Most immigrants in York and Lancaster know how difficult the process of getting a visa or green card can be. Then there are the people in other countries seeking a job or chance to go to college in the U.S. but have not gotten approved yet. After a while, they might start looking to other countries for these opportunities.
Canada, for example. According to Forbes, more skilled immigrants are choosing Canada over the U.S. than in years past.
Changing immigration destination
From 2016-18, the number of Indian nationals attending college in Canada went up 127 percent, going from 76,075 to 172,625. Meanwhile, from the 2016-17 school year to 2018-19, the number of Indian nationals in U.S. graduate schools for engineering or computer science went down by more than 25 percent.
These numbers could be part of a larger trend and could be because it is easier to get a Canadian visa than an American one. Canadian immigration officials often approve applications for their version of the H-1B visa within two weeks. There are no caps on temporary visas for high-skilled workers like engineers.
By contrast, the U.S. only issues 85,000 H-1B visas per year. American employers filed about 308,000 H-1B applications for fiscal year 2022. In a 2020 survey, 74 percent of employers said that Canada’s immigration policies are more business-friendly than the U.S.’s, and 48 percent said they had placed foreign national employees in countries other than the U.S. because of immigration law.
Immigrating to the U.S. is still possible
Many observers say that U.S. immigration policy needs to be updated to reflect the number of students and skilled professionals who want to come to this country to work or study. However, obtaining a work or student visa is still possible, if not always simple.