Meanwhile, in Canada, the government takes the opposite tack with respect to ongoing increases in immigration levels, making it easier for businesses to employ Temporary Foreign Workers along with almost eliminating study requirement for international students given removal of work hour caps, the latter two reinforcing a low-pay model:
The days of “cheap labour” must end to wean the UK off its “immigration dependency”, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has told business leaders.
Sir Keir called for a plan to train British workers and move the economy away from its “low-pay model”.
But he accepted the need for skilled foreign workers and promise a “pragmatic” approach to immigration.
His speech comes at a time when businesses are calling for more migrant labour to boost economic growth.
The Labour leader’s speech to the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) conference in Birmingham followed that of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Monday.
Mr Sunak told business leaders having “proper control of our borders” was one of the immediate benefits of Brexit and said curbing illegal migration was the “country’s number one priority right now”.
He spoke after CBI director-general Tony Danker said the UK needed more foreign workers to drive economic growth as the country faces a deep recession.
“People are arguing against immigration – but it’s the only thing that has increased our growth potential since March,” Mr Danker said.
There was considerably less migration during the Covid-19 pandemic than in previous years and the number of EU citizens moving to the UK has dropped since the UK left the European Union.
The Office for Budget Responsibility has forecasted a decline in net migration, with the number expected to settle at 205,000 a year from 2026 onwards.
In his speech, Sir Keir set out what the UK’s immigration policy would look like under a Labour government, should the party win the next general election.
He promised an immigration system that works better for the needs of business and recognises the need for skilled workers from abroad.
But he stressed that any changes to a points-based migration system “will come with new conditions for business”.
“We will expect you to bring forward a clear plan for higher skills and more training, for better pay and conditions, for investment in new technology,” he said.
“But our common goal must be to help the British economy off its immigration dependency. To start investing more in training up workers who are already here.”
Sir Keir outlined Labour’s plans for reform including:
Ensuring all employers able to sponsor visas are meeting decent standards of pay and conditions
Speed up visa delays to avoid labour shortages damaging the economy
Introduce training and plans for improving pay and conditions for roles that require international recruitment
Reforming the Migration Advisory Committee to project future trends more accurately
While I disagree with the government’s “the more the merrier” approach, I also worry that housing shortages, a strained healthcare system and other weaknesses may understandably erode support. And it is positive that the CI and others are more forthcoming of these issues, or the costs of increasing immigration:
Canada is breaking records on immigration. The federal government recently announced increased targets for the next two years, with the intention to welcome a record 500,000 new permanent residents in 2025. Statistics Canada’s latest release from the 2021 census shows immigrants now make up a greater share of the population than at any point in our history as a country. The latest Focus Canada survey reportbreaks a record of a different kind: Canadians have never been more supportive of immigration than they are today, showing Canada truly stands out for its openness to diversity and change.
These points also suggest an awareness of the vital contribution immigrants make to the country’s social and economic fabric. That may in part explain why Canadians have grown more open to immigration and multiculturalism, not less. The Focus Canada survey report found 70 per cent of Canadians support current immigration levels—the largest majority to do so in more than four decades of polling.
Similarly, there is also growing public support for accepting refugees, not only from Ukraine, but also from countries such as Afghanistan. Three-in-four Canadians now agree we should accept more newcomers from parts of the world experiencing major conflicts—twice the proportion that held that view 20 years ago.
This is remarkable at a time when nationalism, populism, and anti-immigrant sentiment are on the rise globally. But while Canada has been more welcoming than most nations, support for immigration in this country cannot be taken for granted. As the country wrestles with rising inflation, housing affordability, a strained health-care system, and an increasingly toxic political environment, support for immigration could erode.
Our research shows concerns about immigration have to do with how quickly newcomers integrate into Canadian society. Canadians are fairly evenly divided as to whether there are too many immigrants coming to Canada who are not adopting our values. But the proportion who disagree has also never been as high as it is today. Indeed, the survey found nine in 10 of us now see multiculturalism as important to Canadian identity, and a steadily growing majority of Canadians are rejecting the attitude that Canada accepts too many immigrants from racialized cultures.
Our research also provided some interesting regional insights. In Quebec, where immigration was a campaign issue in the provincial election, our research confirmed Quebecers are no less supportive of immigration and no less welcoming of refugees than Canadians elsewhere in the country. Quebecers are especially sensitive to potential threats to language and culture, but like other Canadians, Quebecers recognize the benefits immigration brings to our economy and society.
The insights into Canadians’ attitudes toward immigration and immigrants are invaluable at this juncture in our history. Our population is aging, our work forces shrinking, the demand for skilled labour growing more acute, and our birth rate is at its lowest in more than 100 years. This is creating demographic pressure we must address if we want to sustain the quality of life we’ve grown accustomed to and want a prosperous future for the country’s next generations. Immigration is the only way we can address the growing demographic and economic pressures we’re facing. The support Canadians show for immigration should provide our elected leaders with the political courage required to invest in attracting more newcomers to Canada.
Naturally, challenges remain. We do not always deliver on the promises we make to newcomers. Many face barriers—whether in the form of prejudice, or red tape—as they try to put the skills they bring with them to work. Immigrants, and especially the children of immigrants, expect not only public attitudes to change, but also the policies and practices of public institutions, such as the health-care system and our police forces.
The fact remains that these challenges are much more likely to be met when the public is solidly onside—meaning we can face them together. We are no utopia. But whatever issues may divide Canadians today, immigration is not one of them. In this sense, the country has never been more united. That’s an advantage and an opportunity that we, as a country, can’t afford to ignore—our economic future depends on it.
Michael Adams is the founder and president of the Environics Institute for Survey Research. Lisa Lalandeis the CEO of Century Initiative, a non-partisan charity aimed at increasing Canada’s population to 100 million by 2100.
Canada’s major overhaul of its Express Entry System to attract more economic migrants will see a dramatic increase in “invitations to apply” (ITAs) being issued by Immigration Canada (IRCC)
This could exacerbate the country’s historic visa backlog — 2.2 million applications under processing by IRCC as of this month — given the expansion and priority for immigration programs managed under the Express Entry system.
Nurse aides, long-term care aides, hospital attendants, elementary and secondary school teacher assistants, and transport truck drivers are examples of some of the 16 occupations now included in Express Entry under the National Occupational Classification (NOC) 2021.
Veteran Vancouver Immigration lawyer Victor Ing said the new NOC codes which took effect on Nov. 16 are generally viewed as a good move but cautioned that IRCC should be prepared for “backlog-easing shifts and measures” to meet the recent immigration targets set by the government.
Rising immigration levels
Sean Fraser, Minister of Immigration announced this month that Canada is looking to settle 500,000 new immigrants by 2025. The announcement comes on the heels of a record-setting year in 2021 when Canada welcomed more than 405,000 newcomers.
Speaking to NCM, Ing said the federal immigration minister highlighted in his announcement that he intends to meet 60 per cent of his 500,000 target by welcoming “economic immigrants,” including those classes of applicants that fall under the Express Entry system.
“With the Minister’s latest announcement, we should expect that the number of ITAs being issued will continue to increase over time and that the increase could be quite dramatic,” said Ing.
He said before the pandemic, IRCC had never issued more than 4,500 ITAs at any one time. By comparison, during the most recent round of ITAs on Nov.9, the government issued 4,750 ITAs.
“We are, therefore, already seeing the effects of the Minister’s agenda to increase our immigration levels after a 10-month, pandemic-related hiatus from issuing any ITAs between September 2021 and July 2022,” Ing said.
“We need to have the resources in place to process the ITAs while not hampering applications in other pathways and the government needs to be transparent on how it plans to do it… The Express Entry system must continue to be a major contributor to our immigration system in the coming years.”
“If NOC 2021 will cause your occupation to fall below the new eligibility requirements, you are faced with a few options and you need to begin looking towards alternatives,” said Sas. “The introduction of NOC 2021 brings the most significant changes to Canada’s occupational classification system that we’ve seen in the past 10 years.
For prospective immigrants and for those who are currently in the process of applying, you will need to watch, assess, and potentially adjust your Canadian immigration plans.”
The Canadian Immigration Lawyers Association (CILA) said while it is pleased with the recent return of all-program draws and six-month processing standards, it is the expected introduction of targeted draws in early 2023 is a concern.
“One of the advantages Canada offers prospective immigrants is certainty they will be assessed objectively,” the association said in a statement. “Express Entry candidates have a strong sense of what Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) score they need to compete for a permanent residence invitation.
“The looming introduction of targeted draws, however, erases this certainty, thereby potentially eroding the competitive standing of Canada’s immigration system. Moreover, it begs the question as to what criteria and processes Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) will employ to implement targeted draws.”
Marina Sedai, the past national chair (2018-2019) of the Canadian Bar Association Immigration Section and past provincial chair of the CBA BC Immigration Law Section, said she does not expect the processing backlog to be impacted significantly with the new NOC codes.
“Will the NOC 2021 serve Canada’s labour market needs better? Yes, I think so,” Sedai told NCM.
“One example: Canada has had a truck driver shortage for years, which contributes to supply chain disruptions and inflation. Now, more truck drivers can settle in Canada permanently, easing the stress on these two variables.”
Sedai suggested the NOC be restructured more often than every 10 years because the labour market is evolving quickly.
“As someone who uses the NOC in my daily work life, I would like to see it restructured every 5-7 years,” she said. “We have to keep up to the labour market realities; otherwise, we impair Canada’s economy and interfere with the jobs, services, and goods that Canadians need.”
Immigration Canada told NCM that the department is planning to consult a wide range of stakeholders to inform new categories in Express Entry, as required by the legislation, and is preparing for technical implementation in spring 2023.
“IRCC will continue to invite candidates to apply through generic-ranked (ITA) rounds, such as those with high Comprehensive Ranking System scores, and program-specific (ITA) rounds,” said IRCC spokesperson, Peter Liang.
May be more correlation than causation but nevertheless interesting study:
Economists have concluded that increasing exports and imports is a significant benefit that countries gain from admitting immigrants and international students. New research finds international students provide more of an economic boost than previously thought.
