Romanian strippers find Canada ideal gig, as do those skilled in the field of “terorrism”, “couch potatoe-ology”, “n’er-do-wellism”, “pot-smoking”, “laying about”, and coincidentally, liberals from other countries too.
Alina Balaican, the exotic dancer who has taken centre stage in a political controversy, is part of a growing wave of Romanian strippers coming to Canada—552 exotic dancers from that country were granted temporary work visas last year, according to government records.
Market forces, Eastern European networks and curious federal immigration policies are being cited for the influx. Regardless, records show that Romanian women have recently accounted for a quadrupling of the number of temporary visas handed out through the federal government’s little-known exotic-dancer program.
While Ms. Balaican is now in the spotlight—Opposition MPs are seething that Immigration Minister Judy Sgro helped her get special permission to stay in Canada after Ms. Balaican worked on her campaign—she used to be merely one face in a sea of nearly 100,000 temporary immigrants who arrive each year under the skilled-workers program.
Thousands come to pick fruit. Thousands more become nannies. And in hundreds of cases, female migrant workers arrive to take off their clothes and lap dance in the back rooms of bars for $20 a song.
Increasingly, for reasons that befuddle some officials, the last type of workers are from Romania. While the exotic-dancer program is not new, its numbers are surging upward from a low of a few years ago, when enforcement actions aimed at uncovering prostitution fronts stanched the migration flow.
Immigration Canada records obtained by Vancouver immigration researcher Richard Kurland show that in 2001, only 25 Romanians came to Canada under the program. In 2002, there were 216 work permits issued. Last year, 552 Romanians arrived—accounting for 83 per cent of the exotic dancers admitted under the program.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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