• TheJesusaurus@piefed.ca
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    2 days ago

    A lot of our immigration was from student visas. And a lot of student visas were being abused, both to bring in cheap labour and to prop up diploma mills.

    The government stepped in to protect domestic labour and the reputation of Canadian higher education institutions (education being one of our largest export markets)

    • iocase@lemmy.zip
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      1 day ago

      Don’t forget housing… When you have 5-10 students sharing the rent on an overpriced home then landlords can charge much more. Low interest rates and massive immigration both inflated the hell out of property even more than it normally would have without them.

    • Dr. Bob@lemmy.ca
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      2 days ago

      There was a policy decision around 30 years ago to deregulate tuition and cut funding to universities. Part of the arrangement was allowing massive differential fees for foreign students. So they have been propping up most universities, not just the diploma mills.

      • TheJesusaurus@piefed.ca
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        2 days ago

        I really don’t have an issue with student visas for actual students pursuing actual degrees from reputable universities. They are as close to printing free money as a country can get and it’s really only a benefit for us as a nation.

        • Foxer@lemmy.ca
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          22 hours ago

          Yes and no. It is a tool that must be wielded like a scalpel and not a hammer.

          If done perfectly right it can be a big benefit. But it is extremely easy to do it wrong. And the problem is even if you set it up right at the beginning it tends to take a life of its own on and go off the rails in a relatively short. Of time.

          But in principle I agree with you that there are benefits. Not only does it reduce costs to our universities by providing income but more importantly it can make a lot of foreign nationals very comfortable with the idea of doing business in Canada and allow for connections chips that will further our ability to do business in those countries in the future

          But it’s just so easy for it to go wrong and when it goes wrong we run into real problems

  • cecilkorik@lemmy.ca
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    2 days ago

    Maybe all the immigrants finally started to recognize the lies they were being told about living here being a comfortable family dream when it’s actually unaffordable, inhumane and degrading wage-slavery. It’s not much better for the average Canadian either, but at least most of us have some kind of family support system to fall back on, and we have the entire time we spend growing up here to come to terms with the reality of the lies that the economy and media sell us, instead of getting thrown into the deep end of this unfair economy like the immigrants do. No wonder so many of them turn to crime.

    • gramie@lemmy.ca
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      2 days ago

      It sure sounds like you have never lived anywhere else in your life, certainly not anywhere in the developing world. It’s hard to conceive how much worse life is in a lot of places, unless you have lived there. Granted that people who can afford international student fees are in the upper class of most poor countries, but it doesn’t take away from the very real increase in the standard of living.

    • brianpeiris@lemmy.caOP
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      2 days ago

      No wonder so many of them turn to crime.

      I agreed with you until this point. What percentage of them “turn to crime”? Is that percentage higher than non-immigrants? My guess is that it’s a negligible fraction.

    • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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      2 days ago

      I’m gonna need sources for all that bunk you’ve written. It sounds very War Room.

    • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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      2 days ago

      I mean, unless thay immigrated from Iceland or something, it’s still going to be an improvement. The trick is that they’re now at the bottom of the food chain, where often they were at the top, where they came from.

  • Foxer@lemmy.ca
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    2 days ago

    The problem is the people leaving are the highly talented and valuable people economically speaking. The people that are staying are the low income low skill people who do not substantially increase our GDP per capita and in fact lower it

    This is going to be more and more of a problem.

    • grte@lemmy.ca
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      1 day ago

      Low income low skill people are still a net gain to society because they provide the secret ingredient that makes our economy function and grow: Demand. If their income is not enough to stimulate demand, that is because the minimum wage is too low.

      • Foxer@lemmy.ca
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        23 hours ago

        Market economies are not built on demand. If all you have is demand then you have a failed economy because you will have runaway inflation the vast majority won’t be able to afford the things they need

        Which is precisely what’s happening in Canada. The housing market has exploded because there’s demand but not a sufficient supply. The strain on the medical systems is similar, demand increase faster than supply

        Essentially you got it backwards. The magic in a market economy is the supply, and it is the nature of section economy that supply will appear to try and fill in demand. Loweskilled glow paid workers artificially ruin that dynamic and demand winds up outpacing supply with disastrous results

        And their wages are too low because they’re not worth anything. The system operates on the concept of being paid a dollar for the creation of a dollar’s worth of value. To create higher value you need to have skills and abilities or assets which allow for that and that is exactly what is leaving Canada

        • grte@lemmy.ca
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          23 hours ago

          Yes, market economies are built on demand. Neoclassical, supply side economics is a joke that centralizes wealth and destabilizes societies. It’s a failure.

