Juno News - Canada's immigration system is BROKEN

00:00:00.000 Canada once had the strongest and most secure immigration system in the world. We had our pick 0.65

00:00:06.040 of the best and the hardest working immigrants, and illegal immigration was mostly unheard of.

00:00:11.580 But everything fell apart after Justin Trudeau was elected in 2015. And now by 2023, we saw the

00:00:18.060 largest number of illegal immigrants entering our country in the history of Canada. We're going to 1.00

00:00:23.640 break down the numbers. We're going to break down the reasons behind this huge surge in immigration

00:00:27.640 on today's show. I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

00:00:43.520 Hi, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning into the podcast. Today, we're going to return to

00:00:47.460 one of my favorite topics, one of the topics that I've written extensively about in the early part

00:00:51.660 of my career. I was a beat writer on immigration. I wrote countless stories in the Toronto Sun when

00:00:57.040 I used to write over there. And I've written two books on the topic, Losing True North, and then a

00:01:01.560 follow-up, No Border. I've written a lot about immigration, and I'm going to revisit a lot of

00:01:06.020 the work today. Now, before we get into it, don't forget to like this video. If you're new around

00:01:09.800 here, please subscribe to the True North channel. Leave us a five-star review if you enjoy the content.

00:01:14.200 Please head on over to our website, tnc.news, to sign up for our newsletter so you never miss an

00:01:18.880 episode. Now, when most people think about immigration, when most people talk about our immigration

00:01:24.380 system, the number that we hear, the number that we're told, is that Canada welcomes roughly half

00:01:29.000 a million people per year into our country. Now, most people, according to the polls, they believe

00:01:34.220 that that number is too high. Somewhere between half a million and somewhere between half and

00:01:39.180 three-quarters, sorry, of all Canadians tell pollsters that they believe that half a million

00:01:43.720 number is too high and they would like it to be lower. But let me tell you, that half a million

00:01:48.680 number that's often quoted, that's thrown around, it is wildly misleading. Canada welcomes

00:01:53.960 500,000 newcomers each year into one of our immigration streams, permanent residencies,

00:01:59.800 which is the equivalent of a US green card, people who are on track to get their citizenship

00:02:05.420 in Canada. Those are not people who have been living in Canada for a while, who have finally

00:02:09.180 obtained permanent residency. These are people who are entering Canada for the first time.

00:02:13.140 So for the numbers I'm talking about, 2023 was the first year that they came to Canada,

00:02:17.640 and the visa that they were given is a permanent residency. So that's the half a million number

00:02:22.160 that we often hear thrown around. But it's not accurate. It's not a full picture of the

00:02:26.720 immigration system and the people that are entering our country. So on top of that half 0.99

00:02:30.660 a million, Canada also admits approximately 660,000 people as temporary foreign workers.

00:02:37.380 That's 2023 numbers again. And in 2023, the government put a cap of 900,000 international students.

00:02:44.500 So 600,000 temporary foreign workers, 900,000 international students. And then in 2023, Canada

00:02:52.060 saw an absolute explosion of illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants coming into Canada, we saw

00:02:57.700 143,870 people enter the country illegally and request political asylum. That is so out of step

00:03:05.860 with our historical numbers. For context, under Stephen Harper, Canada dealt with a range of between

00:03:12.060 10,000 and 25,000 illegal migrants each year. And we thought that was too high. You know,

00:03:17.660 the government took countless steps to try to lower that number to try to stop that illegal

00:03:22.620 immigration when the number was 25,000. Well, under Trudeau, the number has absolutely exploded.

00:03:28.300 It's grown tenfold more than that 14 fold in the past decade. It's really unbelievable. So when you add

00:03:33.740 all these immigration streams together, the total number of newcomers you get arriving into Canada

00:03:39.100 each year is 2.2 million people. 2.2 million people. That's how many people Canada had welcomed,

00:03:48.380 entered our country, admitted in the last calendar year in 2023. So it's no wonder that our infrastructure

00:03:54.140 is crumbling. It's no wonder that there are housing shortages. It's no wonder that there are viral videos

00:03:59.020 showing dozens, if not hundreds of migrants lining up for minimum wage jobs in the service industry.

