I think there is a real difference between immigration to Canada and immigration to Europe.
Canada's immigration policy is on the whole highly selective, focused on skilled immigrants. The largest category of immigrants is professionals. Immigration laws are enforced and illegal immigration is relatively low. Refugees are admitted, but the government retains control over the numbers, the source countries, which individuals get chosen, etc.
In 2015–2016, Germany admitted close to one million Syrian refugees. Over the same period, Canada took 44,000 of them. There is a never-ending stream of unauthorised arrivals (some genuine refugees, many economic migrants–it can be difficult to distinguish them) crossing the Mediterranean.
The biggest complaint about immigration in Canada is that it is contributing to an overheated property market, locking many younger Canadians out of owning their own home.
But the majority of immigrants to Canada are well-off, educated – so unlikely to get involved in social problems like crime or terrorism, and they tend to integrate well with mainstream society. There are some poorer and disadvantaged immigrant groups who are more likely to experience those problems, but their numbers are smaller. Compare to Europe where the number of poor / poorly educated / socially deprived immigrants is much larger.
So while both Canada and Europe may have some problems with immigration, they are rather different problems.
> Canada's immigration policy is on the whole highly selective, focused on skilled immigrants
Was. At present nearly every min wage and gig economy position in the country is 99% early 20s males from India taking advantage of being able to enrol in a diploma mill to qualify for PR. The Feds knew of this shady pipeline for years and did nothing because it juiced GDP numbers that otherwise would have revealed a recession.
Even once reputable colleges/universities couldn’t resist starting part-time no-show “hospitality” programs with 0 work and 100% pass rate to siphon tuition as the table stakes for being able to circumvent other immigration streams.
> At present nearly every min wage and gig economy position in the country is 99% early 20s males from India taking advantage of being able to enrol in a diploma mill to qualify for PR. The Feds knew of this shady pipeline for years and did nothing because it juiced GDP numbers that otherwise would have revealed a recession.
Australia has had the same problem and in the last few years the Australian government has cracked down heavily on education visas, diploma mills, etc. If Trudeau isn't doing it already, I expect Poilievre will. Which means this may turn out to be more of a passing problem.
Canada has begun cracking down on this. There are now caps on the number of visas issued. Foreign students are no longer allowed to work full-time jobs by default while studying. This is especially relevant, because the Comprehensive Ranking System for permanent immigration gives points for years of full-time work experience in Canada, as well as for diplomas earned in Canada.
Unwinding it will be a bit messy: lots of post-secondary institutions have to figure out how run programs with a lot less funding, and what to do with capital projects that no longer make sense in light of greatly reduced enrollment, etc.
The damage done to the average Canadian's view of immigrants will take some time to fade away. But I suspect it will, with time, especially since our traditional immigration system really does just skim the "good" immigrants -- the ones with money and the skills to succeed.
Are you my doppelganger? I made almost this exact comment word-for-word to a friend of mine a few weeks ago.
Trudeau's immigration video from December [1] was one of the most dishonest, condescending productions that I've ever seen, basically amounting to, "Yes, we destroyed our previous internationally respected immigration system and imported five million low skilled laborers over a couple years without adding any housing or infrastructure. Yes, that's hurt a lot of you and made you angry. No, we don't think that's a problem. But because you're so angsty, we'll throttle it back a tiny wittle bit over the next year or two before throwing the floodgates wide open again."
Not a shred of anything even resembling self-awareness or humility throughout.
The most shocking thing to me is the heavy involvement of McKinsey consulting in all this[1]. Feels anti-democratic to let a foreign consulting firm set immigration targets.
That's absolutely bananas. $3 million for a _report_ about suggestions for possible immigration reform (to speed it up of course). In the hole $62 billion a year, and a sizable chunk is going to overpriced MBA grads right out of school to produce PDF documents. How the hell do we reign these people in.
The student to permanent resident pipeline is an entire booming industry in Canada with a dozen loopholes to exploit. Unless you honestly believe that millions of Indian international students are here to receive a quality education in “hospitality” at a strip mall diploma mill then return home.
It doesn't matter today, does it? There are way too many of them. They don't integrate with the locals and they are taking jobs and housing away from young people. Nothing against them, it's not their fault, but we can't sustain anywhere near this number of Indian TFWs. Canada has been completely swamped.
Just a nitpick -- the "overheated property market" sounds like a bad thing, but I don't understand why it must be that way. In the end -- property developers are Canadian companies, and must bathe in money. "Younger Canadians" must be enjoying elevated salaries at these companies.
The only reason I see why it is that way is when other Canadians restrict the supply of real estate (NIMBY) to inflate their own property value. Same for most other democratic real estate markets in the world in the past years, not just Canada, regardless of immigration levels.
