Temporary foreign workers first to suffer layoffs

The Canadian Press. Sun. Feb. 8 2009


CALGARY — Since the economy began unravelling last fall, Thomas has been
getting fewer shifts at the manufacturing company where he works. The
plant was shut down all of last week, and now Thomas and some of his
co-workers are worried they may soon have no job at all.


“We used to send money back home to our families and now we don’t even
have money to support ourselves here,” he said in Spanish through a
translator. He did not want his last name used because he is worried about
getting into trouble with his employer. Alberta businesses once struggled
with an acute labour shortage, with companies scrambling to find both
skilled and unskilled workers. Many of those firms started recruiting from
overseas in order to fill the gap.

In 2007, there were 37,527 temporary foreign workers in Alberta, according
to the most recent government data.

Now with the energy boom rapidly going bust, there is simply no longer a
need for all of that extra manpower. The temporary foreign workers are
usually the first to go, in order to ensure Canadian jobs are protected.

“The sky has started to fall on all construction workers in Alberta, but
it’s fallen first and fastest on the temporary foreign workers. There’s no
doubt,” said Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour.

If a company wants to hire workers from abroad, it must apply for what’s
called a labour market opinion to Human Resources and Skills Development
Canada.

The government must decide, among other things, whether the employer has
done enough to hire workers from within Canada and whether there is, in
fact, a labour shortage.

If the company is given the go-ahead, the prospective employee can then
apply for a work permit, which lasts two or three years, to Citizenship
and Immigration Canada.

If temporary workers are laid off before their work permit comes to an
end, their options are limited.

Some can find another employer that has permission to hire foreign workers
and apply for a whole new work permit, but that process can take up to
three or four months.

“It’s not like Canadians where they lose their job today, if an employer
wants to hire them they can get it started tomorrow,” said Ramazan
Nassery, who helps newcomers at the YMCA in Fort McMurray, Alta., which
saw an influx of foreign workers at the height of the oilsands boom.

“These people cannot survive in the city of Fort McMurray because the rent
for one bedroom is $1,000 to $1,200.”

The Centre for Newcomers in Calgary has been hearing from a lot of anxious
temporary foreign workers since the Alberta economy started to go
downhill, said Renato Abanto, who co-ordinates the centre’s temporary
foreign worker settlement program.

“They don’t have a source of income. They cannot pay the rent. They don’t
have food, so sometimes what we do is we refer them to the food bank or
some housing agencies,” Abanto said.

Wendy Fehr, communications co-ordinator of Immigration Services Calgary,
said about a quarter of the people her centre deals with have been laid
off.

“Sometimes family at home are sending money here, which is completely
defeating the purpose of them being here,” she said. “It’s a very sad
situation for a lot of people.”

Some workers are simply cutting their losses and going back home.

Under the temporary foreign worker program, employers are required to pay
the plane fare home for unskilled labourers who have been let go.

But for the skilled engineers, designers and other professions, who often
have more options, it’s more of a grey area, said Evelyn Ackah, a business
immigration lawyer for Fraser Milner Casgrain.

“Their employer has no obligation to send them back home. Usually
employers will figure out a way to make it up to them, because they’ve
given up other things, they’ve moved countries,” she said.

“There’s a balance where I feel that employers have to be ethical around
how they treat their foreign workers, so that we don’t get a bad
reputation in the international marketplace.”

Nelson Molina came from Venezuela, major oil exporting country, with his
family two years ago on a three-year temporary permit. The long-time
engineer with heavy oil experience bought a house with the intention of
making Calgary his permanent home.

Molina was laid off from his job at Jacobs and Company Ltd. about a month
and a half ago, and said he has been trying to keep a positive attitude
about his prospects.

“When this situation occurs, I know that this is the action for the
company. They have to lay off the people because they can’t have people
working without contracts,” he said.

Molina has applied to stay in Canada as a permanent resident and is
waiting to hear back. There is a possibility he may be able to find work
in Houston, Saudi Arabia or elsewhere, but Calgary is his first choice.

“The other options are outside the country, but of course I prefer to stay
here because my family’s here and I prefer to stay with them.”

Molina qualifies for employment insurance because he has been working
steadily for two years. But many temporary foreign workers in
lesser-skilled jobs have no worked enough hours to be eligible.

“The way EI is set out, in most cases temporary foreign workers don’t
qualify for it, but they still pay into it,” said Fehr, with Immigration
Services Calgary.

“If they could access those more easily, than I think that would be
something that would really help alleviate the situation.”

The Centre for Newcomers’ Abanto said he would like to see the government
make the work permits more flexible, so that TFWs do not have to apply for
a whole new one if they lose their job.

“Maybe we can provide open work permits. It means that when they come
here, they can work with anybody under any industry as long as they’re
qualified.”


