A Critical Conversation
Canada is taking far too many immigrants and the leaders of all the parties are promising to take even more. There are already close to a million immigrants waiting in the backlog to come here. They have all met the requirements and by law must be admitted. There is also a backlog of 62,000 asylum seekers before the refugee board and even if these are not found to be genuine refugees most will be allowed to stay. In addition, there are between 150,000 and 200,000 temporary workers now in the country and here again it is unlikely many of them will ever go home. james bissett, former director of the Canadian Immigration Service, Vancouver Sun
There is no serious economic reason for mass immigration to Canada and, as Bissett points out, even if there was “only about 18 to 20 per cent of our immigrants are selected for economic factors. By far the bulk of the immigrants we receive come here because they are sponsored by relatives or because of so-called humanitarian reasons and none of these have to meet the “points system” of selection.”
This has to stop. We are flooding Canada with people who have very little to contribute and we are doing it because the instant a politician suggests we stop doing it he or she is called a racist.
A word which should, frankly, be dropped from the immigration debate altogether.
30-50,000 economically well qualified immigrants would be a net gain to Canada, more than that will not. Time to roll it back.
September 29th, 2008 at 9:27 am
I wish we could discuss immigration without the introduction of red herrings and straw men. No one is arguing for mass immigration as THE way of dealing with an aging demographic.
I address some of the issues here, including the notion that immigrants are a net drain on society:
http://drdawgsblawg.blogspot.com/2008/09/183-billion-lie.html
Bissett and co. are simply not arguing honestly.
September 29th, 2008 at 10:32 am
I don’t even know what “racist” means anymore. I mean, I know what it’s supposed to mean. But to declare someone a racist because they oppose immigration for economic reasons doesn’t make sense to me at all. Is it that those screaming “racism” don’t believe that someone can be opposed based upon economic reasoning?
Seems to me that many of these so-called “racists” (myself included) who oppose economically unsound immigration are really better described as “economists.” But I suppose actual economists wouldn’t appreciate that much.
September 29th, 2008 at 11:10 am
Good catch on the bisset column…but how can we roll it back when even talking about it has been politically stigmatized with fraudulent race politics and relegated to the oversight of the PC watchdogs of the HRC?
September 29th, 2008 at 11:38 am
I think that requiring proficiency in either one of our official languages would be a huge help in aiding immigrants and their ability to integrate into Canadian society.
Why don’t we require our new citizens to be able to read/write/communicate in English or French before they get here (and then we throw buckets of money at ESL training). Australia, anyone?
Backwards thinking, IMHO.
September 29th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
One thing I could never figure out, we have a homeless problem and a shortage of affordable housing and rental stock, so where do all the immigrants go!, do they all buy Condo’s as soon as they land?
September 29th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
This is from an article linked in the sidebar. This is 500-calorie irony, almost too rich to digest:
“... Salma Ataullahjan, a Pakistani immigrant, used to be a diehard Liberal but is now running in Mississauga-Brampton South on the Conservative ticket. The real-estate agent, in her mid-50s, said she became disillusioned by the Liberals’ internal leadership squabbles and lack of fresh ideas. “The Liberal Party stopped respecting our intelligence and just came to us when they needed us,” she said. “They used us as fodder to feed the electoral machinery and as backfill for photographs. They took our vote for granted…” Ms. Ataullahjan, who hails from a prominent Pashtun political family, has been wooed as much by specific Tory policies as by Mr. Kenney’s grassroots charm offensive. “He has put the time in and listened to these communities’ concerns. And Harper has put Canada back on the world map [with the Afghan mission]...”
The “Afghan mission”? Oh, wait, she means Harper’s complicity in Bush’s imperialistic warmongering against the peaceful Taliban (WHOM REAGAN AND THE CIA CREATED).
Never realised Islamophobia was so deeply entrenched among Muslims.
September 30th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
Economists like George Borjas have clearly established that immigration makes no economic contribution: it drives down wage rates and whatever economic growth pertaining goes to the immigrants themselves.
IN Canada’s case it’s even worse than that, given our dependence on socialized medicine – we haven’t even the common sense or decency to ensure that contained within the immigrant numbers are sufficient doctors to ensure they do not increase the burden on the medical professionals here already.
Immigration in Canada is a Ponzi scheme, causing increasing social problems, and storing up even more trouble for later, in defiance of any sensible concept of what a nation really is or needs to survive – i.e. common loves and a historic reason to be together greater than just n extra dollar in everyone’s pocket. Everyone knows that Lucien Bouchard was right, and what he was talking about, when he said “Canada is not a real country”, reprised by Joe Clark’s “Canada is a community of communities”.
That says it all.
October 3rd, 2008 at 1:52 pm
“We are flooding Canada with people who have very little to contribute.”
That’s a joke, right? Yeah, all those immigrants coming here and taking our jobs… and bringing their rotten useless families with them.
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Not, perhaps, Renee the examples I would have chosen to make the general case for immigration; however, chacun à son gout.