Quote:
Originally Posted by Acajack
Like most Canadians who live in the larger cities I know lots of immigrants personally and their immigration paths vary widely.
There are those (1) who have a negative view of the U.S. (both society and its place in the world) and who never even considered immigrating there. Quite a few of them will wait quite some time after landing in Canada before visiting the U.S. - especially if they don't have relatives down there. Citing the fact that they "want no part of it". A friend of mine was like that and lived here for 25 years before setting foot in the U.S. A few years ago he took his family down to NYC during the summer (partly at my urging) and they all loved it. He said "you know, Americans aren't so bad!".
There is another subset (2) who applied to Canada, the U.S., Australia, etc., and Canada simply said "yes" first. Of these most put down roots in Canada, and learn to like it. Fairly quickly they no longer yearn for the U.S. as they've built a whole life in Canada (including kids) and the differences in outcomes generally aren't really that great in any event.
And then you a have another group (3) which is probably the smallest of the three, who couldn't get into the U.S. and are trying to use Canada as a stepping stone to get into that country. Some of them succeed, some of them don't and get frustrated and bitter, and some of them eventually end up in group (2) above.
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This all sounds reasonable, but the recent bump in Canadian immigration is purely driven by the current U.S. presidential administration's anti-immigrant mood. Many large U.S. companies have stopped sponsoring new H1b visas because of the uncertainty in the process now.
For example, over the last couple of years, the Trump administration has been challenging the credentials of the holders of many of the H1b visas that it awarded. Last year the administration challenged over 60% of the visas it awarded, up from 20% pre-Trump. It is extremely disruptive when the government does this because the workers are usually already in their jobs and have to go on leave during the process. Many companies are just declining to hire people who need to apply for H1bs.