I’m surprised, so it seems like most tariffs are falling towards zero on all products except agriculture and cars below 17,000$ in the coming few years.
Especially cars, India has had insane tariffs on luxury cars and motorcycles that will disappear, which is interesting. On the face this seems like a good deal for India as India can probably export much more than EU can to India except for a few sectors like Automobiles and Chips, but who knows, I assume EU officials seem to think the gains in a few high tech sectors are enough to offset the cheap goods on all other sectors.
This is excellent, the duopoly discussions of the world mostly center around US and China and EU feels increasingly excluded while the rest of the world appears as footnote for good or bad reasons. I do hope this means there is enough dynamism in global trade.
The current challenge is that China has so much industrial overcapacity that it possibly can sell goods at near , sometimes even below mfg costs which makes it difficult if not impossible for India or other country made goods to even think of competing in the middle part of the value chain. Yet, it is the only hope for India to climb at least slightly even if they can never hope to get to the frontier of mfg. Chinese goals now are to amortize their existing mfg investments in any way possible but they still find it difficult to spur domestic consumption
Europe and the EU, Japan are vassal states curently occupied by the US. China, Russia, India are largely independent states. I am sure once Europe is not occupied, it will be talked about more.
The mobility discussion is interesting to me as someone who navigated US immigration.
Moving countries is hard. Not just paperwork hard, but restarting-your-life hard. Credit history, professional networks, understanding how things actually work versus how they officially work.
If the mobility framework makes it meaningfully easier for skilled workers to move between India and Europe, that's significant. Not because of labor economics, but because talented people having more options is generally good for everyone.
The H1B system in the US has created a lot of anxiety and frustration. Competition for that talent pool seems healthy.
But no, you can make 3-4x in the US. That’s not an exaggeration. And before someone says ‘free healthcare’, big-tech employers in the US provide pretty nice insurance for employees that caps maximum out of pocket expenses to about a week of your salary.
EU (except Zurich and London) tech salaries have sort of stagnated to a point that you make about the same in Bangalore, and spend significantly more.
> But no, you can make 3-4x in the US. That’s not an exaggeration
Eh, we'll see how long that lasts as the transition from financial capital to global pariah progresses. It's quite possible that our labor is extremely overvalued.
Right now it relies on silicon valley's ability to churn out unicorns again and again.
That part seems to be taking an ugly turn nowadays by a bunch of military AI/drone swarm/etc focused startups. I'm guessing that eventually after the Apple/Google model of making money is dead, you'll have to work for Skynet if you want to make money.
Free education and childcare doesn’t come close to shrinking a 300k USD gap in total compensation. Real number in my case, I looked into moving to Berlin last year.
> Not to mention the fascism problem of course.
Agreed.
The US is going in a terrible direction with this. I hope Europe has learned from history and won’t follow.
The soft power stuff has been canned. That has not generated good will, but that act pales compared to kidnapping, threats to invade various places and the destabilising effects of chaos as a leadership strategy.
It's an MoU to "discuss" mobility with no commitment to actually deciding anything: "[a]dopted as a memorandum of understanding in parallel with the finalisation of the FTA, offers an excellent opportunity for us to cooperate on facilitating labour mobility, supporting skills development and capacity building, and working on skills and qualification frameworks" [0].
Notice how this entire thread got derailed by low karma accounts dogwhistling immigration instead of discussing how the deal expanded European industrial and chemical exports to India by giving them a tariff rate under that which is Chinese trans-shipped products via ASEAN get and now includes India as part of ReArm Europe [1] - the EU's defense fund for European and Ukrainian rearmament [2].
Who needs far right funded farmers when you have anonymous social media accounts stirring $hit instead. That said, the deal will go through because the right businesses and unions were mollified over the past 2-3 years building up to this.
> talented people having more options is generally good for everyone
While I support free markets, that argument sounds a bit like the basis of the old 'trickle-down economics' and similar theories such as global free trade: Help the wealthy and the benefits will 'trickle down' to everyone else.
It turns out that if you help the wealthy, then the wealthy benefit. I know that doesn't sound like a surprising result when it's said that way, but the point is that the rest is a convenient fiction the wealthy tell themselves and politicians tell the public, in order to serve themselves.
In the US for example, those policies have led to historic increases in wealth for the few, and stagnated wages for the many. On the other hand, in less well off economies such as China and Brazil, the policies led to historic numbers lifted out of poverty - far more than anything in history. So that's a great result that we absolutely should not ignore or put a stop to. I support free trade.
But if the policy isn't specifically designed to benefit workers in the US, for example, if they are left to get theoretical second or third order theoretical benefits, it won't work for them. It's not 'generally good for everyone' unless it's made that way.
Switzerland has a free trade deal with India already and has a huge trade surplus (~25B). Free trade with china too and also a big trade surplus of around $20B.
Canada is embarking on a trade agreement with India and collectively our greatest fear is the immigration issue. Canada's immigration is already quite lop-sided.
