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2026-01-27 0
It might be even worse in Australia
2024-12-01 0
Thank you for summarizing these key changes! Many problems are actually the Canadian immigration system not learning from the mistakes of the US system and now it’s suffering the same consequences. If Canada cuts down on those selected immigrations but still takes in refugees, it’s only going to make anti-immigrant sentiment worse. Selected immigrants are allowed into Canada to help alleviate Canadian issues…or at least people who come through Express Entry are less likely to become a burden. On the other hand, refugees, given their unfortunate circumstances, really need to rely on a lot of social services and resources to help them resettle. The US has eliminated pretty much all non-humanitarian immigration that’s why immigrants are so demonized there. Americans only feel the drags of refugees and asylum seekers (even though ethically we need to protect them) and there is no selected immigration to balance that out. Yet this round of Canadian policy change is heading exactly that direction.\n\nIt used to be international students in Canada are not paying a lot more tuition than Canadian students. But Canadian universities saw how much money universities in the US are making so they asked the federal government to change the policy to enable them to charge international students several times the regular tuition (whereas in countries like France, international students actually pay less than citizens). So now Canadian universities rely too much on international students to operate and it becomes an exploitative relationship even before students step foot on the campus. The new PGWP eligibility is awful because students can make contributions in every field. It might (and that's a big if) address the pressing problems, but it won't help Canada grow.\n\nI thought the new language requirement was interesting. Some Canadians who immigrated decades ago when the bar was really low still speak English poorly and now they are saying people can’t come to Canada because their language skills are not sufficient. Another point about language is if you apply through Express Entry now, even if you scored the highest language score, given how competitive the pool is, you still won’t get selected. So it’s a given that you need to be fluent in one of the languages at least to get an invitation. Express Entry also selects only the top people, I saw the head of The Institute for Canadian Citizenship in interviews talking about those top-tier people only expect the best treatment/lifestyle when they come to Canada. That's why many of them leave after seeing these Canadian problems play out. But I believe a good Canadian life is not about living in a high rise in Vancouver and Toronto, driving an expensive car, or buying luxury items...it's about the communities, nature and middle-class comfort. So the system is giving PRs to the wrong kind of people (just like mismatched people when hiring that don't align with company values).\n\nThis brings me to the last frustrating issue. There were so many people who attended “fake” universities and bought “fake” jobs to earn points to get an Express Entry invitation. And it's clear that the government wasn't proactively catching these abuses. They are taking up spots from those who try to earn the points fair and square. If I understand correctly, Canada doesn’t send these people away if they are found out (since some of them were scammed). So they still take up immigration quotas.\n\nI have wanted to move to Canada for a long time. I have visited Canada many times, hiking trails through the coastline and fjords, climbing mountains and glaciers. I lived in Montreal for two months to improve my French and I was told by my homestay family that I was the first student they had who didn’t complain about the cold (I wish the winter never ends so I can skate or xc ski in the parks year-round). I have probably seen more Canada than many Canadians and I love every bit of it. But the opportunity for me to even get a shot to move there is pretty much nonexistent now. If only there was a way for the system to allow people who really care about Canada to get a shot at being part of this beautiful country.\n\nThank you for making these videos.
2024-09-24 0
Capitalism does not work. The constant crisis and boom/bust cycles will lead to its demise, eventually. Canada isn't alone, in fact inflation and other problems have been worse in peer western nations. The only nations that seem to be doing better with 'economic growth' are places like China or other societies that place value in public services. Best of luck on your journey. I immigrated to Canada about 10 years ago, and I've done better than the US where I came from. It still is the case, as I go back to visit family in the US regularly and the job prospects are grim, the pensions are even less secure, and union membership is even starker than here. Precarious work is the norm in western nations, and its often worse than in Canada. As a dual citizen, I could choose to get up and move tomorrow, but I'll never return to the US as there is worse places to live than Canada... But I did have a long journey to find stable employment, so I realize Canada isn't perfect. Have you thought about ending work as a content creator on YouTube and doing something that might be more productive or fulfilling? It might be a start to a better future. It may even be better than moving to a different country that would have the same or worse problems.
