Yes Indeed!

Things have changed.

A few frank words about immigration

"Immigration has helped make Toronto one of the most successful and diverse cities in the world. That’s the good news. The bad news is, a lot of immigrants aren’t doing well. Many of them live in what are known as “priority neighbourhoods,” where unemployment is high and incomes are low. The number of people receiving social assistance has gone up. Although the city has no say in immigration policy, it pays the bills. Meantime, another 100,000 immigrants are arriving in the city every year."

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"Canada admits 250,000 immigrants a year, a higher rate than any other country. Why? No one can say. It’s not to raise the birth rate or replace our aging workers – the numbers don’t work out that way. Is it to create wealth and improve our productivity? If so, it isn’t working.

Mr. Burney argues that current immigration policies are dragging down our productivity, not increasing it. The two fastest-growing groups in our population are aboriginals and new immigrants. “They’re also the ones with the fewest skills to perform in our economy,” he says."

Way back in 1967, my ex, an Iraqi Arab with a diploma in Building and Construction from the University of Baghdad, emigrated to Canada, after working for a few years in the Iraqi railways department. The immigration authorities told him to settle in Regina. They did that in those days. And so he did. No whining involved.

He arrived in Regina with 50 cents in his pocket. He found a kindly old German-Canadian lady who was willing to take him in but confiscated his passport to ensure he couldn't rip her off. The very next day, he found a job in a shoe store selling shoes. Later he got a job with a major national construction company working as a draftsman.

He scraped and saved, arranged through a lengthy process of correspondence with the University of Baghdad and the University of Saskatchewan's College of Engineering, to determine what he needed to receive accreditation as a Professional Engineer in Canada. Before long he enrolled in the College of Engineering at the U. of S., took the few necessary courses that, combined with his credentials from Baghdad, would qualify him as a Professional Engineer licensed the practice in his adopted country. Again, no whining involved.

Within a few years, after working for another major construction company, he started his own business (using a Jewish law firm, btw, a member of which had taught a business law course to the engineering students at the U of S). Today, he's a millionaire, living and working in the most rocking city in the land, Calgary.

Our immigration policy makers should look to the past to find the cure to what ails us today.

PS: Our resident leftards often assume that I am anti-Muslim. Well, afraid not. I married one. But then again, he was as devout a Muslim as I was an Anglican. In other words, not so much. When our children came along, we both agreed that we could leave any religious affiliation up to them, which they could choose, or not choose, once they became adults. In the fourteen years of our marriage, I saw him pray once.

We went on a tour of the Middle East in 1973. The intention was to go to Iraq, but his father met us in Lebanon and begged us not to go. You see, he had been in the Iraqi army when he went to Germany on a holiday. It was from Germany that he applied for immigration to Canada. In other words, he was a deserter.

Although Saddam Hussein hadn't yet seized the big prize at that time, he was working his way up the ladder, and the old man was afraid that if his son set foot in Iraq he would be arrested and God knows what would happen to him. There were already dead people showing up on the streets, people who had dissented and ended up on Saddam Hussein's hit list.  So, we heeded his advice and went to Cyprus instead, and eventually Egypt. While in Egypt, we went into a famous mosque, just as tourists. That's the only time I ever saw him enter a mosque. He currently lives only a short distance from a major mosque in Calgary. He has never set foot in it.

That was long before Islamism swept through the Arab world. Arab nationalism reigned supreme and my ex was an Arab Nationalist devotee when he arrived, somewhat anti-Semitic, but he was quickly deprogrammed and it soon wore off. Otherwise, he would never have engaged the services of a Jewish law firm.

A funny thing that I didn't understand at the time: he deliberately avoided befriending and hanging with fellow Arabs and Muslims.  He had seen enough brutality in his homeland, the most searing on his memory being the Iraqi Royal Family murdered and their bodies dragged through the streets of Baghdad until there was no flesh left on their bones, in the so-called revolution in 1958. That will concentrate the mind of a 14 year old.  Such was the state of affairs in his homeland, the Cradle of (cough) "Civilization", and it only got worse. I think I know now why he avoided his compatriots. And I guess you could say he's not really a Muslim.