Guest post: Immigration today in Canada is strictly business
Originally a comment by Artymorty on This period of maximal disruption.
It’s off topic, but you make an interesting point about immigration and benevolence. In Canada, immigrants are not usually poor, and they’re admitted strictly on terms related directly to their suitability to the labour force.
Unlike Western European nations who are saddled with waves of migrants and asylum seekers of all kinds of education, language, and work skills, making their way from the Middle East, Northern Africa and elsewhere, and the US with its porous border with Mexico, Canada has the luxury of naturally strong border protection, flanked on both sides and above by vast oceans, with the US below. This means the topic of immigration is, to us, almost entirely separate from topics like asylum and refugee hosting, and largely uncoupled from cultural debates around xenophobia and racism.
Immigration today in Canada is strictly business, and it’s all about the labour force. Our refugee program aside (which is surprisingly small, given our goody-two-shoes image on the global stage), you can come to Canada from anywhere in the world, so long as you’re already middle-class or have enough qualifications to show you’ll be a productive, skilled labourer when you’re here.
Applicants to come to Canada are scored on a point system, between 0 and 1200 points, almost entirely based around their job qualifications, and what kinds of skills our economy is looking for at any given time. If we need computer coders, we’ll recalibrate the point allocation to give more points to people with computer science degrees; if we need mining specialists, you’ll get a huge points bonus if you’re skilled in that area. Then we set our threshold at however many points we need to get exactly the right number of immagrants into exactly the right areas into our economy. (Today the dial is set at 431. Very low. We’re letting lots of people in. This is causing problems for the housing market, and it’s starting to become a political issue.)
It’s a ruthlessly impersonal system. And it is based 100% purely around the idea, deeply ingrained in Canadians’ psyches, that this country depends on a growing population of skilled labourers to sustain itself. We must always have more productive labourers than retirees, and we must always draw upon immigrants with professional skills to keep the country growing and healthy.
In a country as resource-rich as Canada, that could in theory be sustained for a long time. But realistically, globally, it’s not working. And with AI very suddenly poised to render many of those new Canadian residents’ labour skills irrelevant, tensions at our nation’s borders are sure to get a little dicey.
I remember the huffy indignation that some quarters showed to the 174 Sikh refugees landed by a German ship on the coast of Nova Scotia back in 1987. They were sometimes characterized as queue-jumpers and opportunists, and that they didn’t belong here. That they should have gone through “official channels.” Even then I thought, how ironic considering that many settlers who would eventually become Canadians arrived in pretty much the same way. I recall an editorial cartoon that looked at this event from the perspective of First Nations peoples, as they sat at a desk on a beach, several centuries prior, interviewing perspective European immigrants about their suitability. I thought it was pretty rich that White Canada had conveniently forgotten its own past of “discovery,” undocumented arrival, and subsequent theft of the country from under the feet of its original inhabitants, and that these people complaining about the smuggled Sikhs were volubly, shamelessly, and unironically defending a legacy of thieves.
@Artymorty:
I agree with you that the mantra that a country needs immigrants to sustain the population needs questioning.
In the UK, when immigration is discussed, Channel 4 News (the usual left-leaning media) will pronounce “… immigration boosts GDP …”. (And yes it does, more people, more money changing hands = higher GDP.) But so what? And they never ask about GDP per capita, which isn’t increased.
Net migration into the UK was 745,000 last year, that’s 1% of the population, and we’re not bullding anywhere near the number of new houses for that increase in population (only about 10% in fact). House prices are going through the roof, and young people are still living with parents to age ~ 30 because they can’t afford anything else.
So Scenario A: High immigration, high house prices. A young family can only afford a house if both parents work. They then pay a huge amount for childcare. That’s three salaries; lot’s of money changing hands. High GDP! That’s great! “Thriving economy” trumpets the media.
Scenario B: Low immigration, low house prices. A young family can afford a house on one salary. The other parent looks after the kids (no need to pay a lot for childcare), enjoying having lots of time with them (and they have as much spare money after costs as in A). But: Only one salary? Not much money changing hands? Economy in the doldrums, sighs the media.
And yet, most young families would likely prefer B. Their quality of life is likely better. And isn’t that the goal?
But you won’t find any such discussion in the left-leaning mainstream media. A pros-and-cons discussion of immigration is not allowed, there aren’t allowed to be any cons. There’s only the mantra: “we need immigrants for the economy”.
That’s quite interesting. My name must be on some kind of blacklist, because I’ve always found that legally entering Canada is an incredible hassle. As anyone who is my facebook friend knows, I’m heavily involved with search & rescue. We recently had a mission callout in Point Roberts, which means that I had to transit through Canada. Despite all of this being part of the official record and easily verifiable with the Whatcom County sheriff, and despite the fact that I had my callout backpack in the back seat and was displaying my sheriff’s ID badge, I was still delayed at the crossing for over an hour while they searched my truck with dogs and interviewed me. I was completely cooperative the entire time; I know better than to be a problem to men with uniforms and guns. I tell you what, though: at this point I would no sooner willingly visit Canada than I would Iran.
Coming back to the USA took no more than 60 seconds, and I even got a “welcome home!” from the guard.