💾 Archived View for zaibatsu.circumlunar.space › ~visiblink › phlog › 20200512 captured on 2022-01-08 at 13:44:46.
⬅️ Previous capture (2021-12-03)
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The Head Tax and the Temporary Foreign Worker Program Warning: political content Back in the nineteenth century, my home province, British Columbia, prohibited Chinese migrants from voting. The province also passed several laws intended to bar Chinese immigrants. Each time, the federal government disallowed the province's immigration laws, not because federal politicians opposed the laws in principle, but because they were protecting their jurisdiction and because low-cost Chinese labour was essential to the Canadian Pacific Railway project. As soon as the railway was completed, the federal government passed it's own anti-Chinese immigration legislation requiring Chinese migrants to pay a $50 head tax in order to enter the country. The tax was raised in 1903 to $500. Not surprisingly, aside from the Chinese, wealthy white people were the key opponents of the new law -- because they still wanted to be able to hire low-cost Chinese workers and house servants. Canadians like to think that all that's behind us and that we have a tolerant, multicultural, and cosmopolitan society. But that's not true. Canada still discriminates viciously against immigrant workers from impoverished countries. We have a 'temporary foreign worker' program. Temporary foreign workers are permitted to come to Canada and work for a specified period of time (often two years or less). Many are in what is called a "low-wage stream." The government and the businesses that rely on these workers contend that these are jobs that Canadians do not want. Of course, it would be more accurate to say that these are jobs that Canadians do not want at the wages offered. Employers argue that they cannot pay more and remain competitive. Yet they can't pay more because of the free trade agreements our government has entered into with low-wage trading partners and those with hidden subsidies. For me, the temporary foreign worker program is *the* issue in Canadian politics. I won't vote for any party that supports it. If you work in Canada, you should have the right to become a citizen of Canada. Full stop. You shouldn't be exploited because you're from a poor nation and probably have brown skin[1]. Those wealthy Canadians who opposed the head tax because they wanted to continue employing Chinese people at low wages would have loved the TFW program. And that tells me everything I need to know about it. We haven't really changed much at all. [1] See https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/services/foreign-workers/agricultural/seasonal-agricultural.html