It seems that once 1 person gets here the rest of their extened family all follow. This I have seen first had. I work in a large retail store and more then 75 percent of the sales force are either not citizens yet or are applying to become one. Mostly from India and Iran right now.

I found the following very recently and thought that it might shed a bit more light on the topic: INTERESTING INFORMATION: Only in Canada. Do not apply for your old age pension. Apply to be a refugee. It is interesting that the federal government provides a single refugee with a monthly allowance of $1,890.00 and each can get an additional $580.00 in social assistance for a total of $2,470.00. This compares very well to a single pensioner who, after contributing to the growth and development of Canada for 40 or 50 years, can only receive a monthly maximum of $1,012.00 in old age pension and Guaranteed Income Supplement. Maybe our pensioners should apply as refugees! Let's send this thought to as many Canadians as we can and maybe we can get the refugees cut back to $1,012.00 and the pensioners up to $2,470.00 , so they can enjoy the money they were forced to submit to the Canadian government for those 40 to 50 years. Now we all realize that $2,470.00 per month really doesn't go all that far, at least not in Toronto, perhaps in some of the smaller communites it would, but the vast majority of refugess get located into the larger metropolitan areas. Add tothis the fact that this money is not a pay cheque it is a sit on your AZZ payment, month, after month, after month.

Wow! That amount would sure keep my husband and I very comfy and we could buy a new vehicle too! Does a U.S. citizen moving to Canada qualify as a refugee? Martha

Hi Martha, That amount might seem like it would keep you and your husband very comfy but I think that would more than likely be based upon the cost of living where you currently live. To live on that in the Toronto area would put you just below Statistic’s Canada’s “low income cut-off”. The fact is that Poverty in Toronto is highly racialized, and the economic gap between members of European and non-European ethno-racial groups has been increasing over the last 30 years. Statistics Canada uses two basic measures of low income: the LICO (low income cut-off) and the LIM (low income measure). For both measures, an income threshold is calculated and families (and the individuals in that family) with incomes below that threshold are considered to be in “low income.” The LICO threshold is based on a review of expenditure patterns and is calculated for different-sized families and different-sized cities. The largest city size for LICO calculations is 500,000 and over. But there are nine census metropolitan areas in Canada with populations over 500,000, ranging from Hamilton (the smallest at 662,401) to Toronto at 4.5 million people. These nine cities have quite varying costs of living, which are not reflected in the LICO. The threshold is estimated on a national basis, so being in “low income” in a city with a high cost of living may be much worse than being in "low income" in a city with a relatively low cost of living. For example, someone living in Winnipeg would arguably be better off than someone with the same family income living in Toronto. Comparisons of rates of low income cannot be made across cities. Although there is no national measure for the LIM, Statistics Canada estimates that the family income threshold for a two-adult, two-child family (in year 2000 dollars) would be about $33,600 for the LICO and $34,600 for the LIM. However, results based on the LICO or the LIM can vary. This means that you would have needed to earn $2,800 a month to be just riding the cusp of poverty, and that was 6 years ago. I could go on, but if you list all of your current expenses for where you currently live, you could easily count on at least tripling them to live here. You could of course live in a much smaller community than the Greater Toronto Area and enjoy a some what lower cost of living but there are postives and negatives associated to that. One negative could be -55 degree celcius winters. (-67 F) Oh and that new car will cost you $5,00 to $10,000 more, just on the base price (using a 2006 Grand Am for comparison) plus the 15% in sales taxes etc. etc. etc. and we have not even talked about gas that one day is $0.82 per litre and the next day is almost $1.00 per litre.

Hi Peter, Those statistics are quite interesting. This is a little off the thread but... Australia has just deported one of the worst pedophiles it has ever known - Robert Excell. The reason we could get rid of this piece of human garbage is that he was born in the UK. Imagine our dismay when we heard recently that this guy has been granted a "disability" pension in the UK of something like 800 Pounds per fortnight (do the conversion) plus some sort of a grant to purchase a car. Horror upon all horrors - he has also been housed a mere 200 yards from a school. A similar thing happened with the two demons who killed James Bolger in the UK. They both have pensions, live in tax-payer funded houses, have free cars to drive etc, etc. There ain't a lot of fairness in this world. Commit the crime, do your time then retire off the tax-payers who you preyed upon. Gary