(自Vancouver Sun)Was driving down Oak Street Tuesday night. Going to dinner downtown. My wife warns me, watch out for car ahead of us, it’s drifting into our lane. The car, creeping down Oak, has an “N” in back window. A new driver. The car is a Bentley Continental, list price well over $200,000. The driver is young Asian guy.

Let me be honest, since we are often not honest when it comes to owning up to these sentiments.

If I attempted to beguile you into believing that I, at that point, did not feel the pang of resentment toward the driver simply for what I imagined he represented and not for his driving skill, I would be lying.

It was all there for me to loathe and envy — the spoiled one per center, the rise of Asia, the jarring display of wealth out of all proportion to its surroundings, the sense that Canada was being played by opportunistic immigrants.

For all I know, the guy could have been a sixth-generation Canadian whose forebears had worked a claim in the Barkerville gold fields.

But experience dictated, and my own prejudices led me to believe, that he wasn’t. The sight of young Asian immigrant kids in luxury sports cars is so common it has entered the urban folklore of Metro Vancouver.

And that was only one personal vignette that, rightly or wrongly, plays itself out thousands of times a day in Metro Vancouver. They all give rise to the same resentment. That resentment can be about cars, or real estate, or schooling, or even about the sense that a luxury store was targeting only wealthy immigrants.

And when the federal government killed the investor-class immigrant program last week, it played on that resentment, too, maintaining in its news release announcing the program’s closure that a millionaire investor immigrant could pay less in tax than an immigrant who works as a live-in caregiver. It was put in terms — stereotypical terms — to give the impression that some kind of injustice was being committed. Sly, scofflaw millionaire! Poor, upright caregiver!

But the millionaire was only playing by the rules. It was the feds’ lax regulatory structure that messed things up.

The program deserved to be scrapped, no question. There was a poor return on investment, and a huge discounting of the buy-in when compared to the programs of other nations. We woefully undersold ourselves.

But money wasn’t the real problem. The real problem was the damage it has done to the social fabric.

When the feds decided to import a wealthy class rather than create one, it made two mistakes that did more to divide Metro Vancouver along financial and racial lines than any other phenomenon:

One, the government never thought out the rationale behind the investor program or its social consequences. Was it real desire that brought that class of immigrants here, or convenience? Did they bring just their money with them, or their hearts, too?

The suspicion, in the end, was, neither.

Two, since the overwhelming majority of that class of immigrants have been Asian, and the overwhelming majority of those Asians have been Hong Kong or mainland Chinese, the investor program succeeded in conflating flaunted wealth, which always causes envy, with race, which brings its own set of problems.

So while the overall numbers and economic effect of the investor-class immigrants may be small — and I’ve never bought into the argument that they alone have driven the rise in real estate prices — their visibility has had a much greater effect on racial stereotyping and the city’s sense of fracturing social cohesion. That is, it isn’t just the immigrant communities that have been self-ghettoizing.

It also brought into question the purpose of immigration. Should its purpose be altruistic or strictly economic?

Says Tsur Somerville, professor with the University of B.C.’s Sauder School of Business: “I find it a mind-boggling program. I know it’s a U.S. thing with the give-me-your-huddled-masses-yearning-to-be-free ethic ... but somehow the overwhelmingly wealthy don’t fit into that category for me.”

And more pragmatically, Somerville felt the investor program lacked a clear economic rationale.

“If you’re going to bring in investors, make them be investors in areas that your domestic economy is not providing.”

(The U.S. EB-5 investor-class program, for example, is designed mainly for job creation, especially in low-employment areas.)

“And if you’re bringing in investors, it’s because you believe your capital markets aren’t working well ... or there’s a capital shortage in Canada, so you bring in people who have capital. You’d be doing something like that, but that’s not what we’re doing.”

What we were doing with the investor-class program, the feds have admitted, was wrong, but not for the reasons the feds gave.

