PING!
Posted on 03/28/2006 1:21:07 PM PST by GMMAC
Immigration system is a mess
Toronto Sun
Tue, March 28, 2006
By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN, ASSOCIATE EDITOR
The ongoing controversy over deporting failed refugee claimants working in Toronto's construction industry is an example of the harm that occurs in society when flawed public policy interacts with private greed.
The policy is Canada's failed refugee system, which has been a mess for decades.
The greed can be found among some employers -- who are by no means confined to the construction trades -- who knowingly hire thousands of illegal refugees as a source of cheap, easily exploitable labour.
That's supposed to be a crime in this country subject to fines of up to $50,000 and two years in jail, but the law is rarely applied.
The root problem is our failed refugee system. In this latest controversy (actually an old controversy that keeps repeating itself) the construction sector claims that if all its undocumented workers were deported, the industry would grind to a halt. In other words, if it can't exploit what amounts to a black market in cheap labour, it will go belly up. Well, sorry, but that's not a good enough reason to ignore our laws. If there is a shortage of workers, the way to address that is through a functioning immigration system, not a failed refugee one. A second example of private greed that feeds off Canada's failure to develop a rational refugee system can be found in the unscrupulous immigration consultants and lawyers who lie to these workers (their "clients") by telling them Canada will allow them to stay if they file a refugee claim once their travel or visitor's permit expires.
What assists them in telling that lie is the huge backlog of refugee claims, which means it takes years to reject even claims that have no chance of succeeding. For example, where claimants come from a democratic country and it's obvious they're simply seeking a better economic life, rather than fleeing genuine persecution.
The root problem is our refugee process which allows up to 20 avenues of appeal, meaning it can easily be five to 10 years before the application is rejected, during which time these workers establish roots here, often marrying and having children.
The only permanent way to fix this mess is to develop a refugee system that rejects phony claims at the start and rules on any appeals within months, not years.
MPs from the defeated Liberal government, which had 12 years to address this issue and didn't, now claim they were just about to fix things when their government fell. Sure. Just like they were about to implement a national daycare program, supply clean water to all native reserves and crack down on gun-toting criminals. What utter nonsense!
The Liberals weren't going to fix the refugee system. They were going to give undocumented construction workers an amnesty in all but name, which would have been grossly irresponsible and totally unfair to legal immigrants. Beyond that, using a failed refugee process to try to meet labour market needs is not only unworkable, it's insane.
Many supporters of these workers who are now arguing the refugee system was unfair to their clients because it allowed them to stay here for years without giving them a ruling on their status, are the same people who dragged out that process at every available opportunity. Talk about hypocrisy!
And while we're on the subject of hypocrites, contrary to Liberal fear-mongering, these deportations do not represent a crackdown by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservatives. All they are doing is starting to enforce, tentatively, the rules the Liberals ignored. The Liberals are blaming the Conservatives for a mess they left behind. It's not the first time. It won't be the last.
PING!
What's amazing is that there were no mentions of illegal immigration on any political platform...I am sure in the next election the Liberals will run on giving them amnesty...
I had thought that it referred to the contents of the article and that was surprising as Lorrie Goldstein is not known for liberal whining. Indeed, we cannot accuse Lorrie of indulging in liberal anything, or in whining.
But on reading the article, it appears that you are referring to the usual song and dance that enforcing the law on using illegal immigrants would cause harm to the construction industry.
The Liberals and the liberals will look for any excuse to keep the border wide open. The Liberals work on the premis that immigrants vote Liberal. The liberals (lower case) just want to hug the whole world with no concern for reality.
Perhaps the NDP ought to realize that using illegals in the construction trades is undermining the unions that have been providing them with so much funding.
OTOH, there seems to be a bit of a divergence developing between organized labour and the NDP.
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I have thought that perhaps FR ought to provide for a subheading.
That way we could insert the publication's original main headline untouched and use the subheading space at our option to either insert the original publication's subheading or insert our own.
I usually tick the Canada box when the topic is Canadian or the commentator is Canadian. I have a problem with Zimbabwe stories because there is no Zimbabwe box or even an Africa box, so I usually lead the title with a reference to Zimbabwe.
Possibly OT: I would also like to see a "Military" or "Armed Forces" subject box as they are central to so many stories. Of course, I always check the foreign affairs box on military stories because armed force has necessarily to to with international affairs ("war is diplomacy by other means")
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