6 ms·

An open society, Canada’s best response to immigration

47 points by swsieber 7y ago

swsieber 7y ago
I know the author. Good guy. Level headed and data driven. I found it to be an interesting read. He says he's been getting lots of interesting emails since this piece. Edit: A little more context: this was in response to some other right-leaning piece (if you read the comments on the article you can see references to that).
- emmelaich 7y ago
  Specifically, in response to something like this from Alberto Alesina et al https://scholar.harvard.edu/stantcheva/publications/immigration-and-support-redistribution https://scholar.harvard.edu/stantcheva/publications/immigrat... Immigration is great on balance but it doesn't mean there's not legitimate concerns on number, diversity and education level.
  - emmelaich 7y ago
    Regarding Alesina, there is a "Pepes Seminar" > Paris Empirical Political Economy Seminar, a monthly seminar series co-organized by the Department of Economics at Sciences Po and the Paris School of Economics. which is funny or scary or silly depending your state of mind.
sorenstoutner 7y ago
I think history has shown many times that generally open societies are good for both the economy and for future strength of the country. It is nice to see a well reasoned analysis of specific applications in Canada.
- dirtyid 7y ago
  I generally agree but I do think those benefits are also correlated to a societies ability to support influx of new immigrants. Wealthy, land rich places like Canada of all places should not have problems housing both immigrants and current citizens or rapidly build infrastructure to support increasing capacity needs. But we aren't/can't due to various interests that weren't nearly as entrenched in past histories of explosive immigration, and the friction that results will lead to blowback. E: Canadian immigration also heavily preferences brain draining talent and wealth from other countries, it's obviously in our self-interest. But it also creates losers, both in the developing countries losing out on talent and wealth, but also existing citizens who has to compete with increasingly inflated human resource pool. Again on paper this should be addressable.
- Zarath 7y ago
  What are some examples you'd give? Not trying to refute you, I just can't think of any off the top of my head.
  - RubberbandSoul 7y ago
    It's a tautology. Open societies that handle their openness well are successful. There are plenty of counterexamples; China is doing well despite not being open for immigration and repressing its minorities. Singapore is hardly open. Western countries did well in the 1950s to 1980s with minimal immigration.
jankotek 7y ago
> resettling more refugees than any other country in the world > Since 2017, approximately 150,000 asylum seekers have claimed protection This is pretty low number. Many countries took millions of refugees.
- wisdomdata 7y ago
  australia's yearly intake until recently for around a decade has been more than that.
  - sorenstoutner 7y ago
    The numbers from this website show much lower (not more than 20,000 in any given year since 1982). Where are you getting your data? https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/australian-immigration-humanitarian-intake/ https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/australian-immigration-hum... Note that there is a distinction between refugees (the third column) and total immigration (the second column). Even total immigration never tops 200,000 per year.
  - petre 7y ago
    Too bad they ship refugees off to Nauru and Papua New Guinea where they live in "processing centres". https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-asia-45327058 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-asia...
    - shard972 7y ago
      How about Canada steps up to Australia's magnitude of generosity before telling them how they should manage said generosity.
    - pinkfoot 7y ago
      Too bad the refugees didn't apply for asylum in any number of stable countries they passed through first.
- tempestn 7y ago
  > Canada took in 28,100 of 92,400 refugees who were resettled in 25 countries last year https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-resettled-most-refugees-un-1.5182621 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-resettled-most-refug... Do you have a source for many countries taking in millions?
aledalgrande 7y ago
As an immigrant in Canada (normal process, not refugee) I can say the process is fair, especially compared to other countries (see neighbor). The requirement on language makes sense and also the minimum amount of savings and no dangerous disease. Basically you are set to successfully start out. Just talking about my experience, but after living in other 3 countries, the openness of Canadians to immigrants and the culture that they bring in is astonishing. This is probably why everyone I know that immigrated to Canada had respect for the country from the start. Cannot say the same for most other countries. I feel like the fast (at least in immigration terms) response that the Canadian government gives speeds up the integration and lowers worry about future uncertainty.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  Are you in one of the major cities?
  - aledalgrande 7y ago
    Vancouver
    - em3rgent0rdr 7y ago
      I feel most American big cities are very welcoming to immigrants too, but much less so in rural areas... Do you still feel welcomed in rural areas in Canada?
      - aledalgrande 7y ago
        Haven’t been much, met people from the boonies and they were all friendly. Although easy in my case, nowadays you say “Italian” and mostly everyone thinks pizza-pasta-fashion-boom-done. Also theory of my Canadian friends is that all the anger Canadians might have is taken out at the hockey ice rink! In the end hatred comes from ignorance, big cities are better because people interact and realize humans from somewhere else are in fact still humans.
      - 7y ago
jacquesm 7y ago
On paper Canada is near perfect. But in practice it is a country that is suffering so much from having to maintain continent size infrastructure on the tax base that would match a very small European country that the only way they are going to solve this long term without reducing the size of their territory or falling apart is to import very large numbers of people and hope to integrate them. So far they are quite successful in the first and not so successful in the second. But on paper they excel at both. If you want to see this strategy fail try to move to some small town outside of the top 5 and see how well that integration works in practice.
