6 ms·

Canada bet big on immigration. Now it's hitting the brakes

33 points by raydev 2y ago

mneedham 2y ago
https://archive.ph/95Me6 https://archive.ph/95Me6
jmclnx 2y ago
I wonder how many Health Refugees (Retirees) are going to Canada from the US ?
- david-gpu 2y ago
  Good luck immigrating to Canada as a(n old) retiree, unless you have immediate family there that can sponsor you. It's the only path I'm aware of for that sort of candidate.
  - voisin 2y ago
    Simple: pay to enroll at Conestoga College.
    - red-iron-pine 2y ago
      the key word is pay -- which is what they're doing. a quick look at their tuition calculator shows that international students pay roughly x3 for most programs compared to locals. if US boomers want to pay x3 to get access to sub-par quality care, let em. subsidize the costs for Canadian students, and the expensive surgeries for grandpa will have a wait list so long they'll have to go to the US anyways.
    - david-gpu 2y ago
      International students are not covered by public health care services, they need to purchase private insurance [0]. Once they graduate, they need to follow the same process as everybody to obtain permanent residence, and age is a big component of obtaining enough points to be selected. American retirees aren't doing that because it just doesn't make sense for them. [0] https://www.conestogac.on.ca/international/student-support/health-insurance-and-medical-care https://www.conestogac.on.ca/international/student-support/h...
- adventured 2y ago
  The answer is very few. The US historically has a low emigration rate. Currently immigrants are using Canada to try to get into the US, record numbers of illegal border crossings are happening from Canada to the US. https://www.newsweek.com/us-canada-border-migrants-crossing-update-latest-1892708 https://www.newsweek.com/us-canada-border-migrants-crossing-... "Officials for the Swanton Sector in Vermont said there were 1,109 apprehensions in March 2024. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection figures, this is up from 756 in March 2023, and just 61 in March 2022. The March 2024 figure of 1,109 is higher than the total amount of crossings in all of 2022, which was 1,065." "In a post on X, Chief Patrol Agent Robert Garcia of the Border Patrol Swanton Sector said the 1,109 apprehensions last month included people from 40 different countries." "The top three nationalities apprehended were 408 Indian, 323 Bangladeshi, and 170 Mexican nationals," Garcia said.
  - bawolff 2y ago
    Still seems higher in the other direction. According to https://www.irb-cisr.gc.ca/en/statistics/Pages/Irregular-border-crosser-statistics.aspx https://www.irb-cisr.gc.ca/en/statistics/Pages/Irregular-bor... there were 14,000 illegal border crossings between jan-mar 2023. Even dividing by 3, that is higher than your number.
dmix 2y ago
90% of the problems this has generated could be solved by a massive reform of housing law at every level. We're getting hammered by food, gas, etc prices worse than most places. But everything goes back to housing because its by far the biggest expense on every persons list and the speed it's increasing is insane. I guess the US isn't melting down at the speed of Canada because they can still build houses in many places where immigrants first land (the south like Texas). It's way worse here in Canada. Imagine SF but even in the suburbs and small towns basic houses go for millions. The entire country is basically waiting for the current gov to go away so the next one can actually attempt to fix it. It's very depressing and this is 100% contributing to the flight of our best domestic talent to the US more than ever (it was bad enough the last 2 decades).
- adventured 2y ago
  And the US doesn't have universal healthcare. Scaling that type of system up rapidly (while dealing with pre-existing supply constraints) is very difficult to say the least. Rapid immigration will just make every big shortage that much worse, and healthcare is particularly difficult to increase in terms of supply (doctors, nurses, hospitals, etc; just takes a lot of time).
- voisin 2y ago
  > The entire country is basically waiting for the current gov to go away so the next one can actually attempt to fix it. It is wild that the deal between the Liberals and the NDP is constitutional. All it did is disenfranchise Canadians for 3 years. Trudeau should be forced to have his government subject to non-confidence votes - sink or swim on his decisions, and if there isn’t confidence (which seems totally obvious!) then go to an election. Edit: I would love to hear from those who downvoted this. What’s your take? It seems indefensible to me.
  - bawolff 2y ago
    sigh people really don't understand how parlimentry democracy works. Of course supply & confidence agreements are constitutional. Its not even a coalition government, which would also be constitutional. sheesh Edit in response to your edit [i did not downvote you] - for starters this is a really common feature of most parlimentary democracy. It helps mitigate some of the downsides of first past the post & vote splitting (NDP+liberals have > 50% of the popular vote. They are fairly simlar politically, agreeing on many things. Why shouldn't they get to do the things they agree on, since a majority of the country voted for them when combined, presumably a majority like the parts of their platform that are the same) The second thing, is that politics involves compromises, generally it is expected some wheeling and dealing might occur. e.g. MPs from alberta might vote for something that benefits fishermen in Nova Scotia in exchange for NS MPs voting for something that benefits alberta. I dont see anything wrong with that, this is just a more formal version. Last of all, the agreement is non-binding. NDP is allowed to pull out any time it wants with no penalty other than the liberals being mad at them. So it is not like it prevents a non-confidence motion if the NDP is unhappy (for that matter, individual MPs do not have to vote with their party on anything, the only penalty is they might get kicked out of their party. If the MPs don't like treadau they can kick him out anytime they want regardless of what party leadership thinks.
alienicecream 2y ago
[flagged]
- dang 2y ago
