Wanted and Welcome?

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-viii

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2. Introduction

   • Triadafilos Triadafilopoulos, Craig D. Smith

   Pages 1-12

3. Origins

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 13-13

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   2. Dismantling White Canada: Race, Rights, and the Origins of the Points System

      • Triadafilos Triadafilopoulos

      Pages 15-37

   3. Creating Multicultural Australia: Local, Global and Trans-National Contexts for the Creation of a Universal Admissions Scheme, 1945–1983

      • Gwenda Tavan

      Pages 39-59

   4. Re-Forming the Gates: Postwar Immigration Policy in the United States Through the Hart-Celler Act of 1965

      • Philip E. Wolgin

      Pages 61-81

4. Still the Leader? Highly Skilled Immigration Policy in the United States

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 83-83

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   2. Talent Matters: Immigration Policy-Setting as a Competitive Scramble Among Jurisdictions

      • Ayelet Shachar

      Pages 85-104

   3. Skilled Immigration Policy in the United States: Does Policy Admit “Enough” Skilled Workers?

      • B. Lindsay Lowell

      Pages 105-121

   4. Pointless: On the Failure to Adopt an Immigration Points System in the United States

      • Gary P. Freeman, David L. Leal, Jake Onyett

      Pages 123-143

5. The Challenge of Integrating Highly Skilled Immigrants in Canada

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 145-145

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   2. Closing the Gaps Between Skilled Immigration and Canadian Labor Markets: Emerging Policy Issues and Priorities

      • Jeffrey G. Reitz

      Pages 147-163

   3. Accreditation and the Labor Market Integration of Internationally Trained Engineers and Physicians in Canada

      • Monica Boyd

      Pages 165-197

   4. Integrating International Medical Graduates: The Canadian Approach to the Brain Waste Problem

      • Ivy Lynn Bourgeault, Elena Neiterman

      Pages 199-217

   5. Skilled Enough? Employment Outcomes for Recent Economic Migrants in Canada Compared to Australia

      • Lesleyanne Hawthorne

      Pages 219-253

6. The Politics of Highly Skilled Immigration Policy in Britain and Germany

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 255-255

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   2. The Politics and Policy of Skilled Economic Immigration Under New Labour, 1997–2010

      • Will Somerville

      Pages 257-271

   3. Germany: Reluctant Steps Towards a System of Selective Immigration

      • Karen Schönwälder

      Pages 273-286

   4. Wasting Newcomers’ Human Capital? Cultural Capital and the Integration of Skilled Migrants into the British and German Labor Markets

      • Oliver Schmidtke

      Pages 287-304

7. Back Matter

   Pages 305-309

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This book considers the origins, performance and diffusion of national immigration policies targeting highly skilled immigrants. Unlike asylum seekers and immigrants admitted under family reunification streams, highly skilled immigrants are typically cast as “wanted and welcome” as a consequence of their potential economic contribution to the receiving society and putative assimilability. Testing the degree to which this assumption holds is the principle aim of this book. In contrast to publications which see highly skilled immigration as functional response to labor market needs, the book probes the political and sociological dimensions of policy, drawing on contributions from an international group of established and new scholars from the fields of history, law, political science, sociology, and public policy. The book is organized into four parts. Part I probes the origins of post-WWII immigration policies in Canada, Australia, and the United States. Part II analyzes recent debates on highly skilled immigration policy in the United States, whose origins go back to the 1965 Act by Congress which favored family reunification over skilled immigration. Part III considers the degree to which highly skilled immigrants are welcome, by focusing on the integration trajectories of foreign trained professionals in Canada. Paradoxically, just as Canada has succeeded in orienting its admissions system more explicitly toward privileging highly educated and skilled professionals, highly skilled immigrants have experienced worsening economic outcomes as reflected in rates of unemployment and falling earnings. Part IV considers the internationalization of highly skilled immigration policies, focusing on Europe’s most important immigration countries, Germany and Britain. As is true in Canada, the labor market outcomes for highly skilled immigrants in Europe are disappointing, and the final chapter discusses why this is the case and what might be done to improvematters. Given its combination of cross-disciplinary insights, cross-national comparisons, and empirical richness, the book will be of interest to both scholars and policymakers concerned with immigration policy.

• Brain Waste
• Cultural Capital
• Immigration
• Immigration Policy
• Immigration in the United States
• Selective Immigration
• Skilled Immigration

• University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

  Triadafilos Triadafilopoulos

Policies and ethics