Cloud of uncertainty hangs over talks
Former prime minister Stephen Harper cleaned up Canada’s immigration mess and his smart template is what U.S. President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address this week aims to emulate.
Trump’s form of right-wing American populism may not be attractive, but immigration reform is the new normal both south of the border and in the European Union. One of his main goals is to take a strategic, economically driven approach to increased immigration and that will be the focus going forward. At the same time, he wants to fortify the wall and deport illegals.
Canada never had to build a wall because we share the border with the U.S., but reforms were put in place a few years ago.
Here’s why Trump aspires to a Canadian-like process: Canada will accept one million immigrants in the next three years, with 60 per cent arriving through employment-based channels. By contrast, in the U.S. only 14 per cent of its immigrants come through employer-based programs.
Canada had this problem after 1986 when former prime minister Brian Mulroney began letting in 250,000 immigrants a year, including hundreds of thousands of undocumented “refugees” off airplanes. These people, in turn, sponsored millions of unskilled relatives. Former PM Jean Chrétien made it worse, and Canada ended up with an unnecessary, huge underclass.
Harper made immigration economically driven. Even recent “humanitarian” influxes — such as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s initiative to let up to 50,000 Syrian refugees in — is controversial but involves heavy screening, monitoring, and bootstrapping.
By comparison, the United States — since the Second World War — has been “invaded” by illegal migration from Mexico, the Caribbean and Latin America that is bigger in size than the population of Canada.
Along the way, amnesties have been granted to bring them in out of the underground economy, but the waves kept coming until Trump’s “wall” and election stopped the flow.
Immigration controversies differ but are the new normal for every country.
In Canada, reforms were about economics.
In Europe, populaces are homogeneous than the U.S. and the anti-immigration subtext is not economic (there’s a social safety net) as much as social, even “tribal.” This is behind Brexit and rise of right-wing populism in France, Germany, Poland, and most of Central Europe.
In the United States, the most immigration-friendly country in history, unfettered immigration is both a right and left wing issue. This is why President Trump and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders agreed on the need to curb immigration and on the need to stop unfair, damaging trade deals.
But their executions differed, and these are behind the political fights Americans will engage in for the next few election cycles.
But Trump’s renegotiation of trade deals is also designed to stop the hollowing out of the U.S. economy.
Trump’s reform of tax rules that encouraged its multinationals to build factories abroad, thus robbing the country of jobs and taxes at the same time, would have been done by Sanders, too.
But where they differ is that Sanders also blames tax unfairness, and the lack of a social safety net for American worker problems. He would have increased taxes on the rich, increased minimal wages and brought in a Canada-style health care system.
Trump, on the other hand, has brought in tax cuts and believes in trickle-down benefits. But the fact is half of American workers make so little income they pay no taxes now.
The point here is that Trump may not be everyone’s President but his policies — on immigration and trade — resonate in every country in the world. Only remedies differ.
For Americans, his prescriptions make sense for many and that, along with massive tax cuts, benefit the U.S. and world economies.