  You can't post slurs to Hacker News. We've banned this account. Creating accounts to break HN's rules with will get your main account banned as well, so please don't. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - alienicecream 2y ago
    [dead]
voisin 2y ago
Is it really a “bet” when you make absolutely no provisions for ensuring there is adequate housing, jobs, health care for these immigrants, let alone the rest of society? I guess it is a “bet” the way buying a lottery ticket and hoping for the best is a bet.
- randomdata 2y ago
  Yes, the bet was that the provinces would agree with the action. As you point out, it turns out they did not. You win some, you lose some. 'Tis the nature of betting.
briga 2y ago
I think a lot of this was done with the hope that more immigrants would translate to higher economic productivity, but this simply hasn't been the case. Unemployment rate is 1-2% higher than in the US. GDP per capital is stagnating. Most of the highest skilled workers leave for the US. I don't think the problem is the immigrants per se, but rather our government's addiction to deficit spending and printing money. Not to mention the tacit refusal to enforce anti-trust legislation against the major companies in the country which seems totally corrupt. The number of public sector jobs has ballooned and none of the public services have improved--quite the opposite. Canada needs some major reforms to get out of this mess. To their credit there has been a movement across the country to scrap single-family zoning restrictions and allow more housing development. Which should improve the housing situation but it's still unlikely the housing market can keep up
- voisin 2y ago
  > rather our government's addiction to deficit spending and printing money The deficit spending is clearly to try to buy votes but I think he reading the tea leaves wrong - the average person is way more concerned about inflation, their job, and the economy, and I think this spending is unpopular, even from those who tangentially benefit from the spending!
  - briga 2y ago
    Definitely. The writing is on the wall for the current government. I wonder if there's anyone left that still believes their lies and platitudes
    - Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago
      It is time to for everyone to start believing in the lies and platitudes of the other party! Let the cycle continue.
- bsder 2y ago
  > Most of the highest skilled workers leave for the US. I have been hearing this for years. Capitalism is supposed to increase salaries until that stabilizes. So, why hasn't it?
pseudo0 2y ago
The key takeaways: > There were more than 1 million international students here in 2023, up 245 percent from a decade earlier and 60 percent since 2019. Canada, a country of 40 million, had roughly the same number of international students last year as the United States, a country more than eight times its size. > Immigration Minister Marc Miller said last month that Canada would for the first time set targets for the number of temporary immigrants. He had already announced a temporary cap on undergraduate study permits and increased the amount of money that international students must have to study here. The ministry also barred students in programs run by public-private college partnerships from applying for postgraduate work permits. Some, Miller said, run “the diploma equivalent of puppy mills,” offering poor curriculums in exchange for the prospect of permanent status. This isn't just a housing or infrastructure problem, productivity is also tanking. These strip mall college degrees are effectively worthless, and these programs function as a backdoor mechanism to suppress the cost of low-skill labor. Why invest in automation or equipment when you can just hire more cheap foreign workers?
TMWNN 2y ago
Context: Like the US, Canada allows international students to work. Unlike the US, Canada allows those students to work off campus, up to 40 hours a week. This has caused the rise of an entire industry, in which so-called institutions of higher learning (Lambton, Confederation, and the example the article uses, Conestoga) have 99% Indian "students" that work off campus, destroying the local job and housing markets. The above influx has further stressed an already rickety healthcare system. An amazingly high portion of Canadians don't have a family doctor <https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/despite-more-doctors-many-canadians-don-t-have-a-family-physician-report-1.4611149 https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/despite-more-doctors-many-cana...>. In Atlantic Canada (the four easternmost provinces) it is impossible, repeat impossible, to get a family doctor if you don't have one <https://web.archive.org/web/20190226051406/https://www.thetelegram.com/in-depth/doctor-shortage/what-we-learned-and-what-you-said-about-doctor-shortage-in-atlantic-canada-286436/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190226051406/https://www.thete...>. It's one thing to have shortages in rural areas—that happens in the US too—but Halifax?!? I've heard the same occurs in Vancouver too.
tiahura 2y ago
Your nation and culture are a gift from your ancestors to your descendants. It’s sad that counterculture types have seized power in much of the west and proudly toil to undermine their endowment.
- SleepilyLimping 2y ago
  Canada has neither, though. My parents and their parents assimilated quickly from Eastern Europe, forgot their language, and then set up a system where they pulled up a ladder behind them for housing, opportunity and stability. Boy does it feel great to be constantly shamed for being a white male as the source of our country's problems while not being rich enough to influence the political system like billionaire donors. Boy does it feel great that our industries and political system are completely captured, so they can shame us out of one side of their mouths while making sure their donors who are bought into the housing market (and they themselves, who are too) will never have to worry about their house of cards collapsing.
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
Related news from 3 months: Canada sets two-year cap on foreign students https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68059996 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68059996

