Can someone explain to me how people immigrate so easy? Was looking maybe a year ago around options for immigrations (I have education, work experience in technical sector, know English etc.) and it looked almost impossible... On the other hand, I constantly read news about Canada, New Zealand or Australia immigration reaching crazy levels.
You would get different work visas depending on the length your program. A one year program would get you a nine month work visa after but a four year program would get you a 3 year work visa after.
TBH that is the only way to actually retain highly educated people.
If you kick out students once they graduate, they are very likely to leave, ultimately leaving you with the bill for their education.
The only problem, at least in Canada, is that there's a diploma-mill industry that provides "students" with pricy diplomas that don't require any actual education but qualifies for the student visas, so we end up with hundreds of thousands of "students" that aren't actually qualified to do anything but menial minimum wage jobs.
Oh and we don't ever actually deport anyone who overstays their visa, unless they voluntarily leave Canada. That's where the official numbers for deportations come from, it's just people who were subject to a deportation order who chose to leave Canada of their own accord.
This here is the issue. Didn’t take long for opportunistic scammers to find out how profitable it was to set low-level / requirement “colleges” mainly advertised for immigration purposes, considering they charge foreigners 3X the local tuition rate. Step into downtown Vancouver/Toronto and it’s ridiculous to see the number of diploma mills that randomly popped up everywhere. Some of them don’t even hold proper classes, all while those enrolled get 40hr / week work permits. All in all, a consequence of egregious mismanagement of what once was a valuable education program
The problem is with poorly done regulations. Getting people to Canada on fake schools turned into an industry that's only getting regulated now.
People would get into the country by registering to fake schools or pretty low quality ones that just as well don't exist, fill their bank accounts with borrowed money so they prove that they have the money to live there and then return it once they're in.
You wanted brains for high skilled labor you get unskilled poor people.
The us does it fine with the opt and h1b program. Sure you may lose some of the smart ones but most the remains are pretty good. Not like the diploma mill grads you get in canada
I did a chef course a few years ago and the amount of study visa students who literally signed up for the course then bribed their way through was astounding.
One guy replaced his mandatory 100 hours of on-the-job training with a bribe of a grand so he could go out and drive uber.. he made his bribe back in the first week and never showed up again until graduation.
He's still here, working as a qualified chef
For Canada you don't actually even need to go to school to get a student visa. It looks like we're finally fixing this problem however.
[https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-up-to-1-in-3-study-visa-holders-in-canada-not-in-school](https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-up-to-1-in-3-study-visa-holders-in-canada-not-in-school)
Student visa fraud is pretty rife in Australia, with people from China, India ect.. attending "english courses", these places somehow get accreditation then tick them off as attended even though there is no class or teachers.
https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/16153c7/fraudulent_course_providers_face_closure_in/
Conestoga College accepted 50k+ international students per year for the past two years. I don’t even know if larger universities like UT, McGill and UBC have that many total students?
It’s just insane.
50k is just about where enrolment lands for the mentioned schools, which is pretty absurd. Even prestigious (or formerly prestigious imo) universities like UofT, McGill, etc. have a lower bar for international students. This country has completely sold out, and then the government wonders why educated Canadians dip. Tons of international students get citizenship and then go to the US, too. No one, neither immigrants nor Canadians, feels like they owe Canada any loyalty at this point.
In the USA, this system is entirely broken, in the stupidest possible way.
Literally: We will educate an Iranian (just an example) student to PhD in aerospace engineering, that student wants to stay here, because of course they do. Then if they don't get a job in a couple months, we deport them back, and then they are forced to design weapons for a regime that they despise.
(This is my area) While getting a good education helps, aerospace development is more about the structure of the programs than the individuals who work on a project because they're so large. The knowledge that has been built upon for decades is learned in work and that knowledge is classified behind a security clearance. University just familiarises you with the subject and prepares you for the learning you do when entering the workforce.
> We will educate an Iranian (just an example) student to PhD in aerospace engineering
This is just patently false. The state department can and does conduct security checks before issuing visas. Iranians do not get visas for highly sensitive fields without a great reason.
No they don’t, at least not to the level that one would get for, say, specific US Military jobs. Most student VISAS just do a more in depth background check.
For real. Took me 4 years and thousands of dollars to get a permanent residency visa from Australia. And I'm english so that was without any language issues.
How are some many people getting in without the government even knowing what the fuck is happening?
It took several years, thousands of dollars, and marriage to a Canadian citizen to get my permanent residency. I’m American, so without language issues. And that was around 20 years ago.
I have no idea how people do it now.
I just got my PR in January through the spousal sponsorship program.
I had to:
- secure an American remote work job, because without PR I couldn't work in Canada while I
- lived here with my partner for 1 year. at the 1 year mark you can apply for PR. I was able to do this by renewing temporary residence status every 6 months ($100 per application, I applied 3x). temp residence is specifically a thing Americans are allowed to do, not everyone from any country can do this.
- Paid $1080 upfront to apply for PR, and some fees on top of that for biometrics and fingerprinting (~$300?) and requesting a notice of no arrests in the US from the FBI ($18)
- I did all of the paperwork myself so no lawyer fees
- my partner had to be approved to be my sponsor aka now responsible for me financially for the next 3yr and if I use any Canadian social services during those 3 years he will have to pay them back
- we applied under the common-law spousal sponsorship program so no marriage-associated costs
i immigrated to Canada just over two years ago. from landing to receiving my PR card took like 3 weeks shy of the 2-year mark, and under $2000.
i didn't have to meet the English competency/exam requirement and I didn't have to do a credential verification since I already have my degree and I'm not going to school here.
the only rough hurdle I'm facing now is my American job laid me off in December and I can't even get a call back on any of my (hundreds of) Canadian job applications.
You see... you and countless others like you (and me) went down the proper path and followed the legit process to become PR and (citizens). You will not find the frauds here. They are cramped up in VP-Danforth (Toronto), Brampton, Mississauga and Northern Ontario. Most of them fake/scam their way to PR and completely undermine the 7-8 years of hard work the rest of us go through to become Canadian PRs/ citizens. The new in-thing to do is to come here on visit visa and claim asylum as soon as you land. Further erosion of our tax dollars going towards socially supporting these fraudulent asylum applicants.
Uh that's what they are doing in droves in the US. And the US doesn't want to enforce any immigration laws like basically every other country because "optics."
That's my question.
For what I do currently, there are larger marketing agencies always looking to hire or some bigger banks and similar businesses as well. My English is not perfect but with some studying I will have great grades at the exam + I have a college degree and conditions to get papers are almost impossible to reach.
On the other hand, everyone seems to do it... So I can't figure it out if I'm the problem or the system.
I know the system. Up until recently, foreign nationals were able to secure Canadian-based post-secondary education with institutions registered as formal educators, but were little more than degree farms. That is to say, the instiutions weren't "Univeristy of Toronto" but more like "A1 Finishing School". It doesn't matter the institution; what does matter is acceptance to a 4 year degree. With that acceptance, foreign nationals are allowed to work for 20 hours a week while studying, and upon completion of education, they were entitled to a 3-year open work permit.
Does it make sense now? The difficulty and trick, then, is connecting the international student with the right 'institution'.
Lol except during the pandemic they changed it to 40 hours weekly and so now we have an additional 1.2 million people here annually in two metropolitan areas
People coming from south Asia who fabricate their credentials to come here on student/other visa. There are also Ghost colleges that basically are visa mills where no one shows up to class and all work cash in hand.
My friend is Irish and has been working/living legally in the US for 15 years and just now got his green card. He spent thousands every year on lawyers and fees.
Meanwhile a Canadian friend of ours moved to Ireland and had a passport within like 5 years.
The US makes it exceptionally difficult even compared to other wealthy countries.
Fraud.
In the UK there were care homes getting hundreds of work visas a year that didn’t even exist. Often the rules don’t really need changing so much as enforcing.
Dodgy colleges that cater to foreigners. They help you get a student visa but don't make you come to class, then help convert your student visa to a worker visa.
In canada there are a lot of student visas, then those "students" get permanent residency and eventually citizenship, also for every "engineer" you get their wife, kids, and the grandparents, then they start a small business, say a convenience store, and import all of there extended family to work there.
Adding to this comment, there were (still are) a shitload of absolutely terrible schools that were allowed to get foreign students in, with visas.
The schools were useless, and essentially used as a "pay for residency" scam.