New research addresses a different benefit of international students—the way they expand trade, which helps U.S. workers and consumers. “Total immigration has a significantly positive effect on exports: a 10% increase in total immigrants is associated with a 2.6% increase in exports from the host to the origin country,” according to a study by Lena Susanne Specht at the UCD School of Economics, University College Dublin.
Among the foreign-born, Specht finds international students play a significant role in increasing trade, even though many students may live in another country for only a short period. To examine the connection, Specht looked at data from 34 host countries and 172 origin countries between 2000 and 2018 and found, “[I]ncreasing the share of international students in total immigration by one percentage point is associated with a rise in exports of around 1.6%.”
Research by economist Marina Murat focused on Latin American students and found similar results. “Social ties among university students—of friendship, mutual trust and attachment to the alma mater—tend to be robust and enduring. Through information-diffusion and behaviour-enforcement mechanisms, they can boost the economic exchanges between countries. . . . Results show that Latin American student networks exert strong, positive and significant effects on bilateral imports and exports. A 10% increase in the number of Latin American students in the OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] economy boost bilateral trade by about 3%.”
Specht found that international students are associated with increased trade. “This is especially true for students from non-OECD countries where informational barriers may be most severe,” writes Specht. “This is reinforced by findings that indicate that students from these countries most affect products where issues of information and trust are major.”
“While there are always caveats, the data suggest that foreign student exchanges within OECD countries increase trade in easily tradable goods,” said Specht in an interview via email. “Students from non-OECD countries seem to increase more complicated trades. This is possibly due to the job position students are in upon graduation: the skill upgrade for non-OECD students from studying in an OECD country could drive them into managerial positions with the influence to make such decisions. My findings imply that students have a special ability in promoting trust between countries and especially between institutionally different ones.”
Specht notes that differentiated products are such things as apparel and machinery, which require more information to be traded. “Most of the literature argues that immigrants can lower these informational hurdles due to their contacts with and knowledge about their origin country markets,” she said. “One could then expect that international students possess similar qualities.”
The research adds to our knowledge about the benefits of international students. “International students contributed $33.8 billion and supported 335,423 jobs to the U.S. economy during the 2021-2022 academic year,” according to an analysis produced for NAFSA by JB International.
Specht sees policy implications in her research. She notes that encouraging more international students to study in the United States is a good development strategy that would benefit both the U.S. and the students’ countries of origin. Specht believes it would be in an OECD country’s interest, such as the United States, to provide more funding to international students to allow more of them to study in their country.
Opportunities to work after graduation are also beneficial. “[P]roviding international students with internships and other hands-on opportunities may help origin countries upgrade their export product basket or better connect them to global supply chains via imported intermediates,” writes Specht. “Policies in this direction might include allowing students to be employed as part of their student visas or giving students the opportunity to extend their visas after graduation.”
International students can work in Optional Practical Training (OPT) for 12 months after graduation in the United States. OPT can be extended to 36 months for students in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. The research on international students and expanding trade indicates welcoming students from other countries to U.S. campuses provides additional benefits to Americans.
Interesting how the housing aspects of immigration are showing up in a number of polls. Leger/ACS bundled housing, social services and healthcare in their prompt. Housing emerged as an unprompted concern in the recent Environics Focus Canada. Leger/ACS also prompts on levels by citing the numbers which likely accounts for greater discomfort with the planned increases.
Unprompted responses are IMO more revealing as it is always easier to respond to an existing question or point rather than filling in a blank:
A new poll suggests the vast majority of Canadians are worried about how the federal Liberal government’s plan to dramatically increase immigration levels over the next few years will affect housing and government services.
The poll, conducted by Leger and the Association of Canadian Studies, also found many respondents hesitant about the use of the notwithstanding clause, which lets legislatures override parts of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms for five years.
Based on an online survey of 1,537 Canadians polled between Nov. 11 and 13, the results come about two weeks after Ottawa unveiled plans to admit 500,000 immigrants per year starting in 2025 to address a critical labour shortage across the country.
The government and industry have described the new targets, which represent a significant increase over the 405,000 immigrants admitted last year, as critical for filling about a million job vacancies across the country and to offset Canada’s aging workforce.
Yet 75 per cent of poll respondents agreed that they were very or somewhat concerned that the plan would result in excessive demand for housing as well as health and social services.
That is despite Immigration Minister Sean Fraser having suggested that the new workers could actually enable the construction of more homes by addressing a shortage of tradespeople, along with an increase in federal support and settlement services.
Leger executive vice president Christian Bourque suggested that the poll results reflect the pressures many Canadians are feeling because of a lack of affordable housing and inflation rates driving up prices.
“There’s a heightened sense of concern over stretching our tax dollar and stretching our dollar,” he said.
“In good, positive economic times before the pandemic hit, these numbers might have been different. But now I think there’s a growing concern of how far and how much we can afford.”
The government might need to do a better job explaining the benefits of immigration to average Canadians, Bourque suggested.
Opinions were more divided over the number of immigrants the government plans to admit, with 49 per cent saying it was too many versus 31 per cent who felt it was the right number. Five per cent said it was not enough, while the rest didn’t know.
