Posted by Toronto based Josh Schachnow, CEO – Visto explains Canada’s Express Entry system and skilled workers globally.
A rare merit-based means of entry to the United States for citizens of foreign countries, the H-1B program is wildly popular around the world.
Each of the hundreds of thousands of candidates who apply each year is vying to become one of the 85,000 educated workers awarded an H-1B visa annually.
That’s why it came as a surprise to many to learn that the number of H-1B applications actually fell for the second year in a row in 2018.
Part of that decline is due to increasingly onerous bureaucratic fees and rules, by all appearances intended to further discourage American companies from hiring international workers.
However, competition from programs like Canada’s Express Entry system is also playing a role. Like the H-1B system, Express Entry rewards applicants for having skills that are in demand and necessary to conduct business. But that’s where the similarities end.
The Express Entry advantage
Unlike H-1B visas, permanent residency under Express Entry isn’t tied to any specific job. Anyone can apply, even if they don’t have a job lined up. If an applicant’s Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) score, which is based on factors such as age, education and work experience, meets the threshold, then they receive an invitation to apply (ITA) for permanent residency.
That provides a lot more flexibility than an American H-1B visa, which requires the holder of the visa to be employed by a company sponsor to maintain their status.
Also unlike the H-1B system, which has a cap of 85,000 visas granted per year, Express Entry — only introduced in 2015 — is growing quickly. 2018 saw over 92,000 ITAs, up from just over 31,000 four years ago.
Furthermore, in light of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s vow to add a million more permanent residents over the next three years, the Canadian government is unlikely to institute any hard caps on Express Entry, even as the number of applications continues to increase.
The upshot is that the Express Entry program has plenty of room to scale with any increases in demand.
A further benefit of Express Entry over H-1B to applicants is the duration of stay allowed under the program.
An H-1B visa lasts three years by default, though it can be extended three more years if an employer opts to continue sponsoring the worker’s visa. After that, options for H-1B workers are limited.
They can either apply for a new immigration status, such as student or “extraordinary ability worker,” or begin the process of applying for a green card. But success with either of these approaches is by no means assured.
Canada’s Express Entry system, by comparison, offers a high degree of stability and assurance that a permanent resident will be allowed to remain in the country for an extended period of time. The initial limit on duration of stay is five years, although that can then be extended by another five years.
In the meantime, you’re working your way towards citizenship (having spent three of the last five years in the country is one of the conditions of applying for Canadian citizenship).
All this helps explain why as interest in H-1B visas is declining, applications for Express Entry are skyrocketing, particularly from Indian workers.
Polls show that Canada has eclipsed not only the United States, but also Australia, the United Arab Emirates, New Zealand and the United Kingdom as the foreign country Indian citizens would most like to work in.
Meanwhile, HR professionals agree by an overwhelming margin that Canada’s immigration policy is more favorable than America’s, while The Economist reports that there may be as many as 200,000 tech job vacancies by 2020 in Canada, which the country will need to supplant with migrant labor. All that adds up to highly favorable conditions for high-skilled Indian workers.
A difference with a distinction
The superficial similarity between the H-1B and Express Entry programs — both give foreign workers the opportunity to work for North American tech companies and in other high-skilled industries — can distract from a fundamental distinction.
Namely, that H-1B provides a non-residency work visa, whereas Express Entry offers permanent residency. As long as the U.S. system requires companies and individuals to jump through so many extra hoops, it should come as no surprise if Canada continues to attract more foreign talent.
(Josh Schachnow is a Toronto-based immigration lawyer who has helped over 100 skilled workers move to Canada. He is also the CEO of Visto (www.visto.ai), which builds free tools to help skilled Indian technology professionals immigrate to Canada. Views expressed in this article are of the author.)