Liberal minister says Canada needs more immigration as targets get mixed reviews

2023/01/14 Leave a comment

Mixed reviews are from me and Ted McDonald of UNB:

As Canada plans to significantly ramp up its immigration levels in the coming years, some policy experts are worried about potential effects on health care, housing and the labour market.

But Immigration Minister Sean Fraser insists that Canada needs more newcomers to address labour shortages and demographic changes that threaten the country’s future.

“If we don’t continue to increase our immigration ambition and bring more working-age population and young families into this country, our questions will not be about labour shortages, generations from now,” Fraser said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

“They’re going to be about whether we can afford schools and hospitals.”

In November, the federal Liberal government announced a new immigration plan that would see Canada welcome 500,000 immigrants per year by 2025.

A record-breaking 431,645 people became permanent residents in 2022.

The new immigration rates will be substantially higher than rates in similar countries, such as Australia, said University of New Brunswick political science professor Ted McDonald.

That’s not a bad thing in itself, he said. But in his view, raising immigration levels isn’t the right way to address current labour shortages.

“I think the policy would make more sense if it’s aligned with what are seen as underlying structural labour market shortages that are going to persist,” McDonald said.

At the same, he said one justification for immigration is clear: Canada has a declining birthrate.

According to Statistics Canada, the country’s birthrate fell to a record low of an average of 1.4 children per woman in 2020. That’s well below the 2.1 rate needed to maintain a population without immigration.

That doesn’t stop others from worrying about how more newcomers could put a strain on other perennial issues such as housing affordability and health care.

“There’s no assessment that I have seen of the impact of these targets on housing affordability and availability, no assessment of these targets in terms of additional pressures on health care,” said Andrew Griffith, a former high-ranking official at Immigration and Citizenship Canada.

But Fraser said that many of the new permanent residents already live in Canada. For example, 157,000 international students became permanent residents in 2021.

“It’s not as though there are half a million people coming to Canada who are not already here,” the minister said.

He said changes are also coming to the Express Entry system in the spring so that immigrants can be selected based on the sector and region in Canada they’re heading to.

That will help alleviate some of the strain on things like health care and housing, he said.

The ongoing debate on whether the new targets are too ambitious is also coinciding with heightened scrutiny regarding what — or who — is influencing government policy.

Radio-Canada reported last week that two sources within Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said McKinsey & Company’s influence on immigration policy has grown in recent years.

A government response to a Conservative MP’s written question, which was tabled in the House of Commons in December, says the department has not recently awarded any contracts to the consulting firm — at least, not during the timeframe the MP asked about, which was from March 2021 until October 2022.

And during the interview Thursday, Fraser said McKinsey has had no role to play in the new immigration levels plan.

“I’m not being influenced by them,” Fraser said.

“This is something that I’ve arrived at independently.”

The minister said he came to the decision regarding the immigration plan on the advice of department officials. He said he also took into consideration what he’s heard from different organizations, stakeholders, and provincial and territorial leaders.

Policy experts often worry about the outsized influence stakeholders can have on government policies, since interest groups lobby the government to implement policies that are in line with their priorities, and some are more powerful than others.

Business groups in Canada have seen ongoing labour shortages as a major concern, and they have called on the government to help fill vacancies.

Following the announcement of the new plan, the Business Council of Canada applauded the targets in a press release, saying that “an economy that is chronically short of workers cannot achieve its potential.”

Griffith said that in his opinion, the current government is “fairly responsive to the pressures of stakeholders,” whether they are business groups or organizations that work with immigrants.

While the interests of stakeholders can sometimes align with what is actually good policy, McDonald said stakeholder groups have “vested interests.”

“We have to be aware of where the advocacy is coming from, and not being naïve about it,” he said.

Source: Liberal minister says Canada needs more immigration as targets get mixed reviews

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No-shows, dropouts and asylum requests — these 10 schools have Canada’s highest rates of ‘non-compliance’ among international students

2023/01/13 Leave a comment

Time for their “designated learning institution” (DLI) status to be reviewed and possibly revoked. Back door immigration, not education stream.

Overly charitable to state that “While it would be unfair to cast doubt over the integrity and legitimacy of these colleges and universities” given that, at a minimum, they and governments are complicit in this abuse of the program.

