No surprise at the calls and reasonable for government to be non-committal at this stage:
The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a light on the crucial role asylum seekers and others with precarious status play in Quebec’s economy.
They work long hours in meat-packing plants and warehouses, or tending to elderly people in long-term care homes — low-paying jobs that are difficult to fill.
But they may not be able to stay in Canada when deportations, which have nearly ground to a halt during the COVID-19 crisis, resume.
There are growing calls, however, from community organizers, advocates and opposition politicians in both Quebec and Ottawa for that to change.”What we realize more and more is that those failed claimants are working in essential services most of the time,” said Guillaume Cliche-Rivard, the president of Quebec’s association of immigration lawyers.
About 30,000asylum seekers who crossed into Canada between 2017 and December 2019are still waiting for their refugee claims to be heard, according to the latest figures from the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada.
Others whose claims have been rejected have applied for permanent residency on humanitarian grounds.
That process takes an average of 30 months, Cliche-Rivard said.
In the meantime, they are working.
While the province says it has no record of the total number of asylum seekers doing work in, for example, long-term care homes, Marjorie Villefranche, executive director of Maison d’Haiti, estimates that about 1,200 of the 5,000 Haitian asylum seekers the organization has helped since 2017 have become orderlies.Cliche-Rivard said the federal government should set up a program that speeds up the application process for permanent residency, and formally takes into account the contributions claimants have made to fast-track their application.
Doing so would offer “clear recognition of what those people have been doing for the province and for the country,” he said.
NDP wants a ‘special program’
The federal NDP is also calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to create a special program granting permanent residency to those working on the front lines.
“They are risking their lives to support others in the face of the pandemic,” said Jenny Kwan, the party’s immigration critic and the MP for Vancouver East.
Her party has tabled a petition on behalf of a Montreal community group that calls on Trudeau to, “show leadership by implementing a special program to regularize the status of asylum seekers working to fight COVID-19, and therefore supporting the health and safety of all Canadians, for humanitarian reasons.”
Federal Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino has given no indication the government plans to change the way it processes applications or make any exceptions.
But he said in a statement that, “all eligible asylum claimants receive a full and fair hearing on the individual merits of their claim.”
“Asylum claimants are allowed to work or study and receive basic health-care coverage.”
Legault’s party votes down proposal
Peter Kent, the federal Conservative immigration critic, suggested that Quebec, which has jurisdiction over immigration when it comes to economic applicants, “could move to accept these people as permanent residents” given the “extraordinary circumstances.”
It’s not clear if Quebec would have the power to do that — or if Premier François Legault’s government, which cut immigration levels in its first year in office, would be willing to if it could.
Last week, on the National Assembly’s first day back in session, independent MNA Catherine Fournier tabled a motion to recognize the contribution of “hundreds of asylum seekers, mostly of Haitian origin,” working in long-term care homes.
She said the province should ask Ottawa to, “quickly regularize their status, in order to recognize the work accomplished during the current health crisis.”Quebec’s three opposition parties — the Liberals, Québec Solidaire and the Parti Québécois — voted in favour of the motion, but Legault’s majority Coalition Avenir Québec voted it down.
When asked why, Legault avoided answering directly, saying instead he didn’t want the border to reopen to asylum seekers any time soon.
“That doesn’t mean that asylum seekers, including members of the Haitian community — that there aren’t good people who work in our long-term care homes,” Legault said Friday.
Frantz Benjamin, the Liberal MNA for Viau, which includes Montréal-Nord, said Legault’s response was shocking.
“It was not based on the question asked by the journalist,” Benjamin, who was born in Haiti, said Tuesday.
“Those people that we call ‘guardian angels,’ we need them. We have to recognize the work of those people, most of them women.”
The video came out Monday, on Haiti’s National Flag Day, which fell on the same day as Journée des Patriotes in Quebec this year.
“Both celebrations are about liberation movements,” said Fabrice Vil, a Montrealer of Haitian background and the founder of Pour3Points, an organization that trains sports coaches to help support kids struggling at school and at home.
He helped produce the video, called Je me souviendrai – Marchons Unis — a play on Quebec’s official motto, “I remember,” followed by, “Let’s walk together.”
