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An Auction Model of Canadian Temporary Immigration for the 21 st Century
Author(s) -
DeVoretz Don
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
international migration
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.681
H-Index - 64
eISSN - 1468-2435
pISSN - 0020-7985
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-2435.2008.00434.x
Subject(s) - voucher , immigration , government (linguistics) , economic shortage , the internet , labour economics , economics , business , political science , demographic economics , law , linguistics , philosophy , accounting , world wide web , computer science
Temporary Canadian immigration has grown beyond traditional programs for students, caregivers and agricultural workers to include trade‐related temporary visas under NAFTA and the GATS. Current Canadian debates envision supplanting Canada's permanent immigration programme with a temporary visa programme to remove skill shortages. Several questions emerge under these temporary schemes including who should choose the number of temporary immigrants and under what employment conditions. This paper offers an alternative policy to the current government‐determined quota on temporary visas to answer these two questions. Under the proposed scheme offered in this paper, a Canadian worker can place a job voucher up for auction on the Internet. If the Canadian worker finds an acceptable offer for his one‐year (or less) voucher, then the temporary immigrant is permitted to seek a job in Canada. Thus, under this auction scheme Canadian workers are compensated for the presence of temporary immigrants, and the actual number of temporary immigrants admitted depends on the total number of Canadian workers who sell their vouchers, not on a government fat.