Immigration is absolutely a part of this deal. Interestingly, EU official communications and western media barely mention this, but the Indian government's official communication tout a "new framework for mobility" that will "open up new opportunities in the European Union for Indian students, workers, and professionals." [1]
The quote is “Alongside this ambitious FTA, we are also creating a new framework for mobility. This will open up new opportunities in the European Union for Indian students, workers, and professionals.”
I read it as he is working on a separate deal besides the aforementioned FTA.
They get less Indians in their country, while giving their problems to other countries to deal with. Western leaders are insane to think flooding their already resource constrained and overcrowded countries with thousands of 3rd worlders is a good thing for their nation. How are housing, health care, insurance and other public benefit costs now? Would competing against many more people in your territory in the zero-sum conflict for these resources be a good thing for the average European? Of course not. Just like it's not good for the average American or Canadian.
Additionally, diluting the native population's power in democratic politics where ethnic blocks equal more votes and more power, it is doubly bad for the current citizens of Western nations.
India gets a metric fuckload of money back in remittances every year. Debatable if that's actually worth the brain drain, but then there's also the angle of having your young people learn from the rest of the world and return with new skills. I lean more towards the remittances though.
> Canada's immigration is already quite lop-sided.
I don't even understand what "lop-sided" means here.
Would you say that Canada's oil and softwood businesses are lop-sided because we produce and export a lot of it? Or that the groceries' market is lop-sided because we don't produce a lot of it and therefore have to import?
Canada is an importer of people (not only from India) because it can't produce a lot of people. It is not different from groceries.
Is India lacking in variety? It has more languages than Europe.
Variety isn't a bad idea in and of itself. But you're making the mistake of assuming all the people who live inside a particular nation's boundaries are the same.
The majority of Indian immigrants to Canada are coming from one state, Punjab, so the benefits of diversity within India is not necessarily reflected in the Indians coming to Canada.
Because there are so many Indians around, newly arrived Indians tend to spend most of their time with other Indians, and as a result don't integrate with the rest of society as much as previously waves of immigrants did. Canada is a cultural mosaic, but a certain degree of intermixing and assimilation is necessary, in my opinion, to preserve social and national bonds.
Do you appreciate that, in the wider historical context, this position is an exceptionally radical one? You seem to not understand how there could even exist a difference of opinion on this, but I'm confident that this outlook of humans as being completely fungible, transactional economic units would appear unthinkable to anyone throughout 99% of human history. Just the suggestion that a nation's population should be restocked by swapping it out with another nation's population would be tantamount to treason any time prior to the revolution of the 1960s.
No, not totally, fair point. Immigration has cultural and social consequences that apples and oranges don't have.
However the fundamental justification for immigration is still an economic need. People willing to work and produce do have an healthy and desirable economic impact.
Leaving aside the fact that this is a single picture of a chart with no source provided (or sample size, or methodology)... that's eighth on that chart, not fifth, and just says "immigration" with no further detail.
Canada as a whole has been pro immigration for a long time, but our immigration system was broken in recent years, and the most visible consequence of that has been an enormous increase in low skill, low wage Indian workers. A lot of people who have never had issues with immigration policy before have become very anti Indian immigration as a result.
You don't understand, and your unwillingness to approach this issue with the nuance it deserves will only drive people towards right-wing extremists. These people are not racists! The federal government increased immigration (largely of TFWs and students) by far too much, and that has put an enormous strain on Canada's housing and job market. Canadians are turning against broken immigration policy, which has naturally become associated with its most visible aspect--the recently arrived, unskilled Indian worker. You must understand the negative sentiment is driven by association with bad government policy, not naive racism towards Indians. Of course, none of this is the fault of individual immigrants or TFWs, but they are part of the problem, because they are symptoms of it.
Racism is a serious allegation. Let's not cry wolf when there is a reasonable explanation here.
US immigration policy was explicitly racist from its founding up until the Hart Cellar act of 1965. Assuming that the 2016 election of Donald Trump is your benchmark for when immigration policy became determined by racists again, then the US's immigration policy was non-racist for 51 of the last 251 (and counting) years, or 20% of its history.
Safe to say that the 1990s "End of History" theory has been proven wrong. It may be that the ~1960s-2010s "post-national" political consensus was actually just a historical aberration that is still in the process of being unwound.
Canadians don't seem to have their priorities straight if they are more concerned about having a few more Indian neighbors than the US threatening to invade.
Ironically, the chart you've pointed out doesn't indicate the raw numbers, just proportions. 30% of immigrants being from India sounds perfectly reasonable. What's the problem?
It is worth adding here that in the years after Covid began, the raw number of immigrants reached record highs, in some years more than doubling the previous (steady) intake rate.
Way to fall-off from being the one source of news everyone in "Anglo" countries in the Third-World used to turn to (and love and respect... however biased the news may have been).