**********



Changes to citizenship laws limit ability to pass Canadian status to those born outside Canada,
critics say

*** For more info visit Canadian Council for Refugees backgrounder:
http://www.ccrweb.ca/documents/citizenship09.htm

Globe and Mail. GLORIA GALLOWAY. February 3, 2009


OTTAWA — Expatriate Canadians say their children who have been born abroad
are being denied the full rights of citizenship under rules that come into
effect in April. Canadians who give birth or adopt in another country will
be able to pass along their citizenship to their children. But those
foreign-born children of Canadians will not be able to bestow that same
citizenship on their own children should they also decide to adopt or give
birth outside Canada.

A spokesman for Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said the minister has
heard from parents who fear that the new law will limit the options of
their children adopted abroad. He is aware “of these concerns, and is
seized of the matter,” Alykhan Velshi said. “Last week, he asked his
officials to review this aspect of the legislation.”

But there do not seem to be similar plans to review the rules that will
affect, retroactively, the many people born to Canadians working in
foreign countries.

“Hundreds of thousands of Canadians will be affected by these rules. These
people may be working or volunteering abroad temporarily,” Allan Nichols,
the executive director of the Canadian Expat Association, said in an
e-mail.

“My own children will be affected,” wrote Mr. Nichols, whose son and
daughter were born outside of Nagoya, Japan, where he was working as a
consolidator for a travel agency. “They were born abroad, but, of course,
live in Canada. As bilingual (English-Japanese) children they hope to work
in international trade in the future. Do I honestly need to tell them that
if they have kids while working abroad, they will not be Canadian?”

The new regulations were released in December, after changes to the
Citizenship Act were passed into law last spring. Exemptions have been
extended for the children of Canadian diplomats and military personnel.

But those who have taken jobs overseas with multinational corporations,
for instance, or have gone to another country to teach or work with aid
groups, will be affected.

Robin Pascoe of Vancouver, who advocates for the interests of Canadian
expatriates, said the new regulations will affect Canada’s competitiveness
in the global economy.

“There is a mobile Canadian work force. And it’s not a small number of
people who are going to feel the long-term effects of this,” Ms. Pascoe
said.

In introducing the changes to the Citizenship Act, the government was
trying to prevent foreign-born nationals from coming to Canada, obtaining
citizenship, then returning to their country of origin and passing along
citizenship endlessly from generation to generation.

But federal officials acknowledge they did not contemplate all of the
ramifications when they crafted the legislation.

Janet Dench, executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees, said
her group is concerned about people born Canadian citizens in another
country - or adopted as Canadian citizens abroad - whose main or only
meaningful tie to a country is to Canada.

The new rules, said Ms. Dench “leads to the risk of children of Canadian
citizens being stateless.” Some countries do not automatically grant
citizenship to children born within their borders.

Douglas Kellam, a spokesman for the Immigration Department, said that
can’t happen because Canada has signed an international treaty that means
it doesn’t have rules that could lead to statelessness.

“Potential stateless cases may be eligible to be sponsored in the family
class for permanent residence,” Mr. Kellam said. “As soon as a minor child
of a Canadian citizen becomes a permanent resident, the parent could
immediately apply for a grant of citizenship on behalf of the child.”

A child born to a Canadian citizen who ends up stateless as a result of
the new law could also apply for citizenship if they are under 23 and have
resided in Canada for at least three of the four years immediately before
they make that application.

*****

CANADA’S RULES: SCENARIOS

A girl is adopted in China by Canadian parents and then raised in Canada.
She returns to China as an adult and marries a Chinese man. She cannot
pass along her Canadian citizenship to her children.

A boy is born in the United States to Canadian parents who teach at a
university. He returns with his family to Canada, where he grows up. Like
his parents, he also goes abroad to teach as an adult. He marries a woman
who teaches at the same university in France. His children are not
eligible for Canadian citizenship.

A girl is born to Canadian parents who have moved to Kuwait, where her
mother works for a Canadian petroleum company. She is granted Canadian
citizenship because her parents are Canadian. But Kuwait does not grant
citizenship to children just because they are born in that country. When
the girl grows up and has a child of her own in Kuwait, that baby is
neither Canadian nor Kuwaiti.

Gloria Galloway

THE WORLD’S RULES: OTHER STRATEGIES

Children born to Australians outside of Australia must be registered to
become Australian citizens, but the granting of citizenship is basically
automatic. The second generation of children born outside Australia can be
registered as Australian only if one of their parents is Australian and
has lived for a cumulative period of two years inside Australia.

Children born to British citizens while they are outside the United
Kingdom will be considered British citizens by descent, but they cannot
pass along their citizenship to their own children born abroad.


Children born to American parents abroad can become citizens if both
parents are American and at least one of the parents lived in the United
States before the birth. If only one parent is American, the citizenship
can be passed to the children if that parent lived in the United States
for five years before the birth and at least two of those years occurred
after the parent turned 14.