This article was first published by The Hill Times.
The global competition for highly skilled STEM talent is intensifying, and the United States risks falling behind. At a time when countries are re-evaluating their immigration rules to attract skilled workers, Washington is moving in the opposite direction. The recent introduction of a $100,000 annual fee for H-1B visas is presented as a measure to protect American workers. In practice, it threatens to accelerate brain drain, creating an innovation vacuum across critical industries and leaving the U.S. vulnerable to both economic and strategic setbacks.
For Canada, however, America’s H-1B uncertainty is a lucrative opportunity to attract the top tech talent and highly skilled workforce, expand and strengthen our own innovation ecosystem, and accelerate its emergence as a global tech leader.
For decades, America’s technological leadership has rested on openness. Immigrants have been central to building the country’s innovation ecosystem: nearly two-thirds or 65 per cent (28 of 43) American AI companies were founded or co-founded either by immigrants or their children, according to a 2022 report, and international students make up the majority of graduate enrolments in STEM and computer science programs. Across sectors as diverse as semiconductors, cloud computing, and cybersecurity, H-1B visa holders play an indispensable role.
The U.S. has never produced enough STEM graduates to meet domestic demand, which means foreign professionals are not displacing Americans but rather filling gaps that keep the innovation engine running. Restrictive immigration policies do not solve this skills shortage. Instead, they risk undermining the human capital that sustains growth.
History shows that talent is highly mobile. When one country closes its doors, others open theirs wider. Already, Canada is trying to position itself as North America’s alternative tech hub, offering fast-track permanent residency and streamlined immigration pathways for skilled workers. Unlike the U.S., Canada has built an immigration model rooted in predictability and openness. Its Global Talent Stream, part of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, which allows technology firms to bring in high-skilled workers within two weeks.
More recently, in 2023, Canada launched a Tech Talent Strategy that potentially invites H-1B visa holders stuck in American immigration limbo to apply for open work permits. Canadian cities like Toronto and Vancouver are already emerging as global tech hubs. The convergence of robust universities, thriving startup ecosystems, and world-class public services makes the country especially attractive to mid-career professionals looking for stability, not just opportunity. By proactively marketing itself as North America’s innovation haven, Canada can attract the very people being driven out of Silicon Valley.
But attraction alone is not enough. Canada must now build a whole-of-government innovation strategy that links talent inflows to sectoral growth. This includes expanding permanent residency options for STEM professionals and their families, supporting startups and SMEs that hire global talent with visa sponsorship, capital, and R&D credits, building global IP and commercialization pipelines, so Canadian tech is not just homegrown, but also world leading.
Canada’s goal should be not just to benefit from American missteps, but to leapfrog into global leadership across frontier sectors. This is especially urgent as nations like India and China begin aligning immigration with industrial policy.
Nations around the world understand that in the digital economy, talent is as valuable as oil was in the industrial age. China has poured resources into programs designed to lure back overseas graduates, offering generous research funding, housing subsidies, and startup capital. India is beginning to position its vast technical workforce as a strategic resource, leveraging its size to attract R&D partnerships and joint ventures. The shift of talent flows toward these countries could gradually alter global innovation networks, moving entrepreneurship, intellectual property, and investment capital out of the U.S. Once lost, such ecosystems are extraordinarily difficult to rebuild.
The argument for protecting American workers is not misplaced. But a strategy of exclusion is counterproductive. Rather than raising barriers that deter young professionals and startups, U.S. policy should aim to balance domestic opportunity with international openness. But with the current policy, America risks creating an innovation vacuum that no policy reversal can easily fix. Once top-tier talent begins rerouting itself toward Toronto or Berlin or Bangalore, the downstream effects will be hard to reverse. Patents, investments, unicorns, and Nobel prizes follow people, not policies.
Canada is uniquely placed to become the beneficiary of America’s closed-door pivot. But that requires bold vision, not incrementalism. If the U.S. turns away the builders of tomorrow, Canada must ensure they don’t just land here but thrive here.
