This turn against immigration is really the dumbest, most self-defeating thing Canada can be getting up to. You know why the US presents such a threat to us? Because they represent a productive capacity of around ~340 million people while we represent a productive capacity of ~40 million people. They managed that by having extremely lenient citizenship requirements (for whites, but we can adopt similar policy without the racism) for most of their history.

Pursuant to this power, Congress in 1790 passed the first naturalization law for the United States, the Naturalization Act of 1790. The law enabled those who had resided in the country for two years and had kept their current state of residence for a year to apply for citizenship. However, it restricted naturalization to "free white persons" of "good character". Oddly, the law authorized any "court of record" to perform naturalization. In other words, for over 110 years, any federal or state court of record could naturalize a qualified applicant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_immigration_and_nationality_law_in_the_United_States

Which, far from collapsing, turned it into the wealthiest and most productive country on Earth at the time.

[–] CapuccinoCoretto@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Here is a hot take. Most of our housing crisis was from people abusing our Student visa program. It was dishonest and corrupt from the getgo. The students were trapped in worthhless diploma mills and were not on a path to citizenship anyways.

We couldn't build housing fast enough so we get rooming houses, soaring rents and investor driven real estate prices. Notice how rents and prices have fallen significantly since we stopped this. It's not anti-immigrant. Its closing a loophole. We needed to catch a breather.

Real schools still have large cohorts of real students from international sources.

We still have abuse of the TFW program to deal with. Kids still can't get jobs because employers prefer the abuseability of TFW.

Its long past time to fix these problems.

[–] grte@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Here is a hot take. Most of our housing crisis was from people abusing our Student visa program. It was dishonest and corrupt from the getgo. The students were trapped in worthhless diploma mills and were not on a path to citizenship anyways.

In that case, the people abusing the system were the diploma mills scamming foreigners and we should probably be pursuing legal action against such entities. But even so, letting those scammed students stay if they want benefits us because it provides both a consumer and producer of value to add to our society.

We couldn’t build housing fast enough so we get rooming houses, soaring rents and investor driven real estate prices. Notice how rents and prices have fallen significantly since we stopped this. It’s not anti-immigrant. Its closing a loophole. We needed to catch a breather.

They've fallen somewhat, but so have housing starts so this is short term relief that isn't doing anything to fix the issue. The truth is that, it isn't that we can't build housing fast enough, it's that we are choosing not to build fast enough because so many of the decision makers in our society have their wealth tied up in real estate. Until the government is directly building housing, we are not taking this problem seriously.

We still have abuse of the TFW program to deal with. Kids still can’t get jobs because employers prefer the abuseability of TFW.

I would say that the TFW program isn't immigration at all. It's a labour disciplining program. It should be eliminated entirely because we shouldn't be having second class not-citizens in our society at all. But we should be bringing in similar amounts of people with the aim of making them full citizens who aren't in a position to be abused the way TFWs are.

[–] Rat_in_a_hat@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I agree that the TFW is being heavily abused and that's something that hasn't been closed off since Trudeau and will continue under Carney.

However, I don't think broke students were fueling the 3200/month condo studio crisis. More likely that they were shacking up 5 to a room in the burbs in someone's non compliant basement unit.

Rent prices and development dropped because everyone is broke and holding onto their money during precarious times (it's also more profitable to invest in stocks than real estate) - correlation of a drop in immigrants is not causation of drop in prices.

[–] CapuccinoCoretto@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

However, I don't think broke students were fueling the 3200/month condo studio crisis.

But the investors who buy those lucrative rooming houses do.

[–] potter2010@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

So, is it the broke students or greedy investors?

[–] CapuccinoCoretto@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Why the "or"?

Edit: one creates the excessive demand, the other exploits it.

[–] potter2010@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I think you may be reading a bit too much right wing news.

[–] CapuccinoCoretto@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Supply and demand too right wing for you?

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 week ago

You need to look at it from our government's perspective. The US doesn't like immigrants so by getting rid of them we might be able to cozy up closer to them.