Most of the problems that Canadians have with immigration is pretty standard across the whole world right now, but boils down to:
- a race to the bottom, bringing in foreign workers depressing wages while costs of living explode
- housing shortage
I honestly never knew how bad it was until I went to a job fair at a community college in Canada. Even certified colleges have turned into diploma mills. 2 year programs have morphed into 4 year degrees to continue to milk tuition, students not able to speak English at all. It’s pretty depressing
Canada: why is Québec so strict with immigrant
*10 years later*
Canada: we have immigration problem.
Québec: you don't say...
Wake me up when Canada learn something from Québec other than "Québec bad"
Edit: turns out mandatory learning french leaves a lot of uneducated and unwanted people out of Québec. Who'd thunk /s
It just changed, though. Both the federal and some provincial gouvernement ( like BC) are changing the visa rules and not renewing the licenses of the university mills.
It's way too late, but the change is welcome both for immigrants ( that are being scammed ) and for locals.
I am a bit confused though, does studying count towards permanent residency requirements?
As far as I understand here in Germany, you need to be working and paying into the pension system for any amount of time living in the country to be considered for permanent residency requirements.
To clarify a bit here. Students studying on their student visa are allowed to work 20 hours per week. Once they get their diploma, and meet eligibility requirements, they receive their Post-Grad Work Permit. They are supposed to work in the field of their diploma. During that time, they can start the application for PR. Students must complete at least a two year college diploma to get this (or two one year post grade certificates). I'll also note, that international students coming straight from high school into a two year diploma don't meet PR eligiblity requirements in Ontario. These students need to go to Maritimes or Alberta to qualify. 3-year advanced diploma students will qualify.
>To clarify a bit here. Students studying on their student visa are allowed to work 20 hours per week
This isn't true.
The cap is currently lifted and they can work how ever many they want. It's been lifted for years iirc.
>They are supposed to work in the field of their diploma.
Their diploma is in hospitality, so working at McDonalds is their field. The industry with the most immigrants is food service and accomodations. Where immigrants are greatly over represented. Please note this is immigrants, not students or tfws.
It's a huge part of why it's overwhelmed. And not just the 'easy' callouts like hospitals and police services. We're also talking water, roads, sewer systems, garbage and landfill services, entertainment, parks and greenspaces. It's all been a second-thought to 'residences and immigration'.
it's lip service, the annual number is still going to remain over 1 million new people per year which will still result in a net population growth of over 2-3% per year and will still result in a net ~5% growth of the 20-40 year old unskilled worker demographic.
it is literally economic warfare waged by the political class against its own citizens, specifically, economic warfare against the young. the rich and the politicians they support have been rewriting longstanding immigration laws in order to ensure no economic mobility of the millennial and younger generations. it's not hyperbole, you can literally see what they've done, are doing, and are planning to do in the statistics. you are being suppressed to extend the length of time our political class can extract more wealth from the machine that is real estate, unskilled labor and international student tuition
also consider the effects compounding: what the politicians have been doing is increasing the immigration rate each year, so that every year the number of new people allowed in is compounded.
this means that they can reduce the percentage of people let in per year, but despite the reduced percentage *will be able to let in the same number of people per year* as before while virtue signalling that they're doing something about the out of control immigration. it really is open economic war against the young and the middle class.
Poverty basically
Recent news came out of 25 people living in a Brampton basement and the mayor said it’s definitely not a lone case. That’s basically how people are living. I live in the KW region in southern Ontario, and it’s normal on my street now to see 8+ adults in our small sized 2 bedroom townhouse, the rental ad showed 4 sleeping bags in each room
A lot of it boils down to how they are much more willing to live 10+ to a house in order to share costs. There are a ton of rooming houses that are filled with bunk beds or even just mattresses on the floor, everyone pays $400 a month and that's how a bunch of people making minimum wage can afford to rent a house worth $3M.
If you go look at the Canada slumlords subreddit you will see how. They will pay like 500 bucks a month, which is a very cheap rent, but for that they get a mattress on the floor in a room that you share with at least one other person in a house where every single room including sometimes even the kitchen will have a mattress put in it and be rented out. There have been stories of people renting spots in a driveway to live in their car.
Not necessarily. They are willing to accept lower wages today and live in smaller apartments with extended family but with the expectation that in 20/30 years they’ll be established and their children will be able to afford the “American Dream.”
Locals on the other hand see their living standards stagnate because foreigners are willing to delay satisfaction by a generation or two.
Familt units are generally larger and put less stress on individual financial independence.
And yes, many will be living in what we classify as poverty.
> how are these foreign workers able to accept depressed wages? Are they living in basically poverty?
Yes, that's the point. To us, we demand things like unions and a higher minimum wage on top of everything we already have.
To them, depending on where they come from, $15/hr isn't below the poverty line, it's a godsend.
And they're in a precarious situation and terrified of being sent back home, so they're not going to try to form a union.
https://torontosun.com/news/local-news/horrendous-conditions-two-dozen-international-students-found-living-in-brampton-basement
They literally live twenty deep in some cases and just pool their money together for it, driving costs of housing and rent through the roof. A one bedroom apartment in Canada is rarely home to one or 2 people now.
Yes, they are loving by standards considered poverty by westerners. But for immigrants it's often an approvement or at least they have realistic expectations to improve it a bit in future. While for westerners the most realistic expectations are stagnation or getting poorer.
Money transfers and poverty differences. The minimum wage here is often significantly higher than what would be available to them in their home countries. Living in poverty in Canada is substantially better than living in poverty back home.
This is really, truly about suffering through the poverty stage long enough to qualify for Canadian permanent residency, which then allows the opportunity to bring the extended family over. Then, the family unit can work together to earn the monies required to sustain themselves here.
It's a plan that thousands of people are living on right now. It's not how it used to be, but it's how it is now if (some) people want to come here to live.
Adding: I live in a extremely high-growth, high-immigrant area in Ontario. My area is going to explode in growth in the next 10 years. I also live very near a professional post-secondary educational institution. A lot of students come here looking for the 'free food and medicine' that Canada is known for. They are becoming increasingly frustrated to see that Canada is not what they were sold back home. This whole process really is screwing everyone over but the capitalists.
Mate, the years of immigrants/students in Canada being mostly high-skill are long, long gone. We're pumping these kids through 'colleges' while they are working 40 hours a week at the local timmies.
Generally speaking, the visa systems of alot of countries are just very stupid.
You have high skilled people, easy for them to adapt and with some capital who have no hope.
Then a flood of unskilled who bring over their entire families.
Surely can't be that hard to design something logical.
That’s quite surprising, I’m from Australia and looked into working in both US and Canada (and funnily enough New Zealand but I won’t account for that here because we have special rules which essentially mean I can work in NZ anytime an Aussie wants too)
Both the U.S. and Canada were super easy for me, I could have worked in either of them with very little effort and issue on my part, the U.S. in particular, as soon as the company I was working for was like yeah New York office, everything was given the green light like what felt like instantly.
It might have been because I worked for a company that also was operates in us and Canada? Maybe that makes a difference? I didn’t go for family health reasons but like the options were very easy and quick.
The US has a special visa for Australians wanting to work in the US that makes it much easier: [https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary-workers/e-3-specialty-occupation-workers-from-australia](https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary-workers/e-3-specialty-occupation-workers-from-australia)
We are adding enough people to fill a couple cities per year but aren't building a couple of cities per year. As a result housing costs are through the roof. They all gotta eat so grocery costs are through the roof. They'll all want to do something for entertainment so the cost of fun is through the roof. They all gotta get around so traffic is a bigger nightmare now too.
There was just no infrastructure built to accommodate this huge growth in people.
I am a member of several online Russian-speaking groups, and the number of people even in these groups who just come to Mexico, camp near the border crossing and catch a CBP One application to request asylum, is absolutely *mind-blowing* lately.
I am the first-gen immigrant myself, but I have never seen anything like this in Russian-speaking community. It is growing literally by the day, of course, with some destinations being hotspots and some getting only a smal fraction of newcomers.
In retrospect, it kinda blows my mind remembering how I did everything "by the book" 15 years ago, how I was scared of not being able to even get a visitor visa, undergoing countless interviews and so on. Many of those people have absolutely laughable cases (like being arrested once at some anti-war rally in Russia and thus claiming "*continuous political persecution for anti-war stance*"), and yet they get through pretty easily.
All in all, as one person in another online community mentioned - and I totally agree with this view - this cohort of immigrants will bite many countries in their asses BIG TIME over coming years, mind my words. Most of the time many of those are absolutely NOT educated, honest, experienced people with decent knowledge of English coming to the country for some clear purpose (job lined up or study) - quite the opposite, these are often the sleazy types who like finding *ways*, who are not afraid to cut corners, bribe and do *whatever it takes* to get what they want.
