I believe the plurality of evidence, especially in Canada with our 'merit' based immigration qualifications, is that immigrants outpace native born citizens in terms of productivity and earnings. Meaning they would be a net positive for the economy.
Where you would see issues of increase demand pressures (especially on things like housing), is temporary workers and students, which they are trying to crack down on a little bit (probably not enough). Cracking down on both of these does bring some problems. Such as the need to increase funding in order to maintain our quality of education, or let education suffer and hurting our productive capacity 20 years from now. Or in the case of workers, creating temporary shortages of workers or goods and inflationary pressure (which probably would have been terrible a year ago, but there could be worse things right now, such as housing shortages).
In an ideal world to attack the problem we are currently facing, you would probably put pretty strict quotas on new foreign students in the coming years, and increase funding to post secondary to ensure there is not a service drop. While strengthening laws that say companies have to do x level of searching domestically before applying to accept a foreign worker, then create a regulatory arm that just makes it a little bit painful to prove they did, before they even ask for a foreign worker.
It really is fairly close to what the Liberals are currently doing, it is just a weak and tepid response that isn't big enough to have a noteworthy impact on a short timeframe (as is the Trudeau governments nature, correct policy underwhelming implementation)
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