Small town highlighted as example of Canadian immigration benefits

October 14 2009 by Liam Clifford

Brooks, a small town in Canada, has bee rejuvenated by immigration into the area.

A cattle ranching town in Alberta, Canada, has become the unlikely symbol of how immigration into Canada can work to rejuvenate communities.

Brooks had long been an all-white town, filled with farmers, cowboys and their families. The town also had a strong oil and gas industry along with a large meat processing plant, and it was this that caused the recent influx of immigration into the Canadian town.

A decade ago, XL Foods Inc. Lakeside Packers started to seek foreign workers who had recently moved to Canada. The plant had found that they could not find local workers to fill the positions as they were employed at highly paid jobs within the oil and energy sector.

Now, some 60 per cent of the 2,400-strong workforce at the plant are immigrants, drastically changing the demographic of this small town and injecting new life, and of course cash, into the community.

Over time, the immigrants have settled in Canada and locals have adapted to accept the newcomers as part of the community.

The Red Cross has taken measures to encourage locals to understand where the immigration into Canada has come from. The charity has gone so far as setting up a demonstration refugee camp to show how life would have been for the immigrants, from locations like Sudan, if they had not emigrated to Canada.

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