00:04:04.700 Remember, we're told that Canada has a labor shortage. And so we're bringing in these people to do 0.74

00:04:10.460 construction jobs and fill roles that Canadians supposedly can't fill. And yet we see them lining

00:04:17.180 up for minimum wage jobs, taking jobs away from young Canadians. It doesn't make any sense. So under the

00:04:23.500 current Trudeau government, Canada's range for landed immigrants, which are those permanent residents,

00:04:29.100 was 226 as a low during COVID, 226,000, and an average of just under 500,000 in the few years since the

00:04:37.740 pandemic, we're supposed to hit 500,000 in 2025. This is double the sustained averages of the past two

00:04:45.180 decades. So Trudeau has doubled that number of permanent residencies coming into Canada. And it's really

00:04:50.940 unprecedented in Canadian history, especially considering all the streams together, as mentioned, the true

00:04:56.860 numbers upwards of 2 million. So it's really hard to overstate how drastically out of step this is

00:05:01.900 with Canada's traditional approach to immigration. I like looking at the numbers, I like looking at the

00:05:06.460 stats. There's one page that I always look at that I find really interesting. Stats Canada tracks the

00:05:10.860 number of immigrants who have come here since 1850, so before Confederation. Now curiously, Stats Canada has

00:05:18.140 all the data in one place from 1850, all the way up to 2015. For some reason, they stopped adding new

00:05:25.420 numbers and showing the new annual figures in 2015. Isn't that interesting? What else happened

00:05:30.060 in 2015? Well, anyway, we can look back at this graph, and we can see the history of our immigration.

00:05:37.020 The graph is really interesting, because what you really notice is that there are peaks and there

00:05:40.700 are valleys. So Canada has always had years where we've had huge influxes of newcomers coming into our

00:05:46.380 country. For instance, you can see this big peak that happened right before World War II in sort of 1910,

00:05:52.540 1911, 1912. There was a huge, huge spike in the number of folks coming, and then we saw more spikes

00:05:59.340 sort of in the post-World War II years. So these peaks in immigration are then historically followed

00:06:05.740 by valleys, years when Canada significantly decreased its immigration intake. Now the valleys are as

00:06:12.140 important as the peaks. These are the years when newcomers would acclimate to their new surroundings.

00:06:17.180 They would integrate into the Canadian community and into the Canadian economy,

00:06:21.820 and they would adopt a Canadian identity. These are the years that ensured the continued success of

00:06:27.580 our immigration system. But you can see that everything changed starting in the 1990s. Canada

00:06:33.740 abandoned this key component of our immigration system. So starting in the 90s, we had successive

00:06:38.700 governments, both liberal and conservative, and they realized that they could sort of combat the

00:06:43.820 demographic realities, which were the declining birth rates and the increased cost of social entitlement

00:06:48.780 programs like health care pensions and old age security OAS payments by simply importing more

00:06:55.500 working age people. They kind of got addicted to that artificial growth that you see when you bring in new 0.96

00:07:00.300 people, all those new working age people paying taxes and paying into the economy. And they didn't 1.00

00:07:05.900 want to do the gaps. They didn't want to do the valleys anymore. They didn't want to have years where they

00:07:10.300 basically paused immigration intake to let everybody integrate into the economy, into the community.

