I’m a current American bio student planning to go into healthcare, can confirm I’m planning to go to grad school abroad to hopefully escape the US. I’m not planning to go to Canada though, I’m planning to go to Australia. I decided not to look into Canada after hearing of it’s rising far-right and anti-immigrant sentiment. If Canada wants US brain drain Canadians would have to be willing to accept American immigrants, even with how poorly many Canadians view Americans right now
Sure, but not to the same degree. I don’t know much about Canadian politics but for a time my social media was filled with post after post bashing Trudeau and favoring more far-right politicians just over immigration policy. It was enough to turn me off of your country as a whole, if immigrants are so hated there.
Sounds like propaganda got to you. Maybe don’t make big life decisions if you “don’t know much” about a topic? Educating yourself is free, just hard to do if your source of education is “post after post”.
The funny thing about immigration is that it turns out I don’t need to research every single ‘might be good, might be bad’ country out there. I only needed to find a single country that had lenient immigration laws and would be accepting of me. Australia was that country for me, though it has it’s own issues as all countries do. Personally, I don’t think I should need to have some degree in foreign politics to be able to decide which countries would/wouldn’t be welcoming to me. If anything, if Canada has some massive propaganda problem where allsearchablemetrics (58% Trudeau disapproval ratings, 58% think too much immigration, 41% anxious immigrant rights get too much attention), then perhaps “too much propaganda” is yet another reason to avoid Canada.
That’s because Trudeau is wildly unpopular. So unpopular he was finally asked to resign (and agreed to do so) by his own party.
And furthermore if you want to understand the reasons behind anti-immigrant sentiment in Canada you should study our housing policies and issues. Canada is in the midst of a housing crisis which I believe is the main contributor to anti-immigrant sentiment.
Now you might say (and would be fair to do so) that immigrants are not to blame for bad housing policy. That is true, however it’s entirely fair for Trudeau to receive his share of the blame for the housing crisis, especially given his many promises to address the issue.
And if you’re wondering about Australia: its housing crisis is as bad or worse than Canada’s. Anti-immigration sentiment and far-right politics is even more prevalent there.
I’m well aware of the Australian housing crisis, and of it’s far-right politicians like Dutton. I was also aware that there were other reasons for Trudeau being unpopular besides immigration (hence why it wasn’t the sole statistic I provided, I used Trudeau’s approval ratings as somewhat of a general metric for Canada turning against left-leaning politicians, and I used the other two statistics to try to show Canada’s anti-immigrant attitudes. Without spending exorbitant amounts of time studying Canadian politics this was the quickest summary statistics I choose to look at).
I criticized Canada for having poor attitudes towards immigration, and I would criticize Australia for the same, these two opinions aren’t mutually exclusive. Ultimately my personal decision to attempt to immigrate to Australia rather than Canada came down to choosing ‘the lesser of two evils’ (which as an American I am very practiced in doing. ha. ha.)
Specifically, I thought Australia’s further distance from the US would make it safer geopolitically, it’s higher foreign-born population would make it so that way ‘anti-immigration’ sentiment didn’t become ‘anti-immigrant’ sentiment, and it’s compulsory voting laws would make it harder for far-right politicians to gain and/or maintain a foothold. I truly did not intend for my personal decision to go to Australia over Canada to be some kind of dig at Canada, though I did get defensive at the dismissive claim that the limited research I have done was just “propaganda getting to me.” Apologies if I was a bit aggressive in my critique of Canadian attitudes towards immigration
See as a Canadian I wouldn’t make it so complicated. The reason I would move to Australia is very simple: the weather.
But then I have a giant hole in my living room ceiling because all the winter storms this year caused a giant glacier of ice to build up on the roof which subsequently melted and leaked through the roof, destroying the ceiling in the process. Furthermore, this apparently happened to tons of other people in my area because the insurance company is currently swamped with claims over this.
Australia doesn’t have to deal with any of this. Australia has cheap and highly accessible solar power. Australia has beautiful weather 8 months of the year in exchange for blistering summers. I think I’d take that trade at this point!
It’s a matter of degree. Australia has a housing crisis and many want to lower immigration, but their starting level of immigration was already incredibly high, for instance 30% of the population is foreign born, as compared to Canada’s 21%. A marginal difference, but it still contributes to a culture more accepting of immigrants.
