In just 10 years, one out of every two workers in Canada will retire. To combat a looming labor shortage, the Canadian government announced in November that it will accept 1.45 million immigrants by 2025, 60% of whom will gain urgently needed job skills such as health care.
In the United States, meanwhile, similar immigration bills have stalled as Republicans thwart Democrat efforts to encourage an influx of skilled workers until they go further to secure the U.S.-Mexico border.
The U.S. has about ten times the population of Canada, but data from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service and Canada’s New Policy Makers show the number of legal labor immigrants Canada will receive each year for the next three years in 2022. They said they accepted the same number (about 275,000).
During the final session of the U.S. Congress, which ended in December, a bill to increase the number of foreign-born entrepreneurs, highly skilled workers, microchip manufacturers and farmers could get enough votes to enact legislation. could not.
The only House bill to pass, the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, was opposed by 30 Republicans and one Democrat. A vote in the Senate has not yet taken place.
At the same time, Canada’s two major political parties, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party and the opposition Conservative Party, describe themselves as pro-immigration.
Prime Minister Trudeau has broad support for new immigration targets focused on opening the door for refugees and low-skilled workers, as well as attracting high-skilled workers in fields such as health care and technology. .
Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren, then chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship, introduced two bills to increase employment-based visas, but neither passed the House.
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