hitops

Yep. The left does not ask the question 'what is the alternative?', which is critical to evaluating any difficult question. They just ask 'is it perfect?', and if the answer is no, something MUST be done. Even if that something makes it even worse.

Nobody in eastern Canada had volunteered to stop using oil. The loudest opponent use tons of it just like everyone. I used to be baffled by the sheer stupidity of knowingly increasing the share of rail-oil and tanker-oil as a result of opposing pipe. But now I actually think this is a fake ignorance, and perhaps opponents don't really want safer, more sustainable oil. They want more problems, more disasters, more people killed because that gives them the types of headlines that are gratifying to their ideology. It is the exact same phenomenon when Palestinian groups put women in children knowingly into harm's way, or hid behind them, because they value the headlines more than the humans.

http://www.chron.com/news/article/Data-show-Nigerians-the-most-educated-in-the-U-S-1600808.php http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/opinion/sunday/what-drives-success.html?_r=0(see paragraph 8) http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/04/09/a-rising-share-of-the-u-s-black-population-is-foreign-born/st_2015-04-09_black-immigrants-13/

"well receiving additional training" is why a J-1 worked. I'm not looking for a work/training situation, because I want to make full staff wages. It is the same with everyone I know who went to the US for work. While you train, you are paid, but it is training and you are paid doc-in-training wages. Even if I could full in a full-time independent practice making full wages, and also train, once the training is done, you need to leave according to the state department website info on J-1. If you wife is a dentist, I have no idea what exams a state might require them to write. For docs, USMLE is required, I wish it were not so. Neither PERM nor national interest waiver is realistic for docs wanting to work. The problems with those are outlined in that same link. NIW is granted to basically nobody (I spoke with lawyer about this), and PERM is not realistic if you are already employed in Canada. You wife is a dentist and when in the US, was in training (whether training alone, or training AND working). I'm not interested in that, because I am done my training. J-1 will not work for me. NAFTA, also no. NIW and PERM and NIW are basically a shot in the dark and having called many employers, I can tell you that only a minority have a clue what they are, and none expressed any interest in jumping through those hoops. The clearest, most reasonable path as a non-training, full graduate of Canada, the path which every single Canadian doc I know has followed, is to write the exams and apply for H1-B with a job offer. I wish it were not the case, but unfortunately that's how it is. I am highly motivated and routinely make things happen for friends and family when they cannot. I am no stranger to finding a way when needed. Myself, and dozens of other equally high-motivated colleagues who have looked at and agonized over this ad infinitum, have not found a realistic path outside H1-B. The only doc I know who has achieved US full-time employment in the last 10 years without an H1-B, got a green card because his wife was a US citizen. I will take your advice though and call more lawyers. The other issue is just practical, it would probably take me less time and money to just write the exams.

Except those dying fishing villages don't really affect the world food supply, they mainly just affect those villages and shift the supply into the hands of monopolies.That's not good. But you want Canadian fishing village decline to = worldwide catastrophe. It simply is not the case, sorry. The world overall is doing better than ever, including access to food. Maybe the village decline = catastrophe for your personal favourite issue or your situation. Well just say that then. No need to make it into something it is not.

Pipelines are without a doubt safer for people and the environment. This is not controversial.Stopping pipelines does not mean less oil extraction or less use of fossil fuels. It just means the oil goes west by more dangerous rail, and comes in by tanker from the Arab world. Making a decision to delay pipelines is making a decision to put more people and environments and risk, and provide more funding to Islamic dictators, period. You cannot have it both ways.

Ok we're splitting hairs here. You wife was on J-1 because she was in training. Docs in residency or fellowship are also 'fully employed', and earning a salary, but they are training. J-1 is all good when you training. But you don't make the real doc income in training. If you want to do that, you have to finish training, get licensed independently, and start a practice (not training or getting education or working under anybody or doing research or anything similar etc etc), and that is when you need an H1-B, as a doc. No that is not about 'state exams', there is no such thing as state medical exams. That link is for the state licensing body. They all accept the national ones. It says right there in the first paragraph In general, applicants must graduate from appropriate educational institutions, pass national exams, pass the appropriate Texas Jurisprudence exam, and possess good professional character. The national exams are the USMLE's. The jurisprudence exam has nothing to with clinical medicine or medical knowledge, it is about making sure the doc knows the legal side of practicing in Texas. It is a sleeper, like when professionals have to take 'ethnics exams' for a provincial body. Not every state requires the USMLE's or US board exams. But they are require a legitimate work visa. The only work visa a Canadian (who is not dual, and not married to an American) doc can get to practice independently in the US and earn real, full-practice income (not training, etc), is the H1-B. To get this exam, the state department (federal government dept run by Hilary) requires passing the USMLE's. Yep. Here's a rundown of the situation: http://medicalemployers.com/us-immigration-for-canadian-physicians/