The song in the video is set to the melody of La Dessalinienne, Haiti’s national anthem.
“The current pandemic is really showing that we all depend on each other — and that there are people that sometimes we don’t see as being relevant to our own lives who are currently sacrificing their own lives to support the collectivity,” Vil said.
I would reserve judgement until we see how the program works or doesn’t work in practice. As a pilot, it allows the government to test the approach and adjust as necessary, as it did with The Atlantic Immigration Pilot (now no longer a pilot)”
The federal government’s new agri-food pilot program gives too much power to employers and won’t be accessible for labourers hoping to gain permanent residence status, migrants workers’ advocates say.
Applications for the long-awaited pilot opened on Friday, after being delayed for some months amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Syed Hussan, the executive director of the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, said the pilot is a “slap in the face” to migrant workers who have been deemed essential during the coronavirus shutdowns, and now can’t access a pathway to citizenship due to the program’s stringent requirements.
“By and large, it’s not a program that’s designed to work for the people,” Hussan said in an interview with iPolitics. “It’s an employer-driven program that the vast majority of workers won’t be able to access.”
The three-year pilot was presented by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada as a way to help employers in meat processing, mushroom and greenhouse production, as well as livestock-raising, by providing a pathway to permanent residence for temporary foreign workers who are already in Canada. The department said a total of 2,750 applications will be accepted annually throughout the pilot.
But Hussan pointed to the education and language testing requirements for the program, which he believes that migrant workers won’t be able to access.
The program requires applicants to have either a Canadian high school diploma or an educational credential assessment report, from a designated organization or professional body, that shows they’ve completed a foreign credential at the secondary school level or above. The workers must also meet minimum language requirements: a level four in the Canadian Language Benchmarks of reading, writing, speaking, and listening. The test must be considered approved, and no older than two years.
Keith Currie, vice-president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, acknowledged the language and education requirements may need to be adjusted as the pilot is studied. Unlike the Temporary Foreign Workers program, which is another avenue for migrant workers to access employment in Canada, he noted that the pilot requires the same language and education testing necessary for those seeking full citizenship.
“We just want to make sure that things, rules aren’t too stringent to make it viable for workers to stay,” he said.
Applicants also must prove they have enough money to settle in Canada, eligible work experience, a minimum of 1,560 hours of non-seasonal, full-time work in the past three years, and a job offer letter.
Hussan told iPolitics that many migrant workers come in and out of Canada, and therefore may not be able to meet the hours requirement, which are to be counter over a total period of at least 12 months. As well, he said the job offer requirement will exacerbate employers’ power, claiming that the measure hasn’t been used in federal immigration programs before. Such criteria exists in some provincial regulations though, he said, adding that they’ve proven problematic in some instances.
“We’ve seen multiple examples of employers use these job offers to stop workers from speaking out,” he said.
Currie said he hadn’t heard any complaints about the requirement to have a job offer letter, and said it made sense that the federal government would want to ensure applicants had employment waiting for them. Agriculture producers, he said, were welcoming the program and had advocated for its introduction. Many seasonal workers returned year after year, he said, or sent their children or grandchildren.
“They’re beginning to almost be like family to some of these operations,” he said.
Currie also said the program will help shore up the agriculture sector’s labour needs, where tens of thousands of labour jobs go unfulfilled each year.
In June, the Senate committee on agriculture and forestry released a report forecasting a worsening of farmers’ difficulties with finding workers. The report referenced testimony from the Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council in saying the country’s agriculture sector was short 59,000 workers in 2019 — a figure that could reach 114,000 by 2025.
Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Marco Mendicino said in a release that the pilot aimed to attract applicants who could establish themselves in Canada, while supporting the labour needs of farmers and processors.
“It’s very important that we support our farmers and food processors to make sure they have the workers they need to help strengthen Canada’s food security,” he said.
But Hussan stressed that migrants who make up a critical part of Canada’s agricultural workforce should be valued for the contribution they made to the sector — and claimed the government had skipped over migrant advocates’ organizations in their consultations and assessments within the agricultural realm.
“Canada clearly needs these workers,” Hussan said. “The program should be designed with them in mind.”
