Canadian Immigration Hotline
April 2006, Number 183

Adopt Our Canadian Values, Majority Says

“Is it time for Canada to abandon its multiculturalism policy and insist that immigrants adopt Canadian cultural values?” (66%) 19837 votes Yes. (34%) 10151 votes, No; Total votes: 29988 (Globe and Mail, March 21, 2006) Not only is this a clear message that Canadians reject state-imposed multiculturalism policies by a 2 to 2 margin, but the voting, at nearly 30,000 was extremely heavy. Polls on recent days attracted only 20,000 (should Bob Rae lead the Liberals?) and 13,000 (the war in Iraq).

Art Of The Scam

In 2003, as the world struggled to come to grips with the threat of apocalyptic Islam, whole populations were sluicing through Afghanistan, Waziristan and Pakistan. That year, Canada would accept more than twice as many Pakistani refugees than the rest of the world combined. Yet at a immigration retreat in Oct 2000, “Federal immigration officials were warned almost a year before Sept. 11 that it was ‘critical’ to stop undocumented refugee claimants from entering Canada … ‘It is critical to establish the identity of people seeking to enter Canada and we have made a commitment to do so,’ the internal document says. Up to 60% of refugee claimants have no documents or unsatisfactory documents [both tactics making it all but impossible for Canada to acquire repatriation documents if the claim is rejected — assuming we can even determine their real country of origin. RCMP expert Fred Bowen has said that up to 90% of Canada’s successful refugees paid smugglers to gain entry. Last August, David Harris, a former planner for CSIS, suggested that uncooperative refugee claimants should be issued with electronic monitoring bracelets, but nothing ever happens. To this day, Canada has dedicated immigration detention facilities for just 300.] As many as 30 claimants arrive at Pearson nightly, airport workers said. They are all fingerprinted, photographed and released. Security checks are conducted weeks later by the RCMP and CSIS. The staffers said that from 10% to 20% of the claimants arriving at Pearson and Montreal airports did not return their mail-in refugee kits. [What are the chances they will heed politely worded invitations to appear for a medical exam?] ‘Warrants are issued for many of these cases,’ the staffers said.” (Toronto Sun, November 6, 2001) It’s like a well oiled machine isn’t it? In 2003, our Sri Lankan refugee acceptance rate was 76.3% — as opposed to 2% in the UK and less than 4% in Germany. In a single year, 8,600 of these Canada-based Sri Lankan refugee claimants (tremulously awaiting “life-saving” determinations on their claims) would apply for travel documents to visit the country they’d allegedly fled in fear for their lives. In 2003, 317 Americans also filed refugee claims in Canada — claims which no other country will even entertain. Whether bad faith claims are ultimately successful or not is beside the point: Once you’ve made landfall and phonetically sounded out the magic “I am a refugee” incantation it’s for the Canadian taxpayer to meet your physical and emotional needs until you’ve exhausted the legal aid funded appeal process. (One convicted terrorist has done just that for so long, he now has Canadian-born grandchildren!). If all else fails, the last ditch Hail Mary play is to creep into a church basement, regardless of your own religion, and schedule a media blitz. One study found that, of 261 failed claimants who sought sanctuary in churches over a period of 20 years, 70 percent managed to stay. Just

to be clear, a refugee claimant is not the same thing as a refugee. Refugees have been granted the right to live in Canada; refugee claimants are people who turn up at the border and say: “Open Sesame” In addition to an army of settlement workers, ESLinstructors, social workers, dedicated medical personnel, government-paid defence lawyers, advocates, activists and agitators, the IRB itself “is Canada’s largest quasi-judicial tribunal. In its refugee protection division, about 200 political appointees make decisions on more than 40,000 asylum applications each year. Another 1,390 civil servants provide bureaucratic support.” (Canadian Press, March 22, 2006) This phenomenon of traversing the globe in search of a soft landing was virtually unheard of before the 1985 Singh Decision: ” A senior federal public servant and former deputy minister of immigration [he served the immigration department for 30 years], John L. Manion, warned the government when the Charter was still in draft that the proposed wording of Section 7 of the Charter (which granted fundamental justice to ‘everyone’ rather than only to ‘Canadian citizens’ — the term used in other sections of the document) would allow anyone on our soil, whether here legally or not, to use the provisions of the Charter to avoid removal. Manion was told at the time that his concern was unwarranted and his advice was ignored. Not long after the Charter come into effect, however, the Singh Decision was taken and Manion’s concerns was proven to be justified. In his words, it ‘destroyed any real immigration control, and made Canada the laughing stock of the world, and the destination of too many footloose criminals, terrorists, and social parasites.’ [In 2001] Manion estimated that the refugee claimants cost Canadians in the region of $2 to 4 billion a year. … Before his party was defeated in the January 2006 federal election, Prime Minister Paul Martin went as far as to propose that the ‘notwithstanding clause’ article be scrapped completely. As the party that was in office when the Charter was drafted, moreover, the Liberals assiduously promote the idea that the document is sacrosanct and that any suggestion that parts of it may need to be revisited constitutes a veritable assault on Canadian values, including the rights of minorities.” (Martin Collacott, Canada’s Inadequate Response to Terrorism: The Need for Policy Reform, Fraser Institute, February, 2006)


