Scotty

First of all, we haven't established that I'm gullible. All we've established is your unalterable dedication to defending immigration. I'll remind you that the only reason I posted information about Sweden and Scandinavia is to suggest that this advocacy groups rankings should be considered with some doubt. Second, I posted what was available given Swedish is not a language I'm competent in. Some of those postings had governmental and police cites, which you chose to ignore. I pointed out that no matter what you thought of the unofficial nature of all these sites the mere fact they exist, whereas nothing similar exists with regard to Canada should indicate that at least SOMETHING is wrong over there. A rational you ignored. I have a feeling that unless the Swedish government has Carl Gustav read official statistics taken by an army of sociologists over the course of a few decades you'll still simply dismiss any claims of immigration trouble over there as unsupported. Riots notwithstanding. So I'll thank you not to insinuate that I'm posting reams of material from hate sites or something.

I don't think Canadians have been provided with the information on which to intelligently evaluate the integration of immigrants.

I am pointing out that the report, which you claim shows immigrants are integrating well, shows nothing of the sort. It is evidence of nothing other than how friendly to immigrants government programs are. In response to which you demand proof, as in a cite, that immigrants are not integrating? What kind of a cite do you imagine I would produce other than one from the Fraser Institute which you and others would refuse to read anyway because it's from the Fraser Institute. I'll tell you what I'd like to see. I'd like to see crime statistics on immigrants, not just immigrants in their first 3 years, but permanently. I'd like to see statistics on how many immigrants, in particular Muslims, send their children 'home' to find a mate. I'd like to see surveys from second generation immigrants, particularly Muslims, which says they have little interest in the old quarrels of their homeland, don't really speak the language much, and are more interested in Canada - and are becoming more secularized. No, it does not say any such thing. It says that government programs are immigrant friendly. And your opinion as to how well integrate immigrants are is open to debate.

Why? The only thing you've mentioned from Wikipedia is a general crime rate increase which does not contradict any of the claims with regard to specific types of crime or crime in certain cities, such as Malmo. In any event, without getting into the specifics of why rape in Sweden is many times what it is elsewhere, I think, based upon the wide variety of postings talking about immigrant crimes and rape in Sweden, and violence and riots, etc, that Sweden is not handling its integration better than Canada. You don't see such postings about Toronto, do you? edited to add. This is what Wiki had to say about Sweden and rape. In 2009 there were 15,700[4] reported sexual offenses in Sweden, a rise of 8% compared to 2008, of which 5,940 were rape and sexual harassment (including exhibitionism) accounted for 7,590 reports.[1] In April 2009, it was reported that sex crimes had increased by 58% over the previous ten years.[5] According to a 2009 European Union study, Sweden has one of the highest rates of reported rape in Europe.[6] There is debate about why this number is so high (almost 168 sexual offences per 100,000 inhabitants). An opinion is that this is not because sexual violence is more common in Sweden, but due to other factors, such as the practice of counting multiple crimes against a single victim (such as from long time domestic abuse) according to Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (BRÅ) [1], much higher reporting of sex crimes by the victims than in other cultures, and a much broader definition of criminal sexual behavior and more progressive attitudes towards what constitutes sexual victimization (Sweden has been a pioneer in its approach to rape - for instance it was one of the first countries in the world to outlaw marital rape in 1965,[7] much earlier than other Western countries - e.g. Germany outlawed it only in 1997[8]). However, a different view maintains that Sweden has indeed a serious problem with sexual crimes: in 2009, in a European Union study, the researcher stated that Sweden's high rape rate cannot be explained purely by a greater tendency to report rapes but reflected that rape was more common in Sweden.[6] Amnesty International blamed Sweden's "deeply rooted patriarchal gender norms",[5] (however in 2006 Sweden was ranked as the number one country in gender equality[9]). Immigrants were five times more likely to be investigated for sex crimes.[3]

I actually did source it in the post above. I at first thought, due to the specific mention of Malmo, to cut that quote and its source and past them in the other post, but only got the quote. Then I found a different source and posted that, but it turend out to be in a different post...

