[Khar]

andyt wrote:

sandorski wrote:

Immigration needs to be viewed in the Long Term for its' Economic Benefit.

Since we allow a new wave of them in every year, these problems you are calling short term will continue. We should be greatly reducing the family class of immigration, being way more selective with the skills class and adjusting the annual numbers up and down according to the annual job figures. We also need to find a way to address immigrants clustering together in a few cities, straining the infrastructure while other communities would welcome them. Find a way to force immigrants to go to those communities or don't come to Canada.

Indeed, but they will be short term for those new immigrants -- they will not continue to be problems for immigrants who have been here a while, or for their children. Sandorski is quite right, immigration needs to be looked at for the long term benefits. If we can reduce the short term problems for those same benefits, certainly, let us do that, but I do not feel that we should necessarily slow down immigration to Canada.

I also disagree heavily with the idea that we should adjust immigration to job figures. All that does is limit the potential for economic growth when we do come out of a recession and depresses us further when we have a ton of new immigrants coming in during each boom. Playing around with immigration rates when the long term of immigration inherently covers a business cycle (I remember I have provided sources demonstrating that by then employment rates are fairly equal) makes little sense to me. Changing how many immigrants we have causes more fluctuations down the road rather than fixing short term problems.

As for clustering, this is a fun topic for developing economics but I doubt anyone would appreciate me rambling on. The problem with trying to provide incentives for immigrants to move elsewhere is that it costs Canadians to do that too. New infrastructure is much easier to create on the borders of Toronto or Vancouver than it is on the outskirts of Guelph or Charolettetown. If people move to places like Toronto, Edmonton, or Victoria, they have access to mass transportation, sanitation and other city services much more quickly than they otherwise would have. It also makes it a lot easier for the market to absorb the new labour, especially since transport and such gets much easier for companies. I would like for us to see more immigration to the parts of Canada which could make the best use of it (Calgary and Edmonton, for example) than I would to Montreal or Vancouver, and would appreciate incentives being provided for people to move there.

Quote:

I really don't know much about immigration, but I've been led to understand that the Canadian birth rate is not high enough to maintain our enetitlement programs, and that's why we need immigration.

The native Canadian population has a negative population growth rate currently, which is expected to level off over time into a plateau. This deviation below the replacement rate is typically seen as just before the 2.1 replacement rate is found.

Yes, immigration is expected to alleviate some of the problems in the long term. One source I provided (and I can likely find it again) quoted a 30% decrease potentially in those problems due to immigration in some form, but we still need to make changes. Personally, I think people simply have to get used to the idea that not only do we get to live longer, but we have to work longer since we live longer too. I already plan to work for as long as possible.

Quote:

The point Andy makes is yes we need immigration.

We dont need 300,000 a year when we have high unemployment,
and we dont need to import grandma and grandpa who pay nothing, contribute
nothing except to the ghetto, and use our social systems.

Keeping in mind that these people may be using our social systems now, but they never had to pay for them before -- they also never had to use our education system, our medical system, any of our policing services and so forth until they came to Canada. I also demonstrated in another thread that for all this family stuff, the participation rate of immigrants in our nation is not much lower than that of non-immigrants, and on top of that these people now do have to pay taxes, either through family or otherwise, and have brought a lifetime of savings, goods and so forth onto Canadian soil and into our system.

Most immigrants coming to Canada either already have some savings or are coming from other first world countries. People need to keep in mind that immigration in Canada has a lot more to do with people coming from France, Japan, or England than is does with people coming from South America or Africa.

Quote:

I'll gripe at the immigrants all I want, but it's kind of counter-logical to blame them for problems and crises that our own wonderful upper class is entirely responsible for precipitating.

I absolutely agree with this part of Thanos' post. I find it kind of odd especially since those most worked up about immigrants coming to Canada are the same folks very willing to ardently argue about how the upper class is screwing us all and we shouldn't blame those on other pay scales as much as we are.

Yet when it comes to a thread about immigration, suddenly immigrants are a massive problem in Canada. Wage inequality plays a larger role for problems in Canada than does immigration.

Quote:

I think my initial posts got moderated - thought I had included excerpts. Doubt if the critics bothered to read the linked articles, which is why I like to include part of them in my posts.

I actually already have. Since one came from a source I have time and again argued with you about when it comes to academic integrity and knowledge, I will go on to the other one which uses the work of Borjas.

There is one chief thing that I need to remind you of -- I have already posted literature comparing immigration between the States and Canada here in the past, and this demonstrated that immigration for Canada and immigration for America (which is what Borjas is an expert on) are very different things, with very different structures and sources of immigrants with very different problems.

