Warum das Programm für befristete ausländische Arbeitnehmer abgeschafft werden muss
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-why-the-temporary-foreign-worker-program-needs-to-be-eliminated/
Warum das Programm für befristete ausländische Arbeitnehmer abgeschafft werden muss
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-why-the-temporary-foreign-worker-program-needs-to-be-eliminated/
3 Kommentare
Article is behind a paywall.
But to address the topic – I work with a number of farms, they’d love to hire local people to work the farms.
But nobody applies.
Canadians do not want to do the work.
So they bring in TFWs to do the job Canadians don’t want.
Removing that program would not end in locals getting hired.
Good money to do the work.. Just no interest.
The abstract for the author’s article in the Canadian Journal of Economics is, itself, quite damning:
> Temporary foreign worker (TFW) programs have grown considerably in size when uncapped. We develop a simple efficiency-wage model to explain this phenomenon and examine the empirical evidence for it. We also use the model to evaluate the implications of TFW programs for domestic workers. In our framework, firms that have been unable to find domestic workers may hire TFWs at the wage previously advertised to domestic workers. Due to the lower outside option for TFWs than domestic workers, TFWs will exert more effort for the same wage. **Firms would thus prefer to hire otherwise identical TFWs rather than domestic workers. Our model identifies an unintended consequence of a TFW program: since the repercussions of a failed domestic job search are less severe if a TFW may be hired instead, firms have an incentive to lower their wage offers made to domestic workers.** Using Canadian data, we find that, relative to domestic workers, TFWs work longer hours, have lower rates of absenteeism and are less likely to be laid off, consistent with higher effort in our model. Moreover, for TFWs from home countries with a relatively high outside option, effort is lower than for TFWs from other countries.
https://doi.org/10.1111/caje.12449
Worswick highlights this in the opinion piece:
> **The TFW program can not only slow wage growth, but may actually cause wages to fall.** Employers should anticipate the higher work intensity of temporary foreign workers and **offer a lower wage when initially advertising the job to Canadians, because failing to fill the position means they can hire a temporary foreign worker yielding higher expected profits for the firm.** Our theoretical analysis also predicts a higher unemployment rate in the presence of a TFW program, which is especially worrisome as the Canadian economic outlook worsens.
This unfortunately doesn’t examine what appears to be the main effect of the current policy, of [limiting LMIA applications to „high- wage“ positions](https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/services/foreign-workers/median-wage.html): Disingenuous advertisements by employers, with the expectations of illegal kickbacks by the employees or other questionable forms of cost recovery.
Otherwise we are led to believe that the going wage to hire a [pizzeria manager in Kamloops](https://web.archive.org/web/20250914041939/https://www.jobbank.gc.ca/jobsearch/jobpostingtfw/44990593) is $36.60/hour, despite requiring virtually no experience. If such wages were genuinely offered, one might see a broader rise in the average wages of restaurant workers. Yet that doesn’t seem to be happening which, to me, affirms Worswick’s claim that the TFW program is still causing wage stagnation.
TFW program needs to go, but it won’t have much of an impact if the IMP and international student program are still going.
We need to severely reduce all forms of temporary foreign workers. Canadians should not have to compete with the world for their local jobs.