Keller: How the Liberals can fix the immigration system that they broke

Generally reasonable proposals but unlikely that the government will be courageous (or desperate) enough to rescind some of its policies that have resulted in the shift of public attitudes being more critical of immigration levels:

Step One: Greatly reduce the number of student visas….

Step Two: Restrict the temporary foreign worker stream to a small number of high-end jobs, not millions of low-paying jobs….

Step Three: Rely on the points system to decide on who gets permanent residency. Again, we should be prioritizing immigrants with high skills and educations, and the best shots at earning higher incomes than the average Canadian. …

Step Four: Control the border. A wide and welcoming door, paired with high walls, was an unspoken basis of the Canadian immigration consensus. It was well understood by previous governments, Liberal and Conservative alike….

Liberal brain trust, the choice is yours.

You can restore the national consensus by fixing the parts of the immigration system you broke. Or you can stay the course – which won’t be good for the economy, productivity, housing, higher education, inequality or national unity, but which may give you a wedge issue for the next election.

You can fix the problem, but lose the wedge. Or you can wait for the Conservatives to criticize your immigration mess, and then you can try to weaponize that criticism, turning a practical question of how to run the immigration system for the benefit of Canadians into a moral issue, in which any questioning of your immigration policy and levels will be defined, by you, as racist.

For the sake of the country, choose the first course.

Source: How the Liberals can fix the immigration system that they broke

Globe editorial reinforces some of this points, with the following punchline:

As Mr. Miller has seemingly recognized, the immigration system has indeed spun out of control. Quick action is needed to restore its stability: not in coming months, but now.

Source: The Liberals’ half-measures won’t fix a broken immigration system