US Suspends Visa Program for Tech Firms Including Microsoft

Re:US Suspends Visa Program for Tech Firms Including Microsoft by freeone3000 on Thursday October 08, 2026 @02:20PM (#50009776)

Microsoft is a global employer. This suspension means the job hires will be “in” India, or Canada, or Poland, or Japan, until the policy changes again. It’s not as significant as anyone would hope.

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Re:US Suspends Visa Program for Tech Firms Including Microsoft by joshdavham on Thursday October 08, 2026 @02:25PM (#50009854)

This seems to be the case.

I live in Vancouver Canada so just north of Seattle.

Just recently another building downtown got a big Microsoft logo slapped on it. A colleague of mine said that it’s because of “Microsoft refugees”.

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Re:US Suspends Visa Program for Tech Firms Including Microsoft by TMWNN on Thursday October 08, 2026 @03:21PM (#50010708)

My understanding is that Canadian FAANG offices are staffed mostly with those who cannot (and often will never get) a US visa, plus the odd local who doesn't want to move to the US for personal or family reasons.

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Re:US Suspends Visa Program for Tech Firms Including Microsoft by joshdavham on Friday October 09, 2026 @12:13AM (#50015916)

The only people I know working in FAANG up here in Canada are all at Amazon and AWS. They have a fairly large presence here in Vancouver.

Some are Canadian, born and raised, but many are immigrants to Canada. If you were to ask most of them, I think they'd say that they'd prefer to stay in Vancouver, despite the lower salaries. The alternative for them would be Seattle.

I've never lived in Seattle personally, but the tech workers I know who've lived in both Seattle and Vancouver have all said they prefer the lifestyle in Vancouver.

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