Coyne: Relax – higher immigration alarmism makes more noise than sense

2023/01/07 Leave a comment

Cute opening line but false comparison. Babies have an intensive integration and settlement program, called parenting.

And ironic, given that many of his columns focus on government delivery and implementation failures, largely dismisses issues related to housing, healthcare etc by largely assuming the market will deal with them despite evidence to date that it is failing by any measure:

I don’t wish to be alarmist, but I wonder how many Canadians know their country is being invaded. It doesn’t get a lot of attention in the mainstream media, but there is a massive influx of people coming into this country every year: nearly 400,000 in the past year alone.

These are people, I should point out, who have no means of supporting themselves; who have no knowledge of Canadian history or culture; who not only cannot speak either official language, but cannot walk or feed or even dress themselves; people who will be a net drain on the taxpayer for many years after their arrival.

I speak, of course, of the hundreds of thousands of babies born in Canada every year. There are fewer of them, proportionately, than in the past – at just under 1 per cent of the population, the birth rate is barely a third of its postwar peak – but they still have an enormous impact, not least in terms of public spending. Yet somehow, whenever the discussion turns to population growth and the eternal question of my God how will we ever accommodate all these people, the native-born in our midst never seem to come up. It’s always about immigrants.

Just now we are having one of our periodic flutters of panic over immigration, occasioned by the recent release of the latest federal immigration plan. From 405,000 in 2021, to 431,000 in 2022, to 465,000 this year, the annual intake of immigrants is projected to continue to rise to 500,000 by 2025. And that’s not counting those here on temporary work or study permits.

These are invariably described as “record” numbers, and so they are, in absolute terms. But relative to population, immigration is not particularly high: At just over 1 per cent of the receiving population, it is roughly in line with its historical average. There have been periods when it was lower, but there have also been periods when it was higher – much higher: before the First World War (in some years it exceeded 5 per cent of the population), and after the Second. Even today, population flows across our borders are dwarfed by population movements within; again, while the former excites all the attention, the latter passes unremarked.

What people mean when they say immigration is “high” is that it is higher than it was in the recent past. The implication is that recent levels of immigration are “natural,” such that anything higher must inevitably invite disaster. But in fact there is no such thing as a natural rate of immigration, any more than there is a natural level of population; if there were, it would be a remarkable coincidence to find that we were exactly at it. Current immigration rates have no more or less claim to being natural than any other. They are just more familiar.

At one time, immigration hysterics focused on its alleged doleful effects on unemployment, or wages: The increase in the supply of labour, it was reasoned, must surely outpace the demand. That’s proved hard to sustain in the face of today’s record-high employment rates and real wages. So instead the focus has shifted to the ways in which immigration must lead to an excess of demand over supply: in housing, say, or health care.

It never seems to occur to anyone that immigrants might be a source of both demand and supply – that they are not just workers, but consumers, and not just consumers, but workers, at the same time.

Will immigrants add to the demand for housing? Undoubtedly. Hmm. We’ll certainly need to build a lot more houses for them to live in. I wonder where we’ll find the workers to build them? Ah yes: from immigration. The health care system is a mess at the moment. It was also a mess, you may recall, 30 years ago, when there were 10 million fewer Canadians using it.

A moment’s thought, and a little research, should make clear: Neither the unemployment rate, nor the standard of living, nor the level of environmental degradation, nor anything else about a country is primarily a function of the number of people in it. The decisive factor, rather, is the organization of economic life – how efficiently or otherwise resources are used.

In an economy based on prices, that means “getting the prices right” above all – letting prices signal where resources are in greater or lesser demand relative to supply, so as to avoid either shortages or surpluses. Get the prices right, and wealth will be maximized, waste minimized, no matter how many people a country contains; get the prices wrong, and the reverse will be the case, no matter how few.

That works both ways, of course. We don’t “need” immigration to maintain a particular standard of living, either: Lots of countries that are smaller than us, with slower population growth, do just fine. Canada would have a higher GDP with a larger population, but not a hugely greater GDP per capita.

Still, that’s not to say immigration has no impact, or that there are no reasons to favour higher immigration rates to lower. Larger populations, first, can spread fixed costs over larger numbers of people – economies of scale – in ways that cannot readily be duplicated through international trade: Trade within nations, research shows, is of much greater “intensity” than trade within. Countries with higher population density, likewise, enjoy cost savings relative to those whose population is scattered over greater distances.

Less quantifiably, bigger countries offer more opportunities to their citizens, in the same way that big cities offer more opportunities than small towns. They are magnets for the ambitious, the talented and the entrepreneurial. And they have a clout in the world to match – a greater ability, other things being equal, to shape events in line with their interests and their values.

We should not underestimate the impact on our sense of selves. It is striking to read commentators from those early 20th-century days, when our population was growing at such a torrid rate: the exuberance, the self-confidence, the conviction that we were destined to be the next big thing. You know Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s famous line about the 20th century being the century of Canada? In the same 1904 speech he predicted that, within the lifetimes of some members of his audience, Canada would have a population of 60 million people. That was only a commonplace of the time. Others predicted we’d have 100 million people by now.

Needless to say, we fell a long way short of that. Yet it’s hard not to notice the positive effects of the population growth we have enjoyed. Canada is a much more interesting, dynamic place than it was in my childhood, when it was half its current size. It is also a more tolerant place. Had you predicted then that nearly a quarter of Canada’s population would one day be foreign-born – it is over 50 per cent in our largest cities – you would no doubt have been met with terrified prophecies of racial conflict.

