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An open society, Canada’s best response to immigration

vancouversun.com

41–50 of 63 posts

Re: An open society, Canada’s best response to immigration

#41
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Canada took in 28,100 of 92,400 refugees who were resettled in 25 countries last year https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-resettled-most-refug... Do you have a source for many countries taking in millions?

I am not the OP. When I read that sentence, I thought it meant total refugees settled, not just new 2018 refugee numbers. I would be very surprised if Canada is near the top in total resident refugees. A small country like Lebanon (population of less than 6 million, total area smaller than New York metropolitan area) has 1.5–2 million refugees residing in the country. By some estimates, more than a quarter of the pop…

Agreed; I'm sure there are many countries with far more total refugees. The annual trends do seem newsworthy to me though. If anything it illustrates how much the US annual number has dropped that it's now below Canada. Likewise European countries that were taking much larger numbers of refugees per year are no longer taking as many. Canada has increased its intake slightly under the Liberal government, as the article mentions, but the real change is the reduction by other countries.

Re: An open society, Canada’s best response to immigration

#42
post #10

Certain people are always pushing fears about immigrants but the actual experience of big immigrant nations like Australia (30% foreign born) and Canada (25%) show that immigration, including large influxes of refugees, doesn't cause social or economic problems.

I don't think that the aboriginal peoples of those countries agree.

Re: An open society, Canada’s best response to immigration

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly Canadian points-based system is a non starter with Democrats and some nativist Republicans in the US.

You just have to hope that the new generation is better...

It's very possible that left wing social liberalism has jumped the shark and hard core right wing social conservatism is on the menu going forward. Evidence for this is Trump, states passing ridiculous abortion laws, nativism, etc. That we are switching from the Dionysian to the Apollonian.

Re: An open society, Canada’s best response to immigration

#44
post #25
post #8

On paper Canada is near perfect. But in practice it is a country that is suffering so much from having to maintain continent size infrastructure on the tax base that would match a very small European country that the only way they are going to solve this long term without reducing the size of their territory or falling apart is to import very large numbers of people and hope to integrate them. So far they are quite s…

That's a popular misconception, but flatly wrong. Canada has the 10th largest GDP in the world. It's larger than Russia's and just shy of Brazil, a country with 209M people vs. 37MM in Canada. The vast majority of the country is within 100km of the US border, and frankly we've massively under-invested in critical infrastructure like high-speed rail. Our telecoms routinely claim that prices are the highest in the worl…

I never understood the need to protect a certain class of non-innovative noncompetitive services like banks and telecoms. It just a way to make a few a*holes rich.

Re: An open society, Canada’s best response to immigration

#45
post #23

I think history has shown many times that generally open societies are good for both the economy and for future strength of the country. It is nice to see a well reasoned analysis of specific applications in Canada.

What are some examples you'd give? Not trying to refute you, I just can't think of any off the top of my head.

It's a tautology. Open societies that handle their openness well are successful. There are plenty of counterexamples; China is doing well despite not being open for immigration and repressing its minorities. Singapore is hardly open. Western countries did well in the 1950s to 1980s with minimal immigration.

Re: An open society, Canada’s best response to immigration

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not the OP. When I read that sentence, I thought it meant total refugees settled, not just new 2018 refugee numbers. I would be very surprised if Canada is near the top in total resident refugees. A small country like Lebanon (population of less than 6 million, total area smaller than New York metropolitan area) has 1.5–2 million refugees residing in the country. By some estimates, more than a quarter of the pop…

Agreed; I'm sure there are many countries with far more total refugees. The annual trends do seem newsworthy to me though. If anything it illustrates how much the US annual number has dropped that it's now below Canada. Likewise European countries that were taking much larger numbers of refugees per year are no longer taking as many. Canada has increased its intake slightly under the Liberal government, as the articl…

"Taking" != "Resettling". European countries are still "taking" asylum seekers, but they don't "resettle" them: the asylum seekers show up in the country and request asylum. It's not a good idea to only look at resettlement and extrapolate from that to "total number of refugees admitted".

Re: An open society, Canada’s best response to immigration

#47
post #10

Certain people are always pushing fears about immigrants but the actual experience of big immigrant nations like Australia (30% foreign born) and Canada (25%) show that immigration, including large influxes of refugees, doesn't cause social or economic problems.

Not all immigrants are equal. Obviously when they're selected for employability as professionals, the results will be good.

New Zealand once took a lot of pacific island immigrants which were needed as labor for the protected auto industry and other labor intensive jobs at the time. What we're left with now is a large underclass of people over-represented in crime, unemployment, obesity, lack of education, etc. In the long term, that wave of immigration has surely hurt the country's economy and the existing people's wellbeing.

Re: An open society, Canada’s best response to immigration

#48
post #4

> resettling more refugees than any other country in the world > Since 2017, approximately 150,000 asylum seekers have claimed protection This is pretty low number. Many countries took millions of refugees.

"Claimed protection" != "given permanent residency".

For example, although Sweden got praised for accepting lots of refugee applicants, more than half got repatriated in less than a year.

Re: An open society, Canada’s best response to immigration

#49
post #44
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a popular misconception, but flatly wrong. Canada has the 10th largest GDP in the world. It's larger than Russia's and just shy of Brazil, a country with 209M people vs. 37MM in Canada. The vast majority of the country is within 100km of the US border, and frankly we've massively under-invested in critical infrastructure like high-speed rail. Our telecoms routinely claim that prices are the highest in the worl…

I never understood the need to protect a certain class of non-innovative noncompetitive services like banks and telecoms. It just a way to make a few a*holes rich.

It keeps industries (affecting the currency, in the case of banks) stable. There's only 1 asshole to talk to, when it stops being reliable or the populace gets uppity enough for the political animals to notice.
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