I am pitching a story to UBC publication on long-term Indian immigrants who have moved from the United States to Canada. I cover the experience and transition to Canada, particularly Vancouver! But most importantly to do this story – my editor needs statistics or some factual information, like say X number or percentage of Indian immigrants are moving from the United States to Canada or if companies in the US are claiming losing so and so number of employees to Canada or Canada claims to gain so and so.
I’d really appreciate any leads. Thank you! - Sonal
Hard numbers and statistics are going to be hard to find. This is something that only IRCC will have access to.
But from my own personal experience, take this as an anecdote and nothing more. In general there is great dissatisfaction and anxiety in almost all Indian immigrants in the US who are waiting in the queue for a Green Card. However a very small percentage of people actually pull the trigger and move to Canada. Amongst all my colleagues, working in America for 5 years I only know one other person who along with me moved to Canada.
This forum is going to be somewhat skewed as most of us have already moved or are strongly considering moving to Canada. Others can chime in and confirm if their anecdotal experiences are similar to mine or not.
I’m going to say that statistically, I don’t believe the US is losing a significant number of Indian immigrants. My hunch is that it’s going to be low single digits in terms of percentages. However the immigrants that they are losing are almost all highly skilled immigrants, with most of them making six figure salaries in either country.
The single most definitive source of truth is the IRCC Express Entry Year end Report.
If you start tracking the data from 2014 you’ll observe the trend.
In 2015 and 2016, software engineers (NOC2173) applying for Canadian PR were less than 1000. This number shot up dramatically in 2017 with 5000 engineers applying, in 2018, 6000 and 2019, 6500. This is just looking at the software engineer occupation, there are two other related NOCs all showing an upward trend.
Another interesting analysis - the number of candidates applying from US as country of residence in 2015 and 2016, were under 1000. In 2017, 5000, 2018 and 2019 over 10,000.
The data kinda tells the story of the movement from US to Canada.
MOV North is a community of engineers helping others who are on the fence or going through the same process as they did of leaving the US for Canada.
I agree with your last paragraph. Of those moving to Canada, most are from tech fields. My husband and I both work in STEM/pharma fields. We were in the US for close to 15 years and just moved to Canada this year. Funny enough we met a couple recently who had only been in the US for 4 years; both didn’t get picked in the H1B lottery and moved here because one of their employers was okay with them working from Canada.