Immigration Laws: July, 2004 - Number #02

Canada: Professionals, Politics

Almost two-thirds of the professionals arriving in Canada under the point system are engineers, but many cannot get licenses to work as engineers. Two-year "provisional licenses" will be available to foreign-trained engineers that allow them to work as apprentice engineers. Many immigrant engineers complained that they faced a Catch 22 in Canada, since they were unable to get permanent licenses because they had no Canadian work experience, and unable to get that experience because their foreign degrees were not recognized by Canadian employers.

Toronto-area builders estimate there are 10,000 illegal foreign workers employed in the construction industry, and want the government to provide those in Canada at least five years with a legal status. Illegal foreign workers, many from Poland, Argentina, Brazil and Portugal, earn about half the usual C$30 an hour wage paid to legal workers; many report paying C$300 for a fraudulent Social Insurance Number in order to meet, or appear to meet, a requirement for hiring.

Canada has an estimated 600,000 Muslims, and critics say the government does not do enough to prevent the immigration and naturalization of terrorists. Algerian-born Ahmed Ressam was arrested in December 1999 trying to enter the United States from Canada in a car packed with explosives. Ressam ignored a Canadian deportation order and managed to obtain a Canadian passport.

Some 880 foreign women received work permits to be nude dancers in Canada in 2003. Two-thirds were Romanians with one-year work permits. Exotic dancers are considered a shortage occupation by Canada's Labor Department.

Politics. Liberal Party Prime Minister Paul Martin, who replaced Jean Chretien in December 2003, formed a minority government after elections on June 28, 2004. The key to the election was Ontario, the destination of half of Canada's immigrants, which has 106 seats in the 308-seat Parliament.

Immigration did not figure prominently in the campaign, although Martin repeated Liberal Party pledges made in 1993, 1997 and 2000 to increase Canada's population one percent a year by means of immigration. The New Democrats Party, expected to support the Liberal Party, has called for more family class immigration, legalization for unauthorized foreigners with roots in Canada, and abolishing the $975 head tax (Right of Landing Fee) imposed on all adult immigrants.

Canada's 10 provinces had a combined budget deficit of $4 billion in 2003, and many provincial governments responded by laying off employees in spring 2004, prompting strikes. Provincial finances began to suffer in the mid-1990's when the federal government generated budget surpluses largely by reducing revenue transfers to provincial governments for welfare, health care and education. The federal share of spending for Canada's health care system dropped from 40 percent to about 16 percent between the mid-1990s and 2003, while health care costs rose, prompting the complaint that "Canadians like to have European social services and American-style taxes, and the result is we have Canadian-style deficits."