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You cannot have a welfare state and a liberal immigration policy. Sure, if you do nice things for poor people their lives improve, and so does society, not only because we are kinder, but also because their problems don't become problems for unrelated people. But, if you do nice things for poor people as a government and open the door we have the objective truth that there are billions of poor people in the world who would love to be taken care of too. You will attract them and, like the Tragedy of the Commons, everyone will be poorer and less happy. Before anyone says "this isn't the right topic" I must point out that the population of the US has doubled since the 1950's, but the infrastructure has not. The rise in population is immigration, not native. There is a cost of immigration that is borne by the local population outside of the government for immigration if the housing stock does not keep pace with population, and if immigration is used to attack prevailing wages. What happens is that housing costs increase and income goes down, i.e. the native population gets poorer. |
What Canada doesn't have is a "homelessness-industrial complex" of NGOs and nonprofits that soak up billions of dollars in public money without actually providing significant housing for homeless people: instead, the government just does it.