Immigrating to Canada has evolved profoundly over the last 20 years. And in the last 10 years, almost all the provinces and regions have realized the importance of immigration to their future, both economically and socially.
Several initiatives have been introduced by the Harper government including the somewhat controversial practice of taking in Temporary Foreign Workers to ease employers demand for labour in jobs they cannot find Canadians to fill.
It’s extremely difficult to measure the impact of an immigration or an integration policy because there’s so many compiling factors.
Concordia University now has the Centre for the Evaluation of Immigration Policies to look into what is working and why. Mireille Paquet, an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science is the co-founder of the centre. She says it was established because “we saw that there was a void in research.”
ListenMireille Paquet says they have watched an incredible growth in the Temporary Foreign Worker program in the last ten years. She says it is a tool of the federal government to have relationships with employers as an agent of immigration.
Effect of Temporary Foreign Workers
“It has effected immigration in two ways: first-off by maintaining a population with limited rights in Canada’s territory so people who may stay in the country for a limited period of time but are attached to an employer. One of the things we have noticed, or one of the things we have witnessed in the last couple of years with the growth of the program is that federal policy actually has changed and now some TFW’s are actually able to apply for permanent status in Canada which never was the case before. So with the growth of the program now some newcomers can apply to stay in Canada permanently”
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