Even a liberal nation has limits...

[Catsumi]

A hellhole of a situation and guaranteed to get much worse.

It's all well and good to be big hearted and welcoming but eventually the day comes when the coffers are emptied, but you won't know that until your tax burden drives you out of house and home. Someone has to pay for the largesse and it's US, we the sheeple.

I could be wrong in thinking this but wasn't GB was trying to make a point about illegal immigration into the USA which has been a costly problem for them? Years of Mexican illegals crossing into California put a lot of pressure on their healthcare system, especially when mothers gave birth to a "now" American citizen as one example. Someone is now on the hook to feed, clothe, provide education and healthcare. Then there are the costs involved in preventing illegal crossings and sending them back. Burgeoning urban populations lead to overcrowding and crime rate jumps; there are just not enough jobs to go around as so many work opportunities went overseas.

Just in view of the simple examples above I would expect the appetite to grant USA citizenship across the board to those who were to return to their homelands after natural disasters abated might have waned. Just my guess.

If it were true that high populations led to more wealth generation then India should be the richest country on earth.

Do we really need/want our cities to be more crowded? Do we want to strip our natural resources to the bone to provide for all who wish to come and have all we have now? Do we want our social services and funding to be diluted further?

I am glad that I am not a youngster just starting out, trying to find that first job with the hopes of home ownership a laughable dream. These kids are going to be taxed to the max.

[Queen K]

Yes, GB is pointing that out and at some point there is a limit even in the most liberal country.

[Queen K]

GB, two liberals "liked" your post.



I see there is more mayham at the border now. We just can't have this go unbated. Trump is wreaking havoc down South and causing panic.

I don't know if he's right to demand 200,000 El Salvadorean people to go back to a third World country, but he's certainly trying.

I've agreed with him already.
I was pointing out that Trump is causing the panic wave over to our border.

[Catsumi]

Right. I think that game is called "the buck stops here"

Their problems are now ours.

[The Green Barbarian]

Yes, GB is pointing that out and at some point there is a limit even in the most liberal country.

What I was pointing out was that yes, the US has a huge illegal immigration problem, that was only exacerbated by the Obama and his DNC pals like Pelosi and Reed. They allowed millions of people to cross their borders, which was supposed to be for a short period of time (?) but then never followed up on them going back? And in fact instead they created these "safe cities" or something in the US where they could live even though they were illegal? (I am using question marks here as this is just what a lot of frustrated Americans have told me, not sure if it's true?)

I thought it was telling after the election of Trump, when the media was trying to understand how their decision to elect Hillary president before the election even happened didn't come true, and when they were interviewing Hispanic voters who had voted for Trump, how the Hispanic people said that even they were angry at the DNC and their immigration policies, because they had come in legally, and so why should they be allowing all of these people in now illegally, and doing nothing about it??

What Trump did was tap into a vein that no one else could have tapped into. A regular Republican candidate that started talking about immigration would have been destroyed by the Clinton machine, and they would have crushed him with calls of racist etc. When Trump went right for the jugular, and they called him a racist, he didn't care. It was just pure teflon. And rightly so. Immigration is an issue that has to be talked about. The nutbags who just scream RACIST and BIGOT have to be ignored (because let's face it, these boneheads won't shut up) and the adults have to take over the conversation. It is a huge problem.

[hobbyguy]

Yes, GB is pointing that out and at some point there is a limit even in the most liberal country.

What I was pointing out was that yes, the US has a huge illegal immigration problem, that was only exacerbated by the Obama and his DNC pals like Pelosi and Reed. They allowed millions of people to cross their borders, which was supposed to be for a short period of time (?) but then never followed up on them going back? And in fact instead they created these "safe cities" or something in the US where they could live even though they were illegal? (I am using question marks here as this is just what a lot of frustrated Americans have told me, not sure if it's true?)

I thought it was telling after the election of Trump, when the media was trying to understand how their decision to elect Hillary president before the election even happened didn't come true, and when they were interviewing Hispanic voters who had voted for Trump, how the Hispanic people said that even they were angry at the DNC and their immigration policies, because they had come in legally, and so why should they be allowing all of these people in now illegally, and doing nothing about it??

What Trump did was tap into a vein that no one else could have tapped into. A regular Republican candidate that started talking about immigration would have been destroyed by the Clinton machine, and they would have crushed him with calls of racist etc. When Trump went right for the jugular, and they called him a racist, he didn't care. It was just pure teflon. And rightly so. Immigration is an issue that has to be talked about. The nutbags who just scream RACIST and BIGOT have to be ignored (because let's face it, these boneheads won't shut up) and the adults have to take over the conversation. It is a huge problem.

GB - you have your facts wrong. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/27/5-facts-about-illegal-immigration-in-the-u-s/

Illegal immigration into the US went DOWN under the Obama administration, as did the total number of illegals. The "less than 5 years" illegal immigrant number plummeted under Obama.

