Turnstile Immigration

Turnstile Immigration addresses a variety of issues affecting present and future immigration policy: designer immigration; queue-jumping and quasi-residency; asylum-shopping and family-class echo; the contemporary Convention Refugee System and the Humanitarian and Compassionate Review System. The author also looks at the impact of immigration on the future multiculturalism in Canada and seeks to initiate and contribute to public dialogue in Canada on this important issue. Foster argues that immigration should be a means for building and strengthening Canadian society and promoting social justice. However, at crucial junctures the underlying principles of "social order" and "social justice" conflict in such a way as to render the immigration system virtually inept. Canadian immigration today has become a bureaucratic system that has little to do with nation-building principles and a lot to do with red tape. He calls this halting procession of humanity Turnstile Immigration--where select persons gain entry to the promised land only slowly and one by one.