Real Estate

Vancouver housing bubble?

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Deal Addict
Mar 7, 2011
3744 posts
1986 upvotes
Vancouver
BiegeToyota wrote: Yes. Like I said previously comments are the exact copy of every real estate crash hopeful in any big city on the planet, including here.
Just like the re shills have the same discourse everywhere on the planet...
Deal Addict
Mar 7, 2011
3744 posts
1986 upvotes
Vancouver
charlesd79 wrote: I love this piece of positive thinking from the comments. RE shills should save it and print it Face With Tears Of Joy

Don't don't be too hard on yourself. And certainly don't waste time regretting it. How were you to know? You weren't. You bought them in good faith. Everyone has made bad decisions in their lives, the trick is not to dwell on it. Move on with life, and be as happy as you can, each and every day. Try it and see.
It's in response to this Face With Tears Of Joy

Don't never buy Sansiri properties projects...It's a very bad quality and services.We had experiences in 2 properties and will regret it all our life.
Deal Addict
Dec 30, 2012
1098 posts
1147 upvotes
Toronto
joepipe wrote: the noose is tightening on Vancouver RE.... there's no doubt things have changed since Christy "Kickbacks" Clark got booted out of town...

and if you want a real good laugh about how messed up that city has been for years ....read this

https://globalnews.ca/news/5277136/alle ... aundering/

Why is Canada issuing government residency documents in the Chinese language? If your English isn’t good enough to read the field labels on the document you shouldn’t be allowed to settle in the country.
Deal Guru
Feb 9, 2009
12381 posts
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civiclease wrote: Why is Canada issuing government residency documents in the Chinese language? If your English isn’t good enough to read the field labels on the document you shouldn’t be allowed to settle in the country.
Yikes. Racist much?

How about we do the passports in a Native Indian language shall we? You know..since they had claim to the land first before the brits stole it from them *shrugs shoulders*

Wait, wait wait... so this is how the Natives felt when the Brits took over "this land" too right.. you pissed bro?
Deal Addict
Mar 7, 2011
3744 posts
1986 upvotes
Vancouver
civiclease wrote: Why is Canada issuing government residency documents in the Chinese language? If your English isn’t good enough to read the field labels on the document you shouldn’t be allowed to settle in the country.
That's a photo of Kwok Chung Tam’s allegedly fraudulent People’s Republic of China passport seized by Canadian law enforcement on Jan. 31, 2006.
We only issue passports in English and French.
Anyway, it's sad that this pos is still here and hasn't been deported for so long. No wonder we're seen as suckers by the rest of the planet... Then again, only God knows who he bribed...
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Dec 13, 2016
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civiclease wrote: Why is Canada issuing government residency documents in the Chinese language? If your English isn’t good enough to read the field labels on the document you shouldn’t be allowed to settle in the country.
My wife's national ID card has Roman numerals on it and no one can have this card unless they are Thai citizens.

Also, when I drive around in this xenophobic country there are road signs in both English and Thai and the food meny has the same English font size like Thai.

Hint: Quebec.
Deal Addict
Dec 30, 2012
1098 posts
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Toronto
BiegeToyota wrote: My wife's national ID card has Roman numerals on it and no one can have this card unless they are Thai citizens.

Also, when I drive around in this xenophobic country there are road signs in both English and Thai and the food meny has the same English font size like Thai.

Hint: Quebec.
There’s a difference between posting English signage intended for tourists and drafting residency documents in a foreign language for immigrants. That said, I don’t care what Thailand does, I only care about what my own country does.

Btw did you bother to learn any Thai or are you proudly unassimilated?
Deal Addict
Dec 30, 2012
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Sanyo wrote: Yikes. Racist much?

How about we do the passports in a Native Indian language shall we? You know..since they had claim to the land first before the brits stole it from them *shrugs shoulders*

Wait, wait wait... so this is how the Natives felt when the Brits took over "this land" too right.. you pissed bro?
Yikes. Languages have races now!

Deep thoughts, from the comedy channel.
Deal Addict
Dec 30, 2012
1098 posts
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Toronto
Birth tourism from China will save Vancouver’s real estate market. When these babies grow up they will provide extra demand for condos. Buy buy buy!

https://vancouversun.com/news/local-new ... h-tourists

Ads urging women to come to Canada to give birth tout the value of providing their child with Canadian citizenship.

