Not sure whether I would use the word “intense” but yes, greater debate, discussion and questioning part of a needed new normal. As I have repeatedly emphasized, debate need not be xenophobic or racist as the concerns relate to issues that affect all, immigrant and non-immigrant alike: housing, healthcare and infrastructure:
When I was asked to address members of the immigration division of the Canadian Bar Association, I expected an audience of maybe 25 to 50 lawyers.
But last Saturday, 400 immigration lawyers showed up at the Victoria Convention Centre to hear what three Canadian journalists and a think-tank member had to say about the media’s impact on migration.
The panel was asked to address immigration lawyers’ fears that heightened media coverage is “sparking intense public debate” and influencing “how immigrants are perceived and how decisions are made.”
In addition to offering our thoughts, panel members learned there are actually more than 1,200 immigration lawyers in the Canadian Bar Association, with their numbers mushrooming in the past 15 years.
I noted there are another 13,000 licensed immigration consultants in Canada, a doubling in just seven years. The lawyers in Victoria let us know, justifiably, that the “consultants” are not as highly trained as lawyers, or as regulated.
On top of these private players employed in the migration sector, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada has doubled its staff in a decade to more than 13,000 employees.
Altogether, these professionals and workers add up to an army of more than 27,000 immigration specialists (about the same as the number of soldiers and staff employed by Canada’s Department of Defence).
All make their living helping migrants navigate the complexities of becoming a foreign student, temporary worker, reunified family member, investor immigrant or permanent resident of Canada.
In addition, the C.D. Howe Institute maintains another huge cohort that does somewhat the same thing. Unlicensed agents — from the fields of travel, education and labour — also take fees for advising clients on how to get into Canada and stay there.
The institute’s Tingting Zhang and Parisa Mahboubi, therefore, maintain there should be many more licensed consultants — and that the government should offer better aid to the roughly six million people whose applications are each year processed for entry into Canada.
In other words, the 400 lawyers who gathered last week at the Victoria Conference Centre represented just a fragment of the immigration business in Canada. No wonder it’s called one of the country’s biggest industries.
Understandably, the gathered immigration lawyers, the slight majority of whom were women, wanted to do everything they could to help the clients in Canada and around the world who come to them.
Their questions and comments all revolved around the hope that borders be more open and the often-labyrinthine migration process easier.
They also worried about declining support for immigration. A Leger poll this spring found 58 per cent of Canadians believe migration rates are “too high”. Even half of those who have been in the country less than a decade feel that way.
Given the lawyers’ desire to assist their clients, many were wary that in the past two years more journalists have been digging into migration policy and its impact.
That’s in large part because former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau doubled immigration levels and increased the number of guest workers and foreign students by five times. Almost three million non-permanent residents now comprise 7.3 per cent of the population, up from 1.4 per cent in 2015.
The lawyers noted that, after decades in which journalists essentially avoided migration issues, many more articles were being written about such topics as the sudden jump in asylum seekers, tens of thousands of international students not attending school, businesses exploiting temporary workers and population pressures on housing and rents.
Two panelists, Toronto Star immigration reporter Nicholas Keung and Steve D’Souza of CBC’s Fifth Estate, emphasized the value of talking to migrants to develop poignant “human interest” stories. They have also investigated how bosses, fly-by-night colleges and some migrants have taken part in scams.
In response to CBA’s concerns that Canada’s media were producing “stories that have become a lightning rod for public sentiment, shaping how immigrants are perceived and how decisions are made,” the journalists on the panel explained it’s our duty to cover migration stories, and all stories, in a way that is “fair, balanced and accurate.”
Although panelist Daniel Bernhard, of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship, correctly said that some journalism about migration is superficial, I suggested it’s generally a good thing Canada’s long-standing national taboo against reporting on and debating migration policy has eased.
Although some politicians, migration lawyers, consultants and other agents may not always like it, I also said journalists’ goal is to responsibly probe to the truth of a matter and, beyond that, to “let the chips fall where they may.”
Since my Vancouver Sun editors about a dozen years ago asked me to produce more analyses about migration, I have learned covering the beat essentially amounts to writing about the “winners and losers” of migration policy, which in Canada is put together behind closed doors.
Some examples. Applied ethicists point to how it’s one thing for Canadians to worry about a “brain drain” — about losing talented citizens to places like the U.S. and Singapore. The more worrisome flip side, for countries in Africa and East Asia, is that Canada is actively draining away their brainy people, be they physicians or entrepreneurs.
Then there are the 2.8 million temporary workers in Canada, many of them international students paying exorbitant school fees. Some have been winners, getting solid educations and decent jobs in their homelands or permanent residency in Canada. Others have been exploited for their willingness to work for low wages — which has, in turn, been a losing proposition for other low-skill workers in Canada.
The job of tracking migration policies’ winners and losers is endless, including covering the squeeze that rapid population growth and the trans-national migration of foreign capital is putting on those trying to pay Canadian housing costs and rents.
Suffice it to say, journalists’ job is to shine as much light as possible on this vast system, which impacts millions. The ultimate goal is to encourage the creation of policies that best serve the most people, which is one way to advance the common good.
Multicultural Meanderings 