7 minute read
GOVERNMENT
IMMIGRATION SHIFT
The 2016 immigration plan veers from the old econo-centric strategy to welcome a wider range of people to Canada
By Priya Ramanujam
Some of the failure of an econo-centric policy is that it gets the high yers of the world to come and builds up expectation that they will be high yers in Canada. When that doesn’t happen … it leads to a huge disappointment.” — Howard Ramos
The Liberal government’s recently announced immigration strategy is a welcome fi rst step to rebalancing the program, say several experts.
“We are thrilled,” says Debbie Douglas, executive director of the Ontario Council for Agencies Serving Immigrants (OCASI). “For more than a decade, we saw a real shift away from families, and refugee protection for that matter, toward the economic class.”
The 2016 strategy, announced by Immigration Minister John McCallum in March, pledges to welcome approximately 300,000 permanent residents this year (up from 2015’s goal of 279,200), with an increased number of individuals accepted under family reunifi cation and humanitarian categories, while still heavily reliant on economic class immigrants.
David Campbell, chief economist for the New Brunswick Jobs Board Secretariat, says expanding immigration is what’s needed in Canada.
“We have a broader demographic challenge in the country and the economic growth rate in the country is tied to the ability to ensure that industries have workers,” he explains. “Increasingly, those workers have to come from immigrants.”
Even more than a boost to the economy, Douglas says the Liberals’ plan diverts from the previous government’s approach and demonstrates an understanding of immigration as an essential part of long-term nation building.
“We know that immigration is the future of Canada,” she says. “We need people to grow the economy and people to contribute socially and culturally to the country.”
Economics of reuniting families
Delivering on one of the party’s campaign promises, the Liberals opened up the number of spots under family reunifi cation to 80,000 — 12,000 more than last year, with a focus on spouses and common-law partners. Beyond the numbers, McCallum stressed reducing the backlog and processing times as a primary focus.
“We know the value of keeping families together,” McCallum said. “There is a social value to this as well as an economic value that benefi ts all society.”
While some are critical of the decision to increase family reunifi cation numbers, suggesting that many of these individuals — particularly the elderly — may become a burden on the Canadian economy, Douglas disagrees.
“I think those people are forgetting that many of the people who come here through family reunifi cation, including parents and grandparents, also contribute to the economy,” she says, citing that grandparents play an important role in both childcare and the social acculturation process of their children and grandchildren.
Howard Ramos, a sociology professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, whose research focuses on immigration in Atlantic Canada and noneconomic immigration, agrees. “Just because people come under the family stream doesn’t mean they don’t work,” he says.
Ramos points out that many parents and even grandparents arrive when they’re in their 50s, and are still able to work for 10 to 20 years.
Furthermore, he says family reunifi cation helps prevent onward migration, a problem Atlantic Canada has historically grappled with — being unable to retain immigrants.
“People who have their family here are less likely to move out of the region,” he explains. “They are more likely to feel comfortable, and less likely to feel torn to go back to their country of origin.”
While Campbell agrees that for the nation as a whole the boost to the family reunifi cation stream is helpful, he says it will have little impact on a province like New Brunswick. Because the Maritime province doesn’t have the type of immigration history Ontario, Quebec or British Columbia have, he says it won’t pull in the number of immigrants New Brunswick needs.
“We’re also looking for some fl exibility on the economic class,” Campbell explains. “We do have a lot of industries that have shortages that need to fi nd workers that aren’t necessarily the industries that can recruit workers through the Express Entry [program] … We’d like to see the federal government expand their defi nition under Express Entry.” >>
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<< Back to humanitarian roots
The government’s plan to increase the total number of refugee or humanitarian spots to approximately 55,800 — a plan which many say recognizes the fact that Canada has historically been a world leader around refugees — may be able to fi ll some of the labour shortages in Atlantic Canada — and other parts of Canada — that Campbell is referring to.
He says this has to do with the humanitarian class being much more fl exible than Express Entry from a skills perspective.
“Anybody who’s coming to Canada to advance their livelihood, to create a greater quality of life for themselves — there are jobs here for them,” he says, noting that employment opportunities in fi sh processing plants, the manufacturing sector and the telephone customer service industry aren’t necessarily high wage jobs, but New Brunswick has a low cost of living.
Working in these types of jobs is something many newcomers are willing to do in order to ensure a better future for their children, says John Shields, acting director of the Ryerson Centre for Immigration and Settlement in Toronto.
“Obviously we don’t want to see people exploited when they come to Canada,” Shields says. “But there are all sorts of skills that are needed within the Canadian economy and those include very, very highly skilled technical people, but also people working more blue-collar kinds of jobs.”
Shields points out that over the last decade this type of blue-collar work, which is not being readily fi lled by the Canadian-born, has been taken up by temporary foreign workers who are often exploited, as well as individuals who immigrate through the provincial nominee programs, which have tighter caps.
Ramos adds that by having an immigration policy that takes in a wider range of people, it means they come with an equally wide range of expectations. As such, they are more likely to be satisfi ed with the opportunities in Canada.
“Some of the failure of an econo-centric policy is that it gets the high fl yers of the world to come and builds up expectation that they will be high fl yers in Canada,” explains Ramos. “When that doesn’t happen — countless studies have shown that there’s a devaluing of credentials, of skills, of degrees — it leads to a huge disappointment.”
Economic migration still important
Social entrepreneur and digital media strategist Nazar Poladian came to Canada as a Syrian refugee in September 2015, after spending three years in Lebanon.
The 25-year-old, who now resides in Toronto’s Scarborough community, says it’s important to remember that refugees are not a monolithic class; they come with a myriad of skills and abilities, just like any other immigrants.
Poladian, who calls himself a “skilled refugee,” says extensive pre-immigration legwork allowed him to gain meaningful employment and entrepreneurial opportunities shortly after arriving in Canada. He says more pre-immigration work with refugees will ensure they have a more effi cient integration into the Canadian labour market.
“Those refugees — like myself — can be great bridges for economic and trade transfer [and] great ambassadors for Canadian products and services,” he says. “The capacity of any community should decide what kind of refugees they [accept].”
According to Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel, Canada doesn’t have the capacity to reduce its number of economic immigrants, while increasing overall levels and other streams. Following the release of the immigration plan, she stated that she did not understand the cut to economic immigrants at a time when the country’s economy was slowing and its population aging.
Ramos says that the government must proceed with caution and consider what the critics are saying.
“Some of the criticism should be heeded; it can’t swing fully away from economic migration either,” he says. “That will always have to play an important part of the immigration portfolio in Canada.”
IMMIGRATION BY THE NUMBERS
According to the 2015 Annual Report to Parliament on Immigration released this March, Canada will welcome between 280,000 and 305,000 immigrants, with a target of 300,000, in 2016. Here’s a breakdown: • 54,000 to 58,400 federal economic immigration programs • 46,000 to 48,000 provincial nominee programs • 22,000 caregiver program • 800 business program • 57,000 to 62,000 spouses and common-law partners • 18,000 to 20,000 parents and grandparent sponsorship • 51,000 to 57,000 protected persons and refugees • 2,800 to 3,600 humanitarian and compassionate (H&C) stream • 25,000 to 27,000 Quebec-selected skilled workers • 5,200 to 5,500 Quebec-selected business
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