Yakabuski: The renewal theme rings hollow even as Justin Trudeau names seven new faces to cabinet

2023/07/28 Leave a comment

Pointed comments on Ministers Fraser and Miller, likely understate the challenges. And of course, turning up the dial on the number of permanent and temporary residents much easier than new housing:

Conveying renewal and stability at the same time is a neat trick, if you can manage it.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tried to do both with a cabinet shufflethat featured a slew of new faces on Wednesday, all while relying even more heavily on a quartet of tested ministers – and likely future leadership contenders – to carry the load of a government living on borrowed time.

…

Source: The renewal theme rings hollow even as Justin Trudeau names seven new faces to cabinet

Filed under Immigration, Politics Tagged with , , ,

Exil de mer et de vent 

2023/07/27 Leave a comment

Portrait of Ukrainian exiles in rural Quebec, their welcome into a small community of 100 people, and the challenges they face and how they adopt or not:

Mai dernier. Les trois fillettes sautillent sur le terrain dans le printemps tout neuf. Derrière la maison, il y a la baie immense, les îles, la somptuosité de la Basse-Côte-Nord. Artur exulte : l’épicerie de Tête-à-la-Baleine a enfin reçu des betteraves. Sa soupe borchtch est au feu. Snizhana, vêtue de jaune et de bleu, tient la petite dernière, la quatrième, dans ses bras. « C’est un hasard. Vous me voyez vêtue aux couleurs de l’Ukraine. »

Cet hiver, elle s’est longuement promenée sur la baie gelée, main dans la main avec les enfants et avec sa nostalgie. Ensemble, elle, les filles et la nostalgie, elles ont vu des corbeaux, des phoques, des belettes. Et des renards roux à la queue longue et touffue. En Ukraine aussi, il y avait des renards roux. Les enfants criaient leur joie. Snizhana étouffait son désarroi.

Les Levytskyi, Artur, Snizhana et leurs quatre enfants, sont ici depuis février. Si on les additionne aux membres de l’autre famille ukrainienne arrivée six mois auparavant, les deux maisonnées font gonfler la population de Tête-à-la-Baleine de 11 personnes. Sur une population de 100. C’est beaucoup !

Deux familles qui ont quitté l’Ukraine parce qu’elles étaient en train de devenir un peu folles. Fallait partir. Par tous les moyens. « Mon cerveau avait cessé de fonctionner, se souvient Snizhana, j’avançais comme un animal. » Un animal terrorisé. « Nous dormions tout habillés au cas où il faudrait vite décamper. Je ne suis pas brave, je l’avoue. Peut-être parce que je suis une mère. » Snizhana parle sans s’arrêter, en un flux précipité. « J’ai consulté une psy pour savoir comment cacher aux enfants mes propres angoisses. »

Des histoires qui ressemblent à tant d’autres, de fuites éperdues, d’attentes interminables, de frontières à franchir, de bagages à traîner. Marcher, marcher, exténués, avec le goût de flancher, de s’effondrer. Tenir bon, garder un semblant de moral pour les plus jeunes.

Un village entier mobilisé

Deux familles qui sont parvenues à Tête-à-la-Baleine par la même voie, celle d’un village qui s’est mobilisé pour les accueillir. On a trouvé à chacune une maison, un véhicule, une motoneige, des vêtements, des vivres. Des résidents ont envoyé des chèques pour leurs hôtes venus de loin. « C’était aussi, et peut-être principalement, un échange, une sorte de contrat », explique Michaël Lambert, qui a pris l’initiative de faire venir des familles ukrainiennes jusque dans cette contrée lointaine, désert de poissons et d’oiseaux que nulle route ne relie au reste du Québec et du continent. « On cherchait des familles pour renforcer la vitalité du village, fouetter son économie et empêcher l’école de fermer. » Du donnant-donnant, en quelque sorte.

Trouver des familles qui, en contrepartie d’une vie paisible, loin de la guerre, accepteraient d’y passer ne serait-ce que quelques années, consentiraient à apprendre le français, découvriraient qu’elles apprécient cette vie rudimentaire, loin des centres et de la consommation, dans la poussière grise des quatre-roues l’été, et celle, toute blanche, des motoneiges l’hiver. Avec une épicerie au contenu famélique, des transports impossibles, des bateaux aux horaires incertains ou des avions à prix exorbitants. Des familles qui acquiesceraient au système D, au bricolage, au rafistolage. « On a bien voulu essayer cette vie-là, essayer le Canada », poursuit Snizhana.

Imaginez la scène. Février dernier. Il fait moins 40. Michaël est parti chercher le ménage des Levytskyi entreposé à Kegaska, tandis que la famille, elle, est déjà arrivée en avion à Tête-à-la-Baleine. Une chevauchée en motoneige de 250 kilomètres sur la Route blanche, sentier balisé pour faciliter les déplacements l’hiver sur la Basse-Côte-Nord. Aveuglé par la lumière et frigorifié, Michaël fonce dans la blancheur, traînant le chargement derrière son engin. Et puis, oh ! malheur !, la motoneige s’étouffe, en panne. L’homme manque d’y laisser la peau. À moitié congelé, il sera sauvé par des gens de la côte partis à sa recherche.

