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Abstract
In contrast to recent policies in the United States, immigration reform in Canada, during the past decade, has resulted in one of the most transformative periods in Canada’s immigration history. This article examines these changes, against the comparative backdrop of American inaction. These include changes affecting the three classes of legal permanent residents—economic, family, and refugee—as well as temporary foreign workers and foreign students. Canadian citizenship rules have also been refocused from citizenship as a “right” to citizenship as a “responsibility.” The article illustrates the advantages of the Canadian system, but cautions against overmanagement, centralization of decision-making power, and the loss of Canada’s welcoming reputation. The Canadian system, while not perfect, is efficient and should be able to successfully adjust to future problems that arise, provided that the Canadian public has sufficient input in policy decisions. Given a more complex and cumbersome US immigration policy system, comprehensive immigration reform is not likely to occur if partisanship prevails.
Acknowledgments
The author is grateful to two anonymous referees who provided important suggestions and comments, many of which have been incorporated into this article.
Notes
1. Ironically, nearly one-third of this group has arrived post 9/11 (Passel and Cohn Citation2012), despite this being a period in which there has been an overriding preoccupation with border security.
2. AEDPA was focused on security threats, after bombings at the World Trade Center and in Oklahoma City, and not explicitly immigration. Nevertheless, since it dealt with the treatment of persons detained by authorities, this included the detention of undocumented individuals. A similar point can be made about the Secure Fence Act of 2006 (United States Government Citation2006), which authorized the building of a 700-mile fence on the United States–Mexico border for security reasons and to keep out drug smugglers, but included the illegal crossings of individuals as well.
3. S. Bill 744 was drafted by a bipartisan team of eight senators that included John McCain (R-Ariz.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), and Michael Bennet (D-Colo.). It passed 68–32 with all Democrats and 14 Republicans voting in favor of the bill.
4. Consider that in 2005, both the US House of Representatives and the US Senate made attempts at comprehensive immigration reform (“Sensenbrenner Bill,” H.R. 4437 and “McCain–Kennedy Bill,” S. 1033 respectively), but neither bill saw legislative light.
5. The DACA was renewed and expanded by President Obama in 2014. However, in that same year, a Texas court order halted both the expanded DACA and implementation of DAPA. Despite an appeal by the Obama administration, the 5th US Circuit Court upheld the court order, effectively halting the implementation of both the expanded DACA and DAPA. Only those qualifying under the original DACA could still apply as appeals continued.
6. A points system was adopted by Australia in 1989, New Zealand in 1991, and by several EU countries after 2001. The implementation of a points system was also included as a proposal in the US Senate Bill 744.
9. While there are a number of different US temporary work visas, the primary ones are the H visas, which are H-1B for highly skilled professionals, H-2A for seasonal agricultural workers, and H-2B for seasonal nonagricultural workers. H-1B and H-2B are subject to annual caps, H-2A visas are not.
10. Consider that in the decade 2003–2013, temporary worker admissions in Canada more than tripled (http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/publications/employers/temp-foreign-worker-program.asp) while the US increase was 30 percent (http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/publications/ni_fr_2010.pdf)
11. See OECD (Citation2013). United States—Country Note: Results from PISA 2012.
12. See http://100kstrong.org and http://www.100kstrongamericas.org.
13. The naturalization “rate,” as a concept, is the proportion of “eligible” immigrants receiving citizenship. However, this is not so easily calculated in that while one knows the numerator—the actual number of people naturalizing in any particular year—the denominator is more difficult to obtain. An immigrant can become “eligible” immediately upon meeting the required years in residence, but also remain eligible for five, ten, twenty years, and more if one chooses not to apply. Often, one has to use the stock of foreign-born as a proxy. Passel (Citation2007), for the United States, has estimated that in 1995, 48 percent of all “eligible” immigrants had naturalized, and by 2005 this was 59 percent. In contrast, as a share of all “legal” immigrants, he found these rates to be 39 percent in 1995 and 52 percent in 2005. In a cross-country comparison, the OECD used the “number of foreign-born who had arrived 10 years or earlier” as the denominator and found that in 2007 some 50 percent of such immigrants in the United States had naturalized, while the rate for the United Kingdom was 67 percent, for Australia 81 percent, and for Canada 89 percent (OECD Citation2011). Picot and Hou (Citation2011a) have estimated citizenship rates for those aged 25 and over to be 47 percent for the United States and 79 percent for Canada in 2006, and then calculated this for only those who had been in the host country for 6–10 years, finding a naturalization rate of 71 percent for Canada and only 24 percent for the United States. If the denominator includes all foreign-born, and not just authorized foreign-born, a part of the decline in US naturalization rates (albeit not extremely significant) can be attributed to an increasing number of undocumented, who by definition cannot naturalize (Picot and Hou Citation2011b).
14. See Picot and Hou (Citation2011a) for a comprehensive survey of the literature on the determinants of naturalization.
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Notes on contributors
Tamara Woroby
Tamara M. Woroby is senior adjunct professor of Canadian Studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of the Johns Hopkins University and professor of economics in the College of Business and Economics at Towson University (University of Maryland System). Her research interests are comparative immigration and international trade issues, especially as they pertain to US–Canada economic relations. In recent years, she has served as a consultant to the Migration Policy Institute and The World Bank.