The Truth About Immigration

I finished reading The Truth about Immigration by Zeke Hernandez and I have some things to say. The book is a mantra that successful societies welcome newcomers.... Alright let's take this to a real world perspective.

Firstly as an immigrant myself, I understand this better than anyone. I believe in immigration done right, what is happening now isn't a success.

Firstly jobs. I am going to use where I live in Alberta, to explain why this book has a serious flaw in what it has to say.

An Indian family came to Alberta from India and bought 5 Tim Horton franchises. Great, right? No. They came in, fired everyone and filled each one of the franchises with Indian people, Not one worker of any other nationality. It made headlines because these people who were let go, cannot find work now, in a climate where jobs are already scarce. Lots of people are working more than one job just to make ends meet so immigration to an area with record low employment.... XXXXXXX

Schools. My son went to a large high school and graduated 4 years ago. His school was at 1066 children then which was max capacity. My daughter graduated last year and the total of kids? 1671. 50% over capacity and climbing. This is the reality for almost 55% of schools in Alberta. My daughter couldn't get a locker so had to walk with a whole day's worth of textbooks in her bag and nowhere to put snow boots so her feet froze in the winter months because snow boots in the school weren't allowed and her back was killing her by the end of the day. WINNING! I can't even imagine how hard it is now after the influx of refugees. My young kids are in elementary school and my youngest daughter is a kindergarten student. She has 5 kids in her class who don't speak a lick of English and there is no money from the school board to help the ONE teacher in the room. Oh yes, this is an actual fact. The mothers are lovely and also speak little to no english. This isn't successful immigration. When we moved here, we had to prove we were fluent in 1 of the 2 languages.

This mass immigration did not put more money in the coffers like this book suggests because they CUT money from healthcare, schools, disability programs (I have 2 special needs kids so this was a HUGE problem for us), roads and more. The taxes on homes go up but less gets done every single year. Maybe it's not an immigration issue here but putting a strain on an already strained system doesn't help the kids or the parents.

Let's talk about homes. Rentals. Inflation has caused the cost of units to go up considerably but also the lack of vacancies as well. Alberta used to sit between 6% and 10% vacancies for rental properties at any given time. Today, it's <1%. People are paying even more for tiny places with slumlords because the amount of people who moved here, have nowhere to live. We have tent cities here in a city that has weather as low as -50% in winter. Again, this seems feasible to the author? It's a sad reality that immigration when it is not done right, causes overpopulation and then a lack of resources. 800,000 albertas have no family doc because again, too many people. Infrastructure cannot keep up. Our electricity grid almost crashed 3 times in one week because the grid could not handle all the people here.

Now this book does a lot of its stats in the USA which I cannot say for sure is right or wrong but what I do know is that this book is giving you a very one dimensional narrative that does not fit all everywhere. Mass immigration has made it almost impossible for young adults to even move out of their family home and home ownership? Forget about it. The house across the street was bought for $415,000 in 2019. It sold again in 2023 for $495,000. She sold it 6 weeks ago for an asking price of $599,000 (No renos) and it sold for $110,000 over asking within 3 days of being listed. YIKES. As an immigrant responsible immigration is necessary for infrastructure to keep up and what the USA and Canada is doing is NOT that. I disagree with nearly everything the author has to say about the topic as of today. 10 years ago? This book would have been on point. Houses are not being built. The cost to build has skyrocketed and blanking rezoning in our city has 70% of people in uproar.

3.5 stars because while I do not agree with the author, he went to a lot of effort to display his findings in an easy to understand fashion. My experience doesn't match what he says but others may agree and don't let my view sway you from checking this book out if immigration is something you are interested in.

Thanks @stmartinspress it was an interesting read