1/3 Canadians want fewer immigrants
Interesting…. so people of the three major immigrant-taking western countries don’t even want to have LEGAL immigrants?
If the majority of immigrants coming to Canada are from Europe instead of Asia, do you think the public opinion towards immigration in general will lean to the opposite? Just like what the poster above indicates in 1907?
Americans and Britons Share Unease Over Immigration, Differ with Canadians
People in Canada generally have a more positive attitude towards immigration than those in the U.S. and the UK.Angus Reid poll – A significant number of people in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom express animosity towards both legal and illegal immigration into their respective countries, a new Angus Reid Strategies poll has found.
The online survey of representative national samples in the three countries shows that 37% of Canadians feel that immigration is generally having a positive impact in the country, while 41% feel the opposite.
In the U.S., the gap between those who feel positively about immigration into their country (18%) and those who say it is having a negative effect (66%) is much more pronounced. So is the case in the UK, where 16% of respondents think well of immigration, but 72% are uneasy about it.
Legal Immigration
A significant proportion of the population in Canada (37%) and the U.S. (41%) want their respective governments to reduce the number of legal immigrants who are allowed to stay in each country.
In the UK, a staggering 63% of respondents would limit legal immigration.
Illegal Immigration
Canada is currently home to between 35,000 and 120,000 illegal immigrants. About two-in-five respondents (43%) say that illegal immigrants take jobs away from Canadians, whereas 40% say that unlicensed workers are employed in jobs that Canadians do not want.
In the U.S., where more than 12 million illegal immigrants reside at this point, 59% of respondents say that undocumented migrants take jobs from American workers, while 32% think they perform the tasks that Americans dislike.
British respondents hold similar views. Over half of people in the UK (57%) say that the 500,000 to 700,000 illegal immigrants currently living in the country take jobs from the hands of British workers, while one third of respondents (33%) say that those jobs are just not wanted by British people.
Future of Illegal Immigrants
About a fifth of Canadians (22%) would allow illegal immigrants to stay in Canada and eventually apply for citizenship. Roughly the same number (21%) says that they should only be allowed to stay in the country as temporary workers without an option of citizenship. Almost half of respondents (46%) believe illegal immigrants should be required to leave their jobs and be deported to their country of origin.
A quarter of respondents in the U.S. (25%) support the idea of offering a citizenship path to undocumented immigrants, while 18% say they should only be eligible for temporary work permits. Most Americans (47%) want all illegal immigrants to be asked to leave the country immediately.
British respondents are the least keen on offering any option of permanent residence to undocumented migrants. Only 11% of people in the UK think they should be granted citizenship, 22% say they could stay as temporary workers only, and three-in-five (59%) believe they should be deported.
why should u be surprised. immigration is a social experiment that has failed . to those who believe this is their country they see immigration at the imposition of people fr different countries and cultures on their lands and their lives. when these imposed peoples do not behave the same way as they do or as they expect them to behave then they will very quickly reach the conclusion that enough is enough. this country is finished…
if immigrants are welcome into this country with open arms then their acceptance will speed up their assimilation process. but most immigrants of color face barriers . they are welcome as consumers and private banking clients the rest is not so welcoming.
it is no doubt that more immigrants can stimulate economy by an increase in domestic consumption, but also can lead to a series of social and political problems such as pollution,an increase in crime and all that by the growth of the population.so it is time to slow the number of immigrants down in order to remain the original attractiveness of Canada….
So 2/3 want or don’t mind immigrants? That’s actually not too bad. That’s higher than the percentage of people who voted in elections!
true! good observation :)
how about a poll on % of canadians who want immigrants’ money??
it depends on the target of a poll.i believe civilians like me at my age don’t care how much money will be brought in by the coming immigrants.we much care about the environment we live in.we are so sorry to see that the growth of population is too bad to creat a safe,clean,peaceful environment and that’s the most important thing to most of canadian residents.
Vancouver has gone to the dogs. Every house that had a big yard or garden has been cut up into four to six residences. No garden or concrete one. Apartment rents are ridiculous. Stop further population influx. Bring back beautiful Vancouver from ten years ago.
I think immigration has played a major role in Canada’s development but most Canadians are not immigrants nor are they the children of immigrants. Immigrants are usually in their 30s or older, they are not stopping the aging of Canadian society, nor are they having more children than the Canadian average. Canada does not need 300,000 immigrants a year. We have the highest immigration rate in the world and there are many other prosperous societies that show massive immigration is simply not needed. It is entirely based on building up support in immigrant communities, who seem very entitled.
