Quebec's Immigration Dilemma- Part 2 Why So Many Immigrants?

As I discussed yesterday, Canada is bringing in over three times the number of immigrants that is required to maintain population stability.

How does that compare to the rest of the Western world?
Well, Canada places 2nd in recruiting the most amount of immigrants amongst western nations. Only Spain brings in more, but it's numbers are skewed because so many Europeans, (especially Britons and Germans) are retiring in the sunniest climate in the European Community. Spain remains the most favoured destination for West Europeans considering taking up permanent residency.

For every million Canadians, we accept 6,500 more immigrants than we lose through emigration (Canadians moving out of the country.)
That rate is twice that of the United States and six times larger than France's.
As can be seen in the chart above, Canada's net migration is four times as high as the average of the group.

Why do we do it?
Believe it or not, there's no clear answer! Study after study, shows that these extra immigrants don't bring added value to the country nor do they take jobs that remain unfilled.

According to Herbert Grubel, a Senior Fellow of the The Fraser Institute, the costs in services and benefits received by the 2.5 million immigrants who arrived between 1990 and 2002 is estimated to exceed the taxes they paid by $18 billion in just one year! (2002)

He also concludes, in his paper entitled "The Fiscal Burden of Recent Canadian Immigrants", that;

"In sum, the idea that immigrants are needed for meeting the needs of the labour market in Canada are not valid. Labour shortages can be eliminated by wage increases and the use of labour saving capital. Using immigrants to deal with labour shortages serves the interest of employers tends not to be in the public interest..

One of the worst defences put forward by those supporting high immigration levels is the argument that we need more immigrants to solve the aging population problem. They argue that we need younger people to help pay for a burgeoning senior citizen class.
This is nothing more than a simple Ponzi scheme. As the immigrants themselves age, we'll need an ever increasing numbers of immigrants to pay for their care.

Perhaps the biggest reason leading to the huge up tick in immigration was the passing of the flawed Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (Bill C-11) in 2001, which essentially provided that anyone meeting the immigration criteria would be issued a permit. It did not allow for the government to set limits and led to a tremendous increase in successful applications. Today there remains over a million people on a waiting list to immigrate to Canada.

Efforts by the Liberal government to repair the damage were thwarted by the courts and it wasn't until 2008 that the issue was finally addressed. The Conservative government (over the howls of the immigration industry) placed amendments to the Immigration Act in another bill ( Bill C-50 -The Budget.) These amendments restored the government's power to decide on how many and which type of immigrants would be accepted in the future. The amendments, however, did not apply to the backlog and all those on the waiting list will eventually get in.

And so we remain with one of the highest rates of immigration in the world.

The headlong rush to bring in newcomers by Ottawa forces Quebec to do likewise or face losing it's demographic weight in Canada, which is already in a precipitous free fall.

Of Canada's 265,000 immigrants only about 36,000 end up living permanently in Quebec.
It means that Quebec is netting only about 13.5% of the new immigrants and so, it's 23% proportion of the population of Canada is set to decline.

The Prime Minister has indicated that he will be adding more seats to the House of Commons to reflect the demographic changes. Of the thirty odd seats being discussed, none will go to Quebec.

The mass immigration to Canada is a parade that is passing Quebec by.
In spite of bringing in record amounts of immigrants, Quebec falls further and further behind each year....