Example research essay topic: Canada Present Immigration Policy - 3,184 words

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Canada just like the USA has been growing economically and politically because of the inflow of immigrants. Canada had attempted to establish policies that would attract the world renowned brains that subsequently would contribute to the Canadian development in the years to come. Nevertheless, the process in which Canada's immigration policy was formulated was not democratic and did not hold government accountable to the Canadian people; because only the elite in the government were the ones who formulated the policy. In the following essay I am going to speak about the immigration policy of Canada, present various findings as well as express my personal opinion on the given matter. I am going to describe the economic goals pursued by immigration policy from the earliest years of this century to the present.

Second, I will describe current economically targeted elements of immigration policy and relate them to the historical trends. Third, I am going to examine a set of potential economic goals for immigration policy suggested by Canadas policy history. my aim is not to determine whether each potential goal is reasonable in itself but to find the necessary facts that corroborate the statement expressed above. Canadian immigration policy had recently been reviewed by the Canadian government for the purpose of understanding the main priorities of the given policy that would assure only positive outcomes for Canada. Before the tragic events of 9 / 11 the Canadian immigration policy attempted to fulfill the following goals: Refugee help. Assisted the political leaders and activists in finding a place to live when persecuted in their homeland.

Family reunion. Those who have families in Canada can have their relatives move to them. Making the Canadian society diverse. Foreign policy goals. These goals related to allowing the trading partners of Canada to move more easily to Canada than to non-trader partners. After the terrorist attacks on the United States of America, Canada had virtually shut down the immigration policies especially from the Arab world.

In other word, Canada somewhat halted the refugee help it used to provide throughout its history. Therefore, Canadian immigration policy was changed. It should be noted that the recent immigration policy can be seen as an extension of policies established in the early 1990 s. The most comprehensive blueprint for the Liberals strategy is found in the 1995 document, Into the 21 st Century: A Strategy for Immigration and Citizenship. The key elements of the new framework are as follows.

Immigration levels are to be maintained at 1 percent of the population level, though target ranges rather than specific numbers are to be set. Within that rough total, refugee management is to be moved into a separate system with separate resources and goals from the rest of the inflow. There is a clear commitment to achieving approximate equality of the family class and assessed inflows, even if that means falling short of overall level targets. For instance, Into the 21 st Century proposes placing family-class applicants other than spouses and dependent children in a separate class and putting numerical limits on that class.

All of these elements point to a continuation of the trend toward an enhanced role for the economic component of the inflow. Indeed, it is the Liberal government that has met the goal stated by the Conservatives of having the family component make up no more than 45 percent of the inflow. What is the goal of this enhanced economic component? Statements in Into the 21 st Century and a set of proposed regulations introduced in November 1995, but subsequently withdrawn, provide some guidance.

Those statements indicate that the government no longer perceives filling short-term occupational gaps as an important goal. In telling wording, the government states that filling precise occupational niches is not always effective in meeting long term needs (Canada 1995). The 1995 proposed regulations contained a reworking of the point system with emphasis on broad occupational classes rather than specific categories. However, political trade-offs mean this switch away from targeting occupations will not be complete. In Into the 21 st Century, the federal government commits to provide provinces with the opportunity to choose a number of independent immigrants who meet provincial economic objectives (Canada 1994 b). Immigrants will be selected to meet specific skill needs in specific regions, as denoted by the provincial governments, with applicants in this category given extra points and high processing priority.

The current goals seem, instead, to be more long term. Specifically, immigration policy is to be used to change the nature of the Canadian workforce: The proposed changes (in immigration policy) seek to improve the skills, flexibility and diversity of the Canadian workforce responding to Canadas new, emerging economy (ibid. ). Notably, the government proposed a program be established to identify occupations where there is a shortage of labor and which are closely related to the skills of a specific immigrant. Thus, rather than making admission conditional on there being a labor shortage in the immigrants intended occupation, the government would bring in skilled workers and help them to search for a job, possibly in a different but related occupation to their own. The most telling evidence of a switch toward long-term goals is the virtual abandonment of absorptive capacity as it had been interpreted by previous governments. This is evident in Minister Sergio Marchis statement accompanying the 1994 Immigration Plan: Periodically throughout our history especially during economic downturns there have been calls to slam the door shut to immigration...

I believe that such sentiments indicate lack of vision of what this country can become... I believe that decisions about immigration should be made from the perspective of a long-term vision for Canadas future. The main evidence that the government has abandoned absorptive capacity is the maintenance of large inflows in the face of persistent high unemployment. The level of the inflow has been reduced in recent years, but to nowhere near the extent one would predict based on earlier responses to bouts of high unemployment. To make this point, I strived to regress numbers of landed immigrants in each year from 1946 to 1989 on a constant and the de-trended annual unemployment rate lagged by one year. This is meant to show the correlation between immigration and the business cycle over a period in which absorptive capacity appeared to be part of policy decisions.

