Todd: Quixotic Trudeau finally getting pushback over asylum-seeker chaos

2024/08/03 Leave a comment

Inevitable although most asylum seeker and refugee stakeholders remain largely in denial:

Reality is teaching some important lessons to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about flirting with the ideal of virtually open borders. So are Canada’s premiers and the public.

Particularly in regard to asylum seekers.

For months B.C. Premier David Eby and Quebec Premier François Legault have been almost frantically trying to send a message to Trudeau and his childhood friend, Immigration Minister Marc Miller, that they should no longer indulge in their romantic rhetoric of the past.

“To those fleeing persecution, terror and war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength. #WelcomeToCanada,” Trudeau told the world on Twitter/X on Jan. 28, 2017.

It was the day after newly inaugurated U.S. President Donald Trump issued an executive order banning refugees from Muslim-majority countries. Trump had also proposed the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants. Trudeau promised to be their saviour.

Even though Eby and Legault are among the most bold in their pushback, they haven’t been alone in trying to educate Trudeau about the costs, in public dollars, of such grandstanding on asylum seekers.

As with the categories of guest workers, international students and immigrants under Trudeau, the number of refugee claimants has soared during his nine-year-old Liberal regime.

There are now 363,000 asylum claimants in the country, according to Statistics Canada — double two years ago.

A couple of years ago most claimants were walking across the U.S. border into Eastern Canada, which U.S. President Joe Biden last year helped to tighten up.

So now most arrive at airports in Toronto and Montreal, and to some extent Calgary and Vancouver, particularly from Asia. They come in  legally with study or travel visas and then make their claims after leaving the airport, saying they’re escaping various forms of persecution.

It normally takes about two years, and often longer if there is an appeal, for the refugee board to research backgrounds and make a ruling on a case, says Anne Michèle Meggs, a former Quebec immigration official who now writes independently on the subject.

This year the average number of asylum claims made per month in B.C. has jumped to 640 — up 37 per cent compared with last year, says Meggs.

B.C. has the third largest intake of asylum claimants in the country. Most still go to Ontario, where she says average monthly claims have leapt by 53 per cent, or Quebec, where they’re up 20 per cent.

Canada’s premiers have been telling Trudeau for the past few months that, regardless of the validity of their assertions, asylum seekers cost taxpayers a great deal of money.

Most arrive with no financial means. And while they wait for their cases to be evaluated to see if they get coveted permanent resident status, federal and provincial agencies often provide social services, housing, food, clothing, health care, children’s education and (in Quebec) daycare.

Stories of an out-of-control refugee system are likely contributing to fast-changing opinion poll results. Last week Leger discovered 60 per cent of Canadians now think there are “too many” newcomers. That’s a huge shift from just 35 per cent in 2019.

It’s the highest rate of dissatisfaction in decades — based in part on demand pressure on housing and infrastructure costs. The negative polling result is consistent across both white and non-white Canadians.

In response to complaints out of Quebec, Trudeau has this year coughed up $750 million more for that province to support refugee claimants who arrived in recent years, mostly at the land border. Last year Quebec dealt with a total of 65,000 claims and Ontario with 63,000, with the largest cohorts from Mexico and India.

But B.C., as Eby is telling anyone who will listen, has received no dollars from Ottawa. The premier described how “frustrating” it is for B.C. to “scrabble around” for funds in the province, where housing is among the most expensive in the world, while Quebec gets extra.

“Our most recent total for last year was 180,000 new British Columbians,” Eby said last month, including asylum seekers among all international migrants to the province. “And that’s great and that’s exciting and it’s necessary, and it’s completely overwhelming.”

Eby didn’t even publicly mention the increasingly bizarre anomaly, based on the three-decades-old Quebec Accord, which each year leads to Quebec getting 10 times more funding than B.C. and Ontario to settle newcomers.

Postmedia News has found Metro Vancouver’s shelters are being overwhelmed by the near-doubling of asylum seekers in B.C. in the past year.