Edit: am trying to access from US, I see a paywall. Good to hear from comments that other countries don't see a paywall.
Huh, viewing from India here - no paywall. BBC can be biased, but it is very useful to know what the British state media thinks. This article is neutral reporting with barely any "analyst opinion" flavor.
Just for clarity: the BBC is not "state media," it's a public broadcaster. This is an important distinction as the UK Government cannot determine its agenda or directly influence its funding.
The BBC will regularly criticise the government, especially when it's a Labour government.
> US-based visitors to BBC.com will now have to pay $49.99 (£36) a year or $8.99 (£6.50) a month for access to most BBC News stories and features, and to stream the BBC News channel.
Only the US traffic has a paywall, there's none if you visit it from somewhere else. Understandable to charge people who don't pay for it with their taxes in my opinion, especially if you delivery videos and other expensive content for free without ads.
Most of these cuts happened under the previous government, including where they restricted how revenue from BBC World Service can be recycled into its local broadcasting. You'd almost think the Conservatives were trying to get rid of it.
There are another two hundred-odd countries who also do not pay for it with their taxes. The BBC has apparently not seen fit to paywall them. This is a very confusing and inconsistent move.
The other countries most likely don't make up such a big chunk of visits / costs.
FWIW: There's many news sources in the US (Usually regional news papers etc.) that just throw a forbidden or 402 status code right away at anyone not using a US IP.
> Delhi and Brussels have also agreed on a mobility framework that eases restrictions for professionals to travel between India and the EU in the short term.
This is great news for professionals wishing to move to the EU, and I hope many will use this opportunity.
How are people mistaking what is clearly easier business visas to facilitate short term visits for migration? The EU can't commit to changes on migration because individual countries decide that.
I always thought of Brussels as the city where decisions go to die; that the EU discusses everything, poses for pictures and solves nothing. Then, in less than a month we have the trade deal EU-Mercosur and this one with India.
Maybe the Europeans can actually solve problems, after all.
1.) These trade deals were discussed for 20 years.
2.) Politics always needs discussion of loosy "all people that matter"
3.) EU by definition has a broad definition of "everyone matters". That's why it is lame but that is why it is interesting for countries outside of the EU becoming a member.
4.) EU does get things done. Maybe you don't read the news (where do you live?)
It is funny that it took less time for South Americans to create the Mercosur and for the Pacific countries to create the trans-Pacific partnership than to negotiate any trade deals with the EU.
Of course that's probably not including things that aren't progressing for whatever reason. Otherwise, a lot of this isn't of much interest to someone on another continent.
my first points are about slowiness which is different to "nothing done". The EU has a wide array of free trade agreements.
"Latin American living in Canada."
Probably thats why you dont read about EU laws. Today Commission investigate into Google for breaking the DMA. The DMA itself is a very important piece of law.
My favorite part of this timeline is watching (union) leftists celebrate free trade and gun ownership.
The sad part is that as soon as someone wearing a blue shirt enters office, they will get right in line with whatever the blue shirt says. I saw this with Obama's drone strikes in Syria...
Moderates have always appreciated free trade, including Obama and Clinton, and to a lesser extent Biden. Heck, Republicans going anti-free trade is a relatively recent thing, it used to be moderates liked free trade, and so did the far right, now its just moderates liking on free trade and the far left and right not.
> I saw this with Obama's drone strikes in Syria...
Again, you are mistaking Obama for a far-left liberal when he was basically a moderate with no qualms on intervention. Now that we can compare Obama to a populist who claims to be but is not really a conservative either, I don't think we can claim much.
I'm not talking about the politician, but rather the base of supporters who quickly supported things that would have been trashed if the other team did it.
You are charactituring their supporters just like you are the politicians. There is a wide swatch of opposition to Trump: moderates like me, and far lefties that I don't normally agree with on much. Most of the opposition to Trump are from moderates (most Americans are in the middle somewhere), although the most visible opposition is are the far left activist types (because...well...they specialize in visibility). They weren't protesting tariffs, they are protesting ICE, so really they are pretty ideological consistent.
Party loyalists are moderates, the far left is the one that doesn't turn out to vote when Democrats aren't pursuing their agenda, they were the ones to get on the Bernie train, etc...
You know it's a good deal for the EU and India given that China has been attempting a diplomacy blitz against the deal [0] for [1] years [2] now [3].
Indian DefenseTech and Dual Use technologies vendors can also now participate in ReArm Europe/Readiness2030 [4] (the EU's Defense Modernization fund) as part of the India-EU Defense Pact [5] that was also signed, especially after the French Government identified [6] a Chinese-led disinformation operation against French and Indian DefenseTech which the DGSE reported on with AP [7].
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Edit: Notice how even on HN new accounts are suddenly popping up trying to make a wedge about this deal by dog whistling immigration even though mobility is not mentioned in the draft seen by Reuters and is a power that falls under individual state's sovereignity in the EU.
