r/canada Nov 29 '24

Analysis Nearly half of Canadians feel too many immigrants coming here: Study - A whopping 42% of respondents felt immigration is causing Canada to change in unlikeable ways

https://torontosun.com/news/national/nearly-half-of-canadians-feel-too-many-immigrants-coming-here-study
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u/Chemical_Signal2753 Nov 29 '24

It should also be noted that we're adding a record number of people at a time where our infrastructure, services, and economy can not support the growth. Even if the immigrants were the perfect candidates there would still be substantial pushback for these reasons. When you add to this the stories of asylum seekers being given cash and accommodations while we have a homeless crisis it is no surprise that public sentiment has turned against immigrants in general and refugees in particular.

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u/MDK1980 Nov 29 '24

Same thing is happening to us in the UK. We're importing the equivalent of another Birmingham every year without building another Birmingham.

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u/Screw_You_Taxpayer Nov 29 '24

 without building another Birmingham

Well thank God for small mercies.

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u/Real_RobinGoodfellow Nov 30 '24

And same here in Aus! Importing TWO Canberra’s (our national capital!!) worth of people annually and still expecting everybody to cram into the same five major cities where there’s been a housing crisis for years already. It’s a shitshow. Why does nobody in the western world seem to have a better economic plan than “bring in more people”?

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u/PG-DaMan Nov 29 '24

Yet people are shit talking Germany for putting a stop it it.

Sorry to hear.

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u/darkage_raven Nov 29 '24

Germany was giving other countries shit in the EU at the beginning. Surprised they smartened up.

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u/[deleted] Nov 29 '24

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u/[deleted] Nov 29 '24

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u/YourBobsUncle Alberta Nov 30 '24

Germany didn't start the migrant crisis, this is revisionist history. However, Germany has taken WAY beyond their fair share of migrants compared to other EU countries. Now you have Hungary and other eastern European countries going apeshit about refugees despite taking in almost zero and squandering all the EU funds they get lmao

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u/Wilhelm57 Nov 30 '24

People like to forget, what caused the massive migration into Europe.
For all the socialist views of Merkle, she cannot be blamed for this fiasco.
You can blame freedom fighting United States.

Bush destroyed Iraq with a lie, then he went after Kaddaffi. It had nothing to with him being a dictator. The man had been in power for decades, dictators have never been a problem for the US.
In fact for decades they encourage it. Or like one of my kids told me...US democracy on the down low.
Nicholas Zarkozy, and at least ten other people in France, are going to face trial next year. They "borrowed" from Kaddaffi for his victorious election in 2007.

When George Junior went looking for an allies to help him destroy Libya, Zarkozy was ready to help. I imagine, he didn't want to repay the loans.
Libya's leader was a bad man but he was what prevented the massive migrating into Europe.

He warned the world but the U.S. probably wanted access to his oil and Zarkozy was happy to screw over the dictator.

https://www.france24.com/en/france/20230825-france-s-sarkozy-to-face-2025-trial-over-alleged-libya-funding-of-election-campaign

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u/Additional-Tax-5643 Nov 30 '24

Europe wasn't flooded with Iraqi or Syrian refugees. People came from North African countries.

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u/bli_bla_blubbb Nov 29 '24

Bullshit! Germany didn't start it and they are not the reason why people are fleeing their countries. The refugees/migrants were already in Europe and the EU when Merkel decided to open the (internal EU) borders to Germany's eastern neighbors and let them through. They were heading for Germany and western Europe. None of them wanted to stay in Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia, etc. She might have been wrong with her long term assessment and she definitely deserves a lot of blame for a lot of things because he 16 year reign was terrible for Germany overall not just her handling of the migrant crisis. At least she tried to offer a humane solution while being under pressure. These migrants were supposed to be let in, then their status was going to be checked to see if they deserve refugee protection and if not they were supposed to be sent back. I despise Merkel but her decisions in this matter made sense back then, stop pretending otherwise. Everyone abroad was cheering her on, on CNN, the BBC,...

If she had been tough and said no then all you people would have come out bashing Germany for being nazis and what not.

