[TimPC]

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.

[robocat]

Ahhh, sorry.

Yeah that sounds like a significant difference.

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.

[1] https://thehub.ca/2024-03-29/this-government-is-oblivious-th...

[TimPC]

I think 804k is the number of new temporary residents and 550k is the number of net temporary residents. I think it's reasonable to care about the net change in population from immigration because people are going to strain services in mostly the same way whether they are temporary or permanent. I think many temporary residents do strain housing in similar ways though, Canada has seen a massive increase in demand that seems larger than the 1% number you cared about.

Also I think you're just willfully misinterpreting me at this point because the 2.1% number for Australia included temporary residents. The number for Australia based on only new permanent residents is 195,000/26M = 0.75%

[robocat]

I think the issue with this conversation is that you have been talking about temporary immigrants all along, but I did not realise that originally so I have been talking about permanent immigrants all along. Hopefully both of our comments make a lot more sense in that light.

Your first post used the word "immigrants" and talked about the home building rates and the health care sector. Most people don't expect temporary immigrants to have a large impact on health care costs. So I think my initial misunderstanding of you is sensible. I would guess most people mean permanent immigrants when using the word "immigrants" - however I don't know your background...

We also obviously need to be careful when using annualised numbers. For example plenty of the students that come to New Zealand come to learn English over say two months (as I have just been learning since I'm looking at renting a room out to a student or worker).

6 student visas for two months consecutively has the same yearly impact on resources as 1 permanent immigrant. Adding tourist visa numbers to immigrant numbers would be similarly misleading for the same reason. Perhaps we need numbers for a snapshot of all visitors? The information is available to our immigration departments - they know how many people are currently in the country at any point in time.

If the 550k number is a sample at a point of time during the student year then it can be compared as an annualised number - but I can't know the context of your number without knowing your source. If it is a number of VISAs then the number needs to be annualised to work out impact on resources.

I completely agree that temporary immigration has an impact on resources and residents.

I believe that temporary immigration is nowhere near the impact that permanent immigration has on resources - especially in the long term where retired immigrants DO massively affect the health system costs. Temporary immigrants are mostly healthy and sick ones should be covered by travel insurance?

The podcast mentions one long term impact for Canada: that temporary immigrants can have a baby and Canada gives the baby citizenship.

In New Zealand we have massive numbers of tourists over our summer which has a heavy impact on our resources (including housing due to AirBnB). But tourists do pay their way and don't have a long tail of costs (retirement etcetera).

If we wanted to compare temporary residents, then I can include tourists during the tourism season, and suddenly you will find that the numbers for New Zealand are ridiculously high! However I have no idea what it's like for Canada. Our tourism season has a heavy impact - but mostly on tourist locations - less so on our metro areas (although I see personally see the impact of cruise ships on the suburb of Lyttelton in Christchurch).

I recall the podcast seemed to say that your problem with temporary immigrants was a sudden change and that the numbers likely would revert to something more sensible.

I'm sure we can agree that all 3 countries have economic issues with immigration.

New Zealand has been making new houses especially in Auckland and Christchurch. I believe Canada has been falling behind there. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38430062

And most developed countries are fucked for demographics in the future: permanent immigration is a short term solution but I reckon we are just punting the problem to the future. As a middle aged guy I can see the problem slowly building and I have been doing what I can to prepare!

Since immigration can be a sensitive topic, I want to be clear that I like immigrants and I have close friends and family by marriage that were not born in New Zealand.

All the best. I am hoping to visit Canada in the next 5 years to go skiing. Thank you for the conversation - I comment on HN to learn and I have learnt a few things! Cheers

[TimPC]

Temporary numbers are net not gross so if a tourist enters and leaves the country in a single year they count as 0 not 1.

[robocat]

Right so zero net tourists, therefore zero housing pressure? Nope, that's why people complain about AirBnB.

My point is that picking a number at a point in time doesn't say much about the housing pressure - as the zero net tourists example shows.

Without knowing more about the number of temporary immigrants throughout the year (e.g. total number in Canada per month), the number of temporary immigrants as a yearly value is not much use (just as net zero tourists is not much use). Kinda depends on how quickly the temporary immigrants roll over.

Interestingly enough NZ and Australia have sharply reduced the number of working visas. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/513642/immigration-chan...

Also, I noticed an article implying that Canada is much more successful at getting wealthy immigrants:

  Immigration lawyers [in NZ] are worried by a dramatic drop in the number of millionaires receiving so-called golden visas. "If you have investors looking at options they're going to go for an easier option, they're going to go for Canada", he said.