2. Practically speaking, how many people lack a work visa (or similar documentation), but are supposed to be here?
In fact, did you know, in Canada it doesn't count as work for visa purposes if you work over the internet for a foreign company and get paid into a foreign bank account and don't compete professionally with local interests? (This is a free hot tip for anyone wanting to live in Canada. It might be true in some other places too, but I don't know.)
Usually those long term visas (eg. student visas, I guess) require some sort of extra vetting to acquire (ie. they're not the tourist visas that get auto-issued at the border), and therefore are unlikely to be possessed by "people who aren't supposed to be here", so as a practical matter I agree they should be accepted in place of a "work visa".
Source? If you can do that, a Canadian could too. So you're directly competing with "local interests".
See e.g. https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/co...
What kind of activities are not considered to be “work”?
...
long distance (by telephone or Internet) work done by a temporary resident whose employer is outside Canada and who is remunerated from outside Canada;
https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/SOR-2002-227...
A foreign national may work in Canada without a work permit (a) as a business visitor to Canada within the meaning of section 187;
187 (1) For the purposes of paragraph 186(a), a business visitor to Canada is a foreign national who ... seeks to engage in international business activities in Canada without directly entering the Canadian labour market.
...
(3) For the purpose of subsection (1), a foreign national seeks to engage in international business activities in Canada without directly entering the Canadian labour market only if
(a) the primary source of remuneration for the business activities is outside Canada; and
(b) the principal place of business and actual place of accrual of profits remain predominately outside Canada.
You may send your letter of complaint to the Government of Canada's department of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship.
I'm kidding. :) I guess the interests to which you're referring are just tautologically not the interests I meant. Apologies for the confusion.
1) People get loans against assets literally all the time.
2) People can live and work in different places.
Typically in these cases, there's actually a source of income. You have to pay back the loan, after all. Otherwise I struggle to imagine why anyone without income but with plenty of assets would take out a loan, and having such documentation requirements would greatly inconvenience them. All this feels like a fig leaf for allowing workers lacking work visas to live and work in the US, while turning a blind eye.
>2) People can live and work in different places.
Again, is this something that actually happens, or is it just a contrived scenario? Is there really a large contingent of people working Mexico and then commuting back and forth to the US? They can't get a loan in Mexico?
You mean that there's a demonstrated ability to repay the loan, which isn't the same thing. I say this as a person who has taken many loans in my life, including ones while not working. Anyway that's up to the lender to sort out isn't it?
> "Otherwise I struggle to imagine why anyone without income but with plenty of assets would take out a loan"
Just because you struggle to imagine doesn't mean it isn't common for reasons you don't know or think about. I think this just shows some missing awareness about how things really work in the world more than anything else. Even Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, has billions of dollars in outstanding loans that he could repay today if he wanted to. I think a good place to start is to investigate why.
> "All this feels"
I get it. But I think we've established that you haven't considered the way these systems actually work, so your feelings probably aren't fully contextualized.
> "is this something that actually happens"
Given that I said that I did it personally, why is my story more contrived than the imaginary people in your head that you don't know anything about?
> "They can't get a loan in Mexico?"
I think this question is a non-sequitur. On what basis should someone's right to do something in place A have any bearing on their right to do something in place B?
If billionaires who lack work visas can't get an auto loan because of their stock borrowing schemes, that's fine by me. I don't think progressives would have much sympathy for billionaires in the first place anyways.
More to the point people who are actually engaging in this sort of stuff probably either have citizenship, or can buy citizenship so that they're not living in the country undocumented, so your counterexample doesn't work.
>Just because you struggle to imagine doesn't mean it isn't common for reasons you don't know or think about. I think this just shows either a lack of awareness about how things really work in the world more than anything else.
You know, it's pretty ironic how you interpret my lack of ability to imagine a scenario as "lack of awareness", but you can't think of an actual working example either. You do however, seem to have enough time and words to excoriate me, so why you try again and skip the insults?
I gave you the biggest working example in the world, the one where a person definitively has no objective need to take loans and does so anyway because it's deemed advantageous, and what you did in response instead of saying "oh damn, you're right, I did forget that in fact people take loans all the time against assets vs income" was try to rewrite the discussion around how progressives feel about billionaires.
> "people who are actually engaging in this sort of stuff ... either have citizenship, or can buy citizenship"
I am not rich enough to buy citizenship anywhere, and yet here I am. Your estimation of how things work is not complete.
> "so that they're not living in the country undocumented"
This is the second time now in this thread that you've replaced lack of right to work with something else entirely.
Are you forgetting the whole context for this conversation was over people who lack authorization to work but somehow need (and can get) auto loans? Bringing up Elon Musk, who is a US citizen only fulfills half of that requirement. Not to mention he'd be getting a portfolio loan on his stock, which gets him cash, obviating the need for an auto loan specifically. Then you pretend that was the entire argument, and trying to dunk on me for not accepting it.
https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025...