During a speech in Iowa last week, in the middle of his red-meat calls for a border wall and tougher immigration enforcement, President Trump called for something decidedly less sanguinary: \u201ca total rewrite of our immigration system into a merit-based system.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is one of the few consistent positions the president has held while in office; he called for a similar reform in his State of the Union address, months before. The real surprise, though, is his source of inspiration: Canada.<\/p>\n
If it seems weird that Mr. Trump would propose Canada as a model for anything, that\u2019s understandable. Americans, especially conservatives, love to mock their northern neighbor: for its accent, its apologetic manners, its food (oh, poutine) \u2014 and above all, for its supposedly softheaded, pinko style of government. And no wonder: With its liberal, tattooed prime minister, its universal health care, its enthusiastic embrace of pot and gay marriage and its generous refugee policies, Canada can sometimes seem downright Scandinavian.<\/p>\n
Yet when it comes to immigration, Canada\u2019s policies are anything but effete. Instead, they\u2019re ruthlessly rational, which is why Canada now claims the world\u2019s most prosperous and successful immigrant population.<\/p>\n
The numbers tell the tale. Last year, Canada admitted more than 320,000 newcomers \u2014 the most on record. Canada boasts one of the highest per-capita immigration rates in the world, about three times higher than the United States. More than 20 percent of Canadians are foreign-born; that\u2019s almost twice the American total, even if you include undocumented migrants. And Ottawa plans to increase the number in the years ahead.<\/p>\n
Far from producing a backlash, Canadian voters couldn\u2019t be happier about it. Recent polls show that 82 percent think immigration has a positive impact on the economy, and two-thirds see multiculturalism as one of Canada\u2019s key positive features. (They rank it higher than hockey. Hockey!) Support for immigration has actually increased in recent years, despite a slow economy and the specter of terrorism. Today in Canada, the share of people who approve of the way their government handles the issue is twice as high as it is in the United States.<\/p>\n
Given the xenophobia now sweeping the rest of the West, Canadians\u2019 openness might seem bizarrely magnanimous. In fact, it\u2019s a reasonable attitude rooted in national interest. Canada\u2019s foreign-born population is more educated than that of any other country on earth. Immigrants to Canada work harder, create more businesses and typically use fewer welfare dollars than do their native-born compatriots.<\/p>\n
Indeed, their contributions go all the way to the top. Two of the last three governors-general \u2014 Canada\u2019s ceremonial heads of state \u2014 were born abroad (one in Haiti and one in Hong Kong), and the current cabinet has more Sikhs (four) than the cabinet of India.<\/p>\n
But Canada\u2019s hospitable attitude is not innate; it is, rather, the product of very hardheaded government policies. Ever since the mid-1960s, the majority of immigrants to the country (about 65 percent in 2015) have been admitted on purely economic grounds, having been evaluated under a nine-point rubric that ignores their race, religion and ethnicity and instead looks at their age, education, job skills, language ability and other attributes that define their potential contribution to the national work force.<\/p>\n
No wonder this approach appeals to President Trump. He\u2019s right to complain that America\u2019s system makes no sense. The majority (about two-thirds in 2015) of immigrants to the United States are admitted under a program known as family reunification \u2014 in other words, their fate depends on whether they already have relatives in the country. Family reunification sounds nice on an emotional level (who doesn\u2019t want to unite families?). But it\u2019s a lousy basis for government policy, since it lets dumb luck \u2014 that is, whether some relative of yours had the good fortune to get here before you \u2014 shape the immigrant population.Read more…<\/a><\/p>\n Canada\u2019s Ruthlessly Smart Immigration Policy During a speech in Iowa last week, in the middle of his red-meat calls for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[83],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/canadianvisa.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/canadianvisa.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/canadianvisa.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/canadianvisa.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/canadianvisa.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2597"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/canadianvisa.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2599,"href":"http:\/\/canadianvisa.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2597\/revisions\/2599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/canadianvisa.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/canadianvisa.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/canadianvisa.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Canada\u2019s Ruthlessly Smart Immigration Policy<\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"