Fiscal burdens and knowledge of immigrant selection criteria.

Both scholarly and popular accounts of Canada's relatively non-conflictual immigration politics have attributed substantial power to the selectivity of the country's immigration policy. In this paper, we use new measures of knowledge of the fiscally selective elements of the immigration system to demonstrate that individuals who know more about the system are, in fact, more supportive of immigration, and that this impact is strongest among those who consider themselves on the left. We argue that this is evidence of the progressive's dilemma, showing in particular that knowledge of welfare state-relevant selection criteria such as the Canadian system's discrimination against those with chronic illnesses or those who are older is much more important in determining the attitudes of respondents on the left than those on the right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]