You know, I think somehow the rhetoric has gotten mixed up here though. I have said ‘As a victim currently being forced to flee my fascist home country, I think Canada could stand to be more accepting of immigrants’ and you have heard ‘Canada sucks so hard I won’t go there even though I’m American (and thus an uninformed idiot).’
I think it’s part of an overarching narrative I’ve seen, of people from non-US countries hating on Americans for not voting/volunteering/working hard enough to stop Trump from being elected, that ‘America = Bad’ and ‘[Insert My Country Here] = Good, and we would never be like Bad America.’ It goes without saying that I voted Harris & phone banked often. I don’t think Canada is a bad country, I think it’s amazing, even! But I also find the sheer amount of nationalistic rhetoric I’ve seen both around and directly here in this thread deeply worrying.
Like, you do realize that you’re essentially responding to a trans person, a potential victim of genocide, with ‘Haha, you’re such an idiot! Don’t you realize nowhere is safe for you? Don’t you realize everywhere has rising far-right politics and hatred of immigrants? Have fun immigrating to a country that hates you to escape a dictatorship you tried to stop but ultimately had no control over!’
I’m very aware that Australia also has an upswing in anti-immigrant rhetoric. I find it deeply unempathetic of you to try and use it as some sort of ‘gotcha’ to prove that your country is amazing (or that other countries are just as bad). I’m currently having to flee the country I’ve called home my entire life due to political persecution. I think it would be helpful if people could remember that I’m an actual person and not just another ‘stupid American’
I don’t think I have all the answers, buddy, I’m just defending myself from the accusation that because I happen to not have a favorable view of your country in regards to immigration (and mysteriously, it gets less and less favorable the more actually interact with Canadians) that means I’ve somehow fallen prey to propaganda
I tried to defend myself by showing the statistics I had seen showing that Canadians aren’t currently partial to immigrants, and you are responding by essentially saying ‘responding with statistics must mean you think you know everything, you know-it-all.’ I am willing to learn and engage with actual evidence, this is just an ad hominem attack
Genuinely, where do you think I should get my impression of Canada from? Perhaps this Lemmy instance, where the prevailing response to me going: ‘hey, Canada has a lot of hatred towards immigrants, as a victim of a fascist government forced to flee my home country I decided to search elsewhere’ was ‘um, ACTUALLY, the place you have chosen to go to ALSO hates PEOPLE LIKE YOU, and you (the victim of a fascist government trying to kill you for being a minority) should’ve DONE YOUR RESEARCH(??) because Canada ALSO HAS A MASSIVE PROPAGANDA PROBLEM which is why you should COME TO CANADA INSTEAD’
Frankly, I fear all I have learned from this is that Canadians, unlike the stereotype, are deeply unempathetic people who currently seem to be pushing a narrative of “Canada good, America (and Americans) bad.” Hence the claims I’ve seen on Lemmy that ‘Americans deserve to suffer under fascism’ because ‘we didn’t work/vote/volunteer hard enough to stop it.’
In this case, America = Bad bc American doctors (smart) are leaving. Canada = Good bc American doctors want to go there. So, under this framing, me criticizing Canadian attitudes against immigration somehow becomes me (stupid American) hating on Canada as a whole. Queue the dogpiling about how I’m an ‘uninformed idiot’ and I’ve ‘bought the propaganda’ despite the fact I’ve been researching how to immigrate for the past few months
Forgive me if this came out a bit hostile, I’m a bit frustrated right now, you know, from the whole ‘fleeing my country that wants to genocide me’ thing. As a warning, I’d be wary of dismissing the blatantly nationalistic attitudes of your fellow countrymen as “oh that’s just how Canadians on Reddit behave.” After all, glossing over just how many fascists my country had was what got us Trump.
All our media is controlled by right wing groups (edit: excl. CBC) I wouldn’t take that as a representation of the overall sentiment of the population.
We are looking at an election soon however so hesitation makes sense.
I wasn’t reading news articles so much as I as reading Reddit comments (back when I still used Reddit), which is certainly still not a completely comprehensive read of the whole Canadian population, but it’s about as close as I can get without being in Canada myself. To be honest though, having most of the media controlled by right wing groups is another concern, though I do hope your elections go well
I think it’s important to remember immigration isn’t just some lever you can turn on and off: “oh we’re having issues with quality of life so let’s stop letting immigrants in,” “oh but we want highly educated people like doctors so lets let them in.” Prospective immigrants will remember at best the wishy-washy stance on whether or not immigrants should be let in, at worst the outright xenophobic sentiment they had heard. This especially goes for people in highly educated professions like doctors, who are desirable immigrants in any countries, and thus have options to pick and choose where they want to go.