Great that IRCC has identified this risk, what remains to be seen if IRCC acts on this by revoking their DLI or other measures to curb this abuse:

Ontario is home to seven of the 10 schools flagged by the Canadian government as having the highest rates of “non-compliance” when it comes to international students failing to show up for their registered courses, or instead applying for asylum.

The names of the so-called designated learning institutions, or DLIs — schools approved to host international students — were revealed in an internal report by the Immigration Department’s integrity risk management branch.

The list raises questions about Canada’s rapidly expanding international education industry, which has seen schools bring in hundreds of thousands of foreign students at significantly higher tuition rates than their Canadian peers, and whether it may be experiencing issues around compliance and enforcement.

Seven of the post-secondary schools on the list, compiled in November 2021, were private institutions while the other three are publicly funded universities: Laurentian University in Sudbury, Cape Breton University and Université Sainte-Anne, both in Nova Scotia.

The ratings of the schools were based on the percentages of “no show,” “no record” or “no longer registered/enrolled” among their enrolled international students. The list also cited the number of asylum claims made by enrolled students.

The overall potential non-compliance rates of the 10 schools ranged from 33 per cent to 95 per cent, compared to the overall average of just seven per cent among some 1,600 DLIs across Canada, according to the list obtained under an access to information request by immigration policy analyst and lawyer Richard Kurland.

Evergreen College in Brampton, renamed Eastview College in 2021, and the Academy of Learning College in Toronto topped the list, both scoring 95 per cent.

At Evergreen, where six asylum claims were traced, 274 of the 288 students were deemed non-compliant, including:

  • 132 no-shows, who were offered admission but never confirmed acceptance, registered but never attended class, or presented in class but stopped attending without telling school administration.
  • 140 “no records,” where the administration does not have a record of a letter of acceptance issued to this person or any record of the person being enrolled in the school, despite immigration records saying otherwise. Experts say such discrepancies can be the result of clerical errors. 
  • two who were dismissed, withdrew voluntarily or transferred to another institution.

A spokesperson for Eastview said the “no record” numbers originated from fake acceptance letters that were issued under Evergreen’s name. The spokesperson said the administration had brought the issue to the attention of the Immigration Department but that no action was taken to address it.

The no-shows, she said, could be attributed to those who just came to the college looking for an acceptance letter so they could extend their work permit or to use it as a stepping stone to gain admission to another college.

“With the acceptance letter, they’re supposed to start with the program. But you know what, they do not. We can’t do anything with it,” noted the spokesperson, adding that some of the no-show students didn’t even bother to ask for refunds of fees and tuitions.

While it would be unfair to cast doubt over the integrity and legitimacy of these colleges and universities based on the data, experts say it does suggest some issues around compliance and enforcement.

“Some students may be bona fide or genuine students coming in and then they can fall through the cracks and then start not showing up to their classes. Could it be that they don’t really have the funds to actually pay for the next semester, so they don’t show up and start going under the table and underground?” asked immigration lawyer Lou Janssen Dangzalan.

“You’ve seen the reports of colleges doing strip-mall classes or theatre classes. That could dissuade an international student from attending classes. If I were an international student and paid so much money for tuition, I would be so demoralized attending classes. Basically that’s recorded as a no-show or no-record or no longer registered.”

Michael Sangster, CEO of the National Association of Career Colleges, said he could not comment on specific cases, but said its 450 provincially regulated members work closely to ensure students are supported and have the skills training needed to succeed.

“As all post-secondary institutions experience, there are many personal reasons why prospective students may ultimately make the decision not to pursue their studies, particularly over the last three years,” he said in a statement.

Other private colleges that made the non-compliant list included the Academy of Learning Career and Business College in Owen Sound, with an 87 per cent rate; Flair College of Management and Technology in Vaughan (82 per cent); Canadian Institute of Management and Technology in Ontario (62 per cent); BITTS International Career College in Mississauga (60 per cent); and Pacific Link College in Surrey, B.C. (47 per cent).

The Star reached out to all 10 institutions on the list. Four had responded by time of publication.