2024-08-04 0
There are now quite a few news stories in Canada of immigrants leaving the country - some back home and others to the USA and other places. Many just get a Canadian passport and then leave. There are public health care and pensions, so it can be an asset and also a convenient travel document to have. A lot of Canadian university graduates have a very hard time finding work in their fields and a lot of them look to the US for a better future. Both immigration and unemployment in Canada are much higher that in the US - so more people are chasing fewer jobs that often pay less and are taxed more than in the USA. Opportunities are generally a lot fewer in Canada than the US, and the business environment is not as favourable, and taxes significantly higher. You would be getting some of the entrepreneurs from Canada moving to the US for more favourable conditions as well to launch a business and also now a lot more rich investor types, so-called high net worth individuals wanting to relocate, because they just raised the capital gains tax in Canada. Capital gains is also triggered on inheritance in Canada with a deemed sale of property and assets, so rich people would prefer the American system and want to be residents there for tax purposes and have their assets grow in value in the US compared to Canada. There are very large numbers of foreign students and other categories of immigrants which may have as their goal going to the US after getting a temporary visa to Canada which is easy to get - maybe something like half a million to a million people in those categories depending on the year, plus around another half million regular immigrants and refugees now. The Trudeau administration has increased immigration to record numbers. It has been steadily going up over the years for several decades since 1990. Because of family re-unification it can have a snowball effect and could significantly exceed 1 million per year. A lot of the sending countries have much larger populations than Canada, so there are a lot more that can be potentially sent to Canada in the future. About 1/4 of the population of Canada has been added in the past few decades. Add to that visitors and temporary visas - that is a lot of people potentially moving to the US. Before the 1990s Canadians visiting the US were not required to have a passport and a drivers' license or birth certificate was adequate. Now a passport is required. It is impossible to effectively control the long Canada-US border, so there could be some unified policies in that area agreed on between Canada and the USA on immigration and refugees. Canada currently has a very open immigration policy with the government actively seeking out more immigration beyond its current processing capacity and trying to take rejected immigrants from other countries. The Canadian government, especially in recent years under Trudeau is immigration hungry. It might be the only country in the world doing that. What some news reports are now saying is that some immigrants are actually leaving, since they find it so difficult in Canada and some are worse off than they were in the countries they came from, which were considered to be less developed than Canada. \nWashington currently has more immigration controls and administrative competencies than Ottawa, so US pressure and influence is a faster way to get reforms into the system than waiting for local politicians to do anything, which is unlikely. Canada is seen by some as a backdoor into the US. Biden's immigration policies could be seen as very conservative in Canada compared to Trudeau's. It used to be in the news about how refugees were trying to get to Canada and walking across the border in Quebec and out west from the US earlier, but now there are more news stories of immigrants leaving Canada trying to go the other way, probably due to high costs and unemployment because the government took in more people than it could absorb into the economy. They have the idea that immigration drives GDP growth so that they can borrow and spend more, expand the civil service, etc. without making any cutbacks or efficiencies, supposedly without the Debt to GDP ratio getting worse, just by bringing in more people as if that would drive the economy. A lot depends on who you bring in as well. Are they going to go on welfare, are they going to increase crime, will they somehow contribute to society, are they a net tax benefit or cost in terms of government services, will they invest money, will they start a business and create jobs for others ? Those issues do not factor into government decision making in Canada for the most part. Ontario Premier Doug Ford did say there were too many foreign students. It is bad planning not to consider those factors since there are other costs that grow with those policies as well, and infrastructure has to be expanded. I think that the real immigration numbers to Canada are not transparent or made public, nor are the costs involved, if anyone even knows what they are. Nor is the impact on crime. You can guess from what the reports are in other countries. The Fraser Institute has made some estimates on the net costs of immigration to the government budget a few years ago, which were very high and which by now have increased - the cost equivalent of several new aircraft carriers each year. They are big numbers which are not publicized, but it amounts to the fact that immigration is subsidized by the taxpayers in Canada and it is not paying for our pensions as an ageing society as has been claimed. There is