Comparing Federal Government Immigrant Settlement Policies in Canada and the United States

The approaches to immigrant settlement policy in Canada and US, both of which are known as large-scale immigrant receiving countries has been compared. Canada's immigrant policy is best characterized as relatively comprehensive in scope, proactive, and aiming for a pluralistic integration of immigrants. Canada's federal and provincial governments have articulated a relatively broad range of settlement services, from economic, social, cultural services,bypassing only a direct focus on political integration. On the other hand, US has no explicit immigrant settlement policy. Its degree of comprehensiveness is very thin, in depth and scope, is laissez-faire in its mode of policy intervention and is assimilationist in its aims for the integration of immigrants. Federal aid to public education and social assistance provides some measure of support for the cultural integration of the children of immigrants. Moreover, the Office of Citizenship does provide a bit of useful information to immigrants seeking to naturalize as US citizens. Also included in the study is the demonstration of US and Canada having very divergent approaches to immigrant settlement policy. Future research will include critical examination of the degree to which these two differing approaches contribute to the success of immigrant integration along with the explanations for any difference in success that are discovered in that research.