Will Trump's new visa fee be a boon to Canada and redraw the North American talent map?

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Immigration lawyers in the United States had a busy weekend. Thanks to President Donald Trump’s executive order on Friday, which introduced a US$100,000 fee for every H‑1B visa application, effective Sunday, legal teams spent Saturday fielding phone calls and filing as many visa applications as they could.

The phones have not stopped ringing since.

Having dropped without warning, the rule change came as a shock to companies throughout the U.S. and aspiring visa holders worldwide. The new, nonrefundable fee — a nearly 5,000 per cent increase from the roughly US$2,000 companies paid between the application and asylum fees before — is to be paid by companies for each foreign worker applying for an H-1B visa from Sept. 21 onward.

Prime Minister Mark Carney addressed the issue during his Monday talk at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. While touting Canada’s research universities as producing some of the largest numbers of AI computing and quantum talent in the world, he also lamented that, “unfortunately, most of them go to the United States.”

“I understand you’re changing your visa policy here, so we’re gonna hang on to a few of those,” he quipped with a grin.

Companies looking to hire the most talented workers in computer and IT-related professions top the list of applicants, which means tech giants like Amazon, Meta and Microsoft will feel the pinch, but not nearly as much as the smaller players looking to attract talent from abroad. H-1Bs have long been a pathway for the world’s brightest thinkers to forge their careers and residencies in the U.S. — unlike other visa types, the H-1B allows holders to also pursue a green card — often at the cost of their own countries’ talent pools.

Roughly 400,000 H-1B visas were approved in 2024, and the top countries of origin for approved H-1B visas last year were India, with 71 per cent, and China, with 12 per cent, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). The Philippines and Canada rank third and fourth for the most H-1Bs, at one per cent each. Canada has long lamented the loss of some of its finest computing engineers to Silicon Valley and even tried wooing some H‑1B visa holders with visas to come to Canada in 2023 as a way to offset the talent drain.

So what do the changes mean? Can any benefits be gleaned from America’s exorbitant new H‑1B fee, and is there really a silver lining for Canada?

Teams offering legal advice to U.S. companies and foreign workers have been trying to advise clients despite the subsequent uncertainty following the sudden change.

Isabelle Hurtubise, a partner in the San Francisco-based Hurtubise Weber Law firm, is herself an immigrant from Montreal who specializes in immigration law. She and her team worked tirelessly over the weekend to help clients, but she says confusion remains. After the executive order on Friday, the USCIS issued a memo on Saturday, an FAQ on Sunday, and other quasi-official pronouncements, she said.

Trouble is, “they’re not all consistent, so we are still figuring out how this is going to actually look.”

What is clear is that the $100,000 fee is only for new applicants, not existing H‑1B holders.

“Anybody who has an H-1B visa that was filed starting at midnight on Sunday that was outside the U.S., when they attempt to use that visa to come into the U.S., they have to prove that their company has paid the $100,000 fee,” Hurtubise explained, noting that one of the government clarifications suggested it might be a one-time fee per worker.

Companies sponsor H-1B applications to draw the best possible talent from around the world.

“A lot of our clients are early-stage companies or very cutting-edge, doing new things, and they want the best of the best talent,” Hurtubise said. While tech giants may be willing to pay the new fee, it will likely be “cost-prohibitive,” she said, for some of the smaller Silicon Valley startups.

This, in turn, could have implications for where they decide to do business.

“They’re still going to have to hire the best talent … So they’re going to place their companies where they can hire that talent,” Hurtubise said.

This could be good news for Canada, given that it shares the same time zones and language, offering similarities for remote teams who need to work together.

“I would think Canada is one of the top places that people will look to,” said Hurtubise.

Others aren’t sure there are enough numbers of Canadian workers on H-1Bs to make a difference.

Andreas Schotter, an international business professor at Western University’s Ivey Business School, pointed out that only a fraction of the H-1B visas issued each year go to Canadians.

“We may move some talent to Canada away from the United States because of the H-1B visa,” he said, “but that’s not a lot of visas.”

A few drops in the talent pool may not help much, but Schotter said Canada’s problem is not a lack of talent so much as a lack of investment. While Canada has some strong angel financing, it has nowhere near the scale of what is available in the United States.

Still, the resulting loss of talent could have a huge impact on U.S. companies and American innovation. Because fewer of the world’s top minds will be able to get visas, “I think (this) issue will hurt the U.S. very much,” Schotter said.

Making the U.S. less competitive could also hurt Canada, he said, but in the long run, it could lead to an indirect benefit where the U.S. needs Canada more for its talent and products.

Trade experts in the U.S. are scratching their heads over Trump’s new H-1B fee, as it could undermine a system that has brought some of the most talented computer and AI engineers to American shores.

“This is going to make it difficult for the United States to attract the needed workers to build the plants that we’re pressing countries to build in the United States,” said Wendy Cutler, senior VP at Asia Society Policy Institute and a former trade negotiator at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

“I think it’s important to marry our investment promotion policies with our visa policies.”

National Post

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our newsletters here.