Microsoft’s Canadian Move a Swipe at Stiff U.S. Visa Policies

Fay Hansen of Workforce Management describes how Microsoft is coping with overly restrictive U.S. immigration policies regarding professional nonimmigrant workers.

She writes: “Without national reform, the U.S. continues to drift away from the global move toward greater labor mobility. Other nations, including Canada and the United Kingdom, now use point systems designed to pull in the most talented workers without an existing job offer.

    The U.K. also automatically grants visas to MBA graduates from the world’s top 50 business schools, more than half of which are located in the United States. Unlike these merit-based systems, the U.S. H-1B process is a lottery that increasingly discourages the top candidates from looking for work in the U.S.”