Canuckistani

Far be it for me to defend McD's. But, you're comparing hourly wages to yearly profits. 400,000 people x $2/hr x 8hrs/day x 5days/week x 52 weeks/year = 1,664,000,000 And what's this Jewish shit. You've got to be kidding.

Nope - the 10% should be paying homage to the 75% for helping them make all that money. They got rich off the efforts of the 75%.

I think the prime directive for us at this time is "stop breeding."

So you're a no borders advocate? Do you really think that can work? If we really opened our borders to anyone who wants a better life (and who can blame them), how long would life be better here? Personally I'd be more interested in reining in corporations than giving free rein to immigration.

It's like anything, has its time and place. Know your audience. People that continually swear sound ignorant to me. OTOH, a well placed expletive makes great emphasis - especially if every second word out of your mouth isn't fuck.

Canada does that every day. Is that bad?

Is it possible to have a reasonable discussion about immigration policy in Canada without attributing various evil motivations to your opponents? Although I'm not even sure what immigrant denying means?

Not just when ops are about to close - may be too late by then. But if workers had a share in the operation I think it would be better for everybody - share the pain and share the gain.

They may be happy dispite immigration, since: http://abacusdata.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Immigration.jpg

I don't disagree with you about employers. But I don't expect better from them. If we want to contain their bottom line mentality, then people have to stand up, join a union and vote for govts that balance the interests of business and workers. Otherwise the greedy employers will always outperform the more generous ones. I believe Smith was also for govt regulation to prevent this. Capitalism is sociopathic - it needs to be restrained for the common good. Overdo that restraint and you inhibit productivity too much. Under do it and you get what we're dealing with right now. It takes a lot of intelligence to get it right, and unfortunately we don't seem to be all that smart.

I don't agree. Employer's job is to look out for their interests, unions is to look out for the workers. If the workers won't stand up, they can't expect anything better. And of course governments passing anti-union legislation play a role here too. Obviously the decline of unions has a lot more factors than just immigration. I do think immigration, and importing a bunch of people that will take any job to try to get a start, no matter how poor the conditions, played a role in the decline of the middle class in in unionism.

Apprenticeships and technical colleges are the best in the world. Apprenticeships, by definition are paid. I don't have an immediate link, but I would be very surprised if Germany offered uni for free (including for foreigners) but not technical training.

An influx of people desperate to work and willing to undercut the unions. Also my experience is that Asians are not as familiar with the union movement and so don't support it in the same way. They are more willing to cross picket lines and don't support unions starting up in the first place. And, from what I've seen, many unions that have a large Asian component and thus Asian union leaders play footsie with employers where the union does't actually get the members any benefits.

I believe so for undergraduate degrees at least.

Look at Germany. Post secondary education is free. But, kids are streamed at an early age (grade 5) and have to demonstrate an aptitude for the stream they enter. Uni there is serious business for serious people, no survey courses and jumping around from major to major. The disadvantage is that late bloomers get left out and never really have an opportunity.

I'm pro union. You probably think I'm some right winger, but I skew left a lot of the time. If unions were truly looking out for their members they'd be against mass immigration as well. Part of the decline of the union movement can be attributed to mass immigration. As I asked carepov - 'better how?' Certainly the sectarian violence and terrorism from the Sikhs is a result of immigration in large numbers. We didn't have it when Sikhs were a small minority. Same with the Indo-Canadian gang problems. Certainly crowding and housing prices can be attributed to immigration - not everybody sees that as a bad thing, but I do.

Define better? Vancouver IMO was certainly better, as in less crowded, a more pleasant place to live. The gang problem was much less - in fact right about then it seems to me we had some of the Vietnamese refugees start using automatic weapons to settle disputes - we'd never heard of that before. Air India was in 1985, and the Sikh temple disputes were in full swing. First attempt on Tara Singh Hayer was in 1988, Ujal Dosanjh was attacked in 1985. Houses were affordable. Roads weren't as congested. Unions were stronger and so was the middle class. So it certainly seemed better to me. How much of that is related to immigration is another matter, but some of it certainly is. In migration has transformed Vancouver, not in a positive way IMO. We wouldn't be closing the door to highly trained professionals, we'd only be opening the door to them if we really couldn't create enough highly trained professionals of our own. Which we are not trying nearly hard enough to do. Entrepeneurs come in on a totally different program - we need to tighten that up too because there are so many scams being run there. And Shafirs were let in on a business class permit - no vetting for how well they would fit in here.

Somehow we managed to do it successfully before Mulroney. We can do so again. The way to meet our needs is to look to Canadians first to do so - give them the chance to fill our needs. If we have specific shortages, they could be addressed with temp work permits, and we could then allow those temp workers to apply for expedited pr status after they've been in Canada a while and shown they can succeed. If we don't need workers, we shut down that temp permit process until we do again. Bada bing.

Yes, and what made Canada what it is today is that before Mulroney we opened and closed our doors according to the needs of Canada - ie we based immigration on our needs. Also, at one time we were an agricultural society with lots of land that needed to be opened for farming. The immigrants opened the country they didn't all just sit back east in what was already developed. Those days are gone.

Actually, as a group, immigrants are having trouble catching up, as those studies demonstrate. If you spend a long time in the doldrums you will never catch up. The same is true for Canadian born people,just that they face less barriers to put then in the doldrums in the first place. I don't think we do a very good job of matching immigrants to actual jobs. Family sponsored immigrants is a whole other problem. They become eligible for Medicare after 6 months, and since they are older they will disproportionately make use of it. Medicare is a huge expense. My proposal is that during times of high unemployment we don't need to bring in nearly the numbers of immigrants we have now. But numbers aside, my first concern is providing the proper training for Canadians so that we're not always looking outside of the country to fill specific jobs, while Canadians are un or underemployed. Canadians should come first. Then, if there are jobs we just can't fill because the demand is greater than the people we have available, bring in immigrants matched to a specific job. (The CPC has already started moving in that direction). Cut the family reunification class way back - we don't need to be importing old people. I would allow a generous number of refugees to come to Canada, but ones that are sponsored by the UN, not the ones that come here illegally. My guess is that if we truly put Canadians first, we would not be bringing in nearly the number of people we do now. The one exception is if somebody could figure out how to settle immigrants in the north to build it up economically. But that would take huge govt subsidies, and probably result in something similar to remote native reserves - ie places just dependent on welfare.

Of course courts of law also have their biases.

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/business/immigration+rates+during+recessions+think+tank/6412185/story.html#ixzz1xYEX893J

http://global-economics.ca/immigration-and-the-canadian-welfare-state-2011.pdf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_impact_of_immigration_to_Canada#Decline_in_economic_well_being http://canadianstudiesprogramme.artsandsocialsciences.dal.ca/Files/immlow-income.pdf

Leave the windows open so the dog can breathe. Smash the windows if it seems in distress. -10 is no problem. I've gone back country camping with my dog at temps lower than that and he did fine.

GDP/capita has gone up a negligible amount from immigration. But a natural disaster also increases GDP/capita, nobody is recommending those as a way to prosperity. Immigration is of far greater benefit for the immigrant than Canada. But set that off against all the strains on our infrastructure caused by immigration. The wage depression. And that immigrants since the 1980's have been doing very poorly compared to native born Canadians - this means they draw disproportionately on govt services while paying less taxes for them. In effect we're importing poor people.