Immigration Canada

Immigration Canada: "National reactions to immigration

National reactions to immigration - From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Throughout the world, immigration is a controversial issue. All developed nations put restrictions on how many people can immigrate to them. These are usually justified on economic grounds with worries that many poor workers would lower wages and the nation's standard of living. Sometimes the justification for limiting immigration is cultural. The latter is heard most strongly in homogenous old world (European) nations where citizenship was long tied to a person having deep historical roots in the country. Western European nations, Japan, and other countries have long been deeply concerned about their national culture being subsumed. This concern can be especially high when the immigrants are of differing race or religion than the majority.

Immigration into European countries has a long tradition, though until the 1970s and 1980s the levels were relatively modest. Recent increases in immigration have led to the development of political parties in Europe which are almost solely concerned with limiting immigration. In Hong Kong population growth is driven by new immigrants from mainland China, while the natural growth is negative.

Only five countries in the world 'actively encourage' large numbers of immigrants: The United States, Israel, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. These nations still restrict the numbers of people allowed to immigrate, but in most of these countries, population growth is almost entirely due to the relatively large level of immigration. Many other countries permit immigration in particular circumstances, e.g., to fill jobs where a skill is not available locally, for wealthy investors or business leaders, in cases of marriage, multiple citizenship or asylum, or under multilateral agreements such as within the European Union or between New Zealand and Australia.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration"