This whole business of

This whole business of 'guest workers' is down right shamefull. Our two governments show their true colours; pimps for companies who allow abuse to their guest workers.

temporary foreign workers

We do not need temporary foreign workers. What we need is politicians who listen to the people rather than paid organizations that speak for the farm owners. A few years ago I tried to get a job blueberry picking. I was featured in the Province (front page) over this issue and not one farmer or agency called me to work. We have tens of thousands of people who are citizens of BC that need temporary work and yet they can't get it. What in hell is wrong out there.

Is this "News" or "Opinion" ?

So, 175,000 TEMPORARY workers come in and work for fixed periods of time, then, once here they want to "jump the cue" and stay, ahead of other prospective immigrants who are following due process and are being screened for suitability?
Adding an entirely DIFFERENT issue of work abuse doesn't make cue-jumping RIGHT.
Seems to me that the big, bad government is bringing in legislation that is ENFORCEABLE rather than some knee-jerk reactionary stuff that looks good on paper but is impossible to enact in practical terms.
I know "advocates" are really big on symbolism these days, but I'll take practical, enforceable solutions, thanks.

Everyone who stands still for it...

"We have tens of thousands of people who are citizens of BC that need temporary work and yet they can't get it. What in hell is wrong out there."

Did bourgeois democracy actually work for the working class, and were trade unions/ the labour movement actually effective and not in the hip pocket of the system and its ruling class, all workers would be paid decent and actually livable wages, and guaranteed health, retirement and other benefits. Or there would be a rising of the working class already underway now. But all are corrupted and/or sucking the dry tit of the so-called "free market", and/or of a slave mindset.

The moral code of capitalism that it is every man, woman and child for his or herself it the ruling ideology and morality, for all the fine words dripping with hypocrisy from time to time, from those who serve the system.(Politicians and the various priesthoods, including that of Big Labour.)

But then, of course, our own poor would then be won to "picking our table crops" and the foreign workers would have absolutely no value to the ruling class. They are here, whether they know it or not in their own desperation, to act as a low wage threat to domestic/home labour.

And I don't really blame these foreign folks, though neither do I feel any particular respect for them, for they have to know why they are here and the role they are serving, at some level. (But then, neither do we give a particular rat's ass for what is happening to them in their countries either. The working class has lost its sense of Solidarity, international or at home.) They're being used in this way is just the way capitalism works. It's a criminal system that uses and abuses everyone who will stand still for it.

Queue-jumpers and the temporization of workers

As an immigration lawyer, I can confirm that the "queue-jumping" rhetoric used by anti-immigration interest groups doesn't exist. There isn't a big line of people waiting for permanent resident status that you can just barge into; people apply under various classes, and their applications are considered according to the resources available. If the processing time is 18 months, then it will take 18 months. Certainly, if you're fortunate enough to be rich, then you can possibly apply under the Investor class (where the processing times are shorter) but other than that, you just have to wait like everyone else, whether you're in Canada or not.

In my opinion, temporary workers should always have a means to apply for permanent resident status. Right now most low-skilled workers don't have many -- or any -- options, and have to keep rolling over their temporary status hoping for a chance to find an employer that is willing to lay out thousands of dollars to keep them around -- and even then there's no guarantee. The proposed changes to temporary worker status presently being discussed by the Federal government will operate to ensure that low-skilled workers will be even more tempted to just go "underground", because the proposed cap of four years on temporary worker status won't be coming with a way for people to become permanent if that's what they want. You would have to work pretty hard not to see this as a deliberate attempt to drive low-skilled workers out of status and into the abusive and manipulative hands of unscrupulous employers. For what other reason would you single out low-skilled workers for such unfair treatment?

cboo44

And what do you mean by "suitability"? About the only reason we don't want these people as citizens is because we'd then have to pay them as citizens, instead of "guest workers".

Guest workers? My ass!

These are not guests, people! They are scabs, pure and simple. They may not realize that they are scabs, by taking Canadians' jobs, but they are. They are not taking jobs Canadians won't do, for in my long years of work experience, I have found that there is no job Canadians are unwilling to do. We just want to be paid a liveable wage for doing them. (We're funny that way.) Our heating bills are higher here; cost of living is higher. We resent being laid off while some 3rd world workers come here and take our jobs, (or take jobs at lower rates of pay to undermine our wages). These scabs send their paycheques back to their overpopulated countries (where birth control is needed!). NOT FAIR! Meanwhile the corporate skanks that hired these unwitting scabs are raking in profits and overpaying their CEOs obscenely, to boot. To hell with this noise!

Marysue52

Don't blame the "scabs". Blame those who hire them - and the government policy that allows "scabs" to be hired.

A Rose or Scab by Any Other Name...

"I have found that there is no job Canadians are unwilling to do. We just want to be paid a livable wage for doing them. (We're funny that way.) "

I agree with Marysue52, frankly.

As for the issue of these people being scabs, unfortunately, these "guest worker" folks fall within that definition, in my working class-centric view, and are being used for "scab" purposes. And when scabs make their choice to allow themselves to be used as such, and to take the food out of the mouths of others, however difficult their own circumstances may be or not, they have to accept the natural resentment and hostile reactions of the working class in this country. Folks are going to get pissed, and rightly so.

It is regrettable, and it is the "free market" system of capitalism that is entirely responsible for it, no doubt. But people also share culpability for their own actions, when they choose to be a scab, again from a working class interests perspective, regardless of legalities or otherwise.