- andy_bandy 7y ago
  Lots of people who don't pay taxes is not good. "nine of 10 recent Chinese immigrants arrive in Metro Vancouver with enough money to immediately buy homes. But only half hold down jobs during their first five years in Canada, while four of 10 report they’re surviving on low incomes." https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-how-chinese-filipino-and-other-immigrants-differ https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-how...
- flukus 7y ago
  > on the tax base that would match a very small European country What are you counting as very small? They have 3-4 times the population of the like of Denmark, Belgium and Portugal. They're comparable with Spain and Poland, which few people would consider very small European countries. > country that is suffering so much from having to maintain continent size infrastructure This brings some challenges, but infrastructure doesn't scale 1:1 with the land area of a country, 99% of the infrastructure can be on 1% of the land area and serve most people. It's the urbanization level that matters, not the geography.
- cal5k 7y ago
  That's a popular misconception, but flatly wrong. Canada has the 10th largest GDP in the world. It's larger than Russia's and just shy of Brazil, a country with 209M people vs. 37MM in Canada. The vast majority of the country is within 100km of the US border, and frankly we've massively under-invested in critical infrastructure like high-speed rail. Our telecoms routinely claim that prices are the highest in the world because of the sparseness of the country, and yet our telecoms are the most profitable in the world. Same for our banks. No, Canada's real problem is its lack of self-confidence... we still coddle our banks and telecoms, regulating to protect them against foreign competition while failing to enforce competition laws that would prevent anti-competitive behaviour within the country. We seem to be afraid of competing globally on a level playing field even though this would make us better. It's a very frustrating place to be an entrepreneur, particularly if you have anything remotely resembling a libertarian bent.
nutjob2 7y ago
Certain people are always pushing fears about immigrants but the actual experience of big immigrant nations like Australia (30% foreign born) and Canada (25%) show that immigration, including large influxes of refugees, doesn't cause social or economic problems.
- cheez 7y ago
  Unless you let in low quality immigrants (meaning uneducated, prone to violence, etc)
- flukus 7y ago
  You can't buy a quarter acre block in a major city working a low skilled, low wage single income anymore. That's a social and economic problem. Stagnant wage growth in part driven by our immigration system is an economic and social problem. The underclass of workers on student visas being payed below minimum wage to work at 711 or deliver uber eats is a growing social and economic problem. Australia should serve as a warning.
- RubberbandSoul 7y ago
  I don't think that the aboriginal peoples of those countries agree.
- lopmotr 7y ago
  Not all immigrants are equal. Obviously when they're selected for employability as professionals, the results will be good. New Zealand once took a lot of pacific island immigrants which were needed as labor for the protected auto industry and other labor intensive jobs at the time. What we're left with now is a large underclass of people over-represented in crime, unemployment, obesity, lack of education, etc. In the long term, that wave of immigration has surely hurt the country's economy and the existing people's wellbeing.
  - blaser-waffle 7y ago
    Similar to Turks in Germany under the Gastarbeiter program. "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastarbeiter" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastarbeiter"
_bxg1 7y ago
Would they accept an asylum seeker from the United States?
- avocado4 7y ago
  Yes, if you have enough points (young, educated, skilled, self-sufficient).
  - bryanlarsen 7y ago
    IIRC, there are three lanes: immigrant, family reunification and refugee. The OP was probably asking if an American could qualify in the refugee lane, and the answer is no. The first lane is the biggest one and the best one for most; an educated, English speaking American shouldn't have trouble qualifying in that lane.
- blaser-waffle 7y ago
  Going rate, last I heard, for a sham marriage to get a visa is about $15k CAD. There are also investor visas (if you have $400k to drop into the Canadian economy), startup visas (if you can secure funding from a specific set of orgs), and the NAFTA TN visa, which is a rubber stamp visa for US and Mexican workers.
99_00 7y ago
Vancouver fans of Mao Zedong gather to sing his praises, to the horror of fellow Chinese immigrants https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/2017766/vancouver-fans-mao-zedong-gather-sing-his-praises https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article... Former Ontario Liberal cabinet minister headlines pro-Beijing rally near Toronto https://nationalpost.com/news/former-ontario-liberal-cabinet-minister-headlines-pro-beijing-rally-near-toronto https://nationalpost.com/news/former-ontario-liberal-cabinet... It’s all the way with Huawei, as Sabrina Meng Wanzhou’s supporters converge on Canadian courtroom https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/2177384/its-all-way-huawei-sabrina-meng-wangzhous-supporters https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article... Richmond BC mayoral candidate: >“For a long time, Chinese people have been humble, observing discipline and the law. However, the right of equality, happiness and democracy didn’t arrive as expected... >“Only Chinese people can understand what Chinese people want...Today, Richmond politics has finally heard a Chinese voice, Hong Guo.” https://www.richmond-news.com/election-2018/richmond-lawyer-hong-guo-announces-bid-for-mayor-courts-chinese-voters-1.23327431 https://www.richmond-news.com/election-2018/richmond-lawyer-... Richmond BC city councelor: >According to the Sing Tao article, Au said, “the Chinese population in Richmond has increased but their influence hasn’t increased much. People should consider how to make Richmond a Chinese city.” https://www.richmond-news.com/news/chak-au-nobody-can-claim-to-represent-chinese-vote-in-richmond-1.23395002Z https://www.richmond-news.com/news/chak-au-nobody-can-claim-...
hoseja 7y ago
Canada, so very noble in accepting people of all kinds... when it's popular. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93Czech_Republic_relations#Visa_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93Czech_Republic_...

