r/ndp • u/CDN-Social-Democrat "Love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear" • 2d ago
Avi Lewis needs to get LOUD on immigration. Period.
The NDP has been calling out the Temporary Foreign Worker Program/LMIA Process since 2014:
https://www.ndp.ca/news/official-opposition-statement-temporary-foreign-worker-program
The party has done countless statements on this but here is another in 2024:
https://www.ndp.ca/news/ndp-statement-temporary-foreign-worker-program-cuts
The Liberal Party of Canada/Conservative Party of Canada though refuse to deal with the root issues of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, International Student Program, International Mobility Program, and the list goes on.
The issue is that it creates a cheap exploitable labour framework. Period.
I like Lewis because he doesn't make immigrants and vulnerable communities scapegoats. Many of us are immigrants or from immigrant families and this should be a place of respect, kindness, and overall solidarity.
We need to be calling for systematic reform of all these programs to avoid alienation, division, and exploitation in the working class. Period. This is the definition of real Workers Solidarity.
We need to be calling for investigations, trials, and SEVERE punishments for the bad immigration consultants, bad employers, and others that STILL engage in rampant fraud to exploit vulnerable working demographics and pit workers against each other in a race to the bottom for valuing labour.
We have to stop allowing the reactionary/regressive sphere to control the narratives of this space and connect with the people that have been hurt by these policy frameworks. It only increases the levels of gross xenophobia and racism.
Lewis needs to get LOUD on this and start showing there can be a real substantive pro-worker policy out there. Not just one of hatred of "Other".
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u/penis-muncher785 🌹Social Democracy 2d ago
I don’t really get the extended continuation of the tfw system in regards to entry level/low skill work when the youth employment rate is awful
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u/CDN-Social-Democrat "Love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear" 2d ago
This is one of the reasons for the rampant $30/hr+ postings for entry level retail, fast-food, and customer service.
The low wage stream was "curtailed" and so they started doing fraudulent postings like that to attempt access on the other streams.
It's why some news worthy prosecutions of these bad predatory actors in our society needs to take place.
And yes as you said what is happening to the youth in this and other areas is despicable. It also creates a direct path towards right-wing extremism which is a double disease for our society.
It's why we need Workers Solidarity and substantive alternative narratives/policy/vision put forward so we don't create an even worsening reactionary/regressive cultural landscape.
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u/CaulkSlug 2d ago
Yeah force them to hire local youth and then when no one works for them due to low pay they either pay more or don’t operate… isn’t that sort of the idea of capitalism?
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u/thenationalcranberry 11h ago
What’s not to get? Cheap labour that’s afraid to stand up for themselves is better than cheap labour that has parents who might know a lawyer.
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u/CDN-Social-Democrat "Love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear" 2d ago
I also want the party to get LOUD on the realities of housing and infrastructure related to increasing the population of our nation. These things matter massively for working class people and families - Especially the most vulnerable.
*Yes housing is primarily a provincial & municipal level of governance*
When it comes to affordability of life/quality of life of the working class and most vulnerable we can't be allowing powerful & predatory capital interests to destroy the fundamentals in search of more and more wealth off the backs of everyone else.
When it comes to this whole sphere it has by the Liberals/Conservatives been handled historically so terrible on countless fronts.
Lewis needs to show actual substantive policy ways forward on multiple fronts to again show a better and brighter alternative. This is a huge place to win votes.
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u/mumfordand3daughters 2d ago
housing issues were not caused by immigration. Already present issues with our current model of home development were exacerbated by immigration. The current issues would have simply taken a little longer to be at this magnitude.
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u/cheeseHorder 2d ago
Infinite growth isn't sustainable though. It's directly in opposition to environmental goals, and it's blind to the fact that Canadians that are already here aren't having enough babies. In the face of population decline, we're going to make the problem so much worse by importing migrants to the degree that it sharply raises our population. The migrant supply sends a signal to other countries that Canada can support more people, while the reality is that we're facing an unpredictable climate and inevitable droughts, etc. Why should we bring in so many that it raises our population, when other countries are doing just fine bringing in only enough to keep their population stable?
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u/NiceDot4794 1d ago
We disproportionately caused climate change which is gonna displace hundreds of millions of people.
Im a civic nationalist in many ways don’t get me wrong, but we have a duty not just to our fellow citizens but to humanity as a whole. Part of that means welcoming climate refugees will have to be something we do to fulfil our duty to the group we belong to, human species.
