Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said she will introduce a bill to end H-1B visas, which allow companies to bring skilled foreign workers, days after Donald Trump backed the program.

  • wampus@lemmy.ca
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    21 hours ago

    Yeah, I don’t agree.

    Here in Canada we pay a buncha tax to get things like universal healthcare and to fund various social programs, we also handle taxes differently than other jurisdictions.

    Like even with the existing setup, one of the issues we have is that there’s been a fairly standard style of immigration where chinese citizens will buy property in Canada and have the kid and “stay at home mom” living in Canada, while their Dad/breadwinner stays in China. One reason its done this way is that Canada was considered to have better education opportunities and social supports for the non-income earning side of the family – and property taxes are fairly low in places like Vancouver, with income taxes being very high. However in China, it’s the opposite – high property taxes, low income taxes. So as a country/region, you end up with basically no tax income, but high social program costs, with ‘needy welfare’ people living in multimillion dollar properties.

    And once the kid is through school, and entering the workforce… they often go back home to china to take over the family business from a retiring parent. That parent then comes to Canada, and enjoys the old age social security network.

    If you remove all impediments to inter-country immigration, I reckon that sort of abuse would become so rampant that social programs would become essentially unsustainable.

    • shiroininja@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      Yeah thats some kind of asinine loophole Canada has that has nothing to do with what I proposed. Like how is that even possible.

    • colourlessidea@sopuli.xyz
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      4 hours ago

      applying for a job, getting the job

      Applying for and getting a job implies income, which in turn should result in taxation.

    • fodor@lemmy.zip
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      14 hours ago

      You are making two claims, perhaps indirectly, that I think are simply false. (1) You claim there’s no contribution requirements for national pension. Not true, says the government website. (2) You claim the mom and kid don’t pay taxes in the hypothetical. The national government already has various rules to prevent “income sprinkling” that address this exact issue.

      So basically, you’re accusing the Canadian tax agency of failing to do its job without presenting evidence of that.

      • wampus@lemmy.ca
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        7 hours ago

        Issues with Chinese immigrants are well known and documented, literally with immigrant families openly exposing their own community’s rampant fraud methods to our supreme courts, because “that’s just how its done in Canada!”.

        Paying a little bit of sales tax on modest purchases, is not sufficient to sustain social support programs. Taxes are paid in various ways, and yes, there’s a minimal contribution made by the non-earning people staying in Canada, but it’s not enough to offset the costs of providing social support services to the extended family.

        I don’t think I mentioned the pension program specifically, that’s on you. When I 'm mentioning old age social supports, there’s more than just ‘old age pensions’ in Canada (heck, there’s CPP and OAS, so two direct payments in terms of ‘pensions’ even) – the universal healthcare system is another example. The cost of that system increases significantly for the older demographic, as people become more reliant on pills/medications. There’s a reason a bunch of seniors from the states, in the past at least, would buy prescription meds in Canada, for example – and that’s tied to us having a government funded approach to providing those medications (the US medi-tourists are basically leeching off us). The basic premise of the system is that, generally, working age adults who have less reliance on the healthcare system, fund it via taxes, with the expectation that it’ll be there when they need it (generally when they’re older).

        We do have a problem with frauds and abuse, but the system can tolerate some fraud and abuse. If the ops approach were adopted, we’d have rampant fraud and abuse. The system can’t tolerate rampant fraud and abuse. I don’t think this sort of statement requires me to go into absurd detail to justify/demonstrate, frankly, and I’m not going to bother further.

    • Guy Ingonito@reddthat.com
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      19 hours ago

      Canadians that move abroad don’t pay the sales tax and lose their insurance. Why shouldn’t people who moved to Canada and pay the sales tax get the healthcare insurance?

      • wampus@lemmy.ca
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        18 hours ago

        Canadians who move abroad for a long time lose their insurance, but it’s not tied explicitly to the fact that they don’t pay a sales tax. They also tend not to report their income / pay income taxes to Canada if working outside of Canada (unlike in the states, where they expect taxes to be paid from every citizen no matter where they are in the world).

        People who move to Canada, can currently get insurance coverage as part of immigrating to the country, which generally means staying in and working in Canada for an extended period as a PR to start. During that time they’re paying income taxes and sales taxes etc.

        The ops comment implies that it should be like a light switch that is tied to your employment. There’s a reason there’s a process to immigration flows.

    • SippyCup@lemmy.ml
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      21 hours ago

      So you don’t want foreign workers being able to work in Canada because immigrants are not taking Canadian jobs?

      Sounds like you actually have a property tax problem.

      • wampus@lemmy.ca
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        21 hours ago

        Or china has a property tax/income tax problem.

        The variance is why the approach the op commenter hints at doesn’t make sense.

        • SippyCup@lemmy.ml
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          8 hours ago

          Sure maybe they do, but you can’t vote in China. You can vote in Canada though. And Canada’s real estate issues are at least somewhat known down here. Which, given how apathetic American media is about Canadian problems should tell you how horrifically fucked up your real estate situation is. It’s almost as if your country is courting exactly that type of relationship with foreign investors.

          • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
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            4 hours ago

            Sure maybe they do, but you can’t vote in China.

            Typical of the ignorance of the internet. Look it up.

          • wampus@lemmy.ca
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            7 hours ago

            Oh, yeah, our housing situation is an absolute gong show. I’m “hopeful” that our current govs push for a kind of modular/prefab evolution will help, but it’s really not clear how that’ll pan out, or when – and most of their “major projects” that they’re pushing for, are still about building infrastructure for corporations to extract resources to foreign partners, not so much about building up Canada itself, so there’s good reason to be skeptical of it all. Like even the Small Nuclear reactors they’re promoting, are made by US companies and are reliant on US fuel sources, which is absurd.

            But this is basically a thread responding to a commenter’s take on how immigration should be entirely dependant on job acquisition – get a job in Canada? Boom, you’re Canadian. Get a job in the US? Boom, you’re American. The point of my previous comment isn’t so much to highlight/critique “Canadian” or “Chinese” policies on housing and income tax, but rather to point out that there are differences that make the commenter’s take unfeasible in my view. I’m just familiar with the Canadian/Chinese variance as it’s been an issue that Canada’s failed to address adequately for years.

    • IphtashuFitz@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      Those sound like the sorts of issues that could easily be addressed by well thought out legislation. I have a nephew that recently got a digital nomad visa so that he could work for his US employer while traveling around Europe. Some of those countries require you to prove you have health insurance or buy insurance from their national health network. Those countries also regulations regarding taxes, etc. that the visa holder is responsible for.

      So Canada should pass laws to close the loopholes you describe. They would need regulations similar to digital nomads that apply to foreign exchange students etc.

      • wampus@lemmy.ca
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        21 hours ago

        Yeah, but a bunch of legislation and conditions isn’t what the op guys comment was hinting at. He was basically saying, get a job? Congrats, you’ve immigrated and get all the citizenship perks of wherever you work.