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Comment by arcticbull | Hacker News Reader

It's pretty amazing to me how anti-immigrant America is, for a country built on immigration, but I suppose it's always been that way. Benjamin Franklin hated the Germans in the 1750s [1].

For perspective, Canada, a country 1/10th the size of the US, brings in 30,000 refugees each year. The US brings in 18,000. This means Canada brings in 25X the number of refugees per capita than the US does.

Canada, a country 1/10th the size of the US, brings in 300,000 new immigrants each year. The US brings in 1M. This means Canada brings in ~5X the number of new immigrants per capita than the US does. [2]

[edit] This rate has been consistent since 1992.

[edit] I originally stated the US brings in 140,000 immigrants per year, this was a mistake, my cursory search led me to the cap on employment based green cards, not total. Factoring in family members of US citizens, it's ~1M. By Immigrants I include green cards per year, as everyone else is by definition a non-immigrant. It is my understanding the Canadian number is the same category.

Blanket requiring additional pay for H-1Bs seems fine, but leaves startups in a difficult spot where they're unable to bring in the same level of foreign talent that bigger companies are, as, of course these rules do not take into account equity based compensation. As it stands, 4 out of 5 H-1B holders make more than average Americans.

The process of bringing in H-1Bs is already so expensive, arduous and wasteful that companies aren't going to be bringing in huge quantities of "US replacement" labor. I certainly wouldn't if I were in charge of hiring.

[1] https://qz.com/904933/a-history-of-american-anti-immigrant-b...

[2] https://www.boundless.com/immigration-resources/how-to-read-...

View on HN

Your data for the US is far off every source I can find. Per the UN, ~20% of all immigrants globally reside in the US.

On an annual basis:

The US brings in 100-200k refugees. Total immigration is 1.0-1.1M. The US grants citizenship to 700-800k immigrants.

The data I provided for you is per capita.

The US has set a target cap of 18,000 refugees next year [1] vs Canada's now world-leading (per capita) 28-33,000 [2]

You are correct that I was off re: 140,000 (that's the quota for employment based green cards), the number is ~1M total and I have edited my post to reflect. This is based on the total number of green cards available, as they are the only "immigrant" visa. Every other class is considered to be non-immigrants -- temporary workers, or visitors.

However, the fact 20% of the world's immigrants reside in America doesn't mean nearly as much on a per capita basis.

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/26/politics/refugee-cap-historic...

[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/19/canada-now-...

> However, the fact 20% of the world's immigrants reside in America doesn't mean nearly as much on a per capita basis.

What? We have 5% of the world's population and 20% of its immigrants, 4 times second place, but that's not enough for you? Wild moving of the goalposts.

I have not moved the goalposts. I never mentioned the total number of immigrants already in the country. That number is pretty close to 98.4% of course, since the number of First Nations or Native Americans is 5 million. Everything in my post is focused on the rate of new immigrants per year.

The UN classifies a migrant as a person that has moved across an international border [1]. If you are born and live in America, you are not a migrant by definition. So I am not sure where you are getting your 98.4% number.

While immigration policies can always be improved, your initial statement was that America is "anti-immigrant." This is hard to reconcile with the actual immigration numbers.

From the UN [2]: "The United States of America has been the main country of destination for international migrants since 1970.15 Since then, the number of foreign-born people residing in the country has more than quadrupled – from less than 12 million in 1970, to close to 51 million in 2019."

We can debate whether the number should be increased or decreased. But it is unfair to classify a country as "anti-immigrant" when it is leading the world in immigration. Even on a per-capita basis, America is way up there (look at the map on page 23 [2])

[1] https://www.un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/migration/index.... [2] https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/wmr_2020.pdf

I'm not sure you're using the term 'per capita' in the way it's intended or normally understood. If Canada allowed 28-33000 refugees per capita, that would effectively mean every person in the world could move to Canada.

My multipliers were per capita. Canada brings in 2X the US refugee count per year in absolute numbers, but is 1/10th the size, so ~20X per capita migration rate of refugees. Napkin numbers of course.

My parenthetical section indicated that Canada's numbers are world-leading per capita, not in absolute numbers.

Apologies if that was unclear.

