The socially irresponsible practice of Technology Immigration in Canada

How a technology immigration “Scam” works in Canada

The morning headline in the Globe and Mail newspaper reads “Cybersecurity talent a major Issue”, but is it? Canada is now one of the only nations in the world that permits the importing of engineering, while at the same time its Labour Participation rate falls and U-6 Unemployment Rates hover at 15%+?

Canada is not facing a shortage of cybersecurity workers clearly, but Canada is facing:

1. A crisis of very foolish immigration politicians
2. Embarrassingly low SKILL levels in hiring managers – and offices today
3. Sub-contracting and offshoring that makes recruiters very very rich while driving starvation wages to Canadians
4. Record-low accountability by major business to the viabililty of Canada and Canadians

Here’s how a national scam works…

When 20-year middle managers needed a cybersecurity worker, they sent out a job notice at market rate. They would get a mix of very-qualified to less-qualified applicants – usually 10 or so applications per role because most everyone who wanted to find a job in cybersecurity could find one – as opposed to today where 8,000 posted jobs pile-up and are unfilled while local applicants can’t find work.

A skilled middle manager, let’s call this individual “a SKILL”, might decide to choose an applicant who was a little more junior, and a little cheaper, because that manager had skills in cybersecurity – and could train anyone in his group to be qualified and senior. A Canadian worker is hired.

That was 10-years ago. Today a completely unskilled WILL administrator does or does not fill the job based on their 8-second or less (e-filter) of skill keywords, or salary, or gender, or age (open sexism, racism, agism); criteria that they have been told to hire to by accounting – so now these workers are not “a fit”. No-one is hired.

Now there is a fictional 8,000 worker shortage. So, major banks and other lobby groups now approach an untrained Minister and ask for “express-immigration” to take care of this critical & fictional problem – oh, and by the way, salaries offered to these new onshored workers will be 50% to 70% of Canadian salary levels. Or, maybe an onshored worker can captain an offshored team back in India – so that now a WiPro or similar offshore recruiter is charging Rogers $85 per hour for a worker that they are paying $2 per hour for (these are real numbers, by the way, salaries to onshored workers can be as little as $50k per year; WiPro’s owner is one of the richest people in the world by this practice).

At this point – Canadian business is driving unsustainable starvation wages, far-too-low fertility rates, far too-high unemployment, far too-low labour-force participation rates, and low economic productivity that now costs the Canadian economy $4.2 billion per day – http://csq1.org/SCP. Even worse, when the onshored individual arrives with their family, they “dig-in” 20-to-a-house until family members can buy and flip, or rent out, homes at unsustainable rents and home costs to our kids who can no longer live where they grew up.