Canada Is An Airport

To wit:

Canada is facing huge student visa scams by Indians.

Thousands of Indian “students” are coming to Canada in the hope of securing a path to citizenship upon graduating.

In India, men and women are agreeing to ‘contract marriages’ with the aim of immigrating to Canada through the… pic.twitter.com/VOr82A5jEr

— Klaus Arminius (@Klaus_Arminius) July 8, 2024

**

Why not create an educated and trained class here?:

In a new study, Prof. Pierre Fortin, a former president of the Canadian Economics Association, finds that Canadian immigration, which has prioritized addressing labour shortages, has, in fact, done more to increase labour demand than labour supply in recent years. And as labour markets tighten, corporate Canada calls for more immigration, and labour shortages are exacerbated.

The government’s ill-advised preoccupation with shortages in low-skill labour markets is resulting in the dismantling of Canada’s skilled immigration system, which for decades has been the envy of the world.

The dismantling began on Feb. 13, 2021, when the government bypassed its Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) – a “points system” used to grade the human capital of applicants – to provide permanent residency status to applicants with record low scores. Two months later, they again bypassed the CRS to provide a pathway to permanency for 90,000 “essential workers,” our modern-day euphemism for low-skill workers. In September, 2023, Category Based Selection was enshrined as a new selection policy allowing the minister to bypass the CRS to prioritize truck drivers, farm workers and French speakers outside Quebec. Whatever lobby group shouts the loudest will be prioritized next.

But perhaps most significant is the continuing devolution of immigrant selection to provinces through their nominee programs which have lower skill requirements. Ontario recently proposed to extend eligibility in its program to 34 new occupations, all of which are occupations that require a high-school diploma or less. And with the federal government now downloading responsibility for allocating international student visas, Ontario has opted to allocate only 15 per cent of its 235,112 visas to universities, with the remainder going to community and private career colleges.

What is too often overlooked is that immigrant selection is a zero-sum policy choice because annual admissions are capped. Every time a construction labourer is prioritized for immigration, a computer science graduate from one of the country’s top universities is not.

Benefits of a more educated population are clear. Education raises workers’ earnings, improves their health, reduces crime and increases civic participation. These benefits spread widely through higher tax revenues, lower public-health care costs, greater safety and community trust, and a more active and informed electorate.

Evidence also points to the potential of educated immigrants to increase innovation and boost the wages of other workers through higher productivity. These gains can raise average living standards and, if anything, will tend to lower economic inequality as any adverse effects of immigration on wages affect the highest-, not lowest-, paid workers. In turn, immigrants are less likely to be seen as competition and public support for high immigration isn’t undermined.