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I believe he meant a net value. If he made $5 but cost $25 in services, it would be a net loss of $20. But if it was the other way around he made $10 but incurred $5 of service, it would result in a net $5 net gain.

   

Fail - Reducto ad absurdum

I never said that all immigrants are rich, just the ones I know are doing just fine. I realize it is anecdotal, but I have never met immigrants that you and Grubel appear to think constitute the majority of immigrants. I have no doubt that many immigrants do come here and find it tough - but just as the Irish, the Ukrainians and everyone else from the 19th and 20th centuries, they work long and hard doing jobs most Canadians refuse to and succeed after time. Very few immigrants come to Canada and are suddenly prosperous.

With your assumptions that most immigrants are a drain on our society, perhaps we should only let in people already making the Canadian median salary as immigrants - and guess how many people making that kind of money are willing to uproot their family, move to another country with colder weather, for uncertain prospects, etc.

The answer is next to none.

What people like Grubel forget is that all those European imigrants who came here in the 19th and 20th centuries had very little in the way of skills, wealth or anything else. People come to Canada now for the same reason they always did - so they and their children can have a better life than they had in the old country.

You and Grubel can pine wistfully for the days when Europeans were our #1 source of immigrants, but many of them simply aren't interested in coming to Canada these days - yes there are still some willing to come (as evidenced by Eyebrock and Brenda), but nowhere in the numbers they used to (we had several million come to Canada in less than a decade before WW1 for example).




Reducto ad absurdum again...if that's all you've got, stop wasting my time.

   

I don't see it that way - nannies come from the Philippines now instead of England, and cabbies come from India instead of Europe, but immigrants are still doing a lot of the same jobs they did in previous generations.

   

Exactly. This paper is saying we should keep out immigrants because their tax revenues don't pay for their social services, but it ignores that the money they spend drives business profits, which are also taxed. Then andyandy chimed in with "even so, they don't provide as much as domestics do", to which I replied "Who cares? Net positive is still positive". So what's your beef, OTI? I never said "+$5 - $25 = positive. I think I pretty clearly implied the +$5 was net. You don't walk away from a business venture that generates net benefits just because those benefits aren't as large as some other business venture.

   

You're just trying to deny what Statistics Canada shows. Immigrants pre mid eighties did better than native born Canadians, after that the trend reversed. You can use all the personal anecdotes about how you don't know any of those immigrants Gruebel is talking about, but it doesn't change the basic data. Lots of people have commented on this, not just that bastard Gruebel.

You say my argument about immigrants contributing is reducto ad absurdum - sure it is. But what's your argument? If immigrants are a net benefit to Canada, no matter what their sills are, because they consume shit, it makes sense to import as many of them as possible. If not, if it's way more complex than that, we should be choosing only those immigrants who actually are a net benefit to us. And we should have a flexible enough policy that changes the number we take in depending on economic conditions.

Gruebel has suggested the way for immigration is to expand the temp work visa program. If employers really need people they can bring them in on the visa program. Guaranteed match up between immigrant and a job. Then, after a couple of two year visas, if things have worked out for the immigrant, they've remained employed and not committed any crimes, s/he can apply for pr status, which would readily be available because they've shown then can contribute to Canada. 3 years of pr and they can apply for citizenship. Makes sense to me.

   

Right about the time Reaganomics arrived on the scene and started sawing the rungs off the bottom of the ladder. Coincendence? It's not the quality of immigrant that's changed, it's the labour market.

   

Makes sense to me too. Again, the devil is in the details tho.
What's in it for the worker when the boss turns out to be an ass? Can they quit their job when they are underpaid or not paid at all? Do they have to leave the country when the boss kicks them out?
If you don't build a safety net for your temp-workers, you build modern day slavery.

   

Even the ones who come in to do low level work are adding. The North Industrial bus in Saskatoon is full every morning with Asian immigrants coming to work in the various meat processing plants. If they don't the plants close, the farmers loose and the city suffers.

I remember an article by that noted leftie, Barbara Amiel where she commented how, in Canada, immigrants tend to push their kids very hard, resulting in the kids ending up as the next generation of doctors, engineers, etc. The immigrants themselves may struggle, but their kids do great.

   

They'd have to leave the country. Tough, but can't see a way around it. Although I would give them say a 6 month grace period. As for getting underpaid - they'd know what they're getting before they accepted the job. And they would, and do, have the same rights as any other worker in Canada. We already take in 250,000 of these temp workers every year - so it's no big change. Many of them are in the agricultural sector, and exploited, and we should address that. But these new temp workers would be in higher skilled fields, in more demand and more aware of their rights.

To me it just makes on sense what we do now - lure people her with promises that don't pan out when they get here. And I want a strong program to give jobs to Canadians first, give them training instead of always trying to import people.