Sandip Dhakecha, Flair College’s campus administrator, said some private institutions do have lower admission criteria than their publicly funded counterparts. Sometimes, international students stop showing up when they realize their programs won’t earn them postgraduate work permits and coveted permanent residence in Canada.

“This is a pressing issue for us also because, you know, it looks bad on our name. We want to provide the quality education. But the thing is, we don’t have any control over our students,” he explained. “If a student comes before the program starts and asks for a refund, we 100 per cent refund them.”

In a statement to the Star, BITTS International said it was surprised by the report because it always follows all procedures for reporting and registration as required by different federal and provincial ministries of all DLIs.

“The non-compliance percentage of students are (those) who obtain their admissions at BITTS and then never continue with their enrolment and full-time studies. Many of these students obtain multiple admissions and then enrol where they find it convenient,” it said.

“Whatever information, that has been obtained in this report, we would like to review all of it, in detail, and respond accordingly.”

At Laurentian University, which has a 39 per cent non-compliant rate (with 321 of the 828 students potentially breaching the rules), registrar Serge Demers said post-secondary classes don’t take attendance and the registration system has become a proxy to monitor students.

“We’re talking about people who are not here, so it’s difficult to ask them why they’re not here,” said Demers. “There’s all of these levels of privacy that exist. In a world where everyone was in good faith, we wouldn’t need this system. I think the system is in place because there are people that are working their way through the cracks.”

A total of 197 asylum claims were reported from students enrolled in the top 10 DLIs — an issue that Dangzalan blames partially on the fact that not all international students have access to permanent residence, as often marketed by unscrupulous recruiters.

“If you run out of your postgraduate work permit, you are able to get a work permit while you’re waiting for your refugee determination,” said Dangzalan. “It’s an offshoot of the problem of overmarketing Canada. The system is just overwhelmed and now they’re trying to use alternative avenues to stay and remain in Canada.”

Source: No-shows, dropouts and asylum requests — these 10 schools have Canada’s highest rates of ‘non-compliance’ among international students

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Elrick: The problem with immigration targets: They’re ‘guesstimates’ easily misunderstood by the public

2023/01/13 Leave a comment

Elrick’s critique of immigration targets being ‘guesstimates’ is valid, given the lack of serious analysis of labour and other needs and the lack of consideration of the externalities in terms of housing, healthcare and other public services.

However, in Canada at least, the negative political impact has been limited with only recently some question but not on xenophobic grounds.

But having a better understanding of the impacts of high immigration levels on housing, healthcare, infrastructure is essential to reduce the negative impacts of current and future levels:

The illusion of science that surrounds these numbers and their emotive force make them powerful political tools that need to be better understood by the public to avoid provoking anti-immigration sentiment.

Immigration targets are immigration bureaucrats’ best guess, based on institutional experience and analyses, of how many people can join a society and economy without threatening social cohesion.

In other words, they are estimates of what Canadian immigration bureaucrats have historically referred to the country’s “absorptive capacity.”

Writing in 1948, a high-ranking civil servant called the concept “difficult if not impossible to measure,” while noting that it includes factors such as the population to land ratio (accounting for expected standards of living), demographic trends, employment opportunities and immigrants’ economic, social and human capital.

Based on these considerations, the federal government has aimed since the 1950s — and, as shown below, mostly failed — to bring in the equivalent of one per cent of Canada’s population annually through immigration.

Canada’s immigration levels as a share of population. Author’s calculations

Immigration intake

Ottawa’s announcement late last year of plans to raise its immigration target to 500,000 a year by 2025 is therefore unremarkable from a policy perspective.

Statistics Canada’s low-growth scenario for Canada’s population in 2025 is 39,861,100, which would make the planned immigrant intake equivalent to 1.25 per cent of the population.

The problem with immigration targets entering public debate is that they eliminate nuance while raising anxieties. Like governments, the general public is concerned about “absorptive capacity,” but it seldom has access to the kinds of detailed academic research on the economic and social integration of immigrants that civil servants do.

Integration successes and challenges can vary by someone’s human capital (for example, education and linguistic ability); how they enter the country (for example, as a skilled worker or a spouse); their age and macroeconomic conditions upon arrival; broad institutional contexts (including the structure of labour markets); racial or ethnic discrimination; and the quality of their social ties in Canada.

