avidamoeba comments on Majority of Canadians want fewer immigrants in 2027: Nanos

Majority of Canadians want fewer immigrants in 2027: Nanos (www.ctvnews.ca)

submitted 4 days ago by quanin@lemmy.ca to c/canada@lemmy.ca

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A majority of Canadians want the country to accept fewer immigrants and temporary residents next year, according to a new Nanos Research survey commissioned by CTV News, as the country continues to grapple with immigration levels and their impact on housing, services and the economy.

The survey found that 52.3 per cent of respondents believe Canada should accept fewer immigrants and temporary residents in 2027, compared with 33.5 per cent who want the numbers to remain about the same.

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[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 12 points 4 days ago (18 children)

If racism was a significant driver of this, I don't think people would have shiften in opinion so much, especially in correlation with the economic conditions. Racism tends to be stable and change over longer periods. I think it's mostly 2 and 3.

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[–] CapuccinoCoretto@lemmy.world 11 points 4 days ago* (12 children)

It's never simple and straightforward. People have a mix of 1, 2 and 3 in varying amounts. Those who are mostly 1 didn't change over time. This poling doesn't distinguish them from the other groups who do. It is the 2 and 3 that account for the changes.

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[–] quanin@lemmy.ca [S] 6 points 4 days ago (11 children)

The problem is that until very recently, if you questioned Canada's immigration policy you were called racist. You don't hear as much of that now because the people who used to call those people racist agree.

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[–] CapuccinoCoretto@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago (10 children)

But a LOT of it is racism. It's how and why someone questions immigration policy that gets called out.

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[–] potatomuncher@lemmy.ca 3 points 4 days ago (5 children)

Racism is a factor but conversations on this topic used to be immediately shut down as racism by default all the time. Not the case as often now.

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[–] CapuccinoCoretto@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

I'm kinda new here so I can't comment on thread locks and overzealous modding. But legitimate arguments should be discussed. Its the bad faith actors, and conservative and Russian trolls who latch on to any real argument to shoehorn in their hate and disinformation. Look at how well it worked in Brexit.

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[–] quanin@lemmy.ca [S] 4 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Precisely.

Person: "We should slow down our immigration rate."

Someone else: "Don't be racist."

That's the conversation, more or less, for most of Trudeau's time in office. Now that Carney's starting to do that, it's not.

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[–] supersquirrel@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago (2 children)

The idea that immigration should be slowed down IS racist, Canada is a MASSIVE country, immigration is not the problem it is the solution.

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[–] quanin@lemmy.ca [S] 0 points 2 days ago (1 child)

Reducing immigration levels is not racist. Our choices are reduce immigration levels or massively increase spending on infrastructure, and we're allergic to the latter, collectively.

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[–] TheJesusaurus@piefed.ca 1 point 1 day ago

Tax the rich

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[–] Canajan@piefed.ca -1 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Canada used to have an excellent immigration program, it was envied by other countries. It was fair, and made sure Canada got decent qualified candidates and at a rate that Canada could easily absorb.

Justin and the Liberals decided to throw it out and open the flood gates, and mostly from only one particular country. To make matters worse, we also have / had the scam foreign schooling going on here as well as the TFW debacle, and it was / is a recipe for disaster.

You can’t have that many people from only one country, in the numbers that were done, without uproar. It’s not racism, it’s just common sense.

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[–] CapuccinoCoretto@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

You didn't amswer my question. You said "people like me". What did I say that triggered you to lash out at me?

Also, now I'm starting to see the point. You actually are framing the discussion in a probably racist way. <-feel free to be triggered now. It might not be intentional, I have no idea. But just fyi if you want to know why people say that to you -

If the immigration system was built on rules and selection criteria, why does it matter where they come from? Qualified is qualified. That you choose to single out Indians is why you are getting called out. It's not common sense at all. It's racist. You aren't pointing that the rules are bent for India, which would be a legitimate complaint. You just say too many of those people.

It is not odd that India represents by far the single largest immigrant source. Being not only one of the most populous countries, but a commonwealth country with a very high rate of english as a second language and as a developing country with heavy poverty, inequality has a lot who want to leave.

You can make an argument about the total numbers of people we can absorb. Like my point about a country in a housing crisis not tying immigration numbers to housing completions only adds to the crisis.

The proverbial floodgates were opened because of our demographic crisis - an aging population won't have enough young workers to support pensions a d healthcare let alone a changing economy. In trying to solve one crisis (demographic), they exacerbated two more (housing) and affordability (labour wage suppression.)

The abuse of the student loophole with sham "colleges" is a legit complaint. These are people who don't qualify as permanent residents going to false front schools just to live here and work full time at the jobs qualified Canadian youth can't get.

The abuses of the TFW porgram, where people can't get interviews or jobs while businesses are filing obviously bogus TFW applications claiming that they can't find anyone skilled for high paying jobs is also legit criticism. Nothing racist about that. Brutally bad policy where Trudeau was asleep at the wheel and Carney hasn't yet and likely won't fix.

