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Canada - Power Of The Immigrant Vote
Friday, October 03, 2008

The following is an excerpt from:
Vancouver Sun
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/letters/story.html?id=5484f08

As Canada moves closer to election day, our most topical issues are being debated with increasing intensity. The subject of immigration isn't among them. Given its relevance in modern Canadian society, this seems curious.

Perhaps some answers can be found in the Sept. 29 Issues & Ideas article by James Bissett, former executive director of the Canadian Immigration Service. In it, he wrote that "there is only one reason why our political parties push for high immigration intake, and that is they see every new immigrant as a potential vote for their party."

A rather bold statement, but perhaps he's on to something.

The fact is, our mainstream political parties have been buying immigrant votes for decades. The Liberals have been most successful in using immigration to their electoral advantage. A 2005 poll found that 44 per cent of minority community members identified most closely with the Liberals, compared to six per cent identifying with the Conservatives. In the 15 ridings in Canada with the largest immigrant populations, the Liberals claimed victory in every one.

Economically speaking, there has yet to be a study produced showing a positive economic contribution from Canada's immigration policies. There does exist, however, a 2005 study by a Simon Fraser University economics professor pointing out that the 2.5 million immigrants who came to Canada between 1990 and 2002 received $18.3 billion more in government services and benefits in 2002 than they paid in taxes. All major parties advocate an increase in annual immigration numbers. The New Democrats are calling for an annual increase from 237,000 to 333,000. The Conservative party numbers are more modest, while the Liberal party recommendation is 490,000 immigrants annually by 2016.

A 2004 government-sponsored study, Counting and Courting the Immigrant Vote, states that "at no other time in our country's history has the foreign-born elector been so fundamental to whether there will be a majority or minority government in Canada." Perhaps it's time for immigration to take its rightful place among Canada's primary political issues.

Brad Saltzberg
North Vancouver

Truth And Immigration
Thursday, September 18, 2008

Rather than climbing over each other promising to increase the number of immigrants to Canada, party leaders should acknowledge that levels are already too high

The following are excerpts from article by:
James Bissett, Citizen Special
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/views/story.html?id=5e81c3f4-15ed

There is only one reason why our political parties push for high immigration intake and that is they see every new immigrant as a potential vote for their party. We sometimes complain about politicians who don't do what they promise to do after they get elected. Ironically, it is sometimes much better for the country when some of these promises are broken.

Let's hope, for example, that the promises made by our political leaders to raise immigration levels and provide more money for immigrant organizations are not kept.

Either our political leaders do not know that Canada is facing an immigration crisis or they care more about gaining a few more so-called "ethnic voters" than they do about telling the truth about immigration. Canada is taking far too many immigrants and the leaders of all the parties are promising to take even more.

There are already close to a million immigrants waiting in the backlog to come here. They have all met the requirements and by law must be admitted. There is also a backlog of 62,000 asylum seekers before the refugee board and even if these are not found to be genuine refugees most will be allowed to stay. In addition, there are between 150,000 and 200,000 temporary workers now in the country and here again it is unlikely many of them will ever go home.

Despite these extraordinary numbers, the Harper government wants to raise the immigration intake next year to 265,000. The Liberals and the New Democrats have said they want even more, as much as one per cent of our population, or 333,000 each year.

These are enormous numbers and even in the best of times would place a serious burden on the economy and on the already strained infrastructure of the three major urban centres where most of them would end up.

Let's face the facts -- when there is a turndown in the world economy and dire predictions of serious recession or worse this is not the time to be bringing thousands of newcomers to Canada. In July of this year Ontario alone lost 55,000 jobs -- so what is the rationale for more immigration? The fact is there is no valid rationale. There is only one reason why our political parties push for high immigration intake and that is they see every new immigrant as a potential vote for their party. This is not only irresponsible; it borders on culpable negligence.

There are few economists today who argue that immigration helps the economy in any significant way. Studies in Canada since the mid-1980s have pointed out that immigration has little impact on the economic welfare of the receiving country and similar studies in the United States and Britain have reached the same conclusion. Comprehensive studies by George Borjas, the world's most renown immigration economist at Harvard have shown that immigration's only significant impact is to reduce the wages of native workers.

Our politicians justify their desire for more immigrants by raising the spectre of an aging population and tell us immigration is the only answer to this dilemma, and yet there is not a shred of truth to this argument. Immigration does not provide the answer to population aging and there is a multiplicity of studies done in Canada and elsewhere that proves this.

Moreover, there is no evidence that a larger labour force necessarily leads to economic progress. Many countries whose labour forces are shrinking are still enjoying economic buoyancy. Finland, Switzerland and Japan are only a few examples of countries that do not rely on massive immigration to succeed.

Productivity is the answer to economic success, not a larger population.

Most Canadians assume that our immigrants are selected because they have skills, training and education that will enable them to enhance our labour force but only about 18 to 20 per cent of our immigrants are selected for economic factors. By far the bulk of the immigrants we receive come here because they are sponsored by relatives or because of so-called humanitarian reasons and none of these have to meet the "points system" of selection.

This is why over 50 per cent of recent immigrants are living below the poverty line and why they are not earning nearly the wages paid to equivalent Canadian workers.

It also explains why a study published this year by professor Herbert Grubel of Simon Fraser University revealed that the 2.5 million immigrants who came to Canada between 1990 and 2002 received $18.3 billion more in government services and benefits in 2002 than they paid in taxes. As Prof. Grubel points out, this amount is more than the federal government spent on health care and twice what was spent on defence in the fiscal year of 2000/2001. Isn't it time our party leaders were made aware of this study?

