Canada prefers Indian migrants, new survey says

TORONTO: Canadians are far more in favour of tech talent immigration from Asian countries like India than from China, according to a new survey.

While Canadian citizens are largely for enhanced immigration in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) stream, they prefer that the migrants arrive more from countries like India, South Korea or the Philippines rather than China, found the 2019 National Opinion Poll on Canadian Views of Human Capital from Asia.

The survey was conducted by Vancouver-based Asia-Pacific Foundation of Canada.

When it comes to intake of STEM talent, nearly three-fourth or 73% are for such immigration from India, eight points higher than the comparable figure for China. The survey also found that 58% of Canadians believe that Canadians have “become less receptive to international talent from China amid the current tension between Canada and China”.

Two Canadians remain imprisoned in China in move that is widely seen as retaliation for the arrest of a senior executive form the Chinese communications giant Huawei in Vancouver last year. The survey stated that data suggests that China is the “least preferred source of talent across all types of workers”.

It also noted: “Compared to the other Asian countries (India, South Korea, and the Philippines), support for workers from China falls by approximately 10 percentage points.”

This includes a similar fall when it comes to the Canadian Government framing policies to attract such talent from these source nations. It pointed out that the statistics suggested that “people are less inclined to support Chinese talent immigration. Overall, nearly 10% of the population amends its response when the policies are aimed at China specifically, as opposed to Asia.”