While opinions were largely the same across different parts of the country, respondents who identified as Conservative, Bloc Quebecois and People’s Party of Canada supporters were more likely to say the target was too high.
“I was not surprised to see a left-right, cleavage on this issue, it’s the same in the United States and the same in Europe,” Bourque said. “Slowly but surely, the issue of immigration levels is becoming political.”
The poll, whose results cannot be assigned a margin of error because internet-based polls are not considered random samples, also asked Canadians about their views on the notwithstanding clause.
The question followed the Ontario government’s decision to include the notwithstanding clause in legislation that imposed a new contract on 55,000 education workers. The province later rescinded the law, which had effectively banned workers from striking.
It found that 48 per cent of respondents agreed with the statement that it was a bad idea for Ottawa or the provinces to shield some of their laws from the Charter, while 19 per cent said it was a good idea. The remaining 33 per cent did not know.
While Quebec has a long history of debate over the notwithstanding clause, and recent events in Ontario have awoken some people to it as well, Bourque said that many Canadians remain unaware of its existence.
“It basically says this is not really a hot button, politically,” he said. “Even with the recent events in Ontario, they don’t really seem to care. Or not that they don’t care, but it’s something that’s a bit beyond what their primary concerns are in national politics.”
Indeed. Good practical comments and suggestions by Arthur Sweetman:
As Canada and other wealthy countries scramble to hire nurses from overseas, there are growing concerns that the exodus of health-care workers from developing countries will push their stretched medical systems closer to a crisis point.
The federal government and provinces are spending millions of dollars trying to entice foreign-trained nurses to Canada — with overseas hiring campaigns, priority immigration pathways and monetary grants to individual nurses.
But Canada has strong competition from Europe, the U.S. and other countries that are also mounting aggressive recruitment campaigns touting high wages and immigration opportunities: health workers can get cheap U.K. visas, while the Australian state of Victoria offers “relocation packages” for foreign nurses, equivalent to as much as $11,670 Cdn.
We’ve seen a significant uptick in international recruitment of nurses from the beginning of this year, overwhelmingly driven by probably six or seven high-income countries,” said Howard Catton, chief executive officer of the International Council of Nurses (ICN), naming Canada as one of those countries.
“[They’re] in a rush to get a quick fix to their own nursing shortage, because they haven’t invested enough in educating their own nurses, and because the nurses that they have, in many cases, are exhausted and burnt out.”
Countries worry they’ll lose specialist nurses
Early in the pandemic, a joint report from the ICN and World Health Organization (WHO) warned of rich countries raiding developing countries’ nursing workforces to make up for their own failure to train and retain the health-care staff they need.
At the time, the Americas had about 83 nurses per 10,000 people, while in Africa, there were fewer than nine nurses per 10,000 people, according to the report.
Two and a half years and one global pandemic later, Catton says the situation has only worsened for lower-income countries struggling to hold onto their health-care workers as wealthy countries ramp up recruitment drives.
These countries are very concerned they’ll lose experienced nurses with specialist skills — like intensive care nurses or specialist cancer nurses, he told CBC News in an interview from Geneva.
“You might only lose one or two specialist nurses, but that can mean that the service no longer exists.”
Those kinds of incentives are hard for nurses in developing countries to turn down.
“If we are pushing out more of our [nursing] professionals, then very soon … we will not have enough of them to take care of ourselves,” says Perpetual Ofori-Ampofo, president of the Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives Association.
Ghana has about 44,000 nurses to care for its population of 31 million — a number just above Africa’s average. And low pay means “some live hand to mouth,” she said.
“It is much, much better for them to travel and work abroad than to stay here,” Ofori-Ampofo said, noting those workers may be better off in Canada, where they receive regular paycheques and the opportunity for overtime.
Bilateral deals a more ethical approach
However, Ofori-Ampofo wants to see wealthy countries like Canada take a more ethical approach to overseas recruitment.
Instead of targeting individual nurses through recruitment agencies that may not serve their interests, she says governments should make bilateral deals with countries the nurses are from — an approach WHO also endorses.
Such deals make it safer for nurses to leave their home countries, knowing their salaries and other conditions of employment are clearly spelled out before they arrive, she said.
Both Ofori-Ampofo and Catton say wealthier countries also should do more to give back to countries where they’re recruiting.
“I hear a lot of [recruiting] countries who say ‘Look, we want to share knowledge, and there’ll be opportunities for people to learn and to share as a result of migration,’ and that’s true, but I’d like us to be more ambitious, more specific in terms of what we’re going to do,” Catton said.
He suggested, for example, that countries like Canada could give money to build nursing schools or help pay to educate the nursing workforce in developing countries.
Canada’s federal government does not have any bilateral agreements with other countries for the international recruitment of health workers, as provinces and territories were responsible for that work, said Health Canada.
The agency noted the federal government funds education programs for health workers in developing countries, including a pediatric nursing program in Ghana led by Toronto’s SickKids hospital.
A complete waste’
Experts see another major flaw with Canada’s international recruitment: thousands of the foreign health-care workers who come here don’t end up working in their profession — potentially as much as 47 per cent.
