Greater Canadian presence could invigorate Coachella
Let’s give the Coachella Valley to Canada.
After all, Canadians already rule the desert in winter. Canadian snowbirds love Palm Springs because it’s a shorter flight than Maui and because it offers more culture — international film festival, Modernism Week, the Coachella music festivals — than Phoenix.
Over time, the desert has developed a Canadian-friendly infrastructure of restaurants, country clubs, and social organizations. The Canadian Club of the Desert, founded in 1982 at the Gene Autry Hotel, holds monthly breakfast forums “sharing experiences and ideas concerning issues of importance to Canadians.” The club also hosts a “Welcome Back Cocktail Party” in early December and “A Wind-Up Dinner and Dance” in March at the Lakes Country Club.
While snowbirds have been coming for decades, the recession accelerated the Canadianization of the California desert. In 2008, the Canadian dollar was at all-time high just as California real estate was in free fall — allowing Canadians to snap up properties cheaply. In the first four years of this decade, Canadians accounted for onequarter of home purchases in the desert.
Home purchases are just one form of Canadian stimulus in Coachella. By one estimate, Canada is responsible for 450,000 visitors annually; the Canadian government has taken credit for tripling the population of Palm Springs during winter. Palm Springs International Airport now boasts direct service to Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg.
The Canadian Invasion has stirred minor resentments. Restaurant servers say they could tip better, and Canadians are blamed for slower traffic, given their strange national proclivity for obeying posted speeds.
But the biggest problem with Coachella’s Canadianization is that it should be bigger.
The Coachella Valley could get even more of a boost if more Canadians could visit more, buy more homes, and stay longer. But Canadians are welcome here only part time. Our bullying federal government imposes its complicated tax and immigration systems on you if you spend too much time here.
While the details are complicated, many Canadians in Coachella limit themselves to just 182 days a year. Spend 183 days here — more than half the year — and you may be considered a resident alien, forced to pay U.S. taxes on all your global income.
This hurts California, because our Canadian visitors and part-time residents pay state and local taxes, while using relatively few services.
A Canadian couple who split their time between Indio and British Columbia (I am not naming them to spare them federal government hassles) wonder why they can’t stay longer. They have come to the Coachella Valley every year since 1984, have owned homes here since 2003, and pay property taxes 180 percent higher than in Canada. They even purchase extra insurance “to protect ourselves against the bankrupting cost of medical services here.”
“We are welcome here for 182 days, then we become ‘alien,’ and must depart,” they wrote to me. “We can own property but not weapons. We can pay every tax but not vote . ... We commit no crimes. We buy media but seldom appear in it. We are a potential resource, never a threat.”
Recent declines in the Canadian dollar have made them less of a resource: Spending by Canadian visitors is down about 10 percent in the past couple of years. The California housing shortage has made buying here harder for our friends from the True North, too. (Still, median home prices in the desert are half of what it costs to buy in Vancouver or Toronto.)
But the Canadians still come — and we would benefit if they stayed longer. Imagine if federal law were changed to allow Canadians to spend nine months a year in California without triggering U.S. residency rules and taxes. That would be 50 percent more time, and more spending and sales taxes from Canadians.
Could this happen? The federal government is generally hostile to policies that benefit California. But congressional Republicans like tax reform, and President Trump has indicated a preference for immigrants from wealthier and whiter countries like Canada.
And if the feds won’t make things easier for Canadians in California, maybe the state could step in.
Perhaps the desert heat is getting to me, but I wonder if California might just deed the Coachella Valley to Canada. Not only would we get more Canadians, we’d also get insurance: If the U.S. government escalates its war against California, we’d only have to drive to Palm Springs to request asylum.
A Canada colony in California might not be paradise. But it sounds pretty good, eh?
Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square. To comment, submit your letter to the editor at SFChronicle.com/letters.