How will Canada’s latest visa H1-B will help

The software manufacturer, a long-standing supporter of the provision of more visas for qualified foreigners due to a shortage of talent in the United States, said at the time that the installation of Vancouver “would allow the company to continue recruiting and preserving highly qualified persons affected by immigration problems in the United States” seven years later, in another round of tightening the H-1B program, including Microsoft, added an engineering hoopoe in Vancouv Salesforce opened installations in the city of the Pacific coast.

This is why many provide that the costs of $ 100,000 on new H-1B requests announced last week by President Donald Trump may have the involuntary consequence of sending more technological jobs to Canada. This could also be a windfall for other countries, such as India and China, with more than their highly qualified workers who stay or go home instead of working in the United States after graduation. Indian and Chinese nationals represent 85% of H -1B visa beneficiaries, according to an analysis by Pew Research – and many opt for jobs at home.

“Cities like Vancouver or Toronto will prosper instead of American cities,” said Garry Tan, CEO of the eminent San Francisco Startup incubator, Yet Cominator, earlier this week in a post X now suppressed, according to Bloomberg.

And the CEO of the Royal of Canada, Dave McKay, said Bloomberg On Tuesday, the new H -1B rule “will help Canada keep some of these major students that we have brought” instead of losing them against Silicon Valley – and facilitating the recruitment of others.

The H-1B visa program is used mainly by the technological sector, as well as by financial institutions and the Council. According to the American government, the largest H1-B visa users are Amazon, the technology giant in India Tata Consultancy Services, Microsoft, Meta Platforms and Apple Inc. Non-technical companies that hire many H-1B workers include JP Morgan Chase and Walmart Inc.

Visas are extremely difficult to obtain: each year, companies must deposit petitions in the United States government on behalf of potential employees by March, for a lottery held in April, with only 65,000 visas available. (There are 20,000 others for master’s graduates.) In 2025, more than 470,000 requests were submitted. Although other visas exist, such as the “O” visa for exceptional skills, many are just as hard, even more difficult, to obtain.

To obtain an H-1B, companies must show that the foreign worker will fulfill a “specialized occupation” for which the company cannot find a qualified American worker. The visa holder must be paid at least the salary in force, so as not to compete unfairly with American workers, to lower their salary or to replace them with cheaper work.

The H-1B program has long been criticized, many saying that companies use it to provide cheaper foreign work for qualified jobs. Over the years, there have been periodic withdrawals from the American government program. In 2004, the government lowered the ceiling on the visas granted from 195,000 to 65,000 per year, and it has not been increased since, except add the provision for American control holders. (An analysis in 2020 revealed that this decision led to an increase of 27% of hiring in the international offices of employers.)

During his first mandate in 2017, Trump signed the executive decree “Buy American, Hire American” which led denial level H-1B to increase to 15%, against 4% two years earlier. (The quota was still reached.)

The announcement of the most recent Trump triggered a frenzy in many large technological companies: Microsoft, JP Morgan and Amazon urgently advised employees with H-1B visas to stay in the United States or return quickly after Friday proclamation. (The White House quickly specified that the costs applied to new requests.)

In the midst of uncertainty and chaos, a relatively predictable approach and adapted to Canada companies may well become more a draw. In recent years, Canadian cities seem to have benefited from a less welcoming environment for immigrant workers in the United States: in 2022, a report by the New York Times discovered that Toronto was the third largest technological center in North America.. MRecently, Montreal and Edmonton, Alberta, have become the main artificial intelligence centers.

While talents, government incentives and an often low Canadian dollar have contributed to the emergence of the country as a place of choice for American technology giants, Restrictions on H-1B visas have been one of the largest friction points for technology employers in the United States

Canada is often a leading choice for American technological companies opening satellite offices because of the proximity of its cities adapted to their head office (Vancouver is only 150 miles from Seattle, which is Amazon and Microsoft) and because the immigration policies of Canada have historically allowed more foreign workers.

The Canadian government, as well as provincial and municipal governments, never hesitated to try to attract talents of foreign technology in the United States in Canada, with highly qualified temporary visas and no permanent residence limit on a country. As we saw with the campaign to court Microsoft in 2007, with promises of incentives and aid to location services.

This does not necessarily mean that H-1B turbulence will make the house in Canada at the next Silicon Valley. These are regional offices after all, not the headquarters. “You do not really see a national ecosystem, certainly does not come out of these offices,” warned Kevin Bryan, associate professor at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.

It remains to be seen the new rules for H-1B candidates to attract more foreign technology workers. The generic character is public opinion in Canada, which has also cooled to immigration. This year, the Canadian government’s objective for new permanent residents is 395,000 people, well below 500.00 last year, with more decreases in the next two years.

But if this is the case, there will probably be a great interest: in 2023, the Canadian government introduced a new work permit targeting the tired H-1B holders of US immigration procedures. The limit of permit requests of 10,000 was reached on the first day.