Alberta’s vote this spring will mark the first major provincial election after a series of news reports on intelligence that Beijing meddled in the most recent federal election. But recommendations that the province’s independent chief electoral officer made last year to bolster Alberta’s legal guards against the rapidly evolving challenge of disinformation, including from foreign actors, won’t be implemented in time for voting day on May 29.
Foreign interference hasn’t been a major concern in the province’s electoral process in the past.Becca Polak, a spokeswoman for Danielle Smith, said no issues have been brought to the Premier’s attention. Political parties using social media to battle among themselves is – at this moment – still probably a graver concern. A Global Affairs Canada report examining foreign interference in Alberta’s 2019 provincial election found evidence of co-ordinated inauthentic behaviour from social media accounts, but determined the majority of these accounts were likely not foreign.
But we should be paying attention. A big portion of Canadian governance takes place in the provinces and territories. And the question of whether they are prepared for a new world of borderless cyberthreats and other sophisticated tools employed by foreign governments should be considered in British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta and other provinces alongside fears about interference in federal elections.
Except for Prince Edward Island, Alberta’s will be the next big election in Canada. In his December annual report, Alberta’s chief electoral officer noted weak spots in the province’s electoral laws, singling out the lack of power the province has to tackle misinformation and disinformation in election campaigns. Glen Resler noted that while federal election legislation has provisions related to foreign interference to fraudulently affect the outcome of an election, Alberta doesn’t have the same safeguards.
The report made a few specific recommendations to beef up Alberta’s Election Act, including specifically prohibiting any person or entity, including foreign persons and entities, from knowingly making false statements about the voting process – including voting and counting procedures – to disrupt the conduct of the election, or to undermine the legitimacy of the election or its results.
The annual report also noted how the province’s laws need to reflect the digital age. The Alberta law has a provision that allows the office of the chief electoral officer to remove non-compliant advertisements, including a physical sign. But it can’t compel social media platforms to remove content in a timely fashion.
The Globe’s reporting in recent weeks has focused on secret and top-secret Canadian Security Intelligence Service documents outlining how Chinese diplomats and their proxies backed the re-election of Justin Trudeau’s Liberals – but only to another minority government – in 2021, and worked to defeat Conservative politicians considered to be unfriendly to Beijing.
The CSIS documents outline how China spread falsehoods on social media and provided undeclared cash donations in the 2021 election. The documents also outline how Beijing directed Chinese students studying in Canada to work as campaign volunteers, and illegally returned portions of donations so donors were not out of pocket after claiming a tax receipt.
In an e-mail this week, Elections Alberta spokesperson Cora-Lee Conway said any efforts that threaten to compromise the integrity of democratic processes are of great concern to Elections Alberta. She noted that the office is in regular contact with a local CSIS office and the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, the lead agency on federal response to cybersecurity events.
Alberta’s Justice Ministry indicated there won’t be any changes to Alberta’s Election Act coming before May, noting the legislative agenda for the rest of the legislature’s sitting is already laid out. Spokesperson Ethan Lecavalier-Kidneysaid the government is in the process of reviewing the chief electoral officer’s recommendations from December.
British Columbia and Ontario are provinces likely far away from elections. But B.C. is in the process of amending its laws to address online political campaigns and election advertising to match with current technologies. Recent reports from Elections BC have raised broad concerns about foreign interference, but the provincial attorney-general’s office says Elections BC has advisedit that foreign interference has not been an issue in B.C. provincial elections.
In past years, Ontario’s chief electoral officer, Greg Essensa, has said it will be looking for cases of foreign interference. This week, Elections Ontario said in an e-mail it takes the integrity, security and accuracy of elections very seriously and works with security partners to monitor and review internal processes. In a response to a question about Mr. Ke, the office said it doesn’t comment on whether it has received a complaint or is investigating any matter.
There will be politicians and critics, whenever the topic of foreign interference in Canadian elections is raised, who say the very act of focusing on the issue will create distrust in the political processes we rely on.
But there is hope – to paraphrase a famous bit of Fitzgerald wisdom – that voters are able to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time, and still hold onto a democracy’s ability to function. For instance, although there were efforts to meddle in the 2021 federal election, those efforts did not affect the outcome of the vote, says a report based on the work of a panel of senior public servants. And a new Leger poll released this week shows the majority of Canadians want Ottawa to call an independent inquiry into foreign interference in the past two federal elections, but still feel the country’s electoral system is safe.
Most voters still trust in our political processes. For that to continue, politicians and public institutions must also say that foreign interference is possible and real, and show they are intent on stopping it.
Since setting these targets, inflation in Canada has spiralled and the rising cost of living has stretched the finances of many Canadian households. A recent report reveals that 64 per cent of Canadians is concerned about their ability to pay off debts, while 59 per cent state that further increases will lead them to financial difficulties.
Financial planning and budgeting are accompanied, for many people, by apprehension and anxiety— especially when the person in question is a newcomer to Canada.
An immigrant’s skills and experience earn them enough points for permanent residency in Canada. However, they soon find that the reality of living and working in Canada is different from what they anticipated.
Immigrants compete for jobs and housing with an average of 10 per cent less pay than Canadian-born workers. If they are skilled and university-educated, they receive an estimated 20 per cent less than their Canadian counterparts each month.
Seventy-two per cent of immigrants recently surveyed by Léger for the Institute for Canadian Citizenship said that “Canadians don’t understand the challenges immigrants face.” Thirty per cent of young newcomers, aged between 18-34, revealed that they are likely to leave Canada in the next two years.
It’s understandable, in the current climate, why many young newcomers would want to take their skills and experience elsewhere. Far too many immigrants arrive to find that their experience and credentials are not recognized in Canada. If they need a license, the cost of getting licensed could cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Immigrants also come up against another barrier—lack of Canadian experience—which is not something they can control or overcome. Some find themselves in low-skilled survival jobs because of these barriers.
It’s a vicious cycle: they arrive in Canada with no credit history and without it, they are not eligible for a career loan from a financial institution. This keeps them stuck in the survival job, moving further and further away from the career they once had in their home country.
Navigating life in a new country can induce stress and anxiety. Research shows that immigrants and refugees are more susceptible to mental health challenges.
Our client Elda experienced anxiety as a newcomer to Canada. As a skilled psychotherapist with years of experience back home in the Philippines, she was unable to practice as a psychotherapist in Canada unless she got re-licensed. Elda wanted to continue her career but it came at a significant cost. With a young family to feed, she needed financial support. She wasn’t sure how she could pay her bills and also return to what she loved to do.
One of these solutions is microloans offered through national charities, like Windmill Microlending. A microloan makes it possible for someone like Elda to get re-licensed while covering living expenses during the process.
Today, Elda is a licensed psychotherapist who helps others manage their mental health struggles. Internationally-trained mental health professionals like Elda are in high demand.
Helping immigrants contribute at the level that our economy needs could help ease pressures on our health-care system.
