Canadian & US Immigration and Discriminition Essay

Canadian & US Immigration and Discriminition - Essay Example Therefore, around the globe many people eyes on the developed countries as a staircase towards their dreams. They believe that being in a developed state will provide them with proper job opportunities and a reward that is equivalent to their efforts. This partly may be true, but the first step of immigration is a big hindrance and may itself be a discouraging factor. Developed countries like United States and Canada have their own policies of immigration. Some may be beneficial for the immigrants while some poses a challenge to their existence. These negative aspects of these two countries immigration policies can be attributed to the fact that most developed nations are not very receptive to immigrants. A lot of discrimination exists on the bases of original nationality of the immigrants and various other factors. The paper will highlight and compare the difference in these policies and how they might discriminate on various bases. History of immigration in Canada and America: Both Canada and America are major recipients of immigrants from all over the world. As the statistics show that both of them accepted over 12 million immigrants between the period of 1960 to 1980 (Borjas 1991). This was a result of various changes in the policies implemented by the governments in the early 1960s. Before this period both the countries had a policy to issue only very few visas based on the nationality of the applicant. For example in the United States national origin quota system influenced the immigration policy prior to 1965 amendments. There was a definitive discrimination as Asian were only allocated a very low percentages of the total available quota. Most of these accepted immigrants were from European countries, Germany and Russia. Now we know that the source of immigration is an important factor that can determine the skills of the workers. This is partially due to the fact that cultural and social aspects of any country mould an individual’s talent. A sing le cultural immigration, therefore, caused a decline in the diversities of skills present in both countries. After 1960 both United States and Canada started to accept immigrants from diverse nations. US evolved a policy that allocated visa permits to those immigrants with relational ties to the residents of US. Whereas Canada initiated issuing visas on the basis of applicants observable socioeconomic characteristics (Borjas 1991). So overall these transmutation in the policies of both countries attracted workers with diversity of technical skills that aid in the economic development of these countries. US and Canadian immigration policy 1960 to 1980: The amendments made in 1965 in United States immigration policies abolished the national origin quota system and introduced a more versatile approach in allocation of the visas to the immigrants. These amendments influenced immigration system for the next two decades. Total number of visa allocation was increased to 270,000 and no more than 20,000 can be issued to the origin of a specific country. This is was totally in contrast to the earlier policies where most percentage of the visas was allocated to only few specific countries. Moreover, about 80 percent of those total visas were given to those with close relational ties with the US resident. This in particular was an important amendment because it