I'm interested that you used the word "absurd" - how come? Historically nothing sets up a country better for future success than lots of immigrants - if it's paired with government policy that doesn't discourage growth...
First canada has one of the largest population growth rates in the world (very unusual for a G7 country)
Second, Canada had absolutely terrible business development investment. There is no capital to make use of the increase in population and as a result the GDP per capita is going negative every quarter.
Now that the quality of life in Canada is dropping, highly skilled Canadians are trying to get out as fast as they can making the Canadian market even less competitive.
I don't think this combination of variables has been present in previous population booms (post WW2). I think we are in new territory here being pushed aggressively by a few companies trying to find even cheaper labor than what was possible.
If Canada took in half the number of immigrants it does it would still have one of the largest rates in the world. We are massive outlier for how many we are taking in and all sorts of things aren't keeping up with the demand. The biggest two are home building rates and the health care sector but there are other problems as well.
Canada has 21% immigrants[1] - it is not an outlier compared to AU/NZ. Canada needs 1/2 again as many immigrants to match Australia which has 30% already. I'm in New Zealand with 27% foreign born.
Net migration per 1,000 people (2023) figures[2] are: Australia 6.4, Canada 5.4, New Zealand 4.8
So Australia's immigrant population is also growing 20% faster than Canadas. (albeit emmigrant numbers included so perhaps I'm oversimplifying - I'm not familiar with Oz - but New Zealand has significant outflows).
The relevant number is not so much how many people are born outside the country which can include 90 year olds who came to the country in WW2. But rather the YoY population growth from immigration, which is a more accurate measure of recent influx.
Canada welcomed 471,550 new permanent residents in 2023 and had an increase of roughly 550,000 temporary residents. That's a net influx of over 1M people for a country of over 40M. Most of Europe takes in about 1% of population in immigration not 2.5%. Australia targeted 195,000 permanent places and a total of 548,000 places across permanent and temporary programs. For a country of 26M that's 2.1% which is still extremely large but well below 2.5%.
Also even if we use your numbers, Canada mostly accelerated immigration in 2023 and 2024 but already by 2021 our immigration percentage was up to 23% according to our census so your numbers are badly out of date for measuring recent immigration. In terms of reaching 30% with a net influx of over 1M immigrants a year over those two years, Canada could be as high as 27% immigrant now. Which even if it is lower than the raw total in Australia I'm sure we can acknowledge is a very rapid change that puts major strain on services.
Your data source has Canada's net migration at 249,000 which is absurdly small compared to Canada's own data. Canada's own data has migration out of the country at 94,576 people but for the 249,000 number to make sense that number would have to be closer to 750,000. It's clear we are using very different sources to calculate the numbers. I'm 100% convinced your source has badly incorrect data for Canada.
I know nothing about Canada's immigration issues, but I did listen to a conservative podcast[1] the other day and at 20:30 it mentioned the 2023 numbers for Canada were:
• 1.27M immigrants
• 471k settling
• 804k temporary residents
So unless our sources are careful how they measure immigration there's a lot of scope for misunderstanding.
No idea why your number is 550k and the podcast mentions 804k.
> I'm 100% convinced your source has badly incorrect data for Canada.
The 249,000 number is sourced from a file provided by the World Bank. It isn't obvious where the World Bank get their number from. Don't ask me!!! Yeah, it looks wrong, but I don't care enough about the topic to go into it further.
Either way from the foreign born population percentages it is very clear that Australia and New Zealand have been accepting lots of immigrants for years and Canada would need to have much larger immigration numbers to get close to catching up.
If you are interested in the effects of immigration on Canada, then keep an eye on Australia and New Zealand to see how it is affecting them.
> For a country of 26M that's 2.1% which is still extremely large but well below 2.5%.
You are comparing chickens to bandicoots. Either compare residents or compare totals including temporary. You are being epically misleading to compare between the two.
From your own numbers, resident immigrant growth is ~1% for Canada (471k/40M) and 2.1% for Australia... I would guess New Zealand is around the 2% mark. I have little idea about temp numbers, but they are not zero.
I've personally just been looking at having a student guest rent a room at my place for $250 per week - students don't create as much pressure on housing. Permanent immigrants definitely do.
You seem to me to be trying to misinform.
When people talk about the problems of immigration they are not generally talking about temporary students and temporary workers. Might as well as add tourists on too - they are a contentious issue where I live.
