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Canada Waives Own Rules, Helps Microsoft Avoid US Visa Problems

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.

21 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 davecb · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I fear the neo-cons want us back in the day of William the Conqueror, where there were Normans and the peasants they owned.

      --
      davecb@spamcop.net
    2. Re:Fucking Hell, Harper needs to go! by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 2

      "Canadian jobs"? Do Canadians own those jobs?

      The rules are clear - companies are supposed to look at the local talent pool to see if a Canadian can do the job before looking elsewhere -- and this deal blows yet another hole in that regulation.

      The federal government has granted an exemption to Microsoft Canada that will allow the company to bring in an unspecified number of temporary foreign workers to British Columbia as trainees without first looking for Canadians to fill the jobs.

      And when you write:

      (CS workers as the proletariat, ha!)

      Times have changed. Ageism is battling with misogamy as THE issue in IT. You may want to read this

      Software Engineers Will Work One Day for English Majors
      41 Apr 22, 2012 6:00 PM EDT

      April 23 (Bloomberg) -- Which of the following describes careers in software engineering?

      A. Intellectually stimulating and gratifying.
      B. Excellent pay for new bachelor’s degree grads.
      C. A career dead-end.

      The correct answer (with a “your mileage may vary” disclaimer) is: D. All of the above.

      ...

      Many programmers find that their employability starts to decline at about age 35.

      Employers dismiss them as either lacking in up-to-date technical skills -- such as the latest programming-language fad -- or "not suitable for entry level." In other words, either underqualified or overqualified. That doesn’t leave much, does it?

      Statistics show that most software developers are out of the field by age 40.

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    3. 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.
    4. 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.

    5. Re:Fucking Hell, Harper needs to go! by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If you're not ever more in demand as you gather more years of skill, perhaps you've let your skills grow stale (thinking "the cloud" isn't important is the new thinking "the internet" isn't important), or perhaps you have 1 year of experience 20 times, instead of 20 years of growth.

      Neither insults nor denial will change the facts. IT has several problems, including ageism, racism, and misogamy.

      But for back-end/infrastructure coding, things change more slowly, with a slow drift from C++ to Java over 10 years, and now Python just starting to be taken seriously, maybe in another 10 years it will be important. If you can't keep up with that sort of change, how'd you learn the field in the first place?

      Of course, if you never want to change tools, there's a job as a kernel dev waiting if you can hack it - they still party like it's 1989!

      Around 1985, assembler, then c, c++, then clipper and a bunch of other database development tools, then switched to windows for a while, pascal and delphi, switched to linux near the end of the century, the "p" languages (php, python, perl), bash scripting, javascript, java (I was late for Java because it was TOO DARN SLOW). At some point I had to use windows concurrently to do flash development and a few other things.

      So, neither 1 year of experience repeated 20 times, nor a reluctance to try new things - whatever gets the job that I was being paid for done.. That came to an end 3 years ago when my retinas started to bleed too much and I couldn't use a computer until a few months ago. I miss programming for a living, but I don't miss all the garbage that seems to be inextricably entangled with it, such as the "pissing contests", the hoarding of information, the sexism, the insane hours, the constant changing of designs "because someone saw something really neat and we need it too". Besides, the treatment of people with visual (or other) handicaps also generally sucks.

      I guess it's time to end with the almost-obligatory "now get off my lawn, kid" comment, but my heart's not really in it.

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

      MS might be using it as a way to weasle around HB-1 requirements (people getting foreign subsidary experience to get around limits)

      That's exactly what it is. There's no point in sugar coating it with the presumption of that they're trying to help out the little guy. This is all part of the orchestrated plan by the elites to create an oversupply of labor with foreign workers and drive wages down. Their proximity to Vancouver makes this a slam dunk for Microsoft. Why sink money into lobbying for more H1Bs when L1Bs are unlimited and NAFTA greases the bureaucratic wheels.

