When the United States tightens the door on high-skill workers, other countries tend to open theirs wider. That dynamic, long observed anecdotally in technology hiring circles, now has detailed economic evidence behind it — thanks in part to research presented at the Immigration Policy and the Economics of Innovation conference held January 22, 2026, at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. The event was organized and funded through the J-P Conte Initiative on Immigration, established by Jean-Pierre Conte, a managing partner and private equity executive who serves on Hoover’s Board of Overseers.
The paper, by economist Agostina Brinatti of the University of Chicago and Xing Guo of the Bank of Canada, used data on H-1B applications, Canadian permanent residence filings, and bilateral trade flows to trace what happened when US work-visa eligibility tightened and denial rates increased beginning in 2017.
The Evidence for Diversion
When US denial rates rose, Canadian permanent residence applications and admissions from the same pool of skilled workers climbed in tandem. Workers who would have come to the US were redirected — and many of them ended up in Canada instead. Those workers brought expertise and professional ties with them, and the research found measurable secondary effects on Canadian exports. Firms that hired the diverted workers showed higher export activity, suggesting that high-skill labor functions not just as a factor of domestic production but as a driver of international trade capacity.
The research makes clear that skilled workers are not a fixed resource that waits indefinitely for access to the US market. They are mobile, they have options, and policy environments shape where they go. Countries with streamlined pathways — Canada has actively marketed itself as an alternative destination for tech talent — can absorb workers that US restrictions push out.
Jean-Pierre Conte on the Stakes of Getting Policy Right
Jean-Pierre Conte has made the economic study of immigration one of his central philanthropic commitments, funding both the J-P Conte Initiative on Immigration at Hoover and the senior research fellowship that supports its work. His motivation is personal as well as analytical: both of his parents came to the United States from abroad, and he credits the opportunities afforded to them — and to him — as foundational to everything he has built professionally.
At the January conference, he pushed attendees to think concretely about the costs of exclusion. He asked those gathered to consider what the technology industry would look like had prominent immigrant founders never had access to the United States. Framed against research showing that skilled workers readily reroute to competitor nations when US gates narrow, the question carries particular weight. The Brinatti-Guo paper puts quantitative form to a risk that Jean-Pierre Conte has long believed deserves serious attention.
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