Yalnizyan: Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker program is ballooning — creating a new class of wage slaves from abroad

2023/10/13 Leave a comment

Good commentary with reasonable recommendations:

This time last year, the media buzz about the labour market was over The Great Resignation, a bigger phenomenon in the United States but occurring here too, as workers took advantage of record-high job vacancy rates to abandon suboptimal jobs for better ones.

This year there’s an emerging made-in-Canada phenomenon that has barely generated a whisper, let alone a buzz: wage slaves from abroad. It’s a result of public policy.

The idea of owning workers seems like an abomination from another time and place. In Canada, in 2023, it’s difficult to comprehend how any worker could be beholden to a single employer.

Nonetheless, this year the government of Canada has issued more than 142,000 permits to employers to hire temporary foreign workers who are not allowed to work for anyone else. It’s the highest number ever issued, and that figure only covers up to August. Intake through the Temporary Foreign Worker Program has grown by 45 per cent across Canada this year compared with the same eight months in 2022, a record-breaking year of population growth, almost exclusively (96 per cent) due to newcomers.

Permits are issued to employers who make the case that they cannot find a Canadian to do the job — at “prevailing wage rates,” that is. When the federal government finds the reasons provided on the Labour Market Impact Assessment form acceptable, it permits a foreign worker to enter Canada to work only temporarily, and only for that employer.

Just since August 2021, the federal government has expanded the categories of occupations eligible for such a permit and increased the allowable proportion of migrant workers working for an individual employer to 30 per cent from 10 per cent. That gives such employers huge influence over not just their migrant workers but all their workers. It is far from clear this was necessary policy reform. It should be reversed.

Ontario’s employers are escalating their dependence on the permanently temporary in sectors such as warehousing and transport trucking, personal care workers in long-term-care facilities, restaurants and fast food outlets, and farm workers.

The vast majority of employers are moral. But tying permits to a single employer increases the odds of exploitation and abuse.

Although the federal government conducts investigations of employers using the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, employers are often given a heads-up before the inspection takes place. Last year, more than 2,100 inspections were carried out. Only 116 were found non-compliant.

Of the 766 employers on a public registry of employers who broke the rules over the past seven years, the most frequent violation was wage theft — not providing the pay promised in the contract. Only seven employers were banned even temporarily from hiring migrant workers through this program; 23 were just given warnings.

Wage theft is not the only issue. Farm workers had an extraordinarily high incidence of disease and death during COVID because of their living conditions. Abuse and assault of workers providing care to people in their homes and institutions remains all too common. These are the very categories of migrant workers least likely to find a pathway to permanence.

Migrant workers may have the same rights as Canadian workers on paper but are less likely to know what those rights are and even less likely to exercise them for fear of jeopardizing their jobs and futures. That kind of contagion needs to be contained. It spreads rapidly in an uncertain world.

The Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology is studying this area of public policy. Last week, Tomoya Obokata, the UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, presented testimony to the committee about his recent visit to Canada, expressing concern for “low-wage and agricultural streams of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program as the workers at the higher risk of labour exploitation, which may amount to forced labour or servitude.”

I appeared before the committee as well and presented some ideas for policy reform.

First: end the practice of tying work permits to an employer. An open work permit, tied to a region (for example, in parts of the country that are aging more rapidly) or in an industry or sector with high vacancies (such as hospitality or long-term care) would mean workers could leave terrible workplaces without risking deportation. This change could reduce the number of bad jobs and improve the quality of life in communities. Addressing potentially crippling labour shortages, while limiting the abuse of workers, seems a promising avenue of reform.

Second: create simpler pathways to permanent residency for all those who seek it and make those pathways clear before people arrive. Canada has developed an incredibly complex system, with more than 140 types of temporary permits in the immigration database, according to Rupa Banerjee of Toronto Metropolitan University.

In 2022, three times as many people were permitted temporary resident status versus permanent resident status in Canada. Less than a third of those who came here to work or study for a restricted period transitioned to permanent status, even after 10 years of temporary residency; but many more will grab at the chance, without knowing the odds.

There is a whole industry designed to lure international students and migrant workers here on what often turns out to be the false hope of permanent residency; and the relationship between temporary and permanent admissions to Canada is getting more lopsided every year.

Although Canada’s job creation rate has been remarkable, including for Canadian-born and landed immigrant workers, the fastest-growing rate of job creation has been among migrant workers: 61 per cent more jobs than pre-pandemic levels.

We are expediting the intake of migrant workers for entrenched needs, not temporary ones.

Increasing reliance on temporary foreign workers to do the work that needs doing, while not allowing them to form families, get sick, age or retire may be an employer’s dream and a labour market “solution.” But it risks creating a dystopian future for Canadian society.