“Go to Canada to vacation and give birth to a child,” says one online ad targeting Mainland Chinese mothers. “U.S. rejected your visa? No problem! In fact, Canada is better!”

Ads tell women that going to Canada for automatic citizenship is a “gift” for their babies since their children will be able to get free education, cheap university tuition and student loans, according to translations provided by Liberal MLA Jas Johal and verified by Postmedia.
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Dec 13, 2016
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civiclease wrote: There’s a difference between posting English signage intended for tourists and drafting residency documents in a foreign language for immigrants. That said, I don’t care what Thailand does, I only care about what my own country does.

Btw did you bother to learn any Thai or are you proudly unassimilated?
I am proudly unassimilated. Why should I assimilate myself into a culture where I'll always be a foreigner?

So, let me get this straight. If you care about what Canada does how about them Nazi language laws in Quebec?
Deal Addict
Dec 30, 2012
1098 posts
1147 upvotes
Toronto
BiegeToyota wrote: I am proudly unassimilated. Why should I assimilate myself into a culture where I'll always be a foreigner?

So, let me get this straight. If you care about what Canada does how about them Nazi language laws in Quebec?
Fair enough. I would prefer interacting with the locals in their own language but that’s just me.

I think Quebec has a right to prioritize its official language and require newcomers to learn it and have their children educated in it. I disagree with some of the more draconian signage rules, but I think it’s a bit of an exaggeration to compare that to concentration camps and genocide.

But I guess we’re getting off topic, the fault is mine for raising the issue.
Deal Addict
Dec 27, 2006
1985 posts
978 upvotes
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/real-es ... as-set-in/

Bubble trouble: In Vancouver’s housing market, pain has set in
With falling sales and prices, patient buyers are sitting on the sidelines, waiting for sellers to face reality

Published 48 minutes ago

West Vancouver is an exclusive oceanside suburb realtors consider the epicentre of a real estate correction in the area. This house sold this year for $7-million, far short of its list price of $16-million in 2017.
Rafal Gerszak/The Globe and Mail
Jon Buss has spent the past four months looking for a home in West Vancouver. Every weekend, he and his wife attend an open house in the exclusive coastal community, where their kids are starting school in the fall. They have noticed the same thing at almost every one: “No one ever shows up.” Often it’s just them and a realtor, sitting in a chair, staring at his phone. “Nothing is moving.“

Mr. Buss, an entrepreneur who invented slip-on covers to rejuvenate old baseboard heaters, currently lives in Delta and is shopping for a house in the $3-million-to-$5-million range. He does most of his research on his bike, to get a better feel for the livability of a home and neighbourhood. He’s seen prices in the municipality – where 38 homes are listed for sale with asking prices north of $10-million – drop as much as a million dollars in a single day. He’s in no hurry: “Why buy in a falling market?”

Jeff Carnahan moved to the Lower Mainland from Calgary eight months ago and has been looking to buy in the $1-million range. He meets the same buyers at weekend open houses. Like him, they are sitting on the sidelines for now. “Sellers are still in denial about the housing correction and unwilling to come down from that mythical price they have been banking on. Buyers, meanwhile, know the home is no longer worth what they are asking," he says.

Story continues below advertisement

“It’s very clear we’re on the back end of a bubble.”

The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver reported this month that sales in the Vancouver region slumped to a 24-year low in April and prices are off 8.5 per cent over the past year as a market downturn deepens. The benchmark price for detached homes, condos and townhouses, an industry representation of the typical home sold in an area, fell last month for the 11th consecutive time, to $1,008,400 – the lowest in almost two years.

Greater Vancouver home sales in April

Sales volume for detached houses, condos and townhomes

0
1,000
2,000
3,000
4,000
5,000
2009
2011
2013
2015
2017
2963
THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: real estate board of greater vancouver

×

year sales
2009-01-01 2963
2010-01-01 3512
2011-01-01 3225
2012-01-01 2799
2013-01-01 2627
2014-01-01 3050
2015-01-01 4179
2016-01-01 4781
2017-01-01 3553
2018-01-01 2579
2019-01-01 1829
Greater Vancouver home sales in April

download csv
Realtors point to West Vancouver as the epicentre of a correction that began some 18 months ago. This month, a mansion in the oceanside municipality sold for less than half its 2016 sale price of $11.2-million, a $6-million loss for the former owners.

