Seeking Homo Economicus: The Canadian State and the Strange Story of the Business Immigration Program

Abstract

Through a policy study, this article examines the active but compromised authority of the state as it engages the global “space of flows.” Business immigration programs in close to thirty countries announce the state's intent to domesticate the unruly forces of globalization by enticing its principal agent, homo economicus. With the objective of priming economic development using immigrant capital and proven entrepreneurial skills, the Canadian business program has permitted the entry of nearly 300,000 immigrants, primarily from Hong Kong and Taiwan. Government statistics have emphasized program success in terms of capital invested and jobs created. However, census data and tax-filer returns suggest modest income generation and limited entrepreneurial endeavor by business immigrants. Interviews with government managers reveal that the pressures to meet high immigration targets were accompanied by inadequate monitoring resources that have compromised the state's due diligence. Annual statistics produced under these conditions become an all-too-human text, representing as much the desires of government and immigrants as they do a reliable assessment. The study emphasizes this social embeddedness of immigration at all levels and the passion and persuasion in a fully social context that lie behind the often suprahuman problematic of globalization.

Key Words:

• Canadian state
• globalization
• immigrant entrepreneurs
• official statistics
• transnationalism

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Dan Hiebert, Diana Lary, and Alan Nash for their comments on this article, and to discussants at oral presentations of earlier versions. The research was supported by a grant from the Metropolis Project of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Notes

Sources: Revenue Canada (1997); CIC and Statistics Canada (1998).

Source: CIC and Statistics Canada (1998).

Source: CIC and Statistics Canada (1998).

1. The point system was revised on 28 June 2002. However, the system itemized in the text was current during the period considered in this article.

2. It is relevant to compare this representation of the Chinese diaspora with an earlier and far more brutal racialization. See Anderson (1991).

3. Total declared personal funds of entrepreneur and investor class immigrants bound for British Columbia and reported to Canadian immigration officers in Hong Kong amounted to $1.35 billion in 1994, $1.38 billion in 1995, and $1.05 billion in 1996. These totals were equaled or exceeded by the fast-rising applications from Taiwan for these years (British Columbia Stats 1997).

4. By way of comparison, 40 percent of all Canadian retail firms in existence in 1978 went out of business by 1986, with another 25 percent in decline (Ray 1996). The retailing sector's profile was similar to the overall total for all industries over this period. Note that Ray's data are for firms of all sizes.

5. National growth of GDP decreased by more than half between 1985–1989 and 1990–1994.

6. The IMDB has only recently been made available to researchers. See the analysis of immigrant UI payments in Marr and Siklos (1999), of Chinese immigrants in Greater Toronto in Wang and Lo (2000), and of self-employment income in Hiebert (2002).

7. The figure for 1995 was only 16 percent but is omitted in the analysis as being the first year of settlement and therefore atypical. It is notable, however, that a much higher proportion of all immigrants landing in 1995—48 percent—declared earnings that year, indicating slower entry to employment by the business class than the annual cohort as a whole, lower even than that of refugees, who face many barriers to employment.

8. At the national scale, business immigrants declared average earnings 25 percent lower than the average for all major immigrant classes, the lowest level for all groups—including refugees—in 1995 (CIC 2000). Skilled workers, the independent class landing through the points system, consistently achieved the highest earnings.

9. This statement assumes a constant cohort effect in successive landing years, a condition that is not met. For example, the investor stream was introduced in 1986, with the first substantial take-up in 1987. That year coincided with a significant drop in the proportion of PAs reporting employment earnings, as well as a decline of 25 percent in average earnings. It will be important to observe the stability of the 1986–1987 breakpoint in successive tax years.

10. A national survey of the self-employed working over ten hours a week identified a median pre-tax income from self-employment in 1999 of $30,000–$35,000 (Delage 2002).

11. Estimates of Canadian passport holders living in Hong Kong range upwards from 250,000 (Ley and Kobayashi 2002).

12. The managers were promised anonymity and therefore are not identified further. Unless otherwise specified, unattributed comments in this section were made by this group of civil servants.

13. The accusation was made by a senior forensic accountant at the World Bank who had been contracted to conduct audits on a sample of investor accounts. Noncompliance and fraud in the entrepreneur program also provide copy for the critical press (Clark 1999).