US sees immigration slowdown

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26842511/

Assuming that half million figure is correct (it's an estimate) - by comparison Canada let in around 250,000 people into permanent resident status legally, which is obviously not including people on work permits and people in Canada illegally. So on that basis Canada had at least half, probably significantly more than half as many immigrants as the US did last year.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26842511/

Assuming that half million figure is correct (it's an estimate) - by comparison Canada let in around 250,000 people into permanent resident status legally, which is obviously not including people on work permits and people in Canada illegally. So on that basis Canada had at least half, probably significantly more than half as many immigrants as the US did last year.

According to the USCIS webpage, the number of immigrants granted lawful permanent residence was:

1,266,264 in FY2006
1,052,415 in FY2007

So a drop but not nearly as dramatic as the MSN article claims. Of course, the timing of when people officially get their green cards depends so much on artificial factors like when USCIS clears backlogs that, especially over a time frame of a year or two, it is hard to know to what extent external factors like the economy, changing world perception of the USA, etc, plays a role.

Those figures don't necessarily mean that. FY2007 for the USCIS includes the last quarter of 2006, plus people applying for LPR status are often people already in the US who are applying for AOS. (Either way, that's a huge drop, over 200,000).

It's based on a survey, always think these Govt. surveys are a bit silly, the one that made me laugh several years ago was when ATF paid for a survey of how many people in the US own guns:

(ring, ring)

"Oh hello, I'm a researcher from gallup, would you happen to own a gun by any chance?"

I'm sure everyone answered honestly to that one.

One assumes that illegal immigrants wouldn't fess up to being there illegally in a survey, but I can't see why legal immigrants wouldn't.

Really we won't know what the trend is for several years because you have to wait at least three years to see whether people who are on work permits now apply for AOS.

But it does appear to be sharply downwards.

If you compare purely the CIC v. USCIS stats, Canada grants about 250,000 LPRs a year, so the US grants four times as many but has nine times the population.

Or put another way, Canada grants 750 per 100,000 population and the US grants 350 per 100,000, roughly.

Difficult to compare other countries because the US and Canada are two of only a handful of countries where basically every foreigner has to have some sort of status to stay in the country, e.g. the UK for example allows anyone who is a citizen of an EU state to stay indefinitely, and Australia allows anyone who is a citizen of New Zealand to stay indefinitely, etc.

So although people say Canada has the highest rate of immigration, it's a bit misleading because you don't really know what the rate of immigration in EU states is for example.