[alephnerd]

FYI most Canadian immigrants also leave Canada once they become Canadian. Plenty of my family did that, and if we didn't first immigrate to the US we would have done the same as well decades ago.

Canada was dealing with a brain drain well before TFWPs and LMIAs were a thing - all the way back to Thomas Edison's family.

[seanmcdirmid]

Did you mean to use “most” instead of “many”? I can see many doing that, I can’t really see most doing that. If you have numbers please share.

[alephnerd]

Yep. I'm using "most" in place of many (I can't always be typing in academic prose on HN - it gets tiring at some point).

The actual number is 20% of all Canadian immigrants leave Canada within 25 years of landing [0], and this rate is 2x higher amongst Canadian immigrants with a doctorate and is elevated amongst Canadian immigrants classified as "business and finance managers, ICT professionals, engineers, and architecture managers" [1].

And speaking anecdotally amongst the Asian American/Canadian community - most who I've known who landed in Canada as skilled immigrants left Canada for the US on a TN visa once they naturalized (even with Trump in office). In a number of cases, they chose Canada simply because they couldn't make it to America on their first try.

[0] - https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/one-in-five-immigrants-a...

[1] - https://forcitizenship.ca/article/highly-skilled-immigrants-...