47 points by swsieber 7y ago

I know the author. Good guy. Level headed and data driven. I found it to be an interesting read. He says he's been getting lots of interesting emails since this piece. Edit: A little more context: this was in response to some other right-leaning piece (if you read the comments on the article you can see references to that).

emmelaich 7y ago
Specifically, in response to something like this from Alberto Alesina et al https://scholar.harvard.edu/stantcheva/publications/immigration-and-support-redistribution https://scholar.harvard.edu/stantcheva/publications/immigrat... Immigration is great on balance but it doesn't mean there's not legitimate concerns on number, diversity and education level.
- emmelaich 7y ago
  Regarding Alesina, there is a "Pepes Seminar" > Paris Empirical Political Economy Seminar, a monthly seminar series co-organized by the Department of Economics at Sciences Po and the Paris School of Economics. which is funny or scary or silly depending your state of mind.

sorenstoutner 7y ago

I think history has shown many times that generally open societies are good for both the economy and for future strength of the country. It is nice to see a well reasoned analysis of specific applications in Canada.

dirtyid 7y ago
I generally agree but I do think those benefits are also correlated to a societies ability to support influx of new immigrants. Wealthy, land rich places like Canada of all places should not have problems housing both immigrants and current citizens or rapidly build infrastructure to support increasing capacity needs. But we aren't/can't due to various interests that weren't nearly as entrenched in past histories of explosive immigration, and the friction that results will lead to blowback. E: Canadian immigration also heavily preferences brain draining talent and wealth from other countries, it's obviously in our self-interest. But it also creates losers, both in the developing countries losing out on talent and wealth, but also existing citizens who has to compete with increasingly inflated human resource pool. Again on paper this should be addressable.
Zarath 7y ago
What are some examples you'd give? Not trying to refute you, I just can't think of any off the top of my head.
- RubberbandSoul 7y ago
  It's a tautology. Open societies that handle their openness well are successful. There are plenty of counterexamples; China is doing well despite not being open for immigration and repressing its minorities. Singapore is hardly open. Western countries did well in the 1950s to 1980s with minimal immigration.