L’une chante, l’autre pas

Deux familles, donc, venues d’une même Ukraine, échouées dans un même exil de mer et de vent, mais deux familles bien différentes. Avec chacune leur façon de voir la vie, avec des exigences distinctes, peut-être, face à l’existence et une quête du bonheur qui ne se ressemble pas. Si bien qu’aujourd’hui, l’une arrive à s’adapter, l’autre pas. L’une envisage de rester, l’autre pas. L’une chante, l’autre pas.*(1)

« Je me sens perdue dans un pays perdu, confie Snizhana. J’ai envie que les enfants aient des activités parascolaires, qu’ils connaissent autre chose pour leur développement intellectuel et spirituel. » À cela s’ajoute son tourment de décevoir ceux et celles qui, à Tête-à-la-Baleine, se sont démenés pour les accueillir. « Même si je comprends leur décision de partir, je suis déçu, dit Michaël, c’est un peu comme un contrat brisé. » « Je comprends leur déception, rétorque doucement Snizhana, mais c’est de notre vie et de notre avenir qu’il s’agit. »

La famille Lizunova, de son côté, envisage de s’acheter une maison à Tête-à-la-Baleine et de quitter le presbytère où elle est provisoirement logée. Les deux adultes, des cousines, Antonina Lizunova et Olga Kulyk, apprennent activement le français, l’une dans le but de travailler à l’aéroport, l’autre pour devenir cuisinière à l’auberge de l’Archipel, au coeur du village. D’ailleurs, Olga a fait cuire sa première morue hier, sous la supervision de Marco Marcoux, propriétaire du lieu, qui lui donnait ses instructions en usant de Google Translate. « Une morue apprêtée à la mode de chez nous ! lance Marco, avec une purée de pommes de terre et un quartier de citron. »

S’encourageant l’une et l’autre et transmettant leur force morale aux trois ados dont elles ont la charge, les cousines sont animées d’un optimisme à tous crins. Mais quand on leur demande si elles souffrent du mal du pays, leurs yeux s’embrument. Ah ! combien elles voudraient pouvoir m’ouvrir leur coeur et se faire comprendre au moins un peu, en français ou en anglais. Bon, à défaut, ne parlant ni l’une ni l’autre langue, elles m’offrent une petite crêpe « à la viande », une expression qu’elles ont apprise depuis leur arrivée à Tête-à-la-Baleine.

Partir dès que possible

Le village s’est mis en quête d’une autre famille ukrainienne. Aux dernières nouvelles, une mère, un père et leurs cinq enfants s’annonçaient pour bientôt.« On a déjà tenu deux activités de financement », se réjouit Michaël.

Snizhana, elle, veut quitter Tête-à-la-Baleine aussi vite que possible. C’est fou, elle le sait, elle veut partir avant que les mouches noires ne fassent leur apparition. Oui, elle en est consciente, c’est fou, elle qui a survécu aux bombes, aux explosions, aux tirs de mortier, est prise d’une peur obsessive des mouches noires. Comme si le ciel allait à nouveau l’attaquer et fondre sur elle. « L’exil ne prive pas uniquement l’individu de sa terre natale, écrit Marie Daniès, dans la revue Mémoires. L’exilé se perd car ce qui le définissait, son rapport à lui-même, aux autres, a disparu. Le sens de sa vie lui échappe. »

En songe, je vois Snizhana au bout du quai de Tête-à-la-Baleine, immobile, offerte aux vagues et aux oiseaux. Rêvant d’on ne sait quoi. Elle ne sait plus. Snizhana, d’autre part et de nulle part. Snizhana, en exil de tout ce qui est elle-même. Snizhana, l’errante des splendeurs et des malheurs de la terre.

Ailleurs le monde est doux

L’air est meilleur et de partout

Coulent des fleuves d’or et de musique

Ailleurs dormir mon coeur tragique*(2)

Source: Exil de mer et de vent

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,

Analysis: Canada’s immigration creates ‘mirage’ of economic prosperity, TD report predicts higher interest rates and an affordability crisis 

2023/07/27 Leave a comment

A number of good articles questioning current immigration policies, given their impact on housing, healthcare and infrastructure. While the change in immigration minister from one with an Atlantic perspective in favour of more immigration to a Quebec minister, more attuned to some of Quebec concerns on levels, may or may not indicate a shift from the “more is merrier” approach to a more intelligent approach that factors immigration impacts on housing, healthcare and infrastructure. We shall see.

Certainly ironic to see Minister Fraser shuffled to housing where he will have to address some of the problems he exacerbated:

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has fueled economic growth and plugged gaps in the labor market by ramping up immigration, but now new arrivals are straining public services and contributing to an overheating economy, economists say.

Since taking power in 2015, Trudeau has brought in an estimated 2.5 million new permanent residents, driving the population above 40 million.

Canada’s population grew at its fastest pace since 1957 last year, placing it among top 20 fastest growing countries in the world, Statistics Canada said, in part offsetting the effects of aging residents who are retiring and adding to healthcare costs.

In large part thanks to immigration, Canada has matched the United States with an average GDP growth of just over 2% over the past decade, well above the 1.4% G7 average, according to Marc Ercolao, an economist at TD Securities.

But problems caused by rapid immigration are beginning to show. First of all, the Bank of Canada struggled to pin down the impact of the newcomers as it tried to cool economic growth.

Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem has said immigration adds to both supply and demand, but the overall effect has increased the need for higher interest rates. While immigrants helped ease a labor shortage, they added to consumer spending and housing demand.

“If you start an economy with excess demand (and) you add both demand and supply, you are still in excess demand,” he said about immigration earlier this month after hiking rates to a 22-year high of 5.0%.

The more concrete problems are the growing strains on transit, housing and healthcare, issues that have begun to dog the federal government as municipal and provincial leaders increase calls for more funding to address them.

“If we want to do more immigration, fine, but let’s have a suite of policies” that increase infrastructure investment for “transit, housing, healthcare… schools,” said Chris Ragan, director of the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University in Montreal and an adviser to the Conservative Finance Minister Jim Flaherty in 2009-10.

“Our communities and our economy are made stronger every day by people who chose to move to Canada,” said a spokesperson for the Finance Ministry.

Most “will contribute to Canada’s economic prosperity and… help address the labor shortages”, the spokesperson said.

‘MIRAGE’

Earlier this month, under pressure from Toronto’s new mayor, Trudeau’s government pledged nearly C$100 million ($76 million) to the city to help house refugees who had been sleeping on the street.

