Canada is taking advantage of America’s chaotic and sclerotic immigration policies by offering holders of coveted American H1-B visas who find themselves out of work because of layoffs in the tech sector hassle-free permission to move themselves and their families north.

Canada’s minister of immigration, refugees, and citizenship, Sean Fraser, announced the new “Tech Talent Strategy” at a major technology conference at Toronto Tuesday. The program specifically targets foreign-born employees in America, who are required to leave the country within 60 days if they lose their jobs.

“We’re targeting newcomers that can help enshrine Canada as a world leader in a variety of emerging technologies,” Mr. Fraser said. “Having a fast and flexible approach, one that is broadly supported by Canadians, is truly Canada’s immigration advantage.”

In addition to promoting Canada to the growing number of digital nomads around the world, the program allows current H1-B visa holders in the United States to apply and receive work permits in Canada even if they do not have a job lined up. Accompanying family members are also allowed to easily apply for study or work permits.

The H1-B visas, which are wildly popular in the tech industry, are intended to allow American companies to hire foreign workers for a specific period of time — typically between three and six years. They require that applicants have at least a bachelor’s degree and are targeted at people who are not on a path to naturalization.

More than 200,000 of the visas were issued in 2022, the highest in the program’s history, according to the state department, and as many as half a million people are currently using them to work in America. Competition for the visas is extremely tough; last year, there were 780,000 applications for just 85,000 slots.

Applicants from India are consistently the largest group of applicants and account for as much as three-fourths of the recipients. Their importance to people on the subcontinent is such that President Biden used the occasion of a state visit by Prime Minister Modi to Washington last week to announce an easing of the rules for renewing H1-B visas. 

Critics of the program say it amounts to a form of corporate welfare, allowing companies that apply for them to replace American workers with lower-paid, more compliant ones from abroad. Many also have questioned the need for such programs given the increasing number of American-born graduates from science, technology, engineering, and mathematics programs.

The technology companies that rely heavily on H1-B visas — Google, Amazon, Apple, and Meta, to name just a few — have laid off an unprecedented number of employees since 2022. By some accounts, more than 200,000 jobs were eliminated in the tech sector during the first five months of 2023. Holders of H1-B visas are often among the first to be laid off at those companies, leaving holders in the lurch unless they can quickly find other jobs in the same field.

An economist with the Manhattan Institute, Daniel DiMartino, has suggested that America is hobbling itself by not reforming its convoluted immigration system, which is plagued by backlogs, delays, and burdensome red tape.

“This is a smart immigration move for Canada but very bad news for the United States,” Mr. DiMartino tells the Sun. “For years, we have been severely limiting the number of high-skilled immigrants we let in legally, and delaying the typical legal immigration process by years through burdensome red tape. Now, other countries are actively recruiting our few high-skilled legal immigrants. This is why it’s imperative to accelerate America’s bureaucratic process of admitting high-skilled immigrants, and for allowing their spouses and children to work here legally.”

“If Congress and the President don’t act, America will slowly lose its technological edge,” he says.

Canada’s program to poach laid-off tech employees stranded in America launches next month and will remain in effect for one year or until 10,000 people have applied for the special status.