I think the immigration question is one that's quite simple. If we're interested in diversity, we should keep it diverse. As in, we should encourage immigration from a variety of sources, not just the usual suspects.
As well, I would support a form of limited immigration with quotas for the largest sources [India, China, etc]. We should promote domestic birth rates through tax friendly measures for families, and make it obvious that we want to encourage our birth rate.
My biggest problem with immigration really only has to do with integration, and cultural infringement. Brampton, ON has become nothing like the Canadian town I grew up in. I don't even really feel like I belong in my own country at times.
Raphael,
If the Harper government has its way, it will be the Province who decides on the newcomer they want. This means more North Africans, Lebanese, and Congolese in Quebec. More Chinese in Sask.
Limited immigration for India and China? Hey, they are the ones who past the test in the stringent criteria adopted by Finley and Solberg. Not to mention the continued promotion of guest workers coming to work in agricultural farms in Haldimand-Norfolk and Medicine Hat.
Wake me up when the future leader of the CPC advocates building a fence along the 49th parallel. Or that the Credit River is drenched with blood.
Might as well get Solberg and Finley to support the voluntarily repatriation of immigrations while you are at it. Show CPC election ads suggesting that immigrants should not come to Canada and struggle to make a living as taxi drivers.
Immigration is an interesting subject.
"it has never been clear to me why we should have the right to strip less developed nations of their educated middle classes so as to provide tax serfs and taxidrivers to Canadians."
As an HR professional I gotta tell you there is NOTHING I would like more than to meet with the yahoos in our embassies around the world that tell engineers and IT professionals "oh, there are LOTS of jobs for your skills" and rubber stamp them.
Before anything can be done about our over-educated taxi-drivers, we need to rip down the barriers between provinces and have ONE body determining whether or not someone's degree is recognized and whether or not their experience is "real." Like the laws of physics change from country to country or something. Bridges recently have fallen in Canada, the US and Pakistan (or was it India?). Prove to me that the engineer that underdesigned the bridge in Minneapolis was educated outside North America (I bet you can't). Or that the construction company that cut corners in Montreal was staffed by anything other than your basic WASP (or Catholic for that matter). Show me the tunnels collapsing in China or Japan - where are they?
They don't exist other than in the minds of Canadian engineers that want to see a resume with "Canadian or North American experience."
Alternatively, show me software designed in India that works worse than the latest release from Microsoft (you probably can't).
FWIW, a Professional Engineer registered in Ontario has to work for a year under an Albertan engineer in order to be deemed a "professional" in Alberta and vice versa. What's up with that? Yes, standards on roads or bridges vary from province to province but the basic laws of physics remain the same. Alberta wants bridges to be painted (they last longer that way, apparently), Ontario does not. Whoopee. How long would it take the average taxi-driving-engineer to figure out THAT?
Java is Java, whether the code is written in India or the US. It's a LANGUAGE for writing computer code, and it works the same way whether your native tongue is Punjabi or French or English or Spanish. But no, gotta have that "Canadian" experience to get a job.
It's absolutely ridiculous, and the bulk of it is driven by xenophobes who can't be bothered to take a bit of extra time to train a new Canadian in our business practices.
Not that this is a pet peeve, or anything.
Grace's The Ambler site appears to be down. Damn, I'm starting to feel like Zeus. : )
I've never understood the mindset that starts with a childhood mental photograph of an ethnic mix, and ensrhines that into a divinely ordained, permanent Ideal - as though six thousand years of human immigration and the cross fertilization of cultures, ideas (and people) achieved perfection in our childhood, and should stop NOW.
Twas ever thus.
I have more comments on this issue than time to write them down, but I'll say a couple of things now.
First, we are closer to having a civil debate on immigration than the Americans are. (I believe people have the right to be uncivil, but it's not usually a good thing.) Practically everyone agrees that we have a right to control entry (in other words, a right to have an immigration policy) and that our policy should reflect both our interests and our values.
Secondly, immigration is really a secondary issue; the primary issues are how we deal with our future demographics: workforce skills, population levels and age structure, and - yes - culture and politics.
To expand a little:
- One of our postwar immigration policies was to sleaze off skilled tradesmen from "Nordic" countries (trained at their native countries' expense), so we could afford to neglect skilled-trades apprenticeships. Now we're doing the same with India and China. The ethical issues here are more complex than unreflective immigration-boosters seem to think.
- Labour shortages aren't all bad. For one thing, they're likely to reduce income disparities, as well-paid blue-collar jobs make a comeback. Disadvantaged minorities would likely benefit disproportionately.
- A smaller population is no disadvantage in itself, the problem is an elderly population with an excessive ratio of dependents to workers. But this will sort itself out: many older people will have to work, at least part-time, and - dammit - our overall standard of living can fall. We will still be Canada with a couple of decades of shrunken incomes, if that's what we face.
- Culture and politics? Anyone looking at the European social democracies (all "Nordic" by the way) surely suspects that culture has something to do with their successes (and failures, too, btw). That is, political systems characterised by a high degree of consensus and trust may not be self-maintaining, but reliant on the underlying culture - both the characteristics of the culture and its relative homogeneity. This is something that should be discussable without too much ranting.
I don't have a lot to add yet. Save to say I appreciate Dawg's putting this question up. We are a long way from having Canadian politicians discuss immigration in any but an entirely positive way; but it is a conversation which Canada needs to have.
Candace, I am astonished by the interprovincial barriers and amazed at the international ones. You are dead right, physics is physics, java is java.
IP, some great points (and not just because you seem to agree with me). I am not sure that our standard of living will drop appreciably if we have a static population. People will work longer and it is possible that the current housing asset bubble will deflate - but would that be a bad thing? - and we would substitute technology for people. We would see - and are already seeing here in Victoria - businesses which depend on low cost labour shrink. But I don't see it as catastrophic to the overall economy to have fewer fast food restaurants or to pay non-union check out clerks a dollar or two an hour more.
