Last week, Elevate’s own Carla Abrahamson obtained her permanent residency of Canada. Carla, a native Peruvian and expert in international export finance, decided to make Canada her home and base for her career. In contrast yesterday, the US president decided to extend and expand on restrictions to allow migrants into the US. Citing the protection of US jobs in the pandemic, this move provides Canada with a real opportunity.
Specifically, Trump extended the previous pause on green card issuance to the end of year and also non-immigrant temporary visas would be blocked.
Technology is the key industry to be impacted. However, it goes much further than this. It’s not just Facebook or Google, manufacturing, mining and other sectors will also be impacted. In fact, it is hard to find an industry that will not be. Advancement of technology is happening in every sector (just listen to our interview with Jay Myers on our website). Furthermore, as countries look to change the dynamics of the global supply chain, on-shoring will require even greater advancement of technology and for this reason alone, technology talent is critical.
In the past number of years, we have already seen immigrants to North America shift their attention to Canada and this will now accelerate. Canada needs to invest more, both in developing home grown talent but it can also benefit from the mistakes of our neighbors to the south.