less money for education, health care and pensions per person, and those social benefits will probably have to be reduced over time. Social programs can only be delivered to the extent that the government has money. The bigger social system a county has, the more such immigration policies are going to cost. Trudeau has been expanding various social programs as well, so higher taxes and debt are likely with that approach. Then more productive people and companies will want to leave Canada and go to the US. Probably the government does not know what the actual numbers and costs are and doesn't actively keep track of that information beyond what is required. Probably nobody knows what the true immigration figures and their associated costs are in Canada, and hardly anyone has even studied those issues. If they can just walk across the US border and get papers so easily making an asylum claim, it is not surprising, since it would take them longer to get a regular visa and work permit if they did it legally. You could call that a loophole in the US immigration system which is being exploited. The US is better governed in general and has a better system in many ways, but I am not sure if it is the same on that. People have arrived on boats and have not been sent back. At least in the US you have more open information about those issues. In Canada it is hard to find out anything about it. Deportations from Canada are very few. \nOn other issues in Canada when voting in federal elections you have to show a government issued photo ID like a drivers' license or passport to vote and bring a card that was mailed out to eligible voters that gets updated addresses when a person files their taxes. I have never heard of mail-in ballots in Canada, but there are remote areas of the country in the far north who may have special system for voting. It is easier to get a Canadian citizenship than US and many more citizenships are handed out in Canada each year in proportion to the population than in the US. Canadian might be one of the easiest citizenships to get in the world. The official line now is that it is a country of immigrants. Based on current trends, will very little opposition to it in the parliament and most MPs supporting it, future immigration to Canada could increase to several million per year because of the rapid growth of population in the world, and the momentum already growing of immigration to Canada, so it may change significantly in the future. Historically around the world you can see many examples that country names, borders, flags and languages change over time with population changes, so it might not be called Canada anymore in 50-100 years. For example, Bulgaria used to be called Thrace which had been a powerful kingdom in antiquity and had a different language which is barely known about anymore. Over the past 2,000 years it has gone through a number of changes and had various regimes governing it, has been independent and also part of several different empires. Canada has only been a country for a short time in comparison and has been been going through significant changes. Trudeau has said that Canada is a post-national country. Canada is also going through a period of critical self-examination and deconstruction-revisionism. A lot of what had been viewed as positive from its history now is seen more critically, with re-naming and removing historical figures now seen as negative.\nDiscussing immigration policy critically is considered by many to be taboo in Canada, unless a person is saying good things about it in general. You can hear people say that the government isn't processing enough people, for example, but not often that there are too many or that it costs a lot of money. The trend of migration from Canada to the US would only increase much more in the future as it is going currently, and its role as a stepping stone to migration to the US could increase. The way this would be seen by many in Canada is that they are losing valuable people to the USA whom they consider assets, since a lot of officials have been trying to bring in more people into the country, but not everyone wants to stay in Canada nowadays because of a lack of jobs and opportunities. Canada is quite laissez-faire about migration, with Toronto being a sanctuary city as well.
2024-08-04 0
Ummm is it me or am I missing something here? I thought you need a passport from America going to Canada ??‍♀️? I know these immigrants getting on a plane with NO PASSPORT , MAYBE ONLY 2% HAVE A PASSPORT BUT ITS DOUBTFUL LIKE WTF, THEY MIGHT HAVE A ID BUT THIS IS BEYOND CRAZY‼️‼️‼️?? AND THE WORST FKN PART OF THIS WHOLE THUNG IS SOME CROSSING COULD BE A TERRORIST ??????????UMM YEAH DID ANYONE EVEN THINK OF THIS??, ALSO THE BIGGEST PROBLEM IS US AS AMERICANS CANT GET TO THE POLITICIANS TO COMPLAIN AND YES THEY COULD CARE LESS‼️‼️??????AMERICA HAS GOTTEN SOOOOOOOOOOO BAD OVER THE LAST 4 YRS ITS A FKN DISGRACEI COULD GO ON AND ON AND ON BUT I WONT I DONT CARE ANYMORE WHAT HAPPENS IM LEAVING AMERICA ASAP , FUCK THIS COUNTRY ITS NIT GREAT LIKE MANY THINK WE HAVE MAJOR MAJOR PROBLEMS HERE PLUS ITS GETTING WORSE WITH ALL THE KILLINGS AND IF THAT WASNT BAD ENOUGH WE HAVE CORRUPTION HERE TOO DONT THINK FOR A SECOND WE DONT‼️????????\nIM SORRY BUT I NEVER FELT THIS WAY BEFORE BUT I CAN HONESTLY SAY NOW I HATE THIS COUNTRY HATE ITTTTTTT‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️?????\nTHIS COUNTRY IS NOW ONLY GOOD FOR IMMIGRANTS SAD BUT TRUE, IF THEY WORK GREAT, BUT WORKING IS NOT THE PROBLEM PROBLEM IS THEY ARE NOW TOP PRIORITY ???
