MAKING IMMIGRATION WORK FOR CANADA

A New National Policy for Immigration

By Margret Kopala
The Ottawa Citizen
May 7, 2012

Jason Kenney is arguably the most activist immigration minister since Clifford Sifton, the 19th-century minister of the interior whose policies were instrumental in building this nation. While many of Kenney´s policies are welcome correctives to a dysfunctional system, the question is whether they will be as beneficial as Sifton´s to the country as a whole.

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How Many Immigrants do we Need?

By Herbert Grubel, Special to the Sun
April 17, 2012

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney´s recent efforts to reform Canada´s immigrant selection policies will improve the efficiency of the system, will treat applicants more fairly and increase the economic prospects of immigrants. He deserves full credit for taking on policies that have been considered politically untouchable for decades.

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Vancouverites prefer livability over growth

By Martin Collacott, Vancouver Sun
March 31, 2012

Re: Anti-growth policies antiquated, March 27

While arguing for the continued growth of Vancouver, former mayor Sam Sullivan should bear in mind that most residents of the city do not benefit from such growth and do not want it.
For them it means more expensive housing, longer commutes and added pressure on health care and educational facilities.

This is hardly surprising, since surveys consistently show that small to medium-sized cities around the world are the most livable for their inhabit-ants. Metropolises such as London, Tokyo and New York are great places to visit, but not to live in, unless you're very wealthy.
This is, moreover, no secret as far as most Vancouverites are concerned: a Leger Marketing survey last summer showed only 5.3 per cent want our city to get larger while 93 per cent consider it large enough or already too large.

When it comes to population growth, the elephant in the room everyone is afraid to talk about is, of course, immigration.

Our continuing high intake has no economic or demographic justification and is driven, rather, by political and other special interests.

While the people of Vancouver are welcoming towards newcomers and appreciate what they have contributed to the city, until there is open and balanced discussion about the unnecessarily high numbers of newcomers, we will have no choice but to deal with problems associated with surging population growth.

Martin Collacott, Centre for Immigration Policy Reform, Vancouver

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/todays-paper/Vancouverites+prefer+livability+over+growth/6391041/story.html

Education quality is the issue with immigrants
Letter to the Editor Published in the National Post April 4, 2012
 
Re:  Why Immigrant Professionals are Still Driving Cabs

http://www.nationalpost.com/Education+quality+issue+with+immigrants/6407438/story.html

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 2, 2012

2012 Federal Budget Doesn´t Acknowledge Disconnect Between Creating Jobs and Importing Immigrants Who Also Need Jobs

The government ‘s 2012 budget struck a balance between achieving deficit reduction while not cutting program spending unduly. To the extent that the budget addressed immigration issues, however, it failed to address fundamental problems.

Some of the immigration-related plans outlined in the budget make good sense. Making immigration programs faster and more efficient, better aligning the Temporary Foreign Worker program to labour market demands, improvements to foreign credential recognition, and the proposal to offer refunds to skilled worker applicants whose qualifications no longer meet current standards all have some merit.

What the budget fails to acknowledge, however, is the basic disconnect between the need to create more jobs for Canadians (for which it assigns several billion dollars) and the fact that we are bringing in hundreds of thousands of immigrants a year who also need jobs. With high rates of unemployment in Canada – especially among such groups as youth and aboriginals, we should be making greater effort to get them into the labour force before importing workers from abroad. Additionally, we know that most labour shortages can be met domestically if normal market forces are allowed to take their course.

While Canada can benefit from accepting a reasonable number of well-selected immigrants, it is quite clear that we are taking in far more than we need or can absorb and that intake should be significantly reduced. This is particularly the case at present since those who have arrived in recent decades have had a weak economic performance and are costing Canadian taxpayers around $20 billion a year.

A further problem presented by the budget concerns the $155 million that will be cut from the government´s immigration budget over the next three years. While relatively small compared with those of some other departments, these cuts will further reduce resources that are already insufficient to ensure prospective immigrants are adequately interviewed and screened. If the cuts are unavoidable, government should also lower intake to levels at which the available funds are sufficient to do the job properly.

