The Head Tax and the Temporary Foreign
Worker Program

Warning: political content

Back in the nineteenth century, my
home province, British Columbia,
prohibited Chinese migrants from
voting. The province also passed
several laws intended to bar Chinese
immigrants. Each time, the federal
government disallowed the province's
immigration laws, not because federal
politicians opposed the laws in
principle, but because they were
protecting their jurisdiction and
because low-cost Chinese labour was
essential to the Canadian Pacific
Railway project.

As soon as the railway was completed,
the federal government passed it's own
anti-Chinese immigration legislation
requiring Chinese migrants to pay a
$50 head tax in order to enter the
country. The tax was raised in 1903 to
$500. Not surprisingly, aside from the
Chinese, wealthy white people were the
key opponents of the new law --
because they still wanted to be able
to hire low-cost Chinese workers and
house servants.

Canadians like to think that all
that's behind us and that we have a
tolerant, multicultural, and
cosmopolitan society.

But that's not true.

Canada still discriminates viciously
against immigrant workers from
impoverished countries. We have a
'temporary foreign worker' program.

Temporary foreign workers are
permitted to come to Canada and work
for a specified period of time (often
two years or less). Many are in what
is called a "low-wage stream." The
government and the businesses that
rely on these workers contend that
these are jobs that Canadians do not
want. Of course, it would be more
accurate to say that these are jobs
that Canadians do not want at the
wages offered.

Employers argue that they cannot pay
more and remain competitive. Yet they
can't pay more because of the free
trade agreements our government has
entered into with low-wage trading
partners and those with hidden
subsidies.

For me, the temporary foreign worker
program is *the* issue in Canadian
politics. I won't vote for any party
that supports it.

If you work in Canada, you should have
the right to become a citizen of
Canada. Full stop. You shouldn't be
exploited because you're from a poor
nation and probably have brown
skin[1].

Those wealthy Canadians who opposed
the head tax because they wanted to
continue employing Chinese people at
low wages would have loved the TFW
program.

And that tells me everything I need to
know about it. We haven't really
changed much at all.

[1] See https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/services/foreign-workers/agricultural/seasonal-agricultural.html