Further to this from Adrian MacNair on the recent Fraser Institute immigration study,
Family Reunification is Breaking the Canadian Piggy Bank
a lot of individuals’ piggy banks are being broken too:
Housing costs soar in Vancouver
Surging real estate prices in Vancouver are pushing ownership costs into uncharted territory, putting it in the top ranks of the world’s most expensive cities and triggering fears the market is poised for a fall…
Funny that the Globe and Mail story not once mentions immigrants–but see this:
Vancouver Housing Prices Pass New York and London as Chinese ‘Move’ In
Well worth a look:
The Centre for Immigration Policy Reform
We have to eliminate the state religion is the cult of multiculturalism, where immigrants are paid not to become Canadians. Instead of assimilation into Canadian culture, immigrants force Canadians to accept their culture. Furthermore, due to the policy of ‘family reunification’ immigrants bring their elderly and other dependants to live off the welfare state, with the full encouragement of the politically correct liberal elite. These policies, combined with the mass immigration of people from radically different ethnocultural backgrounds, result in the national suicide of our country.
Our immigration policy stopped making economic sense a long time ago and a cost-benefit analysis was overdue.
Whether the fact that we’re paying $23 billion a year to sustain a broken policy will trigger any change, well, political correctness is a formidable obstacle to overcome and I doubt it will be until we face a severe fiscal crisis.
This is basically an anti-ghetto, an anti-slum for immigrants.
It’s hard to say what prices would be like if immigration was much more restricted, but the Vancouver market would probably still be fairly expensive compared to most places. It does seem to have gone off the scale in the past few years, and it is forcing the rest of the population into relatively expensive options either renting or buying into very low-value housing that for all practical purposes is rent-to-own and where equity cannot be established in real time.
I had breakfast with some friends today and the cost of renting here in Vancouver came up. They related several stories of people they personally know renting 2 bedroom condos for $2,500 – $3,500 per month. Call me old fashioned, but I think those prices are insane!
There was a time when people emigrated to get away from their families.
The reason the Chinese are moving in is because they are getting out of China before the snowball hits the bottom.
The push back will be brutal. Living in a false wonderland means a hard pay back of unintended Consequences. Time to end the farce of multiculturalism.
Little Big Town – Bones
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmXsbWz20co&feature=related
This recent discussion is directly related to Mark’s post.
There is a sizeable and growing Chinese middle class and it is these and Indian entrepreneurs who are buying and bidding up prices especially in Vancouver but also in Toronto.
The lingering stench of Trudeaupia is strong here, very strong.
Funny. We have just as many Chinese moving into Edmonton,and our prices are actually falling back to reality,albeit slowly enought not to cause a crash. Maybe the Muzzie ghettos(or whatever you call them) has more to do with it?
In most of the major cities particularly TO and Vancouver. The Elite Immigrants now want their seniors homes exclusively for their own nationalities. If it is Chinese, then only Chinese people. Hindu etc. They just want the old white guys money, and definately do not whitey staying in the seniors homes paid for by whitey. That is how uppity and sure of themselves they have become. Look at the fuss caused in Vancouver, when the city wanted to build a Hospice near a MultiMillionaire Chinese HiRise. They freaked on TV about that. The 23B per year that it is now costing the Canadian Taxpayer to settle in Immigrants is more than it costs the Canadian Taxpayer each year to take care of all the Treaty Indians in Canada as well as pacify the whole Province of Quebec. That is 23plusB EACH YEAR.
So the question I have now is: should I be looking for a home in Calgary or wait for this inevitable collapse?
*Puts on Tinfoil Hat*
I’ve noticed a lot of the houses for sale in Calgary are being sold by Chinese families. I only noticed this since I’ve been shopping around.
“Imagine all the people living life in peeeeaaace, yohoooo….”
I can imagine it. It’s too bad most of these immigrants see only free healthcare for their grandparents and/or a money laundering sanctuary for terrorism and syndicated crime in many cases.
Multiculturalism is really code word for, giving the world’s poor a new homeland to set up shop, warts and all. Before long we will see all of the bigotry, hatred, crime and poverty of this cultural mosaic infesting our society. We in fact as nation building Canadians are already the undisclosed underclass in many aspects of this new world view.
If anyone should be the utmost concerned it should be the Native Aboriginal peoples of NA. They will soon be driven into extinction by a multitude of self-serving cultures that could care less about their aboriginal claims to anything but a life of servitude.
On the other hand, if you had the foresight to buy into the Vancouver market 10 years ago, your $350,000 condo investment in a desirable area now means you get a couple of phone calls every month from real estate agents telling you they have clients who will pay $1,250,000 cash, right now for your crib.
Real estate . . . why do we always feel sorry for the losers?
They can go live in Chilliwack.
Sorry about the commute.