2023-11-13 0
1) Toronto is poor value. Getting housing of any kind (buying or renting) is stupidly expensive. And the quality you get for the price is lousy. Especially the newer builds, which are just thrown up as quickly as possible and sold to investors. Policy measures generally all seem to serve to just inflate the price of housing further. The occasional lip service given to affordability is amusing, but ultimately sad. There are lots of people who really do not want the housing bubble to pop. They will fight against it with all they have.\n\n2) It has become kind of boring. There is lots to do if you have money, but it’s harder to find entertainment on a budget. Even the free stuff like parks are filling up. Stuff like sporting events, eating out, going out is very costly across the board. Even the “cheaper” stuff is expensive. It seems like a lot of local culture is disappearing. Even the cool neighbourhoods are filling up with the same chains. I think the high commercial rent and bureaucracy is deflating a lot of would-be entrepreneurs. Most landowners seem to just be banking on cashing out their land for condos.\n\n3) Canada overall has a high cost of living compared to salaries. In the US you can find lower cost of living areas that still give you a real city experience. And in Europe you can be poor but still live a decent, if no frills, life. In Canada the basic necessities are all expensive. Phone bills, grocery bills, rent, insurance are through the roof. Domestic travel is expensive. And the dollar sucks if you want to travel abroad. Health care is free but good luck finding a family doctor or waiting 8 hours in the ER these days. It’s expensive to be poor, or even middle class.\n\n4) Most of the Greater Toronto Area, outside the core, is soulless suburbs with awful transit - very “American” except with worse traffic congestion. You will need a car, which is another huge cost. Row upon row of old cookie cutter suburbs with the same crappy houses. Good luck walking anywhere, and if you do you will need to walk down boring, treeless arterial roads with cars zooming past right beside you, and cross giant eight lane intersections that were never built for humans on foot. In a rainstorm or on a fall evening you have to be really careful not to be run over by aggressive drivers.\n\n5) It is hard to raise a family in an apartment here. You can do it but it’s not very easy, and also you are still kind of judged for it. Lots of young people are feeling stuck and are deferring or avoiding starting a family. Buying any type of house, even a basic townhouse, requires pledging your soul to a bank by taking a massive mortgage with eye watering debt in a volatile market. But few apartment buildings have the kind of sensible gentle density, the family unit sizes and the common amenities, like little courtyards with jungle gyms, that you might find in Europe. No one ever contemplated that anyone would ever desire to raise kids in an apartment. It’s just a cultural thing that has worked its way into how things are planned and designed.\n\n6) The transit system is ok by North American standards but awful by international standards. There are only two real subway lines, one stub line, one line that is permanently out of service after a derailment, and another line that was supposed to open a couple years ago but still has no date for opening. The subways go out of service frequently, sometimes for the dumbest reasons, and then it is a zoo of shuttle buses. The streetcars are nice but so slow. The buses are fine if you find yourself dreaming about riding a daily herky jerky rolling tin of sardines. They are building a lot of transit but it will take decades to get done.\n\n7) There is still a lot of cool multiculturalism and opportunities to experience different foods and cultures - one of the best things about Toronto. Increasingly though it seems to be losing the fun vibe of the 90s, when everyone celebrated each other’s backgrounds and was chill. It seems the immigration is not as broad based anymore and also people are importing a lot of their “old country” grievances here. The immigration system also kind of preys on people abroad by selling them a false fairy tale, so they end up dejected when they arrive and see how things really are.\n\n8) This one might be controversial but it’s kind of an ugly city. There’s nothing particularly of historical meaning or value. Some of the older neighbourhoods are kind of nice, but the last 25 years they have only built giant glass skyboxes, one after another. There aren’t the cool “missing middle” walkups like in NY, Chicago or Montreal (or even LA). There are very few buildings with much architectural character. Some of the buildings they deem “heritage” here are an embarrassment.\n\n9) For safety, honestly on this score I think Toronto is not bad. There are not too many real “ghettos” and it’s night and day compared to much of the US. With that said, there is more vagrancy and social issues these days, with tents and such. It’s very sad but the shelters are full, lots of homeless go into the libraries, parks and transit system. It does make it harder to enjoy these public amenities safely. It is nowhere close to Europe where you might let your kids run free around town. Canadian parents still helicopter their kids and the place again is not designed to really be safe for kids, in the same way as Europe.\n\n10) Finally, a bit of a double edged sword. Toronto had a lot of youthful energy - people coming here from all over. It is definitely not as sleepy as many parts of the world. With that said, it is becoming a bit of a transient place (minus the world class experiences like London or NY). If you are from elsewhere you might find it hard making and keeping friends. I’ve seen lots of people struggle because it’s is hard to build a strong social network. We have a very “shallow” culture here - people are extremely polite but not overly warm and hospitable. We treat one another kind of like neighbours - meaning we’d like to have a cordial, drama-free coexistence and otherwise kind of stick to ourselves.
