Continuity in Canadian Immigration Policy 1947 to Present: Taking a Fresh Look at Mackenzie King��s 1947 Immigration Policy Statement

An examination of the major policy decisions in Canadian immigration history since the end of the Second World War, up to and including the present day, reveals a remarkable consistency in overall approach to this area of public policy. This paper identifies these important milestones and demonstrates how they relate to Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King??s 1947 statement on immigration policy. This contention flies in the face of much of the literature studying this period that suggests that Canadian immigration policy has vacillated and reversed course frequently over the last 60?years. However, the three pillars of the immigration program that Mackenzie King identified??economic, family, and humanitarian??continue to form the basis of Canada??s immigration program.     

Does Immigration always Promote Innovation? Evidence from Thai Manufacturers

Contrary to studies of other migrant-receiving countries, most of which are developed countries, this paper examines impacts of immigrant workers on innovative capacities in Thailand, which is not only a representative of a receiving country that is a developing country but also a country where the majority of its immigrant workers are unskilled. Analysis of firm-level survey data in Thailand finds that employing unskilled and cheap labor from neighboring countries, namely Myanmar, the Lao PDR, and Cambodia, is like adopting a kind of “labor-saving technology” which actually impedes firms’ R&D investment. Contrary to developed countries in which immigrants are found to boost innovation and promote sustainable growth, in Thailand, even though employing unskilled immigrant workers helps firms maintain their cost competitiveness in the short run, its negative impacts on R&D investment tend to hamper improvements in productivity and thus diminish global competitiveness in the long run. Employing skilled or educated migrants, on the other hand, complements technological progress and encourages firms to innovate more quickly. In addition, the paper finds that providing government incentives and promoting access to financing have become effective tools in facilitating Thai firms’ investment in innovation.     

Consequences of the American States’ Legislative Action on Immigration

Over the past decade, US states have responded to federal inaction on comprehensive immigration reform by increasing their output of immigrant policies, both beneficial and restrictive. Although there is a growing empirical literature focused on predicting such activity by states, less is known, especially on a broad scale, about the state-level consequences associated with the policy tone states adopt toward immigrants. To better understand the consequences of restrictive immigrant policies, we created a restrictive score for each state year between 2005 and 2014 and employed linear regression with panel-corrected standard errors to investigate effects on immigrant-related demographics, economic factors, and political participation. We found that states with higher restrictive policy tones do experience reductions in the number of foreign-born residents, including Hispanics and those with limited English proficiency, a goal of many state legislators who favor restrictive policies. States with restrictive policy tones showed reductions in unemployment and poverty rates as well, which are also professed goals for restrictive policy activity. Mediation analyses suggested that the effects of restrictive policy scores on economic conditions are indirect, being exerted through the percentage of a state’s population that is foreign born. Finally, though much attention is focused on the expected increase in Latino political clout, restrictive policy tone was not predictive of increased voter registration or voting in states that pass these types of policies. If anti-immigrant policies are inducing those who oppose these policies to mobilize politically, it must be in an arena outside of voting.     

Portugal’s Immigration and Integration Policies: a Case Apart?

Most countries in Europe have seen the rise of anti-immigrant political parties in recent years and many have implemented more restrictive immigration measures. Portugal has moved in the opposite direction, seeking to produce some of the best practices and laws on immigration and immigrant integration. Traditional theories of immigration policy fail to account for the Portuguese case, and regional models of immigration overlook ways in which Portugal diverges. Instead, Portuguese policies are best understood as the product of (1) a political consensus on immigration that derives in part from Portugal’s social-revolutionary democratic transition; (2) innovative institutions that enjoy both autonomy and political support, enable a “whole-of-government” approach, and mediate social pressures created by immigration; and (3) leadership choices made by politicians, bureaucrats, and civil society groups to forge consensus and seek inclusion. The Portuguese case signals the importance of adopting other lenses for the comparative study of immigration policies that go beyond regional models and highlight policy similarities among countries from distinct regions.     

