With the immigration reform of the US is at the standoff, the former trade and foreign minister of Canada said that it is good news for them who also seek to attract talented immigrants.
The US actual close door policy on the immigration means that many talented visitors who are educated from US universities and will likely to reside here choose to go to Canada. As its welcoming and approach of less bureaucracy and process of making quick decisions, the US loss thus turning into Canada’s gain.
The main path of legal immigration to the US is through its work visa program which is H-1B visa. But only 85,000 visas are available every year. The limit was set with 65,000 and then later on more 20,000 visas were added.
But in many years, the demand for this visa has outpaced its supply forcing to select the candidates through computer generated random selection process. In five of the nine years, the limit has reached in less than three months and previous year the limit was reached in just four days with around 1,24,000 H-1B petitions were received.
With many applications available than the available visas, the visa which allows overseas employees for working here for six years in this time their firms can sponsor them for the green card, but the problem come up here too.
Congress limits every country job based green cards at 7% of the 1,40,000 yearly available; this means that China and India are backlogged to petitions that were approved.
India has been moving slowly as it can be 70 years for the individual to obtain their green card. Apart from that the technology companies are exploiting the idea of shortage so as to hire overseas workers for fewer wages that they will have to pay the US citizens.
The issues have been muddied by the deadlock over what to do with 11 million immigrants who are staying illegally here.
Canada is trying to cash here, as it promised to provide favorable visa and policies of tax for the potential startups. Its purpose was to employ and retain the individuals with high skills that are affected by the issues of immigration in the US.
Canada economy and its society’s future potential are related to Canada’s ability for attracting the best and the brightest talent.