jankotek 7y ago

> resettling more refugees than any other country in the world > Since 2017, approximately 150,000 asylum seekers have claimed protection This is pretty low number. Many countries took millions of refugees.

wisdomdata 7y ago
australia's yearly intake until recently for around a decade has been more than that.
- sorenstoutner 7y ago
  The numbers from this website show much lower (not more than 20,000 in any given year since 1982). Where are you getting your data? https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/australian-immigration-humanitarian-intake/ https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/australian-immigration-hum... Note that there is a distinction between refugees (the third column) and total immigration (the second column). Even total immigration never tops 200,000 per year.
- petre 7y ago
  Too bad they ship refugees off to Nauru and Papua New Guinea where they live in "processing centres". https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-asia-45327058 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-asia...
  - shard972 7y ago
    How about Canada steps up to Australia's magnitude of generosity before telling them how they should manage said generosity.
  - pinkfoot 7y ago
    Too bad the refugees didn't apply for asylum in any number of stable countries they passed through first.
tempestn 7y ago
> Canada took in 28,100 of 92,400 refugees who were resettled in 25 countries last year https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-resettled-most-refugees-un-1.5182621 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-resettled-most-refug... Do you have a source for many countries taking in millions?

aledalgrande 7y ago

As an immigrant in Canada (normal process, not refugee) I can say the process is fair, especially compared to other countries (see neighbor). The requirement on language makes sense and also the minimum amount of savings and no dangerous disease. Basically you are set to successfully start out. Just talking about my experience, but after living in other 3 countries, the openness of Canadians to immigrants and the culture that they bring in is astonishing. This is probably why everyone I know that immigrated to Canada had respect for the country from the start. Cannot say the same for most other countries. I feel like the fast (at least in immigration terms) response that the Canadian government gives speeds up the integration and lowers worry about future uncertainty.

jacquesm 7y ago
Are you in one of the major cities?
- aledalgrande 7y ago
  Vancouver
  - em3rgent0rdr 7y ago
    I feel most American big cities are very welcoming to immigrants too, but much less so in rural areas... Do you still feel welcomed in rural areas in Canada?
    - aledalgrande 7y ago
      Haven’t been much, met people from the boonies and they were all friendly. Although easy in my case, nowadays you say “Italian” and mostly everyone thinks pizza-pasta-fashion-boom-done. Also theory of my Canadian friends is that all the anger Canadians might have is taken out at the hockey ice rink! In the end hatred comes from ignorance, big cities are better because people interact and realize humans from somewhere else are in fact still humans.
    - 7y ago

jacquesm 7y ago

On paper Canada is near perfect. But in practice it is a country that is suffering so much from having to maintain continent size infrastructure on the tax base that would match a very small European country that the only way they are going to solve this long term without reducing the size of their territory or falling apart is to import very large numbers of people and hope to integrate them. So far they are quite successful in the first and not so successful in the second. But on paper they excel at both. If you want to see this strategy fail try to move to some small town outside of the top 5 and see how well that integration works in practice.

andy_bandy 7y ago
Lots of people who don't pay taxes is not good. "nine of 10 recent Chinese immigrants arrive in Metro Vancouver with enough money to immediately buy homes. But only half hold down jobs during their first five years in Canada, while four of 10 report they’re surviving on low incomes." https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-how-chinese-filipino-and-other-immigrants-differ https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-how...
flukus 7y ago
> on the tax base that would match a very small European country What are you counting as very small? They have 3-4 times the population of the like of Denmark, Belgium and Portugal. They're comparable with Spain and Poland, which few people would consider very small European countries. > country that is suffering so much from having to maintain continent size infrastructure This brings some challenges, but infrastructure doesn't scale 1:1 with the land area of a country, 99% of the infrastructure can be on 1% of the land area and serve most people. It's the urbanization level that matters, not the geography.
cal5k 7y ago
That's a popular misconception, but flatly wrong. Canada has the 10th largest GDP in the world. It's larger than Russia's and just shy of Brazil, a country with 209M people vs. 37MM in Canada. The vast majority of the country is within 100km of the US border, and frankly we've massively under-invested in critical infrastructure like high-speed rail. Our telecoms routinely claim that prices are the highest in the world because of the sparseness of the country, and yet our telecoms are the most profitable in the world. Same for our banks. No, Canada's real problem is its lack of self-confidence... we still coddle our banks and telecoms, regulating to protect them against foreign competition while failing to enforce competition laws that would prevent anti-competitive behaviour within the country. We seem to be afraid of competing globally on a level playing field even though this would make us better. It's a very frustrating place to be an entrepreneur, particularly if you have anything remotely resembling a libertarian bent.