The Salvation Army, which operates 100 beds in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, said that since last summer, the proportion of refugee claimants seeking shelter has climbed to about 80 per cent. Meanwhile, about 60 per cent of beds at the Catholic Charities Men’s Shelter in Vancouver were occupied by refugee claimants. Shelters are predominantly funded by taxpayers.

Government statistics show B.C. is now home to 16,837 asylum claimants, says Meggs. That doesn’t include the 5,300 who last year arrived in the province on a more orderly track as government-assisted refugees.

In an article in Inroads magazine, a social policy journal, Meggs says her ”jaw dropped” when Trudeau said in April the number of temporary immigrants, including asylum seekers, was “out of control” and “growing at a rate far beyond what Canada has been able to absorb.”

The cognitive dissonance, she explained, is because Trudeau’s government is entirely responsible for the system spinning out-of control since 2015 — and not only in numbers, but in selection criteria, or lack thereof.

Trudeau has admitted chaos particularly characterizes the dilemma with international students, whose numbers have tripled under his reign to 1.1 million. Many are now claiming asylum. B.C. has 217,000 foreign students in post-secondary institutions and another 49,000 in kindergarten-to-Grade-12 programs.

Vancouver immigration lawyer Richard Kurland is among those suggesting it would be best if Canada processed about 50,000 refugee claimants a year, since it doesn’t have absorptive capacity for more — like the 144,000 who applied last year.

One big problem is the government knows little or nothing about a lot of asylum seekers, say Kurland and Meggs (who generally shares the centre-left leanings of her brother, Geoff Meggs, former chief of staff to NDP Premier John Horgan.)

The immigration department’s ignorance is in part because many make their claims online. Officials don’t even know where tens of thousands live. Meanwhile, Meggs laments, countless claimants are both aided and exploited by people smugglers, landlords and underground employers.

Meggs doesn’t really know how Ottawa is going to get things under control. And, if Trump is re-elected in November and follows through on his vow to get rid of millions of undocumented migrants, it’s virtually guaranteed many will head north to Canada, trying to find ways to pass through what Meggs describes as an incredibly long and understaffed border.

Even though Meggs isn’t optimistic about the future of asylum-seeker policy in Canada, at least the premiers and public are making noises. The thing is, given the Liberals’ defensiveness, it’s just far too soon to tell if their criticism will inspire not empty words but authentic change.

Source: Quixotic Trudeau finally getting pushback over asylum-seeker chaos

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Keller: Canada is about to lose more than 100,000 farming jobs. That’s great economic news

2024/08/03 Leave a comment

More on innovation, productivity and immigration:

….Back in 1891, it would have called for a large (and mostly poorly paid) work force. Progress since then has been remarkable, spurred by massive investments in labour-saving farming equipment and technology. The Conference Board study predicts more of the same.

All of which should be a reminder that labour shortages and rising wages have economic benefits. Yes, benefits. They are the mother of business innovation and investment, because they force businesses to chase ever greater labour productivity. Particularly when it comes to low-wage jobs, a tight labour market and upward pressure on pay should be the goal of government policy.

However, Canadian businesses in recent years persuaded Ottawa that, no matter the state of the economy or the level of unemployment, they can’t fill hundreds of thousands of low-wage jobs. But these alleged labour shortages are mostly just businesses facing the pressure to compete for workers by raising wages.

Those pressures have been alleviated by allowing businesses to recruit an effectively unlimited number of temporary foreign workers, at the lowest legal wage, or less. Absent that low-wage release valve, businesses would have to innovate and invest more in new technologies to use less labour, and get more out of each hour of (increasingly expensive) labour.

That’s how we raise productivity. That’s how we grow the economy….

Source: Canada is about to lose more than 100,000 farming jobs. That’s great economic news

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US border migrant crossings fall for fifth month in a row

2024/08/03 Leave a comment

Of note. Unlikely to change much of the political discourse, however:

The number of unlawful crossings by migrants at the US southern border has dropped for the fifth consecutive month, according to official data.

US Border Patrol agents apprehended around 57,000 migrants along the border in July – the lowest recorded since September 2020.

The numbers are down significantly from December, when around 250,000 migrants were caught crossing the border.

