Editor’s Letter (January 2012): how immigration and repatriation are making Toronto a more interesting city
Cities are often affected by political events outside their borders. In the mid-20th century, North American cities profited enormously from the arrival of well-educated immigrants fleeing the Nazis. The brilliant philosopher Hannah Arendt famously landed in Manhattan after escaping France in 1941. The pioneering modernist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe moved to Chicago in 1937 after the Nazis deemed his work not German enough. Later, in 1956, when Soviet troops occupied Hungary, Canada admitted close to 40,000 Hungarian refugees, nearly doubling the Hungarian-Canadian population. Many intellectuals, writers and artists settled in Toronto, and the city’s café culture was born.
A decade or so later, Canada absorbed a tidal wave of draft dodgers—tens of thousands of young Americans, many of them well-educated, who came here to avoid fighting in Vietnam. For Toronto, it was a windfall. Dodgers proved to have a profound impact on the social makeup of the city, assuming leadership roles in our universities and cultural institutions as well as the corporate world. Andy Barrie, the former host of Metro Morning on CBC, exemplified the phenomenon: for 15 years on the show, he was a fierce Toronto patriot, more enthusiastic about his adopted city than many of us who were born here.
Today, world events are again conspiring to make Toronto a more interesting city. As the American economy fails to recover, a growing group of professionals are looking north for a better life. The Canadian Department of Citizenship and Immigration reports that the number of Americans applying for Canadian work visas has increased steadily over the past few years (reaching nearly 35,000 in 2010). Immigration officials, not surprisingly, are also noting a surge of applications from European countries such as Ireland and Greece. And according to Toronto Homecoming, an organization that connects expat Toronto professionals with job opportunities in the city, a growing number of Canadians who have spent much of their lives abroad are returning home.
Talent is flocking here. An acquaintance of mine who works at the University of Toronto says that when a job opening is posted there now, it attracts hundreds of top-rate candidates from beyond our borders—and the quality of applicants improves every year. I know a Canadian couple, both graduating soon from Harvard with PhDs, who are eager to return to Toronto, if they are lucky enough to secure jobs here. It’s the only major city where they can imagine earning enough money to own property and at the same time find public schools good enough for their baby daughter. Where else in the Western world might they go? They fear America is falling apart, Europe is about to endure mass hardship, and Australia is, well, just too far away. They want to be in a city that is growing and prosperous, and their options are limited.
All of this immigration and repatriation is great news for Toronto. The price of an average two-storey house is up 7.6 per cent this year—a sign of our prosperity and desirability—at a time when property values in most other parts of the West are falling. As we have learned from other influxes of brainy, ambitious immigrants, the city can benefit from their presence in unexpected ways. Even now, when Toronto has a mayor whose international claim to fame is being named “the worst person in the world” by Keith Olbermann, the city might be on the brink of an interesting new era.
(Image: Nigel Dickson)
: how immigration and repatriation are making Toronto a more interesting city&picture=https://torontolife.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/sarah-fulford-e1486489591140.jpg&description=Cities are often affected by political events outside their borders. In the mid-20th century, North American cities profited enormously from the arrival of well-educated immigrants fleeing the Nazis. The brilliant philosopher Hannah Arendt famously landed in Manhattan after escaping France in 1941. The pioneering modernist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe moved to Chicago in 1937 after the Nazis deemed his work not German enough. Later, in 1956, when Soviet troops occupied Hungary, Canada admitted close to 40,000 Hungarian refugees, nearly doubling the Hungarian-Canadian population. Many intellectuals, writers and artists settled in Toronto, and the city’s café culture was born.
A decade or so later, Canada absorbed a tidal wave of draft dodgers—tens of thousands of young Americans, many of them well-educated, who came here to avoid fighting in Vietnam. For Toronto, it was a windfall. Dodgers proved to have a profound impact on the social makeup of the city, assuming leadership roles in our universities and cultural institutions as well as the corporate world. Andy Barrie, the former host of Metro Morning on CBC, exemplified the phenomenon: for 15 years on the show, he was a fierce Toronto patriot, more enthusiastic about his adopted city than many of us who were born here.