Although written for an Indian audience, given the likely significant number of Canadians studying in the US, this change, should it proceed, will have an impact on them:
Although some students return home to India after graduating, for the majority, the US academic journey is premised on continuing pursuit of the ‘American dream’. Their F-1 student visa allows a one-year (three years in case of STEM students) paid Optional Practical Training (OPT) that usually results in a full-time job, typically on an H-1B visa. Separately, tens of thousands of skilled white-collar professionals from India also come to the US on H-1B visa, for short- and long-term projects that often turn into life-long employment in the US. Over decades, these two streams have combined to form the core of a thriving Indian-American community of more than 4 million people that is America’s best educated and highest earning ethnic group.
The pandemic has not only disrupted the annual commencement ritual but also threatens to dismantle the template that led to the formation of this cohort. The destruction of the job market that has rendered some 36 million Americans jobless has all but destroyed the ‘American dream’ of millions of eventually high net worth immigrants who have made the US what it is: a rich, vibrant, innovative melting pot. Thousands of students and guest workers are currently in limbo, not knowing what the future holds, their academic planning, job prospects, and just about everything, including travel plans, on hold.
Their misery is compounded by rising nativist, xenophonic, anti-immigrant sentiment from a Trump base that sees foreign students and guest workers “stealing” American jobs. It’s an understandable sentiment in times of despair, except this was an undercurrent even before the coronavirus struck. There are other issues with this argument: The US by itself does not produce enough qualified graduates, particularly in STEM fields, to meet the needs of its industries and corporations. The reason Microsoft, Google, Apple and other companies back immigration is not because foreign workers come cheap (a fiction that ignores the fact that the labour department requires certification that they are well-paid); they do it because they need global talent.
Such a composite internationalist workforce also gives US companies a foothold into new markets. The entry of Texas Instruments, Hewlett Packard, and other companies into India in the 1980s was spearheaded by Indians working for those companies in America. This globalist engagement is lost on nativists in the US, and even in India, where for the longest time there were complaints about losing its best minds and talent before realisation dawned that “brain drain is better than brain in the drain”. India’s investment in human capital in the US and elsewhere yielded unexpected benefits, among them foreign exchange remittances that offset the $8 billion spent on foreign education and influencing global perception of India.
Of course, US nativists and critics of the guest worker visa are correct that there has been abuse of the programme. Unscrupulous body shoppers and companies have manipulated the system, and this needs cleaning up. But hosting foreign students and guest workers is a net gain for the US and for countries that send their students and workers to America. Physicist and futurist Michio Kaku calls the H-1B visa America’s “secret weapon” without which the US would be an also ran, pointing out that 50% of all PhD candidates in the US are foreign born.
The salience of immigrants has been particularly striking during the pandemic, when they have been on the frontlines. According to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, while 16% of the US workforce is foreign born, immigrants account for nearly 25% of physicians and dentists, 20% of engineers, 23.5% of computer specialists and almost 30% of scientists.
The skills that H-1B workers bring with them can be critical in responding to national emergencies, argues the American Immigration Council, pointing out that over the past decade eight companies currently trying to develop a coronavirus vaccine – Gilead Sciences, Moderna Therapeutics, GlaxoSmithKline, Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceuticals, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Vir Biotechnology, and Sanofi – received approvals for 3,310 biochemists, biophysicists, chemists, and other scientists through the H-1B programme.
So opting out of immigration is not an option for the US, or for countries such as India that thrive in a myriad ways on US immigration. April was the cruellest month for travel, tourism and immigration. Rough winds did shake the darling buds of May, but may June restore reason and sanity.
Interesting and significant study but will, of course, not change the tenor of the debates (more sound than the various Fraser Institute studies):
The economic benefits of illegal immigration are greater than the costs of the public services utilized, according to an expert at Rice University’s Baker Institute of Public Policy.
Indeed, for every dollar the Texas state government spends on public services for undocumented immigrants, new research indicates, the state collects $1.21 in revenue.
José Iván Rodríguez-Sánchez, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Baker Institute, investigates the topic in a newly published research paper. He stresses that it’s important to assess both the positive and negative impacts of illegal immigration.