The Windmill team supports over thousand immigrants like Elda every year as they transition into careers that align with their skills and experience. We recognize that the current economic climate could deter newcomers from applying for a career loan, so we recently introduced a fixed-rate interest loan of 5.95 percent for a limited time.
Offering loans at this below-prime rate ensures that funds remain accessible and affordable to newcomers. We hope that this measure will help newcomers fulfill their career goals and utilize their full potential while also reducing Canada’s labour shortage.
As we welcome more immigrants in the coming years, Canada must remain a desirable destination for skilled workers around the world. We have much to gain by getting the best and brightest skilled immigrants into roles where they can make a difference.
When skilled immigrants are allowed to leverage their skills and experience, Canada reaps the benefits.
Oumar Dicko is national director, Stakeholder Relations of Windmill Microlending, a national charity that empowers skilled immigrants to achieve economic prosperity through microloans and supports.
The one point missing from this analysis is the divisions within the various diaspora communities. Members in most communities have diverse interests and viewpoints and thus the question of “who to take seriously” is not as straightforward as it may appear.
In the case of China, it appears the government was too cozy with Chinese Canadians who were more aligned with the Chinese regime than Chinese Canadians who were more independent:
China’s foreign interference in Canadian democracy has been the hot topic these past few weeks. The Conservatives and Bloc Québécois are demanding a public inquiry to investigate how the last two federal elections were compromised and who in the government knew what and when.
This is not just a federal issue, either. In Ontario, the Progressive Conservative government has faced own its backlash, with allegations that PC MPP Vincent Ke served as a financial intermediary for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Toronto-area network.1
Canadians have strong feelings on the matter. A recent Angus Reid Institute poll finds that a plurality (40 percent) of Canadians now view China as a potential threat to Canadian interests, while over a quarter (26 percent) say that the Canadian government should proceed cautiously with Beijing. Only 12 percent of Canadians are favourable towards China.
While the coverage of this story has been extensive and shows no signs of slowing down, one major element has been under-discussed in this affair: the impact on the Asian diaspora and other diaspora communities as a whole.
Here in Canada, we love commending ourselves for having a pluralistic, open, and inclusive society where people from many parts of the world can live together peacefully and in harmony. Where diversity, famously, is our strength.
While I tend to agree with the premise, how does that shake out in practice? What’s the use of praising ourselves when government officials do not listen to diaspora communities when they are being harmed?
That has been the case in this current scandal, where warnings from the Chinese diaspora of potential foreign interference were not taken seriously. In fact, members of the community reported the issue of Chinese foreign interference as early as 2006. Instead, the Canadian political establishment, both Liberal and Conservative governments, mostly ignored them.
Because of the severity of the scandal, there have finally been talks of officially setting up a publicly-available foreign influence registry, as outlined by Senate Bill S-237. This bill would require individuals or organizations that have ties with foreign governments to be officially registered,especially in the case where they seek to contact Canadian public officials. It would fall in line with what other allies have done, particularly in the U.S. and Australia.
Many are apprehensive of this bill. There have been growing concerns that a foreign influence registry would be used to further incite anti-Asian sentiment in Canada, which has been prevalent in recent years. Over the course of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a 47 percent increase in racist incidents against the Asian community, according to a Chinese Canadian National Council Toronto Chapter and Project 1907 survey.
I am sympathetic to these concerns. Racism and xenophobia in times of crisis are not new here in Canada, and can at times be reflected by a political establishment. In fact, sadly, I have been on the other side of such treatment. Being half-Iraqi, I have experienced racist and xenophobic sentiments over the years following America’s invasion of Iraq 20 years ago, despite Canada not officially joining the war.2
But why did these sentiments persist? The answer is in large part because there was little to no national discussion on how these difficult situations impacted our communities, nor did the political establishment of the day care to hear our experiences or insights. And this didn’t just happen to my community. Ask any diaspora community and they’ll have similar stories.
Dynamics in diaspora communities are complex. For those of you not part of a diaspora, let me paint a picture. Being a part of a diaspora community in Canada is to be living in two worlds. Not only do we operate on a daily basis within the larger local, regional, and national culture of the country that we immigrated or were born into. But many also retain strong communal connections with their respective diaspora community, either with other fellow community members or by maintaining professional, social, or familial ties back in their countries of origin. The WhatsApp groups that many of our older relatives are a part of are no joke.
Additionally, people within diasporas have complicated relationships among themselves. Social, cultural, or political grievances are often uprooted and replanted in the soil of their new homes.
Diaspora communities are then often stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, given these ties to their countries of origin, diasporas can be threatened by malicious adversarial actors back from their country of origin. This has often been the case with the CCP targeting members of the Chinese-Canadian community.
On the other hand, entire diaspora communities in Canada get chastised by the larger adoptive community and painted as the malicious actors themselves. As a result, many can feel as though they are living in a no man’s land, alienated by both their home country and their adopted country.
But there is a major upside. Because diasporas live and operate in two worlds and are culturally versed, they can provide the essential knowledge and intelligence that can be used to serve and protect Canada and its interests. Diaspora communities are the ace in Canada’s card deck. Their wealth of knowledge is an underutilized resource that Canada can tap into, if only we would listen.
But instead of being taken seriously, diaspora communities tend to be viewed by larger Canadian society in one of two ways: childlike and ignorant or dangerous and distrustful. By placing us in either category and not factoring us into the conversation, we are not seen as living, breathing communities that impact Canadian society at large. Both our issues and, importantly, our insights are ignored.
Thankfully, these last few weeks may be the wake-up call we need. Diaspora communities from the Canadian Coalition for a Foreign Influence Registry (CCFIR) have called on the federal government to start a foreign influence registry that will serve and protect diaspora community members. Hopefully their calls do not go unheeded. Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino announced that there will be public consultations on any foreign agent registry to broadly engage with all Canadians, including the Chinese diaspora and other affected communities.
Ultimately, not actively involving diaspora communities in our policymaking not only does a disservice to Canadian democracy, national security, and our institutions, it puts diaspora communities at risk. If a “Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian,” then those in diaspora communities ready to participate in building this country must be both 1) protected from harmful foreign influence and 2) taken seriously as valuable contributors to our national project.
Would this entire mess have been avoided if prudent care was taken to seriously listen to marginalized members of the Chinese diaspora who were ringing early alarm bells about foreign interference? Maybe, maybe not. But we would be a lot further along in solving this problem than we are right now.
Canada not the only country to have processing and service standards challenges, along with effective implementation of automation:
The average time it takes to become a citizen is continuing to rise.
But Internal Affairs (DIA) said it had brought down a backlog of applications by 10,000, with 26,483 applications on hand this week, compared to 36,417 at the same time last year.
Average wait times for residents applying to become citizens have risen to 188 days, up from 27 days in 2017.
Decisions are quicker for applications where many decisions can be made via automated checks, DIA said in a statement.
