From the article - how's this for a winning strategy?
"The Ottawa bureaucrats are now discouraged, so they are starting to offload immigrant selection to provincial bureaucrats through a series of federal-provincial agreements."
Toronto doesn't need more immigrants, Canada shouldn't be foisting more of them upon that city when the city's leadership is clearly too incompetent attract employment.
Immigrants don't want to come to Canada, they want Toronto, Vancouver and a couple of other cities, that's it.
Philanthropist: More than that, it's not Canada many want to come to but rather their own well-defined communities with a higher standard of living (and usually at least some more freedom) than at home.
Mark
Ottawa
If Brampton, Mississauga, Surrey, Vancouver, and Toronto are not all examples of nightmarish multicultural dystopia, then I simply do not know what is.
I have an idea. Let's spend more money advertising for jobs where they are needed. Hire Canadians first. Immigrants are a band-aid solution, and a terrible short-term application to a long-term problem. Importing people to fill the job market and address our negative birth rate will only in the long term destroy the standard of living Canadians have come to enjoy because the new entrants are Chinese, Indian, or African. Not only do they not believe in cultural integration, their culture is so inherently different that you will end up with ghettoized communities that are an affront to Canadians.
Phil is right. We don't need more immigrants to the major cities. Vancouver is turning into China. Toronto has no cohesive cultural identity. Brampton and Mississauga have been annexed by Sikhs and Hindus who the take their agendas and religion into politics by electing MP's.
Continue down this path and watch Canada's Conservative Anglo-French European values destroyed, one Chinese immigrant after another.
"Welcome to Canada's two-tiered international talent search -- one driven by industry choices (temporary foreign workers), the other by government (economic immigrants). The industry-led program chooses specific people for specific jobs. The government program selects people who fit a profile developed by Ottawa labour market analysts that suggests their potential employability. It is not a stretch to guess which approach is more practical -- and successful..."
Why the hell can they not do this for the thousands of people who lay about on welfare? Why spend so much money on a system to assess immigrants, when we have a 5% potential labour force doing nothing right now? Not to mention the part-time and underemployed that reap the benefits of such a program FOR CANADIANS. I swear, it seems like the government is in power for THE people, just not it's own.
"Younger relatives might perhaps be given a slight preference but should also be able to demonstrate a good level of employability."
They should have to sign a declaration of integration, lol...
Currently it seems China is poised to annex East Vancouver...
Why not allow companies, both large and small, to import the workforce they believe they'll need?
Were such a proposal to be put on the table, then those employers would have to act in some capacity as "Immigration Canada" in that they'd be obliged to maintain the necessary documentation to prove where these workers come from, who they are, what they doing and how long they'll be staying in the country, etc.
Gov't could still maintain controle over the process by doing spot-checks of employers picked at random. If the worker-programme's documentation is not in order or if there are more workers on the shop floor than can be accounted for, then those employers should be fined and any illegal individuals escorted out of the country.
Of course, these guest workers would have to remain with the same employer for the duration of their temporary work permit. When that expires they should be given the choice, depending on how well they've behaved, of remaining in the country...to work for whomever they please.... or to return to their lands of origin.
There are many problemes here, though. Unions and leftists will scream about a privatisation of immigration services. Lefty opportunists will even attempt to paint the idea as a "loss of sovereignty".
However, the ultimate word still rests with gov't (our elected reps.) and SOME of the costs of the immigration systeme will be directly borne by private industry....the main benefactors of immigration.
If company "X" needs 200 labourers, then company "X" should share the costs ( paperwork, redtape, documentation etc) that ALWAYS accompanies the migration of manpower.
The role of gov't, and gov't HAS to have a role, should be reduced to unannounced spotchecks. That threat of an impromtu "inquisition" and the enormous economic consequences of any irregularities that might be found would keep the private sector on its toes while relieving the taxpayer of SOME of the financial burden that the present immigration policies place on them.
There are many, many ways to square the circle using different combinations and different degress of private vs public participation.
Provided, of course, the will is there to do it.
I went to Canada in 1997. I'm still at a loss to understand why more people of any background didn't move to any one of the Maritime provinces. Paradise.
The only reason any country needs immigration is for either defence purposes or for filling up skilled positions that the natives can't do. The first reason is obviously irrelevant. A more common sense approach to keeping temporary workers who've worked out is a better way to go.
You are forgetting that each summer Ontario alone, brings in over 25,000 seasonal workers to plant, cultivate, weed, and harvest our fruit, vegetable, and tobacco crop. These workers are primarily from the Caribean and Mexico. The reason (and a similar situation in B.C.) is there is no-one willing to do this work in Canada. Sort of explains the high unemployment in the Maritimes and squegee kids in Toronto and Ottawa.
Posted at 2006-11-07 11:05:07 [PermaLink]John P.
Your response is based on the premise of the inability of the government to manage a central immigration strategy but yet you think that through some magical reforming organizational force that:
"Gov't could still maintain controle over the process by doing spot-checks of employers picked at random. If the worker-programme's documentation is not in order or if there are more workers on the shop floor than can be accounted for, then those employers should be fined and any illegal individuals escorted out of the country. "
Putting the control into the hands of private enterprise will result in an efficient and profitable system with massive, unchecked, efficient, and profitable, loopholes. Expecting the government to somehow hold the reins of a decentralized system like this is about on par with expecting Jack Layton to be leading a majority government within the year.
Dara, I had no idea you were so enthusiastic about being taxed!
The private sector is the biggest beneficiary of the present systeme, yet you and I pay all the expense, whereas they make all the money.
Will there be abuses were the department overhauled? Of course, but probably less than at present.
The highway speed limit is 60MPH and most people stay within that limit even though there isn't a cop car on every corner.
Is it not the threat of an impromtu "spot-check" that keeps MOST motorists within the limit?
I see no other solution for the country's immigration systeme.....other than throwing (wasting?) billions more into costly and inefficient "controles".