One-fifth of Canadians in the publicly funded healthcare system do not have a family doctor, the Angus Reid Institute research firm said last year. In Toronto, Canada’s largest city, an average driver lost 118 hours in traffic in 2022, up 60% on the year and the third-highest in North America, data analytics firm Inrix says.

While immigration adds to annual GDP, per capita GDP has grown only 2.4% since the first quarter of 2016 compared to 11.7% for the United States. That means Canadians’ wealth, or their standard of living, is rising more slowly than in the U.S.

“The Canadian economy on a per-capita basis is flat on its back,” said David Rosenberg, chief economist and strategist at Rosenberg Research. Through population growth “you can create this mirage of economic prosperity, but in the end that’s what it is, a mirage,” he said.

Source: Analysis: Canada’s immigration creates ‘mirage’ of economic …

TD report predicts higher interest rates and an affordability crisis 

If Canada’s population boom continues at its current frantic pace, interest rates will face upward pressure and the massive influx of people will significantly worsen affordability for homebuyers and renters, a new report from TD Bank warns.

And the bank’s economists are calling on the federal government to restore “balance” to its immigration policies.

Over the past 12 months Canada’s population surged by 1.2 million, driven by higher annual targets for permanent immigration but also a swell of non-permanent residents such as temporary foreign workers and international students.

That rapid growth has helped employers fill job openings and propelled Canada to become the fastest growing economy in the G7, but it is also causing “dislocations in other segments of the economy,” including the housing market, health care, social services and infrastructure, that threaten to undo the benefits, the report’s authors warn.

The population jump caught economists off guard, raising the question of whether it will be repeated. Based on the pace of TFW program usage and study permits in 2023 so far, TD said Canada’s population is likely to increase by another one million people this year.

If that happens, the gap between housing supply and demand would grow to 500,000 units through 2025, the report said, adding that even with aggressive policies in place to boost home construction, supply would not keep up.

The result would be an erosion in affordability for buyers and renters, a situation that would be made worse by the upward pressure a persistent high-growth immigration strategy would put on interest rates, the report said.

According to TD, if Canada’s population boom continues, the neutral interest rate – which is sometimes described as the Goldilocks level of interest that neither stimulates economic demand nor holds it back – will need to rise by 50 basis points, or half a percentage point, compared with under earlier assumptions about how Canada’s population growth would unfold.

“The implication is not only do you have a higher run rate on interest rates, but when you get into the position of cutting interest rates it would put a higher floor for how low you would go,” Beata Caranci, chief economist at TD and one of the report’s authors, said in an interview.

“The Bank of Canada is trying to push a boulder up the hill when it comes to inflation, because as it increases interest rates, the sheer size of the population keeps generating demand that outstrips supply.”

For its part, the Bank of Canada has said little about whether therapid population growth is affecting monetary policy, though earlier this month, after the bank raised its key overnight rate by another 25 basis points to 5 per cent, Governor Tiff Macklem said on balance the effect is “probably roughly neutral.”

On the one hand, immigration has reduced pressure on the labour market and eased costs for employers, he said, while on the other, “these new entrants in the economy, they’re also new consumers, they’re renters, they’re new homebuyers, so it’s also adding to demand.”

Ms. Caranci said a jump in population like Canada has witnessed wouldn’t be such a problem if there was a similar surge in productivity; however, the country’s track record on that front is not promising. And what she called the “government guarantee” that it will bring in new workers to fill labour gaps only reduces the incentives companies have to invest in technology that would make them more efficient.

Rather than view immigration as the “be-all and end-all solution” to Canada’s aging work force, the TD report urged policy makers to focus on reforms that would remove barriers to the work force for people already here, giving the example of how flexible work arrangements and the expansion of daycare has lead to a big jump in the number of mothers with young children taking jobs.

Measures aimed at making medical and engineering credentials more transferable would also allow recent immigrants who are underemployed to fill critical gaps in the labour force, it added.

“If the purpose was to put a stop-gap in what was an extreme shortage of labour revealed by the pandemic, at some point you have to take your foot off the gas and let the supply side catch up,” Ms. Caranci said.

“If you don’t, the benefits of that population increase will erode over time. Someone has to do the math here that we have a system that can accommodate everybody.”

Source: TD report predicts higher interest rates and an affordability crisis

Lastly, Diane Francis in the Financial Post:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s push to increase immigration to unprecedented levels is damaging Canada’s health-care system.

The numbers reveal the problem. Last year, Canada welcomed 492,984 new immigrants, all of whom will eventually be issued health cards, entitling them to medical benefits for life. This year, another 465,000 immigrants are set to arrive, plus another 485,000 in 2024 and 500,000 in 2025.

Between 2016 and 2021, the Trudeau government admitted a record of over 1.3 million permanent immigrants into the country, all of whom will require medical services. This has put a significant strain on large urban areas such as Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, which have borne the burden of the influx because they are where the lion’s share of immigrants settle. Toronto and Vancouver, in particular, already suffer from health-care shortages and unaffordable housing prices.

The feds set immigration targets with little regard for skills, the burden placed on social welfare systems or the impact on housing costs. The result is that many hospitals are reaching their limits. Doctors and nurses are in short supply, Canadians face long wait times for specialists and elective surgeries and millions lack a family physician.

Since I began pointing out the connection between deteriorating health care and high immigration levels last year, little has changed. Recently, Immigration Minister Sean Fraser responded with an embarrassingly inadequate policy fix, announcing that Ottawa would fast-track immigration approvals for 2,000 health-care professionals.

This is not nearly enough. Financial Accountability Office of Ontario projects that Ontario alone will be short 33,000 nurses and personal support workers by 2028, despite provincial initiatives to boost graduates.

Canada’s immigration levels are disproportionate to other developed nations, taking in about four times as many immigrants as the United States on a per capita basis. To make matters worse, Ottawa’s screening is inept. Despite the staggering immigration numbers, the federal government has failed to address the shortage of skilled labour across the country by recruiting qualified tradespeople.

