Harsh U.S. Immigration Rules Forces Microsoft to Open Shop in Canada: Tech Giant Says “Majority” of Best Recruits are Foreign
Software behemoth Microsoft said last Thursday it would soon open an office in Canada, lamenting tough immigration rules in the United States that make it difficult to hire foreign staff. “It is about recruiting the best and brightest, and right now, the majority are coming from overseas,” Marc Seaman, a spokesman for the world’s biggest software company, told Toronto’s Globe and Mail newspaper. Canada is currently the third-largest source of recruits for Microsoft outside the United States, after India and Japan.
“The United States has immigration quotas and some limitations for bringing in people from outside the country,” he said. “That challenge is an opportunity for Canada, in the sense that this will bring the top software developers to Canada.” The development office, to be opened in Vancouver, a three-hour drive north from Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington headquarters, will initially be staffed by some 300 recruits from around the world, the company said. Eventually, it could grow to house as many as 1,000 employees, Agence France-Presse reports.
The announcement of Microsoft’s plans follows the failure of an immigration bill that would have expanded the number of foreign high-tech workers that could have come to the country each year under so-called H1-B visas, CNET News.com reports.
High-tech companies have been pushing hard to get Congress to increase the number of visas they are allotted. In separate Capitol Hill appearances, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates made a strong plea for unlimited H-1B visas, while a Google executive credited the company’s success to foreigners and called for expanded ability to hire them, report CNET writers Ina Fried and Anne Broache.
But so far, a broader feud has killed two attempts by the U.S. Senate to overhaul the immigration system, including a bump in the H-1B quota from a base level of 60,000 to at least 115,000. Silicon Valley wasn’t pleased with all of the bill, but it was also counting on passage of amendments that would provide greater assurances that green cards for permanent residency come through and create new exemptions for foreigners with advanced degrees.
Now companies are left to hope that their congressional allies will pass standalone bills, severed from the larger immigration debate, to accomplish those tasks. Although a number of senators have indicated support for the tech industry’s goals, others have taken an arguably more measured approach, proposing bills aimed at curbing H-1B abuse while upping the quota.
Microsoft spokesman Lou Gellos said that while the immigration issue was a factor, the company would be opening the center in Vancouver even if it were not for the immigration challenges. That said, Vancouver is particularly attractive since it is a short drive from Redmond, Wash., but not bound by U.S. immigration policies.
“It does help us address that challenge we have in the United States of hiring very qualified people, many of whom are graduating from schools in the U.S., but who cannot acquire the necessary documentation to work in the U.S.,” Gellos told CNET.
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Corra has always viewed the immigration issue as a conundrum of sorts. Companies want to find the best people and when there are restrictions against hiring a number of qualified foreign students, filling slots can be difficult. Of course Corra believes it is best to first look to recruit from the American candidate pool. This isn’t as easy as it looks with, what Corra thinks are too many young Americans not preparing for the competitive industrial future.
So businesses go global when looking to recruit. The recruit form the domestic colleges and from schools abroad. You have to grow, you need workers, and qualified workers are not all that easy to find. Well, no one said business in the twenty-first century is easy.
Corra tries to make it somewhat easier by offering both domestic and international background checks. We offer the criminal, education and employment verification checks for the United States and around the world. So no matter where you find your candidates, Corra is there to help you check them out before you hire.
