Who is "fit" to immigrate to Canada?

[saffronleaf]

Originally Posted by someone123

The scoring goes hand-in-hand with the overall quota though. You admit N and you pick the highest scores.

It sounds to me that you are proposing we set a score instead of picking a number. If you picked a score of 441 in the last draw the outcome would have been the same as choosing to issue 3,500 invitations. The question of where to arbitrarily set the score cutoff is equivalent to asking how many invitations we should give out, all else being equal.

Fair enough, I wasn't familiar with how the scoring works. Given how the system is set up, I can see how a cap exemption would not be easy to work in (if at all). Perhaps treaty arrangements for work visas, like the current one in place with the US and Mexico under NAFTA, can help achieve this result to a modest extent, although that's probably been worked into CETA to some extent and whatever successor arrangement with the UK will probably share that, as well. So no need for the cap exemption for specified countries under the existing system. And I don't have any ideas for how to change that -- I'm not a fan at all of America's per-country caps.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by saffronleaf

And I don't have any ideas for how to change that -- I'm not a fan at all of America's per-country caps.

Per-country caps are a blunt tool and are probably prone to abuses and weird tinkering (we feel bad for this country right now so raise their cap, etc. etc.).

But my impression from what I've seen of the immigration system, based on feedback from people who have gone through it, is that there isn't enough value placed on cultural affinity. You get your English and French points if you get up to a modest ESL level or beyond but that is it. In reality however Canada has cultural ties to countries like the UK that make it easy for people to get used to life here or vice versa and these are mostly ignored by the system. On paper things are fine but I think cultural ties between Canadians get weaker every year. At least the global multinationals love us and will protect us!

It's been the same in the other direction with Canada getting treated the same as Burundi or Tajikstan from the perspective of the UK government because of constraints imposed by the EU and other political factors.

This area is of course a political minefield, and many people see no problem with what I've described.

[saffronleaf]

Originally Posted by someone123

Per-country caps are a blunt tool and are probably prone to abuses and weird tinkering (we feel bad for this country right now so raise their cap, etc. etc.).

Canada has cultural ties to countries like the UK that make it easy for people to get used to life here or vice versa and these are mostly ignored by the system.

It's been the same in the other direction with Canada getting treated the same as Burundi or Tajikstan from the perspective of the UK government because of constraints imposed by the EU and other political factors.

Yup, I agree with some of your sentiments (the quoted parts) to a significant extent, which motivated the cap exemption proposal. If we agree on the general objective, I think experts can probably come up with creative modifications or alternatives to get us there to a significant extent. Treaty arrangements may already help to a modest extent.

[Dr Awesomesauce]

Originally Posted by someone123

Per-country caps are a blunt tool and are probably prone to abuses and weird tinkering (we feel bad for this country right now so raise their cap, etc. etc.).

But my impression from what I've seen of the immigration system, based on feedback from people who have gone through it, is that there isn't enough value placed on cultural affinity. You get your English and French points if you get up to a modest ESL level or beyond but that is it. In reality however Canada has cultural ties to countries like the UK that make it easy for people to get used to life here or vice versa and these are mostly ignored by the system. On paper things are fine but I think cultural ties between Canadians get weaker every year. At least the global multinationals love us and will protect us!

It's been the same in the other direction with Canada getting treated the same as Burundi or Tajikstan from the perspective of the UK government because of constraints imposed by the EU and other political factors.

This area is of course a political minefield, and many people see no problem with what I've described.

Racist/ ethnocentric. All of it.

Amongst many other very important criteria, we need to judge applicants on their cultural values. Open border types seem not to care about such things which I find endlessly perplexing given the obvious result waiting for us down the line. Unless that's what they want, of course.

On International students, I have several non-native-speaker colleagues who have advanced degrees from Western universities in areas where they appear to have little to no experience or expertise. It's not their fault, of course; they're merely taking advantage of a greedy system.

In terms of linguistic proficiency, the bar is also exceptionally low. Some universities accept Master's candidates who are not proficient in English by any standard measure (IELTS, CAE, etc.). Even being proficient (at the lower end at least) implies you will likely struggle under the weight of all the reading and writing you'll have to do.

It's dishonest and it requires a major readjustment of the course/ program objectives, marking criteria and anything else that might prevent them from getting their degree. You can't, after all, accept a bunch of international students into a program and just let them fail - that would make the university look bad.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by someone123

The scoring goes hand-in-hand with the overall quota. They are functions of each other, given a pool of applicants.

