Free education for all of your decendents

[fuji]

One thing that bugs me about the way Canadian policies work is this:

-- You come to Canada and go to school, and you pay for your education because you're an international student. By the time you are done your degree, you can probably pick up citizenship pretty easily, so you spend another year or so, and you do that. Now you are a Canadian citizen for life.

-- You return to your home country, and you forget all about Canada for 20-25 years or so, until you have a 16-18 year old kid.

-- Your kid is a Canadian citizen, and so when he/she arrives in Canada to go to school, tuition is subsidized and highschool is for free. There is one slight catch, you have to live here with your kid for 6 months or so before schools starts to re-establish "residency", but no biggie.

-- Your kid now gets a free education, and leaves Canada, back to the home country, and forgets all about Canada for 20-25 years

-- Repeat the above for every generation, forever.

I know people doing this. I know people whose parents spent 5 years in Canada getting an education and left, and now their kids are here getting an education, and plan to leave, and their kids love this idea, and plan to send their kids here for the free education, and so on.

None of these people pay Canadian tax. They pay tax and earn their income and live their lives and contribute what they have to contribute to another country.

Now, I am generally a pro-immigration guy and I want to see us bring in all the immigrants we can get, but I think we have to put a stop to nonsense like this somehow.

 

[freshbreath]

one way to combat this would be to have more reasonable standards for recognizing education and degrees from other countries

 

[LancsLad]

Fuji:

The education side is small potatoes compared to the medical system cost. Our medical costing model has always been projected based on std pop growth and people paying in for many years in their younger healthier time before they draw on it later.

If you look at what we have now with the refugee system and the ill-concieved family reunification deal we get far too many people joining our "free" medical system on the tail end. One can't help but wonder just how big the hue and cry would be for a citizen who has paid taxes for 20 years and then finds themselves stuck on a waiting list that wouldn't be so long of canada didn't actively import sick people. I really don't think thats the kind of statistic the government would want known.

All the bleeding heart liberals are now free to attack me calling me a racist or whatever but if you like it and I don't please feel free to pay my share of the costs of this stupidity. I know that upsets liberals, they don't like to use their own money, just develop "programs" so others can pay.

 

[fuji]

As a minimum, maybe just require that people have been resident in Canada for three full years before health or education is free. That solves one part of the problem: The people who live and work outside of Canada and then come back only when they need something.

It wouldn't solve the family reunification thing you are talking about where an older person immigrates permanently. Perhaps we should have a cutoff for free healthcare where you don't get it if you are over 50 when you immigrate or something like that.

Hard problem to solve because there are legitimate reasons why older people would immigrate to Canada and it would also be unfairly simply to deny them residency (and residency is all it takes to get OHIP, you don't need citizenship.)

Another solution might be, on the health side, to require new immigrants to pay an insurance premium for 7 years after they arrive. We'd set the premium based on age and statistics so that it evened out.

 

[goodtime]

A requirement for immigration, one must have s detail medical, in good bill of health and no pre-existing medical conditions.

I make frequent NY trips, as elderly relatives living alone, cannot reunite with family as they didn't apply when younger. Now, it's impossible, regardless how much money you're willing to put up as bond, even if willing to pay for out-of-pocket for Canadian health care.

fuji, people you know may be cheating CDN taxes. Rev. CDN is cracking down on ex-pat that are taking advantage of the system. Ex-pat must give up CDN mailing address for SIN, OHIP, etc, so not to pay CDN taxes. I've a basement full of belonging from my ex-pat friends & relatives.

From what I understand from others who looked into it, when kids go to school, they have to re-establish CDN residency, else kids pay Visa student rate. Then bingo, CDN taxes.

And of course, there's creative immigration lawyer/accountant specialist in loopholes but then instead of paying taxes, they pay their lawyer or accountant.

 

[benito]

Don't worry, with global warming no one will be around in 50 years anyway.