Australia: It’s on and off again for foreign students wanting to work [hours cap]

2022/10/17 Leave a comment

Removal of cap on the number of hours students can work when courses in session, with same weak policy rationales as in Canada apart from low-paid service jobs:

Before and after Australian borders were closed during the pandemic, it was common to see young Indian and Nepali women working in cafés and as cashiers in shopping malls. Young Indian men dominated home delivery systems and were common sights stocking shelves and cleaning supermarkets in Sydney. They were foreign students who were allowed to work limited hours per week.

After some 30 years of resisting pressure from various employer bodies to remove the 40-hour per fortnight cap on the number of hours student visa holders could work while their course was in session, Immigration Minister Alex Hawke rolled over to pressure from the hospitality, tourism and other industries in May 2021 and announced that overseas students in Australia could work unlimited hours in the hospitality and tourism industry that was facing a serious shortage of labour. 

Bowing to criticism that the move was intended to solve a labour crisis and would dent education quality, that decision was subsequently qualified by another announcement in September 2022: unrestricted work rights for student visa holders will end on 30 June next year.

In a statement on its website, the Department of Home Affairs said the reimposition of the cap was aimed at ensuring that students “focus on obtaining a quality Australian education and qualification”.

Until then, it is likely that the international students will continue to take advantage of their ability to legally work unlimited hours. 

When restrictions were lifted in May 2021, the country saw a palpable spike in student visa applications from South Asia after Australia opened its borders in November 2021. 

By April this year, Nepal had become the biggest source of foreign students to Australia, with student visa applications from that country hovering above the 4,500 mark in March and April, while those from India and China were close to about 3,000 per month. 

Before the pandemic, India and China had provided the largest foreign student market for Australia. Given the huge middle-class populations of China and India, how did Nepal overtake them to become Australia’s largest source of foreign students? 

Vocational education and training

According to Australian government statistics, there has been a large increase in vocational education and training (VET) sector offshore student applications from Nepal this year. 

Since Australia’s borders re-opened, there have been more VET sector offshore student applications from Nepalese nationals than from India, China, Pakistan and Sri Lanka put together. Chinese and Indian applicants continue to prefer a university education.

The VET sector has traditionally recruited its students from those who are already in Australia, often poached from among university students who, after a year or two of undergraduate studies, feel they need a change in career focus. 

Australian immigration authorities have traditionally subjected offshore VET applicants to a high degree of scrutiny and hence there has been a high refusal rate. The approval rate for Nepalese offshore primary VET sector student applicants has, since November 2021, averaged well over 80%. 

This worries Dr Abul Rizvi, a former deputy secretary of the Department of Immigration. He argued in a commentary published by Independent Australia in May this year that Australia’s student visa is now essentially an “unsponsored work visa rather than one focused on study”. 

This view is shared by a Sydney-based Nepali immigration agent (who did not want to be named) who told University World News that Nepali parents are ever willing to fork out the money – even if they have to borrow it – to get a student visa to send their child for education to Australia, because they know they can recoup that money quickly. 

“Once in Australia the student could self-finance the studies by working and in the long term they can even earn the family an income by working after graduation,” he said. “If the child wants to go to Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand or India for studies, parents are unlikely to fork out the money for it.”

Post-graduation work rights for degree-holders

Last month, at the conclusion of the Jobs and Skills Summit, Australia’s Minister for Education Jason Clare announced that post-graduation work rights for international students will be increased by two years from next year. 

Thus, bachelor degree graduates can stay on and work in Australia for four years and masters degree graduates for five. It is believed that nursing, engineering and IT students will be top priority areas. 

In an interview with the government-owned network SBS, a spokesperson for the home affairs minister said: “They’re the graduates that the government believes Australia needs, and they can go straight into a sector where there is a shortage of high-skilled workers”. He said that “Australia needs to better use the amazing resource of international students”.

“The overwhelming majority of ‘students’ from India and Nepal come to Australia for work rights and permanent residency, not for education,” argued Leith van Onselen, chief economist and co-founder of MacroBusiness. 

He said the government’s overseas student policy is geared towards expanding student numbers, not improving quality. “All of which proves, yet again, that ‘international education’ is really a people-importing immigration industry rather than a genuine education export industry,” Van Onselen said.

Placement consultant and South Asian community leader Ash Gholkar argued that the problem lies with frequent changes by the authorities. 

“Students are not happy because the rules and points keep changing. There’s too much uncertainty. Students should get to be assessed on the points requirements prevalent at the time they enter Australia to begin their programme,” he argued. “Else, in many cases, students take up a course on a demand list only to find, after the course is completed and they’ve had sufficient experience, that the demand list and points have changed.”

Gholkar told University World News that Australia is attractive to Indian students because of its high standard of living and its Commonwealth heritage that makes adapting and living familiar and easier. “Indian students get the benefit of a world-class education and a chance to apply for skilled migration,” he added. 

Solving a skills crisis

Dr Belle Lim, a past national president of the Council of International Students Australia, argues that international students are a ready-made solution to solving Australia’s skills crisis. There are over 470,000 international students in Australia who possess local qualifications, with the most popular fields being commerce and management, IT, engineering and health sciences. 

With young Australian-born people changing jobs regularly, “taking into account the loyalty that international graduates have towards their employers (ironically due to a smaller set of options), hiring them is less risky”, she noted in a recent column for Women’s Agenda. 

Exactly for that reason, Sri Lankan-born Australian occupational health specialist Mahinda Seneviratne is concerned that students could be exploited as cheap migrant labour. He chairs the scientific committee of the International Commission on Occupational Health, and with colleagues in the Indo-Pacific region, he is involved in research on workplace safety for migrant labour. 

“Various short-term work visa programmes and ‘students’ coming in as low-wage workers have been the backbone of many small businesses [in Australia] in recent years, particularly in hospitality and service industries,” he told University World News. 

“Their precarious situation as casual, informal workers undermines working conditions, including their health and safety at work,” warned Seneviratne.

Source: It’s on and off again for foreign students wanting to work

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Curry: New work rules may be too tempting for international students — and employers

2022/10/17 Leave a comment

Indeed. Bad policy and makes a mockery as study permits become an immigration stream for low-paid service jobs, pandering to student and business stakeholder groups:

New work rules for international students may be a boon to local employers, but a double-edged sword for the students.