> Blanket requiring additional pay for H-1Bs seems fine, but leaves startups in a difficult spot where they're unable to bring in the same level of foreign talent that bigger companies are, as, of course these rules do not take into account equity based compensation.

That's fine by me. For the vast majority of startups, the equity compensation should be considered worthless anyways.

> As it stands, 4 out of 5 H-1B holders make more than average Americans.

The average American doesn't work in a job for which an H-1B would even be permitted, so I'm not sure what this point means? I'd expect everyone in an H-1B position to be making more than the average American.

> The process of bringing in H-1Bs is already so expensive, arduous and wasteful that companies aren't going to be bringing in huge quantities of "US replacement" labor. I certainly wouldn't if I were in charge of hiring.

It's expensive, yes, but it's still a very small amount compared to their overall compensation and benefits. If your entire staff is on visas maybe you'd have a bad time, sure, but otherwise it's usually a drop in the bucket.

The real joke is that H-1B is still a lottery, and in the time it takes people to get theirs, they might reconsider living somewhere else, like Canada.

> Canada, a country 1/10th the size of the US, brings in 300,000 new immigrants each year. The US brings in 140,000. This means Canada brings in 20X the number of new immigrants per capita than the US does.

Actually, "more than 1 million immigrants arrive in the U.S. each year. In 2018, the top country of origin for new immigrants coming into the U.S. was China, with 149,000 people, followed by India (129,000), Mexico (120,000) and the Philippines (46,000)."

Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/08/20/key-finding...

Those are non-immigrants, guest workers or temporary workers. Immigrants are defined, in US law, a green card holders. Congress caps the number of green cards to be issued at 366,000 (140,000 for employment based green cards) per year. [edit] It's about 1M once you factor in family members of US citizens.

This is incorrect. A green card holder is a “permanent resident”. But that’s not where the line is for being considered an “immigrant”. Someone on an H1B without a green card is still an immigrant. As are temporary workers (for example on an agricultural visa).

"The term is often used generally to refer to aliens residing in the United States, but its specific legal meaning is any legal alien in the United States other than those in the specified class of nonimmigrant aliens such as temporary visitors for pleasure or students. Immigrant is also used synonymously with lawful permanent resident."

As this article was about US immigration, I was using the US immigration definition of an immigrant, which is roughly speaking, a green card holder.

H-1Bs are considered non-immigrant visitors, although it is a dual-intent class meaning they are allowed to possess immigrant intent for immigration purposes.

https://www.ncsl.org/research/immigration/common-immigration...

The main difference between Canada and the US is that the majority of Canada's immigration is employment based.

The split in the US for family vs employment immigration is around 80/20. In Canada it's around 40/60.

FWIW I am an immigrant myself (in Australia) and I am in favour of strict regulation. Skilled migration schemes should bring in skilled people, I've seen many people migrating on a skilled visa only to end up making a living as taxi drivers.

Some people ending up as taxi drivers actually have skills; their skilled visa isn't based on lies. They are just not able to continue in their field in the new country for whatever reason. Their accreditation is not recognized, or they don't interview well or whatever. Meanwhile, there are bills to pay and food to put on the table.

Of course, I didn't mean to deny that, actually I was out of my field for some time at one point, and I was working as a waiter to just to pay the bills. On the other hand, I've seen people on skilled visa who never actually worked a day in their nominated occupation.

My previous comment is more related to the fact that some migrants that follow the rules, may suffer from the fact that other migrants don't - for example at first my wife could not join me in Australia, because she comes from a country which had a high number of irregular applications in the past and for this reason that country is now considered "higher risk".

For this reason, many migrants are actually in favour of stricter regulations.

This fact is often not evident if you're not a migrant yourself, that's why I wanted to bring it up.

>> Their accreditation is not recognized

If so, then maybe they shouldn't have been issued "skilled worker" visa in the first place. Part of the visa process should be verification that a person really has the credentials to work in the profession they declare on their application.

Of course there also could be a process to get that accreditation without coming to the country. Something like bar exams for lawyers could be held in US embassies around the world, or online.

The US had 1.8 million new immigrants (legal and otherwise) in 2016 and ~13% of the population is foreign born. Canada exceeds that (~21%) but nothing like the 20X rate you're claiming.

