TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY IMMIGRATION TO NORTH AMERICA

McGILL-QUEEN’S STUDIES IN ETHNIC HISTORY SERIES ONE DONALD HARMAN AKENSON, EDITOR

1    Irish Migrants in the Canadas

A New Approach

Bruce S. Elliott

(Second edition, 2004)

2    Critical Years in Immigration

Canada and Australia Compared

Freda Hawkins

(Second edition, 1991)

3    Italians in Toronto

Development of a National Identity, 1875–1935

John E. Zucchi

4    Linguistics and Poetics of Latvian

Folk Songs

Essays in Honour of the

Sesquicentennial of the Birth of

Kr. Barons

Vaira Vikis-Freibergs

5    Johan Schroder’s Travels in Canada, 1863

Orm Overland

6    Class, Ethnicity, and Social Inequality

Christopher McAll

7    The Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict

The Maori, the British, and the New Zealand Wars

James Belich

8    White Canada Forever

Popular Attitudes and Public Policy toward Orientals in British Columbia

W. Peter Ward

(Third edition, 2002)

9    The People of Glengarry

Highlanders in Transition, 1745–1820

Marianne McLean

10   Vancouver’s Chinatown

Racial Discourse in Canada, 1875–1980

Kay J. Anderson

11   Best Left as Indians

Native-White Relations in the Yukon Territory, 1840–1973

Ken Coates

12   Such Hardworking People

Italian Immigrants in Postwar Toronto

Franca Iacovetta

13   The Little Slaves of the Harp

Italian Child Street Musicians in Nineteenth-Century Paris, London, and New York

John E. Zucchi

14   The Light of Nature and the Law of God

Antislavery in Ontario, 1833–1877

Allen P. Stouffer

15   Drum Songs

Glimpses of Dene History

Kerry Abel

16   Canada’s Jews

(Reprint of 1939 original)

Louis Rosenberg

Edited by Morton Weinfeld

17   A New Lease on Life

Landlords, Tenants, and Immigrants in Ireland and Canada

Catharine Anne Wilson

18   In Search of Paradise

The Odyssey of an Italian Family

Susan Gabori

19   Ethnicity in the Mainstream

Three Studies of English Canadian Culture in Ontario

Pauline Greenhill

20   Patriots and Proletarians

The Politicization of Hungarian Immigrants in Canada, 1923–1939

Carmela Patrias

21   The Four Quarters of the Night

The Life-Journey of an Emigrant Sikh

Tara Singh Bains and Hugh Johnston

22   Cultural Power, Resistance, and Pluralism

Colonial Guyana, 1838–1900

Brian L. Moore

23   Search Out the Land

The Jews and the Growth of Equality in British Colonial America, 1740–1867

Sheldon J. Godfrey and Judith C. Godfrey

24   The Development of Elites in Acadian New Brunswick, 1861–1881

Sheila M. Andrew

25   Journey to Vaja Reconstructing the World of a Hungarian-Jewish Family Elaine Kalman Naves

McGILL-QUEEN’S STUDIES IN ETHNIC HISTORY SERIES TWO JOHN ZUCCHI, EDITOR

1    Inside Ethnic Families

Three Generations of Portuguese-Canadians

Edite Noivo

2    A House of Words

Jewish Writing, Identity, and Memory

Norman Ravvin

3    Oatmeal and the Catechism

Scottish Gaelic Settlers in Quebec

Margaret Bennett

4    With Scarcely a Ripple

Anglo-Canadian Migration into the United States and Western Canada, 1880–1920

Randy William Widdis

5    Creating Societies

Immigrant Lives in Canada

Dirk Hoerder

6    Social Discredit

Anti-Semitism, Social Credit, and the Jewish

Response Janine Stingel

7    Coalescence of Styles

The Ethnic Heritage of St John River Valley Regional Furniture, 1763–1851

Jane L. Cook

8    Brigh an Orain / A Story in Every Song

The Songs and Tales of Lauchie MacLellan

Translated and edited by John Shaw

9    Demography, State and Society

Irish Migration to Britain, 1921–1971

Enda Delaney

10   The West Indians of Costa Rica

Race, Class, and the Integration of an Ethnic Minority

Ronald N. Harpelle

11   Canada and the Ukrainian Question, 1939–1945

Bohdan S. Kordan

12   Tortillas and Tomatoes

Transmigrant Mexican Harvesters in Canada

Tanya Basok

13   Old and New World Highland Bagpiping

John G. Gibson

14   Nationalism from the Margins

The Negotiation of Nationalism and Ethnic Identities among Italian Immigrants in Alberta and British Columbia

Patricia Wood

15   Colonization and Community

The Vancouver Island Coalfield and the Making of the British Columbia Working Class

John Douglas Belshaw

16   Enemy Aliens, Prisoners of War

Internment in Canada during the Great War

Bohdan S. Kordan

17   Like Our Mountains

A History of Armenians in Canada

Isabel Kaprielian-Churchill

18   Exiles and Islanders

The Irish Settlers of Prince Edward Island

Brendan O’Grady

19   Ethnic Relations in Canada

Institutional Dynamics

Raymond Breton

Edited by Jeffrey G. Reitz

20   A Kingdom of the Mind

The Scots’ Impact on the Development of Canada

Edited by Peter Rider and Heather McNabb

21   Vikings to U-Boats

The German Experience in Newfoundland and Labrador

Gerhard P. Bassler

22   Being Arab

Ethnic and Religious Identity Building among Second Generation Youth in Montreal

Paul Eid

23   From Peasants to Labourers

Ukrainian and Belarusan Immigration from the Russian Empire to Canada

Vadim Kukushkin

24   Emigrant Worlds and Transatlantic Communities

Migration to Upper Canada in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century

Elizabeth Jane Errington

25   Jerusalem on the Amur

Birobidzhan and the Canadian Jewish Communist Movement, 1924–1951

Henry Felix Srebrnik

26   Irish Nationalism in Canada

Edited by David A. Wilson

27   Managing the Canadian Mosaic in Wartime

Shaping Citizenship Policy, 1939–1945

Ivana Caccia

28   Jewish Roots, Canadian Soil

Yiddish Culture in Montreal, 1905–1945

Rebecca Margolis

29   Imposing Their Will

An Organizational History of Jewish Toronto, 1933–1948

Jack Lipinsky

30   Ireland, Sweden, and the Great

European Migration, 1815–1914

Donald H. Akenson

31   The Punjabis in British Columbia

Location, Labour, First Nations, and Multiculturalism

Kamala Elizabeth Nayar

32   Growing Up Canadian

Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists

Edited by Peter Beyer and Rubina Ramji

33   Between Raid and Rebellion

The Irish in Buffalo and Toronto, 1867–1916

William Jenkins

34   Unpacking the Kists

The Scots in New Zealand

Brad Patterson, Tom Brooking, and Jim McAloon

35   Building Nations from Diversity

Canadian and American Experience Compared

Garth Stevenson

36   Hurrah Revolutionaries

The Polish Canadian Communist Movement, 1918–1948

Patryk Polec

37   Alice in Shandehland

Scandal and Scorn in the Edelson / Horwitz Murder Case

Monda Halpern

38   Creating Kashubia

History, Memory, and Identity in Canada’s First Polish Community

Joshua C. Blank

39   No Free Man

Canada, the Great War, and the Enemy Alien Experience

Bohdan S. Kordan

40   Between Dispersion and Belonging

Global Approaches to Diaspora in Practice

Edited by Amitava Chowdhury and Donald Harman Akenson

41   Running on Empty

Canada and the Indochinese Refugees, 1975–1980

Michael J. Molloy, Peter Duschinsky, Kurt F. Jensen, and Robert J. Shalka

42   Twenty-First-Century Immigration to North America

Newcomers in Turbulent Times

Edited by Victoria M. Esses and Donald E. Abelson

Twenty-First-Century

Immigration to North America

Newcomers in Turbulent Times

Edited by

VICTORIA M. ESSES

and

DONALD E. ABELSON

McGill-Queen’s University Press

Montreal & Kingston • London • Chicago

© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2017

ISBN 978-0-7735-4943-2 (cloth)

ISBN 978-0-7735-4944-9 (paper)

ISBN 978-0-7735-4945-6 (ePDF)

ISBN 978-0-7735-4946-3 (ePUB)

Legal deposit second quarter 2017

Bibliothèque nationale du Québec

Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free

This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Funding has also been received from the J.B. Smallman Publication Fund, Faculty of Social Science, University of Western Ontario.

McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Twenty-first-century immigration to North America: newcomers in turbulent times / edited by Victoria M. Esses and Donald E. Abelson.

(McGill-Queen’s studies in ethnic history. Series two; 42)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-0-7735-4943-2 (cloth). – ISBN 978-0-7735-4944-9 (paper). – ISBN 978-0-7735-4945-6 (ePDF). – ISBN 978-0-7735-4946-3 (ePUB)

1. Immigrants – Canada – History – 21st century. 2. Immigrants – United States – History – 21st century. 3. Canada – Emigration and immigration – History – 21st century. 4. United States – Emigration and immigration – History – 21st century. I. Esses, Victoria Melanie, 1956–, editor II. Abelson, Donald E., editor III. Series: McGill-Queen’s studies in ethnic history. Series two; 42

JV7225.2.T84 2017

325.7109’051

C2016-907731-4

C2016-907732-2

This book was typeset by Marquis Interscript.

Contents

Tables and Figures

Introduction: Twenty-First-Century Immigration to North America

Victoria M. Esses, Anna Zuschlag, and Donald E. Abelson

PART ONE OVERVIEW OF IMMIGRATION POLICY IN CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES

1Managing Immigration: A Short History of Turbulence and Public Policy

Meyer Burstein

2US Immigration Reform

Susan F. Martin

PART TWO ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF NORTH AMERICAN IMMIGRATION

3Economic Outcomes of Immigrants in Canada

Charles M. Beach

4Immigration Skill Utilization: Trends and Policy Issues

Jeffrey G. Reitz, Josh Curtis, and Jennifer Elrick

5The Impact of Immigration on the US Labour Market: What Have We Learned since 2000 and What Do We Need to Do Next?

Cordelia W. Reimers

PART THREE SOCIO-CULTURAL ASPECTS OF NORTH AMERICAN IMMIGRATION

6Assimilation and Its Discontented

Kay Deaux

7Muslim Immigration to North America: The Rise of New Challenges and the Need for New Perspectives

Abdolmohammad Kazemipur

8Comparing Immigrant Children in Canada and the United States: Similarities and Differences

Monica Boyd and Diana Worts

PART FOUR PRECARIOUS MIGRATION: REFUGEES AND UNDOCUMENTED WORKERS INNORTH AMERICA

9Filling the Federal Policy Void: State and Local Responses to Undocumented Immigration in the United States

Els de Graauw

10Value Conflict in Turbulent Times: Shifting Policies on Refugees, Asylum-Seekers, and Undocumented Migrants

Alan Simmons

Contributors

Index

Tables and Figures

TABLES

2.1   Interests of political coalitions (author-generated)

3.1   Number of immigrants arriving in Canada / per cent of population (Citizenship and Immigration Canada)

3.2   Top ten birth countries of recent immigrants (Statistics Canada)

3.3   Immigrant landings by major admission categories (Citizenship and Immigration Canada)

3.4   Level of education of immigrants on landing (Beach, Green, and Worswick 2011)

3.5   Labour-market involvement rates of immigrants (Statistics Canada)

4.1   Percentage of new permanent residents with a BA or higher, by entry class (1994–2009) (Citizenship and Immigration Canada)

4.2   Percentage at each educational level, for immigrants by arrival cohort, and for the native-born, by gender (Statistics Canada)

4.3   Percentage of men and women in managerial / professional jobs by cohort and education; persons aged 20–64 with positive earnings (Statistics Canada)

4.4   Percentage of men and women in managerial / professional jobs by cohort, education, and province; persons aged 20–64 with positive earnings (Canadian Census microdata)

4.5   Percentage of men and women in health / science occupations, by cohort and education; persons aged 20–64 with positive earnings (Canadian Census microdata)

4.6   Immigrant education coefficients in earnings regressions, as ratio to native-born (Canadian Census microdata)

4.7   Earnings impacts of immigrant skill under-utilization (Canadian Census microdata)

6.1   Number of immigrants and immigrants as percentage of the US population, 1850–2011 (Migration Policy Institute)

8.1   Characteristics of children ages 0–14 living in immigrant and native-born families and characteristics of their families and parents, Canada and the US (RDC Census file; American Community Surveys)

8.2   Children aged 0–14 living in immigrant and in Canadian or US-born families, by race and / or Hispanic status (RDC Canadian Census file; American Community Survey)

8.3   Select characteristics for children 0–14 living in immigrant and native-born families in Canada and in the US, by race and Hispanic status (RDC Canadian Census file; American Community Surveys)

10.1  Global and Canadian indicators of precarious migration (UNHCR 2015; Government of Canada; Auditor General of Canada 2008; Macklin 2011; Rehaag 2016)

10.2  Chronology of selected policies affecting refugees and asylum seekers (2000 to 2015) and the reaction of critics to these policies (author generated)

FIGURES

2.1   Number of immigrants admitted per decade (Dept. of Homeland Security)

3.1   Average annual earnings of all immigrant workers by year of landing and subsequent working years in Canada (Citizenship and Immigration Canada)

3.2   Median real annual earnings of immigrants by admission category for ten years after landing (Abbott and Beach 2011)

7.1   Average income and number of weeks worked in 2000, by religion (Canadian Census)

7.2   Poverty rate (% below LICOS), by religion and immigration status, 2001

7.3   Poverty rate (% below LICOS) of Muslims, by place of birth, 2001

7.4   Mean income by religion and time (Statistics Canada)

7.5   “Muslims: How worried are you about discrimination against Muslims living in Canada?” (Environics)

7.6   “Canadians: How often do you think Muslims are subjects of discrimination in Canadian society today?” (Environics)

8.1   Percentage of all children ages 0–14 who are living in immigrant families for select areas, Canada (2006) and the United States (2005–07)

9.1   Increase in state immigration laws and resolutions, 2005–15 (National Conference of State Legislatures)

9.2   State immigration laws by topic, 2005–15 (National Conference of State Legislatures)

10.1  Immigrant landings by class of entry, 1980–2015 (Government of Canada 2016)

10.2  Claimants entering Canada: selected “designated countries,” 2005–14 (Citizenship and Immigration Canada 2011, 2014)

10.3  Refugees and approved claimants landed by year (Government of Canada 2016)

10.4  Per cent of claimants accepted by year (and by adjudication procedure after 2012) (Rehaag 2016)

TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY IMMIGRATION TO NORTH AMERICA

INTRODUCTION

Twenty-First-Century Immigration to North America

Victoria M. Esses, Anna Zuschlag, and Donald E. Abelson

Immigration and its effects on both immigrants and members of host societies are timely issues that capture national headlines in Canada and the United States on a regular basis. To some extent, immigration reflects both the past and the future prospects for both countries. North America hosted the third-largest number of migrants of all regions of the world in 2013 – at fifty-three million – with the fastest annual growth rate of any region, averaging 2.8 per cent per year between 1990 and 2013. In 2013, the United States hosted the largest number of international migrants of any country, at forty-six million, with Canada coming in eighth at approximately seven million (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs 2013).

Though there are some similarities, there are also significant differences between Canadian and American immigration policies, and in how members of the host society perceive the economic and social consequences of immigration, and their preferred strategies for immigrant acculturation (Esses, Deaux, Lalonde, and Brown 2010). Understanding these similarities and differences, and their impact on immigrant outcomes, is essential if we are to “manage migration effectively so as to enhance the positive side of the tally sheet and reduce the negative” (International Organization for Migration 2004, 1).

Recent public discussions of immigration in North America have focused not only on nation-specific issues, but also on issues that span both Canada and the United States. Nation-specific issues have included Canada’s strategies to increase the utilization of immigrants’ skills and its handling of potential refugees; in the United States, the recent focus has been on the handling of the arrival of large numbers of unaccompanied minors and, more generally, continuing discussions of the need for an immigration overhaul (Akbari and MacDonald 2014). A major issue of recent discussion that spans both Canada and the United States has been the implementation of strategies for moving toward North American harmonization (Gabriel 2013).

The current volume comes out of a conference held in London, Ontario several years ago, co-hosted by the Western Centre for Research on Migration and Ethnic Relations and by the Welcoming Communities Initiative, in which the majority of the authors participated. The focus was initially on the first decade of the twenty-first century, a time of turbulence and uncertainty, particularly related to the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States and the economic recession of 2007–09. During this time much changed, with fear of terrorism and the economic recession influencing views of immigrants and immigration, and new policies and practices being enacted. The time span covered by this volume was subsequently extended as it became clear that events that impact perceptions of immigrants and immigration, and in some cases extensive changes to immigration policies and practices, have continued to the present day.

For example, media depictions of refugee claimants in Canada became increasingly negative in the early years of the twenty-first century, with claims that they were bogus queue-jumpers and potential terrorists (Esses, Medianu, and Lawson 2013). At the same time, more restrictive refugee policies were enacted, including changes to Canada’s refugee determination system and controversial restrictions on eligibility for health care and work permits (Wingrove 2014). In terms of economic immigrants, following the lead of countries such as New Zealand and Australia, in January 2015 Canada moved to a processing system for economic immigrants called Express Entry in which immigrants who can fill labour-market needs are given priority for admission, and employers have a greater role in selection (Mas 2014).

In the United States, in November 2014 President Obama announced a series of executive actions on immigration. Though these initiatives have not yet been implemented, if implemented, they are likely to include instituting measures to reduce border crossing by undocumented immigrants, regularizing the status of some undocumented immigrants currently in the United States, and modernizing and improving economic immigration programs (Department of Homeland Security 2014).

How the changes at the beginning of the twenty-first century will influence the success of the immigration programs of Canada and the United States, and how these outcomes will affect the well-being of Canada and the United States as a whole, are important issues for investigation. The current volume begins to address these issues and points to needed future research in this area. This research takes on an urgency when we consider how immigration has shaped, and continues to shape, the nations so many immigrants and non-immigrants alike call home.

THE CURRENT VOLUME

The volume begins with an overview of recent issues surrounding immigration policy and practice in Canada and the United States, including changes that occurred during the focal period. We then turn to discussions of the economic impact of immigration and the economic outcomes of immigrants, points of contention that strongly influence citizens’ perceptions of the costs and benefits of immigration. The section that follows discusses socio-cultural aspects of immigration, including assimilation in the United States, the integration of Muslims in Canada, and how immigrant children are faring in both nations. The fourth section covers precarious migration, which in Canada tends to involve refugees and their handling by the Canadian government, and in the United States tends to involve undocumented migrants. Throughout, the authors highlight key issues that are likely to continue to dominate immigration discourse, and they suggest what we might expect in the years ahead.

Of note, this is not merely a collection of chapters relating to immigration. Many of the authors have interacted and discussed their perspectives at the conference, and this facilitated our goal of having the chapters “speak to each other.” In addition, to ensure some degree of uniformity across the chapters, with the exception of the initial overview chapters, the authors were asked to cover three facets of their topic area: (1) identifying the most important and novel themes and issues that arose in this period in the area on which the chapter focuses; (2) providing an overview of research addressing these themes and issues; and (3) speculating on the future and proposing new and promising directions for future research. This third section is particularly important because we hope that this volume will serve to spark future research in this area and to promote dialogue between researchers in Canada and the United States.

The contributions to the volume draw on multiple areas of research. The investigations include: critical engagements with theoretical debates over immigration studies methodology; the analysis of immigration data collected by the American and Canadian governments; and assessments of the state of both nations’ immigration policies in the wake of the tumult of the early years of the twenty-first century. Thus, not only does this volume provide a collection of works on the subject of immigrants and immigration from a multidisciplinary perspective, but the contributors have also created avenues for furthering the research potentialities and discourses on the very real impact that instability and turmoil have on immigrant identities, host societies and migrant reception, and government policy planning.

The two chapters in the opening section, “Overview of Immigration Policy in Canada and the United States,” present summaries of the recent history of immigration policy and programming in these neighbouring nations. The chapters offer critical assessments of attempts by both countries to reform their immigration systems in an effort to deal with the turbulence of the first years of this century, and the implications these policies have for immigrants and receiving societies. “Managing Immigration: A Short History of Turbulence and Public Policy,” by Burstein, focuses on why the current time period has been regarded as more turbulent in Canada than the years preceding it, despite there having been much greater fluctuation in immigration between 1980 and 2000. Burstein turns his attention to exploring how Canadian authorities have responded to the perceived turmoil, especially the policies and programs enacted to regulate the composition of newcomers and facilitate their quick integration into Canadian society. The issues precipitating the extensive immigration policy interventions in Canada over the last ten years are examined, particularly the Harper government’s embrace of the economic class of immigrants to the detriment of the humanitarian classes, as well as changes in immigrant settlement strategies. The chapter argues that to understand the long-term implications of the Canadian government’s apparent zeal for transforming immigration policy, one must look beyond arrival statistics to the actual machinery used to regulate and manage the immigration system, including the provision of settlement services.

In “US Immigration Reform,” Martin provides a historical overview of immigration policy decision-making processes in the United States. The chapter outlines efforts to address problems in the nation’s immigration system, which, for many years, has been caught in a protracted tug-of-war between the politics and the economics of immigration. Martin identifies several reasons for the languishment of immigration reform, which include the breakdown of immigration policy coalitions and the existence of widespread public ambivalence over immigration, rooted in the fear that newcomers will not adopt the nation’s norms and values – an ironic sentiment given many Americans come from migrant stock. The chapter concludes with a detailed analysis of more recent attempts at achieving immigration reform under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, examining why, despite bipartisan support for legislation like the DREAM Act, transforming the US immigration system continues to be plagued by issues such as an aversion to temporary worker programs and the ever-increasing demand for tighter border security.

The section “Economic Aspects of North American Immigration” comprises three chapters exploring economic factors related to immigration. In “Economic Outcomes of Immigrants in Canada,” Beach focuses on immigrant economic outcomes in Canada since 2000 with an eye to the Great Recession and the globalization of trade patterns, economic outcomes being the earnings of immigrants in labour markets and labour-market participation, especially relative to non-immigrants. The subject is exceptionally timely because declining economic outcomes over the last several decades are a cause for concern across many sectors, such as information-technology production. This is in part because these poor outcomes have been used as the basis for major alterations in Canadian immigration policy. To that end, the chapter examines recent changes in skilled immigrant policies, investigating the increase in the number of economic-class immigrants in Canada, and why there has been a worsening in immigrant economic outcomes.

The next chapter in this section, “Immigration Skill Utilization: Trends and Policy Issues,” analyzes the phenomenon of “brain waste” – the under-utilization of immigrant skills in Canada – which has cost the nation’s economy billions of dollars. Brain waste is a key component in overall immigrant employment disadvantage. Reitz, Curtis, and Elrick use Canadian census data between 1996 and 2006 to review trends in skilled immigration, particularly in professional and managerial positions, and policy initiatives (credential assessment services, bridge-training programs) during this ten-year period. More specifically, the chapter looks into why unfocused governmental labour-market policies, a lack of systematic strategy implementation, and misinformation amongst target immigrant groups have permitted immigrant skill under-utilization to not only persist, but increase in Canada.

Reimers’s chapter, “The Impact of Immigration on the US Labour Market: What Have We Learned since 2000 and What Do We Need to Do Next?,” examines research facilitated by economists interested in exploring the labour-market impacts of immigration, particularly the question of why the estimated effects of immigration on natives’ wages have been so small. This involves exploring differences in methodology, which itself hinges on the categorization of labour markets, immigrant skill groups, and the need for a more flexible empirical model to examine the cross-skill effects of immigration on natives of different skill levels. A key focus of the chapter is the challenge to the use of the “area approach” (Grossman 1982; Borjas 1987; Reimers 1998) by some researchers in the 1980s and 1990s, and its eventual reconciliation with the “national skill group approach” (Borjas 2003; Borjas and Katz 2007) in the early 2000s. Reimers also reviews the nested multi-level CES (constant elasticity of substitution) model of labour demand and its decreasing effectiveness, analyzing the deliberations over its implementation.

Three chapters consider the “Socio-Cultural Aspects of North American Immigration” and the vital ways in which immigration has come to inform life in Canada and the United States, in both the past and the present. In “Assimilation and Its Discontented,” Deaux investigates the differences in immigration in the US from the beginning of the twentieth century to the first decade of the twenty-first. These changes are viewed through the lens of first-and second-generation immigrants and their experiences, exploring why second-generation members of ethnic groups have become the “discontented.” Taking a social psychology approach, the chapter is concerned with the social context in which immigrants carry out their lives, and how the distinct experiences (obtaining citizenship, birthright citizenship laws) of first-and second-generation immigrants speak to the process of assimilation and incorporation at work in the United States today.

Kazemipur explores the ways in which the intervention of cultural and political forces can turn some seemingly simple demographic changes – such as the increase in Muslim immigration to the US and Canada in the decades since the 1970s – into new challenges in the relationship between immigrants and host populations. The chapter “Muslim Immigration to North America: The Rise of New Challenges and the Need for New Perspectives” reports on “The Muslim Question,” a largely media-based trend, influenced by cultural and political forces, which interprets the interactions between Muslim immigrants and natives as full of distress and tension. The chapter, which focuses on the Canadian context, seeks to investigate what ramifications this negative approach has for actual inter-group relationships, examining possibilities for building healthy perspectives and growing the desire for integration on both sides. This includes proposing an alternative conceptual framework that is relational and structural rather than deterministic and cultural, based on sectors that include public institutions, popular media, and social / communal spaces.

The generational legacy of migration is directly examined in “Comparing Immigrant Children in Canada and the United States: Similarities and Differences,” by Boyd and Worts. The chapter contributes to the significant body of literature interested in probing the experiences of the offspring of immigrants (who either accompanied parents or were born after their parents’ arrival) by presenting a comparative analysis of family data of children living in Canada and the US around 2006. This includes assessing demographic characteristics such as generational composition and geographic location, as well as indicators connected to childhood development such as family size and parental employment. The research presented in the chapter stresses the need to continue to investigate components of childhood development and well-being in relation to immigrant offspring. Moreover, the authors highlight the crucial need for substantive research into the experiences of children in unauthorized migrant situations in both nations.

The volume’s final section, “Precarious Migration: Refugees and Undocumented Workers in North America,” addresses the increasingly fraught state of undocumented immigration in Canada and the United States. “Filling the Federal Policy Void: State and Local Responses to Undocumented Immigration in the United States,” by de Graauw, looks at the changing policy strategies and attitudes towards the creation and enforcement of immigrations laws in the United States. While immigration is generally considered to be wholly under federal jurisdiction, state and local authorities have taken on more of an activist role in immigration policy since 2000, spurred by the failure of federal immigration reform. These sub-national initiatives include proposing and enacting laws and ordinances aimed at regulating some aspects of undocumented immigration. Through an examination of sociological, anthropological, and legal scholarship, as well as immigration federalism, the chapter explores why local immigration policy activism, whether it be pro-undocumented (California) or anti-undocumented (Arizona), has increased over the last decade in the United States.

The chapter by Simmons, “Value Conflict in Turbulent Times: Shifting Policies on Refugees, Asylum-Seekers, and Undocumented Migrants,” explores how the treatment of refugees, asylum-seekers, and undocumented migrants fleeing persecution, violence, and impoverished conditions is informed by debates over human rights, border security, and national values. It presents a critical examination of the divergent values and views behind major developments in Canadian policies on the admission of refugees, asylum-seekers, and undocumented migrants with a specific focus on the years after 2006. Between 2006 and 2015, the Conservative federal government put policies in place to discourage certain groups from entering Canada to make refugee claims, even while the global number of refugees and asylum-seekers was growing. These policies generated great debate and criticism. The chapter addresses conflicting views on refugees and asylum-seekers in Canada, arguing that the debate stems from the tension between differing ideologies of nation-building (utilitarian vs. humanitarian) and the values associated with them. It explores how Conservative and Liberal governments can share similar views on large matters of immigration and fighting terrorism, yet stand apart on important issues regarding refugees, asylum-seekers, human rights, and related matters of immigrant accommodation in multicultural Canada. This value-based analysis focuses attention on what research priorities have yet to be addressed and what can be learned from the successes and failures of past policies, particularly when pondering their profound implications for the welfare of those populations seeking shelter and stability.

In presenting a variety of work on immigrants and immigration from multiple perspectives, this collection underscores the complicated nature of immigration. It also calls attention to the diverse nexus of issues that have made the early years of the twenty-first century a particularly unsettled period that is keenly worthy of examination. By highlighting some of these matters, this volume aims to foster further discussion among scholars alert to the importance of exploring moments of such turbulence in the desire to reach a better understanding of the intricacies of immigration in the years ahead.

REFERENCES

Akbari, Ather H., and Martha MacDonald. 2014. “Immigration Policy in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States: An Overview of Recent Trends.” International Migration Review 48 (3): 801–22.

Borjas, George J. 1987. “Immigrants, Minorities, and Labor Market Competition.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 40 (3): 382–92.

– 2003. “The Labor Demand Curve Is Downward Sloping: Reexamining the Impact of Immigration on the Labor Market.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 118 (4): 1335–74.

Borjas, George J., and Lawrence F. Katz. 2007. “The Evolution of the Mexican-Born Workforce in the United States.” In Mexican Immigration to the United States, edited by George J. Borjas. Chicago, IL:University of Chicago Press.

Department of Homeland Security. 2014. “Executive Actions on Immigration.” http://www.uscis.gov/immigrationaction (accessed 5 December 2014).

Esses, Victoria M., Kay Deaux, Richard N. Lalonde, and Rupert Brown. 2010. “Psychological Perspectives on Immigration.” Journal of Social Issues 66 (4): 635–47.

Esses, Victoria M., Stelian Medianu, and Andrea S. Lawson. 2013. “Uncertainty, Threat, and the Role of the Media in Promoting the Dehumanization of Immigrants and Refugees.” Journal of Social Issues 69 (3): 518–36.

Gabriel, D. 2013. “U.S.-Canada Harmonizing Border Security and Immigration Measures.” http://beyourownleader.blogspot.ca/2013/02/us-canada-harmonizing-border-security.html (accessed 10 December 2014).

Grossman, Jean B. 1982. “The Substitutability of Natives and Immigrants in Production.” Review of Economics and Statistics 64 (4): 596–603.

International Organization for Migration. 2004. “Valuing Migration: Costs, Benefits, Opportunities, and Challenges.” http://www.iom.int/jahia/webdav/shared/shared/mainsite/about_iom/en/council/88/MC_INF_276.pdf (accessed 13 December 2014).

Mas, Susana. 2014. “Express Entry Immigration Points System Revealed Before Jan. 1 Launch.” CBC News (2 December). http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/express-entry-immigration-points-system-revealed-before-jan-1-launch-1.2852922.

Reimers, Cordelia W. 1998. “Unskilled Immigration and Changes in the Wage Distributions of Mexican American, Black, and Non-Hispanic White Male Dropouts.” In Help or Hindrance? The Economic Implications of Immigration for African-Americans, edited by Daniel S. Hamermesh and Frank D. Bean, 107–48. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. 2013. “Population Facts: The Number of International Migrants Worldwide Reaches 232 Million.” http://esa.un.org/unmigration/documents/The_number_of_international_migrants.pdf (accessed 12 December 2014).

Wingrove, Josh. 2014. “Refugee Claims Hit ‘Historic Low’ as Ottawa’s Policy Faces Fresh Criticism.” The Globe and Mail (22 January). http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/refugee-claims-hit-historic-low-as-ottawas-policy-faces-fresh-criticism/article16461486/.

PART ONE

Overview of Immigration Policy in Canada and the United States

1

Managing Immigration: A Short History of Turbulence and Public Policy

Meyer Burstein

INTRODUCTION

Migration is, by its nature, turbulent. Wars, economic stagnation, environmental crises, and political instability push people from their homes and channel them to countries where they feel they can make better lives for themselves and their families. Because the push factors are unstable, so too are the impulses to relocate and the resulting population outflows.

At the receiving end, migration is also disruptive. New arrivals represent change and change often produces discomfort. The degree of discomfort and how it is manifested depend significantly on the social and personal characteristics of the arrivals, on their numbers, on host country attitudes, and on regional and national capacities and appetites to respond to the needs of newcomers. The more precipitous the change, the greater the distance – social, cultural, and religious – between members of the host population and new arrivals, and the less receptive the economic circumstances of the receiving society, the greater the disruptive potential and the greater the required investment in producing a welcoming environment.

Canada, like other “new world” countries – Australia, New Zealand, and the United States – has responded to the inherent turbulence of migration by devising policies and programs that equip the country with an ability to regulate and shape the composition of newcomer intake. In Canada’s case, this is accompanied by an especially elaborate and closely aligned system of public and private (not-for-profit) institutions and services designed to integrate newcomers as quickly as possible. “Old world” countries, by contrast, have generally invested more heavily in trying to keep the turbulence at bay by limiting newcomer intake and newcomer incentives, including making it more difficult for immigrants to obtain permanent residence status and citizenship.

The Western University migration conference, which precipitated this chapter, initially focused on a particular period in Canada’s evolving response to migration: the decade from 2001 to 2010. The conference examined what was deemed to be a particularly turbulent period with a view to inferring what might lie ahead for immigration. Subsequently, this time span was extended as it became clear that the turbulence would continue and that the government had embarked on a series of transformational policy and program changes that extend to the present day. This chapter attempts to contribute to and build upon the ideas that were discussed at the conference.

At first glance, the first decade or so of the new millennium does not look particularly troubled. In fact, a quick scan of annual landings suggests that immigration fluctuated more widely between 1980 and 2000 than it has in the ensuing years. What, then, might be the basis for regarding the more recent period as particularly turbulent or unstable? And what issues precipitated the extensive and transformative policy interventions that were enabled by the 2008 Budget Implementation Act, as well as the changes in immigrant settlement arrangements that occurred more or less in parallel with those on the selection front?

To answer these questions, we will need to step back and look behind the relatively placid arrival numbers at the dominant strategies and systems that were being used to manage immigration flows and deliver settlement services to newcomers. The argument that will be developed in this chapter is that from the mid-1990s onwards, it became increasingly clear that many of the key strategies and systems that had governed policy development and practice – based on ideas introduced in the 1980s and 1990s – were either failing or not living up to expectations. Moreover, the “patches” that had been introduced to remedy the problems that had cropped up either were not working or had introduced further complications of their own. Faced with the imminent breakdown of key systems, the federal government opted for fundamental policy reform. This chapter focuses on the two major thematic areas of policy development that have been the focus of important federal realignment efforts, with far-reaching consequences for how migration is planned, managed, and accommodated:

a)  The system for planning and managing the volume and composition of migrants; and

b)  The system for accommodating newcomers and delivering settlement services.

Recent years have seen massive changes in both the selection and settlement systems. The imminent introduction of the “Expression of Interest” system (renamed Express Entry) for processing economic immigrants, the repatriation of settlement services from the provinces, cutbacks in funding to settlement service providers, and a shift in the philosophy of settlement to focus on the longer term are all evidence of the transformations that are underway. The immigration system of the future will look very different from the system that is in place today. To fully appreciate this, however, and to get a sense of where we are heading, we must first understand where we have been. We begin the story by examining the selection system.

I: THE SYSTEM FOR PLANNING AND MANAGING THE VOLUME AND COMPOSITION OF MIGRANT INTAKE

The “modern immigration” period effectively began with the enactment of the 1976 Immigration Act and the 1978 regulations. The Act set out the basic principles governing migration – family reunion, humanitarian protection, and economic self-interest – and established corresponding immigration classes, or categories. The Act also obliged the federal government to consult annually with provinces about the number of immigrants to be admitted. Other stakeholders were also to be consulted, at the discretion of the minister.

Following the annual consultations, the responsible minister was required to announce in Parliament, before November of each year, the number of immigrants that Canada would admit in forthcoming years. This number was an amalgam based on a combination of projected immigration (such as the family class) and targeted, or managed, entries (such as government-sponsored refugees). It was not an absolute limit or quota, though it was frequently described as such.

It is important to note that the 1976 Act was introduced on the heels of a major, multi-year policy review, termed a Green Paper. The review led to the creation of a special Parliamentary Committee that was charged with considering the Green Paper recommendations. To assist in this evaluation, an extensive series of consultations was undertaken across the country.

A key objective of the policy review and consultations – and of subsequent legislation – was to bring stability and order to the immigration system. Prior to the 1976 Act, immigration fluctuated widely and, to a degree, spontaneously, in response to business cycles and global migration pressures. The 1976 legislation and its following regulations were designed with a view to achieving stability in the face of these pressures.

An ability to manage the volume, composition, and timing of immigrant flows was widely regarded as essential for engaging stakeholders, notably the provinces, refugee advocacy groups, ethnic associations, settlement organizations, and federal ministries. It was also regarded by governments, and by private-and voluntary-sector organizations, as essential for effective resource planning and expenditure management.

Consultations on immigration levels – a prelude to levels planning – first occurred in 1977, before the Immigration Act was proclaimed. Initially, the consultations involved only federal ministries and the provinces, because this was required by legislation; however, within two years of the Act being passed, the consultations expanded to include numerous other stakeholder groups.

As noted above, the Green Paper immigration reforms sought to introduce greater stability, better numeric targeting, and enhanced predictability into the management of immigrant admissions. The greater control was to be placed in the service of an elaborate and extensive planning and consultation system designed to be responsive to the needs of stakeholders, especially provinces. This system came to be known as immigration levels planning.

To tell the story of immigration levels planning and its problems, it is necessary to describe several features of the planning system, starting with the immigration planning categories. This is followed by an examination of the consultative activities that underpin planning, and by a close look at some of the decisions that emerged from this process. The final feature to be examined is the actual machinery for regulating migrant entry and how this machinery has been used. All three planning “features” – components, consultations, and management systems – have evolved over time in response to stakeholder and political interests, external migration pressures, and management requirements.

Immigration Components

Three main categories of permanent migration were established under the new Immigration Act: the family class, the refugee class, and a broad economic category that spanned a range of migrant circumstances and domestic interests. This last category included skilled workers, assisted relatives (labour-market entrants with close relatives in Canada, typically siblings), entrepreneurs, and self-employed persons.

With time, all of the categories underwent significant changes and new components were introduced. This was particularly important in the economic category, though major shifts also took place in both the refugee and family classes.

What distinguished the economic class and its constituent flows from other categories was the use of target numbers and a graded point system to evaluate the desirability of prospective immigrants. The points were linked to applicants’ personal characteristics (such as age) and acquired aptitudes (such as education), and acceptance for immigration was contingent on obtaining a sufficient number of points to pass an eligibility threshold. Business immigration, consisting, at the outset, of entrepreneurs and self-employed persons, became a distinct category in 1979, and subsequently underwent extensive revisions. In contrast to the economic class, applicants in the family class qualified as a matter of right on the basis of their relationships and the willingness (and ability) of designated Canadian relatives to sponsor their applications. Refugees also qualified based on various threshold tests, though in the case of government-sponsored refugees, a finite annual quota was also established by the federal government.

The points test that was adopted for the economic class under the 1978 regulations was very similar to the previous system introduced in 1967 when the discriminatory provisions governing entry were abandoned. However, while the factors assessed by the 1978 regulations were similar to those used in 1967, their weighting differed so as to better accommodate labour-market needs. Points were assigned to such factors as age, education, language ability, occupation, experience, labour demand and supply, and whether applicants had a prearranged job. There were also discretionary point categories that could be exercised by immigration officials (generally in a favourable manner).

International students and temporary foreign workers, two categories that have come to play an extremely important role in recent years, were never part of the formal planning system. Entries in these categories were controlled by means of threshold eligibility criteria, institutional requirements imposed on educational institutions and employers, and case-processing capacity.

Consultation and Planning System

The consultation and planning process that precedes the annual tabling of immigration levels constitutes one of the most extensive and longstanding consultative activities undertaken by the federal government. It has been in existence for well over three decades. Longevity has not, however, produced stability. Right from the start, there was experimentation with planning formats, with stakeholder coverage, with planning timespans, and with the immigration components targeted by the exercise.[1]

Implicit in any planning process is an ability by the associated implementation machinery to deliver on planning decisions. A corollary of this proposition is that that the community of stakeholders involved in planning understands the tools at its disposal, and the limits of those tools for purposes of achieving planned outcomes. This has not always been the case where levels management is concerned.

In part, the disconnect between planners and planning capabilities reflected the complexity of the immigration processing system with its many uncertainties and unknowables. These “technical” problems were compounded, however, by the fact that immigration levels plans quickly assumed iconic status and were regarded by the media, and the public, as a reflection of government support for diversity. As a result, both levels planning and levels management were – and still are – constrained by their symbolic, as well as substantive, import. These issues are elaborated in the discussion that follows and in the subsequent section on management machinery.

A key impetus for developing a more elaborate planning and consultative process, starting in the 1980s, was the conviction that successful integration – the key to a successful immigration program – would depend not only on the careful screening of applicants but also on the ability of Canadian society to develop and align services in accordance with newcomer intake. Achieving this meant that not only federal but also provincial buy-in would be needed, as key areas of integration lie within provincial jurisdiction, notably education, health, social services, and justice.

With a view to bringing provincial resources “on line,” federal authorities sought to engage the provinces around immigration levels planning as soon as the new Act came into force. Most provinces were receptive to these overtures, resulting, in short order, in collaborative agreements with Quebec, Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland. By 1983, agreements were in place with six provinces. In Quebec’s case, the agreement also included assurances that the province would be able to maintain its “weight” within Confederation by allowing Quebec to plan to receive up to twenty-five per cent of the total annual immigrant intake.

While consultations with provinces were required by the Act, they were by no means the only institutions consulted as part of the levels planning exercise. Other federal ministries and federal agencies (notably the Department of External Affairs, the employment arm of Manpower and Immigration, the Department of Health and Welfare, and the RCMP) were also consulted alongside the provinces. Consultation with non-governmental groups began in the early 1980s, especially with refugee advocacy and aid groups. These consultations gradually expanded to include social, humanitarian, religious, professional, business, and labour groups, leading, at times, to massive exercises preceding shifts in policy direction – chiefly, increases in levels numbers – and changes in government. The consultations launched by Minister Barbara McDougall in preparation for the 1991–95 immigration plan and the 1994 consultations undertaken by Minister Sergio Marchi were especially noteworthy. In the latter case, over 10,000 Canadians participated directly, hundreds of submissions were received from stakeholder groups, study circles and town hall meetings were organized in major centres, ten expert groups were formed to report on specific questions, and a national conference was held. The goals of the consultative exercises were a combination of taking the public pulse, providing information to stakeholder groups, and, critically, enlisting public and institutional support for newcomer integration.

As planners and politicians familiarized themselves with the challenges and opportunities that accompanied levels planning, various innovations appeared. An early change involved the introduction of a planning range in place of a numeric target. This offered cover for both “technical” matching and management problems, as well as policy adjustments. For example, the first two annual levels plans underestimated the impact of the Indochinese refugee movement on levels numbers.

A second, more important innovation that gradually took hold was the shift from near-term planning – and a more or less exclusive focus on numbers – to a longer-term, strategic focus. There were multiple reasons for this shift. Prime among them was the desire, at both the political and bureaucratic levels, to link immigration more closely with the state of the economy. This was facilitated – and prompted – by the fact that immigration policy responsibilities were housed within a ministry that was also responsible for labour-market and employment policy. The more strategic stance resulted in a changeover from an annual to a three-year planning cycle in which the second and third years were subject to a rolling review that allowed changes to be made in response to shifting labour-market conditions. The adoption of a more strategic focus and multi-year planning were strongly endorsed by the provinces, as longer lead times made it easier for them to adjust essential services and to build capacity in response to anticipated changes in immigrant intake.

Another critical factor behind the shift to multi-year plans was the desire by central agencies (the Treasury Board and Privy Council Office) to forge closer and more stable ties between immigration levels planning and the federal expenditure management system. This had two objectives: one was to introduce greater stability into the financial planning associated with immigration, and the second was to ensure that policy-makers and ministers had a comprehensive appreciation of the full settlement and processing costs implied by various levels planning options. In practice, this meant that in tabling the annual levels plan, the immigration ministry was also required to indicate the resources that would be needed for its realization. On the processing side, this meant that ministries implicated in processing applications and conducting health checks, security screenings, and criminal background reviews were given an opportunity, alongside the immigration ministry, to indicate resource needs associated with particular changes in immigrant caseloads. In this context, lengthening the levels planning cycle was consistent with wider efforts to improve expenditure management by aligning multi-year immigration plans with multi-year expenditure plans. (The government’s Policy and Expenditure Management System required two annual submissions to Cabinet on immigration levels, in spring and fall.)

The final planning innovation that is noteworthy for the purposes of this discussion was the introduction of component levels planning structured, initially, around the three principal immigration streams: social, economic, and humanitarian. This occurred soon after levels consultations were initiated and following a 1981 Cabinet decision to postpone announcement of a three-year levels plan pending consideration of the recommendations on labour-market immigration contained in the Report of the Task Force on Labour Market Development. With time, the number of distinct components in the levels plan grew markedly, greatly increasing the complexity of the levels planning exercise.

The combination of longer planning horizons, distinct planning components that catered to different constituencies (social, economic, and humanitarian), and broader and more elaborate public consultations created expectations among provinces and other stakeholders that the levels plan could be configured according to their preferences. For this reason, it also led to a desire by ministers and governments to serve up policies that addressed the interests of these differentiated constituencies. The resulting dynamic was one where stakeholder groups began to measure the government’s commitment to their cause by the number of planned admissions for their segment of the immigration pie.[2] This left ministers and governments with two options for responding to stakeholder pressure: increasing the size of the overall immigration pie (and, thereby, the total number of admissions in all categories) or changing the relative size of the component slices. Or both. This last category – “both” – was frequently invoked as governments felt compelled to compensate “other” stakeholders whenever intake was expanded in some target category – for example, family-class or refugee intake was expanded to compensate for a desired expansion of independent immigration.

While the vast majority of stakeholders expressed support for all the immigration components, the prevailing preference consistently favoured economic immigration. This was especially prevalent among provinces and the public at large. Economic immigrants were perceived as integrating more quickly and contributing sooner; hence, economic migration was seen as being in the broad public interest. By contrast, family and humanitarian migration were regarded as catering to narrower private or special interests. The resulting dynamics will be taken up in greater detail below.

Management of Volumes and Composition

This section begins with a ‘technical’ description of the immigration levels management system. We open with a discussion of how the system operated prior to 2008 when new ministerial powers were added to the legislative arsenal.

From a planning perspective, starting in 1979, even before component planning was introduced, the overall immigration levels numbers were generated by aggregating discrete forecasts for some components with planned – and managed – targets for other components. These flows were associated with different classes or categories of immigrants. The following major categories were in play:

a)  Family class: Annual family-class numbers were not targets but, rather, projections. The projections were based on estimated sponsorships, the number of immigrants expected to qualify, processing capacity abroad, and “throughput” times (times from case disposition to arrival). Essentially, family-class migration was a “rights-based” flow. If immigrants met certain thresholds – a bona fide qualifying relationship and a guarantee of financial support – they were accepted and processed on a priority basis.

b)  Refugees: Refugee numbers were a composite of projected and targeted values. The projected component centred on successful refugee claims and forecasts of privately sponsored refugees. The targeted component centred on government-sponsored refugees. Precise numbers were negotiated annually with the UNHCR – the United Nations refugee agency.

c)  Quebec-selected skilled workers: Under its formal accord with the federal government, the government of Quebec gradually acquired (and still retains) the authority to select skilled worker immigrants (subject to certain limitations). As part of the levels planning process, Quebec indicated the number of skilled workers it intended to admit each year. This number was counted under the total skilled worker component of the immigration levels plan.

d)  Federal skilled workers: This component represented a managed flow consisting of the number of skilled workers that the federal government intended to process and admit as permanent residents. Accompanying dependents, who form part of the levels plan, were projected based on principal applicant numbers.

e)  Provincial Nominees: The Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) whereby provinces (other than Quebec) are able to nominate economic applicants did not play an important role in levels planning until after 2005. Starting in 2009, the number of immigrants admitted under PNPS was assigned an annual cap by the federal government. Prior to that, PNP numbers were projected and managed by limiting intake and controlling processing capacity. Provincial nominees were (and are) processed on a priority basis (see CIC 2011b; Seidle 2013).

The relative importance of projections versus purposive (targeted) flows in levels planning depended on the length of the planning horizon. In the near term, levels numbers were essentially projections, because annual landings were dictated by processing actions that had, for the most part, been completed during the previous year. Over the longer term, however, options widened and the possibility of managing landings – by managing intake – was greatly expanded. This management consisted of administrative, regulatory, and legislative actions.

In theory, annual landings can be directly linked to the volume and composition of intake.[3] In practice, however, landings can be constrained by allowing applications to accumulate, thus building case inventories instead of producing landings; equally, once inventories have accumulated, processing can continue long after new intake has been shut down. The gradual breakdown of the immigration management system resulted from an accumulation of inventories and a growing disconnect between output (landings) and intake (case applications).

Prior to the 2008 introduction of ministerial authorities, which offered direct control over immigrant processing, changes in immigrant volumes and composition were meant to be achieved at the “front end” by varying the eligibility, and hence the number, of skilled workers. This could be accomplished by a combination of administrative and regulatory actions (more on this below). The only other category that could be controlled easily was government-sponsored refugees. Refugee numbers were, however, small; the refugee advocacy community was powerful; and support for genuine refugees has deep roots in Canada, thus effectively eliminating refugee management as an instrument for overall levels management.

Before embarking on a discussion of how the levels management machinery broke down, it is important to appreciate the relationships between component flows, particularly the fact that changes in skilled worker admissions induce corresponding changes in family-class immigration. This relationship lags behind skilled worker admissions by some three to five years, the time taken by economic immigrants to initiate family-class sponsorships. Political and bureaucratic efforts to manipulate the relationship that exists between the immigration classes have proven to be the primary source of instability in the levels planning and management system.

While the propensity of skilled workers to sponsor their families is relatively stable (except during sudden international crises), the ratio of family-class to economic-class immigrants has varied considerably over the period we are examining. Two important reasons account for this variation: first, lags between economic immigration and the appearance of sponsored immigrants allowed economic immigration to be increased for several years in succession before family-class immigration followed suit and the prevailing long-term ratio between the classes began to reassert itself (the same phenomenon operated in reverse); and, second, restrictions on family-class processing (not supported by regulation) were attempted at various times in an effort to maintain a favourable ratio of economic to family-class immigration. One result of these efforts was a rapid growth in family-class case-processing backlogs,[4] which proved to be a major destabilizing factor in the overall immigration levels management system.

Efforts to alter the ratio of economic to family-class immigrants have been a regular feature of immigration levels planning since the reopening of economic immigration in 1985 after a three-year “freeze.” Because levels consultations have consistently revealed more support for economic immigration, there has always been pressure for levels plans to “artificially” tilt the balance between family and economic immigration in favour of the latter.[5] Policy and political announcements have supported and justified this shift (which took the form of increasing economic immigration) as a measure of economic policy. Unfortunately, the changes have, until recently, proven unsustainable. As sponsorships and family-class backlogs mounted, family-class processing was also forced to increase, tipping the economic to family-class immigration ratio back in favour of the family class. The increasing family-class numbers created conflict with previously announced economic rationales and related political strategies.

Given available management instruments, the options for preventing conflict between long-term economic policy objectives and periodic corrections favouring the family class were limited: the corrections could be allowed to run their course; growing family-class backlogs could be ignored; the definition of the family class could be narrowed; or independent immigration could be continually ratcheted up. None of these was politically palatable, however, and none was sustainable over the long run – though, in practice, all of the measures were attempted at one time or another, either alone or in combination.

The fact that levels strategy had to be adjusted, on occasion, in a regressive manner to fit the facts on the ground, and that family-class backlogs continued to grow to unsustainable levels, notwithstanding periodic corrections, indicates how much pressure there was to favour economic immigrants and how destabilizing the temptation to tilt the ratio of economic-to family-class immigration (in favour of economic immigrants) proved to be.

The second major source of instability originated with the economic category and the manner in which it was controlled. As noted earlier, the main instrument for managing immigrant volumes and composition – that is, the mix of characteristics that immigrants possess – was the point system used to assess economic migrants. The control of this system was analogous to the operation of hydraulic gates in a dam: for economic-class applicants to qualify for admission to Canada, they had to earn a sufficient number of points to pass a threshold test. Points were assigned based on age, education, vocational training, occupational background, experience, ability in both official languages, pre-arranged job offer, personal suitability, and several other factors.[6] To increase the number of qualifying applicants, either more points were awarded for particular factors or the overall pass mark was lowered, making it easier for applicants to qualify; to reduce the number of qualifying applicants, this was reversed – available points were reduced for particular factors or the pass mark was raised.

In practice, most of the numerical adjustments relied on changes in two variables: one was referred to as a “demographic factor” – though its only use was as a hydraulic “gate”; the other was the occupational factor, where points were assigned to occupations based on anticipated applicant numbers and the relative size of the occupational stream within the Canadian economy.[7] It is this system or, more particularly, the breakdown of this system that provided the impetus for many of the policy changes and shifts in direction that have transformed Canada’s immigration program over the last decade.

The following quotes are from an internal CIC document,[8] ca. 1990, advising the minister of employment and immigration of issues surrounding levels management and the need to address various problems: “The current management system does not provide enough control to ensure that actual landings are in line with planned objectives. The family class, privately sponsored refugees, business immigrants, retirees and humanitarians are not subject to direct control … These groups can only be ‘managed’ through changes to the eligibility regulations.” Still on the same theme: “The machinery for controlling the number and type of immigrants coming to Canada is inadequate. Fixing the machine will, however, require fundamental and, possibly, controversial changes to the way we do business.”

The memorandum goes on to note: “A key element of the current [levels] plan is the government’s commitment to carefully manage immigrant numbers. In giving conditional support to the plan, ministers noted the high cost of initial settlement and deep provincial concerns over the cost of education, health and social assistance. Ministers also noted that earlier immigration plans were exceeded by large margins and CEIC [Canada Employment Insurance Commission, the agency responsible for managing immigration at that time] was directed to implement a better management system.” The following observation is germane: “In virtually every component of the program, more immigrants are being qualified and accepted for processing than are called for under the … plan. In fact, the plan calls for 220,000 persons to be landed while some 350,000 are being qualified [annually].” The result, according to the memorandum, is that CEIC, in order to limit entry, is “artificially constraining the resources that go into immigrant processing … [which] leaves large numbers of individuals in limbo, waiting for their cases to be concluded … [while at the same time] new applicants must queue up behind the nearly 400,000 persons who are already in process.” The following warning is offered: “If there is no demonstrable link between levels plans and results, support for the consultation process among stakeholders will be withdrawn. Alternatively, should there be distortions among the components, the ‘social contract’ that underlies the balance between components will break down and public support for immigration will be eroded.”

While the immigration ministry never enacted the provisions that were developed in connection with the above-mentioned ministerial memorandum, the analysis was to prove prophetic. The ministry continued to experience difficulty in controlling applications and case backlogs continued to grow. Part of the reason for the difficulty was the reluctance by ministers to raise the pass mark and lower the points that were available to economic-class applicants. This reluctance was a response to widespread confusion about the distinction between suppressing new case intake and suppressing landings. Curtailment of intake was regarded by the media, and by stakeholders, as a sign of reduced government support for immigration. This led to paralysis of the management machinery, a situation that was aggravated by a political tendency to select immigration ministers from urban ridings with large immigrant populations.

The continuing increase in case backlogs gradually tore apart the entire economic immigration machinery. Had the program focused exclusively on the acquisition of human capital (basing selection on education, age, and language) without any regard to national and regional labour-market demands, the backlog situation could have been treated as a problem of administrative efficiency. From a policy standpoint, authorities could have been indifferent between applicants who had been accepted for processing years earlier and applicants who had applied within the past year. However, with case numbers reaching the point where processing could be sustained out of inventory for a decade without fresh intake, any pretense that the system was capable of addressing current labour-market needs, by choosing individuals with special skills, vanished. So too did the incentive for employers to turn to the immigration system when recruiting specialized labour. New entries were simply queued, meaning that a decade would elapse before they could enter Canada.

Faced with continuing labour-market pressures from employers and provinces, various workaround solutions began to emerge. Two in particular proved popular: the provincial nominee program (PNP), which assigned limited selection powers to provinces, and the temporary foreign worker program, augmented by international students. The PNP was first introduced in Manitoba in 1996 as a means of “correcting” the regional imbalance of immigration that saw the vast majority of newcomers settling in Quebec, Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia. With time, and the evident success of the Manitoba experiment, interest began to grow among provinces and territories for developing their own PNP initiatives. What made the program especially interesting – beyond the opportunity to structure the program to meet local needs – was the fact that PNP applicants were accorded priority processing ahead of the federal selected worker queue. By 2009, however, the program fell victim to its own success. Faced with continual PNP growth and mounting pressure from the provinces for even greater increases, the federal government decided to establish limits for Canada as a whole and for each province and territory that had a PNP program. This number was initially set at some 17,000 principal applicants but rose to over 22,000 by 2013 (well over 40,000 entrants when including dependents).

By 2012, some twenty-five per cent of the total economic stream entering Canada was composed of PNP entrants. Combined with Quebec’s selection program, this resulted in fully fifty per cent of all economic immigrants admitted to Canada in 2012 being chosen by the provinces outside the federal selected worker system (CIC 2011b). This was a remarkable change given that the selected worker program and the points system were once seen as the “jewels in the crown” of Canada’s immigration system. Perhaps less obviously, the size of the provincial intake made it impossible for the federal government to process sufficient numbers of cases to draw down its processing backlog and achieve a system whose entrants reflected current employer demands.

At the same time as PNP numbers were growing, the temporary foreign worker program also experienced explosive growth. The reasons were similar. Both programs provided vehicles for employers who could not gain access to workers with particular skills in the clogged federal immigration system. And, like PNP entrants, temporary foreign workers were processed on a priority basis. Moreover, they were not limited numerically, though employers had to seek authorization from the Department of Human Resources and Skills Development Canada. Entries under the program rose from roughly 100,000 temporary foreign workers in 1990 to well over 200,000 by 2012, a mix of low-and high-skilled workers (CIC 2012b). This amounted to a substitution of temporary entrants for immigrants.

Federal recognition that the levels management system – in particular, the machinery for selecting skilled workers – was in trouble and would need to be fundamentally revamped was first signalled in 2008 with amendments in the Budget Bill to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. The amendments gave the minister of citizenship, immigration and multiculturalism the authority to issue “Ministerial Instructions” to govern case processing. The authorities were used to limit the acceptance of new skilled worker applications to persons with arranged employment in select occupations, and to students and temporary foreign workers who were already in Canada. The amendments also established the Canadian Experience Class, which allowed international students and skilled temporary foreign workers to apply for permanent residence from within Canada.

The years 2010 and 2011 saw further restrictions on skilled worker applications as the federal government struggled to regain control over the selected worker program. These measures also proved inadequate. Notwithstanding the legislative changes introduced in 2008, it had become amply clear to Citizenship and Immigration that business as usual was no longer a viable option and that a fresh approach was needed. The nature of this approach was signalled in a series of announcements that came in 2012. These included a temporary moratorium on new skilled worker applications (lifted in 2013), a cancellation of pre-2008 cases that were still pending decision in 2012, a revised point structure for the selection grid,[9] and the announcement that the government was developing a new processing system called the Expression of Interest system (Alboim 2009). The Expression of Interest system, since renamed the Express Entry system, became operational in 2015. It is the vessel that the federal government has chosen to reintroduce the federal skilled worker program. In doing so, immigration policy and program management are about to enter uncharted territory. A discussion of this new terrain is contained in section III.