This push to significantly increase the population was concocted at a weekend gathering in 2011 in Muskoka, Ont., led by Dominic Barton, who served as global managing director of McKinsey and Co. before becoming Canada’s ambassador to China for a time, and former BlackRock Inc. honcho Mark Wiseman. They created a Toronto-based lobbying group called the Century Initiative, which believes Canada’s population should reach 100 million by 2100.

The group estimates that, given sagging birth rates, reaching their arbitrary goal of 100 million would require Canada to accept at least 500,000 immigrants a year, if not more. This has now become our official immigration policy, with the Trudeau Liberals targeting around half a million new immigrants per year.

The Century Initiative hopes to create “mega-regions,” increasing the population of the Greater Toronto Area from 8.8 million in 2016 to 33.5 million by the end of the century, the population of Metro Vancouver from 3.3 million to 11.9 million and the National Capital Region from 1.4 million to 4.8 million.

Seven years of this foolish Liberal immigration policy has placed a significant strain on the health-care system and housing market. And Canada is going to make matters worse by admitting upwards of 753,000 international students this year, which will further increase the cost of rentals.

A CIBC report last year said that the admission of huge numbers of newcomers in 2022, including an estimated 955,000 “non-permanent residents,” represents “an unprecedented swing in housing demand in a single year that is currently not fully reflected in official figures.”

This unbridled immigration is placing a burden on Canada’s struggling health-care system and housing market. It is irresponsible.

Source: Diane Francis: Immigration pushing housing, health care to the breaking point

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , , ,

Keller: Canada’s economy is stuck in a rut. High immigration isn’t the cause – or the answer

2023/07/26 Leave a comment

Of note. More on the perverse effects of current immigration policy, permanent and temporary, on productivity and per capita GDP:

Between 1990 and 2022, Canada’s population grew by 40.6 per cent. That’s more than most of the world’s highly-developed countries.

Switzerland’s population increased by 30.6 per cent over the same period, or about three-quarters of Canada’s pace, according to data from the World Bank. Norway was up 28.7 per cent. Sweden’s population grew at about half of Canada’s rate, as did the Netherlands and Austria. Taiwan and Denmark’s population growth was a little more than a third of Canada’s. Finland grew at roughly a quarter of Canada’s pace. Germany’s population rose by just 5.9 per cent, or one-seventh the Canadian rate.

These countries have something else in common: According to the International Monetary Fund, they are on the very short list of nations whose per-capita gross domestic product is higher than Canada’s.

In plain English, they’re wealthier than us. If you took the annual economic output of each country and cut it into the same number of slices as it has people, their residents would each get a slightly larger slice of the pie than the average Canadian.

Canada’s higher-than-our-peers population growth – powered by a higher immigration rate – is not why our economic performance in recent decades has left something to be desired. But neither is the country’s higher population growth, and the Liberal government’s plan for ever-rising immigration, some kind of magic solution for goosing Canadian living standards.

If Canada were a country where a calm and rational discussion of immigration was possible, we’d be talking about this. We’d be thinking hard about how the immigration system can best be designed to raise living standards for the average Canadian – not just growing the population and the economy, but growing the economy at a pace considerably faster than the population.

As a recent study from TD Economics points out, Canada has spent the last couple of decades “falling behind the standard-of-living curve.”

Since 2011, Canada’s GDP has grown at the same pace as the United States, and ahead of the rest of the G7. But Canada’s population has been growing faster than the rest of the G7, masking our economic underperformance.

When you look at GDP per capita rather than GDP – and ask not “is the country bigger?” but “is the average Canadian better off?” – Canada is losing ground.

In 1980, Canada’s GDP per capita was US$4,000 ahead of the average advanced economy, according to TD. By the year 2000, Canada and the others were neck and neck. And today, Canada is behind. Why? Because since 2014, our real GDP per capita has grown by just 0.4 per cent a year, compared with 1.4 per cent in other advanced economies. Unlike those countries, the growth of Canada’s pie is barely keeping pace with the rising number of forks.

A higher-than-average rate of immigration didn’t cause that. Yes, that short list of countries with higher per-capita GDP than Canada is mostly made up of places with lower population growth. But it also includes one country whose growth was only slightly below Canada’s – the U.S., whose population rose by 33.5 per cent between 1990 and 2022 – and another, Australia, which had higher immigration levels and higher population growth for much of the same period.

Canada’s sclerotic economic performance is owing to decades of low productivity growth, caused in large part by low levels of business investment in plant, equipment and technology.

But immigration can be used to boost productivity growth, or to suppress it.

Canada’s immigration system was designed with a clear understanding of that. The core of our immigration system has long been economic immigration. Immigrants in that stream are chosen based on a points system, with applicants with more education and skills going to the head of the line.

To the extent immigration is tilted toward arrivals who are of working age and have more education, skills and earning power than the average Canadian, that boosts Canada’s GDP per capita. High-skills immigrants add more to the pie than the average Canadian – increasing the size of everyone’s slice.

The goals of the economic immigration stream were never perfectly executed, but since 2015, the Liberal federal government has further diminished it.

They somewhat reduced the share of economic immigrants, while raising the share of family-class and refugees. At the same time, the Liberals ramped up admissions of temporary foreign workers, including through a visa student program whose numbers are not limited, and have exploded.

A lot of those temporary workers are filling low-wage jobs in retail and fast food. Employers find it convenient to have an almost bottomless supply of minimum-wage labour, but making sure there are always more than enough people ready to prepare and deliver your burrito, at $15-an-hour or less, is not the right economic imperative for Canada. It doesn’t boost GDP per capita but lowers it.

It also discourages low-wage businesses from raising pay to attract new workers, or making productivity-raising investments that reduce the need for labour. Those approaches would lower inequality and raise productivity – and Canada needs to do both.

And I haven’t even mentioned the impact of immigration on housing.

We need be thinking hard about all of this, and discussing it honestly. Will our politics even allow it? More on that, later this week.

