Yeah ... I was  working for Nortel back then, I was based in Texas, but was pretty much living on the road for 5 years all over the US ...and  around the time the whole thing was slowly falling apart with this company, from 2000 to 2005.  I was on TN-1 visas, very easy to get, but those are normally for temporary usage ... and non immigrant ...I wanted to be on a path for a green card, but they've been laying off peoples for years, so the company didn't want to proceed with me as it would have obviously gotten rejected; You are laying off people by the thousands ... but eh ... THIS guys is needed    ... I had many friends that their application got rejected because of this ... so they stopped doing it. My wife couldn't work on that VISA either, not that she needed too, but we were thinking about having kids at the time, buying a house etc   and having your whole life depend on a random decision of an immigration officer that stamp  or not that VISA every year was far from ideal, combined that with a failing company! I almost got in with Verizon at the time too ... but again, they were in contract negotiations with their union, although it wasn't a unionized position, they didn't want to get anyone on VISA during that time ... something came up here so we decided to go back to Canada ... We loved it in the US ... wasn't my first choice to come back, I actually didn't want to come back  ... but the circumstances pushed me to ... which is why we decided to come to Calgary ...  close to the mountains and the least taxes you can pay overall if you have to live here ...