Why Quebec needs more immigrants: Yakabuski

2016/05/17 Leave a comment

Konrad Yakabuski on the demographic and immigration challenges of Quebec. Not sure whether the data shows longer term economic outcomes in Quebec are as rosy as he indicates in comparison to outcomes elsewhere:

But while it’s true that immigrants to Quebec have initially tended to face more difficulty integrating into the work force – employer discrimination and lack of English-language skills being among the main reasons – they also tend to catch up by the five- or 10-year mark. And Quebec’s new policy of choosing immigrants in line with qualifications and labour market requirements will only hasten the integration of newcomers.

Besides, immigration is the opposite of a short-term policy. It is a long-term investment in a society’s future dynamism and prosperity. A community that invests in its immigrants will see its immigrants, and their descendants, invest in it. If Canada is an example of anything, it is this.

Slow or zero population growth is a recipe for decline – economic, social, cultural. Choosing this path out of the fear that more immigration might not only change the face, but the fibre, of Quebec society would be to condemn the province to increasing marginalization within Canada and the world.

As much as Quebec sometimes feels closer to Europe than to the rest of Canada, Europe would be the wrong model for Quebec on immigration policy. A quarter of all immigrants who arrived in Quebec in the decade up to 2013 subsequently left the province, some because they sensed an unwelcoming environment. Quebec needs to devote more resources not only to attracting immigrants, but to retaining them after they arrive.

So what if it means some will need to learn English (in addition to French) to successfully integrate into the workplace? That is a reality faced by most Quebeckers, whether native-born or not. Most professions these days, especially if they involve technology, require some functionality in English.

No francophone Quebecker I know considers unilingualism an asset, yet the suggestion that immigrants should learn both of Canada’s official languages sparks howls of protest from the PQ and CAQ, which seek to make political hay out of Quebeckers’ insecurities. It’s an insult to the resourcefulness of Quebeckers who, over four centuries, have maintained their linguistic identity in the face of far bigger cultural threats than the presence of bilingual immigrants.

If anything, Quebec needs more of them.

Source: Why Quebec needs more immigrants – The Globe and Mail

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USA: The disastrous, forgotten 1996 law that created today’s immigration problem – Vox

2016/05/12 Leave a comment

Good long-read on US immigration policies and their impact by Dara Lind (thanks to Arun with a View):

But one effect was clear: After IIRIRA, deportation from the United States went from a rare phenomenon to a relatively common one. “Before 1996, internal enforcement activities had not played a very significant role in immigration enforcement,” sociologists Douglas Massey and Karen Pren have written. “Afterward, these activities rose to levels not seen since the deportation campaigns of the Great Depression.”

A chart of Mexican deportations from the US.Douglas Massey/Julian Simon Lecture Series

This particular law was passed during an era where Congress and the Clinton administration were both working to increase the amount of spending and agents on the US–Mexico border.

And after 9/11, the way the federal government handled immigration changed in two major ways. The bureaucracy was reorganized — and moved from the Department of Justice to the Department of Homeland Security. And the funding for immigration enforcement got put on steroids.

The combination of those gave rise to what Meissner and the Migration Policy Institute have called a “formidable machinery” for immigrant deportations — a machinery that took the US from deporting 70,000 immigrants in 1996 to 400,000 a year though the first term of the Obama administration. But that machine was built on the legal scaffolding of the options IIRIRA opened up.

“Both of those things have had so much more force because of this underlying statutory framework that they were able to tap into,” says Meissner. In retrospect, “it was sort of a perfect storm.”

After ’90s immigration reform, the unauthorized population tripled

But even though deportations exploded after the passage of IIRIRA, it didn’t keep the population of unauthorized immigrants in the US from growing. It went from 5 million the year IIRIRA was passed to 12 million by 2006. (By contrast, during the decade between the Reagan “amnesty” and IIRIRA, the unauthorized population grew by only 2 million.)

These two things didn’t happen despite each other. More immigration enforcement is one big reason why there are so many unauthorized immigrants in the US today.

A lot of this is because of the increase of enforcement on the US–Mexico border — something that was happening even without IIRIRA. Many unauthorized immigrants used to shuttle back and forth between jobs in the US and families in Mexico. Once it got harder to cross the border without being caught, they settled in the US — “essentially hunkering down and staying once they had successfully run the gauntlet at the border,” as Massey and Pren write — and encouraged their families to settle alongside them.