To help address current labour shortages, the federal government says, as of November 15, international students will no longer be restricted to 20 hours of work a week. This will last until the end of 2023, when, presumably, it will be re-evaluated.

Immigration Minister Sean Fraser is reacting to the fact that nearly one million job vacancies were reported in the second quarter of this year.

I look back at my own undergraduate days at Carleton University when I worked 20 hours a week at the residence cafeteria, 20 hours or more on the student newspaper, and sat on the residence council.

That was a lot.

As the sports editor, I travelled with the Carleton Ravens basketball team, once on a long train trip through Quebec and New Brunswick to Antigonish, N.S., for the national basketball championships. Carleton was a power even back then, probably top five in Canada. Lately, they have won 16 of the last 19 national championships.

Although I was a varsity basketball player at Bell High School in Ottawa, when I got to Carleton the players were a lot better, and a lot taller.

Did those trips and all that work affect my grades? Certainly. I could have done a lot better.

When I was more mature and working only one full-time job, my grades for my master’s degree were much higher.

Local employers tell me they can’t get enough people to work in restaurants — as chefs, cooks, and servers. If you dine out you have probably seen that restaurant staffs are not up to their full complements.

Our latest restaurant foray was at Lot 88, where we had a wonderful meal and a university student server who really knew her stuff.

She is a Canadian student at Nipissing University and we could tell from her knowledge of the menu items, confident demeanour and sense of humour that she was likely working many hours there. There are no restrictions on how much Canadian post-secondary students can work.

She told us she was working on a second degree, so she obviously could handle working and studying at the same time.

Some aren’t so fortunate and need to study a lot to keep their grades up.

Blurring the lines

It will be tempting, for both students — and employers — to hike the hours now that they can. Some in the immigration industry are fearful that it will devalue study permits, and turn them into work permits.

Both employers and students have to be careful that it doesn’t turn out that way. Employers should not pressure international students to work long hours, and international students should not be eager to work 40-hour weeks while in school.

Study permits are a vehicle to permanent residence for the majority of international students in Canada. After a post-secondary program of two years or more they can apply for a Post-Graduation Work Permit that is good for three years. They then use that work experience to apply for permanent residence a year or two later through the Canadian Experience Class Express Entry system.

Those fortunate enough to have studied in North Bay, or Timmins, Sudbury, Sault Ste. Marie or Thunder Bay in Northern Ontario, don’t have to wait that long to apply for permanent residence. They can do it immediately upon graduation, providing they have a year-round full-time job in the community.

That is the beauty of the Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot program, which dozens of local graduates are using as their path to permanent residence, and, eventually, Canadian citizenship.

We need those students in the full-time labour force after they graduate. Let’s hope sanity prevails and they don’t use the lure of unlimited hours of work to become workers instead of students.

They came here to study, not work, and get a diploma or degree at the end of it that will help them start a satisfying career. They might have to have that conversation with their employer when pressure is exerted to work more hours.

Source: New work rules may be too tempting for international students — and employers

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International students enticed to Canada on dubious promises of jobs and immigration

2022/10/14 Leave a comment

Yet another policy and program fail. Federal and provincial governments need to regulate better to reduce this exploitation by recruiters and private colleges:

Dilpreet Kaur’s parents were worried it would be difficult for her to find a job in her home state of Punjab, India, where her father toils long, lonely hours as a rice and wheat farmer. She, too, felt there was no future for her there.

So last year, her dad sold two trucks for $28,000 and mortgaged the family’s land to raise money for her to come to Canada, rent a room in a shared apartment in Toronto’s east end and pay $16,000 in international tuition fees for the first year of a two-year college program.

Kaur, 19, told CBC’s The Fifth Estate that she consulted with a college recruiter, one of a legion of freelance agents operating in an unbridled market in India who earn commissions by signing up students to attend Canadian colleges — sometimes by painting a distorted picture of the education on offer and the ease of life in Canada. The recruiter directed her to Alpha College, a school she’d never heard of before.

“I don’t know why she just suggested this college,” Kaur said in an interview. Nevertheless, she enrolled in a computer systems technician course at Alpha.

“Before coming here, it was kind of, in my mind, ‘Canada is so beautiful. I’m going to come here, just earn well, live a life, have fun at the weekends,’ like we saw in the movies,” she said.

“When I came here it was different, it was completely different.”

Increasing numbers of Ontario’s international college students come, like Kaur, from India, where it’s not uncommon for rural families such as hers to literally bet the farm to raise enough money to pay for a daughter or son’s education, hoping they’ll eventually land a decent job and be able to remit money back home to repay the debt.

Drawn by Canada’s reputation and the potential to gain permanent residency, tens of thousands of foreign students enrol every year in Canadian post-secondary schools. The vast majority head to universities and public colleges.

But a subset, about 25,000 students as of last year, had been enticed to enrol at private career colleges in Ontario that partner with public colleges — colleges that have grown dependent on the international students’ much higher tuition fees, typically four to five times what a domestic student pays. Critics told The Fifth Estate those colleges are packing pupils into classrooms — real or virtual — with little regard to government rules, student wellbeing or anything beyond the bottom line.

Since the pandemic began, Alpha, a private career college in partnership with public St. Lawrence College in Kingston, Ont., has more than doubled its enrolment, to 4,900 students, whereas its two-storey building at Kennedy Road and Passmore Avenue in Toronto has a capacity of just 420, according to the Toronto fire department.

“They just want us to give money, again and again. And get rich, filling their pockets, and don’t really care about us at all,” Kaur said of her experience.

A report from Ontario’s auditor general last December found that the province’s smaller public colleges, particularly the ones in smaller or northern communities where domestic enrolments have been declining, “have become highly dependent financially on international students but increasingly face challenges in attracting these students to their home campuses.”

As a result, 11 of them have entered into partnerships with private career colleges in the Toronto area, allowing students to live in or around Toronto but take courses toward a diploma from a public college located in Timmins or North Bay, for example.

The auditor general’s report found that the tuition revenue from these partnerships single-handedly meant the difference between running a deficit or a surplus for five of the six public colleges that had them in place as of 2019-20, and is also lucrative for the private career colleges, with net profit margins ranging from 18 to 53 per cent.

“With reduced funding from government, international students have become bread and butter sustaining these institutions,” said Earl Blaney, an advocate for international students and a registered Canadian immigration consultant based in London, Ont.

