Canada has had a relatively very proactive approach to welcoming immigrants – skilled, through a points system, and many refugees. I posted here and here in 2024 about Canada trimming back its immigration.  Thanks to Rupa Banerjee for helping me to understand what’s happened.

Permanent Immigration: Canada lowered its annual permanent resident targets from 500,000 to 395,000 in 2025, to 380,000 in 2026 and 365,000 in 2027.  At 500,000, that was equivalent to 1.25% of the population – contrast that with the prevailing rate in the U.S. (1 million) which is 0.3%. Evern at 365,000 the rate remains much higher than the U.S.

57% of Canadians now believe that too many newcomers aren’t adopting “Canadian values” (up 9 points from 2023). 43% think a lot of refugee claims aren’t legitimate (up 7 points). Rupa told me that even among racial minorities and first-generation immigrants, concerns about immigration levels are increasing.

The Canadian government mentioned demand for housing and social services as factors in reducing the volume.  Still it is quite high.

American migration to Canada has been very little – on average in the neighborhood of 10,000 a year. In the past few weeks Yale professors Timothy Snyder, Marci Shore, and Jason Stanley announced they will relocate to the University of Toronto due to the political climate in the U.S. Canada’s point system will screen out many would-be applicants.

The Los Angeles Times notes that both the immigration crackdown and new tariffs are threatening produce farmers in California:

“The administration’s vows of mass raids targeting undocumented immigrants, combined with its new tariff-induced trade wars, have farmers and labor groups united behind the need for legislation that ensures the U.S. continues producing an ample food supply and has sufficient workers to tend its crops.”

The administration’s approach to immigration appears to be comprehensive against all immigration perhaps with the exception of skilled workers.

The three largest California counties in terms of dollar value of farm production – Kern, Fresno, and Tulare, which produce half of the state’s farm output – have workforces which are 75% foreign born. Diary:  more than 50% foreign born; Grapes: 70% foreign born; Almonds: 70% foreign-born; Strawberries: 70% foreign born; Cattle: over 50% foreign born (go here).

Simply stated, about 140,000 green cards are reserved for employment-based applications, as opposed to about 750,000 family based green cards.  How many workers come in these ways?  That depends in part on whether those dependents accompanying the primary applicants (about 50-50) are working age.  A rough estimate is that 70% – 80% of those who get in with an employment based or a family based green card are of working age. That comes to about 650,000 – 750,000 a year.  How many actually become employed? Perhaps 600,000 – 700,000.  (if you include refugees and other green cards, these estimates of employed increase by about 70,000.)

Employment visas like most other visas have annual caps. These caps for each visa include dependents. Roughly half of these visas are issued to the primary individual seeking the visa, and half to their dependents. There is a 7% cap for each visa by country; i.e. only 40,040 x 7% = 2,828 can be awarded to any country (such as India).  Actual numbers of visas awarded in any year vary due to several factors, such as access to visas what were not issued under the cap for other purposes, such as family-based visas.

It usually takes at least 12 months, if not two years or more, between the initial date of filing an application and the award of one of these visas. Over three quarters of EB visa awardees are already residing and working in the U.S. while they file and wait.

40,040 EB1 visa: persons with extraordinary ability, tenure track in academia, corporate executive, and other reasons

40,040 EB2 visa: professionals with advanced degrees or exceptional ability. Need a job offer and cubject to wage evaluation (labor certification) by Dept, of Labor

40,040 EB3 visa skilled worked in name but basically plain ol’ highly desirable workers. .Perhaps a cook who skilled at one kind of ethnic dishes. Need a job offer and cubject to wage evaluation (labor certification) by Dept, of Labor

9,940 EB4 visa: special immigrants like religious workers.

9,940 EB5 visa: investors with at least $1 million to invest in a for-profit venture and create 10 jobs, plus other criteria.

The UK has relied much more than the U.S. on foreign doctors (“foreign trained” very roughly equals “foreign born”).  About half of doctors practicing in the UK are foreign trained compared to 25% in the United States. In contrast to the U.S, the share in the UK has grown noticeably in recently.  Volatile trends in special recruitment by the National Health Service shows how much the terms of temporary immigration matter.

After World War II, the National Health Service faced harsh workforce shortages and actively recruited medical professionals from abroad, particularly from Commonwealth countries such as India and Pakistan.

A special Health and Care Worker visa was created in 2020. This provides for five years of work and after then an option to become a British citizen. In 2023, 350,000 such visas were issued (I think this includes the primary person and dependents). But the government stopped allowing workers to bring dependents, and the number in 2024 dropped to 50,000.

Today, the NHS is experiencing a shortage of health care professionals. The job vacancy rate which used to be about 2 jobs unfilled for every 100 jobs. That jumped to over 4 jobs per 100 after the pandemic.

From a 2024 report. This profile has been pretty much unchanged for at least 10 years, although sone sources say that immigration of health professionals has very recently picked up.

In 2021, 51% of junior doctors and 41% of senior doctors (called consultants) were non-white. This compares with 20% of the English working-age population. Much of this is driven by international recruitment. But even among UK-trained doctors, 37% of junior doctors and 24% of consultants were non-white.

By far the largest non-White group is Asian, making up 33% of junior doctors and 32% of consultants in 2021. The share of non-white senior doctors also increased, from 39% in 2012 to 45% in 2021.

India has been the world’s largest source of immigrant physicians.