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Edit 2: Note the subsequent whataboutism that has arisen. A nation trying to conduct disinformation ops against another nation is an offensive action. It's the tip of the iceberg of attempts of foreign interference within France [8]
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Edit 3: Replying here
> I still don't know what 'diplomacy blitz' are you talking about.
The GT is the de facto voice of China's foreign policy, and has consistently viewed the EU-India deal as an attempt to isolate China. Additonally, Table Media (Germany's equivalent of Axios) noted He Lifeng's statements against the EU-India deal dueing Davos 2026, as the EU and India are investigating a compromise on CBAM for Indian exports.
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Edit 4: Unsurprisingly, the entire HN thread has been derailed by immigration.
As to your point [7], no need for China to "spread doubts about the performance of French-made Rafale ", I have at this very moment this book on my desk: Le Pouvoir sans visage: Le complexe militaro-industriel [1], written by a Pierre Marion [2], former head of the SDECE/DGSE in the early '80s, where said Pierre Marion does the same thing, i.e. he heavily criticises the Rafale programme and Dassault (the company and the man himself, Serge Dassault)
> Delhi and Brussels have also agreed on a mobility framework that eases restrictions for professionals to travel between India and the EU in the short term.
That should hopefully help increasing the much needed immigration.
I wonder if UK will also get a deal soon.
I’m surprised, so it seems like most tariffs are falling towards zero on all products except agriculture and cars below 17,000$ in the coming few years.
Especially cars, India has had insane tariffs on luxury cars and motorcycles that will disappear, which is interesting. On the face this seems like a good deal for India as India can probably export much more than EU can to India except for a few sectors like Automobiles and Chips, but who knows, I assume EU officials seem to think the gains in a few high tech sectors are enough to offset the cheap goods on all other sectors.
The cheap goods are already coming from China, so having more of it from India doesn't hurt them at all.
> cheap goods
In a cost of living crisis, maybe this is seen as a helpful import?
This is excellent, the duopoly discussions of the world mostly center around US and China and EU feels increasingly excluded while the rest of the world appears as footnote for good or bad reasons. I do hope this means there is enough dynamism in global trade.
The current challenge is that China has so much industrial overcapacity that it possibly can sell goods at near , sometimes even below mfg costs which makes it difficult if not impossible for India or other country made goods to even think of competing in the middle part of the value chain. Yet, it is the only hope for India to climb at least slightly even if they can never hope to get to the frontier of mfg. Chinese goals now are to amortize their existing mfg investments in any way possible but they still find it difficult to spur domestic consumption
Europe and the EU, Japan are vassal states curently occupied by the US. China, Russia, India are largely independent states. I am sure once Europe is not occupied, it will be talked about more.
The mobility discussion is interesting to me as someone who navigated US immigration.
Moving countries is hard. Not just paperwork hard, but restarting-your-life hard. Credit history, professional networks, understanding how things actually work versus how they officially work.
If the mobility framework makes it meaningfully easier for skilled workers to move between India and Europe, that's significant. Not because of labor economics, but because talented people having more options is generally good for everyone.
The H1B system in the US has created a lot of anxiety and frustration. Competition for that talent pool seems healthy.
The US is no longer in competition for that talent pool by its own deliberate actions.
Might we see a European flowering as the US chokes itself into a regional power?
Sure, if they want to pay decent salaries.
But no, you can make 3-4x in the US. That’s not an exaggeration. And before someone says ‘free healthcare’, big-tech employers in the US provide pretty nice insurance for employees that caps maximum out of pocket expenses to about a week of your salary.
EU (except Zurich and London) tech salaries have sort of stagnated to a point that you make about the same in Bangalore, and spend significantly more.
Conveniently enough, neither Zurich nor London are in the EU anyways!
You’re right, I meant Europe.
But makes me wonder if EU policies are contributing to wage stagnation.
There had been several high profile cases in the US about wage stagnation, so much that tech companies are a bit wary of this topic.
> But no, you can make 3-4x in the US. That’s not an exaggeration
Eh, we'll see how long that lasts as the transition from financial capital to global pariah progresses. It's quite possible that our labor is extremely overvalued.
Right now it relies on silicon valley's ability to churn out unicorns again and again.
That part seems to be taking an ugly turn nowadays by a bunch of military AI/drone swarm/etc focused startups. I'm guessing that eventually after the Apple/Google model of making money is dead, you'll have to work for Skynet if you want to make money.
Add free education and childcare to the mix and the difference shrinks quite a bit.
Not to mention the fascism problem of course.
Free education and childcare doesn’t come close to shrinking a 300k USD gap in total compensation. Real number in my case, I looked into moving to Berlin last year.
> Not to mention the fascism problem of course.
Agreed.
The US is going in a terrible direction with this. I hope Europe has learned from history and won’t follow.
> I hope Europe has learned from history and won’t follow.
