'Selling Canada, one job at a time'

Guest post: In another special edition of the newsletter, Darshan Maharaja, independent writer and political analyst, shares his insights into what went so wrong with Canadian immigration, and why.

Despite reluctant, half-hearted claims from the Liberals that they’ll finally get to the problem they worked so hard to create, Canada continues to buckle and swell under a decade’s worth of immigration squeezed into just two-and-a-half years.

The pitfalls of the Liberals’ Punjabi caste system can indeed no longer be ignored, but when the Ponzi scheme now penetrates deep into the heart of fraudulent government-backed colleges, as well as major players in corporate Canada, change won’t come easy. Immigration Minister Marc Miller has been dragged kicking and screaming to his bedside conversion for a reason.

In fact, the numbers are so staggering, the doors blown so wide open, that even with the previous teasing of major changes for ‘diploma mill’ attendees and used and abused replacement labourers, Canada’s runaway non-permanent resident population grew by an astronomical, country-breaking sum *again* in Q2 of 2024.

A stunning 7.2% of Canada’s population, almost overnight, now belongs to foreign students (predominantly Indian males), and the TFWs who have helped youth unemployment reach record highs. However deliberate, and for whomever that serves, no part of that is sustainable. Either it ends, or Canada (eventually) ends.

Spend enough time in the weeds on this most remarkable of Liberal-provincial failures (special credit should be given to Ontario Premier Doug Ford and B.C. Premier David Eby, who haven’t just abdicated responsibility on ‘diploma mills’ and the betrayal of Canadian workers, they’ve directly supported it), and you’ve likely come across the dogged research and advocacy of one Darshan Maharaja.

One of the better follows on the ‘#cdnpoli’ scene, Darshan’s unique perspective on life as a first-generation immigrant, and his quest to help reform a system now doling out anything but the Canadian Dream, has made a tangible impact on Canadians’ understanding of this generational problem we’ve been now been forced to face, and his work has even inspired a major report from Bloomberg.

I’m thankful for his advocacy, and proud to showcase his writing here. If you enjoy this piece, kindly consider giving him a follow, and tossing us a like, comment, or share.

-Alex

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Selling Canada, one job at a time

By Darshan Maharaja

GREEN SHOOTS

The first time I heard about Canadian jobs being sold to prospective immigrants was in 2007 or 2008. I was talking to an immigration consultant. He told me that extra points were being awarded for permanent residency applicants if they had what was then called an ‘Arranged Employment Offer,’ or AEO for short. This had resulted in the birth of a thriving market for AEOs; the going rate at the time was around C$3,000. The curious part was that once an applicant received the permanent residency visa and arrived in Canada, the ‘employer’ was under no obligation to hire that immigrant.

It is easy, especially for myself as a first-generation immigrant, to hazard a guess as to the rationale for the policy of awarding extra points for AEOs. While the ‘points system’ recognized the overseas education and work experience of the applicant, the job market did not. This disconnect resulted in highly qualified immigrants scrambling desperately for unskilled jobs, of which also there wasn’t an overabundance of supply. In this scenario, it was thought, it would work better for the immigrant if they had lined up a job before arriving in Canada. As it turned out, this was wishful thinking. I have held for a long time that regardless of the stated objectives of a government policy, end-users will tend to utilize it for purposes that have absolutely nothing to do with those objectives. Particularly with the loophole available under which the ‘employer’ wasn’t obligated to hire the person to whom they were ‘offering’ employment, the scheme took no time to degenerate into a sham. Neither side was genuine in their stated intentions.

GROWTH SPURT

The next time I heard of the immigration stream being abused, and jobs being sold was in 2019. I remember this clearly as I was recording a talk show on a radio station in Mississauga at the time, and saw a three-part investigative report by one of the mainstream media outlets, describing in detail how the franchisees in British Columbia of a national-level fast food chain were selling Labour Market Impact Assessments (the reincarnated version of AEOs) for anywhere between $10,000 to $40,000. I spoke about this on my show. Keep in kind that this was well before Covid arrived. You guessed it – we were back at ‘stated objectives, unrelated uses.’

The Harper government, in its effort to resolve the obstacle that immigrants faced – in that their overseas education and work experience were not recognized in the Canadian job market – had expanded the study permit program, the logic being that if (younger) people come to Canada and acquire both these qualification in Canada, that would produce better outcomes. Alas, LMIAs started being sold to anxious would-be permanent residents in short order. As post-secondary institutions started receiving more students from overseas hoping to use the route of student-worker-PR, the demand pressure for LMIAs grew. Sadly, this was (and still is) one of the few economic activities in Canada where the free market was allowed to rule the roost.

Consequently, the price for LMIAs kept rising. However disconcerting it was to me, it was not at all surprising to learn that the price was in the tens of thousands of dollars by 2019.

CANOPY

If the rush for LMIAs had been mad in 2019, it became absolutely bonkers in the wake of the laissez-faire policy that the Trudeau government – and provincial governments – adopted, ostensibly, to deal with the labour shortages caused by Covid. I have not yet understood – nor has anyone offered to explain – as to why when it was too dangerous for Canadians to be working, it was perfectly acceptable to bring foreigners in to ‘fill the labour shortage’ that was caused because Canadians were ordered not to work. So much for our higher moral values. But I digress.

By the time the Covid restrictions were lifted, and international students could once again enter Canada, a veritable ecosystem had grown around the LMIA policy. Colleges ranging from those of doubtful provenance to those that barely pretend to exist, with agents abroad (primarily in India), and additional unofficial agents in the form of immigration consultants, were now operating in cahoots. The game was on, and they had rigged it in their favour.

Vague wording by the government and aggressive overstatements of the reality that was awaiting ‘students’ by the sellers convinced hundreds of thousands of (mostly) young people in India that if they managed to set foot on Canadian soil on any kind of visa, it was a guarantee that they would be able to secure permanent residency in Canada. But the crucial question is: who would be willing to pay money roughly equivalent to a king’s ransom just to move to another country?

The answer is this: people who aren’t already doing well in India. Those who see bright prospects for themselves at home have zero inclination to migrate to a foreign country. The Indian economy is increasingly performing well, so there are ample opportunities for the well-qualified (and the well-connected). The ones who are left behind, primarily because they don’t stand a chance of succeeding in that intensely competitive economy, see Canada as a place where they can achieve a good life. This is, of course, a mirage that they have been sold. But they are convinced — recruited — so the family liquidates whatever meagre assets they own (typically land), and even goes into hefty debt to send one child to Canada, in hopes that they would lift the family out of poverty – and into Canada.

These are the poor people who are being lured into our present-day fake dream. Of course, their excessive numbers are causing a host of other problems for Canadians, from housing and healthcare, to the availability of jobs and infrastructure, and everything in between. For all our collective frustrations, there are victims on both sides here, and the men in the middle have inflicted damage that we will be busy dealing with for decades to come.

Darshan Maharaja is a Canadian political analyst and writer. For more of his work, visit his website, or follow him on Twitter/X.

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