
An open society, Canada’s best response to immigration - swsieber
https://vancouversun.com/opinion/op-ed/robert-falconer-the-open-society-canadas-best-response-to-immigration
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aledalgrande
As an immigrant in Canada (normal process, not refugee) I can say the process
is fair, especially compared to other countries (see neighbor). The
requirement on language makes sense and also the minimum amount of savings and
no dangerous disease. Basically you are set to successfully start out.

Just talking about my experience, but after living in other 3 countries, the
openness of Canadians to immigrants and the culture that they bring in is
astonishing. This is probably why everyone I know that immigrated to Canada
had respect for the country from the start. Cannot say the same for most other
countries.

I feel like the fast (at least in immigration terms) response that the
Canadian government gives speeds up the integration and lowers worry about
future uncertainty.

~~~
avocado4
Sadly Canadian points-based system is a non starter with Democrats and some
nativist Republicans in the US.

~~~
aledalgrande
You just have to hope that the new generation is better...

~~~
devoply
It's very possible that left wing social liberalism has jumped the shark and
hard core right wing social conservatism is on the menu going forward.
Evidence for this is Trump, states passing ridiculous abortion laws, nativism,
etc. That we are switching from the Dionysian to the Apollonian.

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jacquesm
On paper Canada is near perfect. But in practice it is a country that is
suffering so much from having to maintain continent size infrastructure on the
tax base that would match a very small European country that the _only_ way
they are going to solve this long term without reducing the size of their
territory or falling apart is to import very large numbers of people and hope
to integrate them.

So far they are quite successful in the first and not so successful in the
second. But on paper they excel at both.

If you want to see this strategy fail try to move to some small town outside
of the top 5 and see how well that integration works in practice.

~~~
cal5k
That's a popular misconception, but flatly wrong. Canada has the 10th largest
GDP in the world. It's larger than Russia's and just shy of Brazil, a country
with 209M people vs. 37MM in Canada.

The vast majority of the country is within 100km of the US border, and frankly
we've massively under-invested in critical infrastructure like high-speed
rail. Our telecoms routinely claim that prices are the highest in the world
because of the sparseness of the country, and yet our telecoms are _the_ most
profitable in the world. Same for our banks.

No, Canada's real problem is its lack of self-confidence... we still coddle
our banks and telecoms, regulating to protect them against foreign competition
while failing to enforce competition laws that would prevent anti-competitive
behaviour within the country. We seem to be afraid of competing globally on a
level playing field even though this would make us better.

It's a very frustrating place to be an entrepreneur, particularly if you have
anything remotely resembling a libertarian bent.

~~~
devoply
I never understood the need to protect a certain class of non-innovative
noncompetitive services like banks and telecoms. It just a way to make a few
a*holes rich.

~~~
dogma1138
Because we don’t have any practical alternatives to banks; and when banks fail
the people who end up losing the most are not their senior management,
investors or even employees but the thousands or even millions of account
holders.

With Telcos it’s not that different too; if the large one as in those who
actually have infrastructure fail it can lead to a catastrophic cascade
failure when you can’t call an ambulance not to mention can’t do business
because your phones or internet are down you are screwed.

Telcos are like roads it might seem really easy to set new ones up but if you
remove all the existing infrastructure that was setup over a century you end
up with a lot of short routes that lead up to nowhere.

~~~
cal5k
This is certainly what banks and telcos will tell you, but it’s simply not
true.

For example, the idea that banks should maintain appropriate reserves and
refrain from taking on certain kinds of risks doesn’t imply that banks should
be the arbiters of who is allowed to send and receive digital payments. The
movement away from cash to digital has handed them extraordinary power over
all economic activity in the country.

Telcos have responded to attempts to shake up the industry by acting in non-
competitive ways, the primary reason why NONE of the new entrants from the
last wireless spectrum auction still exist as independent entities, and why no
foreign telcos have any interest in investing in the space. We don’t enforce
our own competition laws, leading to a small group of extraordinarily
profitable companies at the expense of the rest of the economy.

------
sorenstoutner
I think history has shown many times that generally open societies are good
for both the economy and for future strength of the country. It is nice to see
a well reasoned analysis of specific applications in Canada.

