Onshore Basings
 

When basings go fully onshore, will the many Canadians on US bases require green cards?
Or any other citizen working in any other country for that matter?

I personally think that the on shoring is a long way away. The are on shoring in the UK because they have to not because they want to. The rest of the world bases I'm sure they do not really want to follow US/Canadian and Australian labour law.

What's "onshore basing."

Why wouldn't Canadians have to have a green card to be based in the US regardless? Can Canadians take a European base without the legal right to work there too?

Onshore-Basing
 

Onshore-basing is the term being used to describe the wholesale change in the manner in which CX is moving it's basing companies "onshore" in the areas of the world where it has based crew.

Until now, CX has employed its based crew within a HKG based company, VETA Ltd, and a number of other variations of that name/company. The claimed advantage was that this company was only subject to HKG law on a whole range of issues, including employment law, corporate taxation and company administration, etc. The point here is that the based crew were/are considered to be based-offshore by local authorities within the area or jurisdiction of their basing; UK, EU, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, USA.

The "onshore-basing" process will result in CX basing companies becoming legal entities within the jurisdiction of the base itself, i.e. the basing company that employs these crew with move "onshore". The legal ramifications of this could be extensive, so it's probably fair to say that CX will be doing everything in its power to minimise these ramifications. It may pay us all to equate "ramifications" to "responsibilities" when considering this change at hand.

Thanks!

Seems to me that Canadians working in th US would need greencards regardless of whether the employer was based in the US or HK. After all, why would only Canadians be exempt from US immigration law?

jriv

The company will if required set up a Canadian basing company and roster these crew to fly out of the US. By doing this there is absolutely no requirement for Canadians to have green cards.

I get it - thanks.

US ALPA is aware of the issue pertaining to CX bases in the US. Their history demonstrates that they argue forcefully against any airline that attempts to crew 'US based' airline entities with non-US legal crew (JAL attempted this in the 90's out of Honolulu, and was forced to withdraw all non-US legal crew). It will be intersting to see how CX goes about implementing thier 'onshore' base in the US...

Not so simple
 

404:

Not that easy. If all your flights begin and end in a specific US port then Canadian company or not you are still in a very grey area.

As Apple says ALPA takes a very dim view of this.

The crew are currently operating on a CREW visa which allows foreign airlines/shipping co.s to change crew at an US out port, provided the crew do not domicile (er live) in the port/base/airport area.ie they are moved in to pick up the airplane/boat etc.

Still, could go badly.......