This one's a strong contender for the Housing Theory of Everything. People weren't mad at immigrants, they were mad at rent costs going haywire and looking for a scapegoat.
Right, increasing foreign student enrollment at questionable schools certainly didn't help. I'll be writing more on that soon, but it's also the case that anti-immigration backlash may have nothing to do with housing in some contexts (like Japan, for example).
The targeting of student visas supports your point even though it might not look it to casual observers. Everyone knew that many of the schools were using student immigration pathways to sell access to Canadian immigration status, thereby serving as an unintentional pathway for low-skilled immigrants. And because they were selling the promise of post graduation work permits and eventual permanent residence rather than education, the degrees from these schools were worth less than toilet paper because everyone knew what the product really was
I was also born in Canada to where my parents immigrated so I know this story well. In 1995 Canada changed the mix of immigrants from primarily family reunification to primarily skilled worker, and slapped a fee on each new immigrant. The popularity of immigration soared.
But there is a dirty little secret behind that, and that is that the Canadian economy does not actually generate that many skilled worker jobs. This is most blatant in fields like medicine, where being a doctor gets you immigration points but a Canadian med school degree is required to actually practise. But almost across the board, immigrants deskill to a greater degree than elsewhere. Their earnings remain lower than locally born Canadians, and usually fails to converge in their entire lives.
The real truth Canada stumbled upon is that, by filtering for post-secondary education, Canada ends up with immigrants who almost never end up on welfare or commit crimes. Not merely less welfare and crime than the locally born; that's not enough to satisfy the public. It has to be zero.
The reason the post-2022 surge in temporary workers and students broke this consensus is that that was a much more average group of people, a few of whom did commit crimes and go on welfare. Hence the unpopularity.
Thanks, I agree with many of these points. In Canada's defense though, they did introduce job offers as a part of the point system which significantly helped the overqualification situation. They can certainly do more on qualification recognition, too.
The issue is that Canada and Australia are not that attractive destination for high volumen skilled migration. Most skilled people stayed in their home country (they make lots of money in home country), or want gigantic pay of USA https://x.com/fullantho/status/1673822160111173632?s=46
As a Canadian, I agree that Canada exemplifies your thesis: they had selective orderly immigration for years and people liked it, and then it got less selective and orderly (e.g. through diploma mills, letting in IRGC operatives allegedly, not paying enough attention to integration, etc.) and people liked it less, and now they're taking small steps to right the ship and opinion is taking small steps in favor again.
Current U.S. policy has taken massive steps, swinging the pendulum well past public opinion in several areas, and my understanding is that the response has been thermostatic here too. Right? You know the data better than I do.
The opinion swung back (including increased dissatisfaction with Trump's approach), but, unlike Canada, the government clearly didn't do anything productive in response. That's arguably even a more important part of the whole thermostatic politics dynamic. Which, of course, all gives an opening to the next administration, but I worry they'll botch it yet again.
The problem isn't mainly housing and size. It is about moving from definitely great migrants to the so-so category. And here comes the credibility loss.
When most "pro skilled migration" avocadoes are in truth semi open borders and definite pro asylum people, the truth leaks. And one of the places it clearly shows is in the murky middle.
Someone who really only want skilled migration will be strict about the criteria, and try to reduce family unification, avoid asylum etc.
Back to Canada.
The original "skilled migration model" was ever popular because it was limited and selective. But it slowly became much less selective and more numerous.
The fact that under Trudeau migration expanded implies that the criteria was relaxed. The logic is inexorable. You move from prime value to the margin, and your claim for "clearly rational and beneficial" gets shaky. If the value is marginal it starts depending on taste. If your skilled migrants adds to the budget $400k/lifetime, it's hard to dislike it. If it's 100k it starts getting dubious. Are the numbers credible? Do I even want migration for near break even value? You move from "obviously good" to "some academic calculations find it good".
An extra example is Singapore, a technocratic and rational government if there ever was one.
Between 2011-2015 they realized that the public doesn't like too much immigration, even tho it is selective and as perfect in details as imaginable. The government changed tack and is currently much less permissive, following the logical imperative.
I've been meaning to write more on that soon. I wonder if anyone ever attempted to quantify the extent of selection in Canada across years (based on the observable characteristics of migrants from particular origin, for example, or what not).
Regarding your main model. I think you assume voters are rational. They are rather irrational and moody. Thus, the optimal policy should be to undershoot via a much stricter selection filter for quality. The balance goes: backlash is more costly long term than preemptive policy. So you don't actually want mood variance. And you want the policy to be explicit and strict against slippery slope towards more open borders.
Also, family reunification are a trade-off Vs more skilled migrants. Accepting the public has a limited appetite in terms of total migration, every family unification= one less skilled migrants coming in. Same for asylum.