“Undocumented residents have a positive influence and impact on the economy, since they pay taxes and fees and constitute an important part of the labor market,” he wrote. “Even if we consider the costs of undocumented immigrants to the state of Texas, the benefits outweigh the costs.”
Rodríguez-Sánchez used Texas as a case study because “it is one of the most populous states in the United States, with an unauthorized population considered representative of that of the whole country,” according to the paper.
In 2018, the year on which the report is based, Texas had “an estimated 1.6 million undocumented residents, representing 5.7% of the total state population,” according to the paper. Those residents support the economy by working in industries such as construction, agriculture, manufacturing and services—with an unemployment rate of only 5.7% in the state, according to the paper. They pay sales tax and consumer taxes, such as on gasoline and motor vehicle inspections.
In fiscal year 2018, Texas collected $2.4 billion in state taxes from this group.
“Like any other Texan, undocumented immigrants pay sales and excise taxes when they buy goods and services,” he wrote. “They pay property taxes on their owned or rented houses. Other payments that undocumented immigrants make to the state are related to fees and fines, tuition and utilities.”
The analysis found that illegal immigration cost Texas a total of $2 billion in 2018 through education, health care and incarceration costs. These include costs associated with public schools, higher education, substance abuse services, immunizations and emergency health care.
Rodríguez-Sánchez also analyzed the potential impact of deporting all such residents from Texas. “In this case, deportation would represent a shock to the Texan economy,” he wrote.
“If all undocumented workers were deported, Texas would lose more than $41.9 billion in direct employment compensation, defined as pretax salary and wage earnings. The total lost would be $70.3 billion, which represents a reduction of 7.7% in state employment compensation,” he wrote. “If even 20% of this group were deported, the state would lose approximately $8.4 billion in direct employee compensation, and the total impact would be $14 billion.”
The report estimates that tax revenue collected from such residents exceeded what the state spent on them, resulting in a net benefit of approximately $420.9 million in fiscal year 2018.
“This means that for every dollar spent on public services for undocumented immigrants, they provide $1.21 in fiscal revenue for the state of Texas,” Rodriguez-Sanchez wrote.
Phil Gurski and I have a conservation regarding links or not between immigration and terrorism. Hope you find it interesting:
Canada is a nation of immigrants. It takes in 300,000 + a year. Does immigration pose a national security threat (i.e. are we letting in terrorists)? Listen to my talk with an old friend from Citizenship and Immigration.
Borealis talks with Andrew Griffith, former Director General of Citizenship and Multiculturalism in the Canadian government.
Appropriate flexibility. Looking forward to reviewing monthly data on study permits to assess impact:
International students who are forced to enrol in online courses this fall due to COVID-19 will still be eligible for postgraduate work permits, the federal government has announced.
The news is being welcomed by Canada’s education sector and experts, who say the move can help the country retain international students in uncertain times as borders are closed and commercial flights are reduced as a result of the pandemic.
“This is terrific news for students and for our province. It ensures students outside Canada who want to pursue the quality programs at Ontario’s colleges will get that opportunity this fall,” said Linda Franklin, president and CEO of Colleges Ontario, which represents the province’s 24 public colleges.
“We’re grateful the federal and provincial governments are supporting us during these challenging times.”
International education is a significant source of revenues for Canada, with international students contributing $21.6 billion in tuition and spending to the country’s GDP and supporting nearly 170,000 jobs in 2018.
As of Dec. 31, 2019, there were 498,735 post-secondary international students in Canada, which is a popular destination because it allows international students to work part-time during the school year and grants them work permits when they graduate as a pathway for permanent residence.
Under normal circumstances, international students from government-designated schools are issued postgraduate work permits that are good for one to three years, depending on the length of their studies. However, distance learning and time spent studying outside Canada don’t count.
Due to COVID, all post-secondary schools from coast to coast have moved their programs online and Ottawa had no choice but changed its criteria in order to retain international student enrolment and save its lucrative international education sector.
The confusion and uncertainty hanging over their studies already led many current and prospective international students to put their plan on hold and delay admissions for the May/June and summer term.
