Shopify is looking to benefit from the United States’ move to ban immigrants for the rest of 2020, with founder and chief executive Tobi Lutke publicly inviting engineers to give Canada a try instead.
On Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order suspending immigrant visas to the United States, including the H-1B visa available to high-skilled workers.
The H-1B is used heavily by high-growth American technology companies, because hiring top engineering and software development professionals is one of the major challenges those businesses face.
Within hours of the news breaking on Monday, Shopify vice-president Kaz Nejatian posted on Twitter saying, “We’re hiring at Shopify. If you are an (engineer) getting screwed by this insanity, please message me.”
On Tuesday morning, Nejatian took it a step further, posting that he’s registered the URL h1bengineer.com, which redirects users to Shopify’s career postings page.
“If you are an engineer whose H1B is in jeopardy, I’ve created a resource to help you avoid Visa troubles and finding fulfilling careers that make the world a better place. Go to H1BEngineer.com or DM me,” he said.
A little while later, Lutke chimed into the conversation. Sharing a link to a New York Times story about the U.S. immigration ban, Lutke said, “If this affects your plans consider coming to Canada instead. Shopify is hiring all over the world and we have lots of experience helping with relocation. Let us know at http://h1bengineer.com .”
Lutke then followed up to say, “If getting [to] the U.S. is your main objective you can still move on south after the h1b rules change. But Canada is awesome. Give it a try.”
South of the border, some of the largest tech companies voiced their displeasure about Trump’s executive order. Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Google, posted on Twitter saying, “Immigration has contributed immensely to America’s economic success, making it a global leader in tech, and also Google the company it is today. Disappointed by today’s proclamation — we’ll continue to stand with immigrants and work to expand opportunity for all.”
Twitter posted a message from its vice-president of public policy, Jessica Herrera-Flanigan, saying “This proclamation undermines America’s greatest economic asset: its diversity. People from all over the world come here to join our labour force, pay taxes, and contribute to our global competitiveness on the world stage.”
Financial Post
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