Source: Canada’s economy is stuck in a rut. High immigration isn’t the cause – or the answer

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

Leith: UK Immigration and a government in a state of post-hypnotic suggestion

2023/07/25 Leave a comment

Nice sardonic commentary:

Hurrah! The government, it was reported yesterday, is working on getting some more migrants. To plug a million-strong post-Brexit labour shortage in the hospitality sector, Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick have been instructed by Downing Street to start talks to open the doors to young French, German, Spanish and Swiss nationals. 

If it goes well, the plan is to perhaps invite a few more to help out with farming, fish processing and all sorts of other sectors of the economy that are looking a bit peaky. ‘European baristas and au pairs could return to Britain under government scheme’, read the headline. Just like the good old days, eh?  

What’s wrong with, say, Lithuanian au pairs and Polish hospitality workers? It remains a mystery

This seems eminently sensible to me, as I expect it will to many people. It’s a win-win. Brexit, whatever its many-splendoured virtues, has given a bit of a knock to our national supply of handsome, olive-skinned twentysomething Europeans prepared to make flat whites, sling croissants and serve chicken nuggets to the children of overstretched North London liberals. Meanwhile, our own pallid, knock-kneed twentysomethings, who didn’t have the maturity and long-term vision to vote for Brexit, have reportedly been feeling bitter that it has put a dent in their own chances of living and working in Europe.  

This is a move that will reverse that and make everyone a bit happier. It’s a much-needed boost to a struggling sector of the labour market; and a sop, reciprocally, to the wanderlust of our own young. 

It doesn’t even – calm down back there – need be seen as an example of how a demented national act of self-harm is being quietly, shamefacedly dismantled piece by piece without any of the people responsible admitting it. Rather, we could say, it’s a piece of fine-tuning: it’s an adjustment, of the sort we’re making and were always going to make, as a newly sovereign nation, to fit our interests. It’s an example, indeed, of just what the evangelists of Brexit promised they were going to do – to control our borders and decide for ourselves who we were going to let in (foxy Spanish baristas) and who we were not (drug-peddling Albanian dog-bangers). 

But isn’t it wearying that we don’t say that, and that we can’t say that? Isn’t it a demonstration of how hard it is to do actual real-world politics these days that you can’t, simply, say: ‘Here’s a sensible policy that’s a win for all of us.’ It needs to be sold it to the opinion-strong, complexity-intolerant ideologues whose anger the Tory leadership still fears. That is, it’s being hedged around with all sorts of fudges and tripwires to keep it within broad-brush metrics that don’t, in themselves, tell us much about whether a policy is a good one.  

There are two things that Braverman and Jenrick, at least in the way that this is reported, seem to be anxious about. The first is finding a way to let lots of young Europeans in in such a way that they don’t affect the net migration figures. The argument – which, as I’ve said, is as respectably a Brexity argument as could be made – was never about ‘keeping migrants out’: it was about taking back control as to which ones to let in. 

There are two things that Braverman and Jenrick, at least in the way that this is reported, seem to be anxious about. The first is finding a way to let lots of young Europeans in in such a way that they don’t affect the net migration figures. The argument – which, as I’ve said, is as respectably a Brexity argument as could be made – was never about ‘keeping migrants out’: it was about taking back control as to which ones to let in. 

Then there’s the idea that they might, as would seem perfectly sensible, want to open such a reciprocal youth mobility scheme to any of our former EU partners who had youth willing to travel. Thus, our potential pool of available labour would expand and, in turn, so would the number of places to which our own young people might be able to travel in search of work. 

That would require us to do a deal with the whole EU – which would certainly be easier, it being a bloc, and might be the only way to do it at all – but heaven forbid it look like we’re backsliding and going cap in hand to Brussels. So instead, we’re told ‘Braverman and Jenrick are said to prefer agreements with individual countries. In particular, they want to negotiate agreements which would result in large numbers of French au pairs and Spanish hospitality workers’. What’s wrong with, say, Lithuanian au pairs and Polish hospitality workers? It remains a mystery.  

It puts me in mind, a little, of a running joke from The A-Team. You might remember that B A Baracus – the beefy, gold-festooned, mohawk-sporting character played by Mr T – had an Achilles heel: he’d happily leap from a trench to knock the heads of two armed baddies together like coconuts, but he was terrified of flying.

He’d freak out as soon as someone tried to get him airborne. So when they needed to get him on a plane, they used post-hypnotic suggestion. Hannibal had ‘programmed’ him under hypnosis so that when he heard the word ‘eclipse’ he’d fall instantly fast asleep, and they could load him aboard as cargo. (He’d wake up ornery, but in the right place.) Anyway, of course there’d be a firefight, and someone would shout to him: ‘B A! I’m out of ammo! Gimme clips!’ and zonk, out he’d go right in the middle of the fighting. 

Here we are, bullets whizzing around us. We’re in a tight spot. But the Conservative government is in a state of post-hypnotic suggestion. If the words ‘more net migration’ or ‘EU-wide migration deal’ are said out loud, there’s a danger that they’ll pass clean out. So they are going through quite the contortions to avoid using forms of words that even hint at such a thing. I pity the fool.

Source: Leith: Immigration and a government in a state of post-hypnotic suggestion

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Canada’s ploy to use U.S.-trained immigrants to surpass American innovation

2023/07/25 Leave a comment

Good explainer and advocacy:

The U.S. engages in the global innovation race every single day. From artificial intelligence to nuclear technology and net-zero ambitions, cutting-edge innovation is crucial to protecting the U.S.’s economic wellbeing and security. According to the Global Innovation Index, the United States falls behind Switzerland, ranking second for the most innovative economies in the world.

Yet our biggest competition comes from the countries ranking behind us. China and South Korea are rapidly rising through the ranks, nearing ever closer to overtaking American innovation. And thanks to our ongoing immigration failures that drive talented immigrants away, Canada is also close in the rearview mirror.

