It used to be that Canada's immigration system was forward looking and far-sighted – it brought ambitious, hard-working people from many places in the world and created new Canadians who committed to us as we committed to them.
But as controversy over the temporary foreign worker program has indicated, our immigration system has changed from one built on a foundation of permanence to one that increasingly relies on the temporary.
The temporary foreign worker program is, of course, the best-known example of how temporariness has crept into our system. But there are other examples worth considering.
For instance, family reunification, once a pillar of our immigration system, has fallen quietly by the side. Many immigrants chose Canada precisely because they knew it would be possible at some point to also bring their families to Canada. This has become much harder in the past few years.
In November of 2011, the government imposed a moratorium on sponsoring parents and grandparents and, instead, created a multi-year, multi-entry "super visa" in its place – basically, a souped-up tourist visa. This isn't family reunification; families aren't tourists in one another's lives. The government recently announced that the "super visa" program will become a fixture of the immigration system, even after a stricter parents and grandparents stream opens again in January of 2014.
People who have married Canadians have also been affected. Late last year, the government imposed a two-year period of "conditional" residence on sponsored spouses. This means the couple must live together for two years before the sponsored spouse can be considered a permanent resident. But we don't know the price that some spouses may have to pay to stay within a marriage to gain permanent status. By setting this precedent, the government has created another class of impermanence, with significant implications for vulnerable people, especially women.
Select temporary residents – such as high-skilled temporary foreign workers and international students – have a path to permanent residence. Under certain conditions of residency and attachment to the labour market, these individuals can bide their time and move to the next level of residence by applying for permanent resident status. Not so if you're in Canada as a low-skilled temporary foreign worker. After four years, you're required to leave the country, and your employer can immediately replace you with another temporary foreign worker.
Impermanence comes at a cost, both for us and those who find themselves in impermanent situations. By focusing on the temporary, we create transience. This discourages temporary residents from integrating into their communities and forming an attachment to Canada. In fact, it encourages the temporary to maintain and develop their loyalties elsewhere. It often separates families, sometimes for years at a time.
For those who eventually come to live in Canada permanently, these interrupted family relations can hinder the adjustment of the children and the family to their new life. And from those who leave, we will bypass the most significant benefits that we currently realize from the second generation, who, studies show, are more likely to attend college or university than their non-immigrant peers and have higher earnings as a result.
In other places, rules that allow people to enter temporarily without chance of prolonging their stay or converting to permanent status have resulted in "underground" populations and "shadow" economies. Our tradition of permanent immigration has largely shielded us from this insidious cost, but we must consider where our tendencies toward the temporary might take us.
Certainly, some temporary residents do not hope or intend to stay in Canada permanently. Some want nothing more than a short-term work or study-abroad experience. Similarly, inviting some temporary residents for short-term stays can meet Canada's needs. But surely it doesn't serve our nation to continue to reshape our entire immigration system based on these limited situations.
By looking for quick fixes and failing to consider what we give up, we're reshaping our immigration system and, by extension, our nation's future. We must re-establish our traditional commitment to permanent immigration; it's in Canada's best interest.
Ratna Omidvar is president of the Maytree Foundation.