Multiculturalism in Canada - Does it Unite or Divide?

[-1=e^ipi]

"Overall, nearly two thirds of working-age (25-64 years) immigrants (65%) had a postsecondary diploma or degree, 6 percentage points higher than their Canadian-born counterparts. Immigrants were more likely than the Canadian-born to have a bachelor’s degree or university certificate or diploma above the bachelor level as their highest educational attainment. The concentration in higher education is more obvious for recent cohorts."

A degree from Pakistan is not the same as a degree from Canada. There are large differences in the quality of education between countries.

[PoliticalAtheist]

You are new so may not have read presious threads that included a study of the prison population of Canada broken down by race. You also missed the refutation of ther Fraser report.

Tip: You will have beter luck in continuing a conversation with shorter posts and fewer sarcastic/rhetorical questions and a more respectful tone.

there was no sarcasm and lack of respect at all... I made no ad hominems... where are you getting this?

the tone that I received though... rejection, appeals to probaility, ZERO citations, conjunction fallacy, argument from silence, burden of proof shifting...

[Michael Hardner]

there was no sarcasm and lack of respect at all...

"seriously? lol unreal "

[dre]

I just read in MH's cite that 2/3s of population growt came from immigrants. That pretty strongly suggests that if there were no immigrants our population would still be growing.

No Canadas birthrate is 1.67, well below the 2.0 that would be required for natural population replacement.

[cybercoma]

Your previous false claims are well-refuted by MH. You are the one that asked for real and measureable effects of Canadian multiculturalism. So far you have:

-Sharia law discussions (no actual implementation)

-Immigrants bring diseases (so do tourists)

-Different languages being spoken is bad (?)

-Vague economic arguments supported by the Fraser report that has been refuted

-Immigrants are less educated than Canadians. False:

"Overall, nearly two thirds of working-age (25-64 years) immigrants (65%) had a postsecondary diploma or degree, 6 percentage points higher than their Canadian-born counterparts. Immigrants were more likely than the Canadian-born to have a bachelor’s degree or university certificate or diploma above the bachelor level as their highest educational attainment. The concentration in higher education is more obvious for recent cohorts."

http://www.cic.gc.ca/English/resources/research/education.asp

I will flip your claim and say, immigration and multiculturalism is making Canada a more educated society:

-on average, immigrants know more about our history, geography and government than the average Canadian. Look it up if you don't believe me.

-IMO, on average, people that know speak more than one language are smarter than those that speak only one language

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_advantages_of_bilingualism

Immigration is also helping to reduce crime in Canada

-crime is linked with education

-immigrants from the largest source countries are under-represented in our prisons

A researched argument backed up with facts and data that can be easily referenced? Nice.

[cybercoma]

You think the Citizenship test is a good indication of how much of a Canadian you are?

I think it's an indication about what people know about Canadian history and culture, a point that you've invoked. Native-born Canadians aren't tested on our history and culture. Naturalized citizens are. So if you want to talk about who knows more about those things, one group is required to learn them before getting citizenship, the other is not. Edited July 11, 2014 by cybercoma

[-1=e^ipi]

MacLeans article - average entering grade is now 85% - a 2% increase over 5 years.

It's called grade inflation...

[-1=e^ipi]

There are other factors that could be significant too.

What if a statistical analysis showed that gay males do better than other groups - would we then fast-track gay males into Canada ? If we're talking utility here, then why should country or religion alone be considered.

People can lie about religion and sexual orientation. It is pretty difficult to lie about which country you are from.

[eyeball]

You realize how childish that sounds, I hope.

Tit for tat I guess.t

Do you have any sense of how ugly so much of what passes for debate around this subject sounds?

[danchessplayer]

it devides,

[hitops]

"type of person" is a consideration but the first discussion would be how to find impactful and significant definitions of "types". It's not possible if the dialogue isn't better, IMO.

People that contribute more economically than they take.

The onus is on you to prove that the US is acting to achieve that goal (for some strange reason) and that these things have happened, and that they have contributed to some decline, and to show the decline.

I don't need to prove anything, the economic data is available in countless places, just need to look at it. It's a plain fact that the US has borrowed far more than any other time in it's history, is in far more debt that ever before, and despite all the borrowing and spending, still has craptastic job growth and employment numbers. It's also a fact that they do not secure their border, which has been documented for the past decade and particularly in the news recently.

