Canada Immigration and Citizenship News

Interpreter Releases

June 26, 2000

THROUGH THE EYE OF A NEEDLE: CANADIAN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

PROFESSIONALS AND THE TN CATEGORY OF THE NAFTA

A. James V?quez-Azpiri

Copyright ?span style="mso-spacerun: yes; color: black; mso-fareast-font-family: Times New Roman; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">  2000 West Group; A. James V?quez-Azpiri

  It has now been more than six years since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect. The NAFTA has been undeniably beneficial for some industries and their workers, by lowering barriers to trade in capital, goods, and services and by facilitating the temporary entry of personnel. In other industries, in some of the most innovative and cutting-edge sectors, however, the implementation of the NAFTA has not kept up with the rapid pace of technological change and innovation.

  This article seeks to place into context the provisions of the NAFTA governing the temporary admission to the United States of Canadian professionals for business purposes. Specifically, the article examines such admissions in light of two phenomena: (1) the dizzying evolution of the knowledge-based information technology (IT) industry in the past few years and the chronic difficulty faced by IT companies in locating qualified professionals to enable them to meet their strategic objectives and keep pace with this evolution; and (2) the emergence of Canadian IT professionals as a labor pool tapped with increasing frequency by U.S. IT companies that face such a hiring difficulty.

  The specific focus of this article is upon the Trade NAFTA (TN) category of the NAFTA, which permits the temporary entry of professional citizens of one NAFTA state party into the territory of another, and has proven to be the most frequently used avenue for Canadian IT professionals to take up employment in the U.S., and, more narrowly, upon the extraordinarily high level of difficulty encountered at present by such professionals in seeking admission to this country. In this latter respect, by examining four particular occupations, this article seeks to understand why the TN category has failed to fulfill its potential of providing a simple, rapid, and predictable mechanism for the entry of Canadian IT professionals to the U.S.

 THE HUNT FOR IT KNOWLEDGE WORKERS

  Many readers of Interpreter Releases are already aware of the problems faced by U.S.-based IT companies in recruiting sufficient numbers of "knowledge workers" (the term generally employed by labor experts to refer to technologically educated employees), or the fact that such companies must look to knowledge workers from other countries to meet their hiring needs. Abundant literature has been produced on the subject, and the issue need not be dwelt upon here. Immigration practitioners see examples of these facts on a daily basis. This situation has made the representation of IT companies rewarding for business immigration attorneys over the past few years, and will ensure that these heady days will be fondly remembered as a golden age in the practice of business immigration law.

  The economic power and consequent political clout of IT companies in the U.S. has ensured that the industry's angst over the shortage of knowledge workers has been thrust into national prominence, and will soon replace the now rather dated concern over illegal immigration as the topic of uppermost importance in this country's ongoing immigration debate. The high visibility of this issue has meant that any aspirant to high political office (as well as any polemicist worth his or her salt) who wishes to demonstrate an awareness of contemporary events must be informed about this issue and must be able to discuss it intelligently. Further, the political process has been engaged by the IT industry to alleviate its concerns. At a legislative level, numerous initiatives have been introduced, and continue to be introduced, to ease the hiring crisis concerns by reducing or removing the legal obstacles that impair the ability of IT companies to hire foreign knowledge workers.

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