Yet we seem more at ease with each other than ever. Popular support for immigration, likewise, is not only strong, but growing. The national and international data on this are conclusive: The greatest hostility to immigration is found in places with relatively little experience of it. Where people regularly encounter people from different backgrounds to their own, on the other hand, it is popular. Familiarity, it turns out, breeds respect.

Source: Relax – higher immigration alarmism makes more noise than sense

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National physicians regulator aims to fast-track certification of more foreign-trained doctors

2023/01/07 Leave a comment

Overdue. Will be interesting how they assess cultural competencies, not just the technical given the importance to patients. I developed more awareness if their importance during my various cancer treatments, and reminded myself of the challenges to new Canadians when receiving treatment as well, given language and culture:

The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons is making it easier for internationally trained specialists to work in Canadian hospitals as it responds to the country’s doctor shortage, and to complaints that some of its policies discriminate against people with overseas medical degrees.

The college, a regulatory body that sets national standards for doctors who specialize in fields such as surgery, cardiology and emergency medicine, has been under pressure to streamline the way it assesses foreign-trained physicians and determines their eligibility to write certification exams. Getting these doctors accredited to work in Canada has become a critical issue as the country’s health care system has strained under pronounced staffing problems.

Glen Bandiera, the college’s executive director of standards and assessment, said the regulator is working to remove barriers to licensing for internationally educated doctors by increasing its capacity to review their applications and grant them exam eligibility. Once those changes are complete, he said, the college is planning to provide more flexibility for doctors with foreign training who don’t meet all the Canadian requirements to work in their disciplines. It will do this by allowing them to apply their training to more general disciplines, he said.

The college is also expanding a program called the Practice Eligibility Route, which can take years off the amount of time required for an internationally trained physician to be approved to work in their field. The college, which certifies all specialists in Canada except for family doctors, says this pathway could allow doctors to be cleared to work in as little as two years, instead of seven.

“We want to make it as easy as possible for people who have that competence to demonstrate that competence, regardless of where they trained,” Dr. Bandiera said. “We’re really cognizant of the current health human resources strains in the system.”

A Globe and Mail investigation revealed that Canada is increasingly losing physicians to other developed countries because of shortages of postgraduate residencies for internationally trained medical grads, as well as long delays in assessing their training.

In most provinces, specialist physicians who graduated outside Canada or the U.S. can’t be licensed until they’ve completed five years of practice in their fields, at least the last two of those in Canada. The new alternative path being developed by the college would reduce that five-year requirement to as little as 12 weeks, or up to two years if an applicant requires more time.

Similar practice assessment programs are already used in seven provinces to allow internationally trained specialists in family medicine, psychiatry and internal medicine to enter the work force more quickly – although those programs are limited in capacity and add only about 120 doctors to the country’s medical system each year. Ontario recently announced plans to develop its own assessment program, which it had previously cancelled as a cost-saving measure.

Dr. Bandiera said the college will use that same approach, which puts internationally trained doctors under 12 to 16 weeks of supervision in clinical settings to determine if their training meets Canadian standards, for a range of specialties that don’t have assessment programs in place. This will mean international physicians will spend less time operating under restricted or provisional licences, and it will allow them to help address staffing shortages more quickly, he said.

The regulatory body told The Globe it will take three to five years to make the Practice Eligibility Pathway available in all 64 specialist disciplines it oversees. The program is now available to about 20 disciplines, and had 250 applicants last year. It is administered by the college, but the expansion will require the co-operation and some funding from provincial health ministries, Dr. Bandiera added.

“The mechanisms already exist. We want to tie them all together in one unified, standardized approach across Canada,” he said. “In some jurisdictions, it would require identification of resources and capacity to do this assessment.”

Clinical assessment programs, while they offer more internationally trained physicians entry into the Canadian system, are not without their detractors. British Columbia recently announced it would triple the number of positions in its on-the-job assessment program to 96 by March, 2024 – but only for people with two years of residency training. Many countries offer only 18 months of residency training to their doctors, with longer periods of clinical training – experience not recognized by the B.C. program.

Rosemary Pawliuk, a lawyer and the president of the Society of Canadians Studying Medicine Abroad, an advocacy group, said internationally trained physicians who want to practise in Canada still face significant barriers. They experience overwhelming discrimination from a system designed to favour graduates of Canadian medical schools and protect the interests of the country’s medical faculties, she said.

The doctors who must cope with those obstacles include thousands of Canadians who have gone to medical schools overseas, she said. They must compete for a separate and much smaller stream of residencies if they want to return home to practise medicine, or spend years longer than domestic grads proving their ability to work as specialists, she said.

Canadian regulators claim all of these barriers are necessary to safeguard Canadians, Ms. Pawliuk said. But she argued that the dangers to Canadians who can’t access health care in a timely manner because of physician shortages are far more serious.

“That narrative of competence is so powerful. But people should be judged based on their individual talents, not where they graduated from,” she said. “That’s why we have to ask: Is this really about protecting the public, or the profession?”

Source: National physicians regulator aims to fast-track certification of more foreign-trained doctors

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Mason: It’s not racist or xenophobic to question our immigration policy

2023/01/06 Leave a comment

Good column by Mason questioning the current approach of governments and stakeholders. Money quote:

“We should be able to have this conversation without fear of being labelled a racist or xenophobe. We should be able to have that conversation in the best interests of those already living here, and the ones yet to arrive.”

Canada is experiencing a population boom.

