Geoff Russ: Mark Carney can’t be trusted to get immigration under control

2025/03/31 Leave a comment

Example of any number of articles and commentary by Postmedia columnists warning that the appointment of Mark Wiseman, and to a lessor extent, Marco Mendocino, mean that PM Carney will continue the same high immigration policies of Trudeau. IMO, too early to tell, whether he would continue or expand the restrictions of former Minister Miller, or not. But certainly Wiseman’s appointment could be interpreted as such:

Donald Trump and his tariffs will not be the only key issue that determines who will be prime minister after April, 28. Canada has been plagued by a diverse set of problems for years, all of which will be remembered by voters on election day, including immigration.

Prior to Trump’s election and his decision to threaten Canada, one of the biggest controversies in Canada was the abrupt end of an uncontested pillar in Canadian political culture — immigration. It crumbled as if struck by a sledgehammer after just a few years of the Trudeau government’s careless mass-immigration policies.

The numbers laid bare illustrate Canada’s resulting issues of scarcity. Simply put, Canada is not built to sustain half a million newcomers per year.

Stephen Harper’s government admitted roughly 250,000 permanent residents per year between 2006 and 2015. The Trudeau wave saw those numbers increasing from Harper’s pre-2015 levels, to an average around 334,000, with four years (2019, 2021, 2022, and 2023) exceeding 341,000, at a time when Century Initiative, lobby group that advocates for dramatically higher immigration levels, was at the height of its influence in Ottawa.

In 2018, representatives of the Initiative lamented that Canada’s annual intake of about 310,000 people per year would only increase the population to 53 million by 2100, and called for an increase to 450,000 to reach the goal of 100 million.

Created by former McKinsey executive, Dominic Barton and former BlackRock executive Mark Wiseman, Century Initiative publicly endorsed the Trudeau government’s moves to take in 500,000 new immigrants per year by 2025.

However, the scheme rapidly lost all political currency as the population influx rocked Canada. Immigration-driven demand for housing and services vastly outstripped the supply of both, resulting in a palpable decline in affordability and access to health care, schooling and social services.

Between 2015 and 2024, Canada’s ranking in the Human Development Index plummeted from 9th to 18th, while the country fell behind Italy in the average growth of real GDP per capita.

Western governments since the Great Recession have tried to claim that large-scale immigration is an unambiguous economic benefit. Given the state of the economies of Canada, Germany, and others that embraced mass immigration, immigration has not been a silver bullet to remedy slow growth and stagnation.

Immigrants themselves are not at the root of Canada’s long-standing problems. However, it is also clear that increasing their numbers in such a deliberate fashion failed to make Canada more competitive or improve the lives of its citizens.

There has not been a meaningful increase in the numbers of engineers, physicians, and software developers. In essential services like health care, the ratio of family doctors in relation to the general population has actually worsened. Rather, Canada has imported hundreds of thousands of unskilled international students who stock shelves, deliver food, and flip hamburgers for minimum-wage.

On the other hand, academic institutions have become dependent on this new class of economic immigrant, who often enters the country on a student visa to attend suspect career colleges while paying exorbitant international student fees.

This is not an economic climate that breeds dynamism or healthy growth. Canada needs to be a top choice for highly-skilled immigrants, which means having attractively affordable housing and quality services, neither of which have been rapidly deteriorating.

Even if the restrictions on foreign credentials are loosened in Canada, few trained doctors or dentists from India or South Africa will pick Toronto over Dallas as long as the latter offers substantially higher paycheques and cheaper housing.

In-fact, just 46 per cent of immigrants are now choosing to receive Canadian citizenship, compared to 72 per cent in 1996. Last fall, Ipsos found that just over one quarter of all newcomers plan on leaving Canada within two years, with many citing the lack of affordability. This they have in-common with younger Canadians, many of whom are resigned to bleak and leaner lives than those enjoyed by their parents.

