Canada has launched an ambitious high-recruitment program

–

Skilled immigrants from all over the world, including from the United States, where our sclerotic immigration system makes it difficult for foreign technicians to

or extend [long story, but I checked with Andrea Castillo and this “extend” is misleading]

work visa.

Last month, Canada offered a three-year work permit to anyone with a U.S. H-1B visa, the most common entry permit for

hightech

immigrants

working in the technical sector

. The program, which focused in part on workers laid off during the recent Silicon Valley recession, attracted 10,000 applicants in the first 48 hours, a strong indication of how competitive Canada is on the global stage, a spokesman for the country’s immigration ministry said. .

It was also a reflection of frustration among

high skill

migrants who find the US visa system difficult and slow. By one estimate, only about one in

10th

people who register for the annual H-1B lottery will receive a visa.

A Canadian visa is much easier, said Gireesh Bandlamudi, a 29-year-old software engineer from India. With an offer of a job in the US in hand, he considered his chances of winning

H1-B H-1B

and applied to Canada instead. He now works remotely

A to B

a San Francisco company that provides financial services to transportation companies from its new home in Vancouver

BC

.

“My visa was received in four weeks, max!” Hey surprised.

The United States and Canada both try to lure the world’s top technologists, but they use very different strategies when it comes to immigration policy.

US policy has been self-limiting, if not self-defeating.

Since 1990, US law

a

fixed

cape ceiling

of 65,000 new H-1B visas per year, plus 20,000 for holders of master’s or doctorate degrees from US universities. US tech industry groups have long complained that those limits are too low, but efforts to increase them have been thwarted by partisan divisions over immigration policy.

Canada, on the other hand, is deliberately seeking a major wave of immigration as part of a broader strategy to grow its economy.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party government has boosted immigration by more than 40% over the past five years, admitting more than 400,000 new permanent residents by 2021.

Per capita, that’s more than four times as many immigrants as the United States admits. The US issues about one million permanent residents each year, but the US population is more than eight times that of Canada.

Canada is also working on accelerated application tracking

temporary

work permits for anyone with a sought-after skill, a category that includes not only high

–

technique, but health

health care workers, carpenters, plumbers and pipe fitters, who are also in short supply north of the border.

(

That’s how Bandlamudi came to Vancouver, with the help of

a talent recruitment agency for immigration services

called

MobSquad

.

)

In the United States, such an immigration policy would spark a fierce debate in Congress, where Republican hardliners have argued that legal immigration should be pushed back.

Not in Canada.

; h H

Rising immigration has long been supported by most of the country’s major parties.

When Trudeau announced higher immigration targets last year, the opposition Conservative Party’s initial criticism wasn’t that the numbers were too big,

;

it was that the government was not approving applications fast enough.

More recently, the debate has focused on the country’s housing shortage; more new immigrants arrive than new homes are built, and housing prices in Toronto and Vancouver have met or surpassed Los Angeles levels.

But those concerns have led only to suggestions that the government should slow, not reverse, the wave of immigration.

There’s an argument that the government is moving too quickly, but it’s not necessarily based on anti-immigration reasons, said Doreen Barrie, a political scientist at the University of Calgary. If we bring in millions more immigrants and the economy moves south, that could change. Canadians are not all saints. There are people who prefer a more homogeneous society.

So far, however, Canadian conservatives have avoided making immigration a major political issue, unlike US Republicans.

Conservative Party leaders have supported more legal immigration for the same reason as Trudeau’s Liberals, as a strategy for economic growth.

other

Canadian conservatives have been competing for votes in immigrant communities for decades, with considerable success.

But it also reflects a fundamental difference between the two countries.

We don’t have a border with Mexico, Barrie noted. In Canada we get to choose who enters.

For the United States,

immigration

which is a political problem

unauthorized entry

problem on the southern border

Democrats and Republicans both parties

have tried to solve without much success.

For Canada, illegal immigration is a smaller, more manageable problem. Last winter about 20,000

undocumented

migrants entered Canada on a rural road from northern New York

S

is experiencing a revival big enough in Quebec to cause political controversy. Under pressure from conservatives, Trudeau negotiated a deal that would allow Canadian authorities to return asylum seekers to the United States.

so Canada doesn’t look that different from other countries after all.

Still, there should be a lesson for us in Canada’s broad support for more high-skilled immigration. A similar bipartisan consensus almost certainly exists in Congress, between pro-immigration Democrats and pro-business Republicans.

bb

but in our case

our shouting contests

across the southern border continue to get in the way.