Deep Immigration

At the same time that Harper was in the news for his trip to Cancun, the government of Portugal was wondering why we were deporting illegal workers from their country. In meetings with Peter MacKay, Portugal's minister of state and foreign affairs, Diogo Freitas do Amaral asked for leniency for Portugese citizens who had been in Canada illegally for several years.

While MacKay assured Portugese officials that there hadn’t been a policy change, the Conservatives campaigned on increased deportations in the recent election. The Liberal Party had previously spoken of a general amnesty for illegal immigrants who had been contributing to Canadian society for years.

We have heard for years about the presence in Canada of highly trained professionals who are driving cabs because, although they came here to work, their credentials are not acceptable in Canada. It appears that immigration officials have been concentrating on poaching professionals from developing nations. The practice of actively recruiting the best and brightest from developing nations is something that should stop, since it leaves those nations short of the very people they need if they are to address their many problems. The practice of poaching those people under false pretenses is truly reprehensible though. If their credentials are not acceptable in Canada, that needs to be made clear to them before they come here.

The Harper government appears to have little grasp of the complexity of the many immigration issues facing Canada. That should not be the case, but the almost purposeful ignorance of the Conservative Party in immigration issues was apparent when they were in opposition and is becoming a national embarrassment now that they are in power.

This should come as no surprise. The shortcomings of Stephen Harper and his party in this matter was demonstrated quite clearly during the “Strippergate” non-scandal that centred around Judy Sgro. The Ethics Commissioner found Sgro to be not quite innocent but not quite guilty in that case and, except for some partisan sniping, the issue died. The Conservatives, then in opposition, could have used the case to address the larger issue of temporary visas, guest workers, and how our system leaves workers in the country through such programs open to abuse by their employers.

They may have even gone further and begun to question why we make it so difficult and expensive for working people, be they exotic dancers, agricultural workers, or tradespeople to come to Canada on a permanent basis.

The Conservative Party and their friends in the mainstream press chose to concentrate on the fact that the worker in question was an exotic dancer. Instead of latching on to a legitimate issue, Harper and his party chose to dive into the gutter for some cheap political points through scandal-mongering. It was an indication of the shallow comprehension the Conservative Party has of immigration issues.

Move forward to the present day. When Harper took power he began deporting illegal workers, as promised. That these workers have become an integral part of our economy does not matter. That employers need these workers, many of them skilled tradespeople, is never factored into the equation. That many of these workers have been in the country for long enough to have school-aged children and have been contributing to our society for a decade or more is not considered. The only consideration is that they came illegally.

Harper could have turned the presence of these illegal workers into a political coup that eroded the Liberal hold over the immigrant vote. It was Liberal policy that so drastically favoured rich over poor when it came to immigration, after all. Saying that policy was so flawed that a general amnesty for illegal workers was needed as long as they came forward and registered would have done a lot to increase the Conservative vote in the immigrant community. Workers would have become legal, would gain a political voice, and would begin to enjoy the rights and protections that other Canadian workers have. They could be given access to trades training or given the opportunity to become certified in their trades.

Instead Harper has chosen to criminalize many immigrants and, in doing so, has threatened the ability of many small businesses to complete contracts they have already accepted.

Stephen Harper could also use Fox’s request to accept more Mexican agricultural guest workers to the advantage of both Canada and Mexico. The first step in that equation is to guarantee that they will be offered the same rights and protections as other Canadian workers. The second is to welcome them not just as labourers willing to do work that Canadians are not willing to do, but to offer them training programs during their off season. Such a program would allow these workers to gain access into Canadian society and to take their new skills home with them, improving the lives of people in Mexico as well.

At the same time, requiring employers to treat guest workers just as well as Canadian workers would make it possible for Canadians who wish to become agricultural workers to do so. The common wisdom suggests that Canadians simply do not want to perform the hard work involved in farm labour, so guest workers are needed to fill the void. More likely is that the poor working conditions and low pay have discouraged Canadians from seeking work in the field and the employers, instead of improving conditions and pay, have chosen to use guest workers.

To carry this one step further, Harper could agree to accept guest workers on the condition that Mexico moves to increase worker’s rights and pay rates at home. This would serve to reduce the wage gap, making Canada more competitive with Mexico, while allowing Mexican workers the opportunity to work fewer hours in better conditions and for higher rates of pay at home. Harper could even make the point that many Mexican farm workers are looking for work in Canada and the US because of the devastating effects the combination of NAFTA and US agricultural subsidies are having.

The final area that Stephen Harper and the Conservatives have failed to address is that of professionals who have arrived in Canada only to find that their credentials are not recognised in Canada. Credentials are important and vary widely around the world, so we must be careful that we don’t end up with doctors that don’t meet our standards or engineers that don’t understand our building codes.

A lack of credentials should not disqualify immigrants though. Even if they are not trained up to our standards, they have presumably shown some propensity for the skills required in their chosen fields. We should, now that we’ve enticed these people to leave their home countries, offer them the opportunity to upgrade their skills. Such an offer could be tied to a requirement for those who accepted the offer to move to areas where their services are in demand, addressing the problems of obtaining services in rural and northern areas. It could also be tied to providing part-time aid in the developing countries, mitigating the effects of our poaching of some of their best and brightest citizens.

It is, predictably and unfortunately, unlikely that Mr. Harper and his party will do anything substantial or effective to address Canada’s immigration issues. What is far more likely is that the answer will be more integration with US immigration policies despite their failed policies leading to issues surrounding illegal workers reaching near crisis proportions. We may accept more Mexican workers, but we will not extend more rights and protections to them. We will continue to deport those deemed illegal by our flawed system, even as we scramble to replace them through that same flawed system. We will continue to poach professionals from their home countries even as we continue to deem their credentials inadequate and refuse to offer them help in earning acceptable credentials.

Stephen Harper, just like Paul Martin, sees immigration issues through the eyes of corporate America. He has gone one step further and is moving to adopt the recent American model of marginalizing all immigrants by criminalizing some. It is time Canada began to see immigration through the eyes of a nation built by immigrant workers. Unfortunately Stephen Harper is not a man capable of that sort of vision.