US State Department Directs Embassies in Canada, Other Countries to Scrutinize Impacts of Mass Immigration

The U.S. State Department has directed its Canadian embassy, as well as its other embassies in the West, to scrutinize the impacts of mass immigration.

The department sent a dispatch to U.S. embassies in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe last week directing them to report on the effects of mass immigration on public safety and human rights.

A senior State Department official speaking on background to The Canadian Press said the United States is not trying to tell other countries how to govern, but rather is cautioning them about importing people from “radically different” cultures.

In a series of posts on X on Nov. 21, the U.S. State Department said mass migration poses an “existential threat to Western civilization and undermines the stability of key American allies.” It said the department was instructing all U.S. embassies to report on the “human rights implications and public safety impacts” of mass immigration, and urge governments to take “bold action” to defend their citizens against this.

The U.S. State Department said Western nations have experienced “crime waves, terror attacks, sexual assaults, and the displacement of communities” because of mass immigration. It cited incidents such as an Eritrean migrant who sexually assaulted a 16-year-old girl in Sweden but was allowed to stay in the country because a judge ruled the incident was not an “exceptionally serious crime” that warranted deportation.

The U.S. State Department also mentioned how in the United Kingdom, thousands of girls have been victimized by “grooming gangs” in cities like Rotherham and Oxford by migrant men. The U.K. government has said it will be implementing a new child sexual abuse police performance framework, introduce legislation targeting online offending, and place new restrictions on registered sex offenders changing their names.

The U.S. State Department said it supports the “sovereignty of our allies” and “stands ready to assist our allies in solving the global crisis of mass migration.”

In an X post on Nov. 21, U.S. Vice President JD Vance also suggested that a stagnation in living standards in Canada was due to a rise in immigration, rather than to tariffs imposed by the United States. He reacted to a post showing Canada’s per-capita GDP has remained stagnant since 2018, while saying Canada has the highest foreign-born share of the population among G7 countries, which was confirmed by Statistics Canada’s 2021 census.

U.S. President Donald Trump noted during his first term in 2017 that Canada and Australia have a “merit-based immigration system” and said the United States should adopt a similar policy, shifting away from a system that prioritized “lower-skilled immigration.”

Canada’s government announced plans to increase immigration rates in 2020, and further increased those numbers in late 2022, in order to allow Canadian businesses to fill worker shortages. Canada’s population increased from 38 million in July 2020 to an estimated 41.2 million by July 2024. 

In 2024, the Ottawa acknowledged that high immigration levels were putting a strain on housing and health care, and began lowering its target immigration levels through measures such as reducing the number of temporary residents from 6.5 percent of Canada’s population to 5 percent over the next three years.

Immigration Minister Lena Diab said in the House of Commons on Sept. 22 that the government is intent on “ensuring that our immigration system becomes sustainable, as well as intent on protecting our borders.” She also noted that 100,000 fewer international students arrived in 2025 because of a two-year cap on permits introduced in 2024.

Budget 2025 stated that Canada will aim to admit 385,000 temporary residents next year and 370,000 in the following two years, marking a reduction compared to the government’s previous targets. Last year’s immigration plan said Canada would welcome more than 516,000 temporary residents in 2026.

The Canadian embassy in the United States did not respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment before press time.