Today, world events are again conspiring to make Toronto a more interesting city. As the American economy fails to recover, a growing group of professionals are looking north for a better life. The Canadian Department of Citizenship and Immigration reports that the number of Americans applying for Canadian work visas has increased steadily over the past few years (reaching nearly 35,000 in 2010). Immigration officials, not surprisingly, are also noting a surge of applications from European countries such as Ireland and Greece. And according to Toronto Homecoming, an organization that connects expat Toronto professionals with job opportunities in the city, a growing number of Canadians who have spent much of their lives abroad are returning home.
Talent is flocking here. An acquaintance of mine who works at the University of Toronto says that when a job opening is posted there now, it attracts hundreds of top-rate candidates from beyond our borders—and the quality of applicants improves every year. I know a Canadian couple, both graduating soon from Harvard with PhDs, who are eager to return to Toronto, if they are lucky enough to secure jobs here. It’s the only major city where they can imagine earning enough money to own property and at the same time find public schools good enough for their baby daughter. Where else in the Western world might they go? They fear America is falling apart, Europe is about to endure mass hardship, and Australia is, well, just too far away. They want to be in a city that is growing and prosperous, and their options are limited.
All of this immigration and repatriation is great news for Toronto. The price of an average two-storey house is up 7.6 per cent this year—a sign of our prosperity and desirability—at a time when property values in most other parts of the West are falling. As we have learned from other influxes of brainy, ambitious immigrants, the city can benefit from their presence in unexpected ways. Even now, when Toronto has a mayor whose international claim to fame is being named “the worst person in the world” by Keith Olbermann, the city might be on the brink of an interesting new era.
(Image: Nigel Dickson)){kind=link}
All of your “immigrant” examples are from Western, Colonial, and European states. Despite all of the “world events conspiring to make Toronto a more interesting city,” you reference Europeans fleeing the Nazis, Hungarian refugees, American dodgers and Harvard graduates. Your example of “great news for Toronto” is prosperity in real estate, not contribution to a diversity of cultural or a shift in global perspective.
What about the influx of people from Hong Kong after the handover, or the large East Indian, Iranian, Tamil, Chinese, Korean, Japanese populations… I could go on, but why bother when you mentioned Ireland (!!!) and Greece (!!!). The irony is all of the Americans dodging the war in Vietnam, but nary a mention of the actual Vietnamese population that has contributed to this new “interesting” make up of Toronto. Why bother mentioning all those other countries WAY ACROSS the other side of the world. Besides, what have those countries contributed to Toronto… err… “Toronto Life’s” culture.
But Sarah, I apologize for these harsh criticisms. Maybe these immigrants haven’t moved into your Forest Hill enclaves yet. Keep up the good (white) work and give me a ring when we finally make it onto your cultural map.
Steve, I have to say that your comments are off base… how about you relax a little, She pointed out significant shifts in WHERE these people were coming from or as the title suggests came BACK from (Repatriation – the process of returning a person back to one’s place of origin or citizenship) … for her to point out that there have been an influx of people coming from Asia (as you pointed out) isn’t noteworthy because this has been happening for 2 decades… where as the number of people immigrating from the US or Europe over the past 20 years historically hasn’t been high … There is an article on the main page this morning profiling significant Chinese-Canadian writers, should others be mad that this article didn’t mention other European-Canadian authors ? well no, because that isn’t the point of the article … you need to relax, you seem to think you were omitted from the article on purpose, you weren’t slighted, you just missed the point of the letter itself, also, there is no need to put immigrant in quotations as you did at the beginning… no matter the country they came from, they in fact immigrated. Merry Christmas.
Immigration can be a good thing. But permanently high immigration when there is little job growth is not good. It increases overall GDP BUT it leads it distributes those gains to those at the top. Why? Because high immigration with little/no job growth creates a glut of labor (higher unemployment) which serves to drive down wages/working conditions…thereby leading to GREATER INCOME INEQUALITY. And this is EXACTLY what has happened since Mulroney (YES MULRONEY not Trudeau) increased this country’s immigration rate to the highest per capita in the world (250K plus a year) and made it permanent, irregardless of whether there was enough jobs to sustain them. (Trudeau’s policy change was to change the rules so that people from more areas of the world could emigrate here…a good thing.) Prior to Mulroney’s changes, the number of immigrants coming in went up and down in response to the state of the economy. (It is also important to keep in mind that Mulroney brought in these changes in response to lobbying by the real estate, development and banking sectors.) Countless studies show that recent immigrants are taking longer to gain income stability. Many people seem to think it’s because we are more racist. OR that today’s immigrants are lazier, less able to speak English/French. The real reason is that today’s immigrants are being brought into an already unstable job market. Progressive economists (like Paul Krugman) are beginning to understand how high immigration is being used to erode wages/working conditions. But for whatever reason, many journalists who consider themselves progressive have still not seen these linkages even though the facts are right under their noses.