          • Foxer@lemmy.ca
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            22 hours ago

            No they are not. And as the reality of the situation proves that I’m right and you are wrong. So there you go

            • grte@lemmy.ca
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              22 hours ago

              Yes they are, and the last 40 years of ever increasing wealth inequality totally discredits your economic philosophy. So there you go. Milton Friedman was a dumbass, make your peace with that fact.

              • Foxer@lemmy.ca
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                22 hours ago

                The last 40 years proves I’m right even more 😆😆😆

                Sorry kid. Try reading a book instead of getting her education from Facebook. Demand exist in every economic model, capitalism addresses the supply sideit is that effort that makes things work. The ability to create products and services including ones that didn’t even exist before which creates new demand is what drives us. Demand is not what drives us immigrants don’t produce the supply necessary to meet the demand and that creates inflation and weakens the economy

                • grte@lemmy.ca
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                  22 hours ago

                  The last 40 years proves I’m right even more 😆😆😆

                  If you think extreme wealth inequality, stagnating wages, decreasing purchasing power for the average person, and the rise of reactionary politics is success. If, on the other hand, you are a reasonable person, you would think that’s a really pathetic failure. Kid.

      • brianpeiris@lemmy.caOP
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        2 days ago

        This was one of the key points in the video. Their source is a TD Economics report, which in turn references a report from The Institute for Canadian Citizensihp:

        The Institute for Canadian Citizenship’s Leaky Bucket 2025 report shows that onward migration is highest among immigrants with doctoral degrees, strong earnings potential, and experience in management, ICT, engineering, and science based occupations. Within five years of entering Canada, highly educated immigrants are more than twice as likely to leave as lower skilled immigrants.

        https://economics.td.com/ca-silent-brain-drain

        • TheJesusaurus@piefed.ca
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          2 days ago

          But… That’s fine? We would expect them to? They came here for education. That’s not skilled immigrants leaving, it’s customers going home with what they paid for

          • BassetHound@lemmy.ca
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            2 days ago

            The skilled people are Citizens and PRs going to work in the US because the same jobs in Canada pay half as much with higher taxes.

            • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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              2 days ago

              That’s over now. Who wants to get a pricy Canadian degree just to go get rounded-up in America and maybe killed in the gulags?

      • Foxer@lemmy.ca
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        2 days ago

        You mean other than the ones you were already giving you sea lion? LOL

        Either make a counter argument or admit that I’m right even if you don’t like it. This kind of nonsense just makes you look bad

      • Foxer@lemmy.ca
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        2 days ago

        You could but not successfully 😁 Joking aside though there have been other instances of brain drains taking place in the past. I think to suggest that there’s been a consistent brain drain for that. Of time would be severely erroneous and there are definitely been times when we attracted people to Canada. But this is definitely one of the worst and we are seeing people leave for the record percent of them being exactly the kind of people we want to stay

        And it shows up in a lot of stats. Our GDP per capita is horrible and that’s one of the reasons, our investments climate is cored, etc etc. We have to find a way to reverse that and quickly

    • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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      We’re still the most educated country on Earth by a good margin, so it’s hard to see it getting that bad.

      But yes, our immigration system is fucked. We select for all the best and brightest people, and then put them to work at Tim Hortons.

      • Foxer@lemmy.ca
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        2 days ago

        Unfortunately being educated is not in and of itself a protection from that kind of thing. As is easily seen by a cursory examination of the statistics. Our talented people are leaving and that is a major problem and worse Now intelligent people are just using Canada as a stepping stone with the intent of leaving shortly after they get here because it’s easier to get into countries like America from Canada than it is from some of the countries they come from.

        Either way we’re getting slaughtered