“Their appetite is insatiable. They’re doing everything they can to find more ways to bring in more students… whether it is increasing class sizes, whether it is irresponsibly bringing in students that they don’t have enough support to offer. I mean it doesn’t matter. What matters is numbers.”

Recruiters make questionable claims

Education recruiters represent the first step in the chain from farmer’s field to classroom. It’s a cutthroat industry in India, where thousands of independent agents compete to earn around $2,000 for each student they recruit for a Canadian college with which they have an agreement.

Alpha College, for example, got 100 per cent of its international students in its most recent academic year through recruiters, according to documents obtained by The Fifth Estate.

Ontario’s public colleges paid more than $114 million in commissions to recruiters in 2020-21, according to last year’s auditor general report; the total paid by the private career colleges isn’t tracked.

The Fifth Estate‘s investigation went undercover in Punjab state, using hidden cameras, to see what recruiters are telling potential students. A father and his 19-year-old son interested in a Canadian education agreed to wear a hidden camera while meeting with several recruiters in Jalandhar, the state’s third-biggest city.

In one of their meetings, the recruiter outlined that tuition would cost around $17,000 for the first year.

“Will he be able to find a job for the second year?” the father asked.

The recruiter replied that “it is very easy for students to pay their second-year tuition fees.”

In fact, as The Fifth Estate found, many international college students struggle to earn enough money in Canada to pay their living expenses, much less tuition for their second year.

Last Friday, the federal government temporarily lifted the cap of 20 hours of off-campus work a week that international students had previously been limited to during school semesters. At minimum wage in Ontario, the limit meant international students couldn’t expect to earn much more than about $22,000 a year — not enough to cover $16,000 or $17,000 in tuition and have funds left over for rent, food, utilities and other essentials. And that’s while also studying full-time.

During the meeting involving the father and his 19-year-old son, the father asked about a well-established public college in Toronto. But the recruiter directed him instead to a little-known private career college.

“There is a college called Cambrian at Hanson,” he said, referring to private Hanson College, which is tucked away in a strip mall in Brampton, Ont. Hanson has had a partnership since 2005 with Cambrian, a public college based in Sudbury, Ont., 350 kilometres to the north.

When contacted by The Fifth Estate, a Hanson College spokesperson wouldn’t confirm whether the school had a relationship with that particular recruiter, but did say the college works with “recruitment agents across various regions globally, including Indian agencies,” and that the students they sign up account for about 30 to 35 per cent of the school’s enrolment.

The auditor general noted that because recruiters’ commissions are a percentage of the tuition fees paid by the students they sign up, “recruitment agencies are incentivized to enrol as many students as they can in the programs that charge the highest tuition fees.”

Dubious claims about visas

At another recruitment agency, the father expressed concern that after his son graduated, it might be hard to get permanent residency in Canada.

“Definitely not,” the recruiter said. “It’s easy for students to get permanent residency.”

In reality, a Statistics Canada study last year found only about 30 per cent of people who come to Canada on a student visa had obtained permanent residency within a decade.

Even after the father and son left the agents’ offices, they were approached on the street by recruiters for another agency offering to charge less for their services and to provide a more personal relationship.

The Ontario auditor general’s report found similar examples of dubious claims made by college recruiters, including agencies that promised “100 per cent visa success” and others that advertised “guaranteed scores” on English aptitude tests.

In recent years, a new type of recruitment has cropped up. A number of “edu-tech” companies in Canada, Australia and Singapore have created online platforms to connect the millions of potential students in other countries with the thousands of recruiters and educational institutions in Canada, the U.S., the U.K., Australia and Ireland.

But critics like Blaney, the international student advocate and immigration consultant, said these so-called aggregator companies only put more distance between colleges and the recruiters who are signing up students for them. “Ten thousand-plus sub-agents on the ground … have absolutely no direct connection with the college. The college has no ability to screen them, they have no ability to review their work or conduct with the student, promises made, advertising, you name it,” Blaney said.

Colleges exceed provincial enrolment limits

Blaney said the volume of foreign students coming to Canada really picked up starting 10 years ago, after the federal government declared the country needed more skilled immigrants. A federal advisory panel also recommended doubling the number of international students to more than 450,000 in total by 2022. Canada sailed far past that target and had 621,000 people on student visas as of Dec. 31, 2012, according to federal data.

The crush of students coming from abroad opened up more opportunities for the province’s public colleges to enter into partnerships with private career colleges; nine such deals have been signed since the 2012 report.

All those international tuition fees now provide more money to Ontario’s colleges — $1.7 billion in 2020-21, according to the province’s auditor general — than the provincial government’s total funding of $1.6 billion, which is the lowest amount of per capita government funding of any province in Canada.

Ontario’s Ministry of Colleges and Universities officially caps the number of international students that a public college can have at one of its private career college partners. The quota is a maximum of two times the number of international students enrolled at the public college’s home campus.

But the provincial auditor general found a number of colleges have exceeded those limits in recent years with seemingly no consequences. North Bay-based Canadore College’s private partner had 8.8 times the number of international students as the college itself; at Northern College in Timmins, Ont., the ratio was 8.6. Alpha College is at about 4.5-to-1 compared with St. Lawrence College’s home-campus enrolment, or more than twice the allowed ratio

“The focus has been numbers-driven,” Blaney said. “That’s all, literally, that anyone cares about … how many international students can we pack in, and how much money can we get.”

A Ministry of Colleges and Universities spokesperson told The Fifth Estate that colleges “are separate legal entities and are responsible for both academic and administrative matters — including enrolment and capacity.”

Neither Alpha College nor its public partner, St. Lawrence College, would agree to an interview.

In an email this week, St. Lawrence spokesperson Julie Einarson said the school and Alpha College have “established and followed quality assurance protocols to ensure students who come to Ontario to study have a good experience and ultimately stay here to live and work.”

“Colleges and our partners provide a wide range of support services to international students but we know there is a lot more to do,” the email continued. “We are working collaboratively with other colleges, governments, and community leaders — and most importantly, our students — to find new solutions.”

Low-wage jobs after graduation

Federal Immigration Minister Sean Fraser said it troubles him greatly that “certain private career colleges, I’m convinced, have come to exist just to make a buck on the back of the international student program.”

In an interview with The Fifth Estate last week, he said, “We have concerns that it might be about financial impropriety, rather than providing a quality education to students who are coming here trying to better themselves.”

Fraser said if certain recruiters or colleges are taking advantage of students, then he needs to make it clear to the appropriate provincial government that they don’t need his permission to oust the college from the study permit program.

