Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watnot!watdcsu!brewster From: brewster@watdcsu.UUCP Newsgroups: can.politics Subject: Re: Foreign students treated unfairly. Message-ID: <3094@watdcsu.UUCP> Date: Fri, 6-Mar-87 14:56:38 EST Article-I.D.: watdcsu.3094 Posted: Fri Mar 6 14:56:38 1987 Date-Received: Sun, 8-Mar-87 07:54:16 EST References: <8178@watdaisy.UUCP> <2396@watdragon.UUCP> <847@watmum.UUCP> <2408@watdragon.UUCP> Distribution: can Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario Lines: 99 >From: brkirby@watdragon.UUCP (Bruce Kirby) >I have just one question: > Can "domestic" students collect UI? Yes and no. I know of several people who graduated at the same time as I did, who arranged to start a full time job in September, arranged to work as camp counsellors at resort camps for the summer while being paid under the table, and collected UI for the summer as they had workterms to support minimum number of weeks worked. Ethically disgusting, but it happened. Now that this loophole has been mentioned publicly, do you think UI will be able to close it down ?? I don't think so because people who are willing to lie have an extremely easy job in scamming UI, which is a weakness of the system given that there will always be people who are willing to lie. I know of another student who worked at a company in Toronto that went bankrupt. The bankruptcy happened four weeks before the end of the workterm and so he couldn't find other employment. UI will not pay any compensation for this time out of work because "there was no reasonable expectation of finding suitable employment for the time period in question". Which brings up the point that UI is really a misnomer. UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE IS NOT AN INSURANCE PROGRAM !!!! In the UI program the people who are least likely to require support pay the most, the people who are most likely to require support pay the least or nothing. There is no concept of risk of being unemployed, so that the grade 10 dropout pays the same as the college grad, although one is more "employable" than the other. There is no concept of being allowed to withdraw based on what you had put in, which would have allowed the friend who was out of work three weeks to withdraw some of savings he had presumably built up in the plan over previous workterms. There is no concept of opting out of the plan. The plan is full of loop holes which any regular insurance company would close up before you could say "sinking profit margin" due to money lost through the loopholes to unscrupulous individuals. The point being, UI really isn't an unemployment insurance scheme in any normal manner of understanding of the concept of insurance. It is just a method of collecting general taxes from those who are employed. i.e. the UI you pay doesn't go into a special pot designated for payouts in the future, as normal insurance would, but rather goes into general government revenues. The regular insurance companies are worried because they don't think they're going to have enough in their "pot" to cover future payments if the courts keep awarding huge settlements. I am not sure if UI input has ever matched UI outputs, (and it certainly doesn't now with unemployment at 9%), but have you ever heard the government scream about this imbalance ?? How many hours would Brian last as leader if he proposed that UI output = UI input ?? The government doesn't even count UI payments as expenditures, but as extraordinary items. The deficit figures of approx 30 billion annually do not include approx 7 billion payed out for UI. This despite the fact that the "extraordinary" items happen every year, despite the accounting method having been argued against by the auditor-general. Given that Canadians have chosen to maintain a "safety net", I think we should at least be honest about how we go about collecting the revenue to pay for this net, as opposed to pretending that UI is an insurance plan to protect against unemployment, because it isn't. This would also stop confusion regarding who is entitled to the money, as has happened recently with some foreign students. Conclusion : foreign students pay UI only when they happen to get a paying job, and inasmuch as the UI they pay is being collected as general tax revenue, there is no reason to expect that they will ever see any back again, in the form of UI benefits. They see it indirectly however in the institution they attend as a large majority of at least the infrastructure of the place is supported by public money. It also is seen indirectly in the general state of society around them (no bombs in the streets, no guerilla-warfare on the campus, public hospital for life threatening emergencies in every town, publications devoted to free speach by all individuals, etc, etc). It takes money to provide and maintain this state of society, and in large part that is what the foreign student receives for their UI/tax dollar. I don't really think they should expect anymore. They can expect to be told the truth about the situation however, and have every right to be angry about the fact that they were mislead to believe that UI is somehow related to a regular insurance program that would necessarily cover any period of personal unemployment. I am not saying that this is the way things should be, but rather this is my interpretation of the way things actually are. Try not to become a man UUCP : {decvax|ihnp4}!watmath!watdcsu!brewster of success but rather try Else : Dave Brewer, (519) 886-6657 to become a man of value. Albert Einstein