Revision as of 18:10, 28 October 2015

2000-13: High immigration--followed by tight restrictions

Canada follows US, makes work visa difficult

Effective July, employers in Canada will have to pay $275 as processing fee for each application that they file to bring in a foreign worker.

Shilpa Phadnis, TNN | Aug 13, 2013

The Times of India The Times of India

BANGALORE: The decade 2003-2012 has seen a phenomenal increase in the number of Indians working in Canada, the highest amongst any single nationality.

Like the US, Canada too is tightening its temporary foreign worker program (TFWP) that allows foreign nationals to work in Canada for short periods. The effort, as Rakesh Prabhu, partner-immigration practice in ALMT Legal, says, is to improve employment opportunities for its locals.

Employers have to fill a new questionnaire that tries to figure out whether a firm is seeking to replace existing Canadian workers. Employers must advertise for the position locally three months before the application for bringing a foreign worker is filed, and the advertisement must run for four weeks compared to two weeks previously.

The latest restrictions follow a decision in April to end a provision that allowed employers to pay foreign workers as much as 15% less than the average Canadian wage for a job.

Sajan Poovayya, managing partner in law firm Poovayya & Co, said the changes would have an impact on the Indian workforce movement to Canada. "Companies in India will find it harder to use this route to ship personnel on temporary IT assignments. There will be cost over runs and time delays in sending workforce to that country. The Canadian government's decision to insist on employers who rely on temporary foreign workers to have a firm plan in place to transition to a Canadian workforce over time, will make the whole programme unattractive to Indian technology players," he said.

Canada's move comes shortly after the backlash that followed when the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) outsourced its IT services to iGate, which then replaced RBC's IT employees with foreign workers. It also comes after a ten-year period (2003 to 2012) that saw the number of Indian workers in Canada grow a whopping 730%, making them the fastest-growing foreign worker community in that country. The number of Indian foreign workers rose from 2,686 in 2003 to 22,281 in 2012, said a report by Canada Facts and Figures 2012. The French were a distant second with a growth of 332% to 18,961 workers, followed by Filipinos, who grew 280% to 23,683.

2015: Liberal win in Canada

The Times of India, Oct 21 2015

Ikhhlaq Aujla

 Liberals sweep Canada polls with Punjabi help

A painful chapter in the history of Punjabi migration is the Komagata Maru episode when a shipload of Punjabis was stopped from landing in Canada in 1914 and sent back from Vancouver.Harsh immigration laws had ensured that only 24 of the 376 people on board disembarked.As the rest returned to the Calcutta port, the British fired at them, killing 19. A little over 100 years later, exactly 19 Canadians of In dian origin were elected to the Canadian parliament.

This is the highest ever representation of MPs with Indian roots in the House of Commons in Canada. As many as 17 are of Punjabi ori gin. In 2011, only eight Indianorigin MPs were elected to the House of Commons, all of whom were Punjabis.

The result was historic in more ways than one for Canada as the Justin Trudeau-led Liberals ended nearly 10 years of Conservative party rule. Fifteen or 8.15% of his 184 MPs are Punjabis. IndianCanadians make up over 3% of Canada's population of about 35 million.

The role of Punjabis is important as it helped the Liberals get past the 170-mark needed for a simple majority .

Among sitting MPs, Con servative Deepak Obhrai from Calgary Forest Lawn in Alberta was the only Punjabi-origin candidate to retain his seat.The losers included multiculturalism minister Tim Uppal, who lost to Amarjit Sohi of the Liberals by a mere 80 votes.

Sohi was arrested in 1988 in Bihar under TADA for alleged links with Naxals and released in 1990 on court orders. This victory is about in clusion, cohesiveness, where we build strong communities,“ Amarjit Sohi of the Liberals told a daily .“Canada is where someone like me can come from somewhere else, build a new life, raise my family and contribute back so immensely.“

“I have a strong record both as a representative of the constituency as well as working in government, and in the opposition, over the years I have been in Parliament,“ Deepak Obhrai, who won a seventh term, told the Calgary Sun. Compared to the 24 candidates of Punjabi-origin in the previous general elections in 2011, this time 43 were in the fray, including one independent. There were 11 constituencies where at least two of the candidates put up by the Liberals, Conservatives or NDP were of Punjabi origin.

In the 2011 polls, there wasn't a single Punjabi-origin candidate of the Liberal party who made it to parliament.From just 36 in 2011, Liberals have 184 MPs in a house of 338 this time.