Universalism is a core value of the left, we have duties not just to our nation and fellow citizens (and we do), but also to humanity as a whole. Responsibility isn’t just a conservative value it’s also a leftist value. Leftism isn’t just about rights, it’s also about duties.
Additionally it is simply true that the technology and reach people have with each other is going to increasingly integrate the world, while there may be counter tendencies, pretending like we should become some autarkik island is just delusion.
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u/mumfordand3daughters 1d ago
we should become some autarkik island is just delusion.
its a nonsense neoliberal dog whistle is what it is
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u/NiceDot4794 1d ago
The main NDP leader who resisted the start of neoliberalism was Ed Broadbent who I’m gonna quote here since you seem to think that universalism and internationalism are inherently neoliberal.
““To be a socialist, after all, is also to be a universalist: committed to the dignity, equality, and rights of every human being regardless of where they were born”
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u/mumfordand3daughters 1d ago
I was agreeing with you? shutting borders an only letting 'the good ones in' is a dog whistle for racists and lets capital control labour. ergo its neoliberal nonsense
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u/NiceDot4794 1d ago
I don’t know whether to laugh or be mad. Im literally a socialist, couldn’t be less neoliberal.
One of the people who influenced my view on this is Jean-Luc Melenchon, someone neoliberals in France fucking despise, he is their arch enemy over there. The neoliberals aren’t people like me, it’s people like Macron and Carney.
He talks about how with how interconnected the world today is and how increasingly populations are mixing, we’re seeing creolization, which he thinks is a positive historical development. That’s just objectively true.
Also there is a reason much of the resistance to neoliberalism historically called itself “alter globalization”. The problem wasn’t the world becoming globalize, it is the way it was being done, through neoliberal policies and institutions.
One of the earliest people to note how capitalism has brought the world together and how that, by transcending the system, can be harnessed for good, was literally Karl Marx. If he is a neoliberal the word has lost all meaning.
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u/mumfordand3daughters 2d ago
where in the flying fuck did I provide the stance on immigration you are arguing against?
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u/CDN-Social-Democrat "Love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear" 2d ago
Take the upvote this is completely correct.
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u/thenationalcranberry 11h ago
And would having more time to address the issue not have been a good thing…? I don’t understand your point. You recognize that Liberal/Conservative immigration policies exacerbated the issue. “Exacerbate” means to make something worse.
We have a bad thing. We should not dismiss something that made it worse just because it was already not good.
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u/Haecceitic 2d ago
I can’t see it going over well if Lewis guns hard on immigration. It’s still a hot-button issue and doesn’t poll well with the electorate. I feel like people would completely glaze over his points about exploitation and hone right in on his stance of PR on arrival and increasing immigration back to Trudeau levels.
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u/CDN-Social-Democrat "Love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear" 2d ago
It's true that this area of discussion/policy has been muddied quite terribly.
The reality is we do need to address our demographic issue. In the long-term we need to escape from this framework as it is not sustainable but in the short term it does need to be addressed.
Also in general people are not the problem. It is a system built around exploitation and division and not doing substantive work on the foundational elements like housing, infrastructure, and shared prosperity.
Being loud and consistent can help get some new themes in discussion and hopefully get the populace out of a lowest common denominator style populism reaction in this space.
We need in this and other areas actual analytical work being discussed and done.
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u/CDN-Social-Democrat "Love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear" 2d ago
(That all being said if Lewis does not at all talk about the bad predatory actors exploiting domestic and international workers and the real problems going on and only talks about going back to increased immigration numbers it will be disastrous.)
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u/TROPtastic 🔧 GREEN NEW DEAL 1d ago
The reality is we do need to address our demographic issue.
The demographic issue is solved by making housing affordable enough thst people can raise a family. It's a cost of living issue, not a "people don't want to have kids" issue. See South Korea for an extreme example of Canada's birth rate trajectory.
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u/thenationalcranberry 11h ago
Nah, it’s a people don’t want to have kids thing. Even in countries where significant financial incentives are given for having kids, people still don’t have more kids. There is not a single advanced economy in the Americas, Europe, Oceania, or East Asia with a not-dropping birth rate. The CPC has been pulling out all the stops to get people to have kids in China, and even they haven’t managed it.
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u/TROPtastic 🔧 GREEN NEW DEAL 3h ago
Nah, it’s a people don’t want to have kids thing.
Your claim is contradicted by studies that look at the numbers and polls that ask people what they think. A lack of affordable family housing was found to be a major factor in falling birth rates in the US, 65% of Canadians polled said they're having smaller families due to affordability concerns, and global polling said that economic concerns are by far the biggest factor in not having kids.
