As the Trump administration moves to limit some skilled workers from entering the U.S. on a specialized visa, the Canadian tech sector is champing at the bit — hoping the new restriction will send talent up north.
The H-1B visa, whose champions include Tesla founder Elon Musk, is a common immigration pathway for international tech talent recruited by U.S. companies. But the White House is slapping a $100,000 US fee on new applications for the visa, forcing companies to pay steeply for their recruits or otherwise find workers in the U.S.
H-1B visas were already hard to get, as thousands of foreign students learn every year upon graduating from U.S. universities, says Becky Fu von Trapp, an immigration lawyer and founding partner at Von Trapp Law PLLC in Stowe, Vt.
“They want to stay in America, but the lottery system and visa limits forced them out,” she said.
“Canada has built an entire industry by capturing this talent. And with this $100,000 fee, that trend is about to grow much stronger,” she said. “This is almost a gift because every time the U.S. closes the door on global talent, Canada gains.”
Canada will almost certainly benefit from the U.S.’s move to limit new H-1B visas, according to immigration lawyers, talent recruiters and company executives who spoke with CBC News. But some argue that the country can’t rely on its southern neighbour as a feeder for top tech talent, either.
“There’s going to be a net benefit effect for Canada across the board,” said Andres Pelenur, an immigration lawyer and founding partner at Borders Law Firm in Toronto.
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The visa isn’t exclusive to the tech sector, but 60 per cent of H-1B holders approved since 2012 have held computer-related jobs, according to Pew Research — and the visa is used heavily by giants like Apple, Amazon and Google.
But even with an H-1B, the path to U.S. permanent residency, or a green card, is already long and difficult, sometimes taking up to a decade.
“I think we’ll see a lot of people overseas who were planning to enter the U.S. on an H-1B, who are now going to pivot towards Canada and try to see if they can get a job here,” he said.
Smaller and medium-sized businesses that can’t afford the $100,000 fee might instead open offices in Canada, he added — keeping those workers in North American time zones while facing less expense and paperwork for the equivalent Canadian visa.
Some executives see the new U.S. policy as a silver lining for Canada’s tech industry.
“Think of it like a massive game of musical chairs. Top talent is looking for a place to sit and America just removed many of their options,” according to Martin Basiri, the CEO of Passage, a Toronto firm that pairs highly skilled overseas workers with employers in Canada and the U.S.
“Canada can either watch from the sidelines as skilled workers scramble for the remaining seats, or it can quickly add new chairs for the best players,” he wrote Monday in a memo, published by the think-tank Build Canada, which advocates for tech-friendly public policy.
But Basiri also warned that U.S. companies might hasten to recruit Canadian workers under the TN visa, which lets Canadian and Mexican professionals work temporarily in the U.S. for a maximum of three years with indefinite renewals.
It wouldn’t be the first time that the U.S. has pulled back on skilled workers to Canada’s benefit. Back in 2023, the federal government launched a new work permit to attract H-1B holders after mass tech layoffs hit the U.S.
The temporary program hit its cap almost immediately, with 10,000 applicants bidding for a permit over 48 hours. While some hoped that the program would be expanded further, it hasn’t been — and some analysts raised doubts that the number of applicants far outweighed the eventual uptake.
“In recent years we have been making it a little bit harder in Canada to bring tech talent here,” said Ilya Brotzky, the CEO and co-founder of VanHack, a tech recruiting company based in Vancouver.
Members of Canada’s tech community have often said that the country struggles to invest in its own industries and that companies have a hard time securing capital, making it more difficult for them to scale up and attract skilled workers.
Meanwhile, critics of Canada’s immigration system argue that pandemic-era reforms shifted focus away from skilled immigrants. And when Ottawa tried to recalibrate some of those programs earlier this year, provincial leaders worried that doing so would further limit the entry of skilled international workers and hurt the economy.
On the heels of the U.S. announcement, Canada “should definitely be leaning in,” Brotzky added. “We could bring great software engineers who are going to add their skills and create jobs in Canada.”
The downside of relying on U.S. policy changes for talent is that it isn’t a sustainable recruitment model for Canadian industries. The country is sometimes seen as a “holding pen” for skilled workers who are waiting to enter the U.S., says Daniel Wigdor, the chief executive of AXL, an incubator for Canadian artificial intelligence companies.
“One of the reasons people want to go to Northern California to work and they’re willing to take a risk for their family is, if it doesn’t work out at Company A, they can walk down the street to Company B,” he said.
The more that Canada can attract international companies to its shores, “the more we actually provide a lot of freedom for people to do some exciting work here in Canada.”