None of the nuance needed to answer the question of how many and what kind of immigrants have a positive or negative effect on society is reflected in a single, large number.

Absent a more complete picture of immigrant integration dynamics and outcomes, immigration targets can easily activate public anxieties about immigrants threatening social cohesion by increasing competition for resources like health care, housing, education and desirable jobs, or by creating what some might regard as too much socio-cultural diversity.

Scapegoating the stranger

This is evident in Québec Premier François Legault’s declaration last year that admitting more than 50,000 immigrants a year to the province would be “a bit suicidal.”

This statement followed former Québec immigration minister Jean Boulet’s claim that “80 per cent of immigrants (who) go to Montréal don’t work, don’t speak French or don’t adhere to the values of Québec society.”

Such statements are neither new nor exclusive to Québec.

Immigrants have long been the scapegoats for broader political failures. Just ask Georg Simmel, a Jewish sociologist in early 20th-century Germany, who identified “the stranger” as a key position in modern societies and one often held by immigrants.

Economic insiders but perpetual social outsiders, “strangers” are at once appreciated for their economic utility and easily declared an “inner enemy” when troubles arise.

The scapegoating of “the stranger” is politically expedient, as it allows both political leaders and dissatisfied citizens to avoid painful questions about the real sources of their troubles, including long-term trends in social, health and housing policies, which require sustained political efforts to fix.

Fuelling polarization

When immigration targets cause public anxiety, they can fuel political polarization and be used by politicians to justify harsh immigration policies.

Take the case in the United Kingdom. In 2010, Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron announced that immigration needed to be limited to “tens of thousands” rather than “hundreds of thousands” of people per year to reduce pressure on public services.

Plucked out of thin air during a television appearance, the “tens of thousands” guesstimate, which became known as the “net migration target,” has had a large impact on policymaking and public perceptions of British immigration over the past decade.

The idea that there were too many immigrants being admitted by a factor of 10 helped to justify a new, restrictive immigration policy — as well as Brexit — as a means of limiting immigration from Europe under the European Union’s freedom of movement clause.

The target also became a justification for creating a hostile environment for immigrants in the United Kingdom, whereby controls on legal status have been integrated into everyday settings like classrooms, health-care facilities and workplaces.

Guesstimates like immigration targets can be useful and expedient for policymaking. But in the public arena, they need to be more fully understood if immigration debates are to be grounded in evidence.

Source: The problem with immigration targets: They’re ‘guesstimates’ easily misunderstood by the public

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Canada’s cities see immigration-driven population surge after pandemic lull

2023/01/13 Leave a comment

Useful analysis:

Canada’s urban areas recently experienced their strongest population growth in at least two decades, after a weak expansion during the early stages of the pandemic.

Over the year ending July 1, 2022, the country’s census metropolitan areas (CMAs) grew 2.1 per cent – about 574,000 people – according to Statistics Canada estimates published Wednesday. That was the strongest pace of annual growth since the agency began publishing such figures in 2001.

It was a comeback of sorts for urban regions, which had grown just 0.5 per cent the previous year, lagging the growth in rural areas. The pandemic and its accompanying border restrictions led to a dramatic decline in immigration to Canada, while many urban residents decamped to smaller communities.

But as restrictions eased, immigration surged to record levels, helping drive most of the population increase in urban areas. Sixteen CMAs notched their strongest annual growth on record.

At the same time, some major cities are still seeing plenty of residents leave. The Toronto region, for one, is losing significantly more people to other parts of Canada than it is bringing in. Over the past year, its population growth was entirely driven by international migration, which includes permanent residents and foreign students.

Several economists tie the exodus to worsening home affordability, along with the rise of remote work. And as homes have gotten pricier in suburbs and exurbs, buyers are looking even further afield.

“This is not like 50 years ago, when people were leaving downtown Toronto and moving to Etobicoke,” said Mike Moffatt, the founding director of the PLACE Centre think tank, referring to the former suburb that is now part of the city of Toronto. “This is people moving to London or Moncton or basically outside of the economic region. So there is a fundamental difference.”

Indeed, Atlantic Canada is experiencing a boom. Moncton’s population rose 5.4 per cent over the year ending July 1, 2022, the most of any CMA. Halifax was the next highest, at 4.5 per cent. Charlottetown grew 4.2 per cent.

