Thread: Vancouver: Tight imm. laws in the U.S. work for Canada

Tight immigration laws in the U.S. work to B.C.'s advantage
Vancouver Sun
Published: Monday, July 09, 2007

While it would be nice to be able to say that Microsoft is opening a new branch here simply because Vancouver is such a great place to do business in, the real reason is clearly more complicated.

The software giant, based in Redmond, Wash., did cite Vancouver's "globally envied quality of life" in its announcement, but it also noted that the Canadian operation would allow it to continue to recruit highly skilled people affected by immigration problems in the United States.

In any competition, including the international race for business investment, a competitor's blunder can be as useful as something we do right. In this case, the growing crisis over immigration in the U.S. is presenting an opportunity for Canada and particularly Vancouver to shine.

The recent failure by the U.S. Congress to pass a new immigration bill means that the cap on visas for skilled workers remains in effect for our southern neighbours. Only about 85,000 visas are available each year; a record 150,000 requests were filed on the first day applications were accepted for this year's allotment.

Canada has no such limit, so Microsoft and other high-tech firms can bring in as many skilled workers as they can recruit.

It's worth noting for assessing our own immigration laws that we will be gaining skilled jobs partly as an unintended result of a policy in the U.S. designed to protect the jobs of Americans.

Microsoft's current plan is to start in the fall at a yet-to-be designated location in the Lower Mainland with about 200 software developers and eventually expand up to 900.

Regardless of why these high-paying jobs are coming to Vancouver, our task now is to figure out how to keep them.

In that regard, we have both natural advantages and challenges. On the business side, we already have a thriving software development sector with successful firms such as Electronic Arts Canada and Vivendi Games.

We are also only a couple of hours away and in the same time zone as the centre of the Microsoft empire, which employs more than 75,000 people worldwide. Of that total, 35,000 workers are in Washington state.

Immigrants recruited by Microsoft to come here will be rewarded with the relatively high salaries prevalent in the industry, but they will face the all-too-familiar problem of the high cost of housing in the Lower Mainland.

Still, that negative should be more than offset by the benefits of moving into the multicultural city that Vancouver has become, especially for software engineers recruited from India and China.

In the global competition for business investment and skilled workers, this is a comparative advantage that should serve us well.

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http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news ... be8495a9eb

So now the corporations are going to blackmail the citizens until they get what they want????? Give us what we want or we'll show you!!! If that is the kind of person Bill Gates is, he can take a long walk off a short pier.

Microsoft already has facilities all over the globe and I read somewhere where they've owned this land for some time. So, they are pouting because they didn't get infinite guestworker visas (which Bill Gates asked for). It is important to remember that whether the facility is here or there, Bill NEVER intended to hire Americans for it. His insistance on raising the H-1B cap or else further shows that he wasn't even going to post the jobs where Americans could see and apply, rather he was going to go straight to hiring foreigners. (This is not to be confused with the ads in the YouTube video: those were at a later stage when they are turning the H-1B holder into a Green Card holder).

Better we Americans should let the traitors go, and focus on rebuilding our economy by forming companies in the empty spots the traitors leave behind.

Looks like nothing short of propaganda released at a fashionable time. Even if Amnesty were to have passed the facility would have taken advantage of the market presented to it in that region of the world. If cheap labor is the only draw, why not India? No need for visas there. Such mush! What a shame.

If we could only "dumb down" our citizens just a little more. Then there would be no need for such dribble.

Frontal lobotomies for everyone!

"To dethrone God and destroy capitalism." Karl Marx