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Protestors call on the Canadian government to regularise undocumented migrants in Montreal (MATHIEW LEISER/AFP via Getty Images)
Brampton, Ontario, situated in the sprawling outer suburbs of the Greater Toronto Area, is in many ways your typical Canadian city: rows and rows of middle-class houses with verdant lawns line quiet streets, with strip-mall parking lots and big-box stores in between. That it has been for years a majority non-white city, with South Asians accounting for over half the population, speaks to the success of Canada’s classical immigration regime. For even as Brampton grew more ethnically diverse, its orderly if monotonous suburban social template remained the same, attesting to the motto of late Ontario Tory premier and Brampton legend Bill Davis: bland works.
Lately, however, another set of immigration policy trendlines have begun to alter the town’s pacific character. Demonstrations consisting of more recent arrivals, also from South Asia, can now be seen in Brampton, protesting the prospect of their deportation. Though they came to Canada either with temporary worker or student visas, they believe themselves entitled to permanent residency; some of these students are even protesting their own failing grades! That their presence in the country — amounting to a mind-boggling 2.8 million temporary residents in a population of 40-odd million — continues to exert distortionary effects on wages and housing seems not to bother the rally-goers.
Meanwhile, authorities have registered a 30% rise in hate crimes, a 187% increase in auto theft, and a staggering 350% rise in home invasions in the Peel region of which Brampton is part; this has come on the heels of last year’s interethnic tensions, following the slaying of a Sikh activist. These statistics are not to suggest that all crime stems from immigrants but rather that an environment of material scarcity and institutional breakdown conduces to higher rates of crime, whether committed by immigrants or native-born individuals.
In other words, Brampton, a microcosm for Canadian society, has begun to move away from the “bland” Bill Davis country of yesteryear, looking everyday a bit more like those politically fraught immigrant ghettoes found elsewhere; and its condition brings to mind another kind of Tory politician: Enoch Powell. Though Powell, of course, lived in another time and another country, his legacy had been to mark the passage of immigration from a point of quiet consensus into a source of intractable polarisation and social fragmentation. With more Canadians now expressing opposition to immigration, Canada faces its own “Enoch Powell moment”. And as the rest of the West reckons with the consequences of permissive migration, we must ask: how did Canada, so long a liberal multicultural oasis, begin to lose its exceptional status? To answer this, we must first understand the standards of the pre-existing immigration system, from which the current policies have so radically deviated.
Since the Sixties, Canadian immigration has operated on a principle of prudent control, both in terms of quality and quantity. In 1967, Ottawa came up with perhaps the greatest policy innovation that Canada ever produced: the points system, which could be used to measure candidates’ suitability for contributing economically and integrating socially in Canada.
At the same time, the nations of Western Europe, including Britain, were importing migrants from post-colonial peripheries to act as a “lumpenproletariat” or reserve army of labour, leading to a general erosion of social trust. Unlike in Canada where multiculturalism worked as a rhetorical gloss, European societies could not adjust so easily to their new situation, and it is in this context that Enoch Powell gave his infamous “Rivers of Blood” speech in 1968, a divisive act that nonetheless served as an expression of the sense of alarm felt by many ordinary people.
Canada avoided this path — and not just because of its isolated geography. Its leaders consciously opted for a different approach, choosing to prioritise Canadians’ cohesion and security. As the demographics of post-Sixties immigration show, the points system does not discriminate on the basis of race. But it does discriminate in favour of a certain type of immigrant: English or French-speaking, skilled, educated, financially secure, upwardly mobile, entrepreneurial, and so forth, drawn from the middle classes of many nations. This is borne out by positive immigrant performance in such metrics as social mobility, savings accumulation, skills and educational achievement, and overall economic independence.
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SubscribeCanadia sounds like Straya – it’s less about immigration, and more about the rate of immigration. At one stage 250,000 was considered a fair number, last year it was a million. Is this sustainable or even desirable? What if it was five million? It’s my suspicion the people at the top are aiming for 55 million (from out current 25). On one level it’s a giant Ponzi scheme which no one voted for and which could one day wreck the joint, on another it’s great for our cricket, so all things considered, it’s even Stevens.
Here’s hoping all the newcomers want to junk Net Zero and build nuclear power.