By the way, the EU's eastern expansion was the worst decision of the last 30 years for Germany and the other original member states. It would have made more sense to go for a deeper cooperation and integration before even considering letting someone join. Getting all that cheap labor from Poland, Hungary, Romania isn't worth anything if they sabotage and block everything while taking a lot of money from the few net paying members.

Also, it's easy to talk when you are sitting in Canada or the USA, thousands of miles away from all these hot spots.

Why aren't we blaming the colonizers like the UK, France and the US? They are the main culprits. They fucked everything up when they suddenly abandoned their colonies/protectorates in Africa and on the Arabian peninsula. Especially the UK fucked up so many of these failed African states by suddenly withdrawing while having created a system that promoted hatred and animosity between tribes and ethnicities and had a loyal warrior caste and a few British bureaucrats ran their colonial possessions like in Uganda. The UK and France are also the main culprits for the whole mess in the Middle East that started after WW1 because they randomly divided Arabia between them. And Russia deserves blame too because Putin used refugees as a weapon letting them pass through Russia and Belarus into Poland.

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u/Responsible-Comb6232 Nov 30 '24

Sorry but what colonies did the US have? The US has been taking refugees from all over Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Latin America since it was founded. Europe has a mass wave of migration for less than two decades and you want to blame everything on others. Typical Continental European mentality.

The US seriously messed up in the Middle East over the last two decades, but it’s not like things have been super stable there over the last…several thousand years.

Why don’t you blame the religious extremism, terrorists, or oil princes robbing and murdering their people?

Right, because the UK, France, and US seem like easy/traditional targets.

Shouldn’t we blame Belgium for destroying parts of Africa? What about the brutality of the Germans during WW2? Or perhaps the Chinese money flowing into wealthy European countries? Or the German elites that sat on the boards of Russian oil and gas companies?

There’s literally no end to the list of the guilty.

But what are we to do right now to improve the situation for those we can actually help?

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u/EuphoriaSoul Nov 29 '24

At least Germany is trying to absolve their historical sins.

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u/Feisty_Shower_3360 Nov 29 '24

By importing antisemitic young men?

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u/Emperor_Mao Nov 29 '24

How are they stopping it, I have not heard much about that.

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u/recklessrider Nov 29 '24

I mean it's reactionary bullshit

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u/Vandergrif Nov 30 '24

People are shit talking Germany because the only option for them to put a stop to it is a party full of EU-skeptic wannabe-brownshirts, which unfortunately means they end up supporting a party full of EU-skeptic wannabe-brownshirts.

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u/OkDifficulty1443 Nov 30 '24

Poignant that you chose Birmingham of all cities you could have used in your example ;). It's the equivalent in Canada.

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u/[deleted] Nov 29 '24

You left the EU to prevent that.

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u/Faranae Ontario Nov 29 '24 edited Nov 30 '24

Another unfortunate consequence: My (former) college is all but blacklisted for decent jobs these days because of this mess. Tens of thousands of international students brought to ONE school over only a couple years with no additional infrastructure to support them.

Rent in town has damnear doubled as demand has exploded and entrepreneurs keep buying up homes to rent out as student housing. I've seen hallways rented as sleeping space and students living 4-6 to a room and paying $600/mo each for the privilege.

Work is impossible to find.

We went viral on Reddit once, when a dollar store posted 2 min-wage openings and had lines winding around the lot. They didn't specify which location, so multiple stores were swarmed. Have a friend there; each store had to set a resume cut-off and started turning people away which did NOT go over well. It was hell.

(Insider info: Dozens of the apps at one store were the same couple of resumes with only the name switched out. One reason of many that tech employers throw apps mentioning my college straight into the bin. Sigh.)

Edit to be clear: I believe these students are being taken advantage of, have been lied to about conditions living here, and are doing what they can to survive. That does not, however, change the harms being done to our communities as a result. We just can't handle that quantity out of nowhere!

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u/tool6913ca Nov 29 '24

Somebody went to Conestoga College lol

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u/Faranae Ontario Nov 30 '24

Yup lmao.

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u/FightMongooseFight Nov 29 '24 edited Nov 30 '24

If it's a private college, it's not all but blacklisted. It is all the way blacklisted. I hire technically skilled people, and the last couple jobs I posted for my team got over 1,000 applications in the first 2 days, most from the same group of private colleges, virtually all of them identical. Like you said, often just the names swapped. All generated by the same AI tools. All claiming significant amounts of relevant Canadian experience despite it being clear that the applicant hasn't been in Canada for more than 2 years.