Immigrants are defined in US law as green card holders.

~1.2 million green cards were issued in 2016, with the rest of the 1.8 million immigrants being undocumented. I'm not sure what data you're looking at?

The INA allocates 140,000 visas annually for all five employment-based LPR categories. 226,000 are available for family based migration. [3, 4]

I was likely neglecting the Immediate Relatives of US Citizens? Is that un-capped?

[1] https://www.stilt.com/blog/2020/03/visa-bulletin/

[2] https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/immigratio...

[3] https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R45447

[4] https://www.congress.gov/116/crec/2020/05/12/modified/CREC-2...

And also, 2017 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, Table 6, “Persons Obtaining Lawful Permanent Resident Status by Type and Major Class of Admission,” Department of Homeland Security.

There's the problem, you're comparing the overall immigration numbers for Canada to just the capped employment portion for the US. In addition, Canada isn't as accepting of illegal immigration (estimates of 35-120k in total there now), while the US adds 600k+ yearly.

> Immediate family of U.S. citizens. U.S. citizens can sponsor their spouses, unmarried children under age 21, and parents for a green card. This category does not have annual numerical limits.

> Family-sponsored preference visas. There are 226,000 green cards reserved each year for other categories of relatives. U.S. citizens can sponsor adult children and siblings, while green-card holders can sponsor their spouses and unmarried minor or adult children.

> The Employment Route. There are 140,000 green cards available each year for immigrants in five employment-based categories (formally known as “preferences”).

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/content/explainer-how-us-leg...

The Canadian numbers are number of new permanent residents, so the equivalent of new green card holders in the US, in all classes.

The US number is also the number of new permanent residents, however if my mistake was in fact that I excluded immediate family of citizens, then the number is 5X, not 10X. However, still, dramatic. I'll have to dig in more to make sure that's what I did.

[edit] Thanks for your help in figuring out my mistake!

>The process of bringing in H-1Bs is already so expensive, arduous and wasteful that companies aren't going to be bringing in huge quantities of "US replacement" labor. I certainly wouldn't if I were in charge of hiring.

You might not be, but there are certainly companies where H-1Bs are their bread and butter[1]. Taking Cognizant as an example:

* their wikipedia page says "The company has 281,200[2] employees globally, of which over 150,000 are in India", which means there are at most 131,200 US employees

* in the year 2017 they brought in 28,908 H-1B workers. This works out to 22% of the US workforce. If we include 2016 as well that works out to 38% of the US workforce.

* the figures above are conservative estimates. We probably overestimated their US workforce and underestimated their H-1B population (we've only looked at 2 years of visas, but H1-B visas are good for up to 6 years).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Top_H-1B_employers_b...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognizant

The H1Bs rules were outdated.

Startups in the 1980s had the same challenge because the H1B minimum salary was a really good salary then, average salaries just rose, lets do that part again.

The US receives half a million undocumented immigrants per year; Canada receives almost none. Plus another 1.2 million legal immigrants.

The immigration quotas in Canada are simply out of control.

Almost every week on this forum I see Canadians whining about low wages in Software.... in a market that's more or less flooded with cheap labor!

Immigration quotas have remained constant at about 1% of the population per year since 1992.

Low wages in software compared to the US for sure, but that's in part because Canada has very low income and wealth inequality compared to the US. Most people make a living wage, and there's not a huge spread.

The US ranks near the bottom of the world in income inequality [1]. Canada's GINI coefficient was 33.8 in 2018 vs the US of 43.4. This puts America at 51st in the world (lower being worse) vs Canada's 107th.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/09/ma...

The issues of income inequality, most people making a living wage are non-sequiturs to the argument that says if you have an ample supply of cheap labour, the wage goes down.

I guess the argument I was making is that you can't at the same time have "low income inequality" and a short supply of a particular skillset which drives them to receive disproportionate compensation. To the extent that software engineers aren't paid drastically more or drastically less than people in comparably skilled professions, I would argue that's the system working. Not everyone would agree with that to be sure.

Canada also has lower average wages. That doesn't mean that the average worker is better off; rather it's that it's harder to find high earners.

