Canadian Immigration Policy: The Effectiveness of the Point System and Other Instruments.

This paper examines the effects of changes in Canadian immigration policy on the occupational composition of immigration. The authors focus on 1967 changes that created a regulatory system, including the point system, that still forms the framework of Canadian immigration policy. They find that the point system provides some control over occupational composition but that its effectiveness in fine tuning is limited by the large number of other characteristics it seeks to control. The authors also find that entry class and source country composition of the inflow have impacts that have swamped the effects of the point system in the last two decades.