It is therefore concerning that Mark Carney has brought on Century Initiative co-founder Mark Wiseman as an advisor, whose name is ironic considering the results of his lobby group’s ideology. Canadians do not want Century Initiative-inspired ideas anymore, with nearly 60 per cent of residents polled last summer wanting substantially less immigration.

Unlike Europe, where mass-immigration has resulted in a slew of cultural and social clashes between asylum seekers and the established population, the pushback to immigration in Canada still mostly stems from economic factors, particularly housing.

Nonetheless, Wiseman’s presence on the prime minister’s team is political poison. He once even publicly endorsed pushing the Century Initiative’s agenda, even if it caused outrage in Quebec.

For many Québécois, their future is a major source of concern as their demographic place in North America shrinks. The prospect of more mass immigration could be the landmine that blows up Carney’s current run of goodwill in Quebec.

Without Quebec, Carney has little hope of winning a majority government, and even a parliamentary plurality is uncertain. Within hours of Wiseman’s involvement being announced, both the Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois went on the attack, in both official languages.

Pierre Poilievre himself attacked the Century Initiative as striving to “bring in people from poor countries in large numbers, to take away Canadian jobs, drive wages down and profits up,” and that Canada should only admit people who can be actually housed and employed

Wiseman’s role will harden the perception that Carney is merely feigning a Liberal shift back to the centre under his leadership. It was a misstep that undercuts Carney’s credibility on immigration caps, which he has nominally pledged to maintain until housing is expanded.

To their credit, the Liberal government significantly scaled back the annual immigration numbers in Trudeau’s final months as PM, if only due to public backlash. A new leader, and Trump’s blustering, has gifted the Liberals a huge opportunity to reinvent themselves as the defenders of the country, while sidestepping hard questions about their thus far poor record in government.

Mark Carney is saying and promising all the right things to pull the Liberals back towards the centre and a genuine pro-growth agenda, earning him plaudits across the political spectrum, even from conservatives. However, if he continues to surround himself with the same crew of advisors and cabinet ministers who sailed Canada into a lost decade, can Carney truly be the captain to right the ship, least of all on immigration?

Source: Geoff Russ: Mark Carney can’t be trusted to get immigration under control

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Countries boost recruitment of American scientists amid cuts to scientific funding

2025/03/31 Leave a comment

A reminder that Canada faces competition from other countries in seeking to attract USA-based talent concerned about the Trump education-related immigration practices:

As the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s DOGE seek to reduce the federal workforce and cut spending, some European countries are looking to capitalize on the opportunity by recruiting talent from the scientific community.

The administration’s actions, including eliminating programs and funding for scientific research, are prompting some researchers and scientists to consider leaving the U.S. to live in other countries, such as France, to continue their work.

According to a survey released by the journal Nature on Thursday, more than 1,200 respondents who identified as scientists said they were considering leaving the U.S. and relocating to Europe or Canada because of President Trump’s actions. Approximately 1,650 people completed the survey, which was posted on the journal’s website, social media and an e-mailed newsletter, according to the journal.

Source: Countries boost recruitment of American scientists amid cuts to scientific funding

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Canadians born in Iran, Afghanistan turned away at U.S. border after Trump executive order on terror threats

2025/03/31 Leave a comment

Depressing if not unexpected:

Canadian citizens born in Iran and Afghanistan are being denied entry to the United States after facing intense questioning at the border, immigration lawyers and advisers say, as the Trump administration pursues more aggressive vetting of foreigners.

Legal experts who spoke to The Globe and Mail called on Ottawa to issue a travel advisory warning citizens and residents that they risk being denied entry, having their visas or Nexus cards revoked, or even being detained or deported if they travel to the U.S.

Although there are no up-to-date official figures on the countries of birth of Canadians being refused entry to the U.S., several immigration lawyers said they have been contacted about more border issues since Jan. 20, when newly inaugurated President Donald Trump signed an executive order that called for more stringent screening of foreign nationals entering the U.S.