“Our teams have been working hard to reduce the decision timeframes on citizenship applications,” said DIA general manager of services and access Julia Wootton.
“During 2022, we completely caught up on pending decisions for applications which could be assessed with the maximum number of automated checks. These types of applications are now being decided on within one to three months.
“The remaining applications we are working through require more intervention, but we are working to increase the number of these applications that can be processed with automated checks.”
The longest applications now take more than two years, compared to almost four years in 2016, when people had to make an appointment to see a citizenship officer. Some took longer because of automated checks failing or information being sourced from overseas, she said.
“Reducing the decision timeframes on citizenship applications continues to be a priority for us, and we’ve been able to do that by establishing automatic checks when possible. We are taking several other measures to further reduce decision timeframes, including more training, investing in technology changes to speed things up, and recruiting more staff.
“Based on current trends and the additional measures detailed above, we expect to continue to reduce average wait times and the number of applications awaiting allocation.”
Useful, balanced and realistic analysis, highlighting the difficulties of adopting the German model :
Quebec Premier Francois Legault took to the media to call for changes in how Canada manages asylum claims. With 64 per cent being processed in Quebec in 2022, one of his demands was that asylum-seekers be distributed across the provinces to even out the additional demands on health care, housing and other public resources required to support the new arrivals.
In contrast to his problematic call to close the Roxham Road crossing, the interprovincial redistribution of asylum seekers may be viewed as a feasible policy with precedents in several European countries, including Germany, that could provide inspiration.
However, there are concerns that would have to be addressed before considering such a policy, including a workable funding solution between Ottawa and the provinces, how to provide the necessary infrastructure and human-rights issues.
How are asylum claims managed in Canada?
Currently there is no mechanism for assigning a place of residence to individuals who file an asylum claim in Canada. Claims are filed in the province in which someone arrives. If an initial review determines that the claimant is eligible for consideration, that province provides access to services such as emergency housing, health care, education and social and legal assistance. Municipalities and non-governmental organizations may also contribute to this support. Claimants are free to move to another province and have their claims assessed there.
The federal government supports some of the costs of hosting asylum-seekers during the process, through the Canada Social Transfer, the same block payment that provides provinces and territories funding on a per-capita basis for programs like post-secondary education.
The German model: Efficient and effective at redistributing costs
Since the Second World War, Germany has managed steady inflows of asylum-seekers, with big peaks in the early 1990s and mid-2010s. Over 1.2 million asylum applications were submitted from 1990 to 1993, and another 1.2 million were filed in 2014-2015 alone.
Germany manages a substantially higher volume of asylum applications than Canada, as a comparison of the years 2011 to 2022 shows. In that period, Germany processed over 2.8 millionasylum applications, while Canada had just over 417,000. In peak years, Germany received 745,545 (in 2016), while Canada received 92,100 (in 2022). On average, the number of applications received annually was almost seven times higher in Germany than it was in Canada, while Germany’s overall population is roughly two times larger.
Germany has long distributed asylum-seekers across its federal states. Its current mechanism for doing this was first integrated into West Germany’s 1982 Asylum Procedure Act and later modified to include the former East German states. Asylum claimants are distributed across the 16 federal states according to what is known as the Königstein Key (Königsteiner Schlüssel).
The key calculates quotas for asylum seekers based on each state’s tax revenue and population. More populated and economically powerful states are assigned proportionally more asylum seekers than those with fewer inhabitants and smaller economies. In 2023, North Rhine-Westphalia, a large state in western Germany, is responsible for just over 21 per cent of asylum-seekers while the small city-state of Bremen is responsible for slightly fewer than one per cent of them.
As soon as an asylum seeker launches a claim, regardless of where they do so, an electronic system automatically determines which state will handle their case, and they are immediately sent onwards (at the cost of the first state they arrived in).
Once they reach their assigned state, asylum seekers are distributed across reception centres in that state, and the state pays for benefits like food, housing, clothing and health care. In order to receive these benefits, asylum-seekers need to remain registered and resident in the municipality they were assigned to for at least the first three months after arrival.
The German model is widely regarded as one of the most effective systems of dispersing asylum-seekers geographically. Yet, like all such systems, it has its downsides. Also, the features that make it highly effective require certain political conditions that are not easy to replicate in other countries. There are certain human and social costs.
While it may be desirable from the perspective of the state to distribute asylum seekers geographically, doing so requires that the freedom of movement of individuals be restricted, at least for an initial period.
This has two main downsides. First, new arrivals cannot choose to take up residence in a place where they have family, friends and/or a community. This means that they lack the network connections that are sources of information, support and well being. If asylum-seekers gain permanent residence, the absence of networks can hinder their social and economic integration. Some scholars argue that the disruptive effects of dispersal on asylum-seeker’s networks are welcomed by states like Germany, as means of deterring new arrivals.
Second, true geographic dispersion means placing them in communities that have little or no history of receiving immigrants. In Germany, asylum-seekers placed in more rural areas have been vulnerable to xenophobia and even racist violence.
Asylum seekers and refugee housing centres have regularly been subjected to xenophobic attacks in Germany since the early 1990s. The most infamous of these occurred in a suburb of Rostock in 1992.
Isolation from networks and potentially hostile environments are not just detrimental to asylum-seekers. They can also create costs for society, in the form of poor social and economic integration and increased ethnic and racial tensions, both of which can be mobilized by far-right politicians.
Could Canada adopt the German model?
Due to growing exposure to global forces and refugee flows, Canada will undoubtedly receive increasing numbers of asylum seekers in the future. Designing and implementing an effective, German-style system could lead to better outcomes than more ad-hoc arrangements, as the comparison between Germany and the United Kingdom shows. However, that assumes that Canadians are prepared to pay for the human and social costs to distribute expenditures on asylum-seeker support across provinces. But first, there needs to be at least two key components put in place.
A legitimate means of determining quotas
One thing that made it relatively easy for German states to commit to a refugee quota system was the agreed-upon distribution mechanism – the Königstein Key. This was originally created in 1949 to fund research and science and had long been considered a fair and legitimate means of sharing costs. Its application to a new policy area was thus relatively uncontroversial.
In Canada’s current fraught state of executive federalism, creating a similar mechanism would likely lead to additional intergovernmental conflict.
Language politics could also complicate negotiations, as Quebec might request to only retain and host francophone asylum seekers on its territory. That would have to be factored into the distribution mechanism and, perhaps, make it harder to build political consensus around it in that province and in the rest of the country.
Infrastructure
All residents of Germany, including citizens, are required to register with their city or municipal authority within two weeks of taking up residence. Local registration is recorded on national identity cards (the most common form of personal identification in the country) and determines access to myriad social services. It is also used to determine the amount of funding a municipality receives from the state, including the number of school and kindergarten slots that are needed.
This system makes it possible to tie asylum seekers’ social and financial support to maintaining residency in a particular municipality. In other words, there is an effective infrastructure in place to enforce the quota system and to easily monitor asylum-seeker distribution and financial transfers between states and municipalities.
