Immigration

@ dru is beautiful.
As I said in my original post, I don't think it is a major reason behind immigration, nor is it a reason to condemn people moving countries so I'm unsure if you do think that I believe that way or if you're bringing a different point across. You're always going to have a minority that do abuse the system, we've got them here as well as immigrants that may use the system fraudulently in extremely small numbers for both cases, but that isn't anything to do with immigration as it's a minority abusing a dated system that needs a serious overhaul (although my views on the UK benefits system isn't really the main point I want to discuss as that isn't the point of this thread). The view that immigrants only come to the country to abuse the system is one that the UK government themselves take, which is what I was highlighting originally. That is not my view on the subject.

@ nearly witches.
But you ended with the point of the welfare systems. "I guess what I'm trying to say is that, more than an immigration problem in this country, I think we have a problem with the way that the benefits system works."

So I felt that you thought it was important than you consciously did. Because you came back to it and closed with it.

I live in Canada, and although I'm a citizen but originally was an immigrant (from the States) and my fiancee and his family are Permanent Residents (from South Africa) and recently Canada changed it's immigration policies to make them a lot stricter for people to come into the country, even on a work visa.

I'm really on the fence about immigration, it's incredibly hard for me to say I'm against it when both my and my fiancee's families are immigrants and when were urging his friends and family to come over, but at the same time I feel like there's a fine line with people going through the five to seven year process to get permanent residence cards or pay $2500 for a one year work visa and want to come to Canada and live in Canada. In comparison to the mass amount of people from Asia and the middle east who get contracted out by huge companies, work in Canada for two years and then go home.

I have a really big issue when people abuse the power because the Canadian dollar/wage is significantly higher then that of there own country so they come to get rich and then leave, especially when those people take hours and jobs away from Canadian citizen's because they don't need to be paid as much and the government subsidizes there pay and housing. Huge issue with that.

@ dru is beautiful. My apologies. My post has been edited to what I hope is a better word.

@ Saul Hudson
Oriental is not considered an appropriate word to use for people, just so you know.

living as an immigrant in new york city sucks so much.

SO much.

i don't like talking about immigrant life with my friends because i'm afraid that i'll be stigmatized by them, too. not having access to federal aid, and not being able to afford to go to college because of that is terrible.

i await obama's executive immigration plan that's supposed to take place in a few weeks...

@ Saul Hudson
So do you feel that these people should have less access to higher wages than citizens based entirely on where they were born? I don't want to put words in your mouth here but it seems that you're essentially saying that they should stay in their countries, earn lower wages and stay poor?

Applejack:

@ Saul Hudson
So do you feel that these people should have less access to higher wages than citizens based entirely on where they were born? I don't want to put words in your mouth here but it seems that you're essentially saying that they should stay in their countries, earn lower wages and stay poor?

Basically I think that citizens should have first pick at jobs and the if there are excess jobs available then foreign workers who want to immigrate to canada should be brought in then foreign workers who want to work in Canada before going home should be brought in.

I think it's incredibly unfair for canada to lay off/fire Canadian workers to bring in foreign workers because they are paid less. I think that's wrong to do to the citizens of your country.

@ Saul Hudson
I agree with your sentiments but not your overall opinion. I do agree it is wrong to use foreign work to screw your own citizens. The US does it by sending our jobs overseas.

But I don't agree with "stay in your situation regardless of the outcome because these monies belong to my country and yore from over there". It's just a purely heartless and uncaring way of thinking. And I think the world concentrates too much on how to exclude people and that's why bad shit happens.

Why do countries colonized by white people want to go to where white people are and make more money? Because the white people took away those opportunities from those areas and stockpiles all the money in their home countries in the pockets of really really rich people. Can we blame them for wanting the opportunities we stole?