How To Improve the World’s Worst-Controlled Immigration System
Our federal government should be very cautious about the immigration changes it has recently proposed. A number of these changes would open Canada’s immigration doors even more widely and make the world’s worst–controlled immigration system even worse.
1. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney and his government should re-consider immigration-related job cuts. It has recently announced a cut of about 1100 jobs in the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) . This agency checks people entering Canada at its land borders with the U.S and at its airports and seaports. The agency’s union, as well as academics who specialize in security issues, have warned that cutting jobs will endanger the country’s security and result in Canada incurring much greater long term costs than it will achieve from short-term job cuts.
2. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney should also be improving the Canada Border Services Agency’s (CBSA) ability to police fraud. He has wisely announced a number of measures to curb immigration fraud. The fraud is widespread. It is no exaggeration to say that Canada’s weakness in dealing with fraud has been interpreted by fraudsters as a border surrender. His decision to curb the entry of pregnant women who come to Canada to get birth citizenship for their babies is a small but good step. However, he has to strengthen the CBSA. That agency gets many complaints on its hot-line from average Canadians. People who make these reports to the CBSA are honestly trying to help the country. They report cheaters whom the government is unaware of. As anyone who has made a complaint to that agency knows, for a long time before the recent job cut announcements, the CBSA was seriously under-staffed and many immigration fraud complaints were not being investigated. If Mr. Kenney and his government colleagues are serious about preventing immigration fraud, they should consider two things : (a) The CBSA needs an increase in staff, not a decrease. and (b) The best way to deal with the large number of immigration fraud cases is to reduce the large number of completely unnecessary immigrants, a significant number of whom are committing fraud.
For no sensible reason, Canada has been taking an average of 250,000 immigrants per year for 20 years—the world’s highest per capita intake . It has also been allowing an additional 250,000 Temporary foreign Workers to work here every year.
3. Mr. Kenney has to overcome his fear of saying that although Canada has obligations to help a number of genuine refugees, immigration exists for the benefit of Canada. His many predecessors have never had the courage to do this. When he does this, he has to declare that Canada cannot solve the rest of the world’s problems, particularly the unemployment and poverty in other countries. Canada can provide foreign aid but it has significant unemployment and poverty of its own to correct. An unemployment rate of 14% among its young people needs immediate attention. Immigration is probably a significant cause of that unemployment. Canada’s immigration department is not a job-finding agency for the world. Everything Mr Kenney says about immigration has to be based on this fundamental.
Instead of having made a statement, however, he has recently announced that Canada will be making it easier for foreign skilled trades-people to become immigrants. Like some people in business, he is also saying that Canada has or will have large shortages of skilled workers. Mr. Kenney has to stand up to the business bullies who are trying to stampede him into doing what they want. He has to declare a firm, Canadian “Take off, eh”—and he should have done this long ago. He has to answer some business leaders who have been making wild labour shortage projections. Their aim is to scare him and other Canadians into doing what they want. If some business leaders are going to make such statements, Mr. Kenney has a duty to all Canadians to demand that business prove that their claims are true. His primary duty is to the majority of Canadians, not to the immigration industry which wants to maintain the status quo and to some businesses which are intent on importing cheap labour and exporting Canada’s non-renewable resources as fast as possible.
4. Mr. Kenney should walk around the area which he calls his home. Many Canadians have only to stroll around their neighbourhoods to suspect that something is wrong with Canada’s immigration policies. In some parts of Canada, a significant part of the traditional housing in their areas has been demolished. Many of the people who are doing the demolishing are Punjabis and the people who are doing the new construction work are either Punjabis or Chinese. It is hard not to see some symbolism in this. Most of these people are recent arrivals. This can be easily demonstrated by the fact that the workers are speaking Punjabi and Mandarin on the job sites. Mr. Kenney and his department should be asking some very important “What is going on? “questions such as : Are these people being imported under the claim that the Punjabi or Chinese employers cannot find Canadians to do the jobs or to train as apprentices? It is highly probable that this is the case. His government should be appointing immigration staff to investigate this phenomenon (probably very widespread ), not laying them off and thus rendering his own department impotent.
5. Mr. Kenney should also take a look at the people who are working in the places where he shops. For example, many Canadians, Mr. Kenney included, have gone into one of 3000 to 4000 cheap labour, Tim Horton’s coffee and pastry shops across the country and seen mostly recently-imported immigrants working there. What is going on? Is Tim Horton’s being allowed to bring in thousands of workers who may then have to claim “working poor” or tax-credit status and be subsidized by government? How is this helping Canada? How many other businesses are doing the same thing as Tim Horton’s? Furthermore, how many employers have been duped into chanting such nonsense as the “Diversity” mantra and have hired recent immigrants in order to smugly “demonstrate” that they are now a “Diversity” employer when, in fact, they have denied a job to a long-term Canadian.
5. Mr. Kenney should also think about the recent “job offer” statements he has made. He has announced that his department will approve immigrant applications if the applicant can show that he or she has a job offer in Canada. This is a loophole and will allow employers to commit fraud by not advertising jobs in Canada. Like our government, Canadian business has a duty to other Canadians. It should be hiring other Canadians—not sneaking about and cheating Canada and its unemployed.
6. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney should not fall prey to the slogans of some business people and their allies in the immigration industry. He has recently announced that he will be requiring low-skilled immigrants who come to Canada (in his words, “to do the jobs Canadians won’t do”) to be able to speak either English or French. The language requirement is a good one and should be applied to most immigrants. But before repeating the business mantra that there are “jobs Canadians won’t do”, he should s-l-o-w d-o-w-n and t-h-i-n-k. Has Mr. Kenney’s department ever compiled a list of the so-called “jobs Canadians won’t do”. It is highly doubtful that he or his department has done this, so why is he repeating this claim? At the very least, why doesn’t he take a look at a list that was compiled in the U.S. to answer the claim that there were “jobs Americans wouldn’t do”.
A detailed study in the U.S. by the well respected Center for Immigration Studies concluded that “Of the 465 civilian occupations, only four are majority immigrant. These four occupations account for less than one percent of the total U.S. workforce. Moreover, even in these four occupations, native-born Americans comprise 47% of workers.
“Many jobs often thought to be overwhelmingly immigrant are in fact majority native-born:
‘Maids and housekeepers: 55 percent native-born.
Taxi drivers and chauffeurs: 58 percent native-born.
Butchers and meat processors: 63 percent native-born.
Grounds maintenance workers: 65 percent native-born.
Construction laborers: 65 percent native-born.
Porters, bellhops and concierges: 71 percent native-born.
Janitors: 75 percent native-born.”
In other words, the claim that there are “jobs that Canadians won’t do” is, at best, probably extremely limited. But it is being used by some employers to commit fraud and to justify unnecessary immigration.