I know when my parents (who are both doctors) started looking into investing a bit in other countries, Canada wasn’t even considered, they went straight to investing in Europe. When I told them I was looking into foreign colleges, they suggested schools in New Zealand, in Germany, in Sweden… they didn’t once recommend Canada. Well, this is just anecdotal evidence, and I’m sure many many American doctors will flee to Canada. But I wouldn’t assume just because doctors are leaving the US necessarily means they’re going to Canada
And it’s a problem there too. Both Australia and Canada need to cool it with the anti-immigrant scapegoating unless they want to end up like America. Ultimately the main reason I chose Australia over Canada was due to it’s further distance from the US making it less likely to get embridled in geopolitical conflicts with the US, like Canada already is with these tariff wars
Yes, I’m very aware that Australia (and the whole of the world for that matter) also has rising far-right and anti-immigration sentiment. I’m not sure why so many people in this thread think I was born yesterday and have done 0 research on the matter of where I hope to spend the rest of my life. Ultimately anywhere is better than the US though, and I can’t allow myself to be so caught up in self-defeatist thoughts like “everywhere has rising far-right politics” or “nowhere is safe” or “immigration is too hard” that I stay paralyzed in the line of danger.
My decision to choose Australia over Canada was ultimately a matter of degree. I felt a country further from the US would be more safe geopolitcally, Australia’s higher foreign-born population would lead to a less xenophobic culture, and compulsory voting laws would keep far-right politicians from gaining or maintaining a foothold, thank you for your concern
I’m a current American bio student planning to go into healthcare, can confirm I’m planning to go to grad school abroad to hopefully escape the US. I’m not planning to go to Canada though, I’m planning to go to Australia. I decided not to look into Canada after hearing of it’s rising far-right and anti-immigrant sentiment. If Canada wants US brain drain Canadians would have to be willing to accept American immigrants, even with how poorly many Canadians view Americans right now
Is this not happening everywhere?
Sure, but not to the same degree. I don’t know much about Canadian politics but for a time my social media was filled with post after post bashing Trudeau and favoring more far-right politicians just over immigration policy. It was enough to turn me off of your country as a whole, if immigrants are so hated there.
Sounds like propaganda got to you. Maybe don’t make big life decisions if you “don’t know much” about a topic? Educating yourself is free, just hard to do if your source of education is “post after post”.
The funny thing about immigration is that it turns out I don’t need to research every single ‘might be good, might be bad’ country out there. I only needed to find a single country that had lenient immigration laws and would be accepting of me. Australia was that country for me, though it has it’s own issues as all countries do. Personally, I don’t think I should need to have some degree in foreign politics to be able to decide which countries would/wouldn’t be welcoming to me. If anything, if Canada has some massive propaganda problem where all searchable metrics (58% Trudeau disapproval ratings, 58% think too much immigration, 41% anxious immigrant rights get too much attention), then perhaps “too much propaganda” is yet another reason to avoid Canada.
That’s because Trudeau is wildly unpopular. So unpopular he was finally asked to resign (and agreed to do so) by his own party.
And furthermore if you want to understand the reasons behind anti-immigrant sentiment in Canada you should study our housing policies and issues. Canada is in the midst of a housing crisis which I believe is the main contributor to anti-immigrant sentiment.
Now you might say (and would be fair to do so) that immigrants are not to blame for bad housing policy. That is true, however it’s entirely fair for Trudeau to receive his share of the blame for the housing crisis, especially given his many promises to address the issue.
And if you’re wondering about Australia: its housing crisis is as bad or worse than Canada’s. Anti-immigration sentiment and far-right politics is even more prevalent there.
I’m well aware of the Australian housing crisis, and of it’s far-right politicians like Dutton. I was also aware that there were other reasons for Trudeau being unpopular besides immigration (hence why it wasn’t the sole statistic I provided, I used Trudeau’s approval ratings as somewhat of a general metric for Canada turning against left-leaning politicians, and I used the other two statistics to try to show Canada’s anti-immigrant attitudes. Without spending exorbitant amounts of time studying Canadian politics this was the quickest summary statistics I choose to look at).