   

Having their rights does not mean getting them. Believe me, EVERYTHING is different than an immigrant is used to, even when you are European, and most don't know where to go.
Then, there is always the sleezebags who want to profit from your bad situation. For instance, "immigration lawyers" who tell you they have a guaranteed job offer for you (they don't). You don't know that, so you pay.
Temp workers who come now can apply for PR through the PNP program immediately. They don't have to wait in insecurity for years and years. Takes about 6 to 9 months and they are PR.

   

Interesting that you mention Ukranians. Saskatchewan is having a second wave of Ukranians immigration. Nice people who seem to fit in quite well. I suspect their grand kids will run the place just like the grand kids of the first wave did.

   

There needs to be major reforms at our immigration.

Selective immigration : European immigration is ok but the others not so much. Especially those that go on welfare upon arriving and never contribute anything.

   

Bingo ! This is something these anti immgrant/ion types don't seem to understand. And another big issue to why some immgrants don't seem to well is this recertification issue. When well qualified and respected people in their fields get demoted to less than high school graduates the moment they step on Canadian soil.

Canada really needs to look at the Australian model of immigration where majority of the immigrants hit the ground running.

   

VANCOUVER - Give three economists credit for trying to kick-start a real debate over immigration in Canada. They do so by imagining a “shock” scenario.

What would happen, they ask, if Canada brought in 100,000 more immigrants per year?

Canada already takes more immigrants per capita than any other nation.

But these analysts want Canadians to think about welcoming 350,000 newcomers a year, instead of the current 250,000.

They say immigration policy is a potential “tinderbox” which could turn into a Canadian cultural “inferno” if the numbers on it turn bad — for either native-born or newcomers.

The issue of immigration is especially volatile for big-city residents, since the vast majority of new arrivals funnel into urban centres. More than nine out of 10 immigrants to B.C., for instance, put down stakes in bustling Metro Vancouver.

However, as we just discovered during the Canadian election campaign, there is little high-level political stomach for an honest public debate over immigration.

We are far different from Europe. That’s where the elected heads of Germany, France and Britain have, in just the past year, questioned immigration patterns. And all three have declared “multiculturalism” a failure.

In contrast, every major political party leader in the Canadian election campaign supported the country’s welcoming approach to newcomers, which business leaders also endorse because it creates more consumers and more workers.

Given that almost half the residents of Vancouver and Toronto were born outside the country, many of society’s leaders believe it’s political and economic suicide to publicly question immigration rates.

At least these three academics, funded by various levels of government, do so — through a “meta-analysis” of hundreds of studies on the economic impact of immigration in Canada and beyond.

Although their “shock” scenario of 100,000 more immigrants is controversial, York University’s Tony Fang and the University of Toronto’s Peter Dungan and Morley Gunderson generally say immigration is an economic positive.

Indeed, the economists go further than most politicians.

Their news release boldly states 100,000 more immigrants per year would boost the gross domestic product and add to government coffers by stimulating buying and especially pumping up housing prices.

However, the body of the 34-page report — titled The Macroeconomic Impacts of Canadian Immigration: An Empirical Analysis Using The Focus Model — is less confident than the news release.

The scholars quietly admit in their paper that many of the hundreds of immigration studies they analyzed from around the world reached “mixed” conclusions on many fronts.

For instance, the report tentatively concludes that immigrants generally don’t use taxpayer-funded social and health services more than “domestic-born” residents.

However, the authors concede immigrants, especially more recent ones, may more greatly rely on unemployment insurance the longer they are here.

And even though the news release makes it seem 100,000 more immigrants would benefit Canadian total GDP, the body of the analysis quietly acknowledges per capita GDP could slightly shrink.

Just as importantly, the authors acknowledge many new immigrants are feeling battered. More recent arrivals are having a “difficult time economically assimilating” and are “increasingly falling into poverty.”

Other than on this last point, the scholars’ “macroeconomic” analysis has a bloodless quality to it.

It feels removed from the real world in which Canadian-born and newcomers live and struggle.

Funded by government research bodies, the economists’ meta-analysis fails to touch on a lot of issues Canadians care about a great deal.

One of them is integration. As in Europe, many Canadians fear ethnic enclaves are taking root in our major cities, where there is often little overlap of newcomers and native-born.

The economists also gloss over the emotional issue of housing affordability.

They applaud how immigration fuels housing prices, calling it a “benefit.” But they fail to comment on how strong immigration is also killing the chances of average-income earners to own houses in most neighbourhoods of Toronto and Metro Vancouver.

Still, unlike many in Canadian officialdom, these three able economists are at least aware that a high-immigration policy is not, by definition, an indisputable good. They suggest it is a multi-pronged animal, with many spinoffs, good and bad.

Kudos to them for providing crucial data to start a debate. Now it’s up to Canadian leaders and the public to take the discussion to a new level of openness.



Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/more+i ... z1pIrZgApa

   

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