We're importing ICE tactics now?
12 international students at Calgary protest referred to CBSA office after status check
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/cbsa-international-student-work-permits-protest-9.7306783
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/cbsa-international-student-work-permits-protest-9.7306783
We're importing ICE tactics now?
12 Comments
grte@lemmy.ca · 9 pts · 2d
This turn against immigration is really the dumbest, most self-defeating thing Canada can be getting up to. You know why the US presents such a threat to us? Because they represent a productive capacity of around ~340 million people while we represent a productive capacity of ~40 million people. They managed that by having extremely lenient citizenship requirements (for whites, but we can adopt similar policy without the racism) for most of their history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_immigration_and_nationality_law_in_the_United_States
Which, far from collapsing, turned it into the wealthiest and most productive country on Earth at the time.
CapuccinoCoretto@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 2d
Here is a hot take. Most of our housing crisis was from people abusing our Student visa program. It was dishonest and corrupt from the getgo. The students were trapped in worthhless diploma mills and were not on a path to citizenship anyways.
We couldn't build housing fast enough so we get rooming houses, soaring rents and investor driven real estate prices. Notice how rents and prices have fallen significantly since we stopped this. It's not anti-immigrant. Its closing a loophole. We needed to catch a breather.
Real schools still have large cohorts of real students from international sources.
We still have abuse of the TFW program to deal with. Kids still can't get jobs because employers prefer the abuseability of TFW.
Its long past time to fix these problems.
grte@lemmy.ca · 9 pts · 2d
In that case, the people abusing the system were the diploma mills scamming foreigners and we should probably be pursuing legal action against such entities. But even so, letting those scammed students stay if they want benefits us because it provides both a consumer and producer of value to add to our society.
They've fallen somewhat, but so have housing starts so this is short term relief that isn't doing anything to fix the issue. The truth is that, it isn't that we can't build housing fast enough, it's that we are choosing not to build fast enough because so many of the decision makers in our society have their wealth tied up in real estate. Until the government is directly building housing, we are not taking this problem seriously.
I would say that the TFW program isn't immigration at all. It's a labour disciplining program. It should be eliminated entirely because we shouldn't be having second class not-citizens in our society. But we should be bringing in similar amounts of people with the aim of making them full citizens who aren't in a position to be abused the way TFWs are.
Rat_in_a_hat@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 2d
I agree that the TFW is being heavily abused and that's something that hasn't been closed off since Trudeau and will continue under Carney.
However, I don't think broke students were fueling the 3200/month condo studio crisis. More likely that they were shacking up 5 to a room in the burbs in someone's non compliant basement unit.
Rent prices and development dropped because everyone is broke and holding onto their money during precarious times (it's also more profitable to invest in stocks than real estate) - correlation of a drop in immigrants is not causation of drop in prices.
CapuccinoCoretto@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2d
But the investors who buy those lucrative rooming houses do.
potter2010@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 20h
So, is it the broke students or greedy investors?
CapuccinoCoretto@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 19h
Why the "or"?
Edit: one creates the excessive demand, the other exploits it.
potter2010@lemmy.ca · 0 pts · 16h
I think you may be reading a bit too much right wing news.
CapuccinoCoretto@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1h
Supply and demand too right wing for you?
ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 20h
You need to look at it from our government's perspective. The US doesn't like immigrants so by getting rid of them we might be able to cozy up closer to them.
Ariselas@piefed.ca · 6 pts · 2d
The problem is and always has been predatory "career collages" that dish out diplomas that aren't worth the paper they are printed on. International students are needed if we want to attract the talent to build a real future for Canada that is not based on US Data Centres and Pipelines. The anti Immigration policies are also hurting legitimate Canadain universities who rely on foreign students to make up for decades of funding cuts, because word has gotten out that Canada doesn't want them here.
flamingsjack@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 21h
Speaking of which, I feel like many people are missing the context here (ahem redditors)
When Canada ended PGWPs for colleges in fields that aren't in demand, it only applied to people enrolling after a certain date. These students were enrolled before then.
Another thing is IRCC never mentioned anything about non-credit classes being ineligible for pgwp until after they graduated and applied for PGWP. So by our rules, these students can get a work permit but Canada won't give it to them.
Now this is scary. Why? Because it shows IRCC is willing to make up its own rule and enforce it without regard to others, especially to applications already in process. And people aren't going to trust Canada to respect them while being here. It's basically "I'm altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it further" line from Darth Vader.
That's why I believe these former students deserve PGWPs. They're not the norm. They are the exception. And it's simply following our own rules. We've asked international students to follow the rules here. It's time we also follow our own rules as well
And we're not going to get cases like these in the future with the changed rules