Figures released recently by the federal government are quite staggering: the country grew by 437,000 new residents in 2022 and projections from Ottawa indicate that roughly 1.45 million more will join them over the next three years. According to a recent story in The Globe and Mail, since 2016, Canada has grown at nearly double the average rate of its G7 peers.

In most cases, however, it isn’t newborns enhancing our population growth but adults coming to Canada through our immigration and refugee program – a fact that has consequences far and wide.

For years we have been told that economic growth depends on robust immigration. Immigrants are needed to bolster a work force being weakened, even decimated in some cases, by the demographic bulge of boomers who are retiring. Also, immigrants are core to the Canadian identity, something of which we are unquestionably, and quite rightly, proud.

At the same time, it is fair to ask whether the pace at which we are growing is in our best interests. Or whether in attempting to solve one problem, we are creating others.

We may be about to find out.

For starters, we need to figure out where all the newcomers will be staying. In recent years, headlines have been dominated by stories chronicling the housing crisis in Canada, especially in our major cities. The lack of supply has been responsible for a spike in prices.

Douglas Porter, chief economist with the Bank of Montreal, recently said that the countries with the fastest population growth up to 2020 – countries such as this one and New Zealand – had greater house price inflation than those with stable populations or ones that decreased. If this is correct, one can assume house prices will only continue to reach levels that are unattainable for many, despite assurances from all levels of government that they are “on” the problem.

Supply can’t keep up with demand as it is, let alone meet the challenge of adding nearly 1.5 million more residents over the next three years.

The furious pace of immigration will also put enormous pressure on a rental market that is already making life unbearable for many with a tight supply and soaring rents. The problems that this level of population growth contributes to would likely not be as bad if these newcomers were moving to towns and cities that could use more people. But that’s not the case. The vast, vast majority of new immigrants are congregating in our biggest cities.

It’s also fair to ask what these intake rates will do to our already overburdened health care system. Yes, some of those arriving here will fill critical voids in our health care front lines, but not nearly enough to make up for those who are retiring or leaving the profession because of burnout. And not nearly enough to compensate for the population boom we are anticipating.

There are, for example, more than a million British Columbians without a family doctor, a number that is likely to only increase as more physicians retire and newcomers arrive each year by the tens of thousands.

There are also voices suggesting that massive immigration on the scale we are witnessing may not be the great economic elixir being promoted by the federal government and the business sector. In fact, David Green, an economist with the University of B.C., says this is a contention that turns out not to be true. His research shows immigration often lowers the wages for people competing with new immigrants for jobs.

None of this is an argument for stopping immigration, of course. It is an indisputable fact that immigration has enriched our country beyond any measure, making it the envy of the world. We are a more vibrant and culturally enriched nation as a result of it.

Still, you can be pro-immigration and question the pace at which we are currently welcoming newcomers. You can be pro-immigration and ask whether we are at a moment when it would be prudent to step back and analyze the situation, and see whether we are exacerbating critical problems for which we have not yet found solutions.

We should be able to have this conversation without fear of being labelled a racist or xenophobe. We should be able to have that conversation in the best interests of those already living here, and the ones yet to arrive.

Source: It’s not racist or xenophobic to question our immigration policy

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

Watt: In 2023, Canadians deserve a grand vision from our political leaders

2023/01/06 Leave a comment

Watt notes the need for an actual plan how to address the impact of high immigration levels, which by its nature would require joint federal and provincial collaboration and much more medium and longer term policy and program measures:

A federal election in 2023?

Though far from a certainty, more and more, it feels like one. Federal minority governments have seldom endured more than a few years and the current Liberal-NDP agreement is unlikely to be an exception tothis rule.

If the plug is pulled and the current Parliament Hill tone continues, the election will be waged on decidedly pessimistic terms. Take, for example, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s recent exchange played out over the closing weeks of 2022.

To great effect, Poilievre has repeatedly asserted that “it feels like everything is broken in this country” — a message that resonates strongly with Canadians. At a year-end Liberal holiday party, Trudeau countered that “Canada is not broken.”

While Canada is far from broken, it’s time we acknowledged that there are significant cracks in the land and the current government’s continued approach of ignoring the legitimate concerns of families battling record inflation and a housing crisis can’t continue.

As Poilievre tells it, Justin Trudeau’s excessive spending, runaway deficits and second-rate commitment to infrastructure mean that a continued Liberal reign poses no less than an existential threat to our nation.

Trudeau’s challenge is that circumstances beyond his control — namely brutal economic conditions — make defending against Poilievre’s charges harder and harder. He is left, as many long-term governments are, selling a hypothetical alternative narrative of another kind of doom and gloom.

And so, Trudeau paints a sloppy picture of a Poilievre-inspired hellscape where you pay for groceries with Ethereum and carbon costs less than an FTX token.

Put a pox on both their houses on this one. Better than cartoonish imaginings, our politics requires, now more than in a long time, great causes and long-term objectives.

Nothing places this fact into more apparent relief than immigration.

The Liberal’s target of welcoming 465,000 permanent residents in 2023, 485,000 in 2024, and 500,000 in 2025 is an important objective. Laudable for its human compassion and much needed for the future strength of our economy.

That said, we need to be ready to welcome these newcomers with, among other things, affordable housing and reliable, accessible health-care. The Trudeau government still needs to provide something close to a realistic plan. So far, its approach has been painfully insufficient.

