Immigrant settlement policy in North America: Two challenges in the post‐9/11 era

Abstract

Both Canada and the United States share an interest in seeing that their large numbers of immigrants are successfully settled in their new communities. This essay argues that immigrant settlement policy in both countries faces two important challenges in the post‐9/11 world: (1) ensuring that the racialization of immigrants is avoided (especially in respect to Arabs and Muslims) in a period of preoccupation with security issues, and (2) the need to reorient understanding of immigrant settlement to come to terms with the increasingly transnational orientation of many international migrants. The essay sketches out the nature of these two challenges in both the United States and Canada, and offers some thoughts on what it will take to meet them in each country.

Le Canada et les États Unis ont l'un et l'autre tout avantage à ce que les nombreux immigrants qu'ils reçoivent s'intègrent bien dans leur nouvel environnement. Or, d'après cet article, les politiques d'établissement des immigrants dans l'un et l'autre pays se heurtent à deux problèmes majeurs dans le monde de l'après 11 septembre : 1) la racialisation des immigrants (en particulier des Arabes et des Musulmans) dans les démarches liées à la sécurité et 2) la nécessité de réviser ce que l'on entend par l'établissement des immigrants face à l'orientation de plus en plus transnationale de nombreux migrants internationaux. Cet essai donne un aperçu de la nature de ces deux défis à la fois au Canada et aux États Unis et offre certaines réflexions sur ce qu'il faudra faire à ce sujet dans chacun des pays.

Notes

Professor Ronald Schmidt has been a professor at California State University, Long Beach since 1972, having served as Department Chair of Political Science for many years. He has been the recipient of the CSU Long Beach Outstanding Professor Award, and has filled active leadership roles in the California Studies Association and the Western Political Science Association. In 2005, Dr. Schmidt served as the first‐ever Fulbright‐Enders Chair at the Université de Montréal. While in Montreal, Dr. Schmidt gathered information on the Canadian approaches to immigrant settlement policy, including the policies of the Federal government, as well as those of the provinces, especially Quebec and Ontario. The author thanks the Canada‐US Fulbright Program for the support that made this work possible, the Centre for International Studies (CERIUM) for providing a very hospitable environment in which to work out the ideas contained in this essay, Denise Helly for a very productive discussion of some of the issues discussed here, and François Crepeau for helpful suggestions on an earlier draft of this essay.