There was breadth to the expansion, too. The Calgary area grew 3.2 per cent, or roughly 50,000 people, its strongest pace since the mid-2000s. The Vancouver area added 2.8 per cent to its population. The populations of Barrie and London, Ont., rose 3.2 per cent and 3 per cent, respectively.

The Toronto region did grow – by 2.1 per cent, or more than 138,000 people. However, it saw a net intraprovincial loss of roughly 78,000 – which means that many more people left for other parts of Ontario than moved in. It was the most on record, and the outflow has accelerated in recent years, alongside rising home prices and rents. There has been a spike in the number of children leaving the city, suggesting that young families are getting priced out of the housing market and are looking elsewhere for properties.

The Montreal and Vancouver areas also saw net intraprovincial losses of about 29,500 and 14,300 people, respectively, over the past year. Over all, Montreal’s population grew just 0.9 per cent, outpacing only Thunder Bay (0.2 per cent) among CMAs.

Toronto is also losing people to other provinces. The region saw a net interprovincial outflow of roughly 21,400 residents, more than double the previous record for departures.

Mr. Moffatt said the concern is that cities such as Toronto will suffer a “hollowing out” of their middle classes, who can no longer afford to live there. This has implications for the labour market, he said, as many crucial workers – such as teachers and nurses – are forced to relocate.

“You basically have two extremes, where fairly wealthy and older households can make it work, then you have young students and people starting their careers who are sharing apartments,” he said.

On the flip side, the Calgary area swung to a net interprovincial gain of residents in what amounted to the largest inflow of people since the oil price collapse of 2014 to 2016.

Similarly, Halifax is drawing large numbers of people from outside Nova Scotia. The CMA notched a net interprovincial inflow of more than 8,000 people, a figure that has been rising steadily for years.

Brigitte Teleu, a local real estate agent, said upward of 30 per cent of her clients recently have been out-of-province buyers. Like much of the Maritimes, Halifax saw home prices surge during the boom period of 2020 and 2021.

“Our prices are still relatively low, even now, compared to the rest of Canada,” she said. “A lot of people are selling their homes in Toronto, and they have all the money to spare and they just buy a house upfront in cash.”

Canada is struggling to build enough homes for its rapidly growing population, especially with higher interest rates, which make construction costlier and qualifying for a mortgage even more difficult. The federal government, meanwhile, is pursuing record levels of immigration in the coming years, adding more demand for homes in short supply.

“I think we’re going to have an escalation of the current trends, where our cities are growing but at the same time we are losing a lot of young professionals to Alberta and Atlantic Canada” from Ontario, Mr. Moffatt said.

Source: Canada’s cities see immigration-driven population surge after pandemic lull

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Philip Cross: Reality’s insoluble trilemma: More people, more wealth, more green? Choose two

2023/01/12 Leave a comment

While overly ideological in substance and wording, Cross does have a point regarding trade-offs in both the Canadian and international contexts:

Collectivists subscribe to the fantasy that we humans can simultaneously expand our population, reduce our environmental footprint and continue to enjoy rising per capita incomes. This displays an utter lack of awareness that the three are a trilemma at the global level. In a trilemma you can achieve only two of your three goals simultaneously; whichever two we select, the other necessarily falls by the wayside. Fortunately, the choice is not hard for sensible people to make.

Most of the Left clearly supports an expanding human population. This is implicit in their belief, which they share with just about everyone, that every individual has worth — and deserves, they would add,  support such as universal health care and a basic income. Demographers agree population will continue to increase from its current eight billion to somewhere between 10 and 11 billion people. Most members of the Left will not object.

At the same time, collectivists regard any recession in incomes or rise in unemployment as intolerable. Witness their near-hysterical reaction to the tightening of monetary policy in response to the inevitable surge in inflation following excessive fiscal and monetary stimulus during the pandemic. The Left does tolerate chronic slow growth in developed nations — though without conceding that the taxes and regulations it favours often cause it. Economic growth is even more imperative for the hundreds of millions of people in other countries still living in “where will my next meal come from?” poverty.

