As cross-border work normalizes, employers face a mounting immigration, tax, and reputational exposure without adequate governance in place
The way Canadian organizations manage their people’s movement across borders has changed fundamentally – and most HR teams haven’t kept pace. As cross-border work shifts from structured international assignments to informal arrangements involving remote work, frequent business travel, and digital nomad arrangements, compliance obligations have multiplied without a corresponding evolution in governance.
The risks are unlike anything the industry has previously navigated, says Jack Kim, Partner in the Toronto office of Fragomen, a global immigration services firm. “The global mobility environment is quite in flux and you have a lot of tensions grappling against each other,” says Kim. He says that demand for global talent is surging in priority sectors including defence, energy, and infrastructure, but political headwinds at home and abroad are complicating access to that talent as enforcement tightens worldwide.
The data underscores the problem. According to global workforce management firm ECA’s Global Mobility Now 2026 study, two-thirds of global employers have no formal process for reviewing compliance implications, such as immigration limits or internal company thresholds. With nearly half of organizations in the study expecting business travel to increase and international remote work to grow over the next two years, that gap is...
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