In recent years, hostility to immigration and immigrants has become a common theme in many countries around the world. In the US, anti immigration rhetoric helped propel Donald Trump to the White House.
A Trump administration will secure and defend our borders. Without borders, we do not have a country, folks, we do not have a product. We will build a wall and Mexico will pay for the wall.
Immigration was front and center during the Brexit debate in the UK Times.
A week, I'll spend it on our priorities and yes, let us.
Take back control of our borders with a sensible, fair and impartial.
Right wing politicians in Italy, Germany and other European nations promised to close borders and kick out some migrants, like France's Marine.
Lapenn I will bring back Francis sovereignty in all areas, which means the freedom for the French people to decide for themselves and defend their interests. I will control immigration and re establish security for all bultus.
And Yet, amid all this anti immigration sentiment, one country stands out by moving in the opposite direction. It's Canada.
We have a population that is aging. We need people to arrive with their talents, with their hopes, with their dreams, with their capacities to work hard, to build our communities, to build our future. We are welcoming in people who are being turned away from other countries for the wrong reasons, and it is an incredible benefit to Canada.
That is Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. He's leading a push for Canada to let in half a million permanent residents each year by twenty twenty five. Many will be those who have specific training and skills to fill jobs where there's a shortage within Canada's own workforce. The country is also opening the door to more international students, temporary workers,
and refugees. If the current pace of growth continues, Canada's population of forty million people is expected to double in the next twenty six years and potentially reach one hundred million before the end of the century.
I think Canada is basically running the world's biggest experiments and trying to prove or disprove that this is the way to go.
Bloomberg's Canadian Economy reporter Randy Tantong Knight is here to explain why Canada is bucking the global trend and opening its borders to so many more immigrants, and why, despite being welcomed in, it can often be a long, difficult struggle for immigrants to actually find work once they get there. I'm wes Kasova. That's today on the Big Tick, Randy. A lot of countries are trying to keep immigrants out
and Canada seems to be doing exactly the opposite. Can you tell us why Canada is welcoming in so many immigrants?
In trying to understand the support and the system that we have in Canada today, I think it's worth revisiting some of the key changes that happen in the country over the recent decades. If you look back at history, it might surprise you that Canada hasn't always been this
open and welcoming. The country used to have an immigration policy that allowed officials to refuse entry to immigrants based on politics, nationality, race, or occupation, and at some point the fifties used to bar entry for homosexuals too, and the system back then kind of favored white Europeans. But that changed in the sixties. That's when the country introduced the points system that we still have here today to eliminate that racial and national discrimination from its immigration policy.
How does that point system work.
It's basically a ranking structure where potential immigrants are assign point in several categories, and that includes age, level of education, employment opportunities, and English or French proficiencies. That system help bringing in people of diverse origins and background and we see that today that the majority of newcomers in recent years came from places like India, China, the Philippines, and Nigeria.
And after that system was introduced, Canada adopted multiculturalism as well, is the first country in the world to do so. And what it is is basically what you often hear in the US is this concept of melting pots, right, where different elements of different cultures are combined or fused together to become one. But multiculturalism philosophy is where different cultures sort of co exist and retain their distinct identities.
Sometimes it's described as a salad bowl or mosaic, and it promotes cultural diversity, and so that sort of helps create this image of being a welcoming society to immigrants.
So the way it works is if I want to move to Canada from someplace else and I apply, then I get certain points for various aspects of who I am.
Yes.
So normally what an immigrant or prospect newcomer would do is to submit their profile into the system and you just feel in all the information about you, your background, your skills, your education, your experience, and then you would get points based on those and for each time. You know, once you get enough scores, you get an invitation to
come to Canada. And so basically only the highest caliber candidates or skill workers that have skills that are responding to the needs of the economy are invited to come to Canada. And that's the approach that's different from many of its peer countries.
So what are the different points, What do you get points for and what do you not get points for.
So, for example, the system tend to favor those who are younger, and if you have master degrees or PhDs, you then get more points as well. If you have more skills or more experience in areas that is sort of in demand in the economy, then you would get more points. And if you are very proficient in English or in French, then you would get more points. So
it's all about your skills, right. So the best way to think about the system is to look at it as an economic and labor program that's meant to boost a number of working age population in the country quickly.
And Canada has a very ambitious goal to attract people who meet that criteria, people who can help drive the economy.