Finally, the Left holds that the environment and all plant and animal life are sacred. Humans should therefore save the environment and protect the planet whatever it costs. The completely unrealistic goal is to freeze nature in its current state. But “protecting the planet” at all costs is fundamentally anti-human. We exist and thrive because of our ability to control the planet’s environment. As documented by the economic historian Robert Fogel, this control allowed an explosive increase in human numbers and longevity over the last three centuries, while the average body size of adults expanded 50 per cent as our living standard soared.

Something has got to give. We cannot have more people, rising incomes, and a smaller environmental footprint at the same time. If we continue to expand population and raise incomes, there is bound to be a growing impact on the environment as demand rises for land, food, energy and water. We can try to limit our per capita consumption of resources but more people and rising incomes will put relentless upward pressure on total consumption.

The only way to reconcile rising population and a lower environmental impact would be to sharply reduce the resources available to the average person. This would entail not just a short-lived recession — which we heard repeatedly in 2022 is unacceptable — but a drastic reduction in living standards, which would be especially harsh for the world’s poor

Our final option would be to minimize our environmental impact while maintaining high living standards. But this would require sharply reducing the number of people, which contradicts the goal of a growing population. In his recent book Fossil Future, Alex Epstein cites a biologist who wrote that “Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.” Such anti-human attitudes are repugnant to most people.

If curtailing the number of humans is immoral, while engineering a sharp reduction in our standard of living is unacceptable, the only option left to us is to accept that a planet with more humans enjoying rising incomes inevitably will have a growing impact on the environment. The renowned economic historian Douglas North was frank in his description of how “a necessary precondition to understanding the evolving human environment is understanding the revolutionary changes resulting in the ‘conquest’ of the physical environment.” Epstein echoes that sentiment, noting that much of the improvement in the human condition has resulted from our increasing ability to control an often-hostile environment while extracting more of the planet’s bountiful resources; in his words, eliminating human impact “is an anti-human moral goal.”

The global challenge is to minimize our environmental footprint without compromising either human health or rising incomes. It is simply unrealistic to say we can increase our population, maintain our standard of living and lift billions of people out of abject poverty without impacting the planet’s environment. You can only choose two of these goals, and it is obvious which two most people will opt for.

Philip Cross is a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

Source: Philip Cross: Reality’s insoluble trilemma: More people, more wealth, more green? Choose two

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Poilievre mum on Tory MP’s ‘illegal refugees’ comment, calls for Roxham Road closure

2023/01/12 Leave a comment

Of note. He should know better than making the statement “It is not legal to cross there. That is a reality. It is not legal to cross there.” given that it is legal, if not desirable :

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre called for the closure of the Roxham Road irregular border crossing on Tuesday, but sidestepped questions about one of his MPs denying help to a family who used it to enter the country.

During a news conference on Parliament Hill,his first of 2023,he told reporters that he favours legal immigration but can understand the desperation that leads migrants to cross into Canada through the unofficial entry point south of Montreal.

“I understand why desperate people are trying to cross there,” he said. “Our system is now so slow and so broken.”

Poilievre pointed to the fact that the federal immigration department currently has a backlog of nearly 1.1 million applications to process, which was higher under periods of lockdown during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada reported that as of the end of November, it had 1.09 million applications in the queue that exceed the department’s service standard, a problem that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has committed to tackle.

The Tory leader argued Tuesday that fixing the problem could lead to fewer people crossing through unofficial entry points such as Roxham Road.

“It is not legal to cross there. That is a reality. It is not legal to cross there.”

Thousands of asylum-seekers have entered the country between official ports of entry in recent years and then made refugee claims once in Canada.

Those who come from the United States via official crossings can be turned away under Canada’s Safe Third Country Agreement with the U.S., on the basis that claimants have access to fair asylum processes south of the border.

Radio-Canada reported last month that Quebec Conservative MP Richard Martel recently refused to help a family that was facing deportation after having entered Canada through Roxham Road in 2018, calling them “illegal refugees.”

Poilievre did not directly answer when asked about Martel’s comments Tuesday, but said the Liberal government should renegotiate the Canada-U.S. agreement “in order to close Roxham Road.”

He said Trudeau must fix the system so that people enter through official entry points, instead: “Renegotiate the deal with the Americans, and speed up the processing of immigration generally.”