Immigration Debate in Canada: How Newspapers Reported, 1996–2004

Media representations shape public opinion of immigration, affect policy debate, and influence immigration law. This paper examines media coverage of immigration in the context of the development and conception of the Canadian 2002 Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. The paper performs a topoi analysis on a data set of 490 articles published in five prominent Canadian English-language daily newspapers that address aspects of immigration law. The results reveal that danger is the most frequent and a relatively consistent theme associated with immigration in media coverage. Cultural aspects are relatively unimportant compared to humanitarian, political, and economic considerations.     

More Royalist Than the King? Immigration Policy Attitudes Among Naturalized Citizens

Social psychological research has analyzed immigration attitudes mostly from the perspective of natives without an immigrant background. Nevertheless, an increasing number of migrants obtain national citizenship and take a stance towards immigration policies. By studying immigration policy attitudes reported by naturalized citizens, this article develops a dual-pathway model of immigrant political incorporation featuring pathways of either absorption or transformation. Based on a unique sample of immigrants who just accomplished the naturalization procedure (N = 566), we investigate participants' preferences for permissive or restrictive immigration policies as a function of their naturalization motives and expectations about how immigrants should acculturate in the receiving society (i.e., acculturation orientations). Our findings provide evidence for both processes of political absorption and transformation. On the one hand, belongingness motives underlying naturalization were connected to orientations towards host culture adoption, which in turn predicted support for restrictive immigration policies. On the other hand, instrumental motives were connected to orientations towards heritage culture maintenance, which in turn predicted support for permissive immigration policies. To conclude, we discuss the social psychological dynamics involved in the transition from national outsiders to national insiders and highlight the effects of naturalization on power relations between national majority and immigrant minority groups.     

Immigration Policies and Immigrant Women’s Vulnerability to Intimate Partner Violence in Canada

This article explores Canadian immigration policies’ influence on immigrant and newcomer women’s vulnerability to intimate partner violence in Canada. Neoliberal policies’ influence on immigration policies and restructuring of the welfare state, the creation of structural conditions that increase immigrant and newcomer women’s vulnerability to intimate partner violence while restricting their access to services that can help them seek recourse from such abuse, are discussed. The underlying question raised and discussed in this article is whether cultural identity and distinctiveness could be used to rationalize exclusionary policies that are contrary to the ideals of multiculturalism in Canada.     

Tracking the Emotional Cost of Immigration: Ethno-religious Differences and Women’s Mental Health

The challenges of the settlement process can at times give way to persistent feelings of sadness, loneliness, and despair for immigrant women. Based on analysis of the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada, this article shows that immigrant women’s self-reported experiences of mental health vary at arrival and over the course of the settlement process because of the intersection of pre- and post-migration factors. The results show how ethnic origins and religious differences intersect with women’s main activities in Canada and influence multiple mental health trajectories. Immigrant women strategically pursue different post-migration pathways because some are more likely to find the social interactions of employment contexts emotionally distressing while for others shouldering responsibilities for full-time care work in the home leads to mental health problems. Still others who study to retrain or get a Canadian degree find the experience detrimental to their emotional health. However, these very same activities can be conducive to mental well-being for women with different ethno-religious backgrounds. The results illustrate that the intersection of ethnicity, religion, and gender in a stratified Canadian society is complex and produces a range of mental health outcomes. Concerns are raised about the high emotional toll of racialized Canadian workplaces and the stress that some employed Muslim women report. An awareness of influences on immigrant women’s mental health can assist employers and public service providers as well as members of cultural associations and religious groups in providing appropriate social support for them in the early months and years after arrival.     

Impact of Immigration on Economic Growth in Canada and in its Smaller Provinces

This paper evaluates the potential impact of education levels of immigrants and Canadian-born on economic growth in Canada and its smaller provinces by using data for the period 2006–2013. We specify a production function in which levels of educational attainments of immigrants and Canadian-born workers are entered separately. Feasible generalized least square (FGLS) method is applied to estimate the production function separately for all immigrants, and also for established immigrants (those who have been in Canada for 10 years or longer). The results show that all educational levels of immigrants have positive and statistically significant effects on economic growth. A similar conclusion applies to Canadian-born workers, although the impacts of their university degree holders is lower than that of immigrant university degree holders. Both immigrant and Canadian-born workers have smaller effects on economic growth in smaller provinces, which have attracted larger numbers of immigrants in recent years. The results also show that the economic growth effects are similar for all and established immigrants. Although these results are consistent with previous findings on discounting of immigrants’ educational credentials, more data are needed to strengthen their validity. We also suggest that the higher economic growth impact of immigrant university degree holders than that of Canadian-born is indicative of greater social returns to higher education resulting from increased diversity of population which in turn, as some previous studies suggest, can result in increased technological innovation, new ideas, and production of a wide variety of goods and services.     

