cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/19930828
I don’t have an opinion on housing, but that’s not how job market works. The final decision to employ an immigrant ultimately comes down the HR & company. Saying that “immigrants took our job” is like loosing an auction and saying “they took your painting”
They tried that over here with Brexit. Those darned immigrants stealing our jobs (while also just living off benefits, of course). EU citizens were like, screw this. They left, suddenly farmers were faced with their produce rotting in the fields, because guess what? The Brits don’t actually want to do those jobs.
So what do you think happened next? They had to allow special visas to lure immigrants back in.
Meanwhile, the gammons were still raging that immigrants lower wages because they’ll work for less pay than UK citizens.
Yes, but if you facilitate access to foreign workers, let’s say with a “temporary foreign worker program”, like it is the case in Canada, companies will go after them first because they are cheap labor and are easy to abuse. Meanwhile, there are new graduates who struggle to find jobs.
It does not help canadians and it does not help foreigners. Sure, we can always blame the companies, but the government also has it’s part of responsibility by enabling this.
Okey let’s take a look what that program is, citation from Wikipedia :
Workers brought in under the program are referred to as Temporary Foreign Workers (TFWs) and are allowed to work in positions that are not filled by Canadians. The aim was to address skill shortages
It looks to me that the shortage was the reason why program was initiated. So from the information I have, it looks to me you have it backward.
And then you have companies displaying highly skilled job offers at minimum wage knowing nobody sane will apply. Then they claim that no canadian can be hired for their job and they need foreigners. They end up hiring foreigners for half the wage they would pay a canadian and exploit them all they want.
Foreigners are attractive because they don’t know their rights and their value and can easily be abused.
Sure, the program has been created because of a worker’s shortage, but now that jobs are scarce there is no reason to keep it up. --And that’s why the different governments are starting to say that it has to stop.
This year, the largest job fair in Montréal had the double of attendant they had last year. 8000 people looking for a job. Half of them were newly arrived, the other 50% were either jobless, already on the job market or recently graduated.