Should Canada Direct more Efforts into Recruiting European Immigrants

[CANADIEN]

I doubt it. The recession there is only marginally worse than it is here and only in certain countries. People who would leave the worse off countries would mostly do so because public benefits are going to be stripped. They also have the freedom to live and work in any other EU state. So, if you see the economic performance and public benefits of a country like Germany as compared to Canada - not even taking in account the comparative costs of moving and the bureaucratic paperwork that they would have to jump through to get to Canada but not to Germany - absolutely no competition.

You have a point. Which is why I see a slight bump, not much more.

[Scotty]

Call it whatever you want. It is still changing criterais, but putting more importance on where people come from than on what they can actually accomplish.

If someone comes up with a better means of evaluating what people can accomplish I'd be fine with that. However, it's clear from the stats that people from Europe can accomplish a lot more than people from elsewhere.

What's wrong with doing our best to encourage immigrants who can make it in this country to migrate, regardless of where they come from?

Because we're clearly not that good at evaluating their abilities. As an example, we allow people to come in based on certain skills that are assessed as being in demand, yet only a minority of immigrants work in the same trade/job in Canada as they had back home.

Interesting, btw, that immigration is such a bad thing (at least based on your past postings) but it is to be welcomed if it comes from certain countries rather than other.

You can continue to focus almost all your efforts in somehow determining my motivations and presumed immorality in making arguments rather than actually dealing with the arguments themselves. It shows in your poor rebuttals.

For the record, I believe we are taking in far too many immigrants for no justifiable reason. That would not change even if all the immigrants were from Europe. However, if we're going to have immigration we should at least try to take the immigrants who have the highest likelihood of success.

[scouterjim]

There was an article in the Post the other day about how hard economic times are causing a lot of young, educated Irish to want to emigrate again. The outlook in a number of other European nations is even worse than Ireland's. This offers up the opportunity for Canada to redirect its immigration towards nations which tend to produce more economically successful immigrants. Studies have shown that immigrants from Europe are twice as economically successful as immigrants from Asia or the Middle East, for example.

Recent Immigrant Performance By Source Area

Should Canada take such statistics into account when considering where to direct is immigration recruitment?

It won't happen because both the Liberals and NDP would fight it. It ain't politically correct, ya know. We tried for several years to get my cousin in Scotland into Canada. He is an electrical engineer, and we had a job lined up for him. He was refused because Canada was "committed to taking more immigrants from the 3rd world." I guess we needed more berry pickers instead of people with trades. He applied to go to Australia, and was accepted right away. I guess Australia had enough berry pickers.

[Scotty]

As far has any person with common sense is concerned, people are not a commodity. They are people, period.

Oh stop crying! They are a resource. They are not anything else! They are potential recruits.

Nice try with the comparison between schools and countries. One, given that they do have the credentials to do it, can choose which university they attend. One doesn't choose where they were born.

Why would you imagine I would have the slightest care or interest in how income disparities would affect foreigners' abilities to go to a good university or get a good education? It's completely irrelevant to who we take in. Our immigration system was not designed to be some kind of welfare office to the third world, to help uplift the poor and miserable. It was designed to recruit, for Canada, the very best potential Canadians.

But its great to know that you would choose let's a jamaican-born graduate from Harvard before let's say a Pole who has chosen to stop her studies in Warsaw to immigrate here.

He said, sneer-sneer-sneer.

Sigh. You're so bloody tiresome.

[Saipan]

He applied to go to Australia, and was accepted right away. I guess Australia had enough berry pickers.

Australia act smarter. They didn't accept the Tamils, despite the proximity, so they went around the globe to Canada.

Edited March 6, 2011 by Saipan

[CANADIEN]

If someone comes up with a better means of evaluating what people can accomplish I'd be fine with that. However, it's clear from the stats that people from Europe can accomplish a lot more than people from elsewhere.

Then, it should be clear that a system that properly evaluates people would lead to more immigrants from Europe than other areas. Without the need to have place origin as the determining criteria. Don't you agree?

You can continue to focus almost all your efforts in somehow determining my motivations and presumed immorality in making arguments rather than actually dealing with the arguments themselves. It shows in your poor rebuttals.

Excuse me while I laugh. Fact remains that the right immigrant selection system is the one that chooses the best individual immigrants regardless of where they come from. The best you can put in defense of your "non-Europeans need not apply" proposal is to compare people to spark plug. That's beyond poor.

[Scotty]

So what does that have to do with the original post then ? We're not picking continents now, of course, and the OP says we should - so should we or not ?

Right now, people from one area are greatly outperforming people from certain other areas. The suggestion isn't that we prefer them for any reason, merely that the economic facts lead us to choosing them.

And you know what? Let's be honest here. If the statistics said that the best immigrants came from Vietnam and Botswana, and I suggested we should get more immigrants from Vietnam or Botswana, pretty much no one would object. But because the statistics show the best performing immigrants are from Europe, suddenly everyone's eyes bug out at the thought that we should give some preference to WHITE PEOPLE! Even though the preference has nothing to do with their skin colour.