What's the risk from immigration ? I didn't wade through his link farm after reading the first little bit of his dodgy post.

The fact that immigrants would be less likely to be vaccinated, and more likely to some from areas with endemic infectious disease is fairly self-evident. You actually need references for this?

http://www.macleans.ca/education/uniandcollege/average-entering-grade-now-85/

MacLeans article - average entering grade is now 85% - a 2% increase over 5 years.

That's the average. You can have far lower marks and get accepted quite easily.

Edited July 11, 2014 by hitops

[carepov]

A degree from Pakistan is not the same as a degree from Canada. There are large differences in the quality of education between countries.

Sure, on the one hand you criticize Canada's universities, on the other hand you praise it.

Guess what, I am sure that some degrees in Pakistan are more valuable than some Canadian degrees.

Either way, I have three points supporting my argument that immigrants are more educated on average than average Canadians. (degrees, citizinship tests, and multiple languages). Isn't it true that first generation Canadians are more educated than the average Canadian?

It is true that new immigrants are earning less, that is one point that supports your stance.

[hitops]

The thing is if we didnt have immigration our population would be receding so there would be little new housing starts if any.

That's only true when you let the market handle housing. We have nothing close to that. By far the largest factors in our housing are government manipulation of banking and lending rules. That's why our housing prices do not even remotely follow immigration rates.

Our standard of life is support in part by the fact we are always building to accomodate an increasing population. Houses, apartment buildings, roads, bridges, retail stores, etc etc. A whole lot of us make our livings from this activity.

Nobody's standard of living is helped by a mountain of lifetime debt....that's what buying a house in Canada means today. We didn't have a home building explosion because of a people explosion. The rate of population increase is static. We had an explosion because the government made credit incredibly cheap. This is an illusion of prosperity, done so we would look better during the crisis. When the bubble bursts, builders and tradesmen will be suffering bigtime. Your excess work today is at the cost of vanishing work tomorrow. In several major markets in the country, home prices are declining. This almost never happens, but it does happen after bubbles. The average Canadian home price is far higher than the average Canadian can gainfully support. They only buy because anyone will give you a mortgage, and on the assumption it will go up forever. It won't, and there will soon be a nasty reality to learn.

In addition to that, in order to provide public services the government is borrowing against the assumption that the population will keep growing, and that tax revenues will keep increasing. The debt money system is basically a ponzi scheme, and tomorrows tax payers are going to be asked to pay OUR bills today. In other words the government has already BANKED and BORROWED against the expectation that the number of tax payers will increase by a couple of percent per year indefinately... which is exactly why they let in the ammount of immigrants that they do.

True in some ways, but not really related to the housing issue. Housing is un-affordable because of cheap credit and low interest rates. But it's a ruse, in a few years people will realize just what a pile of sh_t they are in with their 700K mortgage on a POS in Toronto or Vancouver, which is losing value.

Edited July 11, 2014 by hitops

[Argus]

Argus is simply the best on here at providing actual reasons, and even rationale, for his beliefs about immigration. Those of us who favour immigration and multiculturalism need to acknowledge that his views are reflected in the views of millions of Canadians so to dismiss them out of hand does not help social cohesion.

Thank you. It irritates me how obnoxious and arrogant some people are who support immigration. There seems to be an assumption that only a very few people have any doubts or opposition to our current system, and that none of those objections are legitimate. Many on the Left, which is heavily supportive of immigration, do what they often tend to do, make a policy discussion one of morality. Ie, those who disagree with them are immoral.

As to opposition, this poll http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/03/10/most-canadians-in-favour-of-limits-on-immigration-poll/ indicates 50% of Canadians and 44% of immigrants believe Canada should only take immigrants from some countries, excluding others. 43% of those born in Canada feel we should take immigrants from all countries.

Of people born in Canada, 55% were not worried about the number of immigrants, but 45% were.

Of those born in Canada 65% felt immigrants should abandon cultural values which conflicted with Canadians cultural values.

Edited July 11, 2014 by Argus

[Michael Hardner]

People that contribute more economically than they take.

Right but to assess that you need to find significant factors, which could be... anything really.