“On Jan. 7, the pre-dawn quiet of Kern County was shattered by a series of Customs and Border Protection raids billed as “targeted criminal enforcement.” The day after the first Kern County sweep, one citrus operation reported that 25% of its workers did not show up. By the following day, that number had climbed to 75%.” (from here).

The California produce farm community has sought for years for federal legislation that normalizes the status of unauthorized workers. Unless there is a comprehensive immigration reform package, there is no chance such legislation will pass.  Over the past 15 years these firms have relied less and less on unauthorized workers. However, If the Trump administration goes after these workers, and also make it more difficult for farms to use legally temporary workers (H-2A visas), there will be a serious labor supply problem. More food will be imported. If Trump imposes major tariffs on Mexico and other Latin American countries, food, primarily produces and nuts, will become more expensive. Half of vegetables, fruits and nuts are imported, roughly doubling in market share in 15 years.

California has been the leading farm state since 1949. A major role of farming in the state are fresh produce. Mexican born workers dominate the farm workforce, which includes about 420,000 full time equivalent workers at any time. Mexicans have an average of eight years education and average 42 years old. Half of them are unauthorized.   The unauthorized Mexican workforce in the United States, including California farms, began to a decline after the financial crisis. In the last 15 years, farms throughout the United States including California have relied more and more on temporary H-2A workers workers. (Here is my overview of this program, posted in 2013.) With decreasing dependence on unauthorized workers, farms–particularly the very large ones– drove up the H-2A workforce from about 75,000 in 2010 to 400,000 today.

H2A guest workers are mostly Mexican men in their 30s who work about six months a year. They cost employers $25 to $30 an hour which includes housing and transportation as well as wages. (Weekly income to the workers is about $800.) This is more expensive than other farm workers but, H-2A workers are more productive due to there being tied to employers as opposed to being freelancing, going from one farm to another period.  This is an important aspect of large-scale temporary visa worker on forums. They favor large farms which are relatively more adept at driving productivity improvements.

California farmers usually report trouble in finding workers. The relatively very old, 42 years, of the established Mexican workforce reflects not only the absolute decline in authorized Mexican workers but also the lack of interest of their children and others to work in the fields.

There are several ways to reduce dependence on foreign-born workers for produce food for the American table.  A key one is to match vegetables and fruits, plus nuts, with mechanization.  Another way, of course, is to simply import food.A great deal of produce sold in the United States now comes from Mexico such as avocados and blueberries from Peru and South American countries. Since 2016 the majority of blueberries consumed by Americans are imported. There more Mexican produce workers in Mexico for the export market to the United States then produce workers in California.

Beyond the workforce issues of California farmers there is also the acute dependence by small dairy farmers throughout the country on unauthorized workers. That is for another posting.

(Sources of content mainly prior posts and an April 2024 report by Philip Martin of UC Davis, who has studied California farming for years).

Adam Tooze refers to these figures below as “the coming labor market shock.”

If the Trump administration stops or, more likely, cuts back drastically on the inflow of working age immigrants, the impact on workforce supply will be significant. That is because the U.S. born workforce is declining, and a healthy economy needs to fill a net increase of at least two million jobs a year. If he removes hundreds of housands of immigrant workers, there may be an acute worker shortage in some industries.

By combining data from different sources, I estimate that:

In 2022, 4.8 million jobs were created, largely due to a rebound from the pandemic.  In 2023, 3 million jobs were created. In 2024, 2.2 million jobs were created. (All of these net increases.) for the three years: 10 million jobs.

In these three years, 6 million, or 60% of these jobs were filled by recent immigrants.  Half of these by asylum applicants and Parole or Temporary Protected Status persons.  About one million were those with legal non-humanitarian temporary visas such as H-1B. About 1.5 million were unlawful entry or visa overstays.

In the past ten or so years, the number of U.S. born persons of working age has been shrinking by about 300,000 a year. Thus the only way that job growth was a large as it was, was at least half due to immigration and the rest due to Americans returning to work after an involuntary or voluntary absence.

In a modern economy, the dynamics between immigrant and native born workers is so complex that it cannot be reduced to an all-inclusive, simple sum without eliminating 90% of meaningful insight.  Thus, to say that overall immigrants add jobs, do not affect native workers, or compete with native workers is to engage in vast simplification.

Cauimi and Peri came perilously close to vast simplification in a study they released in early 2024. Giovanni Peri is a star academic researcher on immigration who has for some time argued that immigration overall is neutral or positive in its effect on native born workers.

They explain their findings through the concept of complementarity: Immigrants and U.S.-born workers often have different skills and specializations that complement each other rather than compete directly. This complementarity boosts productivity and, in turn, wages for U.S.-born workers. Since 2000, there has been an increase in college-educated immigrants, which has further enhanced the complementary effect, especially benefiting less educated U.S.-born workers.

Pretty much all academic research into the economic impact of immigrants on American workers relies on correlation analysis that deals with association, not cause. Further, these analysis address employment and wages, but not productivity, the investment decision, job switching, career switching, or domestic migration. Nor do they deal with the secondary effects. These analyses cannot capture the possibility that immigrants concentrate on geographic locales and occupations where they perceive substantial growth requiring new workers.

An example of immigrant impact which has a very rich story that is lost in statistical analysis typically done is the independent motel industry. About 60% of all hotels in the US are owned by Indian Americans, and this group may own at least 80% of all motels in small towns.   I addressed this phenomenon here.   At the core of this story is the evolution of a business model crafted by Indian immigrants that facilitated the voluntary purchase/sale of motels and hotels from native owners, and which preserved the viability of thousands of motels in the country.