Realtor Mark Wiens is already seeing his clients swallow hefty losses. One recently sold for $2-million below the home’s assessed value of $6.2-million. Another turned down an offer of $4.5-million for his West Side house last year only to relist it this year for $2.39-million. The “best-case scenario” for a third is a $350,000 loss on the condo bought for $1.1-million less than a year ago.

As Vancouver’s housing market continues to contract, Mr. Wiens tells his clients on the city’s exclusive West Side, where he figures prices of high-end homes have fallen as much as 35 per cent since peaking in 2016, that they are throwing away at least $5,000 every day that they delay listing. “There’s no way this market is coming back any time soon,” he says.

While snacking on a $13 slice of avocado toast, the former landscaper, who speaks Mandarin, offers a one-word prediction for the year ahead: “Pain.”


Vancouver realtor Mark Wiens, who cautions his West Side clients they can lose $5,000 for each day they delay listing their properties.
Rafal Gerszak/The Globe and Mail
This cooling off was, to some degree, orchestrated. To slow mortgage lending, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, a federal agency overseeing the country’s lenders, introduced a mortgage stress test last January that had the effect of reducing the amount Canadians can borrow.

Story continues below advertisement

At the provincial level, successive governments introduced several measures of their own to bring the market to heel. First came the foreign buyers’ tax – 15 per cent of a home’s purchase price – one of the final major policy initiatives of the previous, Liberal government, announced ahead of an election fought almost entirely over housing issues. The stated purpose of the tax was to keep locals from being priced out of the market, but it’s now the subject of a lawsuit that claims the tax is discriminatory and unconstitutional; the summary trial concluded April 1, and judgment has been reserved.

The new, NDP government bumped it to 20 per cent. And transfer taxes were increased to 5 per cent from 3 per cent on homes valued north of $3-million, ostensibly to discourage flipping.

Change in Greater Vancouver home prices

Year-over-year percentage change to benchmark home price*

-10
0
10
20
30
40%
2015
2016
2017
2018
B-20stress teststarts
Foreignbuyers' taxstarts
B.C. hikesforeignbuyers' tax
5.735003296
THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: rebgv / *BENCHMARK PRICE IS AN INDUSTRY REPRESENTATION OF THE TYPICAL HOME SOLD IN AN AREA

×

month yoy
2015-01-01 5.735003296
2015-02-01 6.665572156
2015-03-01 7.395968791
2015-04-01 8.723747981
2015-05-01 9.679487179
2015-06-01 10.47437122
2015-07-01 11.43811645
2015-08-01 12.17542749
2015-09-01 14.01736385
2015-10-01 15.54160126
2015-11-01 18.07625922
2015-12-01 19.16992952
2016-01-01 20.83852868
2016-02-01 22.44112667
2016-03-01 23.35401847
2016-04-01 25.52748886
2016-05-01 29.9094097
2016-06-01 32.24783862
2016-07-01 32.8194147
2016-08-01 31.70077629
2016-09-01 28.20157829
2016-10-01 24.9048913
2016-11-01 20.70431894
2016-12-01 17.96556709
2017-01-01 15.56816716
2017-02-01 13.97862979
2017-03-01 12.79754601
2017-04-01 11.39914773
2017-05-01 8.817905747
2017-06-01 8.814556548
2017-07-01 9.56577816
2017-08-01 10.35258815
2017-09-01 12.01943844
2017-10-01 13.37974546
2017-11-01 15.25927557
2017-12-01 17.01203209
2018-01-01 17.91294643
2018-02-01 18.20888938
2018-03-01 17.9158055
2018-04-01 16.0344278
2018-05-01 13.0749354
2018-06-01 9.502353059
2018-07-01 6.680400235
2018-08-01 5.215111197
2018-09-01 3.210257399
2018-10-01 1.899645016
2018-11-01 -0.458496514
2018-12-01 -1.704274969
2019-01-01 -3.492664458
2019-02-01 -5.150214592
2019-03-01 -6.715867159
2019-04-01 -7.655677656
Change in Greater Vancouver home prices

download csv
For its part, Vancouver introduced a municipal tax on empty homes to punish investors who leave their houses vacant – again, to discourage speculators and to provide more rental housing.

