Who Gets In: What's wrong with Canada's immigration program - and how to fix it

September 11, 2001, marked the end of innocence for Canada’s ill-conceived, poorly run, and highly partisan immigration and refugee programs. In a tightly argued book sure to inspire controversy, Daniel Stoffman debunks the myths surrounding Canadian immigration and offers well-founded
suggestions for change.

A Chinese fishing boat is intercepted off the British Columbia coast. The 123 people on board, seeking to enter Canada illegally, are arrested, then given taxpayers’ money and legal representation. They apply for refugee status. Pending their hearings, they disappear. Welcome to Canada.

An Algerian man is searched disembarking from a ferry from Victoria, B.C., to Port Angeles, Wash. His rental car turns out to contain explosives he plans to use to blow up the Los Angeles airport. The man turns out to be an al-Qaeda-trained terrorist bearing a Canadian passport in a false name.

The terrorism of September 11, 2001, turned an intense spotlight on Canada’s lax immigration and refugee programs. “The longest undefended border in the world” became, for the United States, a pressing security concern, and for good reason. Canada is the most immigrant-friendly country in the world, accepting (on a per capita basis) twice as many immigrants as the next most welcoming nation, many of them people about whom little is known.

Canada’s immigration program used to be run in the national interest. Now it belongs to those who benefit from it, either politically (most newcomers vote Liberal, so the Liberals use immigration to increase support) or economically (a whole industry has grown up around immigration, refugee, and multicultural issues). Who Gets In shows how this came about, explains why it’s contrary to the national interest, and suggests ways to fix the mess.

Daniel Stoffman points out that our immigration policy is based on two false premises: that immigration provides substantial economic benefits and that we need a huge influx of younger people to offset the aging of our population. Both assumptions he persuasively refutes. Add political correctness, diversity masquerading as multiculturalism, and a voting public that has not yet made immigration an election issue, and presto: you have the most generous, insecure, and muddled immigration system in the world. Like most Canadians, Stoffman heartily supports responsible immigration and a compassionate refugee program. We have neither, he argues, and it’s time for Canadians to demand of their leaders that this most important program be rescued from political partisanship and returned to the foundations of national interest and humanitarianism on which it was built.

Daniel Stoffman, co-author of the bestsellers Boom Bust & Echo and Boom Bust & Echo 2000, is also an award-winning journalist who has written on business, politics, and social issues for several major Canadian publications, including Report on Business Magazine, Saturday Night, the Financial Post, and Toronto Life.