And, of course, there are those who profit, and/or whose livelihoods are served by this "guest worker/scab" system... such as capitalists and lawyers. And make no mistake, this is going on all over the world right now, from Dubai, to Amerika, to Canada. It is one of the results of the Neoconazi/Conservative period.

It needs to be stopped.

Time folks. Time to rise up against all forms of scabism in the work place, including this one.

who wants those jobs?

How many canadians are willing to go pick fruit in season, live in temporary housing and work long hours away from home?

There is such a thing as a work-culture that most canadians are lacking! It goes like this: you work your best and you get paid.

It is not about hanging out around the watercooler or playing solitaire on the company computer, it is about an honest effort, yes SWEAT even.

My experience has been that money does not make anyone more inclined to give his/her best.

I argue that folks who work should get paid decently and have all the support a country can give, no matter where they originate from; but it requires an effort and that is what makes Canada a backwater country

But the BS that canadian jobs go missing is off the mark, the simple fact is that for instance farm workers are in short supply because it is not fancy enough to satisfy us

BC Tree Fruit Industry is Dying

http://www2.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/comment/story.html?id=02670a43-632f-4263-8ddf-faf5b8935d03

So-called "scabs" are only an offshoot of the real problem, which successive governments in BC and Canada have either failed to foresee in their haste to spend billions, or have deliberately ignored.

For instance, in the scenario presented in the link, if the Okanagan tree fruit industry was put in jeopardy by the Columbia River Treaty, then the farmers at the time of the signing should be getting a chunk of the income that BC is making off the Treaty, to compensate their losses. That they are not is called "externalizing costs"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_externalizing

So, do those posters here advocate putting BC tree fruit farmers out of business - because of government propensities for "externalizing costs" - because they either lack the foresite or just plain don't give a damn - because their voter base in turn just don't give a damn where their fruit comes from?

alive, apologists and the living dead...

"My experience has been that money does not make anyone more inclined to give his/her best."

In which case the salaries, share options and bonuses ad infinitum which the public tolerates for CEOs that head up major corporations. to say nothing of the coupon clipped profit shares that go to the top 1% ruling class, need to be serious cut. Big time!!!

Which you will support of course, alive, to make available to the lower orders, because all this super wealth is wasted on them. They will work for the corporate interest just as well, even if they can't afford so much as a razor blade or a pair of new shiny boots. They will show up and give their best everyday, just the same, and honestly... because they have the "free market" work ethic.

It sure as hell made a difference to me when I was working. And I actually worked in agriculture for a fair number of years, where workers came and went like changes in the wind direction. And the reason the many ever moved on is... you guessed it, they were never paid enough to give them any incentive to stay until the job was done, let along give their loyalty. And we stole everything we could lay our hands on and get away with. And the very first whiff they got that somebody else was paying better or the hours were better, the smart ones were gone.

It was only the poorest, least educated, and most vulnerable (alcoholics for example), the trapped, or those with no citizenship who had no choice... which the employers loved of course. They seek these people out... in other countries if need be.

It's always easy to pick out the folks that don't know jack about the real world of work, especially nearer the bottom end of the class spectrum of capitalism. Which is where there's always lots of poor to replace what the wind takes.

The users and abusers of capitalism talk very much like they were actually alive. They seek to rationalize it, but they really don't give a rat's ass. They are the true living dead.

The root of most problems

MarySuu52 said it: "Where birth control is needed." Waaaaaaaaay too many people on this planet. It's so depressing.....

Wayyyy too many people....

"Waaaaaaaaay too many people on this planet. It's so depressing.." writes Fii.

And yet "the West", including this country as declared by Harper recently in world forums, echoing the "all male priesthoods" of the Catholic Church, and other extremist religious groups and rightists, block all birth control technology, abortion protection rights, and information being made available to these burgeoning populations and poor populations of the world..

Why?

The want precisely this situation for the reasons that are apparent in their practise, regardless of the pious and concerned statements on motherhood and the rights of women. They clearly want these parts of the world exploding with population, to continue a state of their poverty and vulnerability, in order to steal their resources at "desperation" prices and slave labour conditions. Judging from their policies rather than their words, they want that their mouths will be there to consume our shit, and when they finally flee, (we call it immigration etc), as they are in record numbers as never before. their desperation and cheap labour can be used as a threat to the demands of the working class of the "advanced countries", creating what is growing here as well; a race to the bottom. This is the situation that exists in fact, and the ruling classes of the West, to any serious and objective observer, carefully practise policies that feed and nourish this state of affairs, including support for those regimes that oppress their own people (Thailand) and keep them in religious ignorance and states of dependency.

The real root of the problem however, as KWD so often says here, and to me in correspondence, is only apparently "birth control" etc. The real problem is in the way all, or at least the great masses of people currently "think". They fail to understand why they think the way the do, where their ideas come from and how to change them in a new and radical direction that will transform the old and continuing global/social reality.

There is a desperate need for far fewer "victims" and "slaves" in their conditioned thinking, and more revolutionaries... willing and prepared to be "activists" and take control of their individual and social lives.

The unfortunate greater likelihood, looking from this point in history and human development however, is that a great global "extinction" tragedy or series of environmental tragedies will happen first. It seems that folks will have to be looking directly down the barrel of such, before they act and change direction on the scale necessary to head it off.

I hope myself, but I am not really, at this point, that really optimistic either.