      --
      I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
    7. Re:Fucking Hell, Harper needs to go! by mikael · · Score: 2

      From the job descriptions available now, a software developer, software engineer or senior software engineer will consult with clients and other engineers, write design specifications, write, design and implement unit tests using Microsoft or Google Test frameworks, do task breakdowns, provide accurate time estimates, implement software modules, provide code reviews, keep bug lists up to date, mentor software engineers through techniques such as pair or extreme programming, participate in Agile and Scrum meetings. Depending on the field of work, it's either going to be "Big Data" with R, Scala, Hadoop, Java, "Embedded Systems" with C, embedded C, assembler, IOS or Android; or "Desktop Systems" with C#, Java. In every case, they wil five years or more experience.

      --
      Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
    8. Re:Fucking Hell, Harper needs to go! by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 5, Informative

      And the rich get richer and the poor get poorer -- America where the Walton family (majority shareholders in Walmart) has wealth equal to the wealth of the bottom 42% of Americans combined.

      --
      It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    9. Re:Fucking Hell, Harper needs to go! by sycodon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      When people get their panties in a twist about how much "wealth" the Walton family has it just shows they don't understand what wealth is.

      Their "wealth" is paper. They could be worth X millions one day and X - a butt load of money the next. It has no impact on how much they can spend at lunch or whether they get the premium cable package or the standard. It's not cash. They'd have to sell or take out loans against their shares if they wanted to go buy a Private Jet or something like that.

      So the fact they are worth a few billion in paper doesn't diminish your pay check at all.

      --
      When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
    10. Re:Fucking Hell, Harper needs to go! by NoKaOi · · Score: 2

      It has no impact on how much they can spend at lunch or whether they get the premium cable package or the standard.

      Right, I'm sure they have to budget their lunches very carefully. I'm sure they have to make decisions about which days they have to bring lunch from home and how many days they can afford to eat out. I'm sure it's also a huge decision about whether to splurge for the premium cable package, or save money and get standard cable so they can afford a few more days of eating off the dollar menu.

      They'd have to sell or take out loans against their shares if they wanted to go buy a Private Jet or something like that.

      Oh. My. God. You mean they can't just order another private jet online, they actually have to fill out some paperwork? Scratch that, they actually have to sign the paperwork that their lawyers filled out for them? I feel so sorry for them! They have it so rough compared to their employees, whose entire wealth can be had as cash in an instant simply by digging through the couch cushions.

    11. Re:Fucking Hell, Harper needs to go! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That's because the bottom 42% doesn't save. If you don't save, you have no wealth by definition.

      I know this may come as a shock to you, but it's very likely the bottom 42% can't save in order to build wealth.

      And quite often it comes down to simple math and nothing else.

    12. Re:Fucking Hell, Harper needs to go! by Loki_1929 · · Score: 2

      To be fair, a great many of that 42% have little opportunity to save based on the value of the work they're doing. When you're making $18k a year, even if you have no kids, it's nearly impossible to save anything. Now I know what you're going to say - get a better job - but ultimately, someone has to clean the toilets at your office building and that someone isn't going to make more than $18k because that work just isn't that valuable. Increasing everyone's pay is also not a solution as that merely increases prices to compensate and brings down middle class workers.

      Of course, there's an argument to be made that such people should give up something they really like - TV, cell phone, something - to invest in a 401k. Putting aside $50/month in something like a 401k or IRA with no employer match turns into about $220,000 over 40 years ($335k over 45). However, that $50/month can be a huge amount to someone at that end of the scale and it'll be the first thing to go when they have a medical issue and need to pay the doctor to get better. Worse, these people often have one or more kids (and I don't know how they make that all work), which proves an even greater drain on what tiny resources they have.

      Perhaps part of every welfare program should include some money and financial management counseling.

      --
      -- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
    13. Re:Fucking Hell, Harper needs to go! by CanHasDIY · · Score: 2

      It's always boggled my mind how a person can say that toilet-scrubbers don't deserve decent pay because they aren't necessarily 'valuable,' in the very next breath after saying "someone HAS to scrub the toilets."