It sounds to me that you are proposing we set a score instead of picking a number. If you picked a score of 441 in the last draw the outcome would have been the same as the choice to issue 3,500 invitations. The question of where to arbitrarily set the score cutoff is equivalent to asking how many invitations we should give out, all else being equal.

The way I understand it, his idea would be equivalent to raising the scoring value of cultural affinity, combined with issuing more invitations.

I would tend to agree that 1) it's much easier to integrate people who are closer to us and 2) one of the main reasons to fix immigration thresholds is that our integration capacity has limits.

So, yeah, logically, you can make a case that people from similar countries should count less. If we say we can realistically afford to let in 50,000 people a year, in practice it kind of means we estimate we can let in up to 50,000 complete foreigners a year, plus a bunch of Frenchmen and Franco-Ontarians and Acadians.

[saffronleaf]

Originally Posted by Dr Awesomesauce

On International students, I have several non-native-speaker colleagues who have advanced degrees from Western universities in areas where they appear to have little to no experience or expertise. It's not their fault, of course; they're merely taking advantage of a greedy system.

In terms of linguistic proficiency, the bar is also exceptionally low. Some universities accept Master's candidates who are not proficient in English by any standard measure (IELTS, CAE, etc.). Even being proficient (at the lower end at least) implies you will likely struggle under the weight of all the reading and writing you'll have to do.

It's dishonest and it requires a major readjustment of the course/ program objectives, marking criteria and anything else that might prevent them from getting their degree. You can't, after all, accept a bunch of international students into a program and just let them fail - that would make the university look bad.

By making tuition free for international students, Canadian universities would have a far wider pool of applicants to choose from. They could choose the brightest candidates purely on the basis of merit (including, to the extent generally applicable to all candidates, specified language skills), rather than being driven by the motive of profit / offsetting costs. Being driven by profit can lead to selecting applicants based on their wealth rather than their merit. Universities will not feel compelled to accept international students for monetary reasons, or to accommodate them in a way that hurts the feelings of the natives.

This might also help to mitigate the adverse feelings suffered by some of the natives when witnessing persons who are ostensibly foreign students living comfortably.

[mistercorporate]

High rates of immigration are fine if the people coming in are culturally similar (westernized), speak an official language fluently, hard working, and are interested in integrating socially to the communities where they reside. Otherwise, it will naturally trigger resentment from other Canadians and even outright racist sentiments in some cases, where none may have existed before. I say this as an immigrant myself who wishes Canada to maintain its existing peaceable atmosphere.

Many of the international students we get would make lousy immigrants (lots of Saudis, Kuwaitis and Nigerians).

Right now, most high quality, industrious and educated immigrants worldwide come from Asia, and many of them aren't super-fluent in English/French, and aren't fully going to integrate right off the bat to an alien and unfamiliar society. We need to give them time to adjust, just as we need to bring them in limited numbers so established Canadians can be comfortable too (including Canadians of recent immigrant origin).

I think 300,000 is manageable, though 200,000 with much stricter criteria would be better. Basically the opposite of what Justin is doing. I never liked Harper, but he at least tightened up our immigration standards considerably towards the end of his mandate.

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by saffronleaf

By making tuition free for international students, Canadian universities would have a far wider pool of applicants to choose from. They could choose the brightest candidates purely on the basis of merit (including, to the extent generally applicable to all candidates, specified language skills), rather than being driven by the motive of profit / offsetting costs. Being driven by profit can lead to selecting applicants based on their wealth rather than their merit. Universities will not feel compelled to accept international students for monetary reasons, or to accommodate them in a way that hurts the feelings of the natives.

This might also help to mitigate the adverse feelings suffered by some of the natives when witnessing persons who are ostensibly foreign students living comfortably.

I personally think you're overestimating the number of really talented foreign people out there, and also the pool of talented foreign students who would want to study in Canada. We'll get a deluge of applicants, for sure, but are they of the calibre that we want to attract?

In a way we already have a litmus test for how much foreign talent we can soak up under a condition of low or no tuition rates: doctoral programs. It's true that foreign students are not allowed to apply to Canadian scholarships and fellowships, like NSERC, SSHRC, etc., but they pay low tuition rates (PhD tuition is usually pretty low to begin with) and they are free to apply to private fellowships and get paid as RAs/TAs. Despite this incentive - and the incentive of having an advanced Canadian degree that gives you an edge in the Canadian job market - prospective PhD students from foreign countries aren't banging down the door trying to study at Canadian universities. At the very least, they're not banging down the door more than they are clamouring to go to the US. The fact is that a research degree from about two dozen US Ivy league or Public Ivy schools is just worth more than a Canadian equivalent in all but a few cases; the other fact of the matter is that the number of really talented people - let alone really talented people who already speak flawless English and French and are good at cultural integration - is very small. If we cast a wider net, we're not necessarily going to bag more fish.

