Bureaucratic Implementation Practices and the Making of Merit Based Immigration Policy

Time Taken to Read Article: 75 minutes

Time Taken to Take Notes: 30 minutes

- Canada’s merit based immigration system was established in 1967, and works on a points based

system intended to evaluate an applicant’s value to Canadian society

- The merit based system collects data regarding the applicant’s: wealth, education level, job

security, and language fluency

- The merit based system replaced the group level assessments which focused primarily on an

applicant’s race and ethnicity in order to gage worthiness

- By switching from assessing an applicant on the group level to the merit based system,

Canadian immigration aimed to reduce the role race played in an applicant’s success

- New analyses of both Canada’s merit based system and group level assessments have revealed

that the systems have been more racially prejudice than they were previously thought to be

- If anything, rather than race, past records have suggested that Canadian immigration has

primarily excluded individuals because of their country of origin instead of their race
- Generally individuals from western Europe were thought to be the most successful applicants

followed by individuals from countries within the sphere of western influence

- A main factor for Canada in adopting the the merit based immigration system in 1967, was that

they believed that the most sustainable method of growth was to allow a greater number of

people from different backgrounds into the country

- Although the merit based immigration system was designed to reduce racial prejudices, it

sustained the status quo of keeping races within class lines

- The merit based immigration system opened the door to further reforms within the Canada’s

immigration policies and to some other countries within the commonwealth, who had previously

been as bad, if not worse, with racial inequality

- The creation of the merit based immigration system is credited with having been the foundation

on the mulitracial middle class we see in Canada today

- Canada’s postwar Immigration Act and Regulations in 1952 and 1953 were the legal

frameworks which upheld the racial divide between white Canadians and their minority

counterparts
- In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Canada witnessed a significant surge in the amount of skilled

labours in the country, this led to them allowing mass immigration to balance out the numbers

with unskilled labourers

- Allowing mass immigration solved two existential problems for Canadian society: a lack of

unskilled labourers as well as a low birth rate

- Through the coming decades race was slowly fazed out as a legitimate method of ordering

people in the social and economic world

- The United Nations’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, essentially made it

mandatory for democratically run states like Canada, to change the way they managed racial

discrimination

- For a long time throughout the second world war and postwar, Canada was seen as a friendly

nation across the international community, until they had to reform their own racial problems

- Canada’s attempts to reform its racial problems helped gain the nation respect around the

world, this enabled them to be a mediator when it came to moral and political issues

- Canada’s political position since the 20th century ran on the thought that, without significant

economic or military power they had to create a shield from outside threats, and that shield

would be to gain respect

- The Immigration Act and Regulations in 1952 allowed for some unskilled labourers to gain

citizenship in Canada, most of whom came from former British colonies who were in the

commonwealth

- Fitzgerald and Cook-Martin, deemed the various immigration policies Canada implemented a

“charade played for the international audience”, and that Canada would continue to restrict black

would-be immigrants

- Historians in the 1960s were later accused of undermining the amount of racial prejudice

minorities faced in their attempts to gain citizenship in Canada

- In the few years prior to the 1962 Immigration Regulations, 278 individuals gained citizenship

as skilled workers, but only a fraction of them were able to practise in their trade due to conflicts

with the licensing laws in Canada

- After the 1962 Immigration Regulation a metric known as “Steady Employment”, was used to

determine the success of new Canadians in the workforce, and most of the individuals recorded

were said to have been operating well as the Canadian government had hoped

- The Canadian government was optimistic, as they saw the United Kingdom struggle with

balancing racial diversity in their society, which the Canadian government believed was largely

down to the fact that they Britain had once colonised many of their immigrants’ homeland
- Canada believed that striking a balance in socio-economic relations with people of different

ethnicities would set an example to the world, and more importantly establish themselves as

leaders without having significant military or economic strength

- Canada has since then aimed to foster a positive hard working environment in society which

they indirectly do through methods used to conduct a potential immigrant’s adaptation,

motivation, initiative, and resourcefulness

- Immigrants who intend on setting up a business earn 25 points, which is half of the required

points to gain a Canadian citizenship, this is intended advantage those with an entrepreneurial

spirit, and to grow the amount of transnational corporations