It may come as a shock but there has been an active debate on policies this election cycle. It’s been going on at RealClearPolitics. In the segment on immigration Canadian-born F. H. Buckley’s opening statement includes an excellent contradistinction of Canada’s immigration system with ours:
About 15 percent of the people in the U.S. (including illegals) are foreign-born, but it’s 20 percent in Canada, and yet immigration is not an issue there. All Canadian political parties strongly favor immigration and their country’s current policies for admitting new arrivals. And it’s a system Donald Trump would love.
There are 10 times more undocumented aliens per capita in the U.S. than in Canada — about 11 million in the U.S. versus 100,000 in Canada. The difference comes down to a difference in will. In Canada illegal immigrants are given a refugee hearing and put on a plane and sent home if they fail. And while some Americans might think this heartless, no one in Canada seems to think it’s a problem.
The cross-border difference in attitudes comes down to three things. First, Canada accepts vastly more legal immigrants than the U.S. — about 250,000 a year in Canada vs. 1,000,000 in the U.S. On a per capita basis, the U.S. would need to admit about 150 percent more immigrants annually to match Canada. As such, worries about illegal immigrants are considered less pressing in Canada. “We’ve already done our part,†they think.
Second, the Canadian system gives preference to immigrants who can be expected to make native Canadians better off. What that means is that Canada admits a lot more people on the basis of economic merit. What Canada wants are people who are going to start out as givers, not takers. It’s wrong to distinguish between American givers and takers, as Mitt Romney did, but it’s just fine to distinguish between would-be immigrant givers and takers.
Canada prefers younger immigrants, people who are educated, people who want to go to places where there are labor shortages, people who are going to start businesses in Canada and hire Canadians. In absolute numbers, Canada actually admits more immigrants under economic categories than the U.S. There are about 160,000 such immigrants a year in Canada versus 140,000 in the U.S. Remarkably, a country one-tenth the size of the U.S. takes in more people who promise to make the native-born better off.
Our system by contrast emphasizes what’s euphemistically called “family reunification” which in essence rewards illegal behavior. A relatively small but very vocal minority gets its way. Whether that’s good for the country as a whole or not is open to dispute.
Both parties agree on immigration in this country, too. The dissent isn’t between parties, but between the rulers & the ruled.
And for some reason I’ve ended up following Canadian politics a bit in the last year. They’ve got a good deal of discontent bubbling up on the immigration issue. They’ll be getting their own anti-immigration political turmoil sooner rather than later, I imagine, especially given than Trudeau’s government has announced they want to increase immigration by 50% annually, and wants to triple the population of the country by the end of the century. Essentially, they want Canada to be a Chinese & Indian colony. Eventually even Canadians will figure out what that means.
Damned shiftless Yankee immigrants, taking Canadian jobs.
Actually, I suspect that a lot of the disquiet is due to the substantial East Asian immigration they’ve had.
But how would people in Texas get housekeepers for $5/hour? How would those meatpacking places fare if they had to pay real wages? How would hotels function if they had to pay competitive wages to legal workers? How would hotels function if they lost legal immigrants for that matter?
Steve