Then there's the fact that each foreign student crowds out the opportunity for a prospective Canadian student to get in. That wouldn't be so bad if other countries showed reciprocity. For example, if Chinese foreign nationals got their Bachelors in Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo free of charge and, in exchange, an equal number of Canadians also got to attend an equally prestigious program at Beijing University free of charge as well. However, I doubt the Chinese would allow this to happen.

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by saffronleaf

By making tuition free for international students, Canadian universities would have a far wider pool of applicants to choose from. They could choose the brightest candidates purely on the basis of merit (including, to the extent generally applicable to all candidates, specified language skills), rather than being driven by the motive of profit / offsetting costs. Being driven by profit can lead to selecting applicants based on their wealth rather than their merit. Universities will not feel compelled to accept international students for monetary reasons, or to accommodate them in a way that hurts the feelings of the natives.

This might also help to mitigate the adverse feelings suffered by some of the natives when witnessing persons who are ostensibly foreign students living comfortably.

I don't understand what would be in this for Canada. The current arrangement, whether you agree with it or not, has a clear desired outcome: the subsidization of domestic tuition by international students. What would taking the brightest international students do to benefit domestic students, or Canadians more broadly?

[1overcosc]

If I were in charge, I would divide our immigration policy into 2 categories:
-Immigrants from the developed world (defined as say, all OECD states): There would be no caps, or limited caps, on this category. Prospective immigrants would be scored and everyone above a certain score would get entry.
-Immigrants from the rest of the world: No economic immigration. Family reunification and refugee migration only.

I would like to see this policy enacted throughout the OECD.

My motivation has nothing at all to do with culture or race or integration or anything like that.

It's entirely based on developmental, environmental, and economic considerations. The ability for talented people from the developing world to move to the West severely harms the economic development potential of those countries. People in the developed world also have a much higher environmental footprint, so migrating from the developing to developed worlds instantly increases environmental degradation.

People in the developing world should remain in their countries so they can develop them and grow them into developed countries someday.

In order for this work of course, all developed countries need to adopt this policy or else the whole point will be defeated (as the exodus of skilled workers will just shift to the countries that do accept them).

Some might answer that by doing so, we're condemning the people of the developing world to stay trapped in a lower quality of life. But right now, we're effectively doing that because only the rich and well educated people of the developing world can safely migrate, and they make things even worse for the people they leave behind by depriving their societies of their skills and wealth.

As for the environment, we here in the developed world have a huge responsibility to cut our footprints and live more sustainable. In the developing world, they can "leapfrog" past our bad habits and develop right as sustainable societies. (For example, instead of building coal power plants then switching to green later, they can start off with green power).

It does mean the West will have to face its demon of a declining and aging population. No problem--we can move forward with technological improvement and automation to cope with a shrinking workforce.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by saffronleaf

By making tuition free for international students, Canadian universities would have a far wider pool of applicants to choose from. They could choose the brightest candidates purely on the basis of merit (including, to the extent generally applicable to all candidates, specified language skills), rather than being driven by the motive of profit / offsetting costs. Being driven by profit can lead to selecting applicants based on their wealth rather than their merit. Universities will not feel compelled to accept international students for monetary reasons, or to accommodate them in a way that hurts the feelings of the natives.

This might also help to mitigate the adverse feelings suffered by some of the natives when witnessing persons who are ostensibly foreign students living comfortably.

That doesn't make any sense.

Native-born Canadians are supposed to feel better when they see rich international students get a free education at our expense?

[vid]

When I look at a lot of the white people around me these days, I kind of wish we had these stricter immigration standards in the past. We let in a lot of shit from Europe in the early 20th century, and it shows.

Originally Posted by whatnext

That doesn't make any sense.

Native-born Canadians are supposed to feel better when they see rich international students get a free education at our expense?

We gave foreigners free land 100 years ago!!

[saffronleaf]

Originally Posted by whatnext

That doesn't make any sense.

Native-born Canadians are supposed to feel better when they see rich international students get a free education at our expense?

