Metro Toronto Adding More People than any in US except DFW

[Differential]

Originally Posted by Parhe

How does this mesh with the same idea that Canada is more open to immigration? Canada is more open to immigrants, unless they are from the US??

The Canadian immigration system is different from the US system, it's a merit based points system.

[bostonkid123]

Originally Posted by Differential

The Canadian immigration system is different from the US system, it's a merit based points system.

I read through most of the posts on here, and noticed that most posters confuse Canada's "liberal" immigration with "open" immigration.

Just examining Canada's legal immigration channels, one can see that it is no where as "liberal" or "open" as people like to believe. In fact, Canada's immigration system is highly decentralized - immigrants can apply into the Federal "pool", where a certain annual quota is allocated and selected directly by Immigration and Citizenship Canada. Immigrants also have the choice to apply directly to Provincial "pools", where they are selected to be future legal immigrants directly by the province or territory (e.g. Quebec).

The criteria is also very stringent, almost discriminatory by U.S. standards, because the government specifically looks for certain types of economic immigrants - e.g. those with bachelor or higher degree, those who can speak English and/or French, those with 5+ years of professional experience in a particular sector, and those who are young and healthy and will not be an immediate burden to the public healthcare system. Each criteria that you meet, will automatically grant you 5 to 10 points, until you accumulate enough points to meet the threshold (I believe it was set at 70 or 75) before you can even be considered an eligible applicant. In essence, the government likes to cherry-pick its own pool of applicants based on a number of desirable traits that the government thinks will be beneficial to the Canadian economy/society. For example, the average Mexican manual labor that would've passed USCIS standards, would likely not even make the first cut in the Canadian system due to the selective nature of the above criteria.

Is it merit-based? Maybe. But it can also be very cold-hearted and borderline discriminatory to certain immigrant groups. It is by no means the liberal, "we love y'all" system that some like to believe it is. The U.S. legal immigration system, by comparison, almost seems "egalitarian" (esp. the annual Green Card lottery that randomly picks 50,000 applicants from around the world to hand out green cards... no such thing in Canada).

Family reunions (bringing over your brother or uncle or relative) is a very long process, and these applicants are placed at a lower priority than the high-skilled economic immigrants that the government prefers to have. In the U.S., this is the reverse where in any given year family reunions account for 50%+ of all legal immigration.

[BMI]

Originally Posted by Arcenal352

Milder, but again, that 5 degrees Celsius difference for two months isn't all that noticeable to people who live there. It's COLD regardless. Deep winter freezes are still common. Regular melts aren't really a good thing if it freezes over every night, which it does. All it means it that the streets get flooded during the day, and turn into a skating rink at night.

I’ve lived in Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto.

Toronto winter is noticeably milder....colder days are not as cold.
Much less snow too. My first winter in Toronto there was virtually no snow until
february...Toronto gets more of a “backloaded” winter....december can be quite mild
some years...I have hardy flowers in my yard that bloom into mid december.
February and even march can have the worst weather of the winter.

Compariing Montreal winter to Toronto winter is like comparing
Toronto winter to New York City winter.
New Yorkers get very defensive if you say Toronto has a similar winter NYC,
and rightly so.

What is interesting is when Toronto has an exceptional cold and snowy winter,
I say we had a “Montreal” winter....when Toronto has an exceptionally mild winter,
I say we had a “New York” winter

Here is a comparison in fahrenheit....winter average highs and lows

City.............Montreal .........Toronto.............NYC
december......30/15..............36/26.............43/32
january.........23/7................31/20.............38/27
february........26/10..............33/22.............41/29