Immigration

[ToadBrother]

Good for you. Tell you what, you and others like you can volunteer to pay a special immigrant-support surcharge on your taxes to look after all these hundreds of thousands of third world people and their grannies. That seems fair to me.

Are you confusing immigrants and migrants? Generally speaking immigrants have to demonstrate they can support themselves, and immigrants coming in because they have family here have to be able to demonstrate that if they cannot support themselves, their kin can.

Yes, refugees are often supported by taxpayer dollars initially, but the motives for refugees are far different than the class economic migrant. And since Canada is a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, we are bound by international and domestic law to offer safe harbor to refugees.

[Argus]

I think it would be a lot more fair if the tax was applied to the corporations that are running around the planet stirring up the shit that compels so many people to want to flee.

So now the corporations are responsible for the Syrian war?

[Argus]

Are you confusing immigrants and migrants? Generally speaking immigrants have to demonstrate they can support themselves, and immigrants coming in because they have family here have to be able to demonstrate that if they cannot support themselves, their kin can.

We were speaking about bringing in tens of thousands more old immigrants. Even if their kin here support them they're not paying for their health care. And by the way, immigrants do not have to demonstrate they can support themselves. As for those immigrants sponsored by family, the family are supposed to support them for a set period, usually a few years. After that, they can apply for welfare if they like. Even if the family chooses not to support them in the short term, the government won't send them home, will let them be on welfare, and generally doesn't do much, if anything, to the sponsoring relatives.

[eyeball]

So now the corporations are responsible for the Syrian war?

I have no doubt there are at least a few that are complicit but it's mostly the actions and inactions of several national governments including our own are far more responsible for that mess.

[Argus]

I have no doubt there are at least a few that are complicit but it's mostly the actions and inactions of several national governments including our own are far more responsible for that mess.

Not the Syrians?

[G Huxley]

Oh give it up. The worst environmental calamity in the history of the world was created by cyanobacteria about 2.3 billion years ago.

I'm sure the other single celled organisms must have been horrified back then.

[eyeball]

Not the Syrians?

Now you're just being petulant.

[Argus]

Now you're just being petulant.

I was trying to be logical. I just don't get how so many of you people seem to regard the citizens of third world countries as some sort of innocent waifs whose every action is easily manipulated by steely eyed foreign White guys rubbing their hands gleefully at how much money they'll make as the locals all start howling for blood and tearing each other's throats out.

Edited September 26, 2015 by Argus

[G Huxley]

Syria wasn't third world until NATO backed it's demise.

[eyeball]

I was trying to be logical. I just don't get how so many of you people seem to regard the citizens of third world country as some sort of innocent waifs whose every action is easily manipulated by steely eyed foreign White guys rubbing their hands gleefully at how much money they'll make as the locals all start howling for blood and tearing each other's throats out.

I simply regard humans as being people too and the world's also got lots of greedy brown piranhas...they're in very good company.

[Argus]

Syria wasn't third world until NATO backed it's demise.

Of course it was.

[eyeball]

Syria wasn't third world until NATO backed it's demise.

NATO's failure was to not stand in the face of Assad's patrons.