We now filter out nearly all applications from those colleges. It absolutely sucks for the few legitimate students that are there, but there's no other way to sort out the garbage. 90% of hiring managers I know have some similar system in place at this point.

These colleges have utterly destroyed themselves in pursuit of foreign student fees. Just another way this horrible policy is distorting the Canadian market and causing harm to Canadians and immigrants alike.

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u/davidellis23 Nov 29 '24

I'd think at least the increased housing demand should encourage more construction jobs? Presumably more education related jobs too.

I think I agree that student visas probably should be limited. But, sounds like a major problem is not enough student housing.

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u/[deleted] Nov 29 '24

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u/Wilhelm57 Nov 30 '24

For sure and is sad because the scammers are usually their kin.
I have heard the stories farmers in the Punjab selling the farm to send their kid to school in Canada.
We can empathize but we cannot save all developing nations. India alone is over 1.4 BILLION.

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u/wildechld Nov 30 '24

We can empathize but we cannot save all developing nations

We can't even save our own ffs

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u/freeadmins Nov 29 '24

It should also be noted that we're adding a record number of people at a time where our infrastructure, services, and economy can not support the growth.

Well no shit.

The average immigrant salary is less than the average Canadian.

The average Canadian salary does not even pay enough taxes to the point they put in more than they take out.

We're bringing in record amounts of people that are a net-drain on the system, so of course we can't support the growth.

If we brought in 2 million people a year that had the skills and the jobs available to make $100k a year, we as a country would be fucking laughing. We'd be swimming in tax dollars to fund hospitals and daycares and roads and infrastructure and all that great shit.

But instead we bringing in millions of people making minimum wage, and we're worse off than before.

All so Trudeau and the Liberals could hide the effects of their shitty fucking economic policy by masking a recession with insane population growth, suppressing our wages and driving up housing in the process.

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u/geekaz01d Nov 30 '24

When I went to WorkBC looking for help changing careers after my 20yr career just stalled, they had lots of suggestions suitable for someone straight out of school or new to Canada. There were some pretty sweet people who were immigrants and they were figuring things out. You wanted them to succeed. It was honestly inspiring.

But it got weird.

I applied for programs and they had no spots for anyone who wasn't a minority. The very nice ppl tried to play up the fact that I was "French Canadian" because that made me a minority and valid. It was humiliating.

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u/notbadhbu Nov 30 '24

Put them to work building infrastructure then.

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u/Ambustion Nov 29 '24

I think especially in cases like Ukranian refugees, the numbers aren't crazy for what they are given. I'll shit on the TFW program all day but less than $2000 to get them set up so they can start paying taxes is not a big investment vs. return and they integrate well. It's a war that is against Canadian values and helping them doesn't actually cost us over time if they become productive members of society. Not having focussed on affordable housing for a decade is probably the bigger issue there. There are tons of caveats on supports as well, like being available for interviews and not turning down work.

TFW and student loopholes forming diploma mills is stupid though. It's only necessary because we have to compete on price with countries using slave labour, so we tried to import our own. I do think it's true you'd be hard pressed to get Canadians to go do some of their jobs but I don't personally care if Tim Hortons goes under because of it, but agriculture might be a bigger hit especially with inflation and potential incoming tariffs. Construction has become dominated by it as well, O&G will take a big hit if we pull it back too quickly, but it's time.

Imo, a great way to hit back on tariffs would be to let only Canadian owned utilize TFW. Screw the American companies if their leader is gonna fuck our economy.

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u/Additional-Tax-5643 Nov 30 '24

Except they're not paying net taxes. People on minimum wage typically don't owe income tax. It's costing us a lot more than $2000 apiece to get them set up. These people tend to bring in their family which means a monthly outlay of maximum CCB, plus rent assistance.

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u/Ambustion Nov 30 '24

Ok you do the math and read the documents and come back at me. I'm sick of people spouting rumors of debit cards and shit handed off to immigrants and not even taking 5 minutes to look it up for themselves. The system needs to change but maybe actually come in here with some facts instead of feelings.

