>It has no legal nor practical sense, so why bother? You might be surprised to know that it actually does matter, and it matters in a way that depresses Americ

>It has no legal nor practical sense, so why bother? You might be surprised to know that it actually does matter, and it matters in a way that depresses American software engineer salaries: work visas. The fact that the US government considers "software engineering" to be equal to "civil engineering" means that the TN visa (since we're talking about Canada) applies to people qualified to be employed as software engineers in the US. As such, this visa allows tens of thousands of equally-qualified software engineers from Canada to compete for a good proportion of the same jobs thereby depressing American wages; why wouldn't an American software engineer (or a Canadian P.Eng who wants to make a business but can't afford the better engineers) be opposed to the weak American definition being the only one that really matters?