I do not know of any other country with such a loose immigration system, where severe restrictions seem to be applied to Europeans qualified in a profession. As for “family reunification” it is the same thing. For example in other countries of which I am aware the landed immigrant children must be able to prove they are able to sponsor the parents, and the parents must also prove a certain amount of income (pension, investment returns, a large bank account) along with either the children or the parents putting up a large bond to ensure that the parents will not become a burden on the state. Our immigration system created by the Liberals makes us the world’s biggest suckers and a change is long overdue.
As for the cost of housing I suggest that we allow the market to determine the prices (supply and demand) instead of wanting the government to “fix” it. Even now it is not a truly free market with rest control and a lot of regulations that are unfavourable to landlords, so let us not make it worse with more government meddling.
Sorry it was supposed to be “rent control” not rest control.
Stopping refugee and family immigration would destroy entire federal and provincial bureaucracies.
Alain >
“….severe restrictions seem to be applied to Europeans qualified in a profession”.
There is actually another side to that story – Years ago especially the Tony Blair years, European countries with Britain in the lead, have covertly close the door on “white flight” of professionals from their countries.
So they have appealed to other first world nations (desirable flight nations) to restrict entry and working visa’s for these individuals as they cannot legally hold them at home (not yet anyway).
The same has been true for the “tax evaders”. Remember Blair’s famous trips to the EU, Spain, Portugal etcetera to demand that expatriate Brits are taxed highly enough living in the EU to not wilfully escape the British taxation system.
That is why Spain was forced to raise it taxation of the expatriates, and many left for newer greener hideaways. Spain has suffered economically and the UK is a bad off as it’s always been.
The Fraser Institute report was garbage. $23 Billion is the potential loss because immigrants don’t make as much money.
This is akin to saying oil companies are “subsidized” because they don’t pay higher taxes.
We need immigrants in order to sustain the country. In the early 70’s Canadians decided to contracept and abort themselves out of existence. We need replacements in order to maintain our standard of living before the family trees that were established a century ago are pruned and chopped.
As for real estate….Vancouver and Toronto are overrated anyway. Just leave if you can’t afford to live there.
@Jeff: yes thank you at least somebody gets it! It’s asinine to blame immigrants for either the cost of social welfare or a government-sponsored housing bubble.
Jeff >
Wow sustainable capitalism through growth. How novel.
Yet why are we sustaining our lifestyles by importing massive amounts of third world illiteracy, extreme cultural differences in ideology and aged extended family members?
We could be far more active in the recruitment of the traditional NA immigration demographics to achieve your goals and save some of the troubles could we not?
Nice straw-man jeff. 23 billion is the potential loss because immigrants use that much more in public services and generate that much less in taxes than us dumb locals.
I will admit that this is less a problem of immigrants per se, and more a problem of massive and unjustified public services.
Nothing a massive tax cut couldn’t fix. Or is that too racist?
By the way, I don’t see how you figure we need immigrants to sustain this country. In case you hadn’t noticed, economic activity outside the resource sector has virtually ceased. There is f- all manufacturing in Ontario.
Downtown Hamilton for example is a forest of empty factory and warehouse buildings. All the steel making has ceased, with the exception of Arcelor/Mittal which used to be Dofasco, I think they are ticking over at maybe 10% production capacity. Stelco got bought by US Steel and promptly shuttered. Currently rusting into the bay.
All our jobs went to China. We need immigrants… why? Before long Canadians will be emigrating TO China just to get a frickin’ job. And I’ll tell you what, they will be a f- of a lot less welcoming than we are.
I’ve looked over the Fraser report and the hypothesis still seems goosey.
Basically they looked at the average amount of taxes paid by non-immigrants which is about $16,000 a year and used that as a base.
Because immigrants don’t make as much money on average they pay less tax…$10,000 a year.
So the conclusion is, there is a $6000.00 shortfall and if you multiply it by the amount of immigrants this means it “costs” Canadians Billions of dollars to bring immigrants in.
I don’t buy it.
The Phantom demonstrates a lack of understanding of economics. Immigration generates jobs by bringing in labor and skills. That is part of the reason why Singapore, with massive immigration, is so prosperous, and Japan, with almost no immigration, is so unprosperous.
Also, the stuff about China “taking” “our” jobs is lefty bunkum. They make stuff better and cheaper so we can get jobs doing other stuff. There is no fixed jobs pie for government to cut up and ration out.
