Canada's Immigration Policy

What emigration to Canada used to involve.

For some bizarre reason, it is not obvious to everyone that Canada's current immigration policy is a bad idea.

The Canadian government prides itself on the idea that it selects only the best class of immigrants. Its point system ensures that immigrants are already well-educated and, most likely, well-heeled. The idea is that they will be able to immediately contribute to the society economically, and will not become a burden on the public treasury.

This is an obvious reversal of the old idea, in which immigrants were commonly and without apology the poorest and most destitute in the lands they left: the Irish of the famine years, the Eastern European refugees after the Second World War, the Ukrainians and Poles on the Prairies, and so forth. Recall the words on the base of the Statue of Liberty:

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,”

To some extent, no doubt, this reversal of policy has been prompted by the growth of the “social safety net.” In the old days, if immigrants came to Canada and did not do well, it was their own problem. Now, if they do not do well, it is everyone's problem.

But there are several problems with accepting only “high-quality” immigrants. And we ought to pause to ponder, when we are reversing a policy that served us for so long so well.

The first is the moral problem. In accepting the poorest of the poor, Canada and countries like her were doing good in the world. In seeking to skim off the cream elsewhere, to alienate wealth and expertise from other lands lacking in both, she has no intention of doing anybody else any good. This does not endear her to anyone, including God.

And the converse of this is: because she is not acting in charity, her newest immigrants have little reason to feel grateful for Canadian citizenship. It is just a business transaction. At the same time, they obviously need it less. Accordingly, they will appreciate it less. Instead of developing a real attachment to the new nation, they will view it, in the words of Yann Martel, as “a great hotel.” They will hang around so long as it seems to their advantage, and so long as nothing in particular is asked of them. But if anything is, if Canada ever really needs them, they will be on the first plane home.

This matters; much has been asked of our ancestors. This is no way to build a nation.

The politicians argue that poor immigrants take jobs away from poor Canadians. But by the same token, wealthy immigrants take jobs away from the wealthiest Canadians. Is that better? Doesn't it amount, over time, to importing a new, non-native ruling class? Which is to say, in effect, to reconverting Canada back into a colony? Is this what we owe our ancestors?

Nor, for that matter, is it clear to me that poor immigrants really do take jobs away from poor Canadians. On the whole, poor Canadians do not have jobs. They are able to choose not to work, and to live on social assistance. Poor immigrants, on the other hand, long held back in their own countries, are far more likely, I suspect, to take the dirty and the dull jobs that native Canadians scorn, in the hopes of moving up and ahead in future. Improving the overall economy, and helping pay for those benefits for the natives.

A more troubling consideration is this: poor Third World countries are almost always poor for one reason, and one reason alone: because they are burdened with a selfish and corrupt upper class.

Can you see the problem with carefully selecting only members of this Third World ruling class to emigrate to Canada? They will bring with them, firstly, their assumption of privilege, and so will generally be discontented with Canada's egalitarianism. They will bring with them, secondly, their culture of corruption, and introduce it directly into the Canadian ruling class. In moral terms, we are cherry-picking the worst. We are mainlining social HIV.

I am educated here, in part, by personal experience. My first wife, now deceased, was from an upper class Pakistani family. My second is from a poor Filipino family.

The friends and relatives of my first wife were uniformly hostile to Canada and to Canadian culture. They considered themselves cruelly discriminated against. Why? These are their actual answers: because they were not members of the Granite Club. Because they were not full partners in their accounting firm. Because their Oxford accent was called non-standard in Canada.

About half of them have since moved on, although of course they retain their Canadian citizenship. In case it comes in useful.

By contrast, all my Filipino wife's friends and relatives think quite highly of Canada. I can think of only one of her Filipino-Canadian friends who was content on the public purse. She was legitimately retired, and happy as a clam on a pension of $800 dollars a month. Everyone else was working hard in jobs like cleaning houses, security, clerking corner stores, minding carnival concessions. The kind of jobs, in short, the Canadian poor mostly don't seem very interested in.

It is the children or grandchildren of these Filipinos who will be the doctors and lawyers. And they will be committed Canadians once they are.

I envy the Americans their undocumented Mexicans.