“International students who wish to eventually apply for Canadian immigration will want to capitalize on the opportunity to complete a portion of their studies in their countries of origin, while still being able to access the same benefits (the work permits) had they been required to physically study in Canada,” said immigration policy analyst Kareem El-Assal.
“The cost to study in Canada will decline for them, since they will not have to incur additional living expenses at the outset of their Canadian education.”
The Immigration Department announcement will be a boon for the slowing Canadan economy ravaged by the pandemic, said El-Assal, director of policy and digital strategy at CanadaVisa, an immigration website run by a Montreal-based law firm.
“The tuition that international students will pay will help to support jobs at colleges and universities across Canada,” he said. “International students will support economic activity in a number of ways once they arrive to Canada, through their spending, labour, and the taxes they will pay as workers.”
The Immigration Department said international students may begin their classes while outside Canada and can complete up to 50 per cent of their program via distance learning if they cannot travel to Canada sooner.
Students in this situation won’t have time deducted from the length of a future post-graduation work permit for studies completed outside of Canada up to Dec. 31, it said.
Government should not go there as main benefits accrue to the consultants that push for such programs:
The Investment Industry Association of Canada (IIAC) has suggested that increasing foreign direct investment (FDI) in Canada could help rebuild the economy in the wake of Covid-19.
In a May 5 letter to federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau, IIAC president and CEO Ian Russell wrote that there are “tens of thousands” of foreign investors looking for permanent residence in Canada, and other countries will benefit from their wealth if Canada doesn’t.
Russell suggested the federal government could increase FDI by re-introducing “a formal immigrant investor program, building on the strengths of the previous federal program.”
The previous program, the Federal Immigrant Investor Program (FIIP), was closed in 2014 as a result of the Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, which found that large backlogs of applications tied to economic immigration programs were a major hurdle for the immigration system.
IIAC conceded that the FIIP had issues, but suggested a new program could be temporary and tied to the economic recovery from Covid-19.
“To speed up [the program’s] implementation, its structure could be similar to what exists in Quebec but with the addition of a non-refundable contribution to boost its impact,” Russell wrote. “Unlike regular investors or entrepreneurs, immigrant investors are more interested in obtaining permanent residence for themselves and their families, and having the return of their portion of capital guaranteed after a reasonable time period (5-7 years).”
The implementation of such a program would require collaboration between multiple ministries, and “the government could decide where the FDI would be best invested as per its needs for post-Covid-19 recovery,” Russell said.
Dealer firms regulated by the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC) could “help design, promote and support this new [FIIP] program,” Russell suggested, adding that many IIROC members were “involved in the FIIP process” and some have acted as consultants to other countries.
In data released in late February, Statistics Canada said foreign direct investment in Canada was positive in Q4 2019, but lower than what was recorded a year earlier.
On the fateful day in March that the COVID-19 virus officially became an international pandemic, Canada’s immigration minister, Marco Mendicino, was paying tribute to employers who hire newcomers to this country.
The ceremony was held at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa on March 11 and, as the proceedings were getting under way, the host read aloud a bracing bulletin from German chancellor Angela Merkel. The virus, Merkel had just declared, could infect up to 70 per cent of Germans.
Mendicino was stopped in his tracks. A little over a week before, he had been sitting beside Merkel at an immigration-themed event in Berlin, where he had been invited to share stories of how Canada handled the integration of newcomers.
That event had been a big deal for a rookie minister, only sworn into cabinet a few months earlier. But this news from Merkel in Germany was suddenly a much bigger deal.
“That was the moment. That was enough to give me and everybody else in the room pause,” Mendicino said. “It was the moment that the world changed for me.”
What made this moment even more surreal is that it came only one day before Mendicino was due to make the annual announcement on how many immigrants would be welcomed to Canada in the years ahead — 341,00 for the coming year; 361,000 by 2022.
Even as Mendicino was gamely rolling out this plan on the Thursday of that week, however, the world was closing its doors. Donald Trump had shut down entry of all travellers from Europe the night before. Canada’s own prime minister, Justin Trudeau, went into isolation that day, after his wife tested positive for the coronavirus.
