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Migrants - What is their true value to Canada?


Go.Leafs

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Canada has signed many international treaties that accept migration and immigration of all people to be a right and not a privilege. Almost all of our ancestors were immigrants. Yet now we look down upon today's immigrants and deny them the same opportunities our great grandparents had. I think this is a bit shameful and unethical.

Even if they create a temporary tax burden, I think skilled and educated immigrants should be granted admission and given one year to prove themselves - sort of "probationary immigration" I guess I would call it. If after one year they cannot be self-sustaining and productive to society, and able to speak English or France, they can be shown the door. My guess is that 80% of these immigrants have value to Canada - even if it is taking the unwanted jobs the rest of us reject.

Canada cannot grow to its maximum potential without more people. Just my opinion.

Edited by Go.Leafs
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Value to Canada or to Canadians? 'Value to Canada' is usually synonymous to 'value to politicians.' Value to Canadians can be happiness (marriage, children, parents, etc.), employment (if the employer is an immigrant), labour access (if the immigr

Self-sustaining, I agree. But as for knowing French or English, many are self-sufficient merchants with a weak knowledge of these languages. If they're paying their taxes, what does what language they speak matter for permanent residency (not to be confused with citizenship, which not all permanent residents are interested in obtaining)ant possesses special skulls and knowledge that can be of value to a Canadian employer, etc. And since tourism falls into this, foreign tourists are of value to tourism companies.

Since people disagree on what 'value to Canada' means, how about we define it as value to Canadians. In other words, if a Canadian provides an official statement that a foreign national is of value to him (happiness, employment, labour access, etc., then the state will recognize that he is of value to Canada since Canada is defined by Canadians not politicians.

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Like most industrialized nations, we have birth rates too low to sustain productivity and economic growth. I was at a symposium last year on BC's demographic issues last year that made it clear my province alone is going to need to import hundreds of thousands of workers over the next two decades.

Unless governments do a lot more to encourage birth rates (you know, massive investment in day care, baby bonuses of a significant amount, that sort of thing) we're going to end up like Germany, having to suck in every kind of immigrant from the lowest skilled upward.

And it's happening already. Whenever I stay in Vancouver most of the cleaners are Latino and Filipino.

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If the goal is to increase birth rates:

1. Improve access to quality trades or professional education for all. People with an unreliable income are not as likely to have children.

2. Establish a common educational standards for various trades and professions and a common labour market agreement with other states. Barriers to employment are not conducive to high birth rates.

3. Better respect the human rights of foreign nationals in Canada. To fail to do so will only motivate their Canadian spouses to emigrate.

Somehow break the language barrier between English and French Canadians. Most Canadians are monolingual and so not as likely to marry other Canadians. For example, a monolingual French Canadian will marry a Frenchman before an English Canadian, and thus increase the possibility of emigration. A monolingual English Canadian likewise is more likely to marry a Briton than a French Canadian and so again be more likely to emigrate. Consider the example just this year of the Britons who was deported for 'taking work away from Canadians' for helping his Canadian girlfriend build her DIY patio. If I remember correctly, that experience alone led them to decide for her to emigrate. In our case likewise, though we were considering my emigration before our incident with the CBSA, that incident has sealed it that I will be emigrating within five years after our child is born.

Just plugging the emigration drain would help to buoy Canada's population decline.

Let's not kid ourselves. Most people place family before country.

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Immigrants like our ancestors helped decimate the environment here. Humans are second cousins to rats.

If Canada's greatest potenial is as much environmental destruction as possible then yes we need more people. Otherwise I am very happy to be in a sparsely populated country. If you prefer more people go live in India or China.

Edited by G Huxley
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Canada has signed many international treaties that accept migration and immigration of all people to be a right and not a privilege.

Really? Name them.

Yet now we look down upon today's immigrants and deny them the same opportunities our great grandparents had.

Oh, you want them to have the "same" opportunities? That would mean no government assistance of any kind, including health care, skills training, language training, welfare, unemployment or pensions, right?

Even if they create a temporary tax burden, I think skilled and educated immigrants should be granted admission and given one year to prove themselves - sort of "probationary immigration"

Why should they create a temporary tax burden? Our great grandparents didn't. And what about unskilled and uneducated immigrants? We get many tens of thousands of those every year.

If after one year they cannot be self-sustaining and productive to society, and able to speak English or France, they can be shown the door.

What if they choose not to go through that door? It can take us years to deport people, at enormous cost through one legal hearing after another.

Edited by Argus
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Since people disagree on what 'value to Canada' means, how about we define it as value to Canadians. I

How about we define it as someone who is paying taxes, that means he or she has to be making enough, given their circumstances, to pay more to the government than they get back in services. If they're not paying income taxes, and get a GST refund, then they're being carried, they're a burden, and we don't need any more of those. We already have enough.

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How about we define it as someone who is paying taxes, that means he or she has to be making enough, given their circumstances, to pay more to the government than they get back in services. If they're not paying income taxes, and get a GST refund, then they're being carried, they're a burden, and we don't need any more of those. We already have enough.