By 1993 the gap between the actual and predicted levels was 150, 000. Even with recent reductions in the immigration level, the difference is approximately 70, 000. The gap is a measure of the extent to which both governments in this period have moved away from earlier policies. The abandonment of absorptive capacity signals a victory of the long-term over the short-term view of the benefits of immigration.

Institutionally, the recreation of a separate Department of Citizenship and Immigration in 1993 can be seen either as the source or a signal of the shift in power. Several facets of the new immigration program are tailored to the goal of, ensuring that newcomers to Canada can integrate and contribute to Canada as quickly as possible, without adding to the burden on social programs (Canada 1996). This is the source of new policy proposals which would make immigrants pay for settlement services and make sponsors post bonds out of which any welfare use by the sponsored immigrant in the first ten years after arrival would be subtracted. It is also a source of the push for more flexible workers since, in the new economy where constant change is to be expected, more flexibility will mean less time collecting social security. Most important in this regard is the increased emphasis on language proficiency in the selection process. Immigrants fluent in English or French are argued to enter the labor market more quickly.

Finally, the government has maintained a commitment to using immigrants to generate investment and trade flows. The policy periods I have examined can be aggregated into five broad periods. The first covers the time before approximately 1960. This is a period when short- and long-term economic goals for immigration policy were in concert. The government wanted both more people in general to populate an empty land and more unskilled people in particular to provide the labor to develop Canadian natural resource base. The specific goals changed over time from unskilled labor generally before World War I to farm labor for the west in the 1920 s to unskilled labor for mining and forestry in the 1950 s.

Overlaid on top of this was an attempt to tailor the size of the inflow to the absorptive capacity of the economy. This meant virtually shutting down immigration during economic downturns. From 1960 to 1978 the economic goal of immigration policy changed to the short-term one of matching skill gaps in the occupational structure. The point system was part of an attempt to do that matching as were attempts to keep the size of the sponsored component of the inflow small. From 1978 to 1986, the economic goals of immigration policy were swamped by humanitarian goals. The government maintained a commitment to targeting immigrants to skill gaps but their ability to do so was hampered by a system in which applicants assessed for their skills were a residual category relative to refugees and family class immigrants.

Then from 1986 to 1989, the government focused on long-term, demographic goals for immigration, placing little emphasis on selecting specific skills. Up to the end of the 1980 s, Canadas immigration policy could be broadly summarized as one with low inflows in economic downturns alternating with large inflows directed at specific goals in better times. This time-honored pattern was abandoned in the 1990 s, with the government deciding that long-term benefits of immigration were sufficient to justify maintaining large inflows in the face of high domestic unemployment. Further, the long-term goals being pursued are different from those at any previous time: they are not the broad demographic goals of expanding the population as an end in itself or of changing the age structure.

Instead, the new long-term goal appears to be to use immigration to change the nature of the Canadian workforce, making it more skilled and flexible. I have never before tried to use immigration policy to change the skill mix in the economy without also stating explicitly which skills are lacking, that is, without trying to micro-manage the process. First of all I would like to say that Canadas immigration policy history up to the late 1980 s can be summarized as alternating periods of large inflows targeted at specific economic goals and periods of virtual shut down of immigration in the face of poor domestic labor market conditions. The Economic goals formed a central orientation of immigration policy throughout much of the twentieth century. Second, recent policy departs sharply from our history in not substantially reducing inflows despite high and persistent unemployment rates. The specific economic goals of the policy are also not well specified, in contrast to the past.

This raises the question of whether immigration policy should return to its focus on economic goals and, if so, on which goals. Using a combination of current immigration research and comparisons to historical patterns, I do not find a strong argument in favor of using immigration for virtually any of a considerable list of potential economic goals. my argument is less that immigration is not useful for such goals as building up the stock of human capital in the economy than that other policies are superior for meeting those goals. my conclusion is that economic goals should not form the defining orientation of immigration policy as I move into the next century. That does not mean, however, that immigration should be stopped. There is also no clear evidence of large economic costs to immigration, at least as long as it is well managed.

Thus, the best immigration policy for Canada appears to us to be one that focuses on humanitarian goals while paying attention to short-term costs of immigration in the Canadian labor market. Immigration in the last 20 years has played a significant role in defining Canada as a country with a richly diversified culture and, through refugee policy, as a generous country. Those should continue to be its main goals. Finally, I do not pretend to do an adequate job of placing immigration in the context of political, social, and cultural trends. my aim is to discuss immigration as an economic policy. I turn now to assessing immigration as an economic policy tool for Canada.