Canada has no such infrastructure. Nor is most of its immigrant support designed to maintain geographic distribution. One exception are the provincial nominee programs (PNPs) and – within those – collaborations with municipalities to get immigrants and refugees to settle outside of metropolitan centres. Yet, immigrants self-select into these, suggesting a willingness on the part of participants to settle in a particular region of the country.
If Canada chose to adopt a program for distributing asylum seekers across provinces and territories, it would be following established practices in Germany and other European countries. Doing this effectively and with minimal friction between jurisdictions requires careful planning and adequate population-management infrastructure, however. There are also human and social costs that need to be considered – costs Canada has not yet been willing to pay. These include curtailing the freedom of movement of asylum-seekers and creating living conditions that could be detrimental to them and Canada’s social fabric.
Slow liberalization, but decision of the King, not public servants:
Saudi Arabia has announced it will grant citizenship to certain to selected foreign nationals, following the passing of a law, allowing Prime Minister and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to do so, upon the proposal from the Minister of Interior earlier this year.
The decision was made public on the official Twitter account of the Makkah Al-Mukarramah, quoting the Ministry of Interior. The amendment was published in the official gazette Um Al Qura on Friday. In January, a royal decree was issued to approve the amendment of Article Eight of the Saudi Nationality Law, becoming law on 13 March.
According to the amendment, a person born to a Saudi mother and a foreign father may apply for citizenship upon meeting the following criteria: they must be over the age of 18, must be fluent in Arabic language, must have “good conduct and behaviour”, and should not have been imprisoned for a period of more than six months.
However, some activists have already expressed concerns over the changes to the law, arguing that it will make it even more difficult for Saudi women to attain naturalisation for their children with more legal hurdles. Currently, children whose father is a Saudi national are automatically granted citizenship, which is the case for most states in the region.
In November 2021, the kingdom passed a royal decree granting citizenship to “experts and exceptional global talents,” becoming the second Gulf state after the UAE to introduce a formal naturalisation programme for foreigners with specialised skills.
International graduates with expired or expiring work permits will be able to extend their work authorization in Canada for another 18 months, under a new immigration measure announced Friday.
Postgraduate work permit (PGWP) holders who qualify for the program will soon be contacted with information about logging into their online account to opt in and update their file, starting April 6.
A PGWP is typically not extendable, but similar policies have been implemented twice during the pandemic to allow international graduates to stay and work in Canada as many ran out of status and were unable to pursue permanent residence amid significant immigration backlogs.
Those with expired work permits both in 2022 and 2023 will be able to restore their status, even if they are beyond the 90-day restoration period, and will receive an interim work authorization while awaiting processing of their new work permit application.
“We need to use every tool in our toolbox to support employers who continue to face challenges in hiring the workers they need to grow,” Immigration Minister Sean Fraser said.
“We want to continue to hang on to that talent in Canada, not just to fill gaps in the short term in the labour force, but to ensure that we’re meeting the long-term needs of the economy.”
The federal government’s 2022 PGWP extension program wasn’t without flaws. Permit holders were initially told their authorization would be processed automatically, without them having to do anything. However, many did not receive the needed documents and ran out of status to legally stay and work in the country.
“Lessons learned from that process have been applied as we implement a similar one. The new public policy will allow anyone who was eligible under the 2022 initiative to apply for an open work permit and to restore their status,” the immigration department said.
Yogesh Tulani, whose PGWP would expire this month, said some unscrupulous consultants and lawyers — and some employers — are taking advantage of students who are on the edge of losing status by charging them hefty fees for a job offer and the Labour Market Impact Assessment they would need to obtain a closed work permit and stay in this country.
“You’re asked to pay a large sum of money, which ranged from anywhere between $8,000 to $35,000, which is unethical and illegal,” said the 23-year-old, who graduated from Georgian College in 2019 and now works as a pest-control technician in London, Ont.
Advocates said Fraser needs to make the PGWP permanently renewable to better protect vulnerable students from abuse and exploitation.
“We’re seeing that the same crisis is repeating over and over again. How many more times are we going to have to fight for permanent renewability?” asked Sarom Rho, an organizer for Migrant Students United at the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change.
Rho also urged Fraser to resume the Canadian Experience Class program, which most international graduates use to transition to permanent residence based on their work experience and education credentials acquired in the country.
The draws for the program have been suspended for nine months and the delay has contributed to international graduates’ immigration limbo, leaving some unable to get permanent residence while their legal status is running out, said Rho.
“Many current and former migrant student workers will be facing the same crisis in January of 2024,” she warned.
Canada, like most countries, has faced significant labour and skill shortages in the economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, and the special measures are an attempt to keep current workers in the labour market.
International students and graduates have become a main source of temporary migrant workers in Canada. Those enrolled in a post-secondary program can work during their studies and are eligible for a PGWP that lasts for up to three years.
According to the Canadian Bureau for International Education, there were 807,750 international students in Canada at all levels of study last year, up 43 per cent from five years ago. Indian students accounted for 40 per cent of the overall international enrolment, followed by Chinese students, at 12 per cent.
At the end of 2022, more than 286,000 international graduates were in Canada with a valid post-graduation work permit, immigration officials say.
About 127,000 PGWPs expire this year, though about 67,000 PGWP holders have already applied for permanent residence and won’t need to extend their work permit through this initiative.
Further interest by conservatives on self-administered citizenship oaths, along with concerns over declining naturalization rates, the latter reflecting a longer-term trend, the steep increase in citizenship fees under the Harper government, and the shutdown and slow recovery of citizenship in 2020 and 2021. Dual citizenship prohibitions appears to be less of a factor except for Chinese immigrants.
Understandably, but unfortunately, Shawn Taylor then argues that it is more the “sense of self loathing” and negative narratives that explains the decline with little to no evidence (no public opinion research that I have seen substantiates this claim). He then praises the existing citizenship guide, Discover Canada, developed under the Harper government, which was a vast improvement over its predecessor but overly reflected the ideological bias of that government:
New Canadians may soon face a brand-new obstacle on their path to citizenship. Beyond interminable delays and hefty fees, by June they could also find themselves having to prove they’re not a robot by clicking on every image that contains a motorcycle. Or a parking meter. Or a horse
Last month Ottawa announced plans to eliminate the long-standing requirement that citizenship applicants publicly swear (or affirm) Canada’s Oath of Citizenship at an official ceremony before receiving their citizenship papers. Such oath-taking ceremonies have been a requirement since 1947. And while they went virtual during Covid-19, they’ve always been public events overseen by a citizenship judge or other designated Crown representative.
