Intentionality, instruments, and investment must be present if
integration is to succeed.
In the successful integration of immigrants, there are three necessary
conditions: intentionality, instruments, and investment.
Intentionality
Every country has a choice about how it views immigration; it can view it as
a liability or as an asset. If immigration is viewed as a liability, tight
rules will be established to limit its impact, which will be presumed to be
more bad than good. Such rules will limit immigrants to working in certain
sectors or types of jobs and to living in certain places, restrict the amount
of time they spend in the country, and even tie them to a single employer or
organization. Thus we see temporary foreign worker programs that presume we can
have only certain immigrants for defined periods of time before we send them
home. A temporary foreign worker program tells immigrants that their labour
will be exploited, but that they are not wanted as citizens of the country.
Despite the fact that such programs don’t work, they seem increasingly popular,
and in Canada the federal government has implemented a temporary foreign worker
program in recent years, against all advice to the contrary.
If, on the other hand, a country sees immigration as an asset, it will do
what it can to maximize the value of that asset. It will design a selection
system that complements the labour market, filling jobs for today’s economy
and, more importantly, creating human capital for the emerging economy of
tomorrow. It will permit immigrants to enter the fields of work in which they
have training and experience, rather than requiring that they qualify under the
strictures of domestic certification and credentials; the proper test should be
of competence rather than credentials. It will help immigrants settle in
neighbourhoods with good housing and transit service and access to good schools
and community amenities. It will encourage participation in the life of the
community, including in the political processes, whether by joining the board
of a local library or community centre or by running for election to a city,
state, or national legislature. The country that is successful in integration
will not leave everything to chance, but will intentionally facilitate the key
elements of successful settlement and integration: finding immigrants the right
job, for which they have training and experience; settling smoothly into good
neighbourhoods; and participating in the regular life of the community, not in
an immigrant ghetto but in a neighbourhood typical of that city or town.
So the question of intentionality is: will we give them shackles, or will we
give them wings? We can choose how we treat immigrants.
Instruments
Good intentions often founder on a failure to put them into operation.
Successful public policy often depends on designing the right instruments or
tools, which can be difficult. A good instrument takes into account the broad
context in which the policy operates, and also the various interests in play.
It can be impossible to satisfy every interest, and a gridlock ensues that can
only be resolved by good design or leadership. The design of effective
instruments is critical.
In Canada, we are developing a set of local immigrant employment councils,
modelled on the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council, or TRIEC. These councils have two
main programs: a mentoring partnership that pairs an immigrant with a
Canadian in the same line of work, so the Canadian can both coach the immigrant
on job searching and job culture, and introduce the immigrant to his or her own
network of contacts, which are so crucial in finding a job; and a training program for
employers to help them develop human resource management skills for hiring
immigrants effectively. These instruments work because they ultimately serve
the interests of all the parties.
We have developed instruments for increasing the diversity of people in
governance roles, both in formally elected office and on the governing bodies
of agencies, boards, and commissions.DiverseCity onBoard
is a program that maintains a roster of diverse candidates who we have
qualified by interest, experience, and capability. Through a matching process,
we can help organizations find the right candidate for their board. And we have
developed School4Civics, which trains people who want to run for
office or run an election campaign. In the last municipal elections in the
Toronto region, 12 School4Civics graduates ran for office and dozens more volunteered
on campaigns.
Another Toronto-based program works with foreign-born authors to help them
develop their craft and find a market in Canada. Diaspora
Dialogues is in its seventh year and has a roster of established Canadian
authors to mentor immigrant authors. The purpose is two-fold: to help immigrant
authors establish themselves in Toronto, and to reflect to Canadian readers the
diverse face of Canada, a diversity of culture and point of view.
Enabling immigrants to settle in neighbourhoods is made easier by creating
access to mortgages, for which most immigrants don’t qualify because they lack
a domestic credit history. One of Canada’s most successful companies, Home Trust, offers
mortgages to home buyers who don’t qualify for traditional mortgages because
they have insufficient other assets to meet the coverage required by lenders.
Home Trust makes sure the value of the home exceeds the value of the mortgage
by doing a careful assessment of the property. The mortgage business has proven
to be a profitable enterprise when conducted with proper discipline, and
immigrants create a whole new market. A government – municipal or state – could
work with such careful lenders to provide a set of mortgage products that would
enable immigrants to purchase homes.
In Chicago, the Chicago Federal Reserve has created financial instruments
to help conservative Muslims with home ownership and small business investment
while still observing sharia law restrictions on borrowing money. The reserve
has identified three types of Islamic loans, each existing somewhere between
rental and ownership. The first option is essentially a staged transfer of
ownership, the second a lease-purchase, and the third a more classical shared
equity loan of the type common for affordable housing in the U.K. Without such
instruments, Muslims who want to buy a home have to save hundreds of thousands
of dollars to purchase it outright, get loans from family and friends, or put
aside their religious beliefs and take out a conventional mortgage.
Investment
Without investment, good intentions and well designed instruments won’t
work. Whether a government or society is willing to put money on the line is a
critical test of whether they want immigration to work.
It is not a question only of money but often of a more precious kind of
capital: political capital. In most countries there are those in the political
spectrum only too willing to demonize “the other,” to raise fears of the threat
of people from different countries, cultures, and religions. Such fear can
create a powerful political tide, sweeping up all before it. In Toronto, we saw
it in the recent election of a mayor who spoke against immigration. And
Canada’s federal government has proven xenophobic when incidents like the recent
arrival of a boatload of economic migrants from Asia occur.
There are not enough leaders prepared to make the case for immigration and
to infuse their country with intentionality and instruments backed by the
needed investment. Most of us know the arguments for immigration: economic
prosperity, cultural diversity, new ideas and perspectives, and fresh energy.
We also know the importance of getting integration right, of making it happen
in a short time-frame and with as little human cost as possible. There is no
sense in making it hard, because it becomes hard for everyone.
And we know that immigration is an investment that will pay a big return,
sometimes in the first generation through the quick uptake of skilled
immigrants, and certainly in the longer term as ensuing generations become
educated and engaged citizens.
But we need our leaders to articulate that message, and beyond that to
create and support instruments of inclusion. One that we have been trying to
get our leaders in Canada to embrace is the idea of allowing non-citizens to
vote in municipal elections. The argument for this is that it is a useful
instrument of inclusion, of engaging immigrants in the life of the community
quickly, particularly at the level of government closest to the people through
the provision of everyday services. We call the campaign I Vote Toronto, and we
are gradually building support for it, but we still need some key leaders to
come on board. We need them to invest some political capital.
As we look around the world, we can identify countries that engage fully
with the three I’s of immigrant integration, and countries that engage with
fewer than three. But all three – intentionality, instruments, and investment –
must be present if integration is to succeed.
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Venkat Raju T
Freelancing
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