Some migrate only to discover their qualifications and language skills don’t meet Canada’s requirements, while for others, lengthy and expensive licensing and registration processes can delay their ability to work in their field — sometimes for years.
“We poach people, but we do it very badly,” said Professor Arthur Sweetman, the Ontario Research Chair in Health Human Resources at McMaster University in Hamilton.
Sweetman says private recruitment agencies are part of the problem because they bring workers to Canada without ensuring they have the right skills to be able to work in their medical fields.
It’s the worst of both worlds: we don’t benefit, the source country doesn’t benefit. Nobody benefits. It’s a complete waste.”
This year’s federal government budget included funding to help thousands of internationally-educated health workers have their foreign credentials recognized and find jobs in their medical fields each year.
Room for better co-ordination
While the federal government and some provinces have announced new measures to help internationally-trained nurses get licensed and registered faster, Sweetman says different levels of government should also co-ordinate their recruitment efforts.
“One of the problems is that the [immigration] selection is done by the federal government, and employment in the health-care sector is almost always done by provincial governments.”
In a statement, Health Canada says it welcomes “open dialogue” with different levels of government, health-care workers and others on ways to address health worker shortages and ensure ethical international recruitment
The agency said it encouraged efforts aligned with WHO’s code of practice on international recruitment, which urges countries not to actively recruit from a “red list” of the world’s most short-staffed countries, which includes Ghana.
A WHO spokesperson told CBC News an expert advisory group is currently reviewing if anything more can be done to safeguard developing countries from unethical recruitment efforts, with more details set to be announced before the end of January.
A campaign aimed at persuading foreign universities to end their demand that Nigerian students and others from English-speaking African countries sit English proficiency tests as part of admission requirements has started to pay off.
“At the last count, more than 14 universities in Canada, the United States and Australia have removed the discriminatory English proficiency test barrier for Nigerians and English-speaking Africans,” Ebenezar Wikina, the founder of Policy Shapers, a Nigerian youth-led advocacy platform that started the campaign, told University World News.
The campaign, dubbed #ReformIELTS, was born out of the anger and frustration experienced by many Nigerian students whose admissions to foreign universities were forfeited after they were unable to afford the costs of English proficiency tests.
The campaign is tagged #ReformIELTS because the International English Language Testing System or IELTS is said to be the most widely applicable English test for students seeking admission to universities in countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States.
However, the campaign also targets foreign universities that require other tests such as the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), Pearson Test of English (PTE) and Graduate Record Examination (GRE).
Discriminatory practice
Policy Shapers launched the #ReformIELTS campaign in October 2021 against what it labelled the “discriminatory practice” of foreign universities that demand English proficiency proof from Nigerians.
For Wikina, a 2021 Mandela Washington Fellow, and other Nigerians who have joined the campaign, the argument is that, as a former colony of England, Nigeria’s lingua franca is English. It is the language of instruction from primary to tertiary levels of education in Nigeria.
“I applied for a fellowship that promotes social and economic equity at the London School of Economics [LSE] in 2021 and, despite having an excellent resume and over 12 years of experience working locally and internationally, I was still asked to submit an IELTS or TOEFL result just because I am from Nigeria,” said Wikina.
“I took it up with the LSE and had to forfeit the application … They cannot claim to be fighting for social equity but ask me to pay about US$200 (then NGN83,000) to take an English proficiency exam, whereas, someone from Jamaica, Guyana, Malta or New Zealand applying for the same programme wouldn’t have to take the test, even if they had lesser experience or qualifications than I do. It just doesn’t make any sense!”
In the aftermath of that experience, Policy Shapers launched a petition titled ‘Stop asking Nigerians to take IELTS’ on Change.org, a global non-profit petition website headquartered in California, USA.
As of 12 November, about 80,000 people had signed the petition.
A money-spinner
Many Nigerians who signed the petition have one thought in common: the English test is “exploitative” and a money-spinning venture for the UK and not necessarily a test of English proficiency.
In a report in January 2022, the International Centre for Investigative Reporting, a Nigerian investigative online news agency, estimated that, between 2016 and 2021, the UK government generated more than US$771 million from prospective Nigerian students and visa applicants who took the IELTS exam.
For context, the IELTS exam costs between NGN83,000 (just under US$200) and NGN89,000 and expires after two years, whereas the French language proficiency test, the DELF/DALF examination, which costs as little as NGN16,000 (about US$37) for Nigerians, is valid for life. Thus, the #ReformIELTS campaigners are asking why they need to prove they can speak and write in English every two years.
What’s more, Nigeria’s English proficiency band is ranked the third-highest in Africa, after South Africa and Kenya, and 29th in the world, according to the 2021 EF English Proficiency Index.
Based on the EF ranking, Nigeria’s level of English proficiency is higher than some of the countries exempted by the UK Home Office.
With all these arguments, Policy Shapers wrote a petition to the then UK home secretary Priti Patel, asking the UK government to include Nigeria in the Majority English Speaking Country, or MESC, list.
The UK government, however, rejected the application, saying it did not have enough evidence to claim that at least 51% of Nigeria’s population speaks English as a first language.
