I would argue that "For the year 2022, Canada welcomed 437,180 immigrants and saw a net increase of the number of non-permanent residents estimated at 607,782."
Combined with "About 286,000 new homes are currently built each year, according to 2021 data from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. But the country's housing supply is not keeping up with population growth."
Is absolutely not serving the Canadian people when their home prices are completely unaffordable to a growing number of their population. It also suppresses wages for their own skilled citizens.
I do think importing skilled immigrants is a good long term strategy for their country, but they should tone it down a notch until housing prices are better.
The housing shortage is an issue caused by restrictions on building housing. This is supply side problem.
There is restrictive zoning laws, inordinate red tape, extremely high development charges (taxes), super long delays, NIMBYism in general, that all contribute to the Canadian housing shortage crisis.
Immigration is demand side thing. The solution to the housing crisis is to not to try to mess with demand, but to increase supply.
Whenever I look at the Reddit history of a person attacking immigration by bringing up housing, I almost invariably see comments full of racism, xenophobia, a hatred of non-European-origin people/cultures, etc.
> suppresses wages
This statement is wrong, yet abusively often repeated. North America's population went from a few million to a few hundred million in a few centuries. Wages in North America should close to zero if this statement were a true axiom.
> Whenever I look at the Reddit history of a person attacking immigration by bringing up housing, I almost invariably see comments full of racism, xenophobia, a hatred of non-European-origin people/cultures, etc.
I think it is unfair to make these kind of statements. You are essentially telling the parent poster that they are racist. Perhaps your experiences have created your own kind of biases and hatred.
I agree that often times people do use secondary arguments to guise what they really mean but I think the way through that is to either refute their arguments, not to suggest they are racist.
"The solution to the housing crisis is to not to try to mess with demand, but to increase supply."
Why? Why should we only worry about supply, especially when that's a much, much harder issue to tackle?
I live in a rural part of the US. There are no real zoning laws to speak of, red tape, high taxes, delays, NIMBYism, etc. None. Zero. Yet our house prices have also surged. My parents were able to afford 60 acres on a construction worker's (single) salary back in the 80s. My wife and I both have degrees and we could afford 15 acres with a much worse house, and that was 10 years ago. My wife's brother just bought a house for more than we spent.
It's in town, which is undesirable around here, on a regular in-town sized plot. The house is half of our home's size and needs a lot of work. Yet it's 25% more than what we paid with a much higher interest rate.
You people in cities always think it's all that red tape you have, but the problem is a lot simpler. There are more people than ever and housing supply hasn't kept up with demand. That is something the Canadian and US governments could fix going forward incredibly easily, without somehow finding 4x the home builders we currently have.
> Whenever I look at the Reddit history of a person attacking immigration by bringing up housing, I almost invariably see comments full of racism, xenophobia, a hatred of non-European-origin people/cultures, etc.
Ad hominem. I'm sure racists bring it up, just as it seems everyone else is afraid to bring it up for seeming like they're racists.
> This statement is wrong, yet abusively often repeated. North America's population went from a few million to a few hundred million in a few centuries. Wages in North America should close to zero if this statement were a true axiom.
That's an incredibly silly argument, and I don't know where to start. Again you're ignoring basic supply and demand. If immigrants didn't suppress wages, companies wouldn't bother hiring them. If they need 10 coders in a department and can't get enough, they'd have to raise their starting wage to entice more potential workers. If they can get 6 and fill the rest with immigrants they don't need to do that.
Are you aware that housing prices surged during and immediately after COVID, i.e. circa 2020-2022, a time period which had the lower immigration numbers in recent history.
Lowest immigration in recent decades, yet the massive housing prices?
Yet you blame immigrants? Why do you hate immigrants so much?
> an incredibly silly argument ... felt silly
So you respond with the word "silly" repeatedly. Tells me all about your character.
> ignoring basic supply and demand
This is wrong. It's called the zero-sum fallacy. This doesn't apply to labor, at least not in the same way as to material goods. I'm not going to explain it further to you, but my example "North America's population went from a few million to a few hundred million in a few centuries. Wages in North America should close to zero if this statement were a true axiom." demonstrates this.
> raise their starting wage
And you think highly-skilled workers would magically appear out of thin air, as soon as this is done? http://www.paulgraham.com/95.html
> suppress wages
Your tone of language belies an incredible level of hatred, resentment, and rabid xenophobia towards immigrants.
> I live in a rural part of the US.
Why does it entirely* not surprise me that a rabid immigrant hater is from a part of the rural US (likely a Trump-supporting region), and which likely has seen few immigrants (versus liberal states/regions)? Rural areas with few immigrants that are responsible for much of the hatred towards immigrants at the national level.
The wickedness of restricting the free movement of people is that people like you want to use the violence of the state to exclude people peacefully moving. It's a morally evil thing to do. It makes you morally monstrous (not that you'd ever care of regret repent of it, I'm sure).
Personally, I really shouldn't engage with absolute evil moral monster like yourself, it's not great for my mental health. It makes HN a toxic, and suffocating place. Thank you (/s) for making HN far less welcoming, with your xenophobia.
I've generally avoided engaging in any immigration-related thread on HN for a few years now to the vitriolic level hatred of immigrants that many people here hold. This post has sort of been an object lesson in that -- most of the responses to my comments have been of a xenophobic nature. So I probably should go back to ignoring immigration-related thread on HN.
Combined with "About 286,000 new homes are currently built each year, according to 2021 data from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. But the country's housing supply is not keeping up with population growth."
Is absolutely not serving the Canadian people when their home prices are completely unaffordable to a growing number of their population. It also suppresses wages for their own skilled citizens.
I do think importing skilled immigrants is a good long term strategy for their country, but they should tone it down a notch until housing prices are better.