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Stationary Population as a Policy Vision
By Anatole Romaniuk

Abstract

The article argues in favour of a stationary population as an optimal response   to the quest for ecological and economic sustainability, national identity, social cohesion and world peace. The means of achieving it are identified. Western democracy countries, in particular, are faced with a unique set of challenges arising out of the prevailing imbalance between fertility and immigration. Hence, in order to actualize the benefits of a stationary demographic configuration, they need to raise their fertility to the generational replacement level (two births per woman). The calibration of immigration ought to be consistent with the preservation of national identity and social cohesion. In respect to the doctrinal debates, the virtue of the stationary population is that it cuts across ecologists´ long term concerns and economists´ short term concerns.   Read more pdf …

Anatole Romaniuk is the Former Director of the Demographic Division at Statistics Canada, and Adjunct Professor of Demography at the University of Alberta. Published by Optimum Online, The Journal of Public Sector Management in March of 2012 and republished by CIPR with permission,  this is a revised version of a paper originally presented under the title “Stationary Population as Theoretical Concept and as Policy Vision” at the 26th General Population Conference, organized by the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) – Marrakech, (Morroco), 2009.

Fiscal Transfers to Immigrants in Canada: Responding to Critics and a Revised Estimate

Read the Fraser Institute study by Herbert Grubel and Patrick Grady published on March 15, 2012 here:  http://www.fraserinstitute.org/research-news/display.aspx?id=18103

The Parent and Grandparent Immigration Program in Canada:
Costs and Proposed Changes 
A Working Paper by Patrick Grady,  February 6, 2012

Abstract:

This paper examines the need for the parent and grandparent immigration program in Canada and provides critical observations on its objectives and operations and offers empirical estimates on its costs.  And, as a contribution to the Government´s recently launched consultations on how to redesign the program to make it more fiscally sustainable, it offers a specific proposal.

First, the costs: taking into account a $1.3 billion per year increase in transfer payments to parents and grandparents (in 2005) estimated from the Census 2006 Public Use Microfile and the $4.6 billion extra healthcare spending estimated from Canadian Institute for Health Information data and allowing for growth in numbers and costs, the annual fiscal costs of the parent and grandparent program to all levels of government in Canada could easily exceed $6 billion per year at the present time.  Bringing in the Government´s estimate 165,000 individuals in the backlog and its expected increase in numbers applying to 500,000 by 2020 (including the 165,000) would more than double the fiscal costs from the $6 billion estimated here.  This would represent a significant increase in the claims on Canada´s income support programs, which are already under severe strain from the ageing of the Canadian population.

Many Canadians have trouble understanding the meaning of multi-billion dollar cost estimates. Some illustrative examples of the potential benefits to individual immigrant families can help to put the figures in the perspective of their own household budgets. For instance, an immigrant family that brings in one parent or grandparent might benefit from subsidized health care worth $9,600 per year during the parent´s senior years. The immigrant parent might also get income support worth on average $7,644 ($6,262.24 OAS/GIS plus $1,381.30 other government transfers).  Together, this adds up to a total health and welfare benefit of $17,244 per year, which over a 20-year life time as a senior would equal a rather hefty $344,880. And if an immigrant family were able to bring in all four parents of both the husband and the wife, or perhaps a grandparent if one of the parents can´t come, the total fiscal benefit would equal $1,379,520 over the assumed 20-year post age 65 life of the parents.

The only way to make the parent and grandparent program “sustainable in the future” and to “avoid future large backlogs and be sensitive to fiscal constraints,” the objectives specified by the Government in its press release announcing the consultations, is to drastically pare the numbers of parents and grandparents admitted and/or to shift the costs of the income support of the parents and grandparents and their health care back on to the shoulders of their sponsors where it belongs.  Specifically, the sponsors must be made personally responsible for the support and health care of their parents and grandparents by requiring them to purchase life annuities for their parents and grandparents that provide a minimum level of lifetime income support and also to buy health insurance, perhaps from a special risk pool established by the Government for that purpose to help ensure coverage. This will eliminate the large subsidy from Canadian taxpayers to the parents and grandparents of immigrants admitted to Canada.

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