Audrey Macklin: And just like that, you’re an illegal immigrant

Audrey Macklin on the “4-in, 4-out” rule, requiring all temporary foreign workers who have been in the country for four years or longer to leave, and remain outside Canada for at least four years.

Some Canadians may consider the government’s guest-worker regime to be misguided and believe it should not continue. But terminating it will not resolve the dilemma of those temporary foreign workers who are already here and who are the targets of the “4-in, 4-out” rule. Some Canadians may equally have little sympathy for temporary foreign workers who overstay their visas, no matter what their motives. Some may not care that non-status workers are even more precarious and exploitable than temporary foreign workers — after all, they are not supposed to be here, anyway.

But the point is that it is absolutely inevitable and predictable that they will be here. Governments, like people, might be assumed to intend the natural consequences of their actions. So why would the government devise a rule that is guaranteed to produce just-out-of-time illegality?

It is common knowledge that some sectors of the U.S. economy have become dependent on undocumented workers, of which there are an estimated 11 million. Some employers find them a desirable work force precisely because their deportability ensures that they will “work hard and work scared.” These employers are also known to wield their political influence accordingly. To my knowledge, there is no comparable market for non-status workers in Canada, at least not yet.

On March 31, temporary foreign workers will go to bed as lawfully employed and wake up the next day as illegal immigrants

Migrants without legal status are also easy targets for vilification. The slide from “illegal immigrant” to “criminal” in popular discourse is politically cheap and easy. A government that is looking to supplement the bogus refugee, the marriage fraudster and the foreign terrorist with a new category of bad immigrant and a new excuse to get tough on non-citizens might find it convenient to add “illegal immigrants” to the roster. The government’s role in illegalizing these migrants may escape notice.

Thanks in part to Canada’s historic commitment to permanent immigration, this country has not had a significant population of irregular immigrants, until now. Thanks to the “4-in, 4-out” rule, Canada’s population of “illegal immigrants” is about to increase, and not because hordes of foreign nationals have suddenly surged across the border clandestinely.

On March 31, temporary foreign workers will go to bed as lawfully employed, hard-working, tax-paying residents of Canada, and wake up the next day as illegal immigrants. A bad law will have made them illegal. A good law would put them on the path to permanent residence.

Audrey Macklin: And just like that, you’re an illegal immigrant