And if you think we already have enough, wait until we all get too old to work anymore, (won't take long now) and want our pensions but there is nobody on the payroll to pay for them. Then we will have even more than enough burden, and it will be us.

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And if you think we already have enough, wait until we all get too old to work anymore, (won't take long now) and want our pensions but there is nobody on the payroll to pay for them. Then we will have even more than enough burden, and it will be us.

And even ignoring the fact that the CPP is paid up and that a lot of us have saved substantial amounts of money, just how is some guy who comes here and DOESN'T MAKE ENOUGH TO PAY TAXES going to be helping fund my decrepit old age?

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And if you think we already have enough, wait until we all get too old to work anymore, (won't take long now) and want our pensions but there is nobody on the payroll to pay for them. Then we will have even more than enough burden, and it will be us.

Smart people planned for their own retirement and didn't expect the government pension to be enough to live on. I'd like to see it abolished completely. People should save for the own retirement. Not depend on government.
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And even ignoring the fact that the CPP is paid up and that a lot of us have saved substantial amounts of money, just how is some guy who comes here and DOESN'T MAKE ENOUGH TO PAY TAXES going to be helping fund my decrepit old age?

That guy you speak of won't, but many others will. And if you look at actual reports of late, apparently not a lot of us have saved a lot of money, but actually are carrying record debt levels.

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Smart people planned for their own retirement and didn't expect the government pension to be enough to live on. I'd like to see it abolished completely. People should save for the own retirement. Not depend on government.

I suppose you would likewise abolish healthcare as well? If you get sick, well, too GD bad for you. Luckily Canadians are smart, and compassionate. Two reasons why it's such a great place to live.

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I suppose you would likewise abolish healthcare as well? If you get sick, well, too GD bad for you. Luckily Canadians are smart, and compassionate. Two reasons why it's such a great place to live.

Canadians are insular and stupid on health care. Health care is becoming the beast that ate everyone's budget. We need to move to a mixed system like the Europeans have.

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Canadians are insular and stupid on health care. Health care is becoming the beast that ate everyone's budget. We need to move to a mixed system like the Europeans have.

Yes mixed system will be best. We keep taking in immigrants that do not pay taxes yet use a lot of Healthcare. Look in the emergency room of any big city hospital. The proof is right there.
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A common labour market would help greatly. It would give foreign nationals the right to work in Canada before giving them any other rights. This would give them the chance to prove themselves first.

I would also propose producing a separate citizenship for immigrants, whereby they would pay less in taxes but have no right to social services except to permanent deportation. This would effectively eliminate any concern over them becoming a burden to taxpayers.

One exception might be to protect the right of a Canadian child to his foreign parent in the case of mixed marriages.

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Another way to increase the population: allow a European-style two-tiered health care system. Many foreign nationals are used to the idea of paying for health care in their own home town and not need to cross the border into another country to do so as we do in Canada.

That would make sense. But none of the other parties would support such a sane policy.

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A common labour market would help greatly. It would give foreign nationals the right to work in Canada before giving them any other rights.

Give it a rest. We're not letting a bunch of foreigners come and work here. You'll have to support your girlfriend yourself.

Edited by Argus
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Elect a coalition government with the Libertarian Party in the mix and you might see it. Even a majority CPC government didn't entertain it.

You want more immigration and higher birth rates (and presumably less emigration), you have to actually make Canada attractive to foreign nationals. Take Hong Kong for example. Few Hongkongese would entertain living in Canada except for the sake of a close Canadian friend or family member who can't move to Hong Kong for one reason or another. My fiancée is a prime example. She refuses to live in Canada for more than three years. Though she'll be able to earn money in Canada, she could earn just as much in Hong Kong. She prefers the food, weather, cultural diversity, and communications and transportation infrastructure of Hong Kong along with its more open market including in healthcare and education. She also feels more comfortable in Hong Kong with much fewer people living in the streets than in Canada. Her only motive for having agreed to stay in Canada is for my parents' sake to give them the chance to adapt.

The only two things she prefers in Canada are housing prices and the cleaner air. That's it. So if you want to attract such a person to Canada, you must open Canada's markets a little more. You must understand too that such a person won't care much for Canadian citizenship except for the purpose of being evacuated together with er husband and child from a foreign country in an emergency, nothing else.

Heck, even I have preferred Hong Kong for many years but was emotionally held back by my relationship to my parents. My relationship (which actually developed quite by accident initially) with a Hongkongese is all it took to make me decide to move there when she wants to.

With all of that in mind, establishing a common labour market might help to attract more people from wealthier places too.

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Give it a rest. We're not letting a bunch of foreigners come and work here. You'll have to support your girlfriend yourself.

What a disgusting comment! Have you no sense of respect for other people that don't fit into 'argus mentality'? Who says we aren't letting foreigners work here? You really should take it down a notch. I know you are anonymous but please show respect for members here.

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