The student loopholes are mostly closed and only the TFW abuses and the housing crisis remain.

Notice how I didn't need to single out any particular group? That's not racist. Picking on Indian immigrants because they're too many from one country? That is indeed clearly racist, even if unintentional.

Edits for clarity and spelling.

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[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 child)

I'd push back on the reason for inceeasing the immigration targets. In my opinion the demographic problem is just marketing. I think the real driver is keeping wages low. A shrinking working population means increasing wages which means lower profits and need for higher capital investment in productivity increasing assets. Most business don't want that if they can get away with making good profits without that capital investment, because it lowers the profit rate on their capital. Business is the major donor and lobbyist of the cnservative and liberal parties in Canada so it makes sense to see these governments enacting business-friendly policy at the expense of wages. And to bring this back to the demographic problem - its sustainable solution has always been increased productivity - the exact thing lower wages work against. Adding fresh population is at best a temporary fix as that population soon conforms to pre-existing demigraphic trends. So in my opinion - demographics are a false pretext for increased immigration. (In this economy. In a less market oriented economy increasing immigration can absolutely fill a large landmass without depressing wages or productivity in existing population centres.)

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[–] CapuccinoCoretto@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

I agree with most of this, its definitely a big part of the equation. I'd push back on your push back (fun!) When you say "the reason for increasing immigration targets". The reasons, as there are many. The exact balance of which, varies from place to place and industry to industry.

We do have profiteering dominating executives and boards. Wage suppression is a standard operating proceedure.

We also have systemic thinkers, like pension funds and governments who understand our demographic crisis is real. This is a macro problem.

We have complicating factors like the housing crisis that make life painful for everyone, as no one can afford to move for marginally paying jobs, and the lack of security in a hire and fire on a whim environment make comitting any expenses to move where there is a labour shortage too risky for.

Housing affordability needs fewer immigrants, and profits and demographics need more. There are compelling arguments about the complex interelations between economic factors, like building more houses than immigrants solves the dilemma, but here too the problem is doing so is uneconomical. We already have a bailout of shoebox condo developers who made too much product that no one wants.

It's a classic case of neoliberal market driven ideology failing catastrophically. The numbers never added up, because proponent economists omit what they don't like. E.g limits to growth.

There are many possible solutions. We could get governments responsible for social housing again, like they used to be. Governments don't need profits, they need systemic balancing. They can justify social housing by savings on medical care, justice, crime, and by improving labour mobility and affordability for businesses. A low wage isn't a problem in a free or geared to income appartment. If there are enough, it is easy to move from one place to another to fill a vacant job.

Governments say trades are in demmand, but tradespeople say they are out of work or stalled at apprenticeships. Another market failure. Governments can either bridge the gap and tax accordingly, or tell business to fuck off and fix their own problems. With this group its always have your cake and eat it too. They want no taxes, no regulations, but lots of subsidies and bailouts and novel avenues for labour exploitation worldwide but protection from foreign competition. Hypocrites can eat ass.

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[–] saigot@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 days ago* (2 children)

Hate for south Asians in particular is very much on the rise. Go on literally any mainstream app and find a video featuring canada you'll find awful racist comments under the video. A lot of those are bots, but the point of those bots are to turn people with neutral opinions on indians into negative opinions. Those who are not careful with their algorithms get pushed channels that exclusively push any antisocial news about immigrants exclusively. Right now if you lurk in conservative spaces you'll see a common narrative that people aren't wearing poppies anymore because immigrants don't understand and the government is going to replace rememberance day with Diwali. Ignore that properganda at your peril, its clearly organized and it's going to have some effect.

My wife used to get hate because she was Muslim, now she gets hate because she is Indian looking. It's obviously and decidedly worse than it was 10 years ago, especially in the workplace unfortunately.

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[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 1 point 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 child)

In view of the questionable moral grounds on which Canada has fought in wars after WWII, replacing Rememberance Day with Diwali doesn't sound like the worst idea. 🤭

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[–] saigot@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago

And during, (WWI censored docs are just starting to be de classified now and theres a whole lot of abuse). But i think remembering all the terribleness of the war is an important and good thing, while i don't like the glorification that goes on there is at least some remembrance of how horrible it all was. But y'know we can do 2 things at once and also immigrants all have their own war related traditions as well.

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[–] unbanshee@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 days ago (1 child)

Okay except immigrants have been serving as a very convenient scapegoat for decades of policy failure around housing, especially in the last few years. So... media coverage linking immigration to the housing crisis could absolutely explain wider shifts in opinion than you might otherwise expect, yes?

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[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 1 point 2 days ago*

Obviously the most convenient scapegoat and that can absolitely explain the shift, but this scapegoating is based on an economic argument the media's making, not racism. The distinction is important because it also gives us the solution if it's mosty an economic issue - fix the economic problem and the attitudes would shift back.

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