Mexican asylum trends still concerning: IRCC - "the number of asylum claims from Mexico increased 2,000 per cent since the Liberal's were elected, from 110 in 2015 to 23,995 in 2023. That's partially the result of the government's decision in 2016 to lift the visa requirement, making it easier for people from Mexico to make an asylum claim in Canada... The Conservatives have urged the Liberals to reinstate the visa requirement for Mexicans, arguing the change has led to fraud, abuse and strain on the asylum system. The Biden administration has also warned that human traffickers linked to Mexican cartels may be exploiting Canada's visa-free regime in order to get people into the U.S. Mexico's foreign ministry has maintained that it's important to preserve the economic benefits of easier travel between both countries."
The Canadian Policy Behind the Surge of Illegals – and Mexican Cartel Operatives – at the Northern Border - "The catalyst of mainly Mexican northern border crossings is a policy that Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau implemented on December 1, 2016. On that day, Trudeau rescinded the requirement that Mexicans seeking to travel to Canada obtain visas. The prime minister replaced the visa requirement it with a pro-forma electronic travel authorization (eTA) visitor’s pass, a $7 online affair, that allowed Mexicans to fly in at will like most American citizens. Now, Mexican nationals are using Trudeau's visa-free visitor’s pass in escalating numbers to fly in and then cross south into America... Trudeau’s fast-pass, visa-free loophole for Mexicans to fly into Canada may seem inexplicable unless seen through the prism of Canadian politics. Trudeau’s 2016 policy was a conspicuous reaction to Donald Trump's election weeks before. The visa requirement for Mexicans was there for good reason. Trudeau’s predecessor put it in place in 2009 because prior to that Mexicans were abusing the visa waiver to stake bogus asylum claims on a mass scale. It obviously had to go. Trudeau, though, happily returned that asylum abuse to pacify his progressive liberal base who treasured such abuse... By mid-July 2017, after Trudeau restored the visa waiver to Mexicans, leaked Canada Border Services Agency intelligence reports said Mexican cartel operatives — "drug smugglers, human smugglers, recruiters, money launders and foot soldiers" — were turning up in greater numbers than ever before. The cartels began facilitating the human smuggling business of other Mexicans south over the America’s northern border, just as they did all along the southern border. Global News, which published the intelligence reports in July 2017, quoted them as saying Mexican crime groups such as the ultra-violent Sinaloa cartel had turned up in Canada and would "facilitate travel to Canada by Mexicans with criminal records". Besides the Sinaloa Cartel, Mexican entrants were identified as belonging to La Familia Michoacana, Jalisco New Generation, and Los Zetas cartels... By the end of 2019, Canada saw a 1,400 percent spike in the number of bogus Mexican refugee claims, the vast majority naturally rejected, and of associated detentions. It stood to reason that, when Canada declined Mexican asylum claims, they simply fled south over the thinly patrolled northern American border. But that was then and this is now, right? Except that now appears to be the same as then... In the knowledge that easily reversible policy choices are behind what’s happening on the northern border, the Biden government’s northward deployment of 25 Border Patrol agents should be seen as the empty gesture it is. Those agents will do nothing to slow the gathering northern tide because their deployment treats the consequences of underlying causal policies — and not the causal policies themselves, which are never even publicly discussed so that they can be addressed. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, like President Joe Biden, could easily flick the switches to off and end much of the influx almost overnight. Trudeau could reinstitute visas for Mexicans, for starters, with a wave of his hand. The Biden administration, perhaps thinking of Mexican cartel operatives flowing in with the illegal immigrants, could demand that move and negotiate a closure of the safe third country agreement’s land border loophole. A March 7 meeting in Washington between DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and his Canadian counterpart, Immigration Minister Sean Fraser, shows none of that is likely to happen. Both governments are run by progressive liberals who want as much immigration as possible, legal or otherwise. After his meeting with Mayorkas, Fraser indicated he’s going to let it all ride when he told reporters that the northern border problem is not one that will respond to quick fixes. “Migration is a reality that we’re going to continue to deal with,” Frasier said, indicating inaction. Trudeau and Biden will get away with it, too, because American media seem disinclined to report anything about these causal Canadian policies or their consequences."
