Quote:
Originally Posted by jolinar of malkshor
Exactly, so $29,000 at 90% of 10,000 claims equals a cost to Canadian tax payers of $261,000,000 a year and growing.
That is a LOT of money to deal with fraud.
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That still doesn't stop the Visa restrictions on these people from being a hamhanded way of dealing with this. Heck, Czech's can't even apply for visas in their own country, they have to go to Vienna. That's pretty rude.
The Canadian tourism industry says Mexcians accounted for 266,000 visitors alone last year. (CBC News, 2009) Mexico was the sixth largest source of tourists to Canada last year, and the numbers had been steadily increasing. However, Mexican asylum claims make up one quarter of all applications that Canada receives, the government says. (The Star, 2009)
In the first three months of this year, the number of claimants from the Czech Republic jumped to fourth place (653). Mexico was first, at 3,648, with impoverished Haiti (688) and Colombia (656) just ahead of the Czech Republic. (Dose.ca)
(the links were to long, I did not include them)
You want to look at numbers? 3648/266,000 = 1.4% of Mexicans coming to Canada could be potentially applying for refugee status. What will happen to the economy when Visa requirements are in place for Mexican tourists? The number of Mexican tourists increased dramatically recently due to the ease of travel here to Canada. If you want to add intangible costs to the refugee claimants, you should also subtract the intangible costs associated with more difficult tourism here to Canada.
I'll make up a few numbers, too. If each Mexican coming here to Canada on Vacation spends a week here, and spends approximately $2000 per week on a trip, that results in $532,000,000 in spending that Mexicans bring into the country every year. If this is cut in half, that's a cost to the Canadian Economy of $266,000,000. The Mexican portion of the refugee claims is only 3,648, bringing the cost to the government to 3,648*29,000=$105,792,000 - resulting in a net loss to Canada of -$160,208,000 per year of operation, not counting the costs of diplomatic coolness between two close countries.
Remember, too, that tourism to Canada was increasing significantly year over year. That is now over. These costs do not include additional future capital lost due to no longer increasing tourism numbers.
In addition, "The Immigration and Refugee Board has accepted 118 Czech asylum applications since late 2007, determining that the applicants had "a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a particular political group."
(National post, 2009) If the Czech numbers are at 653 claimants per year, with 118 ACCEPTED (across a time span roughly approximating a year, late 2007 to early 2009), then the fraudulent numbers are down to 535 per year. There are many, many refugee claimants that come to Canada that are accepted.
To think (or suggest) that Visas will cut these claims to zero is laughable. The number of refugees that Canada will accept this year will be 10,000. Next year, it will be 10,000. The year after that, it will be 10,000 - merely because that is the maximum that Canada can process, and there will continue to be more than the maximum applying. Especially with the fraudulent Czech Roma applications, which can be made from any country in the EU, including Great Britain and France. Hell, Czech's have to apply for Visas in another country right now anyways. This stops nothing.
Net result - big economic losses for Canada, minor net reduction in refugee claimants, no net reduction in costs for Canada's refugee board, Major net losses in International standing, relations with European and North American neighbours, as well as the whole thing reeks of unfairness and isn't the right thing to do.
all this over 4248 people entering the country a year, out of 1.1 million, THAT WE KNOW ABOUT. Remember my "sarcastic" comment about just letting them come in? Yeah, not so silly now, is it?