I mostly care about immigration numbers, but you are using temp numbers. Yeah, Canada's temp numbers are whacko and that is discussed in the podcast: the temp student numbers surely can't be sustainable for Canada in the long term.
> ...if it's paired with government policy that doesn't discourage growth...
Well, exactly. Bringing in large amounts of immigration to support an economy that that largely revolves around property transactions will contribute to an increase in property prices but will drag down GDP per capita and drive up infrastructure costs. This is NZ.
> Historically nothing sets up a country better for future success than lots of immigrants
Ummm citations needed urgently. I would point out, immigration policy vs anyone without a passport is welcome are two complete scenarios that the only thing in common is that outsiders are coming in.
Unchecked immigration policy as a good thing is a myth. People from clashing cultures dont mix naturally. Only results are natural ghetos and cultural clashes.
Allowing undocumented people in without any due diligence, only advertises that undesirables from other countries can escape, or being dumped by more crafty foreign leaders.
The immigration as a positive is strictly related to being the cause for brain-drain effect. You want intelligent hardworking people in, not just anyone.
Also its better if people you are attracting are of similar heritage with similar values and culture. As those people assimilate to host cultures within a generation or two.
The european countries don't really have distinctive minorities from their neighbors. The inter-eu immigrants withing generation or two basically become a host country citizens.
I would point to Sweden and their current problems, also to the change of mind of the pro-unchecked immigration politicians. Who now are openly and publicly stating they were wrong.
> I would point to Sweden and their current problems, also to the change of mind of the pro-unchecked immigration politicians. Who now are openly and publicly stating they were wrong.
> Sweden has no language, income, employment, or skills requirement for obtaining citizenship.
Neither does the US. Like the US, it has a requirement of having lived in the country with residency for 5 years. In the US those 5 years are after getting a Green Card (permanent residency), not after getting the original dual intent visa that allowed for the Green Card.
The Swedish residence requirements seem par for the course[1], if more straightforward than for the US.
> The european countries don't really have distinctive minorities from their neighbors
Well… I wonder how that happened since it certainly wasn’t the case until the period between the mid/late 19th century and the 1940. I guess we’ll never know.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
The argument is that the immigration rate has nearly doubled compared to the baseline (https://www.statista.com/statistics/443063/number-of-immigra...) and that the country isn’t set up to absorb such a higher number of immigrants, not that immigration is bad as such
because the rapid growth has put so much pressure on house/rent prices, healthcare availability, general inflation on prices etc that overall the standard of living is falling for everyone.
Poor immigrants now == booming growth over the medium term. Rich immigrants just spend the locals out of their homes. The west is importing the wrong type of migrants.
It became a trend in china's rich circles to invest in canadian housing market as way to hide money from ccp and to flex your wealth.
Chinese new money are prone to trends, and at scale it can have terrible results for city like Vancouver - quick google - "Chinese homebuyers accounted for nearly one-third of Vancouver's real estate market during 2015"
> Historically nothing sets up a country better for future success than lots of immigrants - if it's paired with government policy that doesn't discourage growth...
Define "success?" Mass immigration to America from continental Europe eventually culminated in the 20th century in the dismantling of the American constitution and the republic the founders created. The resulting country is also completely ungovernable.
Generations of cheap immigrant labor ultimately created a materially rich society (for some people), but whether it has been a "success" is quite debatable.
> The resulting country is also completely ungovernable.
Another way to look at it: By any reasonable measure — and for all its indisputable problems — the U.S. is clearly the most successful large, multi-ethnic society in all of human history. Sure, it's always a work in progress. But let's consider the movie, not just the freeze-frame.
When people can vote with their feet, it says something that net migration to the U.S. seems to dwarf that to, say, China [1] or India [2].
The US already had the highest standard of living in the world at the time of independence, before it became a multi-ethnic society. The country de Tocqueville wrote about was an overwhelmingly British country. The subsequent trajectory of the US has been one of chipping away at that foundation. The accommodation of vast numbers of immigrants from societies that had no tradition of self government, and little in the way of unifying cultural traditions, created a top-down society that can scarcely be called America.
Looking at migrants is a misleading indicator of preference, because the choice to emigrate is an aberrational one. Just 7-8% of people in south or east Asia would emigrate if they had the choice: https://news.gallup.com/poll/245255/750-million-worldwide-mi....
