With its global skills strategy, Canada is increasingly becoming an immigrant-friendly country, where software professionals prefer to work despite being allowed to stay in the US.
One of the main attractions is the fact that Canada’s ‘global skills strategy’ is much more simple and speedy compared to the H-1B programme of the US. Canada processes work permits within a span of 15 days.
In addition, there is transparency in the process of achieving permanent residence, thanks to the express entry application system, which ensures that processing takes place in six months’ time.
With faster processing and immigrant-friendly policies, the country will soon be able to achieve its target of a million immigrants by 2021.
About 86000 skilled workers have been issued Invitations to Apply (ITAs) for permanent residence, of which about 41000 are Indians.
With H-1B visas becoming tougher to obtain for Indian software professionals wanting to work in the US, Canada seems to have become a popular destination these days. Rising anti-immigrant sentiment under the Trump administration has only fuelled this popularity.
However, the Country’s tech industry is much smaller compared to that of the US. Also, while techies receive salaries of approx. $142,000 in Silicon Valley, companies in Toronto offer only about $73,000. The population of Indians in Canada is much smaller as compared to the US, where the size of the Indian community is larger.