Mind sharing some numbers? This is a patently false statement. Wages in Canada might be lower, but that is because they get a number of other social benefits, such as healthcare, that gets paid through taxes taken from said wages.

>Wages in Canada might be lower, but that is because they get a number of other social benefits, such as healthcare, that gets paid through taxes taken from said wages.

Not really. They (and most other developed countries) simply pay less of their GDP towards healthcare.

That is... the opposite of what Canada does? Healthcare there is not uber-funded, but also not necessarily strapped for cash.

I'm not implying that Canada (or other developed countries) are cheaping out on healthcare. I'm only pointing out that your initial claim (that the differences in pay can be accounted for because of the various taxes paid) isn't true, or at least isn't telling the whole story.

But gross wages are also lower here. If anything almost everyone I've came across here in Canada talks about their salary using the gross amount. So not only are wages employers advertise pretty low already, they are usually pretax too.

Unless there's something more that is taken from wages that isn't shown on paychecks. Which would be weird considering that paycheck stubs usually have a full breakdown of where your money went and how much taxes were taken.

Everyone I talk to in the States also talks about their salaries in gross amounts, not post-tax (same applies for business advertising jobs).

Canada in general has much lower income inequality, which is an a-OK trade off for slightly lower wages, as long as basic needs are covered.

Taxes in Ontario are similar to say California. That's not the reason wages are lower.

For Software Engineering pretty much all jobs will have great health coverage included, on top of a higher salary. So when you add the value of the coverage, the wages looks ever lower in comparison.

I think you'll find the "low" wages in software here are lowish in comparison to wages in the Bay Area but are comparable to other professional salaries.

But also, the cost of living in the GTA has gotten completely out of control so that's part of it.

My wife and I bought a house in a "bad" neighbourhood of Toronto back in 2005. It was $280,000 CAD and that was the cheapest we could find in the GTA for a 3 bedroom detached home still on decent public transit.

At the time both of us were both employed in tech, and we still had to struggle a bit to scrape together a down payment. We didn't perceive $280,000 as a trivial or cheap amount. And even back then we wondered how families that didn't have our (pretty decent) income level could possibly be buying homes.

That same home would be now be worth over a million. I just can't grasp how that's conceivable at all. I make really good money as a Google employee, but I'd still find it frustrating to scrape together money for that. I don't understand how my kids will ever own a home.

So I think it's less that people are under-compensated in our industry as much as costs of living have just become stupid due to housing price inflation.

EDIT: wife went to go check the mailbox and it was stuffed full of real estate flyers only, including one from an agent who will give you a free lottery ticket if you come to his open house. I smell doom on the horizon, but I've been saying that for a decade, so don't listen to me.

> Canada, a country 1/10th the size of the US, brings in 300,000 new immigrants each year. The US brings in 140,000.

I don't know what definition of "brings in" you are using, but around 1.1 million people obtain permanent legal resident status per year in the US. By this metric your Canada numbers are about right (a bit low, around 340,000 in 2019).

Perhaps you're looking at purely comparing Canada's Temporary Foreign Worker Program with just H-1Bs? If so those numbers are still a bit off -- there were around 190,000 H-1Bs issued in 2019 -- but also that's only a small sliver of all temporary foreign work visas issued in the US (there are again over a million per year).

Canada does admit many more immigrants per capita and generally has a much better immigration system but the numerical difference is not quite as huge as you say.

I'd love to understand where the gap is.

I believe the cap on the number of green cards issued per year is 366,000 -- 140,000 of which are employment based. [1] Is mistook the latter for the former and have updated my post to reflect.

[edit] It's about 1M once you factor in family members of US citizens. Updated.

Similarly Canada's 300,000-ish per year number is also the number of new permanent residents admitted per year. [2]

My goal was to track immigration, i.e. becoming permanent residents, not temporary migrant workers, including those under H-1B.

[1] https://www.boundless.com/immigration-resources/how-to-read-...

[2] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/canada-to-admi...