In December, in a French interview with The Canadian Press,José Nicola Lopez said that his sister-in-law Leticia Cruz and her son had crossed into Canada via Roxham Road to join their relatives in 2018.

He said she did so because she feared expulsion under former president Donald Trump’s policies, and was afraid that a possible return to her home country of El Salvador could make her a target for street gangs.

Lopez said at the time that he found Martel’s comments to be “offensive” and “ignorant.” After Cruz was unable to get help from Martel, whose Chicoutimi-area riding she and her son call home, Bloc Québécois MP Mario Simard said he worked with Immigration Minister Sean Fraser to help the family avoid deportation.

Fraser, the Bloc and the NDP criticized Martel’s comments as lacking compassion.

In a recent interview with Radio-Canada, Martel declined to offer specifics about the case.

Speaking in French, he said the case was complex and that he declined to help knowing that the Bloc were in a position to do so. He said he would likely make the same decision if a similar file came across his desk, adding it’s a matter of “values.”

Source: Poilievre mum on Tory MP’s ‘illegal refugees’ comment, calls for Roxham Road closure

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B.C. plans to streamline licensing for internationally trained nurses

2023/01/11 Leave a comment

Of note:

British Columbia has announced new supports to help hire and train more nurses and midwives in order to take pressure off the strained health-care system.

Premier David Eby said the new measures will support Canadian-trained nurses who want to get back into the workforce, as well as internationally trained nurses looking to practise in B.C.

“There are highly skilled and experienced nurses who want to get to work in our system now but are facing barriers preventing them from delivering services that British Columbians need,” Eby said during a news conference at Langara College in Vancouver on Monday.

Source: B.C. plans to streamline licensing for internationally trained nurses

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Globe Editorial: Canada’s immigration plan should involve more than just big numbers

2023/01/09 Leave a comment

Good editorial, and a sign of a more serious discussion on appropriate levels of immigration and the associated impacts and costs.

A change from the March 2021 Globe event promoted increased immigration and the government’s approach. That in turn prompted my riposte, Increasing immigration to boost population? Not so fast.

As I and others have argued, we need to take these externalities into account in designing and implementation immigration policies and programs, which by their very nature, require joint federal provincial responses:

The word “goal” appears seven times in the Immigration department’s latest annual report to Parliament, a document that purportedly lays out the Liberal government’s vision of how to bring a historic number of permanent residents to Canada in the next three years.

…

Source: Canada’s immigration plan should involve more than just big numbers

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USCIS Fee Hike 2023

2023/01/09 Leave a comment

Good backgrounder:

What’s happening? USCIS released a long-awaited proposal this week that will raise application fees for almost every category of immigrant to the United States. While early press coverage has focused on the significant price increases for employment-based visas like the H1B, Boundless has discovered that family-based immigrant applications will also face dramatic fee increases. This includes a doubling of total fees from $1760 to over $3640 for many marriage-based green card applications when including the mandatory I-130 petition for a family member.

Other immigration applications are also set to increase in price: the fiancé visa petition will increase by 35%, from $535 to $720, the petition for a relative will increase by 53% from $535 to $820, and the removal of conditions application will increase by 76%, from $680 to $1,195.

Why is this happening? The proposed fee hikes are expected, since the agency is required to review its immigration fee structure every two years. USCIS receives roughly 96% of its funding from filing fees, and hasn’t introduced new fees since 2016. The cash-strapped agency is facing staffing challenges and an ever-increasing application backlog. USCIS Director Ur M. Jaddou stated that the new fee structure would allow the agency to “improve customer service operations and manage the incoming workload.” 


When will these changes take effect? USCIS is required to follow a specific process mandated by the Administrative Procedures Act to enact major changes to their services and fee schedule. The first step is the publishing of a proposed final rule, which was released on Jan. 4, 2023. Following the publication of the proposal the agency must conduct a 60-day comment period to collect public feedback on the proposal. Once the comment period ends, the agency can take a variety of actions, including modifying or withdrawing the proposal. After any modifications occur based on feedback, the final rule will be published. This can take place as quickly as 30 days after the end of the public comment period. The final published rule will state the date that the new rule will be implemented, which can be 30 days or more from the publication date. Based on this timeline, Boundless expects that, if the final rule mirrors the recommended fee increases included in the proposal, these new fees could take effect as soon as May 2023.

