CANADIAN farms hire almost 40,000 foreign workers every year to help with planting and harvesting of crops, newly released figures have shown.

These farm labourers are allowed in to Canada under temporary foreign worker programmes, and have no access to permanent residency or citizenship. The 'TFW’s' can work for four years, but then must return to their country, and then wait another four years before they can apply to return to work in Canada.

The country's farming operations say the four year limit hurts them as they have to keep retraining new workers all the time.

Every year, faced with this four5-year exclusion, a few workers decide to “go underground” in order to remain illegally and continue to find work. This year in Quebec, the number of Guatemalan foreign workers going “off-grid” has been unusually high, with about 100 disappearing. It is hard to track them once they disappear, as they can find low-paid unregistered work at hotels, restaurants, and manufacturing.

To try to remedy this situation, a parliamentary committee has recommended changes to the TFW programme, including abolishing the four year limit.