Integration, reception capacity, permanent residents: while the debates on immigration focus on the target of 50,000, at least three times as many people each year arrive in Quebec with a temporary permit or who renew. The figures and the experts are unequivocal, it is a real shift in immigration that is taking place in silence.
“Talking about permanent levels is absurd and obsolete, since the main tool has become temporary immigration,” says Stephan Reichhold, director general of the Roundtable of Organizations Serving Refugees and Immigrants (TCRI). “To speak only of permanent residents does not really illustrate the reality in Quebec”, he continues.
“It is a false debate to speak of the threshold [de 50 000]because they come anyway on temporary routes, ”also says Denis Hamel, vice-president of workforce development policies at the Conseil du patronat du Québec (CSQ).
We lose the integration element and [le fait de pouvoir] say that these people are part of our company, which was the basis of our philosophy
This imbalance towards the temporary is indisputable, he says, and the employers who are members of the CSQ see it in the field. “Put yourself in the shoes of the employer who has to fill a vacant position. He found a candidate abroad, who would ideally arrive as a permanent resident, but it is almost impossible at the moment. So he [l’employeur] takes a faster route, a bypass,” he explains in detail.
It is “the tree that hides the forest,” also says Mireille Paquet, holder of the Research Chair in Immigration Policy at Concordia University.
The professor sees a certain contradiction in this: “The government says it can solve our problems without resorting to immigration. But that’s talk, not actual practice. »
The “real practice” is that the number of immigrants continues to climb, but through temporary categories, say these three observers from different backgrounds with one voice.
Who is responsible for it?
This shift dates back several years, but it has accelerated considerably since the Coalition avenir Québec came to power.
How can François Legault’s government be responsible for this? Temporary foreign workers — both agricultural and highly skilled — are recruited by the companies themselves. Foreign students want to get a Quebec diploma. Asylum seekers arrive by their own will and their own means on the territory.
Temporary and permanent immigration are considered as communicating vessels. The labor shortage has really started since 2016, says Mr. Hamel. But it’s now, “given the ceiling [de résidents permanents] imposed by the government, that employers turn to the [résidents] temporary, willingly or by force”, he then specifies.
Where the rhetoric also converges with practice is that Quebec has excluded itself from the creation of pathways to permanent residence. The reforms during the CAQ’s first mandate notably restricted the possibilities of accessing this status for people without a college or university education. “We need engineers as much as good welders, so why discriminate according to qualifications? asks Denis Hamel.
If what matters to us is whether all these people are able to find jobs in Quebec, we know that, they are already here
At the repeated request of employers, Quebec has also put in place measures to promote the recruitment of temporary foreign workers, and has therefore declared its intention to focus more on this type of immigration rather than touching the thresholds. The provincial Department of Immigration notes in its plan for 2022 that it wants to “support employers” to “increase the number” of temporary foreign workers.
In the rest of Canada, temporary immigration is on the rise, but Ottawa has taken a different path by creating more pathways to permanency to tap into this pool more quickly.
“The number of people who become permanent residents having already had temporary status is enormous,” summed up the federal Minister of Immigration, Sean Fraser, last fall.
Several immigration categories
The number of 50,000 permanent residents is an annual target. To compare it, it is therefore necessary to use the data for each year and for each category of temporary workers. There were more than 145,000 temporary permit holders in all in 2021, and at least 181,000 in 2022, according to data available through October or November, depending on the categories.
These may be people who are new to the territory, or who were already here and are renewing their temporary permit.
The large box of temporaries, as shown in our graphic, groups together various situations. The possibilities of becoming a permanent resident vary greatly from one category to another. These different programs and categories nevertheless have one thing in common: an expiration date on paper that gives the right to be on Quebec territory.
First of all, there are international students, who also have the right to work, a right without limit of hours since last November.
Then there is the vast International Mobility Program (PMI), made up of 70 sub-categories such as International Experience Canada or the thirty working holiday programs (PVT). These temporary immigrants are often graduates or “qualified”, but may also have closed permits.
We need engineers as much as good welders, so why discriminate according to diplomas?
And finally, the two categories considered to be the most precarious: asylum seekers and temporary foreign workers. Some live in uncertainty of having their refugee status recognized, a process that currently takes two years. The others, temporary foreign workers, arrive in the territory with a permit bearing the name of a single employer; they cannot therefore be hired elsewhere at the end of their contract.
This stock of new temporary permits is added to a pool of temporary residents already in the territory, thanks to contracts or study permits overlapping several years, for example. As a result, the number of non-permanent (temporary) residents counted by Statistics Canada has almost tripled in 10 years.
At 1er July 2022, the number of non-permanent residents was 290,000 people in Quebec, or more than 3% of the total population of the province.
Assuming that these “non-permanents” want to settle in Quebec, it would therefore take almost six years to grant them permanent status with the current ceiling.
Bottleneck and consequences
“It is believed that the majority of temporary residents want to stay. But to obtain permanent residence, the number of “places” is limited to 50,000. This means that the delays are lengthening immeasurably, we are heading towards a crisis and we are going to lose a lot of people in this bottleneck. throttling,” says Reichhold.
This turn is taking place silently since it “has never been discussed from a political point of view”, says Mireille Paquet. These temporary people may not respond to “the linguistic and cultural ideals of the government”, but the professor believes that Quebec “cannot do without this difficult discussion”.
Beyond the numbers, “it’s a paradigm shift,” she adds: “Canada’s historical approach is that people arrived with permanent residency. This is how we have always understood immigration. »
“We lose the integration element and [le fait de pouvoir] say that these people are part of our company, which was the basis of our philosophy,” adds Stephan Reichhold.
Regardless of the program used, the temporary status induces more vulnerability, they also say. “Preventing people from projecting themselves into the future is paradoxically a major obstacle to integration,” says Stéphanie Arsenault, professor of social work at Laval University.
“Precariousness also harms employers,” notes Mr. Hamel, because of staff turnover and very cumbersome administrative procedures.
This shift also calls into question the idea that too rapid immigration would put social cohesion at risk, according to Mr. Reichhold. “For the tens of thousands, even hundreds, of temporary workers, things are going relatively well. They already have a job or are studying, they occupy a home and they consume. There is no saturation signal,” he insists.
“If what matters to us is whether all these people are able to find jobs in Quebec, we know that, they are already here,” reiterates Mireille Paquet.
Journalist Sarah R. Champagne participated in the documentary Essentialswhich will be broadcast on Télé-Québec on Wednesday, January 25 at 8 p.m.