Of course, grand visions amount to very little if they are unaccompanied by concrete plans and dedicated action. Historically, there is no better marriage of these two criteria than the revolutionary New Deal. During a rousing speech to the Democratic National Convention in 1936, the man behind it, President Franklin Roosevelt, asserted, “This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.” He spoke these words while his nation was still caught in the grasp of the world’s most significant economic collapse, five years before it entered its most crucial conflict.

As we awaken in 2023, our challenge — Canadians and our political leaders alike — will be to rally around many of the same appointments: one grand vision, concrete plans, and a dedication to action.

Backward glances into the trials of COVID-19 will do us little good. Instead, meeting such a challenge requires us to rethink and revamp our social, technological, and economic policies. It demands that we ask and answer existential questions: Should we expand our global influence or turn inward? Do we still need a monarchy? Which industries will define our future? What, as a nation, is our greatest priority?

Throughout our country, we must not allow our politics to continue being — as Orwell described it — “the choice between the lesser of two evils.” Canadians deserve a grand vision. Unfortunately, we’ve suffered without it for far too long.

Source: In 2023, Canadians deserve a grand vision from our political leaders

Filed under Immigration, Politics Tagged with ,

Sabrina Maddeaux: Liberals bring in influx of immigrants without a plan to support them

2023/01/06 Leave a comment

Yet another commentary questioning the impact of high immigration levels on housing, healthcare, infrastructure etc.

But Maddeaux is silent on the “complicity” of provincial governments who are responsible for addressing many of the externalities and costs, the business community in pushing for high levels of both permanent and temporary residents, and the various stakeholders supporting the increased and increasing levels:

The federal Liberals are well on their way to meeting at least one of their marquee goals: 500,000 new immigrants per year by 2025. The stats for 2022 just came in, and last year saw a record 431,645 new permanent residents.

That’s a 6.4 per cent increase over 2021 — and this year aims to admit 465,000 new residents, which will be another 7.7 per cent increase over 2022. These numbers don’t include temporary foreign workers or international students, which are also rising at record rates.

This sort of rapid swell isn’t just historic for Canada, it makes us the fastest-growing country in the G7. This would be great news, if not for the fact that we’re also among the least equipped to accept a mass influx of new people.

To put those earlier numbers in context, the population of Halifax is about 440,000. Quebec City’s is around 550,000. We are, or soon will be, adding the equivalent population of one of those cities each year.

Diversity is a pride point for many Canadians, and we’re undoubtedly a stronger and better country thanks to immigrants’ many contributions over the decades. However, this doesn’t mean we should blindly open the floodgates to hundreds of thousands more per year, when there’s scant evidence we can support them.

As much as we may want to welcome more immigrants into the fold, there needs to be a debate about whether now is the best time to boost targets. We may find that, until we get our house in order, the risks outweigh the potential rewards.

Immigration isn’t inherently good for a country, or even for immigrants, in and of itself. Positive outcomes for all parties require careful planning and a sense of realism. Unfortunately, it appears the Liberals have neither.

Our health-care system ranks poorly against peer countries and seems to be only getting worse. We can barely even care for sick children in our major urban centres, let alone rural areas. Family doctors are practically the new Polkaroo.

Our housing situation is dismal. We don’t have enough homes, and the ones we do have are exorbitantly expensive and out of reach for all but the very wealthiest young Canadians and newcomers.

It seems like we have shortages of every type of basic infrastructure and service, from transit to schools and childcare spots.

International students are frequenting food banks, living in crowded and often unsanitary rooming houses and even driving five hours –– each way –– to attend classes.

Many immigrants still can’t work in their trained fields because we haven’t taken the time to sort our credentialing systems. Despite just about everyone agreeing that foreign-trained doctors shouldn’t be driving taxi cabs, it always seems to be a problem for another day.

Meanwhile, Liberals argue that we need more newcomers to boost our economy and address labour shortages. Not only does this seem callous and exploitative in light of our inability to provide for needs like housing and health care, there’s little evidence our current immigration system can produce these desired outcomes.

At a certain point, we will get diminishing returns. While more immigrants mean more tax dollars, we don’t get to just take from them without giving anything back. They, too, require doctors, affordable homes, schools and passports in a timely manner. They use subways and parks and, eventually, long-term care homes.

By failing to invest heavily in infrastructure and government services, the Liberals are exacerbating resource scarcity and intensifying competition for fundamental goods and services.

Historically, this never ends well. Eventually, people look for someone to blame for their declining quality of life, and that group tends to be newcomers.

To be clear, such scarcity isn’t the fault of immigrants. It’s the fault of governments that either failed or didn’t bother to properly plan to support their targets. Yet that will be of little consolation if Canadians’ historically welcoming nature begins to take a turn.

Canada’s success with immigration is thanks to its record of sustainable growth. For the Liberals to throw that ethos out the window isn’t just irresponsible, it’s dangerous.

Source: Sabrina Maddeaux: Liberals bring in influx of immigrants without a plan to support them

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

Quebec’s social services under pressure by influx of asylum seekers

2023/01/06 Leave a comment

No surprise:

The influx of asylum seekers to Quebec is putting pressure on the province’s social services network, with homeless shelters in Montreal bearing the brunt.

France Labelle, with a youth homeless shelter in downtown Montreal, says a rising number of requests for beds is coming from asylum seekers, who she says compose about 10 per cent of her clientele.

Sam Watts, head of homeless shelters with the Welcome Hall Mission, says that homelessness in the asylum seeker population in Montreal is a relatively new phenomenon.

The federal government says that between January and November 2022, 45,250 asylum seekers arrived in Quebec, compared to 7,290 people for all of 2021.

