H-1B visa holders: How The U.S. Lost Thousands Of High-Skilled Workers To Canada

The H-1B visa program is essential for bringing qualified technical capability into the country. We need to bring Americans back into the workforce and reform existing programs before we expand immigration. If 2 million more immigrants came to the U.S. each year, we could reverse our predicted population and productivity decline. After decades of deliberation surrounding U.S. immigration policies. High-skilled tech workers are looking towards a new country, Canada. Many warn that if the U.S. doesn't find a way to bring in more of the world's best talent, other countries like Canada will. Canada has launched a new initiative to attract this talent, as well as so-called digital nomads and skilled American workers. But how did we get here? And how does a country that is home to the world's biggest tech companies lose thousands of highly skilled workers to Canada? We spoke with several foreign tech workers and immigration consultants to uncover the story of how the U.S.'s bureaucratic visa process pushes workers north. It is very stressful. Every single year the stress increases. It's not straight forward, it's very convoluted and you have queues and queues. Your ability to even work in a country and contribute to the country is just going to depend on a lottery. The H-1B visa is a nonimmigrant work visa that allows U.S. employers to hire foreign workers in specialty occupations. Specialty occupations require an area of expertise and at least a bachelor's degree or its equivalent. These jobs often include high-skilled workers in tech. Since its creation in 1990, Congress has limited the amount of H-1B visas available each year. The current cap is 65,000, with an additional 20,000 made available for graduates of an American university with a master's or doctorate degree. Because the visa is sponsored by an employer, holders who lose their jobs have 60 days to find a new job, transfer their visa status, or face deportation. Shiva Koul is from India but came to the United States to study in 2013. She started working at Microsoft in 2018, who sponsored her H-1B visa. I was lucky enough for the first time, but I've had friends who've had to apply multiple times and friends who did not get selected or picked up in the lottery at all. Getting an H-1B visa has become increasingly competitive. In order to get approved, an employee has to be sponsored by their employer and then go through a rigorous application process. Once vetted, they are entered into a pool of applicants who are randomly selected for a visa. Harnoor Singh, a software engineer that has a bachelor's and master's degree from Georgia State and is an H-1B visa holder, knows all about this. I have been in the lottery three times, and it took me three times to get accepted in the lottery. For the first year, I wasn't accepted. For second year, I wasn't accepted. It was very stressful because if things don't work out, you have to leave the country. In 2021, nearly half of the eligible registrations received a selection for the random drawing. But for the upcoming 2024 year out of the 758,000 registrations received by the government, only 188,000 were selected for the final random drawing, meaning less than 25% received a visa and thousands were turned away. Once someone receives an H-1B visa, they'll face a number of restrictions. I've been living here for a decade. I've been paying my taxes since my student years. I don't have the same level of rights that a person who's from the states would have, but I have the exact same and even more number of duties. Since you're not a citizen, and since you don't have a green card, you can't even work at a Subway. Because you're restricted with your visa status in the U.S., and you don't even have flexibility to move around. You don't really have flexibility to change jobs. Plus, the green card process, which is the pathway to permanence in the U.S., is a very, very tedious and a long one. Since holders are at the will of their employer, they cannot change jobs or work side gigs. The spouse or child of the holder also cannot work without applying for employment authorization. So you have highly educated spouse that are just, you know, sitting in the U.S. not able to work. Sometimes there are PhD holders that are just staying home cause they can't even work. A natural way to get past this bump is to apply for an employment-based green card. But for holders like Shiva who come from highly populated countries, the backlog is longer than her lifespan. It's painful because all that's left between me and that green card is one piece of paper. That is the last step of the green card. And because there's a backlog, that's why I can't get to that. There is no other reason for that. The U.S. implemented a country cap of 7% for green cards, which means H-1B visa holders born in highly populated countries like India and China are experiencing lifetime waits. 75% of the people who are on H-1B visa in the U.S. were born in India. Majority of Indians suffer by this wait time a lot. They can never get permanent residency in their lifetime. In 2023, the backlog reached a record high, with 1.8 million people waiting and 1.1 million of those people came from India. With the grim path to permanent residency, a lot of H-1B tech workers are exploring their options. H-1Bs were moving to Canada, applying on their own for the permanent residents and doing it. Since I started 20 years ago, the highly educated foreign national is really at the mercy of the US employer. Big tech companies account for a large amount of H-1B visa approvals. Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple and Meta accounted for over 60,000 approvals in the last two years, but all of these companies, except for Apple, underwent major layoffs in the past year, leaving H-1B visa holders in limbo. I got affected with the recent, tech layoff that is going on. And per the U.S. immigration rules. You have up to 60 days to leave the country. You have to gather your everything and if you don't have anything, you have to leave the country. Originally from Ghana, Anokye moved to the U.S. in 2019 on a student visa. He received a bachelor's and master's degree in material science and engineering. After being laid off from Micron earlier this year, he transferred his H-1B visa status to a visitor visa while searching for his next step. I'm still looking for jobs in the U.S., it's not easy. Even certain companies are still laying off, so it's kind of a bit difficult. From October 2022 to April 2023, approximately 50,000 H-1B holders lost their status due to unemployment, and 12,500 of these workers did not transfer to another legal status, meaning they had 60 days to find a new sponsor or potentially face deportation. Then, on June 27th, 2023, this happened. Over the course of this year, Canada is going to be developing a specific stream for some of the world's most highly talented people that will be able to come to Canada to work for tech companies, whether