Where are you getting the 140k new immigrants each year number from? Wikipedia says: "According to the 2016 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, the United States admitted a total of 1.18 million legal immigrants (618k new arrivals, 565k status adjustments) in 2016"

And refugees are only one type of immigrant. Should illegal immigrants count as refugees, since many frequently claim to be fleeing violence, even if they don't get officially declared as a refugee by the US? If so, that means the US admits closer to 500,000 refugees per year.

140k is the cap on Employment Based Green Cards. The rest is for family class Green Cards (spouses, siblings, parents etc.)

Do you have a reference? The numbers I'm familiar with have the US adding over a million new permanent residents each year (https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/immigra...). (Good numbers for "immigration" are hard to find because programs such as H1B aren't legally considered immigration.)

First of all, I'm pretty sure the US accepts way, way more immigrants than that. Also, how is it anti immigration to ask employers to pay H1Bs a competitive wage? Yes the process is expensive, but so what? If you really needed H1Bs, you'd be willing to foot the bill. The program shouldn't be used to get access to cheap labor & it shouldn't be used to save money.

I am all for immigration, but not at the expense of suppressing wages for anyone. That money that was suppressed (indirectly) goes to the pockets of the C suite and contributes to income equality. What is wrong in addressing one of the reasons contributing to income equality?

> Canada, a country 1/10th the size of the US, brings in 300,000 new immigrants each year. The US brings in 366,000. This means Canada brings in ~10X the number of new immigrants per capita than the US does.

I love Canada, would move there in a heartbeat, but the he IT salaries in Canada are pitiful compared to the US. Maybe one of the reasons?

Canada has much lower income inequality than the US, so it seems like the increased immigration rates are not the reason.

Refugees != immigrants. The US admits over 1M immigrants per year. [1] We have the largest immigrant population of any nation in the world and it isn't even close (our immigrant population is larger than the total population of most countries) at over 50 million immigrants (current population not born in the US). [2]

The rest of your comment is incorrect because of this misunderstanding, so I'll give you a break. And I'll also give you a break for accepting current Trump policies as standard American policies.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_Stat...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...

> of course these rules do not take into account equity based compensation

I would not consider startup equity equitable to salary compensation.

Your numbers are wrong [1].

> The United States has more immigrants than any other country in the world. Today, more than 40 million people living in the U.S. were born in another country, accounting for about one-fifth of the world’s migrants.

> The U.S. foreign-born population reached a record 44.8 million in 2018.

> More than 1 million immigrants arrive in the U.S. each year.

What amazes me is how much hate the US gets for being one of the most generous countries on Earth.

The US has changed since the 19th century, when we needed endless amounts of unskilled labor. Things are much different today, and the H1-B Visa has been abused for decades.

Good. It sounds like it's somewhat serving it's purpose. Hopefully these changes will improve it more.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/08/20/key-finding...

> What amazes me is how much hate the US gets for being one of the most generous countries on Earth.

Well, "generous" is a big word. There's not much handed to you when you move to the US, you'll have to work hard for your money, like everyone else. If you want to know what generous looks like, try talking with an immigrant in Europe.

Let's get some terminology right.

Immigrants are defined in US law as lawful permanent residents, i.e. green card holders. Congress caps the number of green cards issued at 366,000 per year. Therefore, the number of new immigrants to the US each year is 366,000. The 140,000 number I initially used incorrectly was the number of employment based green cards as compared to family based. I've updated the math. [edit] It's 1M once you factor in family of citizens.

Everyone else is a non-immigrant visitor, and not relevant to my numbers.

> The U.S. foreign-born population reached a record 44.8 million in 2018.

The immigrant and descendent of immigrant population of the US is roughly 100%, because there are only 5 million native Americans in the US.

> What amazes me is how much hate the US gets for being one of the most generous countries on Earth.

Canada brings in 25X per capita the number of refugees and 10X per capita the number of new lawful permanent resident.

You're simply mistaken.

Unfortunately your smug reply is wrong, as I said before.

From: https://www.dhs.gov/immigration-statistics/yearbook/2018/tab...

Table 1. Persons Obtaining Lawful Permanent Resident Status: Fiscal Years 1820 to 2018

Year Number

2018 1,096,611

2017 1,127,167

2016 1,183,505

This also obviously doesn't even count the number of illegal aliens coming here every year.