Quebec Premier François Legault said last month that the province needed help from Ottawa to house, educate and integrate the rising number of asylum seekers in the province.

Labelle says shelters and other parts of Montreal’s social services network need appropriate resources to accommodate the increasing demand from would-be refugees.

Source: Quebec’s social services under pressure by influx of asylum seekers

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Grubel: Canadians are right to worry about immigration levels 

2023/01/05 Leave a comment

While I disagree with Grubel on many of his points and overall approach, he is right on the negative impacts and externalities of current and projected high levels of immigration.

His proposed solution, essentially only admitting economic class immigrants with a job offer is completely unrealistic (what government would stop family reunification, given the impact in ridings with large numbers of immigrants, or completely stop refugees, which is practically and legally impossible). While sidestepping the numbers questions, a column a few years back referenced 50,000 if I recall correctly.

And Leger is only one poll and its question phrasing, as it often is, was designed to elicit this response:

Canadians are increasingly worried about immigration. A recent Leger Poll found that 49 per cent of us think the federal government’s new target of 500,000 immigrants a year is too many, while fully 75 per cent are concerned the plan will result in excessive demand for housing and social services. For his part, the immigration minister, Sean Fraser, tells us we need not worry: immigrants themselves will provide the labour needed to build the housing stock they’ll need.

The majority of Canadians have always welcomed immigrants and believe they benefit the economy and themselves. What worries them today is the prospect of mass immigration that they believe the housing market cannot absorb without much higher prices. They know the minister’s soothing reassurance is not supported by experience. Past immigration did increase the labour force but did not prevent high housing costs. Excessive regulations and rent control are the main reasons housing is so expensive, not a shortage of labour.

Immigrants not only add to the demand for housing, they also increase congestion for a wide range of public services: doctors, hospitals, schools, universities, parks, retirement homes, and roads and bridges, as well as the utilities that supply water, electricity and sewers. In theory, the supply of all these things could be expanded reasonably rapidly. In practice, expansion is slow. But the main reasons for that are, not a shortage of labour, but inadequate planning, insufficient financial resources and, as a result, construction that lags demand.

The case for keeping annual immigration at traditional or even somewhat lower levels rests on more than the effect on house prices and public services, however. Immigration also depresses the wages of low-income workers, which results in greater income-equalizing transfers and the higher taxes required to pay for them. It also reduces employers’ incentives to adopt labour-saving technology, an important source of growth in labour productivity and wages, and it allows employers to avoid the cost of operating apprenticeship programs to train skilled workers.

Japan’s widespread success in using robots to deal with labour shortages caused by its aging population illustrates what could be done in Canada. In Germany employers operate apprenticeship programs to train skilled workers in the numbers industry needs. In this country, such programs could relieve the shortage of skilled labour while benefiting people already here, rather than new immigrants brought in specially to take highly paid skilled jobs currently going asking.

Despite the Leger numbers suggesting many Canadians have concerns about big increases in the rate of immigration, the debate about it tends to be one-sided. We hear from the many groups that benefit from mass immigration: employers, immigration lawyers and consultants, real estate developers, political parties that traditionally do well in immigrant communities, idealists who want us to “imagine there’s no countries” and so on.

On the other side, the Leger numbers suggest, is a majority that is not at all opposed to immigration in principle but begins to inform itself on the subject and maybe even become politically active only when the costs become so large they can’t be ignored any longer.

In Switzerland during the 1970s an economic boom led to labour shortages and immigration was liberalized. It turned out that the need to produce housing infrastructure and public services for these immigrants actually worsened the labour shortage. The silent majority of Swiss citizens organized and took advantage of the opportunity to get government policy changed by demanding a public referendum that ultimately ended the liberal immigration policy.

In Canada, changes in policies come through Parliament and the election of politicians. Numbers like those in the Leger poll may begin to suggest to politicians that they can increase their election chances by catering to the majority who would prefer somewhat reduced immigration but also a fundamental reform of the system currently used to determine the number and characteristics of immigrants.

Such a reform would put greater emphasis on market forces rather than politicians and bureaucrats in setting immigration levels. Immigrants would be admitted only if they possessed a formal offer of employment in Canada that paid at least the average earned by workers in the region where they would be employed.

Under this system, employers’ self-interest would ensure that workers would have the skills and personal characteristics required for success on the job. The requirement for minimum pay would prevent floods of immigrants competing with Canada’s low-wage workers and ensure that those who did come had the income needed for a life free from the need for public subsidies.

Worrying about immigration is not enough. Only the election of politicians committed to this kind of reform will restore mental peace.

Herbert Grubel, himself an immigrant to Canada, is an emeritus professor of economics at Simon Fraser University and a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute.

Source: Opinion: Canadians are right to worry about immigration levels 

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Dutrisac: La prison pour asile

2023/01/05 Leave a comment

Interesting example of turning an opinion column on migrant detention centres into reinforcing Dutrisac’s legitimate concern over the declining weight of Quebec given its lower immigration levels, with a barb thrown in regarding McKinsey and Dominic Barton:

C’est en janvier 2017 que Justin Trudeau a lancé son tweet où il invitait « ceux qui fuient la persécution, la terreur, la guerre » à débarquer au Canada — « sachez que le Canada vous accueillera », écrivait-il. Six ans plus tard, le gouvernement fédéral a inauguré un nouveau centre de détention pour incarcérer certains demandeurs d’asile. On peut penser qu’à l’époque, un tel développement n’avait pas effleuré l’esprit du premier ministre canadien.

Dans ce tweet innocent, Justin Trudeau fait preuve d’une bonne dose d’inconscience, si ce n’est d’hypocrisie, car le Canada, aussi vaste et généreux le croit-on, ne peut raisonnablement accueillir les dizaines de millions de personnes qui sont forcées tous les ans de quitter leur pays.

Comme nous l’apprenait Le Devoir dans son édition de samedi, Ottawa a inauguré en octobre à Laval un centre de détention pour les demandeurs d’asile et les immigrants temporaires, ce qu’on appelle par euphémisme un « centre de surveillance ». Construit au coût de 50 millions, le nouveau centre remplace d’anciennes installations jugées vétustes. L’Agence des services frontaliers du Canada (ASFC), de laquelle relève le centre, en a profité pour augmenter le nombre de places pour le porter à 153, contre 109 pour l’ancien bâtiment. Seulement 66 « détenus » s’y trouvaient à la fin décembre, tandis que les centres correctionnels administrés par Québec en accueillaient une quinzaine. Les pensionnaires de cette prison fédérale « dorée », mais prison quand même puisqu’ils ne peuvent en sortir à moins d’être libérés, ont la particularité de n’avoir commis aucun crime qui justifierait leur détention. Des papiers qui ne sont pas en règle, des doutes sur l’identité du ressortissant étranger ou des risques de fuite sont évoqués par l’agence pour justifier cette mesure de « dernier recours ». Comme dans les vraies prisons, les détenus n’ont pas droit à leur cellulaire, ni accès à Internet ; on peut se demander pourquoi.

Les organismes de défense des libertés civiles comme Amnistie internationale dénoncent l’incarcération de ces migrants qui n’ont commis aucun crime. Contrairement au Québec et à l’Ontario, la Colombie-Britannique a mis fin à l’entente avec l’ASFC visant la détention de migrants dans des prisons provinciales. L’Alberta et la Nouvelle-Écosse ont annoncé qu’elles en feraient autant. Depuis 2015, il y aurait eu 8000 de ces détenus au Canada — la période de détention moyenne est de 22 jours —, dont 2000 dans des prisons provinciales et le reste dans les trois centres de détention de l’ASFC.

C’est relativement peu considérant les millions de ressortissants étrangers qui sont entrés au pays depuis huit ans. Au Québec, par exemple, les quelque 80 migrants détenus actuellement se comparent aux 36 000 demandeurs d’asile qui seraient entrés par le chemin Roxham dans la seule année de 2022, ce qui s’ajoute aux dizaines de milliers de demandeurs, déjà présents sur le territoire québécois, qui sont toujours en attente d’une décision d’Immigration, Réfugiés et Citoyenneté Canada (IRCC). Ou encore aux 150 000 demandeurs d’asile qui, selon Le Journal de Montréal, sont arrivés au Québec depuis cinq ans, soit 52 % du total canadien.

Or, que ce soit pour obtenir un permis de travail des autorités fédérales ou pour obtenir une réponse définitive sur le statut de réfugiés, les délais ne font que s’allonger. Pour les demandeurs d’asile qui passent par le chemin Roxham, ces délais peuvent s’étendre sur plusieurs années. Ceux dont la demande est rejetée ont le temps de s’établir ici avant de recevoir un avis d’éviction, éviction que nombre d’entre eux tenteront d’éviter en se réfugiant dans la clandestinité. Le système est dysfonctionnel, comme les autres volets de l’immigration. Dans ce contexte, on peut se demander à quoi peut bien servir la détention traumatisante d’une poignée de migrants.

Parmi les ministères fédéraux, c’est l’IRCC qui, depuis 2015, a dépensé le plus pour des conseils en gestion de la firme de consultants américaine McKinsey, a rapporté Radio-Canada. Or l’ironie, c’est que la désorganisation notoire de l’IRCC s’est aggravée en raison de l’accroissement pléthorique des seuils canadiens d’immigration, une recommandation de 2016 d’un comité formé par Ottawa et présidé par Dominic Barton, alors premier dirigeant mondial de McKinsey. Par la suite, le consultant a cofondé The Century Initiative, ou Initiative du siècle, un lobby qui promeut le projet de porter à 100 millions la population du Canada d’ici 2100.

Constater qu’à nos frais, nous participons dans ce pays, au sein duquel le Québec perdra inexorablement son poids démographique et donc politique, à une expérimentation sociale inédite concoctée par McKinsey n’a rien de rassurant.

Source: La prison pour asile

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Immigration to Canada hits record high in 2022

2023/01/05 Leave a comment

Some cheerleading along with critical comments on housing affordability and IRCC service delivery. Numbers more than twice as high given temporary residents (workers and students):

Canada took in a record number of immigrants last year, a result of a federal planto compensate for a lack of new arrivals in the first year of the pandemic, and to make up for the country’s aging population and holes in the work force.

The country added just over 437,000 new permanent residents in 2022, according to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). This topped the department’s target for the year, as well as the previous high of 405,000, reached in 2021.

Immigration now accounts for three-quarters of Canada’s population growth. The federal government’s immigration plan calls for the admission of 1.45 million more new permanent residents over the next three years, which is equivalent to 3.8 per cent of the country’s population

The majority of the permanent residency spots have been set aside for economic immigrants, a term for newcomers who either have money to invest, or specific desirable skills, or can demonstrate that they are capable of opening businesses.

The federal government has said immigration is crucial for the economy, and that it accounts for as much as 90 per cent of labour force growth in Canada.

But critics of the plan have raised questions about the effects of higher immigration targets on the country’s already-unaffordable urban housing markets. And it is unclear whether Ottawa’s plan will help make up for shortages of labour in low-paid fields such as accommodation, food services, retail and health care assistance.

NDP immigration and housing critic Jenny Kwan said the federal government has missed an opportunity to give temporary foreign workers and undocumented workers permanent resident status. This would give them access to taxpayer-funded health care and allow them to live and work anywhere in Canada, indefinitely. (Temporary foreign workers are typically restricted to one employer and not allowed to switch jobs.)

“The government must stop relying on vulnerable workers and give them the protection of permanent status and ensure their rights are respected,” Ms. Kwan said in an e-mailed statement.

The flood of new permanent residents is expected to bring new homebuyers and renters to communities across the country. That could increase activity in the residential real estate market, which has slowed since early last year, when borrowing costs jumped with a rise in interest rates.

“There is little debate that strong population growth goes hand-in-hand with strong real home price gains over time,” said Douglas Porter, Bank of Montreal’s chief economist.

Mr. Porter analyzed the relationship between population growth and home prices in 18 developed countries. He found that countries with the fastest population growth during the decade leading up to 2020 – such as New Zealand and Canada – had greater home price inflation than those where populations remained stable or decreased.

But, considering the rise in borrowing costs, Mr. Porter said he believes that the influx of permanent residents will not immediately create a new pool of homebuyers. “Just as last year’s large population increase was unable to avert a double-digit drop in home prices, another large increase in 2023 won’t keep home prices from falling heavily again this year,” he said.

The typical home price across the country is down 10 per cent from February, 2022, when the market peaked.

Where Mr. Porter does expect the surge in newcomers to make a difference is in the rental market, where borrowing costs are less of a factor. Rents have already risen sharply over the past year, and he expects increased competition will push prices higher still.

The largest share of immigrants usually end up in major cities in Ontario, followed by cities in British Columbia, Quebec and Alberta. Last year was no different. Just over a quarter of new permanent residents intended to settle in the Toronto region, according to the most recent data from IRCC, which cover January, 2022, through October.

The government has said its immigration plan includes placing new permanent residents in small towns and rural communities.

In past years, people from southern and eastern Asia accounted for the largest share of immigrants to Canada. According to the IRCC data, this continued to be the case during the first 10 months of last year. During that period, nearly 110,000 new permanent residents were from India, nearly 30,000 were from China and about 20,000 were from the Philippines.

Canada also admitted nearly 20,000 refugees from Afghanistan in the first 10 months of last year, up from 8,570 in 2021. Ottawa has promised to bring at least 40,000 Afghans to Canada, under a pair of resettlement programs introduced around the time of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August, 2021.

IRCC could have difficulty handling the large numbers of new permanent residency applicants. It has been dealing with a backlog of applications since 2021, when Ottawa bumped up its immigration targets.

Source: Immigration to Canada hits record high in 2022

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USA: The Outlook On H-1B Visas And Immigration In 2023

2023/01/04 Leave a comment

Good overview and we will see the degree to which change will happen given political polarization and deadlock:

For the seventh consecutive year, we should not expect Donald Trump to visit the Statue of Liberty and celebrate America’s tradition as a nation of immigrants. But what will Joe Biden, his administration and the Republican majority in the House do on H-1B visas and immigration in 2023? 

…

H-1B Visas, Immigration Fees and Employment-Based Green Cards

Higher fees and significant business immigration regulations are on the Biden administration’s agenda in 2023. “After the fee rule, DHS will prioritize proposed regulations on adjustment of status procedures and H-1B ‘modernization,’” according to Berry Appleman & Leiden. “A proposed wage regulation remains on the Department of Labor’s regulatory agenda, but the agency has not yet submitted a proposed rule for review and the timing is not yet clear.”

In computer-related occupations, the median salary for H-1B visa holders was $111,000 in FY 2021. The average salary for H-1B professionals in computer-related occupations in FY 2021 was $118,000, according to USCIS. A company may spend up to $31,000 to file an initial H-1B petition (for three years) and an extension for an additional three years, based on an NFAP analysis of government fees and attorney costs.

The summary of the adjustment of status regulation, which does not list a publication timetable, reads: “DHS proposes to amend its regulations in order to improve the efficiency in the processing of the Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status (Form I-485), reduce processing times, improve the quality of inventory data provided to partner agencies, reduce the potential for visa retrogression, and promote the efficient use of immediately available immigrant visas to include the expansion of concurrent filing to the employment-based 4th preference (certain special immigrants) category, including religious workers.”

The summary of the H-1B modernization regulation reads: “The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is proposing to amend its regulations governing H-1B specialty occupation workers and F-1 students who are the beneficiaries of timely filed H-1B cap-subject petitions. Specifically, DHS proposes to revise the regulations relating to ‘employer-employee relationship’ and provide flexibility for start-up entrepreneurs; implement new requirements and guidelines for site visits including in connection with petitions filed by H-1B dependent employers whose basic business information cannot be validated through commercially available data; provide flexibility on the employment start date listed on the petition (in limited circumstances); address ‘cap-gap’ issues; bolster the H-1B registration process to reduce the possibility of misuse and fraud in the H-1B registration system; and clarify the requirement that an amended or new petition be filed where there are material changes, including by streamlining notification requirements relating to certain worksite changes, among other provisions.”