It was wrong because we failed to make the distinction between being an “investor” in Canada and being “invested” in Canada, and we’re all poorer for it.

pmcmartin@vancouversun.com

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译文

温哥华有英文报纸专栏作者发表文章，支持联邦撤销投资移民项目，并指一些投资移民是来自亚洲的富裕阶层，与本地社会格格不入，甚至因炫富而造成种族歧视、引发不满的恶果。

《温哥华太阳报》(Vancouver Sun)专栏作者麦克马丁(Pete McMartin)，周四在题为《温哥华不会记住投资移民计划》（Investor-class Immigrant Program won't be missed in Vancouver）文章指出，「每个人都有著同样的不满，皆因这些（名贵）汽车、豪宅、教育，甚至专门针对富有移民的奢侈品商店。联邦政府上周决定撤掉投资移民类别时候，正是这种不满占上风。当局的新闻稿指这是因为太多百万富翁在加拿大不交税，或者交的税少过居家保母。以这种定型化术语，得出印象是缺乏公义。恶劣丑陋的百万富翁，可怜的保母！」

马丁原文：

周二晚上我们沿着Oak街开车，去市中心吃饭。我妻子提心我小心前面那辆车，似乎想要换线。

这辆车的后车窗贴着N牌，显然是个新司机。这辆车是一辆宾利，售价超过20万加币。司机是个年轻的亚洲小伙子。

说实话吧，因为我们总不太想承认这些小情绪。

如果我尝试让你相信，我，在那一刻，没对这个司机代表的——我想象中代表的，以及他的车技，有那么一丝一毫的厌恶，我就是在撒谎。

我讨厌他，嫉妒他，这些被宠坏了的百分之一，亚洲的崛起，毫无掩饰与周围不相称的财富，那种加拿大似乎被这些机会主义移民耍了的耻辱感。

但事实上，他可能是第六代加拿大移民，他的先祖曾在Barkerville的金矿埋头苦干。

但经验至上。我的偏见之上。我就是相信，他不是。亚洲年轻人开始好坏跑车在这个城市如此常见，已经尽人皆知。

这不过是我个人对这件事的正确或错误的理解，但可能每天在温哥华上演无数遍。每个人都有着同样的厌恶，因为这些车，房子，教育，甚至专门针对财富移民的奢侈品商店。

联邦政府上个周决定废除投资移民类别的时候，我的这种仇恨也占了上风。我兀自相信，这是因为太多百万富翁在加拿大不交税，或者交的税比他们的保姆还少。这样做才是公正平等的体现!恶劣丑陋的百万富翁，哼!可怜正义的住家保姆!

但这些百万富翁也没有违法啊。是联邦政府自己的规范架构不足，才导致这一切的发生。

这个项目的确应该被废，没什么好说的。投资收益比太差，和其它国家相比，我们实在把自己低价出卖了。

但钱不是真正的问题。真正的问题是，它给社会结构带来的破坏。

但联邦政府决定引进一个财富阶层而非创造一个的时候，就犯了两个错误，把大温根据财富和种族划分而开：

其一，政府从未想过投资移民背后的理念或者其带来的社会后果。你是真的想把这些人带进加拿大还是只为了方便?他们会带着他们的钱来，还是带着他们的心来?

最终，我们的答案全部都是否定的。

其二，因为绝大部分这类移民都来自亚洲，而绝大部分亚洲移民都来自香港和大陆，投资移民项目直接就带来了大量的财富，而因此引发种族嫉妒等一系列的问题。

尽管就实际数字和投资移民带来的经济影响可能不大，我也从不相信就是他们导致本地房产市场价格大涨的，他们的存在让种族形象再次固化，也影响了这个城市对社会整体度的分裂。事实上，移民社区并没有自我封闭。

我们还要探讨移民的目的问题。应该是无我利他的还是纯粹经济至上的?

卑诗大学商学院教授Tsur Somerville表示：“这个移民项目不合理。我知道这是一种美国的理念，对追求自由的人们来者不拒，但这种理念并不适用于有钱人。”

Somerville也不能理解这个项目背后的经济远离。

“如果你要带入投资者，那得让他们投入到你的国内经济无法投入的领域。”

(美国的EB-5投资移民项目，就是专门为低就业率地区创造工作机会而设。)

“而且如果你要带入投资者，那是因为你相信你的资本市场运作不良……或者加拿大缺乏资金，所以你带入有资本的人。你得那样做，但我们不是。”

我们在做的，就像联邦政府承认的那样，是错误的，但不是联邦政府说的原因。

它的错误在与，我们没能区分作为加拿大投资者和被投资到加拿大的区别。也因此，我们都更穷了。