There’s an excellent article over at The Economist all about how Canadians are starting to rethink their traditionally liberal immigration policies.
Here’s an excerpt:
CANADA has long been known as one of the world’s most welcoming countries for immigrants, and thus a good bet for refugees, who are granted most of the same rights and freedoms as citizens. At first, this open-door policy was a product of necessity. The world’s second-biggest country, Canada needed people to fill its wide open spaces and build an economy. But multiculturalism has been a part of the national identity since 1971, when a Liberal government embraced it as official policy. Today 20% of the population is foreign-born. The biggest sources of new arrivals are China, the Philippines and India.
Yet the Conservative minority government of Stephen Harper that took power in 2006 has begun to restrict immigration. It has toughened the citizenship test and doubled the lump sum required to gain quick access as an investor. And it has presented bills to fine and jail people-traffickers and detain their clients, and to penalise unauthorised immigration advisers who charge fees (to be called the Cracking Down on Crooked Consultants Act).