Realtors may loathe these measures, but a large majority of British Columbians support them, according to polling by the Angus Reid Institute.

The focus on foreign buyers, especially from China, has been intense – and not without reason. A recent Statistics Canada report found that one in five B.C. condos built in 2016 and 2017 were purchased by foreigners. Vancouver, with its historical and cultural links to Hong Kong, clean air, good schools and respect for the rule of law, is a favourite destination for wealthy Chinese to park their money.

With the Shanghai Composite Index down 25 per cent last year and the Shenzhen Composite Index falling 33 per cent, Chinese investors have been desperately looking elsewhere. But Chinese courts have begun jailing nationals for life for moving money illegally out of the country, part of Beijing’s ongoing effort to halt currency outflows, Vancouver lawyer Christine Duhaime explains.

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Ms. Dumaine, an expert in financial crime, represents Chinese banks hunting fraudsters in Vancouver. Many took out sizable business loans in China, then fled to B.C.'s Lower Mainland, where they hid the money in real estate, shielding their identities through corporations, numbered companies and trusts. Transparency International, a corruption watchdog group, estimates that 50 per cent of owners at the high end of Vancouver’s housing market have hidden their identities this way.

Like it or not, their identities will be made public next month, when the province unveils a residential property registry. This could be another reason for the flood of new inventory, up 46 per cent over last year, says Ms. Duhaime: Some owners may be trying to get their money out of the market before the disclosures take effect.

The city has also become a favoured destination for global cartels and gangs that have been washing billions of dollars through B.C.’s housing market and casinos. This week, in announcing a public inquiry into the explosive growth of money laundering in the province, B.C. Finance Minister Carole James said the criminal activity had increased home prices in Vancouver by as much as 20 per cent.

It’s a strange new world for Vancouver, where the median cost of a home tripled to $1.5-million in the decade before 2015. The sharp rise was fuelled by cheap mortgages and a flood of new speculators hunting for investment gains, particularly after Blackrock chief executive Laurence Fink, one of the world’s best-known investors, named Vancouver condos one of the greatest places in the world to park money.

But unlike New York or London or San Francisco, where the huge salaries typical of the financial and tech industries help explain the high cost of housing, local salaries in Vancouver are so low they became a selling point in the city’s bid to lure Amazon’s new headquarters to town.

This leaves the market in the strangely precarious situation of “resting on the shoulders of local income earners,” says realtor Aaron Best. Vancouver, he says, was the first city in Canada to see foreign speculation spike its housing market. It now looks set to become the first to find out what happens when that wealth pulls out – and no one is left to replace it.

Story continues below advertisement

It’s a new era for condo marketers and developers trying to offload presale condos, too. Gone are the days when long lines of people in sleeping bags snaked around presentation centres ahead of launches. Back then, speculators saw presales as quick wins: They could put down 20 per cent, flip the contract for a steep gain before the project’s completion, then reinvest the earnings in several units in another tower, Mr. Best says.

Last week, developers behind 17 projects, representing roughly 5,000 units, announced they are postponing their sales launches in the hope that market conditions improve. Other developers are offering buyers hefty discounts and bonuses to realtors, according to flyers sent to local real estate agents.

In Vancouver’s tony Kerrisdale neighbourhood, the Shannon Wall Centre, for example, is offering realtors a $150,000 bonus and a 4-per-cent commission, roughly double what they traditionally receive on assignments. They’re also offering to pay buyers’ condo fees for their first two years.

Saadat Enterprises is knocking off the GST for an 18-unit development in East Vancouver. In suburban Richmond, Paramount is offering realtors $100,000 and a bonus of as much as 4.5 per cent. Woodbridge Homes is targeting millennials for its Kira development in Coquitlam, offering them free avocado toast every week for a year.

