Labour Market Matters - September 2014

A growing body of research suggests that skilled immigrants, particularly those in the “STEM†fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), are not only more innovative than their native-born counterparts but also have the potential to produce positive productivity spillovers for their native-born coworkers. This evidence points clearly to the urgency for national immigration policies that attract skilled migrants. Devising the optimal policy for the acquisition of skilled immigrants is a challenging task. While a point system modelled on the Australian and Canadian systems is held up as a solution to the large unskilled migrant labour flows of the U.S., the Australian and Canadian systems themselves appear to produce starkly different results. A study entitled “Immigrant Skill Selection and Utilization: A Comparative Analysis of Australia, Canada and the United States†(CLSRN Working Paper no. 140) by CLSRN affiliates Andrew Clarke (University of Melbourne) and Mikal Skuterud (University of Waterloo), find that while a points-based system may have the goal of influencing immigration flows at the upper end of the skills distribution – where economic growth potential is highest – in reality, such a system tends to have more influence on immigration flows at the bottom end of the distribution. The Federal Skilled Worker (FSW) program is intended to effectively select immigrants based on their ability to establish themselves economically in Canada. The introduction of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) on June 28, 2002 altered the selection system for skilled workers to respond to changing labour market needs associated with the rise of a more knowledge-based global economy. Beyond amending the selection system used in the FSW program through the IRPA, a number of additional programs have been created or expanded to achieve additional labour market goals, while the FSW program continues to focus on longer-run outcomes through the human capital model of selection. A paper entitled “New Directions in Immigration Policy: Canada’s Evolving Approach to Immigration Selection†(CLSRN Working Paper no. 107) by CLSRN affiliates Ana M. Ferrer (University of Waterloo), Garnett Picot (Queen’s University) and W. Craig Riddell (University of British Columbia) examines the impacts of recent changes to Canadian immigration policy, and analyses the preliminary results achieved by recent immigration strategies.