Both Jeff and Libertariansare Liberals have a poor grasp of basic math. They would never be allowed to run a company. But let’s pretend they owned a company called Canada Health and Welfare. And they started off in year 1 with 300,000 claimants on their insurance fund who had never paid a premium, but collected anyway for year one and each year thereafter. Year 2 about 1/3 of them contributed something. This business plan of Jeff and Libaertariansare Liberals repeated their business plan year after year. Add 300,000 claimants each who had contributed nothing and pay out 300,000 claims each year. Real Economic genius’s. They would have been proclaimed Liberal Economic Genius’s like Chretien and Martin who sold off all of Canada’s 700 Metric Tonnes of Gold Reserves for 150 dollars an oz..stole 54B in workers E/I funds and paid down the deficit they created and then proclaimed themselves Economic Genius’s. Leaving the country with 4 Trillion in Total Public Debt. It is this kind of Liberal economics that has the average Canadian Family paying more in TAXES than they have to spend on Food, Clothing and housing combined. This is why Ontario owes over 300B in Total Public Debt and Quebec is over 400B in debt. Yah lack of basic math is working out good for the 16M taxpayers in Canada.
A country is not a business and immigrants aren’t a drain anymore than ‘natives’. Also wtf are you talking about selling of gold?
Yes Libertarainsare Liberals a country is a business. We hire our administrators every 4-5 years to manage our affairs, your and Jeff’s examples are disasters. Completely unsustainable like all socialist schemes. As to Canada’s National Gold Reserves, Chretien and Martin sold off all of Canada’s National Gold Reserves of around 700 Metric Tonnes for around $150/oz. And to make matters worse none of the funds from the sale of those 1,540,000 lbs of 999.9 fine gold belonging to the Citizens of Canada ever showed up on the books of the Government of Canada or the Central Bank of Canada. Your business model is a recipe for disaster, which is what Canadians are facing. Healthcare budgets alone now consume almost 50% of most Provincial Governments. Wake up Stupid.
The premise just isn’t sophisticated enough. It wreaks of fiscal conservatism to the exclusion of other elements.
How much money is dumped into Canadian children for 18 years, (or increasingly 21-22 years) before they begin producing an economic benefit?
Maybe we should ban kids to save taxpayers money?
Oh wait…no need to ban what Canadians have already decided to avoid.
Thus…immigrants!
libertariansaresmarter >
I live in Singapore 6 month of the year, Canada the other 6 months. You are not correct about immigration or the prosperity of Singapore. Immigration is a blight that they have many problems with. The wealth is in the hands of the government and a few businessmen, mostly foreign.
It is a socialist repression utopia that works perfectly for those that wish to be pushed around and herded like cows in a stockyard. Well fed and safe.
Rising cost of real estate is not caused by family re-unification. It is caused by laundering of corruption money by Indian and Chinese new immigrants. Only those Indians with tons of dirty money are eager to come to Canada, the rest are doing pretty good back home or don’t qualify. Talk to the young working Indians and each will name a few of his acquaintances as those who came to Canada with tons of cash they could not legalize back home.
@RFB: no a country is NOT a business. Under such a regime citizens would be seen as production units to be milked for maximum value and that is evil. Countries exist to protect individual rights and immigration is a big part of that.
@Knight99: Uhm, you’re categorically wrong. Singapore went full capitalist some time ago (unfortunately it is a police state). Pretty sure you were in a different country.
No country has ever been economically or socially hurt by immigration.
Smarter>
If you say so.
Actually I’m in Singapore writing this and have been living here for the last twelve years.
You seem to have trouble distinguishing between Capitalism and Socialism, do the research.
You did get the “police state” right. I’m not understanding how that bolsters your positive argument for “prosperity” Mr. “libertarian”.
libtardarian,
Family reunification is a complete bust, get real. This is one reason why healthcare waiting lines are so long in ontario, Brainiac. Do read a bit of elementary economics before posting, would you? You can bone up on “the law of supply and demand” before another post, and maybe appear a bit smarter.
Bad enough that ontarions think healthcare is “free”, and saturate emerg rooms with non-critical maladies. But they, at least, contribute to the payment structure. Where is the contribution from one or two sets of grandparents or other family members who come over and wait alongside for their “free” healthcare, without spending nary a thin dime?
This nonsense cannot continue. Either family members provide full sponsorship and pay out-of-pocket for such social benefits for reunified family members who cannot contribute to canuck society, or leave them from whence they came.
Sorry if that sounds harsh to the typical libtards who frequent this blog, but our healthcare and social services are already under water. Reunification has been a great vote-getter for the liberals (notwithstanding the last election), but I fail to see where it benefits the canadian taxpayer or citizen who must subsidize these people, and follow them in line.
mhb23re
Smarter #2>
“No country has ever been economically or socially hurt by immigration”.
Again.
There needs to be a distinction of what constitutes “immigration”. This concept is as distinct as let’s say – “tourism”.
There is eco-tourism, cultural tourism, or sex-tourism to name but a few. All are not equal, and all are not healthy to economies.
As far as “socially hurt” my god man, please read some history before you comment.
Jeff/Libertariansare Liberals. ”Life’s tough, pilgrim, and it’s even tougher if you’re stupid.”–
John Wayne