(This wasn’t the only reason unauthorized immigrants started settling in the US around this time. The types of jobs available for unauthorized workers were changing, with seasonal agricultural jobs being replaced by year-round service-industry ones, for one thing. But it was certainly a major factor.)

But if border enforcement encouraged families to stay, IIRIRA prevented them from obtaining legal status. By this point, a majority of the unauthorized-immigrant population of the US has been here 10 years — more than enough time to qualify for cancellation of removal, if IIRIRA hadn’t made it so difficult to get. Millions of them have children who are US citizens.

Douglas Massey/Julian Simon Lecture Series

The 3- and 10-year bars alone have caused millions of immigrants to remain unauthorized who’d otherwise be eligible for green cards or US citizenship by now. According to Douglas Massey’s estimate, if those bars hadn’t been instituted in 1996, there would be 5.3 million fewer unauthorized immigrants in the US today. In other words, the population of unauthorized immigrants in the US would literally be half the size it is now.

Source: The disastrous, forgotten 1996 law that created today’s immigration problem – Vox

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Feds should reboot cash-for-residence immigration program: Colin Singer

2016/05/12 Leave a comment

I am never sure whether to take these arguments – follow Austria, Malta and Cyprus models – seriously, or is it simply a way for immigration lawyers to expand their potential business? Singer made the same arguments at the Conference Board Immigration Summit this April.

CIC/IRCC’s study on the former business investor immigrant program was clear on the lack of benefits to Canada; there have been enough studies on the Quebec program showing that most leave Quebec for British Columbia (Study reveals awfulness of Canadian investor immigration; income tax averages C$1,400 per millionaire | South China Morning Post).

Factor in the debates over housing prices in Toronto and Vancouver, and the impact that overseas investors are having on the housing market, hard to see how expansion would benefit the broader Canadian economy or society:

The way out of this morass is clear. The Trudeau government should immediately get on with the task of redesigning the Immigrant Investor Venture Capital Pilot Program. It just needs to create the right policies and a restructured program that will succeed in attracting carefully chosen high-net-worth businesspeople who will bring billions of dollars to Canadian businesses and create new businesses that will in turn create more jobs.

The benefits of the Quebec immigrant investor program to that province are undeniable. From 2001 to 2016, it gave $714 million to 4,737 businesses in 17 territories in the province. As well, a compelling 2010 study conducted by three economists in Ontario and Quebec concluded that an average immigrant investor family directly injects more than $770,000 into the economy.

Additionally, a recent Statistics Canada report on immigration and business ownership in Canada, the first of its kind, confirms that immigrants are more likely than Canadians to establish businesses.

Ottawa should also consider establishing a citizenship-through-investment program for ultra-high-net-worth individuals and become a dominant top-tier country in the citizenship-through-investment arena.

Currently Austria, Malta, and Cyprus are the only top-tier countries offering a direct path to citizenship while Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, St. Kitts and Nevis, and Saint Lucia also offer such programs.

In pursuing this new policy initiative, Canada would be in a position to attract the world’s most successful ultra-high-net-worth businesspeople along with their families and, by extension, their business networks. This could prove highly lucrative and provide Canada with a large inflow of cash, which it badly needs.

If executed strategically, Canada would also realize significant gains to its human capital in the immediate term and, through the children of such businesspeople, in the long term. The human capital benefit that the children of successful businesspeople bring to Canada is immeasurable and invaluable.

How beneficial can a new federal residency and citizenship program be? This year, some 5,000 newcomers will be admitted under the Quebec program alone, which has been selecting its own business investor immigrants since 1986. Under a revised federal immigrant investors’ program, Ottawa would likely account for more than 70 per cent of the market, a position it held at the peak of its popularity in 2010. In doing so, British Columbia and Ontario would then benefit from their share of Ottawa’s transfer payments as the two provinces would become the default choice for the overwhelming majority of applicants applying under the Quebec program.

Together with Quebec, Canada could again become a dominant player in the international residency-through-investment industry and perhaps match or surpass the popularity of the EB-5 program in the United States, which admits 10,000 business immigrants annually.