Now, with massive waiting times afflicting the entire immigration system, the federal Liberals are proposing to speed up this last stage in the process via a “secure online solution.” Immigrants will simply have to left-click their computer mouse to complete their oath and thus become citizens of Canada. It seems an uninspiring culmination to what should be an important, if not life-changing, event.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government unveiled this time-saving proposal quietly in the Canada Gazette on February 25, but it has since attracted plenty of high-profile outrage from Canada’s Liberal elite. Former Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson said she was “horrified” by the idea of doing away with citizenship ceremonies, calling them the “mark of a civilized society.” Sergio Marchi, federal immigration minister during the Jean Chrétien years, called it “a misguided idea” that would add “insult to injury!” (Exclamation in original.) Former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi added that it was “a terrible idea.”
“Becoming a Canadian citizen is a transformational event,” explains Daniel Bernhard, CEO of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship (ICC), in an interview. “This is truly a special ‘once in a lifetime’ occasion – you can get married more than once, you can have more than one child but you can only become a Canadian once. We should celebrate it as such.” Bernhard worries that turning the final stage of citizenship into a “box you tick” will degrade its significance by making it indistinguishable from any run-of-the-mill online transaction.
The ICC, founded by Clarkson and her husband John Ralston Saul in 2005, is an advocacy group focused on integrating and celebrating new Canadians. To this end, it hosts lavish citizenship ceremonies in iconic locations, such as Toronto’s Pearson International Airport or in national parks, and encourages existing Canadians to attend in order to create a broader sense of community engagement. “Everyone is invited to the party,” Bernhard says. “We want to extend a collective welcome and make it a moment for reflection and celebration. Citizenship isn’t just something on your passport. It should exist in your heart as well.”
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada is actually over-staffed when it comes to processing immigration applications. ‘IRCC is estimated to have 65% more staff than would be required to meet the goal’ of its own service standards, the PBO reports.Tweet
It is, of course, impossible to know what exists in Ottawa’s heart. But the federal government appears determined to make the citizenship process dramatically less special – downright banal, in fact. And for reasons that are of its own creation. While the federal government’s current service standard states that a citizenship application will be processed in 12 months, new applicants are currently being told it will take two years to complete, including a three-month wait to schedule a citizenship ceremony.
What’s causing the delay? Waiting times have exploded across the federal bureaucracy, and it can’t be blamed on a lack of resources. According to a recent report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) is actually over-staffed when it comes to processing immigration applications. “IRCC is estimated to have 65% more staff than would be required to meet the goal” of its own service standards, the PBO reports.
Set against such evidence of bureaucratic ineptitude, it seems downright satirical for Ottawa to suggest that new Canadians will “enjoy time savings…[of] approximately 90 minutes” by not having to sit through a formal citizenship ceremony they would likely have remembered for the rest of their lives. “This government has a problem providing the basic service of immigration applications,” snaps Bernhard. “The ceremony is not the problem.”
An Even Bigger Citizenship Problem
When it comes to the state of Canadian citizenship, however, Bernhard has bigger worries than the mere loss of public formalities. Top of the list is the fact new arrivals to this country appear to be falling out of love with the idea of becoming Canadian in the first place. Earlier this year, ICC asked Statistics Canada for an update on the rate at which immigrants become citizens.
In 1991, 68.6 percent of immigrants holding a permanent residency card achieved citizenship between five and nine years of arriving. (Permanent residents can apply for citizenship after spending five years in Canada.) This figure rose above 75 percent in the next two censuses. It has since fallen dramatically. In 2016, only 60.4 percent of permanent residents became citizens within the stated time period. And according to the latest 2021 census data provided by Statcan, it’s now down to 45.7 percent. In other words, fewer than half of recent immigrants are choosing to become Canadian citizens once they’re eligible.
Falling out of love with Canada? According to recent Statistics Canada data, fewer than half of recent Canadian immigrants choose to apply for citizenship after their five-year wait period is up.
“The figures are shocking,” says Bernhard. He considers the trend a fundamental blow to Canadian identity: “One of the ways Canadians see themselves as being unique in the world is in how we welcome immigrants. It is a tradition that goes back to before the founding of Canada.” As proof, he cites an 1840 speech by pre-Confederation Quebec politician Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine, who declared that Canada’s strength lay in welcoming “various populations which come from diverse portions of the globe” and making them “like ourselves, Canadian.”
Now, however, the data suggests a decided lack of interest among new arrivals in joining what Bernhard calls “the team that is Canada.” If immigrants decide they don’t really care about signing up for membership in Team Canada, “then we’ve got a big problem.”
Mobile Free Agents or Pressure from Communist China?
Canada has a lot invested in immigration. Earlier this year, the Trudeau government announced new targets for in-migration that are unprecedented in the modern era. After accepting fewer than 200,000 permanent immigrants in 2020, the Liberals now plan to increase intake to 465,000 in 2023 and 500,000 by 2025. Such a tidal wave of new residents clearly is already straining the capacity of the housing market and likely fuelling inflation as well. Nonetheless, immigration enjoys strong support across all political parties and regions, if somewhat tempered in Quebec. This national consensus appears to be holding because the needs of the labour market are so great. But if all these newcomers feel no particular attachment or affection for their new country, then the economic argument for immigration becomes much weaker.
Chinese immigrants must now choose one passport or the other when they arrive in Canada. If they can’t have both, it appears most are deciding to remain Chinese citizens even after they settle permanently in this country.Tweet
Bernhard admits he doesn’t have an answer to why new arrivals seem to be increasingly disenchanted with becoming Canadian, and he’s hoping Statcan will soon offer more clarity on the issue. From his perspective, the worst-case scenario is if these ambivalent immigrants are mostly highly-educated, high-income “free agents” who are prepared to pull up stakes and move to another country as soon as something better comes along.
Bolstering this fear is a recent poll conducted by ICC of new Canadians showing that nearly one-third of 18-34-year-olds and one-quarter of those with a university education considered themselves likely to move elsewhere in the next two years. As these potentially wealthy – and wealth-creating – individuals offer a substantial economic advantage to whichever country they settle in, Canada has a strong incentive to retain them. Getting them to become citizens seems the surest way to lock them down.
Partly easing this fear of mobile free-agent immigrants is a 2019 Statcan study using earlier data that found the decline in citizenship uptake to be largely driven by immigrants with low education and low income. Further, almost the entire drop between 1996 and 2016 was attributable to migrants from one country in one region. “Most striking was the large decline in citizenship take-up among immigrants from East Asia – mainly China,” the Statcan report states. Naturalization rates for all East Asian immigrants fell from 83 percent to 45 percent over this time.
Communist China’s increasingly strident prohibition on dual citizenship may be to blame here, since it means footloose Chinese immigrants must now choose one passport or the other when they arrive in Canada. If they can’t have both, it appears most are deciding to remain Chinese citizens even after they settle permanently in this country. And if government policy in China is the principal factor behind the precipitous decline in citizenship uptake, then there’s little Canada can do to correct the situation
An international perspective is also useful. According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) International Migration Outlook 2022 Canada remains near the top of the immigration leaderboard despite recent concerns. We stand third overall in terms of total immigrants accepted, trailing only the United States and Germany. (While the U.S. is often painted as unwelcoming, it has long been the world’s dominant recipient of permanent, legal immigrants. Under President Donald Trump, for example, it admitted more than 1 million immigrants annually until Covid-19 hit in 2020; last year it welcomed over 830,000.)