Like I say, if they find out that self-reporting homosexuals are the highest earners, will we just fast-track them ?

I don't need to prove anything, the economic data is available in countless places, just need to look at it.

The burden of proof is on the claimant.

It's the grand plan that you set out, to destroy the USA, that I'm wondering about.

The fact that immigrants would be less likely to be vaccinated, and more likely to some from areas with endemic infectious disease is fairly self-evident. You actually need references for this?

I need to see whether immigration increases that risk. For example, another poster pointed out that tourism also opens us to infectious disease. What is the relative risk increase from higher immigration levels ?

That's the average. You can have far lower marks and get accepted quite easily.

Well so far I have shown that it's harder to get into university not easier. If you can show me something that says more students with 60 averages get into Canadian universities these days than in the past, then that would prove your point.

[Argus]

I think it's an indication about what people know about Canadian history and culture, a point that you've invoked. Native-born Canadians aren't tested on our history and culture. Naturalized citizens are. So if you want to talk about who knows more about those things, one group is required to learn them before getting citizenship, the other is not.

The citizenship test doesn't test on culture. It's a general knowledge of history and geography, mainly, with a few side questions thrown in on voting and government. So it might well be that someone who studied for such a test would be more likely to be able to recite the capitals of each province, but that has nothing to do with a the cultural values and identity of the people of Canada and how likely that individual is to embrace Canadian values.

[Argus]

Tit for tat I guess.t

Do you have any sense of how ugly so much of what passes for debate around this subject sounds?

Name something that's ugly and tell me about why it's ugly.

[Michael Hardner]

Thank you. It irritates me how obnoxious and arrogant some people are who support immigration. There seems to be an assumption that only a very few people have any doubts or opposition to our current system, and that none of those objections are legitimate. Many on the Left, which is heavily supportive of immigration, do what they often tend to do, make a policy discussion one of morality. Ie, those who disagree with them are immoral.

There is such a thing as a moral argument, but you have taken pains to lay your argument out on purely factual grounds. Of course, I dispute how pure those facts are, and maintain that your selection of criteria is influenced by your biases but that's just grist for the mill, ie. more to discuss.

I can only argue that so far, since any choice of factors is impacted by the selector's bias.

As to opposition, this poll http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/03/10/most-canadians-in-favour-of-limits-on-immigration-poll/ indicates 50% of Canadians and 44% of immigrants believe Canada should only take immigrants from some countries, excluding others. 43% of those born in Canada feel we should take immigrants from all countries.

Of people born in Canada, 55% were not worried about the number of immigrants, but 45% were.

Of those born in Canada 65% felt immigrants should abandon cultural values which conflicted with Canadians cultural values.

Well, every country has a saturation point. In terms of pure utility, immigration has a limit on that and of course on the types of immigrants that will succeed in Canada. That is not to say refugees but immigrants.

Maybe my entertainment of this idea is more related to which factors would turn out to be significant in determining success/failure. I would guess: age, education, health, ability to speak official languages, and income relative to the country of origin.

[Argus]

Unemployment rates are INCREASED by immigration EVEN THOUGH immigrants have a lower unemployment rate. The important factor though is not immigration though its population growth. Immigration is just how our government achieves that at the present time. They wouldnt need to do that if our birth rate was higher.

Its pretty simple really. I own a business that builds spec homes in the town I live in. If I thought the population was going to shrink I wouldnt build a single one. That means I wont employ anyone, that also means I wont purchase all the materials to build those homes and hire all the contractors I would have. That means that all of those people will have less money to spend into the economy as well. That means OTHER businesses going bankrupt or downsizing as well.

The population is not going to shrink without immigration. It's especially not going to shrink if we only cut back on immigration, as opposed to cancelling it. It's also not going to shrink if we simply change some of the source countries. In fact, if we change the source countries to bring in immigrants who have a higher general income your business will see more customers, not less.

If the average earned income from an immigrant from a particular geographical source area is about $20,000 a year, do you think they'll be buying as many houses as the same number of immgirants from a different source country whose average income is twice as high?

[Argus]

Right ... but it's not a wide open question as to what factors are/should be considered.

