A high proportion of the Indian population has work experience or degrees in engineering, software development and data science – areas that are seeing tremendous growth in demand
Even though tensions between India and Canada continue to fester, recruitment firms say interest from workers moving between the two countries has not dropped significantly – even though anxiety is building, reported ca.finance.yahoo.com.
The firms attribute the uneasiness some Indians now feel around relocating to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s mid-September announcement revealing “a potential link” between India’s government and the killing of a Sikh leader that Canada was investigating.
Canada later removed most of its diplomatic presence from India after New Delhi threatened to strip diplomatic immunities from them and their families.
The moves have made many nervous.
Indians are often sought after by Canadian companies because of their skills, said Arif Khimani, the president and chief operating officer at MobSquad, a Calgary company that helps businesses with recruitment and visas
“We’ve definitely seen a large increase in people saying, ‘Hey, why should I move to Canada?'” said Ilya Brotzky, chief executive and co-founder of VanHack, a Vancouver-based firm connecting employers and tech professionals around the world. Before the tensions, he estimated about 95 per cent of the conversations his company had with Indians interested in relocating to Canada were positive. These days, it’s dropped to about 80 per cent.
“We’ve never seen that before,” he said. “It’s a bit of an alarming trend.”
Of the 32,115 international tech workers who migrated to Canada between April 2022 and March 2023, nearly half – 15,097 – came from India, a July report from the Technology Councils of North America and Canada’s Tech Network found.
Indians are often sought after by Canadian companies because of their skills, said Arif Khimani, the president and chief operating officer at MobSquad, a Calgary company that helps businesses with recruitment and visas. A high proportion of the Indian population has work experience or degrees in engineering, software development and data science – areas that are seeing tremendous growth in demand.
Many are keen to move because they see Canada as a place offering a good quality of life, relative safety, beautiful landscapes and a decent health-care system, Brotzky said. Entry to Canada also tends to be easier to land than U.S. or European visas, he said: “There’s not too many better alternatives out there.” But even before strife with India materialized, he noticed some were growing weary of coming to Canada because of how much it would cost them to buy a home.
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