WASHINGTON: Indians students and white collar professionals are ditching the “American dream” to pursue a Canadian one because of the increasingly restrictive visa and immigration policies of the Trump administration, which, according to the US corporations, are going be tightened further within days with damaging consequences for the country.
There is heightened expectation in right wing quarters – and growing apprehension in US corporations and academic circles — that President Trump will issue an executive order late on Friday or early next week to scrap or freeze the H1B visa program and the optional practical training program that allows graduate foreign students to intern in the US., because of the high unemployment rate due to the coronavirus pandemic. But a new analysis of US government data shows Indian STEM students and skilled professionals were already veering away to Canada even before the Covid-19 pandemic because of Washington’s unwelcome policies.
Data examined by the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) show that the number of international students from India enrolled in graduate-level computer science and engineering at US. universities declined by more than 25% between the 2016-17 and 2018-19 academic years. At the same time, the Canadian Bureau of International Education repor