How do we attract new immigrants?

Is Rainy River District a welcoming community?
On Monday evening, my wife and I attended the Festival of India at the Rainy Lake Square. It was a fun event organized by members of the local East Indian community.
Song, dance, and music representative of different areas of India were featured. It made me wonder what had attracted this group to the Rainy River District and how their foods, customs and music had already added to the culture of the district.
Looking about the audience, it was interesting to see that we are very a culturally diverse community.
In many ways, even without the food, the music was creating a similar acceptance as did the food from the Ukrainian, Polish, Italian, Hungarian, Vietnamese and French communities who arrived in the district over the past 100 years. Each group has enriched our community and district.
As a community, we must make the newcomers feel valued and see their needs being met. As a community we have to have the ability to meet the needs of newcomers.
We must be able to support the new community by encouraging our retail establishments and shelves stocked with specific food items.
As a district we must identify employment opportunities and develop affordable and sustainable housing. Are we willing to be positive with understanding the diversity of newcomers in our district?
We need to be able to clearly show educational opportunities and have accessible and suitable health care.
Just as we need to be aware of cultural health issues of first nations, we too must be aware of cultural and health issues of people of different faiths.
As a community, are we able to create positive relationships with newcomers and create social opportunities to meet and share in music, food and ideas welcoming the newcomers into our homes?
Monday evening was an opportunity to meet and experience a different culture of music and dance.
As a community, we all have a role to play in attracting and retaining newcomers to the district.
Welcoming newcomers into the district requires a great deal of planning.
Our aging and declining population adds urgency to attract new immigrants to our area. Leaving the safe havens of our larger cities with their largely intact ethnic populations is as big a step as choosing to leave their original country and come to Canada.
We must make our communities attractive for newcomers to Canada or first-generation Canadians.
We need to begin planning on attracting new immigrants to our area.
It may begin as clearly identifying employment opportunities in businesses and services in the area.