nutjob2 7y ago

Certain people are always pushing fears about immigrants but the actual experience of big immigrant nations like Australia (30% foreign born) and Canada (25%) show that immigration, including large influxes of refugees, doesn't cause social or economic problems.

cheez 7y ago
Unless you let in low quality immigrants (meaning uneducated, prone to violence, etc)
flukus 7y ago
You can't buy a quarter acre block in a major city working a low skilled, low wage single income anymore. That's a social and economic problem. Stagnant wage growth in part driven by our immigration system is an economic and social problem. The underclass of workers on student visas being payed below minimum wage to work at 711 or deliver uber eats is a growing social and economic problem. Australia should serve as a warning.
RubberbandSoul 7y ago
I don't think that the aboriginal peoples of those countries agree.
lopmotr 7y ago
Not all immigrants are equal. Obviously when they're selected for employability as professionals, the results will be good. New Zealand once took a lot of pacific island immigrants which were needed as labor for the protected auto industry and other labor intensive jobs at the time. What we're left with now is a large underclass of people over-represented in crime, unemployment, obesity, lack of education, etc. In the long term, that wave of immigration has surely hurt the country's economy and the existing people's wellbeing.
- blaser-waffle 7y ago
  Similar to Turks in Germany under the Gastarbeiter program. "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastarbeiter" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastarbeiter"

_bxg1 7y ago

Would they accept an asylum seeker from the United States?

avocado4 7y ago
Yes, if you have enough points (young, educated, skilled, self-sufficient).
- bryanlarsen 7y ago
  IIRC, there are three lanes: immigrant, family reunification and refugee. The OP was probably asking if an American could qualify in the refugee lane, and the answer is no. The first lane is the biggest one and the best one for most; an educated, English speaking American shouldn't have trouble qualifying in that lane.
blaser-waffle 7y ago
Going rate, last I heard, for a sham marriage to get a visa is about $15k CAD. There are also investor visas (if you have $400k to drop into the Canadian economy), startup visas (if you can secure funding from a specific set of orgs), and the NAFTA TN visa, which is a rubber stamp visa for US and Mexican workers.

99_00 7y ago

Vancouver fans of Mao Zedong gather to sing his praises, to the horror of fellow Chinese immigrants https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/2017766/vancouver-fans-mao-zedong-gather-sing-his-praises https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article... Former Ontario Liberal cabinet minister headlines pro-Beijing rally near Toronto https://nationalpost.com/news/former-ontario-liberal-cabinet-minister-headlines-pro-beijing-rally-near-toronto https://nationalpost.com/news/former-ontario-liberal-cabinet... It’s all the way with Huawei, as Sabrina Meng Wanzhou’s supporters converge on Canadian courtroom https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/2177384/its-all-way-huawei-sabrina-meng-wangzhous-supporters https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article... Richmond BC mayoral candidate: >“For a long time, Chinese people have been humble, observing discipline and the law. However, the right of equality, happiness and democracy didn’t arrive as expected... >“Only Chinese people can understand what Chinese people want...Today, Richmond politics has finally heard a Chinese voice, Hong Guo.” https://www.richmond-news.com/election-2018/richmond-lawyer-hong-guo-announces-bid-for-mayor-courts-chinese-voters-1.23327431 https://www.richmond-news.com/election-2018/richmond-lawyer-... Richmond BC city councelor: >According to the Sing Tao article, Au said, “the Chinese population in Richmond has increased but their influence hasn’t increased much. People should consider how to make Richmond a Chinese city.” https://www.richmond-news.com/news/chak-au-nobody-can-claim-to-represent-chinese-vote-in-richmond-1.23395002Z https://www.richmond-news.com/news/chak-au-nobody-can-claim-...

hoseja 7y ago

Canada, so very noble in accepting people of all kinds... when it's popular. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93Czech_Republic_relations#Visa_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93Czech_Republic_...