Was. At present nearly every min wage and gig economy position in the country is 99% early 20s males from India taking advantage of being able to enrol in a diploma mill to qualify for PR. The Feds knew of this shady pipeline for years and did nothing because it juiced GDP numbers that otherwise would have revealed a recession.
Even once reputable colleges/universities couldn’t resist starting part-time no-show “hospitality” programs with 0 work and 100% pass rate to siphon tuition as the table stakes for being able to circumvent other immigration streams.
Australia has had the same problem and in the last few years the Australian government has cracked down heavily on education visas, diploma mills, etc. If Trudeau isn't doing it already, I expect Poilievre will. Which means this may turn out to be more of a passing problem.
Unwinding it will be a bit messy: lots of post-secondary institutions have to figure out how run programs with a lot less funding, and what to do with capital projects that no longer make sense in light of greatly reduced enrollment, etc.
The damage done to the average Canadian's view of immigrants will take some time to fade away. But I suspect it will, with time, especially since our traditional immigration system really does just skim the "good" immigrants -- the ones with money and the skills to succeed.
Trudeau's immigration video from December [1] was one of the most dishonest, condescending productions that I've ever seen, basically amounting to, "Yes, we destroyed our previous internationally respected immigration system and imported five million low skilled laborers over a couple years without adding any housing or infrastructure. Yes, that's hurt a lot of you and made you angry. No, we don't think that's a problem. But because you're so angsty, we'll throttle it back a tiny wittle bit over the next year or two before throwing the floodgates wide open again."
Not a shred of anything even resembling self-awareness or humility throughout.
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The only reason I see why it is that way is when other Canadians restrict the supply of real estate (NIMBY) to inflate their own property value. Same for most other democratic real estate markets in the world in the past years, not just Canada, regardless of immigration levels.
Vancouver (the city) is a town where a 2 bedroom condo built in the last 20 years is likely going to run ~$1m, and where some 1 bedroom places go for that. The suburbs are a smidge better but not by much. A house, albeit probably a comically large and stupid one on the outskirts near nothing of flavor could be $1.5m-$2m
If you had a big house in Vancouver, if you are a developer, if you are a certain type of business owner, you were riding high. If you're anyone else, your resume is now one among a thousand for almost any low-med skilled position, and the most viable cities were already! sitting at a ~1% vacancy, which is a real life pressing problem. Immigration numbers are a part of this, but not remotely close to the whole picture.
In some cases the biggest development companies are also foreign and have been extremely present in shaping things https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/expo-86-chin...
For better and worse.
Five million of them.
Be good to see a source for the mechanism behind this.
The student to permanent resident pipeline is an entire booming industry in Canada with a dozen loopholes to exploit. Unless you honestly believe that millions of Indian international students are here to receive a quality education in “hospitality” at a strip mall diploma mill then return home.
Do you really think they ever intended to leave?
It's a literally foreign invasion, just with fraudulent paperwork instead of bullets.
He takes a simple observation and generalizes it instead of working backwards to the fact that Canada is just like the US geographically highly isolated with giant oceans on each side whereas Germany and Europe are a landmass directly connected to other continents.
I highly recommend the books "Prisoners of Geography" (1/2) for anyone interested in realizing how geography silently shapes politics.
Sentiment against immigration is real in Canada. You're comparing refugee numbers when in reality Canada's population grew faster than most of the G7 in 2023 [1]
[1] - https://www.scotiabank.com/ca/en/about/economics/economics-p...
This seems to be very out of sync with the opinions of the Canadians I know, and the recent public issues with heavy immigration of unskilled males from the Punjab.
Those are two vastly different groups even if one contains the other.
Not Germany, Merkel. Merkel Incentivized and allowed admitting refugees at an unprecedented rate.
Firstly, as much as people spouting the same simplistic tune may wish for, by all means the government is not just a single person.
Secondly, Merkel or anyone else who would have been in that position during that time would have simply needed to deal with the fact that there were millions of Syrians bleeding into Western Europe across dozens of different routes and hence in ways which the legally open borders of Europe were absolutely not equipped to deal with effectively.
The fact countries of entry to the EU did not at all fullfil their legal obligations with regards to asylum processing is.... let me guess: Again Merkel's fault right?
With comments like these, you might win some imaginary "Thanks Obama/ Thanks Merkel" bingo you're playing with yourself, but it's really not contributing to any debate about where we pragmatically go from here into a better future.
I'd love to hear more about the latter rather than the former.
Canada's immigration policy is on the whole highly selective, focused on skilled immigrants. The largest category of immigrants is professionals. Immigration laws are enforced and illegal immigration is relatively low. Refugees are admitted, but the government retains control over the numbers, the source countries, which individuals get chosen, etc.
In 2015–2016, Germany admitted close to one million Syrian refugees. Over the same period, Canada took 44,000 of them. There is a never-ending stream of unauthorised arrivals (some genuine refugees, many economic migrants–it can be difficult to distinguish them) crossing the Mediterranean.
The biggest complaint about immigration in Canada is that it is contributing to an overheated property market, locking many younger Canadians out of owning their own home.
But the majority of immigrants to Canada are well-off, educated – so unlikely to get involved in social problems like crime or terrorism, and they tend to integrate well with mainstream society. There are some poorer and disadvantaged immigrant groups who are more likely to experience those problems, but their numbers are smaller. Compare to Europe where the number of poor / poorly educated / socially deprived immigrants is much larger.
So while both Canada and Europe may have some problems with immigration, they are rather different problems.