This month, Canada launched a new visa specifically for individuals already holding an American H-1B visa. Less than 48 hours after the launch, 10,000 applicationswere already submitted. H-1B visas are issued to foreign workers who U.S.-based employers sponsor to fill specialty occupations. These workers are educated and highly sought-after, and the demand for them far outpaces visa availability.

Most H-1B visas are issued on a lottery basis, and Canada has often been the second-best destination for companies and individuals failing to secure a spot. However, the new Canadian visa isn’t targeted to these unsuccessful applicants–rather, it aims to entice those who were selected and now work in the U.S.

Although Canada has long  benefited from the international appeal of its southern neighbor and from our immigration system’s inability to retain the talent we attract and produce, this new visa is the most overt attempt yet to lure away valuable U.S. employees.

It demonstrates that Canada recognizes what the U.S. still does not: immigrants are among the most creative and innovative members of our society. They patent more inventions and start more businesses per person than native-born citizens. And when armed with a U.S. university degree or experience at a U.S. company, their value skyrockets–increasingly, to Canada’s benefit.

Canadian Versus U.S. Programs

In designing its visa, Canada took the general parameters of the H-1B and made them even more attractive.

Like the American H-1B, the Canadian visa offers employees an initial stay of three years. Unlike the U.S., Canada will offer these workers open work authorization, allowing them to work for nearly any employer anywhere in Canada. While only some spouses of H-1B workers are eligible for work authorization in the U.S, Canada’s program will allow all spouses and dependents to apply for work or study permits.

The Canadian program outshines the H-1B chiefly because it offers a much more accessible route to permanent residence. After just one year of full-time eligible work experience, workers can apply for many permanent residence pathways available to them.

One of the most direct and widely used pathways, the Express Entry program, does not require employer sponsorship, boasts processing times of 6-12 months, has no country caps, and costs just over $1000.

On the other hand, transitioning from H-1B status to employment-based permanent residence in the U.S. requires employer sponsorship, is subject to country and annual caps, can take years to obtain, and, at a minimum, costs well over $2000.

While the worker benefits of the Canadian program are indisputable, the program is likely to be lucrative for Canada as well.

American Economic Loss Is Canada’s Economic Gain

Canada has repeatedly opened its doors to companies and employees stalled by the American immigration system, and while company profits may still flow southward, even remote workers boost economic activity in Canada by contributing in tax and local consumption.

Even when accounting for money sent abroad or home to other relatives, an estimated 85% of migrant worker earnings are reinvested in the local economy. For instance, an employee earning the average H-1B wage of $126,000 may invest over $107,000 in taxes and local expenditure, adding up to nearly $47 billion for the whole population of FY2022 approved beneficiaries. If these individuals instead worked remotely from Canada, that $47 billion would likely be spent there, even if the company headquarters remained below the border.

With the introduction of this new program, however, the employees the U.S. loses will be free to terminate their relationship with the American company that sponsored their H-1B. They will have nearly free choice to work for any employer operating in Canada, whether that company is Canadian, American, Chinese, or other.

The U.S., therefore, is poised to lose not only the taxes and spending of these individuals but also the crucial knowledge they accumulated while working here. Sixty-six percent of H-1B beneficiaries approved in FY 2022 were employed in computer-related occupations. The technology they learned and mastered in the U.S. will fuel innovation in Canada and the companies working within its borders.

The Canadian program aims to recruit only 10,000 H-1B holders this year. Still, that amounts to  nearly 12 percent of our annual H-1B cap–or as applied to the above model of income reinvestment, over $1 billion in spending power. Without these specialty workers and their economic and innovative contributions, the U.S. is likely to fall behind.

This visa is set to compound the brain drain already siphoning American-trained talent across our northern border.

While there are many ways to promote innovation, one of the primary weaknesses of the American economy according to the Global Innovation Index is our underwhelming production of STEM graduates. International students in the U.S. are much more likely to study STEM fields, and when the H-1B lottery does not play in their favor or permanent sponsors do not materialize, these students often turn to Canada, further slashing our already subpar numbers. This is already playing out as we recently lost nearly 40,000 foreign graduates through Express Entry alone. The new H-1B visa pathway will only expand that trend.

With this new visa, companies may also choose to offshore employees to Canada more aggressively to bypass the long waits and limited capacity of the U.S. Even entrepreneurs may choose to found their startups in Canada, rather than in the U.S., to facilitate easier access to necessary talent. The next Google or Tesla could begin in Canada. A one-year highway to permanent status seems like a more reliable business foundation than endless waitlists and lotteries with uncertain outcomes. Even so, these possibilities are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what the U.S. could lose with the launch of Canada’s latest poaching visa.

If we don’t act before Canada entices away even more valuable talent, we are putting our  innovative and economic advantage at risk. Much of Canada’s strategy hinges on human capital that we educate, train, and discard thanks to our flawed immigration system. As such, we should respond by creating an immigration system that can rival Canada’s. It must be accessible, affordable, and functional–a far cry from our current reality.

Source: Canada’s Ploy to Use U.S.-Trained Immigrants to Surpass American …

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Asylum claims followed Montreal AIDS summit marred by visa woes, planning issues [better header: “Almost one-sixth of guests at a major AIDS conference in Montreal last year who received Canadian visas ended up claiming asylum”]

2023/07/25 Leave a comment

Indicates that IRCC was correct in its caution regarding granting visas, arguably not cautious enough. Cavalier attitude by immigration lawyer, “Good for them. If this is their only way of claiming asylum in a country, then so be it,” is telling:

Almost one-sixth of guests at a major AIDS conference in Montreal last year who received Canadian visas ended up claiming asylum, according to internal data obtained by The Canadian Press.

The documents also show that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) struggled to work with the International AIDS Society as both tried to avoid a mass refusal of visas.