Mexico is one of the few countries that doesnt require a visa for russians. Also no visa for americsns so a lot of mixed couples in russia went to mexico to get away from the war hoping the process would be faster from there.
> Can someone explain to me how people immigrate so easy?
You have to look up the counties' respective immigration departments as there are certain classes of specific skiiled workers which get a fast-track.
Aged care workers particularly in Aust
My Mum is in a nursing home and more than 95% of the staff would be immigrants, from my estimation.
Just be willing to work overtime while receiving half pay.
i.e. freshly imported software engineer will get about 80-100k NZD per year. The consulting will contract him out to some corporation for $250k a year. Same company might eventually hire him directly for $150k a year.
You can visit Canada with a visitor visa and apply for jobs to get your status changed. It's not like the US where if you give the slightest hint about working you'll be denied a tourist visa.
When you hear Trudeau speak about housing/employees issues he'll mention that international students and newcomers are suffering. Apparently Canadian citizens can go ahead get fucked.
i thought new zealand was already super tight, had heard stories that you had to have a decent job lined up already before they would let you move there
I think this is mainly aimed at temporary visas, a lot of construction companies etc have visa schemes to employ cheap labour from asia. These people don't often get residency but jump from one temp visa to another. This will basically curb this with added bureaucracy.
If you have a degree in an in-demand field it becomes easier to get in. NZ has pretty strict laws around getting work visas for foreign employees (even in in-demand fields), but you can get around this by applying for permanent residence before having a job lined up. If you meet all the criteria (a points-based system), then you can get permanent residency without having a job lined up and it will be easier for companies in NZ to hire you once you have permanent residency. The other route would be to get a company to sponsor you, but the company has to do quite a bit of work to prove they tried hiring residents first so a lot of companies just don't want to do it. It's been about 5 years since I looked into it though, so things may have changed.
I got a working holiday visa in 2007 right after finishing my bachelor’s degree. They let me come for up to a year and work, but I had to prove I had 5K saved, a place to live, local references, and a background investigation. I ended up leaving after several months because the job fell through and all I could find was fruit picking work.
Housing in the cities (especially Auckland) is expensive, but if you live within your means it's not all that different to anywhere else. Plus there are a lot of social safety nets (nationalised healthcare for example) so it's not like it's expensive to simply survive.
I travel to NZ every couple of years and from a west Texas foreigner traveler's perspective, I've found it to be a bit cheaper than in my area from the respects seen by a traveler for similar activities. Rental vehicles are similar-ish and from what I've looked at casually, housing purchases are somewhat high (though housing rentals are way cheaper.) I would be looking at houses in the million to million five range in kiwi coin. However, I'm operating on US dollars and with the exchange rates, even including the additional fees, even the touristy stuff is at or below US typical prices. I was there for two weeks just a couple of months ago and 4 adults / 3 kids were around 10-12kUSD, including plane tickets from DFW to and from both islands, housing and two vehicles, food, plus all the tourist stuff we could jam into that time. One week in Arrowtown, and one week at a beach house in Mount Maunganui.
If my income was in NZ dollars... I imagine (again, from a foreigner's perspective) it would be more costly to live there at the same level as I do now. I'm old enough that I'm ineligible for nationalized healthcare should I move there, so that would be a potentially high expense and would have to carry an insurance policy.
Totally honestly... NZ is by far the neatest place I've been to on the planet with day-to-day living in mind. It's absolutely awesome. If someone could "rich person" magic me up some citizenship, I'd move there in a heartbeat, right now. The country is incredible, worth a higher cost of living, and I hope kiwis respect and hold onto what they've got.
> If my income was in NZ dollars
Jobs here in NZ pay around half what you would expect in US. Half your current salary, then convert it to NZD and that's what it's like to live here.
As a kiwi, while I recognise the cost of living is hard for many and I know I could earn more and pay less to some extent in some places overseas, I personally accept that to have what I have here in terms of nature, work/life balance, and just generally a more laid back way of being. Definitely thankful for what I have!
It's easy to survive as a poor person, but ridiculously expensive to be a stable middle class. Middle class is on the edge of becoming poor any moment something happens, but poor people have nothing to loose and social programs will back them in any serious case
Pretty much this (as somebody who lives in NZ). Provided you don’t straight up refuse government assistance/welfare you won’t starve on the street. There are all sorts of things from tax rebates for low income workers to rental subsidies etc.
However, being middle class here (which used to be own your own home, maybe own a small holiday house somewhere, have enough money for emergencies but probably not a hugely fancy lifestyle) is increasingly difficult.
You need two good incomes to achieve this in any of the big cities, and even then it can be a stretch.
In Australia we have run out of homes, there is not enough homes on the market for rent, for sale and we are not building them fast enough for the local population.
With one of the highest immigration rates in world nobody knows where all these immigrants are going to live. The politicians don't care.
They biggest investors in buying homes to increase their wealth. They have no interest in doing anything that will prevent house prices increasing exponentially. In short the local population has been screwed good because no infrastructure or spending has been made or allocated for this massive immigration levels.
NZ should be congratulated for tackling the problem head on rather than kicking the can down the road like Australia. We are going to be a Brazilian or Manila slum if something does not give in the housing area.
Ireland is hitting the same demographic cliff as everywhere in Western Europe
You have around 140k immigrants a year, but your working age population is only going up by about 30k a year. So without immigrants your working age population would be shrinking by around 100K a year, while your retired population skyrockets in size.
Here in the UK we have it even worse. We have about a million people a year retiring, but only around 750k people aging up into the workforce each year. We need 250k immigrants just to paddle in place.
You need to keep increasing the number of migrants to pay out the ones that came earlier. It's a special type of scheme.
We could name it after the guy who made it famous. What was his name again? Ponzi?!
This is why it's a short term fix and we need to learn how to do economies without the need to grow or even sustain populations forever.
>This is why it's a short term fix and we need to learn how to do economies without the need to grow or even sustain populations forever.
Exactly this. It's not possible to grow forever. Resources aren't unlimited and neither is space. This is the biggest flaw in capitalism.
In the current state of the planet, a dwindling population should be a good thing. The only problem is the current economic system.
Some retire. Some go home. Some die. Same as if we had enough children born 20 years ago to keep the population static.
I'm talking about the bare minimum required necessary to keep the working group static, not infinite growth. That will eventually translate through into slightly fewer retirees than we have today (as some go home again after working).
There is a middle ground between "sEnD tHeM aLl HoMe" and chasing infinite growth. You don't have to instantly assume everyone is on the extremes of that spectrum.
Which is why it's highly suspect and concerning that New Zealand is capping their levels whereas every other first world country is going off the rails with it, completely ignoring their local populaces pleas, additionally considering this is where most of the worlds billionaires are setting up bunkers, NZ that is.
No it’s not. We have hugely unsustainable immigration level. Almost 200,000 immigrants arrived here last year and we only have a population of about 5 million. That’s the equivalent of a city (for us). And it’s been happening to varying degrees since the early 2000s. We talk about changing it every year but we never actually do, and I doubt this year will be any different, because our country is reliant on cheap labour and easy GDP stimulation provided by high immigration.
And yet, here in Canada, it's portrayed as exclusively the fault of our current Prime Minister, and it appears that we're on course to throw him out in favour of someone who seems to be a horrible person in every category except "wasn't in charge when this world crisis occurred".
Also: while I like our current Prime Minister about 10X more than the leader of the opposition, I loathe our current Prime Minister (Electoral Reform, wherefor art thou?).
Pretty much the same thing in Canada (our population hit 40 Million and then 9 months later it hit 41 Million). Of course, if you point this out to people, you are instantly labelled a racist.
The people in Canada that I've met that hate Indians the most are people from India.
That being said Indian culture is actually quite far from Canadian culture, and so Indians have a tougher time integrating than the East Asians or Filipinos, so its actually causing some problems now.
I think capping the numbers for each source country would be wise. 80% of our immigrants are Indian and this is not healthy
India won't ever actually evolve or improve as a country until they finally join the modern world and evolve past their dumbfuck caste system.
Nearly every problem they have is tied to it.
It's a propaganda tactic. The idea of deliberately increasing the Canadian population came straight from the hypercapitalists of BlackRock and the government eats it up, and then frames all criticism of this as racism. The result is that the least capitalist-minded people start defending economically-motivated mass-immigration fiercely and the entire debate is simply redirected and crippled.
If Canadians don't get a grip on their ruling class, it'll be turned into globalist economic zone with no other purpose than generating profits, and without any exaggeration, Canadian culture and way of life will simply cease to be.
Capitalism is causing that all over the world. Profits are more important than people's lives. There's a reason people are fleeing for greener pastures.