President Joe Biden’s administration has credited the decrease to recent actions by him to tackle illegal immigration into the US, an election-year political vulnerability for the Democrats.

“This is the product of a number of actions this administration has taken,” said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in an interview with CBS this week.

Mr Mayorkas said those actions include an executive order signed last month by President Joe Biden that allows US immigration officials to deport migrants without processing their asylum claims.

The measure has been called one of the most restrictive border policies by a Democratic president in recent times, and was criticised by left-wing members of the party.

At the time, the president vowed that his executive order would “help us gain control of our border”. He added that “doing nothing is not an option”.

Government data shows that the number of migrants stopped at the US-Mexico border had dropped even before the order.

Border Patrol recorded 141,000 apprehensions in February, 137,000 in March, 129,000 in April, 118,000 in May and 84,000 in June.

The figures do not include official border crossings, where the Biden administration has been processing around 1,500 migrants each day through a smartphone app that schedules appointments between migrants and US border agents.

On the other side of the border, Mexican officials have also been working to curb illegal migration, including stopping people before they attempt to cross on to US soil.

The southern border has been a political headache for the Biden administration heading into November’s election.

Mr Biden has been repeatedly criticised by Republicans and their party’s presidential nominee, Donald Trump, who said last month that the president had “surrendered our southern border.”

The president hit back, accusing the Trump camp of an “extremely cynical political move” by pressing Republican politicians to block a proposed border plan in Congress earlier this year.

Source: US border migrant crossings fall for fifth month in a row

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More measures coming to reduce temporary residents, Canadian minister says

2024/08/03 Leave a comment

Stay tuned, more signs of reality, both substantive and political:

Canada’s government is preparing to unveil a suite of measures to clamp down on temporary immigration and has no plans to follow through right now on a broad program offering status to undocumented residents, the country’s immigration minister told Reuters.

“The era of uncapped programs to come into this country is quickly coming to an end. This is a big shift. You can’t just slam on the brakes and expect it to stop immediately,” Marc Miller said in an interview with Reuters on Thursday.

Canada has long prided itself on welcoming newcomers, and the current Liberal government has overseen a dramatic increase in the influx of new residents, especially temporary ones, as many employers struggled to fill vacancies coming out of the pandemic.

But over the past year the tide has shifted: Immigrants are being blamed for a worsening housing situation along with an affordability crisis in the country. Critics have accused the federal government of bringing in too many people.

A Leger poll conducted in July found 60% of respondents said there are too many immigrants coming to Canada.

“I’m not naive enough to think Canada is immune to the waves of anti-immigrant sentiment. … Canadians want a system that is not out of control,” Miller said in a phone interview.

Canadians “want a system that makes sense. And they want one that still has a lot of welcoming aspects we’ve been proud of, but it’s got to make sense,” Miller said, predicting immigration would be “a top issue, if not the top issue, in the next election,” expected to take place in late 2025.

The Canadian government has already outlined some measures. In January it announced a two-year cap on international students – an area of Canada’s immigration system that got “overheated” and was not meant to be “a backdoor entry into Canada,” Miller said.

In March the immigration minister announced Canada’s first-ever cap on temporary immigration. Canada wants to reduce temporary residents to 5% of the total population over the next three years from 6.2% in 2023. That would be a cut of about 20% from Canada’s 2.5 million temporary residents in 2023.

But in its recent monetary policy report, the Bank of Canada expressed doubts that the government could meet its temporary residents goal, noting that non-permanent residents made up 6.8% of the country’s population as of April and that “the share is expected to continue rising over the near-term.”

The bank is right to say achieving this goal is a challenge, but it is a “reasonable” one given the suite of measures Canada plans to announce over the next several weeks, Miller said.

Miller would not give details but said these measures could include changes to post-graduate work permits and enforcement.

Asked if his government had made a mistake in allowing rapid growth in temporary residents, Miller said, “Every government makes mistakes. I think we are all human.” But “coming out of COVID, in particular, we were facing massive labor shortages.”