Yes, so that public support and the system allows the government to be increasingly ambitious. And the government has set a target of welcoming about half a million permanent residents each year, right, And that's quite a lot. And then there are other parts of that international student, temporary foreign workers and refugees. That's another group that's just as lash right. So last year we saw a million people arriving in
Canada over the course of twenty twenty two. At this current pace of growth, Canada, which is the smallest G seven country by population at the moment, would double its resident in about twenty six years and surpass countries like Italy, France, the UK and Germany by twenty to fifty.
And why is it so important for Canada to attract immigrants to drive this economic growth?
So all advanced economies are facing similar challenges, right of Asian population, declining fertility rates, Asian workforce, and they're a dressing it in a different way, But I think the Canada approach is basically convinced that immigration is the way to tackle this.
Right.
By adding young workforce to the country, it would help offset some of the economic drag of that Asian workforce. And we see France, for example, trying to raise the retirement age. We see Japan trying to add robots and automation to help address some of the shortages in their economy. But Canada is choosing immigration as its way to tackle this.
So different countries are doing different things, and I think Canada is basically running the world's biggest experiments and trying to prove or disprove that this is the way to go.
Justin Trudeau, Canada's Prime minister, has really been pushing this heavily. Is there a lot of public support for this? What do Canadians think about it?
There's a really really wide public support. The most recent survey, and this is back in twenty twenty two, Canadians have never been more supportive of high levels of immigration. So if we look at this opinion poll by the Enveronic Institute in nineteen seventy seven, sixty one percent of respondents said that they agree with the statements that immigration levels
are too high, and only thirty five percent disagreed. Now, last year we saw the biggest support for immigration ever, where about seven to ten people now disagree with that statement. So I think that shows that as the economy grows, as more immigrants arrived, to support and acceptance grew as well.
So they have this program in place, they have big, ambitious goals. How's it actually working.
By adding more immigrants to the economy, you are filling some gaps. There are shortages in jobs right now in Canada in sectors like healthcare, construction, and some of these immigrants are filling in those much needed roles. And of course when you bring in more immigrants, they not only add to the supply of labor, they also create demand within the economy during a period of low growth. The economy is more resilient than expected now and that is
all because of the current immigration policy. But the most obvious strain that we see from high levels of immigration is in the housing market. Canada already has this existing shortage of housing where not enough houses are being built, and by adding more people it worsened that issue.
And especially in big cities like Vancouver, rents are absolutely astronomical.
Right, and this I think hurts immigrants themselves as well as younger generations who are renting or are looking to buy a house, because the shortage meant prices are rising much faster and income growth can't really keep up with that, right, and each year they are being left further behind in building wealth or equity compared to previous generations who own homes.
And this is where a lot of the economists point to that if this gap keep getting larger, if this problem is still ongoing, it could diminish the public support that Canada enjoys for so long and give rise to some of the anti immigration attitudes that we see in peer countries.
After the break, some new immigrants to Canada find lives not so easy once they get there. Randy. Another challenge you write about with immigration is that even though the country vets people with this point system, highly qualified people who come from other countries often can't find work in the fields that they're trained in.
Yeah, this is one of the more common experiences that I heard from immigrants. After immigrants come into the country, they find that the efficiency of the system that's so good at bringing people here stopped there. I think there's a disconnect between the immigration system and the job market, or there's a mismatch between the supply of skilled immigrants and the needs for the labor market, as well as the resistance by some employers to really embrace and recognize
foreign skills. The country basically welcomed them with an open arm, but because of their skills and education, experience broad and all that, but when they arrived require that they have the so called Canadian experience, and that prevented many of them from getting a job that they're qualified to do, just because they're never worked or study in Canada. And they often find themselves in entry level jobs even if they were managers or leaders in their fields before they
came to Canada. And you know, I think housing and the cost of living that that we talked about also play a role in this because many newcomers when they arrived, they arrived with just enough savings to live in major cities for three to six months maybe, so there's not a lot of time for them to wait around to find the right job to come along, right, So they're forced to get survival jobs, low wage jobs, just to get by and support themselves or their families and One
of the immigrants that I spoke with, David Ojina from Nigeria, experienced just that right. He had to work in a minimum wage job for five years of being in this country and then go back to school to get his master's degree to get a job that allowed him to grow professionally. And he's been in Canada for ten years now,
and half of that time he was basically underemployed. And that points to the inefficiencies within the system, and we can really harvest that benefit of immigration fully because of this disconnect, this mismatch.
It's a long five years. And imagine if I was not passionate, I was not taking off an answer, I wasn't pushing, I would have set to it and still be at that level. Went back to school. Wasn't like the magic kill that made this happen, but me also having to drive the tennacity, the hunger to demonstrate that you know, I want this.