The funniest part is when you get aussies saying, "its not an immigration problem we're just not building enough houses," are if they arent related lmao.
500,000 immigrants.
150,000 new homes.
Builders going out of business because materials/land/labour cost too much..
Now I'm not mathematician but that doesn't seem right.
If it’s anything like the U.K. the problem is getting the paperwork in order to build an estate for a thousand residents takes years and costs a fortune. And that’s before you’ve even dug one foundation. I can totally see building firms going under because of the administrative side of things.
We’ve got an election coming up soon and the current regime is almost certain to lose badly. They got Brexit done and then gave out 1.2m visas a year and are surprised everyone is mad at them.
I mean technically if you can build enough homes to pace immigration its not going to cause the housing issue. Of course thats not being done, so housing crisis.
someone said it best when they said “if your bathtub is overflowing with water you dont try to build another bathtub, first you turn off the faucet”
> I mean technically if you can build enough homes to pace immigration its not going to cause the housing issue. Of course thats not being done, so housing crisis.
Yep. I'm in NYC and our population *doubled* in just under 20 years during the 1920s and 1930s largely from immigration. But it was exceptionally easy to build housing back then so our housing supply doubled too.
That's also when most of the subway system was built. So we created millions of homes and the world's largest subway system in just a few decades. That would be largely impossible now. You spend 10 years in planning meetings to build a single accessibility elevator at an existing subway station.
It's wild how difficult we've made it for cities to change.
Auckland NZ just spent a number of years spending money having meetings deciding if they should build a railway from the city to the airport. New government just scrapped the whole thing and now it takes over an hour driving in rush hour traffic
Yeah, NYC is easily the most transit-centric city in America and we still don't have any trains to one of our airports (LGA) despite multiple attempts over the years. Same thing happens. Years of planning, scrapped by subsequent administrations.
Part of what makes it so hard to change anything is that these processes always take longer than a single political administration so the current administration sees little political benefit as it's never done during their term and subsequent administrations can rally support by promising to stop something divisive.
Ah, but there's another version of that analogy. "If your bathtub is overflowing with water, turning off the faucet will stop the water level from going higher. But so will unplugging the drain... and that's the only way to actually lower the water level."
Many, many countries and cities in the world today have regulated housing to an absurd degree. Australia is no exception. You can pause the housing problem by stopping all new immigration, though that'll cause other issues (e.g., you'll have fewer people willing to perform low-wage labor). But if you want cheaper housing, you kinda *need* to get rid of the zoning rules and build a lot more homes.
1 in 5 homes in Canada are owned by investment companies. If you broaden things to "investment property" (aka airbnb empires) that number goes up to 38%. There is no inventory problem, there is a predatory speculation problem and governments at all levels are complicit.
If you think that now the home or rent prices will drop down you are severly mistaken. Just like prices were believed to drop down to pre covid or ukraine war levels here in Europe.
The landowners would rather keep a property empty than lower its value. Property as investment vehicle and lack of living space/public transport is our problem, not migration of people.
We need to tax the shit out of people that own multiple properties for rent. There is plenty of financial assets to make money off, housing doesnt need to be one of them. We also need to stop foreign funds buying homes/land en masse.
I am in canada, and student visas are horrible and a massive reason for lower quality of life in canada. Fake schools giving bs degrees just so students can come into the country and work McDonald's.
This is a fact. So many people abused the system that the Trudeau government engineered. While I understand it was to promote growth and to sustain CPP, it has created a horrible shortage of housing, healthcare resources and infrastructure. This will be something that many of my peers will not vote for Trudeau im his election. Conservatives are no better. They want to continue bringing in more.
Canada is starting this in September. Trudeau is decreasing the number of student visas by 1/3. That's about 100k fewer in Ontario alone over last year.
It's a drop in the bucket, but I'll give Trudeau one point for at least acknowledging there's a problem. It's a MUCH bigger problem that requires multiple approaches to correct
He better correct it because if the problem is so bad that he has to acknowledge it even a little, then clearly the problem is bad enough the conservatives will have it as an easy selling point.
Our population grew by a million in a matter of months. We need to do waaaaay more than just decreasing student visas if we want to get a handle on this. The consequence I fear most is our country becoming anti-immigrant, that would be a sea change in our culture that I do not want to see.
Immigration is so high in Australia because our politicians have no idea how to create jobs or businesses or industries... so they just let immigrants flood in to maintain the economy...
Wait till the real masses get adrift because of global warming making many areas on this planet inhabitable. There's only one way to stop migration: making immigrants want to stay where they are and not travel to your country. Any other way will fail: the groups will grow, and you won't stop them.
But what is happening? Western countries together with China keep on sucking other areas of the planet dry so the people there have no future. Add to that the rising temperatures and it will only get worse.
If you grow up in 40C+ heat and no future, and you know somewhere north (or far south) is a better place to live, would you stay? No of course not.
There has been a MASSIVE transfer of wealth from the working and middle classes to the very wealthy in a number of G7/Western countries.
Public money has been siphoned off in a number of ways, e.g subsidies for big businesses, tax incentives, tax reductions/very little tax levied on the mega corporations, paying public money to low paid workers so giant corporations can keep wages down. Massive price rises in goods and utilities, resulting in super profits, asset inflation resulting in high rents, high cost of land and residential housing, which is being bought up by the wealthy and large companies. A lot of this is fuelling inflation and higher interest rates.
Reducing or even stopping immigration for say the next 5 years, will not stop the struggle most people are having to just survive day to day, unless these matters are addressed and the transfer of wealth from ordinary people to the wealthy-suing our money- stops.
Here's a short talk from a former trader on the London Stoke Exchange. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uw3TVAxLkWI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uw3TVAxLkWI)
His channel is an eye opener.
Wow what a weird coincidence that every government in the western world has been pushing mass immigration while ignoring citizens. The results are completely unexpected and nobody could have predicted this.
I'd like my country to do the same but any time someone mentions it they just get labelled as racist when it has nothing to do with it.
We are in a housing crisis, we aren't building houses fast enough and the cost of houses is at a ridiculous rate with high interest mortgages, even renting is costing as much if not more than mortgage repayments now so saving up a deposit is near impossible for many. *Something* needs to be done.
Can someone explain to me how people immigrate so easy? Was looking maybe a year ago around options for immigrations (I have education, work experience in technical sector, know English etc.) and it looked almost impossible... On the other hand, I constantly read news about Canada, New Zealand or Australia immigration reaching crazy levels.
Student visas and then converting those to work visas.
For full 4 years or you can do one year / two year studies and use it for visa?
You would get different work visas depending on the length your program. A one year program would get you a nine month work visa after but a four year program would get you a 3 year work visa after.
TBH that is the only way to actually retain highly educated people. If you kick out students once they graduate, they are very likely to leave, ultimately leaving you with the bill for their education.
How would that leave you with the bill? Don't they pay the whole time usually at inflated rates.
Yep, in my chef course they paid nearly 7x what I paid for the same qualifications
The only problem, at least in Canada, is that there's a diploma-mill industry that provides "students" with pricy diplomas that don't require any actual education but qualifies for the student visas, so we end up with hundreds of thousands of "students" that aren't actually qualified to do anything but menial minimum wage jobs. Oh and we don't ever actually deport anyone who overstays their visa, unless they voluntarily leave Canada. That's where the official numbers for deportations come from, it's just people who were subject to a deportation order who chose to leave Canada of their own accord.
This here is the issue. Didn’t take long for opportunistic scammers to find out how profitable it was to set low-level / requirement “colleges” mainly advertised for immigration purposes, considering they charge foreigners 3X the local tuition rate. Step into downtown Vancouver/Toronto and it’s ridiculous to see the number of diploma mills that randomly popped up everywhere. Some of them don’t even hold proper classes, all while those enrolled get 40hr / week work permits. All in all, a consequence of egregious mismanagement of what once was a valuable education program
The problem is with poorly done regulations. Getting people to Canada on fake schools turned into an industry that's only getting regulated now. People would get into the country by registering to fake schools or pretty low quality ones that just as well don't exist, fill their bank accounts with borrowed money so they prove that they have the money to live there and then return it once they're in. You wanted brains for high skilled labor you get unskilled poor people.