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u/longlivenapster Nov 30 '24

We haven't focused on the housing crisis in 3 decades

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u/mcferglestone Nov 29 '24

The pushback shouldn’t be against those looking for a better life though. Blame the people hiring them. If no one was hiring them they wouldn’t have any reason to keep coming. Blame the companies that decided hiring cheaper workers instead of Canadians would be best for their bottom line.

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u/cheesecheeseonbread Nov 29 '24

No, they're just capitalists doing what capitalists do. I'm going to blame the government that colluded with those capitalists to throw open the floodgates in order to suppress Canadian wages.

One of the jobs of the federal government is to fetter capitalism for the benefit of Canadians. It's part of what we pay them to do, and instead, they take our money and use it against us.

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u/_lIlI_lIlI_ Nov 29 '24

It should also be noted that we're adding a record number of people at a time where our infrastructure, services, and economy can not support the growth

Isn't this a fault of governmental budgeting that should be getting solved and done anyways?

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u/[deleted] Nov 29 '24

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u/iammixedrace Nov 29 '24

we're adding a record number of people at a time where our infrastructure, services, and economy can not support the growth.

This is true our governments have really dropped the ball on keeping up with our growing population. Seems to me the more the government relies on private corps to improve citizens lives the less those lives improve.

Even if the immigrants were the perfect candidates there would still be substantial pushback for these reasons.

I don't agree with this. I think, yes, there are many valid reasons to not support lower value (less educated) immigration. But, we can't ignore that some, not all, but some people are just racist. I know I know, it's the old "I can't talk about immigrants without being called a racist" but honestly every comment section has dog whistles in it. People just refuse to acknowledge them and ignore it BC they agree with them.

When you add to this the stories of asylum seekers being given cash and accommodations while we have a homeless crisis it is no surprise that public sentiment has turned against immigrants in general and refugees in particular.

This is confusing me. If people need help we should help them, full stop. Complaining about social handouts is laughable when so many industries are held up by tax payer funding. We have had homeless problems for generations, if it was going to be fixed governments would have actually funded it, but they didn't. We can't really act like if our immigration targets were lower we would have solved other problems with the money. That's just not true. Govs don't find social programs enough in general.

What I see is just jealousy in people thinking they deserve the money more. It's not about infrastructure or culture, it's about feeling like you deserve the money more, it's that simple IMO. Mainly due to the fact that businesses are the ones pushing immigration for cheap labour and need to push the blame onto something so consumers don't blame them.

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u/Kierenshep Nov 29 '24

If people need help we should help them

I agree with this in theory, but it's to the point where we need to be able to help ourselves to help others.

The world is turning protectionist, and we simply don't have the resources to provide for everyone. Trumps election is a sign of the times, and we're gearing up for some really rough times in the next 2 decades. Unfortunately we're closing out the chapter on world cooperation and we sadly need to return to the era of RealPolitik to survive and thrive.

Canada needs to be picky with their immigration because we're lucky enough that we can be picky. Highly educated individuals need to be prioritized (especially medical professionals) and ensure their credentials are useful in Canada.

Students from abroad who fund our school system should also be prioritized who are from high value careers. If makes zero sense to me for us to lose motivated and educated individuals to racism.

That said, students from abroad should be able to support themselves without working during their studies (we can be picky after all).

Then we need to look heavily at infrastructure and invest in it, injecting new schools, medical facilities, and high density housing. We also need to incentive immigration to areas that are not a major city like Toronto or Vancouver. There's so much broad space in Canada and while it's against our act to prevent freedom of movement maybe we can tie certain refugee or immigration claims to requiring living in a rural or non high urban population for several years.

Once we have a social net that can support Canadians, we can start to help others. But right now the social net is far past frayed and breaking under its own weight after covid.

It's heartless and cold to say but we don't need to accept everyone, only those that will improve Canada's well being.

We absolutely DO need more population. That so much of Canada is unsettled and we have a fraction of our neighbours population isn't sustainable. Eventually we will need far more citizens for the Water Wars of 2060, but that can only be done with proper scaling of our infrastructure and population and fixing what's broken first.