> The immigrant and descendent of immigrant population of the US is roughly 100%, because there are only 5 million native Americans in the US.

Native Americans came from elsewhere at some point too, I suppose they are immigrants also according to your meaningless definition.

Forgive me if I don't care about the per-capita number of refugees in Canada.

You are the one who is mistaken.

I likely excluded the number of US citizen direct family members, which means Canada brings in 5X per capita not 10X - or even the 20X from before. That's still a startlingly large delta.

> Forgive me if I don't care about the per-capita number of refugees in Canada.

Well then why are you replying to me?

> You are the one who is mistaken.

I'm wrong about lots of things, and my goal is always to get it right, and I've edited my responses for clarity, with a statement of why. However, the fact remains, 25X more refugees per capita and 5X more immigrants per capita is a lot.

Thank you for your help in figuring out where the delta was! I didn't mean to come off smug though, I saw other folks had varying definitions of what an "immigrant" was.

How many of those Canadian immigrants move to the US as soon as they can? I've seen a bunch.

As a canadian immigrant, I'm actually against the ramping up of so much immigration because we do not have the infrastructure to support it. I liked the slow and steady pace of quality over quantity before liberals came into power.

It wasn't much lower in the past -- the number's been hovering around the high 2xx,000 to low 3xx,000 per year since 1992, and immigration per year as a percentage of the population has remained around 1% that entire time, according to IRCC and statcan. [1]

The real issue is that Canada's birth rate is 1.4 children per woman on average. This means within a generation the population would be reduced to 2/3. With a points-based immigration program, the country is able to be selective about who it brings in.

I find blanket statements like "the infrastructure can't support it" pretty weak sauce without citations, especially as more folks in the country means more economic productivity, which means more taxes, which means more money to throw at, you guessed it, infrastructure.

[1] https://www.cicnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Levels-Pl...

Right, in the long term it would be beneficial, but the infrastructure takes time to build up. Most immigrants understandably crowd in either Vancouver, Toronto or a couple of other big cities because that's where the opportunities are. Not sure where you live, but the food and rent have gone up dramatically in these cities. Forget about being able to afford buying a house or an apartment even if you've been responsibly saving up. The commute before covid was killer. I don't understand this off-hand dismissal of concerns because I don't have citations.

>The real issue is that Canada's birth rate is 1.4 children per woman on average. This means within a generation the population would be reduced to 2/3. With a points-based immigration program, the country is able to be selective about who it brings in.

And instead of supporting the native Canadian population in having more children themselves, Canada, like most of the modern West, simply opted to replace them over time via migration.

> And instead of supporting the native Canadian population in having more children themselves, Canada, like most of the modern West, simply opted to replace them over time via migration.

This doesn't make sense. The country already incentivizes child birth, and provides socialized medicine. You can't make people have children.

The reality is that as a country becomes more developed, it's birth rate plunges. There's a strong negative correlation between income, development and birth rate. [1] This is not an east-vs-west thing, it applies the world over.

In developed countries, women do not want to have more children, and you can't make them. So, you allow immigration

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility

>> And instead of supporting the native Canadian population in having more children themselves, Canada, like most of the modern West, simply opted to replace them over time via migration.

>This doesn't make sense. The country already incentivizes child birth, and provides socialized medicine. You can't make people have children.

But this doesn't disprove the prior statement. It's possible that they're incentivizing having children, but not enough. Given the available choices of incentivizing having children even more (eg. free daycare or longer parental leave) or simply admitting more immigrants, Canada went with the latter because it's cheaper. After all, why bother letting the native population produce average workers when you can admit above average workers from across the world?

If you look at the chart, you'll see there is a substantial global negative correlation between income and fertility. High income countries have low fertility. Everywhere.

The question for me is why are you trying to force "natives" to have kids they don't want to have?

>The question for me is why are you trying to force "natives" to have kids they don't want to have?

I'm not sure how you got the impression that I'm for "forcing" people to have kids.

Applying pressure through substantial incentives is probably the better way of expressing it. I guess incentivizing someone enough is the same as forcing them but I digress. Why substantially incentivize locals to have children, when there's strong worldwide negative correlation between income/development and child birth? Why are local children inherently better than immigrants? To the extent that the society functions well and immigrants integrate into the broader country, what difference does it make?

