Temporary Immigrants Mean Temporary Loyalties

The lingering effects of global recession contribute to high unemployment rates and immigration policies favoring temporary guest-worker arrangements over an eventual path toward citizenship. Canada has reduced emphasis on family reunification, treating parents and grandparents as tourists and imposing a two-year period of “conditional” residence on sponsored spouses. The country still offers a path for permanent residency to high-tech workers, but low-skilled workers are regarded as temporary, replaced every four years. Such impermanence has costs for the immigrants and society as a whole, argues Ratna Omidvar in a Globe and Mail opinion essay: “By focusing on the temporary, we create transience. This discourages temporary residents from integrating into their communities and forming an attachment to Canada. In fact, it encourages the temporary to maintain and develop their loyalties elsewhere.” The transience may encourage corruption. The challenges associated with divided families, divided loyalties and lasting resentment could replace the social benefits and innovations of hard-working second-generation immigrants. – YaleGlobal