-TSS-

There is an interesting debate going on in the UK over their border-agency which openly admits it can't 100% guarantee that no-one slips through the net. In fact every year tens of thousands of immigrants go missing. Britain is a relatively small island and should easily be able to oversee which people come and which people go into and out of the UK. The very fact that the same police-force was so efficient at hunting down the rioters of last summer's riots has given rise to a lot of conspiracy-theories. What if the border-control is not even supposed to be tight? Britain is not part of the Schengen-treaty, it should still have the right to police its borders except the one against the Republic of Ireland.

I see that you in Canada also have a similar problem to think about as we in my country: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/01/31/bc-wolves-caribou-protect.html There are contradicting views over a handsome animal being killed to extinction and people's legitimate fears for the safety of their family and domestic animals. In my country we have observed that wolves have clearly got too much used to the presence of the human and are less afraid than before and venture more into people's yards and cause mayhem. There are countless stories of rural people losing their dogs, their sheep, their cows or even their horses by being mauled to pieces by wolves. Needless to say that the most ardent protectors of the wolves live in the cities.

Is the border against Alaska as strictly supervised as the the border against rest of the USA? Probably not. Not much of a chance of illegal immigrants trying to enter Canada from Alaska?

It will be interesting to see whom Romney will take on as the running mate. Certainly not anyone from the religious right as those people are going to vote for Romney anyway rather than Obama so they need no wooing. Another thing is whether Obama himself will take on Biden for another term as VP. I mean, he turns 70 this year.

In the modern world you can't really force people to move anywhere against their will. How would you attract people to move in large numbers to the Canadian arctic? Exempt them from the federal taxation?

He can be a tough nut to crack in four years time. Most likely then there will be eight years of Obama coming to an end and people are disillusioned with the Obama-years and are yearning for a change once again. Whoever becomes the Democratic-candidate in 2016 will be at a major disadvantage.

What happened to his pledge to stay on until the end?

So, Santorum has pulled out, which removes the miniscule doubt that there existed over Romney's nomination as the republican candidate.

Doesn't the non-prolifiration treaty forbid any new countries from getting nuclear weapons?

Looks more and more like it's gonna be a duel betwen Sarkozy and Hollande in France. Marine Le Pen is unlikely to make it to the second round.

I must say from my European point of view that if I ever wanted to move to a country which has as little as possible to do with muslims but I would still want to retain the standard of living I currently have I'd choose Canada. If I weren't so fussy about the standard of living but wanted to have nothing to do with muslims then I'd choose Brazil. Imagine, a country of 190m people with only 200,000 muslims. I guess theirs is a country which takes no shit from immigrants how the host-country should respect the culture of the immigrants. On the contrary; adapt to our way of life or piss off.

Funny parody about what happened on your continent: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=tacvR87FzBU

People seem to make the same mistake over and over again by bundling up all the immigrants, be they high-skilled profesionals whose expertise is badly needed in your country or illiterate adults who can hardly speak a word of English. I'm waiting for a detailed account as to how the GDP would fall if the number latter group of people I mentioned were to fall.

This is a funny test; http://www.cic.gc.ca/app/ctcvac/english/index I would get a temporary visa to live in Canada.

No, it's neither good or bad thing, just a fact. I said earlier that Canada has a points-based system of immigration, that is a world-wide known fact, but Argus insisted that only a fraction of immigrants are chosen by that system and most of them can't even speak English and end up as taxi-drivers. After that dre said that Canada has one of the highest standard of immigrants in the world concerning training and education, which confirms what I said about the point-based system. Therefore either Argus or dre is being incorrect in their claims, they can't be both right.

I mentioned the point-based system of immigration Canada uses. If one is too old, doesn't have any required special skills of which there is a shortage in Canada, or one has no relatives already living in Canada then one has really little or no chance of being allowed to move to Canada.

There are certain situation when a person needs to be identified. Walking on the street is not such a situation. Passport-control is one of those situations. Otherwise, it does not bother me if someone insists on wearing a black sack in an over 30-degree heat. At least that is what they tell us that they do it out of their own will. Whether we believe it or not is irrelevant.

Canada receives quite a lot of asylum-seekers but otherwise the Canadian immigration-policy is fairly tough. It has always been cited as an example by our so-called sceptics of immigration as to how the immigration-policy should be organised. Canada has a point-based system where various factors such as age, one's relations to Canada and most importantly, one's skills concerning professions where there is a labour-shortage in Canada. To put it shortly, if you are over 35, you have no special skills which are needed in Canada and you have no relatives already living in Canada, you can just about forget about being allowed to emigrate to Canada. However, Canada is such a popular destination for emigration worl over that it is in a position to pick and choose which immigrants it wants.

America as a continent has the lowest proportion of muslims living on it even though even on your continent their share of the population has increased but it is still significantly lower than in Europe, Africa and Asia. In Europe many doom-mongerers say that countries like Sweden, Holland or even the UK could be by the year 2050 having muslims as the majority of their population. That could indeed be the case if the current trend of immigration and birth-rates of immigrants continues. However, if out of the population of the UK of 60m people 2.5m are muslims it is a bit difficult to believe that would turn into a majority in 40 years time.

At the time of your last election last year we had reports how the party-affilitions among the Canadian voters can change very quickly. I noted that the reports were suggesting that Canadians are somehow whimsical or fickle because they don't vote for the same party in every election. I think that is just gross. As if voting for the same party all through your adulthood makes you a mature person.

He was a sad "little" man. He was doing ok until he entered politics. That was his downfall. Even though I do agree with some of his views about immigration it doesn't change the fact that he was a failure as a politician.

I think this would be a splendid idea to introduce here too. We surely have politicians who would like to kick the ass of their opponents.

You Canadians sure have some weird politics and politicians!

Some time ago there was a news in Ireland that the word "bogus" will be banned in context of asylum applications. It was said that the word was disparaging.

Is being anti-immigration a vote-winner in Canada? It certainly is in Europe especially in my own country. However, I would have thought that in a country like Canada people would realize the irony of being anti-immigration.