DEBATE OVER THE COST OF IMMIGRATION

Should the government spend ANY money on immigration ? Or should the program be self-funded? The studies discussed below are interesting but they fail to account for the different categories of immigrants: while some immigrants, such as those with pre-arranged employment, contribute immediately to the economy as they have money to spend and pay taxes, others, such as "refugee claimants" are usually an economic drag as tehy make widespread use of services available and may cost tens of thousands of dollars to the various levels of governments: social assistance, legal aid, health care, programs for integration, translation services, cost of refugee determination hearings, etc. one estimate of several years ago pegged that figure at over $70,000 per refugee. The key is to attract those potential immigrants who make an immediate economic contribution.


CTV British Columbia - Each immigrant costs Canada $450 per year: report - CTV News


Each immigrant costs Canada $450 per year: report

Jon Woodward, ctvbc.ca

Updated: Tue. Jul. 26 2011 12:49 PM ET

A team of B.C. economists has cut a conservative think-tank's estimate of the cost of immigration down to size.

Two months after the Fraser Institute estimated that each immigrant on average costs the Canadian government $6,051 per year – a total cost of as much as $23 billion – Mohsen Javdani and Krishna Pendakur of Metropolis British Columbia took another look at their numbers.

Using a wider sample size of immigrants, correcting calculation errors, and using data where it was available rather than estimates, the pair found a far lower annual cost of about $450 per immigrant, or about $2 billion per year.

"We find that there's a significant fiscal effect of immigration," Javdani said. "But we do not conclude that immigrants are a burden to the Canadian economy."

Javdani added Canada needs to find programs that benefit new arrivals to improve immigrants' labour market potential and performance, which would inject money into the Canadian economy.

The authors are both economists at Simon Fraser University.

Taxes vs. benefits

Both studies attempted to figure out whether immigrants fully pay for in taxes the public services that they use, like health care or education.

The Fraser Institute's study was an attempt to gauge whether our system should move to select for would-be immigrants who already have job offers, according to co-author Patrick Grady.

"Canada has to develop a much better system of assessing immigrants coming in," Grady told CTV News in a phone interview. "They can't seem to tell if a person is going to be able to find a job at a good salary or if they'll find employment at their profession and skill."

The Fraser Institute study looked at immigrants arriving after 1987 – about 4 million people – and compared them to average Canadians in the same time frame. The result was a report sharply critical of immigration.

It recommended that Canada only allow immigrants with employment lined up, and keep citizenship only if the immigrants hang onto their jobs.

The Metropolis study, which was given to CTV News before it is to be publicly released, at first set out to correct calculation errors in the Fraser Institute report, which it said were "apparently typographic in origin." Corrected calculations reduced the difference to $5,473.

Where the Fraser Institute estimated property taxes paid by immigrants – 72 per cent of the Canadian average -- the Metropolis team dug up data on immigrant households to find they actually pay about 96 per cent of the Canadian average.

"We prefer data to guesses," the report noted dryly.

The pair also widened their sample size, going back to 1970, which would capture more immigrants in their prime earning years.

"If you look at the longer term, these immigrants are going to contribute through earning higher incomes and paying higher taxes," said author Javdani.

That change reduced the estimated cost to $2,470 per immigrant, the report said.

Instead of comparing the immigrants to the average Canadian – which would include immigrants as well – the Metropolis study compared the immigrants to the Canadian-born, and found immigrants took $554 less in benefits.

They also ignored "public good" government expenditures that are less directly related to the size of the population, such as national defence – a difference of $,1692 per immigrant.

The end result was a much lower annual total cost of $450 per immigrant – about seven per cent of the Fraser Institute figure, and a very different conclusion, said Javdani.

Immigrants tend to be poorer

Javdani said the lesson is that immigrants tend to be poorer than Canadians, and that means we need programs that can help them succeed.

Kanako Heinrichs runs Queensberry Flower Company located in Granville SkyTrain Station. She said when she came from Japan in 2007 with her new Canadian husband, it was difficult to get a job.

