DAVID GREENE, HOST:
As the Trump administration moves to overhaul America's immigration system, some policymakers are saying just look north. Canadians see immigration as critical to their economic success. That nation has invited in so many immigrants that today one-fifth of the population is foreign born, and yet, broadly speaking, Canadians don't seem to wrestle with the anti-immigrant sentiment that has motivated voters in the United States and in Europe. NPR's John Burnett crossed the northern border for a look.
JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: The Caribbean Corner is a sliver of warm, laid-back Jamaica in the frigid precincts of downtown Toronto.
MICHAEL THOMAS: We have different kind of yams - yampee, sweet yam, white yam, yellow yam. We have breadfruit.
BURNETT: Michael Thomas is one of the owners.
THOMAS: If you ask me where I'm from, I said I'm from Canada. And if you ask me what's my nationality, I said Jamaica.
BURNETT: Toronto is one of the most multicultural cities in the world. Just look at the business directory - the Association of Bulgarian Engineers, the Canadian Network of Iranian Architects, the Association of Filipino Canadian Accountants. Half the population, like Mr. Thomas, was born under another flag.
THOMAS: I love it. I see the world in one place. You can celebrate your culture. Yeah, so - and you mix with different cultures and you take part, you know? Yeah, so I like that.
BURNETT: Canada knows what it wants - high-skilled workers and business entrepreneurs like Michael Thomas. As such, Canada assigns points to prospective newcomers for job skills, education and language proficiency. In Canada, they don't even call them immigrants.
MARGARET EATON: In Canada, we do refer to immigrants as new Canadians...
BURNETT: Margaret Eaton is executive director of the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council.
EATON: ...Because there is an expectation that they will come here and that they will stay. And our country, unlike others, actually provides a path to citizenship.
BURNETT: Yet, Canadian immigration is not based purely on maple-leaf hospitality. This northern colossus - the second-largest country on the globe - has only 36 million people. She says a low national birthrate creates Canada's immigration imperative.
EATON: We're not replacing ourselves. So we've always relied upon bringing new immigrants into the country. But it has even more urgency now. If we want to maintain our standard of living, we're going to have to bring in even larger numbers of immigrants.
BURNETT: The United States, which admits more legal immigrants than any other country, has a different approach. It's all about family reunification, bringing in spouses, parents, children and siblings who live abroad. But consecutive Congresses have failed to update the immigration program for 27 years. Foreign nationals can wait a decade for a green card, the lottery system for worker visas is overburdened and 11 million unauthorized immigrants live in the shadows with no hope for legalization.
CHRIS ALEXANDER: The biggest contrast between the U.S. and Canada is that we have reformed our immigration system continuously, intensively, for a decade at a time when the U.S. has been facing gridlock.
BURNETT: Chris Alexander was Canadian minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship from 2013 to 2015. He's currently running to lead the Conservative Party. He sips coffee at a Toronto cafe. He says Parliament continually tweaks the immigration system because it's a national priority.
ALEXANDER: The consensus in Canada that immigration is part of our economic future and part of our identity has never been stronger.
BURNETT: About 300,000 permanent immigrants come into Canada every year. That's equivalent to about 1 percent of its population, one of the highest ratios in the developed world. Ashot Verdanyan and his wife Lora are the kinds of immigrants Canada prizes. We sit down for tea in their cozy apartment in a heavily multicultural Toronto suburb. They came over from Armenia as part of the skilled worker program. He teaches English. She's an industrial engineer. They lived in Iowa for nine years getting advanced degrees.
ASHOT VERDANYAN: We find that the American immigration system hasn't been flexible. Canadian system is much more flexible in terms of immigration. Canada's system is very organized. We wanted to stay in the United States, but even given our credentials, we were unable to do that because we were restricted.
BURNETT: When they arrived in Canada six years ago, Lora says the government had programs in place to help them transition.
LORA VERDANYAN: You don't have any family. You don't have any friends. You don't have anything here in Canada. You can go straight to the newcomers centers, and they will give you support.
BURNETT: This is not to say that every immigrant has a job waiting for them. It's common to find doctors and engineers driving taxis in Canada. Margaret Eaton of the Immigrant Employment Council says the problem is that some employers turn down immigrant job applicants, saying they lack Canadian experience.
EATON: And that can become a bit of a code word for I didn't like your accent. We didn't think you would fit in.
BURNETT: Some parts of Canada are more welcoming to newcomers than others. Drive out of an international metropolis like Toronto to the town of St. Catharines near Niagara Falls.
JOHN DUGGAN: I don't care what people look like. I don't care if they're black, brown or yellow. It doesn't matter. But don't try to change our culture.
BURNETT: John Duggan is an oil field truck driver who's eating an omelet at Angel's Cafe. Though Duggan himself was brought to Canada as a child from Ireland, he's critical of the pro-immigrant policies of the Liberal prime minister, Justin Trudeau.
DUGGAN: I have no problem with people wanting to come here. But we also have a lot of people here that - I always say charity begins at home. I watched Mr. Trudeau giving brand-new jackets to people coming over. I have no problem with that, but we have people here freezing. And, you know, they need the same stuff, but they have a hard time getting it.
BURNETT: One reason there's not more social tension over immigrants is because Canada doesn't struggle with illegal immigration. Canada has fewer than 150,000 unauthorized immigrants. The United States, with its illegal border crossers and visa overstayers, has millions. Former Immigration Minister Chris Alexander says it's partly an accident of geography.
ALEXANDER: We are lucky to have the United States, and we have only one land border. We have Russia to the north of us. We have the Danes. They're not people swimming in from Greenland.
BURNETT: These days, Canadians are taken aback when they look south at the climate of fear and anger that's broken out in America toward Spanish-speaking and Muslim immigrants.
LAURA DAWSON: Canada has looked at the United States in many ways as an example of a welcoming society.
BURNETT: Laura Dawson is director of the Canada Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C.
DAWSON: And it's disheartening for many Canadians to see the United States to be so fearful, to be so xenophobic and not to be more welcoming to other folks in the world.
BURNETT: Some Canadians wonder if that most American motto - E pluribus unum - out of many, one - has moved north. John Burnett, NPR News, Toronto.
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