← Back to context

Comment by breitling

1 month ago

Canada is embarking on a trade agreement with India and collectively our greatest fear is the immigration issue. Canada's immigration is already quite lop-sided.

86 comments

breitling

Reply
diego_moita  1 month ago

> Canada's immigration is already quite lop-sided.

I don't even understand what "lop-sided" means here.

Would you say that Canada's oil and softwood businesses are lop-sided because we produce and export a lot of it? Or that the groceries' market is lop-sided because we don't produce a lot of it and therefore have to import?

Canada is an importer of people (not only from India) because it can't produce a lot of people. It is not different from groceries.

  • breitling  1 month ago

    Why not import from a variety of countries to preserve the social fabric? https://preview.redd.it/in-the-first-three-months-of-2025-ca...

  • FiniteField  1 month ago

    >I don't even understand [...]

    >It is not different from groceries.

    Do you appreciate that, in the wider historical context, this position is an exceptionally radical one? You seem to not understand how there could even exist a difference of opinion on this, but I'm confident that this outlook of humans as being completely fungible, transactional economic units would appear unthinkable to anyone throughout 99% of human history. Just the suggestion that a nation's population should be restocked by swapping it out with another nation's population would be tantamount to treason any time prior to the revolution of the 1960s.

  • modo_mario  1 month ago

    >because it can't produce a lot of people.

    So does every country that can't grow it's population indefinitely need to import a ton of people? What is the endgame there?

    And I thought trade in people as some kind of fungible economic token was out of vogue.

mlmonkey  1 month ago

Trade != Immigration

  • RhysabOweyn  1 month ago

    Immigration is absolutely a part of this deal. Interestingly, EU official communications and western media barely mention this, but the Indian government's official communication tout a "new framework for mobility" that will "open up new opportunities in the European Union for Indian students, workers, and professionals." [1]

    [1] https://www.mea.gov.in/Speeches-Statements.htm?dtl%2F40615%2...

    • rawgabbit  1 month ago

      The quote is “Alongside this ambitious FTA, we are also creating a new framework for mobility. This will open up new opportunities in the European Union for Indian students, workers, and professionals.”

      I read it as he is working on a separate deal besides the aforementioned FTA.

    • tpm  1 month ago

      As the immigration is governed by the member states themselves and not by the EU, I don't see how it can be "a part of this deal". Which is probably why the media don't mention this. There is nothing to mention.

uv-depression  1 month ago

> collectively our greatest fear

Citation very much needed. This sounds like _your_ concern that you're trying to launder through projecting onto the rest of the country.

  • poncho_romero  1 month ago

    Canada as a whole has been pro immigration for a long time, but our immigration system was broken in recent years, and the most visible consequence of that has been an enormous increase in low skill, low wage Indian workers. A lot of people who have never had issues with immigration policy before have become very anti Indian immigration as a result.

    • Tiktaalik  1 month ago

      I think there's some particular niche immigration programs (ie. TFW) that have been broken because bad actors are aggressively defrauding the government, but I wouldn't say that Canada's system is broken beyond that.

      I'm skeptical that an increase in so called "low skill" workers are even a problem considering that the country is experiencing labour shortages that have contributed to construction costs being so out of whack that building new buildings is unviable.

      Now we've "solved" that problem by turning immigration down to zero but that is a kludge and not an actual long term solution to systemic problems.

      It's pretty hard be critical of the need for supposed "low skill" immigration when pretty much all of our settler ancestors were penniless dirt farmers.

      6 replies →

    • uv-depression  1 month ago

      > A lot of people who have never had issues with immigration policy before have become very anti Indian immigration as a result.

      So we just let racists determine national policy now? I wonder how that's working out in the US.

      12 replies →

mekdoonggi  1 month ago

Canadians don't seem to have their priorities straight if they are more concerned about having a few more Indian neighbors than the US threatening to invade.