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> It was, however, amusing watching so many Canadians return during the Trump years and COVID. Our Google office in Waterloo almost doubled in size from returning Canadians.

That was not my understanding of the trend at all. From all sources I've seen discussed over the years, it seems the Trump admin coincided with a record number of engineers coming to America from Canada. In 2020, 84% of graduating engineer from the Waterloo college went on to move to America [0].

However, what I was told and observed is that a lot of engineers previously working on H1Bs or other non-immigrant visas had their work authorizations revoked after the Trump administration decided to increase the scrutiny on "specialty occupations" [1]. From a friend of mine, I heard Canada was a popular destinations to send programmers who couldn't keep working in the US, no matter their passport, due to a lower bar on immigration.

[0] https://twitter.com/danluu/status/1351785083598893062

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-employmen...