Life’s Good, For Immigration Lawyers

“Number of legal aid certificates issued for help in immigration matters in Ontario (some people may have received more than one certificate):

(Capital News Online, Carleton University, March 23, 2001) Put another way, in a single four-year period, the cost to taxpayers exceeded $61-million. And since 60% of newcomers settle in Ontario, national costs were presumably somewhere around $100-million: A genuinely stellar achievement when credible claims are generally accepted without a formal hearing. “In 2000, over 90% of immigrants and refugees landed in Canada settled in Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia. The overwhelming concentration of refugee claimants in these three provinces has forced them to bear most of the legal aid costs in the immigration and refugee area. … The average length of refugee hearings has been longer in Ontario and British Columbia, which pay for actual time spent in hearings, than in Quebec, which pays a fixed fee for each case. Also, utilization of the expedited process, in which manifestly well-founded claims can be determined without a hearing, has been lower in Ontario and British Columbia than in Quebec. … For instance, the average length of refugee hearings in Montreal, where lawyers are paid a flat fee for each case regardless of how much time they spend on the case, is almost 20% less than in Toronto and 33% less than in Vancouver, where lawyers are paid an hourly fee for actual time spent in hearings. [At the same time,] expenditures for translation and interpretation services represent over 16% of legal aid expenditures on immigration and refugee matters in British Columbia and Ontario. … Required expenditures for expert assessments and reports from medical doctors and psychologists’ are also a significant cost driver in relation to immigration and refugee legal aid.” (Department of Justice, Immigration and Refugee Legal Aid Cost Drivers, 2002) Then guess what happens? “In light of the announcement in 2003 by the British Columbia government to cease funding for immigration and refugee legal aid, a federal-provincial agreement was signed in February 2004 to provide legal aid funding for 2004-2005 that included a reduction in the level of funding in British Columbia. In response to an expected decrease in legal aid services and an increase in the number of people who appear before it without representation in British Columbia, the IRB initiated contingency planning measures, which included information and orientation sessions for unrepresented claimants.” (IRB Performance Report 2004-2005; Legal aid changes in British Columbia)


