Immigrant settlement policy in North America: Two challenges in the post‐9/11 era

Abstract

Both Canada and the United States share an interest in seeing that their large numbers of immigrants are successfully settled in their new communities. This essay argues that immigrant settlement policy in both countries faces two important challenges in the post‐9/11 world: (1) ensuring that the racialization of immigrants is avoided (especially in respect to Arabs and Muslims) in a period of preoccupation with security issues, and (2) the need to reorient understanding of immigrant settlement to come to terms with the increasingly transnational orientation of many international migrants. The essay sketches out the nature of these two challenges in both the United States and Canada, and offers some thoughts on what it will take to meet them in each country.