Stuart Anderson for Forbes compares immigration trends in the United States and Canada.  New data show the number of people immigrating to Canada increased by 26% between 2015 and 2019, and is projected to rise higher as the country seeks to overcome the aging of its workforce. In the United States, legal immigration fell by 7% between FY 2016 and FY 2018, and is expected to decline even more sharply due to Trump administration policies.

Canada has announced plans to increase the number of immigrants it accepts each year. “To further ease the challenges of a shrinking labor force and an aging population, our new multi-year immigration levels plan sets out the highest levels of permanent residents that Canada will welcome in recent history,” according to Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Ahmed Hussen. By 2021, Canada is expected to increase legal immigration to 350,000 a year, a rise of 78,165, or 29%, from the 2015 level of 271,835.

The big Canadian immigration news in 2019 was the number of Indians who became permanent residents in Canada increased from 39,340 in 2016 to 85,585 in 2019, a rise of more than 117%, according to a National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) analysis of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada data. “Canada is benefiting from a diversion of young Indian tech workers from U.S. destinations, largely because of the challenges of obtaining and renewing H-1B visas and finding a reliable route to U.S. permanent residence,” said Peter Rekai, founder of the Toronto-based immigration law firm Rekai LLP, in an interview. (See here.)