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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   945 thread views

Transnational Thursday for March 28, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Canada is having an immigration Crysis (the country can't run that many people on the hardware it has, it would need a huge upgrade to handle the influx). The people are noticing. Like many cities in the USA that are finally having to face up to the immigration policies they have supported and voted for, it is leaving a bad taste in everyone's mouth.

It may actually lead to replacing Castro's secret son this next election cycle.

The change in tone in the Canadian spaces that I frequent online and in person (being a border state and having family there) has been nothing short of unbelievable. Where I was called out as a stupid bigoted American (in less severe terms) for opposing open borders in my own country (while canada had a much more restrictive immigration policy going on I might add (am I including too many parenthetical asides?)), now Canadians are the ones telling me that no one speaks English/French anymore and that pretty soon their downtown is going to look like New Delhi at rush hour.

Wait times at medical clinics have gone from weeks to months to years, housing is 5x more out of whack than the US, and many expats once seeking a kinder Canadian way of life are returning home to the USA.

-Notes from a Canadian adjacent person

I live in Southern AB and had a chance to talk to a border guard recently. He mentioned the process of "flagpoling" - i guess new arrivals (visitor visa, education etc.) Can apply for permanent residency but the process takes a few months. What they do is drive across the border to the USA, get turned back, and then just by pulling up to the canadian border on the way back, it expedites the permanent residency application to be days. The border guard said most of his time now was filling out residency applications. Seems bad imo.

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