Cities like Vancouver, Toronto will thrive instead of American cities, says expert
Canada stands to benefit after United States President Donald Trump announced a fee of US$100,000 on a skilled worker visa program in Canada’s neighbour to the south, according to experts.
On Friday, Trump signed a proclamation requiring a US$100,000 payment to accompany any new H-1B visa petitions submitted after Sept. 21.
“Information technology (IT) firms in particular have prominently manipulated the H-1B system, significantly harming American workers in computer-related fields,” said Trump in his proclamation. “To take advantage of artificially low labour costs incentivised by the program, companies close their IT divisions, fire their American staff, and outsource IT jobs to lower-paid foreign workers.
“Further, the abuse of the H-1B visa program has made it even more challenging for college graduates trying to find IT jobs, allowing employers to hire foreign workers at a significant discount to American workers.”
The new, non-refundable fee is a nearly 5,000% increase from the roughly US$2,000 companies paid between the application and asylum fees before, according to the National Post.
This could shift the flow of highly skilled workers away from the United States and toward Canada, according to industry leaders.
“Cities like Vancouver or Toronto will thrive instead of American cities,” said Garry Tan, CEO of Y Combinator, in a post on X, according to a report from The Economic Times. He described Trump’s policy as a “massive gift to every overseas tech hub” by creating a “toll booth” for smaller U.S. firms to hire talent.
The post was later deleted, according to the report.
Canada must ‘move fast’ on visa changes
Build Canada, a non-profit focused on growing the country's productivity, called on the Canadian government "to move fast", claiming that Canada is the likely destination for foreign workers who will be left behind by the recent changes in the U.S.
"Hundreds of thousands of highly skilled and highly paid H-1B professionals are now seeking a new home," the group said in a memo, according to a BBC report.
"Canada, with its world-class research institutions, similar time zones, proximity to the US, and high quality of life, is the natural destination."
And it seems Canada is going to take action. On Monday, Prime Minister Mark Carney—during his talk at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York—addressed the issue.
“I understand you’re changing your visa policy here, so we’re gonna hang on to a few of those,” he said, according to the National Post report.
Meanwhile, Daniel Foch, founder of Valery.ca, a Toronto-based real estate tech startup, said large enterprises operating in Canada have a significant role to play in bringing this talent to Canada.
“We relied in the last decade on population growth to prop up GDP growth, and I don’t think that’s a sustainable model,” said Foch in The Economic Times report.
“We need companies like Amazon and Apple,” two of the largest users of the H-1B program, “to want to move some of these jobs to Canada and get that positive economic growth.”
Many Canadian employers heavily rely on the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), and Ottawa is now working on further changes to the program.
