We are losing our traditional rights in Canada because of 'militant immigration', to coin a phrase. Thus we have recently arrived immigrants saying what may or may not be published in Canadian media and the media, and individuals, are having to pay many thousands of dollars to defend their right to free speech. And of course this free speech system seems only to be working in one direction in Canada, which is against that of traditional Canadian freedoms.
What are "traditional rights", exactly? There is no difference between our stated rights now and what they were 40 years ago; the only difference is that they are now being encroached upon and immigrants are not the source.
Militant immigration? That is simply non-sense. If immigrants are using the system that's already in place to enforce Canadian laws, then I say good. Hate speech is part of that, unlike in the U.S. Your attitude is pretty typical... that the immigrants are taking over. They're not. Immigrants have zero power in this country. Even most professionals who went to school for 10+ years in their country of origin to become doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc. move here and we make it virtually impossible for them to resume their lives. We keep them at the bottom for the most part and that's the way it's always been. Immigrants have not been part of our "traditional rights" in practice because we treat them as labour to be exploited.
can we avoid the European trap and not mention the United States when the debate does obviously not involve them?
What European trap? The only thing happening to Europe right now is the result of their own immigration policies backfiring in their faces. Most European nations are not meeting replacement in their populations; they need foreign labour to make ends meet, but they don't want to give immigrants a say in their society. In other words, they want to have their cake and eat it too.
That is Europe's history and legacy... a bunch of bourgeois whose palace is built on the back of the rest of the world. I don't have much sympathy for nations that are now experiencing sectarian violence or rebellions within their cultural enclaves which they helped create. The systems there only make token attempts to integrate these people.
The western world has been in stagnant decay since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. being the exception until the past 15 years or so, and that's only because its foreign policy has guaranteed it access to what it needs to survive.
Can't you come up with some fresh ideas of your own without regurgitating this sort of claptrap nonsense?
Can you come up with a sound, rational and intellectual rebuttal without all of these meaningless platitudes about how defective my arguments are?
I'll say it any way you want. But to be taken seriously you'll first need some fresh ideas of your own based on your own experience and not that of some magazine article you happened to read while sitting in a waiting room.
I have a university education on these issues but more importantly I have spent more time in "developing" nations (a trite terminology) than you have, so please take your assumptions and shove it.
Democracies, at least in North America, have been formed by immigrants. This makes no sense.
Democracies in North America were formed by people who came from parts of the world where people and resources were being exploited for the sake of luxury; they brought those same practices here and then revised the history to make us feel good and happy about it. Fact is, we did not build our own cities; we imported de facto slaves and indentured servants to do it. That's not my opinion, that's just the way it is. We have only recently started to emerge from an era where human exploitation was common and a fact of life.
If the subject is Canada let's stay there.
You can't talk about Canada without talking about the rest of the western world. Canada is an apple that fell from the same tree as the United States and all of the other colonies of the west.
Right. Our country was too. It is a nation of immigrants wanting a new life, and opportunities and freedoms they lacked elsewhere.
I'm not glossing over the fact that many people were able to arrive here and make a new live for themselves that was comparatively better than where they came from; but you can't take that and say that no exploitation happened. You can't deny that there were serious and wide inequities that remained for a long, long time and in many ways they remain to do this day. It was widespread and endemic. The western world has been at war for centuries with all corners of the globe in order to procure cheap labour and luxury goods: coffee, sugar, tea, chocolate, soy. You have no idea how many people have died at the hands of our governments just so that we can live in the lap of excess.
Ahh, but you being wiser than most, know it.
What I know is that governments use immigrants as a scapegoat to divert the public from their own domestic policy failures. Look at the economy right now... it sucks. The banking system is the #1 enemy of the western world right now but people wouldn't know it because they are too busy arguing over if Muslims are evil or not. The "war on terror" was the latest distortion so that the west can enter the middle east and free up capital for their own uses. So you tell me what our "real" problems are and keep touting that immigrants are the source because that line has been used over and over in history ad nauseum.
Has this been your experience or have you read this in a textbook of some kind? It's gibberish.
I don't read textbooks. Most of the tripe in those is made up by the people in power and it only serves to indoctrinate young people into this "we're the best" mentality when it's a total lie. The truth of our nations is that anything and everything happens under our governments. The rules we hold so dear are torn to shreds behind the scenes and they simply don't care.
If you don't even know the basic information about how our cities were built and the human suffering that that entailed, then I cannot help you. It's hardly subjective content. It's pretty established in academic circles.
How many first generations anywhere hold political office? Are recent arrivals expected to hold political office solely because they just got there? Is that's all that's necessary? The question is whether or not they're being denied political office, or any other rights that other Canadians hold.
I'm not talking about recent arrivals. Do you know what first generation means? It means you were born from immigrant parents but you yourself are a native citizen of the country your are born. Look at the cultural makeup of your government. I can promise you that it's mostly the power of the aristocracy: the power of white.
Perhaps you can name names and some specific policies here rather than just hurling empty phrases into the dark..
No thanks. I'm not going to do your work for you. If you can't even trust that I know what I'm talking about from years of study and travel, then what some other academic says is not going to matter all that much to you. I'm not really going to dig up my 4th year graduate work to satisfy someone who is in such deep denial about reality. :shrug: