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Canada Must End Reliance on Cheap Foreign Labor, Minister Says

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Re: Canada Must End Reliance on Cheap Foreign Labor, Minister Says

#41

Post by Kranar »

KorematsuFredt wrote: post #38
KorematsuFredt wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone deeply involved in immigration advocacy in USA I can assure you that the Canadian points based system is terrible. It is the classic case of grass is greener on other side effect.

To elaborate a bit more: The points based system is eventually administered by a bunch of government servant and the "points" are subject to the internal politics of the government. Consider the french and english language proficiency. It is established based on some exam. Now in countries like India there is a vast network of institutes which will help you to beat those tests without having actual proficiency in the…

Not sure how anything you've claimed is terrible. Yes to assess language proficiency people are tested both with a written and verbal exam. How is that terrible? What other means of assessing someone's language proficiency do you have in mind that is better than a written and verbal test?

Also your other points all involve breaking the law, which yes someone can absolutely commit a crime to gain an advantage assuming they don't get caught. I'm not sure how you expect any immigration system to operate other than by having rules and if those rules are broken having penalties for breaking them.

The main criticism I have about the U.S. system of immigration, and why I think Canada does it better is that in the U.S. in the majority of cases your immigration status is often tied to a specific job and if you lose that job you're done. I find that rather disgusting to be honest even if it attracts "hustlers" and "bad asses" as you claim.

Re: Canada Must End Reliance on Cheap Foreign Labor, Minister Says

#42

Post by red-iron-pine »

darth_avocado wrote: post #34
asdfasdfasdf222 wrote: post #22

The real issue is Canada's demographic decline. Immigrants were brought in to fill that gap and pay for pensions and other goodies that expect a growing base of tax paying productive workers. We're not getting rid of these people, they will become citizens if they choose to. Personally, I doubt that any announcement by the government will be anything but a temporary hold, to be returned to high levels post-Liberal el…

Maybe I am misinformed, being in the US I always hear that Canadian points based immigration policy is way better than US and it encourages high skill immigration. Is that not true?

American in Canada.

One of the work permit paths is points-based -- "Express Entry". There are plenty of other ways, and there are programs like the Temporary Foreign Worker (contemptuously referred to as TFWs), who bring in lots of low skilled workers. Lots of Filipino coffee-slingers working at Tim Horton's (a fast food chain), for example.

Immigration also isn't the problem, the problem is the boomers buying up all of the housing, and large corporations (many of which are foreign) buying up the rest. This is combined with Canada's climate and geography -- aka most of the country is uninhabitable in any real sense -- which concentrates the population in a handful of markets where the prices are absurd.

Re: Canada Must End Reliance on Cheap Foreign Labor, Minister Says

#43

Post by michaelmrose »

adventured wrote: post #31
asdfasdfasdf222 wrote: post #22

The real issue is Canada's demographic decline. Immigrants were brought in to fill that gap and pay for pensions and other goodies that expect a growing base of tax paying productive workers. We're not getting rid of these people, they will become citizens if they choose to. Personally, I doubt that any announcement by the government will be anything but a temporary hold, to be returned to high levels post-Liberal el…

> The problem is the policy driving it is bad. Rather than high-skilled workers, we're letting in low-to-mid-skilled young people. The US has been running its immigration system this way for many decades. It's a disaster. With low to modest economic growth, lifting tens of millions of poor, low education, low skill, non-english speakers up out of poverty is almost impossible. You need persistently rapid economic expa…

We aren't getting 10s of millions in the last 20 years the population of illegal immigrants has grown by about 2 million.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/11/16/what-we-k...

The majority speak English especially after living here for 5+ years.

There are more than enough jobs to go around which is why immigrants only have a problem supporting themselves when not allowed to work.

Re: Canada Must End Reliance on Cheap Foreign Labor, Minister Says

#44

Post by BigFnTelly »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #8
canadiantim wrote: post #3

Easy fix. Simply increase immigration to a million+ people per year thereby driving down domestic wages and now voila we have cheap domestic labour.

A less easy fix, but one that's better for everyone is that we all just stop buying mountains and mountains of absolutely useless plastic and digital crap. Sure we need lots of human labour to keep the world going round, but dealing with the obscenity of consumerism is where a better world begins. These are the results [0], a kind of misery and 'poverty' (an 'affluenza') caused by unchecked material indulgence. Surel…

Great read. I'm glad that the author stressed how systemic tech addiction is, and not a moral failure of the individual. It's only slightly ironic that he asked for readers to plug his article on social media, but the word needs getting out.