Is there absolute proof? Rarely is there absolute certainty in looking for data about government programs. But looking at the stats, well, when immigrants from one geographical area earn, on average, twice as much as those from others, why wouldn't you focus on that region and turn your focus away from the others? The current main source coutnries for Canada seem to mainly produce low income earners. How is this not a bad thing, except to business that wants a lot of cheap, unskilled labour?

[Argus]

I will elaborate on point #2. You are correct, not all Canadians that criticize multiculturalism and feel that our immigration numbers are way too high are xenophobic racist bigot. I certainly do not consider you to be one. However, many are, and certainly almost all Canadian racist-bigoted-xenophobes criticize multiculturalism and feel that our immigration numbers are way too high.

I think we have a very, very, very few people who would fairly be termed 'xenophobic racist bigots'.

I believe the majority of those who are opposed to immigration simply feel themselves outnumbered and economically threatened by vast numbers of 'foreigners' who look, talk, and act differently than they do. As in point one, people feel more comfortable around those who are, more or less like them. When people suddnely find, in their own home town, that they can no longer find jobs very easily, because they can't speak a foreign language, that stores and restaurants are springing up all around them to cater to a 'foreign' clientelle, they can easily feel confused, helpless, and angry.

Most of these people would be friendly enough and welcoming towards 'some' newcomers. But I put it to you that feeling threatened by a huge wave of newcomers is a universal sentiment, and in many countries would have resulted in riots by now, not from the newcomers, but from the angry homegrown citizens. That includes all our main source countries, btw. I'd like to see the reaction in a Chinese city if suddenly hundreds of thousands of Africans and Asians started flooding into town, speaking no Chinese, and carrying on in their old ways.

Canadians have always, by and large, supported immigration, but I wrote once before that if Pierre Trudeau had gone up on a stage before a crowd of voters in 1970 and told them he was going to bring in so many third world newcomers that they'd be minorities in their own city he'd have been lynched on the spot, or at the very least run out of town on a rail.

Similarly, not all immigrants from non-Western countries have the negative stereotypical characteristics that have been assigned to them, including their supposed difficulty or resistance in adapting to Canadian society.

And not all Pintos blew up. Sure, we get a lot of very good immigrants. But a failed immigrant costs a lot in terms of both money and social cohesion and unity. If, for example, 90% of Muslim immigrants oppose terrorism that still means 10% support it, after all. And if we can look at statistics which show that immigrants from one region make half what immigrants from another region do, and are much more likely to be unemployed, then on a macro scale, it seems to make sense to switch our source countries in keeping with those stats.

[guyser]

The fact that immigrants would be less likely to be vaccinated, and more likely to some from areas with endemic infectious disease is fairly self-evident. You actually need references for this?

Im willing to bet it was a tip off for you to go check the facts.

ALL immigrants to Canada MUST have a medical exam before setting one foot in this country.

And before you say 'pfft..any 3rd world Dr can be paid off'.....the Dr MUST be pre-approved by Citizenship and Immigration Canada

And for the record? Visitors dont need one.

Now what were we saying?

[Remiel]

Canada has too much land and too much water relative to the rest of the World to not allow the maximum number of immigrants into the country every year. That, to my mind, is just a geo-demographic fact, edit: whether the rest of us like the results or not.

As far as multiculturalism is concerned, the situation we find ourselves in right now is actually quite skewed by the Temporary Foreign Worker program. Maybe I am wrong but my first instinct is that those people are going to be far less integrated into Canadian culture than regular immigrants. So what we have ended up with a floating population that cannot, by definition, assimilate.

Edited July 11, 2014 by Remiel

[cybercoma]

No, you're missing the point. Let's say you have a pie with six slices, and six people eating it. Four more people arrive, but you have a bigger pie. It now has ten slices. The result is no improement for the people who were already there. The same goes for GDP. A bigger economy but more people does not suggest any great improvement in the economic fortunes of existing citizens. A bigger GDP with the same number of people, would, however.

Except the number of slices per person keeps growing.

Edited July 11, 2014 by cybercoma

[cybercoma]

No. I'm sure that if I study for a bit I can answer a bunch of questions about China and its history. Would that make me Chinese?

I love how you conflate ethnicity with citizenship without even thinking twice about it. Way to play fast and loose with the conceptual framework of your arguments.