Immigration: The Economic Case [Paperback]

Canada receives more than a million immigrants every five years, far more on a per capita basis than any other country. The size and composition of the country's urban centres has been transformed in the last fifteen years with little critical discussion about who gets in or why Canada's immigration targets are so much higher, proportionately, than those of the other principal immigration destinations—Australia and the United States. One recent publication asks some hard questions about current policies, while sharing the belief that more modest immigration numbers, with a greater focus on language and labour market skills, will serve Canada and would-be immigrants much better.
Diane Francis, a well-known financial journalist, takes direct aim at the economic arguments used in support of current immigration flows. Francis highlights the low skill levels of many family class immigrants; of some 600,000 immigrants admitted in 1998 to 2000, 43 per cent spoke neither English or French, and one third of the adults reported that they did not intend to work. Canadian residents who sponsored immigrants gave guarantees that they would not be a burden on social assistance for the first 10 years, but in practice many such sponsors simply reneged on their commitments. In Ontario alone broken sponsorship commitments are costing taxpayers $150 million annually. Faced with growing evidence of withdrawn family support and with the difficulty of enforcement, the Liberals reduced the sponsorship commitment requirement to three years.
One of the more controversial routes into Canada is through the immigrant investor scheme, a favored route for those whose source of income might raise questions about their potential to contribute to their adopted country. Others, not eager to make the required $250,000 investment, found that immigration lawyers and consultants had developed a range of ingenious schemes. These ensured that very little money was ever actually invested and few of the promised jobs created, though the scheme was certainly a windfall for those working in the immigration industry.
Francis's slim book delivers some hard blows to those who believe that Canada's immigration policies are well conceived and well managed. They are neither, she concludes. Instead, together with an incompetent, patronage-driven refugee determination (status-granting) process, current policies are economically disastrous, porous to criminals seeking new opportunities, and incompatible with Canada's national security needs.
Martin Loney (Books in Canada) -- Books in Canada

In this enlightening book, Diane Francis looks at immigration in Canada from an economic perspective. Tracing the country`s experience with immigration from the nineteenth century through the installation of the point system in the 1960s to the adoption of Bill C-11, `The New Immigration Act of 2002,` she shows how originally sensible policies have developed unintended consequences that threaten the economic and social well-being of our country. In particular, lax procedures and a lack of clear thinking and economic vision on the part of both conservative and liberal governments have turned immigration policy away from the laudable goal of helping to increase the living standards of Canadians and newcomers alike. Herself an immigrant, the author is sensitive to the vital role that immigrants play in weaving the fabric of the nation. But the statistics she has collected tell a story of declining welfare among the new arrivals and of their insecure place in the new economy. She quotes numerous immigration officials past and present who are as concerned as she is with the current ragged state of the system. After laying out in vivid detail the troubling problems that this system currently generates, she offers eighteen sensible suggestions as to how it should be reformed.This timely book should help fuel a constructive debate on the direction that immigration policy should take in Canada in the twenty-first century. diane francis is the editor of The Financial Post, a columnist for Maclean`s magazine, and a business commentator for CFRB and CKNW radio. She is also the author of a number of best-selling books including for Key Porter, A Matter of Survival, Underground Nation, Fighting for Canada and Bre-X