Wikina said Policy Shapers is still engaging the UK Home Office on the matter as well as Nigeria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs for diplomatic support.
He added that Policy Shapers has been working behind the scenes engaging institutions like the Association of Commonwealth Universities and the Nursing and Midwifery Council in the UK, to waive English tests for Nigerians.
Furthermore, Wikina said Policy Shapers and other campaigners are now writing to individual foreign universities, urging them to end their requirement of proof of English proficiency from Nigerian students.
Progress on some fronts
One of the frontline campaigners, Dr Olumuyiwa Igbalajobi, has single-handedly written protest letters to over 100 universities so far in Canada, the US and other countries.
Igbalajobi, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of British Columbia, Canada, said he sees the request for the English test from applicants from English-speaking countries as “unnecessary and exploitative”.
Interestingly, the efforts have started paying off, with some universities in Canada and the US waiving the English test for applicants from English-speaking African countries.
“It all started with the prestigious University of Alberta waiving the test for Nigerians and, afterwards, six other universities [including Cornell University, US] changed their policies and waived the test for applicants from English-speaking African countries,” Igbalajobi told University World News.
According to Igbalajobi, “insincerity on the part of the UK Home Office led to the continuous non-recognition of Nigeria as an English-speaking country. More so, I see it from the angle of revenue generation rather than English proficiency, itself. You do not deny your former colony.”
Igbalajobi said he and other campaigners will not relent in engaging the UK government and others while imploring the Nigerian government and its representatives in the UK and other countries to keep the dialogue open.
The universities that have removed English proficiency requirements are the universities of Alberta, Prince Edward Island, Lethbridge and Athabasca University in Canada; Clemson, George Mason, DePaul, Nexford and Cornell universities as well as the universities of Oregon, Texas at Austin, Minnesota, New Orleans, Alabama and Wisconsin-Madison in the US.
Interesting. Surprising no one has developed a similar platform or app for Canada’s complex immigration system:
Immigram, a UK-based tech immigration platform, has won first prize at Slush, Helsinki’s yearly top tech event. The Russian-founded startup will receive €1 million in investment coming from top global investors including Accel, General Catalyst, Lightspeed, NEA and Northzone.
Immigram had raised half a million just six months ago, earning trust from Joint Journey and Xploration Capital, two funds with Russian roots, and Mikita Mikado, a top Belarussian entrepreneur who fled his country and now lives in Silicon Valley.
The platform helps IT specialists and their future employers, as well as tech entrepreneurs, navigate the complex UK immigration system. It claims to lower applicants’ refusal rates and time/money losses, and to facilitate new comers’ settlement.
Immigram focuses on the UK Global Talent Visa, which is touted as “the only UK visa based on your experience not your job offer.”
Immigram’s co-founders Anastasia Mirolyubova and Mikhail Sharonov are immigrants themselves, having left Russia several years ago.
Does Russian IT emigration harm Ukraine?
Even though Immigram announced a $100,000 donation to a Ukrainian NGO, the attribution of the Slush prize to a Russian-founded startup shocked some pro-Ukrainian activists.
In a LinkedIn post, Polish VC Yaroslav Krempovych sees in Immigram an instrument for Russians to “escape the consequences of the economic strain imposed on Russia by international sanctions” by emigrating to the UK.
He finds unfair the fact that, “while some startup founders fight and die on the frontlines for the lives of their families and loved ones and their country’s freedom, others seek to assist Russians to escape the repercussions of their acts and inactions.”
According to ‘Olena M.,’ an HR professional from Kyiv, the matter is “absolutely shameful for such an organisation as Slush2022.” Equating the award to “support of genocide,” she hopes it “will have consequences for Slush itself as well as for all the investors who backed this project.”
Neither Krempovych nor ‘Olena M.’ seem to take into consideration the fact that emigration tools like Immigram tend to empty Russia from its best engineers. Hundreds of thousands of IT people have left the country since February 24, which is arguably weakening the Russian economy.
Just launched yesterday, a fun project to work on and one that hopefully will make some key IRCC data more accessible and understandable. My post on the Institute for Canadian Citizenship website below.
Check it out and let us know what you think:
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dan Hiebert (University of British Columbia) and Howard Ramos (Western University) were speculating about the possible impact of COVID-19 on immigration and citizenship in Canada. These discussions highlighted the unique value and importance of data and ultimately led to monthly tracking of IRCC data across the full range of programs: Permanent Residents, temporary workers, settlement services, international students, citizenship, and visitor visas.
The importance of data was made visible during the citizenship backlogs in the early 2000s and 2010s, which prompted the respective governments to increase funding to IRCC to reduce large backlogs.
We were curious how COVID-19 would change the complex set of push and pull factors that incentivize migration. Put simply, source countries have attributes that make life look more attractive abroad and host countries have features that attract newcomers. For instance, a weak economy or poorer quality of life at home compared to good jobs and good health abroad.
Monthly tracking of data would allow us to observe the downstream impact of COVID-19 on the number and origin of people moving through Canada’s various immigration and citizenship programs delivered through IRCC.