II: THE SYSTEM FOR SETTLING NEWCOMERS AND DELIVERING SERVICES

The main structural elements of the present-day Settlement Program originated in a mid-1970s Cabinet decision that assigned responsibility for economic integration to the Department of Manpower and Immigration while assigning responsibility for longer-term social, political, and cultural integration to the Department of the Secretary of State. Together, the two ministries were authorized to implement a series of measures aimed at providing new arrivals with financial settlement assistance, job counselling, job placement, language and occupational training, information and referral services, and social counselling.

Coincident with the decision concerning the provision of settlement assistance, Cabinet also urged ministries to make every effort to enlist the voluntary sector in delivering the services for which they were responsible, rather than relying on internal staff. As well, Cabinet instructed that an effort be made to enlist provinces in the effort to provide communities and newcomers with integration assistance that fell within provincial spheres of responsibility.[10] These decisions regarding the provision of federal services, together with federal efforts to enlist the voluntary sector and provinces in helping both immigrants and receiving communities, mark the start of the settlement program.[11]

The Green Paper that played a central role in the development of levels planning and levels consultations was also important in the further development of the settlement program. In particular, the Green Paper focused attention on inadequate services in critical areas such as education and health, and on the role of these service disparities in shaping the settlement patterns of newcomers. Since education and health both fall within provincial jurisdiction, it was regarded as imperative that provinces be engaged in planning immigrant intake.

Following the basic blueprint of the Green Paper, many of the central elements of the settlement program were developed during the 1980s alongside the development of levels planning and levels consultations. These key elements included a concerted federal effort to engage provincial ministries in immigration levels planning, and the use of grants to voluntary-sector agencies to deliver basic services to newcomers. The main instrument for delivering these services was the Immigrant Settlement and Adaptation Program (ISAP), which focused on orientation and basic services, adult language training, and a broad range of other measures. The Host Program for refugees (a form of mentoring) and the Refugee Assistance Program (financial assistance) were introduced soon after the introduction of ISAP.

As noted above, the effort to involve the provinces in settlement was an early and persistent feature of the immigration planning process. In theory, the aim was to align intake with the nation’s capacity to integrate and serve newcomers. In practice, however, provinces often felt that immigration plans were imposed on them, irrespective of capacity concerns, and that consultations were merely information sessions.[12] Notwithstanding these sentiments, the provinces generally played an active role in settlement discussions and, in major receiving centres, engaged key stakeholders in the effort to analyze and build receptor capacity. Provincial concerns focused primarily on education and health, though housing and social welfare concerns were also frequently raised.

The provincial concerns with regard to settlement capacity took on a special, constitutional dimension in the case of Quebec. Quebec was concerned that immigration – the bulk of which went to Ontario – would gradually alter the national demographic structure in favour of English Canada, thus diminishing the weight of Quebec within the Canadian federation. In consequence, Quebec successfully sought to strengthen its selection and settlement powers in the course of the Meech Lake and Charlottetown constitutional discussions. Notwithstanding the failure of the constitutional discussions to reach an overall agreement, the immigration provisions sought by Quebec found their way into the 1991 Canada-Quebec Accord.[13] Under the Accord, the federal government agreed to accommodate Quebec’s desire to assume responsibility for settlement by withdrawing from the provision of reception services associated with the linguistic and cultural integration of immigrants into Quebec. Canada also agreed to withdraw from the provision of specialized economic integration services to Quebec immigrants.

A key feature of the Canada-Quebec Accord – which was to play a determinative role in the overall settlement program – was the compensation formula that was devised to compensate Quebec for the provision of settlement services. The formula contained an escalator that increased payments irrespective of either the number of immigrants destined to the province or Quebec’s ultimate settlement expenditures. This escalator raised transfers to Quebec from $75 million in 1991–92 to $237.5 million in 2008–09 (Vineberg 2010), a growth rate that was not matched elsewhere in Canada.

Other provinces soon reacted bitterly to the disparity in per capita expenditure. British Columbia and Ontario, in particular, refused to engage in serious settlement consultations until the issue of fair compensation was addressed. At the same time, the transfer of authority for settlement into provincial hands also put the larger question of jurisdiction and stewardship over immigration on the federal-provincial negotiating table, alongside compensation.

The interplay between the federal government and the provinces around settlement capacity and expenditure took place against a background of three important trends. The first centred on increasing immigration levels; the second, on changes in newcomer composition; and the third, on a pronounced and persistent decline in the economic performance of immigrants. From a low of roughly 84,000 immigrants in 1985 – a consequence of an earlier freeze on economic immigration that was instituted in 1982 – annual immigration rose quickly to 256,000 immigrants in 1993, briefly falling to 190,000 in 1999, before recovering some two years later and persisting at historically high levels thereafter. On its face, this represented a nearly threefold increase in demands on provincial and federal integration services as compared with 1985. Equally important, the recovery from the 1982 freeze was accompanied by a sharp change in the composition of immigration, away from its predominantly European and UK roots, towards Asia and parts of the world that had been scant contributors to Canadian immigration before the mid-1980s. The compositional changes were transformative, especially insofar as they intersected with integration and the structural changes that appeared following the restoration of economic immigration in 1986 alongside the economic recovery.

A significant feature of the mid-80s economic recovery was its disappointing impact on the job market and the prospects facing new labour-market entrants, especially immigrants. Whereas previous immigrants – like their native-born cohorts – had quickly found stable, rewarding work, newer cohorts were far more likely to remain unemployed for extended periods of time. And, even when they found jobs, their earnings growth was painfully slow and significantly below Canadian-born income norms. For the first time, Canada’s major receiving centres were host to concentrations of visible minority immigrants living in poverty. This provided further impetus to growing federal and provincial concerns with integration writ large, sentiments that were increasingly reflected in the levels consultations.

When the federal government launched its annual consultations in 1990 for a new five-year immigration plan, it expected that public and institutional attention would be directed to the size of the immigration movement and to component immigration numbers. Instead, attention focused on integration. In his “History of Immigration Settlement Services in Canada,” Rob Vineberg (2010, 38) had this to say: “While there was widespread support for immigration across Canada, the support was contingent on the existence of effective programs to help immigrants integrate into Canadian society. While the focus of government settlement assistance, since the creation of Manpower and Immigration Canada, had been labour-market integration, many of those consulted felt that settlement programs needed to ensure that newcomers to Canada could participate fully in the social and cultural, as well as the economic, life of Canada.”

This same result was obtained again in 1994 during far-reaching strategic consultations implemented by the newly elected Liberal government and Minister Sergio Marchi. As was the case in 1990, settlement issues again took centre stage. Stakeholders, especially in regions receiving large numbers of immigrants and refugees, were concerned with the integration problems facing newcomers, with the availability and cost of settlement services, and with issues of potential service duplication and overlap.

The timing of the 1994 immigration consultations coincided with a major federal budget exercise. Faced with a burgeoning deficit, the federal government, in 1996, announced a program review. The review was aimed at curtailing departmental spending, improving the system of resource transfers to provinces, and achieving greater operational efficiency. To achieve this, all federal programs were subjected to a six-point review: (1) Did the program still serve the public interest? (2) Did government play an essential role in addressing the problem? (3) Was federal participation or involvement essential? (4) Was there scope for some form of public-private partnership to address the concern? (5) Could the program be delivered more efficiently? (6) Was the program affordable? The questions were designed in a binary yes-no format and were intended to be answered sequentially. A “no” to questions 1, 2, 3, and 6 was tantamount to arguing for federal withdrawal.

In the case of settlement, the federal government decided that the optimal course lay in persuading the provinces to follow in Quebec’s footsteps and to assume responsibility for settlement programming, with federal compensation. The assumption was that provinces were better equipped than the federal government to administer supportive settlement programs by virtue of their responsibility for social assistance. The vehicle for advancing these ideas was a large-scale consultative process called Settlement Renewal. The Settlement Renewal exercise conducted during 1995 and 1996 involved several rounds of stakeholder consultations across the country along with intensive federal-provincial discussions. These discussions sought to make the case that a transfer of responsibility for settlement, accompanied by a budgetary transfer to provincial governments, was in the public interest and would benefit provinces as well as other stakeholders.

The federal intent was clearly signalled by David Neuman, the national director of Settlement Renewal, in his testimony to the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. In Mr Neuman’s own words, “the Department of Citizenship and Immigration has decided to withdraw from the direct administration of settlement services and funds. What that means is the federal government will continue to provide funding for immigrant settlement services, but it will no longer be directly involved in the administration of those funds or in the delivery of those services” (Vineberg 2010, 40). This was elaborated as follows in CIC’s Outlook on Program Expenditures and Priorities: “We will be working closely with provincial and local organizations to find ways to respond more effectively to the settlement and integration needs of communities and to ensure that appropriate services are provided by those best positioned to do so … Together with our partners, we will develop mechanisms to identify local settlement service priorities and appropriate funding to meet such priority needs. This will also involve moving the delivery mechanisms to regional and local levels. Full transition to this new approach will take two to three years” (quoted in Vineberg 2010, 40).

The provinces held mixed views regarding federal efforts to devolve settlement. On the one hand, they were clearly interested in emulating Quebec and assuming control over settlement programming; on the other, as noted earlier, there was widespread dissatisfaction with the level of funding available outside Quebec. (Ontario was receiving roughly $800 per immigrant for settlement services, while Quebec was receiving roughly $3,800.) The provinces were also fearful that the program review would lead to further cutbacks. These fears were soon realized as the Department of Human Resources and Skills Development withdrew from specialized language training and changed other programs in such a way as to limit immigrant eligibility.

In the end, the federal government was forced to increase settlement funding by roughly fifty per cent in order to advance its devolution objectives. In response, British Columbia and Manitoba both signed “Settlement Realignment” agreements in 1998 and began delivering their own services shortly thereafter. No other provinces followed suit, however, forcing the federal government to abandon its plans for full devolution and to turn instead to the pursuit of more limited management agreements.

Interestingly, while the initial impetus for devolution and greater provincial involvement was born out of federal efforts to scale back settlement funding, the provinces were brought to the table by increases in federal expenditure. The first of these has already been noted. The second was initiated in late 2005 when the government of the day, in an effort to bring Ontario into the fold, agreed to increase settlement spending in Ontario by nearly $1 billion over a five-year period. Reaction across the country was swift.

The significant bump in funding for Ontario was not initially replicated elsewhere, drawing an angry reaction from the provinces that had been left out, especially British Columbia and Alberta, which are the largest immigrant recipients after Quebec and Ontario. Unable to justify its preferential treatment for Ontario, the federal government was forced to add another $200 million annually in order to bring all provinces – except Quebec, which remained a happy outlier – to similar per capita expenditure levels.

Paradoxically, the series of events that had started with the program review and ambitious plans to curtail spending had led to an increase in federal settlement expenditure from roughly $300 million to about $1.5 billion in a little over ten years – a fivefold increase (CIC multiple dates; Biles 2011). The same interprovincial dynamics also resulted in a patchwork of federal-provincial arrangements for settlement: in Quebec, BC, and Manitoba, responsibility for settlement was fully devolved to the provinces (including refugee settlement in Quebec’s case). In Alberta, a form of co-management and co-funding prevailed. Meanwhile, in Ontario, Saskatchewan, the Atlantic Provinces, and the Territories, the federal government still held sway and offered only consultations. In Ontario’s case, the consultations had a more formal character, but the final decision regarding spending lay with CIC.

Ultimately, neither federal nor provincial authorities were satisfied with the situation that had evolved. While innovative and worthwhile programs had emerged in Quebec, BC, and Manitoba, the original federal goal of leveraging provincial investments had fallen flat. In both BC and Quebec, federal settlement transfers were being absorbed into general revenues; and disputes had arisen over the federal-provincial reporting arrangements in Manitoba and British Columbia (Smith 2009; Young 1992). Furthermore, relations with Ontario were proving especially contentious as conflicts developed around spending commitments. Faced with this disarray, the first clear signals began to emerge from CIC that it was seeking new directions.

In early 2009, CIC convened a workshop consisting of senior federal and provincial policy officials, many of whom had been party to the Settlement Renewal exercise. The aim was to evaluate the lessons from Settlement Renewal and to derive suggestions for future directions (Burstein 2009b). Three key concerns – germane to the arguments developed in this chapter – were identified by workshop participants:

a)  Participants felt there was confusion within the community sector and among federal and provincial stakeholders regarding federal intentions in the settlement arena. Moreover, the original federal goal of full devolution was seen as unrealistic in light of provincial concerns around long-term federal commitments.

b)  Participants felt that devolution had produced mixed results and questioned whether equal treatment of newcomers across the country, in core areas of settlement, could be attained in the absence of federal administration or oversight.

c)  Notwithstanding federal-provincial agreement around core settlement precepts, participants were not optimistic about the utility of accountability frameworks for ensuring that the federal and provincial governments adhered to commitments, especially if the frameworks focused on long-term social and economic outcomes.

By 2010, it was clear that the bloom had come off the rose. Jason Kenney, the minister of citizenship and immigration, was expressing strong skepticism about the desirability of further devolution in the context of talks concerning the renewal of the Canada-Ontario Immigration Agreement (Seidle 2010). At the same time, a strategic review of the settlement program – a requirement under the federal government’s expenditure management system – was evaluating the costs and benefits of withdrawing from existing devolution agreements, including the Canada-Quebec Accord. The minister’s growing skepticism about devolution and the concurrent review of immigration agreements by the mandated strategic review exercise prefigured a unilateral federal decision in early 2012 to terminate the settlement agreements with both Manitoba and British Columbia. This also put an end to the ambitions of those provinces, such as Ontario and Saskatchewan, that were interested in some form of devolution.

Another (partial) casualty of strategic review was the upward trend in settlement spending. In 2012 came the first significant reductions in the settlement budget as well as a redistribution of resources away from Ontario towards Western Canada. Underlying this reduction was the notion that outcomes could be improved by changes to the immigrant selection system, and also the view that previous additions to settlement expenditure levels had not produced proportional gains in social and economic outcomes – nor in client uptake of services.

The termination of agreements and the reduction in settlement spending sent a clear message that the federal government was abandoning its earlier strategies and embarking on a new tack. The new directions are taken up in the following section.

III: GOING FORWARD

The central premise of this chapter is that recent federal actions can be explained as a response by federal authorities to the inherently tumultuous nature of migration and the failure of federal policy in two broad areas of endeavour. The first of these has to do with the system for selecting and admitting newcomers using a complex array of planning and evaluative instruments; the second has to do with an equally elaborate system for delivering assistive services to new entrants. This latter system encompasses both the services themselves and the machinery for their delivery. In each area, the chapter has described a string of breakdowns spanning a period of some twenty to thirty years and culminating in a series of recent, game-changing federal actions. These actions consist of important new federal programs, a rebalancing of federal and provincial powers, and significant changes in the roles assigned to key stakeholders. In this section, we briefly examine the federal actions and make a stab at describing some of the impacts they are likely to have. Much of this is speculative. The policy terrain is uncharted and the developments are likely to be iterative, reflecting the leanings and interests of the various stakeholders. One thing is clear, though: the initiative lies with the federal government, and so this is where we focus our attention. We begin with the selection system and the changes in this area.

As section I argues, until very recently, the overall admissions system was characterized by a proliferation of disparate provincial selection programs, an ineffective federal selection system mired in backlogged cases, and a series of workaround measures that evolved to serve and placate key stakeholders, notably employers. The result was an array of pressures that eventually combined to force federal action. Chief among these pressures were a desire to harmonize provincial selection, a desire to demonstrate federal presence in an area of shared jurisdiction with federal primacy, and a desire to offset settlement expenditures by means of higher selection standards and increased employer involvement. The resulting interventions have been sharp and forceful, re-establishing federal dominion over selection, pushing aside existing structures and methods, and paving the way for a new order. What that order will be is the subject of the discussion that follows.

Probably, the two most important points to be made about the current situation are: one, that federal action has, so far, been primarily enabling rather than purposive; and, two, that future policies will almost certainly take the form of iterative changes, reflecting both the complexity of the behavioural terrain and the complexity of multi-level governance. It is highly unlikely that the federal government has a clear and detailed roadmap to upcoming policy and program interventions. This is not surprising, given that the federal selection program had been largely squeezed out of existence and federal authorities had lost their ability to manage the composition of new arrivals – that is, to manage the skills and attributes that immigrants bring with them. Rather than being proactive, federal action was reduced to defensive maneuvers aimed at controlling mounting case backlogs, adjudicating competing provincial demands for increasing numbers of provincial nominees, and managing compensatory measures aimed at meeting demands for labour. These measures included a reliance on the temporary foreign worker program and the Canadian Experience Class.

The transformative change that has occurred in the area of selection is that the federal government has equipped itself with a new set of legislative and regulatory tools for managing immigrant selection. These tools were designed with three actions in mind: the disposal of case backlogs; the management of immigrant composition in accordance with current labour-market requirements; and the eventual substitution of federally selected workers for provincial nominees. The first of these actions – the elimination of case backlogs – has already taken place, while the remaining two moves are in train.

The disqualification of backlogged selected worker cases – accomplished in 2012 through the use of ministerial authority (acquired in 2008) – created the possibility of new directions but did not speak to what they might be. For this, it is necessary to examine the consultations and utterances that attended the development of the new selection program (Express Entry) – that the federal government brought in in early 2015. Two features stand out in the federal action: that applicant selection will be regularly refreshed to reflect current needs, and that employers will be accorded a central role in the selection of newcomers.

The new system operates by creating a pool of skilled applicants from which immigrants are chosen. It functions as follows: applicants are qualified for pool entry using a revised point system (December 2012). Selection from the pool favours early labour-market insertion: to be accepted as immigrants, qualified applicants need to be chosen by employers, the provinces, or the federal government. Particular importance has been placed on promoting employer involvement in selection, reflecting concerns that new arrivals find it difficult to secure employment, notwithstanding their qualifications. Applicants in the pool who are not selected within a fixed period of time are disqualified and replaced by new entrants to ensure that the selection pool reflects the current selection grid and current labour-market requirements.

There is a great deal to recommend the proposed system. The fact that backlogs will not accumulate solves a problem that has stymied immigration levels management since the eighties. This will facilitate the use of immigration as a labour-market tool. Beyond this, however, it is difficult to forecast future developments – in part, because it is difficult to predict stakeholder reactions. A key unknown concerns employer willingness to participate in the immigration system and to interact with applicants in the selection pool. Early signals suggested this was problematic,[14] requiring interventions by other institutions, including settlement agencies.[15] This indicates that an iterative and adaptive approach is needed as both employers and the federal government work through the kinks in the new system.

Deeper issues may also arise. Analyses of provincial nominees and immigrants with pre-arranged employment indicate that they experience early settlement success, tempered by slower long-term progress (CIC 2012a). This pattern of behaviour could reduce the demand for settlement services in the near term but would conflict with federal interest in promoting long-term social inclusion. Current federal immigration programs concentrate on early interventions, starting shortly after arrival. One possible consequence of the new selection system is a greater demand for services that support labour-market mobility, as well as programs that promote citizenship and social engagement.

Another significant unknown concerns the interface between provincial nominee programs and the new selection system. The proliferation of nominee programs has produced an array of selection standards allowing applicants – at least in theory – to choose accommodative provincial entry “ports” before moving to their preferred destinations.[16] According to an evaluation conducted by CIC, some fifty individual program streams for selecting newcomers were in operation in 2012 across the eleven provincial-territorial jurisdictions (CIC 2012a; Seidle 2013). CIC has already signalled that it expects the provinces to fill a portion of their provincial nominee allocations with applicants drawn from the selection pool in order to increase harmonization across the country. This has encountered a degree of resistance: the new selection system advantages the most highly qualified candidates; in contrast, some two-thirds of provincial nominees possess lower skill levels.

In the Atlantic and Prairie provinces, there is a perception that federal selection standards have not addressed provincial needs. Federal efforts to promote harmonization have been regarded as a retrograde attempt to roll back successful provincial programs. Provinces also regard the new selection system as having a narrower, strictly labour-market focus that conflicts with provincial goals. In addition to being concerned with labour-market issues, provincial programs have concerned themselves with demographic objectives and local sustainability. How the resulting tension between federal and provincial interests will be resolved is still unclear.

Equally unclear is how the new system will ultimately accommodate special programs that do not have exclusive labour-market objectives. The most obvious of these is the federal interest in promoting Francophone immigration into Francophone minority communities. Another is the interest in promoting the entry of skilled tradespersons and persons possessing niche occupational skills. The Express Entry system would need to be modified in one of two ways to address such “secondary” objectives: either the “special” applicants would need to be allocated extra points to help them compete with “regular” applicants, or distinct pools would need to be created for programs where selection is not based solely on anticipated labour-market performance. Both solutions are complicated. Adjustments will likely follow as CIC gains experience with Express Entry and is able to evaluate its results.

The final area of uncertainty associated with the federal selection changes concerns the temporary worker program and the use of adjustment measures to convert workers from temporary to permanent status. Use of the temporary worker program exploded in recent years and became highly controversial, leading to a series of restrictive measures aimed at curbing the use of the program for low-skilled migration.

While the initial increase in temporary foreign workers was, in part, provoked by the failure of the federal selection system to offer up needed workers, its subsequent growth was likely a political and ideological response to employer pressures. This appears to have run its course, and a retrenchment occurred, but further rebalancing is currently underway.

To a degree, the new selection system with its emphasis on addressing employer needs will moderate some of the demand for highly skilled temporary entrants. There will, however, remain a tranche of low-skilled and mid-level jobs for which it will be difficult to find Canadian workers. This is exemplified by certain health-care work and by service jobs in remote locations where local labour is unavailable. For this work, the temporary foreign worker program will continue to be the instrument of choice.

Where concerns develop regarding the possible exploitation of foreign workers – a result of recurrent, long-term, temporary status – the Canada Experience Category could be used to provide relief. The entry provisions of the live-in-caregiver program offer a potential model for addressing some of the criticisms that have been levelled at the temporary worker program. This same pathway could also be extended to provinces that have relied on temporary entry, in association with their provincial nominee programs, to attract newcomers to targeted occupational and locational niches.

Beyond these ideas, it is difficult to predict the evolution of the temporary foreign worker program. Ongoing tensions between business and labour, coupled with volatile federal and provincial positions, will undoubtedly produce further change. This is in line with international experience and the consensus among policy-makers and analysts that, to date, no country has managed to find the perfect balance between admission and control.

Provided it is successful in the long term, the Express Entry system and the control it affords over immigration numbers and composition will likely renew interest by federal and provincial stakeholders in levels planning, notwithstanding provincial distrust fuelled by the termination of immigration agreements and conflict around provincial nominee programs. This interest will be strengthened if recent measures to control family-class migration – substituting recurrent temporary entry visas for immigration visas and maintaining numeric limits on parent and grandparent applications – are retained.

How the current tensions will resolve themselves is impossible to predict. The most likely course is that solutions will arise iteratively as experience is gained with Express Entry and the management of the temporary worker and student programs.

We turn now to settlement in order to undertake a similar assessment of likely policy and program directions. This is by no means straightforward. As was argued in section II, the federal strategy of devolving services to the provinces in order to improve the efficiency of service delivery and leverage provincial resources appears to have run its course. So too has the likelihood of lavish settlement funding. This has resulted in a highly uncertain environment for stakeholders, including the settlement service organizations that deliver the bulk of settlement programs. The settlement picture is clouded by multiple factors, including a lack of clarity about the strategic aims and directions of the federal government, a murky fiscal picture, an unsettled service environment and service delivery system, and confusing signals about emerging partnerships and the ongoing federal role.

Settlement requirements are strongly correlated with the volume and composition of newcomer intake. This is about to change. Revisions to the selection system will affect applicant characteristics. In particular, the Express Entry system will improve the fit between applicants and labour-market needs; moreover, a greater proportion of newcomers will have pre-arranged jobs upon entry. This will, almost certainly, offset the need for settlement assistance and change service preferences (CIC 2013a).[17] How large an offset and how large a change will not be known until the system has been in operation for some time.

Of course, changes in selection criteria are not the only means by which the government can manipulate the characteristics and labour-market aptitudes of immigrants. Changes in the composition of immigration classes have an even greater impact than selection on newcomer characteristics and settlement needs. This composition is being permanently altered. Recent actions by the federal government, including the moratorium on new applications for parent and grandparent immigration, limits on the issuance of family-class visas, and the substitution of temporary entry authorizations for immigrant visas for parents and grandparents (who are a major sub-component of the family class) inject a strong note of uncertainty into the settlement picture (CIC 2013b; Corrigan 2014).[18] The net effect of these actions will be a substitution of skilled workers for parents and grandparents, with a corresponding decrease in demand for basic settlement services. Whether a similar argument can be made for refugees is not clear, though safe-third-country provisions and differential treatment for claimants from designated countries may reduce the number of asylum claims and, as with the family class, create more “room” for economic-class entrants.

The point being made here is that the federal government is making a concerted effort, on several fronts, to reconfigure the characteristics and aptitudes of newcomers in favour of enhanced labour-market participation. It seems reasonable to assume that these efforts will result in a population of immigrants that finds it easier to make the transition into jobs and economic independence, moves that will reduce the need for basic settlement assistance as well as for federal and provincial language training. At the same time, it can be expected that the demand for advanced employment services and advanced language training will increase. Provincial services will also be impacted in the form of reduced demands for social assistance and health services and increased demands for education, because selected workers are more likely than parents and grandparents to be accompanied by children.

It would also be surprising if the enhanced earning potential of immigrants and their reduced need for basic services did not result in further reductions in the settlement budget. (It seems unlikely that CIC could successfully argue that enhanced selection criteria and a larger proportion of economic immigrants were raising settlement requirements, having consistently argued the opposite in Treasury Board submissions.) Settlement expenditures have already been reduced following the strategic review exercise and the evaluation of iIAP, CIC’S main settlement assistance program. The evaluation produced somewhat ambivalent findings regarding cost-effectiveness. According to the evaluation report, “[t]he growth in [the] number of clients and numbers of services delivered did not keep pace with the growth in funding (for ISAP core and other programs) … it is not possible to assess cost-effectiveness” (CIC 2011a).

Reductions in settlement budgets as a result of compositional changes in immigration would not be experienced equally across the country. While recent cuts have had an especially pronounced impact on Ontario because of a shift in immigration towards the Western provinces, future reductions would likely have a significant impact in the west, owing to proportionately larger populations of skilled immigrant workers. If the projected budget reductions materialize, they will place additional pressure on not-for-profit settlement service organizations across the country.

Up to this point, the discussion of anticipated settlement program changes has focused primarily on adaptive and downstream responses to changes in selection and admission strategies. These are not, however, the only influences likely to affect the settlement program. Revised policy objectives constitute an equally important driver of change.

In 2008–09, CIC indicated that it was amending its Program Activity Architecture in order to “to enhance flexibility and better meet newcomers’ needs … by implementing a modernized approach to settlement programming” (CIC 2009–10). Modernization represented an important “reorientation of the program, expanding it from a narrow concern with individual attainment to a focus on higher order social, psychological and cultural goals that speak to living together … [and expanding the settlement program’s] scope from immigrants … to a wider, place-based conception of welcoming communities” (Burstein 2009a). Adding muscle to this shift was CIC’S stated interest – announced alongside modernization – in developing policies and programs to enhance and promote the value of Canadian citizenship, including measures to more clearly establish the values, rights, and responsibilities of citizenship.

To date, the settlement modernization initiative has not had a major impact on the delivery of services across the country. This is likely to change. CIC has repeatedly signalled its interest in moving from a short-term settlement focus to a longer-term strategy aimed at social, civic, and economic inclusion. This is reflected in the attention that has been devoted to both the citizenship program and to community programs aimed at promoting a more welcoming environment.

A strategic shift favouring long-term integration will require numerous changes in CIC’S settlement programming, including changes in client populations, in partnerships, and in the institutions with whichCIC does business. This shift is already underway. The recent decision byCIC to expand the Community Connections Program by rolling out the Local Immigration Partnership (LIP) initiative across Western Canada and the Atlantic Provinces is an indication of this change. Eighteen communities in British Columbia are expected to implement LIPs; three more LIPs will be formed in the Atlantic provinces, adding to the two already in operation; and new LIPS will be created in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. The LIPS represent a “machinery” for promoting the formation of welcoming communities. They do so by developing a strategic framework to guide local settlement planning and to steer the deployment of settlement and integration investments. This framework helps create connections among local institutions, helps leverage additional resources in support of newcomer inclusion, and promotes greater efficiency and coordination.

The institutional relationships and partnerships that have formed under the LIP program suggest the sort of changes that might be expected if CIC were to strengthen its investment in social inclusion. The LIPS – both in larger cities and smaller towns, including Northern, remote, and rural communities – have been very successful in engaging municipal governments at both the political and operational levels. The resulting partnerships have affected the deployment of municipal services; they have boosted receptivity through large public events such as Welcoming Ottawa Week; and they have enlisted municipalities in efforts to recruit immigrants. The LIPS have also facilitated the inclusion of immigration in cities’ strategic and financial planning.

Other institutions have also become more engaged in newcomer inclusion. Notable among these are regional and local health networks, as well as school boards, colleges, and universities. In all cases, service provider organizations have played a key role in developing the partnerships with these institutions.

Continued investments in LIP initiatives across the country will almost certainly have an impact on the shape of mainstream services and the deployment of settlement resources by all three levels of government. This will occur “from above” as governments take into account LIP strategic plans in the allocation of resources; it will also occur “from below” as settlement organizations and other institutions reconfigure their plans to align with LIP strategic objectives. This redeployment can be expected to increase investment in measures that are implemented through partnerships with other institutions, including mainstream institutions. There will also, likely, be pressure to expand the range of interventions addressed through settlement programs. These would include services to people who have been in the country for extended periods of time but require additional assistance; services aimed at promoting interactions between Canadians and newcomers; and support for community institutions, as distinct from support for individuals.

Another major influence on future directions for settlement programming comes from the apparent decision by the federal government to define its role in the settlement arena in terms of either direct control or some form of co-management, rather than oversight or stewardship based on monitoring and provincial reporting. If this ultimately leads to a withdrawal of provinces from the settlement arena, it could potentially impoverish the settlement and integration program and make it more difficult for service provider organizations to ply their trade. It would also increase the incentive for the federal government to engage directly with municipalities, leading to additional reliance on bridging initiatives such as the LIPS. Because LIPS and municipalities have a more spatial and local community orientation than the federal government, this would provide a greater impetus for engaging institutions and ethnic or religious communities, as distinct from individuals.

The final shift to which this section will address itself is the impact of the various changes on the institutional delivery structures for settlement. As noted in section II, settlement service organizations face a somewhat uncertain future characterized by different client populations, shrinking budgets, reductions in the range of funders, competition from other organizations, and shifts in the ‘technology’ of service delivery, including the provision of services overseas and the use of new technologies for delivering information and educational services. In response to these changes, the sector will need to adapt and innovate. Various initiatives to support this adaptation are underway, some led by Citizenship and Immigration Canada (through its Innovation Division), others operating outside the department through partnerships between settlement and research organizations. The settlement agency of the future is likely to be more adept at finding commercial opportunities, forging partnerships both within and outside the settlement sector, delivering services at a distance, and forging more complex partnerships. This also has implications for the future of settlement umbrella organizations in terms of the support and training they will need to provide, the capacities they will need to develop in order to identify opportunities for their members, and the organization that will be needed to help agencies coalesce and take advantage of the opportunities that manifest themselves.

In conclusion, the turbulence that occurred in the two primary systems for advancing Canada’s migration program – the planning and selection management system, on the one hand, and the settlement and service delivery system, on the other – is still creating eddies. What is different about the last five or so years is that serious and sustained efforts are underway to address many of the seminal issues that have disrupted or hampered the migration program. Because these efforts are themselves disruptive – sometimes clashing, other times reinforcing various program and policy directions – it is difficult to forecast final outcomes. This chapter offers various suggestions for what might transpire, along with ideas that may prove useful to researchers and analysts.

NOTES

1   The discussion that follows was drawn from an internal CIC document – Chronology of Immigration Levels Planning and Management (CIC 2002) – and the author’s direct experience as a member of CIC’S senior management cadre from 1982 to 2002.

2   Stakeholders looked at both absolute numbers as well as the size of ‘their’ component relative to other components.

3   Mechanically, levels planning was a complex and imprecise process. Levels plans are specified in immigrant landings, whereas immigration processing is case-and family-based. Achieving desired landings by component required calculations that estimated numbers of immigrants per case, applicant success rates, rates of visa usage after issuance, and length of time from case disposition to entry. In addition, processing capacity had to be matched to processing demands, a feat that was complicated by the need to respond to spontaneous flows of students and temporary workers who had to be processed without delay. In some circumstances, changes in processing capacity required changes in staffing levels at overseas immigration missions and embassies.

4   The only stable way to change the long-term relationship between economic-and family-class immigrants is to change the statutory definitions of membership in the family class or to amend the regulatory requirements that govern the provisions for sponsorship.

5   The term “artificial” is used to describe a state in which neither the definition of the family class nor the requirements for sponsorship are sufficiently changed to produce the necessary or desired reductions in family-class immigration.

6   Both factors and factor values changed many times over the thirty-year time span covered by the analysis. Factors were established by regulation under the authority of the prevailing Immigration Act.

7   The occupational factor has been widely misrepresented as responding to occupational demand. In actual fact, the guiding philosophy of the occupational point system was to ensure that the occupational distribution of economic immigrant intake would be neutral with respect to the distribution of occupational employment across the Canadian economy. This was achieved by using occupational points as a “pricing mechanism” – more points were assigned to occupations where immigrants were in short supply, and vice versa.

8   The source document is entitled Levels Management – Annex to Memorandum to the Minister: Management of Immigration Levels (Citizenship and Immigration Canada 1990).

9   Points were changed for language ability, age, and adaptability. As well, new measures were introduced to establish educational equivalency and to validate arranged employment. Language has become the most important selection factor.

10  This section, which traces the origins of the settlement program from the mid-1970s until 2009, draws extensively on “A History of Immigration Settlement Services in Canada,” a manuscript prepared for Citizenship and Immigration Canada by Robert Vineberg in 2010 as part of the Department’s review of the settlement program.

11  In his report, Vineberg describes the Cabinet decision as formative in regard to the settlement program.

12  This view was provided by a senior British Columbia civil servant who represented the province during the mid-1980s in levels discussion.

13  The Canada-Quebec Accord incorporated a commitment (from the Meech Lake Accord) that the share of immigrants admitted to Quebec be equal to Quebec’s demographic weight within Canada, with a right for Quebec to exceed that proportion by 5 per cent. Quebec also retained the authority to select economic immigrants using a provincial points grid. Quebec’s system, at the time, differed from Canada’s primarily in the importance assigned to language generally and to French in particular. That is, language ability carried more weight in the Quebec system and, unlike the federal system where French and English were equally valued, Quebec placed a much higher emphasis on French. Beyond this, Canada’s system focused more strongly on labour-market ties, while Quebec’s system assigned more weight to overall adaptability.

14  A quick survey of employers conducted by the British Columbia government indicated that there was scant employer interest in choosing employees from a selection pool, as per extant designs.

15  Settlement organizations, in partnership with the Pathways to Prosperity research project, have launched an initiative entitled “Agency of the Future.” Concierge services for employers is one of the business lines under consideration.

16  To date, immigrant interprovincial mobility under some of the more important nominee programs has been relatively low.

17  According to this document, economic-class immigrants make up 62 per cent of immigration, but consume only 44 per cent of services. By contrast, family-class immigrants make up 25 per cent of the population, but consume 27 per cent of services.

18  The two documents discuss the November 2011 moratorium on accepting new applicants for parents and grandparents, the introduction of the temporary entry Super Visa for parents and grandparents (valid for two years and renewable for up to ten years), and the reopening of applications for parent and grandparent immigration visas, subject to a limit of 5,000 applications.

REFERENCES

Alboim, Naomi. 2009. “Adjusting the Balance: Fixing Canada’s Economic Immigration Policies.” Maytree Foundation (July). http://maytree.com/policy-papers/adjusting-the-balance-fixing-canadas-economic-immigration-policies.html (accessed 5 September 2014).

Biles, John. 2011. “16 Years and What Do We Get? Immigration and Integration in Canada (1995–2011).” Presented at the Western Migration Conference Series, “Taking Stock of a Turbulent Decade and Looking Ahead: Immigration to North America, 2000–10.” London, ON.

Burstein, Meyer. 2009a. Community Settlement Planning and Organization: Pilot Study. Ottawa: Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

–  2009b. Settlement Renewal: Lessons from the Past, Directions for the Future. May.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC). [Multiple dates]. Report on Plans and Priorities. Ottawa: Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

–   1990. Levels Management – Annex to Memorandum to the Minister: Management of Immigration Levels. Ottawa: Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

–   2002. Chronology of Immigration Levels Planning and Management [internal document]. Ottawa: Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

–   2009–10. Report on Plans and Priorities. Ottawa: Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

–   2011a. Evaluation of the Immigrant Settlement and Adaptation Program (ISAP). Ottawa: Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

–   2011b. Evaluation of the Provincial Nominee Program [September]. Ottawa: Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Evaluation Division.

–   2012a. Evaluation of the Provincial Nominee Program [January]. Ottawa: Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Evaluation Division.

–   2012b. “Facts and Figures 2012 – Immigration Overview: Permanent and Temporary Residents.” Ottawa: Citizenship and Immigration Canada. http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/statistics/facts2012/index.asp (accessed 5 September 2014).

–   2013a. Changing Immigrant Profile: Settlement Services Impact [November]. Ottawa: Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

–   2013b. Operational Bulletin 561 [31 December]. Ottawa: Citizenship and Immigration Canada. http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/manuals/bulletins/2013/ob561.asp (accessed 5 September 2014).

Corrigan, Edward E. 2014. “Sponsorship of Parents and Grandparents Dramatically Changed.” The Canadian Charger (16 January). http://www.thecanadiancharger.com/page.php?id=5&a=1666.

Seidle, Leslie. 2010. “The Canada–Ontario Immigration Agreement: Assessment and Options for Renewal.” Mowat Centre, No. 4 (May). http://mowatcentre.ca/the-canada-ontario-immigration-agreement/ (accessed 5 September 2014).

–   2013. “Securing Greater Policy Alignment.” Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP), 12 December. http://irpp.org/research-studies/study-no43/ (accessed 5 September 2014).

Smith, Charles C. 2009. “Modernizing Settlement: Change Management in the Context of Equity and Diversity.” Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants Executive Directors’ Forum, 3 November. http://www.charlescsmithconsulting.ca/speeches.htm (accessed 5 September 2014).

Vineberg, Robert. 2010. “A History of Immigration Settlement Services in Canada.” Manuscript. Ottawa: Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

Young, Margaret. 1991. Immigration: Constitution Issues. Library of Parliament, Law and Government Division, October. Rev. 1992. BP-273E. http://www.parl.gc.ca/Content/LOP/researchpublications/bp273-e.htm (accessed 5 September 2014).

2

US Immigration Reform

Susan F. Martin

INTRODUCTION

This chapter seeks to explain the apparent paralysis that has affected efforts to address the very real immigration problems that the United States faces, as well as the more recent attempts to enact immigration reform. The answer appears to lie in the divergence between the politics and the economics of immigration, which prevented Congress from adopting comprehensive reforms in the first decade of the twenty-first century but changed in a number of significant ways during the elections. The chapter begins with a brief presentation of current immigration policies and then sets out the major problems in this framework. It continues with a historical overview of immigration policy decision-making processes in the United States, and of recent efforts at reform. The chapter then discusses three factors that help explain the difficulties in enacting comprehensive reform: (a) the coalitions that form around immigration policy, which often successfully coalesce over specific provisions in the law but break apart over others; (b) public ambivalence about immigration, particularly among those who see their own immigrant forebears through rose-coloured glasses but are fearful that today’s immigrants will fail to adopt American norms and values; and (c) practical impediments that make effective reform difficult to achieve. The final section discusses future prospects for immigration reform.

CURRENT IMMIGRATION POLICIES

The following sections set out the broad outlines of US policy today, with discussion of some of the most pressing issues on the US immigration agenda.

Legal Permanent Residents

During the 1990s, the United States admitted about 825,000 legal immigrants each year, up from about 600,000 a year in the 1980s (not counting those legalized under the 1986 amnesty), 450,000 a year in the 1970s, and 330,000 a year in the 1960s. In the past decade (2002–11), more than 10.5 million legal immigrants were admitted, averaging about one million per year.[1]

As immigration was increasing, the major countries of origin changed, from Europe to Latin America and Asia.

The four principal bases or doors for admission are family reunification (sponsored by either green carders or citizens), employment, diversity, and humanitarian interests. By far the largest admissions door is for relatives of US residents. In fiscal year 2012, 680,799 were admitted as family members of US citizens and of permanent residents. The second-largest category is immigrants and their family members admitted for economic or employment reasons. In FY 2012, 143,998 employment-based immigrants were admitted. Refugees, asylees, and other humanitarian admissions are the next category. These numbers vary depending on international conditions for refugees and asylum-seekers. In FY 2012, 150,614 refugees and asylees received permanent status. Finally, 40,320 immigrants came in under the diversity visa category – immigrants from countries that have not recently sent large numbers of immigrants to the United States.

The family-based immigration category has two components. First are unlimited visas for the immediate relatives of US citizens, defined as spouses, minor children, and parents. There is no quota for this group, but applicants must meet all other requirements for entry. In particular, the sponsoring family member must demonstrate an ability to support the newcomers at a level that is 125 per cent of the Federal Poverty Guidelines. The second group includes other family members, who are subject to numerical caps. This group is divided into four preferences, each with its own admission ceiling. Unused numbers in higher categories theoretically can pass down to lower categories, but each is so oversubscribed that this seldom happens. The first preference is adult unmarried children of US citizens; the second is spouses and unmarried children of legal permanent residents; the third is married children of US citizens; and the fourth is siblings of US citizens.

The employment-based immigration category is divided into five preferences, or groupings, each with its own admission ceiling. The highest priority goes to persons of extraordinary ability, outstanding professors and researchers, and executives and managers of multinational corporations. The second group includes professionals with advanced degrees and workers of exceptional ability. The third group is composed of other professionals, skilled workers, and a limited number of other workers, with the fourth permitting entry of religious workers and the fifth including entrepreneurs admitted for activities creating employment. Unused numbers in higher-priority groups can be passed down to lower priorities.

Figure 2.1 Number of immigrants admitted per decade

Source: Office of Immigration Statistics, US Department of Homeland Security.

Not surprisingly, the employment-based immigrants are much more highly skilled than any other class of immigrants. Nearly 20 per cent are in managerial or executive occupations, and another two-thirds are professionals and technical sales workers (over 80 per cent together). In contrast, only about one-fifth of family-sponsored immigrants are found in these two highly skilled occupational categories. Diversity immigrants, for whom a high school degree is required, are intermediate, with about 45 per cent finding work in these two occupational categories. Refugees, for whom there are no economic screens, are most concentrated in the categories of operators, fabricators, and labourers (41 per cent).

Most employment-based immigrants are sponsored by employers. There are some clear advantages to such a system. Not surprisingly, rates of employment among these immigrants are very high since they already have jobs and, generally, a supportive employer. It is also argued that employers are the best judges of the economic contributions an individual can make. A checklist, as used in a point system, may identify would-be immigrants with educational or language skills, but arguably these individuals may lack more difficult-to-measure capabilities, such as an ability to work in teams, that employers find valuable.

The mechanisms to determine the legitimacy of employer demand can be quite cumbersome. Most employment-based admissions are subject to labour certification provisions. The employer must demonstrate that (a) there are not sufficient United States workers who are able, willing, qualified, and available at the time of the application for a visa and admission into the United States, and at the place where the alien is to perform the work; and (b) the employment of the alien will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of similarly employed United States workers. Under new streamlined rules, the employer must attest to having recruited US workers using prescribed mechanisms and demonstrate why applicants were not suitable to the job. Although great strides have been taken to reduce the processing time, the wait for approval can be extensive, first at the Department of Labor (DOL) and then at the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which assumed responsibility for employment-based admissions from the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Because the US system is employer / employee-driven and a job offer is essential, most of those admitted to permanent residence in the employment-based categories are already in the United States. Because of delays in processing and availability of visas (discussed below), employers tend to use temporary visa categories to bridge the gap between the decision to hire the worker and the government’s grant of permanent resident status. As a result, the recruitment process required by labour certification rules is often a farce, the employer having already hired the foreign worker.

The humanitarian admissions categories primarily include persons who adjust to permanent residence after having been admitted through the refugee resettlement and asylum programs. Those admitted through refugee resettlement are chosen overseas and admitted under a presidential determination after consultation with Congress. The ceiling on resettlement is set yearly, although it has remained at 70,000–80,000 per year for well over a decade. Asylees, by contrast, arrive spontaneously in the US and apply for relief from deportation based on their well-founded fear of persecution should they be returned to their home countries. Those who are admitted as refugees or granted asylum are eligible to apply for permanent residence one year later.

The diversity program was established in the Immigration Act of 1990. Only those applicants who come from countries with relatively low levels of previous immigration to the US are eligible. Most of the visas go to nationals of European and African countries. The choice is made by lottery; nationals of no one country can receive more than seven per cent of the total number of visas authorized by law (3,500 per year out of 50,000). In FY 2013, more than 14.5 million persons were registered to participate in the lottery (including primary applicants and family members).

Temporary Workers

Individuals referred to as non-immigrants in US immigration law (that is, temporary visitors) are the second principal category of newcomers. In 2012, the Department of Homeland Security issued estimates on the number and characteristics of the non-immigrants currently residing in the United States: “The size of the resident nonimmigrant population was about 1.9 million on average during 1 July 2010–30 June 2011. Approximately 45 percent of the population were temporary workers and their families, nearly 40 percent were students and their families, half were from Asian countries, and over 80 percent were ages 18 through 44” (DHS 2012).

Temporary work categories are increasingly important as the vehicle for admission of foreign workers in all skill categories. Each year, hundreds of thousands of visas are issued to temporary workers and their family members. In addition, an unknown number of foreign students are employed either in addition to their studies or immediately thereafter in practical training. The growth in the number of foreign workers admitted for temporary stays reflects global economic trends. In fast-changing industries, such as information technology, having access to a global labour market of skilled professionals is highly attractive. Also, as companies contract out work, or hire contingent labour to work on specific projects, the appeal of temporary visas, rather than permanent admissions, is clear. Some foreign firms, understanding that it may not be possible to undertake an entire project offshore, obtain temporary work visas to the US so their employees can complete the job at the US client’s facilities. The temporary programs also give employers and employees a chance to test each other before committing to permanent employment. Multinational corporations find the temporary categories useful in bringing their own foreign personnel to work or receive training in the United States.

Over time, a large number of different temporary admission visa categories have amassed, each referred to by the letter of the alphabet under which it is described in the Immigration and Nationality Act. The visa categories now encompass almost the entire alphabet (A–V). The principal sections under which temporary workers enter are H-1B for specialty workers, H-2A for agricultural workers, H-2B for other seasonal workers, E for traders and investors entering under bilateral treaties, L for intra-company transfers, and J for exchange scholars, among others. Smaller numbers enter under the O (extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, education, business, or athletics), P (artist or entertainer), Q (cultural exchange and training), and R (religious worker) visa categories. In addition, there are visa categories for officials of foreign governments, foreign journalists, and officials of the United Nations and other intergovernmental organizations. Professionals, managers, and executives may also enter under the North American Free Trade Agreement. With the exception of the H-2A and H-2B visas, all of these temporary work categories require a significant level of skills or education.

Movement of foreign workers for temporary reasons, at today’s levels, is a new phenomenon for the United States. Statistics on temporary admission count every entry into the United States, and hence they often count the same individual multiple times. Nonetheless, only 770,000 temporary admissions were counted in the first decade of the twentieth century, a number that increased to seven million in the 1950s, and by the last decade of the twentieth century, there were some 230 million temporary admissions. In FY 2011 alone, more than fifty-three million non-immigrant entries occurred. Because these are multiple counts, they reflect both a stupendous increase in the number of individuals involved and a significant increase in back-and-forth mobility.

Unauthorized Migration

While the United States continues to admit large numbers of legal immigrants and temporary workers, the fastest growth in immigration until recently came from those without authorization to be in the country. An estimated twelve million unauthorized migrants were in the United States in 2007, with an estimated 500,000 net new entries each year. As a net number, this reflects the difference between new entries and those who return home or who adjust their status and become legal immigrants. As of today, it is estimated that there are eleven million unauthorized migrants, down from the 2007 height. The reduction appears to have been caused by several factors: poor employment outcomes in the United States, heightened border enforcement, and growing economic opportunities in Mexico. Net entries of Mexican migrants – the largest source of undocumented migration – were estimated at zero in 2012. This does not mean that Mexicans have ceased to come to the United States altogether, but the number of those who are returning to their home country appears to be equal to those newly arriving. By contrast, unauthorized arrivals from Central America have increased significantly in recent years. These movements are composed primarily of unaccompanied minors and families affected by gang violence in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras (UNHCR 2014).

Unauthorized entry occurs in a number of different ways. About 55 per cent of those illegally in the United States are believed to have entered clandestinely, largely across the land border with Mexico, although others arrive by sea. About 45 per cent come through recognized ports of entry. Some do so with fraudulent documents; counterfeit passports, visas, and other identity documents may be used. Others use imposter documents of people who bear a superficial likeness to their own appearance. These may be documents possessed by family or friends, or they may be purchased for the specific purpose of gaining admission.

Still others enter having obtained legitimate visas, often as tourists, and then overstay the period that the visa covers. Some obtain a longer-term visa that does not permit employment, such as a foreign student visa, and then work in contravention of the terms of their admission. In still other cases, the migrants enter as temporary workers but fail to leave when their period of work authorization ends. In some cases, migrants seek the visa knowing that they plan to violate its terms. As with those who come clandestinely, they may seek the visa on their own or obtain it through the assistance of smugglers. In other cases, the migrants have no intention of overstaying or working illegally, but circumstances change and they enter into irregular status.

Most unauthorized migrants come from Mexico (about 56 per cent) and Central America, but they represent a wide array of countries (Passel and Cohn 2009). The majority are concentrated in about seven states within the United States. During the past decade, however, there has been a significant dispersal throughout the country, with large numbers of irregular migrants now living in new settlement areas. Many live in mixed households, with legal permanent resident spouses / parents and US citizen children. On average, the unauthorized migrants are less educated than natives or legal immigrants. They work primarily in services, building cleaning, perishable crop agriculture, food processing, construction, landscaping and gardening, and light manufacturing.

PROBLEMS IN THE IMMIGRATION SYSTEM

A number of problems in US immigration policy need serious attention. These relate to the mechanisms for controlling unauthorized migration and for admitting legal immigrants.

Unauthorized Migration

As long as employers hire persons without authorization to work in the United States, migrants will continue to enter the country illegally in order to obtain jobs. As the economy recovers, unauthorized migration is likely to resume unless significant changes are made in the area of worksite enforcement. In the absence of more effective mechanisms to verify work authorization and to sanction employers who hire unauthorized workers, efforts to stem illegal migration or to redirect persons seeking work into legal channels are unlikely to succeed.

To comply with the law today, new hires fill out an I-9 form and show documentation of their identity and authorization to work. The most frequently used documents are a state driver’s licence (to demonstrate identity) and a social security card (to demonstrate work authorization). Both documents can be easily counterfeited at relatively little cost. Employers are not expected to be document experts, and, in fact, can be fined for immigration-related employment discrimination if they request different or additional documents of persons they suspect are unauthorized to work.

Employers fall into two categories: those who unwittingly (although perhaps willingly) hire persons who are illegally in the country, and those who knowingly hire such persons in order to exploit their labour. Among the first group are employers who hire unauthorized workers who present seemingly good documents. Already-employed workers who vouch for the new hires often refer these new workers to the employer, who fulfills the letter of the law in receiving the documents presented with the I-9 form. Given the efficiency of network hiring of this type, employers are unlikely to participate in legal foreign worker programs unless they face sanctions for hiring unauthorized workers. Without a more effective employment verification system, however, it would be unfair to sanction them for hiring workers with seemingly acceptable documents.

Much of the congressional focus has been on the mandatory deployment of what is now referred to as E-Verify, a voluntary program for electronically verifying work authorization. There are flaws in E-Verify, however. The numbers of false positives (that is, unauthorized workers borrowing legitimate identities that pass muster) and false negatives (that is, authorized workers who are rejected by the system) are too high. The quality of the data must be improved, as well as the mechanisms used to check on identity so imposters cannot pass through the verification process. This process will depend on the type of biometric information used to ensure that the identification materials presented belong to the person who is being hired. Moving from the current E-Verify to a more effective and efficient system for verifying work authorization will require a substantial investment of resources.

Verification in and of itself will not reduce the incentives to hire undocumented migrants, at least among employers who violate a range of labour and tax laws in addition to hiring unauthorized workers. These may include violations of wage and hour laws, child labour laws, and occupational safety and health laws. The employers may pay salaries in cash, failing to pay their share of social security taxes. These employers may seek unauthorized workers because they are less likely to complain about ill treatment and violations of their rights. In the most egregious cases, employers may be complicit with human traffickers and smugglers who hold migrants in bondage. Worksite enforcement to ensure labour standards and to bring criminal sanctions against traffickers and smugglers is essential not only to stop illegal hiring but also to protect highly vulnerable workers. The seriousness with which Congress and the administration take these issues will be measured not only in the authorizing legislation, but even more in the appropriations of funds to implement a more effective verification system and more widespread and effective labour standards enforcement.

Even with new efforts to curb future unauthorized migration, the status of those already in the country remains a concern. Having a large underclass of persons who are unknown to the government and in highly exploitable situations is not in the interest of the United States. Properly implemented, a regularization program could actually support more effective enforcement, if employers know that compliance with a new worker verification system would not jeopardize their existing workforce.

Inflexible Ceilings

Ceilings on both permanent and temporary admission categories limit flexibility to address changes in demand at both the high and low ends of the labour market (for further analysis of ceilings on immigrant admissions, see Wasem 2012). In the permanent admission categories, two types of ceilings are imposed: ceilings on overall and subcategory numbers, and per-country ceilings. By legislation, there are 140,000 numbers available for employment-based permanent admissions plus any unused family-based visas from the previous year. Ceilings are set for each subcategory, although unused visas can flow down to other categories. There are also per-country limits that ensure that no more than seven per cent of the total visas go to any one country. The American Competitiveness in the Twenty-First Century Act (AC 21) recaptured a “pool” of 131,000 employment numbers unused in fiscal years 1999 and 2000 and allowed those recaptured numbers to be used in subsequent years for countries that had met the ceiling. This process has since expired. There continue to be long waiting periods for second-and third-preference permanent employment admissions, especially for applicants from India and China, as discussed above.[2]

Inflexible ceilings have also created difficulties in the temporary worker programs. The H-1B program was capped at 65,000 visas per year in the Immigration Act of 1990. Although the ceiling was raised in the late 1990s following the dot-com boom, the numbers reverted to the original level during the dot-com bust. They were not raised again as the economy recovered (or lowered, for that matter, when the 2008 recession occurred). Legislation passed in 2005 provided certain exemptions from the ceilings, permitting new applications to be processed. At present, there are 65,000 regular visas available, and another 20,000 reserved for graduates of US universities. After 2008, demand was lower because of higher unemployment, but the number of requests for H-1B visas has recently begun to rebound. As of 7 April 2015, enough applications to fill all visas for FY 2016 (which begins on 1 October 2015) had been received; no further applications would be accepted.

The excessive backlogs in the family-based program are also problematic. Waiting times for the spouses and minor children of lawful permanent residents have decreased significantly in recent years, but family members must still wait for two or more years to reunite with their US-based sponsor. The backlog in the sibling category is especially problematic, raising questions about the value and purpose of the program. For example, with a twenty-five-year waiting time, principal applicants from the Philippines are on average in their fifties by the time they are able to enter the United States. They spend the majority of their working lives outside of the US, to arrive closer to retirement age.

Congress has considered short-term fixes to the problem but it has not gotten to the fundamental problem – that ceilings set in stone in legislation are too inflexible to respond in a timely manner to changes in the economy and in labour-market demand. If the concern is with abuse of the visa categories, market tests can be used to weed out inappropriate use of the visas. The US Commission on Immigration Reform recommended that fees be set at a level that makes it somewhat more expensive for an employer to bring in a foreign worker than to recruit and train a US resident for the position. Some scholars have proposed that the government auction employment visas to the highest bidders (Orrenius and Zavodny 2010).

Inadequate Mechanisms to Protect the Rights of Workers

In immigration policy, there often appears to be a trade-off between the numbers who will be admitted and the rights of those who are allowed to enter. At one extreme is the large and rapidly growing number of foreign nationals without authorization to work in the United States who are nevertheless gainfully employed. They have few rights in the workplace, are vulnerable to exploitation, and have very restricted eligibility for social welfare programs. In the middle are temporary workers who have more rights in the workplace but are often tied to a particular employer and may remain in limbo for many years while awaiting a green card. Legal permanent residents have the same workplace rights as US citizens, but their access to certain safety net programs (including those designed for low-income workers) is restricted. Naturalized citizens have full rights and obligations as US citizens.

As with other immigration matters, there are trade-offs in using temporary admission categories to meet labour-market needs. While they may help increase business productivity and even generate job growth, they also render even highly skilled foreign workers more vulnerable to exploitation and may thereby depress wages and undermine working conditions for US workers. Generally, the foreign worker is tied to a specific employer who has requested the visa. Loss of employment may also mean the threat of deportation. Moreover, because the temporary visa is so often a testing period, the foreign worker may put up with any conditions imposed by the employer, fearing the loss otherwise of their chance at permanent resident status.

Policy debates in the United States have long focused on expanded temporary or so-called guest worker programs, particularly for lower-skilled workers. In some proposals, the numbers to be admitted are very large. One issue is the rights to be accorded to workers who enter through such mechanisms. Also at issue are provisions to protect already resident workers against unfair competition from new arrivals. Current programs, especially for lesser-skilled workers, require employers to pay the higher of prevailing or adverse-effect wage rates; to attest that there is no strike or lockout; to provide housing, meals, transportation, worker’s compensation or equivalent insurance, and guarantees that the worker will have work on at least three-quarters of the work days within the contract period; and to fulfill other similar requirements, depending on the visa category. While these provisions provide protections for workers, employers find them too burdensome and often inappropriate for the type of positions for which they wish to hire foreign workers. As a result, they claim, they are unable to use the existing programs to fill all of the jobs for which they need workers.

Another approach to protecting worker rights would provide greater mobility within the labour market so foreign workers would not be indebted to a single employer who holds sway over their wages and working conditions. Current policies allow for little mobility until a foreign worker receives a green card. Even when mobility is permitted, foreign workers are often unwilling to change jobs if it will adversely affect their ability to obtain permanent residence, as discussed above.

Is Temporary Ever Temporary?

The existing notions of temporary and permanent admissions do not reflect adequately the nature of today’s job market or the realities of immigration. The old adage that “there is nothing more permanent than a temporary worker” is often borne out. When temporary workers are hired to fill year-round, permanent jobs, it is not surprising that many employers do not want them to leave at the end of the term of employment, and many foreign workers gain equities and interests in remaining beyond the period of stay. Since some statuses allow for extended stays of more than six years, it is not surprising that many temporary workers accrue such equities and ties to this country. Children are born in the United States, houses are bought, and roots are sunk in American communities. At the other end of the continuum, some immigrants seek permanent residence not because they plan to remain permanently but because a green card affords them opportunities denied to temporary workers (for example, work authorization for their spouses). In an increasingly transnational world in which people maintain ties in more than one country, there is not a clear, bright line between the two categories of permanent and temporary admissions.

Of course, a system of permanent residency that leads to citizenship has many virtues; in fact, the notion that immigrants are presumptive citizens is one of the reasons that immigration has served the national interest for so long. Yet, there needs to be more flexibility in the definitions used and a recognition that for some, temporary migration may be a transition to permanent status, whereas in other cases, temporary migrants (and permanent residents) will return to their home countries or move to a third country.