Oh okay nevermind then! Read it wrong!
Steve I think you read it right the first time… but still you made a decision and felt the need to make those negative (and racist) comments which, weren’t warranted at all, with:
“Keep up the good (white) work and give me a ring when we finally make it onto your cultural map.”
Perhaps try to be a positive influence on Toronto’s culture rather than creating a wedge issue that was never there. That is how we’ll make Toronto (and Canada) better for you and your children.
Correction:
Andy Barry was not a draft dodger he was a disserter. Going AWOL after being trained as a medic in Texas and getting his orders to go to Viet Nam.
Hes still a “good Guy” just wante to set the record.
The US economy actually IS recovering: First part of bad reporting. Second part is that we have these things called Jet Airplanes, that kinda fly in the sky at fast speeds that make travel to even the ends of the earth (Australia – or Canada if you live in Oz) really, really not that bad – try it some day. So the essence is basically marketing and truth in advertising. I’d suggest with a bit of research, were I a USAIAN I’d prolly prefer a place with more sun n surf than a land of snow and ice with occasional glimmers of sun. As for the prospects of a better life, the Australian economy may soon surpass that of Canada – even though it is so far away. Some silly people who obviously haven’t left their own home sometimes say there is more consumer selection in USA & Can than Oz – another myth that should any of you people choose to come in from the cold and actually TRAVEL to Australia you will find is just utter dumb comment. Hey do some research – it’s all there!
Canada’s immigration policy is sheer madness. The 250,000 immigrants allowed to move here annually does not include foreign workers, elderly parents of immigrants (family repatriation program) and refugees. This absurdity has been clear in the last recession. Close to 500,000 Canadians lost good-paying jobs, yet Canada continued to bring in 250,000 immigrants per year. Virtually no Canadian politician demanded publicly that Canada’s immigration intake be decreased to protect the country’s jobless.
Further, the nonsense that we need “skilled migrants” can be readily observed when Pakistani cab drivers possess Ph.D.’s in engineering, fast food managers are trained physicians, and the gas station clerk is an IT specialist. Their degrees are worthless here, and taking the time and trouble to study for five more years with the high costs associated just to re-qualify in Canada is simply not worth their time or effort.
When I emigrated here from Scotland in 1994, getting a decent job was next to impossible. My degree in criminology from Canterbury was not recognised here, and my wife (an RN), had to retrain. And we are from the UK, not Burkina Faso or Waziristan. I couldn’t join the police because I was white and heterosexual, but neither could hundreds of other young white Canadian males, because the police were ordered by their political taskmasters to “diversify.” It didn’t work. Immigrants in Canada come from countries where the police are feared and corrupt. By 2002, so many Canadian police officers were retiring, many local police services could not make up the numbers. So what did they do? They went to the UK and recruited several hundred police officers to move to Canada and continue their policing careers. And almost all of them were – wait for it – white heterosexual males! There’s a lesson in there somewhere.
Immigration has had more of a negative impact on Canada than anythiog else. In Toronto, there is a public school that allows Muslim prayers and readings from the Koran in the cafeteria every Friday. Boys sit at the fronty, girls at the back, and menstruating girls right at the back. Where is a rabid feminist when you want one? Sikh children can carry the kirpan (dagger) to school with them, and one public school in Alberta has banned pork products for fear of “offending” the Muslim students there.
In February 2011, a dozen Muslim families who had recently arrived in Canada told Winnipeg’s Louis Riel School Division that they want their children excused from compulsory elementary school music and co-ed physical education programs for religious and cultural reasons.
Music and phys-ed are compulsory in the province’s elementary schools. The families accept physical education, as long as the boys and girls have separate classes, but do not want their children exposed to singing or the playing musical instruments. The school division suggested they could instead do a writing project to satisfy the music requirements of the arts curriculum.