REFUGEE INFLUX

Meanwhile, Canada is seeing record levels of refugee claims – more than 18,000 in June, according to the Immigration and Refugee Board. This is despite government efforts to deter people by closing the land border to asylum-seekers through a contested bilateral agreement with the United States and by implementing new visa requirements for Mexicans.

Canada cannot dictate how many people file refugee claims but it can make it difficult for asylum-seekers to reach the country. Miller said the government may impose stricter criteria on temporary resident visas to prevent asylum-seekers from coming.

The government had also previously said it would pursue a regularization program to give status to undocumented residents.

That is not on the table before the election, Miller said, but he noted there is a possibility of sector-specific programs.

Source: More measures coming to reduce temporary residents, Canadian minister says

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Clark: Ottawa has to do something about immigration boom, but it doesn’t have any good options 

2024/08/02 Leave a comment

Good capturing Miller’s dilemma as he tries to address the failures of this government and previous ministers:

…So what can Mr. Miller do instead? He can turn a lot of those temporary residents into permanent residents. He has already suggested that is part of the plan.

The problem is that means turning the goals of Canada’s economic immigration program upside down.

It is supposed to bring in people with the best potential to help Canada’s economy – highly educated or highly skilled applicants. But in recent years, the big growth in international students has come in private and public college students, with less education and fewer skills. Turning large numbers of temporary residents into permanent residents means accepting lower-skilled applicants.

And like it or not, those immigrants will take the place of others. There’s a target of 301,250 economic immigrants for 2025, and if the government creates a special program for lower-skilled temporary residents, that means fewer spots will be available for highly qualified applicants. Whiz kids with bachelor degrees in math or computer science will be left in the queue.

But for the next few years, the government will be digging the immigration system out of a hole. The big mistake has been made.

Ottawa didn’t stop provincial governments, particularly in Ontario and B.C., from letting their foreign-student industries grow to excess. The Canadian population grew at its fastest rate since the peak of the baby boom because of unchecked growth in temporary residents, rather than planned immigration. That fuelled a housing crisis.

Now Ottawa has little choice but to do something. And Mr. Miller doesn’t have any good options to choose from.

Source: Ottawa has to do something about immigration boom, but it doesn’t have any good options

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Canada’s refugee system is overwhelmed by skyrocketing claims. What can Ottawa do to reduce backlogs?

2024/08/02 Leave a comment

It starts with reversing some of the visa waivers or relaxed requirements for source countries that are experiencing a major increase along with some of the post-arrival suggestions mentioned by lawyers. And while some will not like it, AI should be part of the triage process:

Canada’s refugee system has been the envy of the world. It’s recognized as being orderly, fair and efficient when compared to any other western country.

But as the number of asylum seekers keeps surging here — and with the queue and processing times getting longer, the beleaguered system is in desperate need of a rethink to save it from spiraling out of control and being clogged up in endless backlogs.

“It didn’t take long for me to realize with the team that we needed to maintain our ability to render fair decisions despite the growing intake,” Manon Brassard, who was appointed as the chair of the Immigration and Refugee Board a year ago, told a Senate committee in June. “We need to do something about that.”

In 2023, the country’s largest independent tribunal received 138,000 new claims, up by 129 per cent from the year before and by 136 per cent in 2019, before the pandemic halted international travels and slowed the inflow. In the first three months of 2024, already 46,700 claims were lodged, with a total of 186,000 cases in the queue.

In the spring, the federal government tried unsuccessfully to ram through some much-needed changes to the asylum system through an omnibus bill that it said were necessary to streamline the process and tackle a growing backlog.

Those changes would have simplified the initial registration of a refugee claim; imposed “mandatory conditions” and timelines that claimants must follow to avoid their cases from being deemed abandoned; and allowed immigration officials to hold on to a file before referring it to the refugee board for hearing. 

Immigration Minister Marc Miller told the Star in a recent interview that the status quo is unsustainable.

“It was unfortunate,” he said of the foiled reforms carved out of the budget bill amid complaints by advocates for the lack of consultation. “Those amendments were fair in nature, and they were intended to accelerate some of the processing.”

