Illegal immigration issue simmers.

Mexico City -- The illegal immigration debate in the U.S. is having its repercussions in Canada as well, with Mexican President Vicente Fox recently suggesting that Canada open its doors to greater numbers of unskilled guest workers from his country in order to address a Canadian labour shortage brought on by an aging population. Fox spoke just prior to the Cancun summit with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and U.S. President George Bush in February 2006.

A Seasonal Agricultural Worker's Program that allows Canadian farms to recruit foreign workers for eight months if they cannot find Canadians to harvest their crops now involves more than 18,000 workers, including 7,200 Mexicans who came to farms in Ontario last year.

Fox is proposing a large-scale "guest worker" program for Mexicans in the U.S., in order to deal with the growing problem of illegal immigration there. Huge crowds have come out in support of illegal immigrants--many at several recent mass rallies in the U.S. in April and on May 1, 2006. The number of illegals in the United States--mostly Latin Americans--may number eleven or twelve million.

An estimated 200,000 illegal immigrants are thought to be currently residing in Canada and about 10,000 are scheduled to be deported this year by the Canadian Border Services Agency. A group of "undocumented" Portuguese construction workers in Toronto was recently deported, causing waves both here and in their home country: "If all of the illegal workers in the construction industry in the Greater Toronto Area were deported, there would be a serious impact on the industry," said Andy Manahan, spokesperson for the Universal Workers' Union (Globe and Mail, March 28, 2006).