I criticized Canada for having poor attitudes towards immigration, and I would criticize Australia for the same, these two opinions aren’t mutually exclusive. Ultimately my personal decision to attempt to immigrate to Australia rather than Canada came down to choosing ‘the lesser of two evils’ (which as an American I am very practiced in doing. ha. ha.)
Specifically, I thought Australia’s further distance from the US would make it safer geopolitically, it’s higher foreign-born population would make it so that way ‘anti-immigration’ sentiment didn’t become ‘anti-immigrant’ sentiment, and it’s compulsory voting laws would make it harder for far-right politicians to gain and/or maintain a foothold. I truly did not intend for my personal decision to go to Australia over Canada to be some kind of dig at Canada, though I did get defensive at the dismissive claim that the limited research I have done was just “propaganda getting to me.” Apologies if I was a bit aggressive in my critique of Canadian attitudes towards immigration
See as a Canadian I wouldn’t make it so complicated. The reason I would move to Australia is very simple: the weather.
But then I have a giant hole in my living room ceiling because all the winter storms this year caused a giant glacier of ice to build up on the roof which subsequently melted and leaked through the roof, destroying the ceiling in the process. Furthermore, this apparently happened to tons of other people in my area because the insurance company is currently swamped with claims over this.
Australia doesn’t have to deal with any of this. Australia has cheap and highly accessible solar power. Australia has beautiful weather 8 months of the year in exchange for blistering summers. I think I’d take that trade at this point!
Australia hates immigrants too so have fun with that
It’s a matter of degree. Australia has a housing crisis and many want to lower immigration, but their starting level of immigration was already incredibly high, for instance 30% of the population is foreign born, as compared to Canada’s 21%. A marginal difference, but it still contributes to a culture more accepting of immigrants.
You know, I think somehow the rhetoric has gotten mixed up here though. I have said ‘As a victim currently being forced to flee my fascist home country, I think Canada could stand to be more accepting of immigrants’ and you have heard ‘Canada sucks so hard I won’t go there even though I’m American (and thus an uninformed idiot).’
I think it’s part of an overarching narrative I’ve seen, of people from non-US countries hating on Americans for not voting/volunteering/working hard enough to stop Trump from being elected, that ‘America = Bad’ and ‘[Insert My Country Here] = Good, and we would never be like Bad America.’ It goes without saying that I voted Harris & phone banked often. I don’t think Canada is a bad country, I think it’s amazing, even! But I also find the sheer amount of nationalistic rhetoric I’ve seen both around and directly here in this thread deeply worrying.
Like, you do realize that you’re essentially responding to a trans person, a potential victim of genocide, with ‘Haha, you’re such an idiot! Don’t you realize nowhere is safe for you? Don’t you realize everywhere has rising far-right politics and hatred of immigrants? Have fun immigrating to a country that hates you to escape a dictatorship you tried to stop but ultimately had no control over!’
I’m very aware that Australia also has an upswing in anti-immigrant rhetoric. I find it deeply unempathetic of you to try and use it as some sort of ‘gotcha’ to prove that your country is amazing (or that other countries are just as bad). I’m currently having to flee the country I’ve called home my entire life due to political persecution. I think it would be helpful if people could remember that I’m an actual person and not just another ‘stupid American’
Hey man I apologize for trolling you because you have clearly done your research.
Australia is basically just like Canada though and let me explain.
Everyone in the country lives in basically the same small area and the rest uninhabitable.
Both colonial nations with still a terrible treatment of the natives.
The wildlife kills you.
The climate kills you.
Canada has hillbillies but straya has bogans.
Housing crisis caused by identical problems.
Have you considered living in tassy? That’s where I live without question.
I’m not sure why you’re talking if you already have all the answers buddy.
I don’t think I have all the answers, buddy, I’m just defending myself from the accusation that because I happen to not have a favorable view of your country in regards to immigration (and mysteriously, it gets less and less favorable the more actually interact with Canadians) that means I’ve somehow fallen prey to propaganda
I tried to defend myself by showing the statistics I had seen showing that Canadians aren’t currently partial to immigrants, and you are responding by essentially saying ‘responding with statistics must mean you think you know everything, you know-it-all.’ I am willing to learn and engage with actual evidence, this is just an ad hominem attack
They got their impression of Canada from reddit
Genuinely, where do you think I should get my impression of Canada from? Perhaps this Lemmy instance, where the prevailing response to me going: ‘hey, Canada has a lot of hatred towards immigrants, as a victim of a fascist government forced to flee my home country I decided to search elsewhere’ was ‘um, ACTUALLY, the place you have chosen to go to ALSO hates PEOPLE LIKE YOU, and you (the victim of a fascist government trying to kill you for being a minority) should’ve DONE YOUR RESEARCH(??) because Canada ALSO HAS A MASSIVE PROPAGANDA PROBLEM which is why you should COME TO CANADA INSTEAD’
Frankly, I fear all I have learned from this is that Canadians, unlike the stereotype, are deeply unempathetic people who currently seem to be pushing a narrative of “Canada good, America (and Americans) bad.” Hence the claims I’ve seen on Lemmy that ‘Americans deserve to suffer under fascism’ because ‘we didn’t work/vote/volunteer hard enough to stop it.’
