A bigger Canada?

[LAz]

It's not racism. It's just recognizing that there is a difference between whites and nonwhites.


That thing about africa could be applied elsewhere. The thing is that there there are not that many people from a single european nation. I would be very troubled if 40 million poles fell into canada within 10 years. But then again, that would mean that there would be no more of them left in Europe. So, I decided to pick on Africa, as some places there have insane population growth rates.


Sure that slavery has something to do with the black condition in the US. But, even after world war two there were things going on... whites rioted as blacks tried to move into their neighborhoods and use their facilities. There is a dislike of them to this day. It would happen again in my opinion. Movement though is static, as there is no longer a housing shortage that prompted blacks to move out of their area. In fact back then the blacks population was booming thanks to immigration from the south. Any radical change in population structure will not be a good idea, especially if it is of a minority group.


Asians did have barriers to blacks. Remember how zoning got started? They banned certain asian businesses in parts of the city on the west coast. There's the origin of zoning. Lets not forget those asian exclusion laws that came next.


You say that blacks are the target of everybody's scorn. Yet right before you were painting a picture that we all get along.


Aboriginal people will never get their land back. Even up top the 1950s genocide was being done to them.


Asians in BC you say... just pick up that national geographic from oh the early or mid 1990s that has a section on vancouver. The white guy in there says that he's a bit bothered by a trend. On the gold course it used to always be english spoken. Now, he hears chinese more than english. That indeed is the crux of the issue.
Europeans are more likely to addapt and lose their roots, in my opinion. Others have more closer family values, which is a good thing, but a bad thing for assimilation.

 

[urbandreamer]

^Nonsense.

 

[LAz]

^lolzors
<lolz
vadding more stuff to this nonsense topic

 

[kEiThZ]

^Nonsense.

+1

The only thing more ridiculous than LAz's racist perception that whites integrate better is his attempted defence of these views.

 

[kEiThZ]

It's not racism.

Yes it is. And it's even more disturbing that you don't think it is.

It's just recognizing that there is a difference between whites and nonwhites.

That excuse has been used by segregationists in the US and defenders of apartheid in South Africa.

That thing about africa could be applied elsewhere. The thing is that there there are not that many people from a single european nation. I would be very troubled if 40 million poles fell into canada within 10 years. But then again, that would mean that there would be no more of them left in Europe. So, I decided to pick on Africa, as some places there have insane population growth rates.

How is Africa's population growth rate relevant to our immigration policy?

Sure that slavery has something to do with the black condition in the US. But, even after world war two there were things going on... whites rioted as blacks tried to move into their neighborhoods and use their facilities. There is a dislike of them to this day. It would happen again in my opinion.

Maybe in the US. Canadians are not so ignorant. Toronto and Vancouver have changed skin colours. And non-whites have moved in to traditionally white neighbourhoods. Demographic changes have never resulted in any sort of mass violence or protest in Toronto.

Any radical change in population structure will not be a good idea, especially if it is of a minority group.

Define the majority group then. Find me a single ethnicity in Canada that is really dominant:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_Canada

Of course, you'll get around that challenge by grouping people by skin colour instead of ethnicity. Funny, how that works.

Asians did have barriers to blacks. Remember how zoning got started? They banned certain asian businesses in parts of the city on the west coast. There's the origin of zoning. Lets not forget those asian exclusion laws that came next.

Yet, again you bring US history into the picture and automatically assume this happened here. Your ignorance about Canada is really starting to show. Proof this was widespread on the Canadian west coast please?

You say that blacks are the target of everybody's scorn. Yet right before you were painting a picture that we all get along.

Right. So because racists have an issue with them, we should cater to the bigots and exclude them?

And that's not what I said. I said the reason they fair poorly sometimes, is because they do suffer from discrimination. That said, Canada has nowhere near the issue with its black communities that the US does.

Aboriginal people will never get their land back. Even up top the 1950s genocide was being done to them.