I would further argue that "bringing in immigrants" isn't the "easy way out" or even likely the "cheap way out" but rather probably more challenging. Creating a society that deals well with the gaijin isn't easy.

I see no evidence that free daycare or longer parental leave actually incentivize adults to have children. The birth rate in Finland is 1.49 and falling rapidly, Sweden and Norway are 1.8ish. Iceland is 1.75. Germany is 1.57. Spain is 1.34. These places have incredibly generous programs and are well below the replacement rate of 2.1.

Finland's mat leave is 4.2 months and pat leave is 2.2 months and offers public daycare centers. If that's not long enough or free enough to boost their brith rate over 1.49 I'm not sure what you'd suggest.

Yes, mat/pat leave is great, and should exist. So should free daycare. However, I don't see any evidence that'll move the needle. If anything, it appears that pushes the birth rate further down being correlated broadly with increased development.

eh... sounds typical right wing comment. Japan has low immigration rates, yet they are not having any more babies. So is Hungary (most restrictive country in EU for immigrants), Italy (lax about immigration), or even Albania (has outflow of people).

It is a world wide issue in all western countries, and it is independent of net 'in or out' immigration. The more developed a country becomes, the less babies it makes.

Even if you stopped immigration, people would not be making more babies, as countries that don't have net immigration still don't make more babies. Baby making seems independent with net immigration rates.

>So is Hungary (most restrictive country in EU for immigrants)

Hungary incentivizes its native population to have larger families, a policy of Victor Orban's, and has seen consistent growth in its fertility rate since ~2010. This is, as far as I'm concerned, the way it should be tackled.

> The more developed a country becomes, the less babies it makes.

America and the UK's birth rates nose-dived in the mid-60's and hasn't recovered since. I'm failing to draw a connection to these countries being drastically more developed by the end of the 60s than they were at the start of them.

If you are going to call out “infrastructure to support it”, care to elaborate and maybe throw in some numbers?

It's about _carrying capacity_, not "infrastructure". We can only absorb people at some maximum rate and still have a chance of bringing them on board with hard-fought Canadian cultural values, getting them up to speed with our official languages, and integrating them into local communities. Past that rate, the tendency is for newcomers to seek out people who are from their home country and speak their language. This creates insular bubbles of culture and damages any effort to actually create a cohesive whole.

Multiculturalism in Canada is different than in America. Here, there's something bigger for us to assimilate to that actually still holds value as a construct; a greater Canadian archetype that has done extremely well as a common point for newcomers to converge on for the past few decades. However, it would be easy to exceed the rate at which this is workable, and end up with a fractured country where people retain their entire original identity and never "become Canadian". This is a legitimate concern for people that love the country created by people who are Canadian through and through and want to see some of our lesser-known values (such as anticorruption, engineering quality, sustainability, etc) continue to propagate.

OK, so where exactly has this NOT worked? Where is this huge number of people that just aren’t adjusted to the “Canadian lifestyle”?

Well, there are certainly areas of Vancouver and Toronto and their outlying suburbs that are on the verge of this; but it's more of an issue with recognizing the potential issues by looking at other countries that are further down the demographic path than Canada is. Or do you think it's necessary to have a problem in order to understand it?

Thank you for explaining it so well. Like I said I am not against immigration as I myself am one. I would just like our government to be mindful about the challenges it poses as well and adjust the rate based on how much we are able to take in at any given point without stressing out the system and making life worse for people already here.

There's a lot to be said for a slow steady pace. Society's relationship with politics tends to be oscillatory. If you push too hard in one direction (liberal or conservative), things swing back the other way and you end up with two steps forward, one step back and a loss of power for your team.

A more productive approach would be to set the cruise control just left of center and not get greedy. If you do that and simultaneously monitor and manage externalities of policies you see as progress, you'll probably see more mileage.

The complete lack of concern for externalities of policies and disregard for second and third order effects is why I've largely abandoned supporting most democrat positions. It's gotten so destructive that I'd rather stick with the devil I know than the devil I don't. And I would rather avoid oscillating between which devil has power since it's at the point in the reversal of political direction that the worst authoritarian abuses from either side happen.

