A trend that is picking up steam as the green card wait and H1B/L1 visas get more difficult to obtain. IT professionals from India make up a big proportion of foreign IT workers in USA. And as Canada has continued to expand its skilled worker immigration program, more professionals are taking on the Northern journey.
Assessment for the Canadian skilled worker immigration program is primarily based on age, education and work experience. There are sites that offer a free assessment service for obtaining a long term Canadian visa. One such site is at https://CanadianVisa.com/
The Economist magazine has a well researched article on this trend. Read the full article at this link. While the headlines say Indian technology talent is flocking to Canada – it could very well point to many of the other nationalities that are in the US on a foreign work visa.
Some highlights of the Economist article are listed here:
As immigrant techies shun the US, its neighbour has rolled out the red carpet
On why he chose Canada, an IT professional referring to life on an H1B visa put it simply –
“I didn’t want to spend the best years of my life on a restrictive visa.”
The starting-point is pretty promising. Toronto already has expertise in artificial intelligence (ai) and an array of promising firms such as Wattpad, a storytelling platform with 65m readers. The city added more tech jobs in 2017 than the San Francisco Bay area, Seattle and Washington, dc, combined.
Such tactics seem to be working, especially with Indians, a mighty force in Silicon Valley, where they form the largest group of immigrant tech workers. Indians from America and elsewhere snapped up almost half of the new temporary visas (processing time: two weeks) that Canada began issuing in June 2017 at the behest of the tech industry.
Despite the trends of 2017 and 2018, whether this trend will further accelerate in 2019, is to be seen. All trends though point to this. Canadian IT professionals of Indian origin have seen this trickle grow and are happy to see more diversity in Maple Valley. Only 2 decades ago, Gerard Street of Toronto was the only Desi celebration spot, but now it has grown to many neighborhoods across the Greater Toronto Area as well as other cities of Canada.
From all of us – Best wishes for a Happy New Year.
PS: For all those with an eye for the keyboard – the ASDF was a targeted effort.