To reinforce the order, the Trump administration is reported to be considering formally issuing a complete ban on travel to the U.S. for the citizens of scores of countries, including Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, Yemen and Somalia, with further entry restrictions on citizens of Eritrea, Haiti, Sierra Leone, Myanmar and others. The administration has also pledged to deport pro-Palestinian protesters in the U.S…

Source: Canadians born in Iran, Afghanistan turned away at U.S. border after Trump executive order on terror threats

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The winding tale of the Sugihara visas, that saved Jews from the Holocaust, led them to Japan and landed them in Canada 

2025/03/31 Leave a comment

Interesting. Impressive courage to refuse direction from superiors, not sure I would have had the courage to do so:

Akira Kitade was about to retire after a lifetime of service at Japan’s tourist bureau, when his boss took a scrapbook off the shelf in his home and showed it to him. In it were photographs of his boss as a young man on a boat bound for Japan with Jewish refugees during the Second World War.

The discovery of the scrapbook, which included seven passport photos of young people, with personal messages in French, Bulgarian, Norwegian and Polish inscribed on the back, set Mr. Kitade on a quest spanning decades to find out who they were.

This week in Ottawa, at an event hosted by Kanji Yamanouchi, Japan’s ambassador to Canada, Mr. Kitade told how the mystery had finally been solved in Canada. A Montreal photographer had recognized a photo of a beautiful young woman in the scrapbook, sparking a train of other discoveries.

In an interview, Mr. Kitade described how the passport photograph, signed Zosia, with a note scrawled in Polish – “To a wonderful Japanese man – please remember me” – had haunted him. Her expression seemed to embody the anguish of Jews persecuted by the Nazis, he said, and he was compelled to learn her story….

Source: The winding tale of the Sugihara visas, that saved Jews from the Holocaust, led them to Japan and landed them in Canada

Filed under Antisemitism, Holocaust, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Canadian researchers are being asked politically charged questions when trying to secure U.S. grants

2025/03/31 Leave a comment

Further counter-productive chill:

Academic researchers are used to filing out forms when applying for grants, but Canadian scholars have expressed shock over a new questionnaire they are receiving when applying for funding issued in part of wholly by the U.S. government.”Can you confirm that this is no DEI project or DEI elements of the project?” asks one question, with an accompanying link to U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order to nix funding from government programs dealing with diversity, equity and inclusion.”Can you confirm this is not a climate or “environmental justice” project or include such elements?” asks another.Yet another asks if a project “defends women from gender ideology” — another reference to a Trump executive order.Peter McInnis, President of Canadian Association of University Teachers, which represents 72,000 staff across more than 125 institutions, says they’ve been receiving messages about what he says is “most unusual, not only just to receive a questionnaire at all, but this one was clearly screening for ideological questions.”

It is unclear how many Canadian scholars received the questionnaire, or how many people’s work depends on funding from granting bodies associated with the U.S. government, but most tend to be in the fields of health, science, agriculture and climate researchFor example, the U.S.-based National Institute of Health last year poured about $57 million into projects involving Canadian researchers, according to McInnis.

Source: Canadian researchers are being asked politically charged questions when trying to secure U.S. grants

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McCauley and Wang: In this time of crisis, let’s make better use of Canadians abroad to build our future

2025/03/28 Leave a comment

Perennial call, but greater urgency.

But there may be limits.

For example, the authors argue that the number of expat Canadians who are engaged politically has increased dramatically (62 percent) without the absolute numbers which show only 56,000 registrations, 26,000 votes counted and 12,000 submitted late and thus not counted. Minimal numbers, and statistical malpractice to cite the percentage increase without actual numbers:

…Today, a growing number of Canadians overseas are engaged politically, as evidenced by the 62 per cent of registered overseas voters who cast ballots in the 2019 federal election, a significant increase over previous years. Many Canadians abroad remain keen to give back and contribute their ideas, expertise and networks to build our country’s future. For some, that means moving home and searching for meaningful ways to engage with our social and civic fabric. Those who remain abroad are left to find mechanisms to participate in and shape Canadian policies….

