Opinion | Justin Trudeau’s immigration minister cracked down on Canada’s international student ‘racket’. Here’s what he wishes he’d done differently

Well worth reading. Some excepts of interest:

Terms of debate: “The issue is having the proper intellectual debate and not turning it into value statements about the race, colour, or creed of the people coming in, but also without painting people as racist when they express views you disagree with.”

International students: “The program had become a bit of a racket, and I probably should have acted sooner. My biggest mistake was to trust people for too long — to trust provinces and the institutions they regulate. Auditors general have said time and time again that Ontario and B.C. had to get a grip on things. Those are the two provinces where international-student placements had become a runaway train. And they were all promising something — permanent residency or Canadian citizenship — that was not guaranteed.”

Temporary Foreign Workers: “Largely hospitality. Go into a Tim Hortons, and you will see a lot of temporary foreign workers. When you take a step back, the questions you need to pose are, ‘How are we filling needs? Are we artificially depressing wages? How is an influx of temporary foreign workers contributing to that trend, particularly when you have a labour force already here?’ There will need to be further adjustments to the program, including in the availability of asylum seekers who have work permits. But we also don’t want to harm markets that are important to regional economies, like fish processing or food processing.”

Source: Opinion | Justin Trudeau’s immigration minister cracked down on Canada’s international student ‘racket’. Here’s what he wishes he’d done differently