More later.
Jay: "...Candace, I am astonished by the interprovincial barriers and amazed at the international ones... "
Do you remember a few months back, when the sky was going to fall because AB & BC signed a "free trade" agreement so that over the next 2 years, regulations and standards would be merged? Some of those screaming the loudest & longest were the unions. Because an AB plumber can't work in BC unless he writes an exam (and pays) for an interprovincial ticket. Because apparently the laws of physics, as related to the trades, ALSO change from province to province.
Same with teachers, etc.
Every professional and trade association has a vested interest in maintaining this stupidity, because if ALL the Engineering Associations combined into one, guess how many people would be out of a job? Same with the various Teachers' federations etc. Although realistically speaking, only the top levels of the associations would be redundant, you'd still need offices across the country to deliver the service (of ensuring that engineers or teachers or plumbers or carpenters across the country meet a certain standard).
Here's a link to an old Coyne post about this. I remember being quite bugged by his stance which struck me as rather hysterical.
The primary issue in the immigration debate is:
for the CPC: What happens if we cannot protect our citizens from the threat within? They start blowing up bombs on Canada's transit system.
for the Grits: Have we integrated our immigrants enough so they don't start planting bombs on Canada's transit system?
Jay, for me immigration becomes a crucial issue that needs to be discussed soon. I am hoping that Harper may bring it up as part of the reasonable accomodation discourse. At the same time, I believe that the multicultural fabric of our society is becoming broken by the minute.
Even though I am a Liberal party member, I support a cradle to grave welfare system similar to the ones in Europe. This means an end to the cheap labour, free trade policies that Harper sympathized with. Immigration numbers at the rate Finley and Solberg are promoting will lead to a broken social welfare state. Thus my preferred candidates for the US Presidency are John Edwards and Mike Huckabee.
Dawg, about the immigration debate, I find most Conservatives in Canada to be nothing but shrills. Grace is no Peter Brimelow nor even Pat Buchanan. Kate at SDA does not even have the same intellect as any member from the Conservative Monday club, let alone Nick Griffin of the UK BNP. Canada's commentators are quite amateurish and blogosphere unfortunately reflects that.
mushroom:
"for the CPC: What happens if we cannot protect our citizens from the threat within? They start blowing up bombs on Canada's transit system."
Are you sure that's the CPC's position? Or are you assuming that 5-feet-in-her-mouth and SDA commenters write the party's positions?
"for the Grits: Have we integrated our immigrants enough so they don't start planting bombs on Canada's transit system?"
Not being a Grit, I can't speak to that other than to say that from the outside looking in, it doesn't look like that to me.
"Even though I am a Liberal party member, I support a cradle to grave welfare system similar to the ones in Europe. This means an end to the cheap labour, free trade policies that Harper sympathized with."
Huh? Looking at the CPC 2006 Platform, can you point out where (page 38 for immigration and 46 for international trade) the support for "cheap labour" is? Because I'm not seeing that. And lest we forget, the Liberal Party of Canada was against NAFTA before they were for it (like the GST etc) so you may want to re-examine your lifelong Liberalness and see if it's still working for you.
Looking at Dawg's request for a civilized discussion, do you think that bringing in such stereotypical and political comments to the table will help or hinder that? Is there a reason we can't have a conversation WITHOUT mentioning political parties or their leaders and what we don't like about them?
"Is there a reason we can't have a conversation WITHOUT mentioning political parties or their leaders and what we don't like about them?"
Apologies Candace, I am not one who has the expertise of discussing immigration without the politics involved. Ideologies help shape the immigration issue. The economic aspects, well, I am ambivalent about it.
I am more interested in the cultural aspects of immigration. Have we integrated our newly arrived citizens enough? Will second generation children of immigrant families fulfil the desires of their parents? What about the cultural clashes between parents and children?
These are the sociological aspects of immigration that I am working on for academic research purposes (working on Attachment Theory, if you want to know in depth). Putting political stereotypes may be an emotional relief to some of the frustrations I am encountering in my research. That, I apologize again fully.
Currie,
"it has never been clear to me why we should have the right to strip less developed nations of their educated middle classes so as to provide tax serfs and taxidrivers to Canadians."
And it is unclear to me why you would use such a collectivist premise to describe what is, in effect, the process of autonomous individuals choosing to improve their lot by moving from one area to another as some sort of a resource extraction problem.
The impacts on the welfare state are a red herring, IMO. If it is in fact unsustainable when too many or not enough people breed, or, too many or not enough people move, then that's a problem with your welfare state, not the breeding or the moving.
mushroom: "I am more interested in the cultural aspects of immigration. Have we integrated our newly arrived citizens enough? Will second generation children of immigrant families fulfil the desires of their parents? What about the cultural clashes between parents and children?"
A related question - has the receiving culture made an effort to actually be welcoming? The company I work for has recently started cross-cultural training for managers (and eventually most if not all supervisors and any staff interested), as well as providing 10-wk "intro to business practices and comunication in Canada" (to that effect, anyway) for staff new to Canada. The training may well become standard for all new hires that are also new to Canada. And before anyone gets all stressed about it, that includes new immigrants from the UK, Australia, etc.
Speaking the same language doesn't guarantee that the words have the same meanings. For example, "project manager" can mean anything from running a small project with 1-2 people to program management, running multibillion dollar projects via multiple project managers, with little hands-on responsibility. Clearly defining that in the interview and when setting expectations upon starting work is essential for everyone's success.
If we refuse to adapt our way of communicating to newcomers, and insist on "them" making all the effort, we extend the length of time it takes for them to assimilate. Conversely, if "they" come here and refuse to make an effort to figure out Canadian business and cultural practices (i.e. there is no interest in assimilation), that won't work either.
