Seven Vital Immigration Ideas To Act On
Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has been announcing a number of important changes to Canada’s immigration system. Here are comments on his announcements and seven more changes he must consider :
1. Immigration should exist for the benefit of Canadians. Although Canada has international obligations to satisfy regarding genuine refugees, and those genuine refugees will become immigrants, all other immigration should not exist for the benefit of immigrants. Let us repeat this because this idea sounds incomprehensible to a number of Canadians. Immigration should exist for the benefit of Canadians. It should not exist for the benefit of immigrants. Immigration has to be based on the needs of Canada’s own people, particularly its work-force and its unemployed. Immigration is not a job-finding program for the world’s unemployed. It is also not a foreign aid program or a social assistance program. If Canada has a need for immigrants, Canada should take them. If it has no need for immigrants, particularly when Canada has a large number of unemployed as it has now and it has had in the last 20 years, it should either dramatically reduce immigration intake or end its intake until the employment picture improves significantly. Canada’s own unemployed have a responsibility to reciprocate in this policy. Canada’s employers also have a responsibility to reciprocate with training programs.
2. It is senseless for the federal government to think that immigrants should be the majority of appointees to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Immigration. It is equally senseless for a provincial government to appoint an immigrant to the position of provincial Minister of Immigration. Likewise, it is senseless for any federal., provincial or municipal government to institute “Diversity” or “Hire an Immigrant” programs when so many Canadian-born are unemployed. Employment Equity provisions which have been applied to visible minority immigrants should be scrapped. Visible minority immigrants should have to get in the job queue like Canadian-born. It is disgraceful for any government or political party to advocate that immigrants go to the front of the job line-up. If they think this, let them say so publicly and receive the contempt they deserve. It has been disgraceful for the Canadian government in the past 20 years to abandon Canada’s own jobless and to allow 250,000 immigrants to enter Canada every year. It has been equally disgraceful for all our political parties not to have put the interests of Canada’s own unemployed first. It has been wasteful for Canada to have spent billions on bringing to Canada several million people whom Canada never needed. These several million have also been an economic, environmental and cultural disaster for many parts of Canada. Cultural interests, in particular, matter in Canada as well as in other countries. To most of Canada’s long-term residents, immigration to many parts of Canada has become an invasion.
3. Immigration levels of 250,000 per year, the highest per capita in the world, are beyond the level of our federal government to control. Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker program, which allows an additional 250,000 foreigners to work in Canada every year, weakens “control” even more. It is disgraceful to have allowed this situation to have gotten out of hand. Re-gaining control of immigration should be a major government priority. Mr. Kenney is to be congratulated for saying that immigration has to be controlled in large part by Ottawa. Lack of government control has resulted in widespread fraud by sponsors and employers. This fraud has to be investigated and all those who have committed it should be removed.
4. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney is to congratulated for focusing on Federal Skilled Workers who are employable and have language proficiency in English or French. He is also to be congratulated for stating that all Federal Skilled workers will be pre-assessed for their suitability. But he has to be reminded that credential fraud is rampant in many countries and that Canada’s assessment must consider this. He should also be reminded that prominent economists have stated that Canada can probably satisfy almost all of its demand for future skilled workers within its own population—a policy that would avoid the costly process of assessing immigrants. Mr. Kenney should point out to Canadians that his ‘Get Tough” policy on Federal Skilled Workers is not as major an issue as some make it to be. Skilled workers comprise only about 50,000 of Canada’s annual immigration intake of 250,000. That number has been far too high and should be dramatically reduced. However, the same reduction should be applied to all other groups.
5. Mr. Kenney is to be congratulated for stating that potential immigrants’ high professional qualifications may not be a good fit for Canada. This means that if Canada already has plenty of such people, there is no need to bring in non-Canadians with similar qualifications. He should be stating clearly that Canada’s needs have to take priority all across Canada’s immigration program. To protect services to Canada’s aged, he has wisely restricted applications for immigrants’ parents and grandparents. He should extend that restriction indefinitely.
6. Mr. Kenney has unwisely stated that the regulations to allow foreign students to remain in Canada will be relaxed so that Canada can compete internationally for the so-called “world’s brightest and best.” Mr. Kenny should be reminded that his primary responsibility is to the Canadian-born “family”. This means training the members of that family, whether they are bright or mediocre. It does not mean throwing them under the bus, as our CBC would have us do. The rest of the world can wait. The idea that there is an international competition for the so-caled “world’s brightest and best” is a scare tactic invented by Canada’s immigration industry to maintain their profits. Canada’s youth unemployment rate is officially around 14%. In reality, it is probably over 20%. This is another disgrace which Mr. Kenney should be correcting, not worsening.
7. Mr. Kenney should be reminded that the worker-shortage panic that Alberta employers and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce are spreading should be taken with a ton of salt. Most of Canada is not booming. Let’s say that again : Most of Canada is not booming. Mr. Kenney should demand that these employers, who have worked themselves into a lather, produce evidence of the kinds of jobs that need to be filled. We suspect the numbers are grossly inflated. Employers like Tim Horton’s should be deleted from the list. Mr. Kenney and the rest of the federal cabinet, as well as the Alberta government, also have to discuss the idea of “Sell oil as fast as possible to China and all other takers.” The oil sands are an Alberta resource, and, for the sake of future Albertans, Alberta should not be auctioning off its resources to non-Canadian interests . The oil sands are also a finite resource and if extraction of them is going to proceed, the extraction and pace of extraction has to proceed in the interests of Alberta and the rest of Canada. Here is one important question that everyone in government must consider : When the oil runs out, and Alberta has a population of several million which is largely unemployed, who is going to afford equalization payments to Alberta? Will the oil extraction companies step up to clean up this mess as well as the environmental mess they are creating?
