Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Conservatives Abandon Alien Amnesty Plan - NOT!

The lead into this article at the Toronto Star reads:
Hard workers can't stay

Illegal workers in Toronto's underground economy are being deported as the new Conservative government abandons a Liberal amnesty plan, immigration lawyers and consultants say.

Which is why this article grabbed my attention. Who knew that that the Liberals had an amnesty plan for the Conservatives to abandon? I didn’t. At one point I recall reading that the Liberals were going to examine the possibility of a general amnesty for illegal aliens and that’s as much as I read. Now I will admit that I am not necessarily the most informed person on the planet but I would bet the rent money if the Liberals had a solid proposal to offer as an immigration amnesty policy it would have been a major campaign issue. And it never came up during the campaign. Not once.

It is not until you get past the first five paragraphs that one learns that Joe Volpe, former Liberal Minister of Immigration had a draft proposal that was never sent to the Liberal cabinet to consider.

Furthermore, unlike the Toronto Star, I am not much interested in the government taking charge and managing the economics of the “underground economy”. I figure the government’s efforts are better spent managing the above ground economy. Nor do I have much sympathy for the plight of the construction industry in Toronto which this article suggests has made illegal aliens a staple of their worker base - not while the general youth unemployment rate is at 11.4% and I suspect it is even considerably higher among black youth in Toronto but I can’t find any race base statistics. Though I would be curious to see exactly how diverse the construction industry in Toronto actually is.

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