Thank you for introducing me to the concept of thermostatic politics. Having a background in macroeconomics, I see an analogy with the concept of output gap. An increasing (decreasing) output gap signals that there is less (more) economic slack in the economy, warranting a less (more) supportive fiscal/monetary stance. The problem however is that the level of the output gap, which tells you whether there is slack (negative) or strain (positive) in the economy depends on where actual output is relative to potential and potential output is unobservable and its estimates are subject to a lot of uncertainty. I guess that potential output corresponds to the deep preferences of the electorate. Typically some of the worst policy mistakes come from failing to detect a significant change in potential output, especially if it occurs in a relative short period of time, eg fall in potential output at the time of the first oil shock.
To capture the high ground on immigration is simply to capture the truth. Where are these truths expressed and crystallized?
1. Not every immigrant is a net positive. There is a continuum -
A) Net positive - takes nothing from the treasury, produces no additional serfdom upon citizens, assimilates and strengthens the “melting pot” without balkanizing society (aka Stanford’s “salad bowl” metaphor), abides laws and decorum
B) mixed outcomes
C) Net negative - increases crime, takes more than they can ever give, increases public debt, increases cost of living via inflationary dynamics and demand curves without accommodative adaptive supply curves, balkanizes communities, violates decorum, displaces citizens while coercing them to pay for it (as in US H1B compulsion to subsidize 7 million wage-suppressive competitors by not forcing corporations who utilize the labor to pay the full cost of the program including second order economic impact).
2. Nations in crisis look for scapegoats. The dirigiste response to economic collapse (2008-2010) was more inflationary spending. Structurally these problems were already stewing without honesty or public awareness. Net-negative immigration pours oil on that fire and yields easy scapegoats in a multifaceted system.
3. A new Amazon consumer might benefit China and Bezos. If they’re paying for the consumption from inflationary dollars or tax subsidized displacements, it does not benefit Main Street. Cui bono? Macroeconomics tends to ignore that nuance.
4. Torment of the innocent cannot be propagandized away for very long. Grotesque violence, vehicular manslaughter, and eradication of innocent lives occurs from predictable and preventable immigration chaos. Europe is swimming in this revelation right now. The US has been for a generation. Appeals to statistical juxtaposition doesn’t sway many people when the grotesque images show the story of entire lives and communities ruined and stolen by violence that could have been prevented with immigration controls and guardrails. “But the average immigrant...” True, but when 20-50% of the lives ruined or eradicated by violent crime in a locality are a result of immigration, the average criminality means very little to those people whose lives were forever tormented by the grotesque and preventable crimes or motor vehicle accidents.
There would be less surprises and wrong predictions in immigration projections if basic analytical parameters were respected and tracked. Your publication seems fixated on perceptions and beliefs rather than the cold hard facts underneath them. Modern immigration is a mixed bag for many reasons that did not apply 100 years ago. It would behoove anyone who seeks novel policy approaches to optimize immigration, to focus on the drivers underneath perception and politics. Those are downstream from the reality.
Immigrants are the easy go-to scapegoats during hard times -- and even not-so-hard times. The current antipathy towards immigrants from some political quarters in Canada is almost entirely the result of provincial and federal government incompetence around post-secondary education and the international student program. Canada needs better immigration policy mechanisms and accountability to ensure we don't fall into that kind of trap again. Not one government official resigned or was sacked because of that disaster. And we need to guard against the easy exploitation of falsehoods around immigration that are now fueling the right in the UK. See Sam Freedman's excellent piece on that issue here: https://samf.substack.com/p/race-to-the-bottom?
A) Cultural concerns about immigration have always been a big deal in Quebec politics, and driver of dissident regionalism (eg Reform Party)
B) (vibes/anecdotal but) the broad concern about Econ effects seems to have made people more comfortable raising/open to considering cultural concerns
C) there isn’t a ton of concern about immigrant crime, except insofar as its downstream of housing, organized crime, and D.
D) we’ve ended up a battleground for a lot of diaspora/homeland disputes (Chinese surveilling citizens; Indian assassins; Khalistan; Persian marches; both sides of IP) that are perplexing, weird to see here, and undermines the idea that we can all get along good
I would be interested in your take on the situation in Australia. It seems a tipping point has been reached. A great background source is the series of podcasts published by Joe Walker. He has a series featuring prominent bureaucrats who administered Australia's program from the early 2000's.
This one's a strong contender for the Housing Theory of Everything. People weren't mad at immigrants, they were mad at rent costs going haywire and looking for a scapegoat.
Right, increasing foreign student enrollment at questionable schools certainly didn't help. I'll be writing more on that soon, but it's also the case that anti-immigration backlash may have nothing to do with housing in some contexts (like Japan, for example).