Mendicino was asked at his March 12 news conference about how he could possibly be talking about welcoming more immigrants to Canada while borders were slamming shut all over the planet.
“We are at a moment where we are responding to COVID-19, but we also are planning for the future,” he said. “The future of this country depends on immigration. We need to continue to grow because we have an aging population, an aging workforce.”
Making the case for immigration in an increasingly insular, inward-looking world was already a hard sell. Mendicino says that he and Trudeau talked about this candidly when he was asked to take on the job after the last election. Canada is a lot more polarized over immigration today than it was in the heady days for Trudeau after the 2015 election, when one of the first big gestures of the new Liberal government was to welcome floods of Syrian refugees to Canada.
Since then, Trump has become president; Britain has voted to leave the European Union; and repeated polls in this country show that sentiments about immigration are hardening.
In the midst of this, COVID-19 has very conveniently handed a big win to all those political forces looking for larger walls between nations and stricter limits on who gets into their countries. Add to that the record unemployment the pandemic is causing and, one assumes, accompanying resentment at anyone coming to this country to do jobs Canadians could do.
It didn’t help fans of immigration either that in the early days of the crisis almost all the cases of COVID-19 had come to this country from abroad. Xenophobia, meet germophobia.
Where has that put Canada’s immigration minister in this crisis? I joked to Mendicino before interviewing him this week about whether he is now the Maytag repairman of cabinet, on lonely call, but presiding over a system that has effectively been shut down until further notice.
Mendicino emphatically disagrees with the premise of that joke. For the past two months, he’s set up his office in the basement of his home in Toronto and he hasn’t been short of things to do. While he remains vague on what’s happened to that 341,000 immigrants target — “we’ll have more to say in the fall” — Mendicino would say that people are still arriving here.
According to rough counts from Mendicino’s department, about 3,000 permanent residents arrived in Canada in April — a massive decline from the usual 25,000 or so who arrive as permanent residents each month during normal times. In the first three months of this year, Canada took in nearly 70,000 permanent residents, but the numbers started to tail markedly downward in the last half of March, once the pandemic hit. In addition, the immigration department was busy in April welcoming a little more than 20,000 temporary foreign workers into the country.
Canada still needs immigrants, maybe more now than ever before, Mendicino says, as the pandemic exposes just how dependent this country is on those who come here from abroad to work in essential businesses.
“The notion that somehow immigration has stopped doesn’t square with the reality that we are continuing to welcome temporary workers, international students and continuing to land those who wish to come to Canada, and lend their experience, their hard work to our country,” Mendicino says.
It should be said that for all the help that COVID-19 has given to arguments for closed borders, the pandemic has also forced Canadians to look at how much the economy depends on welcoming workers from elsewhere.
The havoc that the pandemic has been wreaking in long-term-care homes, for instance, has shone a light on how that whole sector is highly dependent on immigrants. Hospitals are similarly reliant. According to StatsCan, one in every four health-care workers in this country is a newcomer to Canada. More than a third of family physicians are immigrants; roughly the same proportions are seen in the fields of nursing, nursing aides and other related occupations.
Then there are the temporary workers in agriculture, urgently needed this spring when planting season was under way across Canada. Universities are already worrying about what will happen if they lose international students, whose high tuition costs account for about half of universities’ tuition revenue by some estimates.
Mendicino believes that all these facts are going to help make the case for immigration, once it’s safe to open the borders again. “Immigration has been a lifeline during the pandemic by safeguarding our food supply, recruiting additional support for our essential services on the front lines of our hospitals,” he says.
But here’s the blunt question: how do you get Canadians feeling good about opening up borders when they’re still extremely cautious about what’s going in and out of their own front doors? Two months of isolationism is going to be a hard habit to break, especially when it comes to envisioning thousands once again at Canada’s gates.
“We’ve adapted our immigration processes so that everyone is screened at the border, not only immigrants but returning Canadians too,” Mendicino says.
This still relatively new immigration minister refuses to be drawn into any questions about whether his job is tougher now or how he’s going to modify his arguments in favour of immigration in a world that has been locked down for two months.