Armine Yalnizyan is a leading voice in Canada’s economic scene and Atkinson Fellow on the Future of Workers. She is a freelance contributing columnist for the Star’s Business section. Follow her on Twitter: @ArmineYalnizyan. You can write to her at ayalnizyan@atkinsonfoundation.ca.

Source: Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker program is ballooning — creating a new class of wage slaves from abroad

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Yalnizyan: Allowing undocumented immigrants to stay and work in Canada — permanently — would benefit us all

2023/04/13 Leave a comment

Rather than another piecemeal change to immigration policy, the government needs to move from the narrow Permanent Residents focus of annual planning and expand that to include targets (i.e., caps) on temporary workers and students and align a global permanent and temporary resident immigration plan with housing, healthcare and infrastructure capacity.

Not convinced that the economic benefits will be as strong as Armine suggests and we would be largely increasing the numbers of lower-paid and lower-skilled, rather than the higher-skilled needed to improve productivity.

It would also be helpful to have more accurate numbers on the number of undocumented, including visa overstays as the US regularly does as the figures cited by advocates have never been rigorously substantiated (CBSA should be able to collect information on visa overstays):

Want higher pay? A bigger economy with more household purchasing power? More revenues for public programs? Less exploitation of people at work and in society?

It’s all possible. Everyone can win, but the argument is counterintuitive, and may challenge your notions about fairness, process, and who gets to be Canadian. Stay with me on this.

The problem

Canada has long issued permits for people to temporarily come work and study in Canada, but the recent growth in this practice is staggering. By the end of 2022, in the name of fast-tracking solutions to labour shortages for business, the number of temporary foreign workers increased by 50 per cent compared to 2021, to almost 800,000 people.

In less than a generation, there has been an 8.5-fold increase in the numbers we permit to temporarily come work and study here, to 1.6 million in 2022 from 189,000 such residents in 2000. There was no public debate if this was good policy.

Colleges and universities now rely on the high fees they can charge international students, and we now take for granted the endless army of permanently temporary workers who chop and clean in restaurant kitchens, erect and renovate buildings, clean at night and care for your loved ones during the day.

We don’t know what share of temporary residents come here hoping to stay, but the complex maze of rules and conditions — requiring multiple applications and precise timing — guarantees some people will find no pathways to permanence, and others will run out of time trying.

Some leave, some are deported, and some live among us without official status. That opens the door to all sorts of bad economic outcomes. In 2007, the RCMP said between 200,000 and 500,000 were undocumented. It’s surely higher today, given how we’re expanding the inflows. That’s bad for them, and it’s bad for us. 

The fix

The solution is a regularization program for those who have simply overstayed time-stamps on their authorized entries, or whose official authorization is about to run out, with either no path to permanence or a tortured one, at best.

We need them, and they want to be here. Let them stay. Permanently.

Let me show you what this could mean for just one person.

Meet Sam

Sam (I have changed his name to protect his identity), came to Canada from India in the spring of 2019 as a bright and hopeful 17-year-old international student, legally permitted to study and work here.

His parents borrowed the first instalment of $8,500 for his $25,000-a-year, two-year business degree at a southern Ontario college. He worked part-time at a gas station, where he made $900 a month, covering his rent ($550), food and bus fare, but not much else. He, too, had to borrow money to cover the costs of education. 

When COVID hit, he was worried he’d fail because online learning was such a disorganized disaster, so his boss suggested he switch immigration status from international student to temporary foreign worker. The boss introduced him to an immigration “specialist” who charged $3,500 to prepare a Labour Market Impact Assessment, $2,500 for a work permit, and a $1,000 fee.

The specialist bungled the application process, leaving Sam in legal limbo after almost a year of waiting. Meanwhile, he was working 50 hours a week, for cash. It was half the minimum wage. He knew what his rights were, but could not enforce them.

Desperate to avoid deportation, he applied for a temporary work permit through the International Mobility Program. Another year, another negative result because of filing mistakes, another $3,000.

Sam was exploited by everyone: the post-secondary system, his employer, the immigration specialist. He is terrified of staying. He’s terrified of going.

As an undocumented worker, he can only find cash jobs that are dirty, dangerous and difficult. Returning to India would mean he would never earn enough to repay his loans.

I met Sam through the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, whose ambitious and strategic advocacy on this issue has built pressure on the federal government to make good on its promise to deal with a problem of its own making. A move is expected soon.

That could mean a lot of things. All involve better economic outcomes. How much better? 

By the numbers

According to a 2021 study by the Center for American Progress, regularizing the undocumented in the United States could add $1.7 trillion in GDP over the next 10 years and 439,000 jobs over and above the work done under the table by the roughly five million undocumented workers in the U.S.

(Canada is a country more reliant on newcomers than the U.S.; and while I was unable to find such analysis here, similar dynamics apply, on a smaller scale.)

