ARTICLES Commuters claim best of both worlds U.S. paycheques, Canadian security: jobs Windsor Star / Oct 2000 By Brian Cross Windsor lends more than 6,000 of it's best minds to the better-paying, golden opportunity Michigan work world. That's 2,000 more than just four years ago, according to the U.S. Department of Naturalization and Immigration, a 50-per-cent post-NAFTA increase. It's the rough equivalent of the entire pre-amalgamation town of Kingsville packing a lunch bag and heading across the river. But if it's brain drain, it's a uniquely border city variety. For at the end of each work day, the owners of these valued brains drive back in their Ontario-plated cars to their comfortable suburban homes, with paycheques fattened by lucrative U.S. exchange. "It's like immigrants coming from Third World countries and working and sending their money home to their relatives," says University of Windsor economics professor Mike Charette, pointing to the 2.2 million jobs in southeastern Michigan -- 15 times the number in Windsor-Essex County. "It's a huge labour market, there are all sorts of world headquarters and they're sopping up our workers." Consider: The computer programmer who hit the top of the pay grid at $35,000 a decade ago in Windsor and today makes $150,000 Cdn at a Detroit-area software company. The recent law school grad who landed his first job, at a big Detroit firm, where his starting salary is three times what he would have made in Windsor. "I make more in exchange than what (starting Windsor lawyers) make in salary," he marvels. The University of Windsor actuary students, who would otherwise have to move to London, Waterloo or Toronto for jobs with insurance company headquarters, staying in their home towns and pulling in about $75,000 US to start at companies across the river. The more than 2,000 Canadian nurses working in Detroit hospitals, for the equivalent of $37 Cdn an hour, pulling in $90,000 a year with overtime. Kumar Kumaravelupillai, a freshly minted computer science grad, just landed a Big Three job in Michigan with a starting salary of $56,000. Kumaravelupillai, 24, applied to 15 companies, including three in Windsor. None in his home town replied, but seven from Toronto and Detroit expressed interest. He opted for Detroit. "I think I'm interested in staying in Windsor because it's a nice, quiet place," says Kumaravelupillai. If you added up all the money these 6,000 commuters bring home every year -- and with the exchange rate so high, these proudly patriotic Canadians spend almost every cent of their after-tax income in Canada -- it amounts to at least $300 million on cars, homes, appliances and services. Then there are income, property and sales taxes. 'New dollars' "It's like new dollars, almost like a tourist impact where money is made outside the area and it's spent here," says Roman Dzuz, of the Windsor-Essex County Development Commission. A loosening of immigration rules since the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement has helped more Windsor people seek careers in Michigan. The 6,000 Canadians registered with the U.S. government to work in Michigan represent only a portion of the cross-border job traffic. Countless more are dual citizens who get through the border simply by flashing their U.S. passports. "The beauty of NAFTA is it creates a process which is speedy and immediate and direct," says Ingrid Brey, chairwoman of the Michigan branch of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. A NAFTA-listed professional from Canada no longer needs a visa from a U.S. consulate to enter the U.S. to work. Instead, he or she applies at the border and the case is adjudicated the same day. But while NAFTA is making it easier to work over the border, it's the hot Michigan job market that's attracting Canadians like moths to a lantern. With a tiny 2.9-per-cent unemployment rate, southeast Michigan is a career hotbed where employers seeking computer experts, nurses, automotive designers, engineers or casino managers pursue you, handling any immigration hassles. Job choices "Sometimes, it becomes a push and pull thing -- which employer can pay the most," says Michael Smith, whose company, Great Lakes Relocation, helps find homes for newcomers -- especially Canadians -- to Detroit. Todd Langlois, a certified public accountant working for General Motors, has changed jobs in Detroit four times in the last several years because he keeps getting better offers. "There are headhunters calling all the time. I could get a job in 10 minutes," he says from his office on the 39th floor of the Renaissance Center. While critics worry about the lost talent in key sectors such as health