How do we force immigrants to assimilate?

[Argus]

Canadians are not satisfied with the way immigrants are assimilating. It's been showing up in the polls more often of late.

Environics just did a large poll which showed two thirds of Canadians are unhappy at the rate immigrants are assimilating. And lest you immediately start screaming racism - the unhappiness about assimilation did not change markedly between those who have been here for multiple generations, and those who are first generation Canadians.

Notably, this sentiment held true across both first generation Canadians and third plus generation Canadians, with the 63% of the former and 68% of the latter agreeing that immigrants were not doing enough to adopt Canadian values.

This is somewhat similar to another poll, by EKOS, announced a couple of weeks ago which said 40% of Canadians felt too many non-white immigrants were coming into Canada. In that poll, visible minorities were more likely than white Canadians to feel too many visible minorities were coming to Canada. It seems newcomers are growing alarmed that the place they came to is changing to the kind of places they left, and don't like it.

So how do we force more assimilation? In places like Switzerland and France, immigrants are required to demonstrate how they have assimilated or they can't get citizenship. They need to show how they've blended into their communities, how they have improved their language skills, gotten local friends, joined local clubs, etc. In one case in Switzerland, a family was denied citizenship because their daughters refused to swim with boys at the school's swimming lessons. Another family was denied because their sons would not shake hands with their female teachers. Their few is if you want to become Swiss, you need to BECOME Swiss. I agree with them.

[eyeball]

How do we force immigrants to assimilate?

Ignorantly and with a really fucked up perspective. 

[scribblet]

We can't force them to assimilate but we should be more assertive about integration and living withing our laws and values e.g. equality for women as one issue

[Argus]

1 hour ago, scribblet said:

We can't force them to assimilate but we should be more assertive about integration and living withing our laws and values e.g. equality for women as one issue

We can deny them citizenship if they don't show that they've tried very hard to assimilate. 

[Dougie93]

Assimilate to what? 

Being a bunch of sob story cry whiners looking for government handouts in a nanny police state?

Totalitarian leftist loonies passing laws against thought crime?

Parochial provincials who spend all their time crying about the Americans because they are infantilized losers who can't do anything for themselves?

Don't assimilate, immigrants, Canadians are nobody to emulate.

Edited May 13, 2019 by Dougie93

[dialamah]

"Forcing" rarely works well for anything.  Sure, you can do things like make certain modes of dress unacceptable in public, or deny citizenship based on handshaking or refusing to go to a pool with the opposite gender.  It might work, but what is more likely is that those people will become ever more attached to their ideas.  They will close themselves off from the wider society even more, and even if the dominant society never sees a niqab or hijab, the women and girls will still be oppressed, controlled and abused in their homes.  Immigrant women are already the least likely to access domestic abuse services; how much less likely will they be if it's made clear to them that they are unwelcome?l

Thats the problem with "forcing" assimilation: there'll be a lot more lip service than actual buy-in.  Education and time is the only way to get real buy-in, if thats the goal.  

[Dougie93]

Time to force Canadians to assimilate with freedom, by bringing this totalitarian wannabe Chinese Communist Confederation down in a revolution.

[WestCanMan]

They were never forced in the past. They just didn't receive food and shelter on a silver platter, nor were they asked what we could do to make our country more to their liking, so they had to work for everything and learn a language. 

 

[Dougie93]

2 minutes ago, WestCanMan said:

They were never forced in the past. They just didn't receive food and shelter on a silver platter, nor were they asked what we could do to make our country more to their liking, so they had to work for everything and learn a language. 

 

Seem to me all the entrepreneurs in Canada are immigrants, the immigrants are the business class, native born Canadians are the ones who are raised to be infatilized losers who expect a government make work job for life.

[Argus]

4 hours ago, dialamah said:

"Forcing" rarely works well for anything.  Sure, you can do things like make certain modes of dress unacceptable in public, or deny citizenship based on handshaking or refusing to go to a pool with the opposite gender.  It might work, but what is more likely is that those people will become ever more attached to their ideas. 

Then they won't get citizenship and will have to leave.

[Argus]

3 hours ago, WestCanMan said:

They were never forced in the past. They just didn't receive food and shelter on a silver platter, nor were they asked what we could do to make our country more to their liking, so they had to work for everything and learn a language. 