Cometh The Hour, Cometh The Man

Godfrey Baldacchino, the Canada research chair in Island Studies at the University of P.E.I., studied 320 people who moved to the Island from 1998 to 2003 to find out why they came and why they left. … Most immigrants to the Island come from other provinces, not other countries … the main source of new people for P.E.I. is Ontario. [Most outsiders head for PEI] in search of a better life, but if they leave, they do so because of a lack of employment. They also report that they feel discriminated against as people who come from ‘away’. … Many immigrants found Islanders to be friendly but in a superficial way and they did feel as though they were treated as outsiders.” (CBC, March 16, 2006) Got that? If a Canadian moving a couple of provinces away hits a brick wall, well, what did he expect? But let an immigrant move 3/4 of the way around the globe — outside his native country, language and cultural group, imprudently hoping that credentials thing will just kind of sort itself out — and, if he falls on hard times, Canadians are bullies and bigots? Immigrant complaints about Canada are coming so thick and fast it’s hard to keep up, but one recent indictment moans that having we have medicated, upgraded and educated them, newcomers are — or, more to the point, appear to be — moving on. The concern is not that they choose not to pay into the tax base that has been so instantly generous, but that Canada, The Finishing School is not doing enough for them. Again. A new Statistics Canada study “uses two different methods to study return and onward migration. The first method uses landings records that record all immigrant arrivals to Canada … The second method uses the landings records and the longitudinal tax filing information and infers out migration by long term absences from the tax files. [More on that later.] It is clear that a substantial part of migration to Canada is temporary. The estimated out-migration rate 20 years after arrival is around 35 % among young working age male immigrants. About 6 out of 10 of those who leave do so within the first year of arrival which suggests that many immigrants make their decisions within a relatively short period of time after arrival. Controlling for other characteristics, the out-migration rates are higher among immigrants from source countries such as the United States and Hong Kong, and for those admitted under the skilled worker or business class visa. Among immigrants that arrived in either business class or skilled worker class about four in 10 left within 10 years after arrival. … The business class group has a particularly short stay—almost 45% less than the family class.” (Statistics Canada, Return and Onward Migration Among Working Age Men, March 2006) A cynic might conclude that those with the most to offer are least inclined to stick around remitting 60% of their income in taxes. So who does stay? Refugees, the family reunification crowd., an impressive number of those unable to speak either English or French — in short, those heavily dependent on government transfers. What is worse is the underhand methodology of StatCan’s guilt mongering study: Inferring that people have left the country simply because they fail to pay taxes is to disregard Canada’s enormous grey economy. Twelve years ago, Statistics Canada estimated the underground economy at 25 per cent of the official GDP. Whether wangling noodles, driving hack for your cousin or body rubbing out a smuggling debt, immigrant enclaves are rife with off-the-radar employment. “The incidence of personal income tax filing for Canadians 20 years of age and over in 1995 was roughly 91%. The comparable figure for immigrants 18 years of age and over [was] 57%.” (CIC, The Economic Performance of Immigrants: Education Perspective, May 1999) The Fraser Institute calculated the averaged income tax contributions per man, woman and child in 2000 at $4,543 — the comparative averaged contribution per immigrant that year was $968, or $3,575 less. (Immigration and the Welfare State in Canada, September 2005) Recently, hundreds of millions of tax dollars have been diverted to bring foreign-trained brain surgeons and rocket scientists up to speed (curious that so many should overlook such an elementary step before circumnavigating the globe, but Great minds really do seem to think alike). Meanwhile, Canada’s under-utilized immigrants monopolize a few select trades here — taxis, convenience stores, nail salons, doughnut and pizza shops — all businesses with disproportionately high percentages of cash sales and limitless opportunities to hide income.

_______________________________________________________

Comparison of tax avoidance behaviour — immigrants and native-born males aged 25 to 30. Note: “Cdn” includes immigrants who landed 5 or more years previously. (Statistics Canada catalogue no. 11F0019MIE, no. 273)


Torontosis

As a very few voices of reason have tried to point out, the Baby Boom was a demographic blip that worked because an optimistic and homogeneous society was motivated to make it work. On the other hand, continuous, explosive population growth is the hallmark of the Third World. That said, it has been Ottawa’s fondest wish to duplicate just that kind of growth, not by natural increase, of course, — you’d have to instil a sense of optimism in people for that — but through extraordinarily high rates of immigration. As primary beneficiary of these policies, Toronto today is a malignant tumour of gridlock, ruinous infrastructure, smog and mutual suspicion. A year ago February, the Ontario government revealed its Places to Grow “smart” growth plan. The conceit is to double the population with dramatically increased urbanization in already built-up areas such as “Brampton, Markham, Mississauga, Milton, Guelph, Kitchener, Newmarket, Barrie and Peterborough. … Public Infrastructure Minister David Caplan [yes, he’s Elinor Caplan‘s son] said the plan … will accommodate the 3.7 million people and two million jobs expected to move into the area by the year 2031. [In best soviet tradition, the plan will] require regional governments to build 40 out of every new 100 residential units in existing urban areas by 2015. Set a goal of not less than 200 people and jobs per hectare in urban areas. Establish 25 ‘Urban Growth Centres’ which will be targeted for even higher intensification rates.” (Toronto Sun, February 17, 2005) Read that again and you will see that what Ms. Caplan’s boy has in mind is masses of high density housing, near half of it government-owned. In a word, projects. Expand Jane-Finch until it meets up with Regent’s Park in one continuous blighted corridor? While the implications seem to elude the infrastructure minister, it is obvious to some that corralling twice the population onto the same piece of real estate is a recipe for environmental and social toxicity: Shortly before Christmas, Ontario’s environmental commissioner released a report challenging “plans to accommodate an additional 4.4 million people in Ontario over the next 25 years. ‘The issue of population growth is an enormously significant public policy choice that has received little debate,’ says the annual report from Environmental Commissioner Gord Miller. … Ironically, the report [came] on the heels of an announcement by [then] federal Immigration Minister Joe Volpe that the ceiling for immigration [was to] be raised next year from 245,000 people to 255,000 and could go over 300,000 in the coming years. The environmental commissioner’s report does not explicitly advocate curtailment of immigration, but it does take dead aim at the Places to Grow Act, passed [last] year by the Ontario Legislature. … The tangent Miller pursues in this year’s report is unusually controversial, however, because it runs counter to the received political wisdom — shared by all parties in the Legislature — that immigration is good for the province. There are strong echoes in the report of ‘nativist’ (or anti-immigration) sentiments [but notice how anticipated numbers just keep skyrocketing] The provincial Finance Ministry projects up to six million more people will call Ontario home over the next 25 years, most in the Toronto area. That’s a 50 per cent increase over the province’s current population of 12 million but there’s been little debate about the ‘enormously significant’ issue, Miller said, noting that such forecasts essentially dictate how the province plans for land use. … There’s no compelling evidence that economic prosperity depends on an ever-increasing population, said Miller, who painted a grim picture of a sprawling, gridlocked southern Ontario choking on polluted air and unable to contain its own sewage and garbage. Raising the issue of population growth doesn’t amount to an attack on immigration, but it’s a serious problem no one wants to talk about, he said. ‘It stuns me that the topic of sustainability and the future of our lifestyle and environment is a forbidden topic.’ … ‘Why aren’t we talking about the ramifications?'” (Toronto Star, November 1, 2005) He knows why, and if he doesn’t, the Toronto Star could most certainly explain it to him: you can’t talk about immigration in this country without being pilloried as a “racist” and hater of mankind

