ABSTRACT

Based on interviews with bureaucrats involved in policy work at the Canadian immigration department, this article describes how their work may have influenced the content of policies between 2006 and 2015. In dialogue with historical accounts of bureaucratic immigration policy making in Canada and with concepts from the study of policy work, the findings highlight the importance of maintenance tasks (research, monitoring, and stakeholder management) and identify two pathways of bureaucratic influence: bringing problems to the agendas of decision makers and formulating solutions based on expertise. These results show that bureaucratic influence and the activities of a generally pro-immigration bureaucracy should be further explored as a contributor to Canadian immigration exceptionalism. They also shed a different light on patterns of immigration policymaking during the successive terms of the Canadian Conservative government (2005–2015).

摘要

本文基于对加拿大移民局政策工作官僚的采访，描述了他们的工作如何影响了 2006 年至 2015 年的政策内容。通过对政策工作的研究，研究结果强调了维护任务（研究、监测和利益相关者管理）的重要性，并确定了官僚影响的两条途径：将问题提交给决策者的议程，并根据专业知识制定解决方案。这些结果表明，应进一步探讨官僚影响和普遍支持移民的官僚活动，作为加拿大移民例外主义的促成因素。