It is estimated these workers would see about $4,000 more a year in the first five years after becoming a permanent resident (a 10 per cent increase), and $14,000 more annually in the next five years (a 32 per cent increase).

That’s because regularization permits workers to find better jobs, better opportunities, and the chance to openly use their skills. Status also gives people access to education and health care, and protection by labour standards lessens workplace injuries and illness.

Then there’s the payoff: better-paid workers and those no longer in the underground cash economy pay more sales taxes, property taxes (embedded in rents), and income taxes, supporting more public goods.

Regularization = better jobs + stronger public services + more economic resilience. It’s beautiful math. 

Win-win-win … when?

Regularization is a common practice in Europe, but it hasn’t happened in Canada since 1973. 

When Pierre Trudeau regularized almost 40,000 people, 60 per cent were undocumented residents, but 40 per cent were those seeking transition from temporary to permanent status, mostly international students and visitors.

It was a legacy move, securing decades of newcomer support for Liberals, but it was not an obvious thing to do. In 1973, unemployment was rising due to the first global oil price shock.

David Moffette, professor of immigration policy at the University of Ottawa, underscored a surprising fact: “Nobody politicized the issue. Nobody said, ‘Don’t let these people in.’ There was no trace of opposition to the program.” The reality was that these people were already living and working here. Nobody wanted a growing population of the undocumented in Canada. We’re at a similar moment.

Locking the doors isn’t enough

The recent closing of Roxham Road and all unauthorized entry points to Canada locks the back door; but unauthorized entries (roughly 40,000 people in 2022) have never been the main source of undocumented populations. The vast majority become undocumented by overstaying time-stamps on authorized entries.

The federal government is aware.

Immigration Minister Sean Fraser’s mandate letter requires he build on pilot projects his government created in 2021-22 to regularize the status of some undocumented workers in critical sectors like health care and construction.

The take-up has been underwhelming, with these projects welcoming fewer than 10,000 people into the Canadian family, largely due to highly restrictive rules. Therein lies the clue for what comes next, and it looks a lot like the program of 1973: accept those who are already here — working, studying and contributing to communities across Canada — who want to build their lives here.

As the economy slows, providing permanent resident status to the undocumented and those holding temporary permits would maximize their economic and fiscal contributions.

That’s the business case. 

The humane case is an even easier one to make.

Instead of creating impossible Catch-22 situations for Sam and hundreds of thousands of people just like him, we could unlock his future — and in so doing, ours.

Source: Allowing undocumented immigrants to stay and work in Canada — permanently — would benefit us all

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Yalnizyan: Our temporary residents provide a resource we can’t ignore

2021/03/09 1 Comment

Armine’s piece coming out of Ryerson’s CERC panel a few months ago.

I remain sceptical regarding maintaining current target levels during a recession and lowering the CRS minimum points to 75 (essentially, anyone 25-34 with one years Canadian work experience) as a good immigration strategy in terms of economic and social outcomes.

And, as StatsCan helpfully remained us, not all temporary workers will necessarily want to transition to permanent status:

Over the last decade or two, about one third of temporary foreign workers and one quarter of international students became landed immigrants within 15 years after their first arrival. TFWs who had low earnings tended to have low earnings after becoming landed immigrants.— feng hou (@fenghou9) March 7, 2021

Worried about immigration during the pandemic? You may be shocked to learn that for every new permanent resident admitted to Canada in 2019, almost three temporary residents were admitted to work or study. Immigration refers only to permanent residents, so any conversation about immigration is only talking about 28 per cent of all the people entering Canada.

This little-known statistic directly informs a recent conversationabout Canada’s Immigration Plan at Ryerson University, the core theme of which is that we could miss a remarkable opportunity if we don’t see the whole chessboard.

In particular, the surest path to an equitable post-COVID-19 recovery involves increasing the number of immigrants Canada accepts by expanding the paths to permanent residency for people already studying and working here, Canada’s temporary residents. That single reform could bolster Canada’s future in both the short and long run. Here’s why:

It comes as no surprise that Canada’s immigration intake was almost cut in half as a result of COVID-19, bringing us back to levels last seen in the late 1990s. Those levels are not good enough for the post-pandemic future, which will be marked by population aging and a shrinking working-age cohort.

The pandemic accelerated a process already in play, with more people over 55 exiting the workforce than entrants aged 25 and younger. This dynamic hastens that moment when Canada’s net labour-force growth goes negative if not for the addition of workers born outside Canada. A shrinking Canadian labour force, with little or no productivity growth since 2015, is a recipe for economic decline. That’s not a future anyone wants.

Nonetheless, some experts are worried about Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino’s pledge to make up for the shortfall in the 2020 target of 341,000 new immigrants by increasing targets over the next three years: 401,000 new immigrants in 2021, rising to 421,000 by 2023.

