Why are Canadians turning against immigration?

Canada has long been pro-immigration — so proudly so that harsh talk about limiting immigrant numbers has been a nonstarter for the public and politicians alike. That is changing.

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A recent Leger poll found that 65% of Canadians believe the government has set immigration targets too high and will admit “too many” immigrants under its current plan. More than 75% say the number of newcomers is raising the cost of housing and health care, at 78% and 76%, respectively. And a June poll by Research Co. found that 44% of Canadians viewed immigration negatively — a 6% increase from last October — with nearly half wanting fewer immigrants.

Now, thanks to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s aggressive immigration plan — with rates that have outpaced housing starts, doctor availability, and job growth — the decades-old consensus is starting to fray, and American politics and policy may exacerbate the matter.

Temporary foreign worker backlash

The government’s temporary foreign worker program, or TFW, which brings in non-permanent residents to work, has stirred controversy for depressing wages. This is adding more stress to the pro-immigration consensus as Canadians are worried about the country’s capacity to welcome newcomers while facing crises in health care, housing, and, in some cases, employment.

Canada admitted nearly a quarter of a million temporary workers in 2023, almost double the number from five years ago. The immigrant unemployment rate was nearly 12% this spring, nearly double the 6.4% general rate.

Last week, Employment Minister Randy Boissonnaultannounced that as of Sept. 26, Canada would not allow businesses to apply for temporary foreign workers through the low-wage stream — jobs paying below the provincial median wage — in any big city where unemployment was above 6%. It allows exceptions for several industries, but employers will be limited to 10% of their workforce being filled by temporary foreign workers. The employment term is reduced from two years to one, and visitors may no longer apply for work permits inside Canada — a pandemic-era policy adopted in response to travel restrictions — but must apply from abroad.

The changes are expected to lower the number of temporary foreign workers by roughly 65,000.

Asylum-seeking on the rise

The TFW program isn’t the only concern in Canada — or the US. A rise in asylum-seekers moving south to the US from Canada caught the attention of the Biden administration. In February, the Canadian government reinstated a policy requiring visitors from Mexico to obtain a visa before entering the country. It had lifted the requirement in 2016, which led to an increase in asylum-seekers and irritated the White House.

The 2023-24 fiscal year has seen record-breaking numbers of irregular crossings from Canada into the US, with a high of over 18,600 encounters between American officials and migrants in May and nearly as many in June and July. US Customs and Border Patrol has already had nearly 127,000 encounters this year and is on track to surpass last year’s 147,666 encounters.

In the US, immigration and border policy are top ballot issues. Some voters are looking north and growing concerned about security along the world’s longest undefended border. The Biden administration has adopted stricter controls, lowering the number of asylum-seekers along the northern border through a series of deterrence measures and aligning northern border policy with its stricter southern counterpart.

Last year, Republicans talked about building a northern border wall, a silly notion that nonetheless prompted then-presidential hopeful Nikki Haley to claim that while the southern border is a routine concern, the northern border doesn’t get enough attention. In 2023, House Republicans created a Northern Border Security Caucus focused on human and drug trafficking.

Border politics shape US and Canadian elections

Republicans are attacking Democratic nominee Kamala Harris on the issue, though southern border encounters have declined. Harris has made getting tough on the border a key component of her campaign, promising “strong border security and an earned pathway to citizenship,” as the Democrats move right on immigration and border security.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump routinely talks about his ill-defined mass deportation plan, which involves mobilizing the whole of government, including the National Guard, to round up migrants and return them home.

The “plan” has been criticized as unworkable, but even the possibility of mass deportations could lead to fear and panic. As Evan Dyer reports, the idea of the plan could generate a rush to the Canadian border, further complicating Canada’s tenuous immigration consensus.

Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, whose party is up in the polls, says he would cut immigration and tie the number of newcomers to trends in housing, health care, and employment. He alleges the Liberals have “destroyed” the country’s immigration system. A July poll found that 27% of Canadians see it as a top issue – and 54% of those who do prefer the Conservative Party over Liberals.

Delicate balancing act

Pressure from several sources will make life difficult for the governing Liberals as they try to navigate the intersecting issues of immigration, the border, housing, health care, security, and foreign relations.

Graeme Thompson, a senior analyst with Eurasia Group’s global macro-geopolitics practice, says the political problem for the government is a need to navigate between those who worry immigration is too high, “primarily for economic reasons,” and constituencies that want to see more newcomers, including industry and universities, who rely on foreign nationals for labor and tuition fees.

Trudeau must manage the current and future US administration and a growing focus on border security, Thompson says, echoing that a Trump win “could result in a major problem on the Canadian border with increased numbers of irregular migrants being forced out of the United States.”

“The government is going to make somebody very unhappy here,” he says.

On Wednesday, the stakes for the Liberals got higher as the NDP, which is heavily pro-immigration, ended their parliamentary deal to back the governing party, raising the odds of an early federal election — and an end to what’s left of Trudeau’s sunny ways.