Yes, Canada's bet on skilled immigration is really smart of them, and it's a neat way of side-stepping the usual social tensions that we hear about wrt. "anti-immigrant" sentiment from socially marginalized or low-income natives.
So while there certainly is a skilled worker immigration path, if you are accepted by the board as a refugee, you will be met with help and kindness. And even while waiting, we do not separate kids from you and put them in cages. And we accept the most refugees in the world: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-48696974
How is that different than the U.S.? Are refugees not met with help and kindness in America?
> And even while waiting, we do not separate kids from you and put them in cages
While I do not agree with this tactic, I also think that this paints an unfair picture, since Canada has never experienced immigration issues to the degree that the U.S. has. Maybe the U.S. should do what Mexico did and let caravans of migrants show up at the border in Vancouver?
"According to the US-based Pew Research Center, which looked the the UNHCR data, 2018 was the first time the US did not lead the world in refugee resettlement since 1980."
I guess congratulations? I don't necessarily view "accepting the most refugees" as a moral calculation, nor something that should be a competition. But if you want to keep score I guess the U.S. is now 28-1 since 1980. Go America!
"The US is the world's major recipient of new asylum applications, registering 254,300 applications in 2018.
Canada was ninth on the list of new asylum claims with 55,400 registered in 2018, behind the US, Peru, Germany, France, Turkey, Brazil, Greece and Spain."
Jeez only 9th? Worse than Peru?
"An influx of asylum seekers crossing at the US-Canada border has become a political issue after approximately 40,000 people "irregularly" crossed into Canada between 2017 and 2018."
Why is this an issue for Canadians?
"
Canada currently is struggling with a backlog of almost 74,000 asylum claims with applicants waiting almost two years for a hearing."
Other relevant facts from your article.
But hey, the U.S. is bad because that's what the news says.
America historically greeted refugees with kindness. This changed significantly with the new administration in 2017.
The US Asylum backlog jumped to 340,000 - up 10x since 2014. Certainly some of that is due to heightened applications, but a lot is due to antiquated systems in USCIS and political changes.
I’d also note in the Syrian refugee crisis, that Canada punched high above its weight in resettlement, far beyond the numbers the USA accepted, for a country 10x smaller.
With global warming and conflict on the rise, we are about to see over a billion people displaced over the next 50 years. In prior eras, the US would have led global efforts to manage this in a structured, humane way. But lately the US has preferred dismantling the global order and institutions it created after WW2.
> we are about to see over a billion people displaced over the next 50 years
Yes. And this is worrisome because stable countries won't be able to "let them all in" (sorry not sure the best way to put that). Long-term it's going to be more sensible to stabilize unstable countries.
Canada also runs separate refugee immigration program. Also: the advantage of not having too many illegal immigrants coming through the border and having to make decisions when they and their children put roots in the country.
The US has so much land and so much economic capacity to add people (most of those people are already in the economic system so the US will have more trouble removing them than legalizing them) that the current illegal immigrants are not an issue at all. The US obviously needs to get better control of the borders (which it has for the past decade) but the only sensible, economically effective and not to mention humane way to deal with people already here is to provide them with legal status so they don’t remain an unprotected and therefore cheaper competitor for jobs.