For critics, it’s too soon for such ambitious plans. COVID-19-related job losses and foregone hours of paid work mean the current labour underutilization rate is over 18 per cent. Given that the pandemic hit low-income workers the hardest, and that low-income workers are disproportionately women, youth, racialized minorities and recent immigrants, it could seem counterproductive to add more people to the mix as the nation’s hardest-hit citizens struggle to find their feet again in the post-pandemic world. Indeed, the Conservative immigration critic, Raquel Dancho, describes the goal of accepting 1.2 million new immigrants by 2023 as “pure fantasy.”

Higher targets do raise legitimate concerns about the well-known challenges of integration, given the current inadequacy of settlement services. But is the Liberals’ plan really so unattainable and undesirable?

Consider the numbers: Canada accepted more than 1.2 million newcomers in just one year, 2019, (see Chart 1) through permits for both permanent and temporary residency — a number that has increased steadily over the years, particularly among for those brought into Canada for economic reasons.

In 2019 (see Chart 2), about 30 per cent of those who entered Canada as permanent residents had made the transition from temporary-resident status. We can easily accommodate 1.2 million new immigrants over the next three years if we draw from the ranks of temporary residents who already work or study here. They have adjusted to life in Canada to some degree. Providing them with better settlement services like subsidized housing, English/French as a second language instruction and learning supports is a low-cost, high-yield return on public spending that also creates new jobs for Canadians.

Ironically, admitting more immigrants may be the surest path to a more equitable recovery, if one looks at the entire system of the intake of newcomers, including temporary residents. We don’t know for sure how many want to stay, but there’s plenty of demand for pathways to permanence among the more than 530,000 international students, 459,000 migrant workers (via the International Mobility Programs) and 77,000 temporary foreign workers who were in Canada as of December 31, 2020, and that’s in the middle of a pandemic. It is hard to believe that this deep well of human aspiration could not satisfy most, if not all, of the minister’s goal of adding 50,000 more immigrants this year. More generally, failing to integrate those who are already here studying and working and who want to stay is like leaving money on the table.

Though hard to imagine right now, we will soon be looking at widespread labour shortages. While population aging creates an unprecedented opportunity to increase skills and employment opportunities for whole groups of systemically underemployed Canadian residents, like the ones hardest hit by the pandemic, we’ll nonetheless need more newcomers to address temporary and permanent labour and skills shortages.

Historically, we have admitted more permanent residents than temporary ones to address labour shortages. But in 2006 the lines crossed. Ever since, we’ve admitted more migrant workers than economic immigrants. Take a hard look at the trajectory in Chart 2 and ask yourself: can you imagine living in a society where the vast majority of economic newcomers are migrants? Is this the future you envision for Canada?

The shift described in Chart 2 erodes workers’ rights in industries like accommodation, food service, personal services, elder care and child care, long-term care, and some types of manufacturing. These sectors, which have long relied on low-wage immigrants, reduce costs even further by turning to migrant workers with even less ability to exercise statutory labour protections. Exhibit A: seasonal agricultural workers, the essential workers who make sure we are fed, but may not be able to protect their own health and safety. Most come back, year after year; but this year some couldn’t even get tests or take time off when they fell ill with COVID-19. We can do better, for them and for us.

This process has begun. Small steps to create more pathways to permanence started in 2019, with a new pilot for personal care workers, joined by two others in 2020 for seasonal agricultural workers and live-in caregivers, and one for health-care workersin 2021. To these measures was added the recent federal invitation to basically everyone in Canada to put in an application to become a permanent resident. Last month the federal government drew 27,800 people from these applications. 

Canadian immigration is based on a point system, and the lowest score of applicants was 75. A normal draw features applicants with 400 points, sometimes more. Does this downgrade the “quality” of immigrants and hence their ability to integrate? No. They were already here, studying and working, but at risk of losing their status and deported during the pandemic. This was effectively a regularization program. (Note: Canada hasn’t had a major regularization program for residents without status since the 1970s, under Trudeau père. If not during a pandemic, when should such measures be taken? Never?)

We should celebrate, not be afraid of these measures. Permitting more migrant workers to transition to permanent status increases their ability to access labour protections and basic human rights. If we reduce exploitation of these workers, we improve working conditions for everyone in the workplaces where they are employed.

The de facto “two-step immigration process” that has emerged in recent years has been primarily driven by business demands for faster intake of newcomers, but could lead to better integration and lives for “low” and “high” skilled workers alike. If temporary foreign workers are good enough to work for us, they are good enough to live among us, permanently, if that is what they wish.

Let’s not look at the immigration story with our eyes wide shut. How we live with others will define the labour market, society, and future of Canada.

Source: https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2021/03/06/our-temporary-residents-provide-a-resource-we-cant-ignore.html

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