00:07:17.900 Instead, they just kept it going, kept the floodgates open, kept bringing more and more people. Well,

00:07:22.460 the Trudeau government, Justin Trudeau, has taken this hack to an extreme. They've attempted to cover up

00:07:28.540 ruinous economic policies like the carbon tax and excessive runaway deficit spending by simply and

00:07:34.300 dramatically increasing the number of people who come into the country. So more people means a higher 0.96

00:07:39.820 cumulative economic output, which we measure as GDP. And so with a straight face, government officials

00:07:45.260 can say that Canada's economy is growing and our GDP continues to rise when we all know that that is

00:07:50.780 not the real case. It's not happening. And we recently had this pointed out to us. So a Waterloo

00:07:55.740 economics professor named Mikkel Scudderlin said this on Twitter. He wrote, Canada's GDP grew by 1.1% in the

00:08:03.180 fourth quarter of 2022, while our population grew by 3.2%. So that means the real GDP per capita is

00:08:11.740 actually falling at 2% annually, roughly the difference. So we can pretend that our economy

00:08:17.580 is growing by 1%. But when you subtract the fact that we've imported and grown our population by 3%,

00:08:23.100 reality is that per person, the economy is much worse. So politicians will tell you the economy is

00:08:28.940 growing is not true. It's only technically true. And that is because of mass migration. They're using

00:08:33.820 mass migration to cover up their terrible economic policies. The average Canadian is much poorer under

00:08:40.780 this system. And it gets even worse because GDP figures are further distorted when you consider

00:08:46.220 that it includes government spending in their calculation. So government spending is part of GDP.

00:08:52.460 The government can simply increase the GDP by taxing and spending more of your money. And that has been

00:08:57.980 the case in recent years. So look, immigration only works when it is well managed and when it has the

00:09:03.020 approval of the vast majority of Canadians. Our current system is the opposite of that. It's been

00:09:08.060 completely overrun. It's been completely mismanaged. This is harmful to the economy. It's harmful to

00:09:13.660 Canadians who are struggling with the rising cost of living. Now, I want to zero in on one element of

00:09:20.380 immigration that I find to be the most alarming, the most disturbing, and sort of the worst when it 1.00

00:09:25.500 comes to how poorly managed, mismanaged the system is. And that is a surge in illegal immigration that

00:09:31.340 happened in 2023. I'm telling you, I look at these numbers closely, and I've never seen anything like

00:09:35.820 this. I've never seen a jump or a spike in one category of immigration look anything like this. So a shocking,

00:09:43.260 shocking 143,830 people entered Canada illegally. Let me say that again, 143,830 people entered Canada

00:09:54.940 illegally in 2023. They made an asylum claim. And this is according to raw data that I found on

00:10:00.140 Canada's immigration department website. So who are these people? These are wannabe refugees who entered 1.00

00:10:05.740 illegally. They either snuck across at an unmanned border crossing. They entered using fraudulent or

00:10:11.340 falsified passports and documents, or they entered under false pretenses. So they came

00:10:16.700 as a temporary visitor, pretending to be a tourist, only to later place an asylum claim and ask Canada

00:10:22.860 for refugee status. So they're trying to obtain refugee status, but they're not yet legal refugees.

00:10:28.380 They still have to have their case scrutinized by an immigration judge. And this is a process that has

00:10:33.100 historically been very difficult. Most claims ended up being rejected or abandoned. Although I must admit,

00:10:38.380 in recent years under the Trudeau government, they've significantly loosened the rules to allow

00:10:42.860 more of these asylum seekers to become permanent refugees and to stay in Canada permanently. Now, 0.95

00:10:48.940 even if these individuals have their claim rejected by an immigration judge, or they choose to abandon

00:10:53.580 them, maybe they choose to go to another country, usually the United States, or they just decide to go

00:10:57.900 dark and live on the lam here in Canada, there are significant benefits to just putting your name in

00:11:03.980 that system and being in that process as an asylum claimant. So asylum seekers receive government

00:11:09.740 benefits, including welfare, social housing, and a gold-plated program called the Interim Federal

00:11:15.340 Health Program. This is a program that the government spends about a billion dollars a year on.