[Scotty]

There's nothing wrong with it, except that the OP immediately suggests picking Europeans for some reason. So... we're changing the idea now, I guess.

For some reason? I think the OP was pretty damned clear on the reason.

[Scotty]

Why not?

Uhm, because they suck as far as economic performance goes.

[Scotty]

It's not a smear. People from many different groups and succeed. People from many different groups come here and fail. Italian and Irish immigrants had horrible times integrating into the economy when they were the largest groups coming here.

Do you have some sort of citation to that effect? Something about Italians and Irish on welfare or unemployment, say?

The notion that gigantic groups as he's suggesting do even marginally better than others I find to be rather ridiculous.

The statistics are abundantly clear And if they showed the best immigrants were anything other than white you'd be cheering them.

[CANADIEN]

Oh stop crying! They are a resource. They are not anything else! They are potential recruits.

Keep digging yourself a bigger hole. People are... people. Better luck trying to prove they're not.

Why would you imagine I would have the slightest care or interest in how income disparities would affect foreigners' abilities to go to a good university or get a good education? It's completely irrelevant to who we take in. Our immigration system was not designed to be some kind of welfare office to the third world, to help uplift the poor and miserable. It was designed to recruit, for Canada, the very best potential Canadians.

And if you think that's what I want it to be, you need to learn how to read. As I have said before, our system cshould enable us to pick the best candidates, regardless of where they come from.

He said, sneer-sneer-sneer.

Sigh. You're so bloody tiresome.

Of course, pointing to the flaw in your argument is gonna be tiresome... to you.

[Scotty]

Scotty is proposing a quota (namely, European immigrants in, others not). If quotas are wrong, then this one is too, isn't it?

You have a habit of inventing positions and then attributing them to me.

I never said a single thing about quotas. I said we should attempt to select our immigrants from those parts of the world which seem to produce the best immigrants. This is an entirely logical position.

That is why it's so difficult to discuss these sorts of things. I'm using logic. You're using emotion.

[Scotty]

There are many more people wanting to immigrate to Canada than we allow to do so. Those people come from all parts of the world. If we prioritized immigration from specific countries, put them at the head of the line, we would get more from those countries and less from others. Of course, there might not be enough from certain countries to fill the 250k+/year that is our present immigration rate, but we could certainly slightly reshape the demographics of incoming immigrants if we wanted to do so.

We don't need 250,000 immigrants a year and there is no academic or demographic or economic study or data which says we do.

The only way to ensure that the immigrants chosen will do better is to be more selective. The selection system will have to be revamped and the economic performance of immigrants should be much more carefully monitored. A second, and more fundamental, change in immigration

policy should be to lower the global target for immigration to no more than 100,000 a year. This would represent a significant cut from current levels. If it, together with a better selection system, produced the desired improvement in the economic success of immigrants, it could be maintained. If not, it should be reviewed. - Patrick Grady, Fraser Institute Report on Immigration.

Edited March 7, 2011 by Scotty

[CANADIEN]

You have a habit of inventing positions and then attributing them to me.

I never said a single thing about quotas. I said we should attempt to select our immigrants from those parts of the world which seem to produce the best immigrants. This is an entirely logical position.

Like it or not, deciding we will take people based primarily on where they come from is a quota.

That is why it's so difficult to discuss these sorts of things. I'm using logic. You're using emotion.

And what is more logical than choosing the best candidates regardless of what they are coming from, pray tell? Certainly not discarding potential candidates because "oh well, no matter how good of a candidate YOU may be, the avarage candidate from your neck of the wood is not that good".

[Smallc]

We don't need 250,000 immigrants a year and there is no academic or demographic or economic study or data which says we do.

So the one from the Conference Board of Canada doesn't count, then.

[Saipan]

Nice try. We both know that Scotty is proposing something that would NOT be an application of the same yardstick to immigrants. And that, when I pointed to a flaw in his argument, you jumped in with claims, which you will not prove, that somehow this country is turning into Africa

Scotty is proposing a quota (namely, European immigrants in, others not). If quotas are wrong, then this one is too, isn't it?

So how come you have difficulty to post MY WORDS? I'm not his secretary.

Do you speak for pinkos?

[Scotty]

So the one from the Conference Board of Canada doesn't count, then.

You see, Smallc, this is one of the differences between you and I. You posted a newspaper story about that, probably not even reading the whole story. I read the story, then went to the Conference Board site and read the report itself. It was written almost like a long opinion piece. It was not a study of any kind, and contained no actual evidence to support its desire for more immigrants to feed corporate Canada's desire for cheap, malleable labour.

On the other hand, when I posted a cite you sniffed that you don't ever read anything from the Fraser Institute.

I suspect, however, that you don't read anything from ANYWHERE unless it's a short news clip.

