"Economic Globalization and Immigration Policy: Canada Compared to Europe"

Long-standing immigration policy differences between Canada and Europe moderated somewhat over the first decades of the post-War period, but subsequent to 1989 there was a significant shift toward greater divergence. This paper provides details on the widening policy gap, its post-War context, and the economic, political, and ideological factors which influenced the Canadian policy stance in particular. Canadian immigration policy in the 1990s emphasizes the admission of relatively large numbers of immigrants from around the world as self-financed, "just in time" sources of skilled labor, advanced technology, and entrepreneurial capital fire European attitude over this same period has, in contrast, centered on further efforts to restrict inflows of migrants originating from outside Europe, largely on the grounds that immigrants are threats to domestic employment security. Although these widely different responses to economic migrants have some spill-over effects on other aspects of international migration policy, such as family reunfication and asylum, Canadian and European policies remain more similar in these areas. The major immigration policy contrasts between nations arise through significant differences in political ideology, in turn related to the structure of interest groups and power relations in society.