Interesting piece. The other concern with very high immigration to large countries like Canada and my country, Australia, is the direction of immigrants to a small number of urban areas.
In Australia some two thirds of the population live in five urban areas. The result is that ramping population into what were low density spread cities undermines the amenity and quality of life for everyone.
The choice, here in Aus, are five never ending urban areas or establishing new cities to accommodate a bigger population. I suspect Canada might be in a similar situation.
Of course, a smaller, better targeted immigration programme might allow for even better outcomes . Quality over quantity.
Is it racist to bring to light one’s disdain for having their pleasant city/village turn into Delhi without any referendum?
https://www.economist.com/asia/2023/08/14/how-to-fix-indias-decrepit-cities
The Canadian immigration / multicultural “success” was not due to the principle being right, but the tolerance of the host population. As the elite increased immigration, flushed with their “success” in stuffing new and different people into places the elite didn’t live, the tolerance of ordinary people was being eroded. It was always going to stop being successful at some point. The stupidity of the elites bores me.
But the ‘elite’ didn’t do it; that was achieved by the non-elite members of the population. those you refer to as ‘ordinary people’.
Like the UK, the Canadian government is living with an increasingly mixed ethnicity population, and the UK’s experience is worth considering:
A comparison of the results of the 2011 census with those of the 2021 census reveals the following:
White and Black Caribbean people remained the largest Mixed ethnicity group (UK residents with parents of different ethnicities) and 513,042 people identified as such, up 20% from the 2011 Census. But other mixed ethnicity groups saw faster growth.
The number of people identifying as White and Asian rose 43% to 488,225; White and Black African rose 50% to 249,596.
Other Mixed or Multiple Ethnic Groups showed the fastest growth: up 61% to 467,113. This demonstrates that in England and Wales a mixed ethnicity population is becoming increasingly diverse and popular.
In the ‘London borough of Lewisham, 24,253, or 8.2% of the population, identified as Mixed ethnicity. This is the largest proportion in any area in England and Wales. Indeed, the top 10 areas with the largest proportion of mixed-race populations are, not surprisingly all in London.
But dozens of areas far from London and traditional port city mixed communities now show sizable mixed ethnicity populations too: Nottingham (5.9%), Wolverhampton (5.4% ), Cambridge (5.2%) and Reading (5.1%), to name a few.’
Isn’t the rather simple explanation that despite the UK and other governments making it increasingly difficult to for its citizens to procreate with whom they wish and that in the end – ‘love conquers all,’ and ethnicity is of little or no consequence?
…“these ones have often been taken en masse in from the villages and rural regions of their home countries, where lifestyles are markedly “pre-Calvinist”.”
The problem is the religion/superstition/state cult of ‘colour blindness’. What a strange way for a great civilisation to end.
This article identifies what is desirable for an uncontroversial immigration policy: Choosing immigrants who will fit in and be an asset in sensible numbers. I know and am friendly with plenty of immigrants regardless of race colour or creed but all of them appreciate the social milieu they have come to join and are eager to contribute. This includes professionals who are Muslim but in no way militant in their faith.
The problem lies in the sort of immigrants described in the article who have undesirable cultural traits, a primary desire to benefit from welfare and a desire to impose their own religious views more widely – almost exclusively Muslim. When combined with excessive numbers so that wages are depressed and infrastructure is unable to cope with the rapid population expansion friction is bound to arise. This is neither beneficial to the immigrant or the native population hence the apparently paradoxical phenomenon of the immigrant who is against greater immigration.
Perhaps you are too polite to put “the problem” in more blunt terms: some immigrants have no intention of assimilating and are hostile to the native culture, but the govt officials behind the push not only refuse to see it but also want to punish the natives who do.
Indeed. I believe the plan is to create chaos and revolution in order to suspend constitutions and insert martial law. There is no other plausible explanation for such lunacy being forced down our throats.
Or there is no plan & they’re just a bunch of greedy chancers?
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So am I to understand that unfiltered immigration doesn’t work?!
Shock horror!
Quick, we better tell our MSM and governing classes the news.
Oh wait a minute. We did.
They didn’t listen.
And now the people whose lives are affected by this nonsense are getting angry.
How depressingly predictable.
There is nothing that the left touches which doesn’t crumble thereafter.
And a significant number of people in Canadian government are part of what foreign Davos based organization that calls unlimited immigration and other nation destroying policies…
When did speaking about a problem become “divisive”?