As for the cultural clashes between parents and children, those tend to be universal, do they not? Although I'd agree that additional strains are likely placed on relationships within families following various religions with well-defined/entrenched expectations based on gender.
Glad you are taking on the bigots Dawg. But is there really anything wrong with a declining population? All developed countries are shrinking in population and the sooner the underdeveloped are allowed to find their own pathway to a better life for the majority, they too, will find their population shrinking. With 6 billion of us, and a possible 8 billion in the next 20 years or so, population decline, through lower birth rate is something to cheer, not fear. Furthermore, the decline in the number of work-age wage slaves might be the very issue that allows us to create a more egalitarian society, than the one we now have. We (and by this I mean all developed nations) are certainly wealthy enough to support a large aged population, but that would mean changing our priorities, favouring people over corporate welfare, militarism and other forms of waste. Geriatric socialism here we come?
Jay Jardine encapsulates my position on this nicely. Immigration in and of itself is nothing more than a social engineering experiment, using the the powers of the state to prevent what would be completely natural migration patterns, all to protect some idea of "culture" or ethnicity.
But what that really does is prevent me from freely inviting workers, professionals and guests to enter my property and work or visit. What that can do, and does, is create the very labour shortages we decry here.
On top of it all is the state enforced cartels that Candace must deal with. Each Professional association, be it PEs or the CMA or Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons, has been granted monopoly over who may practice and relies on the state to enforce that. Meaning, once again, purposeful labour shortages (doctors, for instance) and protectionist rules to prevent the kinds of competition that would improve quality and reduce costsprices for services. (see Dean Baker's "Conservative Nanny State" for lots of other examples)
Economically immigration quotas make no sense.
I can only see the "culture protection" aspect, and in that sense, I agree with Balbulican. A culture will survive on its own merits, and as much as our so-called culture changes due to immagration, the immagrants culture changes due to exposure to ours - tis a two way street. Hence the reason the vast majority of Canadian Muslims, like the vast majority of Jews, Chinese, Ukranians etc before them, are different than where they come from, and support the values of democracy and freedom and tolerance that marks Canada.
Maybe to help defeat extremism we should have more immigration not less.
Dawg,
The coming demographics crunch is one of the few things that keep me up nights. I talked a bit about it here.
I see a big problem in terms of health care, but unlike some commentators, this is not a problem isolated to state insured health care. Jay suggests that it is an assumption that the healthy and young among us will suddenly have to take care of a lot more ailing and infirm seniors, but the fact still is that these seniors are going to get older, and eventually they will require convalescent care. And well before then, the economic choices they'll be making will be altering the shape of our economy. Has anybody done a study of what the economic impact is of a large amount of cash (RRSPs) coming out of savings and being spent? Not to mention the skills shortages you mention.
I'm with you: the only way, in my opinion, to prevent our economy from being twisted out of shape in the next twenty years, is to decrease the average age of our population, and immigration is the only way I know of doing this. It's too late to consider encouraging a rapid increase in the birth rate; in two years time our first baby boomers will reach retirement age, and I also feel that it is immoral of us to consider increasing our population through encouraged natural births when the rest of the world is so severely overpopulated.
Jay is right, there are moral questions over "stripping" developing nations of their educated workers, but pragmatically, this has been the secret of Canada's success from the moment of its birth. Natural births didn't open up the last best West. And it's not like we're dragging people out of their homes in Africa or India. A lot of these people _want_ to come here. The same demographic problem that we face is also an opportunity, much in the same way our prairies were when we offered the Last Best West to Europeans. We only need to streamline the immigration process, with a stronger focus on making it easier for those skilled labourers to make a good life here.
Candace,
The book I am reading now on Attachment Theory is "From Pain to Violence" by the psychologist Felicity De Zulueta. She had updated her book shortly after the 7/7 bombing in London. Her work on immigrant families in the UK focus on the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder which can spiral into terrorism.
We tend to give platitudes to most immigrants due to their hard work and entrepreneurship. However, we do not see the effects that systemic racism and poverty have on immigrant families. For example, it is easy to condemn honour killings. But hanging on to past traditions may be the consolation one desperately tries to hold on to when the cruel world encircles and smothers them.
I can go on and provide reasons why young second generation immigrants in the UK become jihadis in Pakistan. But this is fuelling the fire of SDA diehards. With regards to the management theories one use in the field of Human Resources, I put this into discourse. Words and language that are used to confuse and obfuscate, unless one does a phenomenological study which one cannot fit under a HaloScan comment.
I was an immigrant in my own country for a few years, when I lived in what was then the NWT. My community had a population of roughly 85% Inuit, and the dominant language (nearly 30 years ago now) was Inuktitut. Politically, of course, it was Canada - culturally, it was as foreign to me as Mongolia or Saudi Arabia.
I tried to be a good immigrant and fit in. I read as much as I could about the history, culture and people. I began language training, and after a couple of years I could stumble through a basic conversation, if the Inuk I was talking to was patient enough (and they inevitably were). There were some elements of the dominant culture (theirs) that I managed to adopt, because they made perfect sense in the context. Hunting. A certain flexibility about time (in a hunting culture, you need to rest when you can so you can work without a break when the caribou are there). A new way of working with a group (Slowly. Everyone has his say. Don't move on until there's authentic consensus.) That was their world; it had worked for them for a long time. I was a guest there, and it behooved me to fit in.
BUT...I still needed the support of "my" culture, "my" community. I was lucky - I was working for an Inuit organization, and I was immediately welcomed to many homes. But there were teachers, nurses, RCMP officers, and other transients who never connected with the community at all, except in the workplace. They tended to hang out together, drink a fair bit, and complain about "the Inuks". And even though my main sense of connection was with the Inuit community, I still needed to hang out with people whose language and cultural referents I knew inside out, whose sense of humour was the same as mine, whose thousand non-verbal language cues I understood. Being immersed in another culture was exhausting, intellectually and emotionally, and I frequently needed to retreat. And the Inuit could not have been more welcoming, more supportive, more understanding of strangers - there was no Herouxville up North.