If Canada is to return to the forefront of the business immigration field, it must replicate a modified format of the Quebec program and other successful international programs by installing a well-devised, targeted model that creates a capital fund for Canadian businesses and attracts the right calibre of applicants on the basis of clear policy objectives featuring program integrity, international competitiveness, processing cost efficiency, and fast processing.

The federal Immigrant Investor Venture Capital Pilot Program is dead but the need for high-net-worth business immigrants to Canada is not. The substantial financial benefits to Canada, a welcome advantage in the face of our current economic difficulties, could well be surpassed by the undeniable human capital benefits it would receive from the world’s most innovative and wealthiest businesspeople and their families who would choose to live in Canada.

Additionally, Canada could take the lead on the global stage by creating an international charitable fund for refugees from a portion of the proceeds of investment inflow. In doing so, it would help ensure that the world’s wealthiest are directly assisting the world’s immigrant population who are most affected by international conflicts. This is one of the hallmarks of effective immigration policy.

Source: Feds should reboot cash-for-residence immigration program |

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Chinese real estate investors are reshaping the market

2016/05/11 Leave a comment

Good long-read in Maclean’s on the impact of Chinese investors and immigrants in the Vancouver, Toronto and other real estate markets. Most interesting point for me was that Chinese Canadians, equally affected by rising housing prices, are participating more in the debates:

Last November, the 38-year-old lawyer and former head of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association helped Andy Yan, acting director of SFU’s City Program, with his headline-grabbing study on home buying in Eby’s West Side riding. In addition to the incendiary data involving Chinese names, the study revealed that 36 per cent of owners on homes worth an average of $3.05 million listed their occupations as housewives or students with little or no income. Fully 18 per cent of the 172 homes purchased were not mortgaged by banks. That means on Vancouver’s West Side alone over a six-month period last year, roughly $100 million in cash came pouring into Canada, almost all of it from China. Yet the homeowners would in all likelihood pay little or no income tax. The total value of all homes sold in the study period topped a half-billion dollars.

Predictably, when Yan’s study was published, a chorus of voices, including former developer Bob Ransford, jumped to criticize Yan: “The danger is intolerance, racism, singling out certain groups of people saying they’re to blame for this,” said Ransford. But such labels have failed to muffle the debate, particularly as more and more Chinese-Canadian voices have begun calling out white developers and academics for making the claim. Fung, the software engineer, says he’s among those “deeply pissed off” by what he considers a slur: “The only people claiming racism are white Anglo-Saxon males—that’s it. These are the same guys trying to label Andy Yan—whose grandparents paid the head tax—a racist? It’s absurd.”

That sentiment is shared by Ian Young, the South China Morning Post’s Vancouver correspondent and author of the popular Hongcouver blog. Young, who is ethnically Chinese and was raised in Australia and Hong Kong, says the issue is one of money, not of race. “What defines those people in terms of their behaviour here in Vancouver, and in terms of their impact on affordability, is not their ‘Chineseness,’ it’s their ‘millionaireness,’ ” he says. “The idea that there is commonality to be found in the Chineseness—I find that kind of insulting. Why would you think that someone was better defined by the colour of their skin than the colour of their money?”

This is why Fung believes it is so vitally important for Chinese-Canadian voices to encourage a debate over the impact of foreign investment on the local market. “Chinese people have a tendency to be a little quiet, we tend to want to not create ripples—culturally it’s something we’re not comfortable with.”

Source: Chinese real estate investors are reshaping the market

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Creation of ombud’s office urged to tackle immigration snafus

2016/05/10 Leave a comment

Not sure that adding another layer is necessarily the best approach compared to reviewing the overall processing system and making adjustments as necessary:

….These cases are problems critics say an ombudsman at the immigration department could easily fix, saving taxpayers money for reprocessing and potential litigation, and immigration applicants the agony of having their lives thrown into disarray.

“These are the majority of problems people have day-to-day that could be resolved if there is the will to cut through the red tape,” said Toronto immigration lawyer Raoul Boulakia.

“Immigration cases are expensive to litigate. In some cases, the court would not intervene and the process takes so long. Having an ombudsman’s office would be terrific.”