Canada’s Mexico visa rule change ‘had to happen’ after asylum spike: minister - "Mexican citizens will once again need a visa to come to Canada after asylum claims from that country have soared in recent years."
Leaving the old country behind - "'The foundation of Canadian multiculturalism rests on a basic piece of common sense: Leave your shoes at the door. Importing the world’s geopolitical nightmares into our country would end multiculturalism, and right quick.'... But is the way Canadians reacted to the Israeli-Hamas war a unique event? Not if we recall the destruction in 1985 of a fully loaded Air India passenger jet by Canadian Sikhs seeking the independence of what they call Khalistan in India or the recent murder of a Canadian Sikh leader allegedly by Indian intelligence agents in British Columbia. Geopolitical nightmares always seem to have a way of intruding on our populace. A little history might be useful here. Because parts of Ukraine were located in the Austro-Hungarian Empire during the Great War many Ukrainian-Canadians were interned, as were many Germans. In the 1930s Italo-Canadians in substantial numbers supported Mussolini’s Fascist party, their cause aided and abetted by the Italian consuls in Montreal and Toronto. Some would be interned once Canada declared war in 1940 as a result. The Hitler government also looked for sympathizers to the “truths” of National Socialism, and the Deutscher Bund (Canadian Society for German Culture) enrolled German Canadians in substantial numbers with support from Berlin’s diplomatic representatives; again many would be interned. So too would Canadian Communists whose loyalty to the Soviet Union made them suspect before Hitler invaded the USSR in June 1941. For its part, the Japanese consulate in Vancouver paid for propaganda in media in British Columbia, and it was directed by Tokyo to recruit spies. While the consul-general’s success in recruitment remains unknown, Japanese Canadians were moved inland after the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941, and a substantial number of pro-Japan issei and nisei were interned in camps. Of course, those events occurred before multiculturalism became government policy under Pierre Trudeau in 1971, and his successors offered apologies in profusion for our past sins (but not to the Germans!). But has multiculturalism worked more recently in making sure the old country shoes came off at Canada’s door? Not really. During the break up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, Canadian Serbs and Croats fought in the street in front of the Yugoslav consulate in Toronto. The first Croatian minister of defence was an Ottawa restaurant owner and house painter who raised some $200 million for his newly independent nation. Journalist Carol Off noted that Gojko Susak (who had lived in Canada for more than two decades) presided over the ethnic cleansing of Serbs in the Medak Pocket. If he had not died before the International Criminal Court was created, he would certainly have been tried as a war criminal. It was not only Croats, of course. A Serb Canadian was sentenced to three years in jail in September 2005 for taking United Nations peacekeeping personnel—including Canadians—hostage in Serbia in May 1995. And when Sri Lanka was in a civil war in the early 2000s, Tamils in Canada raised funds for their countrymen, even getting Paul Martin, then the finance minister, to appear at a 2001 money-raising dinner. Ottawa later declared the Tamil Tigers a terrorist organization. What was going on? Clearly, the old country ties remained strong in immigrants to Canada. Ethnicity is a powerful force, naturally enough, but official multiculturalism encouraged ethnic communities to retain their identities. There were language schools funded by Ottawa, in addition to newspapers, community centres, and dance troupes. The money flowed because there were votes out there waiting to be harvested... To paraphrase the American writer David Rieff in the New York Times some years ago, the multicultural fantasy in Canada was that, in due course, assuming that the proper resources were committed and benevolence deployed, immigrants would eventually become liberals. As it was said, they would come to “accept” the values of their new countries. It was never clear how this vision was supposed to coexist with multiculturalism’s other main assumption, which was that group identity should be maintained. But by now that question is largely academic: the Canadian vision of multiculturalism, in all its simultaneous goodwill and self-congratulation, is no longer sustainable. And most Canadians know it. What they don’t know is what to do next."