People who believe today's immigrants will assimilate as easily as generations past ignore things like that. They ignore that today's immigrants are in 24/7 communication with their homelands, reading their newspapers, watching their TV, listening to their radio, visiting home often. They ignore that their cultures are HUGELY different from ours compared to generations past. They ignore that in generations past they had little choice but to assimilate. Society wouldn't accept them otherwise and they had little chance of success. Today they can wear their burka to work and if anyone refuses to hire or promote them the human rights bureaucrats will be all over it. And besides, just stay home and life off welfare. Only 42% of Somali men who came here decades ago are employed. The rest live on welfare, and they get bigger cheques with every kid they have.

[Goddess]

2 minutes ago, Argus said:

Then they won't get citizenship and will have to leave.

Or maybe they won't want to come in the first place.

The handshaking thing is no small matter.  It became an issue for a friend of mine who worked in a warehouse.  A Muslim coworker would not look at her, shake her hand (she was his boss) or have anything to do with her.  She finally got him moved out of her warehouse citing safety concerns - if she got injured or trapped in the warehouse, he would not save her.  Memories of all the girls who burned alive because they weren't allowed to leave the burning building without their hijabs on.

[dialamah]

51 minutes ago, Argus said:

Then they won't get citizenship and will have to leave.

Why would they have to leave?   Getting citizenship isn't a requirement for remaining in Canada, or in Switzerland for that matter.  

The Swiss model is interesting because its not their national government that denies citizenship requests, but local authorities.  They refuse citizenship for things like not shaking hands, not knowing where a specialty cheese comes from, wearing sweatpants and not saying hi often enough, or being too much of an activist.  

Not convinced I like that model for Canada, but if it works for the Swiss, I say good on them.

[Argus]

40 minutes ago, dialamah said:

Why would they have to leave?   Getting citizenship isn't a requirement for remaining in Canada, or in Switzerland for that matter.  

I'm fairly sure most Canadians would want to make it a requirement if given a choice. Exceptions could be made for those with rare skillsets needed here, but Canada is for Canadians, and if you're not one, you shouldn't be able to stay.

[Machjo]

23 hours ago, Argus said:

Canadians are not satisfied with the way immigrants are assimilating. It's been showing up in the polls more often of late.

Environics just did a large poll which showed two thirds of Canadians are unhappy at the rate immigrants are assimilating. And lest you immediately start screaming racism - the unhappiness about assimilation did not change markedly between those who have been here for multiple generations, and those who are first generation Canadians.

Notably, this sentiment held true across both first generation Canadians and third plus generation Canadians, with the 63% of the former and 68% of the latter agreeing that immigrants were not doing enough to adopt Canadian values.

This is somewhat similar to another poll, by EKOS, announced a couple of weeks ago which said 40% of Canadians felt too many non-white immigrants were coming into Canada. In that poll, visible minorities were more likely than white Canadians to feel too many visible minorities were coming to Canada. It seems newcomers are growing alarmed that the place they came to is changing to the kind of places they left, and don't like it.

So how do we force more assimilation? In places like Switzerland and France, immigrants are required to demonstrate how they have assimilated or they can't get citizenship. They need to show how they've blended into their communities, how they have improved their language skills, gotten local friends, joined local clubs, etc. In one case in Switzerland, a family was denied citizenship because their daughters refused to swim with boys at the school's swimming lessons. Another family was denied because their sons would not shake hands with their female teachers. Their few is if you want to become Swiss, you need to BECOME Swiss. I agree with them.

How do we force assimilation? Well, let's take examples from history.

1. Favour British immigration.

2. Hand out smallpox-infected blankets. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_disease_and_epidemics#Frequency_and_efficacy_of_biological_weapon_usage)

3. Force the natives into residential schools. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_school_system).

Favouring British immigration and establishing the Indian Residential School system helped English overtake Chinuk Jargon as the dominant language in BC betwee 1898 and 1900. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinook_Jargon#Overview_and_history)

Of course to ensure that English continued on track, the Government had to stay firm even once English gained the upper hand:

Duncan Campbell Scott in 1910  described the goal of the Department of Indian Affairs in dealing with the Indian Problem.