00:11:20.300 They send money, the federal government sends money to the provinces, and the provinces provide

00:11:24.780 health care to these asylum seekers. It is above and beyond what Canadians receive. It includes the cost of 1.00

00:11:30.620 any medication, dental visits, eye doctor visits, and other services that Canadians typically pay

00:11:36.780 out of pocket for. So when you look back at historic numbers of illegal immigrants and asylum seekers,

00:11:43.420 the numbers just look so quaint in comparison to what we're seeing today. So here is a graph that I

00:11:48.140 found on the Immigration Department website. It shows illegal immigration from 2000 to 2018. It's

00:11:55.740 interesting because according to the IRCC, which is the Department of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship

00:12:01.180 Canada, prior to the Trudeau government forming in late 2015, Canada's previous high in asylum seekers

00:12:08.140 was in 2001 when we have 44,000, and in 2008 when we had 37,000, and the low was in 2013 when there were

00:12:16.780 only 10,365 illegal immigrants entering the country and claiming asylum. And even the government's own

00:12:25.020 sort of communication on this, you can see what the bureaucrats wrote here, they said that the number

00:12:29.020 of asylum claims more than tripled since 2015, increasing from 16,000 in 2015 to over 50,000 in

00:12:36.300 2017. So in 2017, when there were 50,000 illegal immigrants coming to Canada, the bureaucrats thought

00:12:42.300 it was a big deal. They were worried about it. They noted that they had tripled in just a few years,

00:12:46.300 and you could tell that they didn't like that. Now Trudeau had an opportunity to put this all

00:12:50.060 to an end because during COVID, the Trudeau government implemented incredibly tight restrictions

00:12:55.100 on who could fly in and who could fly out, who could enter and who could leave Canada.

00:12:59.500 So in 2020, we only had 23,600 asylum claims, and in 2021, we only had 24,900. But rather than take

00:13:09.260 advantage of the natural reduction that happened in illegal immigration caused mostly by the global

00:13:14.700 travel restrictions that governments implemented during the pandemic, instead of taking advantage

00:13:19.180 of that, the immigration department under the Trudeau government made a series of policy errors that

00:13:24.620 led to the 6x jump in illegal immigration in just two years from 2021 to 2023. And that staggering 14

00:13:31.260 fold increase from 10 years prior from 2013. So I'm going to go through what I believe are the four

00:13:38.300 factors behind this unprecedented surge in illegal immigration. The first reason why this is happening

00:13:45.260 is because of the Prime Minister, because of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his messaging. So you'll

00:13:50.060 remember this. This was back in 2017, same day that US President Donald Trump announced an executive order

00:13:56.380 that would restrict travel from seven countries that were known state sponsors of terrorism. That's why

00:14:01.660 those seven countries were picked. It became known as the Muslim ban, even though it wasn't a Muslim ban per

00:14:07.420 se. But it blocked people from coming from those seven countries that were state sponsors of

00:14:11.900 terrorism. On that same day, January 28, 2017, we had our Prime Minister Justin Trudeau say, give a

00:14:19.020 completely different message. So this is what he tweeted. To those fleeing persecution, terror and war,

00:14:23.900 Canadians will welcome you regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength. So that was Justin Trudeau

00:14:29.980 virtue signaling. Well, according to records obtained from bureaucrats inside the immigration department,

00:14:35.260 Trudeau's tweet created an absolute frenzy, created a frenzy at embassies, consulates,

00:14:40.380 immigration offices around the world, as many people, many potential wannabe refugees,

00:14:46.300 interpreted Trudeau's statement as a literal invitation. They thought that Trudeau was literally

00:14:51.340 inviting everybody to come be refugees in Canada. And the reality is that hundreds of thousands of

00:14:57.500 people around the world heeded this call. This contributed to the tripling of asylum claims

00:15:02.540 in that calendar year, in the year that Trudeau put out that tweet, which was 2017. And it still

00:15:09.020 contributes to the earth shattering figures that we see today. So that was number one reason is

00:15:13.980 Prime Minister's messaging. Number two reason is Canada's decision to abandon the visa requirement

00:15:20.300 for Mexican nationals. So Mexico, Mexicans are the number one source country of illegal immigration

00:15:25.980 into Canada, the number one source of asylum seekers. So just under 10,000 Mexican nationals enter Canada,