Of course, we are told it is racist to accuse "minorities" of dual loyalty
Quebec to challenge Court of Appeal ruling granting asylum seekers access to daycare - "Quebec hopes to appeal a Quebec Court of Appeal ruling which gives access to the province's subsidized daycare system to children of asylum seekers... It said barring them from daycare is discriminatory because it unfairly prevents women from participating in the job market... A statement from the office of Quebec Family Minister Suzanne Roy says the ministry "profoundly disagrees" with the Court of Appeal's ruling that denying asylum seekers access to daycare amounts to discrimination based on sex — a position supported by the province's human rights commission, the Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse. "Quebec will always be one of the most welcoming places in the world. However, we must be realistic and consistent," the statement reads. "The financial and human impacts must be taken into consideration." Roy also pointed out that anyone living in Quebec can find child care in the private sector, where higher costs are offset by tax breaks from the provincial and federal governments."
The problem with subsidising everything is that resources are not unlimited. And if you keep welcoming new people into the system, the bill will keep growing. Of course, the left wing solution is to just raise taxes to pay for it. Or print money (because money is a social construct)
Quebec's math on asylum seekers doesn't add up, immigration experts say - "Rather than politicizing the issue, Daoud said, governments like Quebec need to organize and create the infrastructure necessary for needs like temporary housing and increased schooling. When Russia invaded Ukraine, Canada quickly created a new system allowing it to accept 200,000 Ukrainians in a year. “No one politicized it, no one fought it or said it was overwhelming,” Daoud said. “No one said, ‘You owe us $1 billion.’” Quebec and other provinces have had ample warning since 2017 that the asylum crisis would be at their door, but failed to create the infrastructure to accommodate it, making it much more costly to deal with now, Daoud said."
Unlimited numbers of asylum seekers are inevitable, and doing anything about it, or asking the authority in charge of accepting them (the federal government) for money to solve the problem they enabled is politicising the issue
Kirk Lubimov on X - "How does Canada have mass immigration with over 1 million people coming in over the last couple years but we still have shortage of doctors, engineers, specialists, etc but line ups for $15/h jobs hiring fairs?"
Clearly, the problem is not enough immigration and even more people are needed
White workers at B.C. resort suffered racial discrimination, tribunal finds - "The owner of a resort in B.C.'s Cariboo region has been ordered to pay more than $173,000 to seven former employees who complained they faced discrimination on the job – for being white. The Spruce Hill Resort and Spa staff alleged owner Kin Wa Chan fired some of them and reduced the others' hours back in August 2016 after he hired several new employees, all of whom were Chinese... Before Chan hired the new employees, he mentioned on multiple occasions that he wanted to bring in Chinese students because they wouldn’t demand holiday pay, overtime pay or days off, according to Eva. "I find that over a period of months Mr. Chan repeatedly said that he wanted to replace Caucasian employees with ethnically Chinese employees to reduce labour costs," the tribunal's decision reads. "Mr. Chan said words to the effect, 'Chinese workers are better and cheaper than white workers.'"... Eva also complained that Chan sexually harassed her during a business trip to China, when he only booked them one hotel room and tried to convince her to share it with him. Though Chan claimed he did so to save money, the tribunal noted the room he booked was not at a budget hotel. Eva described it as a "fancy" five-star accommodation."
Trudeau's welcome mat for immigrants wears thin amid Canada housing crunch - ""One of the reasons why we got here in the first place was that (provincial and federal) governments just didn't want to touch this issue out of a fear of looking xenophobic," said Mike Moffatt, founding director of the Place Centre, a thinktank focused on sustainable housing. Immigration went from historically high levels of support among Canadians in 2020 to a three-decade low at the end of 2023, according to Ekos Research polling company data provided exclusively to Reuters."