As it happened, the data revealed that COVID-19 did not significantly affect immigration source countries apart from China, where Chinese government restrictions and policies resulted in an ongoing decline compared to other countries.
In the end, it was the Canadian government’s immigration policy response after the initial shutdowns and restrictions that had a much greater impact on immigration and citizenship than our relative handling of COVID-19.
The government’s response included both short-term measures to address particular pressure points such as seasonal agriculture workers, greater flexibility for international students for remote study, and perhaps most significantly, the vast expansion of temporary residents transitioning to permanent residency (TR2PRR).
Picking up on earlier plans stalled by the pandemic, the government took full advantage of the opportunity to implement substantial increases in immigration levels, with the most recent plan committing to welcome 500,000 new permanent residents in 2025.
The citizenship program, briefly shut-down, moved to a mix of virtual and in-person citizenship ceremonies and has recovered to pre-pandemic levels.
Medium and longer-term measures included more online applications and tracking along with IT, AI, and associated investments to improve processing.
Each of these responses had an impact on the people moving through IRCC’s immigration and citizenship programs. But to what degree? The observable change can only be seen in IRCC’s monthly data tables, which remain complex and unapproachable to most.
The goal of this dashboard is to make basic immigration and citizenship data more readily available and accessible to the public. It focuses on permanent residents and new citizens in terms of overall numbers, immigration categories, the countries of citizenship and the year-over-year change. Application data is not included given the approximately six-month time lag. IRCC web data provides a sense of interest in immigrating to Canada and becoming a citizen.
The data series starts in 2018, two years prior to the start of COVID-19, and tracks the impact of COVID-19 and the related effects of the government policy and program responses to COVID-19.
Now, more than two years later, most of Canada’s immigration programs have recovered from the depths of COVID-19 health and travel restrictions.
In late October, the angle of an adjustable ramp connecting the shore of the Mississippi River to a casino riverboat made it easy to see how low water levels had dropped in south-east Missouri. The downward slope also resembled the population decline in the surrounding town, Caruthersville, over the last decade.
The Century Casino Caruthersville provides a crucial source of employment for the town, which lost many of its local businesses and a Walmart, which closed after 42 years in 2019. But two of its decks were closed because of the drought. Even when the river returns to a more normal level and the whole boat reopens, the fortunes of the town may not change.
“Walmart hurt us when it came and it hurt us when it went out,” said Sue Grantham, the mayor of Caruthersville. “You’re not gonna get those mom and pop shops back again.”
Parts of rural America like Caruthersville are emblematic of a larger trend in the United States: a population that in 2021 grew 0.1%, the slowest rate since the founding of the country, according to the US Census Bureau.
Demographers and sociologists who study the trend point to a number of factors, including low fertility, the Covid-19 pandemic and a significant decrease in immigration due to the pandemic and restrictions introduced by the former president Donald Trump.
And while the threat posed by the virus has waned and the birthrate increased slightly in 2021 after falling for more than a decade, if a growing population is necessary to have a healthy US economy and way of life – which not all researchers agree upon – then the country will probably have to rely on immigration.
“Immigration is sort of the extra safety valve we have for population growth in the United States,” said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution. “It’s unaffected by the ageing of our current population because immigrants tend to be younger, and they also have children, which makes the population younger.”
But immigration remains a divisive topic, with Republicans viewing tightening restrictions on illegal immigration as a greater priority than Democrats, and Democrats more supportive of legal immigration than Republicans, according to polls.
But Social Security, a programme which people across the political spectrum support, will depend on contributions from a younger labor force.
“A lot of the people who are part of [Trump’s] base will suffer the biggest negative consequences if the contributions to Social Security and Medicare and a lot of other federal and state-level programmes” evaporate because of a diminished young labor force, Frey said.
While 2021 saw a record-low increase in population rate, it was not a significant outlier in terms of the last decade. Thirty-seven states grew more slowly in the 2010s than in the previous decade and three states saw population decreases, according to the 2020 census. There were 330 million people in the US that year, a 7.4% increase from 2010, which amounts to the second lowest decade-long increase since the government first conducted the study in 1790.
The fertility rate in the United States has also decreased significantly in recent decades. During the post-second world war baby boom between 1945 and 1964, there were more than 100 births per 1,000 women of childbearing age, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2021, the number was 56.6.
The trend was particularly evident in rural areas, which saw their population decrease over the last decade for the first time, according to a University of New Hampshire report. Meanwhile, in most of the country’s biggest cities, the population grew at a faster rate in the most recent decade compared with the prior one, a Brookings Institution report states.
Pemiscot County, which includes Caruthersville, saw its population decrease by 15% over the last decade, which was among the sharpest drops in the state, according to a University of Missouri report. During the 1950s, there were more than 8,000 people living in Caruthersville; in 2020, there were about 5,500, the census reports.
Grantham, the mayor, grew up in southern Mississippi. Her mother had a flower shop, which Grantham worked at in the mornings before school. Grantham then attended the University of Mississippi and became an elementary school teacher, but she missed the flowers, so in 1977 she bought Joplin Floral Company in Caruthersville and moved north.