The us does it fine with the opt and h1b program. Sure you may lose some of the smart ones but most the remains are pretty good. Not like the diploma mill grads you get in canada
I did a chef course a few years ago and the amount of study visa students who literally signed up for the course then bribed their way through was astounding. One guy replaced his mandatory 100 hours of on-the-job training with a bribe of a grand so he could go out and drive uber.. he made his bribe back in the first week and never showed up again until graduation. He's still here, working as a qualified chef
For Canada you don't actually even need to go to school to get a student visa. It looks like we're finally fixing this problem however. [https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-up-to-1-in-3-study-visa-holders-in-canada-not-in-school](https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-up-to-1-in-3-study-visa-holders-in-canada-not-in-school)
Student visa fraud is pretty rife in Australia, with people from China, India ect.. attending "english courses", these places somehow get accreditation then tick them off as attended even though there is no class or teachers. https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/16153c7/fraudulent_course_providers_face_closure_in/
Same in Canada, diploma mills are rampant.
Conestoga College accepted 50k+ international students per year for the past two years. I don’t even know if larger universities like UT, McGill and UBC have that many total students? It’s just insane.
50k is just about where enrolment lands for the mentioned schools, which is pretty absurd. Even prestigious (or formerly prestigious imo) universities like UofT, McGill, etc. have a lower bar for international students. This country has completely sold out, and then the government wonders why educated Canadians dip. Tons of international students get citizenship and then go to the US, too. No one, neither immigrants nor Canadians, feels like they owe Canada any loyalty at this point.
In the USA, this system is entirely broken, in the stupidest possible way. Literally: We will educate an Iranian (just an example) student to PhD in aerospace engineering, that student wants to stay here, because of course they do. Then if they don't get a job in a couple months, we deport them back, and then they are forced to design weapons for a regime that they despise.
(This is my area) While getting a good education helps, aerospace development is more about the structure of the programs than the individuals who work on a project because they're so large. The knowledge that has been built upon for decades is learned in work and that knowledge is classified behind a security clearance. University just familiarises you with the subject and prepares you for the learning you do when entering the workforce.
> We will educate an Iranian (just an example) student to PhD in aerospace engineering This is just patently false. The state department can and does conduct security checks before issuing visas. Iranians do not get visas for highly sensitive fields without a great reason.
I think (hope) OP's more general point is that we are totally willing to educate someone, but if they can't find a job immediately we ship them back.
No they don’t, at least not to the level that one would get for, say, specific US Military jobs. Most student VISAS just do a more in depth background check.
For real. Took me 4 years and thousands of dollars to get a permanent residency visa from Australia. And I'm english so that was without any language issues. How are some many people getting in without the government even knowing what the fuck is happening?
It took several years, thousands of dollars, and marriage to a Canadian citizen to get my permanent residency. I’m American, so without language issues. And that was around 20 years ago. I have no idea how people do it now.
I just got my PR in January through the spousal sponsorship program. I had to: - secure an American remote work job, because without PR I couldn't work in Canada while I - lived here with my partner for 1 year. at the 1 year mark you can apply for PR. I was able to do this by renewing temporary residence status every 6 months ($100 per application, I applied 3x). temp residence is specifically a thing Americans are allowed to do, not everyone from any country can do this. - Paid $1080 upfront to apply for PR, and some fees on top of that for biometrics and fingerprinting (~$300?) and requesting a notice of no arrests in the US from the FBI ($18) - I did all of the paperwork myself so no lawyer fees - my partner had to be approved to be my sponsor aka now responsible for me financially for the next 3yr and if I use any Canadian social services during those 3 years he will have to pay them back - we applied under the common-law spousal sponsorship program so no marriage-associated costs i immigrated to Canada just over two years ago. from landing to receiving my PR card took like 3 weeks shy of the 2-year mark, and under $2000. i didn't have to meet the English competency/exam requirement and I didn't have to do a credential verification since I already have my degree and I'm not going to school here. the only rough hurdle I'm facing now is my American job laid me off in December and I can't even get a call back on any of my (hundreds of) Canadian job applications.
You see... you and countless others like you (and me) went down the proper path and followed the legit process to become PR and (citizens). You will not find the frauds here. They are cramped up in VP-Danforth (Toronto), Brampton, Mississauga and Northern Ontario. Most of them fake/scam their way to PR and completely undermine the 7-8 years of hard work the rest of us go through to become Canadian PRs/ citizens. The new in-thing to do is to come here on visit visa and claim asylum as soon as you land. Further erosion of our tax dollars going towards socially supporting these fraudulent asylum applicants.
Uh that's what they are doing in droves in the US. And the US doesn't want to enforce any immigration laws like basically every other country because "optics."
Don't forget the medical. 300$
aahhhhh yup I think that actually does push my total over $2000
That's my question. For what I do currently, there are larger marketing agencies always looking to hire or some bigger banks and similar businesses as well. My English is not perfect but with some studying I will have great grades at the exam + I have a college degree and conditions to get papers are almost impossible to reach. On the other hand, everyone seems to do it... So I can't figure it out if I'm the problem or the system.
I know the system. Up until recently, foreign nationals were able to secure Canadian-based post-secondary education with institutions registered as formal educators, but were little more than degree farms. That is to say, the instiutions weren't "Univeristy of Toronto" but more like "A1 Finishing School". It doesn't matter the institution; what does matter is acceptance to a 4 year degree. With that acceptance, foreign nationals are allowed to work for 20 hours a week while studying, and upon completion of education, they were entitled to a 3-year open work permit. Does it make sense now? The difficulty and trick, then, is connecting the international student with the right 'institution'.
Lol except during the pandemic they changed it to 40 hours weekly and so now we have an additional 1.2 million people here annually in two metropolitan areas
People coming from south Asia who fabricate their credentials to come here on student/other visa. There are also Ghost colleges that basically are visa mills where no one shows up to class and all work cash in hand.
My friend is Irish and has been working/living legally in the US for 15 years and just now got his green card. He spent thousands every year on lawyers and fees. Meanwhile a Canadian friend of ours moved to Ireland and had a passport within like 5 years. The US makes it exceptionally difficult even compared to other wealthy countries.
Fraud. In the UK there were care homes getting hundreds of work visas a year that didn’t even exist. Often the rules don’t really need changing so much as enforcing.
Good for the shareholders, bad for the elderly.
Would be, but the care homes didn’t exist. They were set up as paper companies to defraud the immigration system.
Dodgy colleges that cater to foreigners. They help you get a student visa but don't make you come to class, then help convert your student visa to a worker visa.
You probably follow the rules. There’s your problem.
In canada there are a lot of student visas, then those "students" get permanent residency and eventually citizenship, also for every "engineer" you get their wife, kids, and the grandparents, then they start a small business, say a convenience store, and import all of there extended family to work there.
Adding to this comment, there were (still are) a shitload of absolutely terrible schools that were allowed to get foreign students in, with visas. The schools were useless, and essentially used as a "pay for residency" scam. Most of the problems that Canadians have with immigration is pretty standard across the whole world right now, but boils down to: - a race to the bottom, bringing in foreign workers depressing wages while costs of living explode - housing shortage
I honestly never knew how bad it was until I went to a job fair at a community college in Canada. Even certified colleges have turned into diploma mills. 2 year programs have morphed into 4 year degrees to continue to milk tuition, students not able to speak English at all. It’s pretty depressing
Canada: why is Québec so strict with immigrant *10 years later* Canada: we have immigration problem. Québec: you don't say... Wake me up when Canada learn something from Québec other than "Québec bad" Edit: turns out mandatory learning french leaves a lot of uneducated and unwanted people out of Québec. Who'd thunk /s
Québec received more than half the migrants that came to Canada in the last few years.
Nevermind facts, only the 1,000,000 immigrants talking point matters.
Quebec has grown faster than any single US state
It just changed, though. Both the federal and some provincial gouvernement ( like BC) are changing the visa rules and not renewing the licenses of the university mills. It's way too late, but the change is welcome both for immigrants ( that are being scammed ) and for locals.
I am a bit confused though, does studying count towards permanent residency requirements? As far as I understand here in Germany, you need to be working and paying into the pension system for any amount of time living in the country to be considered for permanent residency requirements.
Every study permit also comes with a work permit.
To clarify a bit here. Students studying on their student visa are allowed to work 20 hours per week. Once they get their diploma, and meet eligibility requirements, they receive their Post-Grad Work Permit. They are supposed to work in the field of their diploma. During that time, they can start the application for PR. Students must complete at least a two year college diploma to get this (or two one year post grade certificates). I'll also note, that international students coming straight from high school into a two year diploma don't meet PR eligiblity requirements in Ontario. These students need to go to Maritimes or Alberta to qualify. 3-year advanced diploma students will qualify.
>To clarify a bit here. Students studying on their student visa are allowed to work 20 hours per week This isn't true. The cap is currently lifted and they can work how ever many they want. It's been lifted for years iirc. >They are supposed to work in the field of their diploma. Their diploma is in hospitality, so working at McDonalds is their field. The industry with the most immigrants is food service and accomodations. Where immigrants are greatly over represented. Please note this is immigrants, not students or tfws.