Funny how that works. So you draw the line on which ethnic groups are entitled to immigrate in Canada, on who got to wipe out the aboriginals first?

Asians in BC you say... just pick up that national geographic from oh the early or mid 1990s that has a section on vancouver. The white guy in there says that he's a bit bothered by a trend. On the gold course it used to always be english spoken. Now, he hears chinese more than english. That indeed is the crux of the issue.

And if that's the concern (and to some extent I sympathize with it), that can easily be addressed by more stringent standards on citizenship and immigration, when it comes to language.

But more broadly, just because Cantonese is common in Vancouver, has it hindered Vancouverites in anyway? You can even get around any China Town in any major Canadian city in English. Just like you can get around any ethnic enclave on Queen Street in English. No need to know Italian or Portugese.

I find it telling that you give credence to the views of this one bigot, and ignore the entire positive history of immigration in this country. That too, from the 90s. Wow. I'll bet even that guy's moved on, and probably now eats Dim Sum every Saturday.

Europeans are more likely to addapt and lose their roots, in my opinion.

And it's a fairly ignorant opinion.

Others have more closer family values, which is a good thing, but a bad thing for assimilation.

So Italians for example don't have strong family and community values? I know more 2nd and 3rd gen Italians that speak Italian than Indians and Arabs, etc. who remain fully fluent in their languages after a generation or two.

 

[kEiThZ]

More to this discussion, what I find particularly peculiar is that people think we'll be able to get this many quality immigrants.

For all this talk worry about ethnic balancing, I don't see Italians and Poles and Czechs dying to get into Canada.

And to SiP, assuming we want to step it up, where would we get that many immigrants? With the BRIC countries, chunks of the Middle East, north Africa and South America all starting to develop economically, where are we going to get a lot of these skilled immigrants? We'd have to start dropping the standard. And I don't know if that's something, even me as an immigrant would support.

One alternative that the Harper has put in and is becoming popular is granting residency to students who work in Canada for 2 years after graduation (they are pretty much guaranteed work permits). This seems to net Canada younger migrants who automatically overcome the pesky "Canadian experience" barrier that most immigrants face. Now, all it takes is expansion of our universities, and this could become a major sources of extremely well trained immigrants who can be very easily integrated.

 

[Second_in_pie]

Funny how that works. So you draw the line on which ethnic groups are entitled to immigrate in Canada, on who got to wipe out the aboriginals first?

There were just too many sad and wrong things in that comment. The reason that land claims problems aren't being solved is that defeatists like LAz (assuming it's not just ignorance,) say nothing's gonna happen so why worrying about it?

And if that's the concern (and to some extent I sympathize with it), that can easily be addressed by more stringent standards on citizenship and immigration, when it comes to language.

But more broadly, just because Cantonese is common in Vancouver, has it hindered Vancouverites in anyway? You can even get around any China Town in any major Canadian city in English. Just like you can get around any ethnic enclave on Queen Street in English. No need to know Italian or Portugese.

I find it telling that you give credence to the views of this one bigot, and ignore the entire positive history of immigration in this country. That too, from the 90s. Wow. I'll bet even that guy's moved on, and probably now eats Dim Sum every Saturday.

While I accept that there could be reasons that people'd be annoyed by this, I'd like to put in a question: if these people are coming into the area, it doesn't mean that there's less English speaking people in the area. It just means that new services need to come in for the new people. The only reason you'd be annoyed is if you just don't like people speaking another language around you.

More to this discussion, what I find particularly peculiar is that people think we'll be able to get this many quality immigrants.

For all this talk worry about ethnic balancing, I don't see Italians and Poles and Czechs dying to get into Canada.

And to SiP, assuming we want to step it up, where would we get that many immigrants? With the BRIC countries, chunks of the Middle East, north Africa and South America all starting to develop economically, where are we going to get a lot of these skilled immigrants? We'd have to start dropping the standard. And I don't know if that's something, even me as an immigrant would support.

