Migrant Workers

The analysis of this chapter is about the migrant workers and we are going to focus on the Canada case, our guide text is a David Verbeeten article: The past and future of immigration in Canada.

Canada is a country with a rich immigration history, the lower population levels in this territory has always been a big concern for the canadian public authorities.

The author states an interesting definition of how the immigration dynamic works:"Immigration will as always, though, be the product of "push" and "pull' factors abroad and at home".

In the canadian case, during the nineteenth century the net migration inflows presented a negative rate, indeed for that time Canada was not an attractive target for the european migrants, Canada was perceived as a remote, cold and backward territory. There is no doubt that Canada did not have a strong pull factor to attract immigrants. Besides the canadian authorities had a declared preference for a certain kind of immigrants, people with the following features: white, Anglo-Saxon and protestant, that is, British or America. The policies did not help to settle the canadian territoty.

However this reality changed during the twentieth century, Canada had become an attractive and promising place to live. This transformation was the result of the progressive economic boom, almost all the economic sectors presented a high performance and a dynamic growth, so the canadian economy needed a bigger and qualified workforce to sustain this growth. Besides the previous fact the economic and political situation from overseas territories did not assure stability for the citizens, so these situation became push factors, it means these reasons encouraged people to immigrate to better destinies, in this case Canada.

Regarding the migration policies, the selecting criteria based on the race and religion was eliminated and replaced by a "point system", "which emphasized the skills, education and training of the independent immigrant". These measures were more consistent with the conditions and necessities of this period. Canada encouraged the immigration inflows through more flexible entry requirements, an example of this initiative is that canadian government eased the entry of dependents, family members and refugees in its intent to foster the family reunification. 

Nowadays Canada is still facing a migration challenge, because the migration trends have demonstrated that many immigrants return to their countries when those states obtained a certain development grade or a higher richness level. Also the migrant workers constantly move to those countries, where they can receive a higher payment for their jobs. So the dilemma that Canada faces could be summarized in this way:

Canada wants to have under control the immigration inflows in order to not damage the welfare system with the entry of "vulnerable" people, but at the same time the authorities should keep creating incentives or pull factors to not lose the qualified migrant workers and to avoid the brain drain of national citizens.

The proposed question for this topic is:

1. Do you think the point system in Canada is meant to protect the country's sovereignty? or is it just a deliberated form of discrimination? why?

I think the point system is a selecting method that defines which persons are the right immigrants according to the Canada's expectations. I think the country has the right to decide which people are going to live in the territory and off course the public authorities are going to show preference for those persons, who have professional skills because those are the persons who can contribute to the country's richness. I do not see this selecting method as a discrimination criteria because its rules and requirements are not so strict, indeed they allow the entry of many people, who perhaps do not have the educational background that the country would wish they have it. This is the case of dependents, family members or refugees in order to pursue the family reunification objective.

Image taken from: http://www.chinaexpat.com/blog/ernie/2008/12/22/china-s-ten-toughest-jobs.html