…Some business leaders are dubious that the U.S. overhaul of the H-1B visa program is creating an opportunity for Canada.
“The United States uses immigration and visa policies to strengthen its economic and work-force advantage,” said Jim Balsillie, the former chair and co-chief executive of Research In Motion, which is now known as BlackBerry.
Mr. Balsillie, speaking at The Globe and Mail’s Building Canada’s Workforce event on Wednesday afternoon, noted that Mr. Trump’s “strategic use of visas” includes the TN category for trade professionals and the O-1 tier for individuals with extraordinary abilities and achievements.
“I can make a case that the recent H-1B changes actually hurt Canada because TN and O-1 visas are more attractive for many reasons,” he said.
He argued that America’s H-1B changes could exacerbate Canada’s brain drain if the U.S. looks north to fill the gap by seeking new talent in sectors such as artificial intelligence, life sciences and quantum computing.
Here’s another hard truth. If high-skilled immigrants treat our country as a way station to the U.S., it’s our own fault.
Ottawa has known for years that preferred candidates are getting lost in the immigration queue because they are competing with international students for a limited number of permanent-resident spots, said Stephen Green, managing partner at immigration law firm Green and Spiegel LLP.
As he points out, those foreign students have a Canadian education but minimal work experience. Trouble is, our immigration system skews heavily toward younger people….
US employers are increasingly relocating employees abroad to hold onto key talent in the face of restrictive quotas on high-skilled foreign workers.
Ninety-three percent of companies that responded to a survey of workplace immigration trends say they expect this year to turn to offshoring or nearshoring talent—transferring employees overseas or to a nearby country—because of a combination of immigration restrictions and labor demands.
Canada is the top destination to relocate foreign workers, with 62% of responding companies sending workers there, according to the survey produced by immigration services firm Envoy Global Inc. It was followed by Mexico and the United Kingdom (48%) and Germany (31%).
In most cases, the move is the result of challenges securing a work visa. More than eight out of 10 employers lost a foreign employee in the past year because they were unable to secure an H-1B or other employment-based visa.
“There’s a continued frustration with the finite viability and challenge of securing a visa,” said Envoy Global President and CEO Dick Burke. “They’re pursuing the next best alternative, which is overseas.”
The online registration period for H-1B specialty occupation visas opened last week, a preliminary step before US Citizenship and Immigration Services holds a lottery for the 85,000 visas available for fiscal year 2024.
Demand for foreign workers with skills in science, technology, mathematics, and engineering has continued to grow across the economy, far outstripping that annual cap.
At the same time, many companies are becoming more comfortable with hybrid and remote work to keep top talent.
“The confluence of those factors”—immigration difficulties and the rise of telework—drove the increase in offshoring plans, Burke said.
O Canada
Recent international graduates with STEM degrees from US colleges and universities can work for up to three years on F-1 student visas under a program called Optional Practical Training. The program allows those graduates to remain and work in the US while trying their hands at getting an H-1B.
When an early-career worker has run out of immigration options after multiple attempts at the H-1B visa lottery, relocating them to Canada has become a top fallback option for employers, said Jennifer Behm, an attorney at Berardi Immigration Law.
Such nearshoring was already a “no brainer” for large, multinational corporations, but it’s drawing increasing interest from smaller and midsize firms as well.
“When we’ve seen new interest, it has been the medium size firms, not the enormous conglomerates or multinationals,” Behm said. “We’ve successfully made it work for companies who only have US operations.”
Canada is attractive because of its close proximity and similar time zones. It also offers a more worker-friendly immigration system, including immediate work permits for spouses and a quicker pathway to permanent residency, she said.
Relocation Services Industry
There hasn’t been a massive shift toward relocating workers abroad, but companies that do so are finding it easier, said Davis Bae, co-chair of the immigration practice group at Fisher & Phillips LLP.
“Are people more interested in it now? Only because there are more resources,” he said.
Smaller companies without operations abroad have been turning to professional employer organizations (PEOs) for human resource and compliance services when they face losing a skilled foreign worker. The PEO serves as the employer of record in a country like Canada so companies don’t have to establish their own offices outside of the US.
Under this arrangement, paying to relocate a worker to Toronto or Vancouver costs a fraction of what it would cost to replace them with a new employee, said Marc Pavlopoulos, the founder and CEO of PEO Syndesus Canada Inc.
The company employs about 200 workers for US companies in Canada, roughly 90% of whom relocated after losing out on the H-1B lottery. Pavlopoulos works with smaller US-based tech companies that are seeking to grow, while also working toward a Canadian goal of adding 500,000 immigrants per year by 2025.
“The Canadian Dream is a good one,” he said. “You get to keep your cool job and you’re on your way to getting a Canadian passport.”
The Japanese government decided Friday to update immigration rules in hopes of luring world-class talent, including through slashing the wait for high-earning professionals to obtain permanent residency.
Japan currently grants visas to highly skilled professionals under a point-based system, accounting for factors like academic history, work experience and research achievements. Those in this category can obtain permanent residency after up to three years instead of the typical 10.