Source: USCIS Fee Hike 2023

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Star Editorial: Helping new Canadians succeed

2023/01/09 Leave a comment

Of note. Even the Star is starting to question the government’s approach:

Immigrants have always enriched this country. Today, more than ever, they are also essential to sustaining a needed workforce as the Canadian population ages.

It speaks to the maturity of this country that a record number of immigrants were settled in Canada in 2022, giving this country the largest percentage of immigrants in the G7, without rancour, bitterness or xenophobic political arguments. An Environics poll found almost seven in 10 Canadians support the immigration policies of the Liberal government, double the support Canadians offered for newcomers 50 years ago.

While this country has benefited from the diversity, the energy and the talents of immigrants, the size of the wave that has been – and will be – settled by this Liberal government means it comes with challenges.

To understand the scope of recent immigration in Canada, consider the numbers:

  • In 2022, 431,645 new permanent residents were settled in this country, a record. Almost a quarter of them settled in the GTA and environs. For perspective, that is the equivalent of adding another city of Halifax. The government is aiming to welcome another 1.45 million immigrants over the next three years, essentially adding another city the size of Calgary.
  • According to the 2021 census, almost one in four (23 per cent) residents in this country are or have been a landed immigrant or permanent resident in Canada. This is the highest proportion in a century.
  • Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship estimate that by 2036 immigrants will represent up to 30 per cent of the Canadian population, jumping from 20.7 per cent in 2011
  • An Environics study of 2021 census data found that 79.6 per cent of the GTA population is first- and second-generation arrivals; in Vancouver the number is 72.5 per cent.

Ottawa is making up for an immigration downturn during the pandemic. Immigration now accounts for almost 100 per cent of Canada’s labour force growth and about 75 per cent of the population growth. And, as we age, younger skilled workers are needed in health care, manufacturing, information technology and the building trades. The government says the worker-to-retiree ratio is expected to be two to one by 2035. In the 1970s, it was seven to one.

But when they arrive, immigrants will find the Canadian dream comes with a significant sticker shock.

Where will they live? Higher mortgage rates and limited supply will mean the goal of home ownership would likely be as elusive for many new arrivals as it has been for long-time residents. If they turn to the rental market, they will find options limited because of a shortage of supply and people priced out the housing market renting longer. The average monthly rent for a two-bedroom condo in Toronto is $3,350 according to Urbanation, a real estate data analysis company. That is a 24 per cent increase in one year. Vacancy rates fell to 1.2 per cent, down from a pandemic high of 6.4 per cent in the first quarter of 2021.

Immigration will continue to fuel demand for rental properties, but a slowdown in the number of building projects underway now point to a shortage of housing in four to five years, experts say.

There is also evidence that Canada is wasting the skill of immigrants, particularly in the health care field. Statistics Canada found that only 36.5 per cent of immigrants trained abroad as registered nurses were working in that field here and only 41.1 per cent of new arrivals with foreign medical degrees were working as doctors. Bureaucratic and professional barriers leave too many languishing in fields other than medicine at the very time additional healthcare professionals are urgently needed on the frontline.

The federal government has invested $90 million to streamline the recognition of foreign medical credentials. The Ontario Medical Association has called for more spots in residency programs needed for training of physicians here and a provincial “ready-assessment” program that would more quickly integrate physicians trained abroad into the provincial system. It’s welcome as well to see political pressure to speed the approvals of foreign-trained doctors and nurses.

There is also the question as to whether the federal government has overestimated the impact immigrant labour will have on the workforce. Immigrants will not fill every labour force void and bringing in new labour to certain sectors could blunt opportunities for real wage gains for those already employed.

The record immigration numbers are welcome. But governments cannot simply point to the numbers as the cure for so many of our ills. They must rise to meet these challenges, from housing to employment barriers. Governments must invest in the programs that help newcomers get settled in communities, find their sense of belonging and realize the dream that motivated their move here in the first place.

In so doing, they will not only be helping immigrants, they will be helping all Canadians.

Source: Star Editorial: Helping new Canadians succeed

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