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US Companies Are Moving Tech Jobs To Canada Rather Than Deal With Trump's Immigration Policies, Report Says (recode.net)
US companies are going to keep hiring foreign tech workers, even as the Trump administration makes doing so more difficult. For a number of US companies that means expanding their operations in Canada, where hiring foreign nationals is much easier. From a report: Demand for international workers remained high this year, according to a new Envoy Global survey of more than 400 US hiring professionals, who represent big and small US companies and have all had experience hiring foreign employees. Some 80 percent of employers expect their foreign worker headcount to either increase or stay the same in 2019, according to Envoy, which helps US companies navigate immigration laws. That tracks with US government immigration data, which shows a growing number of applicants for high-skilled tech visas, known as H-1Bs, despite stricter policies toward immigration. H-1B recipients are all backed by US companies that say they are in need of specialized labor that isn't readily available in the US -- which, in practice, includes a lot of tech workers. Major US tech companies, including Google, Facebook, and Amazon, have all been advocating for quicker and more generous high-skilled immigration policies. To do so they've increased lobbying spending on immigration.
That's been going on for some time.
Since the Bush years we often had to deal with tech seminars and conferences where they were moved out of the U.S. because many of the participants couldn't deal with U.S. Customs and Border enforcement. If you weren't a white European you were basically treated like shit and assumed to be a terrorist unless you could prove otherwise.
Also, the corporate tax rate in Canada is very competitive, and health care premiums are much, much lower thanks to universal single-payer health care. Plus, if your income is in USD but your salaries are in CAD, you get a nice little boost.
I know it's hip & trendy to blame Trump for everything under the sun, these movements have been happening for longer than he has been in office. Ex: https://www.geekwire.com/2016/trudeau-speak-opening-microsoft-vancouver-facility/
I've lost jobs to Canadian outsourcing because companies didn't want to deal with our screwed up healthcare system. One of the worst/best was when a US based insurance company moved it's call center operations to Canada.
That said, if this really is just H1-Bs shifting to Canada I find it really hard to care. I couldn't have gotten those jobs anyway and to be blunt I see very, very little of the benefits from immigration here in America. Without robust set of programs to take advantage of those economic wealth generated it's all just money going to the top. Even small businesses can be hurt since they're left to compete with companies that can hire engineers for less money (though it's debatable whether wage depression brought on by the influx of cheap labor offsets that).
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in another country than it is to hire developers older than 40 and pay them for their skills??
You realize that when he said that, the top income tax bracket was a 91% tax. Now it's ~35%. The right solution is raising income taxes on the ultra rich (10M income per year?) to 50% or more, and raising capital gains tax to the same amount to make it so the rich have to give back to the economy rather than buying more private jets.
Just like how the R's stole money from the middle class with the tax code change. If you don't understand that both sides do this shit, you are a fucking moron. But going by what you wrote, yeah, you are a fucking moron.
Then the H1B to green card transition became hard, the waiting lists got longer, and USA was losing its charm for the elite graduates. At the same time, Indian economy boomed, these grads were getting great career prospects back at home. The stream of resumes with IIT BTech has dwindled to nearly nothing.
Let Canada keep them. When USCompanies realize most of them are duds, it will be Canada's problem, bot ours.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
1. Nice lie. It's not "get rid of CAFE standards". It's "don't price the working class out of cars". Physics is a bitch, and she doesn't care about your green agenda.
2. It's not about the trade balance; it's about unfair competition and dumping. The Chinese were deliberately, and successfully, dumping to destroy the US steel industry. Jobs are the campaign slogan, but the real problem is national security. Without domestic steel production, our entire economy is completely vulnerable to the Chinese Navy. Just like China and electric vehicles: with only a trivial petroleum reserve, they realize their economy is completely vulnerable to the US Navy or Lloyds shutting down their economy.
3. Keep out the damn illegals. You keep lying and lying and lying, but the republicans are tired of the left-wing importing illegals in the hope of getting more voters. Stop lying. It's not about immigration, it's about illegals. In fact, when you narrow down to groups, it's the progressives who are being hurt the worst, and most aware of the damages from H1B abuses.
It's sad that we're going to suffer batshit insane because so many people like you are incapable of critical thought and unwilling to consider the geopolitical context or listen to your neighbors.
Theory: "We want the very best developers and engineers from around the world to supercharge the American economy!"
Reality: "Hey, my cousin Sanjay knows Sharepoint. Let's write the job rec so narrowly tailored that we can get him into the country on an H-1B."
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