#immigrant workers

As the federal government looks to drastically reduce its immigration targets over the next few years, the mayors of northern Ontario’s largest cities say they need more immigrants to sustain local economies and population. The mayors of Sault Ste. Marie, Thunder Bay and Sudbury are calling on Ottawa to deliver on its promise to make permanent a pilot program that resettled skilled workers in their communities, saying a one-size-fits-all approach to immigration policy doesn’t benefit northern regions. Sault Ste. Marie Mayor Matthew Shoemaker said the now-closed rural and northern immigration pilot program allowed employers in the city to fill highly skilled positions in aircraft repair, engineering and various trades. “It has been an enormous success,” Shoemaker said, adding that without economic immigrants such jobs would disappear from the region.

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Billionaire Tesla and X owner Elon Musk, President-elect Donald Trump's chief financier, on Wednesday sparked MAGA backlash after defending visas for foreign tech workers.

South African-born Elon Musk was once an immigrant to the U.S., illegally overstaying his visa to build a future here. He employs hundreds of foreign-born engineers at his Tesla and SpaceX companies and says they fill a shortage of American-born workers. 

Musk called a shortage of “excellent engineering talent” a “fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley” in a Wednesday tweet, arguing that immigrant labor is an essential ingredient in American innovation and warning of a "dire shortage of extremely talented and motivated engineers in America."