How Canada’s liberal immigration policy works—and why it could be a success here too
Canada has achieved something no other western nation can claim—it has built a liberal immigration system that takes a humanitarian attitude towards asylum seekers, while also bringing in hundreds of thousands of economic migrants through a well-planned, orderly process that—crucially—has broad public support. “We have, by and large, a public consensus for immigration,” Senator Ratna Omidvar, an independent politician who has played a prominent role in the evolution of Canada’s immigration policy, told me. “It is impossible for any political party to be anti-immigrant. We argue about who should get in—should they have education, how many refugees—but we won’t argue about whether we should have immigrants.”
The British debate, meanwhile, has been reduced to a conversation about prevention—essentially, how can we stop so many people coming? Since the referendum, liberals have been trapped in a cul-de-sac, endlessly debating the rights and wrongs of freedom of movement, but seemingly unable to have a conversation about how to build a sensible system that fits the country’s needs. If Britain leaves the European Union as expected, we will—as the slogan on the bus proclaimed—“take back control.” But what then? Once the UK has full control of its own borders, what sort of immigration policy should it have?