33 points by raydev 2y ago

mneedham 2y ago

https://archive.ph/95Me6 https://archive.ph/95Me6

jmclnx 2y ago

I wonder how many Health Refugees (Retirees) are going to Canada from the US ?

david-gpu 2y ago
Good luck immigrating to Canada as a(n old) retiree, unless you have immediate family there that can sponsor you. It's the only path I'm aware of for that sort of candidate.
- voisin 2y ago
  Simple: pay to enroll at Conestoga College.
  - red-iron-pine 2y ago
    the key word is pay -- which is what they're doing. a quick look at their tuition calculator shows that international students pay roughly x3 for most programs compared to locals. if US boomers want to pay x3 to get access to sub-par quality care, let em. subsidize the costs for Canadian students, and the expensive surgeries for grandpa will have a wait list so long they'll have to go to the US anyways.
  - david-gpu 2y ago
    International students are not covered by public health care services, they need to purchase private insurance [0]. Once they graduate, they need to follow the same process as everybody to obtain permanent residence, and age is a big component of obtaining enough points to be selected. American retirees aren't doing that because it just doesn't make sense for them. [0] https://www.conestogac.on.ca/international/student-support/health-insurance-and-medical-care https://www.conestogac.on.ca/international/student-support/h...
adventured 2y ago
The answer is very few. The US historically has a low emigration rate. Currently immigrants are using Canada to try to get into the US, record numbers of illegal border crossings are happening from Canada to the US. https://www.newsweek.com/us-canada-border-migrants-crossing-update-latest-1892708 https://www.newsweek.com/us-canada-border-migrants-crossing-... "Officials for the Swanton Sector in Vermont said there were 1,109 apprehensions in March 2024. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection figures, this is up from 756 in March 2023, and just 61 in March 2022. The March 2024 figure of 1,109 is higher than the total amount of crossings in all of 2022, which was 1,065." "In a post on X, Chief Patrol Agent Robert Garcia of the Border Patrol Swanton Sector said the 1,109 apprehensions last month included people from 40 different countries." "The top three nationalities apprehended were 408 Indian, 323 Bangladeshi, and 170 Mexican nationals," Garcia said.
- bawolff 2y ago
  Still seems higher in the other direction. According to https://www.irb-cisr.gc.ca/en/statistics/Pages/Irregular-border-crosser-statistics.aspx https://www.irb-cisr.gc.ca/en/statistics/Pages/Irregular-bor... there were 14,000 illegal border crossings between jan-mar 2023. Even dividing by 3, that is higher than your number.

