Weeks after the clock ran out for thousands of temporary foreign workers in low-skilled jobs, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said that, under his leadership, Canada will not have a “permanent underclass” of workers who stay in the country “forever” with no path to citizenship.
Harper was asked about the temporary foreign worker program during a joint news conference Friday with Philippine President Benigno Aquino, who is on an official visit to Canada.
Harper said his government is “pro-immigration” and it has welcomed a growing number of immigrants and temporary workers from the Philippines over the years.
But he said Ottawa must also make sure that immigrants are not filling jobs for which Canadians could be hired.
“We are making sure that when people come to this country to work and to work long-term, they have the ability to move towards being permanent citizens of this country,” Harper said.
“This country is not going to have a policy, as long as I’m prime minister, where we will have a permanent underclass of people who are so-called ‘temporary’ but here forever with no rights of citizenship and no rights of mobility.”
In 2011, the Conservative government set an April 1, 2015 deadline for temporary foreign workers in low-skilled jobs to either become permanent residents or return home.
Although Ottawa has not revealed how many of those workers would eventually be forced to leave Canada, immigration experts and advocacy groups have said that tens of thousands will be affected, including people from the Philippines.
Aquino told reporters Friday that it is his understanding that most of the Filipino workers in Canada have skilled jobs and are unaffected by the April 1 deadline.
That wasn’t the case for Mario Reyes, a Filipino man who told The Canadian Press last month that he had exhausted his options in Canada after working as a low-skilled temporary foreign worker in Alberta for years.
Harper said Friday that he expects immigration from the Philippines to increase. And Aquino said the large Filipino community in Canada wouldn’t exist if “they weren’t happy or if they were so filled with anxiety.”