Now, maybe I’m wrong, but shouldn’t the immigrants be the ones making the effort to accommodate Canada, and not the other way around? It’s all very well to talk about “diversity” but where is the “diversity,” but too many immigrants coming here just want it all their own way? Not all immigrants are like this of course, but too many ARE. Oddly enough, I have found their biggest critics to be other immigrants who dp make the effort to fit in and are proud to call themselves Canadians.
Although Canada is a vast an beautiful country, our cities cannot continue to expand at their current rate. Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver will have minority white populations in 20 years from now, along with the rapid ghettoization of neighbourhoods where a white person is probably a lost tourist or the last diehard neighbour whose family has lived there since 1812. Immigration also costs us around $23 billion a year in various government services, including financial support. The recipiants pay less than one third of this cost back in taxes. Think about that. That is more than we spend on national defence!
A few things need to happen. First off, we need to cut immigration numbers drastically. Secondly, we need to scrap official multiculturalism, right along with the Multicultural Act, brought in under Brian “On The Take” Mulroney. Thirdly, we need to stop telling immigrants to hold on to their language, culture, religion and dress code and BECOME CANADIANS. What’s the point in taking your diriving exam in nine languages, when the road signs are written in English & French?
The danger here is, why we are all pretending to be “tolerant” and celebrating other cultures, our own culture (inherited from the UK and Europe) is rapidly going down the wazzo. Christmas plays are banned, and saying “Merry Christmas” is taboo lest it “offend” someone newly arrived from the Pushkan Mountains or a politically correct NDP city councillor. Worst of all, an honest and open discussion on immigration is taboo because, well it only shows what an intolerant bigot you really are.
Canada cannot continue to be the welfare state to the Third World. We can’t afford it for one thing, and the current immigration levels MUST be drastically reduced in order to allow the country to absorb the four million people who have arrived here in the past 15 years. The only alternative is, that the Canada we know and love will vanish in 30 years from now, reducing this great country to a 4,000 mile-long land mass made up of different languages, ethnic groups and religions, but with no cohesive national identity.
What kind of Canada do YOU want?
@Bill – as a young Canadian (young 20s), I can say that we do have a “national identity”, if that’s what you want to call it… I’m not sure how it makes me a better person or the country better as a whole that there is some set-in-stone identity that we must be.
While I do believe that people who come to Canada should learn the way we live and learn our language (english or french), they shouldn’t drop it for the sake of dropping it (my immigrant grandparents feel the same way too). Worrying about incredibly silly things like the “dress code” that we apparently have and forcing them to switch religions is incredibly crazy. Since the English won against the French and took over New France, there has always been tolerance for different languages and religions, although the rich Protestants from the States who moved upwards are the reason for the public-Catholic school boards (or Protestant-Catholic at the time), that’s incredibly tolerant compared with what they had done with the Acadians before.
Although I could further pick apart your comments for being both silly and intolerant, I will end off with the fact that you are forcing some sort of Canadian (European) way of life onto newcomers, yet you don’t complain about the Europeans, and now, Canadians, not adopting Aboriginal languages and ways of life, especially considering they were never conquered and have a direct relationship with the Crown, unlike other Canadians who have MPs.
To stopitman:I would like you to read this quote from a Canadian house wife who wrote this to the editor of her paper ” Only five defining forces have ever offered to die for you: 1. Jesus Christ 2. The British Soldier 3. The Canadian Soldier 4. The US Soldier and 5. The Australian Soldier. One died for your soul, the other 4 for your freedom”. So please don’t pick apart what Bill Gibbons has to say for he is right. Rules were set when the Europeans emmigrated to Canada over 100 years ago and guess what they abided by them. These people came here and took nothing from the country and did nothing but hard physical and manual labour to support their families. Now I have nothing against immigration but what I am against is the billions of dollars of tax payers money that is used to support immigration. When the unemployment is over a million and a half and over 2 million on social assistance there is a problem of bringing in more people. The immigrants of today take advantage of our system and want every thing changed to suit them. So sure come to this country but with your own money and take nothing from Canada. These people come here with their cultures and backwards way of life and expects Canadians to except that. Well please take a look at Brampton and see what has happened to that beautiful town over the last 20 years. There are very few english speaking people left and it is very very dirty. The same can be said for Toronto, BC and so on and before you reply with I don’t know what I’m talking about I used to go to Toronto back in the late 60’s all the time and it was beautiful and safe not now. So people feel free to emmigrate to Canada but please try to abide by the rules that were set by people that DIED for this country!