“It’s not what the program was designed for. It’s designed to provide an education to students and to benefit Canadian communities, not to allow sham operations to open up to financially abuse innocent students who have in their mind what Canada could be, only to be let down.”

Source: International students enticed to Canada on dubious promises of jobs and immigration

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Hyder: Canada’s immigration advantage – A survey of major employers

2022/10/14 Leave a comment

Of note:

Canada’s success in attracting newcomers from every corner of the globe is one of our country’s greatest competitive advantages. In addition to enriching the social and cultural fabric of our communities, immigrants bring valuable knowledge, skills and experience that contribute to economic growth.

This report sheds light on immigration’s importance to employers and the overall economy. It is based on a survey of 80 member companies of the Business Council of Canada in the first quarter of 2022. Collectively, these 80 companies employ nearly 1,650,000 Canadians in more than 20 industries, generating revenues of approximately $1.2 trillion in 2020. 

Close to two-thirds of the companies said they actively recruit workers through the immigration system. The rest hire immigrants who have already relocated to Canada. Among employers that use the immigration system, two-thirds expect to increase their usage over the next three years.

Employers look to the immigration system to help meet a variety of business needs, from enabling enterprise growth to increasing the diversity of their workforces. Above all, immigration helps them fill positions that would otherwise stay vacant. Of the employers that make direct use of the immigration system, four out of five say they do so to address labour shortages. 

Employers rely most on programs designed to attract highly skilled workers, such as the Global Talent Stream and the Federal Skilled Worker Program. Employers report that newcomers make important contributions to their businesses, adding that the immigrants they hire tend to possess strong technical as well as human skills.

Nevertheless, some immigrants face challenges adapting to their new environment. Employers recognize these challenges and say they are committed helping newcomers succeed. This includes investing in community settlement organizations, providing language and cultural training, and helping foreign-trained staff obtain recognition of their credentials.

Half of the employers that took part in the survey are in favour of raising Canada’s annual admission targets, in particular for economic-class immigrants. At the same time, employers note that higher levels of immigration should be accompanied by greater investments in the domestic workforce, as well as in childcare, housing, and public transportation.

Despite their overall support for the immigration system, survey respondents say there is room to make it more responsive to Canada’s economic needs. Frustrated by application processing delays, complex rules, and the cost of navigating the system, fewer than a quarter say the immigration system currently serves their business needs well.

These challenges are made more pressing by the accelerating race for international talent. Canadian employers overwhelmingly agree that global competition for skilled workers is likely to intensify as other countries step up their efforts to attract the best and brightest.

Source: https://thebusinesscouncil.ca/app/uploads/2022/06/Canadas-immigration-advantage-final.pdf

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U.S. Immigration Flaws Cause Ripple Effect in Canada

2022/10/14 Leave a comment

Of note:

While the U.S. grapples with questions of immigration reform, border security, and an ever-increasing visa backlog, neighboring Canada is experiencing immigration-related changes of its own.

Unlike the U.S., where population growth has steadily declined for decades, Canada is seeing the fastest population growth since 1957 — a demographic shift driven entirely by immigration. A significant percentage of this growth in recent years can be attributed to an increase in asylum claimants entering the country along the U.S.-Canada border. According to official government data, the number of asylum seekers crossing into Canada at informal entries along the country’s U.S. border reached the highest level since 2017.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) statistics show 23,358 asylum seekers have crossed into Canada at unofficial border points since the beginning of the year. While asylum seekers who enter Canada at official land border crossings are typically sent back to the U.S. for processing, migrants who cross elsewhere along the 5,500-mile border may remain in the country and file asylum claims with the Canadian government instead. These types of unauthorized crossings shot up during the Trump administration and have not slowed since President Biden took office.

Unofficial entries have become a common way for migrants to seek refuge in Canada and avoid being returned to the U.S. based on a decades-old agreement between the two countries. Ratified in 2004, the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) was designed as a way to manage U.S.-Canada land border crossings. Under the STCA, asylum seekers must request protection in the country where they first arrive, so migrants who enter Canada at official entry points are sent back to the U.S. — and vice versa. The idea underpinning the agreement is that both Canada and the U.S. are equally “safe” for refugees and offer access to fair asylum systems.

The pact has drawn widespread criticism from rights groups in recent years, with its future now being considered by Canada’s Supreme Court. Many in Canada argue that the U.S. is no longer a safe country for refugees, and therefore the U.S. government is unable to uphold its end of the agreement. Immigration advocates claim the policy forces asylum seekers to take increasingly dangerous journeys in order to cross the border, and migrants that do manage to cross are put at risk of immigration detention or deportation upon return to the U.S.

Canada’s asylum system and border policies are not the only areas to be impacted by grim immigration realities in the U.S. The sentiment that Canada may be a safer country for immigrants has rippled into other facets of the Canadian immigration system, namely the study and work permit sectors.

International student enrollment at Canadian colleges and universities doubled between 2016 and 2020 based on new analysis from the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP). By comparison, Boundless’ data report on international students found that U.S. schools experienced a 72% decrease in international student enrollment in 2020 compared to the previous year. NFAP’s analysis cited Canada’s friendlier immigration policies as a possible explanation, as the lack of reliable paths to a green card in the U.S. could also make Canada a seemingly safer immigration choicefor prospective international students. International graduates in Canada jump through far fewer hoops to obtain temporary work visas and permanent residence than their counterparts in the U.S.

In addition to losing international students, many highly skilled foreign nationals are choosing employment opportunities in Canada over the U.S. In 2021, House Immigration Chair Rep. Zoe Lofgren warned that the U.S. is losing immigrant talent to Canada because of “outdated and restrictive U.S. immigration policies.”

There is no numerical limit on how many work visas can be issued under Canadian immigration law. In contrast, it has become increasingly more difficult to get an H-1B work visa, which is typically the only practical option for immigrants to work in the U.S. long-term. The H-1B system itself is plagued with complex requirements and yearly caps that applicants and sponsoring employers must navigate. For example, in March 2021, sponsoring employers filed around 308,000 H-1B applications and over 72% of petitions were rejected.

Unlike the U.S., Canada also does not have a per-country limit on permanent residence, and immigrant workers are generally able to declare immigrant intent after working in temporary status for one year, regardless of country of origin. Meanwhile, the employment-based green card backlog stood at around 1.4 million in 2021, with applicants from certain countries like India estimated to wait several years to a decade before becoming eligible for a green card.