When the society’s conference got underway in Montreal in July 2022, dozens of delegates from Africa had been denied visas or never received responses to their applications. Some accused Ottawa of racism on stage, saying international gatherings should not return to Canada.

Source: Asylum claims followed Montreal AIDS summit marred by visa woes, planning issues

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Jack Mintz: Rapid immigration isn’t the only way to grow

2023/07/24 Leave a comment

Good focus on productivity and per capita GDP but limited concrete policy prescriptions to address productivity and no serious questioning of current levels of permanent and temporary residents:

Canadian and U.S. economic growth is diverging in a surprising away. As BMO chief economist Doug Porter pointed out in a memo last week, Canada’s overall growth is super-charged by immigration. But we have trailed U.S. per capita growth miserably in the past three years. Even though a bigger population will create a larger market here, the growing divergence in per capita incomes is bad news for Canada. Workers, savers and businesses will look elsewhere for better economic opportunities, and we won’t be growing fast enough to adequately serve a larger population demanding more in terms of housing, health care and pensions.

As Porter calculates, Canadian and U.S. annual GDP growth rates for the 12 years before 2020 were almost identical (at 1.72 and 1.66 per cent, respectively). Since the fourth quarter of 2019, however, Canada’s annual growth rate has fallen by a third, to 1.12 per cent, while the U.S. growth rate has stayed virtually the same — at 1.67 per cent — despite the pandemic.

Where the countries diverge is in the sources of their GDP growth. Canada’s comes entirely from population growth, which averaged 1.6 per cent per year over the past three years, including this year’s whopping 3.1 per cent. But GDP per working hour actually fell by 0.2 per cent per year over the last three years.

Despite large-scale illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border, which is reported in U.S. population figures, American population growth was only 0.5 per cent per year since 2020, the lowest it has been in a century. Most U.S. GDP growth came from labour productivity, which grew by 1.4 per cent a year. U.S. GDP per capita, at US$76,400 is already two-fifths greater than Canada’s US$55,300 — with both expressed in “purchasing-power parity” dollars. The current gap in per capita growth rates implies American per capita income will be twice ours in 2050.

That raises two key questions. Will our policy to supercharge immigration lead to better productivity so Canada won’t lag so badly? And do we need other policies to increase the economic gains from immigration?

As leading U.S. immigration expert George Borjas concluded in a 2019 paper, the effect of immigration on productivity is actually uncertain. Continued large-scale immigration will result in lower wages and falling average labour productivity as firms take on workers rather than invest in capital to improve productivity. On the other hand, a larger pool of skilled labour, successful assimilation into the workforce and beneficial long-term fiscal impacts could lead to productivity improvements over time.

Canada has done a remarkable job integrating immigrants, who are now 23 per cent of the population. Sixty per cent of Canada’s immigrants are “economic,” with a focus on skilled-based immigration. Almost 95 per cent are under the age of 65, are likely to work and do help create a larger pool of workers. Within 10 years, landed immigrants have similar incomes and unemployment rates as the rest of the population — even if in their first five years they have double the unemployment rate of the general population.

Immigration is therefore like an investment, with good economic returns in the long run but potential upfront costs providing housing, health care, education and other services to new Canadians. Most immigrants gravitate to big cities where housing prices are highest: 44 per cent settle in Ontario and roughly 15 per cent each in British Columbia and Alberta. With Quebec’s restrictions on immigration, its share has fallen to 15 per cent even though it still has more than a fifth of Canada’s population.

My second question is whether other policies could help us exploit the potential productivity gains from a larger population.

In theory, a larger Canadian market does provide opportunities for businesses to achieve economies of scale in production. In practice, however, barriers to inter-provincial trade and capital and labour mobility make realizing these gains difficult. By relaxing accreditation standards, some provinces are having success bringing in the extra health professionals our ailing Medicare system so badly needs. But far more needs to be done to attract both white-collar and blue-collar workers.

Dumping refugees on Toronto streets is not much help. In cases I know of, Customs and Immigration have been terribly slow to process landed immigrant applications — sometimes to the point of forcing immigrants to reapply. The federal government, whose workforce has swollen by an unbelievable 40 per cent since 2015, needs to improve its own labour productivity and provide better, hassle-free service to more Canadians.

And then there is Canada’s pathetic investment performance. Without an expanding business sector, labour productivity stalls and unit costs rise, hurting competitiveness. As we are unlikely to build homes fast enough to meet the high demand for them in our cities, housing prices seem bound to continue to rise. With recent interest rate hikes and no reform of regulation, it’s not surprising that Statistics Canada reports real residential investment dropped nine per cent May over May, seasonally adjusted, while real non-residential investment in structures has barely changed this past year.

To make a bigger-population growth strategy work, we need to do more than just welcome immigrants at airports. We need to get our act together and speed up workforce integration, reduce barriers to mobility and encourage business investment.

Source: Jack Mintz: Rapid immigration isn’t the only way to grow

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Canada’s new approach to immigrant selection aims to fix labour markets. Will it create more gaps instead? 

2023/07/22 Leave a comment

Good critiques:

The federal government has shifted its immigration policy by recruiting thousands of foreign nationals to settle permanently in Canada in hopes they will fill specific jobs, a strategy that has drawn criticism from labour experts.

Since late June, the immigration department has invited almost 9,000 people to apply for permanent residency because of their recent work experience in certain occupations or because of their French-language skills. These individuals are being selected through the Express Entry system, which accounts for a large portion of economic immigration to Canada.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) said last year that it would target immigrants who could fill roles in high demand. On May 31, the department announced it would focus on French speakers and people with experience in five fields: health care, skilled trades, agriculture, transportation and STEM (science, technology, engineering and math).

Within health care, for example, the government is seeking immigrants with experience in 35 occupations, including dentists, massage therapists and registered nurses.

The government says its pivot to category-based selection of immigrants, which started on June 28, is meant to ease the hiring challenges that have frustrated many sectors of the economy over the past few years.