Randy, one of the immigrants you spoke to was a nurse who was originally from Rwanda and came to Canada. Can you tell us about her?
So, Bahati Maganjo from Rwanda. She grew up and was trained as a nurse, in Kenya, but when she arrived in Nova Scotia in twenty twenty one, she couldn't really work as a nurse despite her training. She could only work as a continuing care assistant in a retirement home. And you know, her plan was to just basically work there for a while and at some point get training so that she could be qualified as a nurse and practice.
It's very frustrating, really, because the shortage is very in your face even as you're working, let's say as a SCA or whatever job you're doing. It's very much present. So it's very frustrating knowing that you have the skills, you have the ability, but the system, the environment is not conducive to be able to transition.
This is one of the more common issues among immigrants as well trained nurses and doctors from abroad. The sort of this efficiencies within the system put newcomers on the sideline. And you know, you see some truck drivers driving ubers, or some train doctors having to sit and wait to get qualified to work in the country. Right, And there's this joke that I often hear in Canada that the best place to have a heart attack is in the back of the cab and there's some truth to that.
The system doesn't really utilize some of the best and brightest people we bring into the country because they face with this issue of credential recognition, certifications and all that. So some of the provinces are now trying to change that, and we see efforts by provinces like Nova Scotia, Alberta and British Columbia in trying to get these people on board and get these people to areas where they are
most needed. Right and so in the case of Bahati, she's in Picto County in Nova Scotia and she is now part of the province's pilot program to integrate internationally educated nurses and she's now expected to start working by July as a register nurse in the county.
And so in larger cities where there are more say doctors and nurses, they're less likely to find a position, but where there's a greater need, in more rural or distant areas, they're welcoming in these people to give them jobs where they're not able to find Canadians to do them. Yeah.
So I think because of the need in some of the provinces, especially in rural communities right, there are much greater needs because it's a much older communities because young
people left to find opportunities in big cities. So because of that need, there are more responsive in trying to change and adapt their system to take advantage of the available trained professionals that are in the province or are broad and they're trying to bring in right and so there are i think conscious efforts to try to integrate these professionals in faster than some of the more popular areas.
When we come back, is anyone in Canada against this big push for more immigrants? You had said that public opinion is very positive about the immigration program. Who's against it is they They're a vocal opposition to rising number of immigrants in the country.
In thinking about the opposition to immigration in Canada, it's the context of it is different from what we would see in other countries. So just to give you an example, Quebec the second most populous province in Canada, because they have concerned over the languages and culture there. The province's goal has always been to preserve its culture and language and maintain its influence within the country. So the immigration
policy sort of follow that. Even though they resisted matching the high levels of immigration set by the federal government. They still accept immigration, but they require that they speak French, for example. And across political spectrum, I think the majority of the people support immigration. If you see people who vote for Conservative Party of Canada, for example, their support compared to other parties may be softer, but the majority of people who vote for that party still in support
of the current immigration policy. I think that's partly because it's wide support that we have foster over the past few decades sort of prevent any political parties to take on that anti immigrant policies because it won't be popular among voters. And we saw that one outlier political party in Canada ran its campaign on anti mass immigration and they weren't successful at all.
In the poll, you called this a great experiment that a lot of other countries are going to be watching to see how it plays out. What are you watching for? How do you think this plays out in the future.
We've seen some of the drawbacks and benefits to the economy from this policy, but a lot of the issues that we see now are more short term. Canada I think looks at immigration as more of a long term solution to demographic challenges of the climbing fertility and aging workforce. So there's not a lot of research out there yet on the economic implications of mass immigration in the current
modern context. I think one key metric that I'm watching out for is whether this immigration policy can raise the standard of living for everyone in the economy. We know that boosting immigration leads to higher GDP growth, but does that translate to higher GDP per capita down the line? I mean, does that guarantee long term prosperity for everyone? Only time will tell, and as I mentioned, the country will be bigger than France, Italy, the UK and Germany
by twenty fifty. But you will the economy perform better a few decades from now compared to these countries two decades from now. That's yet to be seen.
Randy, thanks so much for speaking with me. Thank you, thanks for listening to us here at the Big Take. It's a daily podcast from Bloomberg and I Heart Radio. For more shows from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen, and we'd love to hear from you. Email us questions or comments to Big Take at bloomberg dot Net. The supervising producer of the Big Take is Vicky Bergolina. Our senior producer is Catherine Fink. Our producers
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