Let’s choose to be a place of hope and opportunity
Where others saw chaos, Brad Ferguson saw opportunity.
Last Saturday afternoon, the rest of us watched the drama created by Donald Trump’s abrupt executive order that banned entry to the United States by citizens of Somalia, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Yemen and Syria. That included the revocation of more than 100,000 valid visas — a situation that left people scrambling, and provoked protests at airports across America.
Ferguson was watching, too. So the head of the Edmonton Economic Development Corp. quickly tweeted out an ad, inviting U.S. tech businesses to consider relocating here.
“Whether it’s Amazon, Google, Genentech or Apple, the world needs our innovators to keep growing, keep progressing, and keep attracting the brightest minds from around the globe,” read the copy. “Look NORTH and we can get you up and running within 48 hours. Visit Edmonton. com, Canada’s most entrepreneurial city, to start the process today.”
Ferguson created the ad himself. No marketing department. No ad agency. No focus groups.
“It was a very quick decision. I just felt it was something we needed to do,” he says. “I didn’t look at it as opportunism. We just wanted to be present, to be part of the conversation.”
The ad, which featured a sepia-toned photo of Edmonton’s snowy river valley, ended on a poetic and wildly patriotic note: “Neighbors (sic) with Open Arms/Open Heart, Open Minds/ Peaceful and Purposeful/Industrious and Entrepreneurial/ Welcoming All/In Times of Need and Strive/We Remain Steadfast/ At Your Side, to Lend a Hand/To Welcome You/For We are One.”
Just one tweet — in blank verse, no less.
But that one tweet, says Ferguson, led to 15 inquiries to EEDC, including one from a San Francisco-based tech company. Three of their programmers, says Ferguson, were Iranian citizens, working in California on H-1B American visas, the so-called “genius visas” issued to highly skilled specialized workers. They’d had been in Tokyo on business, and were now barred from re-entering the US.
Ferguson says the EEDC is now following up on eight solid leads. And yes. He’s serious about that 48-hour promise, at least in some cases.
“Canadians with dual citizenship like Canadian/Iranian who are employed on H-1B visas, working for San Francisco-based companies, may experience reentry issues at the U.S. border,” he notes. “If they contact us, we can set them up at Startup Edmonton and in a downtown hotel rather quickly.”
The EEDC, he says, was already partnering with Calgary on a marketing push to convince tech companies in Seattle, San Francisco and San Diego to move to Alberta. Now, they’ll be tweaking the campaign to capitalize on the confusion around Trump’s ban — and his expected tightening of the H-1B visa program.
“Business loves certainty, and in the face of this uncertainty, people are looking to other markets.”
It may seem callous, to exploit America’s current dysfunction and the woes of those with cancelled visas. But why shouldn’t we scoop up the best and brightest of those America no longer wants — be they tech workers, physicians, scientific researchers, academics or engineers?
Bruce Allen is an immigration lawyer, with offices in both Cleveland and Halifax. In the last week, his firm has seen an enormous increase in inquiries from people who want to move to Canada — 10 times their normal business.
“One morning, we heard from five different Iranian PhDs by noon,” says Allen.
Still, it’s not so easy, he says, to move north. Some American citizens, if they have valid job offers and specific professional training, can apply directly for work permits under NAFTA. Americans with a Canadian parent can apply for citizenship fairly expeditiously. And Ottawa is allowing people who hold American visas and got stuck in Canada because of the Trump ban to apply for temporary status on an emergency basis.
Others, though, have to jump through the standard immigration hoops — in a points system that gives preference to workers who are highly educated, skilled, experienced, fluent in English or French and young. Still, says Allen, for highly skilled, specialized workers who rank high in Canada’s express entry system, immigration can take as little as four months.
So yes. Why shouldn’t we cherry-pick? Let’s invite people in, not just out of benevolence, but from enlightened self-interest. We’re not the tolerant Utopia of Ferguson’s tweet — as the horror in Quebec City, and its aftermath, should remind us all, painfully. We are vulnerable, too, to the contagion of hate. But we can still be a place of hope and opportunity — if we’re bold enough to seize the moment.