Miller said he has some decisions to make in the coming months and is not ruling out reintroducing the proposed changes in a new bill.

The refugee board’s dilemma

Despite an extra $87 million in federal funding over two years — and new rules to crack down on irregular migration through U.S. land border — the refugee board only has the capacity to process 50,000 claims a year. With more than 186,000 cases pending, it would take almost four years to clear its inventory, even if new intakes were halted.

And the board is not going to get more money. As part of the federal budget cuts, the tribunal must reduce spending by $8.3 million this year, $10.5 million in 2025 and $13.6 million in 2026 and beyond.

Without the proposed legislative changes, the tribunal has few tools at its disposal.

“Money is part of the solution, but it’s not the only solution,” Brassard, who declined the Star’s interview request for this story, told senators in June. “We need to improve the way we do things.”

The board is developing a plan, known as “Horizon 26-27,” to streamline its operations and processes with the help of technology and automation, but few details are available. The aim is that by next March it will be able to process 80 per cent of claims within two years, as opposed to the current 37 months.

Critics urge for greater efficiency 

Critics say that while the board does need more decision-makers, it must also improve efficiency, and the government could help take some of the asylum seekers out of the queue by providing them with alternative pathways.

The tribunal already has policies to expedite less complex claims, such as those that appear to have solid evidence and are from clearly troubled countries.

Brassard told the Senate committee that the board has a task force to review cases — covering Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Turkey and Venezuela — for quicker processing and about a third of the claims go through the screening.

However, immigration lawyer Robert Blanshay said even if an asylum seeker is selected for less complex screening, the case is still required to go before a refugee judge for a decision.

He said the board could hire trained administrative staff to review cases and interview claimants to make a record for the adjudicator to just sign off on, to save time and resources for formal hearings.

“On paper, it has been implemented, but it’s been severely underutilized,” said Blanshay, vice-chair of the refugee and litigation committee of the Canadian Bar Association’s immigration section.

Immigration lawyer Maureen Silcoff, who served as an adjudicator on the refugee board in the 1990s, said there used to be refugee protection officers — neutral parties — tasked with interviewing claimants where credibility was the only concern.

“You had an opportunity to ask questions and get clarification about some points that might be troubling you and could be resolved,” she explained. “The member (adjudicator) who signed off on the decision did so with more comfort.”

Silcoff said it’s worth bringing back the eliminated administrative position and triaging cases into three streams based on complexity: those requiring a full hearing, an interview if there are a few questions, or just a paper review for the most solid claims.

Aviva Basman, president of the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, said the current asylum process is complicated and cumbersome, and the online portal, launched in 2021, takes a long time to fill out, especially when a claim involves multiple applicants.

Currently, foreign nationals can seek asylum at port of entry or make an inland claim after entering the country. However, there continues to be inconsistent and confusing information, for example, about deadlines to file documents, depending on the entry point into the refugee system. 

The less complex file review process is also somewhat unclear, which discourages counsel from even making an attempt because it requires substantial resources to make a case.

“What you have is a complicated, cumbersome refugee claim process where a lot of people are having a hard time,” said Basman. “Having simpler, streamlined processes would be a good thing.”

Alternative pathways for refugees

In addition to adequately resourcing asylum processes, a recent international report recommends governments alleviate pressure on their refugee determination systems by providing safe, orderly alternatives through resettlement programs and regular immigration pathways.

“Narrow- or short-sighted policies that focus on only one piece of the puzzle are likely to merely push the problem elsewhere,” warned the report by Washington-based Migration Policy Institute and the Robert Bosch Stiftung, a German foundation. 

Silcoff said Ottawa could expand on initiatives that offer immigration status to asylum seekers employed in fields with labour shortages, such as a one-time program during the pandemic that granted permanent residence to asylum seekers working in health care and a current pilot that resettles skilled refugees abroad to fill in-demand jobs here. 

“That could be a win-win,” said Silcoff. “It meets our labour market needs and it helps relieve the pressure from the refugee board.”

Source: Canada’s refugee system is overwhelmed by skyrocketing claims. What can Ottawa do to reduce backlogs?