One alternative that the Harper has put in and is becoming popular is granting residency to students who work in Canada for 2 years after graduation (they are pretty much guaranteed work permits). This seems to net Canada younger migrants who automatically overcome the pesky "Canadian experience" barrier that most immigrants face. Now, all it takes is expansion of our universities, and this could become a major sources of extremely well trained immigrants who can be very easily integrated.

Firstly, I don't think we need all of our immigrants to be "quality" as we're taking in today. The immigrants that Canada is taking in are the best of the best, definitely of a much higher calibre than born-in Canadians on average. I'm not saying that we should be letting in uneducated, unmotivated rednecks, but there's a wide variety of people that could do jobs which are currently rejected for immigration. If you accompany just slightly lowering our immigration standards, while increasing the ease of crossing over certifications, I think you'd have a very good thing on your hands. A large amount of specialists in many trades, a new demographic to take up their previous jobs and grow the economy some more (accompanied by more highly educated people to let them in.) Then with that demographic growth, you could add in people working in simpler jobs which barely need a high school education, if even assuming some of them may aspire greater heights or have innovative ideas just as the current Canadian populace has with it's demographic of people who aren't high school educated. And to accompany all this growth, there's room to let in manual labourers to do construction in new infrastructure and such. And when the growth stops in 50 years, these people will be retired like the rest of us, but their fully Canadian educated children will be taking up the help and bring their family bloodlines to our regular demographic mix in education.
If you were to also diversify the economy and pursue other trading partners, these groups of immigrants have a great chance to be on the front lines of international trade and relations for their respective countries. There's plenty of room for Canada to start manufacturing it's own resources, and definitely a lot of room if we were to take back the helm in green resources and sustainable technologies.

As for these developing countries, while it's true that many are developing, there still exist huge problems in a lot of them that aren't even going to get solved in 50 years. I think the only developing countries that we might end up losing a lot of potential immigrants from are Brazil and China (though maybe not even China if they haven't progressed in their plan to give liberty to the people.) In basically all of the other countries, there are huge issues of explosive population growth leading to overcrowding, terrorism and insurgency, oppression, and economic inequality that definitely won't be solved so soon. There might be significant progress for those countries and that's great, but unfortunately these major issues won't be solved in 50 years, probably not even 100.

EDIT: That program does seem interesting though.

 

[LAz]

Yet, again you bring US history into the picture and automatically assume this happened here. Your ignorance about Canada is really starting to show. Proof this was widespread on the Canadian west coast please?

Who the hell are you telling me what to do? Okay, lets meet halfway on this one. You'll get the crap, and I'll tell you what crap that you need to get.
Back some years ago I ran into Cultural hegemony and the race-definition process in Chinatown, Vancouver: 1880 - 1980 by Anderson. It is well known. So there, I gave you the stuff where you can learn about hardcore repression on asians in vancouver. Cheers.
Your part of the bargain will be to provide use with the pdf. I'm too lazy to go about it.
Here's more information on the source, http://www.envplan.com/abstract.cgi?id=d060127
We can get into the asian exclusion laws next. Yep, they had that too in the US and in Canada.

And that's not what I said. I said the reason they fair poorly sometimes, is because they do suffer from discrimination. That said, Canada has nowhere near the issue with its black communities that the US does.

That's only because canada had fewer blacks. Trust me, it would be a whole lot worse if there were more blacks in canada. Small numbers result in less stuff going on. Go read up on "Making the Second Ghetto", a book about race and housing in Chicago. It's a nightmare, really scary what the blacks went through. White man will always be so towards the black man. It's like inherent or something.

Define the majority group then. Find me a single ethnicity in Canada that is really dominant:
...
Of course, you'll get around that challenge by grouping people by skin colour instead of ethnicity. Funny, how that works.