So I kept those aspects of my culture that I couldn't shake, or that retained their value in my current circumstances - and I adapted to the extent I could.
That experience is relevant to this discussion because we in North America are, to some extent, in the same position as the Inuit were. We've been isolated by geography from all but small incursions by other cultures, waves of arrival we can handily absorb. But that's over. The world is moving toward fewer borders, not more; greater mobility, not less.
Will it be a painless transition? Not on your life. Ask the Inuit.
*round of applause*
Carry on, folks. This is tremendously interesting. I am enjoying being a spectator here.
mushroom: "However, we do not see the effects that systemic racism and poverty have on immigrant families."
Sadly, the scary parts of town here in Edmonton tend to be populated by Aboriginals, with some new Canadians thrown in for good measure, although I think they are short-term residents and move to a nicer part of town as soon as they can. We don't have a "Jane & Finch" area, or at least its not so clearly defined. And even the scruffy parts of town are being upgraded & renovated with the housing crisis we've got going on.
With all the money flying around in Alberta these days, we're not seeing a lot of poverty or unemployment - I think provincially we're at 3.5-4% so financially, at least, new immigrants are doing okay here.
Having gotten heavily involved in international recruiting lately, I have discovered that there are multitudes of ex-pat communities and clubs in the city, so it seems that opportunities exist for connecting with others from your home country.
As for my experiences, living in the US for a couple of years as a teen was pretty eye-opening, because we are NOT the same as our neighbors to the south. Not as extreme a difference as you are talking about, Balb, but noticeably different, and I remember getting teary-eyed the first time I heard the Canadian national anthem after returning.
more later, daughter is punting me from the computer
As balbulican rightly points out, fitting into a new culture and language is hard. Very hard. And for a good portion of Canadian immigrants that is exactly the steep path they are trying to climb.
There is, however, another alternative which - for want of a better term - I would describe as voluntary segregation. This has been a feature of Canada for years. The area I lived in when I lived in Toronto had been Irish Catholic, became heavily Jewish, then Italian, then a mix of Portuguese and, as I was leaving was shifting to Chinese/Vietnamese all the while being the heart of the arts and hipster demographic.
Parts of Vancouver and most of Richmond are now overwhelmingly Chinese.
This works fine so long as the second generation are able to break out otherwise it becomes involuntary segregation. (As I would argue Jane and Finch has become.)
The great worry about mass immigration is that instead of one or two generations to full participation in Canadian society we could get the situation which seems to have arisen in England and France where three or four generations in, immigrants are essentially stuck in their own areas and cultures. Worse, stuck in a way which isolates them from the opportunities the host culture offers and often condemns them to poverty.
This can be exacerbated by cultural and/or religious beliefs which see the host culture as corrupt, ungodly and inferior.
I think we have to consider out immigration policy from a much broader perspective than a purely economic one. And one perspective I think is vital is the Canadian and international experience when it comes to particular cultures capacity and willingness to adapt to host cultures and assimilate the values of those cultures.
Jay Jardine, I use the collectivist concept in deference to our host 
But also because that is how immigration policy in Canada actually, functionally, works. We set targets for particular countries rather than for individuals.
In a perfect, libertarian, world where everybody paid their own freight, I suspect an individually targeted open immigration policy would make sense. Especially if things like "family class" immigration were eliminated.
However, I suspect there are a fair number of developing nations which are less than thrilled to see expensively - and usually at the expense of the state - educated people leave for the greater opportunities in Canada. Again, from a libertarian perspective, boo hoo. However, if Canada's argument for mass immigration is primarily economic is there any particular reason we should be allowed to free ride on the educational and training expenditures of others?
"This can be exacerbated by cultural and/or religious beliefs which see the host culture as corrupt, ungodly and inferior..."
Or by host culture beliefs which see the newcomer culture in the same light, of course.
I am a first generation immigrant.
The current mix of federal and provincial immigration policies is a horrendous mess. I currently live on the east coast and most immigrants here come through two programs: they are either refugees settled here by the federal government or immigrants accepted through the Provincial Nominee Program.
I don’t know what’s worse. The refugees are dumped in a small community with minimal resources to help them integrate into the society. They are provided with a year of language training usually through a non-profit organization dependent on federal and provincial funding and fundraising. Those organizations barely make it from year to year. During the language training, the refugees have subsidized housing and receive financial assistance. After their year is up, they are pretty much on their own. These are people who often have valuable skills, but no education to back those skills up. For example, I volunteered with an Iranian family where the father used to work for decades as an optician in Iran, but had no formal education and therefore had no hope of doing the same work here. He ended up working night shifts in a fish canning factory miles away from the city which eventually destroyed his back. Many of those immigrants also come from volatile regions where they were under constant threat and they suffer from conditions ranging from poor health to full blown PTSD. In small Maritime towns there is simply nobody equipped with a skill set to provide psychological help these people need in order to lead anything resembling a normal life. Once their mandatory two years of living where the government told them to live are up they usually move to one of the big centers where they will receive support from their own immigrant communities. As a program aimed at helping the demographics of smaller provinces, it’s simply a failure.
The Provincial Nominee Program allows immigrants with about $120,000 in cash that they are prepared to invest in a local business to jump the queue. They also often have no English or French language skills and are vulnerable to various scam artists calling themselves immigration consultants and ripping them off. (Google it for details...)