The update, which the government hopes to implement in April, shortens the period to one year for researchers and engineers who make at least 20 million yen ($149,000) annually and have either a graduate degree or at least 10 years of work experience.
The reduced time frame also applies to business managers who make at least 40 million yen and have at least five years of experience.
These professionals will be able to bring two foreign domestic workers into Japan instead of the current one. Their spouses will be able to work full time in a wider variety of fields.
There were 3,275 people designated as highly skilled professionals in the January-June half. Just 783 of them were new arrivals.
The planned update will also allow elite university graduates from around the world to stay in Japan for two years to look for work. Currently, they have 90 days.
The scheme will apply to those who, within the last five years, graduated from a university in at least two of three top-100 rankings created by British and Chinese entities. They will be able to bring their families along as well.
Japan’s move comes as countries around the world compete for skilled talent able to spur innovation. The U.K. launched in 2022 the two-year High Potential Individual visa, which is awarded to graduates of top-ranked universities. Singapore’s Tech.Pass, launched in 2021, allows technology workers who have been making at least 20,000 Singapore dollars ($15,000) a month to work or start a business in the country.
Still, “factors beyond immigration qualifications, like having lower wages compared with the U.S. and Europe, pose a bigger challenge for Japan,” said lawyer Koji Yamawaki, an expert on Japan’s immigration system.
Average pay in the information and telecommunications industry in Japan came to roughly $40,000 in 2022, according to Tokyo-based human resources company Human Resocia. This amounts to around half of the U.S. average and 70% or so of the German average.
Japan came in 25th out of 35 countries in terms of attractiveness to highly educated workers in a 2019 ranking by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. It was rated particularly low in “quality of opportunities” and “family environment.”
For example, Japan’s education ministry launched a framework in 2014 that allows foreign children to take Japanese classes at school. But only 65% of those who need the extra language instruction have received it, owing to such issues as a teacher shortage.
The majority of applicants for the skilled-professional visa are already in Japan on a different work or student visa. In addition to attracting new talent, Japan will need to find ways to help foreigners in the country advance their careers.
But critics say that rhetoric is at odds with the administration’s actions.
“Show me any policy that’s come out so far that has actually made it easier for highly skilled immigrants,” says Doug Rand, who worked in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy under President Barack Obama.
“I haven’t seen any,” Rand said.
In practice, critics say the administration is making high-skilled immigrants’ lives harder, in all sorts of ways. It has gotten tougher to get or renew an H-1B visa, a program that brings in tech workers, doctors and other professionals. And the administration is getting rid of other visa programs altogether.
That includes a special program for the spouses of H-1B guest workers that has been widely embraced by immigrants like Neha Mahajan. She hosts and produces a TV talk show in Edison, N.J., that’s targeted mainly at Indian expats like her.
“This is the kind of work I always wanted to do,” said Mahajan. “I am picking up topics that typically don’t get talked about in the South Asian community. So I’m trying to be a change-maker in my community.”
Mahajan has a master’s degree in English literature and worked as a journalist in India. It never occurred to her that she would have trouble finding opportunities in the U.S. But Mahajan was not allowed to work when she first got here.
“So here I am in the U.S., the most advanced nation on this Earth,” Mahajan said. “But I’m in a cage. A metaphoric golden cage.”
Mahajan moved here with her husband and daughter in 2008 when he secured an H-1B visa to work as a software developer. But she wasn’t able to work legally until 2015, when the Obama administration launched the H-4 EAD program. It allows the spouses of H-1B guest workers to get work permits once they’ve been approved for a green card. About 100,000 people have signed up — mostly women, and mostly from India, which has a years-long waiting list for green cards.
Now the Trump administration is poised to end the program, which it considers an overreach.
“For me, one of the main reasons for proposing to rescind that is because I don’t think it’s appropriate,” said Lee Cissna, the head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency in charge of legal immigration. “I don’t think that Congress intended for the spouses of H-1Bs to work.”
“Everything we do is guided by the law,” Cissna said. “That’s all we’re doing.”
The administration is also trying to kill another Obama-era program known as the International Entrepreneur Rule, which Doug Rand helped create.
“This was designed for entrepreneurs from other countries to more easily come to the U.S., or stay in the U.S., build companies here, create jobs for U.S. workers,” said Rand, who now runs a firm called Boundless Immigration.
“What the administration is saying is, we want to make it difficult for companies to employ anyone who is not an American citizen,” said Dean Garfield, president of the Information Technology Industry Council.
But the head of Citizenship and Immigration Services dismisses that.
“The idea that we are intentionally, mischievously, impishly, malevolently trying to build an invisible wall on purpose because we don’t want foreign workers to come is false,” said Cissna.
Nonetheless, immigrants like Neha Mahajan wonder whether the administration is serious about “merit-based” immigration.
“I don’t know what to think,” Mahajan said. “Hypocrisy, maybe? They want us to stay. They don’t want us to stay. Why put people’s lives into a limbo?”
Mahajan and other spouses of guest workers are pushing to save the H-4 EAD program that allows them to work. The Trump administration is expected to announce the official end of that program any day.
Multicultural Meanderings 