No sooner had it been reported last week that the Conservative government was set to introduce immigration reforms than the Opposition pounced on it as evidence that the Tories want to exclude newcomers. "The Conservatives are shutting the door on immigration because they fail to understand its importance to our labour markets and our nation-building," Liberal immigration critic Maurizio Bevilacqua intoned. "Why does [Immigration Minister Diane Finley]insist on closing Canada's doors to the newcomers we desperately need to fuel our labour and our population growth even though history shows this is absolutely the wrong approach?" Liberal MP David McGuinty echoed.
The Liberals' rhetoric was predictable. Seeking to shore up their support in minority communities, they seize any opportunity to reinforce ethnic voters' mistrust of conservative parties. But the Tories show no evidence of an anti-immigration bias. Nearly 430,000 temporary and permanent residents were admitted last year, more than 60,000 more than four years earlier. And the reforms introduced on Friday stand to make it easier for deserving applicants to get in.
At present, many applicants must wait as long as six years for their cases to be processed. A backlog of 50,000 applications when the Liberals took office in 1993 grew to 800,000 by the time they left it 13 years later, and now sits even higher. The Liberals themselves announced in 2002 that they would raise the admission standards in hope of easing the backlog, then promptly backed off amid the ensuing outcry.
Now, the Conservatives are proposing a bolder reform, one that will allow the immigration minister to set limits to the number of applications processed each year, and to prioritize those applications by category. This will not reduce the number of applications accepted; if anything, it may accelerate that number's rise. It could really affect the type of immigrant accepted, and Ms. Finley might use her new powers to prefer "economic migrants" - i.e., skilled immigrants - over those applying on grounds of "family reunification."
This will not sit well with some ethnic communities, for whom the Liberals have made sacred the right to bring in aging parents and grandparents. But it stands to benefit our economy. Immigration policy, not to be confused with refugee policy, should first and foremost fit Canada's needs. While there is room for compassion in some family cases, the priority should be to strengthening the Canadian work force - an opportunity missed when skilled applicants spend years waiting for forms to be processed.
Seeking to cut into the Liberals' ethnic support base, the Tories surely anticipated how their opponents would misrepresent their policies. That they are pressing on regardless shows a strong commitment to this country's interests.