The second thing I am a bit peeved about is the notion that it’s only the immigrants who need to integrate into the society. I am sorry, but integration is a two way street. I lived in Alberta and in New Brunswick. I am not a visible minority, but I do have an accent. I also have a Canadian undergrad degree and a European post-grad diploma. Applying for jobs as an immigrant is a whole different ball game. I have heard everything from “We prefer to hire New Brunswickers” to “It takes three generations to become a Maritimer” to “Can you write in English?” to a lady in southern Alberta, who became much nicer to me in a face to face interview because she realized I am not an East Indian and openly said so. I shudder to think what immigrants who are
First, Bojan, welcome! And what an interesting blog.
Second, there are horse's asses in every nation. I'm sorry you had to run into them in Canada.
Third, I completely agree that it is madness and very likely cruelty to drop an Iranian family in the middle of a small Maritime town or a little village on the prairie to sink or swim. Similarly, ignoring foreign credentials and uncredentialled skills makes no sense at all.
Just getting these sorts of things right could make the immigrant experience in Canada much, much better. However, can we get that stuff right for 250,000 people a year? Apparently not so, perhaps, we should be looking at reducing those numbers.
And don't get me started on the buy-a-passport scam - not only is it corrupt to its core but it creates all manner of perverse market effects.
Bojan:
Haloscan imposes a character limit, alas. Could you re-post the last portion of your message?
Welcome aboard, by the way. I second Jay's comment about your blog.
Thanks Jay and Dawg. I've been an avid reader for some time...
The rest of that comment said something along the lines that I shudder to think what visible minorities experience on a daily basis. I also said that I believe Canada has to decide what it is that it wants to accomplish with its immigration policy. There is no sense in pretending that this is not a political and ideological decision. Of course it is. At the same time it's also a decision that profoundly affects thousands of people - immigrants and their host communities alike. Immigration policy is always going to be social engineering. Make sure that you do as little harm as possible.
That's about it.
Jay, I don't think that it is the number that is unmanageable. The whole system is flawed. The number is just something somebody pulled out of a hat. Granted, it would be easier to manage 100,000 people, but they would still be here because of an aimless immigration policy that is ultimately going to fail most of them.
Bojan,
Thanks for addressing the PTSD issue for immigrant families. Leaving Iran as a refugee and working in a Maritime fish factory are what many consider to be tolerance. The humiliation, stress, and the dire poverty of this situation are something many refuse to consider. I don't want to talk about government policies per se. But, maybe Canadians need to get angry and say that we should not want our immigrants to fail and live a life of shame in a land of so-called freedom and opportunity.
Jay,
Thanks for making the point of voluntary segregation. While one talks about a crisis community such as Jane and Finch, a neo-con pundit would focus on places such as Mississauga, Brampton, Delta, Surrey, and Scarborough. Raphael, who has not appeared to comment after my diatribe, would say negative things about these new towns and is threatening "white flight". But while CBC producers like to make us laugh with Little Mosque in the Prairie, these suburbs are where our cultural fabric are facing the most stress. In Jane and Finch, people there fight to survive amid senseless violence. In Canada's suburbs, our immigrants are facing pain and are suffering silently. Yes, they have worked hard to live a comfortable surburban life. But to achieve it the immigrant family have faced years of racism and humiliation. Eventually, a very small minority of them will fight back. This response is similar to the attacks of the Baader-Meinhof in the 1970s. A revolt against the dominant capitalist establishment culture by the lower middle class and upwardly mobile working class. The exception is that the perpetrators are of a visible minority and have an affiliation to a non-Christian religion.
Bojan, you have an interesting story. However, the PNP you talk about "The Provincial Nominee Program allows immigrants with about $120,000 in cash that they are prepared to invest in a local business to jump the queue." is quite different from the one I'm familiar with in AB, or maybe I only know the part that says a company can nominate a new immigrant in order to help them jump the line and the financial piece also exists.
"...a lady in southern Alberta, who became much nicer to me in a face to face interview because she realized I am not an East Indian and openly said so..." Oh dear. Please accept my apology on behalf of Albertans.
Slightly off topic, THESE are the sorts of things that the HRCs should be hearing about not cartoons, but that's a different thread.
I find it interesting that nobody has mentioned that, for many immigrants to Canada, we are but a rest stop to the United States. I know of at least half a dozen techies with whom I used to work who took off to the US as soon as they could.
James,
I know more than a half a dozen techies whose families have been in Canada for 200 years that did the same thing. Again, if bettering your life, both economically and socially means moving to Canada or the US, where you are welcomed and wanted by an employer or community, why should the government have any say in the matter?
Good comments all round.
I reject the libertarian argument for unrestricted immigration. Pushed to its logical conclusion, living standards for unskilled workers in Canada would drop to the point where impoverished, rural families in Bangladesh wouldn't find it worth their while to scrape up the money for a Dakha-Toronto plane ticket. This may be someone's idea of Utopia, but it isn't mine.
More plausibly, high levels of unskilled immigration will push us towards a Brazil-like society. I know a little bit about Brazil. It's not a horrible country. It's very much like most civilizations have been most of human history: an elite conscious of its superiority and masses who know their place. But it's a vision of society that negates what we in Canada (and the West generally) have built over the last century and a half: an essentially middle-class society that - despite many failures and shortcomings - provides for the welfare and dignity of all levels of society.
Candace, Bojan and others are quite right about credentialing and so on. To some extent, credentialism is a sort of trade-union tactic, restricting the labour pool in order to keep up incomes for the lucky insiders. Expect more of this in a high-immigration society. Everyone wants to get their lawns cut cheap, but nobody wants to start billing clients at a lower rate. Expect a shift of income away from the unorganized and unskilled towards the knowledge workers - hmm, exactly the kind of guys who tend to declare themselves libertarians.