I went right off the bat with skin color, no? You went back to ethnicity. All these subgroups of whites get absorbed and assimilated. I saw it with my very own eyes both in Canada and the US.

How is Africa's population growth rate relevant to our immigration policy?

We're discussing immigration of tens of millions. Thus we could exclude many european countries and instead look at places that could do this, such as Africa. Yeah, I'll just lump them all into one nation. Well, no, I'll pigeonhole them into subsaharan and northerns.

And if that's the concern (and to some extent I sympathize with it), that can easily be addressed by more stringent standards on citizenship and immigration, when it comes to language.

People who want the tens of millions of newcomers will make the requirement of language and whatnot incredibly easy. Take the golf example from national geographic, and put it every context imaginable, if we are gonna get so many millions overnight.

You can even get around any China Town in any major Canadian city in English. Just like you can get around any ethnic enclave on Queen Street in English. No need to know Italian or Portugese.

I think I said this before, I view ethnic neighborhoods as b.s. constructions for the sake of tourism.
Chinatowns emerged as places in which people got segregated into. Now it's all about making money and tourism for the city.

So Italians for example don't have strong family and community values? I know more 2nd and 3rd gen Italians that speak Italian than Indians and Arabs, etc. who remain fully fluent in their languages after a generation or two.

Those are exceptions regarding italians, rather than the norm. European groups lose their mother tongues really really fast.
Muslims on the other hand have a religious commitment to learn arabic, for supposedly the Koran must be read in Arabic. It's a whole different sort of society. But islam is more than a religion, it's a way of life, a political system, it's everything really. A whole different way of life.

And to SiP, assuming we want to step it up, where would we get that many immigrants? With the BRIC countries, chunks of the Middle East, north Africa and South America all starting to develop economically, where are we going to get a lot of these skilled immigrants? We'd have to start dropping the standard. And I don't know if that's something, even me as an immigrant would support.

Considering that the overwhelming majority of the world lives in miserable conditions, then that should not be a problem whatsoever.

 

[toraerach]

All these subgroups of whites get absorbed and assimilated. I saw it with my very own eyes both in Canada and the US.

A pretty biased eye if you overlooked every Mennonite/Amish/Hutterite/Hasidic community on the continent. Or hey, why not take a quick trip to Quebec? Those people have been resisting assimilation longer than Starfleet.

Since rational arguments don't seem to work with you (and I'm not just talking about this thread), I'm going to have to resort to this - who assimilated better into Canadian culture and national fabric: Michaëlle Jean or Ernst Zündel?

EDIT: And if we're looking at knowledge of official languages, remember that the majority of Black immigrants living in Toronto come from the English-speaking Caribbean. As native speakers of the official language and lingua franca of a linguistically diverse city, they have a leg up over many European immigrants.

I'm getting tired of every thread in the Politics section turning into the same arguments about race (and so have a lot of other forumers judging on how depopulated it's become around these parts).

 

[LAz]

Or hey, why not take a quick trip to Quebec? Those people have been resisting assimilation longer than Starfleet.

Quebec's a special case. I feel that they should get the most autonomy that they can get.

However, they have been defeated. The reason why/how is through immigration. Their referendum would have passed in 1995 had there been no foreign immigrants. Since then the federal government has done what it can to dump as many newcomers there as they possibly could, to reduce the secession votes. Rather asshole tactics if you ask me, but effective nonetheless.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/w...5786385.html?scp=24&sq=Andre Boisclair&st=cse
Newcomers challenge Quebec separatists

EDIT: And if we're looking at knowledge of official languages, remember that the majority of Black immigrants living in Toronto come from the English-speaking Caribbean. As native speakers of the official language and lingua franca of a linguistically diverse city, they have a leg up over many European immigrants.