In the discussions about immigration we never hear from our political leaders about the serious environmental problems caused by the addition of over a quarter of a million immigrants each year. Most of our immigrants are coming from developing countries of Asia where their "ecological footprint" is tiny compared to the average Canadian but within months of arrival here the immigrant's footprint has increased to our giant size.

We have already experienced the impact mass migration has had on the health, education, traffic, social services and crime rates of our three major urban centres. It may be that cutting the immigration flow in half would do more than any gas tax to help reduce our environmental pollution.

If immigration is to be an issue in the election campaign then let us insist that the real issues be discussed and that our politicians contribute more to the debate than promising higher levels and more money to immigrant groups. Canadians and immigrants deserve better.

James Bissett is a former executive director of the Canadian Immigration Service.

Toronto's Prosperity Tied To Immigrants' Success
http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/rob_granatstein/2008
7th October 2008
Excerpts from Opinion Column in Toronto Sun
By ROB GRANATSTEIN

Inside the sea of numbers and nuggets from the Toronto Community Foundation's Vital Signs 2008 report being released today is a warning we're on the verge on squandering the future of our city.

And it comes down to mishandling immigration.

Toronto is importing a wealth of talent and knowledge through immigration, but not letting it shine.

"If you came to Toronto 20 to 25 years ago, you're doing pretty well," said Rahul Bhardwaj, president and CEO of the Toronto Community Foundation, a group dedicated to making the city the best place possible to live, work, learn and grow. But immigrants who landed in the big smoke in the last decade have found it's harder to find a job, those jobs pay less and rent is expensive.

The sour message is getting out -- we welcomed 14% fewer immigrants to the GTA in 2007 than the year before. Still, a stunning 26% of Torontonians have immigrated to the city since 1990.

Bhardwaj said in a time of unparalleled economic growth, the people who should help Toronto thrive in the future are not taking up all the available spots in medical and dental schools -- they are being left behind.

That said, not all of our immigrants are taxi drivers sitting on MBAs and medical degrees. We've also welcomed more than our share of unemployables, refugees and some people who should not have made it to Toronto at all.

But that said, even gifted newcomers are finding Toronto and Ontario career quicksand. And the fact remains that Toronto's economic future rests squarely on the shoulders of our ability to attract and retain immigrants and young people.

"Our prosperity, and that of our children and future generations, rests on creating opportunities for others to succeed," Bhardwaj said.

Why? Our birth rate is falling, while our population is aging. It's the same for all the G7 countries.

So attracting immigrants to keep our cities and countries growing, to fill the void of doctors, engineers, and construction workers, to stimulate new housing construction, is important.

Science and religion have co-existed throughout the ages
By AUSTIN MARDON
Special to the WCR

Opinion
Excerpt from Western Catholic Reporter
http://www.wcr.ab.ca/news/2008/0915/science091508.shtml
Week of September 15, 2008

Various fields of organized science such as biology, medicine, geography and engineering go back in the western world to antiquity and even earlier in Oriental cultures. At the time of Christ, they had institutions of higher learning such as those around the library of Alexandria and the academies in Greece.

We forget that religion is not set within a vacuum, but exists within its time as far as world views and technology. What is science? As we know it today it is a system of predicting future events based on a system of understanding past events through predicting probability. A series of experiments using controls and variables is the experimental basis of science.

Development of models

Other sciences such as astronomy and geography are based on the development of models based on observation of whatever phenomena are being observed.

Is this intrinsically opposed to religion and our Catholic faith? Did God not give us our cognitive abilities to make our way through life in the best way that we can.

Our lives have been transformed on the outside by scientific discoveries and their myriad of applications and yet that which is inside and the motivations by which we act have not changed in 2,000 years.

Christian template

Does not Christianity give us a template to give a basic meaning to our lives? Science cannot answer those questions because ultimately it does not answer why or for what purpose but it tries to answer how.

Religion is not set within a vacuum, but exists within its time as far as world views and technology.

In the past, many men and women of science were persons of faith and in the Western world were even clergy. Modern genetics is based on the pea experiments that were done by Gregor Mendel, a member of the clergy. Before him, we did not have a modern understanding of how genetics worked in a systematic way. He lived in Europe (France in the 19th century).

St. Albert the Great, the teacher and defender of Thomas Aquinas, was a well-known scholar and in the modern context could easily be seen as not just a scholar but also a scientist. Galileo never gave up his faith in being a Christian or a Roman Catholic all through his trials for preaching a heliocentric - sun-centred solar system.

Modern universities in Europe and some in North America started out as colleges of higher learning with a large religious element if not a sole source. Science is an attempt to understand the world using probability and our minds. This comes out of a Christian desire to understand the world as created by God.

Ancient science and scholarship was preserved in the West by monasteries for a thousand years until the advent of the Renaissance in the 15th century. Science is a tool - as is technology - that can be used for good or for evil.

Complimentary existence

Modern scientists and theologians such as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin showed even in the modern world these two worlds can exist together and complement each other. Our personal ongoing health is dependent on modern medicine. Without whose advances due to science, many of us would be sick or dead.

Finally ironically both ethical science and Christianity both aspire to improve the human condition. It is sad that they can be so at odds even centuries after the trial of Galileo.

(Austin Mardon recently received the Order of Canada for humanitarian works. He has authored a series of books and 169 scholarly peer reviewed communications, including pieces in Science and Nature)