This is our call to action. To our leaders: develop a national strategy to engage Canadians abroad. To our businesses: tap into our global talent pool for nation-building at home. To Canadians living outside our borders: stay engaged, demand inclusion and bring your ideas and energy home when Canada needs them most. At a time of nation-building at home, we should recognize that our country’s future is also global – and it’s time we start acting like it.

Adam McCauley is a Canadian journalist and academic based in Ottawa. He writes about international relations, defence and security, and technology.

Steven Wang is a Canadian lawyer based in Toronto and an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law and Harvard Law School.

Source: In this time of crisis, let’s make better use of Canadians abroad to build our future

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Immigration to Canada from the U.S. has been shifting. Here’s how

2025/03/28 Leave a comment

Interesting shift:

Over the last decade, the majority of Canadian immigrants from the U.S. have been either non-U.S. citizens or Americans who previously lived here as temporary residents, says a new study on migration trends.

According to the Statistics Canada analysis released Wednesday, almost all American immigrants in the early 1980s were U.S. citizens, with more than three-quarters born and last residing in the United States. While this share declined in the following decade, it remained above two-thirds until the early 2010s.

Since then, the proportion of non-citizen U.S. residents immigrating to Canada rose sharply from the early 2010s, reaching 45 per cent or 9,307 in 2019 — the year before the COVID-19 pandemic. This group includes legal and undocumented residents in the country.

Meanwhile, the share of U.S. citizens who were previously on temporary permits in Canada also increased significantly during this period, peaking at 54 per cent (6,454) in 2017 and fluctuating in subsequent years.

“As a result of these shifts, the majority of U.S. immigrants to Canada in recent years have been either U.S. non-citizen residents or U.S. citizens who had already been living in Canada,” said the report, “Recent trends in migration flows from the United States to Canada.”

Who occupies the White House does affect American immigration to Canada, in driving U.S. citizens and temporary residents to seek permanent residence north of the border, it said….

Source: Immigration to Canada from the U.S. has been shifting. Here’s how

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Todd: This should be the first Canadian election that focuses on migration

2025/03/28 Leave a comment

I suspect, however, that it will not given that immigration, like so many other issues, is drowned out by the existential crisis of the Trump administration. But yes, appointments by PM Carney provide a hook to raise the issue and cite the excessive influence of the Century Initiative in past government policy before former immigration minister reversed course. As I have argued before, his changes provide space for immigration policy discussions without being labelled as xenophobic or racist.

Skuterud’s comments on rotating immigration ministers is valid and unfortunately former minister Miller was shuffled out by PM Carney:

A controversial appointment put migration in the headlines on the same weekend that Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a snap election.

The investment fund manager and former head of the Bank of Canada, who won the Liberal leadership contest two weeks ago, became the subject of news stories focusing on how he has chosen Mark Wiseman, an advocate for open borders, as a key adviser.

Wiseman is co-founder of the Century Initiative, a lobby group that aggressively advocates for Canada’s population to catapult to 100 million by 2100. Wiseman maintains Canada’s traditional method of “screening” people before allowing them into the country is “frankly, just a waste of time.” The immigration department’s checks, he says, are “just a bureaucracy.”

Wiseman believes migration policy should be left in the hands of business.

The appointment of Wiseman is an indication that Carney, a long-time champion of free trade in capital and labour, is gathering people around him who value exceptional migration levels and more foreign investment, including in housing.

Carney denied a charge by Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre that bringing in Wiseman “shows that Mark Carney supports the Liberal Century Initiative to nearly triple our population to 100 million people. … That is the radical Liberal agenda on immigration.”

Carney tried this week to distance himself from the Century Initiative, telling reporters Wiseman will not be advising him on migration.

For years, migration issues have been taboo in Canada, says SFU political scientist Sanjay Jeram.