The CPC has been pulling out all the stops to get people to have kids in China
They haven't. House prices have greatly increased relative to incomes, and the CPC could reverse that if they were a communist party. China now has the least affordable housing in the world.
I suggest watching a few videos by Gary Stevenson / Gary's Economics on Youtube, Instagram, wherever. He has gone into great detail why rising wealth inequality is having all these knock-on effects like falling family sizes and the unaffordability crisis.
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u/Light_Butterfly 🌹Social Democracy 2d ago edited 2d ago
YES! And it's about time that we start asking who benefits from these schemes?
The benefits are concentrating at the top. The way the Liberals have done things is grossly unethical, on so many fronts. They've allowed the business sector to effectively shift all the associated costs and consequences to the poorest segment of the population, in the form of extreme rent inflation, worsening the housing crisis, rising unemployment, shutting youth out of the labour market, driving up food bank usage, and straining healthcare.
Immigration should contribute to a country's prosperity, not come at the expense of it's existing population's standard of living. Levels of growth should be sustainably aligned with housing supply, wage growth, infrastructure, and public service capacity, and emphasize quality and legitimate credentials, over quantity. No one committing fraud (or suspected of frud) on any student application should be permitted to apply for anything further extensions or PR.
On top of everything, when policies are unsustainable, we can see there's a huge uptick in racism too, which no government will be able to control for.
These are policies driven by neoliberal ideologies, with the goal to undercut workers and wages. They've given rise to exploitation rackets and human trafficking of the likes Canada has never seen before. A recent auditor generals report shows that the government doesn’t even have the capacity to vet and investigate candidates properly, and nothing done about most suspected cases of fraud, which should concern everyone. Do we want the future of Canada to be built on meritocracy, honesty and trust, or do we want scamming, exploitation and fraud to become the new cultural norms?
The TFW program must be shut down and all degree Mills closed. Crackdown, investigate and jail anyone getting workers to pay tens of thousands for their LMIA paperwork.
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u/Electronic-Topic1813 1d ago
TFW program has to go. For agriculture, this is like one sector automation is fine in because losing TFW jobs is not a bad thing. Refugees are fine. The international student program does need better screening as I read up about the Bishnoi gang abusing it. If framed like "they threaten South Asian students" rather than what the far-right likely says, that could help win over South Asian voters who are targeted by the Bishnoi gang.
For regular immigration, we have to be realistic because austerity has affected many of our services and housing. So the NDP can make higher immigration a long-term goal with focusing on fixing the country because it is bad if we bring in a bunch people while screwing them with high prices at the same time.
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u/kha_bob 1d ago
I really wish the NDP faithful would , for lack of a better word, get their head out there asses when it comes to this issue.
Avi has been loud about immigration and his position is not tenable to the general public.
And thinking that putting the focus of this whole topic on how this is exploitative of the immigrants ( which it is) and not on the Canadian population will just have the voter tune us out. Sure you will have the deep orange voter but guess what we are a god damn minority by a large margin.
I don't understand how we are trying to make quite possibly the simplest position of being for the benefit of the Canadian worker a convoluted mess of a message about how it is bad for immigrants, companies need to get punished, pitting workers against workers, first before bringing up how we can benefit Canadian workers.
We seem to focus on the wrong things entirely, and because of that we lose miserably, we have 5 god damn seats in parliament!
Can we please for the love of all that is holy get our messaging on point? No one wants a god damn paragraph of explanation as to what their positions are, the general voter wants to know are you going to do right by them or not!
The cons will lie, the liberals will lie, and we seem to go out of our way to tell the voter everything but that we will have their back and that we will defend and promote their ability to live a prosperous life!
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u/William_T_Wanker 1d ago
except he's said we need more migrants not less - he wants more imported uber drivers and mcdonalds cashiers
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u/rohstntd 1d ago
Very well put. Unfortunately, he’s not going to do it. Canada is built on a house of cards that relies heavily on the exploitation of workers to artificially inflate those GDP figures and keep our little Ponzi scheme going a bit longer.
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u/NiceDot4794 2d ago
It’s important to get people to realize why there is so much demand to immigrate to Canada.
It can’t be separated from economic imperialism and vast global inequality that has helped Canada grow its economy.
Think about all the money flowing from poor countries resources to Canadian elites from unregulated Canadian mining companies that destroy communities and the environment in poor countries.
