10/07/2014
Canadian Employment Minister Jason Kenney recently announced that the Canadian government is planning to impose strict reforms to curb fraudulent immigration of live-in care workers.
Current rules permits families to hire carers from abroad, but authorities said it has been abused to the extent that thousands of immigrants were able to enter Canada to work as carers for their own relatives.
There is, however, no sign that the UK government will institute a similar measure as of the moment.
UK currently has previously policy that prohibits foreign care workers from filing permanent residency status even after rendering five uninterrupted years of work, but influx of foreign care workers continues. Currently, 20 per cent of the 1.2 million registered care workers in the UK are foreign born, according a research sponsored by King's College London. Experts even believe that one-half of care workers in some cities in the UK are foreigners.
A study conducted by Oxford Institute of Ageing says that care worker employers say they hire migrant care workers due to lack of application from UK-born workers. Yet concerns have been raised recently by some sectors regarding compromised service by immigrant care workers whose poor English skills may prevent adequate patient-carer communication. As a counter-measure, the government laid out its plans to implement a 12-week training requirement for foreign care worker applicants. A care agency must prove that the applicant has the needed English communication skills; otherwise, his certification for care work will be denied. The plan is to be effective starting March 2015.
UK’s immigration problem remains one of the most problematic in Europe. Data from the Office for National Statistics revealed that UK’s population can hit 100 million by 2075 if immigration is not controlled well. The UK’s population rate is the fastest growing in the EU and majority of voters are pushing the government to implement reforms to curtail fraudulent immigration.