dmix 2y ago

90% of the problems this has generated could be solved by a massive reform of housing law at every level. We're getting hammered by food, gas, etc prices worse than most places. But everything goes back to housing because its by far the biggest expense on every persons list and the speed it's increasing is insane. I guess the US isn't melting down at the speed of Canada because they can still build houses in many places where immigrants first land (the south like Texas). It's way worse here in Canada. Imagine SF but even in the suburbs and small towns basic houses go for millions. The entire country is basically waiting for the current gov to go away so the next one can actually attempt to fix it. It's very depressing and this is 100% contributing to the flight of our best domestic talent to the US more than ever (it was bad enough the last 2 decades).

adventured 2y ago
And the US doesn't have universal healthcare. Scaling that type of system up rapidly (while dealing with pre-existing supply constraints) is very difficult to say the least. Rapid immigration will just make every big shortage that much worse, and healthcare is particularly difficult to increase in terms of supply (doctors, nurses, hospitals, etc; just takes a lot of time).
voisin 2y ago
> The entire country is basically waiting for the current gov to go away so the next one can actually attempt to fix it. It is wild that the deal between the Liberals and the NDP is constitutional. All it did is disenfranchise Canadians for 3 years. Trudeau should be forced to have his government subject to non-confidence votes - sink or swim on his decisions, and if there isn’t confidence (which seems totally obvious!) then go to an election. Edit: I would love to hear from those who downvoted this. What’s your take? It seems indefensible to me.
- bawolff 2y ago
  sigh people really don't understand how parlimentry democracy works. Of course supply & confidence agreements are constitutional. Its not even a coalition government, which would also be constitutional. sheesh Edit in response to your edit [i did not downvote you] - for starters this is a really common feature of most parlimentary democracy. It helps mitigate some of the downsides of first past the post & vote splitting (NDP+liberals have > 50% of the popular vote. They are fairly simlar politically, agreeing on many things. Why shouldn't they get to do the things they agree on, since a majority of the country voted for them when combined, presumably a majority like the parts of their platform that are the same) The second thing, is that politics involves compromises, generally it is expected some wheeling and dealing might occur. e.g. MPs from alberta might vote for something that benefits fishermen in Nova Scotia in exchange for NS MPs voting for something that benefits alberta. I dont see anything wrong with that, this is just a more formal version. Last of all, the agreement is non-binding. NDP is allowed to pull out any time it wants with no penalty other than the liberals being mad at them. So it is not like it prevents a non-confidence motion if the NDP is unhappy (for that matter, individual MPs do not have to vote with their party on anything, the only penalty is they might get kicked out of their party. If the MPs don't like treadau they can kick him out anytime they want regardless of what party leadership thinks.

alienicecream 2y ago

[flagged]

dang 2y ago
You can't post slurs to Hacker News. We've banned this account. Creating accounts to break HN's rules with will get your main account banned as well, so please don't. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- alienicecream 2y ago
  [dead]

voisin 2y ago

Is it really a “bet” when you make absolutely no provisions for ensuring there is adequate housing, jobs, health care for these immigrants, let alone the rest of society? I guess it is a “bet” the way buying a lottery ticket and hoping for the best is a bet.

randomdata 2y ago
Yes, the bet was that the provinces would agree with the action. As you point out, it turns out they did not. You win some, you lose some. 'Tis the nature of betting.