Doesn't change the fact that the blacks are pretty much always put at the bottom of the barrel by all of white man. White man does not like the black man. That is not my view, but alas it is the brutal reality facing the black man. Slavery did not go away. It just changed form. Now the white man does not need to put chains on the black man.
Toronto would be having whites rioting against blacks just like in Chicago. The reason it did not is because the black population did not boom from 10 to 30% of the population in 10 years. Immigration would do this, hence one must be opposed to such mass migration - from any people. I pick on the blacks because they are the most likely if such stuff was implemented. We could take indians too, their population is booming, and their caste system is still in place I'd say.

 

[Rowe]

Gladly your views are condemned in Canada.

 

[Second_in_pie]

LAz, you have a pretty messed up view about this whole race thing.

Firstly is the fact that you're basing incompatibility on race as opposed to a logical argument about cultures colliding. There is no predisposition towards a certain race; racism and racial prejudice are all entirely newly made up things. In ancient Greece and Rome, Ethiopians (that's about as black as you can get,) were a highly respected civilization. While it may not have been commonplace to see an Ethiopian in an ancient Greek town, when they arrived people treated them as sophisticated foreigners, just as we may treat someone from France. Trying to keep someone out of our country based on skin colour is a totally backwards and wrong way of thinking.
Racism was actually born out of slavery. The only available slaves for the Americas were Blacks from western Africa. To make it much easier for western rulers in the Americas to rationalize this very immoral behavior, they put Black people at the level of animals, saying that they're helping the black man because he can't survive on his own. Since then, the US south has had a deep racial prejudice. In the 50s as African Americans moved north, segregated communities weren't born out of racism, they were born out of the fact that many black people from the south had a hard time finding job and so settled into slums. A lack of effort to improve the conditions of all people living in poor areas (which includes a lot of Hispanics too,) has led to the poverty conditions which makes the current racial prejudice against black people, that being that they're dangerous. Statistically, this may be true, but it would be because of higher crime levels due to higher poverty due to this demographic having been segregated into these conditions in the past.

 

[kEiThZ]

Gladly your views are condemned in Canada.

+1

He has absolutely zero clue about our history. He keeps trying to apply the US context here. That goes for transit, race relations, urban development, etc. And that's really how he tries to stay relevant.

He seems to think we'd have riots if we went from 10% to 30% black. Meanwhile, anybody over the age of 30 has seen more demographic changes than that in their lifetimes in our major urban centres with basically no major upheaval or significant public backlash.

As an immigrant, what I find stunning in Canada too is how much smaller communities are clamouring for immigrants. For all their concerns about immigrants, it's amazing how many immigrants Quebec takes in. And they can easily turn the tap off, given that they are the only province that has exclusive control over their immigration policy. The other provinces are now looking at Quebec and are actually starting to complain that the feds are moving too slow on immigration. And this guy still thinks there's resistance to immigration. That'd be news to every Premier in the country.

 

[kEiThZ]

That's only because canada had fewer blacks. Trust me, it would be a whole lot worse if there were more blacks in canada. Small numbers result in less stuff going on. Go read up on "Making the Second Ghetto", a book about race and housing in Chicago. It's a nightmare, really scary what the blacks went through. White man will always be so towards the black man. It's like inherent or something.

Again with the US (and specifically Chicago) history lesson. This is just like your earlier attempt to try and prove there was some evil type of gentrification going on in Toronto.

Canada is Canada. It is not the US. We don't have the history they do. Heck, this land was the terminus of the underground railroad. You seem to forget that we were a refuge for blacks escaping the harshest policies of the US.

But other than that, you've yet to show a single link pointing to mass protests and public resistance to demographic changes in Canada since non-white immigration was stepped up in the 1970s. Please show me where we had Chicago style race riots since after Trudeau opened up immigration to non-whites and Mulroney upped the quotas in the 1980s.

I went right off the bat with skin color, no? You went back to ethnicity. All these subgroups of whites get absorbed and assimilated. I saw it with my very own eyes both in Canada and the US.