Some temporary work statuses do consider these patterns. The H-1B and L visas allow for “dual intent.” At the time of admission, a person seeking admission in these categories can admit to being an intending immigrant – someone who hopes to remain in the United States. Most temporary categories, including foreign students, require the foreign national to demonstrate that they have strong enough ties to their home country to overcome the presumption that they are an intending immigrant. Even in the categories in which dual intent is allowed, the route to permanent residence may require the exceedingly long waits that were described above, leaving visa-holders in limbo until their number comes up in the immigration system.

Complexity and Inefficiency in the Immigration System

A final problem in the immigration system is its very complexity. There are dozens of non-immigrant visa categories for temporary workers and difficult-to-define distinctions in both the permanent and temporary systems. For example, the Employment-Based (EB)-1 category is for “foreign nationals of extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, education, business or athletics” (italics added) whereas EB-2 is for those with merely exceptional ability. Given the proliferation of visa categories and the often-nuanced differences, applying for any immigration benefit has become an excessively difficult process requiring professional assistance.

In addition, the systems for determining that individual applicants meet the criteria are cumbersome. Not only do the statutory ceilings create long waiting times, but processing of applications can add to those waits. For example, as of March 2013, the California Service Center, which is one of the principal application-processing centres, was adjudicating applications for certain family categories that were filed in January 2010. Especially problematic are waiting periods for refugee resettlement. Refugees go through security checks by multiple federal agencies before they are approved for entry into the United States. These can take months and even years to complete.[3] Inadequate financial resources for the agencies responsible for immigrant admissions are part of the problem.When immigration functions were transferred from the Justice Department to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2003, the new US Citizenship and Immigration Services bureau inherited a backlog of 4.3 million applications. Processing of these applications is funded by fees paid by applicants.[4] Historically, the fees themselves were inadequate and Congress often delayed appropriating the resources. There have been recent efforts to ensure that fees capture the true cost of processing, but problems persist in catching up with the backlogged cases. Exacerbating the situation are weaknesses in technology. Secretary of the DHS Janet Napolitano noted in testimony delivered in February 2013 that it was only in May 2012 that “USCIS launched the first release of its electronic immigration benefits system, Electronic Immigration System (ELIS), which began the agency’s transition from a paper-based to an electronic, online organization … The system is modernizing the processes for filing and adjudicating petitions, transforming how USCIS interacts with its customers and manages the six to seven million applications it receives each year” (Napolitano 2013). In the meantime, however, inefficiencies continue to plague the system.

HISTORICAL PATTERNS OF IMMIGRATION REFORM

Comprehensive immigration reform is the exception, not the rule, in American politics (for more information on the history of US immigration policies, see Martin 2011; Tichenor 2002; and Zolberg 2006). Until 1875, there were few laws regulating immigration to the United States. From then until 1921, Congress put into effect a series of rules that restricted immigrants from certain countries and races (primarily Asian) and on the basis of their health, morals, likelihood to become public charges, and other similar factors. During the last decades of the nineteenth century and early into the twentieth, debate on immigration heated up as the numbers of Southern and Eastern European immigrants increased dramatically. At first the debate focused on a literacy test that proponents thought would restrict immigration to those with higher levels of education. After passage of the literacy requirements in 1917 failed to shift immigration origins and numbers as expected, opponents of mass migration turned to a more comprehensive approach that resulted in the National Origins quota system passed in 1921 and refined in 1924.

The National Origins laws stayed in place until 1965, despite great criticism in the period after World War II and a series of bills that enabled admission of refugees and displaced persons outside of the quotas. President Harry Truman established a commission that issued a report (Whom Shall We Welcome?) which recommended elimination of the consideration of national origins and establishment of criteria based on broader US interests. Nevertheless, Congress, over Truman’s veto, renewed the National Origins quotas in the 1952 McCarran-Walter Act. It was not until 1965 that a comprehensive overhaul of US immigration policy took place. Touted as a civil rights initiative, the 1965 amendments eliminated national origins quotas and rescinded the various Asian exclusion acts that had been enacted in the nineteenth century. Instead, a uniform per-country ceiling was established to ensure that nationals from no one nation used all of the visas to be made available each year.

Similar delays in enacting legislation for admission of refugees can be seen. During the 1930 and early 1940s, many refugees had been rejected for admission to the United States. The most extreme case was the St Louis, the ship of Jewish refugees that was turned back by the United States and forced to return to Nazi-controlled Germany, where many passengers died in the Holocaust. After the war, the US admitted thousands of displaced persons via a series of presidential rulings and laws that, in effect, mortgaged the national origins quotas. In 1951, the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees was adopted, but the United States did not ratify the Convention despite having participated in its drafting. Only in 1969 did the US ratify the 1967 Protocol to the Refugee Convention. Only in 1980, however, did the US pass legislation that adopted the UN refugee definition and put in place a permanent system for refugee resettlement and asylum proceedings. Previously, refugees from Hungary, Cuba, Indochina, and the Soviet Union were admitted through the parole authority of the attorney general because those emergency programs far exceeded the 17,000 refugee visas included in the regular immigration legislation.

When unauthorized migration grew in the 1970s, Congress considered legislation but failed to reach consensus. Instead, it formed the bipartisan Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy (SCIRP), a time-honoured way to navigate the complexities and emotions in immigration policy. SCIRP included four cabinet officers, four senators, four representatives, and four public members. The final report issued in 1981 recommended a three-legged stool that included enhanced enforcement, particularly in the form of sanctions against employers who hired illegal workers; legalization for the estimated three to six million unauthorized migrants already in the country; and reforms to legal admissions programs that would increase dramatically the number of immigrants to be admitted on the basis of their skills. The basics of the SCIRP proposals were taken up by successive Congresses. The employer sanctions and legalization recommendations were enacted in the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act by a narrow vote in the lame-duck Congress. The legal admission reforms were not enacted until the 1990 Immigration Act.

The 1990 Act created the US Commission on Immigration Reform (USCIR), which was to monitor implementation of the new legislation and report to Congress on changes that would be needed. Although the commission had originally been established to assess the legal immigration system,[5] persistent undocumented migration soon grabbed its attention and that of Congress. USCIR’S first report, issued in 1994, made the point that unauthorized migration undermined the credibility of the legal admissions system. It urged Congress to enact legislation to improve worksite enforcement, including a secure employment verification system, along with the enhancements already undertaken in beefing up border security. The commission’s recommendation was taken up in 1996 as part of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) of 1996, with a requirement that the administration pilot test new forms of electronic verification. Almost twenty years later, the testing continues and Congress has been deadlocked on legislation to mandate its use.

RECENT EFFORTS AT IMMIGRATION REFORM

The twenty-first century has seen two major rounds of debate on immigration reform. The first began in 2001 with the inauguration of George W. Bush, and the second followed Barack Obama’s election to a second term.

Bush campaigned for the presidency with a pledge to make immigration reform a top priority of his administration. He had served as governor of Texas, a border state with close ties to Mexico, where over one-third of the population is of Hispanic origin. Texas also depends heavily on cross-border trade with Mexico for its economic livelihood, especially after the launch of NAFTA in 1994. Familiarity with US-Mexico issues thus predisposed the new Bush administration to place immigration at the forefront of the political agenda, and the president began negotiations with his Mexican counterpart.

In the aftermath of 11 September, however, serious discussion of immigration reform languished in the United States, although some progress was made in achieving agreements with Canada and Mexico on border security strategies. The Summit of the Americas held in Monterrey, Mexico, from 12 to 13 January 2004, provided the opportunity for President Bush to return to the issue of immigration reform. Less than a week before the summit, he unveiled his proposal for a new temporary worker program, titled “Fair and Secure Immigration Reform.” The temporary worker program outlined by President Bush on 7 January 2004 sought to provide a broad framework for resolving some of the many problems that plague the US immigration system. Chief among these was the need, in his words, to better “match willing foreign workers with willing American employers, when no Americans can be found to fill the jobs” (WCPD 2004; see also Jachimowicz 2004).

The dynamics of a presidential campaign year impeded the immigration reform agenda. Efforts to curry favour among voters in the battleground states of the upper Midwest refocused the political debate on issues other than immigration, most notably the war in Iraq and the US economy, for fear of alienating critical undecided voters. After the presidential election, the Bush administration indicated it planned to return to the issue of immigration reform. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge announced on 9 November 2004, while attending meetings of the US-Mexico Binational Commission in Mexico City, that moving forward with a temporary worker program was a “high priority” for President Bush in his second term. Still, Secretary Powell cautioned that immigration is “always a difficult issue before Congress” (Shane 2004).

The president’s proposal for “Fair and Secure Immigration Reform” at its most basic was an uncapped temporary worker program. Although the program would provide status as a temporary worker, it would not lead directly to citizenship. Temporary workers would be eligible to apply for permanent residency, but only through the existing application process and without any preferences over other applicants for citizenship. De-linking the temporary worker program from citizenship status was designed to deflect criticism of President Bush’s proposal from conservative political groups that oppose amnesty for immigrants illegally in the country. Instead, program participants would be eligible to work in the US for an initial period of three years, with the possibility to renew their temporary worker visa for an unspecified number of three-year periods. Return to the country of origin would otherwise be required at the end of three years.

The primary incentive for individuals to come forward and participate in the guest worker program was the guarantee of the right to live and work in the United States. It would eliminate the risk of deportation for three years. A related benefit of the temporary worker program, according to the proposal, was that it would assure “circularity,” or freedom of travel between the United States and the temporary worker’s country of origin. Program participants no longer would have to fear being barred from re-entry to the United States after a visit to their home community.

The Bush proposal was criticized widely. At the conservative end of the political spectrum, critics voiced concern that the temporary worker proposal amounted to an amnesty for unauthorized migrants (Antle 2004). While the Bush proposal did not provide an automatic path to citizenship for unauthorized aliens currently in the United States, it nevertheless would have allowed temporary workers participating in the program to apply immediately for a green card if they had an employer’s sponsorship for the very limited number of visas available for lesser-skilled workers (Bush 2004).

Equal criticism of President Bush’s proposal emanated from the liberal side of the political aisle. After the plan was unveiled in January, Senator Edward Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, disparaged the temporary worker proposal for being grossly inadequate to resolve the nation’s broken immigration system.[6] Senators Tom Daschle, D-South Dakota, and Joe Lieberman, D-Connecticut, specifically criticized the proposal for failing to offer guest workers a direct path to citizenship, such as through an earned legalization process (CNN 2004).

An additional concern was that most of the onus of reforming the immigration system was placed on the immigrant guest worker, not the employer that hired the worker. Despite calls for increased workplace enforcement and verification of compliance with other labour laws, the proposal earmarked very little funding to verify that employers were hiring only those individuals with temporary worker cards and were complying with fair labour standards. Whereas the president’s proposal designated $2.7 billion for border security inspections in the FY 2005 budget, the funding for worksite enforcement was increased to a mere $25 million (DHS 2004). The AFL-CIO asserted that the president’s proposal did nothing to strengthen protections for wages, benefits, and other rights for either immigrant or domestic workers. Instead, the proposal would create a permanent, and larger, underclass of workers in the US economy. The plan allegedly would reward large corporations and employers with a steady stream of vulnerable and underpaid workers, while weakening the rights of workers and exacerbating disrespect for individuals’ rights within the immigration system, according to the AFL-CIO (Sweeney 2004).

Several legislative alternatives to President Bush’s temporary worker proposal were introduced but not enacted during the 108th to 110th Congresses. Two bills, AgJOBS and the DREAM Act, had bipartisan sponsorship in Congress. AgJOBS, introduced by Senator Larry Craig, R-Idaho, was the principal legislative effort to reform the system for admitting temporary agricultural workers. It focused on reform of the H-2A visa category and proposed two basic reforms. First, it would grant legal residence, on a one-time-only basis, to unauthorized migrants who had worked in the agricultural sector for the equivalent of 100 workdays, during any twelve consecutive months, of the eighteen-month period ending on 31 August 2004. This would apply to approximately 500,000 foreign farm workers in the US at the time of the bill’s introduction, in addition to their spouses and minor children. Adjustment to permanent residency (green card) would be possible if the migrant performed an additional 360 days of agricultural work over the following six years. Second, AgJOBS would streamline the H-2A temporary, non-immigrant guest worker program. It would make the hiring process more similar to the expedited hiring process for H-1B high-tech workers. The H-1B process only requires an “attestation” that the employer has complied with the requirements, as opposed to the much lengthier certification process that is required to obtain an H-2A visa.

The DREAM Act (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act), originally sponsored by Senator Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, sought to facilitate the entry into institutions of higher education of those illegal immigrant minors who had obtained a high school diploma. These students were legally barred from seeking employment and were constrained from pursuing additional education because of the high costs of out-of-state tuition. The DREAM Act would authorize states to determine residency for higher education purposes, regardless of an individual’s immigration status. It also would suspend removal of students who were admitted to an institution of higher education or who joined the military. After a six-year wait, the immigrant could adjust to permanent residence.

Despite their bipartisan support, AgJOBS and the DREAM Act languished as Congress considered more far-reaching reform. In the 109th Congress, the Senate and the House of Representatives took very different approaches to the issue. The House focused primarily on enhanced enforcement while the Senate tried for comprehensive reform. The Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005, which passed the House in December 2005, was roundly criticized because it included what were widely seen in immigration circles as draconian measures and lacked any legal alternatives to unauthorized migration. The bill’s border security provisions included increased staffing and training for the Border Patrol, technology to be deployed along the border, and physical infrastructure to deter unauthorized crossings. The bill also required development of a national strategy for border security. It expanded the scope of and enhanced the penalties for smuggling and trafficking offenses.

In a particularly criticized provision, the bill increased the penalties for “harboring” an unauthorized migrant in a manner that would risk the imprisonment of staff of religious and social services organizations that assist immigrants. As described by the American Immigration Lawyers Association, “This incredibly overbroad definition of smuggling would criminalize the work of social service organizations, refugee agencies, churches, attorneys, and other groups that counsel immigrants, treating them the same as smuggling organizations. In addition, family members and employers could be fined and imprisoned for ‘harboring,’ ‘shielding,’ or ‘transporting’ undocumented family members or employees, filling our prisons with people who have done nothing more than try to reunite their families, or help a worker, friend or client” (AILA 2005).

In an equally criticized provision, the bill created a new felony offense: unlawful presence in the United States. Traditionally, simple violations of immigration law have been treated as civil offenses, not criminal ones. Other provisions (a) enhanced the use of mandatory detention, (b) expanded still further the definition of aggravated felonies that would result in mandatory removal, (c) put into place new definitions of terrorist-related reasons for inadmissibility and removal, and (d) eliminated or reduced access to the courts to hear certain immigration-related cases. It also made changes in the burden of proof for an asylum-seeker. It required such a person to establish that “his or her life or freedom would be threatened in the country in question, and that race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion would be at least one central reason for such threat.” A number of these provisions overturned federal court rulings.

In addressing the work magnet for unauthorized migration, the bill required the secretary of Homeland Security to implement an electronic system for verifying employment authorization, building on the pilot program authorized under the 1996 legislation. The system would become mandatory for employers. Employers would need to verify not only new hires but also their existing workforce.

The House-passed legislation created uproar among immigrant advocacy organizations, businesses, and civil rights and civil liberties groups. Opponents argued that enforcement-only approaches would not solve the immigration problem, just further criminalize individuals whose main purpose in violating immigration law was to work. Demonstrations across the country showed the depth of concern within ethnic communities with large immigrant populations. These demonstrations, along with the concerns of business that immigration reform must address their legitimate need for foreign workers, paved the way for a radically different approach in the Senate.

The Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act was introduced by Senators John McCain, R-Arizona, and Edward Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, and Representatives James Kolbe, R-Arizona, Jeff Flake, R-Arizona, and Luis Gutierrez, D-Illinois. The bill addressed a wide range of issues ranging from legalizing unauthorized migrants and creating temporary work programs to increased border security and new employment verification provisions. It attempted to provide answers to three aspects of reform: (a) what to do about the existing unauthorized migrants; (b) how to meet the legitimate needs of employers for foreign labour and families for reunification; and (c) how to deter future unauthorized migration. A competing bill, the Comprehensive Enforcement and Immigration Reform Act of 2005, was introduced by Senators John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Jon Kyl, R-Arizona, in the Republican-controlled 109th Congress. It too provided a mechanism to legalize the status of unauthorized migrants in the United States, but it was far more restrictive than the McCain-Kennedy approach. A compromise was then negotiated by Senators Chuck Hagel, R-Nebraska, and Mel Martinez, R-Florida, which paved the way for passage of the bill by the Senate. Since there was no prospect for agreement with the House’s enforcement-only approach, however, no immigration bill became law during that session.

In the 110th Congress (2007–08), immigration reform once more came on the political agenda but again died before the enactment of legislation. The Senate and the House once more took different approaches, although both bodies were by then under the control of the Democratic Party. In the Senate, closed-door discussions between senators from both parties and the administration led to the introduction of a bill that lifted elements from each of the previous legislative attempts and introduced new policies not previously encompassed by any of the legislative packages. The bill was comprehensive in scope and radical in many of its strategies for curbing unauthorized migration and reforming legal admissions. The House, by contrast, held numerous hearings on immigration reform issues, but its leadership decided to take a wait-and-see attitude and defer action until the Senate debated its legislation. When the Senate failed to end debate on the bipartisan bill supported by the president, the House also deferred action.

The most controversial element of the pending Senate bill was its legalization provisions. The legislation included what was called an earned regularization program (Z visa) that was at the same time more generous and more restrictive than previous versions. It was more generous in its scope, providing a route to legal status for all unauthorized migrants in the country as of January 2007. Eliminating a tiered system used in previous legislation, the provision would treat all unauthorized migrants similarly. They would regularize their status with a new non-immigrant visa that could be renewed every four years, with additional fees and with English and civics testing requirements applied at the renewals. While it made migrants eligible for eventual permanent residence and citizenship, the Senate bill put new restrictions on access to these benefits. The persons granted the new Z visa would be at the back of a long waiting list, estimated to take about eight years to clear. Moreover, the Senate bill would require what is referred to as a “touch back,” in which the heads of all regularized families would have to return home to re-enter as permanent residents. They would also have to meet the requirements of a point system. While unauthorized migrants would immediately find relief from deportation, the full regularization program would only go into effect when certain benchmarks were met in the enforcement of immigration laws.

The Senate bill also included a new temporary worker program (Y visa) that would introduce a rotational requirement. Workers would be granted an initial two-year visa, renewable twice more. What made the Y visa a radical departure was the requirement that workers return home for one year between each renewal. After three rotations, they would not be eligible to re-enter. A ceiling of 200,000 Y workers was approved by amendment on the floor of the Senate, but a mechanism remained to permit increases in the ceiling if demand was high.

Also included in the Senate legislative initiative were major changes in the program for permanent admission. After clearing the backlogs of current applicants, the legislation would eliminate the extended-family, employer-petitioned, and diversity visa categories for admission. While immediate family (spouses, minor children, and parents) of US citizens and of permanent residents would still be eligible, all other immigrants would be admitted based on a point system that would reward education, English language ability, and qualifications in occupations with a shortage of workers. A small number of points would be awarded for family ties if the applicants amassed a minimum number of points in these other areas.

Most of the enforcement provisions were lifted in their entirety from previous bills or represented a variation on the themes of already negotiated provisions. The legislation emphasized both border security and interior enforcement. With regard to worksite enforcement, the bill included provisions for mandatory electronic employment verification, as well as increased penalties for illegal hiring of unauthorized workers.

As negotiations over the Senate bill continued, provisions were added that troubled the proponents of comprehensive reform without satisfying the opponents. The agreement began to unravel in its own bipartisan way, with some Democrats peeling off because of concerns about the open-endedness of the temporary worker program and its lack of labour protections, the new enforcement measures, and the elimination of many family categories. Many Republicans remained opposed, and they were joined by some newly elected Democrats from typically Republican-leaning districts, because of what they called an amnesty program that, to their supporters, signified a reward for illegal activity. When the Senate leadership tried to end debate over the legislation, it failed to garner the sixty votes needed to bring the legislation to a vote. With the 2008 elections looming, few members expected immigration reform to regain any momentum until a new administration was in place.

The economic crisis that accompanied the start of the Obama administration made comprehensive reform even more elusive. Supporters of reform feared that a new congressional debate would inflame sentiments against immigrants in a period of heightened anxiety about high levels of unemployment. Relieved that immigrants had generally not been scapegoated for the country’s economic woes, advocates for legalization of undocumented migrants were wary of raising the visibility of immigration. The 2010 elections, which brought a new Republican majority to the House and reduced the Democratic majority in the Senate, spelled an end to any hope that the gridlock of previous Congresses about core elements of immigration reform could be overcome.

After the 2012 elections, the prospects for comprehensive immigration reform appeared to improve significantly. President Obama had already taken popular action to relieve a portion of the undocumented population from the fear of deportation by granting those who had immigrated illegally as children “deferred action” from deportation. Known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), it applied to those who had entered the US before their sixteenth birthday and were under the age of thirty-one as of 15 June 2012. Only those who were in school, had completed a high school degree, or had served in the military qualified for the relief, which also provided work authorization. This measure was similar in some respects to the DREAM Act but the childhood arrivals were not granted legal permanent status. DACA would have to be renewed after two years. It provided immediate relief, however, to the category of youth who had come to be known as the Dreamers.

With President Obama winning the election, at least partly because of overwhelming support from the growing Hispanic and Asian populations in certain key battleground states, political leaders in both parties immediately began to discuss the need for immigration reform. Democrats felt they needed to respond to the interests of constituents who had voted for them, and some Republicans argued that their party would find it difficult to win national elections if this important demographic continued to turn away from them because of what was perceived as a negative stance on immigration. A number of commentators pointed to Mitt Romney’s remarks in favour of “self-deportation” of undocumented migrants as the type of rhetoric that would consign Republicans to becoming a minority party.[7]

Bipartisan efforts to enact comprehensive immigration reform began in the Senate with the formation of the so-called Gang of Eight. Made up of four Democrats and four Republicans, the senators met frequently with immigration advocates from business, labour, and immigrant rights groups to forge a new consensus on immigration reform. Since a number of the members had been involved in earlier reform efforts in the Senate, they drew heavily on prior experience. What emerged from months of debate was a complicated bill that grew to more than eight hundred pages of text. It tried to balance competing interests while keeping to the basic framework that had by then been agreed to by all those with a serious interest in reform: enhanced enforcement at the border and mandatory electronic work authorization to deter future unauthorized migration, earned regularization for those already in the country illegally, and changes in the legal admissions system to address future labour demand.

The earned regularization provisions were still the most controversial part of the legislative package. As in previous efforts, agricultural workers and Dreamers were treated separately from the majority of undocumented migrants. Most undocumented migrants would apply for Registered Provisional Immigrant Status (RPI). Those who entered prior to 31 December 2011 would be eligible. They would be granted an initial six-year permit. After six years, the permit could be renewed if the migrant demonstrated payment of taxes, fines, and fees, and had been continuously employed. After ten years in RPIstatus, the person would be eligible to apply for legal permanent residence status but would be at the back of the line of pending applications for green cards. After an additional three years, RPIS could apply for US citizenship. By contrast, Dreamers (defined similarly to the DACA recipients) could naturalize in as little as five years. Agricultural workers (those who performed at least 575 hours or 100 work days of agricultural employment during a two-year period ending 31 December 2012) would be able to apply for lawful permanent resident status five years after enactment of the bill if they continued to work in agriculture, paid their taxes, and paid a fine. They would be able to apply for citizenship after being permanent residents for five years. The much-extended period in provisional status for most undocumented migrants was considered their penalty for having been illegally in the country.

When the legislation reached the floor of the Senate, a number of amendments were introduced to toughen the enforcement provisions. In particular, extensive new funding was authorized to ramp up border controls well beyond their current levels. The Congressional Budget Office had determined that the legislation would reduce the deficit, meaning there were resources that could be allocated even in tough budget times. Moreover, the legislation as passed included triggers that would determine whether those granted RPI status would be able to obtain permanent status. They could do so only after a Southern Border Security Strategy was operational, 700 miles of additional border fencing completed, a mandatory employment verification system for all employers implemented, and at least 38,405 full-time Border Patrol agents deployed along the southern border.

The legislation also included changes in the legal admissions system. Extended family categories were eliminated but those in the queue for five years or longer would be able to obtain their green cards through a new “merit-based system” that gave them priority for admission. The number of employment-based visas was increased by exempting spouses and minor children from the cap. In addition, a point system was devised that would be similar to the Canadian and Australian programs in giving preference to those with high levels of education. As many as 125,000 visas could be allocated each year to those who qualified, with the number varying based on unemployment rates and other economic conditions.

The House of Representatives took no action on the Senate bill, nor adopted its own legislation. The Republican leadership stated clearly that the Senate bill was unacceptable and would not be considered in its entirety. In January 2014, the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, R-Ohio, offered his principles for immigration reform. They embraced many of the provisions of the Senate but departed over a path to citizenship for undocumented migrants who regularized their status: “There will be no special path to citizenship for individuals who broke our nation’s immigration laws – that would be unfair to those immigrants who have played by the rules and harmful to promoting the rule of law. Rather, these persons could live legally and without fear in the US, but only if they were willing to admit their culpability, pass rigorous background checks, pay significant fines and back taxes, develop proficiency in English and American civics, and be able to support themselves and their families (without access to public benefits)” (“Text of Republican Principles” 2014). However, these principles did not transform into legislative language during the 113th Congress.

In the absence of legislation, President Obama attempted to take further executive action to defer the removal of additional categories of unauthorized migrants. In November 2014, he announced that certain undocumented parents of US citizens and of lawful permanent residents would be given deferred action (referred to as DAPA). He also announced an expansion of the DACA program for those who came to the United States as children. In December 2014, Texas and twenty-five other states filed suit to stop the new programs from being implemented, citing them as an overreach of executive authority. The government countered that the new programs fell within prosecutorial discretion to set priorities for seeking removal against specific unauthorized migrants. A federal judge blocked implementation of DAPA and of the expanded DACA while the case wended its way through the judicial process. As the result of a 4–4 split decision in the Supreme Court in June 2016, the bar on the two programs remains in place as of this writing (October 2016).

ELUSIVE REFORM PROSPECTS

In the context of these historical trends, the failure of recent Congresses to enact comprehensive reform is not surprising. Major changes in immigration policy generally require years of preparation and negotiation. Even the imprimatur of blue-ribbon panels helps but does not ensure quick passage of new approaches. The nature of the political coalitions that form around immigration explains some of these difficulties in gaining consensus. These interests can be seen in Figure 2.2, which rates groups by their attitudes towards immigration numbers on one axis and towards immigrant rights on the other. The top left quadrant includes groups that are favourable to high levels of immigration as measured by numbers of admissions and a commitment to the protection of the rights of immigrants; their preference is for permanent admissions that provide access to citizenship. Groups in the bottom left quadrant also support high levels of immigration, but they are willing to restrict the rights of those admitted; their preference is for large-scale temporary worker programs, limitations on access to public welfare programs, and measures that permit quick removal of any migrants that commit criminal or other offenses. The bottom right quadrant also holds those who support limits on the rights of migrants, but they also support limitations on the numbers to be admitted. Those in the top right quadrant see rights as paramount and are comfortable with numerical limits on admissions, especially on categories that inherently limit the capacity of migrants to exercise their rights (e.g., temporary worker programs and unauthorized migration).

Table 2.1 Interests of political coalitions

The interests that influence immigration policy often join in support of specific provisions in the law, but they are unable to maintain long-term cohesion, making the type of comprehensive reform that has been proposed very difficult to enact. Moreover, as has been the case throughout US history, the public is highly ambivalent about newcomers, seeing their own immigrant forebears in a positive light, but fearful that today’s immigrants will fail to adopt American norms and values. That ambivalence makes immigration reform all the more difficult because there is seldom a strong constituency behind any set of policy changes. The public tends to favour restriction, but immigration seldom appears as one of the most important deciding factors in elections. Making the process of reform even more difficult is a basic ambivalence within the American public regarding immigration. Most Americans speak fondly and nostalgically about their own immigrant forebears, who, in their mind, created this nation of immigrants. At the same time, they are fearful that today’s immigrants are somehow different and less likely to contribute and assimilate – to become true Americans. This ambivalence is by no means new. Benjamin Franklin worried that the Germans immigrating to Pennsylvania in the eighteenth century would never learn English. The result of this ambivalence is the absence of any strong consensus among the public about changes in immigration policy. A small group that knows what it opposes can often pre-empt action (as witnessed in both the immigrant rallies that derailed the House Republican enforcement measures and the talk radio shows that derailed the Senate regularization measures) but pressure for positive changes is too often lacking. The safe decision for politicians is no decision – at least until there is no choice but to act.

CONCLUSION

After the 2012 election, the prospects for immigration reform appeared to be much improved. While the Senate took action and passed a bipartisan bill, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives blocked any legislation from being enacted. Today, with a Republican-controlled Congress and a 2016 presidential election in which the winning candidate campaigned on building walls to keep Mexicans out and banning the entry of members of entire religions, comprehensive reform continues to prove elusive. Much of the current action is in the courts, which must decide how much authority the executive branch has to implement reforms on its own.

At the same time, there appears to be considerable consensus as to the contours of immigration reform – enforcement against unauthorized migration, measures to address the large population of undocumented migrants already in the country, and new admissions policies to enable the immigration system to respond to future demand for workers. Differences abound, however, when the discussion shifts to the details. Debate continues to focus on the merits of comprehensive versus incremental changes; the relative weight to be given to various modes of enforcement (e.g., border versus worksite); the efficacy of mandatory electronic employment verification; whether and how to frame a program to legalize those who are currently in the country without legal status; the need for and nature of new admissions programs to fill jobs that undocumented migrants currently take; measures to reduce the backlog of approved applicants for family reunification; the unwieldiness of current mechanisms to set admission numbers and adjudicate applications for employment-based visas; and other similar issues.

These specifics of immigration reform are fruitful areas of future research. Whereas there are studies of the problems in the current system, there is much less research on the implementation challenges inherent in any effort to improve immigration policies. In particular, good assessments are needed of the administrative capacity of the agencies assigned immigration responsibilities to carry out their current missions as well as likely future ones. For example, what would it take to implement a complex regularization program for as many as eleven million migrants, are federal agencies up to the task, and what would be needed to get them to where they need to be?

Given the infrequency with which Congress undertakes fundamental reform, careful attention to details is essential. The country is likely to live with the consequences for decades to come.

NOTES

1   See immigration statistics at http://www.dhs.gov/immigration-statistics (accessed 27 July 2016).

2   See monthly Visa Bulletin issued by the US State Department.

3   Observation based on the author’s interviews of refugees and resettlement agencies in Amman, Jordan in January 2012.

4   Exceptions are refugee resettlement and asylum applications that are paid through the fee accounts but not by individual applicants.

5   The name of the commission was originally the Commission on Legal Immigration Reform.

6   Subsequently, he and Senator McCain introduced their own version of comprehensive immigration reform.

7   For example, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said publically that Mitt Romney’s comment about “self-deportation” at a 2012 presidential primary debate was “horrific.” See The Washington Post (16 August 2013), http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/08/16/priebus-romneys-self-deportation-comment-was-horrific/.

REFERENCES

American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA).2005. “The Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005 (H.R. 4437) as Amended and Passed by the House on 12/16/05. Section-by-Section Analysis.” http://www.aila.org/content/default.aspx?bc=6755|37844|11536|18675|18126 (accessed 23 May 2013).

Antle III, W. James. 2004. “Amnesty by Another Name Is Still Amnesty: Bush Compounds an Immigration Disaster.” Intellectual Conservative (12 January). http://www.intellectualconservative.com/article3017.html.

Bush, George W. 2004. “President Bush Proposes New Temporary Worker Program: Remarks by the President on Immigration Policy” (7 January). http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2004/01/20040107-3.html.

CNN News. 2004. “Democrats: Bush Immigration Plan Not Enough.” CNN News (7 January). http://www.cnn.com.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS). 2004. “Budget in Brief – Fiscal-Year 2005” (2 February). http://www.dhs.gov/dhs-budget-brief-fiscal-year-2005.

–   2012. Estimates of the Size and Characteristics of the Resident Nonimmigrant Population in the United States: January 2011. Washington, DC: Department of Homeland Security.

Jachimowicz, Maia. 2004. “Bush Proposes New Temporary Workers Program.” Migration Information Source. Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute. http://migrationinformation.org/feature/display.cfm?ID=202 (accessed 27 May 2013).

Martin, Susan F. 2011. A Nation of Immigrants. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Napolitano, Janet. 2013. Written testimony of US Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano for a Senate Committee on the Judiciary hearing, “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” (13 February).

National Immigration Law Center. 2004. “NILC Reflections on President Bush’s Immigration Reform Proposal” (9 January). http://v2011.nilc.org/immlawpolicy/cdev/NILC_Reflections_On_Bush%20Proposal.pdf.

Orrenius, Pia M., and Madeline Zavodny. 2010. “Foreign Stimulus.” The New York Times (13 September).

Passel, Jeffrey, and D’Vera Cohn. 2008. US Population Projections, 2005 – 50. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center.

President’s Commission on Immigration and Naturalization. 1953. Whom Shall We Welcome? Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office.

Shane, Scott. 2004. “Bush to Push for Temporary Worker Program.” The New York Times (9 November). http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/09/international/americas/09powell.html?_r=1&.

Sweeney, John J. 2004. “Statement by John J. Sweeney, AFL-CIO President, on President Bush’s Principles for Immigration Reform.” AFL-CIO: America’s Unions (8 January). http://www.aflcio.org/Press-Room/Press-Releases/Statement-by-AFL-CIO-President-John-J.-Sweeney-on7.

“Text of Republican Principles of Immigration Reform.” 2014. The New York Times (30 January). http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/31/us/politics/text-of-republicans-principles-on-immigration.html?_r=0.

Tichenor, Daniel. 2002. Dividing Lines: The Politics of Immigration Control in America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).2014. Children on the Run: Unaccompanied Children Leaving Central America and Mexico and the Need for International Protection. Washington, DC: UNHCR.

United States Commission on Immigration Reform. 1995. Setting Priorities: Legal Admissions. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.

Wasem, Ruth E. 2012. US Immigration Policy on Permanent Admissions. Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service. http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/homesec/RL32235.pdf (accessed 1 June 2013).

Zolberg, Aristide R. 2006. A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

PART TWO

Economic Aspects of North American Immigration

3

Economic Outcomes of Immigrants in Canada

Charles M. Beach

INTRODUCTION

This chapter provides some basic background information on major economic aspects of North American immigration. It focuses on the economic outcomes of immigrants in Canada since 2000, meaning the earnings of immigrants in the labour market and their labour-market involvement, particularly relative to non-immigrants in Canada.

A review of immigrant outcomes in North America is particularly timely. Declining economic outcomes of immigrants in Canada in recent decades are of concern in their own right, but also have been the principal motivation for major changes in Canadian immigration policy. In the United States, President Barack Obama recently announced that revising US immigration policy would be one of the top priorities of his second term. And in the background, both the Canadian and US economies have been undergoing major structural changes related to the so-called Great Recession, slow economic growth, globalization of trade patterns, and the advancing use of information-technology production processes – changes that affect the pattern of demand for immigrant workers in the labour market, and hence their economic outcomes.

The chapter has three sections. The first section sets out key features of recent immigrant outcomes in Canada. It examines some basic background statistics on immigrant arrivals and economic outcomes of immigrants since 2000. The second section, the major portion of the chapter, lays out several emerging themes and issues in the recent Canadian immigration literature. The third section reviews recent skilled immigration policy changes, and looks at some promising directions for future research related to these policy changes.

KEY FEATURES OF RECENT IMMIGRANT OUTCOMES IN CANADA

It is useful to keep in mind the various different roles that immigration plays in Canada. First, it may be broadly referred to as nationbuilding. It provides diversity, energy, and vibrancy to Canada’s cities. It helped open the West and develop Canada’s natural resources. And it has helped mold a perspective of openness, respect for differences, and multiculturalism. Second, immigration facilitates family reunification. Third, it offers a humanitarian haven for refugees from around the world. Fourth, it contributes to demographic growth by countering low domestic fertility rates and offsetting the natural aging of the work force. And last, but not least, immigration provides a broad range of economic benefits. It brings economic skills that can increase productivity and fill labour-market gaps. It fosters economic expansion and helps maintain economic growth. It increases the flexibility and adaptability of the work force, and it helps promote regional economic growth.

Basic Background Immigration Statistics

Consider some basic background statistics on Canadian immigration. Figures on overall immigration rates are provided in Table 3.1. The principal feature of this table is the big increase in the number of arriving immigrants since the mid-1980s. Levels range generally between 230,000 to 260,000 immigrants per year since the 1990s, or around 0.7 per cent of Canada’s population. The inflow levels were kept fairly stable over the period of the severe 1991–92 recession and during the recent 2008–09 economic slowdown as well.

Across major immigrant-receiving countries, Canada’s immigration rates are among the highest. Australia has the highest proportion of immigrants in its population at over 21 per cent, and Canada is next at 19 to 20 per cent. France, the United Kingdom, and Germany have 9 to 12 per cent, and the United States 12 to 13 per cent (OECD 2008).

One of the most marked changes in immigration to Canada has been the shift in the countries of origin of arriving immigrants, from the traditional sources of Europe and the United States to Asian countries and, more recently, countries in the Middle East. This is highlighted in Table 3.2. Since 2001, the top four source countries of recent immigrants were the People’s Republic of China, India, the Philippines, and Pakistan. The big changes occurred in the 1980s and 1990s following the advent of the Canadian point system in 1967, and the run-up of immigration levels in the 1980s. Since these immigrants are largely visible (racial) minorities within the Canadian labour market, these changes flag a concern with ongoing effects of possible racial discrimination in observed earnings differentials in Canada (Pendakur and Pendakur 2002, 2011).

Table 3.1 Number of immigrants arriving in Canada and per cent of population

Source: Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Facts and Figures 2008 (2009); Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Permanent and Temporary Residents, 2012, at http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/statistics/facts2012/.

Another major change in Canadian immigration patterns has been a marked shift among immigrant admissions categories. Just as immigration serves several roles, immigrants are admitted corresponding to these different roles. Table 3.3 shows the number of immigrant landings for the three leading admission categories: economic-class immigrants who are admitted based on the skills they bring to the Canadian labour market, family-class immigrants who are admitted because of their family relationship to someone already here, and refugee-class immigrants who are admitted on humanitarian grounds.[1] As can be seen, since the mid-1990s, the share of economic-class immigrants has increased to around 60 per cent of all landings, while the share of family-class immigrants has declined to around 25 to 28 per cent, and the proportion who are refugees has fallen below 10 per cent. Canadian immigration policy has thus been shifting its emphasis away from family unification and more towards skill contributions to the Canadian economy.

Table 3.2 Top ten birth countries of recent immigrants

Source: Statistics Canada (2007), Cat. No. 97-557, http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/statistics/facts2012/permanent.

The economic category of immigrants includes several distinct programs. By far the largest is the Federal Skilled Worker Program (FSWP) – 64 per cent of all economic-class immigrants in 2010 – which consists of those who are assessed under the point system (and their dependants). But it also includes those arriving under the various Provincial Nominee Programs (PNPS), representing about 20 per cent of economic-class immigrants; under the new Canadian Experience Class category (about 2 per cent); under a set of immigrant investor and entrepreneur programs (about 7 per cent); and under the live-in caregivers program (also about 7 per cent); as well as under various smaller programs.

Changing Skill Mix and Economic Outcomes of Immigrants

Just as the background characteristics of immigrants to Canada have been undergoing substantial changes, so also have the major skill-related attributes and economic outcomes of these immigrants over recent decades. The two attributes we focus on here are immigrants’ level of education and their official language fluency – the skill dimensions highlighted in the immigration literature and in recent changes to the Canadian point system.

Table 3.3 Immigrant landings by major admission categories

Source: Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Permanent and Temporary Residents, 2012 (2012), at http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/statistics/facts2012/.

Workers with higher levels of education are viewed, on average, as more productive within the human capital analytical framework and as more able within the signalling / screening analytical framework. They foster the shift of the Canadian economy towards a more high-tech, value-added, service-oriented production environment, and they are required in many highly paid, skilled occupations. The Canadian point system puts considerable weight on number of years of schooling and on having a university degree.

Table 3.4 shows how the levels of education of landing immigrants rose dramatically between 1980 and 2000, responding to the increasingly heavy weight put on formal education by the Canadian point system over this period. There has indeed been a remarkable rise in the proportion of immigrants who have university degrees, and even more so among economic-class immigrants. Indeed, a larger fraction of immigrants entering Canada have a university degree than do Canadian-born residents. The proportion of immigrants with a university degree has continued to be at least as high through the 2000s (CIC 2011).

Fluency in either English or French is a further key skill dimension in the Canadian labour market. It is of value in its own right, to enable workers to communicate and get things done within the workplace. But it also serves as a transmission vehicle or actualization device that allows workers to make better use of the skills they have already learned in their home country and to acquire Canadian workplace skills at a faster pace. In an economy undergoing a major shift from a manufacturing base to a service-sector base of employment, fluency in the major local language(s) plays an increasingly important role.

Table 3.4 Level of education of immigrants on landing, 1980, 1990, 2000 (per cent)

Source: Beach, Green, and Worswick 2011.

Using data from the 2003 International Adult Literacy and Skills Survey of Statistics Canada, Bonikowska, Green, and Riddell (2008) find that the actual level of language fluency (in either English or French) is substantially lower among immigrants than among the Canadian-born population. More specifically, for both males and females, a much larger proportion of immigrants cluster at the lower end of the literacy scale than is the case for Canadian-born workers. Language fluency is substantially greater among economic-class immigrants than among other immigrant admission categories.

Now turn to the labour-market outcomes of immigrants – i.e., how they are doing in the Canadian labour market. Table 3.5 presents unemployment rates, labour-force participation rates, and employment rates for immigrants in 2006 according to how long they have been resident in Canada.[2] Here we can see that immigrants initially face real difficulties integrating into the Canadian labour market. During their first five years in Canada, immigrants experience unemployment rates twice or three times those of Canadian-born workers. The proportion who are either working or seeking work is lower than for non-immigrants, indeed substantially so for women. And their employment rate – the proportion of their population aged twenty-five to fifty-four who are actually working – is only 90 per cent that of non-immigrants for men, and only 67 per cent for women. This is important because employment rates are a major determinant of average income levels and living standards. Note, though, that these problems attenuate the longer immigrants reside in Canada and hence have greater opportunity to adjust, advance, and integrate into the Canadian labour market. But, as seen by comparing the last two columns of Table 3.5, though these problems largely disappear for male immigrants, they still continue for female immigrants after ten years in Canada.

Table 3.5 Labour-market involvement rates of immigrants aged 25–54 by sex in Canada, 2006 (per cent)

Note: “Very recent” refers to immigrants who have been in Canada for five years or less; “recent immigrants” between five and ten years; and “established immigrants” more than ten years.

Source: Statistics Canada 2008, Cat. No. 97-559-X.

We turn finally to the actual outcome of average annual earnings (i.e., income received from working in the labour market) of immigrants in Canada. This is illustrated in Figure 3.1 from Citizenship and Immigration Canada (2004), and requires some explanation. The upper heavy line indicates the average earnings levels in Canada (all figures in constant 2004 dollars) for individual tax years 1981 to 2004. The lower dashed line shows the average earnings levels of immigrant workers for the calendar year in which they landed (i.e., years since landing, YSL = 0). So immigrants arriving in Canada in the year 2000 had average earnings of about $13,000, compared to average earnings of workers as a whole of about $35,000 that year. The latter immigrant earnings figure is relatively low in part because it reflects only part-year earnings the year of arrival in Canada. The lower heavy line labelled “Entry” indicates the average earnings (all in 2004 dollars) of immigrant workers their first full year after landing (i.e., YSL = 1). So in 2001, the average full-year earnings of those immigrants who had landed in Canada the year before (2000) had risen to about $20,000 – somewhat above their $13,000 figure the previous year, but still significantly lower than the Canadian average earnings level.

The lighter lines with dates attached in Figure 3.1 show the average earnings growth of immigrant workers (YSL > 1) who arrived in Canada in the year indicated by the label attached to each such curve. So the line labelled “1986” displays the average earnings for the 1986 immigrant landing cohort for each year from 1987 on. Thus, the 1986 landing cohort of immigrants experienced average landing-year earnings of about $14,000, 1987 average (full-year) earnings of $21,000, and by 2000 had reached an average earnings level of about $33,000. More recent landing cohorts start further to the right along the time axis, and are shown with shorter earnings adjustment profiles because there are fewer years of earnings data available for them between when they arrived in Canada and the final coverage year of 2004. Each of these lighter lines (or immigrant-cohort-specific earnings adjustment profiles) has an upward slope indicating how the earnings of each specific cohort of immigrants increase over time faster than the Canadian average earnings level, and thus adjust towards the Canadian average as immigrants gradually integrate into the Canadian labour market.

The vertical gap between each of the (cohort-specific) immigrant adjustment profiles and the Canadian average earnings level (or upper heavy line) shows the shortfall of immigrant earnings levels compared to average Canadian earnings. The key point to note in this diagram is that the earnings adjustment profiles for successive landing cohorts since the early 1980s lie below each other and thus have been drifting down relative to the average Canadian earnings level (and relative to previous cohorts of immigrants). The key message, then, is that there has been a widening gap or worsening of average immigrant earnings levels (relative to average Canadian earnings levels) for more recently landed immigrants right up until the 2000s. As a result, more recently landed immigrants are worse off and it is taking longer for immigrants’ earnings to catch up to the Canadian average. The gap is particularly wide for those with university degrees. Indeed, for more recent cohorts of immigrants, average poverty rates have been rising, and these recent immigrants’ average may never fully catch up to the Canadian average.

Figure 3.1 Average annual earnings of all immigrant workers by year of landing and subsequent working years in Canada, 1981–2004

Note: Dollar amounts in 2004 dollars.

Source: Citizenship and Immigration Canada 2004, 3.

THEMES AND ISSUES ARISING FROM IMMIGRANT OUTCOMES

Considerable debate has been devoted in the immigrant research literature to the reasons for the marked worsening of immigrant labour-market outcomes in Canada, and what can be done about them.

Reasons for Worsening Immigrant Outcomes

Many recent studies have examined various factors that have contributed to this worsening of immigrant outcomes (Aydemir and Skuterud 2005; Beach, Green, and Worswick 2011; Green and Worswick 2010a, 2010b; Hou and Picot 2010; and Picot and Hou 2009). We highlight only the main contributing factors here.

First, as examined in the previous section, immigrants to Canada since the 1980s have predominantly come from source countries such as Asia and the Middle East, rather than the previously traditional English-speaking, Commonwealth-based or western European sources. Their language and cultural adjustment are likely greater, and the opportunity for racial and language discrimination correspondingly greater. Even for similarly identified occupations, how these workers operate in the workplace is likely to be quite different in North America from what they were used to at home, so that their workplace skills are less transferable. Increasingly, various ethnic groups are also agglomerating into regional neighbourhoods in major Canadian cities such as Toronto, making it more difficult to acquire English or French fluently and to develop non-ethnic-based networks for job opportunities beyond these neighbourhoods. And most of the major source countries in recent decades are developing economies whose educational systems are typically not up to North American standards and may be difficult for employers to evaluate. Pendakur and Pendakur (1998, 530) estimate from the 1991 Canadian Census that, controlling for observable skill and work characteristics, foreign-born visible minority workers receive 8 per cent (for men) to 9 per cent (for women) lower annual earnings than Canadian-born visible minority workers. So an increasing shift towards visible minority immigrants, assuming such an ongoing earnings differential, implies a continuing widening of the overall immigrant earnings gap.

Second, it has been argued that immigrants are like young Canadian-born workers in that both are recent entrants into the fulltime labour market. For reasons not yet well understood, young cohorts of workers in Canada over the last twenty-five years have seen their early earnings levels slip by 15 to 20 per cent compared with those of young workers of a generation earlier (Beaudry and Green 2000). Thus it has been estimated that much of the slippage of immigrants’ initial earnings in Canada over the 1980s simply reflects the general decline of earnings of new labour-market entrants over this period. The 1980s and 1990s were also a period of relatively high unemployment rates, and new entrants typically experience stronger negative effects from slack labour markets than long-established workers. Furthermore, as we have seen, the large run-up of immigration landings began in the 1980s, but continued through the severe economic recession of the early 1990s – the first time that Canada kept the immigration tap on full during a major domestic recession. The first half of the 1990s was also a period of labour-market upheaval as the Canadian economy adjusted to free trade agreements, and federal and provincial governments reduced their employment expenses in the face of major deficits. Again, the ongoing increase in the supply of new workers at a time of relatively high unemployment may well have contributed to depressing the earnings opportunities of those workers.

Third, the Canadian labour market may be more difficult to get established in with a well-paying job now than a generation ago because of the ongoing shift of employment away from traditional manufacturing-sector and towards service-sector jobs. Many manufacturing jobs did not require high-skilled training, paid historically good wages, typically provided union protection, and did not require a high degree of English-or French-language fluency. High-skilled service-sector jobs, however, typically do require a high degree of language fluency, particularly fluency in the language of workplace activities rather than just general language proficiency. The Canadian point system within the Federal Skilled Worker Program puts great weight on university education and white-collar professional expertise. Yet professional accreditation and recognition of foreign credentials have proven to be very difficult for immigrants from foreign lands to obtain. It is not so surprising, then, that many immigrants end up working in lower-paid service-sector employment while they are trying to get established in Canada.

Fourth, it has been argued that the decline in immigrants’ relative earnings (compared to those of non-immigrant workers) during the early 2000s was very much concentrated in information-technology-related occupations following the dot-com bust of the early 2000s, since a large number of the highly educated immigrants arriving in the 1990s were in this field (Picot and Hou 2009).

Issues in Better Understanding Worsened Immigrant Outcomes

One recent study, however, is less pessimistic about worsened immigrant labour-market outcomes. Hou (2010, 22) observes:

The largest increase in the gap [between immigrant and nonimmigrant earnings] was observed in the 1980s, driven largely by compositional shifts, most of which abated during the 1990s, and certainly by the 2000s. The shifts in immigrant source regions and language ability have stabilized and may not negatively affect trends in immigration patterns (e.g., it may become less easy to attract highly-educated immigrants from fast growing Asian economies). Changes in returns to Canadian experience and education played a moderate role in the 1980s, but its effect has become small, at least for the earnings gap of recent immigrant men. The reason for the expanding earnings gap in the early 2000s is unique. The downturn of a single industrial sector (IT) affected a substantial share of recent immigrants. A similar event may not be repeated, although it remains to be seen what effect the recent recession of 2008–9 had on immigrants’ relative earnings.

Nevertheless, the worsened economic outcomes of immigrants in Canada have given rise to several themes or directions in the recent economics immigration literature. The present chapter focuses on four principal themes within this literature:

a)  reduced returns to foreign education and work experience in the Canadian labour market;

b)  the critical role of language fluency in the Canadian workplace;

c)  occupational matching and the transferability of foreign skills; and

d)  a shift in the focus of analysis to the outcomes of second-generation immigrants.

REDUCED RETURNS TO FOREIGN EDUCATION AND WORK EXPERIENCE[3]

The worsened earnings gap between immigrant and non-immigrant workers can be usefully viewed as having two distinct aspects: the initial earnings gap within the first full year of landing in Canada, and the rate at which the gap narrows the longer the immigrant continues working in the Canadian labour market. The first represents the earnings gap challenge being faced by new immigrants, and the second represents their rate of adjustment or integration into the local labour-market environment. Work by Green and Worswick (2010a, 2010b) shows that, while the initial earnings gap for men has been widening over the 1980s and 1990s, the rate of earnings gap adjustment has been speeding up. However, the latter positive adjustment has not been enough to counter the negative effect of the widening initial earnings gap.

This earnings gap also differed across education level and age group of landing immigrants. The initial earnings gap for immigrants worsened much more dramatically for immigrants who were university graduates than for those with only a high school education. This is consistent with a marked ongoing increase in the supply of university graduates in Canada, as well as the increasing supply of university-educated immigrants. The initial earnings gap also worsened much more dramatically among older, more experienced arrivals than for younger, less experienced landing immigrants. This is consistent with the large, aging baby-boom cohort of workers making its way through the system.

A good deal of the debate about the worsened earnings gap between immigrants and Canadian-born workers has revolved around what economists call “the returns” to labour-market skills or human capital of immigrants vs. non-immigrants. The key skill dimensions highlighted in the literature are level of formal education, years of accumulated work experience, and fluency in the host country’s official language(s). By “returns to skills” is meant the percentage higher in earnings of workers from having a greater degree of some such skill ceteris paribus (within a regression framework).

An extensive literature has examined the degree to which immigrants face a lower return on their foreign education and work experience in the Canadian labour market (Ferrer and Riddell 2008; Green and Worswick 2010a, 2010b; Aydemir and Skuterud 2005; Skuterud and Su 2009), and how these returns have declined, especially over the 1980s and 1990s. The quality of education varies substantially across countries of origin, and the shift of immigrants to predominantly “more foreign” sources since the 1980s has resulted in immigrant education and training that may be less up-to-date and less attuned to North American standards, and just generally may be harder for Canadian employers to evaluate. The result is that riskaverse domestic employers discount its value. Typical estimates of such discount rates on foreign education, for example, are 21 per cent for men and 33 per cent for women (Aydemir and Skuterud 2005). Immigrants who complete their education in Canada, however, seem to experience little or no discounting of that education.

In the case of foreign work experience, though, the discounting has become quite severe. The human capital skills acquired from a career working in a quite different economy with very different technology standards, organizational style, and language of operation may not be readily transferable to the Canadian workplace, even in a similarly labelled occupation. The returns to foreign work experience since the 1980s and particularly during the 1990s have become heavily discounted by Canadian employers. Typical estimates of the extent of this discounting are 76 per cent for men and 88 per cent for women (Ferrer and Riddell 2008). Immigrants who are older at time of landing experience greater discounting of their previous work experience than younger immigrants with less foreign work experience, who are likely to be more adaptable to new workplace methods of operation in Canada.

THE CRITICAL ROLE Of LANGUAGE FLUENCY IN THE CANADIAN WORKPLACE

A second major theme or strand of recent research on immigrant outcomes in Canada is the critical role of fluency in either of Canada’s official languages. It is one of the leading barriers to entry into the workforce. A limited proficiency in English or French is associated with lower earnings for a variety of reasons: access to fewer and less remunerative job opportunities; reduced facility to learn new job requirements as quickly; inability to handle as many tasks as quickly or correctly; and perhaps discrimination. The key feature here is language proficiency in the workplace rather than general-purpose language fluency (which is what many tests evaluate) (Weiner 2008). An analytical framework for the role and acquisition of host-country language in the workplace is offered by Chiswick and Miller (2008).

Estimation of local language proficiency effects again makes use of regression analysis applied to three extremely useful Statistics Canada surveys that contain information on English or French language proficiency – measured in several dimensions – along with immigrant status, standard skill measures, and labour-market outcome variables (such as earnings). One such data source is the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS); another is the Ontario Immigrant Literacy Survey (OILS); and a third is the International Adult Literacy and Skills Survey (IALSS). Direct estimates of language proficiency effects on the earnings of workers are found in Green and Riddell (2003), Ferrer, Green, and Riddell (2006), and Bonikowska, Green, and Riddell (2008). Typical of their findings is that the average difference in document literacy scores between immigrant and Canadian-born workers with only foreign-based education is associated with lower male immigrant earnings by 22 per cent (Ferrer, Green, and Riddell 2006).

OCCUPATIONAL MATCHING AND THE TRANSFERABILITY OF FOREIGN SKILLS

Another theme of research that has gotten a lot of recent attention involves the transferability or portability of foreign-acquired skills, as represented by the extent to which immigrants in Canada work in the same occupation as they previously did in their homeland. A mismatch between pre-and post-arrival occupations can represent personal loss to immigrants and their families; can mean unemployment, under-utilization, and atrophying of immigrants’ skills in the labour market; and can lead to loss of efficiency in the skilled resources sector of Canada’s economy.

Goldmann et al. (2009) and Sweetman et al. (2012) have used the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada (LSIC), which includes information on occupation of employment of immigrants in their source country as well as in their main post-landing job in Canada, to measure the degree of occupational mismatch and examine the effect of such mismatch on returns to foreign-based skills. They find that the skill level of immigrants’ jobs shortly after landing in Canada is indeed lower than in their pre-landing employment in their home country, but that the skill level associated with their Canadian jobs increases the longer the immigrants continue working in Canada. Yet after four years in the Canadian labour market, only about 25 per cent of male and about 18 per cent of female immigrants have attained a match with their source-country occupation. Obtaining such a match is associated with a large earnings premium. Those immigrants who do not obtain such a match effectively get no return on either their home-country work experience or their home-country education. Interestingly, even those who do obtain occupational matches still do not gain any return on their foreign work experience, but do receive a large return on their foreign-based schooling. Clearly, these issues deserve further inquiry.

Mismatches also reflect barriers to the recognition of foreign credentials in Canada, entrance to regulated occupations, federal and provincial selection processes for immigrants to Canada, language deficiencies in either English or French, unfamiliarity with how North American workplaces operate, possible cultural differences regarding the workplace, and possible racial discrimination.

SHIFT IN FOCUS TO OUTCOMES OF SECOND-GENERATION IMMIGRANTS

A further topic of considerable research interest is the issue of the economic outcomes of second-generation arrivals, or the offspring of immigrants. If adult immigrants have been experiencing deteriorating earnings, what has been happening to their children, particularly if the future well-being of their children is one of the principal motivations for immigrants to migrate to Canada? Several recent studies have examined this issue: Aydemir, Chen, and Corak (2009), Aydemir and Sweetman (2007), Bonikowska and Hou (2011), Finnie and Mueller (2010), Hum and Simpson (2007), and Picot and Hou (2011a, 2011b).

Using the 2006 Census, Picot and Hou (2011a, 2011b) find that the educational attainments of Canadian-born children of immigrants are significantly higher than they are for the children of non-immigrants. Indeed, even controlling for parental education and residence location (immigrants tend to settle in urban areas where wages are higher), educational attainment levels of the former group still exceed those of the latter. Education outcomes also vary by ethnic and source country group, suggesting the role of “ethnic capital” in the children’s outcomes. The children of immigrants also show higher earnings levels (and are more likely to be employed in professional occupations) than their counterparts with Canadian-born parents. Most of this earnings advantage, however, arises from their higher educational attainment and residence location. Again, outcomes differ among ethnic / social groups. Picot and Hou (2011b, 8) conclude that “[e]conomic integration may be a multi-generational process.”

POLICY AND RESEARCH DIRECTIONS ARISING FROM IMMIGRATION POLICY TRADE-OFFS

The last several years have seen a flurry of major changes in immigration policy in Canada. The changes are too extensive to review here, so this chapter will consider only those that are related to skilled or economic immigration.

Immigration Challenges and Recent Policy Changes

Changes to skilled immigration policy were driven by several concerns:

a)  a worsening in the economic outcomes of immigrants and a widening earnings gap between Canadian-and foreign-born workers;

b)  the growth of a massive backlog of applicants under the Federal Skilled Worker Program by the mid-2000s that had resulted in processing lags of five to six years and more;

c)  growing international competition for skilled labour from the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Australia, as well as from India, China, and other Pacific Rim countries, so that Canada needed to respond more nimbly or risk falling behind; and

d)  unresponsiveness or inadequacies of the Federal Skilled Worker Program to address growing labour shortages in some key areas of the Canadian economy.

As a result, the federal Conservative government brought in several major changes to Canadian immigration policy to respond to these concerns.