The targeting of student visas supports your point even though it might not look it to casual observers. Everyone knew that many of the schools were using student immigration pathways to sell access to Canadian immigration status, thereby serving as an unintentional pathway for low-skilled immigrants. And because they were selling the promise of post graduation work permits and eventual permanent residence rather than education, the degrees from these schools were worth less than toilet paper because everyone knew what the product really was
I was also born in Canada to where my parents immigrated so I know this story well. In 1995 Canada changed the mix of immigrants from primarily family reunification to primarily skilled worker, and slapped a fee on each new immigrant. The popularity of immigration soared.
But there is a dirty little secret behind that, and that is that the Canadian economy does not actually generate that many skilled worker jobs. This is most blatant in fields like medicine, where being a doctor gets you immigration points but a Canadian med school degree is required to actually practise. But almost across the board, immigrants deskill to a greater degree than elsewhere. Their earnings remain lower than locally born Canadians, and usually fails to converge in their entire lives.
The real truth Canada stumbled upon is that, by filtering for post-secondary education, Canada ends up with immigrants who almost never end up on welfare or commit crimes. Not merely less welfare and crime than the locally born; that's not enough to satisfy the public. It has to be zero.
The reason the post-2022 surge in temporary workers and students broke this consensus is that that was a much more average group of people, a few of whom did commit crimes and go on welfare. Hence the unpopularity.
Thanks, I agree with many of these points. In Canada's defense though, they did introduce job offers as a part of the point system which significantly helped the overqualification situation. They can certainly do more on qualification recognition, too.
The issue is that Canada and Australia are not that attractive destination for high volumen skilled migration. Most skilled people stayed in their home country (they make lots of money in home country), or want gigantic pay of USA https://x.com/fullantho/status/1673822160111173632?s=46
That's certainly a part of it, though if you look at the best available Gallup data (https://news.gallup.com/poll/708614/desire-migrate-drops-new-low.aspx), Canada and Australia are still on the top and relatively more desirable than most other countries.
Not depended on local policy.
As a Canadian, I agree that Canada exemplifies your thesis: they had selective orderly immigration for years and people liked it, and then it got less selective and orderly (e.g. through diploma mills, letting in IRGC operatives allegedly, not paying enough attention to integration, etc.) and people liked it less, and now they're taking small steps to right the ship and opinion is taking small steps in favor again.
Thanks! Right, but it's crazy how few other governments are actually doing this well or at all: taking small steps to right the ship.
Current U.S. policy has taken massive steps, swinging the pendulum well past public opinion in several areas, and my understanding is that the response has been thermostatic here too. Right? You know the data better than I do.
The opinion swung back (including increased dissatisfaction with Trump's approach), but, unlike Canada, the government clearly didn't do anything productive in response. That's arguably even a more important part of the whole thermostatic politics dynamic. Which, of course, all gives an opening to the next administration, but I worry they'll botch it yet again.
(And I also think there should be some emphasis on the word "small" for Canada's steps.)
Fair :)
The problem isn't mainly housing and size. It is about moving from definitely great migrants to the so-so category. And here comes the credibility loss.
When most "pro skilled migration" avocadoes are in truth semi open borders and definite pro asylum people, the truth leaks. And one of the places it clearly shows is in the murky middle.
Someone who really only want skilled migration will be strict about the criteria, and try to reduce family unification, avoid asylum etc.
Back to Canada.
The original "skilled migration model" was ever popular because it was limited and selective. But it slowly became much less selective and more numerous.
The fact that under Trudeau migration expanded implies that the criteria was relaxed. The logic is inexorable. You move from prime value to the margin, and your claim for "clearly rational and beneficial" gets shaky. If the value is marginal it starts depending on taste. If your skilled migrants adds to the budget $400k/lifetime, it's hard to dislike it. If it's 100k it starts getting dubious. Are the numbers credible? Do I even want migration for near break even value? You move from "obviously good" to "some academic calculations find it good".
An extra example is Singapore, a technocratic and rational government if there ever was one.
Between 2011-2015 they realized that the public doesn't like too much immigration, even tho it is selective and as perfect in details as imaginable. The government changed tack and is currently much less permissive, following the logical imperative.
See opus 4.8 extra summary (seems true).
https://claude.ai/share/3a29509a-a2c3-48d6-abd0-6754a66daf54
I've been meaning to write more on that soon. I wonder if anyone ever attempted to quantify the extent of selection in Canada across years (based on the observable characteristics of migrants from particular origin, for example, or what not).
Claude says it was a big expansion bet. See details
https://claude.ai/share/2092f583-ee29-4106-84e2-6773ec0b9938
Regarding your main model. I think you assume voters are rational. They are rather irrational and moody. Thus, the optimal policy should be to undershoot via a much stricter selection filter for quality. The balance goes: backlash is more costly long term than preemptive policy. So you don't actually want mood variance. And you want the policy to be explicit and strict against slippery slope towards more open borders.