Edited March 6, 2011 by Scotty

[Scotty]

"Slightly shift" I could agree with, Bonam but some posters in this thread are implying we should fear huge numbers due to racism.

Says who? Let me ask you this? Would you object to bringing over fifty million new immigrants each year if it were possible?

How about ten million? At what point would you ask - "why would we?"

Or would you just say that of course you'd welcome ten or fifty million immigrants a year, because to do otherwise would be RACIST.

[CANADIEN]

So how come you have difficulty to post MY WORDS? I'm not his secretary.

When I pointed out that the statistics used by Scotty ranks immigrants from certain parts of Africa higher than those from certain parts of Europe, you could not come with anything better than:

Then, we will live like in Africa. Is that what you want?

And I am still waiting for concrete evidence that this is happening or likely to happen, instead than statistics on crime in FOREIGN countries.

Now, if I am in error in believing you support Scotty's proposal, my apologies. question is, though, are you in support of his proposal?

[Scotty]

Then, it should be clear that a system that properly evaluates people would lead to more immigrants from Europe than other areas. Without the need to have place origin as the determining criteria. Don't you agree?

Yes, now how do we do that? Given our absolute inability to do so has now extended for decades. Just how do you propose to establish a system which can adequately screen 300,000 people, most of whom are from third world countries were bribery and corruption are endemic, and where educational systems are nowhere near the same as ours?

As an example, we give points for a university education. Sounds pretty fair. Except that a university education in Pakistan or Indonesia or Vietnam is nowhere near as good as a university education from France or the UK or Germany. So how do we differentiate?

[CANADIEN]

Says who? Let me ask you this? Would you object to bringing over fifty million new immigrants each year if it were possible?

How about ten million? At what point would you ask - "why would we?"

Or would you just say that of course you'd welcome ten or fifty million immigrants a year, because to do otherwise would be RACIST.

Now, has anybody anywhere suggested we welcome millions of immigrants every year? Talk about a statement that lacks logics.

[Smallc]

Now, has anybody anywhere suggested we welcome millions of immigrants every year? Talk about a statement that lacks logics.

Hey hey, that's Mr. I read every study you're talking about. Never mind the fact that government and business both agree that we need immigrants (and more of the economic kind). They're all wrong, because the Fraser Institute says so.

[Smallc]

You see, Smallc, this is one of the differences between you and I. You posted a newspaper story about that, probably not even reading the whole story. I read the story, then went to the Conference Board site and read the report itself. It was written almost like a long opinion piece. It was not a study of any kind, and contained no actual evidence to support its desire for more immigrants to feed corporate Canada's desire for cheap, malleable labour.

The thing about successful businesses, is they generally know what they need. They need more workers that are willing to do jobs for wages that they can afford. I'm now in a position to see that. I have this feeling that you aren't.

[SF/PF]

desire for more immigrants to feed corporate Canada's desire for cheap, malleable labour.

This is ultimately what its about.

I saw this first hand during the last oil boom here. Companies were going to the far reaches of the world to recruit temporary foreign workers and pushing the government to recognize their credentials. Many of these workers were given translators to write their examinations for certification here, because they were unable to complete the examination in either of Canada's official languages. They were permitted to work for 6 months before being forced to write that examination, and were often permitted two or three rewrites if they failed.

Ultimately, they were permitted to work in safety and quality critical jobs for up to 8 or 9 months with no qualifications whatsoever. Which leads to situations like:

Charges laid in oilsands deaths...

And:

Chinese workers paid a tiny fraction of the going rate...

Someone from the company had signing authority on all of the workers' bank accounts. The workers were living in a camp and could request spending money to buy items from the camp store, said union representative Wayne Prins.

That signing authority could also have been used to take money from the accounts.

...

Despite regular and unsupervised meetings on site and off with the Chinese employees, no one told the union any money was missing, said Prins, the union representative in Fort McMurray.

"(The workers) were so nervous. They wouldn't say a thing," he said. "The ones who did talk, they said everything was fine."

Meanwhile, many American tradesmen were trying to get visas to work here, and were being turned down. These were workers who were, for the most part, already trained and tested to the same standards of tradesmanship and safety.

This goes far beyond academic debates about the economic performance of immigrants by region. In some cases, peoples lives depend on it.

[Bonam]

As an example, we give points for a university education. Sounds pretty fair. Except that a university education in Pakistan or Indonesia or Vietnam is nowhere near as good as a university education from France or the UK or Germany. So how do we differentiate?

Actually, the answer is relatively simple: let the market decide. Let the main path of immigration be job offers from Canadian employers, rather than a points system. It doesn't matter what education someone has, what matters is whether they can get a job in Canada. And the only way to know for sure if they can get a job is if there is an employer giving them a job offer. The potential immigrant must continue to hold the job with that employer for the period of their permanent residency (with appropriate processes in place for exceptions as needed) until they can apply for citizenship and remain unconditionally. If the offer of employment was not genuine, then the immigrant must return home and the employer must pay a fine.