The trend of individuals selecting Canada over the U.S. for future immigration plans, regardless of which visa category they may fall under, is likely to continue with increased incentives from the Canadian government. Prime Minister Trudeau’s government announced plans to roll out new policies and programs to better recruit immigrant workers in industries suffering the most from labor shortages. Trudeau also set an ambitious target to bring in a record number of new permanent residents (more than 1.3 million) over the course of the next three years.

Source: U.S. Immigration Flaws Cause Ripple Effect in Canada

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Canada’s permanent resident application backlog is forcing thousands of skilled workers to quit and return home

2022/10/13 Leave a comment

Major policy and program fail, unfortunately yet another one, as a result of the government’s fixation on artificial immigration targets and attracting applications rather than addressing the existing “inventory” of potential immigrants from the Canada Experience Class, creating backlogs and hardship:

Thousands of highly skilled immigrants who in previous years would easily have qualified for permanent residence in Canada are being forced to return to their home countries as their work permits expire – the result of a backlog created by federal policy decisions intended to boost immigration during the pandemic.

Many of them are former international students who landed jobs in Canada mid-pandemic, during a critical labour shortage. Now they find themselves in limbo, waiting for opportunities to apply for permanent resident status – opportunities that may never arrive.

“I have spent weeks trying to figure out what to do, but I don’t think there’s anything left that I can really do but leave Canada and find a job elsewhere,” said Gaurav Purohit, a Toronto-based finance professional who has worked at a prominent global financial services company for the past 15 months.

Mr. Purohit came to Canada from India in 2017 and completed a master’s program in Indigenous Studies at Trent University the following year. His work permit expires this month.

His immigration problems, and those of other people who now find themselves in similar situations, stem from the earliest days of the pandemic, when COVID-19 caused a steep drop in the number of immigrants being granted permanent residence in Canada. Sensing trouble for the country’s immigrant-dependent work force, the federal government introduced measures to reverse the trend.

Those measures succeeded in attracting a great many applications for permanent residence, but there was an undesired side effect: Canada’s immigration bureaucracy soon buckled under the pressure to process the avalanche of paperwork. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), the federal immigration ministry, responded to the backlog by imposing a moratorium on new applications from people who had already lived and worked in Canada. The pause lasted for almost a year.

Now, Mr. Purohit and other immigrants with Canadian work experience, many of whom would likely have sailed through the federal vetting process before the pandemic, are still waiting for the government to invite them to apply for permanent residence. If their work permits expire before that happens, many of them will be unable to remain in the country.

“Our immigration system is already a particularly complicated one, but the pandemic and the decisions made by the federal government during the pandemic created an even bigger mess,” said Meika Lalonde, a partner at McCrea Immigration Law in Vancouver. “We are now in a situation where tens of thousands of individuals who are integrated into the labour market – the perfect individuals to stay here forever – have to leave.”

Canada’s economy relies heavily on immigrants. Every year, the government sets a target for the number of them it hopes to turn into permanent residents, who can live and work in the country indefinitely and eventually apply for citizenship.

The target in 2020 was 341,000 – but, because of the pandemic, only 185,000 new permanent residence visas were granted.

This was the exact opposite of what the government was trying to achieve. In late 2020, it announced that it was increasing its targets for the next three years, in the hopes of admitting over 1.2 million new permanent residents by the end of 2023.

And so the government decided to take steps to boost the number of permanent residence applications it was receiving. One of the first things it did to accomplish this was make a dramatic adjustment to Express Entry.

Skilled immigrants who want to live permanently in Canada usually start by submitting their personal information to Express Entry, which is a federal program that puts them all in a pool of candidates who are competing against one another for permanent residence.

Each person in the Express Entry pool gets a score from the government’s Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS), which awards them points for having positive attributes like Canadian work experience, advanced academic degrees or fluency in English or French. Everyone in the pool is waiting for the government to invite them to apply for permanent residence. Normally, only those with the highest CRS scores get invites.

Immigrants like Mr. Purohit, who have already worked in Canada for at least one year, typically apply for permanent residence through the Express Entry program’s Canadian Experience Class (CEC) stream, whose candidates form a smaller pool within the Express Entry pool.

The government usually issues 3,500 to 4,000 CEC application invitations every two weeks, which gives the pool time to replenish its supply of high-scoring candidates. But in February, 2021, during the push for more applications, IRCC handed out invitations to all 27,332 people remaining in the CEC pool at the time. To send out all those invites, it lowered the minimum CRS score to 75, from its usual average of 450.

Another way the government boosted 2021 immigration levels was by creating a new program: the “temporary resident to permanent resident pathway,” or TR to PR. The special program was designed as a quick path to permanent residence for foreign nationals who were already in Canada and working in essential sectors like health care.

The resulting increase in the number of permanent residence applications created a processing backlog at IRCC.

“It’s easy to make an announcement that you’re going to boost immigration levels. But they created a massive problem for the people who worked in the department, who had to now process tens of thousands more applications,” said Mikal Skuterud, a professor of labour economics at the University of Waterloo who has spent decades researching Canada’s immigration system.

In September, 2021, to stop that backlog from growing, IRCC abruptly paused permanent residence invitations for work permit holders in the CEC pool. The invitations didn’t resume until July, 2022.

“If you happened to be in the CEC pool when the CRS score was lowered to 75, you plainly got lucky. If you were in the CEC pool during the pause and your CRS score was high, above the old average of 450, it didn’t matter. You had to sit and wait, even if your work permit was on the brink of expiring,” Ms. Lalonde explained.

IRCC acknowledged these backlogs in a March, 2022, internal memo, which said “existing federal high skilled inventory would have to be reduced by more than half” before any new invitations were sent out. Caught up in this delay were immigrants like Mr. Purohit.

Canada did succeed at hitting its immigration target for 2021. That December, the government announced it had admitted more than 401,000 new permanent residents, the highest annual number on record.

“There was a cost to reaching those 2021 immigration targets. You now have huge numbers of talented, high-skilled workers, who would have previously qualified easily, sitting in this pool, just waiting,” Prof. Skuterud said.

In a statement to The Globe, IRCC said it paused invitations to “manage growing inventories.” It added that Express Entry is an application management system, meaning reducing or pausing invitations is “precisely part of what the system was designed to do.”

IRCC also said new applications will now be processed within the usual six-month time frame.

