Scotty

Don't get all resentful just because I actually read. You could too, if you weren't being intellectually lazy. They're not all wrong because the Fraser Institute says so. They're wrong because they're wrong. And you won't find any supporting economic or demographic evidence from anyone to show otherwise. Not that you'd bother to read it anyway.

They do this now. They advertise a job at half or a third the going rate, then run with crocodile tears to the government saying they can't find any employees and need to bring them in from India or wherever. The number of temporary workers has also skyrocketed of late, as employers bring in hundreds of thousands of cheap workers to work in the hotel and restaurant industry, among others.

Again, nice idea, but as the Fraser Report pointed out, we have no way of properly screening and processing 250,000+ immigrants each year. Which is why we need something more broadly based. Unless, of course, cut immigration to 100,000 per year as they recommend.

Nice idea. Never happen. We don't even make people return home when we prove marital fraud. Even when there's no question they simply lied, pretended to love someone, married them, and then walked away the instant they were in Canada we let them stay and become citizens.

Oh yes, indeed. You're quite right about the needs of business for wanting workers at the lowest possible wages. I don't think there's any doubt there. You do know business also wants to do away with unions, with minimum wages, minimal benefits, minimum paid vacations etc. I suppose you're also in favour of all those?

Yes, now how do we do that? Given our absolute inability to do so has now extended for decades. Just how do you propose to establish a system which can adequately screen 300,000 people, most of whom are from third world countries were bribery and corruption are endemic, and where educational systems are nowhere near the same as ours? As an example, we give points for a university education. Sounds pretty fair. Except that a university education in Pakistan or Indonesia or Vietnam is nowhere near as good as a university education from France or the UK or Germany. So how do we differentiate?

Says who? Let me ask you this? Would you object to bringing over fifty million new immigrants each year if it were possible? How about ten million? At what point would you ask - "why would we?" Or would you just say that of course you'd welcome ten or fifty million immigrants a year, because to do otherwise would be RACIST.

You see, Smallc, this is one of the differences between you and I. You posted a newspaper story about that, probably not even reading the whole story. I read the story, then went to the Conference Board site and read the report itself. It was written almost like a long opinion piece. It was not a study of any kind, and contained no actual evidence to support its desire for more immigrants to feed corporate Canada's desire for cheap, malleable labour. On the other hand, when I posted a cite you sniffed that you don't ever read anything from the Fraser Institute. I suspect, however, that you don't read anything from ANYWHERE unless it's a short news clip.

We don't need 250,000 immigrants a year and there is no academic or demographic or economic study or data which says we do. The only way to ensure that the immigrants chosen will do better is to be more selective. The selection system will have to be revamped and the economic performance of immigrants should be much more carefully monitored. A second, and more fundamental, change in immigration policy should be to lower the global target for immigration to no more than 100,000 a year. This would represent a significant cut from current levels. If it, together with a better selection system, produced the desired improvement in the economic success of immigrants, it could be maintained. If not, it should be reviewed. - Patrick Grady, Fraser Institute Report on Immigration.

You have a habit of inventing positions and then attributing them to me. I never said a single thing about quotas. I said we should attempt to select our immigrants from those parts of the world which seem to produce the best immigrants. This is an entirely logical position. That is why it's so difficult to discuss these sorts of things. I'm using logic. You're using emotion.

Do you have some sort of citation to that effect? Something about Italians and Irish on welfare or unemployment, say? The statistics are abundantly clear And if they showed the best immigrants were anything other than white you'd be cheering them.

Uhm, because they suck as far as economic performance goes.

For some reason? I think the OP was pretty damned clear on the reason.

Right now, people from one area are greatly outperforming people from certain other areas. The suggestion isn't that we prefer them for any reason, merely that the economic facts lead us to choosing them. And you know what? Let's be honest here. If the statistics said that the best immigrants came from Vietnam and Botswana, and I suggested we should get more immigrants from Vietnam or Botswana, pretty much no one would object. But because the statistics show the best performing immigrants are from Europe, suddenly everyone's eyes bug out at the thought that we should give some preference to WHITE PEOPLE! Even though the preference has nothing to do with their skin colour.