Motion calling on Liberals to review immigration targets passes - "A motion to curb record immigration levels within 100 days, spearheaded by the Bloc Québecois, passed in the House of Commons with a vote of 173 to 150 on Monday. All 149 Liberal MPs voted against the motion, with 1 Independent joining them. The rest of the Independents, the entirety of the Conservatives, Bloc Québecois, NDP, and Green Party voted in favour of the motion. The motion on federal immigration targets calls on the government “to review its immigration targets starting in 2024, after consultation with Quebec, the provinces and territories, based on their integration capacity, particularly in terms of housing, health care, education, French language training and transportation infrastructure, all with a view to successful immigration.” The non-binding motion also calls on the Prime Minister to convene a meeting with provinces and territories to consult them on their respective integration capacities... “Canadians strongly disagree with the immigration policies of what is left of this government,” said Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet. He insisted that the Liberals “could not have cared less” about costs incurred by taxpayers. “Everyone is being crushed by health care costs, education costs, and other costs,” Blanchet told MPS. “This used to be a Québec thing. Now it is a Canada-wide issue.” A previous Nanos poll revealed that over half of Canadians would like to see the Liberals reduce their immigration targets. 75% of Canadians believe that immigrants are contributing to the housing crisis. 73% believe that immigrants are putting pressure on the health care system, and 63% believe the same for the school system, revealed a Leger poll. Since March 2022, the number of Canadians willing to welcome more immigrants has nearly halved from 17% to 9%. Immigration Minister Marc Miller acknowledged that the current level of temporary foreign workers and international students has grown at an unsustainable rate and noted that the system is “out of control.” However, when speaking in the House, Miller defended his government’s immigration policy."
Motion calling on Liberals to review immigration targets passes : CanadaHousing2 - "I hope this puts to rest all the liberal supporters saying yes but the conservatives would be the same or worse. At least the Conservatives have expressed interest in doing something. That said not sure why it took the Bloc to bring up this motion."
Conestoga president fires back at allegations of being a bad actor - "Tension is rising between the province's post-secondary institutions as they prepare to fight for their share of international student permits handed out by the province this fall under a 35 per cent cap initiated by the federal government. Those emotions flared up Tuesday afternoon as Conestoga president John Tibbits and University of Waterloo economist Larry Smith defended the school against allegations of being a bad actor amid the international student crisis... Comments made by Sault College president David Orazietti in a recent podcast on 'Inside the Village' accused Conestoga of being one of the bad actors the federal government was talking about when implementing the cap. "How do you take 20,000 students into your community and have housing for them, services and everything they need without creating chaos?," Orazietti questioned. Tibbits took exception to these allegations as he fired back noting Orazietti had only been on the job for a few months and needed to learn to "shut his mouth." "Like Orazietti, why are his goddamn students in Toronto? Why not up there? Talk about a whore, I mean, he's taking a percentage of the profits of an operation," said Tibbits. "I can't stand the guy by the way."... One of the college's biggest criticisms is that they admitted close to 30,000 international students and only had 900 residential units available. Tibbits admits that the school grew faster than what they were expecting, but maintains that students are finding places to live and are choosing to live in packed houses. "Why are they all applying here? Why are they applying if there was no place to live?" he asked. "Some of them live like that because they don't want to pay more than $400." Tibbits said students choose to live like this to keep their costs down and avoid paying high rents... International students have started to break their silence on the conditions they are living in here in Cambridge and the rest of the region. The housing situations students are forced to live in are often overcrowded and ripe for slumlords who are taking advantage of the students. "The problem is you get someone who goes and talks to an international student, and he said, I had a tough time finding a house, but the truth of the matter is not one international student could not find housing. Not one," Tibbits said. He blames the federal government for allowing this many students to come in knowing the housing system could not support this many newcomers in such a short amount of time... Tibbits noted they should have a better idea of the number of study permits in six to eight weeks, but in the meantime, the country is looking foolish for making a rushed decision without ironing out the details. "This is a world business and we're operating like this is a banana republic.""