We should of course cut back unnecessary credentialism, but it will be an uphill battle in an increasingly bureaucratized society. I'm in favour of persuading the regulators to recognize more foreign educational credentials, provided it's done realistically - all systems of secondary education are not equal. Apprenticeship requirements (as for Alta. engineers) sometimes have a point; if so, maybe the state should encourage the provision of apprenticeship opportunities. I wouldn't want to interfere with private businesses' informal evaluation of foreign experience, except maybe for the most blatant violations. In the long run, if Company X fails to hire qualified immigrants due to ignorance or prejudice, Company Y, which follows more enlightened policies, will reap the benefit.
One thing we should do is tell applicants about the regulatory barriers they may face. Sometimes people come over and are quite shocked at not being able to practise their professions.
Jay: I don't know that we will actually face a drop in living standards due to the demographic crisis. I had been running some estimates for Western Europe, and they are pretty certain to. I'm just saying that if necessary we can take it - we can have a decent society at $15K per capita GDP as well as at $30K. James: You and many others hold up immigration as the sure-fire (or perhaps, last-ditch?) remedy for the demographic crisis, but there are reasons to think it
Hit the Haloscan wall again, fortunately, on the very last sentence of my post, which should have ended as follows"
"... there are reasons to think it may not work or may not be enough."
While I'm at it, I'll add one more point: I'm sure we all agree that we don't want to end up with marginalized, ghettoized immigrant communities that have massive social problems. Bad for them, bad for the rest of us. None of us want that, but some of us advocate policies that can be expected to produce that sort of thing.
Mike: I don't have a problem with Canada being a "stepping stone", except that it stinks of Canada being merely a "stepping stone". And it devalues my Canadian passport somewhat if my society is seen as basically an American waiting room. Of course, as a capitalist pig, I guess I'm somewhat responsible for the "global economy" that allows this...
No, the government shouldn't have any say, UNLESS taxpayers are out some bucks. Then again, we spend oodles on education for some who skip away anyway.
Damn, Dawg, I'm not used to thinking...very much out of practice.
Mushroom: I just cannot agree with some of your points.
"In Canada's suburbs, our immigrants are facing pain and are suffering silently. Yes, they have worked hard to live a comfortable surburban life. But to achieve it the immigrant family have faced years of racism and humiliation."
This strikes me as a vast exaggeration. If you have some evidence it back it up (opinion surveys for example), I'd be interested in seeing it.
"Eventually, a very small minority of them will fight back. This response is similar to the attacks of the Baader-Meinhof in the 1970s. A revolt against the dominant capitalist establishment culture by the lower middle class and upwardly mobile working class. The exception is that the perpetrators are of a visible minority and have an affiliation to a non-Christian religion."
Baader-Meinhof? Good God. Do you really expect Baader-Meinhof-style terrorism from the Canadian Muslim community. Dawg! We've got an Islamophobe here! With the exception of Andreas Baader (a highschool drop-out and criminal) the members of B-M were typical middle-class student radicals of the late 60s, who, disillusioned by the collapse of radical movement, turned to violence and nihilism. It's been a long time since I heard anything positive about them, though they seem to have some fans in Wikipedia. Here's a good article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europ...ope/
6314559.stm
Spread the thread: "Immigration: What is to be done?"
Mark
Ottawa
Mark:
Thanks for that. One of the best threads in living memory.
I have several recently-naturalised friends who would love to sue the pants off immigration authorities at various Canadian embassies. Candace is correct, sometimes the embassy immigration folks flood the country with skills not entirely in high demand, plus the Canadian professional labour pool has many invisible barriers to entry that you only find out about once you're out on interviews. (i.e. it's nice that you're an M.Eng and have a decade of experience in aircraft avionics design, but we don't consider your degree to be on par with ours, and where is your Canadian work experience?)
If we could streamline the professional accreditation process for new immigrants, life would be far less frustrating for them and Canadian businesses.
"But is there really anything wrong with a declining population? All developed countries are shrinking in population..." -- Larry Gambone | Homepage | 01.26.08 - 9:18 pm
Declining population is not sustainable. There are not enough young people to support the system on which the older people have come to rely. This gets worse as the population ages.
No civilization has yet survived once their fertility rate drops to 1.2 (I think I am remembering that correctly). Many countries have counteracted that problem somewhat through immigration, but allowing adults to immigrate will only increase the median age. The country will continue to age.
Not all developed countries are shrinking in population, but most are. Most have a fertility rate below 2.1 which is the replacement rate.
Larry, you suppose that this is a good thing that world populations decline. As you point out, it is the developed nations that are going first. What will happen when the developed nations collapse?
Many of the developing nations are much older than Canada, the USA, and Australia. Why have those developing nations not become developed? Why do people want to leave those areas for the developed countries? People leave to find a better life.
I understand there is a problem of ghettos. My inlaws have done well at integrating. Their kids were easily able to 'break out' such that many of the institutions that the elders created are gone. I did my part to help. I took a language class and practiced for years with my kids, so that my kids would be able to keep some of the Scandanavian heritage. It is quite correct that both sides must make an effort to welcome and help each other with the integration; however, that integration is important.
I don't want Canada to have no-go zones like France has.
John M Reynolds
mushroom: "In Canada's suburbs, our immigrants are facing pain and are suffering silently. Yes, they have worked hard to live a comfortable surburban life. But to achieve it the immigrant family have faced years of racism and humiliation."
On the bright side, they haven't had their homes and businesses taken from them and been interned like the Ukrainians and Japanese in Canada in early parts of the 20th century. Nor have they been unable to bring their wives and families with them like the Chinese brought over for cheap railroad labour.
I'm not saying that their experiences don't count, I'm pointing out that it was ever thus, and likely not just here but in other countries built via immigration. Ellis Island, anyone?
Candace,
Comparing Muslim Canadians to the Ukrainians, Japanese, and the Chinese and saying that they didn't have their business confiscated is like saying they should be fortunate to get Permanent Resident Status. In the year 2008, we should be moving closer to a global, borderless society where imagined concepts such as nation states and countries are used to divide rather than unite.
