WINNIPEG, Manitoba – As waves of immigrants from the developing world remade Canada a decade ago, the famously friendly people of Manitoba could not contain their pique.
What irked them was not the Babel of tongues, the billions spent on health care and social services, or the explosion of ethnic identities. The rub was the newcomers’ preference for “MTV” – Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver – over the humble prairie province north of North Dakota, which coveted workers and population growth.
Demanding “our fair share,” Manitobans did something hard to imagine in US politics, where concern over illegal immigrants dominates public debate and states seek more power to keep them out. In Canada, which has little illegal immigration, Manitoba won new power to bring foreigners in, handpicking ethnic and occupational groups judged most likely to stay.
This experiment in designer immigration has made Winnipeg a hub of parka-clad diversity – a blue-collar town that gripes about the cold in Punjabi and Tagalog – and defied the anti-immigrant backlash seen in much of the world.
Rancorous debates over immigration have erupted from Australia to Sweden, but there is no such thing in Canada as an anti-immigrant politician. Few nations take more immigrants per capita or with less fuss.
Is it the selectivity Canada shows? The services it provides? Even the Mad Cowz, a violent youth gang of African refugees, did nothing to curb appetites for foreign workers.
“When I took this portfolio, I expected some of the backlash that’s occurred in other parts of the world,” said Jennifer Howard, Manitoba’s minister of immigration. “But I have yet to have people come up to me and say, ‘I want fewer immigrants.’ I hear, ‘How can we bring in more?”’
Immigration history
Canada has long sought immigrants to populate the world’s second-largest land mass, but two developments in the 1960s shaped the modern age. One created a point system that favours the highly skilled. The other abolished provisions that screened out nonwhites. Millions of minorities followed, with Chinese, Indians and Filipinos in the lead.
Relative to its population, Canada takes more than twice as many legal immigrants as the United States. Why no hullabaloo?
With one-ninth of the US population, Canada is keener for growth, and the point system helps persuade the public it is getting the newcomers it needs. The children of immigrants typically do well. The economic downturn has been mild. Plus the absence of large-scale illegal immigration removes a dominant source of the conflict in the United States.
“The big difference between Canada and the US is that we don’t border Mexico,” said Naomi Alboim, a former immigration official who teaches at Queens University in Ontario.
French and English from the start, Canada also has a more accommodating political culture – one that accepts more pluribus and demands less unum. That American complaint – “Why do I have to press 1 for English?” – baffles a country with a minister of multiculturalism.
Another force is in play: immigrant voting strength. About 20 percent of Canadians are foreign born (compared with 12.5 percent in the United States), and they are quicker to acquire citizenship and voting rights. “It’s political suicide to be against immigration,” said Leslie Seidle of the Institute for Research on Public Policy, a Montreal group.
Discontent
Some stirrings of discontent can be found. The rapid growth of the “MTV” cities has fueled complaints about congestion and housing costs. A foiled 2006 terrorist plot brought modest concern about radical Islam. And critics of the refugee system say it rewards false claims of persecution, leaving the country with an unlocked back door.
“There’s considerably more concern among our people than is reflected in our policies,” said Martin Collacott, who helped create the Center for Immigration Policy Reform, a new group that advocates less immigration.
Collacott argues high levels of immigration have increased safety net costs, slowed economic growth and strained civic cohesion, but he agrees the issue has little force in politics.
“There’s literally no one in parliament willing to take up the cudgel,” he said.
The Manitoba program, started in 1998 at employers’ behest, has grown rapidly under both liberal and conservative governments. While the federal system favors those with college degrees, Manitoba takes the semi-skilled, like truck drivers and welders, and focuses on those with local relatives in the hopes that they will stay. The newcomers can bring spouses and children and get a path to citizenship.
Most are required to bring savings, typically about $10,000, to finance the transition without government aid. While the province nominates people it wants, the federal government does background checks and has the final say.
While many migrant streams attract the desperately poor, the new Manitobans have backgrounds that are strikingly middle class.
“Back home was good – not bad,” said Nishkam Virdi, 32, who makes $17 an hour at the Palliser furniture plant after moving from India, where his family owned a machine shop.
He said he was drawn less by the wage than the lure of health care and solid utilities.
“The living standard is higher – the lighting, the water, the energy,” he said.
The program has drawn about 50,000 people over the past decade, and surveys show the majority stayed. Howard, the immigration minister, credits job placement and language programs, but many migrants credit the informal welcomes.
“Because we are from the third world, I thought they might think they are superior,” said Anne Simpao, a Filipino nurse in tiny St. Claude, who was approached by a stranger and offered dishes and a television set. “They call it friendly Manitoba, and it’s really true.”
One complaint
One complaint throughout Canada is the difficulty many immigrants have in transferring professional credentials. Heredina Maranan, 45, a certified public accountant in Manila, has been stuck in a Manitoba factory job for a decade. She did not disguise her disappointment when relatives sought to follow her.
“I did not encourage them,” she said. “I think I deserved better.”
They came anyway – two families totalling 14 people, drawn not just by jobs but the promise of good schools.
“Of course I wanted to come here,” said her nephew, Lordie Osena. “In the Philippines there are 60 children in one room.”
Every province except Quebec now runs a provincial program, each with different criteria, diluting the force of the federal point system. The Manitoba program has grown so rapidly, federal officials have imposed a cap.
Arthur Mauro, a Winnipeg business leader, hails the Manitoba program but sees limited lessons for a country as demographically different as the United States.
“There are very few states in the US that say, ‘We need people,”’ he said.
But Arthur DeFehr, chief executive officer of Palliser furniture, does see a lesson: Choose migrants who fill local needs and give them a legal path.
With 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States, he sees another opportunity for Manitoba.
“I’m sure many of those people would make perfectly wonderful citizens of Canada,” he said. “I think we should go and get them.”
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