As well, the average annual rate at which foreign-born residents become citizens across all OECD countries is just 2.2 percent. In Canada, it’s 4 percent – nearly twice as high. While the OECD also notes Canada’s citizenship rate has fallen significantly in recent years, this global perspective does not reveal any grave threat to Canada’s way of life or its ability to attract immigrants. Among the top five immigrant-accepting countries (Spain and the United Kingdom complete the set), all have substantially larger populations than Canada; our status as a generous, welcoming and desirable country appears solid.
The Horror Stories We Tell Ourselves
The evident decline in Canada’s citizenship rates may say more about the attitudes and habits of existing Canadians than those of newly-arriving immigrants. The federal bureaucracy’s failure to meet its own published service standards is certainly a self-inflicted wound. As is the proposal to solve this problem by eliminating much-loved citizenship ceremonies. The effect of both situations is to debase the perceived status of Canadian citizenship by emphasizing the transactional over the transformational. Then there’s the Roxham Road debacle, which offers migrants the opportunity to illegally sneak into our country via a dead-end road rather than at a regular border crossing and still be recognized as refugee claimants, with all the official support and standing this entails. If Canadian citizenship is supposed to be so valuable, it seems foolish to further cheapen the reputation of the entire immigration system in this way.
Beneath these obvious failures of governance and policy, however, lurks an even deeper and more insidious problem. As Bernhard explains, becoming a citizen is akin to joining a team with all other Canadians. A “club,” so to speak, that is exclusive to those who wish to be identified as Canadian and who intend to participate in its promotion and maintenance by voting and performing other civic duties. If we accept such an analogy, then it clearly matters how we advertise and promote this club to new members. So what sort of stories do Canadians tell about their own country these days? And do they amount to an effective marketing strategy?
“The story of Canada that our major institutions tell has increasingly become one that focuses on only the most negative aspects of our country, such as oppression, racism, discrimination and dispossession,” observes Christopher Dummitt, an historian at Trent University’s School for the Study of Canada in Peterborough, Ontario. Common examples of this new tendency are factually-dubious claims, often from officially sanctioned sources, that Canada has committed and continues to commit genocide against the Indigenous population, is systemically racist towards black people, was once a slave country, and on and on. “It is a deliberate distortion of our actual history,” says Dummitt in an interview.
This sense of national self-loathing has become so encompassing that official multiculturalism, once billed as an unquestionable Canadian value, is now considered evidence of an “unjust society premised on white supremacy,” as two University of Calgary education professorsabsurdly argued last year. Even professed supporters of Canadian identity, such as ICC co-founder Ralston Saul, now casually declare that “Canada has failed on many fronts.” As for how such a perspective might work as a branding exercise, Dummitt says, “If the story about Canada is that it was an institutionally corrupt nation beset by the original sin of colonialism, then why would anyone want to become a citizen of that?”
Dummitt has been pushing back against the now-pervasive narrative that Canada is, at its core, morally bankrupt. In 2021 he organized a rebuttal signed by many eminent Canadian historians condemning the Canadian Historical Association’s (CHA) unilateral declaration that Canada’s treatment of Indigenous peoples was “genocidal.” In making such a claim, Dummitt’s rebuttal stated, the CHA was “insulting the basic standards of good scholarly conduct.” He has also spoken out against the practice of tearing down statues honouring Canada’s founding fathers, and is currently fighting Toronto’s plans to scrub the name of 18th century British parliamentarian Henry Dundas from its streets and public squares on the (entirely bogus) assertion that he was an ally to the slave trade. “We need to call out these nonsensical claims,” Dummitt states determinedly. “And we need politicians who are willing to celebrate the Canadian nation in diverse ways.”
If there is a piquant irony to how Canadian history is currently being told by and to Canadians, it’s that new immigrants are actually more likely to receive a fair, balanced and generally uplifting vision of their new country than native-born residents. That’s because immigrants must still study for their citizenship test using a guidebook written by the Conservative government of Stephen Harper before our current historical miasma took effect.
“Discover Canada,” unveiled in 2011 by former Citizenship and Immigration minister Jason Kenney, was widely recognized for its nuanced treatment of Canada’s history, governance and culture. It explicitly acknowledges the low points in our past – including the Indian Residential School system and racist policies towards Chinese immigrants – but never claims such events represent the totality of the Canadian experience. The overall (and entirely honest) message is that Canada has always been a remarkably tolerant and welcoming country with a proud heritage of accommodation, democracy and the opportunity to achieve prosperity for all. As a result, Dummitt observes, immigrants who read the guidebook may actually have a better understanding of the true nature of Canada than Canadian students who’ve been force-fed a litany of horror stories about our past in high school and university classrooms.
Precisely because of the guidebook’s even-handedness and generally upbeat tone, however, many groups are demanding it be replaced with something grimmer and much less complimentary about Canada and its past. When the CBC tried to foment outrage over the continuing existence of the Harper-era citizenship guide in 2019, Janet Dench, then-executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees, called the situation “incomprehensible” and demanded a new version that “acknowledges the problems in Canadian and current reality, and how that affects Indigenous and racialized people.” In other words, Dench wanted Ottawa to tell newcomers a much more negative – and almost certainly much less accurate – story about the country they were coming to. With this sort of self-hatred being expressed by current citizens, is it any wonder immigrants are having second thoughts about joining Club Canada?
Discover Canada, the Canadian citizenship study guide introduced by the Harper government in 2011, is one of the few remaining official documents that offers an evenhanded and generally uplifting vision of Canada’s history by celebrating our legacy of democracy, accomodation and prosperity.
If we want to make Canadian citizenship more attractive to newcomers, the first order of business should be to project a more uplifting story about what Canada means. And to do that, says Dummitt, “we need to stop telling lies about our past.”
Peter Shawn Taylor is senior features editor at C2C Journal. He lives in Waterloo, Ontario.
A year after hearing “welcome home” for the first time at the Canadian border, Shahzad Gidwani found himself questioning whether he and his wife made the right decision to start a new life here.
The timing wasn’t ideal, arriving in Toronto from India with their son just as the pandemic began sweeping the globe. Yet the 53-year-old held high hopes for his family’s future. He was bringing with him decades of international work experience in sales and marketing, and a master’s degree in business from the U.S.
But as inflation crept toward a 40-year high, eating away at the family’s savings, panic began to set in. Gidwani struggled to secure a permanent job with a living wage because employers didn’t want to hire someone without Canadian experience.
“We hadn’t prepared for inflation,” Gidwani said. He estimated they were spending nearly $6,000 a month on rent, furniture, food and basic necessities when they were first settling in. “We were in a state of shock.”
