Friday, February 12, 2010

Quebec's Immigration Dilemma Part 5- Assimilation

Assimilating immigrants in Quebec has proven to be a costly and largely unsuccessful affair.
For obvious reasons Quebec has favoured choosing immigrants from French speaking countries. It was felt that these people would transition into the French side of the language divide and maintain the predominance of French in Quebec. But so far, the French assimilation rate of immigrants is only 60%, and falls short of the 80% necessary to maintain the status quo.

The newcomers, while speaking French, are as culturally different from Francophone or Anglophone Quebeckers, as can be. It presents an unexpected problem, the newcomers don't fit in at all.

This is because they lack the necessary skills needed in a complex society.  Most immigrants who arrive from Muslim  countries don't even share fundamental values, such as the equality of men and women.
Today's immigrants, unlike the previous waves of newcomers,  are prone to demand that Quebeckers accommodate them, rather than vice-versa.

A rising chorus of voices is advocating that accepting people with fundamentalist religious views or little education and job skills, just because they speak French, is a mistake.

Many Quebeckers, especially those outside Montreal, demonstrate an outright hostility towards immigrants, believing that is they and not the immigrants who are being assimilated. The overall Quebec view of immigration is at odds with what Canadians think in other parts of the county.

Here's a video made by Radio-Canada a couple of years ago. It's quite an eye-opener.


Quebec finds itself caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. In order to maintain it's demographic position in Canada, it needs to match the high Canadian immigration rate. But by bringing in a large amount of unproductive people, many of which  don't fit in or assimilate over to the French side, Quebec is becoming more populous, but less and less French.

For Quebec, the economic price of immigration is staggering. It's welfare rolls are bloated with unproductive immigrants. While immigrants make up less than 10% of Quebec's population, they represent 30% of the people on welfare and 25% of the people on unemployment insurance. Quebec also subsidizes immigration support organizations with over $14 million in aid a year.
Up to one third of  immigrants are refugees or family reunifications, immigrants who are unproductive and represent the largest economic strain.

The generosity of  Quebec society is at it's breaking point.

For Quebec, there is but one solution, lobbying Ottawa to drastically cut the number of immigrants, so that Quebec can do likewise.
To continue on with massive waves of immigration will have dire consequences.The province will become poorer, less French and continue to lose it's demographic position in Canada.

5 comments:

  1. Last weeken is pent the nght at a rural B&B run by French-speaking immigrants from france and Switzerland. Literate, cultured people. They joke that they learned their Québecois idiom by watching La Petite Vie. But after 15 years in the same village, they are never invited into the homes of the locals.
    And I was surprised years ago when I heard a black Cameroun immigrant tell me that in 17 years here, he had never been invited to a Quebecois house.

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  2. I think you would do the same video in rural 95% white Western regions and you'd certainly get the same kind of answer of old folks.

    They are from another generation who are not used to so much immigration just like they were not used to so much pollution (comparison between two different topics).

    Times are changing and the older you get, the more averse you get toward change.

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  3. You are all missing the point..which planet do you guys live in?..when was the last time, you visited a foreign country?

    Immigrants have done so much for Canada, and you people know it, but would not accept it!

    If immigration was so much a trouble...why is the Govt still doing campaign to recruit more?

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  4. The last five lines in this blog post are the most ironic. Quebec must lobby Ottawa for Canada to stop (or reduce) immigration so it can do likewise. Now HISTORICALLY Quebec zealously backed the Liberal party. And this party is more responsible then anyone for the massive (and massively CHANGED) immigration Canada has had to endure since the 1960's. This is particularly true of Pierre Trudeau. Didn't Quebec massively support him in every single federal elction? And didn't he do every thing he possibly could to let in as many non-White foreigners from the third world as possible? Trudeau NEVER would have lasted without Quebec. Consider the 1972 election where every single province BUT QUEBEC utterly repudiated him. Only Quebec's French TRIBAL VOTE kept him in power. So in a way, Quebec has only itself to blame for all of this....what goes around....comes around.

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