ABSTRACT
Canada is a favored destination of immigrants and temporary foreign workers (TFWs) from around the world. While its traditional focus is geared towards permanent migration, the entry of TFWs has increasingly signaled the preference of temporary migration to address labor demands in designated sectors. For example, the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP) 1 for agriculture and the Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP) 2 for domestic services are the two main federally regulated temporary labor schemes. To further respond to particular needs of different provinces, the Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) is a shared framework agreement between the federal and provincial governments in which the latter submits worker nominee for permanent residence status without going through the standard point system assessment for federal skilled workers (Gabriel 2011). According to Statistics Canada, the number of TFWs “has been rising faster than the number of people admitted temporarily for other reasons” (Thomas 2010, 35). 3 In the 2006 census, the Philippines was the leading source country for nonpermanent residents in Canada, or about 14 percent of the total (Thomas 2010).