In response to a question about why the minimum CRS score was lowered to 75, IRCC said the average score of candidates invited in that round was 415.

“All candidates in the Express Entry pool, even those with the lowest CRS scores, qualify for at least one economic immigration program and therefore have the necessary skills to succeed and contribute to the economy,” the ministry said.

The government has offered some supports to immigrants who now find themselves with expiring work permits and no way to apply for permanent residence.

In January, 2021, IRCC introduced a special temporary program that gave people with postgraduation work permits 18-month extensions on their permits’ expiry dates. The permits, which are given to people who studied in Canada, typically expire after eight months to three years.

The rationale for the extensions was pandemic-related: because much of the country was in lockdown, many former international students struggled to find work in Canada. Without Canadian work experience, it’s much harder for a person to gain permanent residence.

The government estimated that roughly 52,000 former international students would benefit from the extensions. Mr. Purohit was one of them. “I was really happy to get the 18-month extension in April, 2021,” he said.

He worked as a part-time instructor at Trent University before landing his current job in July, 2021.

By October, 2021, Mr. Purohit had worked full-time in Canada for a year, his CRS score was high, and he was confident he would get an invitation to apply for permanent residence before the extension on his work permit expired.

But by the time the government resumed draws from the CEC pool in July, 2022, there were so many applicants in the pool that the average CRS score required to receive an invite had risen above 500.

“Now I’m in a situation where I’m not going to get an invitation for PR because my score is too low,” Mr. Purohit said. “And it is ironic, because when the government granted us the 18-month extension, they said it was to ensure we would all get permanent residency.”

Ramkumar Narayanaraja, a Vancouver-based graphic designer who came to Canada from India, is in a similar situation.

His 18-month extension expired in September. He is now waiting for his employer to agree to apply for a labour market impact assessment, which would allow the company to get government approval to hire a certain number of temporary foreign workers. Meanwhile, Mr. Narayanaraja’s wife is about to give birth, and the couple has been racking up hospital bills because their immigration status prevents them from getting public health benefits.

“It just seems unfair that I paid my taxes, contributed to the system, and I’m faced with so much uncertainty,” Mr. Narayanaraja said. His CRS score is high, but not high enough to clear the new, elevated bar for a permanent residence invite.

If he’s able to remain in Canada as a temporary worker, and if the minimum CRS score eventually declines, he might one day be able to apply. But it’s more likely that he and his wife will have to leave the country.

In August, the government announced another 18-month extension for post-graduation work permit holders, but only for those whose initial permits had expiry dates between September, 2021, and December, 2022. Neither Mr. Purohit nor Mr. Narayanaraja are in that category.

In response to questions about whether they and others will be granted further extensions, IRCC said it “cannot speculate on future policy or program decisions.” But the ministry noted that in some cases people who were issued extensions under the 2021 policy will also be eligible for the extension announced this year.

It is unclear exactly how many skilled immigrants are currently living in limbo, unsure when or if they will obtain permanent residence, but Prof. Skuterud and Ms. Lalonde estimate that there are tens of thousands. The number of people in the Express Entry pool currently waiting for permanent residence invitations has ballooned to nearly 240,000 since early 2021.

Prof. Skuterud argued that the government lost sight, during the pandemic, of the real objective of economic immigration.

“Look, the Express Entry program and the CRS score was created in 2015 in order to get the best immigrants into this country,” he said. “And for years, it worked well. There’s been a clear improvement in the average earnings of new immigrants since 2015.”

“But the government got really fixated on making up for the 2020 shortfall, so they lowered the CRS score for the CEC pool, and created the TR to PR pathway. The result is we gained a lot of low-skilled immigrants, and we are currently losing high-skilled immigrants because of an avoidable backlog.”

Ms. Lalonde said the obvious solution is to hand out targeted work permit extensions to people like Mr. Purohit and Mr. Narayanaraja, who have high CRS scores and would easily have qualified for permanent residence had the pandemic not happened. And she said the government should be more transparent about how it intends to address the current backlog.

In September, the government announced steps to shorten application processing times. Those included hiring 1,250 new employees at IRCC and exempting permanent and temporary residence applicants who are already in Canada from medical exams.

But that won’t help people whose work permits are on the verge of expiring.

“There is so much uncertainty. And it’s unfortunate, because these people did so much to get to this point,” Ms. Lalonde said. “We really shouldn’t have to lose them.”

Source: Canada’s permanent resident application backlog is forcing thousands of skilled workers to quit and return home

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Cap on international students’ working hours should be lifted permanently: advocates

2022/10/13 Leave a comment

Of course they would. And of course they shouldn’t given the impact on eduction outcomes, the ostensible reason for granting the study permit. Ripe for abuse as we are already seeing:

Advocates who want the federal government to lift the cap on working hours for international students say a new pilot project that allows them to work more should be made permanent.

Last week Immigration Minister Sean Fraser announced the government would temporarily remove the 20-hour cap on the number of hours international students can work off-campus to address labour shortages.

The cap will be lifted from Nov. 15 until the end of next year.

The International Sikh Students Association has been calling for this change for years to improve the quality of life of students, and founder Jaspreet Singh says he was surprised to hear the change would not be permanent.

Singh says the cap doesn’t make sense, and puts stress on students who face increasingly high costs while they are in Canada.

At a press conference Friday, Fraser said the next year or so will help the government determine whether it could continue the approach over the long term.

Source: Cap on international students’ working hours should be lifted permanently: advocates

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Quebec wants more immigration powers from Ottawa, but does it really need them?

2022/10/13 Leave a comment

Valid question.

IMO, not, as transferring family reunification, temporary workers and students would likely not change the overall demographic picture unless a Quebec government would decide to discriminate in favour of those from francophone countries, which would be particularly hard to justify in the case of family reunification.

And mischievous but legitimate raising the question of Quebec’s sweetheart funding agreement with Ottawa where it is guaranteed a fixed percentage of settlement funding irrespective of the number of Permanent Residents admitted:

Even though Canada’s prime minister has repeatedly shut the door, Francois Legault keeps on knocking, intent on winning more control over immigration from the federal government.

As with many past leaders in Quebec, it’s been a regular refrain of his, dating back well before the provincial election on Oct. 3.

But is there substance to the claim that Quebec needs more autonomy on immigration?

Or, does Quebec already have all the control it requires to ensure as many immigrants as possible speak French, which the premier has said is his main preoccupation?

