globeandmail.com: Ottawa rules out amnesty for illegal workers

globeandmail.com: Ottawa rules out amnesty for illegal workers: "Ottawa has ruled out amnesty for the estimated 200,000 undocumented workers toiling in Canada's underground economy, saying it would not be fair to those who have applied legally and are waiting in line, according to a letter obtained by The Globe and Mail.
Allowing illegal workers to stay would likely “encourage more illegal immigration,” noted Linda Arseneau of Citizenship and Immigration Canada's ministerial enquiries division in an Oct. 18 letter to the Universal Workers Union.
“Even a small increase in the number who decide to come here and stay here illegally based on the hope of regularization would simply recreate the very problem the proposal is supposed to fix,” the letter says.
The decision is a bitter disappointment to Portuguese and Hispanic groups, home-builder associations and unions in Ontario that have lobbied CIC to allow undocumented workers in the construction industry to regularize their status."
Source: The Globe and Mail