First, through revisions to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) in April 2008 and through a series of ministerial instructions issued as part of the government’s announced Action Plan for Faster Immigration between November 2008 and June 2010, the government sought to make the Federal Skilled Worker Program more responsive to current labour-market needs by introducing new criteria for applications under this program. To be processed now, applicants must either already have an offer of arranged employment, or have experience working in one of thirty-eight specified in-demand occupations (subsequently reduced to twenty-nine), or be either a temporary foreign worker or a student who has resided in Canada for at least one year. Applicants under the FSWP satisfying any of these three conditions will have their applications fast-tracked (though they must still pass the point-system screen); those who do not will be rejected and have their application fees returned. These additional three requirements thus operate as a front-end filter to speed up the application process by reducing the backlog of applicants. The occupational requirement has the effect of refocusing skilled immigration away from a broad human capital perspective (as embodied in the point system), and towards an occupational gapfilling role.

A second change in policy toward skilled workers in Canada has been the much-enhanced role played by temporary foreign workers (TFWS). Such workers are intended to address short-term or temporary shortages of specific skills or labour needs (e.g., a business needing specialized experience in some area, or seasonal agricultural workers). But in recent years, the size of the TFW program was expanded dramatically to the point where it rivalled or exceeded the entire number of economic-class immigrants. It was increasingly being viewed as a way to get around the delays and inadequacies of the FSWP to address immediate labour needs by employers. Indeed, the TFW program was increasingly being used to bring in lower-skilled foreign workers, who accounted for more than half of TFW arrivals (Auditor General of Canada 2009); this was not the original intent of the program, particularly when domestic unemployment rates are relatively high.

A third major change in policy is the substantial increase in the role of the Provincial Nominee Programs (PNPS). These are agreements between the federal government and individual provinces (and one territory) whereby the latter select immigrants on the basis of provincial and local labour-market needs in an effort to promote regional economic growth and attract immigrants to smaller urban areas. Each province has its own selection criteria, and such applicants are not required to pass a point-system screen or any federal skill selection threshold. Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) agrees to process these nominees for permanent residence as a top priority. PNP landed residents are included within the general economic class of immigrants. Immigrant admissions by the PNP route have increased dramatically from fewer than 500 in 1999 to over 36,000 in 2010. Again, this route provides an opportunity to avoid the delays and basic skill requirements in the FSWP and to address employers’ more immediate labour-market needs.

A fourth major policy change is the new Canadian Experience Class (CEC) of immigrants established in September 2008 that targets highly skilled temporary foreign workers and foreign post-secondary students who are already in Canada, and hence are already acquiring local language fluency and Canadian work experience or post-secondary training that Canadian employers can more readily evaluate. Applicants who are temporary foreign workers must have at least two years of Canadian work experience in a high-skilled job. Applicants who have been foreign students in Canada must have graduated from at least a two-year full-time college or university program in Canada and have one year of Canadian program-related work experience. Applicants under this program are fast-tracked within the broad economic class of immigrants. In 2010, there were about 3,900 admissions under this program, but numbers are expected to rise sharply over the next few years.

Fifth, there have been a number of recent announcements of changes to the Federal Skilled Worker Program itself. In March 2010, the minister announced a streamlining of the process for assessing language proficiency skills for FSWP and CEC applicants, who must now provide pre-assessment independent third-party test results of their English-or French-language ability when submitting their application, rather than self-assessed language proficiency claims. In October 2011, CIC announced that multiple-choice written tests are no longer sufficient to demonstrate that applicants can speak English or French. Applicants must be independently tested on their oral and listening skills, and they must now meet the Canadian Language Benchmark Level 4 as a mandatory requirement for landed immigrant status. Within the FSWP point system itself, the maximum weight provided for language fluency in either English or French was also raised in 2012 from 24 to 28 points (out of a total of 100 points). At the same time, the maximum points awarded for youth (i.e., age between eighteen and thirty-five) were increased from 10 to 12 points, and for foreign work experience were reduced from 21 to 15 points. And as of October 2013 and February 2014, independent assessment of foreign credentials and some professional credentials in terms of their Canadian equivalencies is now required in order to be accepted under the FSWP.

A potentially quite major change in skilled immigration policy is the introduction of a whole new program targeted at skilled tradespeople. As already noted, the point-system grid in the FSWP focuses on essentially white-collar skills, such as whether the applicant has a university degree. It provides basically no points for skilled trades such as heavy-duty equipment mechanics, welders, or pipe-fitters. But these skills are currently in great shortage, especially out west in the energy sector. In January 2013, CIC announced a new Federal Skilled Trades Program to address these shortages, initially targeting 3,000 applications in the program’s first year. Applicants will have to either have a job offer in hand or be pre-approved by a province or territory, and will need to have at least some basic language proficiency, have at least two years of work experience in their trade, and work in an eligible in-demand skilled trades occupation on a list to be drawn up by the government. One can think of this as a separate skilled trades stream, as an alternative to the FSWP white-collar stream.

Also in January 2013, the minister announced plans to transform at least part of the Federal Skilled Worker Program into an electronic matching format or service. Under the new Expression of Interest system (renamed the Express Entry system, established in January 2015), prospective applicants list their skills and qualifications on a simplified preliminary application or “Expression of Interest,” which prospective employers or provinces can search for needed talent and select the most promising candidates, who are then invited to submit a full application for evaluation under the FSWP. In effect, employers and the provinces make the selection of who is admitted under this procedure, and many immigrants under this system will arrive with a job already in hand.

Directions for Future Policy Research and Immigration Policy Trade-Offs

This raft of major changes to skilled immigration alone gives rise to many directions for future Canadian policy research just to examine and analyze the full extent of economic (and other) effects of these changes. Canadian immigration does not operate in a vacuum, and comparative studies should continue to examine Canada’s experience against that of other major immigrant-receiving countries around the world. Already, studies by Alboim and Maytree (2009), Alboim and Cohl (2012), and Ferrer, Picot, and Riddell (2012) are examining Canada’s rapidly changing immigration policies from both critical and analytical perspectives. We identify two broad areas where future research is needed to better understand the policy issues at hand.

ECONOMIC OUTCOMES OF IMMIGRANTS UNDER DIFFERENT PROGRAMS

First, economic outcomes of immigrants arriving under different specific programs need to be much better understood. A recent study by Abbott and Beach (2011), for example, follows economic-class immigrants as well as family-class immigrants and refugees for a full ten years after their landing in Canada for each of three separate landing cohorts (1982, 1988, and 1994 landing years). Using data from the longitudinal database (IMDB) from Citizenship and Immigration Canada, they calculate median real annual earnings figures – illustrated in Figure 3.2 – for independent economic immigrants (essentially principal applicants under the FSWP), tied economic immigrants (i.e., accompanying adults under the FSWP), family-class immigrants, and refugee-class immigrants. What the results show is that economic-class principal applicants do dramatically better in the Canadian labour market than any other group over their first ten years in Canada; family-class immigrants and refugees do distinctly worse. Similar results are found over a shorter period but within a regression analysis by Aydemir (2011), and Sweetman and Warman (2012). Also, refugees have initially the worst economic outcomes, but show the fastest rates of earnings growth over the period, so over the long run of, say, twenty years or so, they may move ahead to eventually integrate into the Canadian workplace environment.

For the period covered by the above study, economic-class immigrants consisted almost exclusively of admissions under the Federal Skilled Worker Program. It would obviously be useful to undertake a similar analysis for each of the separate programs (the updated FSWP as well as the PNP and the CEC program) once sufficient data are available on such admissions over at least five years. Once data become available over, say, a ten-year period, one can then examine issues such as short-run vs. long-run adjustment patterns for the different programs. Since earnings adjustment patterns are also expected to differ by age at time of arrival and by source region of origin and skill level, one may also wish to incorporate these additional breakdowns. As a technical issue, such studies would benefit from a sample selectivity adjustment to reflect the likelihood that immigrants who stay working in Canada for five or more years (rather than, say, returning to their home country or moving on to a third country such as the United States) are not fully random nor representative of the experience of immigrants as a whole in Canada.

Figure 3.2 Median real annual earnings of immigrants by admission category for ten years after landing, 1994 landing cohort

Source: Abbott and Beach 2011.

OUTCOME EFFECTS OF DIFFERENT IMMIGRANT SELECTION PROCESSES

A second line of research following from the recent flurry of immigration policy changes could address how the immigration selection process operates and its consequences for immigrant outcomes. The point system within the FSWP has recently come under considerable scrutiny as to its effectiveness. Beach, Green, and Worswick (2011) analyze the effects of specific point-system weights at time of landing on raising average skill levels of arriving immigrants in each of the corresponding weight dimensions (e.g., education and language proficiency), and find that they indeed have their intended effects. Bonikowska, Green, and Riddell (2010, 3), however, using IALSS data on the literacy and numeracy of immigrants as a whole, find that “[t]he results raise doubts about the extent to which a formal points system designed to select ‘skilled immigrants’ achieves its objectives.”

Hawthorne (2008) argues that immigrants have shown considerably better economic outcomes in Australia than in Canada over the last ten years because Australia has shifted its point-system selection process from a human capital model (as basically embodied in Canada’s current FSWP point system) to one based on “the core employability factors of skill, age and English language ability based on the establishment of ‘minimum threshold standards’ for each of these aspects” (5). Up to 20 points are awarded to applicants qualified in high-demand fields; applicants as well have to attain vocational-or higher-level scores on the independently administered English language test.

A paper by Clarke and Skuterud (2012), however, examines the apparently superior economic performance of Australian immigrant workers as compared to Canadian. In particular, when they look at immigrants from each of three major source countries (the United Kingdom, India, and China), they find little evidence of an Australian performance advantage. The results suggest that there is more going on than just the assessment of economic-class immigrants, in particular the choices of immigrants themselves as to where to settle. The more employment-directed immigration policy in Australia appears to be influencing the source-country composition of new arrivals rather than selecting higher-skilled immigrants within given source countries. For example, the higher language fluency requirement may simply be redirecting prospective immigrants from very non-English-speaking countries (such as China) to apply elsewhere – perhaps applying instead to Canada. Clearly, much more research is needed to sort out how skill-screening immigration policies operate and how they interact with the immigrants’ own decision-making process as well.

A further immigrant selection issue is the relative economic success of a point-system–based selection process versus an employer-based selection system. While admissions under the Federal Skilled Worker Program are based on principal applicants passing a point-system screen where the points grid has been set by Citizenship and Immigration Canada, entrance under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program is determined by employer selection, and admission under the Provincial Nominee Programs is also very much determined by employer selection. But these two selection approaches have different objectives and perspectives. The current Canadian point system essentially incorporates a long-run broad-based human capital perspective, whereas employers typically seek workers to fill specific short-run or immediate needs.

Sweetman and Warman (2009) find that temporary foreign workers have better earnings and employment outcomes than recently landed immigrants, and Warman (2010) shows that male TFWS have large positive economic returns to their foreign work experience, quite unlike recently landed immigrants, as well as higher returns to their foreign education. However, by four years after landing, immigrants and TFWS show no difference in earnings or employment outcomes (Sweetman and Warman 2009) as the former group experiences stronger earnings growth.

Because Provincial Nominee Programs are so recent, much less is known about the economic outcomes of entrants under them. The largest and most developed such program has been that of Manitoba. Carter, Pandey, and Townsend (2010) and Pandey and Townsend (2010, 2011) both find that immigrants destined for Manitoba under the PNP have earnings similar to, or higher than, those arriving under the FSWP in Manitoba in their first year or two years after landing, but they also experience slower earnings growth than the latter. Part of the explanation for this difference in earnings is that many entrants under the PNP arrive with pre-arranged jobs. In both the TFWP and PNPS, workers get established in their employment virtually at time of arrival as they immediately fill employer or demand-side needs, whereas for FSWP entrants the move is essentially a supply-side decision that is not necessarily matched up with specific jobs on offer. But since average skill levels of FSWP entrants are quite high, once they get adjusted to the Canadian labour market and their on-the-job language proficiency improves, after four or five years they have generally overtaken the earnings of TFWSand PNP workers. Clearly, much more research is need to better understand the full adjustment processes under these different programs and to better understand the potential benefits (and costs) of shifting Canada’s skilled immigration admission process towards an employer-based selection system.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author wishes to thank the editors of this volume, and the organizers and sponsors of the conference “Taking Stock of a Turbulent Decade and Looking Ahead: Immigration to North America, 2000–10,” held at Western University, London, Ontario. The author takes full responsibility for any errors in this chapter.

NOTES

1   The category of economic-class immigrants includes both the principal applicants whose skills are the basis of admission, and their spouses and dependants.

2   The unemployment rate is the proportion of the labour force who are not employed; the participation rate is the proportion of the eligible population who are in the labour force and hence either employed or unemployed; and the employment rate is the proportion of the eligible population who are indeed employed.

3   Some of the discussion in this section abstracts from the more extensive review in Beach, Green, and Worswick (2011, ch. 5).

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4

Immigrant Skill Utilization: Trends and Policy Issues

Jeffrey G. Reitz, Josh Curtis, and Jennifer Elrick

INTRODUCTION

Under-utilization of the skills of Canada’s immigrants – “brain waste” – emerged as a recognized problem in the 1990s, costing the economy $2 to $3 billion annually (Reitz 2001; Watt and Bloom 2001), and representing one of the most significant disappointments for immigrants settling in Canada. Immigrant skill underutilization is related to the lower value of immigrant human capital and is an important component of the overall immigrant employment disadvantage (Li 2000, 2004; Pendakur and Pendakur 2002; Skuterud 2010). A number of policy initiatives have been directed at the problem, particularly in the past decade, including credential assessment services, regulations to ensure fair access for professional licensing, and bridge-training programs to fill gaps in immigrant skills that may arise from foreign-acquired education or experience. As well, settlement services, including language-training programs, have been adapted to more effectively serve the needs of immigrant professionals.

Has progress been made? Have policy initiatives addressed skill under-utilization? This study examines recent trends and assesses policy impacts based on Canadian census data from 1996, 2001, and 2006. First, we review trends in skilled immigration in Canada since the mid-1990s, based on immigration statistics, noting some researchers’ explanations of immigrant employment and earnings outcomes. Second, we summarize policies to address labour-market barriers, noting time of implementation and differences by province and by occupation. Third, we assess trends in the success of immigrants with university degrees, including graduate and professional degrees, in gaining access to highly skilled professional and managerial occupations. Fourth, using human capital earnings analysis, we estimate the earnings deficits of immigrants due to skill under-utilization, both at the individual level and in the aggregate across the population. We conclude by identifying implications for future policy development. Policy initiatives appearing since 2006 cannot be assessed in the census series ending in 2006, of course. However, analysis of policy development and trends to that time will help focus discussion of policy requirements for the future.

SKILLED IMMIGRATION AND SKILL UTILIZATION IN CANADA, 1994-2010

Skilled immigration received a substantial boost in the mid-1990s, when selection criteria were changed to emphasize formal education, particularly university education. Immigration data in Table 4.1 show that the proportion of immigrants with university degrees rose dramatically from 20.8 per cent in 1994 to 45.6 per cent in 2001, and remained there through 2009. This increase was led by the “economic-class” immigrants, whose employment-related skills were a key to their selection as immigrants, and among whom the proportion with university degrees increased from 39.0 per cent in 1994 to 77.7 per cent in 2001. Educational levels for the spouses and dependants of principal applicants, and for family-class (sponsored) immigrants, also increased over time. Refugees and “other” immigrants (a small category) were not affected by the changes to selection criteria. A decline in the educational levels of economic-class immigrants occurred after 2005, from nearly 80 per cent with bachelor’s degrees for principal applicants down to 68 per cent, and from 45 per cent for spouses and dependants to 39 per cent. This may reflect changes in selection criteria away from education and toward experience in occupations in demand in the labour market. The educational levels of the family-class immigrants continued to rise after 2005. The proportions of all immigrants with a bachelor’s degree remained between 43 and 45 per cent from 2005 to 2009.

The presence of more skilled immigrants means that the issue of skilled immigrant employment matters more. In the growing body of research, explanations have emphasized both the quality of immigrant skills and the discriminatory disadvantage faced by immigrants (Aydemir and Skuterud 2005; Reitz 2007a; Bonikowska, Hou, and Picot 2011; Frenette and Morissette 2005; Nadeau and Seckin 2010; Picot and Sweetman 2005). To some extent, immigrant education may be not equivalent to native education, or less relevant to employer needs (Sweetman 2004). Using the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS), Bonikowska, Green, and Riddell (2008, 65) argue that the poorer results of immigrants on literacy tests reflect lower levels of cognitive skills that are “usable in the Canadian Economy,” and suggest these are a major factor in immigrant earnings differentials. However, literacy test results may reproduce cultural biases, which are also affecting employer decisions. In any case, there are substantial sample variances in the estimated impact of measured immigrant skill differences in these studies (Ferrer, Green, and Riddell 2006; Wald and Fang 2008). At the same time, there is convincing evidence of the significance of processes of discriminatory disadvantage affecting skilled immigrants (Reitz and Banerjee 2007, 500–3; see also Pendakur and Pendakur 2002; Oreopolous 2011; Skuterud 2010).

Table 4.1 Percentage of new permanent residents with a BA or higher, by entry class (1994–2009)

Source: Citizenship and Immigration Canada. 1994–95: Facts and Figures 2003; 1996–2005: Facts and Figures 2005; 2006–09: Facts and Figures 2009.

Policy Context

A review of Canadian immigration policies addressing employment barriers experienced by skilled immigrants must take account of policy development over time, variation by provincial jurisdiction, and variation by occupational groups or sectors targeted by policy or more accessible to policy intervention. Over time, two phases of policy-making regarding barriers to immigrant skill utilization can be distinguished. In the first, the focus of policy development was on credential assessment and recognition. In the second, the complexity and extent of skill under-utilization were recognized; programs such as licensing regulation, bridge training, and mentoring were introduced; and traditional settlement programs were modified to include assistance to professionals. These two periods coincide roughly with the data points provided by the census – 1996 to 2001, and 2001 to 2006. However, identifying expected effects within specific time periods is difficult, because the timing of policy implementation varies across provinces.

FOREIGN CREDENTIAL RECOGNITION

Before 2001, policies aiming to improve immigrant skill utilization focused on creating provincial credential-assessment services and on establishing best-practice models of doing so. Quebec led the way in 1970, followed by Alberta in 1994, British Columbia in 1995, Manitoba in 1998, and World Education Services in Ontario in 2000 (Alberta’s service also operates in Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories). Provincial mandates vary. The Ontario service is a private not-for-profit organization, provided with start-up funding, ongoing project-based funding, and government endorsement. In Quebec, Manitoba, and Alberta, credential-assessment services are integrated into provincial government ministries.

The impact of credential-assessment services in helping immigrants get skilled jobs has not been formally evaluated. Obviously, the fact they are used suggests that immigrants see them as worthwhile. One survey suggests that the propensity to use credential-assessment services corresponds to the level of labour demand, with employers in high-demand sectors such as information technology willing to test new employees on the job rather than investigate paper credentials (Sangster 2001).

Supplementing the provincial services, Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC 2005) launched the Foreign Credential Recognition Program in 2003, with $84.16 million in funding over seven years. This initiative could strengthen service provision, but its explicit mandate is to work with regulatory authorities and industry sectors and institutions responsible for non-regulated occupations to “minimize barriers to full labour market integration” (CIC 2010a, 11). Further, although the existence of a national program may help spur action across the country, there are still no national standards. After Canada ratified the UNESCO Convention on the Recognition of Studies, Diplomas and Degrees in 1999, the Councils of Education Ministers in Canada established the Canadian Information Centre for International Credentials to help Canada conform to the Convention. The Alliance of Credential Evaluation Services of Canada (2009, 15, 20) has documented discrepancies in the interpretation of international qualifications across its members, so significant provincial differences remain, owing to different provincial standards and different procedures for submitting and assessing qualifications (Owen and Lowe 2008, 13).

Seeking to move beyond the evaluation of institutional certificates, HRSDC has been working to link its Foreign Credential Recognition Program with its program on literacy and essential skills. In 2010, it sponsored three nationwide consultations with immigrant service organizations, colleges responsible for administering language training and bridging programs, employers, and other stakeholders in the credential recognition process to promote tools developed by its Office of Literacy and Essential Skills. These tools, such as 350 Essential Skills Profiles covering occupations in the National Occupational Classification (NOC), are designed to help employers translate job descriptions into tasks that can determine what a job candidate can actually do, regardless of what their paper credentials say (HRSDC 2012).

A more aggressive move is Ontario’s Fair Access to Regulated Professions Act (2006) mandating that professional licensing agencies operate in a “transparent, objective, impartial” manner in assessing immigrant qualifications (Office of the Fairness Commissioner 2011, 1). This is a strategic effort because recognition of foreign qualifications is technically feasible when educational requirements for specific jobs are delineated, and this is more likely when regulatory bodies set required qualifications. In addition, the existence of regulators facilitates access to the process. However, the need for legislation reflects the widespread perception that these regulators sometimes impede fair recognition of immigrant credentials.

TOWARD SKILL UTILIZATION

A number of policies have addressed the fact that barriers to immigrant skill utilization go beyond a simple lack of recognition of foreign-acquired qualifications. Some immigrants are well trained but lack some specific knowledge or skills required in Canada. Some find that their lack of Canadian work experience concerns employers. Other problems include a lack of social networks useful in job-seeking and a lack of knowledge of Canadian professional “lingo.” Perceptions of these barriers among immigrants were probed by Statistics Canada’s Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada (Statistics Canada 2003, 2005). Overall, 71 per cent of immigrants reported encountering at least one barrier to gaining access to a job at their level of skill. Lack of Canadian experience was identified by 26 per cent as their primary barrier six months after arrival, and the same figure of 26 per cent was found seven to twenty-four months after arrival. Other perceived barriers included a lack of acceptance or recognition of foreign work experience or qualifications, and language barriers.

Community groups can help develop more comprehensive policy (Alboim 2010). The Toronto Immigrant Employment Council (TRIEC), established in 2003, includes representatives from employers, labour, occupational regulatory bodies, post-secondary institutions, assessment service providers, community organizations, and all three levels of government (federal, provincial, and municipal). In 2009, TRIEC reported that its mentoring partnership program matched 5,000 skilled immigrants with Canadian professional mentors. Career Bridge internships, which TRIEC helped initiate, provided 1,300 skilled immigrants with Canadian experience, and 600 skilled immigrants made connections through multiple networking events. Buoyed by these successes, the TRIEC model has diffused across Canada.

Where immigrant credentials are assessed as deficient, bridgetraining programs may be a useful alternative to starting over, but problems frequently go beyond a simple need to fill in technical gaps. In TRIEC, educational institutions, employers, regulatory bodies, and others work together to address multiple barriers (TRIEC 2006; Birrell and McIsaac 2006), creating programs that include academic and technical writing, workplace culture and communication (“soft skills”), occupation-specific language training, licensure exam preparation, job interview preparation, and internship, mentorship, or clinical placement. The Enhanced Language Training (ELT) program, launched by Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) in 2003, provides language skills tailored to the requirements of a particular occupational field, and gives participants job-seeking assistance (Weiner 2008).

Some programs have targeted immigrants prior to arrival, such as the Canadian Orientation Abroad (COA) program. Realistic expectations may help prospective immigrants prepare for arrival in Canada, while deterring those with limited prospects. In cooperation with the International Organization for Migration, CIC delivered COA sessions to over 68,000 people between 1998 and 2006 (International Organization for Migration 2011).

GENERAL SETTLEMENT PROGRAM TRENDS

Settlement programs are not aimed exclusively at labour-market integration, but may provide some help. There are three main components: the Immigrant Settlement and Adaptation Program (ISAP) encompasses services such as reception, orientation, translation, interpretation, referral to community resources, counselling, general information, and employment-related services; the Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) program supports locally based language training in English or French for adult immigrants, in a full-or part-time format; the Host Program matches immigrants with volunteers trained by Service Providing Organizations who help newcomers adapt. There are also supplementary grants to provinces and a Resettlement Assistance Program (RAP) for refugees.

Over the period 1996–2006, annual settlement program spending by CIC jumped from $235.4 million to $445.0 million (CIC 1997, 10; CIC 2006, 31); spending had increased to $965.7 million by 2010 (CIC 2010b, 28). LINC and ISAP account for the largest share. Because of the local nature of service provision, systematic outcome evaluation is not available.

PROVINCIAL DIFFERENCES

Although policy development has proceeded unevenly across provinces, the leading role of Ontario suggests that immigrant skill utilization may be more advanced there. The TRIEC initiative has been influential not only in Toronto but across Ontario. By 2006, Ontario’s Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration had funded the most extensive number of bridge-training programs for internationally trained individuals in Canada (TRIEC 2006). Beginning with pilot programs in pharmacy and nursing in 2001, it now includes myriad programs from midwifery to biotechnology (TRIEC 2006).

FOCAL OCCUPATIONS

Labour-market initiatives to assist immigrants have been directed at many occupations, but health-related and engineering professions stand out as consistent targets. The Internationally Educated Health Care Professionals Initiative, launched in 2005, was allocated a budget of $75 million over five years to improve labour-market integration in seven priority professions: medicine, nursing, pharmacy, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, medical laboratory technology, and medical radiation technology (CIC 2010a, 13). It was estimated at the time that the funding would help integrate up to 1,000 physicians, 800 nurses, and 500 other health-care professionals (Health Canada 2005). The Canadian Council of Professional Engineers (CCPE) introduced its own credential assessment service for engineering credentials obtained outside Canada in 2003 (CCPE 2008). That same year, the Council embarked on a three-phase project funded by HRSDC ($2.9 million) designed to gain an overview of immigrant experience and licensing procedures and to recommend improvements (Canadian Council of Professional Engineers 2004; Weiner 2008). One result was a provisional licence allowing immigrants to gain the work experience needed to obtain their P.Eng. degree (Owen and Lowe 2008).

TREND ANALYSIS: CENSUS DATA FOR 1996, 2001, AND 2006

Trend analysis of census data is useful for tracking immigrant skill under-utilization and may provide some clues to policy impact over time. While each policy deserves separate evaluation, it is also of interest to track the trends, to assess the overall status of the problem, and to learn how the policies are working in the aggregate.

The 1996 census was used previously to describe immigrant skill under-utilization in terms of the total earnings lost when immigrants are employed at occupations below the level at which similarly qualified native-born workers are employed. The economic impact turns out to be around $2.4 billion (Reitz 2001). Replicating this 1996 analysis to 2001 and 2006 provides a trend line that is useful in tracking changes in the significance of the problem, in terms of the numbers affected and the extent of skill under-utilization. Detailed examination of the trend data also helps reveal variation by gender, recency of immigration, and possibly other demographic characteristics. In addition, it enables the analysis of differences in experiences in different regions or provinces where different strategies may have been pursued, or in different occupational sectors. Such a trend analysis, while useful, is by no means to be interpreted as an “evaluation” of policy in general, or of any specific policy. As well, many innovations have occurred since 2006, and their impact will not be seen until later.

Ensuring the comparability of the census analyses requires attention to changes in variable definitions. Two key variables critical to our analysis, levels of education and occupational skill levels, have been revised slightly in the censuses. In the case of education, the 2006 coding shifted attention toward specific employment credentials and away from the attempt to measure years of education. This is fine for the present purpose, since the focus is on university degrees at the bachelor’s and post-graduate levels, and definitions of these categories are identical across censuses. Regarding occupation, our descriptive analysis distinguishes only two categories: professional and senior or middle management occupations. These account for most of the skill and earnings variations across occupations. The professional occupations were defined identically across the three censuses but the relevant managerial occupational categories were revised in 2006. In the 1996 and 2001 censuses, “Senior” and “Middle” managers, as well as general “Supervisors” and “Craft and trade” supervisors, were differentiated. In the 2006 census these categories were aggregated into two categories only: “Managers” and “Supervisors.” To achieve comparability of the 2006 data with the two earlier censuses, we recoded the earlier versions to match the 2006 coding.

The analysis is restricted to persons between the ages of twenty and sixty-four. We begin by describing the employment trends of university-educated immigrants, paying close attention to immigrants in professional or managerial occupations. We then estimate overall earnings lost due to the immigrants’ skill under-utilization – that is, to their employment in occupations below those at which comparably qualified native-born persons are working. The method follows Reitz (2001), who based the analysis on human capital regression equations for immigrants and native-born men and women, using a substitution procedure explained below. The earnings equations include measures tapping economic and socio-demographic variables. The educational qualifications include, first, a variable for bachelor’s degree, as well as a second variable that captures professional and graduate degrees together (i.e., MA, PhD, and professional degrees combined). In the regression analysis, occupation is measured with a series of nine categorical variables that have been recoded to maintain continuity between census periods. We control for age, city of residence (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver), visible minority status (Black, Chinese, South Asian, Filipino, Other visible minority), and knowledge of an official language. Age in years minus twenty is used as a proxy for work experience, since twenty years is the minimum age of the sampled population.[1] A squared term is used to capture the non-linear component of the effect of work experience. Individual years of age were substituted with age categories in the 2006 microdata, so the earlier censuses were recoded to match these. We include dummy variables for knowledge of French, knowledge of French and English, and knowledge of neither official language. English knowledge only is the reference category. For immigrants, the number of years since arrival in Canada is represented as a series of dummy variables for arrival in five-year intervals. We isolate three five-year periods (“last 1–5 years,” “last 6–10 years,” and “last 11–15 years”), as well as a reference group of immigrants having lived in Canada for sixteen years and above.

Trends in Employment of University-Educated Immigrants: 1996–2006

The rising level of the university-based education of immigrants in Canada is reflected in the 1996–2001–2006 census series in Table 4.2. Table 4.2 shows the proportions of immigrant men and women with four-year bachelor’s degrees and the proportions possessing graduate or professional degrees, by arrival cohort for each census; a native-born comparison group is also included. The data show that the most recent cohorts in every comparison are better educated than earlier cohorts. This holds for both men and women and at both the BA and post-graduate or professional levels, for all three census years. Because of the increasing selection standards for economic immigrants from 1990 forward, this trend becomes more pronounced from 1996 to 2006. Education levels for the most recent arrivals (five years before the census) increased rapidly over time. These trends have a cumulative effect on the immigrant population, so that in 2006, higher levels of education are seen for all cohorts arriving in the previous fifteen years. Over this period, educational levels also rose for the native-born, but less rapidly than for immigrants. Among immigrants arriving five years before 1996, the proportion with university degrees was nearly twice as high for immigrants as for the native-born population (24.5 vs. 12.8 per cent for men, 19.2 vs. 11.6 per cent for women). For the most recent immigrants in 2006, the proportion of men with university degrees was nearly three times as high as for native-born men (44.2 vs. 15.0 per cent), and for women it was nearly two and a half times as high as for the native-born (38.7 vs. 15.2 per cent).

Table 4.2 Percentage at each educational level, for immigrants by arrival cohort, and for the native-born, by gender; persons aged 20–64. For census years 1996, 2001, and 2006.

Source: Statistics Canada, census microdata files, 1996, 2001, 2006; authors’ analysis.

ACCESS TO HIGH-SKILLED OCCUPATIONS

With more immigrants seeking high-skilled occupations, how successful have they been? Has their rate of success improved over time? These questions can be answered by examining Table 4.3, which shows the occupational status of those immigrants who were working, according to levels of qualification. The baseline situation in 1996 shows a substantial disadvantage for immigrant men and a greater disadvantage for immigrant women. Among men arriving in the five years before the census, 50.4 per cent of those with a university degree worked in a managerial or professional occupation in Canada, compared to 70.7 per cent of their native-born counterparts. For those with graduate degrees, the figure was 67.8 per cent, compared to 86.8 per cent of their native-born counterparts. The relative success rate is lower for women. Among immigrant women in the recent arrival cohort with a university degree, only 34.6 per cent had a managerial or professional occupation, compared to 64.5 per cent of their native-born counterparts; of those with a post-graduate or professional degree, 54.2 per cent had a managerial or professional occupation, compared to 83.6 per cent of the native-born. The immigrant / native-born percentage differences are around 20 per cent for men and 30 per cent for women.

Table 4.3 Percentage of men and women in managerial / professional jobs by cohort and education; persons aged 20–64 with positive earnings

(For 1996, N = 492,086; for 2001, N=527,167; for 2006, N=574,392; N for each percentage in parentheses).

Source: Statistics Canada, census microdata files, 1996, 2001, 2006; authors’ analysis.

Immigrants in the country for longer have higher success rates, suggesting that assimilation into the labour market raises the rate of success. In fact, in 1996, for immigrants who had been in the country for sixteen years or more, the proportion of those with university degrees attaining a professional or managerial occupation is about equal to the native-born, for both men and women. But earnings parity relative to the native-born is not the same.

Most recent cohorts fared worse in 2006 than in 1996, despite a trend toward improvement in 2001. For male university graduates arriving five years before each census, the percentage in highly skilled occupations was 50.4 in 1996, rising to 54.2 in 2001, but then falling to 43.5 in 2006. For women, the percentage in highly skilled occupations went from 34.6 in 1996 to 42.3 in 2001, only to fall to 34.4 in 2006. Those with more advanced degrees fared even worse.

Although business-cycle effects explain the fluctuation to a degree, they do not explain the extent of the downturn in the most recent period. Labour demand was generally weak in the early 1990s, so an improvement for immigrants arriving in the late 1990s is expected – the drop in the early 2000s is not. The unemployment rate, in the double digits in the early 1990s, fell to roughly eight per cent in the late 1990s and remained at that level until 2005 (Statistics Canada 2010). Hence, labour demand was stronger from 2000 to 2005 than in the recession of the early 1990s, yet the occupational success of immigrants was significantly less for those arriving in the latter period. Picot and Hou (2008) suggest that the “IT bust” soon after 2000 had a particularly negative impact on immigrants. Note that the shift to non-European origins, a major trend in Canadian immigration beginning in the 1970s, was largely completed by 1995 and would not have affected trends since that time.[2]

EMPLOYMENT OF THE HIGHLY SKILLED IN LOW-SKILLED OCCUPATIONS

A stereotype vividly symbolizing immigrant underemployment is immigrant professionals driving taxis. Actually, only about one per cent of immigrants with university degrees work as taxi drivers, according to the census, but this is still many times higher than for their native-born counterparts. To see whether the employment of highly skilled immigrants in the lowest-skilled occupations has changed in any way over time, we focus on the two lowest skill categories common to all three microdata census files: the lowest-skilled sales and service occupations (cashiers, “food couriers,” kitchen helpers, cleaners) and manual labourers. According to the NOC list, these two categories represent Skill Level D, the lowest of four possible classifications (taxi drivers are Level C). In the 1996 census, the proportion of university-educated immigrants across all cohorts working in such low-skill occupations was 3.9 per cent, compared to 2.6 per cent in the native-born population. In 2001, the percentages rose to 6.8 per cent for immigrants and 2.9 per cent for the nativeborn. By 2006, the percentages of university-educated immigrants in low-skill occupations declined to 4.3 per cent, but the proportion in the native-born population declined even further, to 1.8 per cent. Thus, over time, the proportion of university-educated persons in low-skill occupations rose and fell, but the relative proportions of immigrants in such occupations rose steadily, from one-and-a-half times the proportion for the native-born to 2.3 times and then to 2.4 times. University-educated men are more often in low-skill occupations than university-educated women, but among immigrants, the relative proportions are greater among women. Relative proportions grew steadily from census to census for both men and women.

DIFFERENCES BY PROVINCE AND SKILL SECTOR

Based on more extensive policy development in certain occupations such as health care and the sciences and in certain provinces such as Ontario, we are interested in variations in employment trends by occupation and province. These analyses are presented in Tables 4.4 and 4.5, respectively. The trends for Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia, the three most immigrant-intensive provinces, are similar. In Quebec, university-educated immigrants have higher rates of success in gaining access to skilled occupations than in BC, and more in BC than in Ontario. However, comparing the most recent arrivals in all three provinces over time shows that recent arrivals had more difficulty in 2006 than in 1996. Probably the trend over time is more negative in Quebec, since the new arrivals in 1996 had a much higher success rate than in either of the other two provinces, but in 2006 it was similar across all three.

Immigrants are more likely to be employed in health-care or scientific occupations, compared to the native-born. However, while the success of the most recently arrived immigrants in gaining entry into such occupations improved between 1996 and 2001, it was less in 2006 than in 1996.

Table 4.4 Percentage of men and women in managerial / professional jobs by cohort, education, and province; persons aged 20–64 with positive earnings

(For 1996, N=310,280; for 2001 N=315,082; for 2006, N=323.822; N’s for each percentage in parentheses.)

Source: Canadian census microdata, 1996, 2001, 2006; authors’ analysis.

Trends in the Aggregate Cost of Immigrant Skill Under-Utilization Due to Lost Earnings

The evidence presented above indicates that immigrant skill underutilization has grown for two reasons: an increase in the numbers of immigrants affected, particularly from 1996 to 2001, and a decline in the success of immigrants in gaining skilled employment because of negative trends between 2001 and 2006. A more precise estimate of the magnitude of the problem can be gained by calculating the total earnings lost to immigrants as a result of skill under-utilization in each of the three census years.

To do so, we use decomposition procedures inspired by Oaxaca (1973) and adapted from Reitz (2001, 369–72). Native-born and immigrant earnings differences are analyzed to estimate the component due to lower returns to human capital and related characteristics; this component is further analyzed to estimate the subcomponent specifically due to lower access to skilled occupations. The result can be summed across the immigrant population to determine the aggregate financial impact. There are two sets of such equations for the nativeborn and for immigrants, one with only human capital and related variables as earnings determinants,[3] and the other with added occupational categories reflecting skill levels.[4] These four equations, estimated for men and for women, and for each of the three time periods, make twenty-four equations. The analysis is restricted to those with positive earnings. Detailed regression results in Appendix A present variable means and coefficient estimates for each equation.

The basic human capital equations are used to estimate the earnings impact of immigrants’ lower returns to human capital, separately for men and women, following the traditional Oaxaca (1973) method. Specifically, the native-born / immigrant difference in the earnings value of each characteristic (the difference in regression coefficients), multiplied by the mean for that characteristic in the immigrant population, estimates the impact of lower returns,[5] telling us how much higher immigrant earnings might have been, had immigrants’ education and other characteristics been valued as for the native-born (assuming them also to be white and not recent arrivals). This is then divided into two components, according to the extent to which it arises from reduced access to highly skilled occupations and the higher earnings that go with such occupations, as opposed to the lower value of immigrant characteristics within occupational skill levels. The latter estimates the earnings impact of immigrants’ lower returns to education within occupations, done in a second decomposition, using the expanded set of regression equations, including occupations as predictors.[6] Earnings lost due to lower access to skilled occupations constitute the difference between this figure and the total earnings lost due to lower returns to education. This is the skill under-utilization component.[7]

Table 4.5 Percentage of men and women in health/science occupations by cohort and education; persons aged 20–64 with positive earnings

(For 1996, N = 427,292; for 2001, N=454,666; for 2006, N=484,422; N for each percentage in parentheses).

Source: Canadian census microdata, 1996, 2001, 2006; authors’ analysis.

Focusing on education, regression results show that although the labour-market value of university credentials grew for most Canadians from 1996 to 2006, it was less for immigrants than for the native-born for both men and women. Table 4.6 figures are based on metric regression coefficients for possession of a bachelor’s degree, and possession of a graduate or professional degree beyond the bachelor’s degree, on unlogged earnings. They are ratios of the dollar value for immigrants to the dollar value for the native-born. For immigrant men, the dollar value of a bachelor’s degree declined from 80 per cent of native-born to 67 per cent; the dollar value of a graduate or professional degree declined from 98 to 70 per cent. For women, there was more stability over time; all the ratios are in the range from 70 to 80 per cent. For immigrant women, the relative value of education was less than for men in 1996, but declined less rapidly, so was actually somewhat higher than for men in 2006.

Table 4.6 Immigrant education coefficients in earnings regressions, as ratio to native-born, 1996–2006

Source: Canadian census microdata, 1996, 2001, 2006; authors’ analysis.

Regression estimates for unlogged earnings include terms for bachelor’s degree, graduate or professional degree, age minus 20 (with quadratic), urban area of residence, official language knowledge, and three recent half-decade arrival cohorts.

Most of the earnings disadvantages for immigrants remain after taking account of occupational attainments, indicating that lower access to such occupations is only one component of their lost earnings. Immigrants are paid considerably less than the native-born even when they have similar qualifications, are at similar ages, live in the same cities, have similar language knowledge, have similar racial backgrounds, and even work in the same occupational levels. However, our interest here is in the disadvantages that arise because of lack of access to skilled occupations, and that estimate is gained by subtracting the disadvantages for those working in skilled occupations from the overall disadvantage. This calculation is presented in Table 4.7. All earnings figures are inflated to 2011 values. The overall earnings deficits for immigrants are the amounts that immigrants would have received if their university qualifications had had the same labour-market value as those of native-born whites (row 2), over and above the actual mean earnings (row 1). The deficit due to inequity within occupations is calculated the same way, with occupational levels in the prediction equation (row 3). The difference is the deficit due to lower access to skilled occupations (row 4). These deficits are then summed across the population (row 5) to yield the aggregate earnings lost due to employment in less-skilled occupations (row 6). The aggregate earnings losses are $4.80 billion[8] in 1996, rising to $6.02 billion in 2001 and $11.37 billion in 2006.

The losses are greater for women than for men in each of the three calculations. This reflects the fact, noted earlier, that immigrant women with university and professional qualifications have less access to high-skilled occupations than immigrant men. However, trends for men were more negative, so the earnings loss experienced by immigrant women declined somewhat as a proportion of the total, though it remained the largest share. Of the overall earnings lost due to lack of access to highly skilled occupations, women absorbed 78 per cent of the loss in 1996, 72 per cent of the loss in 2001, and 65 per cent of the loss in 2006.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

Our findings confirm that immigrant skill under-utilization not only persists in Canada but has grown; its economic significance in real terms is now more than twice what it was in the mid-1990s. Skilled immigrants are a larger proportion of the immigrant population now than they were when the problem of “brain waste” was identified. While they are a growing proportion of the Canadian workforce, their success in gaining access to professional and managerial occupations has declined over time; it was less in 2006 than it was in 2001. Based on census data, the economic impact measured in total annual earnings lost due to immigrant skill under-utilization has grown from about $4.80 billion in 1996 to over $11.37 billion in 2006 (figures inflated to May 2011 values).

Table 4.7 Earnings impacts of immigrant skill under-utilization, 1996–2006, ages 20–64

Source: Canadian census microdata, 1996, 2001, 2006; authors’ analysis.

Definitions:

(1) Adjusted to May 2011 dollars.

(2) Additional earnings assuming native-born education coefficients, white, not recent arrival.

Regression estimates based on bachelor’s degree, and graduate or professional degree; additional variables include age minus 20 (with quadratic), urban area of residence, official language knowledge, and three recent half-decade arrival cohorts.

(3) Similar to (2), with earnings estimated with occupational skills in equation. Regression identical to (2), with professional and managerial occupations added.

(4) Row 2 minus row 3.

(5) Weighted N.

(6) Row 4 times row 5.

These census-based figures represent maximum estimates based on the assumption of full equivalence of immigrant and native-born skill quality. Reitz (2001, 363–72) suggests, based on evidence of the equivalence of foreign education and experience, that a downward adjustment of one-third may be appropriate. In more limited data, lower literacy test scores for immigrants confirm the need for downward adjustment (Ferrer, Green, and Riddell 2006; Bonikowska, Green, and Riddell 2008), but available estimates vary widely and represent only rough approximations. More precise measurement of actual skill quality is needed but remains elusive.

At the same time, our data show that the low value of immigrant skills leads immigrants to be paid less than equally qualified nativeborn Canadians even when they work in occupations at the same skill level. This may be an artifact of the measurement of occupational skill, and using only ten occupational categories may allow significant variation in occupational skill levels within those categories. Nevertheless, skill under-utilization is not the largest component of earnings disadvantage for immigrants; a larger – and growing – component is that immigrants are less well paid even when working in occupations at the same skill levels as native-born Canadians.

On balance, barriers to full immigrant skill utilization persist in Canada. The impact of policies addressing this problem before 2006 has had little aggregate effect in producing meaningful change. Given the significance of immigration for Canadian economic development, the evaluation of current policies and the consideration of future directions seem urgent. Despite the recent turn in policy away from skilled immigration toward immigrants with arranged employment, Canada will likely continue to have many traditional economic-class immigrants.

Although some of the policy changes described above were introduced since 2006, the fact that little impact is seen from the various initiatives up to 2006 is concerning. When the 2011 census data become available, they will provide a more up-to-date assessment. However, the data used here come from the long-form census, and the shift to a voluntary survey means that the 2011 census may be an unreliable tracking instrument for recent immigrants, particularly those struggling in employment.

There are, of course, many reasons why barriers persist. One is the sheer complexity of the problem. Not only does each professional group have its own qualifications and evaluation procedures, many occupations outside the regulated professions seek analytic and problem-solving skills, and education plays an increasing role as a qualifying criterion – jobs such as sales supervision, human resource management, or public relations. In those occupations, addressing barriers to foreign-acquired skills poses enormous organizational challenges. Because of the lack of systematic standards in many unregulated fields, it is difficult for immigrants to demonstrate the value of their specific skills.

Racial and cultural difference is another problematic factor. Assessment of qualifications or professional competence is affected by social characteristics, including race and national origin, as well as gender, age, and other individual qualities (Esses et al. 2006). When the discounting of immigrant qualifications disproportionately affects visible minorities, as in Canada, this is racial discrimination. The discriminatory aspect of immigrant underemployment is clearly illustrated in cases coming before the Canadian Human Rights Commission. In a tribunal finding at Health Canada in 1997, the denigration of minority qualifications was a key piece of evidence. The view that ethnic minorities may possess technical qualifications but lack “soft skills” such as communication and decision-making perspective was found to play a significant role in low rates of promotion to management.

One reason for the continuing lack of improvement in the skill utilization of immigrants may be that labour-market integration policies are unfocused and lack a systematic strategy. Immigrant service providers target programs based on relationships to sectors and / or employers that have evolved over time. For example, COSTI, one of the largest immigrant service providers in Ontario, offers a childcare program mainly because of its experience in that area, unrelated to immigrant settlement needs. The funding model in place at the federal and provincial levels, distributing resources to local service providers who identify needs, encourages this diffuse approach. Given the complexity of the basic problem and the diverse approaches to it, many immigrants remain unaware of programs that could help them.

Recent changes in immigrant selection introduced by the government in 2006 seek to get immigrants into employment more quickly, arguably helping reduce skill under-utilization. First, in the selection of economic-class immigrants, selection criteria have shifted away from formal education toward official language knowledge and experience in particular occupational categories in current demand. These include professional fields such as medicine, dentistry, and nursing, but also include jobs for crane operators, drillers and blasters, and heavy-duty equipment mechanics. Second, the use of temporary rather than permanent foreign workers has increased sharply, and there are new opportunities in the Canadian Experience Class for temporary workers to gain permanent status. Third, provinces nominate immigrants they believe will contribute most to the needs of local communities.

Notwithstanding the difficulties faced by skilled immigrants, evidence in Canada and elsewhere confirms that the highly skilled have more labour-market success than less-skilled immigrants. Although many highly educated immigrants experience employment frustration over long periods, the statistics consistently show they do better than less educated and unskilled immigrants. Many well-educated immigrants achieve a significant degree of success in Canada; as noted, in 2006, over half of university-educated immigrants worked in professional or semi-professional fields, and another 23 per cent worked as managers, as supervisors, or in other skilled occupations. Highly educated immigrants are the hallmark of the success of Canadian immigration, and in the long run, they will always be more successful. Their skills mean they have greater ability to adapt to disappointment and create new opportunities even when their skills are not recognized.

APPENDIX A

Regression estimates and means for native-born and immigrant men and women aged 20–64 with positive earnings, with human capital characteristics (top panel), and with occupational categories (bottom panel): 1996, 2001, and 2006.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A version of this chapter was first published online (3 January 2013) in the Journal of International Migration and Integration 15 (2014): 1–26.

NOTES

1   An alternate method for measuring potential work experience is age minus years of education minus five. This measure cannot be used here because years of education as an explicit variable is not available for 2006. For 1996 and 2001, the two measures produce similar results.

2   About 80 per cent of Canada’s immigrants now come from Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America (Reitz 2012, 522).

3   Earnings equations for the native-born include human capital characteristics of education (bachelor’s degree and graduate or professional degree dummies), work experience (measured as age minus 20, with a squared term), and official language knowledge (English, French). As in the previous analysis (Reitz 2001), coefficients for urban area of residence are included and assumed to reflect differences in returns to human capital. The origins terms are included so that their role can be examined. For the native-born, the basic regression equations are:

where WNG are mean native-born earnings for gender G, KNG is a constant, XNGi is the mean for each characteristic i, = 1, … n, as described, and ßNGi is the respective coefficient estimates. For immigrants, the regression equations are of the form:

where WIG are mean immigrant earnings for gender G. The equations include four dummy variables unique to immigrants: three recent half-decade arrival cohort dummies (earlier arrival being the reference category), and knowledge of a non-official language. The native-born are assigned reference-category status on those variables.

4   A second set of equations adds a set of occupation category dummy variables representing skill levels. The equations for the native-born are:

with X°NGj the mean for each of m occupation categories j = n+1, …, n+m. and ß°NGj the respective coefficients. The second set of equations for immigrants is:

with X°IGj the mean for each of m occupation categories j = n+1, …, n+m, and ß°IGj the respective coefficients.

5   The native-born / immigrant difference in earnings can be divided into components:

where represents the impact of differences in the earnings value of characteristics.

6   The decomposition for the equations with occupational categories is:

where represents the impact of differences in the value of characteristics which is not explained by occupational attainment.

7   The method used here is inspired by, but differs from, the one developed by Oaxaca. The objective here is to identify inter-group differences in returns to characteristics and to decompose this difference into the portion due to differences resulting from selection into particular occupations and from other reasons. The issue is the role of occupational selection in a causal sequence; hence, the analysis uses a sequence of regression equations, one with only human capital variables, and one with occupation.

8   This estimate of $4.8 billion differs from the $2.4 billion based on 1996 data reported in Reitz (2001, 370). First, the measures of education were adjusted to provide the same measures across the three censuses, resulting in an estimate for 1996 of $3.1 billion. Second, all figures were inflated to 2011 dollars, resulting in the increase for 1996 data from $3.1 billion to $4.8 billion.

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5

The Impact of Immigration on the US Labour Market: What Have We Learned since 2000 and What Do We Need to Do Next?

Cordelia W. Reimers

INTRODUCTION

At the turn of the century, research on the labour-market impacts of US immigration was poised for a burst of new activity. Previous studies had not reached a consensus on this issue. After a careful review of the previous literature, Friedberg and Hunt (1995) had concluded that a 10 per cent increase in the immigrant share of the population reduces native wages by no more than 1 per cent. A 1997 National Research Council report on immigration had concluded that “the weight of the empirical evidence suggests that the impact of immigration on the wages of competing workers is small” (Smith and Edmonston 1997, 220). But the prevailing method for estimating this impact had been challenged, with claims that it led to underestimates and that the true effect was larger than had been found.

This chapter reviews the research by economists since 2000 as they attempted to answer the question: why are the estimated effects of immigration on natives’ wages so small? As we will see, most of this research focused on low-skilled workers; but there were also some studies of the effects of high-skilled immigration. Among the important developments, the empirical models used since 2000 were all based on a particular theoretical model of labour demand – in technical terminology, a nested multi-level constant elasticity of substitution (CES) model (explained below). Statistical methods were refined for dealing with reverse causation, in which wage changes due to other reasons attract or discourage immigration to a labour market, and with internal migration by natives, which dampens the effect of immigration on wages. A vigorous debate occurred over the correct way to model the problem – whether cities can be treated as separate labour markets within which immigrants and natives interact, or whether inter-city migration means that skill groups nationwide are more appropriately analyzed as labour markets; and which types of labour (high school graduates and dropouts, or immigrants and natives within an age cohort and education level) are sufficiently interchangeable that they can be combined into a single skill group.

The chapter is organized as follows: after a description of where things stood in 2000, it first shows how analysts refined the methods for dealing with reverse causation and internal migration. Next it explains the nested multi-level CES model and reviews the debate over two issues that arose in implementing it: whether immigrants and natives of the same skill level could be combined into a single type of labour, and whether high school graduates and dropouts could be combined. This is followed by a discussion of studies of the longer-run effects of immigration on a region’s production methods and product mix, and of the effects of high-skilled immigration. Finally, it describes how the results using the “area” and “national skill group” approaches were reconciled. It now seems clear that immigration does indeed have a very small effect on native wages, because these other dimensions of the economy adjust. The chapter concludes with a summary of what has been accomplished since 2000 and suggestions for future research.

THE STATE OF RESEARCH IN 2000

Two significant studies of the effect of immigration on natives’ wages appeared in the 1980s. Grossman (1982) and Borjas (1987) attempted to measure the effect by dividing the labour force into just a few broad types of labour and estimating the correlation between wages and immigration in local labour markets. They made explicit assumptions about the underlying production function that allowed some pairs of labour types to be complements (meaning that adding workers of one type would increase the wages of another), while other pairs competed with each other.

In the 1990s Altonji and Card (1991) and Lalonde and Topel (1991) focused especially on low-skilled workers, looking for an explanation for the increasing wage gaps between more-and less-educated workers. Immigration was a likely suspect, as immigrants are likely to be good substitutes for similarly skilled natives, and the surge of unskilled immigrants in the 1980s and 1990s increased the relative supply of high school dropouts. Reimers (1998) investigated the effect of unskilled immigration on unskilled native and immigrant men belonging to different racial groups. She found that unskilled immigrants are substitutes for native White and Black male dropouts who earn above the median wage, but are complements for native Mexican male dropouts. Apparently the substitutability of immigrants for natives within a skill group varies with unobserved factors that are associated with ethnicity, such as language.

These early studies used what came to be known as the “area” approach, which assumes that the country contains a large number of labour markets, typically corresponding to metropolitan areas. Estimates of the effect of immigration in these studies are obtained from the empirical correlation between immigrants’ share of the workforce and natives’ wages in local areas. Sometimes immigrants and natives are divided into skill groups within an area (Altonji and Card 1991). These studies found that immigration had, at most, a modest negative effect on the wages of natives. These estimated wage effects were surprisingly small, and a search commenced for the reason why.

The “area” approach came under criticism in the 1990s, setting the stage for further debate in the 2000s. This approach faces several empirical problems: reverse causation, in which local demand shocks raise wages and thereby attract immigrants to a city; the “open economy” nature of cities, with possible net out-migration of natives in response to immigrant inflows and with inter-city capital flows and trade in goods and services; and the diversity of immigrants, which necessitates assigning them (and natives as well) to groups within which competition is likely to occur.

The earliest studies using the “area” approach assumed that immigrants’ destination decisions do not depend on local economic conditions (Grossman 1982; Borjas 1987). In all probability, however, local demand shocks that influence wages also affect immigrant inflows, because immigrants are attracted by high wages and discouraged by low pay. This reverse causation biases estimates of the effect of immigration on native wages in a positive direction. The standard way to address this problem is to use “instrumental” variables, such as the historical patterns of immigration (Altonji and Card 1991), to predict the current size of the immigrant labour pool in an area. This eliminates the effect of current wages on immigration (the reverse causation), revealing the direct effect of the portion of the immigrant inflow that came for other reasons.

Another issue faced by the “area” approach is internal migration – does an influx of immigrants to an area trigger out-migration (or reduce in-migration) of natives who are affected by the increased competition for jobs? This would dampen the estimated effect on native wages and employment rates. In other words, how large an area should be considered a single labour market – city, state, or nation? Filer (1992) and Frey (1996) presented evidence that areas with a larger immigrant share are less attractive to natives.

Borjas, Freeman, and Katz (1996, 1997) used the possibility of selective native migration to challenge the “area” approach. They showed that the larger the geographic area considered, the larger the estimated wage effects were. As an alternative, they proposed the “factor proportions” approach, in which the changes in relative labour supplies of particular skill groups at the national level due to immigration are multiplied by the estimated effects of a change in supply on the wage from other studies, and found larger negative effects on the relative wages of high school dropouts than “area” studies had found. Borjas, Freeman, and Katz (1997) assumed immigrants are perfect substitutes for natives within a skill group nationally, and used a constant elasticity of substitution (CES) function to combine labour groups. A CES function has the convenient property that the wage and employment rate of a group depends only on the share of the workforce in that group (plus productivity factors that affect relative demand). Thus, the change in the relative wage of two types of labour depends only on the change in their relative supply (and demand) and the degree of substitutability between labour types. The supply of other types of labour is irrelevant, and complementarities (in which two types of labour cooperate in production) are ruled out by assumption. Thus, in the 1990s the “area” method was challenged, and more theories and assumptions regarding the production function were introduced.

RESEARCH SINCE 2000

Most research since 2000 has focused on how immigrants affect the economic opportunities of natives within the same skill group, defined by education, education-experience, occupation, or earnings categories; and the effort to explain why most estimates of the wage effects of immigration are so small has continued. While Card (2001, 2005, 2009) found relatively small to no effects of immigration on native wages, Borjas (2003) found much larger effects. In the ensuing debate, both underlying assumptions and empirical methods were criticized and refined. Important developments were:

a)  Improvement of instruments to predict immigrant inflows and thus deal with reverse causation;

b)  Investigation of the empirical importance of immigration-induced out-migration from cities;

c)  Development of the “national skill group” approach;

d)  Linking empirical work more closely to the theory of labour demand, with attempts to estimate the underlying ease of substitution between types of labour using nested multi-level CES functions;

e)  Debate between “East Coast” (Borjas at Harvard) and “West Coast” (Card, Ottaviano, and Peri at the University of California) economists over modelling and measurement issues and attempts to reconcile the results produced by the “area” and “national skill group” approaches. In addition to how large an area should be considered a single labour market, key issues in this debate were:

i)   Are immigrants interchangeable with natives of the same education and experience in producing goods and services?

ii)  Are high school dropouts perfect substitutes for high school graduates, with a proportional reduction in productivity? And similarly for those with some college versus college graduates – that is, should the model have four education groups, or only two?

iii)  Is the capital stock assumed to be fixed, or does it adjust to changes in the supplies of workers with various skills? That is, does the analysis apply to the short run or the long run?

One theoretical assumption that has gone unchallenged in the 2000s is the form of the production function. Virtually all of the studies that have been published since 2000 assume a CES functional form to combine types of labour. I will raise some questions about this later.

REVERSE CAUSATION

The 2000s saw the refinement of ways to deal with the reverse causation issue by using instrumental variables, which predict immigrant inflows to a city but are not affected by current labour-market conditions in that city. The “ethnic enclave” idea – that immigrants are attracted to areas where their compatriots have settled in the past – was developed further and widely adopted. Card and DiNardo (2000) used the historical share (in 1970) of Mexican immigrants in the area and skill group. Others used total national inflows of immigrants by skill group and country of origin, interacting with earlier settlement patterns by country of origin (Card 2001, 2009; Lewis 2003, 2011a; Hunt and Gauthier-Loiselle 2010); immigration to other states by skill group and decade (Peri 2007); immigration of Mexicans and Central Americans to the US as a whole by skill group and decade (Peri 2009a, 2011a); or distance from the Mexican border interacting with the total inflow of Mexicans and the historical existence of a Mexican community (Peri 2012; Smith 2012). Card (2001) found that his estimates for the late 1980s using instrumental variables are more negative than estimates that ignore reverse causation, but are still small – a 10 per cent new immigrant inflow rate to a skill group reduces its relative wage by 1.5 per cent.

INTERNAL MIGRATION: HOW LARGE AN AREA SHOULD BE CONSIDERED A SINGLE LABOUR MARKET?

In response to Borjas, Freeman, and Katz’s (1996, 1997) emphasis on the theoretical importance of internal migration, Card and DiNardo (2000) and Card (2001) estimated the effect of immigration on the migration of natives. They found that outflows of low-skilled natives and earlier immigrants are not correlated with new immigrant inflows in the same skill group, so that low-skilled immigration increases the supply of low-skilled workers in a city one for one, on average. Therefore, they concluded that the “area” approach does not result in biased empirical estimates of the effect of immigration on wages. As Card (2005) noted, Borjas, Freeman, and Katz (1997) focused on the effect of immigration on total population, not on the relative sizes of different skill groups. Card (2001) concluded that immigration in the late 1980s reduced the relative wages of less-skilled occupations in high-immigrant cities by no more than 3 per cent.

