سیاست مهاجرت و تاثیر آن بر گذار جمعیتی Immigration Policy and Its Impact on Demographic Transition

The demographic challenges facing Canada are not new. Aging population and falling birth rate create significant existing and potential labour shortage. Among all instruments to deal with these challenges, immigration policy has long been considered as one important or the most important approach to tackle demographic issues. The purpose of this paper is to explore to what extent immigration policy helps to relieve demographic pressures and how different policy elements such as immigration level and its composition, selection criteria and integration programs etc involved in the impact process. The impact analysis suggests that although immigration policy plays a critical role in shaping Canada’s demographic profile, this policy alone can not achieve a sustainable demographic development. The need to balance various policy objectives (namely social, humanitarian and economic goals) and the impacts of other variables (such as emigration, immigrants’ personal behaviour) on demographic system pose both internal and external constraints on the immigration policy and make the actual impact of immigration policy on demographic transition limited. Another lesson learned from the impact analysis is that immigration policy is determining what kind of and how many people should be imported, but it is also be determined or affected by various factors such as interests groups and global migration competition. To better respond to demographic challenges, the immigration policy needs to be integrated with other policies or instruments to maximize the total benefits for the whole society