“I have faith that Canadians believe in immigration,” he says. “That’s because they relate to it. It’s part of who we are. At its core, immigration is about people coming together to build a stronger country, which is what we’ve seen throughout our history, throughout this pandemic and, I’m confident, what we will see in the future.”
As with everything around this pandemic, though, no one knows whether this experience will make Canada more closed, or more aware of how much this country is connected to the world. Attitudes to immigration — and Mendicino — will be at the centre of that debate.
Needed rethink. All governments will likely have to review their ranking and selection systems given the importance of the essential and lower-skilled support workers:
Conservative MPs have called on Boris Johnson to rethink his harsh new immigration rules, because “the world has changed” with the vital role played by lower-paid migrant staff during the pandemic.
One Tory MP warned of “very serious consequences” if care homes – where a quarter of Covid-19 deaths have taken place – lose more staff, while a second pointed out that many hospital cleaners and porters are EU migrants.
Caroline Nokes, a former Home Office minister, called for urgent changes, telling The Independent: “If the last six weeks have shown us anything, it is that we are dependent upon workers from all round the globe, but in large numbers the EU, for many essential roles.”
And Stephen Hammond, a former health minister, said: “I believe an exemption for social care workers is one that would be widely welcomed.”
The crackdown drawn up by home secretary Priti Patel – to replace free movement of EU citizens, from next January – will impose a minimum salary threshold of £25,600 for most workers seeking to enter the UK.
Around 70 per cent of the 200,000 EU migrants who come to the UK each year are expected to be excluded by the new rules, officials believe – which would mean around 140,000 shut out.
Even before the coronavirus laid bare how care services depend on migrant workers – some of whom have paid the ultimate price – the package was branded “a disaster” by social care leaders, who fear a deepening recruitment crisis.
Ms Nokes said she supported what the Home Office calls a “points-based system”, recognising education level, ability to speak English and shortage occupations, which will apply to migrants from anywhere in the world.
But she warned: “The Home Office will also have to build in flexibilities to make sure we don’t run out of carers, child care workers, farm labourers, road hauliers, retail assistants.
“These may not be regarded as ‘skilled’ workers in cold immigration terms, but do any of us look at those care workers on the front line of the battle against Covid-19 and think of them as ‘unskilled’?”
Steve Double, the MP for St Austell and Newquay, in Cornwall, said: “The proposals came out of what we thought back in December and January, but the world has changed. We are now looking at a very different world.”
On social care, he added: “There are very serious consequences if we get this wrong and there is no one to care for an elderly person in a residential home.”
Sir Roger Gale, the MP for North Thanet, in Kent, said: “Unless and until there is a sea change in our attitude to funding social care, we are not going to attract the people to fill the vacancies.”
He also pointed to the NHS’s dependence on migrants for ancillary staff, adding: “We have got to reflect the reality and, while I understand what Priti is trying to achieve, now is not the moment.”
One former senior minister said the plans now looked “stupid”, adding: “In the light of recent events, these salary thresholds make no sense at all and may be counterproductive, by arbitrarily increasing the salaries of the migrant workers we will still desperately need.”
Sally Warren, director of policy at The King’s Fund, said there were 122,000 social care job vacancies – while one in six staff are non-British – adding: “It is hard to see how staff shortages can be plugged without overseas recruitment.
“As the care sector struggles to cope with the ongoing impact of Covid-19, the government cannot allow international recruitment to fall off a cliff.”
The row came amid anger over Ms Patel’s refusal – revealed by The Independent – to waive the £624 immigration health surcharge for foreign healthcare workers.
The Immigration and Social Security Coordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill will have its second reading on Monday, in a race against time to complete the dramatic shake-up in just seven months – with an extension to the post-Brexit transition period ruled out.
However, the bill itself will simply end free movement, with the battle to come in future months over salary thresholds and shortage occupations which will be settled in secondary legislation.
Nevertheless, the Liberal Democrats vowed to vote against the “destructive” ending of free movement in the midst of the pandemic.
“Priti Patel may consider care workers to be ‘low skilled’, but they are on the front lines protecting us and our loved ones every single day,” said Christine Jardine, the party’s home affairs spokesperson.
The new rules will require migrants to speak English to “B1” level, enabling someone to, for example, open a bank account, or cope with “most situations” at home, work or leisure.
