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MS Moves R&D To Canada Due To Immigration Problem
telso writes "Microsoft will be opening a new software development center in Vancouver because of difficulties getting workers into the US. The company said the center will 'allow the company to continue to recruit and retain highly skilled people affected by the immigration issues in the US' It seems possible that shrinking immigration quotas have affected America's tax and knowledge base."
(And I hate that phrase.)
There is no shortage of programmers or software engineers in the U.S.; there is a shortage of people who are interested in being paid next to nothing.
It seems possible that shrinking immigration quotas are has affected America's tax and knowledge base.
Starting with you.
Outsourcing, eh?
"No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson
I read this as Microsoft does not want to take the time, money or effort to get people cleared by Homeland Security. So they can get people from Indian and China to work with temporay visas in canada easier.
The company said the centre will 'allow the company to continue to recruit and retain highly skilled people affected by the immigration issues in the U.S.'
Translation: We don't want to pay American employees what they're worth, so we're going somewhere else.
It's their right to do so, but....
I was on a congressionally funded study of some specialized skills of which the government believed there was a shortage. We had a distinguished economist on the committee and his first comment was, "There is no shortage. Employers (the government, in this case) always perceive a shortage because they want to pay their employees less."
There are more than enough qualified engineers in the US to work for the tech firms. They're just not willing to compete on the salaries. When Bill Gates says, "we need more visas for the best and the brightest,' he means he wants to pay less for talent.
Calling Canada, and Vancouver of all places, backwater, is very insulting. Vancouver is near the top in the Mercer quality of life ratings for cities on Earth; the highest US city is not even in the top 20 (and it's Hawaii, not even continental US). http://www.mercerhr.com/referencecontent.jhtml?idC ontent=1128060#top50all And if you're going to critique Mercer, you better be able to back it up because their research is considered the standard given how widely used their services are.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
Yeah.. you really don't want to have to move to Canada. Let me tell you aboot my day today:
During the 3 hours when the sun will shine here, I emerge from my igloo to play the government required hour of hockey. Then after I have finished I go hunting for my family's dinner with my trusty bow and arrow. Once home with my cariboo meat, I will sit back down in my igloo, crack open a Molson Canadian and watch one of the two channels we get up here, CBC and the Curling network. And this was a good day, some days it is too cold to even leave the igloo. I can't wait for global warming.
The question is. . . Will the Canadians put up with it?
Or will they insist that Microsoft hire qualified Canadian programmers first (as the US gubermint refuses to do)?
is in order. First of all, this gives hope that even as a geek, I'll have a chance.
Secondly, there's no shortage of excellent marijuana in Vancouver. After hours and hours of working for Microsoft, nothing will make you feel better than a few bong hits of BC bud. I think being really high makes Vista worth having. It's slow, you're slow. The nifty visuals are "trippy" and while it's paging out to disk, you can munch.
[http://it-tastes-so-good.blogspot.com] Are you hungry?
Ask yourself, why are they moving to Canada and not India/China if low wages is all they are after?
Could they be moving to Canada because:
-it has a very similar social, economic, and political environment to the US which makes it good for business
-Canada has 'open borders' for highly skilled and educated foreigners (yes, even Americans)
-Canada has very strong labor laws protecting the immigrants: they have the same rights as the natives, can switch employers, won't be deported (in fact, "ratting out" a bad employer can them a permanent visa, as happened to a bunch of welders recently)
-Canada believes in cultivating the best and the brightest, no matter where they were born
Face it, Canada is a mini-US, but with a more reasonable immigration policy. Canada is now the fastest growing economy in the entire G8 (the only one at over 3%), the Canadian dollar, the GDP, and the worker wealth.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
Let me see if I've got this straight:
Your saying that Microsoft can't find employees because they don't pay enough because salaries are being held artificially low because of the flood of new employees from other countries.
Something not quite right about that argument. Seems to me that if the programming field was being flooded with immigrants, Microsoft would not have trouble finding employees.
So, I'm a young American employee at MS. Hired right out of college a year ago, with a much higher salary than I would have gotten from any other company that would have hired me.
Now, having said that, I work on a team that's only about 20-30% US-born citizens. The rest are a mix of Russian, Romanian, Chinese, Indian, and Mexican. But they're not your stereotypical wage slaves hired to save costs. They're bright, intelligent contributors. And my girlfriend, an Australian citizen in a different group, gets paid as much as I do and got even more out of her relocation benefits (apparently shipping across the Pacific isn't cheap).
So, why then does MS hire foreigners. Because (arguably, at least) MS isn't interested in the top 4X% of American developers, they're interested in the top X% of all developers. Since that subset isn't entirely American, they're very interested in immigration issues. Not to drive down wages, but to drive up hiree quality.
You can argue all the live-long day that Americans are the best in the industry (correct or not), but you can't reasonably state that *all* American developers are better than *all* non-American developers.
