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Q: Is your country of origin getting tough with Chinese immigration or loosening up?
I just saw this headline from the website zerohedge: "Unprecedented Surge in Chinese Applicants Willing to Buy US Green Cards." It seems to me some countries are opening up the side and backs doors for Chinese immigrants to come.
This is in sharp contrast to a story I read on a website that shall remain anonymous that the world was keeping out the Chinese.
10 years 3 weeks ago in Visa & Legalities - China
I can speak for France : if you're an ordinary Chinese (city dweller, median-level income), getting just a touristic visa is tough. I've witnessed it 1st hand once, and 2nd hand many times. The best option seems to come to study and get married and/or getting a job 
It used to be easier. Lots of people came from Wenzhou (around 300 000) in the 80's. During the 2000's, modest influx of Dongbei people, now 15 000, much more women than men. They are not much connected to the previous waves of Chinese migrants, with various level of integration (can be not at all to fully integrated). All waves merged, that's 700 000 people.
RiriRiri:
Most of the non-marriage long term immigration from China is now composed of ex-corrupt officials and their families
DrMonkey:
Hum... A lot of Chinese study abroad too, and stay to work afterward. From the people I know in that case, they are not from super rich family, just more wealthy than average. I wonder what the actual statistics says : how much bought their way to citizenship, how much came to study, worked and got naturalized.
DrMonkey:
On the US Homeland Department website, 2012 report on immigration
In 2012, a total of 757,434 persons naturalized. The leading countries of birth of new citizens were Mexico (102,181), the Philippines (44,958), India (42,928), the Dominican Republic (33,351), and the People’s Republic of China (31,868).
I could not find stats on how those people got naturalized, but at least it gives an idea of the scale. 30 000 people in one year, for a net population of 310 millions people, I'm not impressed. I also read on another report that Chinese represents only 2% of the illegal migrants on average.
RiriRiri:
Found this about visa processing, http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/what-we-do/networks/european_migration_network/reports/docs/emn-studies/migration-channel/09b._france_national_report_fr_version_fr.pdf page 58, very detailed but stops in 2010 and does not include naturalizations.
For Australia, I don't know about 'toughening up' of Chinese immigration, but...
We've been adjusting immigration laws, so for virtually everyone (excepting Kiwis), it's become tougher in general.
However, immigrants from China are on the increase, and make up about 20% of all immigrants per year. (but, out of 21 million, still only about 300,000 say they have Chinese ancestry).
And, of course, Chinese students are on the increase, but they come and go - so don't affect the above statistics too much.
Apparently, 50% of Chinese born Australians chose to live in Sydney, and 25% in Melbourne. The other 25% obviously scattered over the rest of the country... Yay!
(and in googling, I found that in 2001 there were about 55,000 Aussies in China, but about 46,000 of them were in HK! I wonder how many came to mainland China, and then left shortly after :p In 2010, that number changed to about 13,000 on Mainland China...)
The influx of foreign labor in Singapore dropped by more than 30% compared to previous year. This is due to tightening measures implemented by the government. Singaporeans have been complaining that these foreigners are taking away their jobs and rightly so because it's so much cheaper to hire a Filipino, Indian or Chinese to do the same job at half the cost. Most of these displaced Singaporeans voiced their dislike in the 2011 elections which resulted in the loss of key ministers. If this inbalance of labor isn't corrected by 2016's elections, the incumbent party will lose even more seats. We have 5.4 million residents in Singapore , of which 2.4 million are foreigners.
Shining_brow:
Why are they cheaper to employ? Doesn't Singapore have labour laws that require all people to get paid basically the same amount for the same job?
louischuahm:
Well, this foreign labor thing started out because Singaporeans themselves weren't having enough babies to replace the expiring population, so we have negative population growth. Some wise crack in public administration suggested opening the immigration doors to let in more foreigners to boost the population numbers. What happened thereafter was a population boom from 3 million to 5.4 million in 10 years. Obviously, the wise crack didn't think about the after effects of such a move. Those who migrated to Singapore were mostly from 3rd or developing countries and were willing to work for much lower pay. Take for instance a computer programmer, a local would be paired about $4,000 while an imported foreign talent would accept $1,800. Naturally, for the employer, this means giving the bottom line a big boost if he were to fire all locals and hired imports. Of course, the government tried to implement limits on import hiring but there are ways to get around it. Without considering infrastructure and social issues, the whole game plan failed and locals were pushed out the door. Those in the 35 to 45 age range were the most affected. Coupled with recessions and the financial melt down, these guys took the worst hit.
Immigration regulations in my home country (Italy) are a joke resulting in a complete disaster.
icnif77:
Chinese are everywhere in NE Italy, mostly with small stores selling Chinese made cheap garment. Seen two months ago!
For many countries, it's not so much about toughening or loosening, but rather about the fact immigration legal systems are hardly suited for post-2010 Chinese immigration.
China is in a unique place in history, the first country that got wealthy in a couple of decades, but where people's unique objective remain to get a ticket out (mostly) anywhere else. Reason being that when literally everything has been sacrificed - from education to environment, culture, living standards, freedom, you name it, in the name of profit, well, maybe the place ends up much richer, but not more desirable for an inch.
Now the problem is, many other countries do not see it this way. Many countries expect wealthy persons to be able to set up a nice living in their own country of origin (I know, I can't generalize on that, but it's all about scales), therefore not making immigration a very hot topic. On a side note, they do not expect them to behave like peasants from middle age as well, which makes this new issue all the more visible.
So, well, this is why most countries have some kind of rules allowing long term residency on the provision of owning something (like a property), setting up a company with X capital, or just depositing money.
But now, with more and more wealthy Chinese sharing the unique goal of leaving the boat (or at least of having an escape insurance), these marginal rules have been turned into real investing products agents are eager to sell and people are eager to buy. I've seen more than one advertisement for this type of package, and trust me, the catch was not emphasizing on culture or blending in.
Now I bet this is going to get a real debate in a while, depending on the countries, it is already starting. We'll see which will have restricted access, and which will have done nothing because they were short-sighted enough to believe it helped economy.
DrMonkey:
"China is in a unique place in history, the first country that got wealthy in a couple of decades"
South-Korea did it too, and they didn't waste 20 to 30 years with *several* blunders of epic scale like the Great Leap Forward. Or Vietnam past 1987 with the Doi Moi.
KimOnach:
What's after the "but" is the most important point, actually :)
Shining_brow:
Taiwan... Singapore (post-WWII) S. Korea...one could argue for a few East European countries.
I think the point we're making is that there seems to be a difference between mainland Chinese, and other people/nationalities/governments... and it ought to be asked, why is there this difference?
Canada slammed the door on about 10,000 Chinese applicants saying it was "clearing a backlog too get a fresh start."
Apparently they found out that the Chinese were driving up the prices of housing in B.C. (bad for the economy) so ordinary Canadians couldn't afford housing. Don't forget. Canada's immigration policy allows you in on two requisites: Be filthy rich
, or be a refugee.