The idea of establishing a public complaints office at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada has been floating around for years but never got traction because of the lack of organized efforts among applicants and Ottawa’s short-sighted arrogance to cater to foreign nationals with no voting power.

However, with the new Liberal government’s emphasis on transparency and accountability, critics say an ombudsman could aptly look at these systemic challenges and find solutions.

While Immigration Minister John McCallum agreed that “obviously there is enormous room for improvement” for his department’s service delivery, he is noncommittal to the idea.

“That’s what a lot of my job is about. We are trying to reduce processing times and improve services. The idea of an ombudsman is an interesting idea, but it might be a little bit duplicating of what my office and I are trying to do, and it would add costs. Our objective is similar,” he told the Star.

“If having an ombudsman would assist that task, I would consider it … if it’s value-added. Right now, people can go to their MPs, the MPs might bring it to me and we work on it. We certainly spend a huge amount of time dealing with these problems and cases trying to get the best outcomes.”

The Public Service Alliance of Canada, the union that represents the 5,000 immigration department employees, said frontline services have suffered after 10 years of cuts — staffing was down by 5.3 per cent while workload increased — under the previous government. That led to minimum service and sometimes tainted decision-making, the union said.

“Our members are caught between a lack of resources and instructions. They are being told you have two minutes to respond to a phone call, basically. That’s not worthy of client service in our mind,” said Chris Aylward, national executive vice-president of the union.

“It is nice for the minister to say he’s all for increasing the service and service delivery, but in order to increase service delivery, you have to make sure the resources, tools and training are there.”

The union is all for the establishment of an impartial office if it serves both the clients and its members instead of creating an additional administrative burden and more work under existing resources, Aylward added.

Queen’s University professor Sharry Aiken, who specializes in migrant law and policy, said an ombudsman could best handle administrative issues that emerge in application processing as a result of “misunderstanding, poor representation and human error” that could easily be fixed.

Currently, members of parliament are overwhelmed by constituents’ requests for assistance on immigration files for relatives and friends looking for updates on applications, and immigration cases are inundating the court system and tribunals.

Aiken said the cost of setting up a well-equipped ombudsman’s office at the immigration department could easily be offset by the savings in resources in other jurisdictions and improved operational efficiency. Meanwhile, the courts and tribunals should still handle cases involving errors in law, she added.

“The office would need the authority and resources to deal with these cases and circumstances,” said Aiken, who co-chairs the Canadian Council for Refugees’ legal affairs team. She said the danger of setting up an ombud’s office without proper resources is it would get swamped and couldn’t investigate complaints in-depth.

Source: Creation of ombud’s office urged to tackle immigration snafus | Toronto Star

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La situation démographique avive les enjeux de l’immigration au Québec

2016/05/10 Leave a comment

Good overview of Quebec demographics and the some of the challenges to its immigration policies:

Alors que le taux de fécondité poursuit son déclin et que le vieillissement de la population s’accentue au Québec, l’enjeu de l’accueil des immigrants est placé à l’avant-plan, suscitant des débats sur l’économie, l’identité, la culture et la langue dans la province.

L’Institut de la statistique du Québec (ISQ) a annoncé à la fin du mois dernier que l’indice synthétique de fécondité s’était établi à 1,6 enfant par femme en 2015 – une baisse de 1 % par rapport au niveau de 2014 -, marquant un recul pour la sixième année consécutive.

Bien que ce chiffre ne semble pas anormalement bas, la province doit aussi tenir compte du vieillissement de la population et du manque de main-d’oeuvre qualifiée.

Québec estime qu’environ 1,1 million de travailleurs auront pris leur retraite entre 2013 et 2022, et selon un document récemment publié par le ministère de l’Immigration, cette situation «souligne la nécessité de réaffirmer le rôle de l’immigration et de sa contribution au Québec».

Cependant, les immigrants ne sont pas répartis équitablement partout dans la province. Selon Statistique Canada, d’ici 2031, les minorités visibles représenteront 31 % de la population de Montréal, mais pas plus de 5 % ailleurs au Québec.

Le démographe de l’Université de Montréal Marc Termote se dit «très, très inquiet» des divisions culturelles et linguistiques entre la métropole et le reste des municipalités québécoises.

