Jason Kenney used to say the immigration system was broken and he was going to fix it. Yet it’s more broken now than when he took over in 2008.
Just about everything he has touched — and he touches a lot as minister for immigration and citizenship — is in chaos. The entire system is mired in scandalous delays. Crucially, different elements of it are working at cross-purposes.
About 1.3 million Canadians don’t have jobs. Another million are underemployed or have given up looking for work. The unemployment rate for the young is twice the national average, though they are the most educated in our history.
Yet Kenney has kept bringing 250,000 and more immigrants every year. Many of them can’t find jobs, either. Their unemployment rate is twice the national rate. Of those who do have jobs, three in four are not working in their fields — not using the education and skills for which they were selected as immigrants.
Yet Kenney is also bringing hundreds of thousands of temporary foreign workers, of whom we have at least 500,000. Perversely, the program kept growing while the economy slowed down. Faced with public fury, he recently made a show of reforming it but, tellingly, did not kill it or even cap it.
This is Stephen Harper’s Republican economic theology at work — supply businesses with cheap and pliant labour, even as our corporations remain among the lowest spenders in the industrialized world on recruitment, retention, training and skills development.
Where shortages do exist, they should be addressed by better immigrant-selection, not temporary foreign workers. Besides taking away jobs from Canadians and depressing wages, guest workers put Canada on the path of Germany or Saudi Arabia, creating a two-tier society with all its long-term ills.
more
Fire Jason Kenney and freeze immigration: Siddiqui | Toronto Star
Just about everything he has touched — and he touches a lot as minister for immigration and citizenship — is in chaos. The entire system is mired in scandalous delays. Crucially, different elements of it are working at cross-purposes.
About 1.3 million Canadians don’t have jobs. Another million are underemployed or have given up looking for work. The unemployment rate for the young is twice the national average, though they are the most educated in our history.
Yet Kenney has kept bringing 250,000 and more immigrants every year. Many of them can’t find jobs, either. Their unemployment rate is twice the national rate. Of those who do have jobs, three in four are not working in their fields — not using the education and skills for which they were selected as immigrants.
Yet Kenney is also bringing hundreds of thousands of temporary foreign workers, of whom we have at least 500,000. Perversely, the program kept growing while the economy slowed down. Faced with public fury, he recently made a show of reforming it but, tellingly, did not kill it or even cap it.
This is Stephen Harper’s Republican economic theology at work — supply businesses with cheap and pliant labour, even as our corporations remain among the lowest spenders in the industrialized world on recruitment, retention, training and skills development.
Where shortages do exist, they should be addressed by better immigrant-selection, not temporary foreign workers. Besides taking away jobs from Canadians and depressing wages, guest workers put Canada on the path of Germany or Saudi Arabia, creating a two-tier society with all its long-term ills.
more
Fire Jason Kenney and freeze immigration: Siddiqui | Toronto Star
