You should try immigrating to Canada. The barriers they put in place for skilled people are bonkers. I personally know of 3 doctors who all want to come to Canada, and 2 more physically IN Canada who are not allowed to work until they get a residency spot (despite being trained surgeons). They are trained/educated in accredited universities outside of Canada, so their credentials are not an issue... The medical board is the issue. They put so many barriers in place and intentionally artificially restrict the number of medical professionals who can enter. The potential doctors have to complete a Canadian residency and there's a VERY small number of spots.. the doctors also have to complete a series of lengthy exams that are eye wateringly expensive and time consuming. A lot of potential doctors that we desperately need in Canada give up and go work elsewhere in the Commonwealth/Europe/MiddleEast where they are welcomed and put to work almost immediately.

What's weird is that when I looked into emigrating to Canada, the requirements for entry seemed to be pretty strict. It stated that you needed to bring critical skills with you to be considered for a visa. How are people circumventing that requirement?

We let them in and then force them to jump through a million hoops in order to get into the medical sector.

Hi buddy, I'm a new Canadian (well, rather old at this point) who works in the tech sector. My company recently hired a programmer that fled Ukraine and there are a whole bunch of new tech workers in the Vancouver market who were also displaced from Ukraine.

I'm pretty sure Canadian is trying it's damnedest to siphon up any programmer or Doctor looking to immigrate.

yet still lack personnel in essential sectors ... technology?

We have no lack of people who are pigeonholed in technology-based jobs that have no avenue for working remotely (e.g. ones where you handle physical hardware).

But for jobs which are ripe for being done remotely (e.g. programming), once you are here, why would you work for a Canadian company when it is just as easy to work for a US company at twice the rate?

It's not about labor shortages or improving the services and lives of existing residents. It's about devaluing the domestic labor market to the benefit of "the economy" and financial metrics (corporate profits, GDP, etc) — it's about increasing labor competition to depress wages and increase unemployment. There is no labor shortage. There is only an expectation of endlessly increasing profit YoY by capitalists.

Suppressing wages and increasing unemployment are the core goals of central banks around the world ATM. It doesn't matter than inflation is fuelled by greed, consolidation, monopolisation, etc; that none of these the "solutions" actually increase quality of life or standard of living. Those metrics are irrelevant to "the economy". They literally change how they calculate the metrics whenever they start to grow too gratuitous or obscene (e.g. CPI).