Card and DiNardo’s (2000) and Card’s (2001) findings regarding internal migration did not convince Borjas to resume using the “area” approach. Instead, Borjas (2003) developed the “national skill group” approach described in the next section. Borjas (2006) and Borjas and Katz (2007) continued to argue that the nation as a whole is the appropriate market size because internal migration reduces the effect of immigration on wages in a metropolitan area, and skill groups compete within a national market. Countering this, Peri and Sparber (2008, 2011a) said that Borjas’s (2006) model specification is biased toward finding native displacement, and provided evidence that it does not occur. Ottaviano and Peri continued to use the “area” method (Ottaviano and Peri 2005a, 2006a, 2011; Peri 2008, 2009b, 2011b, 2012), but they also sometimes used the “national skill group” model in order to compare results with Borjas and to try to settle the modelling issues – how many separate skill groups exist, and whether immigrants and natives are two groups or one (Ottaviano and Peri 2005b, 2006b, 2008, 2012). Peri (2009a, 2011a) combined features of the “national skill group” and “area” approaches when he applied a nested CES model for skill groups in a national market to estimate employment effects of immigrants on natives in a single state.

Additional evidence about internal migration was provided by Cadena (2013, 2014) and Cadena and Kovak (2013). They showed that foreign-born workers are more likely than natives to move among cities in response to changing job opportunities. By moving into cities where wages rise and avoiding cities where wages are depressed, immigrants moderate the wage changes due to shocks to labour demand or supply in a given city. This internal migration by immigrants beyond their initial destination is an additional channel via which immigration has an effect on natives’ wages.

THE “NATIONAL SKILL GROUP” APPROACH AND NESTED MULTI-LEVEL CES MODELS

Based on the idea that immigrants compete with natives of the same skill level nationally, Borjas (2003) divided the national labour force into education-experience categories and treated each one as a separate labour market. Changes over time in the share of immigrants in each category and in relative wages were used to estimate the impact of immigration. This was an improvement over earlier studies that had combined experience groups within education level, treating older and younger workers as perfect substitutes.

In sharp contrast to studies using the “area” approach, studies using this “national skill group” approach found that immigration significantly reduces native wages, in particular the wages of native low-skilled workers. For example, Borjas (2003) found that a 10 per cent increase in labour supply reduces the wages of low-educated native workers by 8 per cent and lowers the wages of all native workers by 3 to 4 per cent, on average.

Borjas (2003) also introduced a much more structured model into the analysis of immigration and wages – a nested two-level constant elasticity of substitution (CES) function for combining types of labour. This enabled him to estimate the ease of substitution between types of labour directly, rather than using estimates from other studies. Virtually all of the post-2000 research on the impact of immigration on natives’ wages has used a nested multi-level CES model. This allows one to use the “national skill group” approach, in which each education-experience group is treated as a separate labour market (as opposed to each metropolitan area in the “area” approach), but it is highly restrictive. It assumes that all pairs of labour types within the same level of the model have the same ease of substitution. This assumption rules out complementarity – that is, the possibility that an increase in high-skilled immigration could improve the labour-market prospects of low-skilled natives, or vice versa.

Moreover, if all education categories are in the same level of the nested CES function, the model assumes that the ease of substitution between college graduates and high school dropouts is the same as between high school graduates and dropouts. Ottaviano and Peri’s (2008) model, with two nested education levels, still has problems due to the CES assumption. It imposes the same ease of substitution between high school dropouts and college graduates as between high school graduates and those with some college. Also, Ottaviano and Peri (2008), like others, used a CES function to combine eight levels of experience, which is certainly problematic, as it assumes the same ease of substitution between very young and very old workers as between adjacent age groups.

The nested CES model also assumes that the ease of substitution within a level of the model (such as age) is unaffected by the amounts of inputs at other levels (such as education). The estimates of the ease of substitution are a sort of average of all the pair-wise values within a level, rather than expressing the true ease of substitution between two specific groups (for example, highly educated immigrants and less educated natives). These averages obscure the actual relationships – whether they are substitutes or complements – between specific groups of workers.

In a nested CES model, the estimated ease of substitution matters by focusing the impact of an increase in one type of labour on the “own” group if the estimate is small, or spreading the impact if the estimate is large. In such a model, whether immigration has a negative or positive effect on the wages of natives in a different skill group depends on the difference between the estimated ease of substitution at adjacent levels of the nested model and the immigrants’ shares in the total wage bills for each successive higher level of the nest. Thus, the answer is sensitive to the averaging of values within a level of the model, and thus to how the levels are defined. Moreover, the results are sensitive to the order of nesting (Ottaviano and Peri 2012). In sum, the CES model is elegant, but imposes too much theoretical structure.

Any empirical analysis requires enough sample points to estimate a model, so the analyst must use either many cities or many skill groups as the units of analysis – that is, as labour markets. Since mobility among the markets would dampen wage effects, the relative immobility between education-experience groups is a desirable feature of the “national skill group” approach. However, it drastically narrows the set of questions that can easily be addressed, to the impact on natives of direct competition from immigrants of a similar skill level. To estimate effects across skill groups requires strong assumptions about the functional form of the model that can affect estimates of the effects of immigrants on wages (Ottaviano and Peri 2006b; Orrenius and Zavodny 2007). Moreover, the definition of a “skill group” is key, as it implies the assumption that workers within a skill group are perfect substitutes for one another. Thus, how many education and experience groups to include, and whether to combine immigrants and natives, are controversial decisions.

Furthermore, the “national skill group” approach does not effectively control for other time-varying factors that are correlated with immigration. If unobserved factors (for example, technological change, international trade, de-unionization, or composition of the skill group) increased the wage gap between high school graduates and dropouts over time, then the estimated effect of the relative supply of dropouts due to immigration would suffer from omitted-variables bias. For instance, Bohn and Sanders (2005) show that the findings in Borjas (2003) are entirely driven by the outcomes for high school dropouts during the period 1980–2000, and they argue that the wages of high school dropouts may have been driven by other time-varying factors such as technological change, declining unionization, and changes in the minimum wage.

ARE IMMIGRANTS PERFECT SUBSTITUTES FOR NATIVES?

The puzzle of why natives’ wages are not more affected when immigration increases the relative supply of unskilled labour, plus earlier findings that an increase in immigration has a negative effect on the wages of previously arrived immigrants but not of US-born workers (Borjas 1987; LaLonde and Topel 1991; Reimers 1998), led some researchers to conclude that immigrants and natives may not be perfect substitutes (Longhi, Nijkamp, and Poot 2005). Immigrants may not compete directly with natives within the same measured skill level because of differences in command of the English language (Lewis 2011b), knowledge of the US labour market, access to occupational networks, and other US-specific skills and cultural differences.

After having written a paper that found complementarity between immigrants and some natives (Borjas 1987), Borjas has since maintained that there is perfect substitutability between immigrants and natives within an education-experience category (Borjas 2003; Borjas and Katz 2007; Aydemir and Borjas 2007; Borjas, Grogger, and Hanson 2008, 2012). Card (2001, 2005) also assumed that immigrants and natives are perfect substitutes, but Ottaviano and Peri (2005b, 2006b, 2008, 2012) and Cortes (2008) said “no.” Ottaviano and Peri investigated this issue in detail, and found that immigrants are not perfect substitutes for natives, even within the same education-experience group. Additional evidence came from Peri and Sparber (2009), who found that, in states with more low-skilled immigrants, less-educated natives shift from manual occupations into occupations using communication skills; and from Peri and Sparber (2011b), who found that when the foreign-born share of highly educated workers within an occupation rises, native workers with graduate degrees choose occupations requiring less analytical and more communicative skill. Moreover, Dustmann, Frattini, and Preston (2013) found that immigrants’ measured skills do not match their actual skill level as measured by their wages. As a result, immigrants are misassigned to skill groups. This downgrading leads to biased estimates of their ease of substitution with natives, depending on the amount of downgrading.

Borjas, Grogger, and Hanson (2008) made a careful detailed critique of Ottaviano and Peri’s (2006b) methods using the same data and concluded that immigrants and natives are perfect substitutes within the same education-experience category. They showed that Ottaviano and Peri’s (2006b) results are very sensitive to seemingly small differences in weighting, measurement of the cell-specific wage, and sample definition. Among other things, they found that Ottaviano and Peri’s (2006b) results were driven by the presence of seventeen-and eighteen-year-old high school students in the high-school-dropout category. Borjas, Grogger, and Hanson (2012) later found that immigrants and natives are perfect substitutes when the self-employed are excluded from the sample, and when period and skill-group fixed effects or linear trends are included in the model. These fixed effects or trends control for unmeasured differences in the composition of immigrants and natives within skill groups or over time, and other unobserved demand factors affecting their relative wages.

In response, Ottaviano and Peri (2008) removed enrolled students from their sample and still found imperfect substitutability between immigrants and natives in most models. They also questioned whether fixed effects leave enough variation within skill groups over time to identify significant relative supply effects on wages (Ottaviano and Peri 2008). Ottaviano and Peri (2012) estimated the ease of substitution between immigrants and natives of similar education and experience, using the “national skill group” approach and a variety of nested CES models, and continued to find that they are imperfect substitutes. However, Ottaviano and Peri did not adjust for any individual characteristics within their education-experience-nativity cells, so their estimates include any effects of unobserved characteristics that are correlated with education, experience, or immigrant status. Therefore the imperfect substitution they found may be due to language problems and other unmeasured factors. By 2009, Card concluded that the assumption that immigrants and natives are perfect substitutes is untenable (Card 2009, 2012).

ARE HIGH SCHOOL DROPOUTS PERFECT SUBSTITUTES FOR HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATES

(WITH A PROPORTIONAL PRODUCTIVITY DISCOUNT), OR ARE THEY SEPARATE TYPES OF LABOUR?

The answer to this question determines whether the model should include four education levels (as in Borjas 2003, Borjas and Katz 2007, and Ottaviano and Peri 2005b, 2006b) or only two (as in Card 2009, 2012, and Ottaviano and Peri 2012). It matters because US immigrants are disproportionately dropouts (31 per cent of immigrants vs. 11 per cent of natives), whereas the share of immigrants who have a high school diploma or less (63 per cent) is similar to that of natives (59 per cent). Therefore we would not expect immigration to depress the average wage for this combined group very much, because the model assumes that a skill group’s wage depends only on its share of the workforce.

Ottaviano and Peri (2008) criticized, tested, and rejected Borjas’s assumption of four education groups with the same ease of substitution among all pairs. They used a three-level CES model with a double nesting of education, thus placing only two groups in each level: high school dropouts and graduates within “less than college,” and “some college” and college graduates within “some college or more.” They found that high school dropouts and graduates are most substitutable for each other; “some college” and college graduates are less so; and “less than college” and “some college or more” are least so. Moreover, they showed that changing the model in this way changes the estimated impact of immigration on native wages.

Card (2009), too, estimated the ease of substitution between labour types defined by levels of education. He used the “area” approach and relied on a nested multi-level CES model. Like Ottaviano and Peri (2008), he found that “high school equivalents” and “college equivalents” are imperfect substitutes. However, he found no correlation between the high school graduate-dropout wage gap and their relative supplies across cities or over time post-1960 (Card 2009; Card and Lewis 2007). He concluded that high school graduates and dropouts can be treated as perfect substitutes, so can be combined. Card (2012) pointed out that Borjas’s (2003) inverse elasticity of substitution among four skill groups is not significantly different from zero, implying that they are good substitutes for each other, on average. Raphael and Ronconi (2008) confirmed this with a larger sample. (But note that the CES model restricts the ease of substitution within all pairs to be the same, which may obscure the true elasticity between dropouts and high school graduates taken alone.) Lewis (2011a) found that they are imperfect substitutes, but that induced changes in production methods reduce the effect of an increase in the relative supply of dropouts on their relative wage.

Borjas, Grogger, and Hanson (2012) found that the answer to whether high school dropouts and graduates are perfect substitutes is sensitive to the assumptions made about the time path of unobserved relative productivity and demand shocks. Because the “national skill group” approach relies on changes over time to identify the impact of immigration on wages, there are not enough observations to estimate wage differences between skill groups and also use period fixed effects to control for demand and productivity shifts. Consequently the analyst must assume a particular form for the trend. The results are unstable, depending on the assumed shape of the trend in relative demand. Sometimes the estimates of substitutability are even negative, contrary to the CES assumption on which the model is based.

ARE ESTIMATES SHORT-RUN OR LONG-RUN EFFECTS? EFFECTS OF IMMIGRATION ON TECHNOLOGY AND PRODUCT MIX

As Ottaviano and Peri (2006b, 2008, 2012) pointed out, the downward-sloping demand for labour relied upon by Borjas (2003) is a short-run model, holding other things constant that may also adjust: the capital stock (that is, the amount and type of buildings and equipment), technology, and the product mix. In that case, standard economic theory predicts that an increase in labour supply will depress the wage. Whereas Borjas (2003) assumed the amount of capital is fixed, Ottaviano and Peri (2006b, 2008, 2012) assumed an unlimited supply of capital at the same rental price everywhere. In that case, increasing the supply of labour in a city need not depress the wage, according to the standard theory.

Neither the “area” nor the “national skill group” approach allows for the possibility that the local or national economy may adjust to changes in the relative supply of immigrant workers by shifting the product mix toward goods and services produced by immigrants, or by changing production processes to use more immigrant labour. Since 2000, Hanson and Slaughter (2002), Lewis (2003, 2011a, 2012), Card and Lewis (2007), and Cortes (2008) have pioneered the analysis of immigration-induced changes in output composition and technology. Hanson and Slaughter (1999, 2002) and Lewis (2003) used models derived from the theory of international trade to hypothesize that when immigration increases the relative supply of low-skilled workers, the product mix shifts toward low-skill-intensive products, and wages are not affected by local skill ratios in the long run. Hanson and Slaughter (1999) found that changes in the product mix within states broadly match changes in the skill composition of the labour force, suggesting that states absorb labour-supply shifts via mechanisms other than relative wage changes. In another paper, Hanson and Slaughter (2002) found that states absorb changes in labour supply primarily through changes in the output of traded goods rather than changes in production methods.

In contrast, Card and Lewis (2007) found that changes in production methods within narrowly defined industries absorb most of the increases in the relative supply of low-educated labour across cities; changes in the mix of industries account for only a small share. Lewis (2011a) adopted a production function that allows capital and skilled labour to work together and assumes an unlimited supply of capital to each metropolitan area. He found that an increase in the relative supply of high school dropouts in an area due to immigration reduces investment in automation machinery within narrowly defined manufacturing industries. Such an increase in the relative supply of unskilled labour also results in slower growth of the capital / labour and capital / output ratios, but not a shift to a more unskilled-intensive product mix. Apparently the least-skilled workers substitute for automated equipment, so adjustment of the capital stock reduces the effect of immigration on the relative wage of unskilled labour.

Cortes (2008) provided some additional evidence about the effect of immigration on the product mix. The theory of international trade predicts that low-skilled immigration should reduce the relative price of non-traded services that are produced by low-skilled workers, by reducing their wage. She found that a 10 per cent increase in the share of low-skilled immigrants in the labour force of US cities reduces the price of immigrant-intensive services by 2.1 per cent and of other non-traded goods by 0.7 per cent. The wage effects are larger for low-skilled immigrants than natives, indicating that they are imperfect substitutes. She concluded that immigration in the 1990s increased the purchasing power of high-skilled natives by 0.6 per cent, but decreased that of native dropouts by 1.3 per cent.

HIGH-SKILLED IMMIGRATION AND CROSS-SKILL EFFECTS

In addition to the large number of studies focusing on low-skilled immigrants and natives, high-skilled immigration has also received some attention from economists since 2000. Borjas (2005, 2009b) investigated the impact of immigration on native scientists and engineers, finding that a 10 per cent increase in the supply of foreign doctoral students in a given field lowers the wage of competing doctoral degree recipients in that field by 3 to 4 per cent. Peri and Sparber (2011b) found that native workers with graduate degrees choose occupations with less analytical and more communicative content when the immigrant share of highly educated workers within an occupation increases. Kerr and Lincoln (2010) found that expanding H-1B visa admissions increases science and engineering employment and patenting, and does not displace natives – indeed, may even increase their opportunities. In contrast, Borjas and Doran (2012) found that the influx of mathematicians from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s pushed native mathematicians into lower-quality institutions and reduced their publication rate. These studies did not attempt to estimate the overall effect of immigration at all skill levels, so did not need to use a nested CES model.

A number of papers – for example, Borjas (2003), Ottaviano and Peri (2005b, 2006b, 2008, 2012), and Card (2009) – simulated the net effect of immigration over a given time period on the wages of natives in each skill group, including the cross-skill effects – that is, how immigrants in one skill group affect the wages of other skill groups. They defined groups by education, nativity, and some subset of experience, gender, and time in the host country. All of them estimated the ease of substitution in a nested multi-level CES model and then calculated the effect on wages of changing the number of workers, both within and across education-experience (and sometimes nativity) groups. Then they simulated the net effect of the overall immigration during a given time period on the wages of each group, including the cross-effects. But, except for Borjas (2003), these papers did not report the individual cross-effects; they simply reported the ease of substitution and the overall net effect of immigration on the wages of various groups.

Borjas (2003) found that the immigrant inflow from 1980 to 2000 depressed the wages of high school dropouts by 8.9 per cent, of college graduates by 4.9 per cent, and of the average worker by 3.2 per cent. He assumed that immigrants and natives are perfect substitutes within education-experience categories and that the capital stock does not adjust. In contrast, Ottaviano, Peri, and Card allowed the capital stock to adjust fully and allowed immigrants and natives to be imperfect substitutes, and found much smaller and even positive effects. For example, Ottaviano and Peri (2006b) found that the influx of immigrants from 1990 to 2004 depressed the wages of native dropouts by 1.1 per cent, but raised those of more-educated natives by 0.7 to 3.4 per cent and of the average native by 1.8 per cent. Assuming high school dropouts and graduates are perfect substitutes, and likewise college dropouts and graduates, Ottaviano and Peri (2012) found that the immigrant inflow from 1990 to 2006 increased the wages of native dropouts by 0.6 to 1.7 per cent and of the average native by 0.6 per cent, but depressed the wage of the average previous immigrant by 6.7 per cent. In contrast to the others, who reported the effect on the wages of each group, Card (2009) reported the effect on the relative wages of natives of different skill levels, and concluded that immigration accounted for only 5 per cent of the increase in wage inequality from 1980 to 2000.

OUTCOME OF THE DEBATE

By 2009, Borjas had begun to doubt that a CES model is adequate for analyzing the ease of substitution between skill groups. The results are too sensitive to small changes in assumptions and methods and to the arbitrary choice of a form for the trend in unobserved relative demand (Borjas, Grogger, and Hanson 2012). By aggregating education groups, one can produce estimates of the impact of immigration of any size (Borjas 2009a). An analogous situation occurs in the “area” approach, where aggregating geographic areas increases the size of estimates (Borjas, Freeman, and Katz 1996, 1997). The issue is the level of aggregation – what areas, or skill groups, should be combined. In a sense, the answer depends on how much “mobility” there is between skill groups or areas, if we consider substitutability in production to be analogous to movement between cities.

In 2000 it seemed that the “area” approach had been discredited by the issue of internal migration, but in recent years it has made a comeback. The recent studies take account of immigration-induced internal migration. Yet the debate continues. Card and Lewis (2007) and Card (2009) used the “area” approach and found strong evidence that high school graduates and dropouts can be treated as perfect substitutes (with a proportional discount for productivity). Aydemir and Borjas (2011) showed that sampling error in measuring local immigrant shares causes downward-biased estimates when local areas are used as the units of observation. Borjas, Grogger, and Hanson (2012) still worried about how local labour markets adapt to a shift in relative labour supplies. They pointed out that results depend on the level of geographic aggregation, and that there may be unobserved differences among cities in the underlying trend in relative demand. As noted above, the results are quite sensitive to the arbitrary assumption that must be made about the shape of this trend. Finally, Card (2009, 2012) and Ottaviano and Peri (2012) found that there is no conflict between the conclusions of local area studies and studies of economy-wide trends, when the model allows immigrants and natives to be imperfect substitutes, high school dropouts and graduates to be combined, and the capital stock to adjust. In either case the effect on native wages is quite small.

SUMMING UP: WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED SINCE 2000

This chapter has reviewed the research since 2000 into the effects of immigration on native wages in the US. As of 2014 we have some answers to the questions that have stirred up so much debate since the turn of the century between Borjas on the one hand and Card, Ottoviano and Peri, and Lewis on the other. Everyone now uses instrumental variables to predict the increase in labour supply in a city due to immigration, thus eliminating the effects of reverse causation. The “area” approach has become respectable again. It seems clear that internal migration of natives is not important empirically, as it does not systematically offset an influx of immigrants to a city. However, internal migration of immigrants themselves does mitigate the impact on wages. It also seems clear that immigrants are not perfect substitutes for natives within skill groups as currently measured (that is, within education-experience categories).

The discrepancies between results using the “national skill group” and “area” approaches have been resolved. Studies using the “national skill group” approach that find large negative effects are those that assume immigrants are perfect substitutes for natives and there are no adjustments in the capital stock. But when immigrants are allowed to be imperfect substitutes for natives, and the amount and type of equipment is allowed to adjust to changes in the relative supplies of skill groups, even studies using the “national skill group” approach find much smaller negative and even positive effects on native wages, similar to those found in “area” studies. More controversial is whether high school dropouts should be treated as a separate skill group, or combined with high school graduates (with a proportional productivity discount). This matters a great deal because recent immigrants to the US are three times as likely as natives to be dropouts, but only slightly more likely to be high school graduates or less. If dropouts are combined with high school graduates in a single skill group, we would not expect immigration to have much impact on the wages of this group, because it does not change the relative supply of workers with a high school education or less. But even without combining them, it seems clear that the effect of immigration on native wages is in fact surprisingly small.

SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

Improve Matching of Immigrants and Natives by Skill

The definition of skill groups within which immigrants are assumed to be perfect substitutes for natives could be further refined. At a minimum, fluency in English should be taken into account. Further, as Dustmann, Frattini, and Preston (2013) argue, the degree of skill downgrading experienced by immigrants, in which their actual skills do not match their measured skill level, changes with time in the US, the speed of upgrading, and time between measurements. The literature on the economic progress of immigrants with time in the US and acquisition of English fluency could be consulted to help classify immigrants with natives of comparable actual skill. This would link the two strands of research, on the economic progress and the labour-market impacts of immigrants.

Relax the Nested CES Model and Estimate Unrestricted Cross-Skill Effects

Despite the fact that over 26 per cent of the foreign-born in the US have at least a BA degree, there has been surprisingly little investigation of the cross-skill effects of immigrant inflows, in contrast to the vast amount of research on the within-skill-level effects of low-skilled immigration on low-skilled natives. Several recent studies have incorporated cross-skill effects in their estimates of the impact of immigration on native wages. The results reflect the relative numbers of immigrants and natives at different skill levels, but all of them have used a nested CES model. This model is useful for certain purposes, such as estimating the average substitutability between types of labour within a level of the model, but not for investigating specific cross-skill effects. It rules out by assumption the possibility that an increase in high-skilled immigration could directly improve the labour-market prospects of low-skilled natives. Moreover, all of the studies that have estimated cross-skill effects have used the “national” approach, which does not effectively control for other time-varying factors such as technical change, international trade, decreasing unionization, or changes in the minimum wage. Consequently, we do not know how an increase in the immigration of college graduates would affect lower-skilled workers.

Relaxing the restrictive assumption of a nested multi-level CES model, to allow for possible cooperation between certain types of immigrants and natives in producing goods and services, would be a useful contribution. For instance, the model that Borjas used in his 1987 paper does not impose any a priori assumption about the relationships between various types of labour. Use of a less-restrictive model may not produce radically different estimates of the impact of immigration on the average native wage or on native wages within the same skill group, but it should provide useful insights into crosseffects between certain types of immigrant and certain types of native that cannot be detected using a nested CES model. Another useful project would simulate the effect on native wages using the actual numbers of immigrants and natives in each education category, but assuming a variety of cross-effects of different signs and magnitudes, to determine the robustness of the results that have been reported based on the CES model.

Relax the Fixed and Separable Capital Assumptions and Estimate Effects on Technology and Product Mix

Apart from the studies by Lewis (2003, 2011a, 2012) and Hanson and Slaughter (2002) that take induced changes in technology or product mix into account, most of the existing studies also assume the capital stock is fixed, as Borjas (2003) does. These are short-run models. More studies like Ottaviano and Peri’s (2006b, 2008, 2012) that allow the capital stock to adjust to changing labour supplies, and thus apply to the medium or longer run, are needed. Moreover, some immigrants bring capital with them, thus directly expanding the supply of capital. Some contribute directly to developing new products and technologies (Stephan and Levin 2001; Hunt and Gauthier-Loiselle 2010). The impact of immigrants as entrepreneurs, inventors, and innovators has barely begun to be investigated. This is another promising topic for future research.

The standard model that is used in most of the existing studies says immigration affects wages only if it changes the relative shares of skill groups in the workforce. This is a consequence of assuming a fixed production function with constant returns to scale and separable capital (meaning there is no substitution or complementarity between the capital stock and a particular type of labour, so that the relative wages of different types of labour do not depend on the amount of capital). This assumption is too restrictive. It assumes the capital stock can be ignored when modelling the effects of immigration on relative wages. Results regarding wage effects will be misinterpreted if in fact capital disproportionately substitutes for (or complements) a particular type of labour.

Grossman (1982) tested for and could not reject the separability of capital and labour. Most subsequent researchers simply imposed this assumption. An early exception was Borjas (1987), who estimated the cross-effects between capital and each type of labour. More recently Lewis (2003, 2011a, 2012) and Card and Lewis (2007) pioneered the analysis of immigration-induced changes in technology and the mix of industries, as discussed above. More such studies that relax the assumption that capital and labour are separable, and estimate the effects on technology and product mix, would be another useful line of research.

To sum up these suggestions: one promising direction for future research is to take account of English fluency and skill downgrading, and classify immigrants with natives of similar actual skill so that they would be closer to perfect substitutes. Second, the nested CES model has become the standard way to express the interactions among skill groups in production, but its usefulness is diminishing. It may be adequate for summarizing average elasticities of substitution between skill groups, but it is quite restrictive. It is time to use a more flexible model in order to investigate specific cross-skill effects of immigrants on natives of a different skill level. Finally, the small effect of immigration on the wages of less-skilled natives suggests that the impact is diffused by adjustments in technology and product mix, as suggested by the theory of international trade. These adjustments, as well as the impact of high-skilled immigrants as scientists, engineers, inventors, and entrepreneurs, should receive more attention in future research.

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PART THREE

Socio-Cultural Aspects of North American Immigration

6

Assimilation and Its Discontented

Kay Deaux

INTRODUCTION

The United States is, like Canada, a country defined in fundamental ways by immigration, both past and present. Yet, although immigration has always been with us, there are important differences between immigration at the beginning of the twentieth century and immigration now at the beginning of the twenty-first century. After briefly reviewing the new demographics, I will focus on the social behaviour of contemporary immigrants, and in particular on some differences between first- and second-generation members of ethnic groups.

Background: Demographics, Assimilation, and Generation

In sheer numbers, consider the trends shown in Table 6.1, which charts the flow of immigrants to the United States between 1850 and 2015. In 2015, there were an estimated 43.3 million immigrants in the United States, representing 13.5 per cent of the total 320.1 million US population (MPI 2016). Strikingly, almost 40 per cent of these immigrants entered the country since 2000 (MPI 2016), a number that would seem to resonate with the “turbulence” in the title of this volume. Of historical interest is the fact that while the number of immigrants entering the United States in the past decade is substantially higher than ever before, the percentage of the US population represented by immigrants has still not reached the level that existed in the early part of the twentieth century. Together, the numbers, the percentages, and the clear trend of the past fifty years establish a particular framework for viewing immigration in the United States at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Table 6.1 Number of immigrants and immigrants as percentage of the US population, 1850 to present

Note: The term “immigrants” refers to people residing in the United States who were not US citizens at birth. This population includes naturalized citizens, lawful permanent immigrants, refugees and asylees, legal nonimmigrants (including those on student, work, or other temporary visas), and persons residing in the United States without authorization.

Source: Migration Policy Institute tabulations of the US Census Bureau’s 2010–15 American Community Surveys and 1970, 1990, and 2000 census data. All other data are from Gibson, Campbell and Emily Lennon, US Census Bureau, Working Paper No. 29, Historical Census Statistics on the Foreign-Born Population of the United States: 1850 to 1990, US Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1999.

Summary figures of immigrant populations are only part of the picture, however. Who is coming can be at least as salient in public discourse as how many are coming, and the characteristics of “who” have changed substantially over the years. In the nineteenth century, immigration to the United States was primarily a northern European affair, with certain exceptions (e.g., Chinese labourers, who were subject to specific bans and legal restrictions prior to the development of any systematic federal immigration policies). The change in the demographic base in the early twentieth century, to include more immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, was in fact seen as a cause for alarm and influenced legislation in the 1920s that restricted immigrant flow to the United States. Europe – whether northern, eastern, or southern – accounts for a relatively small minority of the immigrant population in the United States today. More than half of the contemporary foreign-born population is from the Americas (which includes Canada, representing 3 per cent of the Americas’ total immigrants to the United States). Current figures indicate that 47 per cent of the total immigrant population reports having Hispanic / Latino backgrounds (MPI 2013). Asia is the other major source of current immigration to the United States, constituting approximately one quarter of the foreign-born population.

These demographic patterns have several implications for understanding the situation of immigrants in the United States today. First, the fact that immigration is an ongoing process that has been increasing for more than forty years results in a continuing presence of ethnic enclaves. Although some immigrants move up and out, following past practice, others continue to live in inner-city areas that are defined by their ethnic concentration; still others move directly to suburban and rural areas and create new ethnic enclaves there. As a consequence, multiple generations of immigrants can often be found in the same location, providing a continuing source of connections to the culture of origin. Second, the remarkable ethnic diversity of contemporary immigrants creates a more complicated attitudinal and intergroup climate. Some ethnic groups are viewed as less desirable than others, and members of those groups are likely to experience more discrimination and negative treatment. The varying amounts of capital that immigrants bring, in terms of education and economic status, further contribute to the diversity. Documentation status – whether real or perceived – also serves as a key marker in the attitudes of the receiving country, with undocumented immigrants falling to the bottom on most attitudinal measures (e.g, Fiske and Lee 2012).

Others in this volume speak to the influence of state and federal immigration policy on the conditions of immigrant lives. Suffice it to say, the current jumble of inconsistent and unevenly enforced policies and practices in the United States today creates a climate of uncertainty for many immigrants, particularly for those who either are undocumented or who, in a process of guilt by association, are treated as if they were. My concern in this chapter is not directly with policy, but rather with the social context in which immigrants carry out their lives. In particular, I will consider differences between first-and second-generation immigrants, as they speak to the process of assimilation and incorporation in the United States today.

ASSIMILATION: CONCEPT AND CHALLENGE

“America is God’s crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and reforming.”

Israel Zangwill, The Melting Pot, 1909

The concept of a great melting-pot, introduced by a young British playwright and enthusiastically adopted by President Theodore Roosevelt, has served as a popular representation of American attitudes toward immigration for decades. (See Deaux 2006 for a more extended discussion.) The concept finds its academic parallel in assimilation theory, first introduced by Robert Park and the Chicago School of Sociology in the 1920s (Park and Burgess 1921, 1969; Park and Miller 1921) and continuing to the present day, albeit with elaboration and modification, most prominently by Richard Alba and his colleagues (Alba 2008; Alba and Nee 2003). More commonly accepted in the United States than in Canada, the assumptions of assimilation theory have nonetheless been challenged by US writers as well. Marcelo Suárez-Orozco (2002, 27), for example, argues that “to assume that immigrants today are joining a homogeneous society dominated by the white middle-class European American Protestant ethos … may no longer be useful.” In addition to challenging the assumption of homogeneity, Suárez-Orozco also questions the idea that immigrants make a “clean break” from their country of origin, pointing to the existence of extensive transnational networks, and, most relevant to the present discussion, disputes the assumption of steady upward mobility and generally improved conditions with successive generations. Some sociological scholars have proposed an alternative theory of segmented assimilation (Portes and Zhou 1993; Zhou 1999). In this model, three alternative paths are recognized for the children of immigrants: the traditional upward assimilation path; a downward path that leads to integration with the underclass; and a pattern of economic achievement combined with maintenance of the ethnic community and its values. The likelihood of following one path versus another varies by immigrant group, depending on factors such as financial and social capital, and racial discrimination.

Among psychological scholars, as well as in much socio-political discourse, patterns of incorporation are more often discussed in terms of multiculturalism rather than assimilation (Deaux and Verkuyten 2014). This concept, however, is not very tightly defined and is used in many different ways, from a normative framework for specific (and often disputed) policies to individual psychological processes that allow for multiple ethnic and national identities. However, although the concept of multiculturalism by definition recognizes the existence of various ethnic groups, it offers little guidance for exploring differences between ethnic groups, nor does it account for the generational differences that are increasingly apparent (Deaux and Verkuyten 2014; Zhou 1999).

DOING A GENERATIONAL ANALYSIS

In the mid-1950s, when new immigration to the United States was at a low point, Gordon Allport (1954, 1958) understood that the impact of immigration could extend beyond the first generation. He noted that “in the second generation the assimilation was partly, though not entirely, complete” (237) and suggested that the children of immigrants had “certain (gradually diminishing) handicaps.” His pessimistic argument continued: “They are ashamed of their parents, who still seem foreign. The sense of social inferiority in status is haunting. Usually they lack a reassuring pride in the ethnic traditions and culture of the parent” (237). Further building his case for negative effects, Allport pointed to sociological evidence of high crime rates and maladjustment among second-generation immigrants. Allport’s account of the second-generation experience is quite bleak, emphasizing pathological outcomes and a lack of social ballast. He did, however, also note the variety of experiences that immigrants can encounter and the greater likelihood for discriminatory experiences among some groups (including “Negroes, Orientals, and Mexicans” in his telling) than others. Now sixty years later, how well do Allport’s observations match contemporary realities?

The traditional assimilation story is a historically based account, looking at how successive generations of immigrants make their way and (by assumption and for the most part by data) improve their lot, such that children do better in the new country than do their parents. One limitation of this approach, however, is the confounding of historical context with generation (Telles and Ortiz 2008). This covariation was inevitable in immigration research of the mid-twentieth century, when government policy and practice severely restricted new immigration to the United States. However, with the continuing inflow of immigrants following the immigration reforms of the mid- 1960s, multiple generations of immigrants now coexist in many communities and, as Telles and Ortiz recognize (2008, 10), “it is important to disentangle family generational status from generation-since-immigration to understand their immigration experiences.” Telles and Ortiz specifically apply their analysis to the Mexican population, which in certain parts of the United States, primarily in the Southwest and on the West Coast, includes newly arrived immigrants as well as second-, third-, and even fourth-generation immigrants. Similar conditions are true for other immigrant groups as well, such as some of the Asian communities throughout the United States.

Consistent with a sociological-demographic tradition, Telles and Ortiz (2008) direct their attention to intergenerational change between parents and children. As a social psychologist, my interests are a bit different. While adopting the concept of generation-since- immigration, I focus not on differences between parents and children, but instead on possible differences between age peers in the same contexts.[1] In my analysis, generation becomes a marker of current experience rather than an interaction of person and historical period. By shifting the reference point completely to the contemporary setting and equating the age of the immigrants (as well as their education and social class, to the extent possible), we can home in on the social-psychological processes that are occurring and identify the circumstances that lead to different outcomes for first-and second-generation immigrants.[2]

Why might we expect these two generations of immigrants to differ, despite their living in similar conditions in the same historical time period? As a social psychologist, I direct my attention to the specific experiences that immigrants have and to the ways in which those experiences are interpreted. Are there objective social conditions that differ between first- and second-generation immigrants? And at the psychological level, do first- and second-generation immigrants have different ways of interpreting what might appear to be equivalent conditions?

In the category of objective factors that might lead to different experiences for first- and second-generation immigrants, citizenship ranks high. Specifically, because of birthright citizenship laws in the United States, second-generation immigrants have full citizenship from their date of birth; first-generation immigrants, in contrast, may or may not become naturalized citizens some years after they have arrived in the United States (or may live as undocumented residents for many years). Apart from the legal ramifications of this generational difference, automatic citizenship might be expected to have psychological consequences as well, varying from identity definitions to the sense of entitlement to the full spectrum of opportunities and advantages that citizenship presumably entails.

For visible minorities, experiences with discrimination are common to first and second generation alike (Deaux et al. 2007). Whether members of the first generation experience more discrimination than the second is a question not fully resolved. It seems quite likely, however, that the generations will differ in how they interpret and how they respond to discriminatory treatment. Attributions for discrimination may invoke different factors: for example, the first generation might attribute their negative treatment to the fact that they are not nativeborn Americans, while second-generation members of visible minorities may see race as the operative category. In the former case, the cause could be seen as limited in duration, to be eliminated or reduced when citizenship is obtained, and irrelevant to one’s children and grandchildren. In the latter case, however, the attributional locus could be viewed as more pervasive and persistent, linking oneself and one’s group to the existent racial strata in the United States (see Major and Sawyer 2009 for a more general discussion of attributions to discrimination).

To the extent that these circumstantial and experiential differences exist between first- and second-generation immigrants, we can expect that they will show differences in a number of psychological processes. In the following section, I review some of the work that I and others have done to explore this generational divide.

RESEARCH EVIDENCE FOR GENERATIONAL DIFFERENCES

Although the question itself has only recently been posed in the psychological literature, evidence for differences between first- and second-generation immigrants is steadily accumulating. To the extent that these comparisons are made between immigrants who are approximately equivalent in age and socio-economic status, as discussed earlier, they point to the importance of social psychological processes whereby the two generations, though perhaps set in objectively similar circumstances, are framing and interpreting their experiences differently, with different consequences for their actions and reactions.

In this section, I review findings in three domains: first, issues of self-regard and self-definition, including the estimate of others’ views of oneself and one’s group; second, beliefs about the society and the opportunities or obstacles that it offers, as reflected in beliefs about meritocracy and social inequality; and third, some examples of the ramifications of these beliefs for performance and orientation to collective action on behalf of one’s group.

Self-Appraisal and Self-Definition

Some commentators assume that ethnic and national identity is a zero-sum game: that is, that immigrants must drop their ethnic identity of origin in order to take on a new national identity. Witness the statements of the late historian Samuel Huntington (2004): “There is no Americano dream. There is only the American dream.” However, this position is not supported by the psychological research evidence. People can and do hold onto two (or more) identities, and further, there may be some clear advantages of doing so. More easily than holding two legal citizenships, which is regulated by varying federal policies, immigrants find ways to hold onto their allegiance to the ethnic origin group while at the same time taking on a new national identity of their country of immigration (see Berry 1990; Deaux and Verkuyten 2014; Hong et al. 2000; Wiley and Deaux 2011). Frequently immigrants construct a bicultural identity in which the old ethnic and the new national identity are fused into a meaningful combination that accepts both and rejects neither. Even in first-generation immigrants, evidence of this fused identity is present (see Wiley 2013), but it is more strongly endorsed among second-generation immigrants (Calcagno and Udugampola 2013).

Labels or categories are a first step at understanding the ways in which immigrants identify themselves. Identity is a multifaceted concept, however, and can be considered in terms of a number of dimensions, including the importance attached to the identity and the positive or negative valuation of it (Ashmore, Deaux, and McLaughlin-Volpe 2004). Interestingly, if we compare the ethnic identities of first- and second-generation immigrants in terms of these two dimensions, we find no differences. In three studies that included Latino, Afro- Caribbean, Asian, and White immigrants from a variety of countries, first- and second-generation immigrants rated the importance of their ethnic identity equally (Wiley, Deaux, and Hagelskamp 2012; Wiley, Perkins, and Deaux 2008). Nor did first- and second-generation immigrants differ in how positively they regarded their ethnic identity (Wiley, Perkins, and Deaux 2008; Perkins, Wiley, and Deaux 2014). In all cases, average scores fell between four and five on a seven-point scale, indicating moderately high endorsement.

Although first- and second-generation immigrants are alike in the ways that they personally evaluate their ethnic group membership, differences emerge when they are asked to estimate how others view their group, a dimension that is generally referred to as public regard. Specifically, second-generation immigrants have a more negative estimate of what other people think of their group.[3] These generational differences are particularly apt to emerge among members of ethnic groups that are more likely to be devalued in the society at large, specifically immigrants of African or Latino descent (Wiley, Perkins, and Deaux 2008; Wiley, Deaux, and Hagelskamp 2012; Perkins, Wiley, and Deaux 2014).

The correspondence between private regard and public regard has long been a question of interest for scholars of the self. Since the early work of theorists such as George Herbert Mead (1934) and Charles Cooley (1956), social scientists have assumed that reflected appraisal is inherent to the formation of self, a theme that was picked up by Winnicott (1971) with his concept of social mirroring. The degree to which one’s own view of the self corresponds to the view that others have of oneself or of one’s group depends, however, on the favour-ability of those other views. In their studies of immigrant children, Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco (2001) found that the majority of Dominican, Haitian, Mexican, and Central American children believed that most Americans had negative views of their group because they were not White. How children responded to this condition of “negative social mirroring” had consequences for their general well-being.

In work that compared first- and second-generation immigrant college students from three broad ethnic groupings (Asian, Black, and Latino[4]), Wiley and his colleagues (Wiley, Perkins, and Deaux 2008) found notable differences in the degree to which private regard for one’s group corresponded to the perceived views of others (i.e., public regard) as a function of both generation and ethnic group. The most striking generational difference was found for Black immigrants: while the association between public and private regard was high (r = +.51) for first-generation immigrants, there was virtually no connection between the two measures in the second-generation group (the latter pattern corresponding to findings obtained in a nonimmigrant Black group; see Crocker et al. 1994). Latino immigrants showed a parallel but non-significant pattern, with a weaker link in the first generation and a less precipitous drop in the second generation. In contrast to these two groups, who generally are valued less positively by the public at large, Asian immigrants showed high and constant associations between the two measures of regard.

Although Asian immigrants may benefit from the higher status that is accorded to their group, as compared to Black and Latino immigrants, they typically are also visible minorities with physical characteristics that make them subject to routine ethnic categorization by the dominant White majority. For those who have an immigrant background, but who are born in the United States and have birthright citizenship, the desire is often to be seen first as an American, and ethnic categorization by others can be a source of stress. In work by Wang, Minervino, and Cheryan (2013), first- and second-generation Asian immigrants were asked to imagine scenarios in which they were questioned by a professor as to whether English was their native language or asked by a cashier where they were from. Second-generation participants reported that they would be significantly more angry in such situations than did first-generation immigrants (while the two generations did not differ when imagined encounters did not involve identity denial). Thus, while firstgeneration immigrants may be willing to accept ethnic categorization, the second generation views such treatment as much more problematic, challenging their self-definitions and denying their status as full-fledged Americans.

Beliefs in Meritocracy and Social Inequality

People who emigrate typically arrive in the new country with some ideas about the values and contingencies that the country will offer. Frequently these ideas have been motivational for their move, as they see in “the American dream” possibilities and opportunities believed to be unattainable in their country of origin. Some of these beliefs are framed in terms of individual probabilities of succeeding on the basis of one’s own abilities and efforts; others take group position and status hierarchies into account as immigrants assess the acceptance of their ethnic group relative to other groups in the society, including the dominant White American group.

These kinds of beliefs – about social diversity, social equality, and meritocracy – are relevant to all immigrants, but they are endorsed in different degrees depending both on generation and on ethnic background. In research by Deaux et al. (2006), first-generation immigrants (all students at a public university in New York City) who were either White (primarily from Eastern Europe) or Black and Latino (primarily from the Caribbean) were compared to members of similar ethnic groups who were born in the United States on measures of support for social diversity and acceptance of social inequality.[5] Beliefs in the value of social diversity were predicted primarily by ethnicity: Blacks and Latinos, whether immigrant or native-born, were more favourable toward diversity than were Whites, though all groups scored above the midpoint of the scale. On the measure of acceptance of social inequality in society (on which all groups scored below the midpoint of the scale), ethnicity again showed a main effect, wherein Whites were more supportive of social inequality than were Blacks and Latinos. In this case, however, immigrant status interacted significantly with ethnicity: White immigrants endorsed inequality most strongly, while Black and Latino immigrants were the least favorable.

Ethnic group differences also are evident in comparisons between student immigrants of higher status (White and Asian) and lower status (Black and Latino), even when all might be considered privileged by virtue of their enrollment in a highly selective private university (Feygina and Godfrey 2013). Focusing on the concept of system justification (Jost, Banaji, and Nosek 2004) and differentiating between socio-political justification and economic justification, Feygina and Godfrey (2013) found that the higher-status White and Asian students expressed stronger confidence in both the sociopolitical and economic aspects of the existent system than did Black and Latino students. Generation also exerted an effect, independent of the ethnicity of the students. Whereas the generations did not differ from each other in justifying the socio-political system, firstgeneration immigrant students were more likely to justify the economic system than were second-generation students.[6]

Generational effects among Black and Latino immigrants have also emerged consistently in several studies of beliefs about meritocracy, a concept that is similar to system justification but that focuses more specifically on the perceived likelihood of upward mobility. In interviews with West Indian immigrants, Waters (1999) observed that while the first generation believed that barriers could be overcome with hard work, second-generation immigrants were more likely to see the problems as systemic and the barriers as insurmountable. Questionnaire data assessing meritocracy (defined as endorsement of the Protestant work ethic and belief in individual mobility regardless of ethnic group) reveal similar patterns (Wiley, Deaux, and Hagelskamp 2012): first-generation Dominican and Mexican immigrants were significantly more likely to endorse these beliefs than were second-generation immigrants. These generational effects appear to be driven in part by perceived differences in public regard: that is, the lower the regard that second-generation immigrants perceive from the majority culture, the less likely they are to believe in meritocracy.

If immigrants see the system as one in which meritocracy is not operative, what is likely to be their response? Emerging evidence suggests there are effects both on the strength of ethnic group identification and on willingness to engage in collective action on the part of one’s group, again moderated by generational status. In the Wiley et al. (2012) study, for example, belief in meritocracy was significantly related, in a negative direction, to ethnic identification as a Dominican or Mexican (i.e., weaker endorsement of meritocracy was associated with stronger ethnic identification) for second-generation immigrants, while the two variables were unrelated among first-generation immigrants. Further, the orientation toward collective action on behalf of one’s group, although not differing in strength between the two generations, was significantly mediated by ethnic identification among second-generation immigrants. Speculating on causal sequence, we can suggest that the second generation reacts to a perceived lack of meritocracy with a strengthened sense of ethnic group identification, which in turn motivates an interest in doing something to change the situation. For first-generation immigrants in this study, in contrast, a belief in meritocracy directly predicts support for collective action, although that link is relatively weak and, we suspect, less concretely realized.

GENERATION AND BEHAVIOURAL OUTCOMES

For several decades, investigators have pointed to what is variously termed an “immigrant paradox,” an “integration paradox,” or an “epidemiological paradox,” referring to the unexpectedly disadvantageous outcomes for second-generation immigrants compared to first-generation immigrants in areas such as infant health, adolescent health and risk behaviours, and educational attainment (Rumbaut 1999). These negative consequences are not invariant, however, as more recent research shows, nor are they consistent across all forms of health behaviour nor all ethnic groups (Lara et al. 2005). At the same time, it is clear that acculturation to the United States is not without its downside.

Psychological choices are necessarily part of the story. As is well known by now, the typical US diet is high in sugars and fats and can be linked to the increasing obesity rates in the US population, as well as the increase in chronic diseases such as diabetes and hypertension. Newly arrived immigrants on average have lower levels of obesity than the average US citizen, but their rate of obesity increases with length of time in the United States (Goel et al. 2004), and second-generation children match US children of non-immigrant parents in their likelihood of being obese (Harris, Perreira, and Lee 2009). This greater propensity to eat fattening food could simply be due to its greater availability in the environment. However, the choice might also be a deliberate attempt on the part of immigrant youth to demonstrate their commitment to being American, particularly when that identity claim is threatened (Gundelman, Cheryan, and Monin 2011). In an experiment carried out on a university campus, students believed to be Asian on the basis of physical appearance (and later confirmed to be US-born) were approached by a White American researcher and asked if they spoke English. This seemingly simple request was hypothesized to constitute a threat to the student’s American identity (while being neutral for White American students who were approached in a similar manner). The researcher’s next request to the participants was simply to write down the name of their favourite food. In a control condition, the researcher only asked for the food preference without inquiring about English facility. The results were striking: although the language question had no effect on the stated food preference of White Americans, the Asian American students showed a sharp shift to American foods when their identity had been questioned. In this condition, 75 per cent of the students named a typically American food (e.g., steak, vanilla ice cream); in the control condition, only 25 per cent named an American food, stating a preference instead for more typically ethnic food (e.g., Peking duck, sushi). Thus the desire to assert a particular identity can possibly lead to behaviours that have negative consequences for one’s health.

In the food preference study, students had the option to present themselves in ways that brought an American identity to the fore; in other situations, however, the implications of the ethnic identity – and the regard that others have for that identity – cannot be so easily circumvented. Research on stereotype threat (Steele 1997, 2010) has consistently and dramatically shown how awareness of the unfavourable stereotypes that others hold about your group, and by implication about you as a member of that group, can have detrimental effects on performance in domains related to those stereotypes. In the case of African Americans, for example, the stereotype of lesser ability in academic domains has been shown to elicit lower performance when group membership is salient (compared to equivalent performance with Whites when group membership is not salient).

We extended the logic of this theory to the circumstances of first-and second-generation Afro-Caribbean immigrants, to whom the assumptions of the Black American stereotype are often applied (Deaux et al. 2007). Although both first- and second-generation immigrants from countries of the West Indies would be aware of the stereotypes, we assumed, due to the pervasiveness of these stereotypes in the US culture, we predicted that first-generation immigrants would not be susceptible to stereotype threat in an academic performance situation because they do not identity as African American. As first-generation immigrants, their primary identification would be with their ethnic / national group, one that is clearly distinguished from African American by most West Indian immigrants (Waters 1999). In contrast, second-generation West Indian immigrants are more likely to have taken on an African American identity, instead of or in some combination with their ethnic identity of origin, and in doing so would have become more susceptible to the stereotype threats associated with that category.

Using standard stereotype threat procedures, we compared a condition in which a verbal achievement test (items from a GRE preparation manual) was presented with instructions that emphasized its diagnosticity as a measure of intelligence (see Steele and Aronson 1995) with a non-threat condition in which the test was described as an exercise in test development rather than a measure of individual ability. First- and second-generation immigrants, all students at public universities in New York City, were randomly assigned to one of the two conditions. Although the performance of the two groups was equivalent when stereotype threat was not aroused, our results showed that the generations reacted quite differently to the stereotype threat condition. Second-generation West Indian immigrants performed worse when confronting the threat, while first-generation immigrants did better. In another sign of the influence of circumstances on the two generations, results showed that the race of the experimenter made a difference as well: first-generation immigrants did better when the experimenter was White, while second-generation immigrants did better with a Black experimenter. Thus, the conditions that might facilitate performance by the first generation (a challenge to their group’s ability and the presence of a representative of the White majority) are reacted to quite differently by the second-generation Afro-Caribbean immigrants, who do better when they are with a same-race experimenter in a non-threatening situation.

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL STATE OF THE SECOND GENERATION

A generational analysis in which age and history are held constant and immigrant groups are defined by generation-since-immigration allows a more contemporaneous view of the status of immigrants in the United States (and perhaps in Canada as well) in these early years of the twenty-first century. The perspective adopted here does not assume that the children of immigrants will do better than their parents, as basic assimilation theory would suggest, nor does it even use parents and their children as the basis of comparison. Rather the question is how people of the same age in the same circumstances may be shaped in different ways by their immigrant status and the psychological processes associated with that status.

Using this framework, we see numerous differences between the first and second generations. Ethnic identity is often no less important to the second generation, but it is typically combined with a developed US national identification and sense of entitlement that the first generation does not have. At the same time, members of the second generation often believe that the dominant society is less accepting of their ethnic group, as compared to the first generation, and their belief in meritocracy is often diminished as well. These perceptions have behavioural consequences, both for health and for academic performance, to the detriment of the second generation.

Almost all of the differences we find between the generations are amplified for immigrants of colour. Immigrants of Asian and European ancestry are not immune to discrimination and unforeseen barriers to their anticipated paths to incorporation, but Black and Latino immigrants show more negative effects. They are more likely to believe that the native White majority views their group unfavourably and they are less likely to find these views a useful gauge for their own group evaluation (Wiley et al. 2008, 2012; Perkins et al. 2014). At the same time, they are more favourable toward conditions that might change their status, in their endorsement of social diversity and their non-acceptance of social inequality (Deaux et al. 2006). For Black immigrants, whether from the Caribbean or from Africa, the path to incorporation often entails being categorized as African American, with the negative evaluations that can accompany that categorization. For Latino immigrants, the dominant image is one of an undocumented Mexican, again a stigmatized category that brings few benefits to its occupants. Asian immigrants may, on the whole, be free of these negative attributions, yet their legitimacy as Americans can still be questioned and create psychological threat (Wang et al. 2013). The United States is a diverse society, but it is certainly not a colourblind society.

IMMIGRATION AND GENERATION IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

As I write this chapter in 2014, conditions for immigration are quite unsettled in the United States and predictions for the future are highly uncertain. On the one hand, demographic analyses show that immigration has levelled off, with the yearly increases evident in recent decades no longer occurring. At the same time, the total number of immigrants in the United States continues to increase, assuring that at least in the short run, immigration will continue to be an important element of the United States’ demographics. Further, as the 2012 presidential election results demonstrated, the political impact of the immigrant population, and in particular the Latino population, has increased markedly. Immigration reform, debated and derailed for many years, is in the spotlight again, but the resolution of contentious issues is still problematic and as of this writing, no concrete progress has yet been achieved (see Martin, ch. 2 in this volume).

Will generation continue to be a marker of psychological experiences in the coming decades? No answer to this question can be offered without some caution, but it seems reasonable to assume that issues of ethnic and national identification, prejudice and discrimination, and shifting ideological beliefs will be staples for many years to come. Not only do these issues need to be addressed with respect to first- and second-generation immigrants, but to later generations as well, as the reservoir of migrants continues to expand. Will members of a third generation continue to show the discontent that has been found among second-generation immigrants? Very little research yet exists to answer this question, and virtually none in terms of psychological processes. Some evidence from the sociology literature, however, suggests that problems can persist in the third generation and beyond (Portes and Rumbaut 2001; Telles and Ortiz 2008).

Data already at hand suggest the complexity of assessing the assimilation of immigrant populations. On some dimensions of analysis, such as indices of education attained or economic condition, evidence for progress in the second generation seems quite clear (see, for example, immigrant groups in New York City studied by Kasinitz and his colleagues, 2008). Yet these tangible gains do not rule out the more subtle but influential psychological processes that can co-occur, as our evidence shows. Such processes are important to understand, not only as an index of psychological well-being and commitment to the community and the nation, but also as they influence concrete action. Civic engagement and collective action, for example, are outcomes that depend on psychological process and social position (Wiley, Deaux, and Hagelskamp 2012).

Existing research also shows great variation in attitudes and behaviours as a function of ethnic group (e.g., Kasinitz et al. 2008; Wiley, Perkins, and Deaux 2008). A term such as “average immigrant” probably has little predictive power; even further, though my own research has frequently used pan-ethnic categories for classification, such as Latino or Asian descent, a compelling case can be made for making sharper distinctions that will more accurately capture the different experiences and resources that different ethnic groups have. Similar caution should be exercised in making generalizations between the United States and Canada, as even the same ethnic group may differ between sites as a function of government policies and immigration history.

At least within the United States, one major factor that predicts differences in the immigrant experience is the ethnicity of the group and its position on the prevailing status hierarchy. Black and Latino immigrants are typically judged more harshly and experience more discriminatory treatment. For the second-generation immigrant who is a full citizen in legal standing, the downgraded social status can be particularly aversive and a source of the different reactions that we find when comparing first- and second-generation immigrants. Thus, it is important to recognize that differential outcomes among various immigrant groups cannot be fully attributed to characteristics of the group per se (e.g., their level of education, their financial resources), but also must also take into account the climate of reception for a particular group. Both research and policy need to take these specific intersections into account.

Also relevant to the issue of discriminatory treatment is the proposal by some politicians in the United States to give legal status, but not full citizenship, to currently undocumented immigrants. Substantial bodies of research on categorization and stigmatization recommend against this strategy, which would be likely to create a distinct category for disparagement. Although such a policy might provide some legal protections, it would be unlikely to alleviate the social and interpersonal discrimination that immigrants experience today.

Whatever policies may (or may not) be enacted in the near future, the circumstances and the incorporation of immigrants will be an important focus for research. The United States is still a country in which the arrival of new waves of immigrants defines the country and tests its ideals. How well those ideals are realized becomes both a challenge to policy-makers and rich soil for scientific exploration.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author would like to thank Nida Bikmen, Nancy Foner, Sarah Martiny, and Krystal Perkins, together with the volume editors, for their helpful suggestions on an earlier version of this manuscript.

NOTES

1   Perhaps a term such as “generation-since-immigration cohort” might be adopted to emphasize the contemporaneous nature of my comparisons. However, to avoid the awkwardness of repeating that lengthy term, I will simply use “first and second generation” as my terms of comparison.

2   The terms “first-generation” and “second-generation” immigrants are widely used in the US immigration literature (as well as “third and fourth generation,” in some cases, cf. Telles and Ortiz 2008). Some investigators prefer to use the term “children of immigrants,” recognizing that birthright citizenship in the United States makes the term “immigrant” questionable. However, for reasons of common usage as well as simplicity of language, I will use the terms “first and second generation” in my discussion.

3   Measures of public regard typically leave “other” unspecified, as exemplified by the public regard subscale of Luhtanen and Crocker’s (1992) Collective Self-Esteem scale. If the group is specifically defined as the ethnic group in the country of origin, both first- and second-generation Black and Latino immigrants rate public regard highly and do not differ significantly from each other (Perkins, Wiley, and Deaux 2014).

4   A group of White immigrants was also included in this study, but because the sample size was small and there were substantial differences in the ethnic / religious composition of the first- and second-generation samples, they are not discussed here.

5   These two concepts were assessed with scales originally developed for a Canadian population by Bourhis, Berry, and Kalin (1999). Statements were revised to use the term “Americans” rather than “Canadians”: e.g., “We should promote equality among all Americans, regardless of racial or ethnic origin” (Acceptance of Social Inequality) and “Americans should recognize that cultural and racial diversity is a fundamental characteristic of American society” (Support for Social Diversity).

6   In both cases, the two immigrant groups reported significantly more confidence in the system than did students without immigrant backgrounds.

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7

Muslim Immigration to North America: The Rise of New Challenges and the Need for New Perspectives

Abdolmohammad Kazemipur

INTRODUCTION: BACKGROUND

The populations of Muslim immigrants in Canada and the United States have been rising rather quickly since the 1970s. In both countries, a series of immigration reforms in the 1960s resulted in the arrival of large numbers of non-European immigrants during the following decades, particularly increasing the number of those coming from Muslim countries. The Canadian census data indicate that Muslims made up about 20 per cent of all immigrants who arrived in Canada in the year 2000, a significant jump from a mere 2 per cent in 1970. As a consequence, the population of Muslims in Canada has grown significantly, with estimated figures of 579,640 in 2001 (Statistics Canada 2001) and 940,000 in 2011 (Pew Research Center 2011), and projections of two million in 2021 and about three million in 2031 (Mata 2011). If these estimates are accurate, they indicate that the percentage of Muslims in the Canadian population will jump from its current 2.8 per cent to about 6.6 per cent in the year 2030 (Pew Research Center 2011). This is a significant jump in a relatively short period, and has important social and cultural implications.

