Scotty

In what way is your interest related to the value of unions?

They don't generate any taxes. They don't have the money to pay any. And a better way would be to get them up to speed BEFORE they get here, since most observers agree one of the major, if not THE major problems with economic performance is their very poor language skills. If you had bothered to read the cites you would have seen that immigrant economic performance has been steadily deteriorating for thirty years, and that virtually EVERYONE agrees on that, from Stats Canada on down. I don't think so. I am going by general observation and media reports as to the extremely conservative nature of many of these immigrants on social matters, as well as their hostility towards female emancipation. A few clowns who blew up porn stores a quarter century ago somehow refutes all concern with Muslim terrorism? Do fourteen percent of the Canadian population believe in violent terrorist behavior in the name of their God?

Saw one guy with his fancy new (laugh) RPG on the news, after some little dustup with Ghadaffi's boys. He is quoted as saying they want to finish Ghadaffi so they can go to Gaza and fight Israel. I don't think the illiterate rabble of Egypt and Libya care much about Iran. They fear and hate Israel.

I have never understood the logistics or economics of long waits at hospital. It seems to met that if 500 people come to be treated and you treat 500 people then however long or short they wait doesn't help or cost the hospital anything. Also, either you're treating all 500 or your wait times will grow, day by day, week by week. So they have to be treating as many as come in. So why can't they treat them without making them wait for ten hours? The only way I can see it as having any economic affect would be if a lot of those people who come in just go away after a while without being treated. But I don't see that as being necessarily good for our society. Those people will presumably have to be off work for longer periods of time, and maybe come back at another time or go somewhere else (which we also pay for) for treatment.

Unfortunately, I don't see it getting better before it gets worse. A major factor is the number of seniors filling hospital beds because they can't go home alone in their weakened condition, and are nearly total lack of effort at expanding either full-time or temporary spaces in nursing homes for seniors. As the number of seniors ages more and more hospital beds will be clogged with them until we keep throwing out politicians who gloss over the problem and find someone to actually roll up their arms and do something about it. In Ontario and Quebec, you will hear nothing whatever from the provincial Liberal governments about senior care. And, of course, it's a provincial matter, so you're not likely to find anyone at the federal level willing to intrude on a tricky, expensive problem - unless we demand they do.

You could have just said 'I disagree' but you had to work some smarmy comment in there, didn't you. The point is that far too many new immigrants we are bringing in are living below the poverty line and likely to remain so their entire lives. Thus the costs associated with bringing them in are extremely high. We would be better off to restrict immigration to those individuals likely to prosper in Canada. And that means fewer people from Asia and the Middle East, and more from Europe. Immigrant Economic Performance by Area of Origin You continue to reduce the argument over integration to whether or not they are working. Very well. I've already posted a number of cites pointing out that immigrant economic performance is low and getting worse. This suggests major changes need to be done to the immigration system. However, beyond economics there remains the question of immigrant social integration. I'd like to see some agreed-upon means of measuring that, but until we do the best I can say, in a broad way, is that until they have the same generalized respect for the rights of others, including sexual rights, including female rights, including morality rights, I will not consider them integrated. And no, I don't consider Mennonites or the Amish or for that matter, a lot of Ultra-Orthodox Jews to be integrated into our culture either. But the difference is none of those groups have any hostile intentions towards our society and do not have a history of expansion by violence and forced assimilation. They might have their own language and lead separate lives but they're not likely to blow up buildings or markets when unhappy.

I was not suggesting being against gay-rights meant you weren't integrated. He said that a Hijab wearing woman could well be very progressive. I find that highly unlikely. Few people who wear overt signs of religious dedication to that degree are going to be what our society considers 'progressive'.