France was recently an absolute inspiration in this regard.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgrlxn4ngdgo
That isn't at all what I'm seeing. I still have people from Europe asking me to sponsor their H1B.
That’s not true. Trump will be gone in a few years. Soft power and destabilizing many countries has done wonders for US hegemony.
The soft power stuff has been canned. That has not generated good will, but that act pales compared to kidnapping, threats to invade various places and the destabilising effects of chaos as a leadership strategy.
Does anyone have a detailed explainer on the mobility changes, or is it just not finalized yet?
It's an MoU to "discuss" mobility with no commitment to actually deciding anything: "[a]dopted as a memorandum of understanding in parallel with the finalisation of the FTA, offers an excellent opportunity for us to cooperate on facilitating labour mobility, supporting skills development and capacity building, and working on skills and qualification frameworks" [0].
Notice how this entire thread got derailed by low karma accounts dogwhistling immigration instead of discussing how the deal expanded European industrial and chemical exports to India by giving them a tariff rate under that which is Chinese trans-shipped products via ASEAN get and now includes India as part of ReArm Europe [1] - the EU's defense fund for European and Ukrainian rearmament [2].
Who needs far right funded farmers when you have anonymous social media accounts stirring $hit instead. That said, the deal will go through because the right businesses and unions were mollified over the past 2-3 years building up to this.
[0] - https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_...
[1] - https://theprint.in/diplomacy/india-eu-sign-security-defence...
[2] - https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2025/7695...
> talented people having more options is generally good for everyone
While I support free markets, that argument sounds a bit like the basis of the old 'trickle-down economics' and similar theories such as global free trade: Help the wealthy and the benefits will 'trickle down' to everyone else.
It turns out that if you help the wealthy, then the wealthy benefit. I know that doesn't sound like a surprising result when it's said that way, but the point is that the rest is a convenient fiction the wealthy tell themselves and politicians tell the public, in order to serve themselves.
In the US for example, those policies have led to historic increases in wealth for the few, and stagnated wages for the many. On the other hand, in less well off economies such as China and Brazil, the policies led to historic numbers lifted out of poverty - far more than anything in history. So that's a great result that we absolutely should not ignore or put a stop to. I support free trade.
But if the policy isn't specifically designed to benefit workers in the US, for example, if they are left to get theoretical second or third order theoretical benefits, it won't work for them. It's not 'generally good for everyone' unless it's made that way.
Switzerland has a free trade deal with India already and has a huge trade surplus (~25B). Free trade with china too and also a big trade surplus of around $20B.
I might be wrong, but isn't it due to them being a finance hub and/or Veblen goods?
These are a bit of a legacy thing that countries can't just develop.
Canada is embarking on a trade agreement with India and collectively our greatest fear is the immigration issue. Canada's immigration is already quite lop-sided.
Trade != Immigration
Immigration is absolutely a part of this deal. Interestingly, EU official communications and western media barely mention this, but the Indian government's official communication tout a "new framework for mobility" that will "open up new opportunities in the European Union for Indian students, workers, and professionals." [1]
[1] https://www.mea.gov.in/Speeches-Statements.htm?dtl%2F40615%2...
The quote is “Alongside this ambitious FTA, we are also creating a new framework for mobility. This will open up new opportunities in the European Union for Indian students, workers, and professionals.”
I read it as he is working on a separate deal besides the aforementioned FTA.
Right but if you want a favorable trade deal then you gotta throw in some immigration sweeteners.
Particularly with India, that's normally one of their top requests.
Why is it a top request from India? What does the Indian government get out of letting their kids overpay for education abroad?
1. ~4% of their GDP is from remittances, compared to <1% a few decades ago[0]
2. India has a massive male surplus[1] and they actively look to send them abroad to prevent domestic unrest
[0] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/BX.TRF.PWKR.DT.GD.ZS?lo...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_India
They get less Indians in their country, while giving their problems to other countries to deal with. Western leaders are insane to think flooding their already resource constrained and overcrowded countries with thousands of 3rd worlders is a good thing for their nation. How are housing, health care, insurance and other public benefit costs now? Would competing against many more people in your territory in the zero-sum conflict for these resources be a good thing for the average European? Of course not. Just like it's not good for the average American or Canadian.
Additionally, diluting the native population's power in democratic politics where ethnic blocks equal more votes and more power, it is doubly bad for the current citizens of Western nations.
India gets a metric fuckload of money back in remittances every year. Debatable if that's actually worth the brain drain, but then there's also the angle of having your young people learn from the rest of the world and return with new skills. I lean more towards the remittances though.
Mark Carney should know that it would be an _extremely_ unpopular move right now to allow India more access to immigrate here.
"Should know" and expecting a logical outcome is wishful.
> Canada's immigration is already quite lop-sided.
I don't even understand what "lop-sided" means here.
Would you say that Canada's oil and softwood businesses are lop-sided because we produce and export a lot of it? Or that the groceries' market is lop-sided because we don't produce a lot of it and therefore have to import?