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Fake letter leaves Nigerian international student without status, asked to leave Canada

2024/08/02 Leave a comment

Yet another example of unscrupulous consultants and lack of real time due diligence. Appears that about 2.4 percent of all applications include fraudulent letters:

…The new letter of acceptance verification process began on Dec. 1, 2023. Before it began, the department acknowledged many students “sincerely” came to Canada to study, but some who knew about the fake letters had “no intent” of studying.

Between that day and July 1, IRCC said it has caught 9,175 letters that were never issued by a Canadian school.

Those 9,175 letters were out of a total of 361,718 letters checked by IRCC and the schools.

These letters “may be an indicator of fraud,” IRCC wrote in a statement, but each one will need to be checked by an officer.

The department declined to make anyone available for an interview, and agreed to answer questions only by email.

It said it is “focused on identifying culprits, not penalizing victims” of fraud.

In response to questions about Akinlade’s case and why IRCC believes she knew about the fake letter, IRCC pointed back to its officer’s decision based on the “balance of probabilities.”

“Applicants are responsible for all the information on their application,” IRCC wrote, noting that Akinlade had an opportunity to address the officer’s concerns.

Onus on the applicant

Sandhu said it’s not clear to her exactly why IRCC believes Akinlade knew the letter was fake.

“If we’re going off of hunches, I feel that most officers can be very skeptical when it comes to applicants that claim they were victims of a rogue agent.”

Sandhu acknowledged that Canadian immigration rules put the onus for everything in the application on the applicant.

“Even though you may have used an agent, you are still supposed to be aware of everything,” she said.

Akinlade said she has learned a “lesson” about finding a reliable agent to help her, but she believes if IRCC looks again at her case it will find she was not complicit in the fake letter.

Her lawyer is submitting her humanitarian application to IRCC in the coming weeks but the application does not give her any right to stay in the country, and it is not clear how many months it could take to process.

“I really want to be investigated,” she said, adding that the whole experience has been “traumatic” for her family.

“This is not something I pray for my enemy to experience.”

Source: Fake letter leaves Nigerian international student without status, asked to leave Canada

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Feds headed in ‘wrong direction’ on immigration: Privy Council survey

2024/08/01 Leave a comment

Just another confirmation of the trend:

It doesn’t get any clearer.

Of the people surveyed by the Privy Council Office, 100% said the federal cabinet is “headed in the wrong direction” when it comes to immigration, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.

“Asked whether they felt the government of Canada was on the right or wrong track when it came to managing the immigration system, all believed it was headed in the wrong direction,” said a Privy Council report.

“It was strongly believed the rate of immigration needed to be temporarily stabilized.”

The federal government’s immigration levels plan has quotas of 485,000 people in 2024, another 500,000 in 2025 and 500,000 more in 2026.

These figures don’t include 1,040,985 foreign students and 766,250 migrant workers let into Canada in 2023.

“Several expressed the view that the rate of immigration had been too high in recent years and that action needed to be taken to temporarily reduce the number of people coming to Canada, including refugees and those seeking asylum,” said the report Continuous Qualitative Data Collection of Canadians’ Views.

“It was felt that the current capacity of infrastructure and vital services could not accommodate further increases to the population and that a priority needed to be placed on supporting those already living in Canada.”

The research was based on focus groups across Canada done under an $814,714 contract with Toronto-based pollster The Strategic Counsel.

The other big observation in the report was that immigration should be restricted to foreigners who fill labour shortages.

“It was felt a priority should be placed on more targeted immigration going forward with a primary focus on bringing in skilled workers in areas such as health care and education, which were believed to be facing widespread labour shortages at present,” said researchers.

Respondents felt current immigration policy merely added costs.

“A number identified what they viewed as a higher rate of immigration in recent years as a contributing factor to rising housing costs,” wrote researchers.

“It was believed that as more people entered the country, the increasing demand for housing had driven up housing prices even further.”