Immigration transforming Sweden

The number of rape charges per capita in Malmö is 5 to 6 times that of Copenhagen, Denmark. Copenhagen is a larger city, but the percentage of immigrants is much lower. And it’s not just the rape statistics that reveal a scary increase in Malmö or Sweden. Virtually every kind of violent crime is on the rise. Robberies have increased with 50 % in Malmö only during the fall of 2004. Threats against witnesses in Swedish court cases have quadrupled between 2000 and 2003. During the past few decades, massive immigration has changed the face of Sweden’s major cities, as well as challenged the viability of the welfare state. In 1970 Sweden had the fourth highest GDP per capita among developed countries with income about 6% above the OECD average. By 1997 it was at fifteenth place with an average GDP per capita 14% below average. Malmö has a heavy concentration of Muslim immigrants in particular. According to some estimates, it will be a Muslim majority city in no more then 10 years. Crime is rampant in the growing ghettos:

I don't know what Wicky is claiming, but these claims are for specific types of crimes, ie, rape. as in The study, which is financed by the Brussels-based EU fund Daphne II, compared how the respective judicial systems managed rape cases across eleven EU countries. Sweden is shown in an unfavourable light, according to the study. The high figures in Sweden can not it seems be explained purely by an increased tendency to report rapes and other more minor sexual offences. Rape simply appears to be a more common occurrence in Sweden than in the other EU countries studied, the researchers argue. Over 5,000 rapes are reported in Sweden per annum while reports in other countries of a comparable size amounted to only a few hundred. sweden rape Most sexual assaults in Oslo by non western immigrants The number of rape charges per capita in Malmö is 5 to 6 times that of Copenhagen, Denmark. Copenhagen is a larger city, but the percentage of immigrants is much lower. And it’s not just the rape statistics that reveal a scary increase in Malmö or Sweden. Virtually every kind of violent crime is on the rise. Robberies have increased with 50 % in Malmö only during the fall of 2004. Threats against witnesses in Swedish court cases have quadrupled between 2000 and 2003. During the past few decades, massive immigration has changed the face of Sweden’s major cities, as well as challenged the viability of the welfare state. In 1970 Sweden had the fourth highest GDP per capita among developed countries with income about 6% above the OECD average. By 1997 it was at fifteenth place with an average GDP per capita 14% below average. Malmö has a heavy concentration of Muslim immigrants in particular. According to some estimates, it will be a Muslim majority city in no more then 10 years. Crime is rampant in the growing ghettos: Rape and violence rising across Scandinavia Alarmed at last week’s police statistics, which revealed that in 68% of all rapes committed this year the perpetrator was from an ethnic minority, leading Muslim organisations have now formed an alliance to fight the ever-growing problem of young second and third-generation immigrants involved in rape cases against young Danish girls.

It makes NO such points. If you think it does I would suggest you name them. The study says absolutely NOTHING about Canada's success or failure in integrating newcomers. It studies policies and laws only and then gives a score based on its assessment of those policies and laws. It does not study success or failure at anything. It marks Sweden as the most successful, despite the fact Sweden clearly has an awful lot more problems with integrating newcomers than Canada or the United States.

Jane/Finch in Toronto. Heatherington Avenue housing projects, home of the infamous Heatherington Crips, in Ottawa.

Yes, it is. In fact, it is one of the components of the study, and it is why we lose points, as compared to Sweden.

I think you need to read more than the headlines, and apply a little critical thinking. The story said NOTHING about whether immigrants are or are not integrating. The report was in fact, entirely based on what programs the government has available, and how immigrant friendly they are. This study measures policy components and does not in any way, shape or form attempt to assess how successfully integrated a body of immigrants is. In addition, according to the news story, Sweden is number 1, indicating that the authors believe Sweden's system for dealing with and integrating newcomers is superior to anyone else's. The problem is that in reality Sweden has a lot of trouble with integrating newcomers, particularly from Muslim countries. There are a lot of suggestions, statements, and statistics all over the internet which say that Muslims in Sweden are not only not integrating but are criminally hostile to the native population. Sweden's rape rate, for example, has skyrocketed since they started bringing in Muslim immigrants, rising 400%, and is currently the highest in Europe, double the next highest - the UK.