care, commuters say having Detroit at their disposal keeps them from leaving Windsor altogether. "If you have a high-end job, if you get bumped out, where do you go for another job? You have to move to Toronto," says the U of W's Charette. "Our advantage in Windsor is we have this huge labour market across the river." Mike Conmackie would have to move to Ottawa and a software company such as the ailing Corel Corp., to find the same kind of job he has 40 minutes from his LaSalle home. At Compuware he's worked his way up during the last 10 years to software developer, "where I always wanted to be." It's an alluring combination: "I still get the small-town environment and I get the advantage of working for a big corporation. The U.S. exchange really helped enable my wife to stay home," says Conmackie, one of 40 Compuware employees with Windsor-area addresses. Although he pays about $8,500 in Canadian taxes on top of U.S. income taxes, he doesn't plan to move to Michigan. "I don't need to worry about my kid being shot in school. It would be a huge stress factor if I were to uproot my family." Mark Eugeni applied to law schools on both sides of the Detroit River three years ago and, despite the $22,000 US tuition at the University of Detroit, decided Michigan was the place to be. That decision paid off. Whereas first-year lawyers are paid $35,000 to $40,000 in Windsor and Toronto's larger firms recently upped their salaries to $88,000, Eugeni had his pick of positions at more than $100,000 Cdn. "They're paying huge dollars here," says the Windsor-raised dual citizen. Lawyers wanted "It's a great time to be an attorney, especially in Michigan," he says, because Michigan firms are competing with the big spenders in New York and San Francisco's Silicon Valley. "They've decided to solve the brain drain problem and compensation is the way to do it," he says from his office in downtown Detroit. Eugeni, 28, who recently bought his parents' South Windsor home, is among a younger generation of professionals who look more naturally to southeast Michigan for career opportunities. They're highly educated, confident and yet like the idea of staying in their home town. Big Three managers who've worked their way up the ladder in Windsor typically transfer to head office for career-boosting promotions and never have to take their children out of their schools or put their houses up for sale. "The opportunities are much, much greater on this side of the border," says Ford human resources executive Mike Lewandowski, speaking from his office in Dearborn, where he's one of about 70 Canadians. Unlike most other Windsor commuters, Big Three employees who transfer to Michigan are paid in Canadian dollars. "You don't do it for the money, you do it for the career opportunity," says Lewandowski, whose job is now international in scope. He lives in Walkerville with his wife, Catherine Henne, also a Ford human resources specialist in Michigan. They're Ford's only commuting couple. When traffic isn't terrible at the tunnel, Brad Burningham and his wife, Gwendolyn Ebett, leave their Riverside home for their librarian jobs at about the same time each morning. Hers is at the University of Windsor, his at Detroit's Wayne State. "She's there in 15 minutes and I'm there in 20 to 30. There are not many places in Canada where you can work in two different universities," says Burningham, an Essex native. Ross Binnie is a Canadian-British dual citizen with a U.S. green card who was living in Texas with his wife, Elizabeth, a bookbinder, when they got a hankering for a change in culture. They wanted to try Canada, a country they consider half-way between the conservatism of Britain and the brashness of America. They considered three locations on the Canada-U.S. border -- Vancouver-Seattle, Niagara-Buffalo and Windsor-Detroit. DSO job Binnie landed a job as director of ticketing services for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and they settled into an attractive old home in Amherstburg. "I'd always wanted to move back to Canada and the $1.50 exchange doesn't hurt," says Binnie. Clara Deck is half Canuck -- with an all-American job. She's a conservator at Dearborn's Henry Ford Museum, where one of her recent projects involved preparing transport for the chair Abraham Lincoln was sitting in when he was assassinated. But she's fiercely faithful to Canada. "I love Windsor as a city. I can live close to the water, walk to the stores in my neighbourhood, the health-care system, I feel safer," says the dual citizen. "I always tell people I have the best of both worlds. I get to work in Detroit, earn American dollars and live in Canada, the greatest country in the world."