On most subjects Slashdot seems to largely adhere to the open competitive markets are efficient markets theory. Except when it comes to this subject, which is repeatedly posted as news every few weeks.
The fact is whether you are buying a toaster, calling support or getting a job its increasingly a global economy. One way or another you are competing with people from India, China and Canada.
Microsoft going to Canada to hire people can only be attributed to one thing. They feel they get a better deal there. And before we call them greedy or evil, we should consider that most of us do the same thing when buying a toaster, we look for the best quality at the lowest price.
The fact that the USA is a less attractive than Canada as a place to hire foreign workers won't be a surprise to many foreign workers who have worked in the USA. The procedures for foreign workers in USA are complex, slow and characterized by hostility from immigration officials at every stage. (I left USA after my H1B visa was extended for the last time and green card procedures were too expensive, restrictive and lengthy for my taste (I would point out that my time in USA was otherwise excellent and I love the place, the people and the culture)).
In today's world, the only sustainable way to increase your earnings is to make yourself more valuable. If you are asking Microsoft to pay you more than another similarly skilled candidate based on geography or nationality then you are just asking them to subsidize you.
cheers,
David
Basically for a company to get H1-b applicants, they have to interview American workers and give the American workers an equal shot at the position.
That's a nice fairy tale, but you're confusing H1B visas and green cards. There is no requirement to interview American workers for H1B visas; for H1B visas, a company can simply write a letter saying that they couldn't fill the position with an American worker.
The requirement to interview American workers exists only for green card applications. Green cards remove any hold the company may have over their workers, so they are the exact opposite of what a company would apply for if it wants to keep salaries low by hiring cheap immigrants. Companies are indeed trying to skirt that requirement, but that's not to keep salaries low, it's to avoid losing an employee that has likely been with the company for many years and is very valuable to them.
I just recently read this in the news.
Perhaps your inability to read and understand written materials has something to do with your inability to command a higher salary.
I don't know why everyone needs to comment without looking at the leaked MS Salary documents:
a ry/MSCompGu.jpgr osoft-compensation.html)
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/libr
(from http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2006/03/internal-mic
Fulltime out of university is level 59.
I have no doubt at all the reason for MS coming to Canada. US customs block every temporary work visa they can, with no regard for how the american companies with their american employees will be hurt.
... we aren't talking landscaping and fruit picking, which you Americans insist on passing off to foreign workers when you could do it yourself.
... and be right there at the fax machine in the customs office at the moment an updated letter arrived from the client. If she was in the bathroom when it arrived, too bad, she would have been denied. What a stupid system! She eventually got in, after missing a connecting flight, and the USA company that needed her services, was able to carry on with their business of making money for their American shareholders.
... The USA company that needed her services just happened to be owned by a Canadian parent company. The dumbass customs officer would not investigate the facts, he could not comprehend the idea that the USA company was a real, USA registered company, with real assets, with real USA employees. He decided the USA company was an empty shell, and that it must really be the Canadian parent company that called her to work in the USA. The officer threatened to declare my wife's actions as being a fraud, which would have banned her for life from working in the USA. He refused entry to my wife.
... he didn't even understand that for any fraud to have been commited by my wife there would have to have been a criminal intent to deceive. At most there was a misunderstanding created by the American employees of the American company. Not fraud.
... did the asshat customs officer do a proper investigation and let her proceed? ... NO. He was off shift. A different officer gave her the work visa and let her enter the USA without any hesitation, without reviewing the incident with the first custom's officer, or even asking her anything that might have resolved the confusion. He probably wasn't even aware that there had been any incident. ... so we went from a brainless shit who was going to block my wife and put a group of American citizens out of their jobs, to a brainless shit who let her pass with no questions asked, who didn't even try to resolve the first shit's concerns. Now that's just awesome security! Tell me, Do you feel safe?
... my wife's boss was flying to south america for work, with some simple scientific field gear with her. She had a brief stop over in the USA where she never left the secured area of the airport, she just needed to go through customs (even though she was in limbo, not actually departing for a US destination), and then onw
It must be an utter nightmare for MS to bring in the smartest developers available around the world, enriching the intellectual capacity of the USA, helping an American company grow wealth for their American shareholders.
In an unrelated field, my wife, who is a Canadian with two science related bachelor's degrees and a professional registration has been blocked twice from entering the USA on temporary work visas by ignorant american customs officers.
And she was going to perform work needed by American companies that were not able to find qualified American professionals. High end specialized scientific work
The first time, the company she was going to consult for made a small mistake on their reference letter. She had to wait for several hours
The second instance
This fuckwad didn't have even the most basic understanding of the situation
Her client nearly lost her services, which would have delayed their project, which would have meant laying off American citizens from their jobs, and would have delayed or pre-empted millions of dollars of economic activity in a remote area of the USA where the jobs are desparately needed.
But many hours later, after missing her connecting flight, she did get through
There was another incident
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"