“We thought about whether we’d made the right decision because we were burning through money. What you spend here in one month would last you nine months back in India,” Gidwani said.
Many newcomers like Gidwani come to Canada dreaming of a better life, but lately they have found themselves pummelled by the highest inflation rate in four decades, unable to afford adequate housing, food and basic necessities. And as the federal government responds to historic labour shortages by ramping up immigration — targeting an unprecedented 1.5 million immigrants over the next three years and issuing work permits to non-Canadians at record highs — newcomers are arriving only to find mostly low-skill, low-paying jobs available to them.
Many Canadians are feeling the strain of exorbitant living costs, but those struggles can be more acute for recent immigrants and those trying to secure permanent residence. Newcomers can face discrimination and precarious work conditions while scrambling to fulfil convoluted immigration requirements. According to a recent RBC report, they earn less than the general population and are more likely to reside in inadequate housing.
“Because of competition and favouritism and racism, the Canadian dream of working your way up after you get here often doesn’t happen,” said Jim Stanford, economist and director of think tank Centre for Future Work.
The situation for newcomers is unlikely to get better, economists warn, as the government’s gambit to help fill nearly one million job vacancies with an aggressive immigration strategy risks creating an underclass of newcomers trapped in low-paying jobs with little hope of advancement or improvement, while often lacking the same basic rights and protections granted to Canadian workers.
Inflation shock
Like Gidwani, Sara, a former chief financial officer, moved to Canada a few years ago hoping her extensive work experience would help her secure employment while she and her family pursued permanent residence.
But hope turned to fear as Sara found her savings evaporating. Rent was “excessive,” Sara said, and for the first year she and her husband shared housing with another family to cut costs.
(Sara’s name has been changed and the Star has granted her anonymity as her immigration status could be compromised by speaking publicly.)
Immigrants are more than twice as likely to live in inadequate housing, with 16 per cent of immigrants living in homes not suitable for the size of their household, compared with seven per cent of non-immigrants, according to a recent RBC report. A full 21 per cent of immigrants spend more than 30 per cent of their income on housing, compared with 13 per cent of non-immigrants.
As she desperately looked for work, Sara found her job applications routinely rejected because she lacked Canadian experience, so she took up work as an Uber driver to stay afloat until she finally landed a job as a personal support worker.
“It was scary,” Sara said. “We needed income. We had savings, but based on how expensive everything was, that was used up quickly.”
Sara made it through COVID-19 lockdowns, job losses and discrimination before eventually getting a job in the financial sector, albeit in a position much lower than expected, given her skill set and experience.
It has also taken Gidwani two years to secure a job with adequate pay, but he remains on contract and feels like he’s constantly “on edge.”
Immigrants in 2021 accounted for more than half of the working-age population who hold a doctorate and master’s degree, or a degree in medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine or optometry, as well as 39.1 per cent of those with a bachelor’s degree.
But only one in four immigrants with a university degree worked at a job that typically requires less than a high school education, or 2.5 times more than the “overqualification rate” of Canadian-born degree holders
“You can see the difference is in how you’re treated as an immigrant,” Sara said. “It has brought me to tears to see how I have been treated and how other individuals have been treated, not because of our competency and our experience, but merely because … we weren’t born here.”
Now she and her family have come out the other side, having secured permanent residence, only to find themselves in a city of soaring costs.
“The grocery bill is almost double or triple the amount when we first came here. Not to mention the cost of gas and housing on top of that,” Sara said. “It’s beyond my expectation or understanding. And we’re seeing those costs go up, but we’re not seeing our wages go up.”
The median wage of immigrants admitted to Canada in 2018 was $31,900 one year after arriving, according to Statistics Canada. Despite being the highest wage since 1981, this was still 18 per cent lower than the 2019 median wage of the total Canadian population ($38,000).
Because of the high cost of living, Laura Sanchez, 42, and her husband,Daniel Faura, 42, are considering leaving Toronto after moving here with their children in 2021. Despite sending out hundreds of resumes and getting a Canadian education, Faura said he isn’t hearing back from employers. To be eligible for permanent residence, Faura needs 12 months of Canadian work experience in one of the government’s listed occupations before his work permit expires in a couple of years.
For the time being, Sanchez and Faura, who were journalists in Colombia, have picked up cleaning jobs with long night shifts at a warehouse, making $14 an hour, which barely covers the cost of their $2,100 monthly rent. The low wages mean they frequently have to resort to food and clothing banks to cover basic necessities.
According to Statistics Canada, an estimated 12 per cent of immigrants get trapped in chronic poverty and nearly one-third experience shelter poverty. Because of these conditions, 30 per cent of young new Canadians aged 18-34 and nearly a quarter of university-educated newcomers say they are likely to leave Canada in the next two years, according to a 2022 survey conducted by Leger in partnership with the Institute for Canadian Citizenship.
“That’s why we are thinking about moving to another province, because it’s too difficult to make it work here in Toronto,” Faura said.
Unprecedented expansion
Newcomers like Faura often have the promise of permanent residence — and eventually, citizenship — dangled before them, but the journey to both is becoming increasingly difficult as Canada expands its immigration programs and admits more and more people.
Both of Canada’s two main programs through which work permits are issued — the International Mobility Program and the Temporary Foreign Worker Program — have ballooned in recent years to fill labour gaps in the aftermath of the pandemic.
But the biggest surge in temporary foreign labour has been largely driven by the massive expansion of open work permits under the International Mobility Program. This program allows employers to hire a foreign worker without a labour market assessment, which demonstrates that there is a need for a foreign worker to fill the job and that no Canadian worker or permanent resident is available to do it. Those in Canada on open-work permits include hundreds of thousands of international students.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada processed more than half a million more work permits in 2022 than it did the previous year. An estimated 756,000 work permits were processed in 2022, compared with approximately 215,000 in 2021, according to IRCC data. More than 470,000 of these work permit holders were under the International Mobility Program in 2022, up from 253,365 work permit holders in 2018 — a whopping 85 per cent increase.
One of the main reasons for the growth of the International Mobility Program is the “explosion of the international student program,” said Syed Hussan, executive director of Migrant Workers Alliance for Change.
Post-secondary institutions in Canada have ratcheted up their intake of international students, who can work without permits while they study. In 2021 there were 845,930 valid study permit holders in Canada, which increased to 917,445 as of Sept. 30 last year. At the same time, the amount of international students with T4 earnings skyrocketed to 354,000 in 2019, up from 22,000 in 2000, according to Statistics Canada.
The 20-hour weekly work cap on international students was also lifted last year, which experts have cautioned could create yet another tier of temporary foreign workers stuck in low-wage jobs.
While the move was seen as a positive step for students hoping to get work experience in their field, “it could set them up for becoming another form of low-skill, low-wage worker and an underclass that employers can then exploit,” said Toronto Metropolitan University professor Rupa Banerjee, Canada research chair of economic inclusion, employment and entrepreneurship of Canada’s immigrants.