“The fact that political parties in Quebec all want more power in immigration is not surprising,” said Martin Papillon, a political science professor at Université de Montréal.

“It’s an area of politics and policy, where, historically, Quebec governments have been very proactive […] seeking to assert their identity.”

However, Quebec already has a fair bit of independence on immigration issues compared to other provinces, he said, the result of “an asymmetrical arrangement” negotiated in 1991.

“And I have to say, and this is not something that the Quebec government or the CAQ or Francois Legault likes to talk about — it’s a pretty good deal that they got.”

A ‘VERY GOOD’ FUNDING DEAL WITH OTTAWA

Papillon describes the funding arrangement between the two levels of government as a win for Quebec, singling out the section that calls on Ottawa to pay for integration services in the province.

The funding formula “is based on a fixed percentage of the total amount that the federal government is budgeting for immigration for its own integration program, no matter the percentage of immigrants that are actually going to Quebec,” he said.

Since Quebec has been selecting fewer immigrants than its share of the population, “about 13 per cent,” according to Papillon, “Quebec has a very good deal in terms of funding its program.”

Just two days after the provincial election, federal Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez told reporters in the foyer of the House of Commons that the province has the power to select up to 28 per cent of its immigrants.

“Which means there is another [percentage] that Quebec could choose that would be entirely francophone,” he said.

CTV News asked the Quebec government to confirm the figures.

According to Ministry of Immigration, Francisation and Integration spokesperson Arianne Méthot, Quebec selected and admitted only 70 per cent of the proportion of immigrants permitted in 2018 and 2019.

“In 2020 and 2021, this proportion dropped to around 60 per cent due to the effects of the health crisis,” Méthot wrote in an email.

From January to August 2022, the proportion subject to Quebec selection rose to 73 per cent.

With Rodriguez pointing out publicly that Quebec is not taking full advantage of the selection powers it already has, Papillon suggested that the province’s push to reopen the deal with Ottawa could backfire, perhaps on the financial front.

“The federal government can very easily say okay…but either you increase your immigration targets to sort of balance it out, or, we change the funding. That’s an interesting side question that is not often debated,” Papillon said.

ECONOMIC IMMIGRATION, REFUGEES, AND FAMILY REUNIFICATION

There’s not much leeway for Quebec when it comes to the general area of permanent economic immigration, which is now largely controlled by the province, said Papillon.

“Its priorities and its targets and the requirements for French, for example, this is all in Quebec’s hands. So that wouldn’t change,” he said.

The next category, refugee claimants, wouldn’t provide Quebec with any greater powers either, he said, since it’s heavily regulated by federal law and international covenants.

Francois Legault has also argued for more autonomy over those who come to Quebec through the family reunification channel.

At the end of May 2022, in a pre-election speech at a CAQ party convention, he said it’s estimated that half of them don’t speak French, and called that a threat to Quebec.

But Quebec already plays a role here as well, because it’s the province that establishes the conditions for sponsoring a family member, which includes the need for the family established in Quebec to demonstrate a financial capacity to help support the new arrivals, according to Papillon.

Daniel Beland, the director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, agrees that emphasizing the family reunification program is “misguided.”

“I’m not sure that Quebec should spend that much energy fighting over this,” Beland said. “It’s not the smartest way to use your political capital.”

First, it wouldn’t be a useful area of immigration to control because family reunification brings in a relatively small number of people every year, he said, and therefore wouldn’t help protect the French language in a meaningful way.

On top of that, “increasing French requirements for family members coming here, that would kind of run counter to the very basic principle of family reunification, which is, it’s not about your capacity to contribute immediately, it’s a humanitarian type of immigration,” Papillon added.

And issues that are tied to “human rights” and “foreign policy” are not things the federal government wants to give away, said Beland.

“I do think that is highly political because Francois Legault’s brand of nationalism is really about gaining more autonomy for Quebec,” he said, adding that the premier is under pressure from the Parti Quebecois, for example, to actively confront the issue.

TEMPORARY FOREIGN WORKERS

The only areas where Legault could make headway practically speaking, said Beland, is on the subject of “temporary foreign workers and helping immigrants to learn French — those who are already here.”

He thinks it could be possible to work out a new deal with the federal government or improve the current agreement. And unlike Papillon, he surmised that more funding could be on the table.

“Maybe they want more money from Ottawa to help the Francization of immigrants. Sometimes you ask a lot and in the end, as long as you come back home with something — it might not be what you asked for in the beginning, but you can still frame that as a victory,” he said.

There probably is some “wiggle room” when it comes to temporary immigration, “if the federal government is going to budge, it’s probably there,” Papillon concurred.

But again, he wonders what Legault would ask for. “What kind of criteria would you add to the temporary aspect of immigration is not clear to me,” since it would be difficult to ask a worker coming here on a temporary visa to have a basic knowledge of French, he said.

Language requirements exist for foreign students, and Papillon said Quebec already has the authority to act when temporary foreign workers or students want to stay in Quebec and become permanent residents after their temporary visa expires.

The requirements are laid out by the Quebec Experience Program and include a certain level of proficiency in French.

“I mean, this is the big untold story of this whole thing is that really, more than 60 per cent of people that are coming in Quebec […] are coming with a temporary immigration visa, as temporary workers, as students, so it’s more than half,” said Papillon.

“But the truth is, I think Quebec already has enough authority to act on this. So it’s not clear to me why they would want more power other than [for] symbolic politics” and the general idea of seeking more autonomy, he said.

That doesn’t mean we won’t see Ottawa open the door to discussions with Quebec at some point, said Papillon, particularly as the federal election approaches, given the issue’s sensitivity in the province.

“The [federal] Liberals cannot take for granted their votes in Quebec anymore in the current landscape, so it’ll be interesting,” said Papillon. “The politics of it may shift in the next year.”

Source: Quebec wants more immigration powers from Ottawa, but does it really need them?

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Australian immigration rockets back

2022/10/13 Leave a comment

Of note:

Recall that Australia’s net overseas migration (NOM) hit its highest ever level in the March quarter, with a record 96,200 net migrants arriving:

Net overseas migration

Highest ever NOM in March quarter.

Now the ABS has released permanent and long-term arrivals data for August, which revealed that annual arrivals have surged to 121,270.

The below chart tracks this series against the official quarterly NOM and suggests that immigration has continued to surge:

Australian net immigration

Australian immigration surging.