Maybe this will help to explain things. According to this story the relative insecurity of a minority parliament has had all parties scrambling to find experienced people willing to give up their secure jobs for a run on the Hill which might only last a few months. As a result, a lot of the aides up there are only in their twenties. Kids on the Hill

I realize that sort of cliche'd juvenile insult is used routinely, but i can't recall ever seeing it where the user clearly said exactly what was claimed. I guess what you meant to say is that I should have read words into your words which you weren't clever enough to put there. Obviously, Tareen was not aware of the Environics poll of 2007 that found 12 per cent of Canada's Muslims having a favourable disposition towards the Toronto 18 terrorists and 14 per cent who identified themselves with "extremists" within the Muslim community. This means there could be as many as 100,000 Muslim Canadians who are hostile to Canada and western civilization. A scary number by any measure. Winnipeg Free Press Not to mention that an even larger number of Muslims, and their religious and community leaders remain committed to the idea of Sharia law. Well, for all that fodder, you don't appear to be doing anything with it except producing waste products. Muslims don't want to be left alone. Islam is an expansionary religion and proselytizing and conversion are integral to it. and since it has such a long history of converting others by the sword its adherents do not have the sort of feeling about forcing their beliefs on others as more pacifistic groups. Do you really think this sort of sullen, snotty response is even remotely suitable for a forum where adults discuss issues in a mature fashion? I didn't invent a number. That was your doing.

Ministers offices, I believe, have both government staffers and political staffers, the latter being paid by the party.

Probably from you writing: Have Al Jezeera on the TV right now in my office. Dont watch local tv either. You mentioned Orthodox Jews before. Now its yarmulkes. I realize you're using these in a mocking way, but to be honest, Jews in Canada have resisted integration far more than any other group. And the more religiously observant they are, the more they resist integration. In that way they are quite similar to Muslims. However, the two religions vary in that Judaism is not hostile to our Western system of government and values. Judaism does not have the same determination to expand and to proselytize as Islam. You constantly hear from Muslim Islamists how they will take over the world and convert everyone to Islam, but there's never been that desire among world Jews. All the Jews have ever wanted to do, basically, is to be left alone. Uhm, sure, okay. I recall when the NDP were thrilled to grab the hijab wearing wife of Mahar Arar's wife as a candidate, then horrified to realize that, gol darn it, she insisted on acting like a Muslim! Which meant, she said, there was no way in hell she was going to support gay rights and marriage. Lot of red faces among the NDP there. I didn't give any stat. So what you mean is you lied.

Adding to the cultural mosaic? I don't recall Canadians ever being asked if they wanted a cultural mosaic, or if so what they wanted to add into it. I rather doubt, given most of our immigrants come from failed cultures with terrible and often very backward, very intolerant, very misogynistic value systems, that these are the kinds of colors we want to add to our 'mosaic'. And unsurprising you would ignore the cites about the growing issues with immigrant employment and income. The fact is that bringing in poor people doesn't in any way, shape or form help us economically. We, as a society, wind up paying far more money to poor families in the form of services and income support than we ever get back. They are a drain on our economy, on our GDP, and on the budget. That's all quite aside from the question of whether or not they're properly integrating. The assumption made by many that they'll integrate the same as immigrants did in the past is not borne out by evidence, and ignores the fact that realities have changed. We don't KNOW how those changed realities, and the changed circumstances of these immigrants, particularly the Muslims, will affect the degree of integration.

When you have a band of 300 people where four councillors are each earning more than the premier of the province you know you've got issues. I wonder how many people living in squalor on some of those reserves would be amazed at how much money their band councilors and chief are raking in.

It's a pretty pathetic excuse for a 'scandal', as are most of these things. Which is why none of it is resonating with the public. The opposition is either going to have to find something more substantial - a LOT more substantial - or, I don't know, maybe some policies people might want.

Well, it was supposed to be about police abuse of their powers during the G20. It seems to have morphed into some sort of half-assed gun control debate.

They were posted in the other immigrant/integration thread a short time back. Should I post them here as well?

