Former Canadian immigration chief calls for increased immigration

Image via Wikipediaby Ray Clancy on May 30, 2011

A former immigration boss in Canada is calling for the country’s annual immigration intake to be increased by 100,000 a year to match needed population targets.
Robert Vineberg, a former Director of Federal-Provincial Relations at Immigration Canada, said policy changes are needed to boost numbers in most provinces.
He pointed out that the major political parties are failing to address the issue despite agreeing that Canada needs to increase immigration levels by 1% per year.
Now a research fellow at the Canada West Foundation, he argued that Canada’s native labour force is stagnating. Most provinces, and particularly the Western Provinces, want to increase their population and see increased immigration as a major way to do so. The way to expand the federal immigration streams is not to freeze growth in provincial programmes but to increase overall levels during the next several years,’ he explained.
‘An increase in immigration levels by 50,000 to 300,000 per year would bring the ratio back to the 0.87% figure of two decades ago. An increase of 100,000 to 350,000 per year would see Canada finally achieve the one-percent-per-year goal that all parties ostensibly espouse,’ he added.
His comments have been made as a result of Canada’s major political parties failing to address the issue of how many immigrants Canada needs, despite all of them expressing support for an increase in Canadian immigration.

He also hit out at a recent study from the Fraser Institute which suggested that immigration costs Canada as much as $23.6 billion a year. Economists Herb Grubel and Patrick Grady used statistics from the 2006 census to argue for a reduction in immigration.
They said that immigrants received on average $6,051 more in benefits than they paid in taxes and that this weak economic performance of recent immigrants is costing Canadian taxpayers between $16.3 billion and $23.6 billion a year.
Vineberg said that the average income of immigrants in Canada more than 15 years before the 2006 census was actually higher than for native-born Canadians. ‘This turns the Fraser Institute’s analysis on its head and suggests that immigrants are net contributors to government revenues if their entire working life is considered,’ he said.
The data used can lead to diametrically opposed conclusions, he added and described the study as not addressing the issue. ‘The whole principle of such analysis is faulty,’ he said, adding that it zoomed in on one small aspect of the economics of immigration and ignored the larger picture entirely.

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Small towns try to jump-start immigration

Image via WikipediaBy: Bill Redekop

CARTWRIGHT -- When Alex and Nadia Tolmachev and daughter, Ekaterina, emigrated from Russia five years ago, they didn't know a soul in Manitoba but at least Alex had a job waiting, thanks to an immigration consultant.

Alex worked in Winkler for a few years, then moved west to the village of Cartwright, where he opened his own carpentry shop, and now has gained a reputation in restoring heritage buildings like the Christ Church Anglican (1898) in Cartwright, and the historic train station museum in Miami.

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He's fortunate. That kind of immigration -- matching immigrants with jobs -- has virtually stopped in rural Manitoba the past two years, the unintended result of the provincial government's Bill 22.

Now the government is trying to correct the problem by supporting a pilot project.

The pilot project resulted when companies in the Pembina Valley told a recent survey they need at least 600 new employees within the next 12 to 18 months. Many businesses in the Winkler-Morden area have rebounded from the recession stronger than ever and, if they had more staff, could fill the void left by American companies that went out of business in the recession.

But they haven't been able to access foreign workers like before under Bill 22.

Bill 22, passed in 2009, changed the Worker Recruitment and Protection Act to protect immigrants from unscrupulous immigration consultants. Under the bill, consultants can no longer act as both immigration agents and job recruiters. There were too many cases of immigrants landing and not having the job promised them.

But Bill 22 made it too hard for many legitimate consultants to recruit immigrants for the labour market, to the point where most new immigrants to rural Manitoba are now arriving under the "family stream" of the provincial nominee program (PNP). Under the family class, landed immigrants sponsor a friend or close relative for immigration but not for the labour market. However, the PNP was designed primarily to match skilled foreign workers with provincial employment needs.

Winkler officials initiated talks with the province that resulted in the "strategic initiative." Under the program, the local economic development office will act like a recruiter by reviewing immigrant applications and identifying newcomers with skills that are in demand. The economic development officer for the City of Winkler and RM of Stanley will fill that function along with an industry committee. They have already begun reviewing immigrant applications on a weekly basis.

If successful, government hopes to roll the pilot project out across the province, said Ben Rempel, assistant deputy minister in the province's immigration office. Rempel said an imbalance of immigrants was starting to arrive under the PNP's "family stream."

He maintained the pilot project is part of "a learning experience" for communities trying to adapt to Bill 22.

How big an impact did Bill 22 have? To the west of Pembina Valley, in small-town Cartwright, people pulled off a minor miracle six years ago by drawing 140 immigrants to their small, little-known town near the Canada-U.S. border, including the Tolmachev family.

Penny Burton, the economic development officer for that area, said that immigration would not have taken place under Bill 22.

"The province now recognizes what has happened," said Irma Maier, an immigrant herself and owner of Compass Canada Immigration Services in Morden. Maier helped bring most of the newcomers into Cartwright.

In Winkler, about 10 families have already been approved under the new "strategic initiative."

"Our goal is to bring in 100 to 150 families" under the pilot project, said Darlis Collinge, the Winkler-Stanley economic development officer.

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 30, 2011 B3