Then apparently you are blind. An hour's drive from TO there's plenty of Amish communities, who haven't been integrated in generations. Ditto for the Hasidim in Montreal. How are they any different than more conservative Muslims?

And it's absolutely convenient how you ignore the massive South Asian community in BC that's extremely well integrated and have been there for generations now.

We're discussing immigration of tens of millions. Thus we could exclude many european countries and instead look at places that could do this, such as Africa. Yeah, I'll just lump them all into one nation. Well, no, I'll pigeonhole them into subsaharan and northerns.

If that's the road you are going down, we have bigger problems. We need immigrants simply to sustain ourselves. If Europe won't provide enough, then regardless of your opinion on the integratability of African migrants, we are unlikely to have any choice but to source migrants from there.

People who want the tens of millions of newcomers will make the requirement of language and whatnot incredibly easy.

Except that's not what has happened. Language requirements have gotten tighter under every successive government since Trudeau, even as non-white immigration has increased. And survey after survey shows, that the issue isn't the standard but the provision of opportunities to learn the language. Immigrants of every race and creed have shown in survey after survey that they want to learn English or French and they just wish the government would make more classes available to them. The problem unfortunately is that this is a provincial not a federal responsibility. So while some provinces do this well (Quebec), some struggle with it (Ontario). Go to any ESL program in Toronto. You'll find there's usually a waiting list.

I think I said this before, I view ethnic neighborhoods as b.s. constructions for the sake of tourism.
Chinatowns emerged as places in which people got segregated into. Now it's all about making money and tourism for the city.

If the complaint is that there's too much Chinese being spoken, then whether it's tourist kische or not is irrelevant. You'll find the most Chinese being spoken in Chinatown. And if you can still get by in Chinatown in English, then I fail to see the problem....unless of course, you are a bigot and just don't like to hear anybody talking Chinese near you too often. But that's a personal problem not a societal one.

Those are exceptions regarding italians, rather than the norm. European groups lose their mother tongues really really fast.

Really? So all the Serbs who cling together in Mississauga are an exception too? What about the Ukraininian communities in the Prairies, who generations later still speak the language and make delicious pergoies?

The only Europeans who have assimilated are the original British stock. And that's largely because they just have more generations between them and their ancestors here than anybody else. A Czech or a Pole or a Serb coming to Canada today will face the same issues integrating and demonstrate the same willingness to integrate as a Chinese, Arab or Indian immigrant.

Muslims on the other hand have a religious commitment to learn arabic, for supposedly the Koran must be read in Arabic.

Kinda like how many "white" jewish families teach their kids to read Hebrew so they can get throught the Torah?

It's a whole different sort of society. But islam is more than a religion, it's a way of life, a political system, it's everything really. A whole different way of life.

Is there a religion that's not a way of life? My parents are staunch Catholics. You can bet that their faith certainly requires that they conduct their lives a certain way. Heck, we have priests who tell us to vote with our conscience (code for vote pro-life). How is that any different?

Considering that the overwhelming majority of the world lives in miserable conditions, then that should not be a problem whatsoever.

Except, the stock of immigrants you seek come from countries where the conditions are rapidly improving and can hardly be categorized as "miserable". You'll have a harder and harder time convincing Eastern Europeans to migrate as time passes...just like how Western European migration has all but dried up over the years.

 

[kEiThZ]

I can't be bothered with this level of ignorance any more. Indians still have the caste system? Wow. I am Indian and that's news to me. The most egregious practices of the caste system have all but disappeared and the rest of the of the system is rapidly going out the window in India itself. Out here it's all but non-existent among Indians...and of course not practiced at all by non-Hindus. I am fairly sure in my 20 years in Canada, I've never seen untouchables on Gerrard street.

Anyway, no point arguing with somebody who clearly thinks he's from the "superior race". Oh sorry...the "just different" race.

I am just stunned that this kind of bigotry actually exists today. And that they actually think such views are defensible and acceptable....must be an American thing