Canada’s immigration system, once admired for its fairness and balance, has drifted into crisis
Canada’s immigration system, once admired for its fairness and balance, has drifted into crisis
I work with a lot of immigrants. Here's some random thoughts opinions and observations
They aren't the problem. I've met and learned a lot from the people I work with. They are as amazing or as shitty as anyone else you know.
Most of the immigrants I know are from India or the Philippines(just establishing perspective), and some are first generation Canadians(children of immigrants)
It's not hard to make friends with these people. They care a lot about community because it's what has allowed then to succeed as much as they have. I'm an atheist the vast majority are solidly theist.
But like everyone else, they want something familiar if and when they have the choice, just like anyone else seems to
Most of our opinions are forged by how we grew up and what we learned about the world at that time. (Meaning this was the same for everyone I worked with and didn't matter where you came from)
communication is by far the most common problem, it's hard to be successful when you don't understand what you are being told. Often that means not understanding what you are doing wrong. Hard to do if you don't speak the language that company does business in. I felt this same way when I had to go to Quebec City to work. I don't speak French. What I learned to do is exactly what the people I work with do, rely on the person or people that can translate for us. It can turn bad coworkers into your best assets if you can communicate effectively, even if that's just a box with Google translate on it as your interpreter. Wanting to understand and trying to is going to get you far, even when you are embarrassed about the difficulty you have. You will be appreciated for not just getting yes yes, okay boss, and continuing to make mistakes.
Minimum wages in Canada are way better than most of the places people are coming from, but the cost of living quickly catches up to people. Immigrants often have much better coping mechanisms to combat cost of living than local people do. This is the crux of blaming immigrants for low wages, if the wages didn't suck already then you wouldn't have so many immigrants coming here. That's not on them, that's on domestic policy and employers fucking everyone over.
This is the crux of blaming immigrants for low wages, if the wages didn't suck already then you wouldn't have so many immigrants coming here. That's not on them, that's on domestic policy and employers fucking everyone over.
Happily, I don't think many people here are blaming immigrants for the system that's taking advantage of them. Most of the comments I've seen on Lemmy get that this is a policy failure by our governments, and that newcomers are getting screwed.
Would you believe that's the whole ethos of the CanadaHousing2 subreddit, that it's the government's fault and they are taking advantage of immigrants and Canadians alike, but it gets labeled as a hate sub, lol.
Maybe not on here, but it is typical that is the problem I encounter with people who are vocally against immigrants. My experiences being my experiences(my algorithms online)
I didn't read through most of the comments before I felt like commenting, for whatever that's worth if anything
I don't know that I would agree that newcomers are necessarily getting screwed, not anymore than anyone else anyway. And I think that's why I have worked with so many. (Corporate greeeeeed)
Most of the people I work with still are better off than where that came from, it's still a better life for them comparatively, and like I mentioned, they often have skills(opinions, preferences, familiarity etc) that allow them to utilize their situation to make them happier than non immigrants typically find.
Against my experience, I don't mean to sorry for everyone else, but I do have first hand experience in this place so I feel comfortable offering an opinion
The UN called it modern slavery, while the NDP called you racist if you said it was debasing salaries.
When people start getting concerned over the number of immigrants only when those immigrants are identifiable by skin tone, it's probably racist. No one seems to have given a flying fuck about the number of immigrants in low paying jobs when those immigrants were white.
Nobody cared when immigration was 200k a year instead of 1.4 million. Its people like you that helped destroy the poor by making people feel too insecure to talk about it openly.
if only we invested more in housing instead of forcing scarcity to enrich a small percentage of the population.
It's become really bad. Immigration is a strength for Canada. But this is out of control. I wish we all would put more pressure on governments to stop it. It's so unanimous across liberal and conservative to stall this yet I think almost all voters are against this. It's such blatant corruption.
I remember Trudeau traveling to India. Like were there some behind the scene deals made to flood Canada with Indian immigrants during these visits?
This is how you learn that representative democracy in our system represents business significantly more than individual citizens, and is therefore less democratic than advertised.
This sort of nativism is a root of fascism. Your problem is government unwillingness to antagonize NIMBYs, not "floods" of Indians trying to live better lives. Also the reason politicians are hesitant to seriously cut migration is because first world economies are dependent on immigration to sustain population and economic growth; mess with it too much and suddenly you have a recession.
No the out of control immigration from a single demographic is the problem. I think many people are done sugar coating it. It's out of control. It's hurting first generation Canadians to benefit business class and politicians
It's been an even greater strength for big corporations though. There's a lot of immigration lawyers who own Tim Hortons. Same with education; their entire business model requires extortionate tuition/rent that only foreign students can afford.
We need to name and shame the people profiting off of this mismanagement. Pointing the finger at the government just causes them to deflect aimlessly.
It's all funding at the end of the day. A big power we have is shame. If we keep pressure and awareness on a single topic long enough we could impact funding. If companies and individuals become toxic by proxy for donating to these parties or even become aware how damaging it is to Canada, that funding dries up and the parties will panic. But if we ignore it or just mildly be annoyed then they just get away with it.
Are the majority of recent immigrants Indians?
There sure has been a huge influx of Indians in Montréal since 2018. But, I know there was a huge fiasco about colleges that were created solely for Indian foreign students for profit. So I figured that was linked. But if it's Canada-wide, then it's something else.
It sounds like it's Canada wide. In Ontario the majority of minimum wage jobs are Indians. Even where I work, teams are made up of majority Indians and there are talks of having teams set up there. I've been seeing people say the same across Canada. It's put a lot of pressure on young first generation Canadians who are competing for their first job against applicants who have professional careers or resumes with fake jobs since it's hard to verify jobs if they're in another country. I can't imagine the stress of being a 17 year old kid today trying to enter the job market. Especially in cities where new immigrants migrate towards.
The problem isn't really the immigrants. It's that politicians don't want to spend any money on public infrastructure and services so that we can continue providing for everyone adequately.
I keep saying it: we aren't even prepared for the mass flooding that will be caused in Canada by climate change in the coming decades despite civil engineers sounding the alarm for years. We will not be investing in mass transit, basic income, and affordable housing if we can't even fucking commit to anti-flood measures.
It's not about immigrants.
Yeah. Immigrants aren't to blame here. It's government policy failure.
Exactly this. All levels of government have failed to plan and build for our future - the extra 7% of our population just makes it really obvious.
Temporarily stopping/slowing immigration will give us a chance to fix our shit. But we need a government willing to admit there's a polycrisis and actually start training doctors, building houses, etc.
We train lots of doctors but they leave and go to the US. The brain drain is still on.
You're totally right but I really think there's an issue with immigration nonetheless that's been going on for several years.
The root cause though is corporate greed and the government that's in their pocket.
Can you explain more about what you think is the issue? I'm aware that a lot of the work and support programs we have are incredibly unstable and exploitative (seen pieces of it secondhand with TFW), but I'm curious as to what you're thinking of.