Presumably it would be better to regulate the market to protect them, and if some cannot find housing because of that, too bad
Siavash Safavi: Canada's clueless immigration policy will not end well - "I came to Canada as a political refugee. In my home country of Iran, I was arrested, tortured and later received a prison sentence for my student-organizing activities... It’s popular nowadays for people to feel sorry for themselves and express feelings of victimhood. But I have no complaints. If someone is kind enough to let me into their home for life, they have a responsibility to their family to at least find out if I am honest or not... In 2013, under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Canada was accepting around 24,000 refugees a year, and the Canadian middle class was surpassing the U.S. to become the richest in the world. Canada was respected worldwide, and I couldn’t wait to become a patriotic Canadian. In my second year in Canada, I attended York University. As someone who was arrested for their student activism in Iran, I wanted to enjoy the university experience in a free country. And as a classical liberal, I was intent on familiarizing myself with current western thought in the humanities. So I took anthropology and gender studies. Both courses taught me that almost all the injustice in the world is the fault of white men, that western ethnocentrism is the cause of most conflicts between East and West, and that all cultures are equal, only different. I remember walking out of the class thinking, “I guess the West had a good run. It was bound to end at some point.” I was pretty shocked at the views promoted through Canadian universities, and quite horrified to find those ideas metastasizing in the cultural fabric. I’m sensitive to this issue because I’ve lived in countries in which a radical ideology has infiltrated the culture, taken over and ultimately undermined the national interest. It happened in Iran following the 1979 revolution, and again in Turkey with the rise of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Two years after I came to this country, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau came to power and declared Canada the first “post-national” state. Soon after, tens of thousands of Syrian refugees were expedited into Canada, and I couldn’t help feeling insulted. It wasn’t just about the 2½ years of my life wasted away in Turkey, it was also because there were serious concerns that the refugees weren’t being properly vetted. Proper vetting is very necessary when bringing in people from countries whose cultures clash with our own. There are many Iranians who I wouldn’t want in Canada, including the policeman who lashed me in public when I was 19 for allegedly holding hands with a girl in the street, or the judge who ordered the lashing. This is not about a certain nationality or ethnicity. Cultures are shaped by their geography and their history. Some are more inclusive than others. It doesn’t mean one is necessarily evil. It simply means it holds values that are incompatible with those of some other cultures. Newcomers are supposed to adopt the fundamental aspects of the culture of their new country, in order to fit in better and help maintain social cohesion. That’s just common sense. In my orientation before arriving in Canada, we were taught not to relieve ourselves in the street. I could have felt offended, but I understood that there might be refugees from countries with different cultures or no indoor plumbing. For us to live with people from many different places, we need common cultural threads. Even in a multicultural country like Canada, the native cultural threads are the only things that hold society together. Immigrant cultures can add their own pearls and jewels to that thread, but the thread is the base. When dealing with refugees from countries in which the dominant culture or state ideology differs from our own, we should invest the necessary time and resources to vet each individual properly, to ensure that those who hold extremist views are not admitted. But when the government imports tens of thousands of people from these countries each year, a few things happen. The newcomers, many of whom usually do not speak the language well, will feel the need to stick together in close-knit communities, forming a parallel society with a completely different culture to the country they live in. The culture of the old country is promoted and protected in these communities, usually by self-appointed authoritarian leaders through social pressure, or sometimes by force, leaving the people vulnerable to all kinds of corruption. Their children, who naturally will go through their own identity crisis phase, will go to university and learn that every negative thing their old country’s culture says about their new country is true. So they will grow to resent their new country. Newcomers in these communities are also easy prey for the criminals and sociopaths in their own communities, because they are not familiar with the law. And since they mostly come from countries with a negative view of authority, they don’t trust the police, so it is much easier to take advantage of them. Over time, through mass immigration and high birth rates, their numbers grow, and they will be able to impact the political sphere, led by the most radical or corrupt authoritarians who take advantage of them. Now imagine millions of Canada citizens who believe that all white people are evil and racist, or that Jewish people are a societal virus, or that the LGBTQ+ are demonic and need to be eradicated, or that women should be subservient to men, or, worst of all, that the use of violence is necessary against people who disagree with, or “disrespect,” their culture. At that point, you risk balkanization. You cannot force people who have nothing in common — or worse, hold animosity toward each other — to share the same country. And owing to the freedoms afforded to people in a country such as this one, it is hard for authorities to combat citizens who despise their adopted country and are looking to undermine it through legal means. None of us know what the best immigration policy is, but anyone with common sense should be able to see that if you bring in large groups of people in who hate your culture, while at the same time demonize your own country, it is just masochism, not policy, and it will not end well."
Racist xenophobic Islamophobe!
