Quote:
Originally Posted by Acajack
The "Canadian advantage" is already seen as marginal at best by a lot of people, as evidenced by the millions of Canadians such as yourself who live in the US. Even during the worst periods of contemporary US history, lots of Canadians have always moved south.
So my point is probably that the "Canadian advantage" probably can't afford to take that much of a downgrade before all of this starts to affect our overall attractiveness and competitiveness as a country a lot more seriously.
|
I guess even in the times of brain drain and loss in the 20th century, Canada has compensated by being more liberal on immigration than the US (I mean historic stuff like the Last Best West, and at least since for instance, allowing more Southern/Eastern Europeans when the US had stricter rules from Ellis Island onward, and later, in the postwar years and to the 50s, 60,s 70s, and to now even if Canada was also restrictionist for some time). Though to be fair birth rates were higher then. As we see in contemporary times, we can still afford to turn away people. I guess as far as immigration goes, the limit is still not that "no one comes" the fear is that the "best and brightest don't come" of the people that choose to immigrate (only those that saw Canada as "consolation prize" in terms of picking a western country to immigrate to).
I guess, if you want to be less cynical, perhaps the world has enough talented immigrants to go around that even if the US takes the lion's share, Canada will still have some to go around.
Not that this takes away from the concern but another interesting observation is that countries can seem to recover from quite a lot of population drain -- I mean an example is Ireland, archetypal nation of emigrants and is rich today. East Asian nations like South Korea also seemed to do well industrializing despite brain drain to the US or other parts of the west (though of course they have the problem with low birth rates).
Another example is the EU allowed brain draining of some less well off European countries. Yet there's a lot of countries like Poland, the Czech republic etc. that still grew economically even as they lost people to emigration (though of course, keeping Canada from losing economic competitiveness to the US is not quite the same thing as Ireland or South Korea or Poland becoming richer).
And there's always people willing to remain in Canada and refuse the temptation to leave to the US for better jobs/pay because of strong cultural ties, much less likely admittedly with urban Anglophones growing up in big cities like me, (but e.g. in the Canadian case probably mostly Francophones and to some extent people like Atlantic Canadians with strong family networks still remain and form a solid bloc of Canadian identity that is not going away any time soon).
I guess another less pessimistic note is that if we compare Canada to the US, it's less desirable, but Canada probably isn't too bad compared to other western countries (e.g. Australia, NZ, UK, Germany, France). E.g. France or even some other EU countries also have problems that may be social, economic etc. that other countries see in the news (e.g. riots, unrest) but still has no problem having other good aspects that attract immigrants, tourists, expats etc. and France continues to be well-liked and respected worldwide.
At least Canada mainly only loses population to one big country (the US) which is not nothing I'll admit, and I guess return migration happens too. The Canadian advantage vs. the US might be kind of small, but how about Canadian advantage vs. UK, Australia, NZ etc. I think these places, also similar in birth rate to Canada and in need of immigrants to sustain growth are not too different from the US. Immigration is now sufficiently globalized but then no.2 (or even 3, 4, etc. as destination is not bad in absolute terms for a country in terms of choice of newcomers).
Prev
)
Linear Mode