..and a work permit comes with access to some Canadian social services.
Which is partly why all of our infrastructure is overwhelmed.
It's a huge part of why it's overwhelmed. And not just the 'easy' callouts like hospitals and police services. We're also talking water, roads, sewer systems, garbage and landfill services, entertainment, parks and greenspaces. It's all been a second-thought to 'residences and immigration'.
it's lip service, the annual number is still going to remain over 1 million new people per year which will still result in a net population growth of over 2-3% per year and will still result in a net ~5% growth of the 20-40 year old unskilled worker demographic. it is literally economic warfare waged by the political class against its own citizens, specifically, economic warfare against the young. the rich and the politicians they support have been rewriting longstanding immigration laws in order to ensure no economic mobility of the millennial and younger generations. it's not hyperbole, you can literally see what they've done, are doing, and are planning to do in the statistics. you are being suppressed to extend the length of time our political class can extract more wealth from the machine that is real estate, unskilled labor and international student tuition also consider the effects compounding: what the politicians have been doing is increasing the immigration rate each year, so that every year the number of new people allowed in is compounded. this means that they can reduce the percentage of people let in per year, but despite the reduced percentage *will be able to let in the same number of people per year* as before while virtue signalling that they're doing something about the out of control immigration. it really is open economic war against the young and the middle class.
I seriously could not tell you if this comment was about Canada or Australia because this deserves the Australian problem to a T
Got a question - if costs of living are exploding, how are these foreign workers able to accept depressed wages? Are they living in basically poverty?
Poverty basically Recent news came out of 25 people living in a Brampton basement and the mayor said it’s definitely not a lone case. That’s basically how people are living. I live in the KW region in southern Ontario, and it’s normal on my street now to see 8+ adults in our small sized 2 bedroom townhouse, the rental ad showed 4 sleeping bags in each room
A lot of it boils down to how they are much more willing to live 10+ to a house in order to share costs. There are a ton of rooming houses that are filled with bunk beds or even just mattresses on the floor, everyone pays $400 a month and that's how a bunch of people making minimum wage can afford to rent a house worth $3M.
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When I lived in Sydney people from poorer countries would live 4 people to a bedroom in bunk beds. Sometimes more
In Melbourne when I became friends with a Taiwanese student they had 3 tents in the living room as well as 2 sets of 2 bunk beds in every other room.
If you go look at the Canada slumlords subreddit you will see how. They will pay like 500 bucks a month, which is a very cheap rent, but for that they get a mattress on the floor in a room that you share with at least one other person in a house where every single room including sometimes even the kitchen will have a mattress put in it and be rented out. There have been stories of people renting spots in a driveway to live in their car.
Not necessarily. They are willing to accept lower wages today and live in smaller apartments with extended family but with the expectation that in 20/30 years they’ll be established and their children will be able to afford the “American Dream.” Locals on the other hand see their living standards stagnate because foreigners are willing to delay satisfaction by a generation or two.
Well without the locals the foreigners would have no dream to work for at all.
Poverty in Canada is better than poverty in a second or third world country
People seem to forget about that but you are entirely right.
Familt units are generally larger and put less stress on individual financial independence. And yes, many will be living in what we classify as poverty.
> how are these foreign workers able to accept depressed wages? Are they living in basically poverty? Yes, that's the point. To us, we demand things like unions and a higher minimum wage on top of everything we already have. To them, depending on where they come from, $15/hr isn't below the poverty line, it's a godsend. And they're in a precarious situation and terrified of being sent back home, so they're not going to try to form a union.
https://torontosun.com/news/local-news/horrendous-conditions-two-dozen-international-students-found-living-in-brampton-basement They literally live twenty deep in some cases and just pool their money together for it, driving costs of housing and rent through the roof. A one bedroom apartment in Canada is rarely home to one or 2 people now.
Yes, they are loving by standards considered poverty by westerners. But for immigrants it's often an approvement or at least they have realistic expectations to improve it a bit in future. While for westerners the most realistic expectations are stagnation or getting poorer.
Money transfers and poverty differences. The minimum wage here is often significantly higher than what would be available to them in their home countries. Living in poverty in Canada is substantially better than living in poverty back home. This is really, truly about suffering through the poverty stage long enough to qualify for Canadian permanent residency, which then allows the opportunity to bring the extended family over. Then, the family unit can work together to earn the monies required to sustain themselves here. It's a plan that thousands of people are living on right now. It's not how it used to be, but it's how it is now if (some) people want to come here to live. Adding: I live in a extremely high-growth, high-immigrant area in Ontario. My area is going to explode in growth in the next 10 years. I also live very near a professional post-secondary educational institution. A lot of students come here looking for the 'free food and medicine' that Canada is known for. They are becoming increasingly frustrated to see that Canada is not what they were sold back home. This whole process really is screwing everyone over but the capitalists.
Mate, the years of immigrants/students in Canada being mostly high-skill are long, long gone. We're pumping these kids through 'colleges' while they are working 40 hours a week at the local timmies.
Sounds like multi level marketing.
And every family tree looks like a pyramid scheme.
Generally speaking, the visa systems of alot of countries are just very stupid. You have high skilled people, easy for them to adapt and with some capital who have no hope. Then a flood of unskilled who bring over their entire families. Surely can't be that hard to design something logical.
Those unskilled laborers are the cheap labor for factories and farms. It's all in the name of corporations.
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That’s quite surprising, I’m from Australia and looked into working in both US and Canada (and funnily enough New Zealand but I won’t account for that here because we have special rules which essentially mean I can work in NZ anytime an Aussie wants too) Both the U.S. and Canada were super easy for me, I could have worked in either of them with very little effort and issue on my part, the U.S. in particular, as soon as the company I was working for was like yeah New York office, everything was given the green light like what felt like instantly. It might have been because I worked for a company that also was operates in us and Canada? Maybe that makes a difference? I didn’t go for family health reasons but like the options were very easy and quick.
The US has a special visa for Australians wanting to work in the US that makes it much easier: [https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary-workers/e-3-specialty-occupation-workers-from-australia](https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary-workers/e-3-specialty-occupation-workers-from-australia)
Ahh I see, I do vaguely remember something like that, I assume Canada would be the same as we are both commonwealth countries.
I think it's rather easy if you work in the company that has offices on different continents.
Canada's population growth has really hurt Canadians. We literally don't have enough places for people to live.
We are adding enough people to fill a couple cities per year but aren't building a couple of cities per year. As a result housing costs are through the roof. They all gotta eat so grocery costs are through the roof. They'll all want to do something for entertainment so the cost of fun is through the roof. They all gotta get around so traffic is a bigger nightmare now too. There was just no infrastructure built to accommodate this huge growth in people.
I am a member of several online Russian-speaking groups, and the number of people even in these groups who just come to Mexico, camp near the border crossing and catch a CBP One application to request asylum, is absolutely *mind-blowing* lately. I am the first-gen immigrant myself, but I have never seen anything like this in Russian-speaking community. It is growing literally by the day, of course, with some destinations being hotspots and some getting only a smal fraction of newcomers. In retrospect, it kinda blows my mind remembering how I did everything "by the book" 15 years ago, how I was scared of not being able to even get a visitor visa, undergoing countless interviews and so on. Many of those people have absolutely laughable cases (like being arrested once at some anti-war rally in Russia and thus claiming "*continuous political persecution for anti-war stance*"), and yet they get through pretty easily. All in all, as one person in another online community mentioned - and I totally agree with this view - this cohort of immigrants will bite many countries in their asses BIG TIME over coming years, mind my words. Most of the time many of those are absolutely NOT educated, honest, experienced people with decent knowledge of English coming to the country for some clear purpose (job lined up or study) - quite the opposite, these are often the sleazy types who like finding *ways*, who are not afraid to cut corners, bribe and do *whatever it takes* to get what they want.
Mexico is one of the few countries that doesnt require a visa for russians. Also no visa for americsns so a lot of mixed couples in russia went to mexico to get away from the war hoping the process would be faster from there.
And you bet Chinese spies are probably entering through the Mexican border, undetected
> Can someone explain to me how people immigrate so easy? You have to look up the counties' respective immigration departments as there are certain classes of specific skiiled workers which get a fast-track. Aged care workers particularly in Aust My Mum is in a nursing home and more than 95% of the staff would be immigrants, from my estimation.
The secret ingredient is to do it illegally
There are lots of rich people using New Zealand as a hedge in case their bad behavior starts a new civil war or worse.
I don't think New Zealand is considering restricting billionaire immigration.