As your source says, what is provided is a simplified view on how things work in the American market economy, but that does not accurately reflect how things work in the Canadian mixed economy, which is based heavily off of energy, resources, and other such things.

[andyt]

Khar wrote:

Quote:

I really don't know much about immigration, but I've been led to understand that the Canadian birth rate is not high enough to maintain our enetitlement programs, and that's why we need immigration.

The native Canadian population has a negative population growth rate currently, which is expected to level off over time into a plateau. This deviation below the replacement rate is typically seen as just before the 2.1 replacement rate is found.

Yes, immigration is expected to alleviate some of the problems in the long term. One source I provided (and I can likely find it again) quoted a 30% decrease potentially in those problems due to immigration in some form, but we still need to make changes. Personally, I think people simply have to get used to the idea that not only do we get to live longer, but we have to work longer since we live longer too. I already plan to work for as long as possible.

Unless we keep importing more and more people we'll never solve this problem with immigration. Immigrants also get old and adopt the same breeding rates as Canadians. An when we import their aged parents and grandparents, that just makes the problem worse, not better.

Khar wrote:

Quote:

I'll gripe at the immigrants all I want, but it's kind of counter-logical to blame them for problems and crises that our own wonderful upper class is entirely responsible for precipitating.

I absolutely agree with this part of Thanos' post. I find it kind of odd especially since those most worked up about immigrants coming to Canada are the same folks very willing to ardently argue about how the upper class is screwing us all and we shouldn't blame those on other pay scales as much as we are.

Yet when it comes to a thread about immigration, suddenly immigrants are a massive problem in Canada. Wage inequality plays a larger role for problems in Canada than does immigration.

This is disingenuous. I don't blame immigrants for coming here, I blame our upper class for importing them, which depresses wages and adds to the problems the upper class created. See how that works?

As for Borjas etc. The studies I saw you put up in the past always seemed to be a tangent to what we were discussing. So, show me a study that directly shows that immigration in Canada has not depressed wages in any way in the last 20 years. And one that looks at the same question that Grubel does but comes up with a different conclusion. I really doubt you'll be able to do so,espcecially the last one. So for you to claim my source is wrong, when you have none to counter it isn't right. Nobody else seems to have addressed that simple question - low income people cost the govt more in services than they contribute. That's true for native Canadians as well. The point is that there is no point in importing a bunch more people to also be working poor here, depressing the wages and costing the govt money. Even Grubel makes that point, even tho he's a right wing Fraser Institute type. He says that if we had higher low end wages it would cost the govt a lot less in revenues, would in fact increase govt revenues so we could all pay less taxes. He doesn't look at the social costs part of the equation of course, how it would help to build a more cohesive and harmonious society. And that saves money again in the legal and health systems. It's win win.

[Bruce_the_vii]

Thanos wrote:

Not really. As much as I like to rag on the immigrants what's really fucked up the United States has been all the outsourcing of industrial- and middle-class jobs to the third world. And, as opposed to our wishy-washy Canadian way of doing things, the United States really doesn't provide a gravy train of free goodies for immigrants as soon as they step off the plane; maybe California does, with all this 'sanctuary city' nonsense they've got going for illegals from Mexico, but on the federal level government assistance to immigrants is no where near what we give them when they show up in Canada.

It's one thing to blame them for coming here and "stealing" jobs (which is a crock anyway since 99% of the time they're filling the shitty and lowest-level jobs no one else here wants to take anymore). It's something else altogether to somehow manage to hold them responsible because some greedy CEO's or those evil cocksuckers on Wall Street think it's a cool idea to get rid of as many working North American jobs as possible to 'increase shareholder value'. Or just because they've decided that unions are just too annoying to deal with anymore.

I'll gripe at the immigrants all I want, but it's kind of counter-logical to blame them for problems and crises that our own wonderful upper class is entirely responsible for precipitating.

Oh, millions of immigrants will impact the labour market to be sure but one thing. We are blaming the government, their immigration program, not individual desperate poor people. No one blames the immigrants for trying to get in. When you criticize immigration you have to watch that you are blaming the government. Otherwise the government is scot free of responsibility.

[herbie]

Surprised mine didn't. Wasn't trying to be racist, just basing it on the observable fact there were ZERO Filipinos around here last year, now every fast food joint is staffed exclusively by or mostly by them on work permits.
And as an employer, I post for a network tech and get a measly three resumes locally, none of the applicants even bothered to update the ones stored on the employment agency computer.
Qualifications:
A - Greco-Canadian cooking
B - child care, good with kids
C - ski lift operator. Pumped gas for 7 years.
None had Grade 12.