Canada is an importer of people (not only from India) because it can't produce a lot of people. It is not different from groceries.
>because it can't produce a lot of people.
So does every country that can't grow it's population indefinitely need to import a ton of people? What is the endgame there?
And I thought trade in people as some kind of fungible economic token was out of vogue.
Why not import from a variety of countries to preserve the social fabric? https://preview.redd.it/in-the-first-three-months-of-2025-ca...
Is India lacking in variety? It has more languages than Europe.
Variety isn't a bad idea in and of itself. But you're making the mistake of assuming all the people who live inside a particular nation's boundaries are the same.
The majority of Indian immigrants to Canada are coming from one state, Punjab, so the benefits of diversity within India is not necessarily reflected in the Indians coming to Canada.
What does "preserve the social fabric" mean?
It's a dog whistle for 'keeping Canada white'. There are a lot of racists in Canada.
Because there are so many Indians around, newly arrived Indians tend to spend most of their time with other Indians, and as a result don't integrate with the rest of society as much as previously waves of immigrants did. Canada is a cultural mosaic, but a certain degree of intermixing and assimilation is necessary, in my opinion, to preserve social and national bonds.
It's what the Irish said to us Italians when we were immigrating to Canada in droves.
It's a much larger drove this time around, to be fair.
>I don't even understand [...]
>It is not different from groceries.
Do you appreciate that, in the wider historical context, this position is an exceptionally radical one? You seem to not understand how there could even exist a difference of opinion on this, but I'm confident that this outlook of humans as being completely fungible, transactional economic units would appear unthinkable to anyone throughout 99% of human history. Just the suggestion that a nation's population should be restocked by swapping it out with another nation's population would be tantamount to treason any time prior to the revolution of the 1960s.
Is it typical to consider immigration as a trade similar to apples and oranges?
No, not totally, fair point. Immigration has cultural and social consequences that apples and oranges don't have.
However the fundamental justification for immigration is still an economic need. People willing to work and produce do have an healthy and desirable economic impact.
To politicians and economists humans are fungible.
Do you feel like your govt represents you?
The current Carney govt? Maybe. Too soon to tell, but things are heading in the right direction.
The previous Trudeau govt? Absolutely not. He was the prime minister of everyone except Canadians.
> collectively our greatest fear
Citation very much needed. This sounds like _your_ concern that you're trying to launder through projecting onto the rest of the country.
Here ya go bud: https://abacusdata.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Slide6-1.pn...
It is one of the top 5 issues for ALL Canadians.
Leaving aside the fact that this is a single picture of a chart with no source provided (or sample size, or methodology)... that's eighth on that chart, not fifth, and just says "immigration" with no further detail.
Canada as a whole has been pro immigration for a long time, but our immigration system was broken in recent years, and the most visible consequence of that has been an enormous increase in low skill, low wage Indian workers. A lot of people who have never had issues with immigration policy before have become very anti Indian immigration as a result.
> A lot of people who have never had issues with immigration policy before have become very anti Indian immigration as a result.
So we just let racists determine national policy now? I wonder how that's working out in the US.
You don't understand, and your unwillingness to approach this issue with the nuance it deserves will only drive people towards right-wing extremists. These people are not racists! The federal government increased immigration (largely of TFWs and students) by far too much, and that has put an enormous strain on Canada's housing and job market. Canadians are turning against broken immigration policy, which has naturally become associated with its most visible aspect--the recently arrived, unskilled Indian worker. You must understand the negative sentiment is driven by association with bad government policy, not naive racism towards Indians. Of course, none of this is the fault of individual immigrants or TFWs, but they are part of the problem, because they are symptoms of it.
Racism is a serious allegation. Let's not cry wolf when there is a reasonable explanation here.
US immigration policy was explicitly racist from its founding up until the Hart Cellar act of 1965. Assuming that the 2016 election of Donald Trump is your benchmark for when immigration policy became determined by racists again, then the US's immigration policy was non-racist for 51 of the last 251 (and counting) years, or 20% of its history.
Safe to say that the 1990s "End of History" theory has been proven wrong. It may be that the ~1960s-2010s "post-national" political consensus was actually just a historical aberration that is still in the process of being unwound.
Canadians don't seem to have their priorities straight if they are more concerned about having a few more Indian neighbors than the US threatening to invade.
What's a "few more" to you?
Look at this chart for example: https://preview.redd.it/in-the-first-three-months-of-2025-ca...
Ironically, the chart you've pointed out doesn't indicate the raw numbers, just proportions. 30% of immigrants being from India sounds perfectly reasonable. What's the problem?
It is worth adding here that in the years after Covid began, the raw number of immigrants reached record highs, in some years more than doubling the previous (steady) intake rate.
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/71-607-x/71-607-x2025008...
