Kerostasis

Depending on your definition of "the necessary taxes", I would expect not many. As an accountant, the way I would define "the necessary taxes" is "enough income to cover the entire cost of the health care provided, plus a little extra to compensate Canada for the extra record keeping." And once you're paying that much, you might as well just keep the money and pay for your own health care here in the US.

Now, if you change the example slightly and suppose that US citizens could sign up for Canadian health care without becoming citizens, without paying any additional taxes, and without being required to actually contribute anything to Canada in return, then you have a better analogy to the situation at our southern border. Granted, many immigrants do contribute to our economy with their work -- but that's not actually a prerequisite to receiving government benefits.

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ScratchMonkey

The problem with the southern border, as you point out, is that you can get government benefits without paying taxes. If you allow an easy workers visa that puts you on the record and paying into the system, that objection largely goes away. You could go one step further, taking the European approach, and also limit the benefits available to guest workers.

The whole issue of citizenship is a red herring IMHO.

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Kerostasis

It would have to be handled carefully, but I would have no objection to that approach in general. It ceratinly seems more effective than our current approach of "lets not give out any visas, tell them they can't come in, and then close our eyes and look the other way when they come in anyway".

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