In this case, America = Bad bc American doctors (smart) are leaving. Canada = Good bc American doctors want to go there. So, under this framing, me criticizing Canadian attitudes against immigration somehow becomes me (stupid American) hating on Canada as a whole. Queue the dogpiling about how I’m an ‘uninformed idiot’ and I’ve ‘bought the propaganda’ despite the fact I’ve been researching how to immigrate for the past few months
Forgive me if this came out a bit hostile, I’m a bit frustrated right now, you know, from the whole ‘fleeing my country that wants to genocide me’ thing. As a warning, I’d be wary of dismissing the blatantly nationalistic attitudes of your fellow countrymen as “oh that’s just how Canadians on Reddit behave.” After all, glossing over just how many fascists my country had was what got us Trump.
All our media is controlled by right wing groups (edit: excl. CBC) I wouldn’t take that as a representation of the overall sentiment of the population.
We are looking at an election soon however so hesitation makes sense.
I wasn’t reading news articles so much as I as reading Reddit comments (back when I still used Reddit), which is certainly still not a completely comprehensive read of the whole Canadian population, but it’s about as close as I can get without being in Canada myself. To be honest though, having most of the media controlled by right wing groups is another concern, though I do hope your elections go well
I think it’s important to remember immigration isn’t just some lever you can turn on and off: “oh we’re having issues with quality of life so let’s stop letting immigrants in,” “oh but we want highly educated people like doctors so lets let them in.” Prospective immigrants will remember at best the wishy-washy stance on whether or not immigrants should be let in, at worst the outright xenophobic sentiment they had heard. This especially goes for people in highly educated professions like doctors, who are desirable immigrants in any countries, and thus have options to pick and choose where they want to go.
I know when my parents (who are both doctors) started looking into investing a bit in other countries, Canada wasn’t even considered, they went straight to investing in Europe. When I told them I was looking into foreign colleges, they suggested schools in New Zealand, in Germany, in Sweden… they didn’t once recommend Canada. Well, this is just anecdotal evidence, and I’m sure many many American doctors will flee to Canada. But I wouldn’t assume just because doctors are leaving the US necessarily means they’re going to Canada
/r/Canada was taken over by right wing groups too. The rest of us migrated to /r/onguardforthee (before coming here).
Onguardforthee is trash. Echo chamber.
No more than /r/canada
At least a few years ago. Who knows how they’ve both devolved since.
Yea there aren’t really any good canadian subreddits
Australia has the same problems as Canada
And it’s a problem there too. Both Australia and Canada need to cool it with the anti-immigrant scapegoating unless they want to end up like America. Ultimately the main reason I chose Australia over Canada was due to it’s further distance from the US making it less likely to get embridled in geopolitical conflicts with the US, like Canada already is with these tariff wars
My bro, or sis, if you’re not going to Canada because of righties and anti-immigration, I got some bad news for you about Aus…
Yes, I’m very aware that Australia (and the whole of the world for that matter) also has rising far-right and anti-immigration sentiment. I’m not sure why so many people in this thread think I was born yesterday and have done 0 research on the matter of where I hope to spend the rest of my life. Ultimately anywhere is better than the US though, and I can’t allow myself to be so caught up in self-defeatist thoughts like “everywhere has rising far-right politics” or “nowhere is safe” or “immigration is too hard” that I stay paralyzed in the line of danger.
My decision to choose Australia over Canada was ultimately a matter of degree. I felt a country further from the US would be more safe geopolitcally, Australia’s higher foreign-born population would lead to a less xenophobic culture, and compulsory voting laws would keep far-right politicians from gaining or maintaining a foothold, thank you for your concern
Got a bio friend fleeing to NZ rn