Also, family reunification are a trade-off Vs more skilled migrants. Accepting the public has a limited appetite in terms of total migration, every family unification= one less skilled migrants coming in. Same for asylum.
The well poisoning / backlash tradeoff is huge.
Thank you for introducing me to the concept of thermostatic politics. Having a background in macroeconomics, I see an analogy with the concept of output gap. An increasing (decreasing) output gap signals that there is less (more) economic slack in the economy, warranting a less (more) supportive fiscal/monetary stance. The problem however is that the level of the output gap, which tells you whether there is slack (negative) or strain (positive) in the economy depends on where actual output is relative to potential and potential output is unobservable and its estimates are subject to a lot of uncertainty. I guess that potential output corresponds to the deep preferences of the electorate. Typically some of the worst policy mistakes come from failing to detect a significant change in potential output, especially if it occurs in a relative short period of time, eg fall in potential output at the time of the first oil shock.
To capture the high ground on immigration is simply to capture the truth. Where are these truths expressed and crystallized?
1. Not every immigrant is a net positive. There is a continuum -
A) Net positive - takes nothing from the treasury, produces no additional serfdom upon citizens, assimilates and strengthens the “melting pot” without balkanizing society (aka Stanford’s “salad bowl” metaphor), abides laws and decorum
B) mixed outcomes
C) Net negative - increases crime, takes more than they can ever give, increases public debt, increases cost of living via inflationary dynamics and demand curves without accommodative adaptive supply curves, balkanizes communities, violates decorum, displaces citizens while coercing them to pay for it (as in US H1B compulsion to subsidize 7 million wage-suppressive competitors by not forcing corporations who utilize the labor to pay the full cost of the program including second order economic impact).
2. Nations in crisis look for scapegoats. The dirigiste response to economic collapse (2008-2010) was more inflationary spending. Structurally these problems were already stewing without honesty or public awareness. Net-negative immigration pours oil on that fire and yields easy scapegoats in a multifaceted system.
3. A new Amazon consumer might benefit China and Bezos. If they’re paying for the consumption from inflationary dollars or tax subsidized displacements, it does not benefit Main Street. Cui bono? Macroeconomics tends to ignore that nuance.
4. Torment of the innocent cannot be propagandized away for very long. Grotesque violence, vehicular manslaughter, and eradication of innocent lives occurs from predictable and preventable immigration chaos. Europe is swimming in this revelation right now. The US has been for a generation. Appeals to statistical juxtaposition doesn’t sway many people when the grotesque images show the story of entire lives and communities ruined and stolen by violence that could have been prevented with immigration controls and guardrails. “But the average immigrant...” True, but when 20-50% of the lives ruined or eradicated by violent crime in a locality are a result of immigration, the average criminality means very little to those people whose lives were forever tormented by the grotesque and preventable crimes or motor vehicle accidents.
There would be less surprises and wrong predictions in immigration projections if basic analytical parameters were respected and tracked. Your publication seems fixated on perceptions and beliefs rather than the cold hard facts underneath them. Modern immigration is a mixed bag for many reasons that did not apply 100 years ago. It would behoove anyone who seeks novel policy approaches to optimize immigration, to focus on the drivers underneath perception and politics. Those are downstream from the reality.
Immigrants are the easy go-to scapegoats during hard times -- and even not-so-hard times. The current antipathy towards immigrants from some political quarters in Canada is almost entirely the result of provincial and federal government incompetence around post-secondary education and the international student program. Canada needs better immigration policy mechanisms and accountability to ensure we don't fall into that kind of trap again. Not one government official resigned or was sacked because of that disaster. And we need to guard against the easy exploitation of falsehoods around immigration that are now fueling the right in the UK. See Sam Freedman's excellent piece on that issue here: https://samf.substack.com/p/race-to-the-bottom?
Thoughtful and interesting. We need more stuff like this from academics. I really look forward to seeing where your future research on this goes.
Thank you, Steven!
Alex I’m Canadian and had a few thoughts:
A) Cultural concerns about immigration have always been a big deal in Quebec politics, and driver of dissident regionalism (eg Reform Party)
B) (vibes/anecdotal but) the broad concern about Econ effects seems to have made people more comfortable raising/open to considering cultural concerns
C) there isn’t a ton of concern about immigrant crime, except insofar as its downstream of housing, organized crime, and D.
D) we’ve ended up a battleground for a lot of diaspora/homeland disputes (Chinese surveilling citizens; Indian assassins; Khalistan; Persian marches; both sides of IP) that are perplexing, weird to see here, and undermines the idea that we can all get along good
I would be interested in your take on the situation in Australia. It seems a tipping point has been reached. A great background source is the series of podcasts published by Joe Walker. He has a series featuring prominent bureaucrats who administered Australia's program from the early 2000's.