At least five Hootsuite-sized technology-based companies are setting their eyes on Vancouver, looking to set up satellite offices in the city due to the Trump administration, according to True North.
True North is an organization that offers services to help foreign-born workers in the U.S. set up backup plans in Canada in case something changes to the worker visa system. With the Trump administration seemingly working to dismantle the H-1B visa — a non-immigration visa designed for foreign workers in specialty occupations — True North has been receiving a lot of calls.
“What’s been most interesting to us recently is the size of companies who are approaching us,” Tippett told News 1130. “To put it in perspective, we’re seeing companies who are on the scale of a Hootsuite or Shopify or some of the larger technology companies in Canada who are thinking very seriously about setting up operations in Canada. Generally not relocating the organization completely but setting up a hub in the city, so the scale is much larger than we imagined it was initially.”
Tippett added he didn’t expect these large companies to be looking to the north. Forty-three percent of the founders of Silicon Valley tech companies are not American-born, and anywhere from 10-30 percent of their employees are also on the H-1B visas, meaning that large chunks of Silicon Valley might be looking to set up location out of the U.S. These offices could hold hundreds of employees.
Vancouver is a lot closer to Silicon Valley than Toronto, making it the “ideal” place for five to 10 somewhat large tech companies to move to in the near future.
This article was originally published on MobileSyrup