«C’est une cassure vraiment profonde entre Montréal et le reste du Québec», a-t-il constaté.

Il a cité l’exemple de Brossard, en banlieue sud de Montréal, qui abrite plus d’immigrants que Québec, la capitale et la deuxième ville la plus populeuse de la province.

M. Termote s’est par ailleurs désolé que tous les gouvernements répandent le «mythe» voulant que l’augmentation des niveaux d’immigration aide à combler le manque de main-d’oeuvre.

«Toutes les études montrent que l’impact économique de l’immigration est nul», a-t-il soutenu.

«Il y aura des pénuries, mais ce seront des pénuries très ponctuelles, dans des secteurs bien spécifiques. Et ce n’est pas en ajoutant 10 000 immigrants de plus qu’on va régler cette pénurie-là. (…) Ce n’est pas par une politique générale qu’on règle le problème», a-t-il ajouté.

Montréal a du mal à intégrer les immigrants qu’elle a déjà accueillis, alors que le taux de chômage pour les résidants nés à l’extérieur du pays se situe à 11 %, comparativement à sept pour cent pour ceux qui sont nés au Canada.

Par rapport aux autres provinces, le Québec contrôle davantage ses politiques d’immigration. La province sélectionne ses immigrants en fonction de la langue; 61,3 % des immigrants arrivés entre 2010 et 2014 étaient francophones.

Cette politique aide à préserver le caractère distinctif du Québec, mais elle crée également des tensions, selon M. Termote.

«Le bassin d’immigration francophone, ce n’est pas la France, la Belgique ou la Suisse francophone. Le bassin francophone, c’est essentiellement l’Afrique francophone – l’Afrique subsaharienne et le Maghreb -, ce qui a des implications (culturelles)», a-t-il indiqué.

Mais il y a aussi des conséquences politiques, a souligné Daniel Weinstock, directeur de l’Institut de recherche sur les politiques sociales et de santé de McGill.

Selon M. Weinstock, la province est témoin d’un «évidemment» de la position nationaliste modérée sur l’immigration et la diversité qui avait caractérisé les discours politiques dans la province, depuis les années 1960 et au temps de René Lévesque.

Il y a une forte division entre le gouvernement libéral, qui souhaite augmenter les niveaux d’immigration à 60 000 personnes par année et les sélectionner selon leur potentiel économique, et l’opposition, qui s’inquiète de leur intégration dans la province.

«Il y avait une sorte de consensus à l’idée que le Québec est une société immigrante, une société francophone et qu’être un citoyen québécois signifiait l’acceptation de ce contrat», a-t-il expliqué.

Ce discours change, dit-il, puisque désormais, certains Québécois veulent aller plus loin que de protéger la langue, ils veulent «protéger tous les aspects de la culture québécoise que certains immigrants, même s’ils parlent français, ne partagent pas».

Source: La situation démographique avive les enjeux de l’immigration au Québec | Giuseppe Valiante | National

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La langue au Québec, un casse-tête pour l’immigrant

2016/05/03 Leave a comment

More on Quebec’s francophone immigration challenge:

L’intégration en emploi des nouveaux arrivants francophones pose problème, surtout pour ces immigrants qui ne parlent pas anglais. Le taux de chômage des immigrants (admis depuis cinq ans ou moins) qui ne parlent que le français — en plus, souvent, de leur langue maternelle autre — atteint 23 %. Mais ceux-ci restent au Québec dans une proportion qui dépasse 85 %, contrairement aux immigrants qui parlent anglais et qui sont beaucoup plus mobiles.

La discrimination dont font preuve les employeurs ainsi que les problèmes de reconnaissance des compétences nuisent à l’embauche de ces immigrants francophones. Mais l’exigence généralisée du bilinguisme en emploi représente un autre frein pour eux. Dans ce contexte, doit-on prévenir les candidats à l’immigration du Maghreb, de la Côte d’Ivoire ou du Sénégal qu’ils devront apprendre l’anglais s’ils désirent s’installer dans la région de Montréal ? La ministre croit que non. « Nous, on ne peut pas lancer un autre message [qu’au Québec, ça se passe en français], a affirmé Kathleen Weil au Devoir. On veut attirer des gens qui veulent vivre en français au Québec. »

Le MIDI agira sur trois plans : choisir davantage de candidats qui parlent français (95 % des candidats sélectionnés — issus l’immigration dite économique — disent parler français), favoriser une meilleure adéquation avec le marché du travail grâce à un nouveau mode de sélection et, enfin, renforcer les services de francisation et d’intégration. En matière de francisation, après les coupes des deux dernières années, le MIDI peut compter en 2016 sur 4 millions de plus par rapport à 2015.