00:15:33.500 they overstay their visas, and they eventually make refugee claims each year. And there's a really

00:15:38.940 easy way to fix this problem. There's a policy tool that was previously introduced by the true

00:15:43.740 by the Stephen Harper government back in 2009. It really works. It's simple. It's just a visa

00:15:49.580 requirement, a simple visa that requires Mexican visitors to submit some basic paperwork prior to

00:15:55.340 coming to Canada, just basically proving that they have a place to stay, that their stay is temporary,

00:16:00.140 and that they have purchased a flight home is really, really basic. Most countries that you go to

00:16:05.100 will ask to see your flight home when you're entering. And that's just sort of part of traveling

00:16:09.340 to a different country. So personally, again, as a Canadian, I've traveled extensively around the world.

00:16:14.860 And many countries that you go to require some kind of visa. I've had to do one when I've gone to places

00:16:20.300 like Brazil, Russia, India, China, Vietnam, so many countries require visas. And so it's not

00:16:25.660 that big of a deal for Canada to say to Mexicans, have a visa when you come. We used to have that. 0.99

00:16:31.420 But in 2016, the federal government under Justin Trudeau decided to eliminate this visa requirement

00:16:37.100 for Mexicans. And as a result, I mean, it was completely predictable. There was a huge surge in 1.00

00:16:42.380 asylum claims for Mexicans. They come to Canada pretending to be tourists, and then they never leave. 0.99

00:16:47.100 Okay, the third reason why we've had this huge spike in illegal immigration is because the government

00:16:53.500 has eliminated important rules that are meant to limit other streams of immigration that could

00:16:57.980 potentially be misused. So over the past several years, Canada's seen an explosion in two categories,

00:17:05.180 temporary foreign workers and students coming to Canada. So as I reported in True North, the number of

00:17:11.740 international students has tripled in the last decade. We used to welcome about 300,000

00:17:16.780 back in 2013. And then as I mentioned, in 2023, the government had to actually cap the number of

00:17:22.060 student visas because they were just getting so many applications. We now allow 900,000 students

00:17:27.740 into the country each year. Likewise, there's been a jump in those temporary foreign workers that went

00:17:32.060 from about half a million in 2013, up to 700,000 2021, which is the last figures that we have available.

00:17:39.340 So by allowing all of those people to come into Canada on a temporary basis, 0.96

00:17:43.100 you're basically inviting them, there's opportunity for fraud and abuse. Because once a migrant is 1.00

00:17:49.180 legally in Canada, there's nothing stopping them from asking for refugee status, they literally just

00:17:54.060 have to go to an office, throw up their hands, say, I'm a refugee, fill out a bit of paperwork. And all

00:17:58.860 of a sudden, they're placed in that stream of refugees, they get all the benefits that I mentioned

00:18:03.980 earlier, including that interim federal health care. So really, you're kind of creating incentives by

00:18:08.780 allowing 1.5 million people to come into the country under the guise of either a visa or temporary

00:18:15.660 firm worker. And all they have to do to jump to that other category where they could become a refugee

00:18:20.460 and potentially state in Canada as a permanent resident, all they have to do is pretend that

00:18:25.580 they're a refugee. And there you have it. So again, that's a huge mistake. And finally, the fourth reason 1.00

00:18:32.540 why Canada has seen this unprecedented surge in illegal immigration is because of the bureaucracy.

00:18:38.540 It seems to me by looking at the numbers and reading into it, that the bureaucracy has basically

00:18:43.020 taken over, they're not being tamed by the political staff, the liberals aren't stopping them from doing

00:18:47.660 what they want. It's a situation where the sort of the inmates are running the asylum. Bureaucrats are

00:18:52.540 obsessed and focused on reducing the backlog. So Canada gets 2.5 million applications for visitor visas

00:18:59.340 each year. And the bureaucracy has to process each of those. There's a huge undertaking. It's a huge

00:19:05.500 problem. They don't have enough staff to do it. And so they're always looking for shortcuts and tricks

00:19:10.780 to get through that backlog as fast as possible. You know, what would stop the backlog and what would

00:19:15.980 make it all much more obtainable would just be to put a fee on an application. Like you want to apply

00:19:22.300 for a visa to Canada, you have to pay 50 bucks to pay for it to get processed, but they don't want to do that.

