3 reasons for limiting immigration to Canada
Why is Canada bringing in about 250,000 immigrants per year? We are still going through a recession. Half a million Canadians lost their jobs and have not been able to find jobs that pay as well as the ones they lost. Immigration should be based mostly on Canada's economic need. It is madness to be bringing in so many people when so many people born here cannot find work.
There are cultural reasons for opposing high immigration. Canada's immigration levels since 1990 are an abnormality in Canada's immigration history. Between 1920 and 1990, Canada had a TAP ON, TAP OFF immigration policy. It turned the immigration tap on when Canada needed immigrants. It turned the immigration tap down or off when Canada did not need them. The abandonment of this policy has caused economic problems, but it has also made many Canadians feel like strangers in their own country.
There are environmental reasons for opposing immigration. Our cities are becoming very crowded and dirty. Years ago (1976), our Science Council recommended that Canada shed 2 myths about itself. One was that it had infinite resources. The Science Council said we did not have unlimited resources and we needed to conserve what we had. One resource in particular, our agricultural land, had to be conserved rather than transformed for roads and houses. The other myth Canada had to discard was that could take unlimited numbers of people. The Science Council said Canada's large space did not mean that it could support open-door immigration. The Science Council recommended that Canada cap its population and stabilize it.
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Some Arizona cities reluctant to implement new immigration laws
In Arizona, no city has declared itself an official "city of refuge" or begun to issue municipal identification cards. But some cities have been informally labeled sanctuary cities because of their illegal-immigrant-reporting practices.
Shortly after Gov. Jan Brewer signed Senate Bill 1070 into law in April 2010, Sen. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, said he believed that Chandler, Mesa and Phoenix all had policies that violated the new law. He warned that municipalities that are not in compliance could face state sanctions and fines.
Although a federal judge halted several parts of SB 1070 from going into effect, the portion of the law that forbids any state or local official or agency from limiting or restricting the enforcement of federal immigration laws is in effect.
Chandler and Mesa have responded by making subtle alterations to the way they deal with illegal residents.
In Chandler, Police Chief Sherry Kiyler had long ordered her officers not to inquire about the citizenship of crime victims, witnesses, civil-traffic violators or juveniles convicted of non-violent crimes. The policy was recently changed to allow - but not require - officers to investigate the legal status of any detainee.
Chandler Mayor Jay Tibshraeny, who as a state senator voted for SB 1070, has been pushing the city's police department to be more aggressive about checking immigration status.
But city officials are proceeding carefully. Some still feel the sting of a 1997 immigration raid in which Chandler police and federal immigration officials stopped hundreds of Hispanics. In a review of the raid, then-Attorney General Grant Woods said that officers had illegally used racial profiling in determining whom to stop, had violated the constitutional rights of some of the people stopped or detained, and had likely broken federal law.
The raid also produced a major rift between police and the Hispanic community - something Frank Mendoza, a spokesman for Chandler police, doesn't want to see repeated. "We have a very diverse community," Mendoza said. "We continue to work to uphold that, as it's something we value."
Prior to the passing of SB 1070, the Mesa Police Department had a policy of asking the immigration status of only those arrested for serious crimes. Now Mesa policy allows officers to ask anyone about their citizenship status.
In a 2009 guest column in The Arizona Republic, Pearce called the failure to enforce immigration laws "the greatest threat to our citizens." "Sanctuary-city policies threaten safe neighborhoods, not to mention violate federal law," he wrote. "We must eliminate all sanctuary cities in this state and allow legal citizens the right to sue their government for violating this law."
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Background
Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party.
Why is "La Raza" the one Spanish term that is NEVER translated in the American mass media? Because translating it would make it a lot less respectable. It means "THE RACE" -- The mixed Hispanic "race" of Mexico. Racism is fine South of the Rio Grande only, apparently.
The "line" of this blog is that immigration should be SELECTIVE. That means that:
1). A national government should be in control of it. The U.S. and U.K. governments are not but the Australian government has shown that the government of a prosperous Western country can be. Up until its loss of office in 2007, the conservative Howard government had all but eliminated illegal immigration. The present Leftist government has however restarted the flow of illegals by repealing many of the Howard government regulations.
2). Selectivity should be based on "the content of a man's character, not on the color of his skin", as MLK said. To expand that a little: Immigrants should only be accepted if they as individuals seem likely to make a positive net contribution to the country. Many "refugees" would fail that test: Muslims and Africans particularly. Educational level should usually be a pretty fair proxy for the individual's likely value to the receiving country. There will, of course, be exceptions but it is nonetheless unlikely that a person who has not successfully completed High School will make a net positive contribution to a modern Western society.
3). Immigrants should be neither barred NOR ACCEPTED solely because they are of some particular ethnic origin. Blacks are vastly more likely to be criminal than are whites or Chinese, for instance, but some whites and some Chinese are criminal. It is the criminality that should matter, not the race.
4). The above ideas are not particularly blue-sky. They roughly describe the policies of the country where I live -- Australia. I am critical of Australian policy only insofar as the "refugee" category for admission is concerned. All governments have tended to admit as refugees many undesirables. It seems to me that more should be required of them before refugees are admitted -- for instance a higher level of education or a business background.
5). Perhaps the most amusing assertion in the immigration debate is that high-income countries like the USA and Britain NEED illegal immigrants to do low-paid menial work. "Who will pick our crops?" (etc.) is the cry. How odd it is then that Australians get all the normal services of a modern economy WITHOUT illegal immigrants! Yes: Before the pandemic, you usually COULD buy a lettuce in Australia for a dollar or thereabouts. And Australia IS a major exporter of primary products.
6). I am a libertarian conservative so I reject the "open door" policy favoured by many libertarians and many Leftists. Both those groups tend to have a love of simplistic generalizations that fail to deal with the complexity of the real world. It seems to me that if a person has the right to say whom he/she will have living with him/her in his/her own house, so a nation has the right to admit to living among them only those individuals whom they choose.
I can be reached on jonjayray@hotmail.com -- or leave a comment on any post. Abusive comments will be deleted.
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