The Mortise Group is knocking $40,000 off purchase prices at two of its Surrey townhome developments. Anthem has dropped the requisite deposit to 5 per cent and is offering buyers a $5,000 discount at its Marine and Fell development in North Vancouver. Onni is offering a $75,000 discount for units at 1335 Howe, a 40-storey tower near the base of the Granville Bridge, and has dropped the deposit to 5 per cent for a North Shore development on Keith Road.


Sehrish Qureshi, a UBC student from Toronto, rents a room in a 6,000-square-foot mansion that needs occupants if its owners want to avoid paying a vacancy tax.
Rafal Gerszak/The Globe and Mail
While there is plenty of misfortune to go around, it turns out there’s also plenty of delight. On social media, more than a dozen or so accounts have sprung up to document the collapse of the market and highlight speculators’ biggest faceplants. One of the most popular goes by the handle Vancouver Real Estate Flip Flops.

Typical tweets begin like this one, dated earlier this month: “SOLD FOR 50% BELOW PEAK MKT VALUE IN DUNBAR! EPIC CARNAGE.” It goes on to detail the total losses of the flipper caught holding the bag. “+$2M LOSS IN 11 MONTHS” another begins, celebrating yet another speculator’s legendary fail.

It may sound an awful lot like schadenfreude, but for the generation shut out of the housing market in Vancouver, the news is also cause for cautious optimism. People have begun sharing links and joining Facebook groups such as “Metro Vancouver Housing Collapse,” which is run by a retired Coquitlam teacher.

And what is bad news for realtors, speculators and over-leveraged homeowners is anything but for bailiffs, auctioneers, bankruptcy lawyers and entrepreneurs ferreting out ways to cash in on the downturn.

Diana Mander of the Mander Group, a mother-daughter property-management firm, has seen a surge in new rental listings in the past six months, many of them Chinese owners who want to keep their investment properties but don’t want to pay the vacancy tax.

Vanmates, a new site targeting the foreign student market, has begun renting out bedrooms in empty Vancouver mansions for about $1,000 a month. That’s how Sehrish Qureshi, a Vancouver Film School student, found herself living in a brand-new, nine-bedroom, chalk white mansion that her housemates have dubbed “the castle.” For $900 a month, the 26-year-old Toronto native shares it – and the billiards room, steam room and pool – with 13 other young people.

But not all realtors say house prices are cratering in Vancouver.

David Peerless, manager of Dexter Realty, says the local market is “in the process of stabilizing and correcting as we speak.” In 2008, he adds, the market dropped significantly, “then recovered 100 per cent the following year.”

West Side realtor Carole Lieberman says she considers the softened market “the best buying opportunity for West Side detached properties in years."

As Ms. Lieberman notes, price declines vary across the spectrum and are much more moderate at the lower end and on the city’s east side, where the market is still showing signs of life.


This property, located on Vancouver’s West Side, sold for $4.1-million this year, $2-million less than its sale price a year ago.
Rafal Gerszak/The Globe and Mail
For the first time in his 30-year career as a foreclosure lawyer, Lindsey Goldberg is seeing defaults hit the Lower Mainland’s two most exclusive communities: West Vancouver and Vancouver’s West Side. “These places are home to very wealthy individuals – people who had no problem getting their hands on money when they ran into trouble."

Consumer insolvencies are up 6 per cent from a year ago, the largest jump since the Great Recession. But it can take several years for rising rates to be reflected in default figures, says Blair Mantin of Sands and Associates, B.C.’s largest insolvency firm. This quarter, the firm recorded its busiest January, February, March and April in its 30-year history. Mr. Mantin has hired five new staff, expecting business will continue to grow in tandem with the correction.

Last year, the Bank of Canada increased its benchmark rate three times to 1.75 per cent. For the first time in 25 years, households are going to be renewing their mortgages at higher rates. That’s when things are going to get ugly, Mr. Mantin predicts. “You’re going to start seeing people who are maxed out and can’t get refinancing.”

He thinks Vancouverites are still in denial about what lies ahead. We’ve reached our Wile E. Coyote moment, he says, referring to the hapless antihero of the Road Runner cartoons, a dreamer puffed up on arrogance and ambition.

