[mardifoufs]

What?! You literally cannot emigrate to Canada if you don't either go through the super harsh pointing system or fill a specific labor need. In both cases, the intent is very clearly to only allow in people who will be economically productive for Canadian companies. Good luck immigrating without a degree or without a contract.

Even sponsorship/spousal immigration is super unforgiving, since you are on the hook for any money the state ends up spending on the people you bring in, especially if it's social spending.

The only real exception is refugees but we send tons of them back and don't take anywhere close to the same amount of illegal immigrants as the US does. We also have agricultural labor immigration but again, it's nothing but Canada wanting cheap labor since they have to go back at the end of the summer with almost 0 exceptions.

But your feeling is pretty widespread here, Canadians really like to think way way too highly of ourselves especially on immigration. When keep in mind, if your refugee status gets denied here you are almost assured to be deported, which is not the case in the US. In that regards the Canadian immigration policy is much more colonial and centered around a transactional relationship, which is also somewhat the case in the US but at least they have the very humane lottery system, DACA, etc.

[rswail]

The points system for immigration is intended to allow in people who will be economically productive. Not for specific companies. This applies in Australia as well.

That's the difference. The focus is on the community contribution, not a specific company's requirements.

In Australia we have the equivalent of H1B (457) visas that are "sponsored" by an employer. That's separate to individual immigration visas.

[mardifoufs]

It's either you can get picked by an employer outright or go through the point system. Still, the point system is very very heavily skewed towards the theoretical economic output you have so I'm not sure if it's about maximum community contribution, unless we only judge that contribution according to how much an immigrant will work. In that sense the immigrants are still accepted mostly because they are beneficial economically, so our main immigration policy really isn't centered on any "humane" principle.

I'm not saying that's a bad thing, my point was mostly that thinking of Canada as being less strict/picky/transactional with regards to how it treats it's immigrants is just classic Canadian soft self-delusion[1]. Even the US lottery system is wildly more "progressive", and opens opportunities that just wouldn't exist otherwise if you cant meet the more stringeant requirements most of the other Western countries require.

[1]. I mean 18 years ago my dad was about to get denied at the very end of the whole process because an x ray showed a small shadow in his lungs that could've meant he may have had tuberculosis at some point in his life (it thankfully turned out that he didn't) . That would've meant that my mother, my sister and I would've been just flat out dropped too. After years of waiting! Though I understand that the system needs to filter these things out, but imo there's still nothing humane about that, it's just a transaction