Immigration Policies and Integration Models in Canada: Conflicting Approaches and Converging Trends

Abstract

This chapter deals with Canada’s immigration policies and integration models, with a particular focus on the divide between the predominantly French-language province of Quebec and the mainly English-speaking rest of the country. After portraying the origins and evolution of the immigration legal framework in Canada, particularly in the light of nation-building and the path that led from a highly restrictive admission policy to an extremely open one through the adoption of the “points system”, the chapter describes the tension between the two competing models, multiculturalism and interculturalism, that coexist in the Canadian context and that reflect two narratives and two practical approaches to the integration of newcomers. These differences stem from Quebec’s unique status within the national context and, in particular, from an agreement signed between that province and the federal government that recognized its “distinct identity” and gave Quebec full authority to select its “economic” immigrants. The final section dwells on some of the recent and current changes in immigration policy that seem to signal, in both English Canada and Quebec, a major shift in their view of diversity, as new criteria applied to the selection of immigrants appear to heed to economic pragmatism and might entail a more restrictive conception of what a “desirable immigrant” is.