A National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) report concluded, “In formulating a new H-1B regulation, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) should avoid the Trump administration’s approach of narrowing what qualifies as a specialty occupation” and the agency should not redefine what constitutes an employer-employee relationship. 

“Congress designated the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), not USCIS, to investigate and oversee the labor market protections for the H-1B visa category. By attempting to take on the duties of another agency, USCIS has engaged in questionable policy pursuits and expended vital resources,” according to former USCIS Director Leon Rodriguez, former USCIS Chief Counsel Lynden Melmed, and former Associate Counsel for the USCIS Vermont Service Center Steve Plastrik. The three wrote that USCIS does not need to enact new H-1B restrictions via memos or regulations since Congress has already imposed significant restrictions, including wage requirements and a low numerical limit.

The H-1B numerical limit is so low that in April 2022, the annual limit of, in effect, 85,000 new H-1B petitions for employers—about 0.05% of the U.S. labor force—led to USCIS rejecting about 400,000 (80% of) applicants. Even with layoffs at high-profile technology firms, one should expect H-1B registrations to exceed the 85,000-limit for FY 2024. The significant demand for technical labor across sectors of the U.S. economy should outstrip the annual limit. (“Most laid off tech workers are finding jobs shortly after beginning their search,” according to a survey cited by the Wall Street Journal.)

Employer fees will likely increase significantly under a new USCIS proposal. That will not be welcomed by those paying the fees. On the other hand, employers and individuals would like to see USCIS have sufficient resources to do its job. In December 2022, USCIS stated in a report that it reduced its backlog of cases but that more funding from Congress is needed. Berry Appleman & Leiden notes USCIS “cites the new fee rule as part of its plans to prevent the accumulation of new backlogs.”

Although the State Department has made progress, employers expect delays in obtaining visas to continue in some places, such as India. Visitor visas will likely remain particularly problematic.

DACA: Good News Not Expected

“The worst case, which unfortunately is a very realistic possibility, is that the courts will invalidate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program,” said Andrew Pincus, an attorney with Mayer Brown, in a September 2022 interview. “That means that more than 600,000 people will lose the ability to work, to drive a car, to participate in society, and also that they will face the possibility of being deported to countries they have never known because they came here as children.” A DACA case is currently at the Fifth Circuit.

Passing legislation to protect DACA recipients in a Republican-controlled House will be challenging. “[Rep. Kevin] McCarthy is taking a very hard line on immigration policy,” reported Punchbowl News. “The California Republican is opposed to trading a pathway to citizenship or DACA for increased border security. This is the traditional trade both parties have envisioned for years.” Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) failed to gain enough Republican support for a compromise proposal on Dreamers at the end of 2022. 

Refugees

The Biden administration resettled fewer than 26,000 refugees in FY 2022, nearly 100,000 below the 125,000-refugee ceiling it established. The refugee ceiling is the same for FY 2023, but to meet that level, “President Biden must make the resettlement program a priority, investing resources and political will in creative solutions to expedite processing,” according to the National Immigration Forum’s Danilo Zak.

Americans have stepped forward and offered their time as volunteers and money as sponsors to help those fleeing war and persecution in Afghanistan, Ukraine and elsewhere. The Biden administration has implemented the successful Uniting for Ukraine initiative that has allowed over 90,000 Ukrainians to be paroled into the United States with the help of U.S. financial sponsors, according to Michelle Hackman at the Wall Street Journal, with another 34,000 approved for travel. A more limited program was established for Venezuelans. 

The Border

The Biden administration has not made the case that America is dealing with a historic refugee crisis in the Western Hemisphere to counteract the narrative that the United States has simply failed to enact sufficiently harsh immigration policies. Border Patrol encounters in FY 2021 and FY 2022 were the highest on record but not wholly comparable to previous fiscal years that only counted apprehensions and did not have Title 42 restrictions in place.

Still, individuals and families from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and others have come to the United States in large numbers seeking asylum or employment. To the extent the Biden administration can funnel people into lawful paths to apply for work or asylum, Border Patrol encounters will diminish. More creative solutions may be needed to address the situation, including expanding the avenues to work and supplying refugee circuit rides in the region.

Supreme Court Cases

Judges will have a say on U.S. immigration policy in 2023. In 2022, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in United States v. Texas, a lawsuit by Texas and Louisiana that argues the Biden administration’s enforcement guidelines, as outlined in a memo, are unlawful. George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin expects the Biden administration to prevail. “But it’s not entirely clear whether it will do so on standing or on the merits,” according to Somin.

The Supreme Court will also decide the fate of Title 42 and a lawsuit by several Republican-led states. “In its order, the court . . . agreed to take up the states’ appeal this term,” reported CNN. “The court said it would hear arguments on the case during its argument session that begins in February 2023.”

Two Years to Enact Positive Immigration Reforms

The Biden administration can use the next two years to enact reforms to improve the U.S. economy and the immigration system. One such reform, recommended by University of North Florida economist Madeline Zavodny in an NFAP study, would allow all spouses of H-1B visa holders to work, not only those whose H-1B spouse is in the queue or in the process for permanent residence. “The United States can reap significant economic benefits, ease labor shortages, and attract more workers in the global competition for talent if it expanded current rules on work eligibility for the spouses of H-1B visa holders,” writes Zavodny.

The Trump administration failed to lock in many of its anti-immigration policies via regulation. The Biden administration has two years to publish regulations or enact new policies that would benefit immigrants, international students and the competitiveness of the U.S. economy.

Source: The Outlook On H-1B Visas And Immigration In 2023

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