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Chinese are big customers for schemes selling foreign residency

economist.com

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Re: Chinese are big customers for schemes selling foreign residency

#121

Post by Tiktaalik »

jseliger wrote: post #49
Tiktaalik wrote: post #4

> But Canada closed its federal programme in 2014 (some provincial schemes, such as Quebec’s, continue). Only mentioned as an aside, but for Vancouverites, this has been very painful. Uniquely Quebec manages its own immigration (let's not get into it) and they have an investor immigration scheme that essentially sells citizenship for a pittance. Of course since persons have freedom of movement there's nothing stoppin…

If we only had a technology that could be used to build more housing units on a given plot of land, we could probably build as many housing units as people want to buy. Until such technologies emerge from the land of science fiction, we'll be stuck with shortages, because the problems are really technical, not legal. https://www.vox.com/a/new-economy-future/urban-sprawl-housin...

Perhaps this sort of sarcastic comment would make sense if we're talking about SF which doesn't build, but we're talking about Vancouver, which actually builds quite a bit of housing, and is currently building multi-unit housing at unprecedented levels not seen in the last 30 years.

The big problem of course that there are real physical limits to the rate of housing development where people have to touch the process eg. inspections, design, labour limits and so 'just add more supply' isn't really a solution when the limited supply you can build are for-sale condos literally being directly marketed overseas and out of the grasp of locals with mere local incomes (Vancouver has pretty much the lowest median income of major Canadian cities).

Re: Chinese are big customers for schemes selling foreign residency

#122

Post by jseliger »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #121
jseliger wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we only had a technology that could be used to build more housing units on a given plot of land, we could probably build as many housing units as people want to buy. Until such technologies emerge from the land of science fiction, we'll be stuck with shortages, because the problems are really technical, not legal. https://www.vox.com/a/new-economy-future/urban-sprawl-housin...

Perhaps this sort of sarcastic comment would make sense if we're talking about SF which doesn't build, but we're talking about Vancouver, which actually builds quite a bit of housing, and is currently building multi-unit housing at unprecedented levels not seen in the last 30 years. The big problem of course that there are real physical limits to the rate of housing development where people have to touch the process…

Do you know anything about supply and demand, or Vancouver, at all? Much of the city is still zoned for single-family only: https://www.thestar.com/vancouver/2019/01/01/2019-could-be-t.... To call this madness is an understatement.

Re: Chinese are big customers for schemes selling foreign residency

#123

Post by sangnoir »

introvertmac wrote: post #6

Peter Thiel wrote about it back in 2014 in his book, Zero to One. We have a different image of China and China has done a great job posing as next superpower but the reality is very different on the ground. Rich Chinese want to get away from China by paying whatever price they can afford, this is not surprising at all!

Would this the same Peter Thiel who bought himself[1] a New Zealand citizenship, just in case things go south in his home country? Sounds like an expert on that playbook.

1. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/indepth/national/how-peter-thiel-...

Re: Chinese are big customers for schemes selling foreign residency

#124

Post by Tiktaalik »

jseliger wrote: post #122
Tiktaalik wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps this sort of sarcastic comment would make sense if we're talking about SF which doesn't build, but we're talking about Vancouver, which actually builds quite a bit of housing, and is currently building multi-unit housing at unprecedented levels not seen in the last 30 years. The big problem of course that there are real physical limits to the rate of housing development where people have to touch the process…

Do you know anything about supply and demand, or Vancouver, at all? Much of the city is still zoned for single-family only: https://www.thestar.com/vancouver/2019/01/01/2019-could-be-t... . To call this madness is an understatement.

Yeah the remaining single family (actually duplex now) zoning hasn't been a restriction on development. In the last several years the City of Vancouver took significant parcels of that SFH area such as Cambie, Marpole, and Norquay and up zoned it to allow for high rise and mid rise residential.

Like I said, Vancouver isn't SF. Even with areas of the city untouched by redevelopment, there's still thousands upon thousands of units in the pipeline being developed in the areas the city has up zoned over the last 10 years. That's just the CoV proper, never mind the huge amounts of development next door in all the surrounding cities.

On top of this, Metro Vancouver is still a young enough that there's massive areas of untouched brownfield and greenfield that are being redeveloped as well, such as Jericho, NEFC and the Squamish lands around Vanier Park.

Re: Chinese are big customers for schemes selling foreign residency

#125

Post by TomMarius »

vkou wrote: post #67
TomMarius wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is not foreign capital but that someone thought that limiting housing construction would be a good idea

Vancouver, SF, Seattle are all going through unprecedented construction booms. There are more active cranes in Seattle at the moment then there are anywhere in North America. This has not stopped housing costs from going through-the-roof. People are buying houses to speculate, new residents (foreign rich, or migrating techies) are buying houses with staggering amounts of money - amounts that existing residents could…

Why do you build houses and not apartment building like we do in Europe?

Re: Chinese are big customers for schemes selling foreign residency

#126

Post by moltar »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #4

> But Canada closed its federal programme in 2014 (some provincial schemes, such as Quebec’s, continue). Only mentioned as an aside, but for Vancouverites, this has been very painful. Uniquely Quebec manages its own immigration (let's not get into it) and they have an investor immigration scheme that essentially sells citizenship for a pittance. Of course since persons have freedom of movement there's nothing stoppin…

Actually QC did implement changes:

- limited country representation to a X% only

- added a law that enforces that immigrants are intending to reside in QC and even now must learn French

- investment amount was raised

Re: Chinese are big customers for schemes selling foreign residency

#127

Post by moltar »

CatThe wrote: post #92
thatfrenchguy wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Uniquely Quebec manages its own immigration (let's not get into it) and they have an investor immigration scheme that essentially sells citizenship for a pittance Their website say 1.2M$ ? That’s a pittance ?

In other words, If you buy one house you can have citizenship.

In QC that’d be 4 houses.

Re: Chinese are big customers for schemes selling foreign residency

#128

Post by blaser-waffle »

oh_sigh wrote: post #63
roywiggins wrote: post #20

Our "First Son-in-Law" has his little hands in this game, too. > the Kushners' company held an event at a ritzy hotel in Beijing to encourage Chinese investments for a development project in New Jersey. > "Invest $500,000 and immigrate to the United States," read a brochure at the event... > A spokesperson for Kushner Companies later apologized for the poor optics, but just two months later, CNN reported that the bus…

What's wrong with that? It's not like that is a secret program that only Kusher has access to. Anyone (with the money) can invest $500k and come live in the US.

In Canada it's $400k CAD.

Open to all -- bring $$$ and drop em in the local economy.

See also: Vancouver housing issues.

Re: Chinese are big customers for schemes selling foreign residency

#129

Post by Balgair »

Aside: A lot of comments here mention various methods of paying for various citizenships. Most of them seem somewhat derisive about these pay for a passport schemes, so to speak.

But, hold up, isn't this a move in the right direction? Sure, it's all 'rich' people that can do this right now, but having people from lots of different countries moving about, having 'table stakes' in many countries, and generally putting cash into these places, that seems to be a 'good' thing to me. Sure, yeah, it could be a lot better for even us proles. But the world being such a place where these 'schemes' can happen at all seems like it's a good thing.

Re: Chinese are big customers for schemes selling foreign residency

#130

Post by rainhacker »

An interesting related incident regarding the role of EB-5 in the financing of Hudson Yards was a top HN post[1] not too long ago.

> Manhattan’s new luxury mega-project was partially bankrolled by an investor visa program called EB-5, which was meant to help poverty-stricken areas

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19644880

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