Episode Description
In this episode, I am speaking with Carolyn Watson, who runs CW Immigration and spent close to twenty years in the settlement sector before moving into immigration consulting.
The work that I think usually has the biggest impact on immigrants, which is helping people settle and integrate, is slow, intangible infrastructure that takes years to build. I call it a class-two problem, the kind you can't fix by flipping a switch or throwing a million dollars at it.
And when the work is slow to build, it's also slow to break. Which is why the recent funding cuts worry Carolyn, because the effects of pulling funding today doesn't show up for a while. And till then, it looks like a great call till we discover that loads of immigrants who didn't get the support they needed to settle and integrate are still struggling to find their footing.
I call it banking the savings now and paying for it in people later.
Carolyn and I also chat about:
The journey from Bill C-2 to Bill C-12
Why settlement agencies are often a newcomer's first community
How soundbite politics doesn't help us solve those challenging societal issues, like immigration
What capping funded English at level five does to the folks who need it
What dual intent means and why you have to acknowledge it
Dozie's Notes
A few things that stuck with me as I listened through this week's conversation:
The immigration debate keeps blaming the people instead of the planning. Housing, services, and cost of living got squeezed by a pandemic and the inflation that followed it, and immigrants became the easiest face to put on a problem they didn't cause. Carolyn's point is that scapegoating is cheaper than planning, which is exactly why it keeps happening. For newcomers, this is the quiet cruelty of the current moment, being told you're the burden in a country whose own forecasts say you are an important part of its future.
The student-to-PR path is honest in design and dishonest in delivery. Every step in it points toward staying and building a career. And that intention is obvious to anyone who actually reads the policy. The frustrating part of it all is that the same applicant who follows the plan can be turned away for admitting they're following it.