Let's not forget that (European) immigrants were mostly wanted, so as to provide needed workers. Even the Chinese immigrants of the 19th century were wanted to help build railroads and the like. Racist anti-immigrant factions such as the Know-Nothings and the KKK never really gained the power needed even to try to stop immigration (with the notable exception of the Asian exclusion acts in the late-19th and early-20th centuries).
Scores of millions of Americans, including your servant, are descended from those European and Asian immigrants. Again, the "movie" is that over generations, those people became fully assimilated into American society and values.
As for "accommodating" the immigrants, that brings to mind Heinlein's dictum: Never argue with the weather. It's questionable whether the "British" America of, say, 1787, or even 1868, could have effectively prevented immigration.
We also shouldn't lose sight of the millions of involuntary "immigrants" who were brought here in chains from Africa.
> Let's not forget that (European) immigrants were mostly wanted, so as to provide needed workers.
Sure. I’m talking about the long-term effects of that deliberate policy choice.
> Again, the "movie" is that over generations, those people became fully assimilated into American society and values.
Quite a bit of evidence shows that core cultural values, such as levels of social trust and attitudes towards the nature of government, are durable across generations: https://cis.org/Richwine/Still-More-Evidence-Cultural-Persis.... Scandinavian Americans, German Americans, and Italian Americans to this day exhibit differing levels of social trust that mirrors those of their cousins back in Europe. The waves of immigrants didn’t “fully assimilate” into American society, they changed it into something entirely different.
An overlooked aspect of Donald Trump—who is barely a third generation American—is that he was the last nail in the coffin of British America. British American culture is no longer prevalent enough to sustain even one political party. The Trump GOP has dropped the distinctly British American idea of limited government and replaced it with a cult of personality that can appeal to immigrant Germans, Italians, and increasingly Latin Americans. If Trump acts like a Latin American dictator it’s because that’s what it takes to get all those people from disparate cultural backgrounds into a coalition that can get close to 50%.
People notice this shift, but because we have this mistaken notion that “white people” are a single group, we overlook what it means. It gets framed as the “death of the Reagan GOP.” It is, but more accurately it’s the death of the British American GOP.
> core cultural values, such as levels of social trust and attitudes towards the nature of government, are durable across generations
Interesting. Does that take into account the mixing of cultures as the generations go by? My own immigrant ancestors came to this country in the 19th- and early-20th centuries — from four different countries in northern- and southern Europe; two different religions; and arguably three distinct subcultures. My own kids have three more countries stirred into the mix from my wife's side — and her outlook and attitudes have influenced mine in the decades we've been together. Then there's the influence of the different places I've lived and worked. I can't imagine I'm unique.
> more accurately it’s the death of the British American GOP.
Which "British America[]"? The New Englanders like the Puritans, and later the Adamses? The mid-Atlantic Quakers? The Virginians? The Cavalier enslavers who came from their Carribean sugar plantations to grow cotton? Very different subcultures. (And if you want to talk about "top-down," consider the southern American subcultures.)
And which British American GOP — the now-extinct liberal northeasterners and -Midwesterners? The hard-core racist Southerners who were right-wing "Democrats" until the Nixon-Reagan-Atwater "Southern strategy" coaxed them to the GOP? The California Reaganites of Proposition 13?
> If Trump acts like a Latin American dictator it’s because that’s what it takes to get all those people from disparate cultural backgrounds into a coalition that can get close to 50%.
My guess is that Trump appeals to a certain fearful, hero-worshipping, authoritarian mindset that's widely distributed among the human population, and whose adherents have far greater ability to communicate and organize than ever before. We see that mindset today in the followers of Putin, Orbán, Kim, Maduro, etc., as well as those of Trump. (For that matter, the fascist Oswald Mosley was a Brit.)
> created a top-down society that can scarcely be called America.
Really? The U.S. is notably less top-down than many other places that either of us could name. And nostalgia for an imagined bygone "British" past is unproductive.
Second, Canada had absolutely terrible business development investment. There is no capital to make use of the increase in population and as a result the GDP per capita is going negative every quarter.
Now that the quality of life in Canada is dropping, highly skilled Canadians are trying to get out as fast as they can making the Canadian market even less competitive.
I don't think this combination of variables has been present in previous population booms (post WW2). I think we are in new territory here being pushed aggressively by a few companies trying to find even cheaper labor than what was possible.