The problems with excessively high immigration

I thought I’d elaborate a bit on a topic I touched on in my previous post, one reason for Canada’s current decline: unsustainably high levels of immigration.

A difficulty in talking about this subject is the knee-jerk reaction of some to accuse anyone in favour of limiting immigration of being racist, xenophobic, etc. While this can be true (I have seen a lot of hateful rhetoric aimed at immigrants, particularly in the US), it certainly is not necessarily true. One can be in favour of immigration while recognizing the necessity of limiting numbers to sustainable levels; in the same way a couple is not anti-child if they use birth control to limit their family to a size commensurate with their resources.

I’m not an economist, but a basic economic principle is that all resources are limited. In the case of immigration, limited resources include things like housing, healthcare, and jobs. If these are over capacity, people miss out.

All of these resources can grow, and immigrants can and do contribute to their growth. But growth takes time, and flooding the system too rapidly is a recipe for breakdown, not growth.

Immigration to Canada skyrocketed in 2021-22, to nearly half a million in a country with a population of about 39 million, and it’s on track to reach those numbers again this year. This is due to the Liberal government’s expansive immigration targets, growing to 500,000 by 2025.

And it’s having an effect. I live in the Niagara region of Ontario. Immigration slowed in 2020, due to the “pandemic”, but in 2021, massive numbers of asylum seekers began to show up. Thousands of refugees were bused to Niagara Falls from other parts of Canada and put up in hotel rooms, paid for by the government. The mayor of Niagara Falls sounded an alarm, noting that this leaves hotels unavailable for tourists, who make up a significant part of the local economy.

Refugees face multiple barriers to moving on to permanent housing and jobs. There simply is not enough affordable housing for them all. Until their claims are processed and they are issued work permits, they can’t (legally) work.

Even with work permits, language barriers and a lack of marketable skills or Canadian qualifications and experience are further barriers to employment. Even skilled immigrants face many years of expensive study if they wish to practice in their field, so many end up in low-skilled jobs. As with housing, there simply aren’t enough jobs to accommodate the numbers who want them.

Excessive numbers also strain healthcare resources. It’s close to impossible to find a family doctor now in Canada, and emergency room waiting times have ballooned. Refugee claimants require healthcare, just like anyone else, so this is yet another resource being stretched past its capacity.

My husband worked with a refugee claimant from Central America (let’s call him Daniel), and we’ve been taking him to church on Sundays. Daniel arrived in February 2023, and as of December, is still living in a hotel room in Niagara Falls. It appears there is no limit to his stay and no deadline to move out.

Like him, many hotel residents have jobs and even cars. I am not sure if they stay due to the housing shortage, or little incentive to move out of a place where their rent and three meals a day are paid for by the Canadian government (a.k.a., taxpayers).

Daniel has had multiple health problems since he arrived (perhaps due to his four covid jabs), so he’s been seeing doctors and getting scans and treatment, yet another number contributing to the scarcity of healthcare resources.

He claims persecution due to opposition to the current government in his country. I can’t adjudicate the validity of his claim, but my husband says Daniel once told him that if he had $20,000 he would go back home.

It’s not hard to see how the wide-open door the Liberal government has offered to immigrants, as well as the generous benefits they get just for showing up, may incentivize people to exaggerate or invent asylum claims.

I know many who have arrived as refugees, who, although they are my friends, I can’t say have solid claims to that status. (I also know many who do). Yes, they come from countries with corruption, poverty, and high crime. But that in itself doesn’t make an asylum claim. Mostly, to be honest, they are simply looking for a better life for themselves and their children. Who can blame them? Certainly not I. But at current and growing levels of immigration, I must question whether or not they are likely to attain that better life in Canada.

Another vignette. We are currently renting the main floor of a house with an apartment in the basement. A month after we moved in, the basement tenants moved out. It was empty for a couple of months, but this month, a family moved in. They appear to be African, and brand-new arrivals to Canada. They don’t work, and it doesn’t seem their two little girls are in school.

The property management company was asking $1650 for the basement. Basement apartments in former single-family houses are becoming something of a plague in this region. Nobody wants to live in a basement, and it’s not much better to live in the upper floor of a house with a rented basement. Both apartments get noise from the other, because owners never bother to soundproof the floor/ceiling. Basements have lower light levels. In this house at least, heating and air conditioning are central, with the controls in the upper unit, creating problems if there are significant differences in temperature preferences. Because of central air, food smells fill our unit whenever the downstairs tenants cook. The plumbing isn’t properly separated, so our water pressure and temperature are affected by water use downstairs.

It’s quite absurd, because we moved due to excessive noise in our previous rental, only to land somewhere with the same problem and additional ones, paying quite a bit more for the “privilege”. (To be fair, it does have good points, but not enough for me to justify the move).

But basement apartments are a factor of the housing shortage. With a surplus of housing and lower rents, owners would not have the same incentive to convert basements to rental units. Even if they did, they’d be less likely to be rented.

Even this one was empty for a month after the former tenants’ lease ended. If the family currently living there weren’t new arrivals, it may have remained unrented. I don’t know their situation, but as a family with two young children, they face more pressure to find housing than single immigrants. Even a basement apartment is better than nothing, and likely better than wherever they came from. The rent is ridiculously high, but it’s almost certainly being covered by the government, so that isn’t a factor in their decision.

In this way, high immigration numbers skew the housing market, create shortages, drive prices up, and force more people into subpar rentals.

I focus on housing because that’s the area that has affected me the most, but it’s certainly not the only problem. As previously mentioned, there is also a job shortage. In both my husband’s field and mine, work is scarce.

To be sure, there are more factors than high immigration to blame. Pierre Pollievre, the leader of the Canadian Conservative Party, recently released a video enumerating some of the factors behind the housing shortage. But many of the comments point out it doesn’t even mention mass immigration, the elephant in the room.

In sum: I believe Canada should remain a country where immigrants are welcome. We should remain a country where people with valid asylum claims find safety. But paradoxically, to do that, we need to bring down immigration numbers, because new immigrants suffer just as much as earlier ones from the effects of excessive arrivals.

It’s not a matter of new immigrants being “worth less” than established ones. It’s a question of spheres of responsibility.

Most people recognize that individuals and governments have responsibility primarily for those who belong to them. Scripture says, “Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” (1 Timothy 5:8). It doesn’t say the same about strangers, though it does say we should do good to all as we have the opportunity. But this shouldn’t happen at the expense of our own family. Most people would think a parent irresponsible, not noble, who sent their entire salary to feed poor children in a foreign country while leaving their own to starve.

Similarly, a government’s basic obligations are to those who already belong to it, and it should ensure that immigration numbers are permitting current residents to thrive. Otherwise, like me, more and more will face the prospect of increasing scarcity in Canada, and leave.