"Most immigrants can relate to that," she said, adding that the hardest part was bouncing around through low-paying, dead-end jobs. "It's tough."

She contacted immigrant services agency SUCCESS, and they helped her develop an idea of bringing a Tokyo-style flower shop into a subway station. The project has been a huge success, to the point that she is opening another shop in the Yaletown subway station, which will employ more people.

"Everybody has a different background. In my case, I brought what I know very well over here," she said. "That's what immigrants can do. Brand new ideas, brand new products, new concepts that make the city more exciting."

Javdani said her story is a good example of how difficult it is to filter immigrants. "If you limit settlement in Canada to the people who have a job offer, you limit opportunities that immigration may bring," he said.

SUCCESS CEO Thomas Tam said the $450 per immigrant is an investment that pays off in the connections that immigrants make with the world, and the ideas and opportunities they bring Canada.

"We see thousands of immigrants, they settle down, they find a job, some create jobs for other people," he said.

Grady of the Fraser Institute said the institute stands by its report, with some corrections that he said don't dramatically change the final cost.

He rejected the Metropolis team's choice to go farther back than 1987, because immigrants from before that time largely came from developed countries. Since then, a court decision has required the government to accept applications from all over the world.

"Canadian taxpayers are going to be subsidizing future generations of immigrants if they keep coming at the rate they're coming. It's going to exacerbate the problems that we're going to get with respect to the aging of the population, and it's not going to solve the problem," Grady said.

STUDY ON IMMIGRATION HIGHLIGHTS COSTS

This study has been publicized in all media yesterday. It is very interesting and dispels many myths. The question i show to fix the system in a politically acceptable manner. I was a guest on Sun TV last night to comment on the report. There is absolutely no debate that the system is not working and not bringing the right skills to the labour market, while allowing many unqualified and unemployable individuals to come to Canada.

Immigration costs Canada billions: Fraser Institute Canada News Toronto Sun

Immigration costs Canada billions: Fraser Institute

CHRIS DOUCETTE QMI Agency

First posted: Tuesday, May 17, 2011 6:00:13 EDT AM

TORONTO - Newcomers to the country generally make less money and chip in less in taxes than the national average.


And allowing 250,000 immigrants into the country annually is costing us all billions of dollars each and every year, according to a study by the Fraser Institute.


The study, dubbed Immigration and the Canadian Welfare State, sharply criticizes Canada's current immigration system, using earnings and other figures from the 2005-06 fiscal year reported by 844,476 people in the 2006 Census.


It claims the group as a whole earned on average about $10,000 more and paid about $2,500 more in income taxes annually than those within the sampling who had settled in Canada in the previous 18 years.


The study also found immigrants typically pay a little over $6,000 less in property and sales taxes than the national average.


That means the approximately 3.9 million immigrants who settled in Canada between 1987 and 2004 are shortchanging federal government coffers by between $16.3 billion and $23.6 billion annually, depending on how many of those newcomers have moved back home, emigrated elsewhere or died, the study said.


By comparison, the study points out that the loss would more than cover the $13 billion spent by the feds each year on the environment.
The study also dispelled some commonly held beliefs about newcomers.


The idea that the children of immigrants will repay tomorrow the money lost today on their parents can only come to pass if they earn above average salaries, the study said.


"This outcome is unlikely given that the offspring of immigrants in the past eventually take on all of the characteristics of the average Canadian," the study says.


The study also takes on the notion that immigrants are helping the country by taking menial jobs that most Canadians don't want.


"Immigrants do fill jobs that Canadians don't want and thus benefit the economy but, in the absence of immigration, these jobs would pay higher wages and would be filled by Canadians or eliminated by the application of labour-saving technology," the study states.


"Under these conditions, poverty in Canada would be reduced substantially."


As for changes, the study suggests annual immigration numbers should be increased or decreased, depending largely on "market forces."


The study also recommends Canada be more selective, allowing only newcomers who have employment lined up, offering them citizenship only if they hang onto their job for a set number of years and deporting those who lose their jobs