But this new approach has raised concerns among economists and policy experts, who warn that today’s labour needs could change quickly and leave the country with a glut of workers in some fields. Moreover, they say high-ranking candidates in Canada’s points-based immigration system could get overlooked as Ottawa prioritizes various groups.

Labour markets “are always evolving and changing,” said Robert Falconer, a doctoral fellow at the London School of Economics who studies migration policy in Canada. “We’re potentially overtargeting certain needs.”

Canada’s labour market is undergoing a transition. While employment has risen by a net 290,000 positions so far this year, job vacancies have tumbled about 20 per cent from their peak levels in 2022. The unemployment rate, now at 5.4 per cent, has risen half a percentage point from a record low set last year.

In some areas, there appears to be persistently high demand for labour. As of April, there were more than 150,000 vacant jobs in health care and social assistance, a record high – almost a fifth of all job vacancies in Canada.

These labour gaps “are just going to get worse as the population ages,” said Rupa Banerjee, a Canada Research Chair in immigration and economics at Toronto Metropolitan University. “Targeting those kinds of occupations has the potential to improve this mismatch” in labour supply and demand.

But in some white-collar industries, there has been a steep drop in vacancies. For example, job postings in software development have plummeted to below prepandemic levels on the hiring site Indeed Canada. (Software developers are among the STEM roles being targeted by the government.)

“We don’t know if the targets that are set today will really be indicative of the needs that we’ll have in five years’ time,” Dr. Banerjee said.

She noted that category-based selection echoes a situation in the late 1990s, when the government admitted thousands of technology workers during a boom period in that industry. Shortly afterward, the dot-com crash led to significant layoffs.

To date, IRCC has invited 8,600 people to apply for permanent residency over five rounds. Two of those rounds targeted French speakers, another two focused on candidates with recent work experience in health care occupations and one focused on STEM experience.

This is a departure from how Express Entry usually works.

Immigration candidates in the Express Entry pool are assigned a score through the Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS), accounting for such factors as age, education and employment history. The score corresponds to their expected Canadian earnings, based on the outcomes of previous cohorts of immigrants.

In the past, Ottawa would select a few thousand people with the highest scores every two weeks to apply for permanent residency. Policy experts likened this to a “cream-skimming” approach that would boost economic outcomes by targeting people with the highest earnings potential.

But in selecting people with certain attributes, the government is reaching deeper into the pool – and those individuals, with lower CRS scores, have lower expected earnings.

Last week, for example, IRCC invited 3,800 people in the French-language category to apply. The cut-off score for an invite was 375 – much lower than usual.

“It’s analogous to a university prioritizing other considerations, such as athletic ability or legacy status, in their student selection,” said Mikal Skuterud, an economics professor at the University of Waterloo, via e-mail. “The inevitable trade-off is lower average academic quality of new admissions.”

IRCC is still selecting people from the broad pool of Express Entry candidates, but it has largely focused on category-based selections since late June. The categories are in effect for 2023 and subject to change thereafter.

Dr. Banerjee said this adds “uncertainty” to a system that, because of the points system, was more predictable for prospective immigrants. “People who perhaps have a higher score may be overlooked, and this could lead to a lot of frustration,” she said.

Recognizing foreign credentials is another issue, Mr. Falconer said. Just because someone is selected for their health care work experience doesn’t mean they’ll easily transition into a similar role in Canada.

He said he senses “mission creep” in how IRCC is trying to fulfill multiple objectives at once, such as boosting the number of French speakers through an economic immigration program.

“If we want to accomplish goals outside of economic goals, I think that’s fine,” he said. However, with the Express Entry system, “we should really see it as the economic productivity stream, where we do aim to boost productivity across Canada.”

Source: Canada’s new approach to immigrant selection aims to fix labour markets. Will it create more gaps instead?

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H-1B Visa Holder Applications Overwhelm Canada’s New Program

2023/07/21 Leave a comment

Victim of its success in terms of interest, success and outcomes to be determined but aligned with productivity objectives:

Canada’s new program to entice H-1B visa holders to the country attracted so many applications that the 10,000 limit was reached in less than 48 hours. The response is likely a warning sign to U.S. policymakers that many highly sought foreign-born scientists and engineers in the United States are dissatisfied with the U.S. immigration system and seeking other options. Canada may reopen the program and accept more applications if it finds not all applicants are approved and entered the country to work.

On June 27, 2023, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Sean Fraser announced Canada’s “Tech Talent Strategy,” including a new program to provide open work permits for 10,000 H-1B visa holders. Only the principals would count against the limit, although spouses and children 16 or older would be eligible to work. In the United States, typically, only the spouses of H-1B visa holders with pending green card applications receive employment authorization.

“As of July 16, 2023, H-1B specialty occupation visa holders in the US, and their accompanying immediate family members, will be eligible to apply to come to Canada,” according to a Canadian government Backgrounder. “Approved applicants will receive an open work permit of up to three years in duration, which means they will be able to work for almost any employer anywhere in Canada.”

The online application process for H-1B visa holders started on July 16th, but on July 17th potential applicants received a message stating: “You can no longer apply: We reached the cap of 10,000 applications for this initiative on July 17, 2023.” Analysts consider this an overwhelming response.

Will Canada Reopen The Application Process For H-1B Visa Holders?

Attorneys believe Canada may reopen the application process after it determines the number of individuals who applied and did not follow through in coming to Canada.

“What normally happens is, after you fill out your forms, they say, congratulations,” said Peter Rekai, senior partner of Rekai LLP in Toronto. “If you’re a person who needs a visa, you submit your passport. If they don’t submit their passports, you know those positions have not been used, and they have opted out. If they do submit their passports and they get a visa stamp in it and the work permit authorization, then they have to cross the border with the authorization. If they don’t cross the border with the authorization, it doesn’t become active. The government would then be able to determine how many people actually activated these work permits.”

Source: H-1B Visa Holder Applications Overwhelm Canada’s New Program

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