text: About a couple of decades ago the Canadian province of British Columbia employed very similar policies to encourage the immigration of moneyed Hong Kong residents, believing that if they come, they would enhance the prospects for the, then, sluggish economic times the province was enduring, and also participate in community building efforts. You may want to ask B.C. residents who weathered these policy decisions just how well it all turned out. 
  
  As a nearby (U.S.) observer, to me it turned out that property values skyrocketed, middle- and working-class neighborhoods were transformed into communities of lot-line-to-lot-line “McMansion” monstrosities, and those middle/working-class residents were priced right out of the market, forcing them towards the metropolitan edges and rural areas of the greater Vancouver region. Sound familiar?