Margaret Wente on immigration:
Canada admits 250,000 immigrants a year, a higher rate than any other country. Why? No one can say. It’s not to raise the birth rate or replace our aging workers – the numbers don’t work out that way.
Is it to create wealth and improve our productivity? If so, it isn’t working. (…)
Most of the people we bring in are “family class” immigrants, including parents and grandparents. The Centre for Immigration Policy Reform estimates that recent immigrants receive billions of dollars a year more in benefits than they pay in taxes. (…)
Success depends on sophisticated language and communication skills – along with knowledge of local networks – that many newer immigrants never acquire.
And their kids? Their success depends largely on “ethnic capital,” a culture that values education and expects kids to excel. Kids from cultures with lots of ethnic capital do vastly better than kids from cultures that have little.
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Which is a polite way of saying:
Asians, Hindus and Jews do better than Mexicans, Haitians and Jamaicans.