But the Canadian “‘immigration consensus’ that more is always better” is weakening, Jeram says. Most people believe “public opinion toward immigration has soured due to concerns that rapid population growth contributed to the housing and inflation crises.” But Jeram also thinks Canadian attitudes reflect expanding global skepticism.

Whatever the motivations, Poilievre says he would reduce immigration by roughly half, to 250,000 new citizens each year, the level before the Liberals were elected in 2015. The Conservative leader maintains the record volume of newcomers during Trudeau’s 10 years in power has fuelled the country’s housing and rental crisis.

Carney has said he would scale back the volume of immigration and temporary residents to pre-pandemic levels, which would leave them still much higher than when the Conservatives were in office.

What are the actual trends? After the Liberal came to power, immigration levels doubled and guest workers and foreign students increased by five times. Almost three million non-permanent residents now make up 7.3 per cent of the population, up from 1.4 per cent in 2015.

Meanwhile, a Leger poll this month confirmed resistance is rising. Now 58 per cent of Canadians believe migration levels are “too high.” And even half of those who have been in the country for less than a decade feel the same way.

Vancouver real-estate analyst Steve Saretsky says Carney’s embracing of a key player in the Century Initiative is a startling signal, given that migration numbers have been instrumental in pricing young people out of housing.

Saretsky worries the tariff wars started by U.S. President Donald Trump are an emotional “distraction,” making Canadian voters temporarily forget the centrality of housing. He says he is concerned Canadians may get “fooled again” by Liberal promises to slow migration, however moderately.

Bank of Canada economists James Cabral and Walter Steingress recently showed that a one per cent increase in population raises median housing prices by an average of 2.2 per cent — and in some cases by as much as six to eight per cent.

In addition to Carney’s appointment of Wiseman, what are the other signs he leans to lofty migration levels?

One is Carney’s choice of chief of staff: former immigration minister Marco Mendicino, who often boasted of how he was “making it easier” for newcomers to come to the country. Many labour economists said Mendicino’s policies, which brought in more low-skilled workers, did not make sense.

By 2023, the Liberals had a new immigration minister in Marc Miller, who began talking about reducing migration. But Carney dumped Miller out of his cabinet entirely, replacing him with backbench Montreal MP Rachel Bendayan. Prominent Waterloo University labour economist Mikal Skuterud finds it discouraging that Bendayan will be the sixth Liberal immigration minister in a decade.

New ministers, Skuterud said, are vulnerable to special interests, particularly from business.

“It’s a complicated portfolio,” Skuterud said this week. “You get captured by the private interests when you don’t really understand the system or the objectives. You’re just trying to play whack-a-mole, just trying to meet everybody’s needs.”

Skuterud is among the many economists who regret how record high levels of temporary workers have contributed to Canada being saddled with the weakest growth in GDP per capita among advanced economies.

Last week, high-profile Vancouver condo marketer Bob Rennie told an audience that he pitched Carney on a proposal to stimulate rental housing by offering a preferred rate from the Canada Mortgage Housing Corp to offshore investors.

We also learned this week that Carney invited former Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson to run as a Liberal candidate. Robertson was mayor during the time that offshore capital, mostly from China, flooded into Vancouver’s housing market. When SFU researcher Andy Yan brought evidence of it to the public’s attention, Robertson said his study had “racist tones.” Two years later, however, Robertson admitted foreign capital had hit “like a ton of bricks.”

It’s notable that Carney, as head of the Bank of England until 2020, was one of the highest-profile campaigners against Brexit, the movement to leave the European Union.

Regardless of its long-lasting implications, Brexit was significantly fuelled by Britons who wanted to protect housing prices by better controlling migration levels, which were being elevated by the EU’s Schengen system, which allows the free movement of people within 29 participating countries.

For perhaps the first time, migration will be a bubbling issue this Canadian election.