Grantham then watched how parts of the area wilted. In 1991, Brown Shoe Co, one of the largest shoe manufacturers in the country, closed four facilities in rural Missouri, including a warehouse in Caruthersville.
″Style trends in women’s shoes are shifting to more casual shoes and those are best obtained overseas,” a spokesperson for the company, which is now called Caleres and based in St Louis, told the Associated Press.
Local farms also gradually needed fewer people due to technological advances, Grantham said. “It’s a big part of why we don’t have that rush into town and all those people here because there were not jobs,” said Grantham, who in 2020 sold her business, which remains open.
The size of families has decreased too. Grantham was one of six children; none of the next generation had more than three kids. “You can’t provide for six children hardly today,” said Grantham, a 73-year-old mother of two.
Women are also waiting longer to have children. And the number of unintended pregnancies dropped to an all-time low in recent years, according to the Brookings Institution.
“More women are in the labor force than ever before,” said Joseph Chamie, a demographer and former director of the United Nations Population Division. “Delaying childbirth, delaying marriage … and when you delay, you often have fewer children.”
Among the younger generations from places like Caruthersville, there has also been a drive to move to urban areas because there are more opportunities for work and socializing.
The poverty rate in Caruthersville is 29%; in St Louis, it’s 20%; and in St Louis county, it’s 9.1%, according to the census bureau.
Wade Mansfield, 53, started Grizzly Jig Company, a crappie fishing supply business, in 1991 in Caruthersville with his father. The company employs 14 people and has managed to stay afloat despite competition from Bass Pro Shop and Amazon, and technological challenges due to its rural location. Most of its business comes from online sales, Mansfield said.
“We found a niche just like Mack’s Prairie Wings,” which specializes in waterfowl hunting, Mansfield said. “Instead of focusing on the big pie, we focused on one sliver, which was the crappie industry.”
In spite of his company’s success, Mansfield does not expect his two older daughters, who live in college towns in Mississippi, to return to Caruthersville. His youngest daughter is in high school.
“I think if I had all boys, it would be a little different just because of the hunting and fishing [opportunities in south-east Missouri]”, Mansfield said. “The girls want to go to movies, go out to eat [and shop].”
But big cities have also seen their annual growth rates slow over the last decade, and from July 2020 to July 2021 large cities saw a 1% population decline, according to the Brookings Institution. Suburbs continued to grow during the pandemic, though at a slower rate than a decade earlier. Over the last decade, the metro areas that saw the largest increases were in the Sun Belt, including Austin, Texas; Orlando, Florida; and Raleigh, North Carolina.
Meanwhile, cities such as New York and Los Angeles saw their population decrease significantly during the pandemic after large increases a decade earlier. Cities saw an unusual population gain at the start of the 2010s, as millennials continued to live at home due to the Great Recession; during the pandemic, some people fled cities because they wanted to avoid the tight quarters and public transportation due to the threat posed by the virus, Frey explained.
“I think we’ll get back to somewhat more normal growth in cities than we have seen,” Frey said. “Nobody really knows at this point what the working-from-home trend is going to do.”
Immigration levels also remain an uncertainty. In Pemiscot County, a district in which 71% of voters supported Trump in 2020, Mexican immigrants have filled a variety of roles, and farmers have hired seasonal workers from South Africa, Grantham said.
“The Mexicans that are here are really, really good people. In fact, one of them used to keep my grandchild,” Grantham said.
Frey sees immigration as one of the solutions to the country’s ageing population. He sees the diminishing population as a worrisome trend. That’s not only because of the need for younger generations to contribute to Social Security but also because nursing homes and assisted living facilities will need workers, he said.
And a youthful population means more economic potential and innovation, Frey said.
But Chamie, the demographer and former UN population division director, said he is not “ringing alarm bells” over the trend. “Businesses want this growth. They want more labor. They want more consumption,” he said.
Entities such as the United States Chamber of Commerce “are always complaining about a high shortage of workers because they want to keep wages low, and that’s why they keep pressing for more immigration. I don’t see it necessarily that economic growth depends on population growth. You have many countries that are growing slowly, and their economies are growing.”
Leslie Root, a demographer at the University of Colorado Boulder, also does not see the declining fertility as a negative. That’s in part because of the reduced number of unintended pregnancies.
“We know that when people are having births that are intended, health outcomes for the parents and the babies are better,” she said. “Helping people to not have babies that they don’t mean to have is generally, from the public health perspective, a positive thing.”
As to what the declining population trend could mean for a town like Caruthersville, Grantham remains optimistic. The state recently removed a requirement for casinos to float, which means that Century Casinos plans to build a land-based facility in Caruthersville. The company also bought a nearby hotel, which it is renovating.
The comedian and actor Cedric the Entertainer, a Caruthersville native whose film Johnson Family Reunion was set there, has also bought land in his home town. His goal is to bring “more housing, more people and new industry”, he told a local news station.
Grantham thinks the town population could return to levels not seen in decades. “Reaching the levels of the 50s, 60s? If it keeps going, I think we could,” she said. “We’re not but 3,000 behind.”
Multicultural Meanderings 