The are expected to be charged around £1,200 for a work visa, or £900 in a shortage occupation – the same fee paid by non-EU migrants currently.
Ms Patel has hailed Brexit as a “once-in-a-generation opportunity to strengthen the security of the UK border”, blaming free movement for letting in illegal immigrants, terrorists, drugs and guns.
“We will attract the brightest and the best from around the globe, boosting the economy and our communities, and unleash this country’s full potential,” she said in February.
Yet another example of Trump administration considering further immigration restrictions, one that would reduce the attractiveness of studying in the US:
At the direction of the White House, the Department of Homeland Security has sent recommendations for further restricting legal immigration during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to one former and two current administration officials.
Among the recommendations expected to be considered is the suspension of a program for foreign students to stay in the U.S. to get one or two years of occupational training between secondary education and full-time employment, a move many in the business and university communities are fighting.
The program, known as Optional Practical Training, or OPT, is an incentive for foreign students to come to U.S. universities, as it provides some cushion between school and employment. Talk of suspending OPT has pitted business interests against immigration hard-liners like President Donald Trump’s senior adviser Stephen Miller, the officials said.
Miller, acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf and Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., have all said the program has been rife with abuses, particularly by Chinese students whom they accuse of getting American educations and then returning to China. Data from the Congressional Research Service, however, shows otherwise.
“Suspending or ending OPT makes no practical sense — it solves no problem, it reduces the quality of America’s higher education system, and it threatens the international exchange of ideas so vital to academic freedom,” said Julie Schmid, executive director of the American Association of University Professors.
“International students contribute nearly $41 billion a year to the U.S. economy. Our campuses and our communities benefit from the contributions international students make to education and research,” Schmid said. “This move does nothing to ensure the health of U.S. citizens during the COVID crisis. As with Trump’s Muslim ban, this is just bigotry posing as concern for national security.”
The new guidelines, expected to be announced in an executive order this month, would expand curbs on legal migration announced by the White House in April. The administration is expected to frame the move as economic protection for Americans faced with staggering unemployment rates.
Representatives of the White House and DHS did not respond to requests for comment.
A U.S. official familiar with the matter said, “While we won’t comment on internal administrative policy discussions one way or the other, millions of Americans have been forced out of work by the pandemic and they ought to be first in line for jobs — not lower-paid imported labor. Polling shows Democrats, Republicans and Independents agree.”
Critics of the proposals say Miller and other immigration hawks are using the pandemic to accomplish a goal they have had since Trump took office: bringing down the overall number of legal immigrants.
When Miller served on the staff of then-Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., he helped draft a bill that would have eliminated OPT. Now, four Republican senators have asked the White House to take the issue of curbing OPT and other legal migration programs into their own hands.
“We urge you to continue to suspend new nonimmigrant guest workers for one year or until our new national unemployment figures return to normal levels whichever comes first,” Cotton and Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Josh Hawley of Missouri said in a letter to the White House on May 7. The letter said OPT, along with H-1B visas for highly skilled workers and H-2B visas for non-agricultural seasonal workers, should be suspended.
Todd Schulte, president of FWD.US, a pro-immigration reform group of business and tech leaders that counts Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg among its founders, said the plan is too similar to previous proposals to be framed as a legitimate response to the economic crisis caused by COVID-19.
“Three years ago, when unemployment was at 4 percent, the signatories who were in the Senate at the time tried to slash legal immigration by more than 50 percent. … Today, as unemployment has skyrocketed, these senators now say we need to slash legal immigration in response to the COVID-19 crisis,” Schulte said.
An official familiar with discussions at the White House said the influence of the business community, often communicated by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, could sink plans to suspend OPT.
But Rosemary Jenks, executive vice president of NumbersUSA, which shares Miller’s goal of decreasing overall immigration, said it would be a mistake to keep the program open. Jenks noted that OPT is a regulatory program not protected by statute.
“At a time when millions of Americans and lawful permanent residents are graduating from college with severely limited job opportunities due to COVID-19, it makes absolutely no sense for the administration to continue a regulatory program that allows foreign graduates to take jobs Americans need,” she said.