The clinic is looking for 2 Doctors. Wonder if they applied for that one too.

[Khar]

Quote:

Unless we keep importing more and more people we'll never solve this problem with immigration. Immigrants also get old and adopt the same breeding rates as Canadians. An when we import their aged parents and grandparents, that just makes the problem worse, not better.

No, but it does give us time. Also, as I either mentioned in this thread or the other one, the trend Canada is following has occurred in other nations, where a drop below the replacement rate occurs until we increase to closer to the replacement rate. The fact that we have such a large amount of immigrants means that not only does the population and social structure of Canada have more time to adapt, but also those added people might be why people in Canada are having less children.

In addition, with more immigration tends to come things like population momentum. We also cannot ignore that in the last fifty to sixty years ago, things like women's rights and a reduction of religious influence would not doubt have an impact on population, amongst other things. With such rapid change does come changes to society, and this could simply reflect that. For example, in nations like Romania and Ukraine, coming out of communist rule, there has been numerable social changes which could reflect dropping population, especially considering massive emigration which has occurred from the Eastern Bloc to the rest of the world since then.

Right now, all we can say is that immigration is positive in that added regard, until we find a way to fix it. It might not be an answer, but it's a good crutch, and, in my mind, a good investment for when we no longer need the crutch.

Quote:

As for Borjas etc. The studies I saw you put up in the past always seemed to be a tangent to what we were discussing. So, show me a study that directly shows that immigration in Canada has not depressed wages in any way in the last 20 years. And one that looks at the same question that Grubel does but comes up with a different conclusion. I really doubt you'll be able to do so,espcecially the last one. So for you to claim my source is wrong, when you have none to counter it isn't right. Nobody else seems to have addressed that simple question - low income people cost the govt more in services than they contribute. That's true for native Canadians as well. The point is that there is no point in importing a bunch more people to also be working poor here, depressing the wages and costing the govt money. Even Grubel makes that point, even tho he's a right wing Fraser Institute type. He says that if we had higher low end wages it would cost the govt a lot less in revenues, would in fact increase govt revenues so we could all pay less taxes. He doesn't look at the social costs part of the equation of course, how it would help to build a more cohesive and harmonious society. And that saves money again in the legal and health systems. It's win win.

I showed you once again in the other thread some of my sources. I also demonstrated that you have fallen back on the same sources which had the same issues as last time, expecting them to be accepted.

Here's the thing, andyt, I have provided you numerable sources as to the reason I believe why I do. In other threads, it's gone from government sources to the ones I have recently linked you too. In the papers provided, the result has been the same -- GDP increase, wages increase in the long term, and immigrants become an economically positive factor in the long-term. It's not that I haven't been arguing with my points, it's just that I have now reiterated them so many times and have disproved so many of your sources "information" now that it's somewhat pointless to do it again and expect a different result. That's supposedly the definition of insanity.

The thing is that, no matter how you look at it, a questionable source should be taken with loads of salt. As I stated above, Harper is a university trained economist who disagrees with that position. How come his words cannot be accepted? How come you do not accept his words? He is a source, is he not? He is an economist, no? Has he not also been involved in numerous immigration reforms, and lead from prestigious government positions? Why have you not responded to the fact that he and his party support our current immigration position? How come your response does not reflect his positions? How is his word any less sound than your sources?

Because I already said he was a questionable source, and said why? Because in this case, it was not a problem agreeing with me on that one?

On this site, many claims have come up where the source has been questionable and I have argued them. That there is no gay gene, an announcement coming from a religious site dedicated to reducing the existence of homosexuality in our world. That Romanians love communism, from a tainted poll taken by people who had never experienced communism in Romania, which occurred before they were born. If an article is questionable, that is reason enough for people to question remarks taken thereof.

If something like this is true, than you can find a real, relevant source, academic or government-based, which can corroborate what you are saying here. I have already covered Borjas in the other thread, who is an excellent academic but who's use as a reference does not work in this context. When I write, I consider a source as to whether or not I would include it as a source in my papers for topics like this. I would not include the Fraser Insitute, Immigration Watch, and so forth, for the reasons I have already provided you, more than once, because my words would be suspect. I hold myself to the same level of criticism and scrutiny as I hold you andyt, and I have come out against others for the use of questionable sources before.