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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.
Leaving the country is easy when the gov't comes tromping thru the door every year wanting 21% of your profits. Lets fix it, by abolishing the prosperity-killing income taxes. In 1963, with the income taxes only 50 years old at the time, JFK said, "“The largest single barrier to full employment of our manpower and resources and to a higher rate of economic growth is the unrealistically heavy drag of federal income taxes on private purchasing power, initiative and incentive.” John F. Kennedy, Jan. 24, 1963 " He was right.
The FairTax is a consumption tax that, if enacted, calls for the complete repeal of all income taxes - personal, corporate, capital gains, alternative minimum, gift, estate, self-employment, etc. All of 'em. It replaces them with a consumption tax on new items sold at retail, and services, while giving every legal resident enough money every month in advance, to be able to pay the FairTax on the person's purchases every month up to the poverty level. Poverty level for a single person is about $12K / yr, so every month, that person would get enough money to pay the FairTax on $1K of spending.
How's that help this? The little thing about repealing the corporate income tax would have those companies, and all the rest of the companies on the planet at least WANTING to move their operations to the USA where they could operate without having their profits stolen by the gov't. Move to Canada? Canada will come tromping thru the door and steal a part of their profits via corporate income taxes. So will pretty much everywhere else in the world. The USA would stand alone in NOT stealing from either its businesses or its people. Nobody would owe a dime of taxes from the start, they would be able to regulate how much tax they pay by regulating how much new goods and services they buy. Don't want to pay taxes on a new car? Buy a somewhat used car. No taxes on the used car. No taxes on the used (existing) house, only taxes if you build a new house. No taxes on the money you make and use for savings, tuition (tuition is treated as an investment), money used to pay your state taxes, car license fees, buying stocks and bonds (again, and investment), and so forth.
Bottom line is that the USA would be the place to make the biggest profit, because of the lack of at least the Federal gov't tromping thru the door to steal a portion of the business' profits each year. Companies stay. More companies come. Jobs stay. More jobs come. That's what we want, and killing the income taxes dead is the way to do it.