Oreopoulous and Skuterud: Once the envy of the world, Canada’s immigration system now lies dismantled

Another good sophisticated critique of current immigration policy:

…Labour market earnings are our best indicator of the value of workers’ skills to the economy. Studies of earnings reveal that not all skills are valued equally and not all schools are equally good at attracting and producing skills. Yet in screening applicants, our current immigrant selection system ignores the schools, fields of study and academic grades of applicants.

We’re completely ignoring the lessons of history. 2001 saw the introduction of a new Immigration Act that doubled down on the human capital model of economic immigration. Canada’s annual immigration rate was kept at a steady and predictable 0.8 per cent of the population, mandatory premigration language testing and credential assessment were introduced, and a new selection system regularly selected applicants with the highest predicted future earnings.

The result? After decades of deteriorating immigrant earnings, research from Statistics Canada and a separate study by the Parliamentary Budget Officer shows unambiguous improvement in the average earnings of new immigrants up to 2019.

Why are we now undoing everything we learned?

Philip Oreopoulous is Distinguished Professor in Economics of Education Policy at the University of Toronto and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Mikal Skuterud is a professor in economics at University of Waterloo, director of Canadian Labour Economics Forum and the Rogers Phillips Scholar of Social Policy at the C.D. Howe Institute.

Source: Once the envy of the world, Canada’s immigration system now lies dismantled