海角社区官网

Now, comes Washington鈥檚 latest self-inflicted wound: a new executive order from U.S. President Donald Trump forcing companies to pay $100,000 a year, for up to three years, for each skilled foreign worker on an H-1B visa.

This is not a minor change. H-1B fees once ranged from just $1,700 to $4,500.

The stunning increase is billed as a way to 鈥渆ncourage companies to hire Americans.鈥� In practice, it slams the door on the world鈥檚 best scientists, engineers, and innovators 鈥� and hands America鈥檚 competitors 鈥� Canada foremost among them 鈥� a golden opportunity.

For decades, H-1B visas have filled critical shortages in IT, health care, and engineering. Their impact has been transformative. Google alone employs nearly 44,000 H-1B workers.

Research from the National Bureau of Economic Research shows that while immigrants represent only 16 per cent of inventors in the U.S., they account for 36 per cent of patents and innovation outcomes. Immigrant scientists also tend to collaborate more widely, spreading knowledge and boosting overall productivity.

Since the program鈥檚 inception in 1990, the U.S. has been the prime beneficiary of a global brain drain, especially from India and China.

In 2023, Indian nationals claimed 72 per cent of H-1Bs, and Chinese nationals another 12 per cent. These are not just numbers: they represent the lifeblood of America鈥檚 tech and innovation economy.

Both India and China supply not only coders and engineers but China is a leader in frontier fields like quantum computing, artificial intelligence, with China dominating the U.S. in advanced manufacturing and clean-energy technologies. By turning away this talent, Washington is effectively undermining its own innovation capacity.

That is where Canada comes in.

Unlike its southern neighbour, Canada offers stable institutions, predictable policies, and less political turmoil.

For years, Canada has struggled with brain drain as homegrown talent chased Silicon Valley salaries聽and venture capital. Now, with the U.S. actively pushing away talent, Canada has a chance to reverse the flow.

Already, Canada admits about 240,000 skilled workers annually 鈥� roughly 0.6 per cent of its population.

The U.S., by comparison, admits skilled immigrants equal to just 0.07 per cent of its labour force. Per capita, Canada is far ahead, but numbers alone are not enough.

Canada鈥檚 immigration system is a confusing patchwork of programs: Express Entry, Provincial Nominee Programs, and regional pilots like the Atlantic Immigration Program.

In the Trudeau government, it was a policy of saturating Canada with low-skilled temporary foreign workers and lower tier students that financed a broken provincial education system and drove up housing costs for everyone.

What shall the Carney government’s policy be? What is missing is a coherent national strategy that links immigration directly to industrial priorities and future growth sectors.

That means more than empty slogans like elbows up.

If Canada wants to lead in AI, sustainability, clean energy, and advanced health care, it needs to build immigration pathways specifically tailored to these industries.

Targeted programs could fast-track the best researchers in climate change technology, modular nuclear reactors, sustainable manufacturing, medical science, and fusion energy. Similar pathways should be designed for artificial intelligence experts, robotics engineers, and next-generation materials scientists 鈥� fields where Chinese researchers have already made global breakthroughs.

China, in particular, has become a world leader in green technologies, from solar and battery storage to electric vehicles. The country is also advancing rapidly in AI research, publishing more peer-reviewed papers than any other nation.

Canada would be wise to court Chinese scientists and entrepreneurs who may now find the U.S. closed to them.

Creating dedicated visas and permanent residency streams for innovators would not only strengthen Canada鈥檚 own tech ecosystem but also accelerate its role as a hub for climate solutions and high-tech industries.

But immigration reform cannot stand alone.

Canada must pair it with an aggressive industrial strategy. That includes investing in housing and infrastructure so that skilled newcomers can settle and thrive, while ensuring that salaries and research funding remain competitive with the U.S. and Europe.

It also means creating strong partnerships between government, universities, and industry to direct new talent into high-growth areas like clean tech, advanced manufacturing, and AI-driven services.

The potential payoff is enormous.

Canada鈥檚 tech sector, long overshadowed by the U.S., could position itself as a global leader in sustainability and innovation. International students already rank Canada ahead of the U.S. as a destination, citing American dysfunction as a deterrent.

With the right policies, Canada can lock in that advantage, transforming from a country that loses talent to one that attracts and retains it.

While the U.S. is retreating聽into protectionism and fear, Canada can seize the future by embracing openness, an aggressive strategy, and global talent.

But time is short.

The world鈥檚 best scientists, engineers, and innovators will not wait forever. The window is open 鈥� if Canada acts boldly, and now.