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Canada Waives Own Rules, Helps Microsoft Avoid US Visa Problems

Posted by timothy on from the alle-menschen-sind-auslaender-fast-ueberall dept.

Freshly Exhumed writes Citizenship and Immigration Canada has granted an unprecedented exemption to Microsoft that will allow the company to bring in an unspecified number of temporary foreign workers as trainees without first looking for Canadians to fill the jobs. No other company in any other field has been granted such an exemption, and it does not fall within any of the other categories where exemptions are normally given, according to a source familiar with process, effectively creating a new category: the Microsoft Exemption. Microsoft Canada did not immediately respond to questions about the deal, but in an interview earlier this year with Bloomberg Businessweek, Karen Jones, Microsoft's deputy general counsel, said the deal will allow Microsoft to bypass stricter U.S. rules on visas for foreign workers. The entire issue of temporary foreign workers has been as blisteringly hot a topic across Canada as it has been in the USA.

3 of 122 comments (clear)

  1. Fucking Hell, Harper needs to go! by iCEBaLM · · Score: 5, Interesting

    We do not have a shortage of CS workers in this country, we have a surplus, and with some provinces having over 10% unemployment rates Harper is seemingly doing everything he can to keep Canadians out of Canadian jobs.

    Fucking neocons.

    1. Re:Fucking Hell, Harper needs to go! by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The article is bogus. If you'll note, the article was written to attack a study by the TD Bank that debunked the whole "skilled shortage" myth. It was written by an employer lobby group, without citing a single statistic to back it up. As has been pointed out many times since, there is no skills shortage - just a shortage of people willing to work for far less than they used to under the threat of "we'll replace you with someone off-shore/with a visa/whatever".

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    2. Re:Fucking Hell, Harper needs to go! by ILongForDarkness · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Agreed. People quickly specialize just like any profession. I think I'm pretty comfortable learning new stuff but my experience and expertise lies with C# and tsql development. So for example going with a recent posting I've looked at: when Google posts a job wanting a javascript and Python coder with 5 years experience with each I'm not that guy. I might be able to talk myself into a shot but it isn't exactly like the recruiter is going to be jumping up and down saying "obviously that guy will figure it out quickly". I need a great resume, have good real world (if not directly related) experience, and solid references to get an interview. Then I need to sell myself like hell to convince the hiring manager to give me a chance. Similar with MS: a lot of people don't have C/C++ experience any more. Some areas of the company that might be fine, others it won't be it all depends on what they want you for.

      Most commenters seemed to be missing the point of the linked article though: these are for trainee positions. MS might be using it as a way to weasle around HB-1 requirements (people getting foreign subsidary experience to get around limits) but it might be that it is a training centre to ultimately send people back to their home countries. It could be hard to scatter around say Office development and have the true experts with the code base mentor junior devs in each of the countries MS operates in. Easier to have them nearby Redmond for a couple years then push them out already relatively up to speed back to India, Ireland, wherever.

      It really depends what MS's intent is with the workers that are "trainees". If they are meant to go back "home" then they probably weren't jobs Canadians were qualified for anyways: language/culture reasons, presumably their home countries have similar hire local first rules, or are otherwise unappealing to most Canadians: earning $10,000 a year in India for example. Similar to H1-B rules if I understand them correctly (I'm Canadian not American) for those workers that MS is allowed to bring in they should mandate that they get comparable wages compared to Canadian workers so as not to drop the market price for "IT" workers in Vancouver down to Indian wage levels. Vancouver is one of the most expensive cities in the world, I moved away from there because of it: earning a programmers salary there is about equivalent to being a college student elsewhere in the country: ie one bedroom apartment and enough money left over at the end of the week to order a pizza. Not my thing, but I guess people make equivalent choices when they live in San Fran or whatever.