{"id":9708,"date":"2014-05-11T19:10:47","date_gmt":"2014-05-11T11:10:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=9708"},"modified":"2014-05-12T02:08:13","modified_gmt":"2014-05-11T18:08:13","slug":"immigration-consultants-offer-to-pair-firms-with-temporary-foreign-workers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2014\/05\/11\/immigration-consultants-offer-to-pair-firms-with-temporary-foreign-workers\/","title":{"rendered":"Immigration consultants offer to pair firms with temporary foreign workers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"ShutterStock<\/a>
ShutterStock image<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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OTTAWA — Immigration consultants, many of them in Western Canada, are apparently now specializing in pairing up employers and temporary foreign workers.<\/p>\n

One online advertisement placed in several provinces even pledges to help temporary foreign workers find employers, instead of the other way around.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre you looking for an LMO (labour market opinion) employer?\u201d asks the ad placed by Edmonton-based Global Hire on Kijiji, the online classified advertising service.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have access to 800 LMO jobs right now. Also, I have the complete list of ALL companies with LMOs in Canada. Over 50,000 employers. Do you have friends and family who want to come to Canada to work? I can help.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sales pitch opposite of standard TFW procedure<\/strong><\/p>\n

The owner of Global Hire \u2014 which bills itself as \u201cforeign worker specialists\u201d \u2014 did not respond to requests for an interview.<\/p>\n

But the company\u2019s sales pitch turns on its head the standard procedure in place for companies to obtain temporary foreign workers under Ottawa\u2019s embattled program.<\/p>\n

Employers must first make an attempt to find qualified Canadian workers before applying for a labour market opinion \u2014 called an LMO \u2014 in order to hire someone from abroad, not turn to a bank of temporary foreign workers.<\/p>\n

Companies are required to place ads on the federal government\u2019s online job bank and prove they\u2019ve made other attempts to find Canadian employees.<\/p>\n

Critics of the procedure, however, charge that it\u2019s easy for a company to include bogus requirements in their job ads.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey just make up any type of stupid requirement with the goal of just being able to exclude Canadians,\u201d said Gilles Hudicourt, an Air Transat pilot who\u2019s become a vocal critic of the temporary foreign worker program.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe government has no way of verifying whether any Canadians applied. They have to take the company\u2019s word for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the company reports that no one applied, it can then apply for a temporary foreign worker.<\/p>\n

Feds vowed to take aim at \u2018crooked\u2019 immigration consultants<\/p>\n

Employment Minister Jason Kenney, who took aim against \u201ccrooked\u201d immigration consultants when he helmed the immigration department, is vowing to crack down on abusers of the temporary foreign workers program.<\/p>\n

A new slate of rule changes is expected to be announced soon, including greater auditing powers for federal inspectors as they hunt down abusers of the program.<\/p>\n

Other immigration consultants in the West are advertising similar services regarding temporary foreign workers on Kijiji and other job sites. Most didn\u2019t return calls from the media, or hung up when asked about the nature of their business.<\/p>\n

The temporary foreign workers program has ballooned from about 100,000 people in 2002 to as many as 338,000 now working across the country, undoubtedly making it an attractive business opportunity for immigration consultants.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can help your company with all the necessary paperwork and also the foreign worker recruitment process,\u201d reads one ad placed by a company in Red Deer, Alta.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe (can) help you find, qualified, hardworking individuals to fill your labour shortages.\u201d<\/p>\n

A quarter of a million temporary foreign workers were approved in 2013<\/p>\n

In 2013 alone, Ottawa approved approximately 240,000 temporary foreign workers.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of Canadian companies and governmental bodies employ temporary foreign workers, according to data compiled by Kenney\u2019s department. The program was originally designed to address shortages of skilled workers, not to recruit low-skilled help.<\/p>\n

The hot-button issue was once again in the spotlight on Friday as the NDP told the House of Commons that the number of temporary foreign workers in the manufacturing sector has doubled from 8,600 in 2006, when the Tories took office, to almost 17,000 in 2012.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy has there been such a staggering increase? Why is the government showing such clear incompetence?\u201d asked NDP House leader Peter Julian.<\/p>\n

The government answered with what has become its standard reply.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur government sent a strong message to employers that they must always give Canadians first crack at any available job,\u201d said Scott Armstrong, Kenney\u2019s parliamentary secretary, of Kenney\u2019s recent crackdown on the food services sector.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  OTTAWA — Immigration consultants, many of them in Western Canada, are apparently now specializing in pairing up employers and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":9793,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,6],"tags":[2584,2583],"class_list":["post-9708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ca","category-immigration","tag-temporary-foreign-workers","tag-tfw","mauthors-lee-anne-goodman","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}