Canada suffers from the same demographic challenges as the U.S. – an aging workforce and declining birth rates resulting in a shrinking talent and labor pool. However, Canada’s strategy for solving this challenge is radically different from the Trump Administration’s approach.
In its 2018 Annual Report to Parliament on Immigration, Canada’s Ministry of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship (IRCC) sets out its goal to admit more than 1 million immigrants from 2019 through 2021. New immigrants just in those three years would represent 3% of Canada’s 37 million population.
As we’ve noted previously, Canada has also reformed its immigration system so that international students who receive advanced degrees from Canadian universities have an accelerated path to permanent status in Canada.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has been taking steps to curtail legal immigration that are expected to continue. Time will tell which approach to immigration, Canada’s or the U.S.’s, is the most economically sound. However, economic leaders in the U.S. have been sounding the alarm that the U.S. has chosen the wrong path.