While the link to housing prices gets much of the notice, SFU’s Jeram also believes “the negative framing of immigration in the U.S. and Europe likely activated latent concerns among Canadians. It made parties aware that immigration politics may no longer be received by the public as taboo.”

Source: This should be the first Canadian election that focuses on migration

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Nicolas | Victoire antiwoke

2025/03/28 Leave a comment

A reminder but yes, there have been excesses:

…En toute transparence, un sentiment de colère m’habite alors que je parcours et reproduis ici ces mots. Une colère saine, que je travaille à exprimer sainement. C’était écrit dans le ciel que l’obsession pour les wokes et le wokisme manufacturés de toutes pièces par Fox News et les autres grands médias de la droite républicaine visait le rétrécissement des libertés d’expression, d’association et universitaire. Les campus ont été des lieux cruciaux dans les luttes pour les droits de la personne dans l’histoire américaine : s’attaquer à l’université, c’était autoriser un recul des droits, et vice versa.

Je trouve lourd qu’il soit même nécessaire de rappeler que le wokisme est la clé d’une guerre culturelle inventée par la droite républicaine pour servir ses intérêts, et que c’est à partir du combat contre le danger woke — renommé parfois EDI de manière à peu près interchangeable — qu’on assoie présentement cette attaque contre la raison, la science, le langage et des pans entiers de la population.

Certains auront de la difficulté à admettre qu’en alimentant ces chasses aux wokes, ils sont tombés dans un piège extrêmement grossier dont on voit maintenant le résultat. Je crois que, derrière cette colère, il y a surtout une tristesse, une forme de deuil. Une déception aussi.

Marginalisé. Marijuana. Minorités. Multiculturel. Noir. Non binaire. Obésité. Opioïdes. Oppression. Orientation. Polarisation. Politique. Pollution. Personne enceinte. Populations clés. Préférences sexuelles. Préjugés. Privilège. Promouvoir. Pronoms. Prostituées. Qualité environnementale.

Si j’établis l’obsession pour les wokes comme le début de la fin des haricots, c’est parce que je citais Hannah Arendt la semaine dernière, et je vais me répéter : « La mort de l’empathie humaine est l’un des premiers signes et des plus révélateurs d’une culture sur le point de sombrer dans la barbarie. »

Et que le mot « woke », à la base, ne signifie qu’une sensibilité pour la justice sociale et un engagement actif dans la lutte contre la discrimination et les inégalités.

En écrivant semaine après semaine de manière négative à partir de ce concept, des chroniqueurs ont contribué à associer le souci des personnes vulnérables au ridicule, voire au danger ou au mal. On a stigmatisé l’empathie — sans prévoir que ça allait finir par revenir au nez d’à peu près tout le monde. Parce qu’on a tous des éléments de vulnérabilité en nous, d’une manière ou d’une autre.

C’était ça, le piège.

Des personnalités médiatiques américaines, européennes, canadiennes et québécoises ont passé une partie de la dernière décennie à cibler des personnes, principalement des jeunes, qui exprimaient des préoccupations pour le bien commun à partir de profondes réserves d’empathie, déclenchant souvent à leur égard une pluie de messages haineux qui a contribué à les faire taire. Il y avait bien sûr parfois des maladresses dans la manière de s’exprimer, maladresses qui ont servi de justificatif à cette dureté. Mais le traitement médiatique a tellement été dur envers les jeunes empathiques qui s’exprimaient de manière parfois maladroite dans l’espace public qu’il n’y a pratiquement plus de jeunes empathiques qui osent s’exprimer dans l’espace public. Problème réglé, je suppose ?

Race. Racisme. Rougeole. Santé mentale. Science climatique. Ségrégation. Sexe. Sexualité. Socioculturel. Socio-économique. Sous-représentés. Sous-représentation. Sous-estimés. Stéréotypes. Sujets à enquête fédérale. Sujets qui ont récemment reçu l’attention du Congrès. Sujets qui ont reçu une grande attention médiatique.

