Welcome back to a new week and the continuation of our three-part series on the rise of India’s middle class. Last week in part one we discussed the history of this rise to prominence. Now, let us dive into the effects that this surge has had on the international stage.
As mentioned last week, India’s young adults used international education opportunities to venture into the world outside of India. Top universities in the United States, Canada, and United Kingdom were typical hot spots for new applicants. The Indian students would study abroad, earn their degrees, and would often stay in these countries post-graduation. What this began to create is miraculous: a boom in technology expertise in these countries. Globalization has its flaws, but when applied for the betterment of global society, it is one of the greatest achievements in modern history. Suddenly in the new millennium you have numerous countries sharing their talents and creative ideas with each other. Small technology businesses sprouted up increasingly in these countries, clustering in the larger cities, and this revolutionized the technology in these regions. Cell phone and internet infrastructure improved dramatically to a point today where everything in daily life is connected digitally. The advancements being launched every day now are simply incredible and make us wonder if this is indeed a fantasy. But this fairy tale is not without some villains.
Prior to 2016 in the United States, Indian immigration occurred at a healthy rate. But that all changed with the Trump administration. Under this administration, applications for continuing H-1B work visas were denied at a rate of 12% and new applications at a rate of 24%, both four times higher than 2015 numbers. However, one of the beneficiaries of this declination has been Canada. The approval of new Indian immigration applicants to Canada doubled from 2016 to 2019. As Forbes put it, “Canada is benefiting from a diversion of young Indian tech workers from U.S. destinations”. Simultaneously, Canadian universities’ acceptance of new international students rose by 20% in 2017 and a further 16% in 2018, whereas US universities saw a decline by 10% during those same periods of time. The US is declining a gift of skills and knowledge, so Canada is prospering over this voluptuous opportunity for societal advancement.
It is clear that the go-to North American destination for Indian post-secondary students and immigrants has shifted from the United States to Canada in the past five years. If this trend continues now into the Biden administration and these new immigrants/students remain in Canada with their businesses, Canada may one day become a technological superpower on the world stage.
The main lesson here is that compassion and curiosity has been at the forefront of human progress in the modern era as opposed to aggression and intimidation that may have worked in the pre-modern day. But I will discuss this in more detail next Monday in the final installment of this series.