~~~
Zarath
What are some examples you'd give? Not trying to refute you, I just can't
think of any off the top of my head.

~~~
RubberbandSoul
It's a tautology. Open societies that handle their openness well are
successful. There are plenty of counterexamples; China is doing well despite
not being open for immigration and repressing its minorities. Singapore is
hardly open. Western countries did well in the 1950s to 1980s with minimal
immigration.

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swsieber
I know the author. Good guy. Level headed and data driven. I found it to be an
interesting read.

He says he's been getting lots of interesting emails since this piece.

Edit: A little more context: this was in response to some other right-leaning
piece (if you read the comments on the article you can see references to
that).

~~~
emmelaich
Specifically, in response to something like this from Alberto Alesina et al

[https://scholar.harvard.edu/stantcheva/publications/immigrat...](https://scholar.harvard.edu/stantcheva/publications/immigration-
and-support-redistribution)

Immigration is great on balance but it doesn't mean there's not legitimate
concerns on number, diversity and education level.

~~~
emmelaich
Regarding Alesina, there is a "Pepes Seminar"

> Paris Empirical Political Economy Seminar, a monthly seminar series co-
> organized by the Department of Economics at Sciences Po and the Paris School
> of Economics.

which is funny or scary or silly depending your state of mind.

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hoseja
Canada, so very noble in accepting people of all kinds... when it's popular.
[1]

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93Czech_Republic_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93Czech_Republic_relations#Visa_dispute)

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nutjob2
Certain people are always pushing fears about immigrants but the actual
experience of big immigrant nations like Australia (30% foreign born) and
Canada (25%) show that immigration, including large influxes of refugees,
doesn't cause social or economic problems.

~~~
lopmotr
Not all immigrants are equal. Obviously when they're selected for
employability as professionals, the results will be good.

New Zealand once took a lot of pacific island immigrants which were needed as
labor for the protected auto industry and other labor intensive jobs at the
time. What we're left with now is a large underclass of people over-
represented in crime, unemployment, obesity, lack of education, etc. In the
long term, that wave of immigration has surely hurt the country's economy and
the existing people's wellbeing.

~~~
blaser-waffle
Similar to Turks in Germany under the Gastarbeiter program.

"[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastarbeiter"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastarbeiter")

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_bxg1
Would they accept an asylum seeker from the United States?

~~~
avocado4
Yes, if you have enough points (young, educated, skilled, self-sufficient).

~~~
bryanlarsen
IIRC, there are three lanes: immigrant, family reunification and refugee. The
OP was probably asking if an American could qualify in the refugee lane, and
the answer is no. The first lane is the biggest one and the best one for most;
an educated, English speaking American shouldn't have trouble qualifying in
that lane.

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jankotek
> resettling more refugees than any other country in the world

> Since 2017, approximately 150,000 asylum seekers have claimed protection

This is pretty low number. Many countries took millions of refugees.

~~~
tempestn
> Canada took in 28,100 of 92,400 refugees who were resettled in 25 countries
> last year

[https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-resettled-most-
refug...](https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-resettled-most-refugees-
un-1.5182621)

Do you have a source for many countries taking in millions?

~~~
smnrchrds
I am not the OP. When I read that sentence, I thought it meant total refugees
settled, not just new 2018 refugee numbers. I would be very surprised if
Canada is near the top in total resident refugees. A small country like
Lebanon (population of less than 6 million, total area smaller than New York
metropolitan area) has 1.5–2 million refugees residing in the country. By some
estimates, more than a quarter of the population of Lebanon are refugees. No
matter what indicator you choose (total, per capita, per square km, per $ GDP,
...), Lebanon would be far ahead in the number of refugees accepted.

~~~
tempestn
Agreed; I'm sure there are many countries with far more total refugees. The
annual trends do seem newsworthy to me though. If anything it illustrates how
much the US annual number has dropped that it's now below Canada. Likewise
European countries that were taking much larger numbers of refugees per year
are no longer taking as many. Canada has increased its intake slightly under
the Liberal government, as the article mentions, but the real change is the
reduction by other countries.

~~~
luckylion
"Taking" != "Resettling". European countries are still "taking" asylum
seekers, but they don't "resettle" them: the asylum seekers show up in the
country and request asylum. It's not a good idea to only look at resettlement
and extrapolate from that to "total number of refugees admitted".

