Immigration Policy And The Search For Skilled Workers

The market for high-skilled workers is becoming increasingly global, as are the markets for knowledge and ideas. While high-skilled immigrants in the United States represent a much smaller proportion of the workforce than they do in countries such as Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, these immigrants have an important role in spurring innovation and economic growth in all countries and filling shortages in the domestic labor supply. This report summarizes the proceedings of a Fall 2014 workshop that focused on how immigration policy can be used to attract and retain foreign talent. Participants compared policies on encouraging migration and retention of skilled workers, attracting qualified foreign students and retaining them post-graduation, and input by states or provinces in immigration policies to add flexibility in countries with regional employment differences, among other topics. They also discussed how immigration policies have changed over time in response to undesired labor market outcomes and whether there was sufficient data to measure those outcomes.

Canada's approach to immigration faces major challenges, and requires reform if Canada is to meet the international competition for skilled immigrants, according to a new policy study. In the Policy Study, the authors assess the strengths and weaknesses of the current point system used to screen new arrivals, identify the policy levers that affect the attributes and success rates of new arrivals, and break new ground by providing a tool to measure those impacts. The past two and a half decades have seen a marked worsening in the adjustment process of new immigrants, as their earnings levels have dropped significantly relative to Canadian-born workers, say the book's authors. The earnings gap between Canadian- and foreign-born workers has widened, and the catch-up interval between the earnings of immigrants and Canadian-born workers has lengthened. These results have come at the cost of fewer human resources and skills available to the Canadian economy, a potential threat to social cohesion, and the likely loss of skilled immigrants who choose to return home or move on to another country.

The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration finds that the long-term impact of immigration on the wages and employment of native-born workers overall is very small, and that any negative impacts are most likely to be found for prior immigrants or native-born high school dropouts. First-generation immigrants are more costly to governments than are the native-born, but the second generation are among the strongest fiscal and economic contributors in the U.S. This report concludes that immigration has an overall positive impact on long-run economic growth in the U.S. More than 40 million people living in the United States were born in other countries, and almost an equal number have at least one foreign-born parent. Together, the first generation (foreign-born) and second generation (children of the foreign-born) comprise almost one in four Americans. It comes as little surprise, then, that many U.S. residents view immigration as a major policy issue facing the nation. Not only does immigration affect the environment in which everyone lives, learns, and works, but it also interacts with nearly every policy area of concern, from jobs and the economy, education, and health care, to federal, state, and local government budgets. The changing patterns of immigration and the evolving consequences for American society, institutions, and the economy continue to fuel public policy debate that plays out at the national, state, and local levels. The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration assesses the impact of dynamic immigration processes on economic and fiscal outcomes for the United States, a major destination of world population movements. This report will be a fundamental resource for policy makers and law makers at the federal, state, and local levels but extends to the general public, nongovernmental organizations, the business community, educational institutions, and the research community.

This volume offers a comparative perspective on the drivers, dynamics and policies of high-skilled migration.

This guide provides information about the new Immigration and Refugee Protection Act as well as comprehensive, step-by-step settlement information that immigrants must know before arriving in Canada. (Legal Reference/Law Profession)

Canada has not only the largest in terms of numbers, but also the most elaborate and longest-standing skilled labour migration system in the OECD. Largely as a result of many decades of managed labour migration, more than one in five people in Canada is foreign-born, one of the highest shares in the OECD. 60% of Canada’s foreign-born population are highly educated, the highest share OECD-wide.