I've observed that some of the natives exhibit a tendency to get really worked up if they see that a person who they believe to be a foreign student is living comfortably. So by issuing international student visas on the basis of merit rather than ability to pay, there would be fewer foreign students living comfortably and, by extension, fewer natives getting worked up over seeing a person who they believe to be a foreign student living comfortably.

But you're right, some of the same natives also exhibit a tendency to get really worked up if they see that a person who they believe to be a foreign student has limited financial resources with access to free education, as they believe that the alien will be getting a 'free ride' at 'our' expense. This behavior is exhibited even by some of the natives who are a net loss in respect of the government.

[mistercorporate]

[someone123]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

I personally think you're overestimating the number of really talented foreign people out there, and also the pool of talented foreign students who would want to study in Canada. We'll get a deluge of applicants, for sure, but are they of the calibre that we want to attract?

You can look at the Express Entry scoring to see what the current pool is like. The borderline case right now is someone who speaks one official language, has a bachelor's degree or master's degree, and has saved up a moderate sum of money. That is without any bonus from having relatives in Canada.

I think the market for immigrants will become more competitive in the future as the overall global situation continues to improve at a rate much faster than Canada is improving. There are already plenty of people who have better job prospects in China than in Canada.

In a way we already have a litmus test for how much foreign talent we can soak up under a condition of low or no tuition rates: doctoral programs.

It's also worth noting that Canada loses a lot of its master's and PhD graduates. A huge proportion of the best students move to the US to work in private industry after graduating, and another share ends up in research institutions around the world. How bad this is is a matter of debate; are we funding our university programs to support basic scientific research (OK if people are trained to be brilliant, move somewhere else, and contribute to human understanding), economic development (not so great if we pay but don't collect taxes), or some combination? How well those goals are satisfied depends on the exact rules but I'm not sure our current system does anything close to an optimal job and I don't think lowering tuition for international students would increase the return on our investment without other changes.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by saffronleaf

I've observed that some of the natives exhibit a tendency to get really worked up if they see that a person who they believe to be a foreign student is living comfortably. So by issuing international student visas on the basis of merit rather than ability to pay, there would be fewer foreign students living comfortably and, by extension, fewer natives getting worked up over seeing a person who they believe to be a foreign student living comfortably.

But you're right, some of the same natives also exhibit a tendency to get really worked up if they see that a person who they believe to be a foreign student has limited financial resources with access to free education, as they believe that the alien will be getting a 'free ride' at 'our' expense. This behavior is exhibited even by some of the natives who are a net loss in respect of the government.

How charmingly naive, it is very clear you're not from Vancouver.

For example:

...But after taking delivery of the hefty-looking black bag in the back seat of his Jeep SUV on April 29, Xing Wei was pulled over by police in the Granville Street shopping district, according to a lawsuit launched by British Columbia’s Director of Civil Forfeiture last week.

Inside the car with Wei were his wife and son. Inside the bag was C$140,000 (US$112,000) in alleged drug money, rubber-banded in bricks of $20 notes and weighing a total of about 7kg.

After his arrest, Wei told police he was a student. He was apparently living the life of a wealthy scholar, residing in a luxury 1,800-square-foot apartment in the heart of the University of British Columbia’s campus, across the road from the School of Law....

...The apartment – which last changed hands in 2011 when it was sold for about C$1.3 million – is not listed among the public access codes on Coast’s intercoms. Any link between Wei and the current owner is unclear, so the SCMP is not naming him.

On a recent morning, a procession of luxury vehicles with young drivers could be seen exiting the Coast car park....

http://www.scmp.com/news/world/unite...er-student-his

[saffronleaf]

Originally Posted by GlassCity

I don't understand what would be in this for Canada. The current arrangement, whether you agree with it or not, has a clear desired outcome: the subsidization of domestic tuition by international students. What would taking the brightest international students do to benefit domestic students, or Canadians more broadly?

1. If we assume that Canada would benefit from immigration and a higher population (obviously this is a big assumption and you may very well disagree with and an important discussion on its own), then graduates of Canadian universities would be excellent candidates for immigration -- especially if Canadian universities are permitted to admit international students on the basis of merit rather than ability to pay. They will have the skills and credentials that will facilitate quick integration into the Canadian economy and will have experience living in Canada (and therefore will be better positioned to determine whether they would like to remain).

2. The education sector itself can become a major driver of economic activity. Canada can position itself as a global hub for education, with all the jobs, investments and innovations attendant thereto.

