The People Speak : A Motto For Copenhagen; Wisdom From Dutch Labour Party; New Litmus Test; Cultural and Economic Displacement

A MOTTO FOR COPENHAGEN; WISDOM FROM THE DUTCH LABOUR PARTY; THE NEW LITMUS TEST; CULTURAL AND ECONOMIC DISPLACEMENT

COMMENT #1 : A MOTTO FOR COPENHAGEN—S.J.

The environmentalists could be a powerful lobby for immigration restriction, but they have become globalized in their thinking, and therefore they don’t think in terms of the national environment but of the global environment which most individuals find hard to grasp. Most people find it easiest to understand what is around them. The environmentalists’ mantra is: Think globally and act locally, instead of: Think nationally and act nationally.

The former does not work but the latter does.

COMMENT #2 : WISDOM FROM THE DUTCH LABOUR PARTY—T.D.

Most of us start life as tax recipients. As young, childless adults, we become net taxpayers. As parents, we become net tax recipients again. As middle-aged adults, we go back to being net taxpayers, and as seniors, we are net tax recipients again.

The real question, then, is whether an immigrant is a net taxpayer or net tax recipient over the lifetime that he spends in Canada. That depends on the following factors: his age of arrival, his health, his labor force participation, his level of income, his law-abidingness. If an immigrant arrives as a young adult, is healthy and remains healthy most of his life, works most of his years under 65, has a high income and avoids crime, then he is likely to contribute more to the Treasury than to take out of it. If one of those conditions does not hold, then the immigrant is likely to be a net tax recipient over his lifetime in Canada.

Of course, we should also look at the second generation. Even if the first generation of immigrants does pay more in taxes than it receives in government benefits, partially because they were educated abroad, it does not follow that their children will also be beneficial to the host country. The children of some immigrant groups are massively over-represented in negative statistics such as crime. Examples are the Moroccans in the Netherlands and the Jamaicans in Canada.

We should bear in mind that in a welfare state like Canada, due to a combination of progressive taxation and social programs that are either universal or biased toward the poor, the majority of the population receives more from the government than it pays in taxes. I’m not making a complaint of it. Far from it, as a social-democrat, I’m all in favor of it.

However, it is precisely because we have a welfare state that we should be extremely careful with immigration because mass immigration can overburden the welfare state. To translate Wouter Bos, the leader of the Dutch Labor Party, : “We have to choose between a generous welfare state and restrictive immigration on the one hand and a restrictive welfare state and generous immigration on the other hand.”

COMMENT #3 : THE IMMIGRATION LITMUS TEST : IF IT’S GOOD FOR THE IMMIGRATION INDUSTRY, IT’S BAD FOR CANADA.—S.T.

On balance, Live-In Care-givers should be covered by private health insurance, receive the workplace protections to prevent the type of abuse that MP Dhalla allegedly inflicted on her foreign worker, and then be sent home at the end of their contract. Of course, the Government only heard one side of this issue, the one most likely to generate revenue for the parasitic immigration industry. We have to start pressing for a Canadian first immigration policy and the first test of any position is: will it negatively impact the professional immigration advocates? If the answer is yes, we’re onto a good proposal !!! This is the ultimate litmus test for immigration.

COMMENT #4 : NO SELF-RESPECTING COUNTRY TOLERATES CULTURAL DISPLACEMENT—C.W.

Most people have no objection to immigration so long as it does not threaten to displace the dominant and founding peoples of any given country and so long as the immigrants and refugees do not try to change or abuse the laws, traditions and customs of the host country. No country in the world, be it Muslim, East Indian, Asian or European, is different in that regard. The situation today is that it is predominantly European nations that have been receiving massive immigration from other countries and not the other way around. That is to say, there are no boatloads of native Canadian, British, Australian, German, or French peoples heading for China, Sri Lanka, or India. It is European nations or nations founded by Europeans that are, by virtue of the democratic principles that they are governed by, most susceptible and malleable to having their own laws, traditions, customs, etc, subverted by foreign cultures. Therefore, peoples from those (European founded) nations have legitimate and understandable concerns regarding immigration.

COMMENT #5 : COUNTRIES WITH HIGH UNEMPLOYMENT REDUCE IMMIGRATION—T.N.S.

Today’s high unemployment calls into stark focus that, even in boom times, the economy is challenged to add enough new jobs every year for up to 250,000 new immigrants without crowding out already unemployed Canadians. There is something fundamentally wrong with an immigration policy which floods our labour market with new arrivals who then compete with unemployed Canadians for scarce jobs.

It is rare that there is a single root cause of an economic problem, but in this case there clearly is. We simply are allowing too many new immigrants into Canada each year. The Ontario Court of Appeal recently mandated a case by case review for all sponsors of immigrants, should they not meet their obligations. This would “…raise humungous administrative overhead and weigh down any collection system.” The sensible alternative is to cut immigration levels to less than 50,000 per year . This would immediately alleviate these and so many other costs which are incurred by our economy as it struggles to cope with runaway immigration. With a sensible level of annual immigration, the cost of monitoring and enforcing sponsorship obligations becomes a minor expense with close oversight readily available. In fact, by cutting immigration levels we can select only the cream of the applicants for landed immigrant status who can be carefully selected to fill genuine shortages in the labour market. Instead of immigration being a drain on our economy, we would have a system which truly provides what should have been the case all along – an immigration policy which provides a net gain for our economy.