The Post had an item a couple of days back about the high interest of young, educated Irishmen in coming to Canada due to the bad economic situation there. I'm willing to bet, given the poor economic situation in other parts of Europe, that we could get an awful lot of immigrants if we put any effort into it. That won't happen, however, because it would be seen as racist. China, for example, continues to be our number one immigrant source country despite how poorly immigrants from China fare. Pakistan is another major source country, despite, again, their immigrants faring comparatively poorly. Another interesting note in the economic sites I've found, including from Stats Canada, is that immigrants with university degrees are not faring well in Canada. The poverty and unemployment rate among immigrants with degrees is far higher than for native born Canadians. And only a fraction of those immigrants wind up working int he jobs they're supposedly educated in.

So you only watch TV from the middle east? You don't watch TV from Canada? You are being deliberately obtuse. I would say categorically that any woman wearing a hijab, much less the more conservative versions, in Canada is not integrated into Canadian society. Oh, you have statistics on how often this happens? Good! I'd like to see them, please. I'm sure there are a lot of people in Canada who are conservative Christians. They might believe in the morality as preached by their churches, but I doubt you'd find many of them who want people to be executed for working on the Sabbath, or want six hundred year old religious laws incorporated into the Criminal Code and Family Law. When immigrant kids grew up in Canada decades ago there was a total commitment to this country, and to becoming Canadians. There was no television or newspapers from home, no calls home, no routine visits back to see family. they grew up amidst Canadians and they blended in. I think immigrant kids today do not enjoy that same opportunity of immersion. Many go to schools where there are few Canadian kids, watch TV at home on the satellite dish from their "homeland" in their homeland's language, visit 'home', and are otherwise inundated by their old homeland's culture and values and language and religion to the point its very hard for them to get the advantages of that immersive experience immigrants used to get. I don't see how this could fail to resist integration.

Uhm, okay. As the chart above illustrates, the unemployment rate of recent immigrants was almost twice that of their Canadian-born counterparts in 2009 (15.0% to 7.8% respectively). This gap varies depending on level of education. The unemployment rate for new immigrants without a degree, diploma or certificate was 19.5% – 1.2 times the rate of 15.9% for Canadian-born workers with the same education. In comparison, the gap is four times wider for university-educated workers (13.9% for new immigrants compared to 3.4% for Canadian-born workers). Unemployment bad and getting worse for immigrants In addition, the participation rate (employment) of immigrants is lower, substantially lower in their earlier years here, than Canadian born workers. And while that participation rate rises after some years it never reaches the same level as that of native born Canadians. Stats Canada Labour Force Survey Immigrants No, it doesn't, unless you're going to suggest that 'every single Canadian' fails to reach the average income level of Canadians.

i would say ti means watching local television, and not Al Jazeera. It means cheering for local hockey, football or basketball rather than being obsessed with soccer back home. It means not wrapping your daughters in bed sheets, and not sending them back 'home' to find a proper husband. It means having pretty much similar societal and cultural attitudes towards a wide basket of issues as the bulk of Canadians. It means accepting differences of opinions and beliefs in the same way the majority of Canadians do, accepting that religion plays no part in government, just like Canadians do. It does not mean, as in the case of a Muslim man born and raised in Germany, arrested the other day for murdering two American airmen, feeling more kinship with Muslims abroad than with your own countrymen. It does not mean that you believe in violent, vindictive punishments for all people based on the words in your ancient religious texts. It does not mean wanting to raise and keep your children away from Canadian children because of their presumed inferior morals, or wanting your children segregated at schools by gender, or even insisting they go to special courses to learn the old country's language and ways.

This one is about the violent and criminal behaviour of the police during the G 20 meetings.

I came across this by chance. I think it's interesting in its assessment of which immigrants do better in Canada and which ones do worse. One would think that if immigration was designed with Canada's needs in mind, we would be attempting to bring in more immigrants from the top of the cart, and far fewer from the bottom, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Recent Immigrants from Low Income Countries doing worse