2023-07-29 1
8:15 there’s a reason for this. It’s a melting pot in America. Bringing all these different cultures together… but if too many from one country show up, they’ll make a community too large that they don’t need to melt with the population. There are Chinatowns and Little Italys and whole Mexican communities, but ultimately everyone has to interact with everyone else. Allowing 300,000 Indians to get green cards every year and only 1,000 Norwegians would lead to the Norwegians merging well with the country, while the Indians would all move to one or two cities and make entire sections of the cities like small versions of their own country. Which is the last thing we want. Once an immigrant community gets enough power to be a voting block, things are scary, but once it has enough power that they start getting their own representatives and passing laws for the rest of us? Laws the look like laws they had back in their own countries… that led them to run from their countries in the first place? It’s a concern. We want people to adapt to the USA and not try to adapt the USA to them. Over time, the US does change due to the growing voting blocs. But that’s after generations of those immigrant populations getting larger, and their children being born and raised in the country they’ve adapted to. When I see a protest of Muslim immigrants burning pride flags, or Chinese and Spanish-speaking Hispanic immigrants who never bothered to learn English, I see problems with our immigration system. But the kids of the Arab immigrants will be more tolerant, and the Hispanic kids will have grown up in American schools. Most Chinese-American kids might speak some Chinese at home with their parents, but they’re worse at it, and their first language is English. It takes second Generation immigrants to really start meshing with America. But if entire school districts are all Indian, and every store, restaurant, and business in a whole town is Indian, then those kids won’t adapt to America. They won’t get bits of their home culture from their time at home and with their neighbors, while also getting bits of American culture from their classmates and other people around them. Nope. They’ll only be exposed to the first Generation who completely took over the area- IF, we allowed for unfettered immigration from the largest countries. It’s a fact that immigrant communities like to stick together. But if not enough people are in that community that you need to reach out to others around you, it helps expose you to the rest of America… Anyway! There are a ton of shows that indirectly show this phenomena. Fresh Off the Boat. The Sopranos. Even Brooklyn 99. We see as traditional and hard-to-adapt parents have to deal with kids in the next generation who are more American, don’t follow the same customs and traditions as their parents, and overall just left more of their old culture behind. No one is asking that immigrants abandon their cultural ties, but if you come to America, there are things that people need to change and accept if they’re going to live here.
2015-02-19 0
Speaking as a white man I have to admit I don't quite understand the need for anyone to organize as a race in Canada. First generation clubs from whatever country, sure, but as a race? Is it the elephant in the room... American slavery?  I can't help but think that most perceived problems blacks have in Canada are due to American issues we see in movies and media.\nWe in Canada bend over backwards to offer opportunity to succeed. Even touching on racism is widely and loudly crushed. I personally, as do most, give any individual the opportunities they deserve but it's up to them to screw it up or not. To me, if any minority can't make it in this society they aren't trying.\nIt's actually worse in my mind to be white male in public forums because our views and opinions are marginalized and shouted down. Youtube and the internet are the few forums where honest feelings and opinions can be spoken. No one with anything to lose would say this in public for fear of attacks from the thought police. Pretty sad we live in a free country that actually doesn't allow free speech from all. I guess some are more free than others.\nKeep telling me I'm unfair and bad, when I'm not and I might actually grow resentment and the very prejudice you're complaining about.
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