International Law

Ottawa Citizen: "Time for an Immigration Time Out"

By immlawyer

Margret Kopala greets the findings of two Canadian think tanks with "relief and some cause for celebration". The Fraser Institute and the Institute for Research on Public Policy address the thorny issue of immigration:

No, Canada doesn't need to expand its internal markets, globalization has given it plenty elsewhere; no, immigrants are not net contributors to the economy, rather they are costing Canadian taxpayers billions while driving wages down in concomitant income categories, including the professions; no, immigration won't address the revenue vacuum created by an aging population, not unless it reaches stratospheric levels. Why not just raise the retirement age?

And no, it is not up to governments to provide industry with endless supplies of cheap labour -- temporary or permanent -- when industry itself should be improving productivity and paying our own workers proper wages. It was temporary workers who caused the problems in Europe, remember?

(In the U.S., I might add, it's 12 million illegal Mexican immigrants who have expanded an underclass costing billions in social and incarceration costs, who have become a large factor in the subprime mortgage crisis that's damaged American fiscal credibility.)

So no, we don't need more immigration and furthermore it isn't racist to say so. Better we take a time out, ensure the immigrants we've got do well and figure out what we want to do next. Canada has in the past "turned the tap on or off, as needed," James Bissett, a former head of Canada's immigration department, told his Montreal audience.

Kopala underscores an issue raised at the Citizenship & Immigration CLE Conference in Niagara - that of transnationalism - the retention of loyalties to countries of origin, and the dilution of any real, tangible link to Canada, it's history and traditions.

Full post as published by Canadian Immigration Blawg on August 02, 2008 (boomark / email).