Branding ‘Canadian Experience’ in Immigration Policy: Nation Building in a Neoliberal Era

This paper examines the branding of ‘Canadian experience’ in Canadian immigration policy as a rhetorical strategy for neoliberal nation-building. Since 2008, the Canadian government has introduced an unprecedented number of changes to immigration policy. While the bulk of these policies produce more temporary and precarious forms of migration, the Canadian government has mobilized the rhetoric of ‘Canadian experience’ as a means to identify immigrants who carry the promise of economic and social integration. Through a critical discourse analysis of Canadian print media and political discourse, we trace how the brand of Canadian experience taps into the affective value of national identity in an era of global economic insecurity. We also illustrate how the discourse of Canadian experience (CE) remains ideologically deracialized, such that the government’s embrace of CE as an immigrant selection criterion dismisses the discriminatory effects that this discourse is shown to have for racialized immigrants in Canada.     

Civic Stratification, ‘Plastic’ Citizenship and ‘Plastic Subjectivities’ in Greek Immigration Policy

This article critically discusses Greek immigration policy, its adaptation to current social conditions such as the extended stay of undocumented migrants, and political pressures from the EU, with special focus on three groups of migrants: Albanians, ethnic-Greek Albanians (Northern Epirotes) and ethnic-Greeks from former Soviet Union. Taking into account Greek immigration law, its implementation by public authorities and the diversity of immigration status and associated rights accorded to these three groups of migrants, we argue that there is a ‘plastic citizenship’ (from the notion of plasticity) developed, where boundaries are blurred and processes of becoming or not are fluid, changing over time and influenced by notions of who should belong and who should not, who is entitled to what rights and who is not. Plastic citizenship creates plastic subjectivities for migrants in Greece.     

Immigration, Trade and Home Country Development: State-Level Variation in the US Immigrant–Export Link

This article examines the pro-trade influence of immigrants using data on state-level exports from the 48 contiguous USA to 28 countries during the year 1993. Immigrants from lesser developed countries are found to exert stronger proportional effects on state-level exports relative to the immigrants from more developed countries. Calculation of absolute immigrant effects at state, regional and national levels also reveal influences of immigrants from developing countries are of greater magnitude; however, results depend on the metric employed to categorize countries as developing or developed. The findings emphasize the importance of immigrants’ connections to business and social networks and allow for an improved understanding of the role that information asymmetries play in fomenting opportunities for immigrants to enhance trade.     

Is There a Backlash Against Immigration From Richer Countries? International Hierarchy and the Limits of Group Threat

Why do immigrants from particular countries systematically face more opposition? To resolve inconsistencies of prevailing group‐threat theories, I reintroduce a long‐standing hypothesis stipulating that people have a disposition for maintaining status hierarchy between ethnic groups. Accordingly, independent of perceived economic or cultural threat, natives are more likely to prefer immigrant groups of higher status based on the development level of the group's national origin. To test this argument, I exploit a substantial provincial variation of immigration flows and attitudes in Spain—one of the only countries that has received immigrants from both less and more developed countries. Consistent with my hypothesis, I demonstrate that anti‐immigration attitudes are more widespread in areas with immigrants from less developed countries regardless of their economic and cultural characteristics. I further document that many voters perceive stable group hierarchies and that these preferences are more predictive of anti‐immigration attitudes in lower‐status immigration contexts. Overall, these results suggest that even culturally similar and economically beneficial immigrant groups from poorer countries can face public opposition due to their lower‐status national origin, highlighting the independent role of group‐status perceptions in politics.     

Immigration Opposition Among U.S. Whites: General Ethnocentrism or Media Priming of Attitudes About Latinos?

