The Stripper Visa

Ryan Healey reflects on the end of Canada’s experiment with pole-dancing immigrants:

Since the 1970s, a specific visa process for foreign strippers has been in place, although it has vacillated between expedient carte blanche and Victorian prejudice. So many people want this visa window closed for so many noble reasons. For humanitarians, you can protect women from this way of life; or, if you’re nativist, you can appeal to “keeping it Canadian.” And haven’t you heard of human trafficking? A 2010 RCMP report said that criminal groups exploited the visa policy to induct foreigners into the underground sex trade, the stats slippery but terrifying.

Healey concludes:

The stripper visa was radical, even if it existed for all the wrong reasons, and now it is lost: a federal policy that required Canada to meet its infinite demand for libidinal energy. The country had opened its arms to the legitimacy of the sex trade and the beginnings of considerable social mobility. A Romanian could raise herself up with only her body, and Windsor’s streets could be paved with worn US dollar bills.