[hylaride]

It's a contentious issue in Canada, too. There are legit reasons families may want to bring in certain extended family members (grandparents for childcare, etc), but it becomes a chain. Canada's elderly benefits are designed for people that have lived here all their lives, so it adds a strain to healthcare and other services.

IMO it should be immediate family (spouse and children) and then maybe one should be able to sponsor 2 others on long term VISAs. But there would still be fraud (there always will be I suppose).

[nicbou]

> Canada's elderly benefits are designed for people that have lived here all their lives, so it adds a strain to healthcare and other services.

In Germany, the benefits are tied to contributions, and after 45 years old, having some sort of pension is a requirement for getting a residence permit.

That being said, Canada is also getting skilled workers it did not pay to raise, educate and train. It's getting a good deal, but it's not getting a free meal. Those workers will have demands too.

[rayiner]

> That being said, Canada is also getting skilled workers it did not pay to raise, educate and train. It's getting a good deal, but it's not getting a free meal.

Canada’s moribund GDP per capita suggests they’re not getting a good deal. One big problem is that foreign education is worth very little because the standards are so much lower. Half my extended family in my parents' cohort moved to the U.S./Australia/Canada. They all had college degrees from Bangladesh, which was very favorable under the point-based immigration in Australia and Canada. Out of a dozen people, only my dad got a college-required job without further education. My uncle became a doctor after redoing medical school. And two cousins went to college in Australia and got professional jobs. That was it--everybody else got permanent residency based on paper credentials then took non-college jobs. And they lived in subsidized housing, and got a lot of support from the government.

I would be curious to see the statistics for what fraction of Canadian/Australian skilled immigrants actually get a job that requires their skills and credentials. I suspect that there's a high percentage of people who get permanent residency based on paper credentials, but who can't actually get a job. The American system of tying the visa to a specific job solves at least that problem. I suspect the rate of return for the Canadian/Australian system is poor outside of medicine + people who immigrate to attend college in Canada/Australia.

[hylaride]

I'm not complaining myself, but the system has broken down due to abuse (and outright fraud) of student visas, where the "students" then started working front-line retail and delivery jobs. We stopped getting the skilled workers and got a lot of fraudulent ones, and there was a path to permanent residency/citizenship, which then became a pipeline for their families.

There's been a crackdown as of late, but it's significantly impacted the perceived benefits of immigration here (and significantly increased south-asian racism). I know this problem wasn't unique to Canada (AU/NZ/UK all had similar issues) as many countries felt it was better to get these immigrants educated here where their credentials could be recognized, but they underestimated the demand via diploma mills.

[TMWNN]

>That being said, Canada is also getting skilled workers it did not pay to raise, educate and train.

As raynier said, Canada's diminishing per-capita GDP does not in any way reflect this. It is not an exaggeration to say that the entirety of the country's post-2015 GDP growth has come from massively increased immigration.

Indians in the US are by are large filtered for ability, and contribute to legal immigrants in the country being of high quality in the aggregate (although H1B visa abuse has changed this view).

Canada has seen a colossal recent influx of Chinese and especially Indian immigrants, the latter group now twice as large as in the US per capita.

Like the US, Canada allows international students to work. Unlike the US, Canada allowed those students to work off campus (!) for up to 40 (!!) hours a week. This caused the rise of an entire industry, in which so-called institutions of higher learning (Conestoga, Lambton, Confederation) have 99% Indian "students" that work off campus, destroying the local job and housing markets.

While they are (mostly) legal, unlike the influx of Latinos streaming uncontrolled across the Mexican border until the Trump crackdown, the numbers are still staggering for a country of Canada's size. And at least those illegal aliens entering the US are looking for manual labor, with the men going into construction and other trades. The Indians in Canada aren't nearly so willing to get their hands dirty, working at Tim Horton's ("Timmigrants") and as truck drivers (causing havoc on highways).

[fakedang]

Under the UAE's Golden Visa scheme, it's parents, children and any dependent siblings, which I think is an optimal balance. The person who sponsors the rest is/are the primary visa holder(s) and the authorities only take their situation into account when assessing lifestyle.

So your parents don't need to have a pension or an income source if they want to live with you, and you can sponsor any disabled siblings (who get massive benefits from the UAE government whether citizen or non-citizen). But you cannot support an able-bodied male sibling above the age of 25. You can sponsor female unmarried siblings regardless of age as long as they are unmarried (realities of that region I guess). But more importantly, you cannot sponsor just about everyone and anyone, so it stops becoming a chain of sponsorships like it is in the West. There are some workarounds to this system though (e.g.: you can hire one as a personal driver and another as an administrative assistant staff for your company) but they're still very restrictive.

Citizenship is obviously not at all a given, even for long term Golden Visa holders. But at least they don't tax you either which is still a reasonable balance altogether. You will get considered for citizenship though if you have a stellar track record (research, entrepreneurship, sports, govt service).