General ethnocentrism seems to be a powerful antecedent of immigration opinion, typically displaying larger effects than economic concerns. News about immigration, however, may focus attention on a particular group in a given historical moment. We predict group‐specific affect, not general ethnocentrism, should most powerfully shape immigration policy opinion in the contemporary United States. We test this expectation with content analyses of news coverage, survey data from 1992 to 2008, a survey experiment, and official statistics. First, we find that mentions of Latinos in news coverage of immigration outpace mentions of other groups beginning in 1994, the year when Proposition 187, a proposal in California to end most social welfare and educational assistance to illegal immigrants, garnered significant national attention. Second, while ethnocentrism dominates economic concerns in explanations of Whites' immigration policy opinions, attitudes toward Latinos in particular account for nearly all of the impact of ethnocentrism since 1994. Finally, journalistic attention to Latino immigration roughly parallels actual rates of immigration from Latin America, suggesting the media shaping of policy opinion around this group may be driven by real‐world demographic patterns.     

“And Who Is My Neighbor?” Religion and Immigration Policy Attitudes

This study explores immigration reform as a possible new "moral" issue upon which American religious elites and organizations take public positions. It is argued that religion is a key independent variable necessary for understanding the determinants of public attitudes regarding immigration policy. Theoretical expectations are formed from the ethnoreligious, religious restructuralism, and minority marginalization frameworks. Quantitative evidence is presented, that demonstrates that those who attend religious services more frequently are more likely to support liberal immigration reform policies. Members of minority religions, notably Jews and Latter-day Saints, are also more likely to empathize with the plight of undocumented immigrants and support liberal immigration reform measures.     

The Immigration Experience of Iranian Baha’is in Saskatchewan: The Reconstruction of Their Existence, Faith, and Religious Experience

For approximately 150 years, Baha’is in Iran have been persecuted on the basis of their religion. Limitations to aspects of their lives have compelled them to face “civic death” or migrate to other countries. This qualitative pilot study explored the experience of forced migration and how religion attenuates the disruption to the lives of Iranian Baha’is. Adaptive strategies that four participants utilised to re-establish continuity were examined. Participants who were satisfied with their lives developed a way to allow parallel cultural traditions (Iranian and Canadian) to co-exist; those who could not integrate found it difficult to maintain a balance between these traditions.     

Discussion of “Emmy Grant: Immigration as Repetition of Trauma and as Potential Space”: Commentary on Paper by Veronica Csillag

This commentary is a response to Veronica Csillag’s exploration of the influence of historical and transgenerational trauma on the lives of immigrants, and on the psychoanalytic process (this issue). Dr. Csillag’s paper deepens our understanding of the intrapsychic life of immigrants who have suffered collective trauma pre-migration and continue to suffer from “ghosts” from the past. Her ideas are critical to examining not only the specific traumas incurred in Europe related to the Nazi Holocaust and totalitarian and socialist regimes but also to contemporary traumas related to social identity and position in the United States. In this commentary, I elaborate three primary areas within Dr. Csillag’s contribution: (a) the illusion of choice in traumatic migration, (b) secrecy and privacy, and (c) experience of the outsider and the insider. My discussion underscores the importance of engaging with historical and ongoing trauma in psychoanalytic psychotherapy as a path to healing within individual and collective dimensions.     

Business or Bureaucratic Dominance in Immigration Policymaking in Canada: Why was Mexico Included in the Caribbean Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program in 1974?

This article considers why Mexico was added to the Caribbean Seasonal Agricultural Workers’ Program in Canada in 1974. It also asks how the conflicting interests of the host country’s bureaucracies, its business community, and the sending countries’ representatives influence the formation of policies on seasonal migration programs? The article suggests that recent versions of political economy, which emphasize a neoliberal turn in Canadian immigration policy, help only partly to explain why Mexico was added to the Caribbean Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program in 1974. The author argues that political economists need also to pay attention to the independent interests of immigration bureaucrats and bureaucracies in the policy-making process. Canadian immigration officials were responsive to employer interests, but also gave the green light to Mexican migrant workers as a way to solve a particular legitimacy crisis that they were facing in the early 1970s. From immigration bureaucrats’ point of view, this policy also had the effect of helping to resolve embarrassing and politically explosive challenges to its claimed ability to supply Ontario farmers with suitable supplies of farm labour.