Viva El Norte

According to the Immigration and Refugee Board, “free-trade partner Mexico was the largest supplier of refugees to Canada last year with more than 3,500 claimants. [Of these,] 2,290 of the asylum seekers had their cases rejected and 700 never bothered to show up for hearings. [So, 510 apparently credible cases among ‘more than 3,500 claimants’ — less than 14 per cent. As a result,] Immigration officers and police … are probing two rings that use Canada as a staging zone to smuggle Mexicans into the U.S. … Mexicans do not require a visa to travel to Canada [and, as an additional draw,] Mexicans who file refugee claims can obtain welfare and other benefits. They are placed in safehouses but, within days some are smuggled, to the U.S., where they continue to collect Ontario welfare deposited by electronic banking. … Ontario community services spokesman Paul Doig said the province dishes out 80% of the cost of social services for refugees or just over $1 billion yearly. The city pays 20%.” (Toronto Sun, February 13, 2006)

Country Number of refugees Freedom House’s democracy

Name to Canada last year rating — out of 140 countries

Mexico

At the same time, “Canada is seeing a surge in the number of refugee claimants who say they are homosexuals and will be persecuted if they are returned to their homelands. In the past three years, nearly 2,500 people from 75 different countries have sought asylum on the basis of sexual orientation, according to information released under the Access to Information Act. … The surge in applications is being driven both by bogus claims and a growing view of Canada as a haven for persecuted homosexuals, refugee experts say. The largest number came from Mexico, with 602, and Costa Rica, with 276—both democracies with thriving homosexual communities, annual Gay Pride Day parades and websites offering everything from gay weddings to gay tour operators. … Michael Battista, a gay immigration lawyer, says many of the gay Mexicans he has represented are HIV-positive and have trouble getting jobs and medical care back home.” (Globe and Mail, April 24, 2004) According to Canadian Council for Refugees 2005 figures, Canada’s approval rating for Mexican refugee claims last year was 19%, down from 25% in 2004 and 27% in 200; India’s approval rating was 25% last year, down from 27% in 2004 and 29% in 2003; Sri Lanka’s was 67% last year, up from 64% in 2004 and 73% in 2003; Nigeria’s was 41%, down from 50% in 2004 and 47% in 2003; Colombia’s was 79%, down from 81% in 2004 and 2003; (no figures for Zimbabwe); Pakistan’s acceptance rate was 40%, up from 35% in 2004 and 41% in 2003; (no figures for Haiti); and China’s acceptance rate was 48% in 2005, down from 52% in 2004 and 61% in 2003.


