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With the benefit of hindsight, how to change Canada's immigration policy?

Dichotomy said:
Nope. Never been on any of the political forums. Guess I'll check those out, too. I actually haunt many of the car forums.

As I said in an earlier post, I was apolitical until recently. I did all my placard waving in the early '80s (against Anita Bryant, Roy McMurtry, et al), but left all that behind me to go aloft and make my fortune.

Now it's too obvious the lunatics are in charge of the asylum and something must be done.
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Is personal fortune more important than standing up to injustice? I don't understand why both cannot be done simultaneously.
 
Mot said:
Also in the US they have doctor's selling slurpees and lawyer's driving cabs. Not all foreign education is accepted. In addition it's much harder and takes way longer to gain permanent residency and citizenship in the US than in Canada. I believe Canada treats it's immigrants much better in the long run.
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Perhaps. I'm mostly going off census results from the U.S. where practically every immigrant group, and especially those from South and East Asia, have education and income far higher than the national average. It's hard to reconcile that with the fact that in Canada, our points system should act as a bigger "filter" than their system, yet we don't have the same trend here with immigrants. As for how immigrants are treated, well that may be a different story socially. Clearly racism is more prevalent in the United States.

P.S. Can't believe I spelled Papua New Guinea wrong.
 
afransen said:
I was banned from 'free' dominion for questioning some of their logic (and it was all canuckistan this, and Lie-beral that). And I mean with in a matter of a couple of hours. I was impressed--they managed to lower my opinion of them more than after merely reading their ideas.
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My rule of thumb is to why bother arguing in those kinds of forums, they're not my crowd, anyway, and it's like yelling "fire" in a crowded movie theatre. Just treat it as the closed circle of discussion that it is.

Though personally, I can picture the Free Dominion crowd resembling the sorts of folk you see attending Happy Hedonist events, etc...
 
Mot said:
Is personal fortune more important than standing up to injustice? I don't understand why both cannot be done simultaneously.
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Unless you work in a unionized environment, who has the time? If you want to get ahead in this world (the real world) it takes 50-60 hour weeks and years of hard work - hardly conducive to packing up and going to the cause du jour, is it?

There's a reason that many of the 'causes' are overly represented by the very young and the very old - the rest of us are too busy earning a living!
 
theowne said:
Perhaps. I'm mostly going off census results from the U.S. where practically every immigrant group, and especially those from South and East Asia, have education and income far higher than the national average. It's hard to reconcile that with the fact that in Canada, our points system should act as a bigger "filter" than their system, yet we don't have the same trend here with immigrants. As for how immigrants are treated, well that may be a different story socially. Clearly racism is more prevalent in the United States.

P.S. Can't believe I spelled Papua New Guinea wrong.
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It's just wrong to compare their system with ours: proportionately, we accept far more immigrants than they do. The American economy is simply massive; it can absorb far more immigrants than it does accept.

I am not sure what Mot is getting at: getting into this country if you are gay is very easy. I have tons of gay south American, Asian and Eastern European friends. Been to a gay bar recently?
However, to do it right, you do need a lawyer and spend some $$$, which unfortunately, many gays escapting persecution don't have.
 
You know, there are people who'd object to your sexuality on similar "other 80%" grounds, so if you wanna eat your words, fine by me...

Besides, coming in here from a realm of "car forums" is a little like a Manitoba hog farmer expressing judgment on abstract art...
 
adma said:
You know, there are people who'd object to your sexuality on similar "other 80%" grounds, so if you wanna eat your words, fine by me...

Besides, coming in here from a realm of "car forums" is a little like a Manitoba hog farmer expressing judgment on abstract art...
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First of all, my gay shield allows me to see the world from the outside, looking in. This is why many of the great artists and thinkers in history have been (and continue to be) gay. Being able to slip in and out of both worlds can be a huge advantage. ;)
Secondly, being an avid car nut since I was, like 5 years old, gives me a perspective that is (obviously) different than many people on this forum, but not totally out of synch with the majority of people in this city. Perhaps some of the people on UT should become more acquainted with the 'enemy,' no?
Like many people, I have followed my interests and those interests have led me to this forum because I plan to fight the destruction of the Gardiner to the bitter end.
I don't like what is happening in this country in general and this city in particular. Having a more 'rounded' education and having actually lived with my eyes wide open for the past few decades has given me a different take on things.
It is interesting to note that a lot of the hand wringing that is going on in Canadian politics today started 30 or more years ago in the gay movement. No other movement is more PC oriented or paralysed with fear of giving offense than gay politicos.
Not me. I've seen and heard it all before. Nothing can surprise me.
 
syn said:
They seem to have an Admiral Beez too:
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Yeah, that was me. Now that is one scary group of people. I got banned for disagreeing perhaps too strongly. What you see at FD is that whenever someone can't find a mainstream media source to support whatever viewpoint they want to post about, they dig up some blog written to appear like a news article.
 
Our immigration system is for the large part a system that works fairly well....that's why the UK and a few other countries are now implementing systems similar to ours or studying ours in depth.

Changes I would make...coming from a person who moved here myself....

1) Tighten up family class immigration. This does very little to benefit Canada. You already get additional points for having family in Canada in the first place, which means that family class sponsorship is really for people that wouldn't cut it otherwise. My parents refused to sponsor their siblings, who all qualified on their own merits. If folks want to bring grandma over from ye olde country, perhaps a new semi-permanent residency category should be created.

2) Better integration of the overall immigration experience. It broke my heart to see my parents destroy their careers to stay in Canada. Immigrants move here for a better life. They want to work. Let's facilitate that. The professional associations in this country need some severe handling to get the ball rolling on this file....we could probably cure the doctor shortage in the process too....

3) Better services for refugees. Moving to a new country under duress is a traumatic experience. Let's do better at making this experience a little more palatable so that these folks might decide to continue staying here.....

4) No sponsorship without citizenship. I dunno if this has changed or not....but I dont think its appropriate to have immigrants sponsoring immigrants. That right should be reserved for citizens.

5) Increase the time period required to attain citizenship. 3 years is a joke. Canadian citizenship is increasingly seen as a passport of convenience....a gateway to the US or other western countries, or as an insurance policy (ie. for living in Lebanon) By increasing the time period required to say at least 5 or 7 years, we will dissuade at least some people from using us as a flag of convenience.

6) Impose a minimum language standard for citizenship. I can understand bringing in immigrants that cant understand English. But if you havent made any effort to learn one of the two official languages of Canada in the three years you've been here do you really deserve to be a citizen? Yes, I know the citizenship test is supposed to test for language proficiency....but we all know how well that works.....
 
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