Source: Feds headed in ‘wrong direction’ on immigration: Privy Council survey

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Canadians increasingly divided on immigration, government research shows

2024/08/01 Leave a comment

Confirms other surveys. Karas is editorialized by adding DEI concerns to the mix as no such question was asked in the survey (https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2024/ircc/Ci4-183-1-2024-eng.pdf):

Canadians are becoming increasingly divided on the federal government’s current immigration targets, with over a third now saying we’re taking in “too many” people from other countries.

The Department of Immigration requested polling agency Ipsos conduct a national survey on its current immigration quotas. 

“Many participants felt that the targets set for the next three years, which were presented to them, were too high,” reads the survey. “They could not fathom how cities, that are already receiving high volumes of immigrants and where infrastructure is already under great strain, could accommodate the proposed targets.”

The survey cost $295,428 and included 3,000 people canvassed with two surveys and 14 focus groups.

When asked if they thought that immigration has a positive effect on their city or town, just over half, 55% agreed, while 22% said the effect has been negative. 

The results were similar when broken down provincially, with 58% saying that the immigration has had a positive effect on their province, compared to 24% who disagreed. 

Asked if immigration had a net “negative effect” on their province, 41% of Ontarians surveyed said yes, while a third of Prince Edward Islanders, 33%, and 27% of Albertans saw immigration as a net negative.

Only 48% of respondents felt that the current targets were “about the right number,” while a little over a third, 35%, said it was ‘too many.’ 

Another small cohort of 12% said that “too few” immigrants are coming to Canada. 

The “too many” sentiment was felt highest in Alberta at 52%, followed closely by Nova Scotia and Ontario at 51% and 49%, respectively.

On the national level, 63% said immigration has a positive effect and 23% said it’s negative. 

This shows the erosion of a long-held immigration consensus in Canada, one expert says.

“For the first time in recent history, support for immigration has eroded steadily amongst the public,” immigration lawyer Sergio Karas told True North.

“There are a multiplicity of reasons why this is happening. Still, the main issues are the cost of living, housing, competition for good jobs, and the general perception that the recent cohorts of immigrants do not contribute to the economy in the same way that previous generations have.”

The immigration department said the “broad sentiment” indicates support for immigration generally but with the caveat of “not right now” or “how are we going to make this work?”

Participants also expressed “strong appeals for reducing the barriers that prevent experienced newcomers from practicing in their fields of expertise,” citing nurses, teachers and skilled labourers as necessary examples. 

However, “reactions to prioritizing those with business skills were more mixed.” 

On the issue of family and immigration, respondents generally agreed on “setting a higher target for sponsoring spouses and partners, who are likely to be working-age, and a lower target for sponsoring parents and grandparents, who might put a strain on the healthcare system rather than contribute to the economy.”

Several participants suggested expediting immigration applications for healthier parents and grandparents over “frailer ones.”

“There is also resentment, especially from immigrants who have been in Canada for many years, that the current crop of newcomers is far more interested in receiving government benefits, and that their language and work skills are not up to par,” said Karas. “This seems to be especially acute about the large number of refugees that Canada has admitted.”

According to the department’s data, few participants believed that Canada was doing the “right thing” by providing asylum to large numbers of refugees. 

While some respondents recognized the “need to assist,” they were also concerned about Canada’s ability to “realistically support population growth given the current strains on public infrastructure.”

Karas said that a further reason for Canadians’ shifting opinion of immigration is the notion that the government is “admitting anyone” without properly vetting them for their skills, language ability and security. 

“While this is not always true, the public is sensitive to how immigrants from non-Western countries are changing the face of Canada,” said Karas. 

“The public concern is that the changes are too rapid and too deep and that immigrants should do more to adapt to existing customs, rather than the public being obligated to adapt to them. Current policies of  Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion have exacerbated that perception as organizations show a preference for EDI hires rather than using a merit system.”