That’s about 30k people? So a 0.075% increase in your population with people from India (Not accounting for any departures back to India)
That's 30%, not 30K
30% of 100k = 30k.
Welcome to the world by population that speaks English
It's insane to me that BBC now has a paywall.
Way to fall-off from being the one source of news everyone in "Anglo" countries in the Third-World used to turn to (and love and respect... however biased the news may have been).
Edit: am trying to access from US, I see a paywall. Good to hear from comments that other countries don't see a paywall.
Huh, viewing from India here - no paywall. BBC can be biased, but it is very useful to know what the British state media thinks. This article is neutral reporting with barely any "analyst opinion" flavor.
Just for clarity: the BBC is not "state media," it's a public broadcaster. This is an important distinction as the UK Government cannot determine its agenda or directly influence its funding.
The BBC will regularly criticise the government, especially when it's a Labour government.
> US-based visitors to BBC.com will now have to pay $49.99 (£36) a year or $8.99 (£6.50) a month for access to most BBC News stories and features, and to stream the BBC News channel.
Only the US traffic has a paywall, there's none if you visit it from somewhere else. Understandable to charge people who don't pay for it with their taxes in my opinion, especially if you delivery videos and other expensive content for free without ads.
It should be funded as part of spreading the British viewpoint, promoting British values, culture and so on — i.e. maintaining "soft power".
I would have expected Britain to realize this and continue funding it.
Most of these cuts happened under the previous government, including where they restricted how revenue from BBC World Service can be recycled into its local broadcasting. You'd almost think the Conservatives were trying to get rid of it.
There are another two hundred-odd countries who also do not pay for it with their taxes. The BBC has apparently not seen fit to paywall them. This is a very confusing and inconsistent move.
> BBC.com reaches 139 million visitors globally, including almost 60 million in the US, the corporation said.
From: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2vgkn7w10o
The other countries most likely don't make up such a big chunk of visits / costs.
FWIW: There's many news sources in the US (Usually regional news papers etc.) that just throw a forbidden or 402 status code right away at anyone not using a US IP.
I don't see the paywall. EU-bound.
> Delhi and Brussels have also agreed on a mobility framework that eases restrictions for professionals to travel between India and the EU in the short term.
This is great news for professionals wishing to move to the EU, and I hope many will use this opportunity.
How are people mistaking what is clearly easier business visas to facilitate short term visits for migration? The EU can't commit to changes on migration because individual countries decide that.
The quote uses the words mobility and travel and short term. It doesn’t mention residency or work permit. Am I missing something?
More indian IT imports that get to enjoy Europe...
EU will scuttle the trade deal to protect the niche interests of French onion farmers. See Mercosur.
This is fantastic, just another step of trade moving away from being US-centric.
Everyone is just going to move on and ignore the silly tariffs.
I am pleasantly surprised.
I always thought of Brussels as the city where decisions go to die; that the EU discusses everything, poses for pictures and solves nothing. Then, in less than a month we have the trade deal EU-Mercosur and this one with India.
Maybe the Europeans can actually solve problems, after all.
1.) These trade deals were discussed for 20 years. 2.) Politics always needs discussion of loosy "all people that matter" 3.) EU by definition has a broad definition of "everyone matters". That's why it is lame but that is why it is interesting for countries outside of the EU becoming a member.
4.) EU does get things done. Maybe you don't read the news (where do you live?)
Well, I take 1-3 as evidence for my point.
It is funny that it took less time for South Americans to create the Mercosur and for the Pacific countries to create the trans-Pacific partnership than to negotiate any trade deals with the EU.
> where do you live?
Latin American living in Canada.
You can see the news the EU reports here, in case you are interested: https://european-union.europa.eu/news-and-events/news-and-st...
Of course that's probably not including things that aren't progressing for whatever reason. Otherwise, a lot of this isn't of much interest to someone on another continent.
my first points are about slowiness which is different to "nothing done". The EU has a wide array of free trade agreements.
"Latin American living in Canada." Probably thats why you dont read about EU laws. Today Commission investigate into Google for breaking the DMA. The DMA itself is a very important piece of law.
This will strengthen relationship and stabilize the economy a lot in the face of Trumps tariff shenanigans.
My favorite part of this timeline is watching (union) leftists celebrate free trade and gun ownership.
The sad part is that as soon as someone wearing a blue shirt enters office, they will get right in line with whatever the blue shirt says. I saw this with Obama's drone strikes in Syria...
Moderates have always appreciated free trade, including Obama and Clinton, and to a lesser extent Biden. Heck, Republicans going anti-free trade is a relatively recent thing, it used to be moderates liked free trade, and so did the far right, now its just moderates liking on free trade and the far left and right not.
> I saw this with Obama's drone strikes in Syria...
Again, you are mistaking Obama for a far-left liberal when he was basically a moderate with no qualms on intervention. Now that we can compare Obama to a populist who claims to be but is not really a conservative either, I don't think we can claim much.