Intellectual Pariah,
I don't have opinion surveys but De Zuleuta's book I recommended in a previous blogpost is a good read. I would even disagree that Baader-Meinhof is not based on disillusionment. The 70s and the early 80s were a period of radical thought in Germany and Italy. A new generation encouraged by popular sentiment towards the US presence in Europe became influenced by radical ideas. Some got involved in acts that called for a violent overthrow of the capitalist system. Many of these organizations did not disband until the early 1990s, when the Soviet Union collapsed.
Just because a Madrid train bombing and a July 7 attack on the London underground did not happen in Canada, does not mean that we are the most tolerant country in the world. Seriously, does Canada treat our immigrants better than most European countries that have not had a colonial experience ie. Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries? Should Canada move closer towards these social economic models in order to ensure a cradle to grave welfare state and become a world leader in promoting peace, equality, and justice for all? I believe that the way Canada integrates its immigrants may help answer these questions.
mushroom, good points. But should we be the most tolerant country in the world? Should we offer cradle to grave welfare? Should we take multi-culturalism and cultural relativism as the dominant principles of our society?
And, perhaps most to the point, should we keep doing this at the rate of 250,000 immigrants a year of whom a significant number are family class immigrants who do not have to meet our already rather weak tests for economic viability?
There are alternatives as I suggested and Dawg quoted me as suggesting. We could have a static or slightly shrinking population. We could have a pro-natalist policy orientation where we encouraged people living in Canada to have larger families.
The assumptions which underlie mass immigration need to be examined with an open mind. And we need to start that process, as Dawg has here, by excluding the haters from the debate while including people who may not be entirely happy with the pace of immigration induced change in Canada.
Hi Mushroom: Postwar German politics are extremely interesting but somewhat O.T. for this comment thread. Someone ought to compare the official political language of West Germany with the more recent language of political correctness. Back then I used to say things like, "The weird thing about German politicians is that they speak entirely in these painfully constrained, pre-vetted cliches, because of all the ideological taboos in German politics." At the time, this seemed like a reasonably original observation. Nowadays, it would be an utter commonplace - for Canada.
The non-European immigrants I know here in Victoria, and the ones I knew back in Toronto in the 90s seem to have pretty good lives, at least as good as mine. There are no doubt some groups that have crashed and burned, unfortunately, and end up forming communities like those around Jane and Finch. Those aren't typical, but of course they are a worry. I wonder if such groups are actually worse off in Canada than in their native countries, despite a higher material standard of living. On the whole these groups are probably family-class immigrants and their descendents, plus some refugee groups like Somalis, wouldn't you agree?
You seem to be *automatically* ascribing the London Transport attacks to British racism. You're smoothing over a hell of a lot of assumptions there. Here's one: "Only the white man acts; the brown or black man merely reacts, like a billiard ball struck with cue."
IMO, European countries are naturally less open to immigrants because they tend to have unitary cultures. But I don't think every country has to accept lots of immigrants. Should Nepal open its borders to Indian immigrants, swamp their own population, and end their own separate cultural development? A world consisting entirely of Colours-of-Benneton-style multicultural cities under the rule of human-rights commissions would not be diverse, it would be uniform.
Again, Jay's "stripping" argument is somewhat relevant. It may be difficult for third-world countries to build civil societies and grow their economies when their best and brightest are decamping to the West.
mushroom: "Comparing Muslim Canadians to the Ukrainians, Japanese, and the Chinese and saying that they didn't have their business confiscated is like saying they should be fortunate to get Permanent Resident Status."
No, it is not - I was pointing out that their experience(s) are not unique to them. I was not trying to be blase about their issues, but I think a certain reality check is required. Why move to a different country & culture if you have no intention of trying to integrate? Why move to a country that you don't speak either of the two official languages, and not at least attempt to learn one of them prior to your arrival (unless of course you are a refugee, but still, wouldn't you want to move to a country where you can easily communicate)?
I think a significant portion of blame can be laid at the doorstep of the immigration officials in various embassies around the world, but does the immigrant not have a responsibility to do some research first? And again, whose responsibility is integration - the immigrant's or the receiving country? We all seem to be arguing "both," not JUST the receiving country, no?
"In the year 2008, we should be moving closer to a global, borderless society where imagined concepts such as nation states and countries are used to divide rather than unite."
Huh? No thanks. There's a border along the 49th parallel for a reason - Canada and the US became countries in different ways, for different reasons. Our governments are run differently, both federally and state/provincially. Our Constitutions read differently, for a reason. I'm okay with that.
IP/Jay: "Again, Jay's "stripping" argument is somewhat relevant. It may be difficult for third-world countries to build civil societies and grow their economies when their best and brightest are decamping to the West."
Good point, but is it not incumbent upon those countries to try and change things? Maybe quit syphoning aid money for shoes (Imelda) etc (various and sundry despots) and put it into infrastructure? Although corruption in third-world countries and the attendant problems is probably for another thread.
Jay, Candace, and Int. Pariah,
About family class immigrants, family unification is difficult already under our immigration laws. Our policy has led to the importation of the best and brightest from the Third World. As a result, we integrate our immigrants better than other countries (ie. US and UK).
BTW, I also support pro-family social policies. Such as income splitting, a homemaker's allowance for stay at home mom's, tax incentives for families with three kids and more. These policies would enhance our social safety net greatly.
I believe quotas in immigration are used by government officials to set benchmarks which make themselves and the voters look good. Such as Canada is a tolerant, multicultural society. We are welcoming extremely good well-educated immigrants etc. Thus, I refused to be drawn into the numbers game. I will not go into the "boat is full" or the reasonable accomodation game, because these two concepts promote a more nativist and populist agenda that voters love to hear.