A more or less similar trend has been at work in the United States, too. According to the estimates compiled by Pew Research Center (2013), of all legal immigrants entering the US in 2012, 10 per cent were Muslims; this is double the percentage reported for 1992. These figures indicate that, of an estimated 2.75 million Muslims living in the United States in the year 2012, 1.7 million were immigrants who had arrived during the twenty-year period prior to that. The number of Muslim immigrants arriving in the US has now stabilized at about 100,000 per year (Pew Research Center 2013), slightly less than half of all immigrants to Canada (around 250,000 annually). So, in both Canada and the United States, Muslim immigrants will have much more visibility in the coming decades due to their larger populations, in both absolute and relative terms.

This simple demographic change has the potential to create new challenges in the relationship between Muslim immigrants and host populations. The previous research in the area of inter-group relationships at neighbourhood level has indicated that as the proportional size of a minority population in a neighbourhood starts approaching the 20 to 30 per cent figure, the level of comfort of the majority residents starts declining; after that, it will improve, but a second tipping point occurs at around the 50 per cent level and creates more discomfort and tension in the inter-group relationship (see, for instance, Blalock 1967; Kanter 1977; Sigelman et al. 1996). These dynamics have been at work in Canada after the arrival of large number of immigrants from Hong Kong, and in the United States with the arrival of large numbers of Latinos. Similar social dynamics, this time with Muslim immigrants, may emerge in both countries, in response to the demographic reality of the rising Muslim population.

However, what is at stake here is not a simple demographic development; strong political and cultural forces are at work, too. The political factor was developed, largely, in response to the events of 11 September 2001. As tragic as the events of that day were, their symbolic meaning was much more enormous. A group of Muslim fundamentalists belonging to the Islamist militant group Al-Qaida staged four suicide attacks on the most powerful symbols of American power: on the twin towers of the World Trade Center as the symbol of American economic power; on the Pentagon, as the symbol of American military might; and a failed attempt to attack Capitol Hill, the symbol of the American political system. The nineteen hijackers were identified as Muslims of Arab backgrounds (fifteen from Saudi Arabia, two from the United Arab Emirates, one from Egypt, and one from Lebanon), all of whom were on American soil on legal visas. In the aftermath of this terrorist act, and as ordinary Americans were desperately looking for answers to their questions of “who” and “why,” the American media chose to put the emphasis on the “religious,” “Muslim,” and “Arab” elements of the hijackers’ backgrounds, rather than highlighting the “fundamentalist,” “extremist,” and “radical” features of their views and ideologies.

A cultural element was added to the picture by the middle of that decade, as terroristic and / or violent acts involving Muslims started occurring in several other immigrant-receiving countries: the assassination of Dutch film director Theo van Gogh in 2004; the Madrid train bombing in 2004; the London subway bombing in 2005; the social unrest in France in 2005; and the arrest of eighteen terrorism suspects in Canada in 2006. The involvement of Muslim immigrants – sometimes second- or third-generation – in those events added a cultural element to the picture, as the perpetrators were now perceived to have been driven by the nature and content of their faith, Islam. This seemingly subtle development had far-reaching implications for the issue of developing healthy inter-group relationships with Muslim immigrants; the idea arose that such relationships could not come about, simply because the teachings of Islam made Muslims either unwilling or unable to coexist peacefully with people of other religious backgrounds.

The addition of the above political and cultural elements to the older demographic realities has resulted in the emergence of new questions and debates surrounding the issue of Muslim immigration. The questions that have been raised revolve mostly around the status of Muslim immigrants in immigrant-receiving countries (although there is a broader version of this question that involves the general issue of non-Muslims’ relationship with Muslims, whether as majority or minority populations and, in the latter case, whether immigrant or national minorities). Some scholars are increasingly referring to this phenomenon as “The Muslim Question,” emphasizing its similarity to the much older issue of “The Jewish Question” (see, for example, Kazemipur 2009, 2014; Norton 2013).

The loudest voices in the debates about “The Muslim Question” have been, thus far, coming from commoners, pundits, and politicians, all with a strong flavour of social or political conservatism. The bulk of the contributions have also been European in origin and content, but hastily borrowed in North America in the post-9/11 era. Some of these voices come with a clear anti-Muslim tone, well captured in words and phrases such as “Eurabia,” “the Muslim tide,” “Islamophobia,” “Euro-Islam,” and so on, all terms in wide circulation these days. In environments with a dominant culture of political correctness, anti-Muslim sentiments have taken the shape of anti-multiculturalism views, so much so that, according to Norton (2013, 46), in these debates, “‘multiculturalism’ means ‘Islam,’” and according to Kymlicka (2005), in many countries, the strength of opposition to diversity and multiculturalism has become proportional to the size of their Muslim immigrant populations. In other words, as Kalin (2011, 4) puts it, “[a]ttacks on multiculturalism have become indirect attacks on Islam and Muslims.” These debates are in full swing, and they get re-energized with every global mishap that involves Muslims, whether a Muslim country, or a group, or even an individual.

The fact that multiculturalism has been linked to the questions about the challenges in the way of the integration of Muslim immigrants living in Western liberal democracies has given those questions a Janus-faced nature. On the one hand it is related to the general and more global issue of the coexistence between Muslims and non-Muslims; on the other, it is related to the broader issue of immigrant integration. As a result of this double nature, the debates, discussions, and research on the issue of Muslim immigrants can be found in these two general areas of study. In the next section, the main ideas that have been suggested on this issue are briefly discussed. In the last section, an alternative perspective is proposed and is applied in the case of Canadian Muslims.

OVERVIEW OF THE EXISTING RESEARCH

Most of the existing views and studies on the integration of Muslim immigrants into Western liberal democracies have been informed by a misguided conceptualization of the problem, in which religion is viewed as the heart of the matter, and the behaviours and attitudes of Muslims are viewed as exclusively shaped by the contents of their religion and their holy scripts. As a result, in these views, if there is any solution to this problem it has to be found in the realm of Muslim faith and religion. This could be called a “culturalist” perspective, and has been expressed by a wide range of people, from politicians to academics.

On the one extreme of the “culturalist” spectrum, one can find those who believe that the attachment of Muslims to their beliefs is too strong, and the contents of those beliefs too rigid, to allow for any modification or moderation. Their suggestion, therefore, is to stop Muslim immigration altogether (see, for instance, Baldwin 2012, in a panel discussion on Fox News) and even deporting the already-arrived Muslim immigrants (see, for instance, Wilders 2011). A slightly more hopeful, but perhaps also more impractical, view considers the possibility of change, but in a very mechanical way. A prime example of this can be found in a report that, in the aftermath of 9/11, President George W. Bush sent personal messages to Islamic scholars asking them to “delete those verses and sayings that Bush sees as ‘inappropriate’ from the Quran” (quoted in Haddad 2011, 81). This is clearly based on the assumption that believers are passive recipients of everything that is written in their scripts; hence, the only way to change their behaviours is to change those writings. This completely removes the human agency from the dynamics of the development of religious identities.

A slightly more sophisticated example of this perspective is found in the ideas put forward by a number of atheist thinkers and activists, such as Sam Harris, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Richard Dawkins. These scholars and activists have been concerned more with Islam in general, and not the specific issue of Muslim immigrants; however, they see their arguments as applying to all Muslims, including immigrants. Their preoccupation with Islam is obvious, despite their claim that their arguments are against religion in general as the source of many social ills of the world today.

The most articulate expression of this preoccupation is found in the writings and speeches of Sam Harris. He argues, for instance, that his focus is on Islam because “[w]e are at war with Islam. It may not serve our immediate foreign policy objectives for our political leaders to openly acknowledge this fact, but it is unambiguously so” (Harris 2004, 109). One particularly troubling aspect of Harris’s views is that, unlike many others, he does not acknowledge any distinction between moderate and extremist Muslims in this regard: “It is not merely that we are at war with an otherwise peaceful religion that has been ‘hijacked’ by extremists. We are at war with precisely the vision of life that is prescribed to all Muslims in [the] Koran” (Harris 2004, 109). So, removing a few verses from the Quran, as George Bush had asked for, would not solve the problem for Sam Harris; rather, Muslims have to abandon their faith altogether.

A very popular view in the post-9/11 era is to call on Muslims to come up with “moderate” interpretations of Islam, or to promote moderate Muslims. This view can be found among many Western leaders (see, for instance, Albright 2006), but also among those who purportedly speak on behalf of the Muslim communities (see, for example, Ramadan 2002; Manji 2005; Ramadan 2005; Fatah 2010). For these thinkers, combining life in non-Muslim societies and the Islamic faith is not only possible but also inevitable for large numbers of Muslims living in Western liberal democracies. The coinage of terms such as “Western Muslims” by Tariq Ramadan, for instance, is a manifestation of such inevitability.

Despite all their differences, the above views have one thing in common: they all find the source of the problem on the Muslim side of the equation, and consequently require or demand something to be done by Muslims to ameliorate the situation. There are those, however, who think that a big “misunderstanding” between Muslims and non-Muslims is at work; as a result, any effort in promoting dialogues between Muslims and people of other religious backgrounds would be a step in the direction of resolving that misunderstanding and the resultant tensions. Akbar Ahmed is one of such voices. In a recent work, A Journey into America, Ahmed (2010, 447) urges Muslim leaders to try to “improve their community’s self-image,” and to learn from the experiences of the Jewish and Mormon communities how “to balance their religious and American identities” (449). So, for people like Ahmed, to fix the problems that exist in their relationship with non-Muslim populations, Muslims need not revise the contents of their beliefs, but should rather launch a big public-relations campaign.

Shifting the burden of responsibility to the mainstream population and institutions of the host societies, and also switching from cultural to political, other scholars have argued for the need to “recognize” and accommodate the minorities (see, for example, Taylor 1992; Kymlicka 1996, 2007, 2009; McGown 1999; Modood 2007). While these thinkers have argued in general terms about all ethnic and cultural minorities, and not specifically about Muslims, the issue of Muslims has frequently shown up in their writings and speeches.

The main problem with the above attempts at theorization is their heavy preoccupation with culture. In viewing the cultural realm as the sole locus of both the problem and the solutions, all these perspectives turn a complex and multidimensional issue into a relatively simple and univariate one. To varying degrees, they commit the classic fallacies of essentialism, reductionism, and intellectualism, by assuming or implying that Muslims are inherently defined by their religion, that their actions and behaviours are determined only by their religion, and that emotions and feelings do not play a major role in this process. As well, these views mostly focus on macro forces and, as a consequence, ignore the influence of the micro daily interactions in the economic and social realms.

In the following section, I propose an alternative conceptual framework that is relational – i.e., the outcome of inter-group relationships depends on the nature of interactions between groups – and multidimensional, treating the integration of immigrant and minority groups as integration into four different realms. I will then apply this perspective in the case of Muslims in Canada, to show how it can result in a sharper and more precise understanding of problem areas, which would allow for a sharper direction of policy interventions. A focus on Canada is partly due to the fact that in the debates on this issue, there is little to no discussion of a Canadian context. For some, this may serve as a confirmation for the absence of the “Muslim Question” in Canada. While this could be valid for the moment, and particularly in comparison to the situation in Europe and even in the United States, there are signs that point to a potentially worrisome future, and hence deserve closer attention.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

The guiding principle of the conceptual framework proposed here is that a better understanding of the nature and the future of the relationship between Muslim immigrants and host societies requires a shift of attention from cultural to structural elements, and from a deterministic to a relational perspective. A “culturalist” approach gives too much weight to cultural orientations in shaping one’s attitudes, behaviours, and position in society; it also treats those orientations as fixed. So, not only does such an approach not explain the current state of affairs, it also sees the situation as unchangeable. A “structural” approach, however, adds much more to the picture, by bringing in economic, political, and social elements. A “relational” approach allows for more flexibility and change, given its premise that the current state of affairs is the outcome of a history of interactions between individuals and groups.

Based on these fundamental principles, I would suggest here that a more realistic and thorough understanding of the state of the relationship between Muslims and mainstream populations in immigrant-receiving countries requires the breakdown of this relationship into four different domains: (a) public institutions; (b) the popular media; (c) the economic arena; and (d) social / communal space. Depending on the nature of the relationship between the two groups in these four domains, one could expect a more positive or negative, healthy or unhealthy, normal or problematic situation.

This is not an entirely new conceptual framework, as its individual components have been around, and studied, for quite some time. The functioning of public institutions has been of interest to political philosophers; media content has been studied by scholars in the field of communication; the impact of economics on inter-group sentiments has been addressed by sociologists; and the interplay of social interactions and attitudinal tendencies has been a part of a long research tradition in social psychology. What is suggested and highlighted here is the need to put these four elements together and to study all of them simultaneously. This, as mentioned earlier, will have a better potential to identify the exact problematic areas, an important prerequisite for sharper and more effective targeting of policy interventions. With these four axes in mind, I will now turn to a discussion of how Canadian Muslims fare in this multi-dimensional space.

Public Institutional Space

The treatment of Muslims in and by Canadian public institutions does not seem to be particularly worrisome. This might come as a surprise to many Canadian Muslim activists, who can quickly refer to many problems that Muslims have with those public institutions. My argument is not that there is nothing to worry about, but that there are few to no major built-in biases against Muslims in the mandates and the structures of such institutions; in this way, these institutions do not block the full integration of Muslims into Canadian society. To better appreciate this position, one could compare, for instance, the ways in which the public education system works in Canada versus in a country such as France. While in France, it is illegal for Muslim women to wear their Islamic dress at school, no such laws exist in Canada. As a result, Muslim women in the former country have to choose between their faith and their education; they are able to pursue their education in Canada without having to make such a difficult decision. Another example is the great difficulty Muslims face in a country such as Germany in acquiring citizenship there.

An informed reader could quickly point to several issues in which the difficulties experienced by Muslims involved a confrontation with Canadian public institutions. This list includes the cases of Maher Arar and Omar Khadr (both in the post-9/11 years), the Sharia law controversy in Ontario (in 2005–06), the debates around “reasonable accommodation” in Quebec (in 2007), and the issue of the Quebec Charter of Values (2013–14). But, one should keep in mind that the relative health of an institutional space should be measured not by the presence or absence of such problems, but by whether or not they have originated from built-in systemic biases in the public institutions, and also by the ways in which those institutions have responded to the problems. In these four cases, either the problem was initially created by entities other than the public institutions (such as the mass media), or those institutions responded in neutral and / or constructive ways.

The negative role played by the Canadian security institutions in the deportation of Maher Arar to Syria and his subsequent torture there has been discussed widely. The finale of this saga, however, restored part of the credibility that those institutions had lost in the process. The final settlement of the issue, including the offering of an apology and the payment of compensation by the Canadian government, showed the capacity of the institutions to correct their wrongdoings. The case of Omar Khadr, the Canadian adolescent who was doing time in the American Guantanamo Bay prison, did eventually reach a more reasonable settlement when he was extradited to Canada to spend the rest of his term in a Canadian jail, and later released on bail. In both these cases, the public institutions were able to correct some of their prior failures, a sign of the absence of a strong built-in systemic resistance to ameliorating the problems.

In the case of Ontario’s Sharia law controversy, the law that had initially made possible the formation of Sharia-based tribunals was eventually cancelled, but for all faith communities, not just for Muslims. The controversy that resulted in this cancellation was mostly a media artifact, which happened between the two institutional responses: the initial facilitating of the formation of the tribunal for Muslims, and the eventual cancellation of the law for all faith communities. Whatever one’s judgement about the un / desirability of those responses, one could not help noticing that their nature oscillated between positive and neutral, and not negative.

The Quebec mini-crises over the issues of “reasonable accommodation” and the “Charter of Values” (with its precedent, the “Herouxville Town Charter”) are harder to fit into the above description, as the influences of public institutions were evident in at least two of these cases – the provincial government in the case of the “Charter of Values,” and some municipal governments in the case of the Herouxville Town Charter. This partly reflects the different sociopolitical realities in the province of Quebec, which has been entangled in a separation and sovereignty movement for the past few decades and thus operates with a heightened sense of identity politics. Both these forces have negatively affected the relationship between the Francophone majority and the ethnic minorities. The emphasis on maintaining the secular nature of the state, however, has brought the public institutions onto a direct confrontational course with religious minorities in general, and with Muslims in particular. Yet, even then, the outcomes of each of those mini-crises indicate that things are not forcefully settled in the province one way or another, nor are the public institutions unified behind exclusivist measures that erupt from time to time. The quiet after the “reasonable accommodation” controversy, the small number of municipalities that joined in the Herouxville Town Charter move, and the defeat of the political party whose campaign was centred on the “Charter of Values” point to this state of flux in Quebec.

The above argument will be better appreciated when Canada’s institutional treatment of Muslims is compared with that of its neighbour to the south. The various types of restrictions on immigrants of Muslim and / or Arab backgrounds in the United States in the post- 9/11 era have been widely discussed in different forums. The list includes proposals, measures, and laws to limit the granting of student visas to applicants from the Middle East, to curb immigration of Muslims to the country, and to give the various law enforcement institutions authority to increase their surveillance of Muslim communities, to easily arrest those of Muslim / Arab backgrounds, and, finally, to deport them to their countries of origin with relative ease and with full authority. While many have become aware of such measures in the aftermath of 9/11, the history of practices like this does not start with 11 September. There were indeed similar, and sometimes even harsher, measures and / or proposals long before that.

Haddad (2011) has provided a detailed account of some of the harsh and negative treatment of Muslims by American institutions. According to Haddad, examples of such measures could be traced back to the 1970s, and were implemented under both Republican and Democrat administrations. In 1972, for instance, “the Nixon administration formed a special committee to restrict Arab immigration to the United States” (69). But the most shocking measure of all was a plan by the American government in the late 1970s, revealed through the Freedom of Information Act, wherein it “was considering preparing two military compounds in the South for the possible internment of Arabs and Iranians living in the United States” (70). Another symbolically significant development along this line was an act signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1996, which “gave the American government the right to incarcerate Arab-Americans without evidence” (Haddad 2011, 70). The presence of such measures both before and after 9/11 is an indicator of the presence of an institutional environment in the US that is not too Muslim-friendly – so much so that, in his Journey into America, Akbar Ahmed (2010, 72) concludes his observations of Muslims all over the United States by saying that “American pluralism, which had initially attracted Muslims to this country, now treats them with distaste and indifference.”

Comparing the above descriptions of the American and Canadian institutional responses to various issues related to Muslims points to a drastic difference in these two institutional environments. While the former reveals clear signs of an anti-Muslim bias, the latter has not shown such a tendency. An interesting example of this can be found in the contents of a 2012 hearing by the Canadian Parliament’s Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, to which political scientist Salim Mansur was invited for a discussion on the issue of immigration from Muslim countries (for details of the exchange, see Parliament of Canada 2012). The interesting pattern in the discussions of this meeting was that while Salim Mansur, himself a committed Muslim, was arguing for restrictions on immigration from Muslim countries and was pointing to the challenges this might cause for Canadian democracy, most of the members of the parliamentary committee were questioning and criticizing his arguments. If nothing else, this goes to show, at least, the absence of a strong anti-Muslim bias in the legislative body.

The above should of course not be taken as suggesting the absence of any unfair treatment of Muslims by Canadian institutions. What it means is that such treatment is more a product of the decisions by individuals working within those institutions, rather than of the structures and mandates of the institutions themselves. The presence of a healthy institutional environment is a necessary and very significant first step towards creating a more inclusive social environment, but for such an environment to come about, other components have to be in place as well. One such component is fair representation in the popular media.

Media

The increase in the anti-Muslim content of the popular media, particularly after 9/11, is a known fact. There is a plethora of studies pointing to the various aspects of how Muslims are currently portrayed in the media, and to the ways in which such images are linked to broader narratives. In his Islamic Peril, for instance, Karim (2010, 301–2) argues that the dominant discourses in the Western media portray Muslims as the Other, the enemy, against whom a nationbuilding project can be carried out. This, according to Karim, has come to fill the vacuum created by the collapse of the Communist bloc and the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Jasmin Jiwani (2003) discusses the presence of a racial structure of inequality that has created a context within which the Muslim issues are understood and discussed. Razack (2006) also argues that the images of Muslims in the Western media have to do with a grand narrative related to a Western empire-building project.

The presence of such anti-Muslim images and narratives in the media and the influence they exert on the lives of North American Muslims are not hard to detect. During the past decade, in the United States, such content has been constantly broadcast by, among others, Fox News, a cable television channel with a clear conservative Christian and anti-Muslim reputation. In Canada, the content of the two biggest controversies of the decade that involved Muslims – the Sharia law debates in Ontario in 2005–06, and the “reasonable accommodation crisis” in Quebec in 2007 – was heavily influenced by the media. In the two Canadian cases, the media were very influential in the initial emergence of those controversies, but also in the ways in which they were handled and concluded.

A great complicating factor, however, is at work here. Nowhere has the globalization of the world been more actualized than in the way in which the popular media currently function. Rarely can we find a local population that is exposed to and influenced by only its local media. This means that there is a high possibility that the attitudes and behaviours of a particular group living in a particular area are influenced by media content generated and reported elsewhere, and for an entirely different audience. An example of this influence on the behaviour of Muslims could be found in their reactions to things such as the Salman Rushdie affair, the Danish cartoons, and the film The Innocence of Muslims, none of which were generated where the harshest and the most extreme Muslim reactions surfaced. In exactly the same way, it is possible for non-Muslims to treat Muslims harshly and unfairly only because of the influence of the media content generated in an entirely different context and for an entirely different audience. Given this complication, it is difficult to convincingly trace a particular behaviour to particular media content. It is also difficult to gauge the impact of the “purely Canadian” content of the “exclusively Canadian” media on the status of “Canadian Muslims.” In other words, it is extremely hard to isolate the “Canadian” element in all these components.

Notwithstanding the above complexity, some anecdotal information points to a generally healthy environment in the ways in which Muslims are portrayed in Canadian media. One example of this could be found in the discussions during a parliamentary hearing on this issue, which was organized in 2004 by Canada’s Senate Committee on Transport and Communications (see Parliament of Canada 2004). In this meeting, where some of the executives of a Canada-wide Muslim organization called the Council on American- Islamic Relations Canada were present, the general feeling was that the Canadian media were not on the kind of anti-Muslim path that characterizes some other industrial countries. Sheema Khan, the chair of this Council, for instance, when asked about differences between American and Canadian media outlets, compares them on the issues related to Muslims:

[T]he American media is very wide. You have one end of the spectrum, with the Fox News network, all the way to the other end, for example, the New York Times. In Canada, there seems to be much less ideology in certain classes of the news media. We have found, though, in our studies that CanWest outlets do present a view which is, at times, not thorough or not complete in terms of issues affecting Muslims in Canada and throughout the world. (Parliament of Canada 2004, 1, 36)

In his testimony in the same meeting, Riad Salooji, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations Canada, also points to the more friendly nature of the Canadian media with regards to Muslims: “In terms of the media themes, there has been a great deal of space given to Canadian Muslims after 9/11 to narrate how they felt about the events of 11 September. Space was given also to allow Muslims to express their own lived reality of what it is like to be a Canadian Muslim and how they cope with anti-discrimination and racial profiling” (Parliament of Canada 2004, 1, 34).

While pointing to the presence of some unsympathetic views towards Muslims in the media outlets associated with CanWest – the National Post, Global, CanWest, and the Ottawa Citizen – he also argues that the situation in Canada is very different from that in the United States: “The American media is much more unsympathetic. The terrain in Canada is much more tolerant and open, and we have not found the obstacles and prejudices that CAIR has in the United States” (Parliament of Canada 2004, 1, 40).

In general, it might be safe to argue that, as in the institutional domain, there is a difference in the ways in which Muslims are treated and portrayed in the American versus the Canadian media. While anti-Muslim elements could easily be detected in the former on a regular basis, such elements are not overtly or regularly presented in the latter. In the media domain, therefore, Canadian Muslims seem to fare much better than their American counterparts.

Economy

The economic performance of immigrants is probably one of the most important forces in influencing their attachment to their host societies (elsewhere the author has discussed this; see, for instance, Kazemipur and Nakhaie 2013; Kazemipur 2014). Such an impact is even more pronounced in countries where immigrants are admitted on the basis of their marketable skills and human capital endowments such as their educational credentials, training, language skills, and so on. A large proportion of immigrants to Canada belong to what the Canadian immigration system calls the “economic immigrant” class, including skilled workers and those with significant amounts of financial capital to invest. A reasonably good economic performance by immigrants selected for their economic potential is an indicator of a reasonably healthy situation; it is also a strong force in creating among immigrants a strong sense of attachment to their new homes.

The existing information on the economic performance of Muslims in the United States shows a dual structure, corresponding to a dual structure in the country’s Muslim population: the local Black Muslims and the immigrant Muslims. The various reports consistently show that while the former group lags behind the average population on most of the main economic performance indicators, the latter group scores significantly above the average. This includes their over-representation among those with higher education, betterpaying jobs, and professional occupations, and their under-representation among those with low income (Razack 2008).

Surprisingly enough, the economic performance of Muslim immigrants in Canada is nowhere near what is reported for their American counterparts. The latest reliable Canadian data from which to examine this are contained in the 2001 Canadian census, as the 2011 Canadian census data, known as the National Household Survey, are not as reliable or as easily comparable, given the changes introduced in the data collection procedures (for a detailed discussion of those changes, see Ramp and Harrison 2012). Based on the 2001 census data, Figure 7.1 reports the two most general but fundamental indicators of economic performance: employment and income. Reporting the average number of weeks worked and the average income earned in the previous year, Figure 7.1 shows that for both indicators, Protestants, Jews, and Catholics are the top three groups, and Muslims are the group at the bottom. On average, Muslims worked about thirty-seven weeks in the year 2000, which is about six to seven weeks less than the group with the highest score; this translates into about two months of unemployment for every Muslim. The average income of Muslims is about $20,000, which is about two-thirds of the income reported by Catholics and Protestants, and less than half of what is reported by Jews. The income reported by Muslims is also noticeably lower than those reported by other largely immigrant groups such as Orthodox Christians, Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhists, and other Eastern religions.

Figure 7.1 Average income and number of weeks worked in 2000, by religion

Source: Canadian Census 2001.

Figure 7.2 reports the poverty rates by religious background – that is, the percentage of each religious group that lives below the poverty line as measured by Statistics Canada’s Low Income Cut-Offs (LICOS). Muslims have the highest percentages. These numbers are reported for both immigrants and non-immigrants, so we can examine the extent to which the high rate of poverty among Muslims could be related to their immigration status. The high poverty rates of both immigrant and non-immigrant Muslims show that immigration status is not a factor here. It should also be noted that for both immigrant and non-immigrant Muslims, the poverty rates are incredibly high – ranging between 40 and 45 per cent.

Another piece of data, which shows the variation of poverty rates within the Muslim group, further confirms the argument that the higher poverty rate of Muslims is not particularly related to immigration. Figure 7.3 shows the comparative poverty rates of different generations of Muslim immigrants, as well as those of immigrants from different countries of origin. Figure 7.3 separates Muslims into those who were born outside Canada (the bars on the left) and those born inside the country (the bars on the right); the former group is then broken down into the main countries or regions from which Muslim immigrants have come, and the latter into various Canadian provinces with a sizeable Muslim population.

Figure 7.2 Poverty rate (% below LICOS), by religion and immigration status, 2001

Figure 7.3 shows that the poverty rates of Muslim immigrants vary between a minimum of about 20 per cent for those who were born in the United Kingdom, to more than 60 per cent for those born in Italy. All of the values in this range are significantly higher than the national poverty rate of Canada and also that of the non-immigrant portion of the population (around 15 per cent). The overwhelming majority of Muslims, however, come from three sources – Western Asia and the Middle East, India and Pakistan (listed as “Other Southern Asia” in Figure 7.3), and Eastern Africa – for whom the poverty rates are in the range of 30 to 50 per cent. These poverty rates are astonishingly high.

Perhaps more surprising are the poverty rates reported for those Muslims who were born inside Canada: that is, the second generation. Normally, such individuals should have significantly lower rates of poverty, due to their better command of the language and of Canadian culture, as well as their Canadian educational credentials. Figure 7.3 confirms that this is partially the case, as the rates on the right half of the graph (second generation) are generally lower than those on the left (first generation). However, even those lower rates are still in the range of 30 to 55 per cent, which is much higher than the Canadian national average. Among these, the highest rates are reported for Quebec and Ontario, the two major areas of concentration for Canadian Muslims.

Figure 7.3 Poverty rate (% below LICOS) of Muslims, by place of birth, 2001

The poverty rates reported above become particularly surprising when they are compared with the poverty rates of Muslims in several other immigrant-receiving countries (see, for instance, Goodstein 2009 and Johnston 2011). According to Kazemipur (2014, 123), “Pew Research Center (2007) has reported the differences in the percentage of Muslims with low income and the percentages for the general populations in five industrial countries. In all those countries Muslims have a higher poverty rate than the general population, but there are significant differences between the five countries: American Muslims have a poverty rate that is only 2 per cent higher than the general public, while for Muslims living in France, Germany, Britain, and Spain, this difference is in the magnitude of 18 per cent, 18 per cent, 22 per cent, and 23 per cent, respectively. This figure for Canada, which had a poverty rate of around 15 per cent (in 2006) for its nonimmigrant population, is in the order of about 25 to 30 per cent; a gap that is higher than all the other five countries included in the report by Pew Research Center.”

Some other aspects of the unexpected nature of the experiences of Muslims in Canada are captured by other data. One such data set has come from the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada (LSIC), an extremely rich set of data that is based on surveys of about 7,700 immigrants who arrived in Canada in the year 2002 and were available to be surveyed at three points in time: six months, two years, and four years after their arrival. Given the longitudinal nature of these data, it is possible to have a glimpse into the experiences of Muslim immigrants in their first four years in Canada, a period that is so crucial in shaping their attitudes towards Canada in the long run.

The income profile of immigrants included in the LSIC survey is in tandem with the picture given earlier. Figure 7.4 reports the average incomes of the respondents belonging to seven different religious groupings: Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox, Jews, Muslims, Eastern religions, and those of “no religion.” As the graph shows, the lowest income is reported by Muslims, in all three waves. Not only that, but with longer stays in Canada, the gap in the average income of Muslims versus that of all other groups widens. It is important to note that this difference exists even when many other relevant variables are controlled for: all the respondents are first-generation immigrants; all have arrived in the same year; and all have been surveyed several times during their first four years in Canada. The resultant pattern is therefore highly reliable.

Comparing the data on the economic performance of Muslim immigrants in Canada and the United States seems to show a great disadvantage experienced by Canadian Muslims. This is a particularly alarming signal for Canada, but it is also a very curious phenomenon, given that in both countries, the human capital profiles of Muslim immigrants are far richer than those of both the native-born and other immigrant groups. It is curious also because of the fact that of all the variables that normally influence the economic performance of immigrants, including education, language skills, prior work experiences, age, gender, and immigrant class, none seems to explain the particularly disadvantaged status of Muslims in the Canadian economy (for more details on this, see Kazemipur 2014).

Figure 7.4 Mean income by religion and time

Source: Statistics Canada, “Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada” (2005).

The source of the curiously disadvantaged position of Muslims in the Canadian economy may have to be sought in areas other than the economy itself. As research in the fields of social economy and network analysis has long shown, the economic machinery operates on the basis of not only technical components, but also social elements. In other words, the economic outcomes, including the economic performance of individuals and groups, could be fully explained when both sets of purely economic and social factors are taken into account. Given this dual nature of the economic domain, it is perfectly legitimate to expect that the nature of the social relationship between native-born Canadians and Muslim immigrants could potentially influence the economic performance of Muslims in Canada. Hence, to arrive at a more thorough picture, it might be useful to examine the nature of the social relationships between Muslim immigrants and native-born Canadians, particularly those with greater potential to affect the economic domain.

Social

Of the four dimensions mentioned here, measuring a group’s integration into social space is probably the most difficult task of all. This is mostly due to the relatively subtle and invisible nature of social dynamics, which get further suppressed in an environment of “political correctness.” Yet, the available data adequately point to the presence of a potentially problematic situation for Muslims in Canada.

Discomfort and feelings of unease towards a minority group, in most cases, translate into discriminatory behaviours towards that group. A survey conducted by Environics in 2006 confirms the presence of such behaviours towards Muslims in Canada. In response to a question on their level of concern about the occurrence of discrimination against Muslims in Canada, as Figure 7.5 illustrates, about 65 per cent of Canadian Muslims have stated that they are either “somewhat” or “very” worried. This is alarmingly high, given the absence of any major negative event (like 9/11) in the country that involved Muslims, and also given the relative health of the Canadian economy at a time when most other countries were struggling economically. The relatively high level of concern about discrimination against Muslims in such normal conditions is cause for pause, to say the least.

But one may argue that self-reported feelings on discrimination by the potential victims may not be the most reliable indicator for the presence of discrimination, given the possibility of over-reporting. It is therefore always prudent to check such reports against those coming from segments of population less directly affected and therefore less biased – in this case, native-born Canadians. Figure 7.6 reports just that – i.e., the distribution of the answers of the native-born Canadians to the question of how often they think Muslims are subjected to discrimination in Canada. Interestingly enough, about 75 per cent of Canadians think that Muslims are either “occasionally” or “often” subjected to discrimination in today’s Canadian society. Comparing this number with those reported by Muslims themselves, and assuming that the top two categories mean the same thing despite their different wordings, one can see that a higher proportion of Canadians than Muslims themselves acknowledge the existence of discrimination against Muslims; the margin is about ten percentage points. The fact that Canadians’ views on the frequency of discrimination against Muslims are so close to the views expressed by Muslims themselves serves as a partial and indirect confirmation about the magnitude and seriousness of the issue, and indicates that what Muslims feel is not merely an excuse for their possible failures in other areas.

Figure 7.5 “Muslims: How worried are you about discrimination against Muslims living in Canada?”

Source: Environics 2006.

Figure 7.6 “Canadians: How often do you think Muslims are subjects of discrimination in Canadian society today?”

Source: Environics 2006.

The American data show that the level of concern over discrimination is equally high among Muslims living in the United States. In response to a question on “the most important problem facing US Muslims,” asked in a survey by Pew Research Group (2007), American Muslims report the highest percentages for things such as discrimination, racism, prejudice, being viewed as terrorists, ignorance about Islam, stereotyping, and negative media portrayals, with a total combined percentage of 67 per cent.

WRAP-UP AND IMPLICATIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

In this chapter, an attempt was made to situate the debates about the integration of Canada’s Muslim immigrants within a larger context, influenced by a relational approach and with emphasis on four domains: institutional, media, economic, and social. While the focus was on Canada, some comparisons were also made with the situation in the United States.

The adoption of this approach yielded some interesting nuances. First, compared to the United States, the institutional domain in Canada is much more favourable towards Muslims. Second, Muslims are treated much better in the Canadian media than the American media; however, the positive impact of this better treatment is limited, given the fairly globalized nature of the popular media today and the easy access and exposure of local populations to content generated in other, more distant environments. Third, while a large proportion of Muslim immigrants in Canada are economically disadvantaged, and are seriously worried about their financial status in Canada, only 2 per cent of American Muslims consider that as their most serious problem. This significant disadvantage of Canadian Muslims in the economic domain is a curious phenomenon that could not be easily explained by a reference to human capital or other purely economic factors. Fourth, Muslim immigrants in both Canada and the US consider discrimination against Muslims to be a prevalent practice and a serious concern. While Muslim immigrants in the United States also cited other negative things such as racism and negative imagery of Muslims, their Canadian counterparts seem to be less concerned on these fronts. These findings draw a much more complicated picture than the one resulting from the previously mentioned culture-based analyses.

Based on these findings, one could suggest several different directions in which to concentrate future policy and academic research and thinking. From the standpoint of policy-making processes and also community activism, the heavy emphasis currently put on correcting the institutional practices in Canada seems to be out of place. Similarly, efforts to show media biases against Muslims seem to be futile and misguided. Instead, more attention should be paid to the situation of Muslims in the Canadian economy and in the community. Even there, some significant fine-tuning is in order.

First, more research should be done on the odd combination of a low level of concern about racism and a high level of concern about discrimination expressed by Canadian Muslim immigrants. A disconnect seems to exist in Canada between the expression of positive attitudes and gestures by the native-born towards Muslims, on the one hand, and the presence of discrimination against them, on the other. One possibility is that the official adoption of a multiculturalism policy in Canada and the strong adherence to a culture of “political correctness” have dampened the expression of, or masked the presence of, negative attitudes towards Muslims in Canada; and such negative attitudes surface only when and where an action needs to be taken, resulting in the prevalence of discriminatory practices against Muslims. Ironing out these complexities should be a priority for future research in this area.

Second, more studies are needed on the odd combination of the presence of a high degree of concern about discrimination and racism and a low level of concern about financial and economic problems among Muslim immigrants in the United States, in contrast to the seriousness of the economic problems faced by Muslims in Canada. To what extent could this be a reflection of the size of the economies of the two countries, and the magnitude of the opportunities available to Muslim immigrants in each country? In other words, could it be argued that the negative attitudes towards Muslims in the United States do not result in the shrinkage of economic opportunities for Muslims simply because the American economy is large enough to offer ample opportunities to everyone? If this proves to be a tenable hypothesis, future research could attempt to test it by comparing the possible changes in the situation during economic booms and busts, and also by comparing different regions within the same country that have had different economic experiences.

Conducting additional studies in this area is a good research investment, given the consistent increase in the size of the Muslim population in both countries, and the continuation of controversies surrounding the integration of the Muslim minorities. It is also important because of the drastic differences in the experiences of Muslims in North America versus Europe – which seem to represent a tale of two Western Muslim populations. The reasons for, and factors behind, a relatively more smooth integration of Muslims in North America is of enormous importance for the rest of the world; but this still remains a poorly understood phenomenon. The timing is ripe for taking on the task.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Figures are reprinted with permission of the publisher from The Muslim Question in Canada by Abdolmohammad Kazemipur, ©University of British Columbia Press (2014). All rights reserved by the publisher. Also, the author would like to acknowledge the funding of the project by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the access to the master files of Statistics Canada through its Research Data Centre initiative.

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8

Comparing Immigrant Children in Canada and the United States: Similarities and Differences

Monica Boyd and Diana Worts

INTRODUCTION

International migration continues to have a profound impact today in Canada and in the United States of America. Migration is a major cause of population growth, accounting for slightly less than half of United States growth and over two-thirds of Canadian growth at the start of the millennium (Barbieri and Ouellette 2012, tables A2 and A3). Migration also affects the foreign-born share of national populations. In 2011, over forty million foreign-born persons resided in the United States, representing 13 per cent of its population; another 6.8 million foreign-born persons lived in Canada, constituting 21 per cent of its population (Gryn and Gambino 2013; Statistics Canada 2013). Migration additionally is an important source of ethnic and racial diversity, producing large Hispanic and Asian populations in the United States and a sizable Asian population in Canada.

Another impact is the generational legacy of migration. Most immigrants enter as adults, and either bring children with them or have children after arrival. Thus, interest in these offspring accompanies the rising numbers of migrants and the altered source countries that resulted from changed immigration policies in 1962, 1967, and 1975 (enacted in 1978) for Canada and in 1965 for the United States (Boyd 1976; Boyd and Alboim 2012). Terms referring to these children include immigrant children, immigrant youth, children of immigrants, or children in immigrant families (for examples, see CCSD 2002; Han 2006; Hernandez 2004; Hernandez et al. 2009; Passel 2011; UNICEF Innocenti Insight 2009). These labels include children who are foreign-born with foreign-born parents (the 1.5 generation) and those who have foreign-born parents but who themselves are born in Canada or the United States (the second generation).[1]

Growing research now exists on the scholastic achievements, identities, and to a lesser extent (because of their young ages) young adult transitions of children of immigrants and their labour-market characteristics. As well, a core area of research also focuses on the family contexts of young children, primarily using census data. Two rationales drive this focus: demographic and childhood development concerns. Demographically, today one-third of all children under age fifteen in Canada have one, and usually two, foreign-born parents; in the United States, one in four children under age fifteen have one or two foreign-born parents. These percentages in turn reinforce the attention paid to family and socio-demographic settings and the implications of these environments. During the 1990s and the first decade of the new millennium, human development and sociological research showed that the social, emotional, cognitive, and scholastic achievements of children were strongly influenced by their family and socio-demographic contexts.

Census-based studies in the United States and other countries compare and contrast the family and demographic characteristics of immigrant children to the native-born,[2] indicating proximal factors that may put the well-being of the former at risk. This chapter contributes to this literature by providing a comparative analysis of family data on children living in Canada and the United States around 2006. The results demonstrate American-Canadian similarities in the characteristics of children in immigrant families, along with some notable differences.

FAMILY AND DEMOGRAPHIC FACTORS

Why focus on family contexts; what do recent studies suggest; and what are the implications for children of immigrants? First, the rationales for research on children in immigrant families rest on child development frameworks used in psychology and on sociological approaches to social stratification. In both disciplines, the focus is on the way that family characteristics and dynamics influence the development of children and their transition into adulthood and beyond. In psychology, the pioneering work of Urie Bronfenbrenner (2001; see also Gabriel, Doiron, Arias de Sanchez, and Wartman 2010) stipulated that family context shaped emotional, cognitive, and social development, along with other interconnecting environments, such as school, community, and society. For sociologists, families are part of a supportive matrix that enables children to access societal resources – to stay in school, to obtain high school or university degrees, to have adequate housing, and to experience good health. Twentieth-century sociologist Max Weber calls these “life chances,” viewing them as central elements of economic classes and productive roles (Breen 2005; Tumin 1967, 56–66). Status attainment research in sociology emphasizes the intergenerational transmission of family background, especially the relationship between family structure, parental education and occupation, siblings, and locational context for the educational and occupational outcomes of offspring.

With respect to the second and third questions, North American research on children generally and on immigrant children more specifically highlights the following family-related factors as affecting children: family structure, number of siblings, language use in the home, parental education, parental employment, level of income (with particular emphasis on low-income, or poor, families), whether or not the home is owned, and the degree of crowding in the home.[3] Many of these factors are interrelated. In this chapter, family structure refers to the presence or absence of two parents. Previous research confirms that children living with both biological parents are less likely to experience cognitive, emotional, and social problems that have long-term consequences for well-being (Landale, Thomas, and Van Hook 2001). Two-parent families are less likely to be poor than single-parent families, in part because the likelihood of two adult earners is stronger and because single parents disproportionately are women seeking livelihoods in sex-stratified societies where women, on average, are paid less than men.[4] On the whole, immigrant children are less likely than children in native-born families to live in single-parent families, although racial and ethnic variations exist (Capps and Fortuny 2006; Hernandez 2004; Hernandez, Macartney, and Blanchard 2010).

To date, research also finds that children in immigrant families have more siblings than those in native-born families. Number of siblings is associated with higher parental fertility and is inversely related to parental education, and thus indirectly related to the financial well-being of families. Status attainment research finds that many characteristics of the family of origin, including number of siblings, are factors influencing educational outcomes and subsequent occupational attainments. A large number of siblings can dilute potential investment in a specific child or reduce the resources available for higher education or specialized employment training (Boyd 2009; Taubman and Behrman 1986).

Fluency in the major or official language(s) of a society is essential for many tasks of daily living: obtaining information, interacting with others, developing networks, and (for adults) finding employment and obtaining social services where needed. An assessment of six projects on the needs of immigrant youth in Ontario finds language difficulties to be pervasive challenges for youth in education, employment, health, and well-being (Kilbride et al. n.d.). In addition to the language skills of individual children and youth, the context of language use in the home is particularly salient for early childhood development; a US study finds that children with linguistically isolated foreign-born mothers have the lowest cognitive development at age twenty-four months (Glick et al. 2012). Other studies show that young immigrant children who have just started school do less well than their native-born counterparts on vocabulary tests when the host country language is not spoken at home (Washbrook, Waldfogel, Bradbury, Corak, and Ghanghro 2012), although disadvantages in math and reading scores may equalize by the teenage years (Worswick 2004). Foreign-born children entering school in the middle years may be more scholastically disadvantaged. One study in Alberta found that English as a Second Language (ESL) students who entered grade nine as ESL beginners between 1989 and 1997 had a dropout rate of 90 per cent (Crowe 2006).

Even though immigrant children learn the destination country language(s), they may do so in the context of linguistically isolated homes, defined in US census data as households where all adults speak a non-English language at home and all cannot speak English “very well” (Siegel, Martin, and Bruno 2001). In addition to starting school with less developed English language skills, such children face additional demands. For example, they may be thrust into the role of linguistic intermediaries: on the one hand, their skills may help their families find needed services and information; on the other hand, traditional parent-child roles and authority may be undermined, leading to lower self-esteem and failure in school (CCSD 2000; Glick 2010; Hernandez et al. 2010).

Language fluency of parents is important beyond the fact that parents stimulate children’s language learning in the early years. Little or no fluency in the destination country language(s) means that parents face barriers to involvement in their children’s schools and with social service providers (Glick 2010). Host country language skills enhance the capacity of parents to find employment commensurate with their education and training, to learn quickly about their new country, and to interact directly with elementary and secondary educational systems. Language is also a marker for other factors that offer a better environment for children. Washbrook et al. (2012) found that in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, immigrant parents who spoke English (and / or French in Canada) had higher educational qualifications, had the same or even higher average incomes, and were less likely to be single parents, compared to the native-born.

Parental socio-economic status, usually measured as educational attainments and economic characteristics, affects the emotional and social development of children and adolescents (Kilbride et al. n.d.; To et al. 2004). As noted previously, parental education is highly associated with the economic resources available to children (Hernandez et al. 2010) because it influences parents’ propensities to be in the labour force, the jobs they hold, and their earnings levels. In the United States, children of immigrants are less likely than children with native-born parents to have mothers in the labour force; they also are more likely to live in lower-income homes (Capps and Fortuny 2006; Hernandez et al. 2010; for Canada, see CCSD 2000). Poverty is especially characteristic of the families of immigrant children. A recent US study cites a poverty rate of 23 per cent among the children of immigrants, compared with 18 per cent among the children of the native-born (Passel 2011).

Poverty has pernicious effects on the well-being of children. From a human development perspective, poverty (and low income) creates chaos in children’s lives by making it difficult to maintain structured and predictable daily routines and impeding the development of socio-emotional functioning and learning through the lack of regular, sustained, and increasingly complex interactions (Davis et al. 2005; Kilbride et al. n.d.). Compared to those living in financially better-off families, children living in poor families are exposed to more family violence and separations from family members; they have fewer supports from social service providers, less responsive and more authoritarian parents, less parental involvement in children’s school activities, and a higher risk of living in poor neighbourhoods with low-income schools and less-qualified teachers (Evans 2004). In addition, they are at greater risk of having poor health outcomes, lower academic achievements, and lower earnings when they reach adulthood (Landale et al. 2011). Because family structure and poverty are often linked, poor children are more likely to live in single-parent households, thus risking greater family stress, inadequate parental supervision, and multiple family transitions or moves. That being said, however, because children in immigrant families are more likely than those in native-born families to have two parents present, these children may be more protected from certain problems associated with poverty (Landale et al. 2011).

Housing conditions contribute to the “chaos” that can create difficulty in children’s lives and influence their physical and mental wellbeing (Jackson and Roberts 2001). Home ownership reflects access to potentially higher-quality housing; it also reflects a family commitment to the local neighbourhood and community (Hernandez et al. 2010). Low-quality housing is associated with pollutants and high levels of noise; such housing is often rented. Poor-quality housing is associated with high internal density that can make it difficult for children to find places to do homework (Hernandez et al. 2010), to experience quiet settings (Jackson and Roberts 2001), and to have regular routine interaction with others (Davis et al. 2005). US studies find that the children of immigrants are more likely to live in crowded housing, defined as more than one person per room (Capps and Fortuny 2006; Hernandez et al. 2010).

US scholars who compare family and housing characteristics for children in immigrant and native-born families frequently include additional demographic details, such as the age of children, their geographical locations, and their race and / or ethnic origins. Age indicates the stage of child development and the percentages likely to be attending school. Geography loosely captures the concentration or dispersion of groups, and in the case of US federal and state legislation, it indicates the (un)availability of specific social services, including hospital care and income security programs for migrant populations. Phenotypical characteristics, or the racial composition of immigrant children, frequently correlate with family structure, parental education, labour-force participation, and housing conditions, all of which affect the well-being of children; they may elicit prejudice and discrimination, reduce the opportunities of individuals to obtain societal resources, and mirror more pervasive social barriers that exist for adults.

CANADA AND THE US COMPARED: DATA SOURCES, MEASURES, AND FOCAL POPULATIONS

Beginning in the 1990s, Hernandez and his associates used census data to extensively document the association between family setting and child well-being in the United States (see Hernandez 2004; Hernandez et al. 2009; Hernandez, Macartney, and Blanchard 2010). Their findings reveal that on the one hand, children in immigrant families are more likely than children in native-born families to be living with two parents; on the other hand, parental education often is lower, mothers are less likely to be employed, and children are much more likely to live in linguistically isolated households, to live in rented rather than owned housing, to live in crowded accommodations, and to live in poverty. These profiles suggest that immigrant children – even those with two parents present – are more likely to live in settings that challenge their well-being and development. Further, race / ethnicity matters; non-White Hispanic, Mexican and other White Hispanic, Southeast Asian, and Black immigrant children are more likely than other immigrant children to be in family situations that may dampen child development and well-being. Subsequently the Hernandez et al. focus on indicators of well-being for immigrant children in the US was adopted by scholars in Australia, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the UK (UNICEF Innocenti Insight 2009).

Left unexplored is the question of whether or not US findings hold for Canada. Addressing this question requires a comparison of Canada and the United States at similar times. Canadian data are from the 2006 Canadian census housed at Statistics Canada Research Data Centres, the most recent census available for analysis outside Statistics Canada. The 2005, 2006, and 2007 American Community Surveys (ACS), available from the Minnesota Population Center (MPC), provide data on immigrant children in the United States. The ACS is an annual survey that replaced the long form of the United States Census starting in 2001; in order to obtain sufficient numbers for analysis, researchers frequently use several contiguous years.

The analysis focuses on children aged 0–14, linking children’s records with those of their parents. Three noteworthy differences exist between the children’s files from the two countries, reflecting inhouse variable construction at Statistics Canada, the United States Census Bureau, and the MPC. First, family membership is defined more inclusively in the US, as any group of persons with identifiable relationships by blood, marriage, or adoption, whereas Statistics Canada uses two family measures: the census family, which approximates a nuclear family, and the economic family, which is closer to the American definition (Statistics Canada 2010, 125, 132).

Second, definitions of poverty are country-specific. Consequently, poverty comparisons can be made between immigrant and nativeborn families within Canada or within the United States, but absolute levels cannot be compared across countries. In Canada, Statistics Canada does not use the terms “poverty” or “poverty levels”; instead, it constructs Low Income Cut-Offs (LICOS), which are income thresholds below which a family will likely devote a larger share of its income to the necessities of food, shelter, and clothing than the average family. Twenty per cent higher expenditures than the average are used to construct LICOS, which also take into account the size of the city, town, or place where respondents reside, and the size of the family. Two measures are available from census data: LICOS before taxes, which indicate if children reside in families where total income, including government transfer payments, is below specified LICOS for the economic family; and LICOS after taxes, which indicate low income levels after tax payments (Statistics Canada 2009). In the United States, poverty is measured by comparing pre-tax cash income against a threshold that is set at three times the cost of a minimum diet in 1963, updated annually for inflation using the Consumer Price Index, and adjusted for family size and composition and age of householder (Institute for Research on Poverty n.d.; US Census Bureau n.d.). Critics charge that this measure underestimates the extent of poverty and is flawed by not allowing thresholds to vary geographically. One common research- and policy-related response is to use thresholds that are higher than the official levels; thresholds are frequently defined at twice (or 200 per cent of) the official poverty threshold (Hernandez, Denton, and Macartney 2009). This chapter provides both measures: the official poverty threshold and levels that are twice that.

Third, questions on language use and proficiency are unique to each country. The American Community Survey asks, “Does this person speak a language other than English at home?” A second question follows an affirmative reply: “How well does this person speak English (very well, well, not well, not at all)?” Using these two questions, the US Bureau of the Census defines a household as linguistically isolated if all adults speak a language other than English and none speaks English “very well.” Adults are defined as age fourteen or older, thus identifying household members of high-school age and older (Siegel, Martin, and Bruno 2001). In Canada, the 2006 census questionnaire asks what language(s) respondents mostly use and regularly use in the home; no subsequent question exists on how well English or French is spoken. In this chapter, Canadian families are defined as linguistically isolated when all persons age fourteen and older do not use English and / or French either mostly or regularly in the home. Because of the country differences in language questions, the American “linguistic isolation” variable taps into use and proficiency, whereas the Canadian variable measures only usage.

The population of interest, children aged 0–14, is defined as all children living with one or more parent. At least one gay or lesbian parent is captured in the American Community Survey (D. Kristiansen, personal communication, 21 May 2013), and all gay or lesbian parents are present in the Canadian children’s file. However, the analysis excludes these parents when presenting parental characteristics because no information exists on how such individuals identify themselves in relationship to fathering or mothering roles. This study also excludes Aboriginal children who by virtue of their distinctive histories are of policy concern and have their own distinctive research needs. The Canadian census treats Aboriginal categories as distinct from other categories used to depict minorities that are visible by virtue of skin colour and other phenotypical characteristics. In order to parallel this, persons declaring themselves as American Indian or Alaskan Native (AIAN) either entirely or with another racial affiliation are removed from the US analysis.

In the United States a large number of immigrant children either are unauthorized migrants or live with one or more unauthorized parent. These children represent nearly one-third of children with immigrant parents and between 7 and 8 per cent of all children (Passel 2011; Yoshikawa and Kholoptsevea 2013). Since ACS respondents do not indicate their legal status, there is no way to identify these children or their parents except to recognize that certain origin groups, such as Mexican, are likely to contain large numbers of them. Undocumented immigration as a legacy of unskilled labour migration is not a current issue for Canada, which lacks a long border with a less economically developed country. But both countries have legal temporary residents, including refugee claimants, those with temporary work visas, and international students. In Canada, a census question permits distinguishing temporary residents from those with permanent residence status, but this is not possible with American data. As a result, the initial aggregated comparisons of Canada and the United States include children who are temporary residents. Following Passel (2011), children born in Puerto Rico and other US territories who live in the United States are treated as children living in native-born families.

CROSS-BORDER COMPARISONS

How do the two countries compare with respect to the characteristics of immigrant children and their families? This question is answered by examining demographic characteristics (size, geographical location, and generational composition), and indicators related to childhood development, including number of parents present, size of family, number of siblings, familial linguistic isolation, parental education, parental employment, housing, and household poverty. In terms of demographic characteristics, the Canadian population stands at slightly more than 10 per cent of the United States population. Accordingly, the number of children living in immigrant families in Canada is lower than in the United States (1.6 million versus 14 million). In both countries, the vast majority of these children are native-born (the second generation), and geographical concentration is high for immigrant children compared to residence patterns for children in native-born families (Table 8.1). Seven out of ten Canadian immigrant children live in the five Census Metropolitan Areas (CMAS) of Montreal, Toronto, Edmonton, Calgary, and Vancouver. Concentration in a few large cities is not as great in the United States, but nearly four out of ten immigrant children reside in five Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAS): New York City and North East New Jersey; Chicago; Dallas–Fort Worth, Texas; Houston–Brazoria, Texas; and Los Angeles–Long Beach (Table 8.1).

These concentrations translate into a predominance of immigrant children in select cities. Figure 8.1 presents the percentage of immigrant children for specific Census Metropolitan Areas (CMAS) and for Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAS). Over two-thirds of children aged 0–14 who live in Toronto reside in migrant families; in Vancouver, approximately six in ten children are immigrant children, as are approximately one in three in Montreal and Edmonton, and two in five in Calgary. In the United States, six out of ten children in the Los Angeles–Long Beach MSA are immigrant children, as are four out of ten in the MSAS of New York City–Northeast New Jersey and Houston–Brazoria, Texas. Nearly one-third of those in Chicago and over one-third in the Dallas–Fort Worth MSA are immigrant children.

Table 8.1: Characteristics of children age 0–14 living in immigrant and native-born families and characteristics of their families and parents, Canada and the United States of America

Source: Special tabulations produced for this chapter from the RDC 2006 Canadian census file and from the 2005–07 American Community Surveys.

Table 8.1 provides additional demographic, social, and economic information on immigrant and native-born children and their families in Canada and the United States. Children in Canadian families tend to be slightly older than those in American families; for those living in migrant families, this feature is consistent with the slightly lower percentages in Canada who are second-generation (see Table 8.1). In the United States, Passel (2011) notes that the percentage who are foreign-born (or the 1.5 generation) increases for immigrant children in the older age groups.

Canadian children are also living in smaller households with fewer siblings. However, compared with their native-born counterparts, immigrant children in both countries have higher percentages living in families with three siblings or more, and with five or more persons residing in the household. In both countries, much higher percentages are living in families where no persons aged fourteen and older use English and / or French mostly or regularly at home (Canada) or where English is not spoken well by any adults (United States).

Conventional immigration policy comparisons invariably contrast the Canadian emphasis on recruiting workers with the American focus on family reunification. Although very recent policy changes nuance these contrasts (see Boyd 2013), it is true that recent immigrants to Canada are well educated. As a result, immigrant children in Canada are more likely than immigrant children in the United States to have fathers and mothers with university degrees. Further, the percentages having university-educated parents are higher for immigrant children than native-born children in Canada, while the reverse holds for the United States. As well, fewer immigrant children live in lone-parent families, and the percentages are lowest for immigrant children in Canada (Table 8.1).

Among children aged 0–14, the percentages living in owned housing are higher in Canada than in the United States and the percentages living in overcrowded accommodations are lower. Nevertheless, earlier findings observed for the United States are confirmed: compared to their native-born counterparts, immigrant children in both countries have lower percentages living in owned accommodations, and they are more likely to be living in crowded conditions.

Figure 8.1 Percentage of all children ages 0–14 who are living in immigrant families for select areas, Canada (2006) and the United States (2005–07)

Economic well-being also varies. As shown in Table 8.1, the fathers of immigrant children are slightly more likely to be unemployed or not in the labour force than the fathers of native-born children. In both countries, higher percentages of mothers of immigrant children are unemployed or not in the labour force compared to mothers in native-born families; however, mothers have higher employment rates in Canada than the United States. As a result, the percentage of mothers of Canadian immigrant children who are employed is higher than that observed in the United States. But the risk of residing in a poor family remains. Although measures cannot be directly compared across countries, in both Canada and the United States, the percentages of immigrant children living in households defined as poor are much higher than observed for children of native-born parents.

CHILDREN AND RACE

Undoubtedly, national differences in immigration policy, modes of entry (undocumented, permanent resident, temporary), and categories of legal admission (economic, family reunification) help explain differences between Canadian and the United States in numbers of siblings, size of household, lone-parent levels, parental education, homeownership, and overcrowding. But migration histories and the racial-ethnic composition of Canada and the United States are other factors. Although both countries are described historically as “White-settler” societies (referring to European settlement), the United States is distinctive. First, the extensive reliance on slave labour in the southern states created a large Black population and a history of race relations that perpetuated Black disadvantage after the 1865 abolition of slavery. Second, contested borders with Mexico resulted in the midnineteenth-century acquisition of Texas, California, and other southwestern areas, but annexation did not stop migratory flows. Indeed, the end of the Bracero program in 1964, which was designed to supply unskilled Mexican workers on temporary contracts, was followed in the 1970s and 1980s by high levels of undocumented (unauthorized) flows of population from Mexico to the United States. Consequently, compared to Canada, Black and Mexican origin populations constitute a larger share of the overall American population. In addition, past migration flows from Cuba, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, and Guatemala, along with migration from Puerto Rico, have enlarged the Hispanic (Latino) populations.

