While Trump nails ‘keep out’ banners, Canada urges skilled youngsters: come up north

OVER dinner at a noodle bar, a Canadian entrepreneur pitched to a table of US tech executives.

Your foreign workers should trade sunny California for snowy Calgary, he told them. And they listened.

Highly skilled foreign workers and the American firms that employ them are in a bit of a visa panic.

US President Donald Trump has vowed to crack down on the H-1B visa programme, which allows 85000 foreigners a year to work in “specialty occupations” in the US. But there are no new rules yet, creating a climate of uncertainty and fear, particularly in Silicon Valley.

Canadian businesses sense an opportunity. The Canadian tech scene has sought for years to compete with Silicon Valley, trying to lure talent north.

In the early days of the Trump administration, “moving to Canada” talk surged among Americans, but most foreign workers waited. Now some are making the move. Though it is hard to track how many foreigners have moved from the US – the Canadian government tracks newcomers by country of citizenship, not residence – immigration lawyers and recruiters on both sides of the border say the number of inquiries from nervous H-1B holders has skyrocketed since 2017.

A small group of Canadian entrepreneurs are dropping into Silicon Valley to persuade companies that rely on foreign tech workers to move them across the border.

Irfhan Rawji, the Canadian entrepreneur trying to sell US tech executives on Canada over dinner, last year founded a company called Mobsquad that helps tech companies move software engineers and other highly skilled workers to Canada. He travels regularly to Silicon Valley to promote his Canadian “solution”.

“Our turnaround to bring a foreign worker to Canada is under four weeks,” he said. “It’s typically longer for them to pack up their stuff.”

For Akshaya Murali, an Indian who spent nearly a decade in the US working for companies such as Microsoft and Expedia, moving to Toronto meant an end to living visa to visa. She and her family applied for permanent residence in Canada and were approved.

Her employer, Remitly, then worked with Mobsquad to move her job north. Mobsquad signed a contract with Remitly and then hired her to do the same job – senior product manager – for Remitly from Toronto.

Mobsquad’s cut is the difference between her total compensation in pricey San Francisco and the cost of the same work in Toronto, which is lower.

Remitly’s chief product officer, Karim Meghji, said the process went so smoothly that he would probably do it again.

Murali landed in Toronto in October and is settling in. “It’s a nice place to bring up our son, really family-friendly,” she said. “The only thing is the weather.”

Silicon Valley’s visa anxiety did not start with Trump, but his policy moves and anti-immigrant rhetoric have compounded the problem, according to tech executives, immigration lawyers and people who have moved.

Months into his presidency, Trump issued a “Buy American and Hire American” executive order that made the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) review the H-1B visa programme to more closely vet applicants.

In the wake of the order, there were reports of an uptick in visa denials and requests by immigration officials for additional information, turning the issue into a topic of conversation for big US companies and immigrant communities alike.

In August, chief executives from top US firms, including Apple, Cisco and IBM, sent a letter to DHS expressing concern about the changes.

“Inconsistent immigration policies are unfair and discourage talented and highly skilled individuals from pursuing career options in the United States,” it said.

Asked to comment on these reported changes, US Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman Michael Bars said: “Increasing our confidence in who receives benefits is a hallmark of this administration.”

Bars said proposed changes under review would make the H-1B process more efficient and ensure the best applicants got visas.

Many have found the uncertainty over the changes to the programme confusing and costly.

S “Sundi” Sundaresh, the chief executive of Cinarra Systems, a start-up that provides location analytics based on mobile data to businesses, says getting US work visas is a significant challenge.

His company employs 55 people worldwide, including 15 in the US. He has three people on H-1BS but would hire more if the process were easier.

Recently, an employee who was working remotely and waiting on a US visa quit in frustration. When a second worker reached the same point, he started looking for options and is now talking to Mobsquad about Canada.

Michael Tippet, a Canadian entrepreneur who founded a company that helps US firms set up satellite offices in Vancouver as a buffer against uncertainty in the US, said highly skilled, foreign-born workers felt anxious and frustrated.

Amogh Phadke, an Indian citizen with a master’s degree in computer science, an MBA and work experience at Fedex and Fannie Mae, wanted to build his life in the US. “I struggled for 10 years with my immigration status,” he said.

His breaking point was the Trump administration’s threat to stop granting work visas for spouses of H-1B holders.

His wife, an Indian studying in Canada, no longer wanted to join him stateside. “She said: ‘It’s here, or we are going back to India.”

He decamped to Edmonton, the chilly capital of Alberta, last year.

While the debate over immigration roils the US, Canada’s major political parties are broadly supportive of increasing the number of skilled immigrants.

In 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government launched the Global Talent Stream, a programme designed to fast-track work authorisation for those with job offers in high-demand realms of science and tech.

Successful applicants can get work permits within weeks. Spouses and children are eligible for work or study permits.

More than 2 000 companies have applied to hire Talent Stream workers, the Department for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said.

With the door wide open, the Canadian government’s biggest challenge might be making the case for Canada.

Recent arrivals said the country was not really on the radar. When Phadke told Americans he was moving to Edmonton, they were shocked.

When people heard how quickly he could move, he was met with more scepticism. “They asked, ‘Is it a scam?’ “

“Canada is really bad at marketing itself,” said Vikram Rangnekar, a former software developer for Linkedin who recently moved from the Bay Area to Toronto. |