By Jinny Sims
Imagine coming to Canada and working hard every day for four years. Your goal is to become Canadian – to stay in this country permanently, and have the same rights and privileges as everyone around you. So you follow the rules, you contribute to the Canadian economy, and you pay your taxes, based on a commitment that if you do so, you will have the opportunity to apply for citizenship.
But after four years, you find that the rules have changed around you. You’re no longer allowed to stay, even though you have submitted an application for permanent residency. The government is kicking you out, based on an arbitrary deadline, on April 1st. And suddenly, your shot at the Canadian dream has disappeared – and your employer loses a trained staff person.
For thousands of temporary foreign workers, this scenario is a reality. Thanks to a new rule created by the Conservatives, temporary foreign workers must leave the country after four years, even if they’re waiting on a decision on their application for permanent residence.
The Conservatives have also systematically eliminated pathways to citizenship for thousands of other temporary foreign workers, ensuring that they do not even get the chance to apply.
This policy is grossly unfair to workers, who have come here with the commitment that they would have an opportunity to apply to stay and build lives as new Canadians. Many of them have become integrated into their communities, making friends, building ties, and supporting the local economy. Some of them have children who were born here and know no other home but Canada.
It is also unfair to employers, who have put in the time to train their employees. Now they are losing out on experienced workers – workers whom they would prefer to keep permanently as permanent residents and citizens, in many cases. Yet the government has refused repeated requests from employers to give their workers pathways to citizenship that would allow them a chance to stay.
Bill Stevenson, CEO of Mushrooms Canada, expressed the frustration of many employers across Canada when he told CBC News, “Frankly, it’s crisis with us because we’re losing workers who don’t want to leave, who have proven themselves to be valuable, and deserve an opportunity to apply for citizenship.”
And what’s more, this wrongheaded policy actually risks creating a new and even more dangerous problem – workers facing this deadline may go underground, and work without documentation, rather than leave the country.
Migrant rights groups, immigration lawyers and consultants, and labour unions have all joined with employers in the call to extend pathways to citizenship to temporary foreign workers, rather than kicking them out on the basis of an arbitrary deadline, risking an upswing in the number of undocumented workers in Canada.
But so far, the Conservatives have refused to listen to them.
That’s why the New Democratic Party has called on Employment and Social Development Minister Pierre Poilievre and Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander to offer an extension to workers who have submitted applications for permanent residency until their applications have been processed. We also want to see the government take immediate steps to restore pathways to citizenship for all temporary foreign workers.
The Conservatives have consistently mismanaged the Temporary Foreign Worker program, allowing it to grow to unreasonable proportions, pushing down wages and allowing abuse to go on unchecked. Now, instead of allowing a pathway for workers to apply to stay here as permanent residents and citizens, the Conservatives are insisting that they be sent home – so the jobs can be filled with new temporary foreign workers.
It’s high time that we had a full, independent review of this broken program so that it can be fixed, once and for all. Canadians, employers and workers who dream every day of becoming Canadian deserve far better.