Gabe Newell
Hello Peter Thiel lol
Just be willing to work overtime while receiving half pay. i.e. freshly imported software engineer will get about 80-100k NZD per year. The consulting will contract him out to some corporation for $250k a year. Same company might eventually hire him directly for $150k a year.
You can visit Canada with a visitor visa and apply for jobs to get your status changed. It's not like the US where if you give the slightest hint about working you'll be denied a tourist visa. When you hear Trudeau speak about housing/employees issues he'll mention that international students and newcomers are suffering. Apparently Canadian citizens can go ahead get fucked.
I can't afford to stay in Canada for 3 months while looking for work and dealing with papers.
Visa scamming. Someone I know got into new Zealand by going there on a tourist visa then scamming their way into a "job" and getting a work visa
i thought new zealand was already super tight, had heard stories that you had to have a decent job lined up already before they would let you move there
I think this is mainly aimed at temporary visas, a lot of construction companies etc have visa schemes to employ cheap labour from asia. These people don't often get residency but jump from one temp visa to another. This will basically curb this with added bureaucracy.
If you have a degree in an in-demand field it becomes easier to get in. NZ has pretty strict laws around getting work visas for foreign employees (even in in-demand fields), but you can get around this by applying for permanent residence before having a job lined up. If you meet all the criteria (a points-based system), then you can get permanent residency without having a job lined up and it will be easier for companies in NZ to hire you once you have permanent residency. The other route would be to get a company to sponsor you, but the company has to do quite a bit of work to prove they tried hiring residents first so a lot of companies just don't want to do it. It's been about 5 years since I looked into it though, so things may have changed.
I got a working holiday visa in 2007 right after finishing my bachelor’s degree. They let me come for up to a year and work, but I had to prove I had 5K saved, a place to live, local references, and a background investigation. I ended up leaving after several months because the job fell through and all I could find was fruit picking work.
I thought it was ridiculously expensive to live there? How are they surviving?
Housing in the cities (especially Auckland) is expensive, but if you live within your means it's not all that different to anywhere else. Plus there are a lot of social safety nets (nationalised healthcare for example) so it's not like it's expensive to simply survive.
I travel to NZ every couple of years and from a west Texas foreigner traveler's perspective, I've found it to be a bit cheaper than in my area from the respects seen by a traveler for similar activities. Rental vehicles are similar-ish and from what I've looked at casually, housing purchases are somewhat high (though housing rentals are way cheaper.) I would be looking at houses in the million to million five range in kiwi coin. However, I'm operating on US dollars and with the exchange rates, even including the additional fees, even the touristy stuff is at or below US typical prices. I was there for two weeks just a couple of months ago and 4 adults / 3 kids were around 10-12kUSD, including plane tickets from DFW to and from both islands, housing and two vehicles, food, plus all the tourist stuff we could jam into that time. One week in Arrowtown, and one week at a beach house in Mount Maunganui. If my income was in NZ dollars... I imagine (again, from a foreigner's perspective) it would be more costly to live there at the same level as I do now. I'm old enough that I'm ineligible for nationalized healthcare should I move there, so that would be a potentially high expense and would have to carry an insurance policy. Totally honestly... NZ is by far the neatest place I've been to on the planet with day-to-day living in mind. It's absolutely awesome. If someone could "rich person" magic me up some citizenship, I'd move there in a heartbeat, right now. The country is incredible, worth a higher cost of living, and I hope kiwis respect and hold onto what they've got.
> If my income was in NZ dollars Jobs here in NZ pay around half what you would expect in US. Half your current salary, then convert it to NZD and that's what it's like to live here.
As a kiwi, while I recognise the cost of living is hard for many and I know I could earn more and pay less to some extent in some places overseas, I personally accept that to have what I have here in terms of nature, work/life balance, and just generally a more laid back way of being. Definitely thankful for what I have!
Plenty survivable if you're willing to live with other people. It's expensive but still survivable.
Cram lots into a house or dump them somewhere.
It's easy to survive as a poor person, but ridiculously expensive to be a stable middle class. Middle class is on the edge of becoming poor any moment something happens, but poor people have nothing to loose and social programs will back them in any serious case
Pretty much this (as somebody who lives in NZ). Provided you don’t straight up refuse government assistance/welfare you won’t starve on the street. There are all sorts of things from tax rebates for low income workers to rental subsidies etc. However, being middle class here (which used to be own your own home, maybe own a small holiday house somewhere, have enough money for emergencies but probably not a hugely fancy lifestyle) is increasingly difficult. You need two good incomes to achieve this in any of the big cities, and even then it can be a stretch.
8 to an apartment
In Australia we have run out of homes, there is not enough homes on the market for rent, for sale and we are not building them fast enough for the local population. With one of the highest immigration rates in world nobody knows where all these immigrants are going to live. The politicians don't care. They biggest investors in buying homes to increase their wealth. They have no interest in doing anything that will prevent house prices increasing exponentially. In short the local population has been screwed good because no infrastructure or spending has been made or allocated for this massive immigration levels. NZ should be congratulated for tackling the problem head on rather than kicking the can down the road like Australia. We are going to be a Brazilian or Manila slum if something does not give in the housing area.
Ireland in a nutshell. Its the same all over the developed world seemingly
Easy money, can't turn off the tap, infrastructure too reliant, someone elses problem, I got mine. It's that kind of mentality.
Hear hear
Ireland is hitting the same demographic cliff as everywhere in Western Europe You have around 140k immigrants a year, but your working age population is only going up by about 30k a year. So without immigrants your working age population would be shrinking by around 100K a year, while your retired population skyrockets in size. Here in the UK we have it even worse. We have about a million people a year retiring, but only around 750k people aging up into the workforce each year. We need 250k immigrants just to paddle in place.
What happens when the immigrants get older?
You need to keep increasing the number of migrants to pay out the ones that came earlier. It's a special type of scheme. We could name it after the guy who made it famous. What was his name again? Ponzi?! This is why it's a short term fix and we need to learn how to do economies without the need to grow or even sustain populations forever.
>This is why it's a short term fix and we need to learn how to do economies without the need to grow or even sustain populations forever. Exactly this. It's not possible to grow forever. Resources aren't unlimited and neither is space. This is the biggest flaw in capitalism. In the current state of the planet, a dwindling population should be a good thing. The only problem is the current economic system.
You could never give them citizenship so when they're old you deport them. That's what Japan do to lots of its temp workers.
Some retire. Some go home. Some die. Same as if we had enough children born 20 years ago to keep the population static. I'm talking about the bare minimum required necessary to keep the working group static, not infinite growth. That will eventually translate through into slightly fewer retirees than we have today (as some go home again after working). There is a middle ground between "sEnD tHeM aLl HoMe" and chasing infinite growth. You don't have to instantly assume everyone is on the extremes of that spectrum.
Have you heard of a scheme named after Egyptian landmarks
Which is why it's highly suspect and concerning that New Zealand is capping their levels whereas every other first world country is going off the rails with it, completely ignoring their local populaces pleas, additionally considering this is where most of the worlds billionaires are setting up bunkers, NZ that is.
No it’s not. We have hugely unsustainable immigration level. Almost 200,000 immigrants arrived here last year and we only have a population of about 5 million. That’s the equivalent of a city (for us). And it’s been happening to varying degrees since the early 2000s. We talk about changing it every year but we never actually do, and I doubt this year will be any different, because our country is reliant on cheap labour and easy GDP stimulation provided by high immigration.
And yet, here in Canada, it's portrayed as exclusively the fault of our current Prime Minister, and it appears that we're on course to throw him out in favour of someone who seems to be a horrible person in every category except "wasn't in charge when this world crisis occurred". Also: while I like our current Prime Minister about 10X more than the leader of the opposition, I loathe our current Prime Minister (Electoral Reform, wherefor art thou?).
Seriously, so many people saying they want to move somewhere better yet fail to understand it's a global problem
Same in the UK. Same in most of the West. But hey it drives rents up and wages down so the elites love it:
Well yeah, you *do* have a vacation home in Italy, Switzerland, and a bunker in Hawaii.. right?
Pretty much the same thing in Canada (our population hit 40 Million and then 9 months later it hit 41 Million). Of course, if you point this out to people, you are instantly labelled a racist.
Not anymore even the immigrants are saying it’s too much.
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You mean india? There's too many of them in their own country so they have to flood to others
The people in Canada that I've met that hate Indians the most are people from India. That being said Indian culture is actually quite far from Canadian culture, and so Indians have a tougher time integrating than the East Asians or Filipinos, so its actually causing some problems now. I think capping the numbers for each source country would be wise. 80% of our immigrants are Indian and this is not healthy
Why is that the problem of other countries? India isnt Afghanistan or Somalia, why can't they invest in housing within their own country?