That may be true, but money is still expensive, lead times are absurd, and we have a small number of companies who probably make most of their money jsut by owning the land regardless of whether it's developed or not. Likewise, even if you're making very good money in one of a scarce few highly specialized or senior positions, you'll need to be doing so for an extended period of time, and probably make much more than even that, along with your spouse, to buy a place.
Vancouver (the city) is a town where a 2 bedroom condo built in the last 20 years is likely going to run ~$1m, and where some 1 bedroom places go for that. The suburbs are a smidge better but not by much. A house, albeit probably a comically large and stupid one on the outskirts near nothing of flavor could be $1.5m-$2m
It's not so much that we're blaming immigrants, anyone doing so isn't appreciating that something like the situation we're in is the result of multifaceted fuckery; an economic failure at some scale. Many types and waves of immigrants are involved—most recent ones being thrown under the bus unfortunately—but generally Canadians accept immigrants more than not, it's just that the rate was intentionally increased haphazardly to such a degree on top of an already abysmal outlook for anyone who wouldn't stand to profit off of increased population.
If you had a big house in Vancouver, if you are a developer, if you are a certain type of business owner, you were riding high. If you're anyone else, your resume is now one among a thousand for almost any low-med skilled position, and the most viable cities were already! sitting at a ~1% vacancy, which is a real life pressing problem. Immigration numbers are a part of this, but not remotely close to the whole picture.
You're right on the money imo and the author clearly shows a lack of understanding of systems thinking.
He takes a simple observation and generalizes it instead of working backwards to the fact that Canada is just like the US geographically highly isolated with giant oceans on each side whereas Germany and Europe are a landmass directly connected to other continents.
I highly recommend the books "Prisoners of Geography" (1/2) for anyone interested in realizing how geography silently shapes politics.
> But the majority of immigrants to Canada are well-off, educated – so unlikely to get involved in social problems like crime or terrorism, and they tend to integrate well with mainstream society.
This seems to be very out of sync with the opinions of the Canadians I know, and the recent public issues with heavy immigration of unskilled males from the Punjab.
There is a slight of hand that is done in these arguments - some take “immigrant” to mean “anyone who was not born in Canada” and others take it to mean “any non-citizen/temp worker”.
Those are two vastly different groups even if one contains the other.
I will not comment on the European data here, but this is so wrong on the Canada side.
Sentiment against immigration is real in Canada. You're comparing refugee numbers when in reality Canada's population grew faster than most of the G7 in 2023 [1]
This observation is moot and quite frankly pretty boring for two reasons:
Firstly, as much as people spouting the same simplistic tune may wish for, by all means the government is not just a single person.
Secondly, Merkel or anyone else who would have been in that position during that time would have simply needed to deal with the fact that there were millions of Syrians bleeding into Western Europe across dozens of different routes and hence in ways which the legally open borders of Europe were absolutely not equipped to deal with effectively.
The fact countries of entry to the EU did not at all fullfil their legal obligations with regards to asylum processing is.... let me guess: Again Merkel's fault right?
With comments like these, you might win some imaginary "Thanks Obama/ Thanks Merkel" bingo you're playing with yourself, but it's really not contributing to any debate about where we pragmatically go from here into a better future.
I'd love to hear more about the latter rather than the former.
And yet racism is on the steep raise in Canada. I guess there's no way of doing migration that doesn't spark racism even if you are super careful about who you let in.
That's not true. Canadians were, in general, very pro immigration until recently, because we had a highly selective process. Public opinion has only changed recently because federal immigration policy opened the floodgates to millions of Indian temporary foreign workers (mostly young, male, and unskilled). This has proved to be way too much for the country to handle.
Canada's immigration policy is on the whole highly selective, focused on skilled immigrants. The largest category of immigrants is professionals. Immigration laws are enforced and illegal immigration is relatively low. Refugees are admitted, but the government retains control over the numbers, the source countries, which individuals get chosen, etc.
In 2015–2016, Germany admitted close to one million Syrian refugees. Over the same period, Canada took 44,000 of them. There is a never-ending stream of unauthorised arrivals (some genuine refugees, many economic migrants–it can be difficult to distinguish them) crossing the Mediterranean.
The biggest complaint about immigration in Canada is that it is contributing to an overheated property market, locking many younger Canadians out of owning their own home.
But the majority of immigrants to Canada are well-off, educated – so unlikely to get involved in social problems like crime or terrorism, and they tend to integrate well with mainstream society. There are some poorer and disadvantaged immigrant groups who are more likely to experience those problems, but their numbers are smaller. Compare to Europe where the number of poor / poorly educated / socially deprived immigrants is much larger.
So while both Canada and Europe may have some problems with immigration, they are rather different problems.