'Canadians Always Come First:' Canada Slashes Guest-Worker Permits in Half

As the bipartisan permanent political class pushes for more guest-worker visas in America that will lower the wages of American workers, Canada is reducing the number of guest-worker permits it will award. 

According to the Wall Street Journal, Canada will also halve the time temporary workers can spend in the country and make the application more expensive after Canadians criticized the program “as a way for companies to replace locals with cheap foreign labor.”

Employment Minister Jason Kenney reportedly said on Friday that “Canadians always come first” and employers must “redouble their efforts to hire Canadians for available jobs, and to ensure that this program works in the best interests of the Canadian economy.”

According to the Journal, “no more than 30% of a workforce at any particular work site will be allowed to be made up of low-wage temporary foreign workers” in Canada, and the “cap will be lowered to 20% in 2015, and 10% in 2016” and could be reduced further in the future. 

In addition, “in areas of high unemployment–6% or higher, according to the government–employers in the food services, accommodation and retail sectors will be barred from using the program to fill the lowest-wage positions.”

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush had recently suggested that America’s immigration system should be more like Canada’s previous system before even Canadians even soured on it and demanded reforms. In America, the U.S. high-tech industry has relentlessly pushed for drastic increases in the number of guest-worker visas even though America has a surplus of high-tech workers.

As Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) wrote in Breitbart News, the immigration debate presents Republicans with an opportunity to stand on the side of American workers. He wrote that since President Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats have been pushing amnesty legislation that will also dramatically increase the future supply of labor and decrease the wages of American workers, Republicans, by opposing such efforts, have an opportunity to “stand alone as the one party representing the interests of everyday working Americans.”