Oh stop crying! They are a resource. They are not anything else! They are potential recruits. Why would you imagine I would have the slightest care or interest in how income disparities would affect foreigners' abilities to go to a good university or get a good education? It's completely irrelevant to who we take in. Our immigration system was not designed to be some kind of welfare office to the third world, to help uplift the poor and miserable. It was designed to recruit, for Canada, the very best potential Canadians. He said, sneer-sneer-sneer. Sigh. You're so bloody tiresome.

If someone comes up with a better means of evaluating what people can accomplish I'd be fine with that. However, it's clear from the stats that people from Europe can accomplish a lot more than people from elsewhere. Because we're clearly not that good at evaluating their abilities. As an example, we allow people to come in based on certain skills that are assessed as being in demand, yet only a minority of immigrants work in the same trade/job in Canada as they had back home. You can continue to focus almost all your efforts in somehow determining my motivations and presumed immorality in making arguments rather than actually dealing with the arguments themselves. It shows in your poor rebuttals. For the record, I believe we are taking in far too many immigrants for no justifiable reason. That would not change even if all the immigrants were from Europe. However, if we're going to have immigration we should at least try to take the immigrants who have the highest likelihood of success.

That word is silly. You should stop using it.

The statistics speak for themselves. Either you accept them or you don't. Toronto is not the only location for Chinese and Asian immigrants. Most, in fact, wind up in BC. And while the latest boat refugees came from Sri Lanka you seem to have forgotten earlier ones. Chinese Boat People

As far as Canada is concerned immigrants are a commodity like any other, and so we should be selecting the best we can find. There is a reason why graduates from Harvard and Oxford are sought after while those from Carleton are somewhat less so.

No I'm not. With regard to judging the application of an immigrant I haven't suggested a single change - though I could. I have simply suggested we should aim our efforts, encouraging immigration, as it were, towards those geographic locales which produce more successful immigrants, and away from those areas that appear to produce the worst. That is, we should select our immigrants rather than having them select us. People seem to forget that there was a time when Canada used to advertise for immigrants abroad. We don't do that now. Why not? What's wrong with advertising in places in Europe which produce solid citizens? What's wrong with doing our best to encourage immigration from those areas?

No doubt there are lots of variables in how long a spark plug lasts, too. That doesn't change the fact that one brand performs twice as well, overall, as the other brand. You still prefer to purchase the other brand. Seems odd to me.

China is our number one source for immigrants. So of course, a number of them are doing well. Unfortunately, as the stats demonstrate, overall, immigrants from China earn near the bottom of the list, less than half what Europeans do. You see the big houses in Markham but you don't see the families crammed into tiny apartments in other parts of the city.

I never offered it as 'the answer'. I merely suggest that it would almost certainly result in a considerable improvement in the economic fortunes of immigrants in Canada. Do you dispute that?

You know, it's not like I'm suggesting we should throw open the doors to anyone and everyone who lives in Europe. I'm not saying we should remove our criteria for judging the ability of a new immigrant to succeed here. I'm simply pointing out that using our current criteria, immigrants from certain parts of the world fare far better here than others. And thus we should attempt to get fewer immigrants from those areas which fare poorly, and more from those areas which fare better. What's wrong with that?

I'm all for finding a defining characteristic for how immigrants succeed. Believe me, I'm all for it! I suspect it begins with language skills and includes a suitable skill set, as well as a cultural background of adaptability, entrepreneurship and determination. Evidently, education is not the key component, as in some of the cites I've already posted Stats Canada has found that those coming in under the "skilled immigrants" program have a higher unemployment rate after we upped the education requirements than they used to. I don't think a masters degree in engineering or whatever is going to get you a good job in Canada unless your language skills are similarly well-developed. I think, in fact, that the higher level of job you aim for, the higher level of language and communications skills are required. We would be far better off bringing in tradesmen with grade eight educations who know how to lay bricks than a bunch of people from third world universities who don't speak English. You can still lay bricks and do most other trades here without a high degree of language skills. In any event, absent this specific to the person measurement what we have to go by is geographic origin. And some geographic locales clearly contain a lot more of this type of person than others do.