The Albanese Government used last month’s Jobs & Skills Summit as a trojan horse to turbo-charge immigration via:

  • Lifting Australia’s permanent non-humanitarian migrant intake by 35,000 to a record high 195,000;
  • Lifting temporary migration to record levels by:
    • Expanding work rights for international students via:
      • Uncapping the number of hours international students can work while studying for another year; and
      • Extending the length of post-study work visas by two years.
    • Committing to clear the ‘backlog’ of “nearly one million” visas awaiting approval.

In turn, Australia is staring down the barrel of record immigration flows next year, which will make Australia’s rental crisis worse and make it impossible to meet Australia’s 43% emissions reduction target.

The major concern is that the planned record immigration will arrive as the economy hits the brakes on the back of the Reserve Bank’s aggressive monetary tightening.

This time next year, concerns around “skills shortages” will likely have vanished, replaced with concerns around low growth and rising unemployment.

Source: Australian immigration rockets back

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Dutrisac: Souveraineté provinciale

2022/10/13 Leave a comment

Dutrisac on Alberta and Saskatchewan’s focus on provincial sovereignty, along with picking up on Ibbitson’s arguments that aggressive federalism is fanning the flames (true but exaggerated IMO). Of particular note the last para:

Quant à François Legault, après les gaffes répétitives commises sur le dos des immigrants, il n’aura qu’à attendre ce que lui réserve le fédéralisme agressif d’un gouvernement Trudeau qui insiste pour que Québec se plie à la politique d’immigration pléthorique de ce pays postnational.

Full article:

La nouvelle cheffe du Parti conservateur uni (PCU) et, depuis mardi, première ministre, Danielle Smith, a remporté la course à la direction de son parti en promettant de présenter un projet de loi sur la souveraineté de l’Alberta.

L’utilisation du terme souveraineté, un concept au coeur du projet du Parti québécois depuis la fin des années 1960, peut prêter à confusion. On ne saurait voir dans Danielle Smith une émule de René Lévesque. Il ne s’agit pas pour la première ministre de promouvoir une quelconque sécession, ce qui ne correspond d’ailleurs pas aux inclinations de la plupart des Albertains. Cette souveraineté est bien celle d’une province, dans ses champs de compétence, une forme de néo-autonomisme, selon le politologue de l’Université de l’Alberta Frédéric Boily. C’est le modèle mis en oeuvre par le gouvernement Legault, en définitive.

Danielle Smith a repris l’expression du premier ministre de la Saskatchewan, Scott Moe, en affirmant que sa province, avec cette loi sur la souveraineté, pourra se comporter comme « une nation au sein d’une nation ». Mais il s’agit plutôt d’un régionalisme axé sur la défense d’intérêts économiques, notamment la poursuite de l’exploitation des hydrocarbures, et non pas d’un nationalisme de nature identitaire comme au Québec.

Certains ont vu dans ce projet de loi une bombe constitutionnelle… et surtout anticonstitutionnelle. Le premier ministre sortant, Jason Kenney, a qualifié l’idée de « cinglée ». De fait, il est encore difficile de savoir comment une telle loi s’appliquerait. Elle permettrait à la province de refuser de se soumettre à une loi fédérale ou à un jugement de la Cour s’ils sont contraires aux intérêts de l’Alberta ou s’il s’agit d’une intrusion illégale dans ses champs de compétence. Il reviendrait aux élus de l’Assemblée législative albertaine d’adopter une motion spéciale en ce sens. Selon la description somme toute sommaire de l’éventuel projet de loi, le gouvernement fédéral devrait alors s’adresser aux tribunaux pour trancher le litige.

À terme, c’est la Cour suprême qui aurait le dernier mot, faut-il comprendre. Le principal conseiller de Danielle Smith a indiqué lundi qu’une fois le projet de loi en vigueur, l’Alberta continuerait de respecter les jugements de la Cour suprême. La bombe est en train de se transformer en pétard mouillé.

Comme cela s’est vu quand Trudeau père était aux commandes, un fort ressentiment envers le gouvernement fédéral s’est développé dans les provinces de l’Ouest, ressentiment relié à l’exploitation des ressources pétrolières et gazières. Le fils semble suivre la trace du père. À l’époque, il s’agissait de la propriété de ces ressources naturelles et des revenus qu’elles généraient. Aujourd’hui, c’est le contrôle qu’entend exercer Ottawa sur ces ressources en raison de la lutte contre les changements climatiques.

Si jamais ce projet de loi sur cette souveraineté provinciale voit le jour, il viendra tard. Déjà, la Cour suprême, dans son jugement l’an dernier sur la taxe carbone du gouvernement Trudeau, a dépossédé les provinces de leur compétence exclusive en la matière au nom de « l’intérêt national » et du pouvoir d’Ottawa de faire des lois pour « la paix, l’ordre et le bon gouvernement ». Nous sommes à l’ère du fédéralisme évolutif, coopératif, qui se déploie au détriment des pouvoirs réservés aux provinces. Un fédéralisme de supervision, selon l’expression d’un juge dissident dans cette cause, Russell Brown.

Selon le chroniqueur du Globe and Mail John Ibbitson, le « fédéralisme agressif » que pratique le gouvernement Trudeau a mis en rogne l’Alberta, alors que le « fédéralisme passif » de Stephen Harper avait calmé le jeu, y compris avec le Québec.

La Saskatchewan et le Manitoba, deux provinces dotées de gouvernements conservateurs, partagent les doléances de l’Alberta. Il lui manque un appui de taille : celui de l’Ontario et du premier ministre conservateur Doug Ford. Lui aussi s’opposait à la taxe carbone du gouvernement Trudeau, mais, depuis le jugement de la Cour suprême, il semble s’être désintéressé de l’affaire. Il faut dire que le premier ministre ontarien a beau jeu. Justin Trudeau a tout intérêt à soigner ses relations avec lui. Doug Ford préférera sans doute profiter des avantages que lui offrira Ottawa au lieu de se joindre aux provinces de l’Ouest dans une fronde perdue d’avance contre le pouvoir fédéral.

Quant à François Legault, après les gaffes répétitives commises sur le dos des immigrants, il n’aura qu’à attendre ce que lui réserve le fédéralisme agressif d’un gouvernement Trudeau qui insiste pour que Québec se plie à la politique d’immigration pléthorique de ce pays postnational.

Source: Souveraineté provinciale

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