TAIWAN IMMIGRANT : BEWARE, SASKATCHEWAN, OF INVESTOR / ENTREPRENEUR IMMIGRANT SPECULATORS
I came to Canada as an international student from Taiwan in 1990 and graduated from Simon Fraser University in 2000. I received my citizenship in 2006. I love Canada and consider myself to be a Canadian.
In the past year, I spent several months working in Saskatchewan as a builder consultant. My experience there wasn’t exactly grand. The company I worked for (let’s call it DH) was probably the worst employer I’ve ever encountered in my working life.
There are four bosses in that company in Saskatchewan. Three are Canadian Permanent Residents (immigrants). They came to Canada as entrepreneurs (and yet, they CHOSE to keep the citizenship of their own country). Their plan is to establish businesses in different areas and sell them to new investors who wish to come to Canada. They also build houses to sell to new investors. Supposedly, Saskatchewan is taking these people in order to help the province. But how is flipping and speculation in the housing market supposed to help Saskatchewan? Is the Saskatchewan government asleep at the switch?
An immigration consultant referred a new entrepreneur immigrant speculator to me in Regina. This guy is buying up commercial properties like crazy. He knows that Saskatchewan is probably the easiest province to immigrate to for foreigners. For foreign entrepreneurs to apply to go to Saskatchewan, they must start a business in Saskatchewan, so this guy is buying up as many commercial properties as he can. But he plans to do the same thing that the bosses of DH have been doing : flip these properties and sell them to foreign speculators. Again, how is this supposed to benefit Saskatchewan?
These guys know how to use the system. In order to qualify for Citizenship, these people are supposed to be living in Regina, but they are actually living overseas. This past winter, Mother Saskatchewan got some revenge on them. In Regina, over 700 roofs collapsed from the weight of snow. A couple of the houses that DH manages collapsed, and the insurance companies would not cover the damage because the owners could not prove that they were living in Regina.
Mother Canada gets abused regularly by these characters . I couldn’t stop thinking : Who let these ignoramuses into this country? They hired a local white guy as their PR person, but they treated him like an outsider. They bad-mouthed him all the time, and they did things behind his back.
The population of Chinese and East Indian immigrants has skyrocketed in Saskatchewan. The funny thing is that the Saskatchewan government isn’t asking for much investment capital from these immigrants. One group is required to invest only $150,000 in order to be granted Permanent Resident (immigrant) status. Although there are lots of requirements for some of these people, (the business must make money, and the applicants must live in Saskatchewan for a specific period of time) , there are always ways around these rules.
I don’t think Citizenship and Immigration has enough manpower to track every applicant and make sure they all physically live in Saskatchewan. Cooking the books to make a business seem successful is already a generally common practice.
House construction is absolutely booming in Regina. Everywhere you see, there are bulldozers and cranes. New houses are being built in bulk—– 20 or 30 houses at the same time. The housing price has increased drastically. I just hope the Saskatchewan government knows what it’s doing, because soon, it could become like B.C., (where the government did not know what it was doing) and an average single house could cost $800K.
I think Citizenship and Immigration should really hire some Asian investigators to examine all the immigration cheating.. It is very naive about these people. It has to fight fire with fire.
A few months ago, after returning to British Columbia, I hired a white person from Abbotsford to pour concrete for one of my job sites in Richmond. He was complaining about how local jobs are being taken over by low-wage East Indians.
For example, I have a Cambodian painter whose price is already low, but he’s recently been undercut by an East Indian painter by 50%!!
This is probably something we all already know, but nobody dares to speak up.
Many employers require “additional languages”, such as Punjabi and Chinese, for a job. This allows them to hire foreign workers because it’s difficult to find local people who can speak these languages. One way the CIC can combat this is to raise the English requirement for foreign workers, so that, the foreign workers must be fluent in English, or French, in order to be accepted to come to Canada.
You guys have no idea how often these immigrants criticize and belittle Canada. They will never be part of Canada. They will always just be foreigners with Canadian passports.
I’m really glad to hear that the Canada Revenue Agency is finally serious about cracking down on people hiding overseas assets because it’s getting ridiculous. I personally know immigrants who say they are low-income, but are living in million dollar homes and driving luxury cars. They don’t report income and they don’t contribute to the society. Our government just lets them into our country for nothing. In my personal experience, I have seen owners pay trades people $40k in cash, so they could both avoid paying taxes.
I really hope the new federal Minister of Immigration, his counterparts in every province, and the government of Saskatchewan will come up with some innovative ways to catch these people.