I don't think a lot of immigrants come to Canada hoping to spend their lives unemployed. I think they truly want to work. Unfortunately, many do not have the skills or education to be successful here. The incidence of poverty amongst immigrants has greatly increased over the past twenty years, and continues to deteriorate. More immigrants are living in poverty, which does not bode well for the future, or for their children s future as proudly integrated citizens. One does not have to look far to see that poverty and the failure to penetrate the job markets successfully by immigrants in the UK, in France, and in Sweden has led to marked levels of resentment by immigrants towards their purported homeland Statistics Canada Almost all new arrivals in Canada have earnings for a number of years that are below their eventual peak earnings. In the case of recent immigrants, these peak earnings are below the incomes of comparable other Canadians for the rest of their lives in the country. As a result, under the progressive income tax system, they pay proportionately less taxes than do other Canadians, on average. A very large fraction pays no personal income taxes at all. Fraser Report on Immigration

Actually, there no anti-immigration groups I'm aware of, not which will do academic studies on the affects of immigration. You're right about the polarization. In other countries, for example, you have similar polarization, but at least there are players on both sides of the issue. American labour unions, for example, are not nearly as supportive of mass immigration as Canadian labour unions. The American unions see the downward impact on wages and don't like it. Canadian unions, by and large, don't care about anything nearly as much as they care about the political correctness of supporting immigration. The Canadian Left, in fact, is united in favour of immigration, the more the better. I hate to pigeonhole them, but this is because most immigrants are non-white. The Left has set itself up as the protectors, defenders and advocates for non-Whites (which is why the NDP is going nowhere, and has gone nowhere for forty years). On the other side, what I could perhaps call the 'organized' conservatives, ie, the conservatism of big business or the churches, is equally supportive of immigration, though for different reasons. Corporate Canada loves mass immigration because it depresses wages, and provides a ready supply of desperate workers. The Churches like it for much the same reason the Left does, because it sees immigration as being an uplifting thing for immigrants - not because it sees it as being positive for Canada. And of course, the political class just sees it as an opportunity to appeal to immigrants (1 in 5 Canadians is now foreign born) and also sees the dangers of daring to be seen as opposing immigration (certain outcries of racism by the Leftist parties). Then we have the immigration industry, which of course, is collectively dedicated to advocating on behalf of immigration and refugees. That's how they make their money, after all. But there really is NO large, decently funded group working against immigration in this country. There are no spokesperson, no organizations, no media, no one who will say that immigration at these levels is not economically justified and poses a substantial danger to our existing culture and values, much less will do the substantial studies to say so. The Fraser Institute is not against immigrants, per se, but as an economic think tank has done a pretty in depth study which certainly showed that immigration was not either economically beneficial nor the answer to an aging population. And the Leftists simply dismiss it out of hand, unread. So it's very difficult to assail the assumptions of Canadians that immigration is good for Canada. After all, they hear it constantly. No one ever really supports that belief with hard data. But they hear it constantly, much as the headline in the Star which was quoted by the OP. Immigration is good, is wonderful, will save the country, will take care of us when we're old. We're told that by most every player in the field, and don't bother to look beneath the platitudes for actual evidence. Well, I hope it works out. I hope that twenty years or so from now we're not looking back and shaking our heads wishing we'd done something different. Because it'll be too damned late by then, much as the people of Malmo have discovered.

Perhaps because the only thing you and the other admirers of mass immigration will even grudgingly accept as being peripherally relevant would be government statistics. But the government keeps no statistics on integration. It makes no effort to even see how well immigrants are integrating. No one does, actually. There have been economic studies (dismissed, of course) by third parties which indicate the associated cost of immigration, and even government statistics which clearly show immigrants today are far more likely to be living in poverty and to be unemployed than immigrants in times past. But we keep no track of, say how many parents send their kids back home to find a proper husband or wife. We rarely take surveys of immigrant attitudes - though I recall the last time we did a sizable number of Muslims expressed enthusiasm for Sharia law. We don't watch to see how many immigrants break the law. We don't even know how many return home to live - aka in Lebanon. As to my position with regard to this question. I don't know for sure. I don't think things are necessarily going poorly. But I look to the situation in Sweden, in the UK, in France, and I worry about where another decade or two of mass immigration is going to lead. And I don't think the government or anyone else has really been able to make a very good case that the economic value of mass immigration is worth the risks associated with a huge flood of newcomers.