When social media monetized our thoughts and beliefs.
You can explain something to people but you cannot make them understand it. In this case, the ‘something’ is that some fish cannot be in the same aquarium as other fish.
For a Canadian writer to speak obliquely of ‘post colonial perpheries’ is to invite a certain amount of good natured banter, surely?
Besides, the comparison with Mr Powell’s sentiments is misdirected and unwarranted.
Enoch Powell was making a point about Britain and Britain alone. A union of nations that has had a more or less stable religious, linguistic and demographic base for the best part of 1000 years.
Canada as a nation is only 150 odd years old. She was established as a colonial project and peopled by economic migrants from the very beginning. I think I say that without moral judgement.
There is more than a whiff of Scotch Piety about the Canadian position. The Pharisees Prayer. They congratulate themselves on their decency and neighbourliness (particularly when compared with the bigots ‘down south’) despite only ever having had to host one large migrant community – Catholics. And what a misery they made it, and for how long, for the papists among them.
Powell’s river of blood speech had the exact opposite effect of what he intended. The subject became undiscussable for decades.
Fairly accurate account, however this mess was set into motion well in advance of any pandemic or post-pandemic pressures. It is the fulfillment of the governing federal Liberal party’s ideologically driven agenda.
And it isn’t ideological at all for Doug Ford’s provincial government. It is 100% driven by greed and the enrichment of his developer friends that will stand to earn billions by paving over our rural communities to house the population boom the Trudeau’s Liberal party has gifted them. They have neutered regional level representation to subvert the will of the constituent to ensure they get even richer by turning the rest of the province into a mirror image of Brampton.
There is no benefit to the Canadian taxpayer. They are expected to shut-up and fund the deterioration in their living standard.
Canada was one of the best run countries in the world for yonks. They need to find their way back to that happy state.
The idea that Canada was multicultural but functionally unicultural is very true, and I don’t think many people in the comments really understand what the writer means. It’s probably hard to grasp if you didn’t experience it firsthand, and I’m only recently realizing just how globally unique that experience really was.
I grew up in a Toronto suburb with friends of every colour and culture from all over the world, yet we all lived similar, comfortable middle-class lives. We shared the same streets and had a kind of reverence and deference to the system (which made sense at the time, because the system worked).
Most of our households (suburban, as they were) had a dad who worked full-time and a mom who worked part-time. We’d go to each other’s houses for lunch, depending on whose mom was home. We enjoyed homemade food from so many different cultures and heard stories shaped by diverse life experiences (I both wanted to and never wanted to visit Lebanon after hearing one parent’s stories in particular!). But somehow, despite our different backgrounds, we were all united in that way.
When I’ve travelled, I often find it strange and a bit boring how homogeneous many places still are. The problem with the current approach to immigration in Canada is that we’re no longer drawing the best from everywhere, with a shared goal of building that same kind of unity. Too many people seem more interested in taking from the system while living in tight-knit ethnic enclaves like Brampton (instead of the diverse, integrated streets of my memories) and/or sending what they gain back “home” (because they don’t see Canada as home).
I completely agree with the author that our points-based immigration system was one of our greatest innovations. I worry that the memories I have of growing up in the best of that time are more of a moment in history, unlikely to repeat. That’s very sad to me.
But I’d like to think we can get it back.
Very lucid piece about how what worked very well for so long is at risk of being disregarded by shallow ideologues
Being disregarded? It is disregarded. it started when family reunification began.
Although family reunification was a policy after WWII, there were still practical limitations, families were supposed to support their relatives, so they were to be a net positive for the country. In the late 80’s(?) newspapers `celebrated’ Canada welcoming it’s oldest immigrant a 90 something great grandmother from Japan. I’m not sure what she was going to contribute to the Canadian economy, but at 90 years old, medical care was not going to be cheap.
From a CBC article 2013
Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney announced new criteria for sponsoring parents and grandparents to come to Canada today that are aimed at ensuring elderly immigrants don’t end up on welfare or in social housing.
The changes are part of “phase 2” of the government’s overhaul of the family reunification category of immigration. New applications for the program have been on hold since 2011 in order to cut down on a massive backlog that resulted in wait times of eight years.