So then the answer is yes, you are only thinking of your immediate neighborhood/nation. That doesn't mean the world is getting worse. It just means this one specific group of people you have in mind are. The world overall is getting better, period. A few million Canadians and Americans today feel it is harder to stay in the middle class. Meanwhile tens and more likely hundreds of millions of Chinese and Indians have entered the middle class for the first time, over the same period. Other people matter, not just us. Anyway if what matters to you is wealthy people getting wealthier, and this bad no matter what, then you will obviously not be convinced by arguments of worldwide health and quality of life data. Expanding income gaps are normal, and exactly what you would expect in a world with more prosperity and global trade for everyone. Obviously when the lower rungs move up, the upper rungs move up to. For hopefully obvious reasons, the sheer scaling of economic structure, this means the gap increase as well.

Based on what measurements? By all the traditional ones likes access to food, life expectancy, fetal and maternal mortality, income and education, the world overall is doing better than ever. Drastic improvement in all these categories are especially evident in places like China, India, Bangladesh and numerous African countries. Almost none are worse off compared to 50 years ago, with very very few exceptions (normally places with catastrophic conflict). Overall, in particular the world's poor, are doing better. Life exists outside of Canada and your own personal, immediate concerns. Just because more Canadians than ever feel they are owed a great qualify of life for doing safe, fairly easy, non-stressful office or labor work for 6.5 hours a day M-F, does not mean the rest of the world does.

And then what about after she passed? Here's what the state department says about those on J-1: You may not arrive more than 30 days before the program start date shown on your DS-2019. Upon completion of your exchange program, you have a grace period of 30 days to depart the United States. Did your wife stay in a non-training, non-educational, working capacity on a J-1? There are no 'state exams' for medical specialties or GP's in the US, to my knowledge. There are national ones. Most likely what they mean is that whichever state they were going to, required that they pass the USMLE's (which are national). Some states require this, some don't. Are you still in contact with them? Actually I did speak with a lawyer a few years back, but maybe not the right one.

That's not re-distribution, that's distribution. So no, the right does not redistribute more money into their pockets. Redistributing requires you take it from somebody. Policies of the right, value not taking it from somebody. Yes, people who vote right tend to be more productive and provide more value for others, and thus earn more. The money was not redistributed to them, it was distributed entirely by free will, to them, by the people they provide something to. The reason CEO's can make big bucks, is because you and I want the crap they are selling, and give them huge bux for it. They didn't do a single thing to force us to give them anything. Incidentally, it is the government agencies and public utilities which are the only ones who can actually force you to pay them for anything. People on the left believe that if somebody gets money by forcible removal from somebody else, that's fine. But, bizarrely, if somebody gets lots of money because another person paid them for their goods or services, that's wrong. It's morally backwards. We don't have to address that with government policy. Things that don't add value, go away. Not one single person has a gun put to their head, and is forced to trade on exchanges that permit high-frequency trading. Not one. All who do so, do so by choice. And in fact, more and more people avoid trading on exchanges that allow high-frequency trading. That's how it is supposed to work. It may not be overnight, but a free market pushes those things out. Once an exchange is all high-frequency traders, the traders are no longer winning. They only profit because they can trade against human traders. 'The dole', is orders upon orders of magnitude larger cost than the costs of all white collar (and every other collar) criminals combined, in economic terms. But yes, corruption is a problem. However, the more government controls the economy, the more of a problem it is. It is really very simple - the more control and goodies the government has to give out, the more benefit there is to trying to preferentially gain from that. China exercises way more control over their economy than we do, and has faaaaaar more corruption. I don't think any reasonable person would argue that. Furthermore, they do worse on all the stuff a strong central government is supposed to do well at - environment, quality of life, equality, etc.

False comparison. Black Canadians are almost entirely first or second generation African immigrants. The comparable group in the US would be, unsurprisingly, first or second generation African immigrants. And yes, they do better. Incidentally, African immigrants in the US far outperform African Americans, on average (one exception being Somalians). For example, the rates of graduation for Nigerian immigrants vs African Americans is the same......except that number is for university degrees for the Nigerians, and high school for the AA's. Nigerian immigrants outperform the average, and outperform whites. And all those racist white cops? Apparently they don't bother African immigrants. It's not at all that your behavior and choices determine whether you interact with law enforcement. No.....their racism is so advanced....they can detect and harass African Americans more often than whites based on 'color', but not african immigrants. Quite the trick eh?

To himself and all of us.

Trudeau's conduct in Davos was embarrassing. Sending Ryan Seacrest would given us more serious gravitas.

Yes a very powerful factor. Grandparents for kids is not something you can buy. But eventually enough pressure can change decisions. The argument of 'the levy has held so far, so adding more water should be fine', is not logical.