Source: Canadians increasingly divided on immigration, government research shows

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Abraham: J.D. Vance’s lessons on immigration for Canada

2024/07/31 Leave a comment

More immigration commentary, arguing for greater focus on economic immigrants with a more self-interested approach. Nails some of the current disfunctionalities, including the confusing plethora of pathways which, of course, large reflect responses to political pressures:

I’m not sure if many Canadians paid attention to U.S. Senator J. D. Vance’s speech to the Republican convention in Milwaukee recently. Even those who stayed up for the late-hour speech might dismiss it as another populist rant from a “hillbilly.” They’d be mistaken, because it carries big lessons for Canada.

I’m most interested in this section of his speech: “Now, it is part of that tradition, of course, that we welcome newcomers. But when we allow newcomers into our American family, we allow them on our terms. That’s the way we preserve the continuity of this project from 250 years past to hopefully 250 years in the future.”

In my 22 years of following the immigration debate in both Canada and the United States, I’ve not heard a clearer articulation of how immigration should work. It’s the exact opposite of what’s happening in Canada today: we have plunging support for immigration; a plethora of visa categories that would make even the immigration minister’s head spin; losing track of hundreds of thousands of temporary residents; and a record number of newcomers giving up on Canada, including moving to the U.S.

That is because we don’t know why we want to bring 500,000 or more immigrants into Canada every year. Every month brings a new number, as if we were talking about widgets in a giant wheel, rather than human beings whose lives depend on how we welcome them, how we treat them and how we make room for them. There is an almost limitless appetite for moving to Canada, and so, the question is: who do we take in … and why?

Instead, what we have is a mushy articulation of feel-good sentiments that mostly portray us as “better Americans.” We throw in words such as multiculturalism, welcoming, settlement, “all of us are immigrants,” etc., to establish our bona fides, but I’m not sure our national interest is served by sustaining very high levels of immigration — in fact, the highest per capita threshold in the world. All of us know at least one newcomer to Canada.

I recall moving to Ottawa in 2002 and disregarding doomsayers who told me that Toronto was the place to be. My kids were the first kids of colour in our local public school, but since then I have been delighted by the number of brown and Black folks moving into our neighbourhood. It was a simpler time and I knew the immigration department had three basic categories for newcomers: economic migrants like me who arrived based on a points system; a family class for close relatives; and humanitarian admissions for refugees and asylum seekers.

Today, I dare anybody to recite the various streams, sub-streams, super streams and slipstream visa categories that define Canadian immigration. No wonder immigration consultancy is a booming business.

Vance offered a more cogent — if narrow — policy prescription. He predicts that a Donald Trump administration will only admit those who serve the U.S.’s national interest, be it high tech, family unification, low-wage labour, entrepreneurs, international students, etc. Of course, his prescription is influenced by the immigration experience of his wife, Usha Vance. Her parents migrated from India, established successful careers in San Diego, and gave their daughter an Ivy League education. She may one day be the wife of a U.S. vice-president.

That is what immigration is supposed to do: grow citizens to become full participants in a nation’s life.

Instead, what we have here is falling rates of naturalization, diving political participation, and growing reverse migration, in addition to maladies such as foreign interference and communal tensions that are almost exclusively the fallout of immigration. Other than hearing or reading about Canada crossing the 40-million population mark — driven largely by immigration, not Canadian births — when is the last time you read something positive about the prowess of newcomers and the dynamism they bring?

I have three simple prescriptions to determine who gets in and how many. One, the quota of newcomers must be determined by economic conditions and must be re-calibrated the moment things begin to go south. Two, we must progressively increase the proportion of economic arrivals in line with labour market gaps. Lastly, we should recognize that there are 280 million people out there who want to move to a developed country because of the appalling conditions in their home nations. Our intake will always be less than a drop in the bucket.

At this moment of political inflection both in the U.S. and Canada, let’s have an honest conversation about immigration. At its root, our policy must be clear enough so a minister or any spokesperson for the government can clearly articulate the fundamentals of our policy. Let’s close back doors that dupe international students into believing their study visas will result in permanent residence.

In a nutshell, we should encourage those who come from other nations to become the next Usha Vance in Canada. That, to my mind, is an example worth emulating.

George Abraham is an Ottawa-based independent commentator on immigration.

Source: Abraham: J.D. Vance’s lessons on immigration for Canada

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