they have a job offer or not. And on July 16th, Canada opened visa applications for a pilot program that would allow up to 10,000 H-1B visa holders in the U.S. to apply for a three year open-work permit in Canada. This is unprecedented. Never heard of any similar program in the past. And the program was a huge success, reaching its 10,000 capacity on the first day. But this pilot program is only one part of Canada's Tech Talent Strategy. A larger multi-year plan to recruit the world's top tech talent. There's been an unprecedented labor shortage in Canada. The tech field is growing, and the labor shortage has been significant in that specific industry for years and years. So that's why the focus is really it's really to be able to provide the businesses in Canada and the economic situation in Canada, the economic immigrants it needs based on their skills, basically. Canada's tech market has grown 15.7% since 2020, outpacing the U.S., which grew at 11.4%. The country now has 1.1 million tech workers, which makes up 6.5% of the workforce. A CBRE study found that Toronto and Vancouver rank inside of the top ten tech cities in the U.S. and Canada, with Ottawa and Montreal ranking ahead of major U.S. cities like Atlanta and Chicago. Canada is also home to Shopify and other big tech companies like Dell, Intel, Microsoft and Amazon all have a presence. Both Anokye and Koul were affected by the tech layoffs and have applied for and received their Canadian work permits. I knew he was going to be very competitive, since there was a lot of other U.S. workers who also have been affected on layoff, and even those who have not yet been laid off. My main reason was to have a sense of security. I wanted to make sure that if nothing pans out, if I can get a Canadian work permit and apply for positions in Canada before my grace period expires, I can just move. The open-work permit is not job-specific, which means they can work in any industry and are not limited to tech. And unlike the H-1B visa, they do not need to have a job lined up before moving to the country. Currently, it is on my plan of trying to move to Canada. If I'm not able to find anything within the U.S. as soon as possible. Personally, I prefer mostly like jobs in my field of study. So, engineering. Others, like Singh, didn't apply but had Canada as a backup plan. I had already applied for a different program to have a work permit in Canada, so I was already in the process to go to Canada as a backup option. Not everybody is jumping on the next flight to come to Canada. They're probably taking their time out of these 10,000 applicants and their families, how many actually do arrive in Canada? I also understand, at least from some of my clients who have applied for this option only as a backup plan. They don't intend to move to Canada in the immediate future. They probably want to wait for six months, one year, probably see how it's going on. The Canadian government issues work permits at the point of entry upon an approved applicant's arrival in Canada. It says so far, more than 6000 work permits have been issued under the H-1B temporary measure. The H-1Bs are really good when they move to Canada because they establish economically, they adapt really well. And usually they like Canada because it's very similar to the U.S. It's always been a pool of ideal candidates. Canadian Immigration Minister Marc Miller wasn't available for an interview, but a spokesperson provided this statement. The immense interest in Canada's H-1B visa application stream is a strong indication of just how competitive Canada is on the global stage. By 2030, the number of STEM jobs in the U.S. is projected to grow by 10.5% to 11.3 million. But in 2019, only 14% of U.S. STEM students worked in STEM post-grad. In fact, 62% of college students that studied STEM worked in non-STEM fields. In Canada, after graduation, foreign students have an easier pathway to permanent residency. The equivalent of the U.S. green card. In Canada,most of our work permits are study permit. There is a direct facilitated pathway to permanent residence. It's fairly new. Our retention is very important because statistics show that people who studied here or worked here are the best at establishing economically and contributing. Harkunwar Kochar is a tech worker who came to Canada on a student visa from India. He has since been able to gain permanent residency. I didn't want to go to a country where I feel like I would always be a foreign resident for a long time if I ended up working there, and to me, Canada feels like a much safer option. I graduated in 2021, and within a one and a half year, I already have my permanent residence. Full-time tech workers in Canada have an average salary of $94,800, while the U.S. is $129,700. However, this hasn't fazed many immigrants. I'm pretty stable in Canada versus I know many similar friends who chose the U.S. as an option, who didn't. Who are still, like, struggling with that. And many have ended up coming to Canada as well. In Canada, the government uses a point-based system based on a number of factors, including language skills, work experience, age, and education to determine visa eligibility. Unlike the U.S., it does not base your permanent residency status on your country of birth. The Canadian immigration system in Canada is not perfect, but it is more responsive to the globalization and the change of the labor market or the economic situation more than where the person comes from. It offers a lot of permanent stability, peace of mind, and that is not easily accessible in the current U.S. immigration system. Some say Congress needs to act in order to retain top talent in the US. People should just take a step back and just revisit and make changes in one go, instead of like taking eons to make those changes because it affects people's lives. Reform is is needed based on the circumstances. But I think that all civilized countries are moving towards, you know, shortage of labor, especially qualified labor. I mean, that's it's that train has left the station everywhere. The policies are extremely inflexible. And when I say inflexible, they haven't changed with times like there was a time when only a few thousand people came in from a particular country. Now you have, you know, plethora of people coming in from those countries. As for the future, where do these tech workers see themselves? If I had the opportunity, I would like to stay in the U.S., but if that doesn't work out, Canada is also a great country, especially for immigrants. I don't think. I would want to stay in the states long term for sure. I think right now people are choosing to go more to Europe, Canada and Australia as opposed to the states. And frankly, if somebody asks me today if I would suggest that they come here, I would not recommend it. So long term, I'm definitely going to stay in the U.S. because at the point of career I am right now, I have more opportunities in the U.S. I haven't really considered living anywhere other than Canada because I'm very happy here.