Most humans without any greater purpose or higher set of ethics or personal morality, will normally choose whatever most immediately benefits and gratifies them, regardless of the long term harm done to others or even to themselves. This is basically the choice those groups you mention make again and again. The thinking is the same as the patient I had who refused to fill his Rx, claiming it was due to cost. Even after we provided him with vouchers for superstore which could be used to cover said cost. "I don't have time, and I can't afford a ride there...." etc etc. Once the social workers informed him that the vouchers could be used for other things (read: smokes), suddenly his objections vanished into thin air, and off he went. What about the cost of transportation? Likewise, suddenly not a problem.

I posted that for a reference to the aboriginal people in the US. Those numbers are clearly better than aboriginals in Canada, for which abundant data is available and I'm assuming you don't need me to tell you those numbers. I thought you were wanting references for my claims that comparable groups do better in the US.

Unfortunately it is. Nurses and pretty much every other kind of professional in and outside of medicine are good to go on NAFTA.....just not docs (for clinical practice). Check it out: http://canada.usembassy.gov/visas/doing-business-in-america/professions-covered-by-nafta.html You mentioned work/study in the above post. So ya that's what J1-1's are for, they are basically training/education visas. So for example a medical student or a specialty resident (who technically yes is doing work, and earns in the range of 40-60K) can go on those. However a fully graduated doc with Canadian-only credentials looking to earn full time, cannot. Even Canadian residents who want to do a fellowship in the US (a type of advanced training between residency and full 'staff'), don't like to go on J1 if they want to eventually work full time in the US, because one of the criteria for a J1 is that after your training, you have to return to your home country for at least 2 years. So if the point of going to the US is for the better wages and better opportunities, J1 is not helpful. My guess is that they completed their USMLE exams. But please if you don't mind, I'd love to know if they did not because I have not heard much about this type of entry. Can you ask them? I would really like clarification, because I have been around dozens of highly motivated, highly competent people, for the last 5-7 years, all of whom have a very large direct interest in the going to the US (docs doing residency) and who discuss it often, who have not discovered this.

People here have offered this advice before, and I wish it were true. Sadly, entering on a NAFTA limits clinical practice to no more than 10% of your work, for physicians. Basically if you go as a researcher or to do teaching, it will work. If not, nope. Right, J1's are only for study. Won't work for practice. I haven't looked into this, but I suspect you can invest in a practice, though likely not operate as a worker in it. Thanks for the suggestion. Trust me, I and my contemporaries have talked many, many times about going to the US to practice and how to do it. It is top of mind for Canadian grads, and discussed all the time. Nobody I know has managed to do it without H1-B (requires USMLE exams), being American, or marrying an American.

http://www.epi.org/blog/2013-acs-shows-depth-native-american-poverty/ I'm hoping you're good on the statscan side, I have to run. Incidentally I am looking forward to the return of the long-form census. Not because I think it's a good idea overall, but it sure is handy for situations like this. Statscan most recent data remains 2006.

Well ya that's the whole issue, they can mobilize capital to meet market demand. In my small world, modern techniques of treatment are available in centers in the 30-50,000 size in the US, which are not available anywhere shy of a half million people in Canada. As far as urbanization, not really the issue. Incidentally I'm not sure exactly what you mean, since a higher % of Americans live in cities vs Canada, just slightly, and about 10x the population density overall.

Americans have far, far more centers with a wide array of treatments, in less densely population areas, than we have. The H1-B work visa in the US, is dependent on the state department and a job offer. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 30% of those who do my job, who graduated in the last few years, went to the US.

I don't have to exaggerate anything, Canada to US immigration for work is public information. But you are correct, I will not pay the new rate. Because again, I don't sit around just let things happen, I'm where I am for a reason, and I can adjust. And to correct lefty misunderstandings, this is not because I laid around until a magic fairy floated by, waved her wand and poof! - ability......poof! - a reliable job! I realize this may be a shock to those of the NDP persuasion.

Not really, if you compare similar groups in US and Canada, they are arguably doing better in the US. For instance if you compare whites on either side or natives on either side, the US comes ahead. You can't compare descendants of slaves because we don't have any. You can compare recent African immigrants however, and they again do quite well on both sides. Other immigrants - winning by far in the US especially groups like Koreans, Indians and Chinese. We don't have the demographic history of the US, but our worst performing group, the natives, remain in the basement by all metrics despite the most generous targeted (at them) support system for any minority in the world. There are other benefits to their system, such as the fact that they can always attract the best and brightest of any nation.

Saying "before-tax income" for somebody making $20K, is redundant presently. There is no difference in before and after tax income at that level. When the Canada Child Benefit comes in, after tax income for that person with kid(s) will actually be higher than before-tax income on the 20K salary. Which is why that is exactly who fills most of them.