Skilled and controlled immigration has been one of the driving forces of Canadian economic expansion over the last twenty five years, it could be argued that it has been a force for the last two hundred years. However this is going to be put under severe strain as Canada’s clever immigration policies increasingly get copied throughout the world.
The Canadian system has been part of the Canadian legal scenery for years, and it is hard to realise how unusual it is for its good sense. Although the Canadian system is recognised around the world for the quality of immigrants it allows in, there are other forces prevailing and a sane system of economic migration is rarely considered. This was the rest of the world’s loss and Canada’s gain. This looks like its changing and Canada is going to find that the market for the most skilled immigrants is no longer rigged in its favour.
The Canadian system uses points to judge the suitability of an immigrant and any hint of the need for state assistance tends to be strongly resisted. This has meant that the Canadian system tends to (at least outside Quebec) get immigrants who earn more and are more educated than they average Canadian. This will mean that Canadians benefit from getting in skilled immigrants.
In most of the rest of the world this is not how it works. There are two other factors. The first is a desire for people who are culturally, and at times, ethnically similar to settle in countries. At times this may be benign, as with the German East European diasporas settling in Germany or the English speaking South Africans settling in London or Australia. Alternatively it may be a family reunification policy, which means that a large number of the immigrants who come into a country are in fact already related to current immigrants – as is the case with the United States.
Another factor is that the main lobbyist for greater immigration tends to be big companies. Large employers are rarely looking for skilled people who may eventually either work for their competition or set up on their own, but they are looking to drive down the “commoditised” wages of the lesser skilled. This does not only include cleaners and construction labourers but also low level software programmers and book keepers.
There is little argument from national economic advantage as all they do is lower wages and increase profits, but there is a lot of lobbying clout.
This has created a lot of anti-immigrant feeling. It has been recognised that if there is a case for immigration then it has to benefit the average voter and in this search for skilled immigrants who do not wish to live off the state countries have started to look at how Canada does things.
Suddenly what was obvious to only Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders is becoming obvious to most first world countries. If half the world wants to come to your country, you can choose the cream of that crop.
Suddenly the cream is going to be spread more thinly.
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