The Immigration Context

Several emerging trends and policy changes have occurred in the past year, impacting not only our organization, but everyone we support and all the communities in which we operate.

Much of this has been driven by the intensifying public debate about Canada’s immigration levels, with growing concerns about our ‘absorption capacity’ due to housing affordability and pressure on the tightening labour market, education, healthcare, and other social infrastructure systems.

In one response, the federal government announced a limit on international students in January 2024, followed by an overall cap on all temporary resident categories for the next two years. These limits highlighted the ongoing tension between permanent resident (PR) targets and the absence of caps on temporary residents (TRs). Over one million TRs were processed for Canada in 2023, prompting concerns about the balance between PR and TR numbers.

The government will combine PR and TR figures in the updated three-year immigration levels plan presented to Parliament for the first time this fall. While including TRs in the plan is crucial for long-term planning, we anticipate that the national debate on immigration numbers, types, and impacts will continue, as will the uncertainty and instability that this leads to for organizations like ours.

Provincially, the BC government passed fair credential recognition legislation in November 2023 to ease barriers for internationally trained professionals seeking employment in BC. Its full effect is anticipated in summer 2024. We provided input and advice to this process and supported the steps in the new framework.

A small yet significant portion of newcomer arrivals to BC are refugees and displaced individuals, making up 10-12 per cent of our annual PR targets. Last year marked the conclusion of the Afghan Special Initiative and the Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel (CUAET) visa holder program, both of which ISSofBC played a leading role in operationalizing.

These programs were major national initiatives that settlement agencies and many other community and business groups across the country supported. They highlight the best Canadian humanitarian capacity and commitment in an increasingly unstable global political environment. The last immigration levels plan – released in November 2023 – saw a decrease in government-assisted refugee (GAR) targets moving forward and a slight rise in privately sponsored refugees. We will closely monitor the next update to these levels this coming November.

At ISSofBC, we also continued to support refugee claimants arriving at our borders, serving over 4,000 unique clients last year. The BC government has responded to this trend by investing heavily in these arrivals. Creating a sustainable infrastructure to support this group is critical to helping some of the most vulnerable newcomers to BC and maintaining public confidence in the broader immigration system.

Lastly, we are carefully monitoring efforts to address the regularization of status for undocumented migrant workers. This group of newcomers contributes significantly to the economy without many of the legal protections that regularization would afford.

As we navigate this evolving immigration landscape, we prepare for the broad spectrum of attitudes to immigration as elections approach in BC, Canada, and the US.

While we acknowledge the imperfect nature of the complex web of systems, policies, and targets, we also need to ensure immigrants and immigration are not inappropriately held responsible for the more significant social challenges all levels of government struggle to resolve. We must all — government, the business community, and civil society — demonstrate the economic and social benefits of immigration. When newcomers thrive, so does our country.