Rudyard Griffiths: We need to fix our broken immigration system
Posted: April 18, 2008, 6:31 PM by Marni Soupcoff
Rudyard Griffiths
As Stéphane Dion weighs the pros and cons of triggering a federal election over the Conservatives’ proposed changes to the powers of the Immigration Minister, he would do well to reflect on one simple fact: 40% of skilled and professional male immigrants leave Canada permanently within 10 years.
This statistic, garnered from an exhaustive government study conducted earlier this decade, represents a searing indictment of our immigration system. It suggests that contrary to being an immigration success story, Canada’s selection process and settlement policies for newcomers are failing the country and recent immigrants alike, and imperilling our shared future.
The culprit here is the supposedly impartial point system that Canada uses to select immigrants. Adopted in 1967, the point system introduced the meritocratic idea that immigration to Canada should be colour-blind when it comes to the region and ethnicity of applicants. However, starting in late 1980s, a new set of biases began to creep into the point system. Whether it was the result of the management-school mania for fostering “knowledge-based” societies, or a class bias on the part of bureaucrats, the point system has been successively tweaked over the last two decades to favour newcomers with advanced degrees and high-level professional credentials.
The fundamental problem with an immigration system that selects for highly skilled and educated newcomers is that these individuals are chronically underemployed. They find it difficult, if not impossible, to get their foreign degrees or certifications recognized by Canadian institutions and professional groups. They also often have to master a new language and all must compete with Canadian born “white-collar” counterparts who have had the advantages of a lifetime of access to first-world education systems.
Given the economic hurdles that face the ever greater portion of highly skilled and educated newcomers who arrive in Canada each year, it is not surprising that poverty rates among newcomers have shot up over the last two decades.
In the 1980s, approximately one in four recent immigrants had family incomes below Statistics Canada’s low-income cut-off. This number climbed steadily to 31% in 1990s to a whopping 36% in the last decade. By way of comparison, low income rates among the Canadian-born population declined from 17% to 14% during the same quarter-century period.
For far too many newcomers, the decision to vote with their feet and leave Canada permanently is an economic necessity, one born of an immigration selection process disastrously out of whack with the country’s labour needs.
Economists know the system is broken. And more important for Dion and the Liberals, so too do many immigrants. After all, they have experienced first-hand the painful discrepancy between their dreams for a better life in Canada and a country that treats newcomers as a pool of cheap labour.
Yes, the Liberals could use the new powers the Conservatives are proposing giving the immigration minister to whip up anxiety among first-generation Canadians about a general slowdown or freeze in the family-unification immigration stream. This will be a tough row to hoe, however, when the admittance rate for the parents and grandparents of new arrivals is up some 200% from 2005 to 2006.
Of greater danger to the Liberals is a Conservative response in an election campaign that emphasizes the societal benefits that would flow from having the immigration minister prioritize the applications from newcomers who have skills that are in high demand. Canada, despite its many foibles, is still a settler country that values merit and hard work. Neither newcomers nor Canadian-born care much if immigrants have PhDs or are welders. Rather, recent arrivals and the long-settled simply want everyone to have a fair shot a good job and the opportunity to better themselves and their children’s prospects.
Much like the myth of Canada being a nation of peacekeepers, Canadians are waking up to the fact that our image of ourselves as the country that “does” immigration better than anyone else is stale-dated. For the good of our economy and to do right by the quarter of a million citizens we welcome each year, we need to fix our immigration system. This should be a bi-partisan priority for Liberals and Conservatives alike, and not an election issue.
rudyard@dominion.ca
— Rudyard Griffiths is the co-founder of the Dominion Institute.
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2008/04/18/rudyard-griffiths-we-need-to-fix-our-broken-immigration-system.aspx
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