Who should be given priority?

This question may be touching on a more sensitive issue.

Which of the following types of immigrants should be given priority to immigrate to Canada?

1. Family Class 2. Economic Class 3. Refugees/Asylum Seekers 4. Prefer not to answer 5. I don't know

What do you guys think?

Anita,

I thınk touchıng on sensıtıve ıssues could make thıs project quıte ınterestıng!

For starters, we should probably famılıarıze ourselves wıth Canada,s ımmıgratıon polıcıes before fınalızıng our questıons. The followıng websıte has a basıc breakdown of the categorıes people can apply to when ımmıgratıng to Canada:

http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/index.asp

Jaıme

Just wondering, since we are trying to find out answers that we can later apply to the rest of the world (not just canada) Should we change the unit of analysis to a few more developed countries, or are we sticking to Canada for every question?

I agree with Anita that sensitive issues make this kind of school work quite interesting. Also, Wendy, I think we ought to stick to Canada for every question for two reasons: 1) Because we can always later examine whether or not we can extrapolate our findings to other countries, and 2) Because different developed countries have (and have had) immigration policies different from ours, and created for different purposes. Hence, I think that most of our respondents will only be familiar with the Canadian context. ...Also, it seems that we've already begun deliberating only on Canadian questions anyway.

Ok sounds good.

I want to propose an alternation of the question started by Anita.

"Which of the following types of immigrants should be given priority to immigrate to Canada?

1. Family Class 2. Economic Class 3. Refugees/Asylum Seekers 4. Prefer not to answer 5. I don't know "

It sounds like we are given more than one choice, so we can change it to...

"Which reason do you think is the most important for immigrants to be admitted to Canada?

Or we can ask people to rate most important to least important

1. Family reunification 2. Employment opportunities 3. Refugee or Asylum Seeker 4. Other reasons

  __(Please state here)______                    "

Personally I think the first one is better.

Also, I don't think we should give people the choice to not answer, just to make analysis of our data easier and more accurate.

Hi All,

Yes, I agree with Pawel. We should limit this survey question to solely Canada due to the variation of immigration policies for every country. Besides, this is a survey conducted for BC Residents.

Perhaps I was not too clear with my question, I will try to make it more clear this time. Wendy, by asking respondents to rank the level of importance of immigrants is somewhat like my initial question. I think we should ask Canadians to choose which class of immigrants should be given priority since this is an highly debated area in immigration policy. We are interested in finding out which class of immigrants Canadians would agree to seeing more of. This means asking respondents to decide who to favor over the others. For instance, picking Class X over Class Y due to their personal reason Z. I would not include the opportunity for them to state the "other reasons" only because it is hard for us to take account of this variable (at least in this survey) since it varies across respondents. Hence, the "I don't know" or "prefer not to answer" options would probably be more suitable, though I am aware these responses cannot completely act as an alternative to the "other reasons" response, which would definitely be a great option to include for other surveys.

In addition, we should include the "I don't know" and "prefer not to answer" responses because we need to give Canadians the option to choose to not answer since it would be undemocratic and immoral to force citizens to select an answer unwillingly, let alone the potential inaccuracy that could cause! The respondents may have unforeseen reasons that we didn't take into account in the survey or they may not know enough information to answer this question, so it could make them feel uncomfortable by forcing them to answer. The survey will still be accurate despite the presence of the 2 options of not selecting a specific class. *Remember we can program this on SPSS!

Jaime, yes, for sure it's a good idea to take a look at the site you have provided. But many of the categories of potential immigrants fall under the economic class. So I thought instead of listing every category there is, it is more efficient to simply name the broad and more general class there are instead. Please include another class of immigrants to the response if it has not been included, thanks!

(Sorry about this lengthy response by the way!)

Hey,

I'm standing by having the option of "other reasons" as one of the choices for this research question and I don't mind adding in "Prefer not to say" or/ and "I don't know". "Other reasons" don't have to be followed by respondents stating what their reasons are if you feel it's going to be hard to organize, but if they do have other reasons that would be where they would check off. Without this option, as the initial question didn't have, people who immigrate for reasons such as education or love of country's culture.etc(perhaps not our focal study point)are not listed as an option for people to choose. This would result in inaccurate data collection.

Hello all,

I have to agree with the above two posts and say we SHOULD include the option of "other reasons/ prefer not to say" in the survey question. As stated by Wendy, it's crucial that we account for other (z) variables and refrain from assuming that the reasons we list are the only reasons out there.

-Aman

I would agree that we should include a "Prefer not to say" option, but I'm not convinced on the "I don't know" option. Should we really have 2 null options for this question? What do you think of changing "I don't know" to "No group should be given priority" as a different option?

If we go with the question posed by Wendy, and people choose the "Other reasons" option, will there be a follow up question? I believe Prof. Owen said a follow up question will count as one of our 5 questions. I think a follow up be might a waste when there are so many other great questions we could ask.

Sounds like most folks are supportive of a "Prefer not to say" option. With this in mind, and after considering how we can use a preference ordering method (p37 of textbook) in questioning our respondents' preferences, here is my proposition:

Regarding the following three classes of immigrants into Canada, family reunification (FR), economic migrants (EM), and refugee or asylum seekers (RAS), how would you rank the importance of these three classes of immigrants being admitted to Canada?

1.FR<EM<RAS 2.FR<RAS<EM 3.RAS<EM<FR 4.RAS<FR<EM 5.EM<RAS<FR 6.EM<FR<RAS 7.Prefer not to answer