Immigration to Canada has stayed very consistent over the last 20 years, check the wiki article [1] for details. It's not political (well, the rhetoric is political. The actual policies and statistics are not.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Canada

It's a shame you're getting downvoted so heavily for such a reasonable position to take.

If you're expecting HN, in all its "rational glory", to be anything but extremely pro-migration to the West when most of the users' are likely either 1st or 2nd generation migrants to the West themselves, then you're very naive.

You can still be pro-migration while disagreeing with the pace of it - despite what the downvotes imply.

America is reasonably pro-immigrant.

They just have to be legal.

> This means Canada brings in 25X the number of refugees per capita than the US does.

> This means Canada brings in 20X the number of new immigrants per capita than the US does.

You assert this as though it's just automatically a good thing with no actual analysis as to the impact on Canadians. What happens to the cultural cohesion, wages, and living standards of Canadians when immigration is at such a rapid pace? Is this not a factor? Or is the sheer availability of cheap, undercutting labour just a natural capitalist good that we should accept regardless of the hard to measure, intangible impacts?

Canada is selective about immigrants (they have a points system), so all the things you call out are accounted for in their model - they bring in those their country needs. And from what I see from down south, they benefit a lot from it.

With housing prices in Canada now it’s terrible to be young. As a landlord it is working great for me when I can get $2000 a month for an apartment in Hamilton.

How is that related to immigration?

Presumably because immigrants (especially the rich variety) drive up demand for housing.

Demand for housing in Canada has in part been driven by foreign non-residents real estate speculators who are looking to park their money in Canada, and other places. New Zealand banned all non-resident foreigners from buying property there [1,2].

I would assume that if a population remains stable as a result of migration, that as many people are leaving houses as entering them, and there shouldn't be substantial pressure on housing prices. I don't have specific data for this.

[1] https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/vancouver-...

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-45199034

Yes, this is correct, and is largely responsible for how Canada has been able to do so well despite high numbers. However, there is no guarantee of that program continuing perpetually, considering the criticism of such ideas pouring out of the USA.

(Though we'd have to be really mad to replace it with a lottery...)

The rate has been consistent since at least 1992.

The wealth and income inequality in Canada is much lower than in the US.

The standard of living in Canada is just as high as the US. Canada's Human Development Index is .922, 13th globally. The US HDI is .920, so a hair lower. 45% of the Canadian population lives in 6 of the 35 most livable cities in the world.

"Social cohesion" doesn't come up, it's not an issue.

> "Social cohesion" doesn't come up, it's not an issue.

Again, asserted, no evidence, no argument. Social cohesion is absolutely an issue. We feel it when we have no community organizations, don't know our neighbours, and have nothing gluing us to where we live. The famous Putnam study on social capital is a fine piece of evidence here.

I believe we can surmount Putnam's identified problems, but only if we have a rate of influx that is sustainable. That means each newcomer has a chance to get proper language training, recertification, and actually integrate into a local community, which I'll somewhat arbitrarily define as having made some real friends out of the group of local or fully-assimilated people. This is the core requirement of being able to fully participate in social life.

> The wealth and income inequality in Canada is much lower than in the US.

Some of us would like it to stay that way, and we understand that bringing in a whole bunch of people to undercut the price of labour while eroding our hard-fought social capital is not the way to do that.

Putnam's study cover the US not Canada, if I'm not mistaken. Do you have any evidence that the rate of immigration is "too high" to sustain social cohesion in Canada? I would suggest that as you're the one that introduced it the burden of proof is on you.

> Some of us would like it to stay that way, and we understand that bringing in a whole bunch of people to undercut the price of labour while eroding our hard-fought social capital is not the way to do that.

The immigration rate of 1% per year has been the same since 1992 and I see no evidence of inequality increasing in conjunction with immigration. Do you have evidence? And once again, dramatically increasing wages by cutting off immigration increases income inequality. The GINI has remained a consistent .33 from the late 1990s through the present day, in spite of 1% per annum immigration.

You're going to need to back your case if you want to sway my mind.

It's just one of those things that's assumed as good and not to be questioned, not even with reasonable and genuine discourse.

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