I have written before that US immigration policy is dated – we focus on country based quotas, family reunification, lotteries, and there is way too much angst about the social cost of Mexican migrant labor. We have lost sight of an increasingly mobile global workforce which does not necessarily want to immigrate but wants to spend productive working years in the most welcoming environments. Young Irish who move around every few years, young Indians who come here for an advanced degree and a few years of experience then move back are the new “immigrant”. They can do what my late father-in-law, Tom could not do in 1915 – they can be in a new country in a matter of hours. Tom’s parents took 2 months to move back from Los Angeles to Ireland.
Last week I sat down to lunch with this new breed of “immigrant”. Bruce Stewart, my colleague at Gartner, is now Director at the iSchool in Toronto. He is a Canadian but spent years in Connecticut and then the Netherlands with Gartner. He then spent a few years in Vancouver, which distance wise and culturally, might as well be another country. He was telling me about the point system Canada uses to attract specific types of qualified talent – successfully if you see how multi-cultural both Toronto and Vancouver are. It is estimated in both cities, half the population was not born in Canada. Bruce, however, feels that Canada could do better. When an immigrant lands, there is little effort to help them integrate. From Bruce’s research about potentially spending time in Australia, he feels they do a much better job integrating new immigrants into professional societies and chosen fields of focus.
That was confirmed by an Indian taxi driver in Toronto having immigrated to Canada a few years ago, now wants to move to the US. Another driver from Hong Kong, in Canada for two decades, may consider moving back to the bustling new China. This is the new “immigrant”. Like capital, much more fluid than ever before and willing to move wherever they feel most welcome.
I came home to see a letter from the Irish consul in New York. My daughter, taking advantage of her Irish mother, wants to get an EU passport so she can position herself to easily work there in the future. More signs of the new “immigrant”.
As we celebrate Labor Day in US and Canada, it is important to reflect that much of the world celebrates it on May 1, Australia does it on the first Monday in October, New Zealand the fourth Monday in October. It is a subtle indicator we view labor differently.
Many of these countries also add what we consider a redundant U in labor. But that U is a sublimal indicator of how welcome they make this new mobile immigrant feel. It is the next frontier in talent management.