In contrast, Canada has a smaller Black population, representing less than 3 per cent in the 2006 census, and only a small population from Latin America (the 2006 Canadian Census reports fewer than 50,000 permanent residents in Canada who were born in Mexico). Following immigration policy changes in the 1960s and 1970s, immigrants to Canada now primarily come from Asian countries, particularly South Asia, China, and the Philippines. In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, migration from Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Sri Lanka added to the Southeast Asian populations in both Canada and the United States.

As a result of these migration trends, the children in immigrant families are racially and ethnically diverse, although the composition differs for Canada and the United States. Table 8.2 shows the country-specific racial composition of immigrant children. The data derive from responses to the visible minority question in the 2006 Canadian census and to the race and Hispanic questions in the United States ACS; selection of categories for the United States is shaped by American research that combines information on Hispanic origins with information on race to distinguish between non-Hispanic White, White Hispanic, and Black Hispanic. (Multiple responses to the race question have been permitted since 2000 in the United States.) For Canada, data in Table 8.2 are for those immigrant children who are legal permanent residents, but such refinements are not possible for US data that include immigrant children (or their parents) who are temporary and / or unauthorized residents.

In Canada, almost all children (97 per cent) in native-born families are not visible minorities.[5] For the United States, seven out of ten (71 per cent) children in native-born families are non-Hispanic Whites; the smaller percentage reflects the larger population share of children in Black families and in Mexican White or other Hispanic families. However, this “majority White” composition for children in native-born families is reversed for children in immigrant families. Only two in ten immigrant children in the United States are non-Hispanic White; in Canada, four out of ten immigrant children are non-visible minorities (Table 8.2). Arabs and West Asians are considered “White” in classifications used by the United States; if children in these categories are added to the non-visible minority category for Canadian immigrant children, the non-visible minority population rises to 45 per cent of the total.

For immigrant children, the impacts of migration from Mexico and other Latin American regions are evident in the United States, where nearly one in five (22 per cent) immigrant children are Mexican White and nearly one third are other Hispanic, both White and non-White. In total, over half of the children residing in immigrant families in the US are enumerated as Hispanic. By way of contrast, in Canada, Latin Americans represent only 3 per cent of all immigrant children, while over one quarter are members of either the South Asian visible minority (17.4 per cent) or the Chinese visible minority (10.9 per cent).

Table 8.2 Children aged 0–14(a) living in immigrant and in Canadian- or USA-born families, by race and/or Hispanic status

Source: Special tabulations produced for this chapter from the RDC 2006 Canadian census file and from the 2005–07 American Community Surveys.

In his analysis of the 2000 US census, Hernandez (2004; also see UNICEF Innocenti Insight 2004) documents that “risk” factors for immigrant children vary by origin. Even though research demonstrates that immigrant children are remarkably resilient to factors that may negatively affect well-being, particularly mental health, and often over-excel in educational attainment relative to their parents (Fuligni 1998; Georgiades et al. 2011), some groups may face greater challenges because low socio-economic status, frequently associated with country of origin, means that these children grow up in linguistically isolated, lone-parent, crowded, and poor households and families (Han 2006).

Table 8.3 shows the prevalence of these four indicators for immigrant children by race and / or Hispanic status. (Arab and West Asian are included with White for Canada, so as to mirror the United States classification.) Although profiles could be individually composed for each racial and / or Hispanic group in Canada and the United States, for simplicity an average, or composite, measure is constructed to suggest which groups of minority immigrant children might be more challenged during their developmental years. This average, of course, is dependent on the components; some groups have a high average (and high ranking) because they have high percentages living in lone-parent families or because they are more likely to be living in linguistically isolated families or because their families are below poverty thresholds. “Type I” thresholds for poverty are used (see Table 8.3) because in Canada LICOS after taxes is the measure preferred by Statistics Canada, and the absolute poverty rate, discussed earlier, remains an official measure produced by the US Census Bureau.

Averages show that White immigrant children in both countries have the lowest averages of living in potentially problematic circumstances compared to children of other racial backgrounds. In Canada, the average indicator is highest for Korean, Black, Latin American, and Southeast Asian immigrant children, representing one in five immigrant children (18 per cent) age 0–14. The Korean rank reflects the large percentage of children living in families where no adult age fourteen and older is using English and / or French in the home, as well as the high percentage living in households below the LICO threshold after taxes (Table 8.3). A high percentage of Black children are also in households below the LICO poverty threshold; however, relative to other groups, only 6 per cent of Black children live in linguistically isolated homes. Their high composite average reflects the very high percentage (38 per cent) living in lone-parent families. Averages for Southeast Asian and Latin American children reflect all four factors – both groups have at least one in four living in linguistically isolated households and at least one in four living with lone parents. One-quarter of Southeast Asian children and nearly one-third (30 per cent) of Latin American children live in families where after-tax incomes are below Statistics Canada’s Low Income Cut-Offs.

Table 8.3 Select characteristics for children age 0–14 living in immigrant and native-born families in Canada and in the United States, by race and Hispanic status

Source: Special tabulations produced for this chapter from the RDC 2006 Canadian census file and from the 2005–07 American Community Surveys.

In the United States, Hispanic children are among the groups with high averages, or rankings, as are Black and Southeast Asian immigrant children. Mexican White children and non-White Hispanic children are especially at risk of growing up in circumstances that may negatively influence their social, emotional, and cognitive development. As shown in Table 8.3, they have high percentages living in linguistically isolated families, in overcrowded conditions, and in families that are below the absolute poverty line; between two-thirds to three quarters of these children are below poverty thresholds defined as twice the absolute poverty line. Over one-third of other Hispanic White children also live in linguistically isolated families where persons aged fourteen and older use a non-English language in the home and cannot speak English very well. Approximately one in three of these other Hispanic (non-Mexican) White children also are living in lone-parent families.

As is the case in Canada, Southeast Asian and Black immigrant children in the United States are also higher than other groups in their composite scores. Nearly 40 per cent of Southeast Asian children live in linguistically isolated families and the percentages living in lone-parent families are comparable to those observed for Mexican White children. As also found in Canada, a relatively lower percentage of Black immigrant children in the United States live in linguistically isolated settings, but over one-third of these children are living in lone-parent families. Approximately one-fifth of Southeast Asian and Black children are living in families with income below the absolute poverty threshold.

Combined, the population of Hispanic, Black, and Southeast Asian children in the United States represents two-thirds (64 per cent) of children in immigrant families. If Blacks are omitted to reduce the comparisons to four groups, equalling the number for Canada, the higher averages would describe over half (56 per cent) of the immigrant children population. Overall, country differences in other proximal factors (Table 8.1) and the higher prevalence of unauthorized migrants suggest immigrant children in the United States may indeed face potentially greater challenges to social, cognitive, and scholastic development than those living in Canada.

CONCLUSIONS AND NEW DIRECTIONS

Data presented in this chapter show that Canadian children in immigrant families overall are more likely than immigrant children in the United States to live in large metropolitan areas, to be slightly older, and to have fewer siblings, smaller households, lower percentages living with lone parents, lower percentages living in rented or overcrowded housing, higher percentages of university-educated parents, and higher percentages of employed mothers (Table 8.1). However, in both countries, comparisons of the characteristics of children in immigrant families to those of native-born families reach similar conclusions: immigrant children have lower percentages living in lone-parent families and they are more concentrated in large cities such as Toronto and Vancouver or New York–New Jersey and Los Angeles–Long Beach. Compared to children in native-born families, they have more siblings, live in larger households, have relatively high percentages living in linguistically isolated families, have higher percentages living in overcrowded accommodations and in rental housing, are less likely to have parents employed, and are more likely to live in families where income is below poverty thresholds. Furthermore, using a limited range of indicators (Table 8.3), such situations are enhanced for Korean, Black, Latin American, and Southeast Asian immigrant children in Canada and for immigrant Mexican White, Black Hispanic, other Hispanic, Black, and Southeast Asian children in the United States.

These characteristics are relevant for specific investigations into various components of childhood development and well-being, for ongoing policies targeting immigrant children, and for future research topics. First, as indicated in the earlier review, many characteristics are associated with, and act as proximal factors for, difficulties in cognitive and social development, limited success in school, and ultimately problems in how youth transition to adulthood. Results thus underscore the importance of continuing and expanding in-depth investigations on topics such as the early childhood development of immigrant children, including the impacts of linguistic isolation, and the verbal, reading, and math literacy levels and progress of immigrant children in school.

Second, although census data do not directly speak to policy initiatives, a number of policy suggestions targeting children rest on these data: how are children in non-English (and non-French for Canada) families faring in school; how can hardships associated with poverty and overcrowding be ameliorated; how can local communities (and states and provinces) build and offer infrastructures to assist children and parents in immigrant families (Capps and Fortuny 2006); how can ESL and ELD (English literacy development) programs be designed to assist non-English language learners and / or those in linguistically isolated families (Crowe 2006)? Should preschool education be available to all low-income immigrant children in order to improve their language and math readiness, and facilitate parental involvement early on (Haskins and Tienda 2011)? And, in the United States, what are the policy levers for helping children who live in families where they, and / or other members, may be unauthorized? Among the suggestions are removing lengthy wait times in family reunification that create incentives for unauthorized migration (Landale et al. 2011), and dismantling barriers, often in the form of local, state, and federal legislation, that dampen or ban access to supports and services required by those children who live with unauthorized family members (Shields and Behrman 2004).

In addition, the focus of this chapter on the characteristics of children in immigrant families represents a simplified portrait of what are undoubtedly more complex environments faced by immigrant children. As other researchers note (Glick 2010; Hernandez et al. 2009, 2010), many of the characteristics of children in immigrant families (and in native-born families as well) are bundled; immigrant children living in linguistically isolated families also live in poor families, with parents who lack university education, with one or more parents who may not be employed, in rental housing, in accommodations shared by many family members, in overcrowded housing. A next research step is to determine which characteristics most likely are combined and what groups of immigrant children are most prone to living in these multi-indicator environments.

Findings in this chapter also raise an intriguing question that requires further study: are immigrant children in the United States more likely than those in Canada to grow up in families characterized by proximal factors that can create challenges in cognitive, social, and academic development, and if this is so, why? First steps involve harmonizing measures of proximal factors, including language proficiency and usage and family income, and assessing the prevalence of multiple factors. To sharpen the country comparisons, racial categories also need to be refined in future studies, particularly for categories such as Black, Southeast Asian, Asian, and other Hispanic.

In addition, examining the population of children who are likely to be unauthorized or have family members who are unauthorized will be an important research topic in the future, not only for immigrant children in the US but also for those in Canada. Several terms are used to describe unauthorized migrants, the most common being “undocumented” or “illegal”; modes of entry also vary. Some may have slipped across borders without authorization or paperwork while others may have overstayed the expiration of their temporary visas. According to United States estimates (Passel 2011), over eleven million undocumented migrants, representing 28 per cent of the foreign-born population, exist, of which Mexicans are the largest group. If Canada had the same percentages, undocumented migrants would number over two million as of 2011; however, guesstimates are lower, usually between 20,000 and 500,000 (Magalhaes et al. 2010). But numbers are likely to grow with two new policy changes. First, in order to meet labour shortages and increase flexibility, the Canadian government is admitting more temporary workers; nearly 500,000 entered in 2012, up from fewer than 200,000 in 2000. Second, new regulations effective 1 April 2011 impose a four-year work limit on many temporary workers with the expectation that such workers will return home for another four years before they become eligible again. On 1 April 2015, the four-year period for the earliest cohort of workers under these new regulations ended. The major question is whether such workers will leave Canada or remain as over-stayers. If the latter occurs, Canada’s undocumented population could sharply increase.

Undocumented migration affects families and children in several ways. First, it is wrong to think that an undocumented worker produces only undocumented families and children; the impact is more extensive. In the US, the long wait lines for family reunification admission have produced “mixed status” families, where one or more members have legal resident visas or even US citizenship but where other relatives circumvent the wait lines by becoming undocumented. As well, the gradual transformation from temporary sojourner to stayer can be accompanied by the development of romantic attachments to persons legally in the US or Canada and by the establishments of families that may produce native-born offspring who hold legal citizenship.

That said, the presence of one or more undocumented parents can create difficulties for their children. Precarious immigration status often means precarious employment for adult workers, including erratic employment, low wages, tenuous or non-existent worker rights, and unsafe working conditions (Goldring and Landolt 2012). For children and adults alike, increased poverty risks also may be accompanied by limited or non-existent access to health care, to subsidized housing, and to schooling because of documentation requirements (Magalhaes et al. 2010; Passel 2011; Yoshikawa and Kholoptseva 2013). In their review Yoshikawa and Kholoptseva (2013) suggest that the psychological distress and economic hardship experienced by undocumented parents are associated with lower cognitive skills in early childhood and lower levels of emotional well-being for young children and adolescents. Other sources of stress that diminish child well-being include parental removal from the home and detention by the authorities.

Research on how the development of children is affected by having one or more undocumented parents is still in its infancy, hampered in part by difficulties in obtaining data on a segment of the immigrant population that may fear visibility. However, the relationships between parental (il)legal status and subsequent indicators of well-being for their children are promising avenues of future research, particularly since almost one-third of immigrant children in the US have one or more unauthorized parents, and undocumented workers and mixed-status families in Canada are likely to increase as a result of recent policy changes.

NOTES

1   We use the term “immigrant children” in this chapter interchangeably with “children of immigrants” and “children of immigrant families.” However, the general use of the term “immigrant” itself is a misnomer if admissions criteria are invoked. While it is true that children or their parents have “in-migrated,” not everyone is a legal permanent resident. Some are admitted temporarily and others are in the destination country as unauthorized or undocumented migrants.

2   “Native-born” is a term used in American research; it is not an expression used in Canada, as it competes with the term “native peoples.” However, to enable international comparison, we use it in this chapter.

3   Additionally, studies tracing children over time and / or targeting children at specific stages of development point to the dynamics of family interaction styles as affecting child development, child behaviours, and health.

4   Dimensions of family structure not examined here include the presence of grandparents or other adult members of a household (Clark, Glick, and Bures 2009), and cohabiting versus legally married parents (Landale, Thomas, and Van Hook 2001).

5   “Visible minority” is a socially constructed Canadian term devised in the 1980s to collect data under the mandate of the 1986 Employment Equity Act. Visible minorities are defined as persons, other than Aboriginal peoples, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-White in colour. Categories in the visible minority population variable include Chinese, South Asian, Black, Filipino, Latin American, Southeast Asian, Arab, West Asian, Korean, Japanese, Visible minority n.i.e. (not included elsewhere), Multiple visible minority, and Not a visible minority.

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PART FOUR

Precarious Migration: Refugees and Undocumented Workers in North America

9

Filling the Federal Policy Void: State and Local Responses to Undocumented Immigration in the United States

Els de Graauw

INTRODUCTION

Throughout American history, different government entities have assumed responsibility for regulating immigration to the United States. During most of the nineteenth century, when there was not yet a federal immigration bureaucracy, individual states, localities, and even seaports processed most immigrants and determined which foreigners were admitted to or excluded from the country (Filindra 2009; Skerry 1995). Only in 1891, when the US Congress created the Office of the Superintendent of Immigration in the Treasury Department (the later Bureau of Immigration in the Department of Labor, then the Immigration and Naturalization Service in the Department of Justice, and now Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the Department of Homeland Security), did the federal government take on a greater role in implementing national immigration policy. During the twentieth century, the primary responsibility for immigration control remained with the federal government, in part because the courts repeatedly declared that only the federal government had the power to enact and enforce immigration law (Aleinikoff, Martin, and Motomura 2008; Romero 2008).

Since 2000, there has been a resurgence of sub-national immigration policy activism. Particularly, states and localities nationwide have proposed and enacted a record number of laws and ordinances aimed at regulating some aspect of undocumented or unauthorized immigration. The steep increase in the number of undocumented immigrants in recent decades, from an estimated 1.9 million in 1988 to an estimated 11.3 million in 2014 (Krogstad and Passel 2015; Woodrow and Passel 1990), has made undocumented immigration a defining feature of immigration debates at all levels of government. The gateway state of California was one of the first states to leap into the immigration fray in 1994 when its voters adopted Proposition 187, an initiative designed to deny undocumented immigrants publicly funded social services such as health care as well as primary and secondary education. Then, in the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks and the failure of Congress to enact comprehensive immigration reform in 2006 and again in 2007, many more states and localities have sought to fill the federal policy void by enacting their own policies targeting undocumented immigrants (Varsanyi 2010).

The background section of this chapter has three parts. The first provides an overview of the different kinds of immigration policies that state and local governments have enacted in recent years. Many sub-national immigration policies seek to drive undocumented immigrants away, but others aim to accommodate them and welcome them into the community. The second background section situates these sub-national immigration policies in the context of a federal system where immigration policy has long been understood as a federal prerogative, while the third background section examines why state and local immigration policy activism has exploded since 2000. In providing an overview of the current research in this area, I discuss the factors that compel different states and localities to enact either anti– or pro–undocumented immigration policies, as well as the legal, political, and societal impacts of these policies. In the conclusion, I outline several directions for future research.

A SURGE IN STATE AND LOCAL IMMIGRATION POLICIES

A key issue in US immigration in the 2000 to 2015 period is the marked increase in state and local immigration policies compared to earlier decades. Scholars often refer to data from the National Conference of State Legislatures to illustrate just how dramatic the increase in state immigration policy activism has been in recent years (see Figure 9.1). In 2005, legislatures in twenty-five states considered 300 immigration-related bills and resolutions and enacted thirty-nine of them. In 2007, when the failure of federal immigration reform became apparent, state legislative activity increased fivefold: a total of 1,562 bills and resolutions were introduced, and 240 passed in forty-six states. State legislators have sustained their immigration policy activism, and in 2015 they enacted 490 laws and resolutions in forty-nine states (NCSL 2016). State immigration laws are diverse and tackle immigration issues across a range of policy areas, including immigrants’ eligibility for state-issued identification documents (such as driver’s licences), their access to employment, housing, education, and other public benefits, and the relationship between local law enforcement agencies and federal immigration authorities (see Figure 9.2). And while an increasing number of these state laws help immigrants integrate into American society, the tendency in both political rhetoric and proposed legislation has been to exclude immigrants, especially the undocumented.

Figure 9.1 Increase in state immigration laws and resolutions, 2005–15

Note: Total number of laws and resolutions enacted during the 2005 to 2015 period is 3,047. For 2014 and 2015, data on the total number of introduced laws and resolutions were not available.

Source: National Conference of State Legislatures (2016).

Figure 9.2 State immigration laws by topic, 2005–15

Note: Total number of laws enacted during the 2005 to 2015 period is 1,788. This figure excludes a total of 1,259 resolutions adopted by state legislatures during the same period.

Source: National Conference of State Legislatures (2016).

On the anti-immigrant side of the spectrum are states such as Arizona, which gained notoriety in 2010 by adopting SB 1070 (The Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act), a law that made being in the country without legal documentation a violation of state (and not just federal) law and that gave local police broad powers to stop and verify the immigration status of anyone they suspect of being undocumented. Other states – Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina, and Utah – have enacted copycat laws that also seek to make life as difficult as possible for undocumented immigrants. These state laws targeting undocumented immigrants have been subject to court challenges. Most prominently, in 2012, the US Supreme Court – in United States v. Arizona – delivered a split decision on the Arizona law. It ruled unconstitutional the provisions that would make it a state crime for undocumented immigrants to work in Arizona and not to carry an alien registration document, but it upheld the provision that allows state police to run immigration status checks on persons stopped for state or local offenses.

On the pro-immigrant side, in contrast, are states that have started issuing driver’s licences to undocumented immigrants, especially since 2013. As of March 2016, twelve states (California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Vermont, and Washington), the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico allow undocumented immigrants to apply for a driver’s licence (NILC 2016). The driver’s licences for undocumented immigrants tend to have special markings to distinguish them from those issued to legal residents, thereby potentially exposing undocumented immigrants to discrimination. They give undocumented immigrants permission to drive and encourage them to obtain car insurance, but they cannot be used for federal identification purposes.

A growing number of states have also have extended in-state tuition rates to undocumented college students who meet specific requirements. This means that undocumented immigrants who attend public colleges and universities can pay a reduced tuition rate, thereby making higher education more affordable for them. In July 2015, twenty states had provisions allowing in-state tuition for undocumented students, and California and Texas were the first states to enact such legislation in 2001.[1] Earlier, in 1982, the US Supreme Court – in its famous Plyler v. Doe decision – had already established that all children, including undocumented immigrants, had a constitutional right to receive a free and equal primary and secondary education in public schools. Because the Court’s decision did not apply to post-secondary education and because undocumented students are ineligible for federal financial aid once they reach college, states have subsequently become a battleground for the education rights of undocumented students matriculating into colleges and universities. These in-state tuition laws, however, have also been challenged in court. California’s in-state tuition law, for example, was challenged in Martinez v. Regents of the University of California, where the California Supreme Court upheld it in 2010 (Keller 2010).

Attention to immigration issues has also spiked in municipalities, although here data across time are harder to come by. According to Ramakrishnan and Wong (2010), close to 180 cities, towns, and counties across the country had considered immigration-related proposals and enacted close to 120 ordinances by the end of 2007. Hazleton (Pennsylvania) is the city most associated with the recent trend in anti–undocumented immigration policy-making at the local level, and its council enacted the Illegal Immigration Relief Act (IIRA) in 2006. Never enforced, this ordinance would have barred undocumented immigrants from working and renting homes in Hazleton, and it would have imposed hefty fines on landlords who rented to undocumented immigrants and would have suspended the business permits of employers who hired undocumented workers (O’Neil 2010). IIRA attracted strong protests and counter-protests by civil rights groups and immigration opponents, it was taken to court immediately after its enactment, and it was first declared unconstitutional in 2007. In July 2013, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals reaffirmed the unconstitutionality of Hazleton’s ordinance, arguing that it superseded federal laws that regulate immigration. Notwithstanding the political and legal controversy of IIRA, more than 130 localities nationwide have followed in Hazleton’s footsteps by proposing or enacting similar anti–undocumented immigration ordinances (Varsanyi 2010).

While they tend to get less media and scholarly attention, several other municipalities have enacted ordinances that instead help undocumented immigrants integrate into American society by granting them local voting rights, municipal ID cards, and sanctuary from federal immigration officials. From 1776 to 1926, at least twenty-two states and territories allowed non-citizen voting in local, state, and federal elections (Aylsworth 1931). Today, only a handful of municipalities allow non-citizens, including undocumented immigrants, to vote in municipal and / or local school board elections, but several others – including New Haven (Connecticut), New York City, San Francisco, and Portland (Maine) – have proposed enfranchising immigrant voters in recent years (Cole 2012). Additionally, since 2007, at least twelve municipalities – Detroit (Michigan), Hartford (Connecticut), Johnson County (Iowa), Milwaukee (Wisconsin), New Haven (Connecticut), Newark (New Jersey), New York City, Oakland (California), Richmond (California), Roselle (New Jersey), San Francisco, and Washtenaw County (Michigan) – have enacted legislation to issue local ID cards to undocumented immigrants to make it easier and safer for them to interact with police and other frontline city workers, participate in local commerce, move around in the city and county, and access municipal facilities including recycling centres, city-run health clinics, libraries, public parks, and public beaches (Center for Popular Democracy 2013; de Graauw 2016). Finally, more than sixty municipalities nationwide have passed “sanctuary” ordinances, thereby declaring that they will not cooperate with federal immigration authorities to apprehend undocumented immigrants except in cases involving felony crimes (Varsanyi 2010). Some local pro–undocumented immigrant ordinances, including New Haven’s and San Francisco’s ID card programs, faced unsuccessful legal challenges in 2007 and 2008, respectively.

FEDERALISM AND THE POWER TO REGULATE IMMIGRATION

A second key issue in US immigration in the 2000 to 2015 period is the topic of intergovernmental relations with regard to immigration issues. The recent surge in state and local immigration policy activism is surprising, given that immigration and citizenship issues in the United States have long been understood as policy areas over which the federal government has exclusive power. Today, only the federal government has the power to decide how many foreigners can enter the country as legal immigrants each year and which foreigners can be required to leave. Also, only the federal government can establish the criteria for naturalization, which refers to the legal process through which a legal immigrant can become an American citizen. To understand how the federal government has attained a monopoly over immigration and citizenship issues, we need to consider the US Constitution as well as US Supreme Court decisions interpreting it.

There is ambiguity in the US Constitution about which level of government has immigration and citizenship powers, but the federal government appears to have the clearest powers. Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution invests in Congress the power to create a “uniform Rule of Naturalization” and to draft laws that allow qualified immigrants to acquire US citizenship. Furthermore, Article 1, Section 9 includes a reference to the “Migration and Importation” of slaves, but otherwise makes no mention of congressional powers to regulate the voluntary migration of foreigners into and out of the country. The US Congress, of course, has sole authority over foreign policy issues, and foreign policy powers can logically extend to include the management of foreigners entering and residing within US territory. The US Constitution, however, is not explicit about this.

The US Constitution says even less about the power that state and local governments have over immigration and citizenship issues. It only mentions that states need to ensure equal treatment to all people, which also includes immigrants. According to Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, states cannot “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Added to the US Constitution shortly after the American Civil War of the early 1860s, this amendment was originally intended to ensure equal treatment for the recently freed Black slaves. Yet, its reference to all “persons” implies that states cannot withhold due process and equal protection rights to foreigners even if they reside in the country without legal documentation (Romero 2008). Municipalities are not mentioned in the US Constitution at all, and they essentially are creatures of the various states in which they are located. This means they have no independent policy-making powers, and therefore they have no independent immigration and citizenship powers.

While the US Constitution suggests that the federal government has the strongest immigration and citizenship powers, US Supreme Court rulings from the late nineteenth century further cemented the federal monopoly in these areas. One of the earliest and most significant Supreme Court cases is Chae Chan Ping v. United States (1889). At issue was whether the federal government could prevent Chae Chan Ping, a labourer from China and long-term resident of the United States who left in 1887 for a short visit to China, from re-entering the country. In 1888, Congress amended the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act by passing the Scott Act, which prohibited Chinese labourers abroad from returning to the United States, even if they had secured legal certificates permitting them to return. Ping subsequently was denied re-entry into the United States in 1888. He sued, but the US Supreme Court upheld his exclusion by arguing that the political branches of government – Congress and the president – had the authority to exclude foreigners as they saw fit based on powers delegated to them by the US Constitution. With this decision, the Supreme Court gave strong deference to the federal government in immigration matters, forming the basis for what is now known as the plenary power doctrine (Chin 2005; Romero 2008).

Four years later, in Fong Yue Ting v. United States (1893), the US Supreme Court extended the federal immigration monopoly to include decisions over deportations. Fong Yue Ting, a Chinese labourer, was ordered to be deported in pursuance of the 1892 Geary Act, which extended the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act for another ten years and required all Chinese living in the United States to obtain a certificate of residence or face deportation. Ting appealed the deportation decision, arguing that he had applied for the certificate of residence but could not supply a “credible white witness” necessary to obtain it. Eventually, his case reached the US Supreme Court, which upheld the “white witness” requirement and extended the Ping reasoning to deportation cases. The Supreme Court held that “The power of Congress to expel, like the power to exclude aliens, or any specified class of aliens, from the country, may be exercised entirely through executive officers” (Fong Yue Ting v. United States, 149 US 698). Since the Ping and Ting cases, the US Supreme Court has consistently held that the federal government holds exclusive power over immigration. When state and local governments nonetheless engage in immigration policy-making, the courts strictly scrutinize such subnational immigration laws as attempts to infringe on federal immigration powers (Chin 2005; Romero 2008).

EXPLAINING THE SURGE IN STATE AND LOCAL IMMIGRATION POLICIES

A third important issue in US immigration in the 2000 to 2015 period is the recent surge in state and local immigration policies. In the United States, the current constitutional and legal framework gives exclusive power to the federal government over immigration and citizenship issues. Yet in recent years state and local governments have increasingly proposed and enacted their own laws aimed at regulating some aspect of undocumented immigration. Why is this happening now? I discuss three explanations, focusing on (a) demographic shifts in recent decades, (b) state and local frustration with the failure of federal immigration reform, and (c) federal invitations for state and local participation in the immigration arena.

Demographic Shifts

One reason why states and localities have entered the immigration fray in recent years in such unprecedented numbers is the immigration-induced demographic shifts that have occurred since the 1990s. Immigration, including undocumented immigration, reached record numbers during the 1990s and 2000s. During the 1990s alone, over thirteen million foreign-born individuals entered the United States, more than one million per year. The total foreign-born population more than doubled from 19.8 million to 42.4 million between 1990 and 2014. The undocumented population grew relatively faster: it increased sixfold from an estimated 1.9 million to an estimated 11.3 million between 1988 and 2014 (Krogstad and Passel 2015; Woodrow and Passel 1990). Because these newcomers tend to be individuals of colour from Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean, and the majority of undocumented immigrants are from Mexico, they are substantially changing the racial and ethnic make-up of the country.

With the increase in the number of immigrants arriving in the United States, there has been a concomitant shift in where they live, and immigrant settlement today is much more dispersed than before. Before the 1990s, immigrants settled primarily in the “big six” immigration states (California, New York, Texas, Florida, New Jersey, and Illinois) and a few large gateway cities (New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Miami). Today, immigrants increasingly are settling in states and localities that until recently never had a significant immigrant population, and more and more immigrants are bypassing central cities to settle directly in outlying suburban and rural areas (Marrow 2011; Singer 2004; Terrazas 2011). New immigrant destinations can be found in Southern, Midwestern, and Northeastern states, many of which experienced foreign-born growth rates in excess of 200 per cent during the 1990 to 2010 period. Several top destinations for undocumented immigrants now include states such as North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Maryland, which housed relatively few undocumented immigrants before the 1990s (Passel and Cohn 2011).

As a result of these demographic shifts and new settlement patterns, both legal and undocumented immigration have become increasingly salient and controversial issues in a range of states and localities (Jones-Correa 2011). Newer immigrant destinations in particular are not well prepared to deal with these changes. They lack the infrastructure, in terms of community organizations, to address the influx of newcomers (Andersen 2010; Zúñiga and Hernández- León 2006). Furthermore, the public in many new immigrant destinations has been anxious about undocumented immigrants in particular, who tend to be perceived as lawbreakers, welfare abusers, job stealers, and threats to American culture and values (Huntington 2004; Jones-Correa 2011). In the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks, undocumented immigrants have also increasingly been perceived as potential threats to the nation’s security (e.g., Chavez 2008; Martinez, Jr. and Valenzuala, Jr. 2006; Newton 2008). This new demographic reality, in other words, has caused many states and localities to react by passing laws and ordinances that take a clear stance on the issue of undocumented immigration.

Failure of Federal Immigration Reform

A second reason why there has been an increase in state and local immigration policy activism in recent years is that the US Congress has failed to enact comprehensive federal immigration reform. In the face of a rapidly growing population of undocumented immigrants and the 2001 terrorist attacks, government officials, the public, and the media have all agreed that the current immigration system is broken and have called on Congress to come up with new immigration measures. There were sustained efforts in Congress in 2006 and 2007 to pass comprehensive immigration reform addressing future immigration flows as well as the fate of the millions of undocumented immigrants residing in the country already. None of these proposals, however, were enacted into law. Within Congress there were particularly strong disagreements among Republicans and Democrats over the possible legalization of the estimated twelve million undocumented immigrants in the country at the time, what some have called a massive amnesty. Nor could they agree on a temporary guest worker program, where workers would be given authorization to work for a few years in the United States, with the understanding that they would leave after their temporary visas expired.

One noteworthy immigration bill proposed in Congress was the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005. Also known as HR 4437, this bill sought to criminalize immigration law violations and ramp up immigration enforcement both in the interior and at the border. Among other things, HR 4437 would have made unlawful presence in the United States a criminal rather than a civil offense, while expanding the federal government’s detention and deportation powers. It would have made individuals and organizations, including churches and nonprofit service providers, offering assistance to undocumented immigrants liable for criminal penalties and jail time. HR 4437 would also have required the construction of 1,120 kilometers of fencing along the US-Mexico border and prohibited federal funding to state and local governments that shielded undocumented immigrants from federal immigration authorities. The bill passed the US House of Representatives along party lines, with the majority of Republicans favouring it and the majority of Democrats opposing it. However, it failed to win majority support in the US Senate and thus did not become law.

Widely viewed as draconian, HR 4437 sparked massive protests in spring 2006, with immigrants and their supporters taking to the streets in over 160 cities nationwide to oppose the bill and urge Congress to defeat it (Bada et al. 2006). Protests took place in large traditional gateway cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York City, but also in newer immigrant destinations of different sizes, including Atlanta, Charlotte, and Omaha (Benjamin- Alvarado, DeSipio, and Montoya 2009; Cordero-Guzmán et al. 2008). After HR 4437’s defeat, Congress considered several other comprehensive immigration reform measures. In 2007, for example, it considered the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act, which offered a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, provided funding for increased border enforcement, and created a temporary guest worker program. This bill also failed. Subsequently, disagreements about what to do about the millions of undocumented residents in the United States have become so deep-seated that Congress has been gridlocked even over smaller legislative initiatives focusing on the legalization of only specific groups of unauthorized immigrants, such as students (DREAM Act) and agricultural workers (AgJOBS). In 2013 and 2014, new congressional efforts were under way to reform the immigration system (see Martin, ch. 2 in this volume).

In adopting their own anti– and pro–undocumented immigration policies, state and local governments are clearly reacting to Congress’s failed efforts at comprehensive immigration reform (Hessick and Chin 2014; Varsanyi 2010). Some state and local governments adopted immigration policies in the 1990s and early 2000s, but this trickle turned into a flood in 2007, exactly the year in which it became clear that federal immigration reform efforts were failing (see Figure 9.1). By taking matters into their own hands, states and localities sought not only to earn political capital on the immigration reform issue but also to fill the federal policy void with laws and practices allowing them to gain control over the local impacts of growing numbers of undocumented immigrants.

Federal Invitations for State and Local Involvement

A third reason why sub-national immigration policy activism has increased in recent years is that the federal government has essentially invited state and local involvement in immigration matters. The 1996 Welfare Reform Act is an example of this. This federal law prohibits undocumented immigrants from receiving federal public assistance such as cash welfare assistance, food stamps, and medical care, and it instituted a five-year bar on public services for legal immigrants. The act also devolved some policy decisions to the states, including whether or not they would use their own state funding to cover immigrants who became ineligible for federal public benefits. Since the act expressly authorizes state-level discretion regarding the status of immigrants and gives states the power to decide which immigrants may receive public benefits, it has created an opening for states to become more active in the immigration arena. Many states used their new authority to provide state-funded replacement coverage for legal immigrants during the five-year bar, although coverage varied across public benefit programs. The states that opted not to provide replacement coverage during the five-year bar included many new immigrant destination states (Bitler and Hoynes 2011).

Also, pursuant to Section 287(g) of the 1995 Immigration and Nationality Act, the US Attorney General can deputize state and local authorities to enforce federal immigration law by apprehending undocumented immigrants in their jurisdictions. By October 2010, sixty-nine law enforcement agencies in twenty-four states had entered into so-called 287(g) agreements with the Department of Homeland Security (uscis 2011). Since January 2006, more than 373,000 undocumented immigrants have been identified for possible deportation through the 287(g) program, mostly at local jails. And as part of the program, more than 1,500 state and local officers have been trained and certified to enforce federal immigration law (uscis 2011, 2015). Today, federal immigration officials continue to rely on state and local law enforcement officials to apprehend undocumented residents for deportation. In 2013, however, the 287(g) program was superseded by the nationwide implementation of the Secure Communities program, under which immigrants booked into local jails have their fingerprints and identifying information sent to the Department of Homeland Security for immigration status verification. The Secure Communities program in turn was replaced, in July 2015, by the Priority Enforcement Program, where federal immigration officials continue to work with state and local law enforcement officials with a focus on apprehending undocumented immigrants convicted of criminal offenses. All in all, the 287(g) program is another instance of the federal government welcoming greater state and local involvement in matters pertaining to undocumented immigrants. It is therefore not surprising that states and localities have acted on this invitation, especially since many have grown frustrated by federal inaction.

RESEARCH ON STATE AND LOCAL IMMIGRATION POLICIES

The recent surge in state and local policies addressing undocumented immigration has attracted significant attention from scholars in different fields, including law, political science, sociology, and anthropology. I review the main discussions on state and local undocumented immigration policies in each of these disciplines.

Legal Scholarship

Legal scholars have explored the normative desirability of sub-national immigration policies, what they refer to as “immigration federalism” (e.g., Huntington 2008; Olivas 2007; Rodríguez 2008; Spiro 1997; Wishnie 2004). Those critical of sub-national immigration policies argue that when states and localities engage in issues dealing with undocumented immigration, they become laboratories of bigotry against immigrants. In particular, critics emphasize that state and local anti–undocumented immigration policies, such as those enacted in Arizona and Hazleton (Pennsylvania), result in racial profiling and increase the likelihood that all immigrants and even native-born minorities will face discrimination (e.g., Pham 2006; Wishnie 2001). Legal critics of immigration federalism also believe that sub-national immigration policies are cause for concern because – following a long-established practice of judicial appeals in the United States – they have inadvertently contributed to an explosion in litigation. Given that undocumented immigration is already a highly politicized issue, with contestation occurring in legislatures and the electoral arena as well as in strident media debates and duelling street protests, the increase in litigation has only deepened the societal cleavages over undocumented immigration.

Legal scholars who instead applaud the increase in sub-national undocumented immigration policies have argued that state and local governments can serve as laboratories of experimentation and innovation. They argue that only through state and local experimentation with different approaches to responding to undocumented immigration can we test which state or local approach works, before deciding to scale it up to make it federal policy addressing undocumented immigration nationwide (e.g., Rodríguez 2008; Schuck 2007). Other legal proponents of immigration federalism hope that more state and local policy activism will translate into additional pressure on the federal government to finally enact comprehensive reform legislation that also addresses the problem of undocumented immigration. Yet still other proponents of immigration federalism argue that state and local anti–undocumented immigration policies have served as “quintessential force multipliers,” emphasizing how state and local involvement in apprehending undocumented immigrants has helped to enhance national security (e.g., Kobach 2005–06).

Legal scholarship has focused also on the litigation explosion following the recent surge in sub-national immigration policies. Because all state and local immigration policies – regardless of content or intent – are legally suspect for possibly infringing on federal immigration and citizenship powers, both anti–undocumented immigration policies that emphasize law enforcement[2] and pro–undocumented immigration policies that emphasize immigrant integration[3] have been subject to court challenges. This scholarship is too extensive for inclusion here, but much of it analyzes the use of federal pre-emption and supremacy defenses to declare unconstitutional state and local policies that curtail and extend the rights of undocumented immigrants (e.g., Bonanno 2009; Cortez 2008; Olivas 2007). The Supreme Court – in DeCanas v. Bica (1976) – declared immigration regulation to be “unquestionably exclusively a federal power,” yet it also stated that sub-national laws dealing with foreigners are not necessarily instances of immigration regulation pre-empted by federal law. Also in light of this decision, legal scholars have studied recent court cases to clarify when sub-national laws addressing the rights of undocumented immigrants are legitimate exercises of state and local authority to protect the health, safety, and welfare of their residents and when such laws impermissibly encroach on federal power.

Political Scholarship

Political scientists, in contrast to legal scholars, have focused on analyzing the actual policy content of state immigration laws. They have done so to determine whether state immigration laws conflict or cooperate with federal laws, and whether they innovate in areas of traditional state responsibility or merely emulate federal immigration objectives. Contrary to theories of federalism that depict states as laboratories of innovation (e.g., Skerry 1995), Newton and Adams (2009) and Newton (2012) find that most state immigration laws actually replicate federal laws, and utilize methods and pursue goals similar to national immigration goals. They also find that while some states – including Alabama, Arizona, and Georgia – have been testing the limits of permissible state action, state-federal relations in the immigration domain tend to be characterized by cooperation rather than conflict. There is not yet comparable research systematically comparing the content of local immigration ordinances with either state or federal immigration laws.

Political scientists have also focused on explaining why and where state and local immigration policy activism has surged in recent years. Most invoke a federalist frame of reference and suggest that sub-national immigration policies are a response to Washington inaction and the deadlock in federal immigration reform efforts since 2006 (e.g., Krane 2007; Varsanyi 2010). Beyond that, political scientists have sought to explain variation in state and local immigration policy activism by questioning demography-based explanations, popular in the media and among legal scholars, which portray subnational immigration policies as reactions to the economic stress and wage depression, language and cultural threats, and overcrowding caused by growing Hispanic and undocumented immigration in particular. In a comparative study of municipal immigration policies, Ramakrishnan and Wong (2010) find that political factors – especially the Republican partisanship of local residents – matter more than demographic or economic factors in explaining why municipalities propose and pass anti-immigrant policies targeting undocumented immigrants. Along similar lines, Gulasekaram and Ramakrishnan (2013) advance a “polarized change model” that emphasizes opportunistic behaviours by political parties and issue entrepreneurs to explain the passage of sub-national immigration policies. Hopkins (2010), furthermore, marries demographic with political explanations and contends that when national anti-immigrant rhetoric is politicized into feelings of threat at the local level, rapid demographic changes such as those that have taken place in new immigrant destinations in the South increase the probability that anti–undocumented immigrant measures will be enacted.

Sociological and Anthropological Scholarship

State and local immigration policy activism has also received attention from sociologists and anthropologists, who have focused on the impact of anti–undocumented immigration policies on immigrants’ daily lives. Much of this scholarship emphasizes how state and local policies targeting undocumented immigrants have contributed to a perennial state of fear that harms the integration of undocumented immigrants directly affected by these policies as well as legal immigrants and native-born minorities – what Menjívar and Abrego (2012) have referred to as “legal violence” in the lives of immigrants. Other scholars have similarly analyzed how anti–undocumented immigration laws and the fear of deportation are causing many immigrants to lead hidden lives characterized by economic hardship and limited physical mobility, where even the most mundane activities such as working, driving, shopping, attending school, and travelling become dangerous and illicit acts (e.g., Abrego 2011, 2014; Chavez 1992; Coutin 2000; De Genova 2002; Donato and Armenta 2011; Garcia and Keyes 2012; Gonzales 2011; Gonzales and Chavez 2012; Hagan, Castro, and Rodriguez 2010).

The threat of deportation and the stigma of immigration status have had harmful effects on families that include undocumented immigrants. Just over half of undocumented immigrants live in mixed-status households, with 4.5 million American-born children having at least one undocumented parent, and 16.6 million people living in families with at least one undocumented immigrant (Passel and Cohn 2009). The surge in anti–undocumented immigration policies at all levels of government has subjected these families to lengthy and uncertain separations due to immigration raids and deportations and the ever-present fear that a loved one may be taken away at any time. The constant fear of deportation caused by federal, state, and local anti–undocumented immigration policies also hampers immigrants’ links to everyday institutions. Families, for example, avoid contact with law enforcement officials to report crimes or come forward as witnesses, and parents refuse to take their children to school because of an impending immigration raid. Families also avoid contact with social service providers, even when some family members are US-born citizens who are eligible for publicly funded services such as food stamps and health care (Capps et al. 2007; Yoshikawa 2012).

The threat of deportation also makes undocumented immigrants wary of exercising their rights against employers and landlords who take advantage of them in the labour and housing markets (Gleeson 2012; Oliveri 2009). While many immigrants toil in the service sector of America’s post-industrial cities where sub-minimum wages and other labour law violations are common, undocumented immigrants are especially prone to experiencing wage, hour, safety, and other workplace violations (e.g., Bernhardt et al. 2009; Gordon 2005). Partly this is because unscrupulous employers lord workers’ immigration status over them to prevent undocumented immigrants from exercising and claiming their rights in the workplace. Partly this is also because undocumented workers have internalized their undocumented status and have come to believe that they are not legitimately protected workers, and that they are better off keeping their heads down to avoid problems (Gleeson 2010). All in all, state and local anti–undocumented immigration laws have had cumulatively negative effects on undocumented immigrants and their families.

DIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

The scholarship on state and local immigration policies addressing undocumented immigration is still nascent, and consequently there are many opportunities for additional research. There is, for example, a need for more large-scale comparative studies across states and municipalities in the vein of Newton (2012) and Ramakrishnan and Wong (2010) to expand our theoretical thinking about the relative effect of political, demographic, and economic factors on sub-national immigration policy activism. Do these factors play out differently in central cities vs. suburbs, in states and cities with long vs. short migration histories, in border vs. interior states? We also need additional in-depth case studies – like those conducted by Armenta (2012), de Graauw (2012, 2014), Frasure and Jones-Correa (2010), Gleeson (2012), and Varsanyi (2008) – to learn about the on-the-ground struggles to shape sub-national legislation affecting undocumented immigrants. How does the growing electoral participation of Latinos and Asians affect state and local policies pertaining to undocumented immigrants? How and to what effect are unions, faith-based institutions, foreign consulates, and pro– and anti–immigrant rights organizations inserting themselves into the debates about state and local immigration policies?

Additionally, most research has focused on analyzing anti–undocumented immigration policies, but we also need to better understand when, where, why, and to what end pro–undocumented immigration legislation is considered and enacted at the state and local levels, especially in the current context of heightened federal immigration enforcement. Particularly, there is little research on the effect that state and local pro–undocumented immigration policies – such as those that grant undocumented immigrants state driver’s licences, in-state tuition rates, local voting rights, municipal ID cards, and sanctuary from federal immigration officials – have on undocumented immigrants and their families. How do pro–undocumented immigration policies affect immigrant well-being and immigrant integration? We need, for example, more research on the types of integration initiatives that are promoted by organizations such as Welcoming America and the Welcoming Economies Global Network, which are national and regional networks, respectively, of community leaders who seek to build understanding and cooperation between immigrants and native-born Americans.

Finally, many studies to date have focused on statutory content and political dynamics leading up to the passage of state and local immigration policies, but scholars should not overlook the administrative or judicial realms of politics. Like de Graauw (2014), Jones-Correa (2008), and Lewis and Ramakrishnan (2007), they should ask what factors drive state and local agencies and bureaucrats to develop anti– and pro–undocumented immigration policies and practices, either with or without the consent of legislative officials, and how administrative practices in turn affect state and local legislative dynamics on immigration issues. Also, how have court decisions on state and local undocumented immigration policies affected subsequent sub-national policy initiatives and rhetoric? The 2012 US Supreme Court decision on Arizona’s restrictive immigration policy, SB 1070, provides an opportunity to study this latter issue in real time.

NOTES

1   By July 2015, 16 states had enacted laws to provide in-state tuition rates to undocumented students: California (AB 540 in 2001), Colorado (SB 33 in 2013), Connecticut (H 6390 in 2011 and HB 6844 in 2015), Florida (HB 851 in 2014), Illinois (HB 60 in 2003), Kansas (HB 2145 in 2004), Maryland (SB 167 in 2011), Minnesota (SF 723 in 2013), Nebraska (LB 239 in 2006), New Jersey (SB 2479 in 2013), New Mexico (SB 582 in 2005), New York (SB 7784 in 2002), Oregon (HB 2787 in 2013), Texas (HB 1403 in 2001), Utah (HB 144 in 2002 and SB 253 in 2015), and Washington (HB 1079 in 2003). Four additional states – Hawaii (2013), Michigan (2013), Oklahoma (2007), and Rhode Island (2011) – have granted in-state tuition rates to undocumented students through Board of Regents decisions.

2   For example: Vasquez v. City of Farmers Branch (2006); Garrett v. City of Escondido (2006); Lozano v. City of Hazleton (2007); United States Chamber of Commerce et al. v. Henry et al. (2008); Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights et al. v. Deal et al. (2011); and United States v. Arizona (2011).

3   For example: City of New York v. United States (1999); Martinez et al. v. Regents of the University of California et al. (2008); United States v. Illinois (2009); and Langfeld et al. v. City and County of San Francisco et al. (2008).

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10

Value Conflict in Turbulent Times: Shifting Policies on Refugees, Asylum-Seekers, and Undocumented Migrants

Alan Simmons

INTRODUCTION

Refugees and asylum-seekers attempting to escape persecution and extreme violence are precarious migrants in need of protection. The way that Canada and other countries treat these migrants is the subject of intense debates and conflict over human rights, border security, and national values. This chapter provides a critical examination of the divergent values and views behind major developments in Canadian policies on the admission of refugees, asylum-seekers, and undocumented migrants, with a focus on the period from 2006 to the present.

Canada’s refugee and asylum policies have changed dramatically over recent decades. Starting in the 1990s and continuing through to the present, the government set lower targets for the admission of refugees. From the early 2000s on, the government also put policies in place to discourage asylum-seekers from entering Canada to put forward a refugee claim. While global numbers of refugees were rising and global flows of asylum-seekers were increasing over this period, the numbers of refugees and asylum-seekers entering Canada remained at low levels.

Not everyone was supportive of this closed-gate agenda for refugees and asylum-seekers. Human rights supporters and refugee advocates, such as the Canadian arm of Amnesty International and the Canadian Council of Churches, argued that Canada was ignoring its commitment to protect refugees and asylum-seekers. The conflict between these critics and government policies increased between 2006 and 2015 as the state continued to erect more barriers and obstacles to the entry of asylum-seekers.

In 2015 Canada’s refugee and asylum policies became a political issue. In electioneering leading up to the October 2015 national election, the Conservative Party – which had been in power since 2006 and was responsible for the many new closed-gate policies enacted over this period – argued that its restrictive approach was justified on economic grounds and to protect Canadians against the threat of terrorists from abroad. At the same time, the Conservatives indicated that they intended to fulfill their promise to admit a share of the huge population of Syrian refugees of concern to the United Nations, but had delayed the admission process until all security checks had been completed on those selected to come. Critics and leaders of other political parties insisted that these security checks had been completed by United Nations authorities.

The Liberal Party, in third place in parliamentary standing before the election campaign began, entered into the race with a range of policy proposals, including a promise to reinvigorate refugee admissions by immediately bringing in Syrians who had already been selected and completed UN security clearance procedures. For reasons beyond the scope of this chapter, the Liberals won a majority in the October 2015 election. The new government moved ahead quickly with plans to admit 50,000 Syrian refugees by the end of 2016. The Liberal government also reinstated health-care provisions for refugee claimants that had been removed by the previous Conservative government.

In this chapter, I argue that conflicting views on refugees and asylum-seekers in Canada stem from the tension between two ideologies of nation-building and the values associated with them. One orientation emphasizes nation-building through a greater focus on utilitarian values, such as maximizing the economic benefits of highly educated immigrants and minimizing the potentially higher social costs of refugees. The other emphasizes nation-building with a greater focus on the role of refugee admission in expressing humanitarian values and strengthening the nation’s capacity to be a caring, multicultural society. For simplicity I refer to these two nation-building perspectives as “utilitarian” and “humanitarian.” Most citizens, and all major political parties in Canada, pursue both sets of values on the grounds that Canada’s future depends on combining effective economic strategies with humanitarian social goals corresponding to national identity and values. Conflicts result from how individuals, various interest groups, and political parties interpret and balance the two sets of core values in their calls for action.

Examining the values underlying conflicting Canadian refugee / asylum policy agendas is illuminating. My analysis reveals that the agendas of the Conservatives and the Liberals, the two parties that have historically dominated Canadian federal politics, are overlapping and similar on large matters of immigration and fighting terrorism. As these two political parties are large and seek to attract a broad political base, this general overlap is not surprising. Yet, recently, their views have moved in different directions on important specific matters regarding refugees, asylum-seekers, and related issues of immigrant accommodation in multicultural Canada. This divide between them is important. The same divide can be found between political parties in other economically advanced nations. The effort to control and limit the admission of refugees and asylum-seekers in these countries is not in itself anti-immigrant, nativist, or racist. However, refugee / asylum control proposals frequently attract the support of individuals who are anti-immigrant, nativist, and / or racist. This pattern, found elsewhere and therefore potentially possible in Canada, makes the stakes in the outcome of the Canadian debate on refugee / asylum policies particularly high.

The chapter is organized in four sections. The first section reviews background issues with respect to the origins of Canadian refugee law, findings from prior research, and arguments on the role of ideology and values in shaping refugee / asylum policy. The second section analyzes the development of closed-door refugee and asylum policies since the early 1990s, with particular attention on the period 2006–15 under the Conservative government. The third section turns to an examination of shifts in policy following the 2015 national election and over the early days of the new Liberal government. The chapter’s final section reviews future research priorities.

BACKGROUND

The term refugee has a long history of everyday use to cover victims of earthquakes, floods, and famines. However, the term refugee in state policy is restricted to those persons who are fleeing wars and persecution. Canada initially followed the lead of the 1951 United Nations Convention on the Status of Refugees, which defined a refugee as a “person outside the country of his nationality … because he has or had a well founded fear of persecution by reason of race, religion, nationality or political opinion” (UN 1951). Subsequently, the various sub-regional and national accords expanded this definition to include those fleeing war and violence (Hathaway 1991). In 1969 Canada signed the revised 1961 version of the UN Convention (CCR 2009). Soon after, in the 1976 Immigration Act, refugees were formally added as an admission category within Canadian immigration policy. In 1989 Canada created the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) to adjudicate the large numbers of individuals entering Canada each year to claim refugee status.

The term Canadian refugee refers to a person who been approved for permanent residence in Canada as an immigrant in the refugee class of admission. Canadian refugees, like other immigrants, are therefore residents with the right to reside, work, and eventually apply for citizenship. Only a small portion of the more than seventy million refugees and displaced persons in the world (UNHCR 2015) are admitted as refugees to Canada or other wealthy nations. Most remain trapped with a dismal future in foreign refugee camps or precarious refugee settlement areas in regions proximate to their home countries.

Refugee-class immigrants are approved for admission to Canada in two ways. The first is to be admitted by Canadian immigration authorities while in a foreign country. These refugees are selected mostly from United Nations refugee camps. Once officially accepted, they then travel to Canada and enter the country as immigrants in the refugee class.The second way is to travel to Canada with the intention of presenting a claim for asylum, in order to be able to remain as immigrants in the refugee class, if accepted. Those who enter Canada to apply for asylum are referred to as refugee claimants. They are also referred to as asylum-seekers. The IRB reviews their applications and decides to approve or reject their claims. When they are not accepted, authorities order them to be “removed,” which is to say deported.

Undocumented migrants in Canada are foreigners who lack documents allowing them to reside legally in the country. To survive, they typically find employment in low-paying, unregulated, and often dangerous jobs. Many refugee claimants in Canada enter the country without documentation, but immediately afterward, or with some delay, put forward a request for asylum. As refugee claimants, they may legally remain in Canada until their request is adjudicated. As noted above, they face deportation if their request fails. However, failed claimants may refuse to leave the country and go into hiding, adding to the undocumented migrant population.

Smuggled migrants are those refugee claimants and other undocumented migrants who are smuggled into Canada. Smuggling is illegal, but does not necessarily involve any profit-making by the agent who assists in the migrant’s entry into Canada. Some claimants are smuggled into Canada at no cost by humanitarian volunteers who do this out of concern for the migrants’ welfare.

Trafficked migrants are typically individuals with very limited opportunities who “voluntarily” accept to pay a working-for-profit agent a fee of up to tens of thousands of dollars for being smuggled into a wealthy country. Since trafficked migrants are generally very poor, many “borrow” the money for the fee from the agent. The migrants are then forced, typically under the threat of violence against them or their families, to pay back the funds from the wages they earn while living in Canada. In exceptional cases, members of communities facing persecution and violent threats to their lives in civil wars will, in desperation, pay for the assistance of traffickers to help them cross borders into safe countries.

The figures in Table 10.1 confirm that the global refugee problem has become enormous, and that Canada is a small but important part of addressing this problem through programs to admit refugees and asylum-seekers as immigrants. Over the period from 2000 to 2015, Canada landed (as immigrants) more than 400,000 individuals as “refugees” (this figure includes refugees admitted from abroad as well as asylum-seekers whose claims were recognized after they arrived in Canada). This is a large number, although it is a very small portion (3.2 per cent) of the world’s total number of refugees in 2014. Asylum-seekers have continued to arrive in Canada in appreciable numbers each year over the recent period. More than 90,000 asylum-seekers (that is, refugee claimants) arrived in Canada between 2006 and 2015. Almost half of these (49 per cent) had their claims accepted and were therefore landed as refugee-class immigrants. The others were deported, or left Canada voluntarily, or remained hidden from authorities as undocumented migrants. Although exact figures are not available, it is estimated that there are tens of thousands of undocumented migrants in Canada. The use of ships to smuggle migrants has made big news in the press. In reality such smuggling is very infrequent, with only seven ships carrying a total of 2,700 migrants having being recorded from 1914 to 2011. This is tiny compared to the recent experience of Europe, where, over the 2014–15 period, thousands of asylum-seekers and undocumented migrants have been smuggled in by boat each month.

Table 10.1 Global and Canadian indicators of precarious migration

Canadian refugee landing figures from Government of Canada Open Data Portal.

Landed refugees include those selected abroad and approved in-land asylum claims.

What explains the different points of view expressed in policy debates on refugee and asylum issues in Canada? In this chapter, I argue that these differences in perspective involve, at their core, a conflict between two value positions and related underlying nationbuilding ideologies. Piché (2012) critically noted that leaders pursuing utilitarian values focus narrowly on maximizing the economic efficiency of immigration and other state programs. They more strongly and narrowly adhere to neo-classical liberal (i.e., neo-liberal) political-economic ideology and related strategies promoting human welfare through economic efficiency, cost-cutting, and unrestricted (or “free”) international trade. They also tend toward stronger policies to limit the admission of refugees, asylum-seekers, and undocumented migrants, because they view these migrants as requiring costly social services. The services provided to asylum-seekers while they are waiting for months or even years for the assessment of their claims are viewed by those with a utilitarian view as excessive because of the long time that adjudication can take (months or even years) and because so many claimants are rejected. In addition, many of those who endorse the utilitarian perspective view asylum-seekers with suspicion. Perhaps their own utilitarian worldview leads them to assume that many asylum-seekers are actually motivated more by utilitarian goals, such as better jobs, and not so much or even not at all by the necessity to escape persecution or violence.

Those with strong humanitarian views, in contrast, favour promoting the nation’s contributions toward a more generous, egalitarian, and peaceful world through expanding human rights, ending racism, strengthening justice, and protecting precarious migrants. They are willing to pursue these objectives even though they recognize that the programs to achieve what they desire involve financial costs.

Humanitarian values and utilitarian values in Canada coexist with one another, despite differences. Political leaders and the public in Canada are attracted both to policy efficiency and to the protection of those in need. Differences between political perspectives on refugee and asylum issues are therefore based on which set of basic values they hold more strongly. In the case of the Liberals and Conservatives, the two parties that have dominated Canadian national governments since Confederation in 1867, the overlap in perspective has been historically fairly high. Both parties have, since the 1990s, been broadly neo-liberal in policy orientation. Despite at times strongly voiced differences, they have in the end supported similar trade and overall immigration policies. Their recent (post-2005) stronger differences in views on refugee protection, human rights issues in security and citizenship, and related matters, such as promoting a multicultural society, need to be placed in this broader context.

Studies of the historical origins and recent developments in Canadian immigration and refugee policy – such as those by Dirks (1978), Adelman (1991), Adelman et al. (1994), Kelley and Trebilcock (2010), and Simmons (2010), plus the ongoing flow of articles in Refuge: Canada’s Journal of Refugees – point to three main periods of development of Canadian refugee and asylum policy. The first period ran from 1867 to the end of the Second World War. During this long period, Canadian immigration policy was based almost entirely on economic considerations and related utilitarian values, with little reference to human rights or refugees. The second period started after the Second World War and developed over the 1960s to 1980s with various policy developments that recognized refugees and asylum-seekers, and established procedures for Canada’s contribution to the protection of these categories of precarious migrants. The third period runs from the early 1990s to the present. This most recent period has been characterized by turbulence and conflicting views on how to respond to the enormous rise in global refugee populations, the increase in international flows of asylum-seekers and undocumented economic migrants, and the rise of international terrorism along with growing fears that migrants as well as travellers may include terrorists. Much of Canadian policy developed in this third period has been oriented to limiting the inflows of refugees, asylum-seekers, and individuals suspected of links to terrorist organizations. At times these gate-keeping policies have evoked strong critical reactions and concern that Canada is abandoning previously developed commitments to protect bona fide refugees.