Harshill Dhingra, 23, who is in Canada on a three-year, post-graduate work permit, is feeling the anxiety of having to complete 12 months of work before his visa expires to be eligible for permanent residence.
Dhingra came to Canada from India four years ago and completed his bachelor’s degree in commerce and accounting. He is currently working at a job that pays him $44,000 annually before tax, which makes it extremely difficult for him to keep up with increasing rent and costs of living.
“The job definitely underpays, but since the experience is counting toward my permanent residence I’m too scared to leave it or get fired,” Dhingra said.
While 60 per cent of international students plan to apply for permanent residence, only three in 10 international students who entered the country in 2000 or later ended up getting it within 10 years, according to Statistics Canada.
Amid growing concerns about the treatment of international students, publicly funded colleges in Ontario recently announced they are bringing in a new set of rules to protect those coming from abroad to study, including post-graduation services to assist international students’ settlement.
“I can’t stress the importance of giving newcomers status. It gives us rights and the ability to speak up and make choices,” Dhingra said.
A permanent feature
The federal government’s various policy changes normalize temporary work and make it harder for many newcomers to make a decent living, forcing them into low-skilled jobs while now also facing a housing and affordability crisis, according to economists.
It’s a problem that won’t get better any time soon because the growth in foreign labour is driven by employers’ desire to keep wages low, Banerjee said.
“The desire for cheaper, more flexible wages is really what’s driving the growth in temporary resident permits,” said Banerjee. “It transforms the role of the immigrant from a person who is there to be a future citizen to someone who’s there as an economic unit or a worker.”
Stanford argues that the labour shortage narrative coming from companies and the government is misleading and an excuse for the government to bend to corporate pressure instead of forcing companies to improve working conditions and raise wages.
“It helps employers lock in the situation where those low-wage jobs are a permanent feature of the labour market,” Stanford said. It allows companies to say the solution is to “quickly find desperate workers so that way they don’t have to change the job, which could be insecure with irregular hours and pays minimum wage with no benefits,” he added.
Because of this, many newcomers may arrive in Canada unprepared for the reality, he said.
“They’ll find themselves segmented into insecure, low-wage work and, as we know, with the cost of living crisis for everyone in Canada, it’s particularly acute for people in insecure, low-wage jobs, including most migrant workers,” Stanford said.
And even when newcomers get permanent residence, many have to restart their careers and upward mobility seems impossible.
“Immigrants always have to start at the bottom of the labour market and work their way up. There’s no surprise that new Canadians are disproportionately represented in low-wage jobs. They don’t have the network, the connections or the Canadian experience to have equal access to better jobs, even if they’re skilled,” Stanford said.
Sheila Block, a senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, emphasized that foreign labour is not taking jobs away from Canadians. The solution is for employers to increase pay and improve working conditions while also protecting newcomers who bring much-needed skills to Canada and help the country’s economy.
“What we need is a just immigration policy that gives workers rights upon entry, and along with that we need a public sector and collective services, which includes transit, housing and health care that will be adequate for all of us, including newcomers,” Block said.
Gidwani and his family love their new home in Canada, but the road to security was long, expensive and harder than it needed to be.
“I tell people who want to come to Canada that the cost of living is so much higher here than where they’re coming from,” said Gidwani, who along with his wife has found work and now dedicates much of his time to helping newcomers like himself plan for the realities of moving to Canada so they are set up for success.
“They can get a job — but it might not be the job they want for a while and it’ll be minimum wage,” Gidwani said.
“I tell them that it’s not impossible, but it’s not easy.”
On the snowy border between New York and Canada, the local sheriff’s office is calling for the U.S. Border Patrol to put more manpower behind what the locals call a growing crisis: The number of illegal border crossings in the area over the last five months is nearly 10 times what it was over the same time last year, and the border crossers are in danger of freezing to death.
From Oct. 1 to Feb. 28, about 2,000 migrants crossed the border between Canada and New Hampshire, Vermont and New York south through the forests, compared to just 200 crossings in the same period the previous year.
The migrants are mainly from Mexico, and they can travel to Canada without visas before they cross illegally into the U.S., often to reunite with their families.
Last weekend, Clinton County, New York, Sheriff David Favro’s team assisted Border Patrol in rescuing 39 migrants, some whose clothes had frozen to their bodies.
“We are seeing more and more people, and it can be a deadly terrain if you’re not familiar with it,” Favro said.
He said responding to rescues like that has taxed the resources of his department, already stretched thin to cover the residents of his rural county, population 80,000, which shares about 30 miles of border with the Canadian province of Quebec.
“The only way to really be able to cover and protect [the northern border] is boots on the ground,” Favro said.
Mooers Fire Chief Todd Gumlaw said he recently helped rescue two Mexican women stuck in an icy swamp in the middle of the night. Gumlaw, along with Border Patrol, local police and EMS workers, was able to render first aid and get the women to a hospital to be treated for frostbite and mild hypothermia after they lost their shoes in the swamp, he said. “Preservation of human life is first and foremost with my department. We put [immigration status] to the back of our mind,” Gumlaw said.
The Mooers/Champlain region is a clump of small blue-collar residences and farms, where, according to locals, “everyone knows everyone” and properties can be several blocks apart, adding a sense of unease among some of the locals witnessing the mass migration in the region.
According to local first responders, southbound migrants often seek shelter in empty sheds and barns to shield themselves from the cold.
April Barcomb, a Mooers resident, said she has had migrants show up at her doorstep and is now saving up for security cameras.
“It’s not something I would usually do,” she said. “But it makes me think twice. And with the kids and the family, I gotta install cameras.”
While most locals who spoke to NBC News said they understood that most migrants crossing the region aren’t threats, neighbors are keeping their eyes open for unusual activity.
“People are scared,” a Champlain County resident said. “It’s the fear of the unknown. They’re [neighbors] worried about their safety, because they don’t know these people.”
Most of the migrants are Mexicans, who are frequently blocked from crossing the southern U.S. border and believe they will have an easier time if they fly to Canada and then cross into the U.S. from the north.
According to a CBP spokesperson, the Swanton Sector has been the site of more than 67% of all migrant crossings at the northern border across all eight sectors through February.
Unlike the southern border, where over 16,000 Border Patrol agents are responsible for staffing roughly 2,000 miles, about 2,000 border agents patrol the 5,000-mile border between the U.S. and Canada, which includes Alaska’s land boundaries, making it the longest international land border in the world.
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican, asked Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in a letter Tuesday to step up enforcement along his state’s 51-mile border with Canada or allow his police forces more authority to do so.
“Over the last few months, the State of New Hampshire has attempted to assist the federal government in securing our northern border. These offers of assistance have been repeatedly rejected. The Biden administration has cut funding and hindered the state’s ability to assist in patrolling the northern border,” Sununu said.
A spokesperson for CBP said the additional agents who were just sent to the Swanton Sector will help deter migration.
Multicultural Meanderings 