By: Phone Min Thant, Staff Writer
The government of Canada is no stranger to using immigration to exploit foreign labour and distract from the source of the country’s domestic woes. They have done it again with the new year’s changes to the Express Entry system. Since 2015, Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has relied on the Express Entry program to sort out so-called “skilled workers” who wish to immigrate to the country and attain a permanent residency (PR) status. This system pools together applicants and ranks them according to a “points-based system” which looks at criteria including “skills, education, language ability, work experience.” The newest changes, however, reflect the neocolonial nature of the Canadian labour market and ignore the real cause of these shortages in the first place. Neocolonialism is the current continuation of colonialism’s violence, only repackaged and strategically unassuming.
Just three weeks ago, IRCC announced changes to the program. The Express Entry draw now focuses on getting more workers in the education sector, scrapping the transport category, and adding new roles in social and healthcare services. There is also a larger emphasis on trade jobs such as contractors. Outside of these specific categories, the changes also reflect a strive towards having more French language users in the workforce. In announcing these changes, Canada’s immigration minister, Marc Miller said, “Canada’s Express Entry system is evolving to meet the country’s changing needs. By addressing labour shortages, strengthening our economy, and increasing Francophone immigration, we are building a more dynamic workforce with workers and professionals from in-demand fields.”
Unannounced, however, were the implications of these changes. Why Canada needs more immigrant workers in the education sector is a mirror image of why the sector is facing shortages in the first place. From extremely unbalanced teacher-student ratios to lengthy procedures in getting certifications to teach the K–12 curriculum, Canadian teachers face burdensome work conditions that make education an increasingly unattractive career path. Then, there is the issue of money. Canadian teachers, on average, earn only “slightly above” the average wage earned by other jobs that require similar training. Even Alberta — the province that boasts the highest salaries for teachers — has not given any raise to this salary in close to 10 years. The pay for Canadian teachers remains well below their living expenses.
With rosy promises of work permits and PR, the government is perpetuating neocolonialism by introducing immigrant labour only when they need it.
Similar problems also plague healthcare and social workers. From BC to PEI, a shortage of social workers have followed issues of burnout and stress caused by the scale of social issues these workers face today, many of which are a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, cities like Regina and Winnipeg saw healthcare workers leading strikes for better pay last year. It’s no wonder all these jobs are facing shortages in Canada.
Instead of solving the root causes of the shortage — or even the mere offering of a mundane, lip-service acknowledgement — the government’s quick fix is to put the same burden (and more) on the backs of immigrants. With rosy promises of work permits and PR, the government is perpetuating neocolonialism by introducing immigrant labour only when they need it.
In theory, the Express Entry program emphasizes merit — skills, experience, and abilities are the only criteria upon which candidates are judged, without any references to ethnicity, race, and nationality. However, regular changes to the system show that the job sector needs of Canadians trump any objective measure of immigrants’ skills and talents. In addition, the guarantee of permanent residency essentially traps these skilled immigrants in sectors that are low-paying, with stressful conditions, restricting success of livelihood and social mobility. This is proven by significant rates of poverty among recently-arrived immigrants and racialized minority communities. The journey to becoming a permanent resident also comes with being a part of the largest community living below the poverty line.
It’s time we realize that immigrant workforces cushion Canada’s problems by carrying them instead of the government. Far from opportunities, the changes to the Express Entry program serve to highlight the neocolonial structures still in place in the Canadian immigration apparatus. This not only distracts the Canadian government from solving its domestic problems, but also sets up thousands of immigrants to work in the same burdensome positions that Canadians are leaving.