      I know that's not what you were getting at, just making an observation.

      --
      An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
  2. does that mean American workers? by swschrad · · Score: 2

    do American workers now displaced from places overseas get waved across the border to work in Canada, then, eh?

    --
    if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
    1. Re:does that mean American workers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It sounds more like a way to get more overseas workers into the US.

      "The source said that means the company will take advantage of rules governing intra-company transfers, which require employees to work for at least one year at a company subsidiary before being transferred to the U.S."

      Sounds like they'll import cheap labor to Canada. Have them work there for a year and then import them into the US.

    2. Re:does that mean American workers? by Cyberax · · Score: 2

      Unlikely. L1 transfers can work just as well for companies in Europe or Asia. A couple of my friends immigrated in the US by creating a company in the US and a local subsidiary in Ukraine, then they simply transferred to the US after 1 year (and it's totally legal). So why Microsoft would need to move workers to Canada first if any other country is sufficient?

      More likely Microsoft said something like: "Either we cut 1000 positions in Canada or you allow us to bring temps. Your choice."

  3. Bypassing the H1B visa requirement. by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's not just a surplus in CS - in some areas it's a HUGE surplus. This is just a continuation of the exemptions granted to the banks to bring in foreign workers and have the current workers train them to do their jobs and then get laid off, ditto fast-food chains who don't want to hire Canadians who know their rights and as such are "too uppity", etc.

    FTFA:

    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 U.S. laws clearly did not meet our needs. We have to look to other places," she told the wire service. She went on to say Microsoft didn’t choose to expand in Vancouver "purely for immigration purposes, but immigration is a factor."

    The source said that means the company will take advantage of rules governing intra-company transfers, which require employees to work for at least one year at a company subsidiary before being transferred to the U.S. He says the result will be a net disadvantage for Canada.

    Bad enough the Burger King - Tim Hortons deal was a blatant tax dodge at a time when governments everywhere are trying to get corporations to behave more responsibly ... I guess the Harper government decided to "double-double down."

    Blame Canada.
    Shame, Canada.
    Oh, Canada.
    Oh-oh Canada.

    --
    "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
  4. Re:Remember the stripper visa by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 4, Informative

    In my opinion, it is very positive for us to have high educated and motivated individuals working here.

    They won't be working long-term in Canada. FTFA:

    The government notice says the new training and development centre will focus on "software and engineering." The notice also says foreign workers will be given 24-month work permits to allow them to stay in Canada "until they are transitioned by Microsoft into a new position elsewhere.

    That "elsewhere" is the US.

    Karen Jones, Microsoft’s deputy general counsel, said the deal will allow Microsoft to bypass stricter U.S. rules on visas for foreign workers.

    And that stripper program?

    Earlier this year, Mr. Kenney announced that employers with good reputations would be allowed to fast track the hiring of temporary foreign workers and be allowed to pay them 15 per cent less than the average wage for a particular job. Labour groups and the NDP opposition slammed the move, accusing the Conservatives of driving down wages on behalf of employers.

    Same crap, different day.

    --
    "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
  5. McD's been doing it for years by X!0mbarg · · Score: 4, Informative

    Until recently, McDonalds and Tim Horton's in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) have been doing this sort of thing for years. Usually in the form of 'minority hiring' that shuns the citizenry. They got their hands smacked soundly over it, and now are being watched like a hawk.

    URL Reference here:
    http://www.vancouversun.com/li...

    Now Microsoft is going to do it en masse, taking away the positions from Canadian citizens that have been training here...

    There will be a reckoning over this one.

  6. Re:Remember the stripper visa by mrchaotica · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've found that foreign western Europeans are welcomed with enthusiasm but foreign Asians with much much resentment.

    Western Europeans are coming from an economy just as good as our own, so they aren't willing to work for peanuts and thus don't drive down wages like people from third-world countries do.

    Asians from developed countries (e.g. Japan) would be welcomed just as warmly, for the same reason.

    --

    "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz