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A new BuildForce Canada report brought together different groups in the construction industry to provide some guidance as to the kinds of reforms needed to the current immigration system to help bolster the sector.

The report recommends the adoption of four consensus principles by governments to ensure the construction sector can better access skilled workers from abroad in an effort to address projected shortages of skilled labour created by rising construction demands and changing demographics, said Bill Ferreira, executive director of BuildForce Canada.

The report is intended to provide an informational base for the industry, he said. It is intended to provide the collective views of the individuals that were part of the steering committee. Its there to essentially provide the information the industry needs to then develop their own recommendations to government, should they feel that additional recommendations are required.

The industry steering committee that contributed to the report consists of representatives from Canadas Building Trades Unions (CBTU), the Canadian Construction Association, the Canadian Home Builders Association, Merit Canada and the Mechanical Contractors Association of Canada.

The first recommendation is addressing educational bias in the Express Entry selection system as it currently and disproportionately favours applicants with high education levels and excludes others who possess the skills or willingness to work in construction.

We looked at the educational profiles of the individuals being admitted into the country, looking at different periods just for principle applicants. What we found was that principle applicants in the period between 1980 and 1990, individuals with trades certificates and non-apprenticeable trades certificates came into the country, about nine per cent of the overall admissions were for individuals with apprenticeable trades certificates and non-apprenticeable trades certificates together, he said. Whereas the share of individuals with university education, so bachelors and above were about 34 per cent.

When the team looked at the most recent period, despite the introduction of the federal skilled trades program, there was a decline in admissions of principle applicants with apprenticeable trades certificates or non-apprenticeable trades certificates and the number of individuals admitted with university educations increased dramatically.

Apprenticeable and non-apprenticeable trades certificates are now down about two per cent, whereas individuals with university education are now up to about 75 per cent of the overall admissions on an annual basis, said Ferreira, adding about 76 per cent of the overall labour force are NOC Category 7, which have struggled to obtain entry under Canadas existing Express Entry system.

The Canadian Home Builders Association (CHBA) emphasized this is one of the key barriers to addressing the labour shortage.

For CHBA, the most pressing need is to address the education bias within the immigration points system, in order to better align with labour market needs, said a spokesperson for the association.For the residential construction sector, the means allowing for construction trade helpers and labourers in NOC TEERs 4 and 5, and which make up a substantial portion of the construction workforce and are in the highest demand, entry to Canada to help address the housing affordability crisis.

The other report recommendations include better aligning federal and provincial immigration policies and increasing transparency; ensuring industry involvement in labour market planning, analysis and recruitment; and supporting competencies-based skills assessments for foreign credential recognition.

We have certain trades and certain jurisdictions who require more tradespeople. Were doing everything we can to bring as many Canadian tradespeople in as we possibly can, but some of our trades and some of our jurisdictions would like to see if there is an avenue that we can explore through immigration to help meet our labour force requirements, stated Sean Strickland, chair of BuildForce Canada and executive director of the CBTU. Its important for us to have an immigration system in Canada that works for the construction industry. Thats the reason for the report.

Stakeholders are going to take the recommendations and use them to advocate with government to make changes to better reflect the labour force requirements in the construction industry, he added.

All the stakeholders dont agree on all the different ways in which we need to do this, but through this report there is a general agreement from the industry that things need to change for immigration federally and provincially to help us meet some of our labour force requirements, Strickland said.

Our recommendation from the unionized perspective is that we need to be adaptable here and recognize that one size doesnt fit all. Immigration requirements arent for all trades and all regions. Ken Lancastle, COO of the Mechanical Contractors Association of Canada, said BuildForce did a good job of capturing a lot of the concerns the sector is facing right now.

It gives us a leg to stand on when it comes to some of these discussions around immigration reform, said Lancastle.

Weve talked about this for a number of years, about how there needs to be reforms made to the immigration system to adapt to the unique needs of the construction industry. This gives us now some tangible data that we can point to and say, This is what were talking about. This is a consensus-based report from multiple stakeholders in the industry.

The current immigration system is biased and does not necessarily pay attention to the immediate labour requirements that the economy needs, Lancastle added.

The educational bias within the system, we would love to see more industry involvement, not just in immigration but also on skills training and recruitment across the country, he added.

Follow the author on X/Twitter @DCN_Angela.

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BuildForce Canada report gives associations a 'leg to stand on' for immigration reform - Daily Commercial News

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Originally posted here:
Our view: Immigration reform don't bet on it - East Oregonian

Hill was policy director for the Center for Humane Technology, co-founder of FairVote and political reform director at New America.

The last comprehensive immigration reform was enacted almost four decades ago, when Ronald Reagan was president. So many Americans were pleased when a bipartisan group of senators announced they had agreed on a compromise bill that would provide for both a more secure and more humane border. It seemed like a win-win.

But then former President Donald Trumpworked behind the scenes to kill the legislation because he did not want to give a political victory to President Joe Biden. Its not the first time that sensible immigration policy got strangled by partisan gamesmanship. Such congressional battles make it harder for the public to know what good policy even looks like.

Unfortunately many important economic questions related to immigration rarely get discussed. How does immigration actually impact our economy and nation? What are the pros and cons of having large numbers of newcomers crossing our border? After all, we are a nation of immigrants. If it wasnt for immigration, most of us wouldnt be here. Or, is it different this time?

Heres the key thing to know about immigration: The reason its so controversial is because how it affects you greatly depends on who you are.

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Are you a business owner who needs to hire lots of blue-collar workers? If so, then immigrants from south of the border are a blessing, because they make it possible for you to employ cheaper labor. That could well be why a number of Republican business leaders in places like Texas, Arizona and California did not support Trumps anti-immigration policies.

Are you a blue-collar worker? Then you might perceive that hordes of immigrants who are willing to work cheaply are threats to steal your job.

Or maybe youre a parent with schoolchildren who has recently seen a rise in immigrant kids. Then you may worry about your taxes having to pay for a surge in teacher hiring, translation services and more.

Are you worried about escalating prices on your grocery bill? Then you might welcome more workers from across the border who will pick your food for lower wages. Most Americans arent willing to work at hard labor jobs like that.

Or perhaps you are an economist, worried about a declining population, worker shortages, dependency ratios and falling labor productivity. If so, then you probably welcome a certain number of new workers, especially skilled labor that can make businesses more productive.

Are you the CEO of a tech company? Then you favor the H1-B visa laws that allow migrants from places like India and China to fill jobs for computer programmers and software designers. Those imported workers come cheaper than Americans yet have top-notch skills for creating great products, like your smartphone and apps.

Or maybe you are a politician, looking to get reelected? Then you might be tempted to bash immigrants and attack political opponents as soft on immigration as a way to score points with voters.

The point is, what you believe about immigration is very dependent on where you sit. Many people fit in two or more of the boxes mentioned above, making matters complicated and personal. Consequently, the economic impacts of immigration often are colored by larger cultural and political concerns.

Study after study clearly shows that large increases in immigration have a tendency to lower wages in the mostly blue-collar jobs where those immigrants work. But the effect usually is temporary, according to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Over the longer term, new workers provide employers with opportunities to expand their businesses, increase production and add jobs to service new customers. Immigration actually grows the economic pie over time, and most of the negative wage or employment impacts fade away. Moreover, according to the Brookings Institution, immigrants usually work different jobs than native-born workers, which often results in lower prices for widely enjoyed services like child care, food preparation, house cleaning and construction.

Here are some other things about immigration that many people dont know:

Immigration will always be a challenge for a modern democratic society. A country can only absorb so many newcomers so fast, its not easy to fully integrate new arrivals. These are all major factors in determining whether the pluses outweigh the minuses. Given the complexity of the issue, what is needed from our leaders is not simplistic divisive rhetoric but a pragmatic approach that carefully weighs all factors.

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How does immigration impact the U.S. economy? - The Fulcrum

The fiasco of the attempted linking of minimal immigration reform with substantial assistance to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, and the murder by the Russian government of the leader of the democratic opposition, Alexei Navalny, coming within a few days of each other, require some American congressional leaders to show some leadership.

The attempt to link immigration, specifically the inundation of the southern border with millions of illegal so-called migrants, to the urgent need for military assistance for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan seemed to some a clever tactic by the Republicans.

It would supposedly require the Democrats finally to do something about the southern border unless they wished to face the opprobrium of leaving Ukraine substantially defenseless against the Russian invader and Israel under-equipped to deal with the Hamas terrorists, and Taiwan in a continued state of unnecessary vulnerability to the Peoples Republic of China.

In fact it was irresponsible. The accompanying polemical excesses that America couldnt afford the 6 percent of its military budget taken up by Ukraine and the closing up of the southern border at the same time were both arithmetic and policy nonsense.

Amid all the wailing about the billions of dollars going to Ukraine, almost unspoken was that approximately 90 percent of it comes in fact to the defense production industries of America to supply Ukraine.

The Republican strategists might reasonably have assumed that the Democrats would try to turn the tables on them by offering a tokenistic immigration reform that, if rejected, the Democrats would try to parlay into an allegation that the Republicans were trying to throw Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan to the wolves while only masquerading as having any concern about the outrageous and unsustainable levels of illegal entry across the southern border.

They could not have reasonably assumed that the now decrepit and misguided Republican leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, would join forces with the Senate Democrats and jointly sponsor an insane measure that would attach to the long-awaited assistance to the three needful countries an immigration bill that implausibly purported to restrict illegal migration to slightly under 2 million per year.

It would not have been easy to predict that this would become practically the last stand of the Never Trump Republicans before President Trump takes the Republican presidential nomination. It was also difficult to foresee, though there were some signs of it, that Mr. McConnell, long a legendarily astute fox of Senate tactics, would take leave of his senses and promote this absurd measure.

We are now down to tawdry gamesmanship. The Republicans proposed a stand-alone measure for Israel that ducked the other issues. It deservedly failed. The Democrats have now passed through the Senate an aid package for all three countries, which is in the House. Mike Johnson, who was assured of a rocky ride when he was elected speaker in October, adjourned the House while contemplating this conundrum.

Before doing so, the speaker at least succeeded in gaining the impeachment of homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, which has no chance of leading to his removal from office by the Senate but will at least give Republicans ample opportunity to put before the country the monumental negligence and dishonesty of the administration on this issue. And it did repair the embarrassment the speaker suffered by being unable to effect the impeachment on the first attempt.

It is time for the Republican leadership, including Mr. Trump, to demarcate clearly their Ukraine objectives. The official murder in custody in Siberia of the Russian democratic opposition leader, for no offense except courageous respect for elemental human rights, has reminded the world of what we are facing with the Putin regime.

It is at the midpoint of Russian historical standards of despotism between Ivan the Terrible and Stalin and Gorbachev and Yeltsin, at about the level of Khrushchev and Brezhnev and the gentler tsars. It remains true that if it were successful, the Western Alliance would be exposed as a paper tiger, the West in decline.

This would just be the start of Mr. Putins campaign to make himself the modern Peter the Great and regain the European components of the Soviet Union and, if possible, to reassert influence over the former satellite countries, the repeal of the Cold War. Any such event would be a catastrophe for the West.

The administrations breezy whatever it takes (in Ukraine) is completely unacceptable. It is perfectly in order for the Republicans to attach to any Ukraine aid measure requirements for comprehensive monitoring of the disposition of the funds voted.

If for any reason this money is not voted, and the great heroism of the Ukrainians these two years in fending off an adversary four times as large and promoting the continued eastward movement of the Western world, the geopolitical damage will be enormous and the responsibility borne by the Republicans will effectively disqualify them as a serious foreign policy alternative administration.

Franklin D. Roosevelt and his foreign policy entourage, including future presidents Truman and Eisenhower, established that a continuing American presence was necessary in Western Europe and the Far East to prevent those regions from falling, as they almost did in World War II, entirely into the hands of anti-democratic governments and leaving the Americas, as Roosevelt put it, prisoners in this hemisphere fed through the bars of our cages by the unpitying masters of other continents.

The correct defense of America and its legitimate interests and allies begins in Central Europe and South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. Any derogation from that concept, and particularly one induced by failed parliamentary tricks and blunders in Washington, would be a disaster for the Western world and a terrible defeat for America.

For all the failings of the incumbent Democrats, on this issue they are defending America and its allies and the Republicans should be extremely cautious about trying to game them with a policy of indefensible ignorance persuasively disguised as a serious effort to resurrect the southern border.

We are long past the point where those issues should be linked. The Republicans should start by stripping away the phony Democratic pretense that what is going on on the southern border has anything to do with immigration.

Immigration is people arriving under the Statue of Liberty and elsewhere, inscribing their names and beginning a new life pledged to become participating and law-abiding citizens of the United States. What is happening on the southern border is a cynical and negligent attempt by Democrats in search of permanent masses of malleable votes with the complicity of Republican employers seeking cheap labor, to maintain an invasion of America.

It resembles nothing so much as the barbarians driven in the fourth and fifth centuries from Eastern Europe and Central Asia into the Western Roman Empire with the Huns at their back as they swarmed into this infinitely more advanced civilization and greedily plundered it. These new invaders are less numerous and for the most part less malevolent, but they are invaders, not migrants, much less immigrants.

Speaker Johnson should allow the aid to the threatened countries to pass and take his chances with the unworldly lunatics in his own party. The Republicans should produce their own immigration reform bill, bearing no resemblance to the fatuous imposture of Senators Schumer and McConnell.

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Fiasco of Linking Immigration Reform and Foreign Aid Signals Need for Leadership in the Congress - The New York Sun

WASHINGTON In a video recorded on Feb. 8, Rep. Dan Newhouse stood in front of a 20-foot-tall fence on the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona and gave his assessment of a crisis that is dominating American politics.

The Central Washington lawmaker was leading a group of a dozen Republicans from the Congressional Western Caucus, a group he chairs that includes representatives from mostly rural districts across the United States and its territories. In contrast to the bombast that pervades the debate over immigration and border security at the Capitol and on the campaign trail, he explained soberly that the wall behind him was built under the Obama administration and is an important tool for border enforcement.

This whole issue can be pretty theoretical when youre sitting in an office in Washington, D.C., Newhouse said to the camera. But I think people really need to see for themselves, and I wish more members of Congress would come.

The situation at the southern border, where Border Patrol agents encountered a record of nearly 250,000 people crossing illegally in December, has captured the attention of lawmakers and defined the presumptive rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. After Senate negotiators proposed a bipartisan border security bill on Feb. 4, a revolt by Trump allies in the GOP sank the deal before it could reach the House, with some Republicans saying they would rather campaign on the crisis than solve it.

But in a phone call from the Tucson airport before he flew home to his farm in Sunnyside, Newhouse said fixing the nations outdated, overwhelmed immigration and border system cant wait.

I just dont think we should go to our respective corners and stomp our feet and yell because we arent getting our way, he said. Wed be asking these communities down here to just put up with what theyre dealing with for another year, because we dont want to do it right now. Thats unconscionable. Its inexcusable. I just think we have a responsibility to do what we can to bring improvements to the system.

When lawmakers returned to the House last week, Newhouse and nearly all Republicans voted Tuesday to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, a symbolic yet virtually unprecedented move intended to express the GOPs disapproval of the Biden administrations handling of the border.

On Friday, a bipartisan group of House members unveiled their own border security proposal, which would restrict migrants ability to seek asylum and reinstate a Trump-era policy that required them to remain in Mexico while awaiting court hearings in the United States. That bill is likely to face resistance from progressive Democrats and GOP hardliners, making its fate unclear.

Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, an associate policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, said its important to put the recent surge in migrants crossing the border in context.

Violence, hunger and limited opportunities for work have driven higher levels of migration and displacement around the world. Criminal organizations have taken advantage of the demand for migrating to the U.S.-Mexico border, creating a sophisticated and lucrative human-smuggling infrastructure. Finally, access to social media has supercharged the spread of information not all of it accurate about getting to the United States.

As a result, Putzel-Kavanaugh said, the situation at the border is completely different from three decades ago, the last time Congress made major updates to U.S. border and immigration laws. Then, most people who crossed the border illegally were single men seeking to work, who tried to evade Border Patrol agents and get into the country undetected.

Now, we have people coming in large numbers who cross onto U.S. territory and wait for Border Patrol to come and apprehend them and process them, she said. And so its created this complete flip in the system and in the resources that are needed and in whats happening on the ground. And our laws and our systems just arent built for this new reality.

In fiscal year 2023, for the first time most migrants who crossed the border illegally did not come from Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. According to Customs and Border Protection data, 51% came from other countries with Venezuela accounting for the biggest share along with Columbia, Ecuador, China, India and other nations.

A massive backlog in the nations immigration courts means migrants who claim asylum are typically released and wait years before their day in court. As a result, Putzel-Kavanaugh said a record number of people are in a liminal status, living in the United States for years without clear legal status, not knowing if or when they will be forced to leave.

The human aspect of this is just horrendous, what people go through, said Newhouse, a longtime advocate of bipartisan immigration reform bills that have failed to gain support among most Republicans.

The desperation to get into our country is real. Most of them are just coming to try to make a better life for themselves and their families. And to the cartels, theyre just a commodity. They dont care about whether they live or die. They just want their money.

Republicans say Biden has the authority he needs to shut down the border, but Trumps efforts to stop border crossings were repeatedly challenged and sometimes overturned by federal courts. At the end of the Trump administration and beginning of the Biden administration, asylum was severely restricted by a pandemic-era public health order known as Title 42, but that expired in May 2023.

While Trump and his allies in Congress claim Biden could do more to shut down the border, in reality the U.S. government doesnt control how many migrants cross the border illegally, only what happens after they do. According to data released by the House Judiciary Committee in October, the Department of Homeland Security released a higher percentage of arrested migrants into the United States under Trump than it did during the first two years of Bidens presidency.

David Bier, associate director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, was involved in the last major push for immigration reform in 2013, as an aide to then-Rep. Ral Labrador of Idaho. He said the political environment makes the prospect of immigration reform so hard that he believes the only option is for Biden to use his limited ability to act without Congress.

In some ways, we felt like we were close then, Bier said of the 2013 effort, which fell short amid GOP opposition in the House. But we still didnt get it done despite bipartisan agreement in the Senate, much lower temperature on the issue, much more support from major conservative media. The politics now are just so poisoned.

What Biden should do, Bier argued, is use his existing authority to allow more migrants to enter the country legally with the help of sponsors, as the president has already done for Cubans, Ukrainians, Haitians and Nicaraguans. That move sharply reduced the number of migrants from those countries who cross the border illegally. Bier said doing the same for other countries could undercut the cartels that profit from smuggling people across the border, while helping overwhelmed Border Patrol agents.

If you deal with that, it dries up so much of the smuggling pipeline, he said. If theres very few people being smuggled from Central America through Mexico, then that whole system just gets gutted of all of its infrastructure.

A similar approach for Venezuela hasnt been as effective, Bier said, because demand for the program far exceeds the number of Venezuelans who can enter the United States legally.

Newhouse said he is open to that approach, although he emphasized that Customs and Border Protection still would need more funding to process even a much smaller number of migrants at the border.

If you took away the commodity they deal in the people yeah, that would make a lot of sense, Newhouse said of the Mexican cartels that control smuggling operations.

While Newhouse acknowledged that the political climate makes immigration and border reform harder, he said the country cant afford to wait. He said he believes the 11 Republicans who traveled with him to Arizona including Rep. Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, who chairs the hard-right Freedom Caucus feel the same way.

The people on this trip, when they saw firsthand whats going on here, I didnt hear anybody say that we should just wait until the next election, Newhouse said.

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After leading trip to southern border, Central Washington's Dan Newhouse says immigration reform can't wait - The Spokesman Review