“It is readily acknowledged that Indian children lose their natural resistance to illness by habitating so closely in these schools, and that they die at a much higher rate than in their villages. But this alone does not justify a change in the policy of this Department, which is being geared towards the final solution of our Indian Problem." 

Then we had the pesky Chinese, but the Chinese Exclusion Act helped to bring that problem under control. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Canadians#20th_century)

Then we had those pesky Germans, but we got that problem under control after 1917. (https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/german-canadians)

In the 1960's, Commissioner J. B. Rudnyckyj wrote a separate statement challenging his colleagues’ proposals for an exclusively Anglo-French language policy at the B&B Commission. He actually believed that because Ukrainian Canadians had cleared the Prairies, they should count among the 'founding races.' But Laurendeau and Dunton would have none of that. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_bilingualism_in_Canada#The_perception_of_official_bilingualism_as_an_exclusively_bi-ethnocentric_policy)

Canada's mistake was in believing that it needed draconian measures only to build the country, not to maintain it. Wrong. If the country is built on draconian measures, it must be maintained through draconian measures too. For example, ever since the end of the residential-school era, some indigenous languages are making a comeback in spite of laws favouring English and French. Ukrainian and German Canadians have rebuilt their languages in the Prairies and parts of the Waterloo region. People are changing religions (used to be stricter laws against that in the past). People intermarry, learn foreign languages, raise their children in those languages, etc.

You see. If you want to force assimilation, you'll need some pretty draconian measures to do so. Even closing our borders will not prevent conversion to minority religions or people learning unofficial languages and using them and intermarrying, etc. You'll need some pretty tough measures to stop all of that.

Edited May 13, 2019 by Machjo

[Machjo]

I suppose an alternative to assimilation is integration. Though around 40% of Indonesians speak Javanese and an absolute maximum of 30% (some suspect maybe around 10%) speak Indonesian as a first language, Indonesia chose Indonesian as the official language just because it was easier to learn and already widespread as a lingua franca that around 99% of Indonesians know to varying degrees. Neither English nor French are particularly easy to learn and so they probably pose the main barrier to integration, whether of indigenous Canadians, foreign born, and even Canadians moving to and from Quebec.

[dialamah]

34 minutes ago, Argus said:

 but Canada is for Canadians, and if you're not one, you shouldn't be able to stay.

Over the weekend, I saw some Mennonite women and girls in their modest dresses and caps.  They, the Amish, the Hutterites, etc. practice a lifestyle that does not accord equality to women, and where abuse and pedophilia are hidden away, the perpetrators protected and victims punished.  They reject Canadian society to the extent that their children are warned away from us (the English) and they refuse to live in our neighborhoods and cities.  Clearly these folks are not Canadian and do not want to be Canadian.  What is your solution to that?

[Machjo]

16 minutes ago, dialamah said:

Over the weekend, I saw some Mennonite women and girls in their modest dresses and caps.  They, the Amish, the Hutterites, etc. practice a lifestyle that does not accord equality to women, and where abuse and pedophilia are hidden away, the perpetrators protected and victims punished.  They reject Canadian society to the extent that their children are warned away from us (the English) and they refuse to live in our neighborhoods and cities.  Clearly these folks are not Canadian and do not want to be Canadian.  What is your solution to that?

And what is Canadian? I work in English and French, speak mostly Chinese in the home and at the local shops, address my parents and extended family in either English or French and my wife's in Mandarin, read litererature in equal proportions in English, French, and Esperanto and to a lesser extent in Chinese Pinyin (children's literature), watch films in English and Chinese equally, and listen to songs in English and Chinese equally and sometimes in Esperanto and more rarely French. Yet I trace my roots back to New France on one parent's side and the UK on the other's. Religiously, there are at least three religions that different members of my family profess.

As for food, I was raised on hunting and typical English and French Canadian fare, later learnt to cook Indian vegan, and then learnt to cook Chinese vegan and now eat mostly Chinese.

So, what is a Canadian?

Edited May 14, 2019 by Machjo

[eyeball]

13 minutes ago, Machjo said:

So, what is a Canadian?

An Earthling like everyone else.

Edited May 14, 2019 by eyeball

[Machjo]

8 minutes ago, eyeball said:

An Earthling like everyone else.

I trace my roots back to New France, yet I doubt that I meet Argus' standard of what it means to be a 'Canadian.'