3. The future of economic development in many advanced economies tends to be concentrated in economic clusters centered around, among other things, universities, and attracting the brightest students from the world will strengthen these economic clusters.

4. The labor talent pool will become deeper, inducing businesses and organizations that engage in sophisticated activities (not just ripping stuff out of the ground and selling it raw) to set up shop in Canada. This will also aid in greater economic sophistication and specialization.

5. Charging exorbitant rates to international students to offset the tuition to be paid by the natives is not necessary -- other countries have free or highly subsidized education for their natives and international students.

[saffronleaf]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

If I were in charge, I would divide our immigration policy into 2 categories:
-Immigrants from the developed world (defined as say, all OECD states): There would be no caps, or limited caps, on this category. Prospective immigrants would be scored and everyone above a certain score would get entry.
-Immigrants from the rest of the world: No economic immigration. Family reunification and refugee migration only.

I would like to see this policy enacted throughout the OECD.

My motivation has nothing at all to do with culture or race or integration or anything like that.

It's entirely based on developmental, environmental, and economic considerations. The ability for talented people from the developing world to move to the West severely harms the economic development potential of those countries. People in the developed world also have a much higher environmental footprint, so migrating from the developing to developed worlds instantly increases environmental degradation.

People in the developing world should remain in their countries so they can develop them and grow them into developed countries someday.

In order for this work of course, all developed countries need to adopt this policy or else the whole point will be defeated (as the exodus of skilled workers will just shift to the countries that do accept them).

Some might answer that by doing so, we're condemning the people of the developing world to stay trapped in a lower quality of life. But right now, we're effectively doing that because only the rich and well educated people of the developing world can safely migrate, and they make things even worse for the people they leave behind by depriving their societies of their skills and wealth.

As for the environment, we here in the developed world have a huge responsibility to cut our footprints and live more sustainable. In the developing world, they can "leapfrog" past our bad habits and develop right as sustainable societies. (For example, instead of building coal power plants then switching to green later, they can start off with green power).

It does mean the West will have to face its demon of a declining and aging population. No problem--we can move forward with technological improvement and automation to cope with a shrinking workforce.

How about viewing humans as individuals with fundamental rights and freedoms, rather than viewing them as the chattel property of whichever regime has a monopoly on the use of legitimate violence over the patch of land on which such human was born through no fault or merit of such human?

As for the consequential impacts to immigration source countries, there is substantial literature on this topic. Empirical data show mixed results, and one can very well argue that emigration has benefits for certain countries. It's absurd to see such confident, conclusory remarks on the consequential effects in light of the rich literature and discussion on this topic.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by saffronleaf

2. The education sector itself can become a major driver of economic activity.

Not if we're offering it for free to everyone on the planet.

It's just like if you argued that if we offered free healthcare paid by Canadian taxpayers to any of the 7+ billion people on the planet who wanted to come here temporarily to be cured/healed in our hospitals for free, it would boost the medical sector as a driver of economic activity.

Well, yeah, for a little while, and on paper, but that's not sustainable, and it wouldn't last long.

Alternatively, it's like saying that offering my units rent-free would be the remedy to make sure my vacancy rate is 0.00% permanently from now on. Sure, that's true, but you're missing one major element - the reason you want your vacancy rate to be low is because you want to make money, the vacancy rate in itself is not the actual goal, merely one of several possible means to it.

We want good, world-class universities, and we want them to be an economic driver, and that can't and won't happen if they're offering free education to everybody.

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

The ability for talented people from the developing world to move to the West severely harms the economic development potential of those countries. People in the developed world also have a much higher environmental footprint, so migrating from the developing to developed worlds instantly increases environmental degradation.

People in the developing world should remain in their countries so they can develop them and grow them into developed countries someday.

In order for this work of course, all developed countries need to adopt this policy or else the whole point will be defeated (as the exodus of skilled workers will just shift to the countries that do accept them).

Some might answer that by doing so, we're condemning the people of the developing world to stay trapped in a lower quality of life. But right now, we're effectively doing that because only the rich and well educated people of the developing world can safely migrate, and they make things even worse for the people they leave behind by depriving their societies of their skills and wealth.

That's a fair point, but a counterpoint could be that places that in the past lots of people tried to leave, or emigrate away from such as Ireland which was once really poor by western standards through most of the 20th century, or East Asian countries like Japan or Korea and Taiwan etc., nonetheless ended up industrializing and joining the developing world.