La langue de travail

Mais le MIDI ne peut rien au regard de la langue de travail des immigrants. Le chômage chez les immigrants francophones, « c’est sûr que c’est désolant », juge la ministre. « Le mot n’est pas trop fort. On travaille tellement fort pour aller chercher des gens qui parlent français. »

Source: La langue au Québec, un casse-tête pour l’immigrant | Le Devoir

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Australia’s Controversial Migration Policy – The Atlantic

2016/05/02 Leave a comment

Not terribly surprising.
Managed immigration is one thing, irregular and/or illegal immigration is another. The former reflects conscious policy choices – which can always be debated – the other not.
Canadians generally have the same reaction to irregular immigration and boats, and of course part of the European anti-refugee and immigration movements reflects the large wave coming from Africa and the Mid-East.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull added: “We cannot be misty-eyed about this. We have to be very clear and determined in our national purpose. … We must have secure borders and we do and we will, and they will remain so, as long as I am the prime minister of this country.”

To be sure, it’s not that Australia has an issue with refugees––in fact, it has agreed to resettle 12,000 Syrians, atop the refugees it typically takes through its Humanitarian Programme. It granted 13,800 refugee visas between 2013 and 2014, and 20,000 between 2012 and 2013.

But the arrivals by sea seem to prompt anger. One reason for this could be that migrants and refugees who try to reach Australia by sea are, in fact, coming illegally. Those that are being resettled through its Humanitarian Programme, meanwhile, are registered refugees being accepted under Australia’s international obligations. The two main parties also contend that its policies deter human-smuggling.

The problem seems only to be when Australia discusses migration by boats, said António Guterres, the former UNHCR Commissioner, “and there, of course, we enter into a very, very, very dramatic thing. I think it is a kind of collective sociological and psychological question. They receive, I think, 180,000 migrants in a year. If you come to Australia in a different way, it’s fine but if they come in a boat it is like something strange happens to their minds.”

Source: Australia’s Controversial Migration Policy – The Atlantic

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Donald Trump proves racial nationalism is alive and well: Doug Saunders

2016/05/02 Leave a comment

Doug Saunders on Trumpism and its variants:

In a big survey conducted this month by the think tank PRRI, one thing stands out, and it isn’t economic. When given the statement “It bothers me when I come in contact with immigrants who speak little or no English,” a whopping 64 per cent of Trump supporters agreed. Among backers of other candidates, fewer than half agreed.

As surveys by San Francisco political scientist Jason McDaniel have shown, expressions of “racial resentment” among voters increase with their level of support for Mr. Trump – something that doesn’t happen with other candidates.

This is explained well in the study White Backlash: Immigration, Race and American Politics, by political scientists Marisa Abrajano and Zoltan Hajnal. Their surveys show that racial resentment has displaced class, income inequality, education, income, gender and age as identifying factors among a large part (but not majority) of white Republican voters. The group who came to support Mr. Trump are clearly defined by anger and resentment at having a black president, and a sense that their racial identity is their country’s, and is therefore threatened.

But, as the authors note, this is not an inevitable turn in Republican politics. “The United States faces two radically different futures,” they conclude. “In one scenario, the Republican Party

alters its stance on immigration, it garners more votes from the nation’s expanding racial and ethnic minority population, the worrisome racial divide … shrinks, and wide-ranging racial conflict is averted. In a more ominous scenario, though, the Republican Party continues to fuel a white backlash against immigrants and minorities … the racial divide in U.S. party politics expands to a racial chasm, and the prospects for racial conflict swell.”

The fact that the first scenario offers a clearer path to victory – as conservatives in Canada, Britain and Germany have found – suggests that this last big idea will not become a map of the future.