[Machjo]

On 5/12/2019 at 7:34 PM, Argus said:

Canadians are not satisfied with the way immigrants are assimilating. It's been showing up in the polls more often of late.

Environics just did a large poll which showed two thirds of Canadians are unhappy at the rate immigrants are assimilating. And lest you immediately start screaming racism - the unhappiness about assimilation did not change markedly between those who have been here for multiple generations, and those who are first generation Canadians.

Notably, this sentiment held true across both first generation Canadians and third plus generation Canadians, with the 63% of the former and 68% of the latter agreeing that immigrants were not doing enough to adopt Canadian values.

This is somewhat similar to another poll, by EKOS, announced a couple of weeks ago which said 40% of Canadians felt too many non-white immigrants were coming into Canada. In that poll, visible minorities were more likely than white Canadians to feel too many visible minorities were coming to Canada. It seems newcomers are growing alarmed that the place they came to is changing to the kind of places they left, and don't like it.

So how do we force more assimilation? In places like Switzerland and France, immigrants are required to demonstrate how they have assimilated or they can't get citizenship. They need to show how they've blended into their communities, how they have improved their language skills, gotten local friends, joined local clubs, etc. In one case in Switzerland, a family was denied citizenship because their daughters refused to swim with boys at the school's swimming lessons. Another family was denied because their sons would not shake hands with their female teachers. Their few is if you want to become Swiss, you need to BECOME Swiss. I agree with them.

My wife has lived in Canada for years and has no interest in obtaining Canadian citizenship: permanent residency works just fine. Your point is?

[dialamah]

6 minutes ago, Machjo said:

And what is Canadian?

The question here is not "What is Canadian", but "What is NOT Canadian, and therefore worthy of being evicted from Canada".  

A major non-Canadian characteristic is following a religion that believes in male domination over females, resulting in women appearing in public in long dresses and/or head coverings.  It's "non-Canadian" to speak a language other than English or French.  It's "non-Canadian" to live in an ethnic 'enclave'.   It's non-Canadian to get welfare or child tax benefits for having Canadian children when you are something other than white.  It seems there's quite a few things that can make you 'non-Canadian'.

17 minutes ago, Machjo said:

Religiously, there are at least three religions that different members of my family profess.

Yup, I have several religions represented in my family.  Also, non-religion - sometimes I forget that people really do believe that God exists and that there is heaven or hell as a final destination.

22 minutes ago, Machjo said:

So, what is a Canadian?

Perhaps Argus has a definitive answer.  I sure don't.

[Machjo]

1 minute ago, dialamah said:

The question here is not "What is Canadian", but "What is NOT Canadian, and therefore worthy of being evicted from Canada".  

A major non-Canadian characteristic is following a religion that believes in male domination over females, resulting in women appearing in public in long dresses and/or head coverings.  It's "non-Canadian" to speak a language other than English or French.  It's "non-Canadian" to live in an ethnic 'enclave'.   It's non-Canadian to get welfare or child tax benefits for having Canadian children when you are something other than white.  It seems there's quite a few things that can make you 'non-Canadian'.

Yup, I have several religions represented in my family.  Also, non-religion - sometimes I forget that people really do believe that God exists and that there is heaven or hell as a final destination.

Perhaps Argus has a definitive answer.  I sure don't.

Oh my! Imagine! I trace my roots back to New France and speak languages other than English and French AND live in an 'ethnic enclave'. I guess that doesn't make me a very good Canadian then. Though I don't profess the Christian Faith, I do read the Bible. I also clip my hair short. Does that count?

[eyeball]

Just now, Machjo said:

I trace my roots back to New France,

My roots go back to Cape Breton and the Isle of Skye and as for my branches, my grand-kids other grandparents moved here from China in the 70's.

 

Quote

yet I doubt that I meet Argus' standard of what it means to be a 'Canadian.'

Don't sweat the small stuff.

[eyeball]

12 minutes ago, dialamah said:

The question here is not "What is Canadian", but "What is NOT Canadian, and therefore worthy of being evicted from Canada".  

A major non-Canadian characteristic is following a religion that believes in male domination over females, resulting in women appearing in public in long dresses and/or head coverings. 

If there was one thing I'd force on anyone it would be to make these men wear blinders.  The comic relief alone would act to defuse a lot of tension.