Immigration not all to blame for Canada's economic woes

The federal Liberal government has been shamed and browbeaten into taking action on immigration, and more specifically on the temporary foreign worker system, which, at least at a cursory glance, does seem to have run out of hand in the last few years.

The Liberals, always very much pro-immigration, has seen the wisdom (political, if not economic) of scaling back the ambitious Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) program that it brought in a couple of years ago, when post-pandemic labour shortages were the main issue. It's an(other) embarrassing u-turn for the Liberals, but I'm kind of past caring about them right now.

The new rules disallow the hiring of low-wage TFWs in areas where unemployment is over 6%, except in the areas of agriculture, fisheries, construction and healthcare (which is actually where most TFWs are). Also, employers will be limited to 10% of TFWs out of their total workforce, down from the current 20%, and TFWs will be limited to one-year contracts, down from the current two years.

Pierre Poilievre's Conservatives have latched on to the immigration issue as an effective wedge, and much of their improved polling has come from the way they have changed Canadians' views on immigration. Housing crisis? Blame the immigrants. Inflation? Immigration. Healthcare crunch? Unemployment? Yup, yup. 

Just a couple of years ago, public support in Canada for immigration numbers was at an all-time high. Today, an increasing number of Canadians are questioning immigration levels, a change almost entirely due to Polievre's constant hammering away at the issue and his dog-whistle politics.

There is an alternative viewpoint, though, and it is being doggedly put forward by a small not-for-profit Migrant Workers Alliance for Change and its director Syed Hussan. Most recently, and in direct response to the government's announcements, he was interviewed on CBC NewsNight, and what he says actually makes a lot of sense.

Among his points:

• Immigrants, and specifically TFWs are being used as a convenient political scapegoat for all manner of economic ills that are much more complex than just the immigration aspect.
• TFWs make up about 60,000 people out of Canada's 42 million - they alone are just not able to influence the country's housing situation. (This number could actually be around 83,000 out of the 2.8 million non-permanent residents according to federal data, but the point stands.)
• Most TFWs live in employer-controlled housing anyway, and so are not even competing with the local populace on single-family homes, etc.
• Cutting the already small number of TFWs will have a negligible effect on the unemployment rate of immigrants in general, which is always higher than that among the general population due to systemic racism issues, accreditation of foreign qualifications, etc.
• Most TFWs are in agriculture, fisheries, domestic work, construction and care work, all of which are specifically excluded from the new announcement (because, for various reasons, we need them).
• TFWs, particularly during and after the pandemic, have been instrumental in keeping the Canadian economy's head above water.
• Reducing the numbers of TFW will not improve the living and working conditions they are suffering, conditions that a UN report recently called "a breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery".

Hmm. Food for thought.