The fact is that the modern, democratic western society that is now Canada has been developing for several hundred years and has been organized and largely settled for several generations now. We have a culture and are proud of our culture, largely European in origin. We do not to massively change our demographics and our culture. We should try to keep things as similar as possible. People want to immigrate to what we have now, by bringing everyone in too quickly you might change Canada into something that wont be attractive.
john, thx for your honest comments. that’s the point…. western countries do not want non-european immigrants. period. i hope our politicians can be that frank up front. so asians and muslims could stop their immigration dreams after all. keep the world polarized and everybody’s happy and content (just like it was in china before the europeans forcefully opened it up.) so we asians could stop waning about not being treated fairly in canada/us/uk/australia/nz, and these countries wouldn’t need to “accomodate” them to make their countries “unattractive”. that’s right, if canada didn’t open her arms in the first place, canada would remain a paradise. “no chinese and dogs allowed.”
bibi jones: i’ve been in vancouver for over a quarter of a century now. i can tell you that my best time with vancouver isn’t that of ten years ago, but 20 years ago… when we could walk safely, worry-free in downtown eastside… when we could walk to woodwards from chinatown after our weekly dim sum. tell me what kind of ppl are inhabiting the DTES today.
I was born and raised in Vancouver. As a multi-generational Canadian, I started not feeling ‘at home’ in Vancouver in the late ’80s and realised in the mid-90s that the Canadian government had effectively committed genocide through immigration. I think it’s really sad because I love Canadian culture and think it had(has?) a lot to offer as a perspective, as an experience. What a lot of new immigrants (especially urban Asian immigrants) don’t understand is how much that culture is based on small numbers of people on large landscapes – the ‘frontier mentality’. What I think of as Canadian culture simply can’t exist at high urban densities as found in say, Delhi or Hong Kong. The urban necessities prohibit the way the (pre-Trudeau) Canadian relates to each other and to the land.
i think it all comes down to what “canadian culture” should be defined. do we want to stick with the “frontier” image or move on to become an international player in a forever-more globalized world? what should be our vision for canada? what do we want for our future generations. once you have a vision, you develop a plan to gear towards that direction. if the majority of canadian don’t want more immigration, then don’t. but say it upfront so ppl won’t be attracted to come. for politicians, if you dare to roll out plan to accept fewer asian immigrants, you should clearly indicate that. don’t hypocritically say you brace for multiculturalism on one hand and wiping out asian immigrants on the other.
All polls done have shown Canadians against increased immigration. I suspect that if “new-Canadians” were filtered out of the Angus-Reid poll, the results would be more in keeping with the US and UK results. We’re being done over by our leadership. Our leadership represents business interests over majority interest and the businesses want a continued source of cheap labour to keep their profits up so they continue to promote the pro-immigration perspective…and you’re right – it is unfair to immigrants.
It reminds me a lot of NAFTA. Every time a poll came out, the majority clearly said ‘no’ no matter how it was phrased or what new information came out, but big business wanted it passed so it passed anyway.
Immigrants are great, and important to our identity but there are way too many of them. Instead of a vibrant multicultural Vancouver, we have a big chunk of Chinese people living in an Asian-like landscape in Asian culture. It’s not really Canadian. Simple as that. It’s hard to swallow for socialists, but that’s the reality. YES to immigration, NO to mass immigration, especially mega concentrations of one culture. And definitely NO to the socialist control of our media platforms in Canada.
In true propagandistic form you have effectively LIED about the results of the poll. The poll was not about ‘wanting less or more immigrants’, it was about ‘the impact of immigrants’. Those are very different things. THE CLEAR MAJORITY OF CANADIAN BORN CITIZENS WANT LESS IMMIGRANTS. YES to immigration, NO to mass immigration.
I’m an immigrant and I want less immigration. I moved to Canada so I could live in Canada, yet I’m here and I can’t for the life of me understand what exactly I’m living in. Where is this multiculturalism we like to rave about? Immigration is great if you balance it with integration and smart policies. It isn’t great when you open the floodgates and then let countries be fragmented culturally and linguistically. Now banks have to have translations in foreign languages, libraries have special foreign events…..I drive through my neighborhood and I go through one huge pocket of Chinese homes and signs and people, then I go to the next area and its all South Asian. Ethnic groups stick together, the linguistic barriers only seem to be going higher and higher…what kind of society are we leading ourselves into?
I spent years learning English, Canadian history, etc, because I felt like immigrating was a huge step I should prepare myself for, and yet once I come here it seems like most people barely consider this a requirement at all.
It was nice knowing you, Canada. You had a nice thing going for a while.
Who are the “Canadians” in the poll, and who are the “Immigrants” in the poll? Is this a poll to demonstrate how Anglo-Canadians are racist against Asian-Canadians? Reading the comments, that seems to be the assumption, that the “Canadians” are Anglo, and the “Immigrants” are Asian, which is false.
Non-native people started immigrating to the region of BC in the 1850’s. By the 1870’s, the population in BC would be: 5000 Chinese, 15 000 Anglos and Francos from Eastern Canada and the States. Chinese people have a historical stake in BC.
Also, I look at Vancouver, and rather than seeing “ethnic” enclaves (“ethnic” means asian, right?), I see Anglo enclaves. There definitely are those around.
The perspective on “illegal immigrants” would change a great deal with rebranding as “disenfranchised immigrants.”
Hypocrites!