Rather than directly evaluating current immigration policy, I pursue the more general end of examining a set of potential economic goals for immigration. Once that evaluation is complete, an understanding of the subset of goals characterizing current policy will follow. The specific set of goals I examine are those that have been pursued in Canadas immigration policy at least once in our history. Focusing on this set allows us to narrow my discussion to the goals that have been deemed relevant for Canada. my approach in considering each goal is to ask whether immigration is the best policy for meeting that goal rather than discussing the usefulness of the goal itself. Thus, I will consider immigration as one of a group of (possibly) competing policies.

I argue that, unlike in the past when there I identifiable goals for immigration policy that could not be met through alternative policies, there is currently no single goal for immigration policy that could not be met better through an alternative. Before evaluating any policy, I need to decide who I care about in the evaluation. A common approach is to examine the impact of immigration on individuals resident in the host country before immigration occurs. This, however, leads to potential inconsistencies as the optimal policy may change once the new immigrants arrive in Canada and their utilities are included in any calculations. 11 As an extreme response to this consistency problem, I could take account of the utilities not only of residents and immigrants but also of potential immigrants.

This approach also has difficulties, which are evident in the context of a classical utilitarian social welfare function. Working with such a function, I could end up at the conclusion that I should bring in a large number of immigrants even if doing so meant very low average utilities for everyone in the country. The latter policy essentially trades off the standard of living for sheer numbers of individuals and arises because the average utility level and the number of people in a population are perfect substitutes in a classical utilitarian social welfare function. In response to these problems, Blackorby and Donaldson (1984) introduce an approach called critical level utilitarianism (CLU). Under CLU, one evaluates different social states the unemployment variable is created by regressing annual unemployment rates on a constant and a trend. The difference between unemployment rates and the estimated trend is used to predict immigration levels.

The variable is designed to capture the relation of immigration levels to the business cycle. Immigration level and unemployment rate data are from CANSIM. The regression has 43 observations and an R 2 of 0. 48. CONCLUSION My goal in this paper has been to use a combination of Canadas immigration policy history and current immigration research to examine economic goals for immigration policy in Canada. I present three main arguments.

First, Canadas immigration policy up to the late 1980 s was characterized by alternating periods of expansion targeted at specific economic goals and periods of virtual shut down in response to poor domestic labor market conditions. The specific goals that have been targeted have varied from long-term goals of increasing population and altering the age structure to the short-term goal of filling specific perceived gaps in the occupational structure. Moreover, in each case one can make an argument for why immigration was the best policy for meeting the specific goal. Second, the policy in the 1990 s has broken with the established pattern in not cutting back immigration in response to high unemployment rates and in switching almost completely to long-term goals. In this regard, claims that keeping the inflow at or near 1 percent of Canadas population is consistent with our policy history are simply not true. Third, in an examination of a list of potential goals, I have not been able to find a convincing argument that immigration is the appropriate policy tool for meeting any specific goal, while the governing class in Canada comprised the wealthy class.

There is some support for using immigration as a tool of trade policy and for increasing the flexibility of the labor force, but neither of these goals indicates a need for large inflows in poor labor market periods. Arguments can be made for using immigration to meet other economic goals, such as increasing the skill level of Canadas labor force, but in each case we argue that other policies would perform better. Thus, Canada appears to have entered a new era in which there is no clear economic goal for which immigration is best suited. A defining feature of immigration is that it constantly rejuvenates the population: bringing in people with new perspectives and customs. This makes for a potentially rich culture that is continually being reinvented.

Just as importantly, it necessarily negates attempts to create one simple definition of what it is to be Canadian. A glance at the ethnic turmoil that curses some of the most culturally static countries in the world indicates the benefit I receive from ongoing immigration. Bringing in a continuous stream of people who come hoping to find a better place provides the ongoing energy needed to make Canada a better place. As I stated at the outset, my examination is centered exclusively on economic trends and policy goals, neglecting immigrations role as a cultural and humanitarian policy.

I chose this approach out of a need to present a focused argument and because of my own limitations in expertise. Believe that immigration plays a positive, dynamic role in Canadas cultural development but that to see this clearly requires a clear understanding of immigration as an economic tool since this is where many discussions appear to end up. Reading this paper should be complemented with reading studies on immigration as cultural policy and with experiencing the wonderful diversity of current Canadian society. It should also be recognized that many potential benefits, both cultural and economic, may be realized in generations that follow the original migrants. Thus, my conclusion is that immigration policy should now be seen primarily as a cultural, social and humanitarian policy rather than an economic one.

This does not mean, however, that all economic concerns should be abandoned. Immigration should be selected to minimize negative impacts on the least well off. In this regard, government plans to move away from targeting specific occupations and toward selecting broad skills seem appropriate. Also, immigration should likely be cut back in poor labor force times rather than being kept at high levels in the hopes of realizing economic benefits for which there is little supporting evidence.

Research essay sample on Canada Present Immigration Policy