00:19:27.500 And so it's this huge undertaking for the bureaucracy. They're obsessed with reducing

00:19:31.020 their backlog. And so that's why they take shortcuts, they take steps that lead to problems

00:19:36.860 in other areas. And this is what we've seen happen. So I found this Globe and Mail report

00:19:40.940 from October 2023. It says, asylum claims jump at Canadian airports after Ottawa eases some visitor

00:19:47.180 visa requirements. So let me just read a little bit from the story. It says, earlier this year,

00:19:51.660 Ottawa waived some eligibility requirements for visa visitor applications. In particular,

00:19:56.540 those individuals no longer have to prove that they have sufficient funds to stay in Canada

00:20:01.580 or demonstrate that they will leave the country when the visa expires. The policy went into effect

00:20:06.380 on February 28th and last through the end of 2023. So think about that. People who are coming to Canada 1.00

00:20:13.340 no longer have to prove that they have a return flight. They no longer have to prove that they actually

00:20:17.580 have money in order to fund their stay or pay for their trip to Canada. They just get the visa,

00:20:24.620 basically. They apply and they get the visa. So what could possibly be the reason for eliminating

00:20:29.420 this? This is an important safeguard for Canada's immigration system to stop fake tourists who plan

00:20:34.860 to just stay in Canada indefinitely. Well, there is a memo that was leaked from the immigration department

00:20:41.100 and it says exactly what the issue is. And so this is from the same Globe and Mail report. It says,

00:20:46.540 the IRCC memo, which dates to December, said waiving eligibility requirements would apply to roughly 450,000

00:20:53.980 visa applications in the system. The documents of the stockpile of application was eroding

00:20:58.940 the public's trust in the department and its ability to manage migration.

00:21:03.260 Hopeful immigrants and visitors often complain that can take years for the government to render a

00:21:07.900 decision on their files. So they're talking about how basically foreigners from other countries,

00:21:14.220 foreign nationals in foreign countries are complaining that it takes too long to get their

00:21:19.100 visa approved. And the the bureaucracy thinks that this is going to erode public trust. Okay,

00:21:24.300 so that's the reason why there's a huge surge. They got rid of all these shortcuts because they

00:21:28.780 wanted to erode, they didn't want to erode the public's trust. When they're talking about the public,

00:21:32.460 let's just be perfectly clear. They're not talking about you and I, they're not talking about

00:21:35.740 Canadians. Canadians don't know anything about the backlog. They don't care how long it takes

00:21:40.300 for someone visiting from India to get a visa. They don't care about that at all. 1.00

00:21:44.380 What the bureaucracy cares about when they talk about the public trust, they're talking about

00:21:47.980 the public in foreign countries. They're talking about non-Canadians, the public in places like

00:21:53.180 India and China and people who want to come visit Canada. The bureaucrats are literally more concerned

00:21:58.620 with quelling the concerns of hopeful immigrants and visitors rather than protecting the integrity of our

00:22:05.740 immigration system. It's really unbelievable. So these are the four factors that I believe are

00:22:10.220 contributing and led to that 140,000 illegal immigrants entering Canada, that shocking figure

00:22:16.860 and those people who are pleading for asylum. Look, it is clear that the system is broken. It is clear

00:22:22.860 that Canada needs a total overhaul. We need a total redesign of our system from top to bottom. The only

00:22:29.260 question that remains here is who will have the political courage to take on this issue and finally

00:22:36.540 fix Canada's immigration system. That's the only question that remains. I'm Candace Malcolm and this

00:22:41.020 is The Candace Malcolm Show.

Juno News - March 12, 2024

Canada's immigration system is BROKEN

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