[BurlOak]

From an economic standpoint, it makes total sense that an Irish worker with trades skills remains part of a revolving door system of temporary foreign workers with no recourse to permanent residency and benefits. They are skilled labourers, to be sure, but it's not like their skills are so specialized and remote that either their employer or the Canadian government should jump through hoops to secure permanent residency for them. Once an Irish plumber's visa expires, there are thousands of other plumbers from Ireland (or other countries) that would jump at a chance for a spot, and they can be easily found and hired.

If you're going to make an emotionless economic dollars-and-cents argument for why families of immigrants shouldn't be brought over (which is not based on any evidence), you should at least be consistent. From an emotionless economic dollars-and-cents POV, you should be perfectly comfortable with an Irish trades worker having no access to permanent residency.

It is clear that you judge immigrants of different countries differently. You care for the social and emotional well-being of Irish immigrants, but strictly the economic interests of Canada when it comes to immigrants of other countries. You have a double standard.

I think the arguement is that if the Irish worker has accumulated a certain amount of savings - then that money would be better kept in Canada and spent on Canadian products (such as housing). The alternative is to have whatever savings are accumulated in the short time frame brought back to Ireland and repeated with each subsequant worker. So I would say it is an economical arguement on why skilled workers should be granted residency.

The only economic arguement to the family re-unification is that Canada is such a poor country that is far from a desired destination that the only way we can attract any immigrants of reasonble quality is to also promise their aging relatives costly benefits and citizenship.

 

[Peepers]

The only economic arguement to the family re-unification is that Canada is such a poor country that is far from a desired destination that the only way we can attract any immigrants of reasonble quality is to also promise their aging relatives costly benefits and citizenship.

You're right. This is the only argument put forward to support family re-unification. The argument is that Canada is such an undesirable place to live that the only way that we can attract the top-notch talent is to allow immigrants to bring their entire family to Canada. I don't buy this argument. I think that we could attract many productive immigrants who have no interest whatsoever in bringing their parents and grandparents with them.

Take for example the Irish lads mentioned above who are having trouble getting permanent residency - essentially being treated as guest workers. I doubt that they are looking to bring mom, dad, grandma and grandpa over to Canada. Likewise immigrants from the U.S. are not likely to want to bring their entire family with them. I have read stories about young American professionals who have been stymied in trying gain permanent residency. Even on this forum we have had American forumers who have either been denied residency in Canada or had to jump through an inordinate number of hoops to get in.

 

[Hipster Duck]

I think the arguement is that if the Irish worker has accumulated a certain amount of savings - then that money would be better kept in Canada and spent on Canadian products (such as housing). The alternative is to have whatever savings are accumulated in the short time frame brought back to Ireland and repeated with each subsequant worker.

But they do that anyway in the current, temporary system. Irish labourer #1 lands in Canada and works from 2011-2013, during which time he consumes housing, food and other staples in Canada. He leaves, but he is replaced by Irish labourer #2 that consumes these things in exactly the same way from 2013-2015; then Irish labourer #3 takes over from him. In a strict economic sense, this is effectively one person consuming and producing goods and services within Canada in perpetuity, even if it's not the same person and that person suffers emotional and social loss (which is externalized out of Canada when that person leaves).

They bring back savings to Ireland, yes, but they also bring some of their savings here at the beginning when they need to establish a life without a first paycheck. The temporary foreign worker status also guarantees that they don't cost Canadian society money in the form of used benefits. Even more economically advantageous is that this system is a better fit of labour skills to economic realities. If we experience a downturn in construction in 2015, we just let labourer #2 go back to Ireland and don't hire labourer #3. Problem solved. The certainty of labour to exactly meet the needs of the market is actually much more valuable to our country than the lost opportunity from an immigrant settling here and remaining productive (which is not certain). A perfectly mobile labour market is a neo-classical economist's wet dream!

Look, I'm not saying I advocate this, but if Peepers wants to rationalize certain immigrants in dollars-and-cents terms he should at least apply this reasoning to everyone.

 

[nfitz]

Why does it matter if they are Irish, or from Niger?