Source: Donald Trump proves racial nationalism is alive and well – The Globe and Mail

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Canada’s uncomfortable reliance on migrant workers

2016/04/30 Leave a comment

The dark side of temporary foreign workers (the film maker introduced her latest film – not sure if it was shown – at the Metropolis Conference in Mexico City last year):

Min Sook Lee read all those headlines in February and March. A documentary filmmaker, she had been busy chronicling another side of the ketchup frenzy, an angle nobody bothered to mention: the migrant, temporary labourers—thousands of them—who toil in the vast greenhouses of Leamington, picking and packaging the vegetables we eat every day, tomatoes included. “I am keenly aware of how Leamington has been drumming up a lot of nationalist fervour,” Lee says. “I think that myopia has to be interrupted.”

Her latest project, Migrant Dreams, will do just that. Premiering at Toronto’s Hot Docs festival on May 1, the film explores the dark side of Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), a controversial federal initiative that allows companies—from hotels to fast-food restaurants to slaughterhouses—to hire out-of-country employees when they can’t find willing Canadians to do the work. A story of abuse and exploitation in the heart of tomato country, the documentary evokes anything but national pride.

“When people talk about buying organic, buying local, I think it’s a really shortsighted viewpoint because it doesn’t factor in who is doing the work,” Lee says. “Yes, it’s important to buy local, but also to think about labour issues. Are the people in the local farms and local work sites being treated properly?”

The film raises many other uncomfortable questions, at a time when Justin Trudeau’s Liberals have promised to launch a review of the TFWP. Why are most of these employees denied the chance to pursue permanent residency in a country defined by immigration? Why are they tied to one company while they’re here, barred from switching jobs? Who is checking to make sure their workplaces are safe and their accommodations humane? “This is a very critical, necessary public dialogue that we need to have,” Lee says. “There has been almost no political will or national interest in the situation of migrant workers. This isn’t new.”

In existence (in one form or another) for more than four decades, the TFWP was created to address critical labour shortages in particular sectors. Simply put, if an employer cannot find a Canadian to do a certain job, it can ask Ottawa’s permission to contract a provisional worker from abroad, for a maximum stint of four years. The government will then conduct a Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) to confirm that a Canadian can’t be found to fill the opening. At this moment, more than 60,000 foreigners are working in Canada under the TFWP.

When the program does make news, the theme is usually the same: Are these foreign workers stealing paycheques from hard-working Canadians? In 2012, Vancouver-based HD Mining came under fire for hiring 200 people from China for a coal mine project, triggering a court challenge by organized labour groups. A few months later, RBC was forced into full damage-control mode amid allegations that the bank was replacing some IT staff with temporary foreign workers. Although the original story was slightly torqued, perception became reality. (An internal government document, leaked to a newspaper at the time, confirmed people’s worst fears. Some employers may be using migrant workers to address “long-term structural labour gaps” instead of short-term needs, it said.)

In 2013, Stephen Harper’s government announced major changes, giving the feds more power to suspend work permits if employers abuse the program, and requiring companies to have a “firm plan” to eventually transition to a Canadian workforce. Further reforms followed, including fines ranging from $500 to $1 million for “misuse” of the TFWP. “Our government is committed to ensuring that Canadians are always considered first for available jobs,” the Tories proclaimed.

But so often lost in the debate are the foreign workers themselves—and how the system treats them. “They perform what I sometimes think of as invisible work,” says Jody Brown, a Toronto lawyer who represents some TFWs. “It is not good to paint the entire industry with the same brush, because I know there are some employers out there who recruit temporary foreign workers and do treat them appropriately. But there is definitely a dark side to it.”

Lee’s film follows a group of Indonesian women who are essentially prisoners to their greenhouse employers in the Leamington area, constantly afraid of losing their jobs and being deported before their contracts expire. It also reveals the shady world of international recruiters, some of whom charge foreign workers thousands of dollars in illegal fees—and show up every week to collect their payments. (In December 2014, the Ontario Provincial Police laid extortion charges against three alleged recruiters in the region, saying they charged illicit fees ranging from $1,400 to $11,500. The trio’s next court date, in Windsor, is scheduled for Aug. 3.)

Source: Canada’s uncomfortable reliance on migrant workers

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