Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by bryanlarsen 114 days ago
I'm sure the UK has way more than 41 thousand shitty jobs with shitty pay that no native really wants. I doubt they're not working because they don't want to.

In Canada the standard complaint is that "immigrants take the jobs" not that "immigrants aren't working". It seems like it's a lot easier to get a job at a Tim Hortons if you speak Hindi like the owners and managers. A job at a restaurant if you speak Levantine Arabic.

And those are just the public tip of the iceberg. Construction crews are mostly foreign. Our roofers were Indian. Our landscapers were Lebanese / Syrian. The people we interacted with spoke great English, but their workers didn't.

The big difference is that Canada had constant immigration. They came over 40 years ago and since they had trouble finding employment became entrepreneurs and restaurants and construction and other blue collar services are the most fertile areas for entrepreneurs. Now they have a huge advantage in hiring low cost labor.