ABSTRACT
We begin this chapter by considering three very different events that took place between 2012 and 2015. The first, in 2012, involved Canada’s former Minister of Citizenship and Immigration appearing on a popular late-night Irish talk show to advertise the thousands of high-quality jobs available in Canada for hard-working Irish citizens interested in applying for a temporary work permit; dedicated Irish workers were, in his words, simply a ‘natural choice’ for Canadian employers looking for labour abroad. Two years later, in the late summer of 2014, officials from the Canada Border Services Agency conducted a series of coordinated raids on construction day labour spots across North Toronto. In less than forty-eight hours, border agents had detained and deported a total of twenty-two men, mainly undocumented migrants from Latin America. Finally, in 2015, a European engineering firm with the contract to oversee the expansion of one branch of Toronto’s subway system was summarily terminated following major cost overruns and mismanagement. The subcontractor then fled the country, leaving many of its non-Canadian workforce suddenly unemployed and without legal permission to work and live in Canada.