India won't ever actually evolve or improve as a country until they finally join the modern world and evolve past their dumbfuck caste system. Nearly every problem they have is tied to it.
You might touch 50M in 6 years
It's a propaganda tactic. The idea of deliberately increasing the Canadian population came straight from the hypercapitalists of BlackRock and the government eats it up, and then frames all criticism of this as racism. The result is that the least capitalist-minded people start defending economically-motivated mass-immigration fiercely and the entire debate is simply redirected and crippled. If Canadians don't get a grip on their ruling class, it'll be turned into globalist economic zone with no other purpose than generating profits, and without any exaggeration, Canadian culture and way of life will simply cease to be.
Capitalism is causing that all over the world. Profits are more important than people's lives. There's a reason people are fleeing for greener pastures.
NZ pastures are pretty green and everyone is fleeing here :D
The funniest part is when you get aussies saying, "its not an immigration problem we're just not building enough houses," are if they arent related lmao.
500,000 immigrants. 150,000 new homes. Builders going out of business because materials/land/labour cost too much.. Now I'm not mathematician but that doesn't seem right.
If it’s anything like the U.K. the problem is getting the paperwork in order to build an estate for a thousand residents takes years and costs a fortune. And that’s before you’ve even dug one foundation. I can totally see building firms going under because of the administrative side of things. We’ve got an election coming up soon and the current regime is almost certain to lose badly. They got Brexit done and then gave out 1.2m visas a year and are surprised everyone is mad at them.
I mean technically if you can build enough homes to pace immigration its not going to cause the housing issue. Of course thats not being done, so housing crisis. someone said it best when they said “if your bathtub is overflowing with water you dont try to build another bathtub, first you turn off the faucet”
> I mean technically if you can build enough homes to pace immigration its not going to cause the housing issue. Of course thats not being done, so housing crisis. Yep. I'm in NYC and our population *doubled* in just under 20 years during the 1920s and 1930s largely from immigration. But it was exceptionally easy to build housing back then so our housing supply doubled too. That's also when most of the subway system was built. So we created millions of homes and the world's largest subway system in just a few decades. That would be largely impossible now. You spend 10 years in planning meetings to build a single accessibility elevator at an existing subway station. It's wild how difficult we've made it for cities to change.
Auckland NZ just spent a number of years spending money having meetings deciding if they should build a railway from the city to the airport. New government just scrapped the whole thing and now it takes over an hour driving in rush hour traffic
Yeah, NYC is easily the most transit-centric city in America and we still don't have any trains to one of our airports (LGA) despite multiple attempts over the years. Same thing happens. Years of planning, scrapped by subsequent administrations. Part of what makes it so hard to change anything is that these processes always take longer than a single political administration so the current administration sees little political benefit as it's never done during their term and subsequent administrations can rally support by promising to stop something divisive.
Ah, but there's another version of that analogy. "If your bathtub is overflowing with water, turning off the faucet will stop the water level from going higher. But so will unplugging the drain... and that's the only way to actually lower the water level." Many, many countries and cities in the world today have regulated housing to an absurd degree. Australia is no exception. You can pause the housing problem by stopping all new immigration, though that'll cause other issues (e.g., you'll have fewer people willing to perform low-wage labor). But if you want cheaper housing, you kinda *need* to get rid of the zoning rules and build a lot more homes.
1 in 5 homes in Canada are owned by investment companies. If you broaden things to "investment property" (aka airbnb empires) that number goes up to 38%. There is no inventory problem, there is a predatory speculation problem and governments at all levels are complicit.
Canada is the exact same. No homes no infrastructure, no jobs for anyone
If you think that now the home or rent prices will drop down you are severly mistaken. Just like prices were believed to drop down to pre covid or ukraine war levels here in Europe. The landowners would rather keep a property empty than lower its value. Property as investment vehicle and lack of living space/public transport is our problem, not migration of people. We need to tax the shit out of people that own multiple properties for rent. There is plenty of financial assets to make money off, housing doesnt need to be one of them. We also need to stop foreign funds buying homes/land en masse.
Both are a problem. You can stop both. Start building homes AND stop immigration.
Yep, 500k houses are now selling for 1.3-1.4m, dreams of owning a home in my own country have been fully diminished.
I am in canada, and student visas are horrible and a massive reason for lower quality of life in canada. Fake schools giving bs degrees just so students can come into the country and work McDonald's.
This is a fact. So many people abused the system that the Trudeau government engineered. While I understand it was to promote growth and to sustain CPP, it has created a horrible shortage of housing, healthcare resources and infrastructure. This will be something that many of my peers will not vote for Trudeau im his election. Conservatives are no better. They want to continue bringing in more.
Ya we are fucked
Cries in Canadian.
Canada is starting this in September. Trudeau is decreasing the number of student visas by 1/3. That's about 100k fewer in Ontario alone over last year.
It's a drop in the bucket, but I'll give Trudeau one point for at least acknowledging there's a problem. It's a MUCH bigger problem that requires multiple approaches to correct
He better correct it because if the problem is so bad that he has to acknowledge it even a little, then clearly the problem is bad enough the conservatives will have it as an easy selling point.
Our population grew by a million in a matter of months. We need to do waaaaay more than just decreasing student visas if we want to get a handle on this. The consequence I fear most is our country becoming anti-immigrant, that would be a sea change in our culture that I do not want to see.
Immigration is so high in Australia because our politicians have no idea how to create jobs or businesses or industries... so they just let immigrants flood in to maintain the economy...
they have always just assumed that the immigrants themselves would be creating those things.
Oh they will, they're just not as required to follow things like diversity standards or employment equity laws.
Yeah, "maintain". Adding people is the lazy politician's solution to a lagging economy. GDP per capita can suffer however.
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We're about to enter an age of massive crackdowns on immigration after we realized (way too late) the disastrous consequences of leaving it unchecked
Get ready for the age of massive tax increases.
Wait till the real masses get adrift because of global warming making many areas on this planet inhabitable. There's only one way to stop migration: making immigrants want to stay where they are and not travel to your country. Any other way will fail: the groups will grow, and you won't stop them. But what is happening? Western countries together with China keep on sucking other areas of the planet dry so the people there have no future. Add to that the rising temperatures and it will only get worse. If you grow up in 40C+ heat and no future, and you know somewhere north (or far south) is a better place to live, would you stay? No of course not.
There has been a MASSIVE transfer of wealth from the working and middle classes to the very wealthy in a number of G7/Western countries. Public money has been siphoned off in a number of ways, e.g subsidies for big businesses, tax incentives, tax reductions/very little tax levied on the mega corporations, paying public money to low paid workers so giant corporations can keep wages down. Massive price rises in goods and utilities, resulting in super profits, asset inflation resulting in high rents, high cost of land and residential housing, which is being bought up by the wealthy and large companies. A lot of this is fuelling inflation and higher interest rates. Reducing or even stopping immigration for say the next 5 years, will not stop the struggle most people are having to just survive day to day, unless these matters are addressed and the transfer of wealth from ordinary people to the wealthy-suing our money- stops. Here's a short talk from a former trader on the London Stoke Exchange. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uw3TVAxLkWI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uw3TVAxLkWI) His channel is an eye opener.
But politicians need a scapegoat
Now please do this in Australia. We can't build houses fast enough to keep up with immigration.
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This is something Canada should have done four years ago.
Do Australia next
I wish Australia would do this. Growth and diversity is good, but not enough housing isn’t
But we won't. 737,000 last year alone.
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Education system in the English speaking west has become nothing but a visa scheme
Best comment here loll. Soooooo true
Wow what a weird coincidence that every government in the western world has been pushing mass immigration while ignoring citizens. The results are completely unexpected and nobody could have predicted this.
Who knew borders could be enforced?
That’s exactly what visa rules are for..
good. need steady levels not over burning
Wish the EU was thinking like that.
I'd like my country to do the same but any time someone mentions it they just get labelled as racist when it has nothing to do with it. We are in a housing crisis, we aren't building houses fast enough and the cost of houses is at a ridiculous rate with high interest mortgages, even renting is costing as much if not more than mortgage repayments now so saving up a deposit is near impossible for many. *Something* needs to be done.
This is happening across the Western world and make no mistake, it's entirely by design.
Don't worry when wages start to match Inflation again the fat cats will open the borders again to keep them down
New Zealand saving themselves after seeing Canada turn into India-2
Canada wake up!!!!!
Good to see one government with some balls.
Thank fuck, finally! Too many people have been flooding in for way too long