I'm not an expert in pensions, but isn't it normal that the employer also makes a contribution?

As a Franco admirer I would think you would instead be praying they all get taken away to concentration camps...

This might be a topic worthy of discussion were it not for the fact most of the House and Congress are already in the pockets of industrial and special interest lobby groups. So why do you want to hamstring one of the only pressure groups which represents workers as opposed to big business? But of course, all those politicians will tell you that no matter how much money they get this doesn't affect their positions on issues.

Well, yeah, but so's everyone else!

Wouldn't American puppet dictators be better - from our perspective?

From the perspective of the immigrant? Sure. I'm not so sure it's doing well by the people already here, though.

Were there Liberal governments of which I'm not aware? Perhaps long before I was born? The only ones I'm familiar with, you see, were Trudeau's - he who doubled the federal budget during his first term in office, then, just to prove he could, he doubled it again in his second term... He who took a balanced budget with an accumulated debt load in the MILLIONS and through a series of huge budget deficits ran it into it up to a hundred billion dollars just in time for a big recession with double digit interest rates and inflation to explode it. Now Chretien's Liberals were more fiscally responsible. I will grant you that. Then, again, it's usually pretty easy to balance the budget when you're in the middle of boom times, and when the GST is pouring money into government coffers.

They broke the law. They broke windows. Now compare that to another guy, also wearing black, who struck a man playing tourist from behind, without provocation, dislocating his shoulder and breaking his arm, then tied him up, dragged him across the ground, threw him into a car, and kept him in a cold cage all night without medical treatment, or even water. What should happen to him?

No, it shows that you have to not just read the headline. You have to look at what it says, engage in some critical thinking, and if you have any doubts, find out who did the study, go to their web site, and have a look at how they conducted the study.

Here's the thing which occurred to me as I read this (and as I went to the web site of the group which did the study). Every single measure they used to indicate whether a country was 'integrating' immigrants had to do with the rights and measures that country was taking to make those immigrants feel at home, ie, what rights we were giving them. You'll see where it said we lost points for not letting immigrants vote prior to them obtaining citizenship, but gained points because of how good our education system is in dealing with multicultural issues. The way this group is measuring 'integration' is entirely based on bureaucratic rights and privileges accorded the migrants. Nowhere did it say a single bloody thing about whether the immigrants, in the end, have adopted Canada's cultural value system, or still retain their own into the second and third generation. You'll notice that Sweden is listed as number one. You don't have to look very hard on the web to find that Sweden is having all sorts of problems with its immigrants - particularly its Muslim immigrants. There are numerous suggestions, backed up by statistics, that Muslim immigrants, as an example, are responsible for a vastly disproportionate amount of crimes against women, and are behind a sexual assault/rape rate which has greatly increased over the past several years. Sweden has highest rape rate in Europe Brussels Journal

I don't really know, but here's the thing. If I'm going to argue the validity of a Fraser Institute study I'd rather it be one on the actual topic of this thread - immigration - which I have actually read, as opposed to an irrelevant study which one particular poster is upset with. The difficulty in talking about immigration is that personal anecdotal evidence and opinions is generally rejected as a means of establishing the worthiness, especially economic, of the system. Yet who is going to launch an actual academic study by educated individuals who does not have some bias in the matter? Any governmental institution will be supporting whatever the government wants. Most others will be at the behest of various groups heavily(and profitably) involved with the immigration industry. If you reject, out of hand, one of the few relatively unbiased (relatively) independent agencies of social and economic policy analysis simply because you don't like their presumed politics it doesn't leave much actual documented evidence to discuss.

While I'm not a big admirer of Harper, his party is considerably more conservative in its fiscal approach than the so-called conservatives to the south, most of whom are ideologues hung up on a narrow range of social policy issues.

You can try and put it into as much historical context as you like, it's still not going to excuse a sweeping statement suggesting all right wingers are closet Fascists. That's akin to suggesting all left wingers are closet Communists and long to gain control so they can establish labour and re-education camps and purge the people of unclean thoughts. For their own good, of course. Both are caricatures. There have been authoritarian 'right wing' regimes and authoritarian 'left wing' regimes. Authoritarianism does not have an ideology.