Posted on 07/05/2007 7:33:02 PM PDT by Babu
US software behemoth Microsoft Corp. said 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 The Globe and Mail newspaper.
"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.
Canada is currently the third-largest source of recruits for Microsoft outside the United States, after India and Japan.
I agree 100%. They are traitors-as dangerous as Benedict Arnold was to the survivial of this country.
I don’t buy your post. I know too many really good IT professionals who are out of a job. In my opinion, your company probably followed the advice available online-how to NOT attract American IT professionals. I know plenty of people who would be happy to make $60,000.
How does that make any sense? You're mad at Microsoft for opening a new office in Canada, so you switch to something from Finland that pays their programmers nothing?
You did not answer my question.
You are raving about something that your appear to misunderstand. As I mentioned earlier, there is a difference between cheap labor and talented labor. We don't have enough talent and we never did before. Who has created the nuclear weapons for us? Go check: with the exception of one individual (Feynman), all were foreigners -- from Einstein to Bethe. Where has the founder if Intel born?
The point is that we ALWAYS imported talent from abroad, from musicians to scientists. Gates merely acknowledges that fact. If you close borders and don't let a single person in, you will still not raise Einstein: he was unique and he was German. If people were to listen to you and close the borders to talent, we would all be worse off.
The same applies to H1B visas. Before you rave about wages, look up some economics and learn what constitutes cheap and what constitutes expensive labor --- and who ultimately pays for it.
This globist would just as soon crap all over America. The H1b visa’s are widely abused and that abuse is being perpeuated by the likes of Mr Gates.
>>Where has the founder if Intel born?<<
I think you mean “of Intel.” Robert Noyce was born, raised, and went to School in Iowa. Gordon E. Moore was born, raised, and educated in California. Andy Grove (not one of the founders) was born in Hungary.
I don’t advocate stopping all legal immigration, but we need a thoughtful immigration policy that does not pander to Gates’s greed. Some businesses already abuse visa programs, and he wants unlimited H1B visas.
Whose greed did we pander to when we let in all those scientist fleeing from the Nazi? Do you really think we were capable of building the atomic bomb without them?
Look at the application pools for almost any doctoral programs in business and science --- count how many are domestic applicants. How many of professors in the universities are foreigners --- all these are H1B visa holders.
You, as many other posters, confuse hunt for cheaper labor with our national need for talent. And even here you make a mistake: why should the rest of America pay $150/hour to a kid without a college diploma (as it did in 1990s), if it can pay less?
What's most unpleasant is your Marxist, anti-capitalist stance. Gates' greed? You do not even have a clue who owns Microsoft and all largest corporations in this country. It shows also the small caliber of your soul, which is unable to even fathom that Gates may act on motives other than greed. It is also plain stupid: if he cared that much about another crummy $100M, as you purport, he would not have give to charity 300 times as much. It is greedy people that suspect others of greed.
Go ahead, ask for a raise, Mt. Socialist.
I think the opposite is true: skills is the only thing that Americans are willing to learn. They are unwilling to get an education: the ability to think and have basic knowledge outside of their field of money procurement. Foreign languages -- why bother? History of the world or even of our own country --- it's useless. Most don't even know when any of the recent wars took place --- WW II, Korean, Vietnam. Geography? Right after Sep 11, people were afraid to fly, and many tour operators in California received requests to substitute plane tickets to Hawaii with bus tickets. At a conference in New Mexico, some colleagues told me of the many Americans who are surprised that travel to New Mexico does not require a visa.
Ignorant population that wants nothing but marketable skills for sustained Saturday trips to the mall.
>>Are you trying to tell me that the question about the founder of Intel was the only thing you’ve got from my post; or is it the only one where you could shine your knowledge of trivia?<<
You should read about Robert Noyce’s life before you preach about the founding of Intel as an example of lack of native talent. You might learn something.
>>What’s most unpleasant is your Marxist, anti-capitalist stance. Gates’ greed?<<
Yes, I have watched Gates for a long time. I have had to debug Microsoft bugs. I have seen his business practices. Unlimited H1B visas? I guess you agree with that.
At first I thought you might be arguing for a reasonable immigration policy, but it appears that your agenda is anti-American. No, believing that Americans have as much talent and skill as any other culture does not make one a socialist. Your “Americans are dumb” mantra is tiresome and false.
>> Look at the application pools for almost any doctoral programs in business and science -— count how many are domestic applicants. How many of professors in the universities are foreigners -— all these are H1B visa holders.
You, as many other posters, confuse hunt for cheaper labor with our national need for talent.<<
It’s not just the wages. H1B visa holders are easier to control than Americans, and greed can desire more control as well as money.
The number of applicants for doctoral programs does not measure all aspects of talent. Bill Gates, your hero, who is talented (but ruthless), dropped out of his undergraduate program. I’ll bet today’s Microsoft would not hire 1975’s Gates. Many of today’s best engineers taught themselves without going through graduate school. After 4 or 5 years at an American university, many talented Americans really need to work rather than going to graduate school.
I resent the seemingly fashionable attitude that anything American - employees, cars etc - is inferior. There is no need to import talent from abroad. In fact, I have worked with some of the H1B visa holder. I would not call them talented-cheap labour-but definitely not possessing any special gifts. The soon to be replaced American workers were forced to train them in all but the most basic skills in order to receive any sort of severance package-meager as it was.
“Political stunt from MS.”
It is. F*ck Microsoft. Let them leave. I just bought a Mac, and Linux is plentiful and available. There’s plenty of talent in the country. Micrsoft just doesn’t want to pay the going rate for them when they can cheap out on workers from India and the Philipines and China.
Well, you've got a pool of applicants from around the world (4.75 billion people) versus a domestic pool from only 300 million. Of course the ratio will be in favor of foreign-born applicants. We need to protect our own citizens first, and not let their hopes and aspirations be overwhelmed by the swarm of non-Americans who want to live and work here.
Marc Seaman is Microsoft’s National Director of Corporate and Public Affairs.
Marc’s career and community involvement have also been focused on helping shape Ottawa as one of the world’s leading regions in which to live and work.
Marc holds a Bachelors Degree in Communications from the University of Ottawa.
Why don’t you apply for a job instead, genius?
Why don’t you apply for a job so they don’t have to hire one of them there feriners to do it?
Bunk. There isn’t a word of truth in your entire post. Congratulations.
Microsoft must have squezzed Canada for MASSIVE tax incentives too!!
Definitely on the tax incentives. And lots of the computer science graduates from those schools are foreigners. But the anarchist punks at Microsoft are such cheap bastards they will try to import different foreigners they can pay even less due to said foreigner getting a green card or the Canadian equivalent somewhere down the line
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