So NO, you can't use that argument to justify the racist bigot spoutings that emanate from the hole 6 inches below the orange comb-over.

[Catsumi]

Well, whoever is right on how it all happened seems irrelevant now. The hordes are coming this way, into Canada, and as GB says, we really must talk as adults about immigration, legal or not.

300,00 additional people intake per annum is a serious strain on our welfare, medical, housing, education and all else.

Something has to give way or give up.

[Snman]

Actually Catsumi, it's more like 340,000, or will be. We do need immigration due to our low birth rate but exactly how much I do not know. I'm all for helping people from around the world that need our help but I also believe that we should immigrate people who have skills with which to get decent jobs and pay taxes, since that's why we have immigration....to pay taxes, not fill schools. Anyway, does anyone out there know what is actually needed for immigration in Canada, in order to maintain current social programs?

https://www.thestar.com/news/immigratio ... -2020.html

[Catsumi]

300,000 or 340,000, either one is a staggering number. It is a new full blown city added to the country EVERY year.

I agree that the goal should be to input the productive (read--taxpayers) and not wind up with the reverse (read --drains).

[The Green Barbarian]

GB - you have your facts wrong. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/27/5-facts-about-illegal-immigration-in-the-u-s/

Illegal immigration into the US went DOWN under the Obama administration, as did the total number of illegals. The "less than 5 years" illegal immigrant number plummeted under Obama.

Well don't talk to me HG - talk to the people in the USA who vote. So what is with all of these people that are in the US right now but are not citizens. Why did Obama and the DNC create all of this confusion with Haitians and people from El Salvador? What was their end game? Even the dumbest Democrat had to know that once these people were in, they were never going to go back. Why? Because their countries are holes.

So NO, you can't use that argument to justify the racist bigot spoutings that emanate from the hole 6 inches below the orange comb-over.

Yes, yes here we go again. Yup the orange guy is a racist so therefore no one can talk about immigration. Let's just get emotional and start screaming. Makes sense.

Meanwhile, a year into his presidency, with an extremely racist bigot as president, unemployment levels for black people in the USA is at the lowest rate its ever been since it began being measured...

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/05/black-u ... d-low.html

but who cares right? I'm sure that the racist orange comb-over is lying in bed at night wondering how to reverse the tide of all of these African-Americans finding jobs....eye roll....

[hobbyguy]

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/were-missing-the-long-view-on-immigration/article36823898/

"Canada's new level of 300,000 makes for an immigration rate of 8.3 per thousand. Mr. Hussen's gradual increase, to 340,000 per year by 2020, would be a far smaller increase than we saw in one year alone under Brian Mulroney (who raised it by 50,000 in 1986-7) and identical to the one-year rise we experienced in 2000. It would give Canada a rate of 9 immigrants per 1,000 citizens.

That's not high by Canadian standards, and it sure isn't by world standards: It's less than the 2015 immigration rates in Britain (9.7), the Netherlands (9.9), Sweden (13.7) or Switzerland (18.5). This is not mass immigration by any stretch. We tried that a century ago: If we were to have the immigration rate of 1913, we'd have to take in 1.75 million immigrants a year. Nobody is returning to those times.

But we're stuck with a way of thinking about immigrants that's often rooted in the previous century.

Canadians, and often their government, still think of immigrants as units of labour to be plugged into factories and labs. But the typical immigrant to Canada today is not an employee; she's someone setting out to employ people, or at least manage them.

Six out of 10 male immigrants and five out of 10 female immigrants today arrive with university degrees – twice the rate of Canadian-born people. More than half of them own a house within four years of arriving – despite the very high costs of housing in the big cities and their suburbs where immigrants settle.

In other words, we should no longer think of immigrants as sources of (or competition for) jobs, but as primary sources of new economic activity."

The problem I see in all of this is that it is based on a continuous economic growth model. We do have a demographic situation where the boomer generation will swell our ranks of seniors for a couple of decades, but that impact will then decline somewhat.

IF you think about the fundamental values involved, should we be basing policy and thinking about policy on a continuous economic growth model? Or should we instead be basing it on a "gross national happiness" model, or other measure? Personally, I prefer a situation where happiness and real prosperity are the focus, not just slavishly chasing the brass ring of GDP growth.

In microcosm, filling up the lower mainland with people (a lot of them immigrants) has not been positive. I honestly believe that people in the lower mainland were happier in the 1960s and 1970s. So has the growth really been a plus for the area, and by extrapolation, the country?

[Catsumi]

I am not seeing these highly educated, very wealthy entrpreneurs nipping across the border as this article suggests. In fact, just the opposite.

The TV cameras must be very selective on what they film.

In any case, where do 300,000 plus extra folks get set down? We are already short on housing, doctors, ....blah, blah.