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Originally Posted by casper
One aspect that will have a major impact on immigration into Canada is the US.
The US is moving more and more towards being closed for immigration. I think this trend goes beyond Trump.
In Vancouver for the past decade we had companies like Microsoft using Vancouver as holding pen for the people they recruited from around the world that they could not get into the US as permanent residents. I think this is a positive. We should be encouraging all of these tech companies to setup shop in Canada and providing a degree of flexibility as they focus on bringing in highly skilled talent from overseas as well as their families.
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The US has in many ways been in impediment to Canadian growth over history. Immigrants chose the US over Canada by a wide margin. Corporate USA often steamrolled over corporate Canada in industry after industry (autos, consumer products, tech). Our biggest players were often just Canadian units of US parents.
We're slowly starting to see a shift of influence and power within north America. The US still dominates but Canada is much stronger (economically, culturally, demographically, politically) within north America than it was in the past. For the longest time there was a 10:1 population ratio. It's now down to 9:1 and could fall to a 8:1 ratio in the next 10-12 years.
And yes, we should be doing all we can to encourage US tech to set up shop here. I think we've done a good job on that front. Equally important is the emergence of home grown tech firms.
There's still no Canadian Facebook, no Canadian Uber, no Canadian Apple, no Canadian Google, no Canadian Nvidia, no Canadian Tesla, etc. The patents are held by US companies and the royalties flow there; as do the profits. As long as this continues, billions of dollars will continue heading south to the US annually. It explains why per capita income in San Francisco is almost double that of Toronto.
Quote:
Originally Posted by casper
There is no shortage of people who have come to the US as immigrants with temporary status that are no longer wanted because geo-political issues instead of the specifics of the individual. Canada should be actively recruiting these people to come to Canada.
The waves of immigrants from Central American that are sitting in Mexico waiting to enter the US are again a potential pool that we should be looking at.
I am not convinced that the major cities will see the majority of the growth. With more and more people working from home I think over time there is going to be more and more relocation from the bigger centers to the smaller centers. Immigrants will still be settling in the major urban areas when they first arrive.
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The hostility to latin America in the US is a potential gold mine for Canada. We'd be wise to capitalize on it rather than let that once in 500 year opportunity pass us by.
I'm also of the view that we'll see a wider dispersal of growth nationally. Cities tend to grow to a size where the negatives start outweighing the positives. You see that phenomenon all across the US. Canada has never really had cities that big where we've seen people start looking at alternatives. That's starting to change. People out west are starting to look at Kelowna and Victoria over Vancouver. In the east cities like Halifax are now on the radar of people who'd initially only thought of Toronto.
Overall, this is good development. It's far better having 20-30 good big city options rather than 3. It might take 50 years to realize but at least the process has started.
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