Il y a quelque chose d’obscène dans le silence des gens qui ont fait leur pain et leur beurre avec la « liberté d’expression » et l’antiwokisme à Fox News ces dernières années, face à cette censure — cette vraie censure —, c’est-à-dire ce bannissement de mots par legouvernement de manière à limiter la distribution des ressources. Mais une fois la colère, la tristesse et la déception exprimées, je retrouve accès à mes instincts plus généreux, voire optimistes, sinon sereins, dans l’interprétation de ce silence. Je me dis — j’espère — que certains ont entamé une réflexion sur la machine infernale dans laquelle ils ont mis le doigt.

Systémique. Trans. Transgenre. Traumatisme. Traumatique. Vaccins. Victimes. Violence fondée sur le genre. Vulnérable.

Au fond, la seule question qui importe vraiment, c’est : qu’est-ce qu’on est en train d’apprendre de tout cela ?

Source: Chronique | Victoire antiwoke

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Politicians’ attacks on immigrants lack solid evidence: New data set the record straight

2025/03/28 Leave a comment

Interesting international comparative study:

…Complaints about inclusion

In the United States, President Donald Trump has voiced concerns about immigrants’ welfare access repeatedly, both during his first term and since taking office again this year. 

In last year’s British election, a staple of Rishi Sunak’s campaign was the insistence that immigrants threaten the sustainability of the welfare state. 

On the other side of the North Sea, the political party that won the Dutch elections made the argument that immigrants are “pampered” a central feature of its election platform. 

Ironically, all three of these countries are among the most exclusionary, according to the most recent IESPI data, as the graph below illustrates. (Note that the IESPI is organized such that a value of 0 is maximally inclusionary and 100 is maximally exclusionary.)

A graph shows immigrant exclusion from social programs by country
Immigrant exclusion from social programs by country. (Author provided)

Inclusionary trends have ended

A second observation is that the era of social welfare systems becoming more inclusive for immigrants has ended.

From 1990 until the 2010s, most western welfare systems were removing barriers for immigrant access to social programs. But since then, levels of immigrant welfare exclusion have not changed dramatically over time. 

Closer inspection shows that this picture of stability since the 2010s hides negative trends in different social programs.

On the one hand, health-care programs and active labour market policies have gradually become more inclusionary. More and more countries have been making health-care services accessible for vulnerable immigrant populations, and rolling out targeted programs to improve newcomers’ chances on the labour market. 

On the other hand, social assistance policies have generally become more exclusionary over time. Many countries have intensified restrictions for recent arrivals, migrants without permanent residence status and migrants who cannot demonstrate successful integration.

A graph shows trajectory of change in social programs for immigrants
The trajectory of change in social programs for immigrants. (Author provided)

Large differences in historical trajectories

When we look beyond aggregate trends, we also note very different trajectories in different countries. 

In some countries (Austria, Germany, Finland, Iceland, Malta, New Zealand, Portugal and Spain), social programs have become consistently more inclusionary. 

Other countries (Canada, Luxembourg and Sweden) have also undergone an inclusionary development, although at a more modest pace of change. 

In a third set of countries (Australia, Belgium, Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, Norway and Switzerland), policies initially became more inclusionary but this trend was halted or reversed around 2010. The social programs of three other countries (the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States), finally, have consistently become more exclusionary over time. 

A graph shows four trajectories of change in social programs for immigrants in various countries.
Four trajectories of change in social programs for immigrants in various countries. (Author provided)

These comparisons within the IESPI data set hopefully enable us to make sense of the frequently charged nature of discussions about immigrants’ access to social programs.

Most obviously, they show we should be cautious when listening to some of the politicians who are most critical of immigrant welfare access, like Donald Trump, Rishi Sunak and Geert Wilders. 

If their arguments that exclusionary reforms in their countries are nothing but reasonable adjustments to overly generous approaches ever had any merit, that merit is quickly evaporating.

Source: Politicians’ attacks on immigrants lack solid evidence: New data set the record straight

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