Re: Canada Must End Reliance on Cheap Foreign Labor, Minister Says

#45

Post by Scoundreller »

darth_avocado wrote: post #34
asdfasdfasdf222 wrote: post #22

The real issue is Canada's demographic decline. Immigrants were brought in to fill that gap and pay for pensions and other goodies that expect a growing base of tax paying productive workers. We're not getting rid of these people, they will become citizens if they choose to. Personally, I doubt that any announcement by the government will be anything but a temporary hold, to be returned to high levels post-Liberal el…

Maybe I am misinformed, being in the US I always hear that Canadian points based immigration policy is way better than US and it encourages high skill immigration. Is that not true?

Chain migration is great imo.

Immigrants arrive with a built-in support system that get them off the ground when they arrive, a safety net and most importantly, someone that they can trust. All in ideal circumstances anyway.

Corporate migration puts immigrants at huge risk of abuse and failure if things don’t go as expected.

A lot of immigration happens somewhere in the middle.

Canada’s points system isn’t that robust, but I guess less problematic than a straight up lottery.

Re: Canada Must End Reliance on Cheap Foreign Labor, Minister Says

#46

Post by frfl »

KorematsuFredt wrote: post #38
KorematsuFredt wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone deeply involved in immigration advocacy in USA I can assure you that the Canadian points based system is terrible. It is the classic case of grass is greener on other side effect.

To elaborate a bit more: The points based system is eventually administered by a bunch of government servant and the "points" are subject to the internal politics of the government. Consider the french and english language proficiency. It is established based on some exam. Now in countries like India there is a vast network of institutes which will help you to beat those tests without having actual proficiency in the…

Isn't green card marriage a thing in USA?

There's also visas for international investors - something like invest $1M USD into a business or create 10 jobs and get a visa, or something along those lines. Perhaps more expensive, but not much different fundamentally than paying someone for a job to get a visa.

Every system has it's flaws.

Re: Canada Must End Reliance on Cheap Foreign Labor, Minister Says

#47

Post by gigglesupstairs »

KorematsuFredt wrote: post #39
maxglute wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was fine, but more importantly borderline sustainable, until post covid explosion in Indian student visas, more than system can realistically integrate in short time line involved. The point of skill based immigration is you drain the brightest (and richest) who can generally pay their way and be net contributor right away (tuition etc). When I was in Canadian uni around the 00s, around explosion of PRC internatio…

To give context some cities in India hold a massive "send off" ceremonies for Indian students going to Canada and they rent a stadium to do so. The are not just sending by truckloads and boatloads but hudrends of flights full of indian students.

Do you have any source for that stadium example? I’m hearing it for the first time and Google didn’t help.

Re: Canada Must End Reliance on Cheap Foreign Labor, Minister Says

#48

Post by goodSteveramos »

gosub100 wrote: post #28
badcppdev wrote: post #2

The world must end reliance on cheap labour or we're always going to have slums next to the factories that make our clothes. Can you have a population of 8 billion humans with something close to a modern lifestyle... we can try I guess

I'm more concerned about the people in Canada being shafted out of entry-level jobs. Who do their government represent, Indians or Candians?

The paradox of globalization is that it benefits the ultra wealthy of every nation but only hurts the working classes of wealthy nations.

Re: Canada Must End Reliance on Cheap Foreign Labor, Minister Says

#49

Post by candiodari »

office_drone wrote: post #29
asdfasdfasdf222 wrote: post #22

The real issue is Canada's demographic decline. Immigrants were brought in to fill that gap and pay for pensions and other goodies that expect a growing base of tax paying productive workers. We're not getting rid of these people, they will become citizens if they choose to. Personally, I doubt that any announcement by the government will be anything but a temporary hold, to be returned to high levels post-Liberal el…

> Immigrants were brought in to fill that gap and pay for pensions and other goodies that expect a growing base of tax paying productive workers. This is not true. 1) Immigrants are not brought in with the goal of topping up the numbers to the existing level, immigrants are being brought in with the intent of tripling the population. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Initiative whose founders are advisors to…

> and don't just route money from young people to old

Doesn't matter. Money represents goods and services. And the young people to provide care to the elderly at the currently expected levels don't exist. Things, even services, that don't exist can't be bought at any price.

People often forget that money is but a proxy for other things. On the small scale of an individual or a family anything can be bought. For a country, the illusion is broken and you have to do economics with actual people, actual land, ... because otherwise prices will rapidly "adapt" and make policy impossible.

Which is exactly the mistake 99% of all governments currently make.

Re: Canada Must End Reliance on Cheap Foreign Labor, Minister Says

#50

Post by betaby »

freedom-fries wrote: post #33

Contrary opinion: well, we like paying less! We get angry on high prices, swan at deals, and then get mad that businesses want to pay less too! Something has to give - either the buyers get shafted, or the workers. I don't believe that margins will be the first to get a cut - margins go to the wealthiest of the bunch who're running the show :)

Canada is very expensive. Cheap labor doesn't help average Joe at all.
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