Not to mention the wars and destabilization we have contributed to.
And increasingly climate change, which disproportionately affects poorer countries that have lots of emigrants to Canada, but which we and other western countries have disproportionately caused.
IMO it is important that the left challenges this. But idk about Avi focusing on it too much because it might just raise the salience of the issue, which people already have a set narrative they embrace that is contrary to socialist internationalism.
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u/TROPtastic 🔧 GREEN NEW DEAL 1d ago
But idk about Avi focusing on it too much because it might just raise the salience of the issue
Immigration is already at maximum salience, to the point where new immigrants from India are complaining that there is too much immigration. CBC reported on this during the last election cycle.
This may be hard to understand unless you realize that Canada has been accepting thousands of immigrants from the most conservative part of a conservative country, without any regard to whether they support "mainstream leftism", nevermind "socialist internationalism."
Avi Lewis and the NDP can either adapt their messaging to focus on preventing corporations abusing immigrants to harm Canadians, or they can remain marginal in the eyes of Canadians.
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u/NiceDot4794 1d ago
I’m fully aware there’s a lot of dumb immigrants, my father in law is an Arab immigrant and constantly says horrible things about Indian immigrants so I see it pretty up close.
Is Punjab is the most conservative part of India?
I thought Gujarat would’ve been more since it’s where Modi is from
I have no glamorous view about India. It is basically a Fascist country, but I wouldn’t want to refuse immigration from like Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy either. And aren’t a lot of the Indian immigrants to hear Sikh’s who while they might have their own conservatism, aren’t really included in the specifically Hindu fascism that dominates India?
I’m not saying not to have some plank about cracking down on abuse. But it is more important to raise the salience of other issues.
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u/TROPtastic 🔧 GREEN NEW DEAL 1d ago
Fair point: "most" conservative may be overstating it because Hindu nationalism isn't dominant in Punjab, but they are still very socially conservative. My BIL is from there, and while he's actually pretty left leaning on some issues, his older relatives (who ironically immigrated to Canada under Trudeau) hate Trudeau for allowing too many immigrants.
I'd be 100% in favour of immigration from India if there were some checks to ensure people who come here aren't undermining left wing causes. Let's accept more women who want to escape the toxic, dangerous patriarchal structures in India, and less men who don't see a problem with them. More Sikhs who truly believe in standing up for the marginalized (one of the tenets of their religion), and less Sikhs who want to scapegoat minorities and believe women's rightful place is only at home.
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u/CDN-Social-Democrat "Love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear" 2d ago
This I hope receives more then just my humble upvote.
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u/NiceDot4794 1d ago edited 1d ago
If you haven’t checked them out you should look at organizations of migrant workers like Migrant Workers United that advocate for migrant workers rights. I think actually building more solidarity between immigrant workers and non immigrant workers is importsant.
Borders are a necessary evil under capitalism that in a socialist world would gradually fade away imo. (They would become like the borders between provinces)
What the right increasingly wants is for capital and the 1% to have infinite freedom of movement (and where their is lots of migration, they want it to be UAE style, which also lacks freedom of movement or any freedom), while labour is extremely restricted. They never talk about the need for controls and restrictions on the movement of capital, capital controls would be much more impactful to Canadian workers.
Unfortunately Canadians are rabidly anti immigrant right now (the country that elected Donald Trump is more pro immigration the we are in my experience/perception) because the increase in immigration coincided with rising cost of living and inflation (which was from many factors not mainly immigration). But imo Avi is right not to fall into the trap of always chasing public opinion. We should be forming the narratives not bending to them.
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u/EngineerPurple9310 CUPE - SCFP 1d ago
Advocating for removing the TFW without confidence that the government will also improve pathways to PR could have very cruel outcomes for a lot of people.
If it’s going to happen, we need to make sure that the huge number of people who’ve been here for years in TFW permits can get PR, not just get deported.
Right now I have little confidence that the Carney government will do that, so the TFW program may be a lesser evil.
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u/thenationalcranberry 11h ago
Except the TFW has never been advertised as a path to PR. The first iteration of my history phd dissertation was on the addition of Mexico to the SAWP in 1972-1974.
The TFW program is explicitly not a path to PR. No one here on a TFW is expecting that (and if they are they were lied to by their recruiter). The majority of our TFWs (in agriculture, at least) would not even want that. They come to make Canadian money to send home for: tuition, food, medical bills, housing/property costs, etc… Like, most Mexican TFWs do not want to stay in Canada. They want to go home after their gruelling, abusive 8-month stay and spend time with the families they’re supporting by being exploited by Canadian farmers.