”We’ve run off the cliff and just looked down. Beneath us, there’s nothing but thin air. Right now we’re pumping our legs, hanging in the wind.”
Deal Expert
Feb 29, 2008
21738 posts
21353 upvotes
Tarrana & The Ri…
Buyers sitting on the sidelines as they should be. I don't think these are the buyers that can't afford housing. I think these are the smart buyers not wanting to catch a dropping knife. It's all going to come down and rules were put in place to do that. I don't understand why the articles of "shock" or even people here surprised by any of this. Again, this is a man-made drop. Maybe it needed to happen, but nothing about Vancouver surprises me. This was the intention.
Deal Addict
Jul 3, 2007
4153 posts
4626 upvotes
Toronto
civiclease wrote: Birth tourism from China will save Vancouver’s real estate market. When these babies grow up they will provide extra demand for condos. Buy buy buy!

https://vancouversun.com/news/local-new ... h-tourists

Ads urging women to come to Canada to give birth tout the value of providing their child with Canadian citizenship.

“Go to Canada to vacation and give birth to a child,” says one online ad targeting Mainland Chinese mothers. “U.S. rejected your visa? No problem! In fact, Canada is better!”

Ads tell women that going to Canada for automatic citizenship is a “gift” for their babies since their children will be able to get free education, cheap university tuition and student loans, according to translations provided by Liberal MLA Jas Johal and verified by Postmedia.
22% of babies born at one of the Richmond hospitals were from non resident mothers...

what an absolute joke this country has become....

meanwhile the government is about to boot the international student from India who worked too much while he was in school here...

https://vancouversun.com/news/local-new ... es-to-rise
Deal Guru
Feb 9, 2009
12381 posts
11307 upvotes
civiclease wrote: Yikes. Languages have races now!

Deep thoughts, from the comedy channel.
So you prejudice against the Chinese language?
Last edited by Sanyo on May 18th, 2019 10:52 am, edited 1 time in total.
Deal Guru
Feb 9, 2009
12381 posts
11307 upvotes
joepipe wrote: 22% of babies born at one of the Richmond hospitals were from non resident mothers...

what an absolute joke this country has become....

meanwhile the government is about to boot the international student from India who worked too much while he was in school here...

https://vancouversun.com/news/local-new ... es-to-rise
well what are u gonna do? Ban foreigners from travelling here? Strip birthright away? Gotta do something drastic to stop if
Deal Expert
Feb 29, 2008
21738 posts
21353 upvotes
Tarrana & The Ri…
Don't let that inner trump come out...you can see it come out in this thread every once in a while.
Deal Fanatic
Oct 7, 2007
9404 posts
5374 upvotes
datoprookie wrote: I've had the chance to speak with Eby at a charity event, he is very smart and articulate. I'm sure he could lineup favors from developers like every other politician but the man has integrity. Also average salaries for physicians in BC is North of 250K so I am sure their family will be just fine. He is the star of the party and a future premier, if they had any worries about him losing Point Grey they can move him to a cupcake riding. But with regards to Point Grey, he won by a considerable margin last election (56% to 33% for the Liberals) as well as defeating the former premier in 2013 in this same riding which sent her running to Kelowna.
Eby's constituents seem very unhappy with him based on the last 3 or 4 anti-school tax rallies I have attended over the last year and a bit. However, if he delivers results perhaps he will get re-elected if he moves to a different riding. I think to a lot of people he LOOKS like he is going to do something when we seem him make appearances but whether he will ACTUALLY DELIVER is yet to be seen.
Deal Addict
Jul 3, 2007
4153 posts
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Toronto
Sanyo wrote: well what are u gonna do? Ban foreigners from travelling here? Strip birthright away? Gotta do something drastic to stop if
why should citizenship and benefits be automatic because a baby is born here by a non resident with no work permit, etc.

no intention of working here, paying taxes, contributing....... they are just looking for the free handouts....

.....this is outright theft and abuse of taxpayer money....its unbelievable how weak and stupid this country is.....


Deal Fanatic
User avatar
Oct 23, 2003
8455 posts
2000 upvotes
Sanyo wrote: well what are u gonna do? Ban foreigners from travelling here? Strip birthright away? Gotta do something drastic to stop if
birth citizenship is a colonial thing, when population was in the 5 to 7 figures for a new colony. We dont need that any longer. No country truly does.

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