Kenney said applications will resume Jan. 1, 2014, and will be limited to 5,000 per year. The applications will still take years to process because of the ongoing backlog. By the end of the year, the backlog is estimated to be around 80,000 applications.
Kenney said that about 25,000 parents and grandparents will be admitted as permanent residents in 2013 and he expects that level to continue in coming years.
Kenney said the number of older immigrants allowed into Canada must be limited because of the burden they place on the health-care system and other social resources. A set of grandparents could cost the system $400,000, he noted.
Kennysaid that about 25,000 parents and grandparents will be admitted as permanent residents in 2013 and he expects that level to continue in coming years.
Aside from health-care costs, Kenney said a growing number of sponsored seniors are ending up on welfare and this is a concern to the government. The sponsoring family must cover income support costs for the first 10 years of residency, but after that, Kenney says more than 25 per cent are receiving welfare benefits.
“That’s just not right. That’s an abuse of Canada’s generosity,” Kenney said
He said he’s been hearing from municipal housing authorities who say they are seeing a growing number of seniors moving into subsidized public housing.
“If this was about family reunification, what’s going on? It seems to me that that sort of thing constitutes an abuse of Canada’s generosity.”
To address these concerns, the government is introducing new criteria for sponsoring a parent or grandparent:
The minimum necessary income level is going up by 30 per cent.Proof of the new income threshold for a minimum of three years instead of one.Only Canada Revenue Agency notices of assessment will be accepted as proof of income.Sponsorship commitment period is going from 10 to 20 years.The maximum age of dependents will now be set at 18 and under.Kenney said the increase in income needed to sponsor parents is modest and reasonable and helps ensure that people do not become a burden on Canadian taxpayers. He said his department knows of cases where applicants have enough money in their bank account the year they apply, “and then they suddenly go back to being poor again.”
Previously, applicants could demonstrate their income with any kind of documentation which made it difficult to detect fraud and is why now only CRA documents will be accepted.
“Let me be blunt: we want to see that people are paying their taxes to help us, as taxpayers, fund the cost of mom and dad’s health care,” he said. “This is one way that we can deal with some of the abuse of our generosity in the program.”
Of course the Liberals and the NDP oppose any kind of restrictions. Once in power the Liberal sought to accelerate family reunification, so you have the headline of Somali family welcomes 150th member to Canada on Canada’s 150th birthday.
it’s all about the votes, not what it will cost the taxpayers or the communities that change beyond recognition.
One of the most informative articles that I’ve read on Unherd this year. Could also apply to the UK.
“The Canadian government could use the vast array of data at its disposal from this system—bank accounts, employment records, bits of personal information and paper trails—to construct a comprehensive live database of temporary residents and prospective deportees, whose exit from the country can then be confirmed by exit controls.”.
And there you might find you’re hoist with your own petard.
How are you going to persuade countries to accept those you might wish to deport? I write from experience:
In 2013 the photograph in my British passport was all but obliterated after it got more than a little damp during a prolonged downpour on a 4000 metre mountain in Southern China. When I presented it at immigration control in Hong Kong I was refused and turned away. The flight left without me.
A sympathetic English speaking member of staff among many other things phoned to explain the situation, photocopied the passport, faxed it to immigration at Heathrow who agreed I would be allowed to enter the UK. During the day he’d told me if I couldn’t get a flight out of Hong Kong before the airport closed for the night I’d be put on the boat back to Mainland China. The fact that I no longer had a valid Chinese visa was met with a shrug. (Reminder – always get a multiple entry and exit visa).
At 22.00 I was escorted from the secure area of the airport to first, the British Airways desk, whose 23.50 flight to London was fully booked and then to Virgin Atlantic where I was allowed to buy an enhanced standard fare seat for its 23.55 flight at an extremely enhanced price.
The reason for this procedure is that once you board a flight it is the airline’s responsibility to sort out any problems and, in my case fly me back to Hong Kong.
And this is why the UK Government spent vast amounts of tax payers money trying to off-load its problems onto a very willing Republic of Rwanda government. Of course even if a flight of illegal immigrants had arrived in Rwanda, there would be no guarantee that immigration control would allow the ‘passengers’ to enter the country.
So having allowed non-Canadians to enter the country, Canada might find it faces the same issue that in part, resulted in the UK’s electorate’s ousting of Rishi Sunak’s government.