Diminishing Returns: The Economics of Canada's Recent Immigration Policy

Joseph Garcea is a professor of political Studies at the University of
Saskatchewan.

The articles gathered here—written largely by economists and presented
at a conference co-sponsored by the C.D. Howe Institute and the Laurier
Institution—analyze the effects that changes to immigration policy in
recent decades have had both on the Canadian economy and on
immigrants’ reliance on social services.

The book’s central theme is that, while immigration is still
providing positive net returns to the Canadian economy, those returns
are diminishing (albeit not evenly across either provinces or sectors of
the labor market). As the editor sees it, the conclusion to be drawn
from the findings of various articles is that “Canada’s immigration
policy needs to focus more on the mix of immigrants and on the needs and
constraints of regional economies.” In other words, to ensure that
immigration continues to make a positive contribution to the Canadian
economy, there must be even closer linkage between the skills of
immigrants and the labor and economic market needs of various regions.

Most of the articles will be of primary interest to hard-core analysts
of immigration policies and immigration trends in Canada. For
comparativists, there is an interesting chapter on policy convergence in
immigration between Canada and the United States. Other topics examined
include family reunification, earnings among immigrants, welfare
dependency among immigrants, the labor-market participation of immigrant
women, employment and unemployment among immigrants, immigration and
trade, and business immigration.