From Survival To Identity--Canadian Immigration Policies Studies

Canada has always faced with the difficulty of shortage in labour force caused by its small population that has not fit its vast land and rich sources. Importing immigration has been the most convenient and immediate way for Canada to ease the tense in lacking human labour. Canada has its systematical immigration policies guard its door by selecting immigrants whom Canada aims to take, which firstly is for Canada's survival. In the past, Canadian immigration policies preferred the European immigrants, especially those from Great Britain and France, because with similar languages and cultures these people were more easily identified with Canadian society and put into economic production. Whereas, at the sime time, Canada discouraged people from Africa, Asia, but used their labour without granting them citizenship, and the immigration policies of that period were in accord to this existing discrimination. The Introduction and Chapter One give brief and concise information to the above social reality in Canada.With the development of economy, strengthening of its national power and its increasing independent influence in international affairs, Canada enlarged the selection mechanism of its immigration policies in the last decades, especially after the 1960s, in order to use this selection to manipulate both the number and the composition of Canadian population. Demanded by the economic characteristics and Canada's comprehensive development, the immigration policies of Canada then eliminated the conventional selection of immigrants according to their physical features and their geographical origins, instead, the point system was applied as measurement of the invisible abilities of the immigration applicant-their human capital. The current Canadian immigration policies, including the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and relevant regulations besides the point system, improve the whole Canadian nation by adding fresh and high-qualified human capital that is grid out byimmigration selection mechanism. This is in step with the demand of knowledge-based economy of today. The shift of the focus of Canadian immigration policies-the shift from searching for simple human labour to selecting human capital-labels that Canada shifts its major concern from striving for survival to searching for identity. Chapter Two and Three focus on analyzing this shift.The selection of immigrants by immigration policies enables the human capital to flow smoothly in a more convenient and regular environment. Consequently, the Canadian immigration policies maintain Canada's identity as a multiethnic country that is characterized as containing a diversity of immigrant identities. From immigration policies as door guard to the endurance of different identities, Canadian identity shows itself as a fan-like open-ended area that has the sameness of Canadian nation as its starting point and multiethnic culture as its radiant sector. When Canadian immigration policies legalized the possibility for exchange of identities, both the immigrants and Canada search for their identities respectively and using immigration as the way to identify with each other. During this process, there are actual benefits brought by immigration policies to Canada, such as supply and storage of human capital, high-qualified Canadian citizens and multicultural society and so on; however, on the other hand, many problems are also resulted form the current orientation to human capital in Canadian immigration policies, such as increasing the pressure and competition in employment for the native Canadians, inequality within immigrant groups and surplus high-level human capital, etc. These benefits and problems are included in Chapter Four and Chapter Five. Finally, the thesis draws a conclusion that to manage immigrants and differences is actually to build up Canadian identity, so the Canadian immigration policies will still remain as a critical concern for Canada.