An “overheated” immigration system that welcomed record numbers of new arrivals into the country has been damaging Canada Decades of consensus on the benefits of immigration, Immigration Minister said Marc Miller as he reflected on the changes in his department in a year-end interview.
The system, he said, needed some discipline to get the country back on track.
During 2024, Miller capped the number of student visas, reduced the number of permanent residents, made it more difficult to obtain a work visa, and suspended most private refugee sponsorship applications.
All this happened as record-breaking immigration rates boosted population growth by over three percent in 2023, twice the average over the last decade.
“You can’t escape the fact that I think we could have improved some things. I think a lot of good things happened too,” Miller said.
This interview took place on December 11, before Chrystia Freeland’s resignation as finance minister and deputy prime minister upended Canadian politics. Miller, who was named immigration minister in July 2023, kept the role on a rotating basis Friday.
Miller said the deterioration in public opinion on immigration was due to a number of factors, including high rates of asylum seekers, high housing costs and political movements in the Western world.
This climate presented Miller with the challenge last year of “bringing some discipline to the immigration system.”
With an aging population and birth rates below replacement levels, immigration is critical to ensuring a strong workforce that can help fund critical programs such as health care, Miller said.
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“We still need immigration, but we need to be able to tell Canadians that we have listened to them and will respond accordingly when we see overheating occurring,” Miller said.
According to the minister, this includes the inclusion of more economic immigrants in order to lower the average working age of the Canadian population.
The increase in the number of temporary workers is one of the biggest problems that have arisen since the pandemic. The original goal of the program was to fill gaps in the labor market, but the program grew so quickly that it opened the door to fraud and worker exploitation.
The government recently decided to make it more difficult for employers to obtain approval, and applications for low wages will be rejected in geographical regions where unemployment is above six percent.
Labor market impact assessments, documents required to hire a worker from abroad, are also worth a valuable 50 to 200 points in Canada’s points-based Express Entry system for permanent residents. CBC recently published an investigation that revealed these appraisals were being sold, sometimes for tens of thousands of dollars.
“It’s being played and I think it’s recognized that there is cheating and it takes different forms. “I have a special role in making sure that people don’t take advantage of this to, for example, get permanent residency,” Miller said.
On December 19, Miller announced that these items would be removed from the labor market impact assessments as part of a series of measures related to tightening border controls in response to President-elect Donald Trump’s threat of tariffs on Canadian products.
The change includes requiring temporary residents to apply to extend their stay exclusively online, ending a practice known as “flagpoling.” This is when someone crosses the US border from Canada, then turns around and returns to the border to process the application more quickly at a port of entry.
The government will also introduce changes to the law that will allow it to suspend or cancel immigration documents, including visas, if it is in the public interest to do so. Miller cited mass fraud as an example.
Trump is threatening both Canada and Mexico with 25 percent tariffs on all American imports from those two countries unless they increase border security to curb illegal border crossings and drug trafficking.
“I find the rhetoric we have heard in the United States deplorable. “I will never advocate for this, but we also need an immigration system that doesn’t appear to be being abused by people trying to game the system,” Miller said.
“And I think that’s something we’re seeing more and more with false asylum claims from certain countries.”
There are around 250,000 asylum applications waiting to be processed by the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Agency. Most claims in 2024 came from India, followed by Mexico.
Miller said he is considering introducing further asylum reforms next month to “streamline” the system and process illegitimate applications more quickly.
But introducing further reforms in a sensitive area amid a heated debate over border policy may be easier said than done. For Miller, it’s about finding a realistic balance between obligations under humanitarian law and Canada’s capabilities.
“We cannot fall prey to our baser instincts. We need to step up and look at this in a rational way that looks at these people as people without being naive about the ability of the Canadian government and the ability of Canada to absorb the number of people that are coming here. said Miller.
&Copy 2024 The Canadian Press