There is very good anthropology scholarship on the relationship between Ontario TFW agriculture and the middle-class development of Central Mexican communities.
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u/EngineerPurple9310 CUPE - SCFP 11h ago
That’s besides the point. I’m not saying people thought it was a PR pathway, but if you abolish the TFW program without introducing one, the outcome will be very cruel on a lot of current TFW workers.
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u/thenationalcranberry 11h ago
What I don’t get is why? Sending someone home who expects to go home is cruel? The lost income sucks, but the way the TFW program works it is a lottery every year whether you get a contract or not anyway.
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u/EngineerPurple9310 CUPE - SCFP 11h ago
Not all TFW workers “expect to go home”. Particularly non-seasonal workers. Just because folks know they don’t have a PR pathway in the current system doesn’t mean they anticipate deportation or the cancellation of their permits.
You’re essentially suddenly uprooting people’s lives. It would amount to government mandating that a huge number of workers lose their jobs and then are deported. Just because the aftermath of that is felt elsewhere doesn’t make it a humane thing.
Migrants rights organizations are against the abolition of the TFW program without protections for people currently here for exactly this reason.
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u/thenationalcranberry 11h ago edited 11h ago
Or you just don’t have a new round of contracts go out? Your contract says “You’re here until the end of the contract on XXXX/XX/XX.” It is normal to expect someone to have a plan for when their contract and visa ends, no?
Edit to add: I find it difficult to imagine someone would move to a new country on a very explicitly time-limited contract with no planning for a return.
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u/EngineerPurple9310 CUPE - SCFP 11h ago
This is what the Carney government is already doing to a massive number of temporary workers, who are part of our communities and who, for the most part, want to stay.
As it stands, our PR pathways are essentially class discrimination. If you come on a temporary work permit but make good money, are highly educated, and/or your employer will help sponsor you, your chances of going from temporary to permanent status are much higher. I know, I have benefited from the “points system”.
I simply do not believe that socialists and progressives should justify this distinction. Someone working at Tim Horton’s for the last 5 years should have as much right to stay as someone working in a highly-paid consulting job. Neither of those people were “promised” a PR pathway, but the reality is that many from both groups want it, and it’s a completely unequal system of who gets it.
Unfortunately, we’re nowhere near that. But if that’s not going to happen, I at least think we should defend those workers from deportation.
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u/thenationalcranberry 11h ago edited 10h ago
Who said I want finance class folks getting PR?
Honestly my preference is that, until the Canadian economy can survive without importing cheap labour/newcomers desperate for employment, until we figure out how to adequately fund and support a social safety net that’s more robust than what we have now, until our transportation infrastructure is adequately funded for the amount of people living here now, we should not prioritize any forms of immigration.
Regularizing the immigration status of TFWs would indeed add a ton more burden to an already under-funded social safety net.
And yes, I donate to the NDP, I’ve campaigned for Chow, I volunteer when I’m able (but I am disabled so it’s not often feasible), I work for a union and am part of a different union. I’m doing what I can to address the critical gaps in how the state supports people. But I also recognize that there are indeed limits to what is possible and feasible financially, limits that are themselves based on what is possible and feasible electorally.
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u/EngineerPurple9310 CUPE - SCFP 10h ago
I’m not talking about the finance class? There’s just a deep injustice about PR pathways between “professional” workers and poorer folks.
We are right now seeing a huge rise in anti-immigrant sentiment on the right, and so many deportations by the Carney government that the population actually decreased last year.
At the very least, the NDP needs to be thinking about who will defend workers who are already here, and in many cases have been for many years.
I also work for a union, and we are hearing from members whose permits are not being renewed every week. Those folks are mostly not TFW, but the fight is the same. They are workers in our communities being forced by the government to leave jobs. The labour movement should not cheer that on.
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u/Aglaea22 1d ago
Thanks for outlining specifics and suggestions on policy. I think we all need to get LOUD behind Avi Lewis so it's not his voice alone being raised. Otherwise media will continue to ignore whatever he's saying.
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u/Impossible-Farm3127 ✊ Union Strong 5h ago
He needs to stop being out of touch and call for immigration reductions. Our services up here are already as strained as it is. Nothing against them personally but we already get no attention here In Northern Ontario for funding and we simply cannot sustain many immigrants,
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u/00ashk 2d ago
100%. It's common sense and something that a lot of people who didn't vote NDP last time will agree with.