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

Opinion: The big picture shows immigrants are a good bet

Image via WikipediaBy Stephen Hume, Vancouver Sun


I’m an immigrant.
Let’s get that out of the way first in this reaction to the Fraser Institute’s disingenuous study asserting that immigration costs Canada as much as $23.6 billion a year.
Researchers Herb Grubel and Patrick Grady — both of whom are also immigrants and presumably don’t consider themselves a burden on the economy — conclude that in 2006, immigrants received on average $6,051 more in benefits than they paid in taxes.
On the basis of this snapshot, they advocate restrictions upon immigration. However, the narrowness of the data set suggests the broad conclusions don’t have sound foundations.
Indeed, the arguments sound suspiciously like those of the old Reform Party, which gave gloomy voice to utilitarian assumptions about acceptable skill sets and wealth required of prospective immigrants.
Of course, anxiety about the potential financial burden of newcomers is well established, if misplaced, in framing immigration policy for Canada.
Similar concerns were expressed about Irish immigrants in the mid-19th century. Central Europeans, Russian Jews, Scandinavians — even the English — have all been subjected to worries that they got more from their new country than they contributed.
So, here we are in 2011 faced with two successful immigrants, both indisputably valued and productive members of Canadian society — let’s leave aside the amusing irony of the Fraser Institute issuing tax-deductible receipts to wealthy contributors so they can pay less tax — fretting that new immigrants don’t pay enough tax to cover their cost to Canadian society.
This sounds like the venerable “I’m in the lifeboat, pull up the ladder” argument.
I say venerable because the notion that the most recent arrivals are paying insufficient tax and drawing excessive benefits remains one of the persistent memes in Canadian society.
And it is almost always based on selective statistical evidence while ignoring the unassailable fact that of the 34 million people in Canada, 33 million are either immigrants or the descendants of immigrants who helped to build a national economy which ranks in the top eight globally.
I’m not alone in my doubtful reaction to the Fraser Institute’s study.
Robert Vineberg, a senior fellow at the Calgary-based Canada West Foundation, notes that the average income of immigrants in Canada more than 15 years before the 2006 census was actually higher than for native-born Canadians.
On average, those immigrants paid more in taxes than they got in benefits, Vineberg observes.
“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 says. The data used can lead to diametrically opposed conclusions, he notes, and suggests “the whole principle of such analysis is faulty.”
Vineberg argues that immigrant contributions are much broader than their tax contribution. For example, an immigrant nanny earning less than average income often enables both native-born parents to earn higher salaries and therefore to pay higher taxes.
So it all depends where you take your snapshot.
When my father brought me to Canada as an infant 63 years ago, the only job he could find was on a garbage scow, although he was a qualified machinist. He worked filling paint cans and delivering bread at considerably less than the average income. He had five kids in school. That snapshot would show him – and me – as a social cost rather than a benefit.
Later he became an award-winning journalist, still writing at 87. And those five kids – two are newspaper columnists, one works for the navy, another provides research and management consulting to big health care organizations, one is a successful artist. By that snapshot, he’s a benefit rather than a social cost.
Vineberg concludes: “By zooming in on one small part of a complex phenomenon, the Fraser Institute ... has come to conclusions that may appear correct but, if the assumptions involved are examined closely, are unfounded. This does not make a constructive contribution to the needed debate.”
Indeed.
shume@islandnet.com

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/Opinion+picture+shows+immigrants+good/4859692/story.html#ixzz1NrSnc8PE

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Country rankings for trade, business, fiscal, monetary, financial, labor and investment freedoms

Country rankings for trade, business, fiscal, monetary, financial, labor and investment freedoms

Canada ranks high on 'better life index'

Canadians make more, work less, are happier with their lives and better educated than most residents of the 34 countries that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a new index suggests.

The OECD launched the "better life index" Tuesday, which allows comparisons between the member countries that go beyond the traditional economic measures, such as gross domestic product.

"Canada performs exceptionally well in measures of well-being," the agency said, citing statistics such as:

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  Nearly four out of five Canadians are satisfied with their lives, compared with three out of five for the OECD as a whole.
• Average Canadian household income of $27,015 US in 2008, more than $4,700 above the OECD average.
• Nearly 72 per cent of Canadians 15 to 64 have a paid job, above the OECD average of 65 per cent.
• Canadians work 40 hours a year (a work week) less than the OECD average.
• About 87 per cent of Canadians have the equivalent of a high-school diploma, much higher than the OECD average of 73 per cent.
• Life expectancy in Canada is 80.7 years, a year above the OECD average.
• The level of atmospheric PM10, tiny particles that are small enough to damage the lungs, is 15 micrograms per cubic metre, lower than the OECD average of 22.

But in terms of voter turnout, "a measure of public trust in government and of citizens' participation in the political process," Canada ranks at 60 per cent, below the OECD average of 72 per cent.

P.O.V.

What makes you happy about living in Canada?

Canada's rankings are based on assigning an equal weight to each of 11 topics. But using the OECD's interactive index, individuals can adjust the weight of the topics and create their own index. The 11 items are housing, income, jobs, community, education, environment, governance, health, life satisfaction, safety and work-life balance.

The index "has extraordinary potential to help us deliver better policies for better lives,” said OECD secretary general Angel Gurría.

It's part of an OECD plan to measure well-being and progress.

The organization includes many European countries, the U.S., Mexico, Australia and New Zealand.

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