When you let left wing ideology run wild
Minister was warned about waiving work limit for foreign students: docs - "Allowing international students to work more than 20 hours a week could distract from their studies and undermine the objective of temporary foreign worker programs, public servants warned the federal government in 2022. The caution came in documents prepared for former immigration minister Sean Fraser as Ottawa looked at waiving the restriction on the number of hours international students could work off-campus — a policy the Liberals eventually implemented... Waiving the cap could help alleviate labour shortages, a memorandum for the minister conceded, but it could also have other unintended consequences. “While a temporary increase in the number of hours international students can work off-campus could help address these shortages, this could detract from the primary study goal of international students to a greater emphasis on work, circumvent the temporary foreign worker programs and give rise to further program integrity concerns with the international student program,” the memo said... “What I really didn’t want to do is impact students in a current year that have made their financial calculations about how they will sustain themselves and how they will be able to pay for the tuition and rent and food,” Miller said... “It’s not credible that someone can work 40 hours and do a proper program,” Miller said."
Weird how he doesn't know that they are supposed to show they have enough money to support themselves
Canada’s Labor Market Absorbing Its Population Boom Is “Impossible”: National Bank - "Last week’s Labor Force Survey (LFS) showed historic growth for Canada’s working-age population. The country added 125k workers just that month, about 4.7% growth when annualized. While the headline data revealed a falling unemployment rate, we emphasized this was largely due to methodology. Increasingly the data considers more people as “long term unemployed,” due to giving up on trying to find employment... the bank provided the above chart—the employment-to-population ratio for the GTA. The ratio fell to 61.4% in January, the lowest level since 2021—in the middle of the pandemic restrictions. Not a great start. Historically, the GTA is considered a high growth employment region that tends to outperform nationally. Marion warns the employment rate on average is 0.8 points higher than the national average, but that’s no longer the case. Migrating to the country’s economic engine now increases a person’s odds of unemployment, a potentially fatal issue for the national economy. The bank’s chief economist urges policymakers to consider how disruptive this may be for Canada. Especially during a period of rapid population growth... NBF is far from the first institution to warn the Titanic is heading towards an iceberg. On several occasions, BMO has highlighted reckless scaling of the labor force without a viable plan. RBC, the country’s largest bank, has also warned that Canada is scrambling to attract labor but has no actual plan for what that talent will do."
‘It will be a good thing for us’: International students living in Canada react to Ottawa’s visa cap - The Globe and Mail - "some also wonder why the government didn’t act sooner... She thinks a reduction in student numbers will cool demand for housing and make it easier to find work... More than a million international students were in Canada in 2022, a number that had more than tripled over the previous decade... Gurpreet Malhotra, chief executive officer of Indus Community Services and an advocate for international students, described the situation he’s seen unfold in Mississauga and Brampton over the past few years, citing the example of 20 students sharing a suburban three-bedroom home, sleeping on mattresses on the floor... On top of attending classes full-time, he also works two part-time jobs – one of them on campus, and another at a grocery store stocking shelves. The cost of tuition is a source of constant stress. He doesn’t want to ask his family back in India for more money, saying they’ve already spent a lot to send him here... she said she’s frustrated to hear international students be blamed for housing and job shortages. “I don’t think international students are the problem. I think the problem is that we have to have better policy for housing – not to blame us”"
Racist xenophobes pulling up the ladder behind them!
Apparently good policy is enough to build housing for 700,000 students (alone, ignoring other migrants) in a decade
If you need to show you have enough money to live to get a study visa but you're struggling to support yourself, it suggests that you committed immigration fraud
Back from the brink: Restoring public funding to Ontario’s universities - "As a whole, Ontario’s university system took in more new revenue from international students than was lost due to cuts in provincial funds and domestic tuition, but this masks wide variation among individual universities."
Damn conservative underfunding! Time to raise taxes to increase subsidies!
Of course, this paper pushes more left wing demands, which will cost even more money, and claims the return on "investment" " is many times greater than the cost" (without even the slightest attempt at a cost-benefit analysis, or even quantifying either costs or benefits; even if we ignore the fact that we know from research that the returns to university education are mostly private, which means the case for subsidising it is poor, the left wing laundry list is even more questionable). Plus it ignores that university is mostly signalling
Amusingly, they claim that subsidising higher education is good because it results in higher incomes - then keep complaining about student debt
There's no discussion of how to pay for any of this
