Slagging immigration

by John Thompson

05/26/03

In a society that prides itself on acceptance and toleration, criticizing our immigration and refugee practices is much like juggling live landmines: Meet three master jugglers.

Joe Bisset is a former Canadian ambassador and the chief architect of our immigration and refugee policies in the 1970s and 1980s. Martin Collacott was another career civil servant who had been our ambassador in three different trouble-spots (including Sri Lanka and Vietnam). Charles Campbell had been a mining engineer for most of his working life, but had also spent ten years on the Immigration Appeal Board.

Their collective judgment carries a simple message; as a nation we have been behaving very, very stupidly. Moreover, the primary engine driving our current policy is nothing more than short-sighted political gain, and not — as we are so frequently assured — by economic considerations.

They all agree that Canada needs immigration (we are, after all, a nation of immigrants), and have no quarrel with the diversity of our population. Collacott, who is married to a Vietnamese woman, even points out that our current policies are actually interfering with true diversity as ‘family unification’ policies carried to extremes are bringing in tens of thousands of people from some cultures, and choking off fuller representation from others.

The worst abuse of our immigration system rests with our refugee policies. Bisset, who had designed our generous refugee system towards the end of his long career, points out that it was intended to accept far fewer numbers than we currently receive. By international law and obligation, Canada must honor requests for refugee status from claimants who arrive here directly from their homelands; but those who have already come from a ‘third country’ are already safe from persecution and need not be accepted here. For example, an Algerian who arrives directly from Algiers and makes a claim should be heard; one who comes by way of Paris should not be entitled to make a claim.

Only a tiny minority of refugee claimants in Canada traveled here directly. The rest are ‘shopping’ for a better deal and using our refugee system to bypass our normal immigration system. Bisset argues that, with the welfare benefits, administrative time, legal aid, settlement spending, etc. that these claimants receive, Ottawa (and the Provinces) are spending 5-7 billion of dollar a year — this is the money we could be spending on foreign aid, on rebuilding our military, and on front-line immigration workers. Canada has the highest rate of refugee acceptance in the World (60% of all claims) and it is making us weaker rather than stronger.

Campbell and Collacott are both highly critical of the arguments used to sustain an enormously high immigration rate. While Canada does have an aging population and a low fertility rate, these trends are world-wide and — thanks to an overly generous family unification policy — the average age of new arrivals closely parallels our population anyway, as does their family size.

The argument that immigrants tend to be more prosperous than born Canadians, and thus generate wealth has been frequently brandished at immigration critics. Actually, all three have pointed out that this argument was true (just barely) for those who came here before 1970. It has not been true since then, and new Canadians now have an average income that is significantly lower than the Canadian average — and which often is eked out with social benefits anyway.

Without offering any proofs or analytical data, sundry Liberal cabinet ministers have argued that we need to bring in hundreds of thousands of immigrants and refugees every year. While immigration can add vitality to our society and would — if properly handled — increase our prosperity, adding 1% of our total population in new arrivals every year would be a disaster. Over 60% of new arrivals flood into the area around Toronto, and the strain on the infrastructure is becoming more noticeable every year. The swollen traffic volume already imperils the industrial base of the region.

There is, however, a vocal industry that does depend on immigration — a host of consultants, lawyers, and immigrant settlement services that endlessly repeat the shibboleths we have all become too familiar with. Considering that this industry does not create wealth, but derives their income out of the public purse, perhaps they have been heard from too often to be trusted.

Bisset, Campbell and Collacott may be juggling landmines with their criticism — but their warnings about the booby traps that await us if we do not soon overhaul our system need to be taken very seriously indeed.

John Thompson is President of the Mackenzie Institute which studies political instability and terrorism. He can be reached at: mackenzieinstitute@bellnet.ca