About Candace's point on foreign aid. I can argue that Canada is not generous and fair enough with regards to foreign aid. Should be raised to 1 per cent of GDP. But that is another story.
"I believe quotas in immigration are used by government officials to set benchmarks which make themselves and the voters look good."
I agree - it also has a lot to do with the federal transfer of funds, and is probably why Bojan was settled (poorly) in the maritimes rather than somewhere else in the country (Bojan, if you're still following, can you tell us whether you chose the Maritimes or were you strongly encouraged by the feds to go there?).
" ...I can argue that Canada is not generous and fair enough with regards to foreign aid. Should be raised to 1 per cent of GDP..."
And I would agree, provided there is significant monitoring/management to ensure that the aid goes where it is intended. But that is, as you point out, another thread for another day.
OOPS, I forgot! Tonight, while cabbing home (because it is too damn cold to stand & wait for a bus that will be late), I was chatting with the cabbie (who now owns his own cab rather than leasing). He's been in Canada 10 years, and was *surprise* an electrical engineer in Pakistan, but couldn't get work here without upgrading his education/taking some courses/whatever (remember that 10 years ago, there was no boom in AB, the province was still clawing its way out of a recession). Since he had a family to feed, he became a cab driver. He has, however, been working toward getting his credentials recognized and will soon be on the market.
I was quite happy to scribble out my email address (jeez, I call myself a recruiter but didn't have a friggin' business card? shame on me) with instructions to send me his resume and "remind me you're the cabdriver!"
Thanks, everyone, for the great discussion, because it was this thread that reminded me to ask him what he did in his home country etc.
(Next week, I'll be caught hanging outside bars in the UofA neighborhood offering candies to grads in exchange for their resume, I'm sure. "Hey, little boy, want a job?")
Candace...I could fake an engineering degree but the bald pate and grey hair would probably have you taking your favours elsewhere.
There is another thread to be written about life in an effective zero unemployment environment. I am recruiting a few people for a gig which pays 20 an hour on a contract basis with a guarantee of 25 hours a week...I have been turned down flat by more than a few people who are not, shall we say, over skilled. Which makes sense in Victoria which really does have a zero effective unemployment rate.
Frankly I think this is a good, if frustrating thing simply because it means employers have to pay a reasonable wage. But it will sing the fast food biz and all sorts of retail.
"Frankly I think this is a good, if frustrating thing simply because it means employers have to pay a reasonable wage."
I agree. It took me over a year, but I *finally* got mgmt to realize that if you want someone to show up, every day, like a grownup, even if a fileclerk, you need to actually PAY THEM ENOUGH to manage the responsibility of *not* living with Mom & Dad anymore. Can't believe this was such a radical concept for brilliant business minds, but there you go, old prejudices die hard.
I laugh at the left-idea of raising minimum wage because here in AB, minimum wage is $8. We pay fileclerks, no education beyond high school, $15. And every offer isn't accepted.
The market drives these things. I wouldn't be surprised if, boom continuing, those same fileclerks aren't getting 18-20 next year. Mind you, they still won't be living the life of Riley (who is this infamous Riley, anyway?) as rent etc is not cheap in AB, but there you go.
In the case of a downturn, I doubt the $15 would go below $14, maybe 13, which is still more than they were getting when I started I'm such an evil capitalist, no?
Well, here at Dawg's capitalist = evil is pretty much a given; over at my place, not so much.
I just cut a deal with a graphic designer. My own client wanted her attention. She billed into me at $25 and hour and they wanted to hire her direct. I was fine with that and I told her I'd been billing her time out at $40.00 and that she should look for $45.00 with a play or pay clause. She did and now she can actually aford to live in Vancouver without borrowing money every couple of months from Dad. She's 23.
This is, I think, an incredibly good thing and, with luck will continue. But it is rocking the world of people who think a buck over minimum wage is pushing the envelope. Those folks are not going to have businesses left in a year or two.
I'd be behind devoting 1 percent of GDP to foreign aid if I was convinced it did good rather than harm. But that's another debate.
Do Aboriginal peoples have the right to determine who has the right to live on their reserves? Why or why not?
That's where the arguement against immigration breaks down for me and unfortunately I find myself as something of a nimby in that in theory I believe people should be free to live and work wherever they desire, but at the same time, property rights of Indigenous people should dictate that they have jurisdiction over their lands and if they want to be as exclusionist as they want about who lives on the reserve and who doesn't then that is their right as sovereign or quasi-sovereign entities.
Extrapolate that to Canada as a whole and what can you say?
As Kevin points out -- "not very much" because the issue is never even allowed to be discussed.
However when it comes to Aboriginals and their rights, people have no problem with discussing the merits of the jurisdictional issues... and matters like blood quantum or Band Council Resolutions being proper, or wrong-headed or what-not.
Look... what I think is important is -- and I haven't taken a position on this yet... The chips have not all fallen where they may for me... that there needs to be a broad discussion of this sort in Canada. It needs to be free from both bigotry and free from those who would engage in knee-jerk false debates headed with "guilt-by-association" and other tactics.
Why can't we talk about the issue?
I'm glad we are doing so here and now... but I rarely see it happen in Canada without it turning into a big pissing contest.
Best Regards
MW
And, MW, in my experience, the pissing contest, with rare exceptions, is usually between us palefaces. It is good to have a First Nations voice in the mix.
How completely silly to refer to vDare.com as a "white supremacist" website. Not only are there writers of a wide variety of ethnicities on the site, there is nothing even vaguely "white supremacist" there.
Until the far left stops labeling everything it doesn't like as "racist," it will be impossible to take you seriously.
You're joking.
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/
0509...new_orleans.htm
Because the truth is "white supremacist."
I was in New Orleans during that terrible catastrophe (with the US military).
Sailer is guilty of soft-pedaling what really went on.
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