briga 2y ago

I think a lot of this was done with the hope that more immigrants would translate to higher economic productivity, but this simply hasn't been the case. Unemployment rate is 1-2% higher than in the US. GDP per capital is stagnating. Most of the highest skilled workers leave for the US. I don't think the problem is the immigrants per se, but rather our government's addiction to deficit spending and printing money. Not to mention the tacit refusal to enforce anti-trust legislation against the major companies in the country which seems totally corrupt. The number of public sector jobs has ballooned and none of the public services have improved--quite the opposite. Canada needs some major reforms to get out of this mess. To their credit there has been a movement across the country to scrap single-family zoning restrictions and allow more housing development. Which should improve the housing situation but it's still unlikely the housing market can keep up

voisin 2y ago
> rather our government's addiction to deficit spending and printing money The deficit spending is clearly to try to buy votes but I think he reading the tea leaves wrong - the average person is way more concerned about inflation, their job, and the economy, and I think this spending is unpopular, even from those who tangentially benefit from the spending!
- briga 2y ago
  Definitely. The writing is on the wall for the current government. I wonder if there's anyone left that still believes their lies and platitudes
  - Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago
    It is time to for everyone to start believing in the lies and platitudes of the other party! Let the cycle continue.
bsder 2y ago
> Most of the highest skilled workers leave for the US. I have been hearing this for years. Capitalism is supposed to increase salaries until that stabilizes. So, why hasn't it?

pseudo0 2y ago

The key takeaways: > There were more than 1 million international students here in 2023, up 245 percent from a decade earlier and 60 percent since 2019. Canada, a country of 40 million, had roughly the same number of international students last year as the United States, a country more than eight times its size. > Immigration Minister Marc Miller said last month that Canada would for the first time set targets for the number of temporary immigrants. He had already announced a temporary cap on undergraduate study permits and increased the amount of money that international students must have to study here. The ministry also barred students in programs run by public-private college partnerships from applying for postgraduate work permits. Some, Miller said, run “the diploma equivalent of puppy mills,” offering poor curriculums in exchange for the prospect of permanent status. This isn't just a housing or infrastructure problem, productivity is also tanking. These strip mall college degrees are effectively worthless, and these programs function as a backdoor mechanism to suppress the cost of low-skill labor. Why invest in automation or equipment when you can just hire more cheap foreign workers?

TMWNN 2y ago

Context: Like the US, Canada allows international students to work. Unlike the US, Canada allows those students to work off campus, up to 40 hours a week. This has caused the rise of an entire industry, in which so-called institutions of higher learning (Lambton, Confederation, and the example the article uses, Conestoga) have 99% Indian "students" that work off campus, destroying the local job and housing markets. The above influx has further stressed an already rickety healthcare system. An amazingly high portion of Canadians don't have a family doctor <https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/despite-more-doctors-many-canadians-don-t-have-a-family-physician-report-1.4611149 https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/despite-more-doctors-many-cana...>. In Atlantic Canada (the four easternmost provinces) it is impossible, repeat impossible, to get a family doctor if you don't have one <https://web.archive.org/web/20190226051406/https://www.thetelegram.com/in-depth/doctor-shortage/what-we-learned-and-what-you-said-about-doctor-shortage-in-atlantic-canada-286436/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190226051406/https://www.thete...>. It's one thing to have shortages in rural areas—that happens in the US too—but Halifax?!? I've heard the same occurs in Vancouver too.

tiahura 2y ago

Your nation and culture are a gift from your ancestors to your descendants. It’s sad that counterculture types have seized power in much of the west and proudly toil to undermine their endowment.

SleepilyLimping 2y ago
Canada has neither, though. My parents and their parents assimilated quickly from Eastern Europe, forgot their language, and then set up a system where they pulled up a ladder behind them for housing, opportunity and stability. Boy does it feel great to be constantly shamed for being a white male as the source of our country's problems while not being rich enough to influence the political system like billionaire donors. Boy does it feel great that our industries and political system are completely captured, so they can shame us out of one side of their mouths while making sure their donors who are bought into the housing market (and they themselves, who are too) will never have to worry about their house of cards collapsing.

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

Related news from 3 months: Canada sets two-year cap on foreign students https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68059996 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68059996