I'm not talking about the politician, but rather the base of supporters who quickly supported things that would have been trashed if the other team did it.
You are charactituring their supporters just like you are the politicians. There is a wide swatch of opposition to Trump: moderates like me, and far lefties that I don't normally agree with on much. Most of the opposition to Trump are from moderates (most Americans are in the middle somewhere), although the most visible opposition is are the far left activist types (because...well...they specialize in visibility). They weren't protesting tariffs, they are protesting ICE, so really they are pretty ideological consistent.
Again, I'm not talking about moderates. I'm talking about party loyalists.
I admittedly am part of a trade organization, so I am quite friendly to both teams. Call what I see intuition. I usually place these numbers at:
>Total Loyalists: 30-40%
>Ideological Believers: 30-40%
>Ambitious Opportunists: 30%
> I'm talking about party loyalists.
Party loyalists are moderates, the far left is the one that doesn't turn out to vote when Democrats aren't pursuing their agenda, they were the ones to get on the Bernie train, etc...
> Call what I see intuition.
Sure, it is obviously not fact driven.
Reuters has the draft terms - https://www.reuters.com/world/india/details-eu-india-trade-d.... Mobility is not mentioned.
You know it's a good deal for the EU and India given that China has been attempting a diplomacy blitz against the deal [0] for [1] years [2] now [3].
Indian DefenseTech and Dual Use technologies vendors can also now participate in ReArm Europe/Readiness2030 [4] (the EU's Defense Modernization fund) as part of the India-EU Defense Pact [5] that was also signed, especially after the French Government identified [6] a Chinese-led disinformation operation against French and Indian DefenseTech which the DGSE reported on with AP [7].
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Edit: Notice how even on HN new accounts are suddenly popping up trying to make a wedge about this deal by dog whistling immigration even though mobility is not mentioned in the draft seen by Reuters and is a power that falls under individual state's sovereignity in the EU.
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Edit 2: Note the subsequent whataboutism that has arisen. A nation trying to conduct disinformation ops against another nation is an offensive action. It's the tip of the iceberg of attempts of foreign interference within France [8]
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Edit 3: Replying here
> I still don't know what 'diplomacy blitz' are you talking about.
The GT is the de facto voice of China's foreign policy, and has consistently viewed the EU-India deal as an attempt to isolate China. Additonally, Table Media (Germany's equivalent of Axios) noted He Lifeng's statements against the EU-India deal dueing Davos 2026, as the EU and India are investigating a compromise on CBAM for Indian exports.
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Edit 4: Unsurprisingly, the entire HN thread has been derailed by immigration.
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[0] - https://table.media/china/thema-des-tages/indien-weshalb-chi...
[1] - https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202105/1222983.shtml
[2] - https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202105/1222993.shtml
[3] - https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202010/1205230.shtml
[4] - https://theprint.in/diplomacy/india-eu-sign-security-defence...
[5] - https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/security-and-defence-eu-and-...
[6] - https://www.defense.gouv.fr/desinformation/nos-analyses-froi...
[7] - https://apnews.com/article/france-china-pakistan-india-defen...
[8] - https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2024/07/02/deux-espio...
For people who don't know who alephnerd is, check their past comments on geopolitics. They're one of the more well informed commenters on HN.
>Mobility is not mentioned.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_...
I read the three articles that you mention [0][1] and [2] and I still don't know what 'diplomacy blitz' are you talking about.
To your edit, its one newish account quoting the article and being pro immigration. Its a completely fine comment. You should calm down.
> its one newish account quoting the article and being pro immigration
The comment is so absurdly out of step that it's clearly just trying to stir the issue.
As to your point [7], no need for China to "spread doubts about the performance of French-made Rafale ", I have at this very moment this book on my desk: Le Pouvoir sans visage: Le complexe militaro-industriel [1], written by a Pierre Marion [2], former head of the SDECE/DGSE in the early '80s, where said Pierre Marion does the same thing, i.e. he heavily criticises the Rafale programme and Dassault (the company and the man himself, Serge Dassault)
[1] https://www.amazon.fr/Pouvoir-sans-visage-complexe-militaro-...)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Marion
> Delhi and Brussels have also agreed on a mobility framework that eases restrictions for professionals to travel between India and the EU in the short term.
That should hopefully help increasing the much needed immigration.
EU would be stupid to miss the opportunity after US crackdown on H1B.
GOOD LUCK
I hope for our (India's) sake, it doesn't. We need to keep as much talent here as we can.
It's cheapest for the employer to keep it in India itself.
Notice how new accounts are suddenly popping up trying to make a wedge about this deal by using immigration as a wedge issue.
Edit: The BBC article is wrong, as can be seen by the draft reported by Reuters [0]
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/india/details-eu-india-trade-d...
It's in the BBC's article.
Wedge issue? EU youth unemployment is 15%.
More entrepreneurs will help with youth unemployment
What is the BBC article wrong about?
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