In its early history, prior to the emergence of a refugee policy, Canada admitted large numbers of immigrants who were motivated by the desire to escape persecution and related hardship. However, these asylum-seekers were not admitted because they were refugees. Rather, they were admitted because they fit the criteria for the kind of immigrant Canada wanted for national development and economic growth. Mennonites who left Europe in the 1800s and early 1900s to escape religious restrictions and to find new opportunity were admitted because they were European and because they were farmers, not because they had experienced persecution in Europe. Conversely, Jews fleeing Nazi persecution in Europe in the 1930s were prohibited from entry to Canada because of a prejudiced view among Canadian state officials that Jews were unsuitable as immigrants (Abella and Troper 1983). State officials did not recognize the fact that they were refugees in need of asylum. There was, in fact, no policy on refugees in Canada at that time. This was not surprising, as international norms on refugee protection did not emerge until after the end of the Second World War.

When refugee and asylum policies began to develop in Canada, they were not matters over which there was a deep division in view between the major political parties in power. Over the period from 1962 to 1989, alternating Conservative and Liberal governments revised the nation’s immigration and refugee polices to strengthen both utilitarian and humanitarian objectives. This took place in the context of ongoing debates in Canada over which people seeking asylum were deserving of admission as refugees. The human rights– related developments emerging from these debates were impressive. They included: ending racist immigrant-selection policies in 1962; signing the UN Convention on Refugees in 1960; adding a refugee stream to immigration policy in 1976; adopting a multicultural act in 1985; and enacting federal employment equity standards with antiracist provisions in 1986. Specifically with regard to refugee claimants, the landmark Supreme Court decision Singh v. Canada (1984) affirmed that asylum-seekers had a right to a fair review of their cases in Canada and could not be deported until such a fair review had been provided (Supreme Court 1985; Hathaway and Neve 1996). This was followed by the creation of the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) in 1989 to adjudicate the claims presented by the thousands of asylum-seekers arriving in Canada each year in that period.

At the same time, utilitarian goals were significantly strengthened through the introduction in 1966 of the “points system” for selecting immigrants. This was a milestone in the evolution of policies intended to increase the positive economic impact of immigrants. The points system replaced racist country-of-origin immigrant selection procedures with a selection process based on the applicant’s schooling, job skills, and other work-efficiency-related criteria.

From the early 1970s to the late 1980s, Canada admitted tens of thousands of refugees by selection abroad and by admission through approving the refugee claims of asylum-seekers who had arrived directly from Uganda, Chile, Ghana, Vietnam, Central America, China, and many other places (Adelman 1991). In many instances, such as the cases of asylum-seekers from Chile and Vietnam, the Canadian state was encouraged by public support, particularly through church-based and other human rights groups, to admit larger numbers of refugees than it seemingly otherwise would have. Overall, the nation had reasons to be proud of its relative successes in immigration and in refugee protection.

THE RISE OF UTILITARIAN REFUGEE AND ASYLUM CONTROL POLICIES

Starting in the 1990s and continuing through to late 2015, Canadian immigration and refugee policy shifted incrementally in a more utilitarian direction, with humanitarian provisions being retained at more qualified levels. In 1992, the government introduced new policy measures designed to increase the relative size of the economic class of immigrants (skilled workers, professionals, etc.) and to increase the “human capital” of those entering in this class through selecting immigrants with particularly high levels of education that would make them suitable for a “knowledge economy” (Simmons 2010, 83–4). At the same time, the government reduced the refugee-class and family-class (sponsored relatives) categories of admission, on the grounds that individuals in these two humanitarian entry streams were less relevant to improving Canada’s economy and were often more costly because of their greater reliance on social programs. Under subsequent governments – led by Liberals (1993–2005) and Conservatives (2006–15) – this fundamental shift in favour of economic immigrants, and against refugees and family-class immigrants, was maintained. As Figure 10.1 shows, the number of economic immigrants landing in Canada since 1993 has continued to rise to ever higher levels. In contrast, the number of refugee landings was held to low levels throughout this period. The current Liberal government (2015 to present) is admitting a large number of Syrian refugees from abroad, which will increase refugee inflows in 2016 (see Figure 10.3). The very high 2016 refugee target (55,000) was exceptional. In 2017 this target dropped to 40,000 (cic 2016).

Policies developed in the early 1990s that put refugees at the bottom of annual intake targets were based on the view that Canada needed highly skilled economic immigrants to develop and compete in a world of global trade. As a result, attracting and admitting immigrants with such skills became the priority. Refugee protection was important, but reflected a much lower priority. In the early 2000s, new arguments emerged to strengthen the effort to reduce the inflow of refugees. Influential policy critics argued that Canada’s admission of asylum-seekers was dysfunctional from an economic perspective (Gallagher 2003) and that economic considerations must include security linked to trade (Bissett 2010). They alleged that weak border control combined with expensive IRB adjudication procedures and costly social / health services for refugee claimants waiting for decisions constituted an inefficient and financially burdening system. They argued that claimants from certain countries had particularly low acceptance rates, and alleged that claims from these countries were frivolous, hence should be given at most brief consideration or not be considered at all. To cut costs and discourage asylum-seekers from coming to Canada, the critics, based on utilitarian values, proposed eliminating the claimants’ access to health care while in Canada waiting for their claim to be assessed. They also encouraged the successful negotiation of a US-Canada “safe third country agreement” that would shut the door to refugee claimants seeking to enter Canada through the United States on the grounds that the claimant should only be allowed to make their claim in the “safe” country (either Canada or the US) in which they first arrived. This agreement was concluded and went into effect in 2004, despite critical concern in Canada that the United States’ acceptance of asylum-seekers was in certain cases far more restrictive than Canada’s (Macklin 2005).

Figure 10.1 Immigrant landings by class of entry, 1980–2015

Source: Author, based on data from the Government of Canada (2016).

Human rights advocates responded that the above cost estimates were exaggerated and that the allegations of claims being frivolous were based on ignorance about real circumstances in the countries from which many claimants originate. They agreed that refugee protection and human rights in immigration policy were expensive, but they also noted that these measures were not expensive relative to many other government programs. Finally, refugee rights advocates noted that costly delays in the processing of refugee claims and the high proportion of asylum claims that were denied for some source countries were in part due to serious inadequacies in the operation of the IRB (Rehaag 2008).

The rise in the terrorist threat after the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and other US targets by extremist Muslims created an enormous challenge to security in Canada, as in other Western nations. Tighter border controls and more careful vetting of refugees were proposed as necessary steps toward improving security. News reports on how a terrorist, Ahmad Ressam, had settled in Canada as a refugee bolstered this view (PBS 2001). These arguments gained further strength when some American political actors alleged that Canadian security measures were weak. Humanitarians and other opponents of the above proposals were very critical of what they saw as false allegations that Canada was a haven for terrorists. Independent researchers concurred that the terrorists involved in 9/11 did not pass through Canada (Kephart 2009). Those with humanitarian inclinations were also worried that the antismuggling legislation being proposed (and eventually approved and implemented) tended to confuse criminal smuggling with humanitarian efforts to help asylum-seekers enter Canada.

Between 2006 and 2015, various policies were put in place to reinforce what can be termed as a “gated-wall” policy agenda. The first building block in this agenda has been the strategy on refugee-class immigrants. Refugees continue to have the lowest priority in annual immigrant admission targets. A key element of the agenda concerns asylum-seekers. Within the refugee class, refugee claimants have the lowest priority. Various policies were developed to control the entry of refugee claimants and if possible reduce their numbers. Finally, antiterrorist policies, including those that affected the access of refugees and asylum-seekers to Canada, were introduced in ways that often further restricted refugee inflows and the rights of asylum-seekers.

Many of the policy measures – such as visa and border controls – used to achieve the above goals were already in place. These existing policy measures were strengthened and a series of new policy measures were added.

The government extended or modified visa requirements to enter Canada to limit the flows of asylum-seekers in cases where their numbers were large or rising. In 2008, Mexico and the Czech Republic were added to the list of countries requiring visas. Starting around the same time, visa applications from Sri Lanka, Colombia, and other countries were screened more carefully to refuse those deemed likely to make asylum claims. Canada continued and enhanced its cooperation with the United States and other governments to identify and interdict ships carrying asylum-seekers to Canada (an activity that was given increased attention after two boats carrying Tamil refugee claimants were seized off the coast of British Columbia in 2009 and 2010). Provisions of the 2002 US-Canada “safe third country” agreement were used to restrict asylum-seekers from Haiti, Mexico, Central America, and other countries entering by land through the United States. Following a long-established practice, airlines were held accountable through fines if they failed to prevent individuals without proper travel documents from flying to Canada.

Since 2000, many new border-control, security, and asylum measures have been developed. Key new measures are included in Table 10.2. They include the 2012 decision to restrict health-care services provided to refugees and to asylum-seekers waiting for their claims to be adjudicated. They also include the 2012 decision to demand biometric data (fingerprints and photographic data) in twenty-nine countries from individuals applying for visas allowing them to work, study, or reside temporarily in Canada (McMurtry 2012). The collection of biometric data is intended to strengthen border security by allowing officials to check the identity of travellers and visa holders at points of departure, entry, and verification within Canada. The reasons for selecting the specific twenty-nine countries in question were not stated. However, these reasons may be largely inferred by examining the list of countries. All are less developed nations. Some have produced many refugee claimants or are the origins of large flows of asylum-seekers and undocumented migrants (e.g., Colombia, Afghanistan, Tunisia, Somalia, Sri Lanka). Others (e.g., Haiti and Jamaica) are the origin of large numbers of seasonal farm workers who are engaged in repeat migration. The government plans to demand biometric data from individuals applying for temporary residence visas from other countries in the future.

A very controversial policy package known as Bill C-31 (the Immigration and Refugee Control Act) was put into place in 2012. This bill provides several new tools to limit the inflow of refugee claimants and undocumented migrants. The Act specifies a new “designated class” of asylum-seekers consisting of those originating in designated “safe” nations that do not or should not, according to government criteria, normally produce refugee claimants. It also specifies an “irregular class” of migrants consisting of those smuggled into Canada in groups of two or more. Migrants in these two new classes face restricted rights while in Canada and fast processing of their claims for refugee status using guidelines designed to exclude most of them. Claimants in these classes are required to submit their asylum applications within forty-five days after arrival, a period that critics view as too short to prepare an application with the necessary facts and supporting documents. Failed claimants in the designated and irregular classes have no right of appeal to the Refugee Board. They may appeal on procedural grounds to the Federal Court, but can be deported while waiting for this appeal to be decided. While in Canada, individuals in both of these two new classes have restricted access to federally supported health care. Those in the “irregular class” face mandatory detention (incarceration) on arrival (see cic 2013a; Alboim and Cohl 2012; CCR 2012).

Table 10.2 Chronology of selected policies affecting refugees and asylum-seekers (2000 to 2015) and the reaction of critics to these policies

The list of “designated-class” countries is updated over time to reflect changing conditions in source countries and the success rates of asylum-seekers coming from them. In March 2013, thirty-five countries were listed within this class (cic 2013a). Most of the countries listed at that time (and most of those listed in early 2016) are wealthy nations with strong human rights protections for their citizens, and hence seldom if ever produce refugee claimants. However, the 2013 list also included countries such as the Czech Republic, Colombia, Hungary, and Mexico. Despite the government’s view that these are “safe” countries, there is considerable evidence that these nations were at that time (and in some cases remain at present) unable to provide acceptable levels of human rights protections to all their citizens even though their constitutions and other policies promise such protections. The evidence supporting this concern is well documented. The persecution of the Roma minority in Hungary and the Czech Republic is well established for the period up to 2008 (EU-MIDIS 2009; Amnesty International 2009) and supported by research covering the more recent past (Beaudoin, Danch, and Rehaag 2015). Significant human rights failures in Haiti are similarly well documented (CIDH 2006; MINUSTAH 2012). Human rights failures, the role of the national army in supporting the unconstitutional and illegal violence of armed militias, and the forced displacement of millions of people in Colombia are also well documented (UNHCR 2013). However, as yet, the Canadian government has not changed its view that these nations were (and remain) so-called safe countries.

Bill C-31 also mandated important changes in the way in which the claims of asylum-seekers are adjudicated by the IRB. Up to 2012, government-appointed officials adjudicated asylum claims. Many of the appointed officials were trained as lawyers, but they did not necessarily have any background on refugee issues. Critics observed that rulings on cases from the same origin country by appointed adjudicators often varied widely from one adjudicator to another. Rulings on cases from the same country also varied widely across regional offices of the IRB (Rehaag 2008). To address these criticisms and seemingly also to speed processing and reduce costs, Bill C-31 established that new cases were to be assessed by civil servants with expertise in doing this work. At the time this change was proposed, no one knew how the new procedures would affect the success rate for refugee claims. Some critics feared that civil servants would be more inclined to take the closed-gate position of the federal government in power at the time. Success rates for claims assessed had already fallen from 54 per cent in 2006 to 37 per cent, leading to worries among human rights activists that they might fall further.

The above post-2006 closed-gate policies had three major outcomes. First, the visa and border controls applied to particular countries had a quick and powerful impact in reducing the flows of asylum claimants coming from them (see Figure 10.2). The rapid downturn in asylum claims from Mexico after the imposition of new visa requirements was most dramatic. However, there were similar downturns in asylum claims from Colombia, Haiti, and Hungary (all shown in Figure 10.2), as well from from the Czech Republic (not shown in Figure 10.2 as it follows a similar pattern to the one shown for Hungary). As noted above, critics of the government’s policies were very troubled by these trends, noting that the asylum-seekers being excluded included many in great need of protection that their home country was unable or unwilling to provide.

Second, asylum applicants from “designated countries” faced greater hardships in Canada. Restrictions on health-care services being provided to asylum-seekers waiting for their claims to be resolved were of particular concern. A physician-led protest movement in 2012 gained followers (Keung 2012). A national coalition of health-care providers pushed for the federal government to reverse its policies (CHC 2013). Some provincial governments began to take action. In 2014 Ontario decided to fund refugee health care following the federal cuts (CBC 2013). More recent developments, including reinstatement by the federal government of the previously cut health-care services, followed the election of a new Parliament in 2015 (see below).

Figure 10.2 Claimants entering Canada: selected “designated countries,” 2005–14

Source: Author, based on data from Citizenship and Immigration Canada (2011, 2014).

Finally, the new procedures that began to be implemented in 2013 for adjudicating the claims of asylum-seekers are leading to higher rates of success. This has been a welcome surprise to critics of government policy, given that they had worried that the opposite might happen. Evidence examined by Rehaag (2016) and Keung (2015) shows that over the period 2013–15, adjudication by civil servants (the new procedure) produced significantly higher acceptance rates (61 per cent versus 34 per cent) than adjudication by government appointees (the old procedure). In this three-year period, as adjudication by civil servants was being phased in to replace adjudication by government appointees, the overall acceptance rate of refugee claimants rose to above 56 per cent (up from a previous low of 37 per cent in 2012; see Table 10.3). One of the most surprising outcomes is the rising success rate of claimants from so-called safe (or designated) countries. Thirty-five per cent of asylum-seekers (nearly all Roma) from Hungary were accepted in 2015, up more than threefold from 2011. Rising acceptance rates were observed for Mexico and other “safe” countries. Janet Dench, the director of the Canadian Council for Refugees, observed that “high acceptance rates of claims from … safe countries contravene the government rhetoric that these countries are safe” (Keung 2015).

POST-2015: EARLY DAYS OF A NEW POLICY AGENDA

The October 2015 Canadian federal election took place in a context of heightened public and political awareness of issues related to border security, terrorism, and refugee policies. Security concerns had been elevated by the deadly ISIL-sponsored terrorist attacks in Europe in 2014 (notably the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris and the Jewish Museum shootings in Brussels) and by the killing in 2014 of two Canadian Armed Forces members (the first in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, and the second at the National War Memorial in Ottawa) by converts to extreme Islam. Security concerns were also heightened by reports of evidence that several hundred young Canadians had been recruited by ISIL to fight in Syria and elsewhere, and that some of these militant youth were returning to Canada after terrorist training and war experience abroad.

At the same time, the Canadian government and citizens were increasingly aware that an enormous humanitarian challenge and refugee crisis had erupted in Western Asia. An estimated nine million Syrians had fled their homes since war broke out in that country in 2011 (UNHCR 2015). Three million had fled to neighbouring countries, principally Turkey. The rest were internally displaced. Starting early in 2014, many of these Syrian refugees and displaced people began to circumvent border controls by travelling by boat across the Mediterranean or by foot through Turkey to Europe. Iraqis, Afghans, and others joined the Syrians in a massive flow of asylum-seekers. By the end of 2015, close to a million new undocumented migrants had arrived in Europe. Thousands of the migrants, including women and children, died while crossing the Mediterranean Sea. The press showed the footage of their desperate and precarious condition. One story that attracted widespread attention in Canada was of a Syrian boy, Alan Kurdi. He was washed up dead on the beach after the boat that carried him and his family sank in an attempted crossing to Europe. He had relatives in Canada who had been seeking to sponsor their family members in Syria to come as refugees (MacKinnon 2015). This tragedy made front-page news.

Figure 10.3 Refugees and approved claimants landed by year

Source: Author, based on data from the Government of Canada (2016).

The political response in Canada to the above issues was divided along party lines. The Conservative government of the time maintained that they were on the right track by enacting (in 2015) the Combatting Terrorism Act (Bill S-7) and the Citizenship Law (Bill C-24) that together increased penalties for terrorism to include loss of citizenship and deportation. They also argued that slowing down the processing of Syrian refugee applicants to near zero was necessary to ensure the careful screening-out of any terrorists. Critics did not accept what they viewed as a number of unacceptable limitations on civil rights in the new pieces of legislation. In their view, UNHCR officials had already vetted all the Syrian refugees who had been selected as eligible for admission. They had, from this perspective, passed a security check and been cleared of terrorist links or sympathies.

When the new Liberal government took office following the October 2015 election, it immediately moved to accelerate the acceptance and settlement of Syrian refugees (cic 2015). Twenty-five thousand were to be admitted in the remaining months of 2015 (this number was in fact reached in early 2016) and another twenty-five thousand were targeted for admission in 2016. If the 2016 target is achieved, it will shift refugee admissions up to a previously very high point observed in 1990 (this high point was a “spike” upward that ended a previously rising trend over the late 1980s; see Figure 10.3). To settle such a large number of refugees in such a short time, Canadian communities and civil-society humanitarian organizations (including churches, mosques, and other institutions) were invited to enter into co-sponsoring relationships with the government (cic 2015). There was a quick uptake of this offer by groups and communities across the nation, supported by a broad coalition of fundraising and support agencies (Humanitarian Coalition 2016).

The new Liberal government has promised other measures that largely reflect a strengthening of humanitarian values in the overall agenda. It intends to modify Bill C-24 (the Citizenship Act) to remove the clauses creating two classes of citizens: a higher level for those with only Canadian citizenship, and a lower one for those with dual citizenship (Zilio 2016).The time required for foreign residents to become eligible for citizenship is also to be shortened. Health services for asylum-seekers waiting for their claims to be processed are being restored. The government argued that the increased costs arising from admitting and settling the Syrian refugees and reinstating health services for asylum-seekers were justifiable in terms of Canada’s commitment to humanitarian values.

Yet, the utilitarian policies developed over previous years remain largely intact in early 2016. Targets for 2017 follow long-established priorities: economic immigrants are at the top (172,000), followed by family (83,500), with refugees, as always, last (40,000) (CIC 2016). Tight border controls and visa regulation are still in place, both for security reasons and to reduce or control flows of asylum-seekers.While a large number of Syrian refugees are being admitted in 2016, refugee admissions from other countries and regions are being held at lower, prior levels. At present, the government continues to maintain a “designated list” of countries that do not normally produce refugees, according to government criteria, while critics argue that some of the countries included do, in fact, produce legitimate refugees. Fast-tracking applications for asylum put forward by individuals originating in designated “safe” countries is pursued as before in order to speed the anticipated deportation of the applicants.

Figure 10.4 Per cent of claimants accepted by year (and by adjudication procedure after 2012)

Source: Calculations by the author based on data made available online by Rehaag (2016).

In sum, the debate over how to combine and balance utilitarian and humanitarian values has been, and remains, at the core of shifting government initiatives to develop Canadian policies toward refugees, asylum-seekers, and other precarious migrants, including low-wage temporary foreign workers (Goldring, Berinstein, and Bernhard 2009). For the moment, Canada is one of a small number of countries, including Germany and Norway, that are accepting their share of Syrian refugees under a UN proposal. What the future will bring for Canada’s position and those of other nations regarding this current crisis and future refugee challenges is at present unknown. However, it is clear that the same underlying value issues and ideologies will be involved in future policy decisions. An understanding of the issues involved based on careful, critical research can improve the decisions made.

SELECTED FUTURE RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The long-term answer to global flows of refugees, asylum-seekers, and other precarious migrants requires what the United Nations refers to as “durable solutions” to root causes (UNHCR 2016). Durable solutions involve ending the persecution, violence, and extreme inequality in migrant origin countries. Unfortunately, these goals are exceedingly difficult to achieve and will take time. In the interim, refugees and other forced migrants will continue to move, in some cases in huge flows, as in the case of the massive movement from Western Asia to Europe beginning in early 2014 and continuing into 2016. What then are the priority research questions for Canada? My suggestions include the following.

a) How can criteria and procedures used by authorities to adjudicate refugee claims be improved?

A surprising research finding reported in our analysis is that new rules and procedures for adjudicating the claims of asylum-seekers led to dramatically higher acceptance rates, reversing a previous trend toward lower acceptance rates. Under the old rules, in which government appointees did the adjudicating, acceptances rates had fallen to 34 per cent. Under new rules in which expert civil servants do the adjudicating, acceptance rates have risen to 61 per cent. Of particular interest is the impact of the new rules on the pattern of acceptance rates for asylum-seekers from designated countries, whom the state has sought to discourage on the grounds that the nations they come from are normally safe. Acceptance rates from these countries remain low under the new rules, but they have also increased considerably from even lower previous rates. Acceptance rates for claimants (mostly Roma) from the Czech Republic, for example, tripled between 2012 and 2015. These findings and the trend they suggest need to be confirmed and more carefully assessed. The findings to date suggest that the rules leading to the classification of countries into “designated” and “non-designated” need to be seriously revised. Procedures for adjudicating the claims of asylum-seekers from countries that have contradictory conditions – say, for example, with some cities, regions, and minorities that are indeed safe, versus others that are not – need to be developed and adopted. Meanwhile, the short timeline allowed for individual claimants from these countries to present their claims is a serious problem that needs to be re-examined and changed.

b) What policies are most effective in assisting refugees to integrate in Canada?

It is well known that refugees who have been accepted into Canada face a particularly difficult set of settlement challenges. They are initially vulnerable to high levels of unemployment, jobs in low-wage positions, and welfare dependency (DeVoretz et al. 2004; Renaud et al. 2003). For some groups this struggle may last for many years. The evidence suggests that programs that provide special attention to the needs of refugees with respect to housing (Murdie 2008), schooling (Yohani 2013), job placement (Krahn et al. 2000), and services for at-risk youth (Rossiter and Rossiter 2009) make positive differences in their well-being. We need to know much more about which programs work best for both economic integration (refugee success in finding jobs and good incomes) and social integration (peaceful and equal relations of refugees and their children with others in Canadian society). The very large Syrian refugee settlement program underway from late 2015 through at least to the end of 2016 will provide an excellent opportunity to examine how the high level of public involvement, business support, and mixed public-private sponsorship in initial settlement efforts will affect outcomes over the longer term.

c) What is the role of civil society actors in Canadian policy?

Organizations such as No One Is Illegal, the Canadian Council for Refugees, the Canadian arm of Amnesty International, and the Canadian Council of Churches usually work independently of one another to protect refugees and promote human rights. Occasionally they join forces in public protest, lobbying parliamentarians, and taking legal action. Court challenges supported by one or more of these organizations and / or others have included the effort by a coalition of doctors and lawyers to overturn the policies limiting healthcare access for refugee claimants (Goar 2013) and the campaign to have some provisions of the Smugglers Act declared unconstitutional (CCR 2013). In early 2013, successful lobbying led Toronto to declare itself an “Asylum City,” thereby joining a number of US cities that promote inclusive social services for all residents, including migrants without documentation (Keung 2013). In mid-2015, the Federal Court, acting on charges against the government brought forward by human rights groups, ruled that policies that deny refugee applicants from designated countries of origin the right to appeal after a claim has been rejected violate Canadian Charter rights (Levitz 2015). How these efforts at mobilizing policy change have come about and the circumstances under which they are successful are poorly understood. This is a priority research topic.

d) Are new patterns of undocumented migration emerging in Canada?

Over the period from 2000 to 2014, the number of Temporary Foreign Workers (TFWS) in Canada increased rapidly, rising to more than 190,000 in 2009 and remaining near this high point through to 2013. Following public criticism that too many TFWS had been admitted, in June 2014, the federal government began to reduce the number of foreign workers (Syed 2015). However, in early 2016, the new Liberal government indicated that it would eventually return to policies favouring selective employer requests for foreign workers. Will the continuing presence of large numbers of TFWS lead to many of them eventually remaining clandestinely in Canada, as has happened in other countries? New studies are required to understand how policy changes affect clandestine migration, why migrants in hiding are staying, how they survive, who employs them, and if and how they obtain health care when they are ill or injured (Magalhaes et al. 2010).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author wishes to thank Jean Turner for excellent comments on the draft version of this chapter.

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Contributors

DONALD ABELSON is a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario (London, Ontario), where he specializes in US politics and American foreign policy. He is the author of several books, including Do Think Tanks Matter? Assessing the Impact of Public Policy Institutes (2002), which has been translated into Arabic and Simplified Chinese, A Capitol Idea: Think Tanks & US Foreign Policy (2006), and Northern Lights: Exploring Canada’s Think Tank Landscape (2016). His work has also appeared in over four dozen academic journals and edited collections. In addition to his research and teaching interests, Professor Abelson often provides commentaries on American politics and Canada-US relations on national and international television and radio stations.

CHARLES M. BEACH has taught at Queen’s University (Kingston, Ontario) since 1972 and became professor emeritus in 2012. He was co-founder of the Canadian Econometric Study Group and the Canadian Employment Research Forum, and director of the John Deutsch Institute at Queen’s (2001–09). He is currently a research associate at both the C.D. Howe Institute in Toronto and the Institute for Research on Public Policy in Montreal, has been an advisor to many federal departments, and is past president of the Canadian Economics Association. He has published a number of research and policy papers, and has written or edited seventeen books, including Transition and Structural Change in the North American Labour Market (with Michael Abbott and Richard Chaykowski, 1997) and Toward Improving Canada’s Skilled Immigration Policy: An Evaluation Approach (with Alan Green and Christopher Worswick, 2011). His current research interests are immigration policy and income distribution and inequality.

MONICA BOYD, trained as a demographer and sociologist, held the Canada Research Chair in Immigration, Inequality, and Public Policy at the University of Toronto, 2001–15. She is the author of numerous articles, books, and monographs on social inequality and international migration focusing on policy developments, immigrant labour-market integration, and the socio-economic achievements of immigrant offspring. Her current research projects focus on the labour-market integration of high-skilled immigrants, care work by migrant women in North America, and changing Canadian and American immigration policies. An active participant in government advisory committees, she has served as president of the Canadian Population Society, chair of the American Sociological Association Section on International Migration, and vice-president of the Academy of Social Sciences of Canada’s national academy, the Royal Society of Canada.

MEYER BURSTEIN is an international consultant. He has served as a senior fellow and director of policy and planning for the Pathways to Prosperity Partnership (P2P), a migration research initiative that he helped create. Prior to this, he played a similar role in the Ontario-based Welcoming Communities Initiative. Meyer is a former director-general for Citizenship and Immigration Canada who was responsible for strategic planning, research, and analysis, and was the co-founder of Metropolis, a pre-eminent, international policy-research project on migration. Meyer has advised both domestic and international governments on a broad range of policy, research, and organizational issues linked to immigration and diversity. His work has included strategic reviews, evaluation studies, and policy and operational assessments in the areas of social and economic policy, research, and knowledge management.

JOSH CURTIS is an assistant professor at the University of Calgary in the Department of Sociology. His research explores how income inequality affects the relationship between social class and economic and political attitudes and behaviours. Some of his research has examined the sources and effects of class identification and awareness, and more specifically, how conditions at both the individual and the national level influence class awareness, and the link between class and political behaviour. He has published in several prominent sociology journals, including European Sociological Review, Research in Stratification and Mobility, the Journal of Aging and Social Policy, the Canadian Journal on Aging, the Journal of International Migration and Integration, and the Canadian Review of Sociology.

KAY DEAUX is a distinguished professor emerita at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and a visiting research scholar in the Department of Psychology at New York University. She has served as president of several psychological organizations, including the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, the Association for Psychological Science, and the Society of Personality and Social Psychology. Currently she serves on the Advisory Committee for Cultural Contact and Immigration at the Russell Sage Foundation. Her published books include To Be an Immigrant (2006) and the Handbook of Personality and Social Psychology (2012). Her current immigration research includes studies of stereotype threat in Turkish-heritage students in Germany, as well as issues of ethnic and national identity, stereotypes, and generational differences in immigrant groups in the US and Europe.

ELS DE GRAAUW is an assistant professor of political science at Baruch College, the City University of New York. Her research focuses on the intersection between immigration and citizenship, race and ethnicity, civil society, urban and regional politics, and public policy. She is the author of Making Immigrant Rights Real: Nonprofits and the Politics of Integration in San Francisco (Cornell University Press, 2016). She currently has under way a comparative study of city and state immigrant affairs offices in the United States, as well as a study of immigrant organizations in New York City. Her work has been published in various journals, including the Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Politics & Society, American Journal of Sociology, Annual Review of Political Science, and Daedalus, as well as various edited volumes. She earned her PhD in political science from the University of California at Berkeley.

JENNIFER ELRICK is an assistant professor of sociology at McGill University. Her work focuses on two overarching research agendas. The first examines how institutional aspects of contexts of reception affect the symbolic and material incorporation of immigrants into Western liberal-democratic states. The second focuses on the reciprocal relationship between ethnic identities and deliberation, understood as a particular form of political communication emphasizing inclusion and reason giving. Both agendas address the relationship between classification processes, diversity, and social inequality, i.e. the ways in which classification processes pertaining to race, ethnicity, legal status, etc. affect the differential distribution of resources and recognition within a society. Her work has been published in Ethnic and Racial Studies, International Migration Review, the Journal of International Migration and Integration, Sociological Forum, and Sociology.

VICTORIA ESSES (PhD University of Toronto) is a professor of psychology and director of the Centre for Research on Migration and Ethnic Relations at the University of Western Ontario (London, Ontario). She is the principal investigator and co-chair of the Pathways to Prosperity Partnership (http://www.p2pcanada.ca), a national alliance of university, community, and government partners dedicated to fostering welcoming communities, and promoting the integration of immigrants and minorities across Canada. She was the founding director of the Collaborative Graduate Program in Migration and Ethnic Relations at the University of Western Ontario, and founding co-editor of the journal Social Issues and Policy Review. She has extensive experience conducting research of direct relevance to immigration policy and practice, including public attitudes toward immigration and cultural diversity, promising practices in settlement and integration, and factors promoting the settlement and integration of immigrants and refugees. In 2010 she was awarded the Harold Crabtree Foundation Award in Public Policy Research and the Faculty Scholar Award for her work in this area.

ABDIE KAZEMIPUR is a professor of sociology at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, and the chair of ethnic studies at the University of Calgary. He does research in the two areas of immigrant integration in Canada and socio-cultural trends in the Middle East, on which he has published seven books, with two more in press. He is the author of The Muslim Question in Canada: A Story of Segmented Integration (UBC Press, 2014), which received the 2015 John Porter Tradition of Excellence Award from the Canadian Sociological Association.

SUSAN F. MARTIN is the Donald G. Herzberg Professor of International Migration Emerita in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University (Washington, DC). She was the founder and first director of the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown. Previously, she was the executive director of the US Commission on Immigration Reform, mandated in legislation to advise Congress and the president on US immigration and refugee policy. She is the author of A Nation of Immigrants (2011) and numerous other books, monographs, and articles on global migration issues.

CORDELIA W. REIMERS is professor emerita of economics at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where she taught from 1982 to 2003. Her research has focused on immigrants in the labour market, ethnic differences in labour-market outcomes, retirement behaviour, and women’s labour supply. Prior to joining the faculty of CUNY, she was an assistant professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University (New Jersey). She has been a senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisers, a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences’ panel on Hispanics in the United States, whose report, Hispanics and the Future of America, was published in 2006. She holds a BS in history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a PhD in economics from Columbia University.

JEFFREY G. REITZ is professor and former chair in the Department of Sociology, R.F. Harney Professor of Ethnic, Immigration and Pluralism Studies, and a member of the faculty of the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. His primary areas of research are immigration and multicultural issues, emphasizing the case of Canada in comparative perspective. His most recent book is Multiculturalism and Social Cohesion: Potentials and Challenges of Diversity (2009). Recent articles include “Comparisons of the Success of Racial Minority Immigrant Offspring in the United States, Canada, and Australia” (2011), “The Distinctiveness of Canadian Immigration Experience” (2012), “Gender Equity in Canada’s Newly Growing Religious Minorities” (2015), and “The Status of Muslim Minorities Following the Paris Attacks” (2015). During 2012–14, he was Marie Curie International Fellow at l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris.

ALAN SIMMONS is a senior scholar in sociology at York University (Toronto, Ontario). He has written widely on international migration, refugee movements, and immigrant settlement in Canada. His publications include International Migration, Refugee Flows, and Human Rights in North America (1996) and Immigration and Canada: Global and Transnational Perspectives (2010). In the past he has served as visiting professor at the United Nations Demographic Centre in Santiago, Chile, and he is a former director of the Population and Development Program at the International Development Research Centre in Ottawa. Dr Simmons is currently a member of the editorial boards of several journals, including International Migration Review, Canadian Population Studies, and the Cahiers Québécois de démographie.

DIANA WORTS is a senior research associate with the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health. She has a longstanding interest in inequalities based on socioeconomic position, gender, race / ethnicity, and immigrant status, along with a concern for the role of social policy in shaping the impact of these statuses over the life course. Her current research examines adult employment and family trajectories, with a focus on how these vary by social position, what their repercussions are for health and economic well-being in later life, and how patterns differ in nations with distinct approaches to social welfare. Dr Worts has considerable expertise in data construction and analysis, including the use of panel studies, life history data, and complex modelling strategies for social research.

ANNA ZUSCHLAG is an instructor of history and American studies at the University of Western Ontario (London, Ontario). Her research is interdisciplinary in nature, focusing on the construction of New Left masculine identities during the Vietnam era and their iterations in the years after the war, particularly in popular media in the late 1960s and 1970s. She is interested in the intersection of gender, popular culture, and violence. She holds a PhD in history from the University of Western Ontario. Her participation on this volume began during her tenure as the Centre for American Studies’ (CAS) editorial assistant at the University of Western Ontario. Dr Zuschlag’s editorial work includes projects for the CAS, the Canada-US Institute, and Historica Canada, an independent historical organization.

Index

The index that appeared in the print version of this title was intentionally removed from the eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.

Afghanistan, 303, 309

AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations), 72–3

Africa, 58, 149n2, 191, 198; Eastern Africa, 222, 223f

AgJOBS program, 73, 276

Alberta, 30, 37, 47, 121, 223f, 236; and settlement realignment, 37. See also immigration policy

American Community Survey, 184t, 239–41, 248, 249t, 252t

American Competitiveness in the Twenty-First Century Act (AC21), 63

Amnesty International Canada, 291

Arabs, 207–8, 215–16, 248, 249t, 250, 252t, 258n5. See also Middle East

Arar, Maher, 214

“area” approach, 8, 157–8, 160–2, 166, 170–2

Arizona, 10, 75, 268–9, 274, 278, 280, 283, 284n2. See also immigration policy; McCain, John; United States Supreme Court

Asia, 34, 55, 58, 68–9, 78, 91, 98, 100, 149n2, 185, 188, 191–6, 198, 200, 233, 247, 249t, 250, 251t, 252t, 253–4, 256, 274, 282; Asian exclusion acts, 68–9, 185, 272–3. See also China; ethnicity; Japan; Korea; Philippines; race; Western Asia

assimilation, 131, 186–8, 199; assimilation theory, 186, 197

asylum: American policy, 57–8, 74–5, 84n4; asylum-seekers, 10, 45, 291–7, 302, 307–8, 313; in Canada, 10, 45, 291–2, 295–300, 302–3, 304–5t, 309, 311–15; Canadian policy, 10, 291–3, 298, 302–3, 304–5t, 306–8, 312; and “designated class,” 306; in Europe, 296, 313; and health care, 301, 307–8, 311; and United Nations, 313; in United States, 55–8, 69, 301. See also Conservative government; Harper government; humanitarian admissions; Immigration and Refugee Control Act; IRB; Liberal government; refugees

Australia, 4, 15, 80, 90, 105, 111, 237, 239

birthright citizenship, 8, 189, 192, 201n2

Border Patrol, 74, 80

Border Protection, Antiterrorism and Illegal Immigration Control Act (HR 4437), 74, 275–6. See also Border Patrol; discrimination; race; terrorism

British Columbia, 30, 33, 37–8, 47, 51n12, 51n14, 121, 132, 133t, 134t, 303, 304t; and settlement realignment, 37, 39. See also immigration policy

Budget Implementation Act (2008), 16

Bureau of Immigration, 265

Bush, George W., 7, 70–3, 210

California, 10, 67, 247, 266, 269–71, 274, 283n1; Martinez v. Regents of the University of California, 269, 284n3. See also immigration policy

Caribbean, 149n2, 191, 193, 198, 274. See also Dominican Republic; Haiti; West Indies

CCR (Canadian Council for Refugees), 309, 314

CEC (Canadian Experience Class), 31, 40, 92, 107, 109, 142. See also employment; labour market

Central America, 60–1, 160, 192, 299, 303. See also El Salvador; ethnicity; Guatemala; Honduras; Latin America

CES (constant elasticity of substitution) model, 155, 158, 162

Charter of Rights and Freedoms, 315

China, 63, 91, 92t, 105, 111, 247–8, 249t, 251t, 252t, 258n5, 272–3, 299. See also Asia; ethnicity; race

CIC (Citizenship and Immigration Canada), 28, 36–8, 42–3, 45–7, 49, 95, 107, 109, 112, 124; Innovation Division, 49; and LIPS (Local Immigration Partnerships), 47–8

Citizenship Law (Bill C-24), 305t, 310-11

Clinton, Bill, 216

Combatting Terrorism Act (Bill S-7) 304–5t, 310

Comprehensive Enforcement and Immigration Reform Act (2005), 75

Conservative government (Canada), 292–3, 297–8, 300. See also Harper government

Council on American-Islamic Relations Canada, 218-19

credential recognition, 99, 104, 108, 118, 121–23, 125, 126, 136–7, 141, 220; Foreign Credential Recognition Program, 122. See also education; employment; immigration policy

culture, 5, 8–9, 15, 3–3, 35, 46, 59, 98, 104, 120, 124, 141, 164, 185, 187, 190, 194, 196, 201n5, 206–9, 211–12, 222, 228, 275, 280. See also discrimination; ethnicity; immigration; race

DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), 78–9, 81;and DAPA (Deferred Action for Parents of Americans), 81

Democratic Party, 76–9, 216, 275–6. See also Clinton, Bill; Obama, Barack

Department of Homeland Security (DHS),57–8, 67–8, 265, 277; Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 265; INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service), 265; and Janet Napolitano, 68. See also Border Patrol

Department of Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC),30, 36. See also CIC

Department of Labor (DOL),57, 265

deportation: Canada, 214, 294–5, 310, 312; United States, 57–8, 65, 72, 76, 78, 84n7, 273, 275, 277, 281. See also immigration policy

discrimination, 61, 103, 185, 189, 198–9, 200, 219, 226, 227f, 227–9, 238, 269, 278; and language, 98, 103

Dominican Republic, 192, 194, 247. See also Caribbean

DREAM (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) Act, 7, 73, 78, 276; Dreamers, 79. See also DACA; education; family; immigrant children; immigration; immigration policy

education, 19–21, 27–9, 32–33, 45, 48, 50n9, 57, 59, 68, 80, 92–3, 98, 101–2, 111, 119–24, 126–7, 128t, 129, 130t, 131, 132, 133t, 134t 135, 136t, 136–7, 141–2, 149n1, 156, 159, 162–7, 169–71, 173, 185, 188, 195, 199–200, 213–14, 220, 222, 224, 235–8, 250, 255, 267, 268t, 269, 300; bachelor’s degree, 137t, 137, 149n3, 173; elementary, 94t, 237, 266, 269; foreign-based, 100–4, 112, 118, 140; parental, 104, 238–9, 242, 247; postsecondary, 73, 94t, 99, 119, 123, 127, 255, 269; professional/graduate degree, 127, 137t, 149n3; secondary, 73, 94t, 101, 172, 237, 266, 269. See also DACA; DREAM Act; employment; family; immigrant children; immigration policy

El Salvador, 60, 247. See also Central America; Latin America

employment, 7, 21–2, 31, 41–2, 45, 50n7, 50n9, 55–7, 58–60, 61–3, 64–6, 70, 75, 77, 80, 94–5, 95t, 99–100, 103, 106, 111–12, 118–19, 124, 126–7, 131–2, 138, 140, 141–2, 158, 161, 220, 236, 244t, 246, 257, 267, 268f, 294, 299; agricultural, 59, 61, 73, 79, 106, 276, 303; employment discrimination, 61, 103; high-skilled, 30, 107, 129, 138, 155–6, 162, 169, 173, 175; low-skilled, 30, 43, 65, 72, 131–2, 155, 157, 160, 162, 168, 173, 175; skill utilization, 103–4, 118–19, 121, 123, 125–7, 135–6, 138, 139t, 140–1; unauthorized workers, 61–2, 77; underemployment, 131–2, 141; undocumented workers, 256–7, 270, 282; unemployment, 64, 78, 80, 94–5, 95t, 99, 103, 106, 113n2, 314. See also credential recognition; FSWP; immigration policy; labour market; race; temporary foreign workers; visa

ethnicity, 18, 48, 75, 98, 104–5, 141, 157, 183, 185, 187, 190–200, 201n3, 201n5, 211, 215, 233, 235, 238–9, 247–8, 274; Afro-Caribbean, 196–7; Asian (see Asia); Black, 127, 143–8, 157,192–4, 196–8, 200, 201n3, 220, 239, 247–8, 249t, 250, 251t, 252t, 253–4, 256, 258n5, 272; ethnic enclave, 160, 185; Filipino, 127, 143–8, 249t, 251t, 252t, 258n5; Hispanic, 70, 78, 185, 233, 239, 247–8, 249t, 250, 252t, 253–4, 256, 280; Latino, 185, 191–4, 198–200,201n3, 207, 247, 282, 284n2; Mexican, 60, 83, 157, 160, 188, 192, 194, 198, 239, 241, 247–8, 249t, 252t, 253–4, 256; South Asian, 127, 143–8, 247–8, 249t, 251t, 252t, 258n5; Southeast Asian, 239, 247, 249t, 250, 251t, 252t, 253–4, 256, 258n5; Tamil, 303, 304t. See also culture; language; race

Europe, 34, 55, 58, 68, 91, 98, 131, 185–6, 193, 198, 206, 208, 212, 229, 247, 296, 298, 309–10, 313; European Union, 105. See also France; Germany; Italy; United Kingdom

E-Verify, 62

Express Entry, 4, 17, 31, 41, 43–4, 108; “Expression of Interest” system, 17, 31, 108

Fair Access to Regulated Professions Act (2006), 122. See also credential recognition; employment family, 9, 15, 17, 24, 26, 49n3, 58, 60, 67, 74, 77, 92, 234–9, 240–2, 243–4t, 245–8, 246f, 249t, 250, 251–2t, 253–7, 257n1, 258n3–4, 281–3, 295; reunification, 55, 75, 83, 90, 245, 247, 255–6. See also immigrant children; immigration policy

Federal Skilled Trades Program, 108. See also credential recognition; employment; FSWP; immigration policy; temporary foreign workers

Foreign Credential Recognition Program. See credential recognition; immigration policy

France, 90, 92t, 208, 213–14, 223f, 239. See also Europe

FSWP (Federal Skilled Worker Program), 31, 92, 99, 105–12. See also employment; Federal Skilled Trades Program; immigration policy; temporary foreign workers

Gang of Eight. See McCain, John Germany, 69, 90, 214, 223f, 239, 313. See also Europe

globalization, 7, 89, 218

Great Recession, 4, 7, 63, 89–90, 100

Guantanamo Bay, 214. See also Bush, George W.; Obama, Barack

Guatemala, 60, 247. See also Central America

Haiti, 92t, 192, 303, 304t, 306–7, 308f. See also Caribbean

Harper government, 6, 10, 105, 300, 304t, 310–11. See also Conservative government

Honduras, 60. See also Central America

humanitarian admissions, 55, 57–8. See also asylum; refugees

Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (1996), 70

immigrant children, 5, 9, 187, 189, 233–4, 235–9, 254–5, 257n1 309; in Canada, 9, 45, 104–5, 240, 243–4t, 245, 246f, 246–8, 249t, 250, 251t, 253–4, 256; parental employment, 9, 235, 242; unaccompanied minors, 4, 60; in United States, 9, 55, 64, 73, 77–8, 80–1, 187–8, 191–2, 195, 197, 201n2, 236–40, 241–2, 243–4t, 245–8, 246f, 249t, 250, 251–2t, 253–7, 269. See also DACA; DREAM Act; family; immigration; immigration policy; language

immigrant generation: first, 187, 189, 190–8, 201n1–4, 223–4; second, 104, 183, 186–8, 189–93, 194–9, 200, 201n1–4, 222–3, 234, 242, 245. See also family; immigrant children; immigration; immigration policy

immigration: business, 19, 28; economic, 4–5, 17, 23–4, 26–7, 29–30, 34, 46, 50n7, 51n13, 105, 109, 298, 300, 301f, 311; economic-class, 19, 26–7, 29, 45, 51n17, 91–2, 93t, 93–4, 94t, 106–7, 109, 111, 113n1, 119, 141–2, 220, 300, 301f; employment-based, 55–7, 63; family-based, 49n3, 55, 301f; and gender, 95t, 98, 102, 126–7, 128t, 129, 130t, 131–2, 133–4t, 135, 136t, 136–8, 137t, 139t, 141, 143–8, 169, 214, 224, 235, 309; and health care, 21–2, 28, 32–3, 43, 45, 47, 62, 132, 195–6, 198, 235–6, 238, 250, 257, 258n3, 266, 268f, 279, 281; and housing, 33, 65, 235, 238–9, 242, 243–4t, 245–6, 254–5, 257, 267, 282, 314; illegal, 60–1, 70–3, 78–9, 256. See also asylum; culture; discrimination; education; employment; family; immigrant children; immigration policy; language; poverty; race; refugees; religion; sponsorship; unauthorized migrants; undocumented migrants Immigration Act, Canada (1976), 17–19, 50n6, 294; and Green Paper, 18, 32; and 1978 regulations, 17, 19, 233

Immigration Act, United States (1990), 58, 63, 70. See also USCIR; visa

Immigration and Customs Enforcement. See Department of Homeland Security

Immigration and Nationality Act (1995), 59, 277

Immigration and Refugee Control Act (2012) (Bill C-31), 303, 304t, 305t, 307

Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (2008), 31, 105

immigration federalism, 10, 278–80

immigration policy: anti-undocumented, 266, 270, 278–9, 280–2; in Canada, 16–18, 22, 26, 28, 31, 38–9, 44, 46, 89–90, 92, 105–10, 118–19, 121–3, 125–6, 132, 140, 206, 212–13, 245, 247, 255–7, 294, 296–8, 300, 302; pro-undocumented, 266, 270–1, 276, 279, 283; reform in Canada, 16, 92, 292–3, 306, 308, 311, 313–15; reform in United States, 54, 64, 68–75, 76–82, 84n5, 188, 199, 266–7, 271, 275–8, 279–82; in United States, 54, 61, 64–5, 68–9, 70, 74, 78–9, 81–3, 185–6, 188, 200, 245, 247, 255, 265–8, 270–3, 276, 279, 283. See also asylum; employment; immigration; refugees

India, 63, 91, 92t, 105, 111, 222, 223f

INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service). See Department of Homeland Security

Iraq, 71, 309. See also Middle East

IRB (Immigration and Refugee Board), 294, 299–300, 302, 307

ISAP (Immigrant Settlement and Adaptation Program), 32, 46, 124

Italy, 222, 223f, 239. See also Europe

Japan, 249t, 251–2t, 258n5. See also Asia

Kenney, Jason, 38

Khadr, Omar, 214

Korea (South), 92t, 249t, 250, 251t, 254, 258n5. See also Asia

labour market, 22–3, 58, 63, 234; Canada, 19, 23, 29, 34–5, 41–5, 51n13, 89–94, 95t, 95–6, 98–104, 106–7, 109, 112, 118–19, 122, 124–5, 131, 136–8, 141–2; United States, 63–5, 155 75. See also credential recognition; education; employment

language: deficiency, 104; ELD (English literacy development), 255; English, 51n13, 76–7, 80, 82, 93–4, 98–9, 102–4, 107, 111, 124, 127, 143–5, 147, 149n3, 164, 172, 174, 192, 195–6, 236–7, 240–1, 243–4t, 245, 250, 253, 255; ESL (English as a Second Language), 236, 255; fluency, 92–4, 99–100, 101–3, 107, 111, 172, 174, 236–7; French, 51n13, 93–4, 98–9, 102–4, 107, 124, 127, 143–5, 147, 149n3, 237, 241, 243–4t, 245, 250, 255; LINC (Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada), 124; literacy, 68, 94, 103, 111, 120, 122, 140. See also credential recognition; culture; discrimination; education; employment; family; immigrant children

Latin America, 55, 149n2, 247–8, 249t, 250, 251–2t, 253–4, 258n5, 274. See also ethnicity; race

legal permanent residents, 55, 65, 248

Liberal government (Canada), 10, 35, 292–3, 296–8, 300, 304t, 311, 315

LIPS. See under CIC

LSIC (Longitudinal Study of Immigrants to Canada), 103, 123, 224

Manitoba, 30, 38, 47, 112, 121; and settlement realignment, 37, 39. See also immigration policy

Marchi, Sergio, 21, 35

McCain, John, 75, 84n6; Gang of Eight, 78–9; and Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act (2005), 75. See also Arizona

McCarran-Walter Act, 68

media, 20, 213–15; Canadian, 217–19, 228; American, 208, 217–19, 228, 270, 275, 278, 280

Mexico, 60–1, 70–1, 160, 247–8, 274, 276, 303, 304t, 306–7, 308f, 309. See also ethnicity; Latin America; race Middle East, 91, 98, 215, 222, 223f, See also Arabs

minorities, 43, 141, 207–8, 211–12, 226, 241, 250, 278, 281, 306, 314; cultural, 211; ethnic, 141, 211, 215; non-visible, 248, 249t, 258n5; religious, 215; visible, 34, 91, 98, 127, 141, 143–8, 189, 192, 241, 248, 249t, 258n5. See also ethnicity; race

multiculturalism, 31, 90, 187, 209, 229

Muslims, 206–30; in Canada, 206–7, 209, 212–19, 220–1, 222f, 223f, 223–4, 225f, 225–6, 227f, 228–9, 302; “The Muslim Question,” 208, 212; in United States, 206–8, 210, 215–17, 219–20, 224, 227–9, 302. See also discrimination; immigration policy; media; Ontario; Quebec; terrorism

NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), 59, 70

Napolitano, Janet. See Department of Homeland Security

National Conference of State Legislatures, 266–7

National Occupational Classification, 122, 132. See also credential recognition; employment; labour market National Origins quota system, 68–9 “national skill group” approach, 156, 159, 161–5, 167–8, 172

naturalization: United States, 65, 79, 184t, 189, 271

New Zealand, 4, 15

Obama, Barack, 4, 7, 70, 78, 80–1, 89

Ontario, 30, 33, 36–9, 46, 121–3, 125, 132, 133–4t, 141, 223, 223t, 236, 308; Canada-Ontario Immigration Agreement, 38; and settlement realignment, 37; Sharia law, 214–15, 217–18. See also immigration policy

Pakistan, 91, 92t, 222

Philippines, 64, 91, 92t, 247. See also Asia; ethnicity; race

PNP (Provincial Nominee Program), 25, 29, 42–4, 92, 106–7, 109, 112

point system: in Australia, 111; in Canada, 19–20, 27, 41, 5on7, 91–3, 99, 106–7, 110–12; in United States, 57, 76–7, 80. See also FSWP; immigration policy

poverty, 10, 237–8, 257; in Canada, 97–8, 221–3, 222f, 223f, 224, 237, 240, 242, 251–2t, 254–5; LICOS (Low Income Cut-Offs), 221, 240, 244t, 250, 251–2t, 253; in United States, 55, 237, 240, 242, 244t, 250, 251–2t, 253–4. See also education; employment; family; immigrant children; labour market; Statistics Canada

Powell, Colin, 71

precarious migration, 257, 291, 296t, 297–8, 309–10, 312–13. See also asylum; immigration policy; refugees; unauthorized migrants

Quebec, 21, 25, 30, 33, 35–8, 51n13, 132, 133–4t, 215, 223, 223f, 304t, 309; Canada-Quebec Accord, 33, 39, 51n13; Charter of Values, 214–15; Herouxville Town Charter, 215; reasonable accommodation, 214, 217; and skilled workers, 24, 30, i2i. See also immigration policy

race, 68, 74, 91, 137, 141, 157, 189, 197, 201n5, 217, 219, 233, 235, 238–9, 241, 247–8, 249t, 250, 251–2t, 256, 258n5, 274, 278; racial discrimination/racism, 91, 98, 104, 141, 187, 226–9, 293, 297, 299. See also discrimination; ethnicity

refugees, 293–4, 295, 296t, 298–9, 309; in Canada, 19, 21–2, 23–4, 26, 32, 35, 37, 45, 90, 93t, 109, 119, 120t, 291–4, 296t, 297–9, 300–1, 301t, 302, 304–5t, 306–10, 310f, 311, 314; government-sponsored, 17, 19, 24–5; and health care, 292, 300–1, 307–8; privately sponsored, 24, 28, 304t; RAP (Resettlement Assistance Program), 124; refugee claims, 24, 242, 292, 294–5, 296t, 299–300, 302–3, 304–5t, 308–9, 313–15; refugee class, 19, 91, 109, 294–5, 300, 302; and United Nations, 24, 292, 294, 313; United Nations Convention on the Status of Refugees (i95i), 294; UNHCR,24, 311; in United States, 55–8, 68–9, 74, 84n4, 184t, 301. See also asylum; Conservative government; Harper government; humanitarian admissions; immigration; Immigration and Refugee Control Act; IRB; Liberal government; Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy; Syria

religion, 15, 21, 74, 83, 201n4, 208–12, 221, 224, 225f, 294, 298; Buddhist, 221f, 222f; Catholicism, 221f, 222f, 224, 225f; Christianity, 221f, 222f; Eastern, 221f, 222f, 224, 225f; Hindu, 221f, 222f; Islam (see Muslims); Jewish, 221f, 222f, 224, 225f; Protestant, 221f, 222f, 224, 225f; Sikh, 221f, 222f. See also culture

Republican Party, 75, 77–80, 82–3, 84n7, 216, 275–6, 280

Romney, Mitt, 78, 84n7

Roosevelt, Theodore, 186

Second World War, 68, 297–8

Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act (2005). See McCain, John

Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy (SCIRP), 69

Sharia law. See under Ontario Singh v. Canada, 299

smuggling, human, 60, 62, 74, 295–6, 296t, 302, 304–5t, 306; Preventing Human Smugglers Act, 304t, 315; trafficking, 62, 74, 395, 304t

sponsorship, 17, 24, 26, 50n4–5, 72, 314; family-class, 19, 24, 26–7, 44, 50n4, 51n18, 91, 119, 300, 301f. See also asylum; family; refugees

Sri Lanka, 92t, 303, 304t. See also ethnicity; race

Statistics Canada, 94, 103, 123, 221, 239–40, 250, 253. See also employment; immigrant children; poverty

Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act (2010), 268

Syria, 214, 292, 300, 309–14; and Alan Kurdi, 310. See also Conservative government; Harper government; Liberal government; refugees temporary foreign workers, 20, 29–31, 43–4, 50n3, 58–60, 63–4, 65–7, 71–3, 75–7, 81, 106–7, 112, 142, 256, 312, 315; skilled, 31, 43, 107; TFWP (Temporary Foreign Worker Program), 29–30, 40, 43–4, 106, 112. See also AGJOBS

terrorism, 4, 207–8, 227, 298, 309; and 11 September 2001, 4, 207, 266, 275, 302; Al-Qaida, 207; and Canada, 208, 292–3, 298, 302, 304–5t, 309–11; and United States, 74, 302, 304t. See also Border Protection, Antiterrorism and Illegal Immigration Control Act; discrimination; media; Muslims; race; religion

Texas, 70, 75, 81, 242, 243t, 245, 247, 269, 274, 284n1

Truman, Harry, 68

unaccompanied minors. See immigrant children

unauthorized migrants, 59–61, 63, 69–70, 72–6, 79–81, 83, 241–2, 249t, 252t, 254, 255–7, 258n1, 265–6. See also asylum; immigration; refugees; smuggling; undocumented migrants

undocumented migrants, 4–5, 60, 62, 70, 78–80, 83, 185, 189, 200, 241, 247, 256, 258n1, 265–6, 268-71, 273–9, 280–3, 291, 294–6, 296t, 303, 306, 309. See also asylum; immigration; refugees; smuggling; unauthorized migrants

unemployment. See under employment

UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees). See refugees

United Kingdom, 90, 92t, 105, 111, 222, 223f, 237. See also Europe

United Nations Convention on the Status of Refugees. See refugees United States Constitution, 271–2

United States Supreme Court, 81, 268–9, 271–3, 279, 283; Chae Chan Ping v. United States, 272–3; DeCanas v. Bica, 279; Fong Yue Ting v. United States, 272–3; Plyler v. Doe, 269; United States v. Arizona, 268, 283

USCIR (United States Commission on Immigration Reform), 64, 70

USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services), 67–8

Vietnam, 247, 299; Indochina, 69; Indochinese refugee movement, 22; Vietnam War, 247. See also ethnicity; race

visa, 49–5on3, 51n18, 55, 57–8, 60, 63–5, 67, 69, 72, 76–7, 207, 256, 302–3, 304t, 307, 311; categories of, 59, 64–5, 67, 77; diversity, 55, 58, 77; EB–I, 67; EB-2,67; employment-based, 80, 83; family-based, 45, 49–50n3, 55, 63–4; H-1B, 59, 63–4, 66, 73, 169; H-2A, 59, 73; H-2B, 59; L visa, 59, 66; student, 60, 66–7, 184t, 215; temporary, 44–5, 57–9, 65, 71, 184t, 242, 256, 275, 303; Y visa, 76–7; Z visa, 76. See also employment; family; immigration; Immigration Act, US (1990); immigration policy; temporary foreign workers

Welfare Reform Act (1996), 277

Western Asia, 222, 223f, 309, 313

West Indies, 194, 196–7. See also Caribbean