CRIME WATCH

Sing Sing For Big Sister Ping
Twenty years ago, Brian McAdam, an immigration control officer posted in Hong Kong, cautioned Immigration Canada that Cheng Chui Ping (known in Chinatowns around the world as Big Sister Ping), was running a major human smuggling operation out of Fujian province: “Everyone thought I was nuts for suggesting what they thought was an absurd idea.” But McAdam was not a man given to absurd fancies: his meticulous reports detailing the graft at Canada’s Hong Kong mission and steady stream of triad rubbish pouring into Canada were persuasive enough to launch the Sidewinder Project (suffocated in infancy by Chretien’s Team Canada players). As McAdam notes, “I spent the last two years of my career being ostracized by my colleagues as I exposed corruption in the embassy there.” When the names of 2,000 Chinese triad/gang members mysteriously vanished from the mission’s computer database, McAdam insisted on an investigation — a probe the Royal Hong Kong Police would reluctantly abandon when it became obvious Canada had no intention of cooperating. The principal suspect in the case relocated to Vancouver and found work as a consultant with (you guessed it) Immigration Canada. Stymied at every turn and frustrated by the cover-up, an RCMP officer named Robert Read would eventually lay the squalid details before the media. When the 26-year veteran of the force was stripped of his career and his pension, McAdam was practically the only Canadian to stand by the courageous officer. As for Big Sister Ping (Cheng), Canada’s consistent failure to deal with serial improprieties allowed her to parlay modest smuggling efforts into a multi-million dollar criminal enterprise. “McAdam, who warned the Canadian government about Cheng more than two decades ago felt if Immigration Canada had taken his reports seriously, the human smugglers’ operations, would not have grown so big. … ‘The Canadian government should be greatly ashamed of what they have allowed to happen and is still happening on a very large scale. The Triads have long been working in alliance with the communist Chinese government in this human smuggling trade,’ said McAdam. [In mid-March, a US imposed fine of $250,000 and 35-year sentence would — perhaps — end Cheng’s long career.] She was primarily convicted for organizing the voyage of the Golden Venture , which had about 300 Chinese immigrants on board when it ran aground off New York in 1993. Ten of them died after being pitched into the sea. The ship had earlier visited Vancouver port without attracting notice. Prosecutors said the woman ran a multimillion-dollar ring using the violent Fuk Ching [Fujian based] Chinese street gang. … In Canada, her name began cropping up on wiretaps as the RCMP began tracking Fuk-Ching Triad members, suspected of using native reserves to smuggle people across the Canada-U.S. border. Cheng’s husband, Cheng Yick Tak, was also caught at U.S. airports and border points trying to bulk-carry cash back to China. In 1989, Cheng’s gang are alleged to have smuggled two women, including a Malaysian and two children, aged 13 and seven, across the Niagara River into the U.S. in a cheap rubber raft. They all drowned. … Cheng was arrested and convicted of conspiracy to smuggle aliens into the United States, and sentenced to six months in prison after the Niagara drownings. While serving time, she became an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, providing information on other migrant smugglers called ‘snakeheads’ as well as on the Fuk Ching. … Both Canadian and U.S. authorities put together major cases against her competitors based on Cheng’s information, according to U.S. court documents. After she got out of jail, Cheng had abandoned the simple small shipments and was allegedly putting together massive loads of migrants. … The migrants paid ‘or promised to pay’ amounts ranging from US $20,000 to US$35,000 for the journey. Many were held hostage by members of the Fuk Ching , according to the FBI, and were tortured and beaten until they produced the cash or made payment arrangements, often over several years. Others were threatened with having their feet amputated and sent to their families. Some victims had cellphones taped to their heads so their families overseas could hear them being tortured. … Cheng maintained her innocence, and said she was merely a small business owner in Chinatown who was subjected to threats from gangs and lent money to newly arrived immigrants. … Investigators said Cheng was working hand-in-glove with Harvard lawyer Robert Porges. New York prosecutors and investigators allege that Porges and his wife Sherry Lu ran an operation filing thousands of political asylum cases for Chinese immigrants [pocketing $13.5-million in the process] and were the front for international alien smugglers. … Porges allegedly advised the smugglers on the best ways to sneak immigrants into the country, and helped concoct false stories of political persecution for the ones who were caught by immigration officials.” (Asian Pacific Post, March 27, 2006) It’s hard to say which of Ottawa’s postures is more repugnant, the complicity in torture and human servitude or the hypocritical back-slappers who insist we are a beacon to the world’s unfree.

HEALTH WATCH

What If They Stopped Lying To Us?
When something went horribly wrong in a Montreal drug trial, Canadian media accounts were uniformly economical with the truth: “Twenty people have tested positive for latent tuberculosis since a man with an active case of the disease was included in a human clinical trial at a Quebec biopharmaceutical lab, health officials confirmed yesterday. Health Canada is investigating the incident at SFBC Anapharm, the Canadian subsidiary of [North America’s biggest drug-testing company] New Jersey-based SFBC International, said spokesperson Jirina Vlk. … Latent tuberculosis means people have been infected with the disease, but do not have active cases and are not contagious. They will need follow-up X-rays and possibly a nine-month course of drug treatment [see below]. A total of 19 participants in the drug trial that took place at an SFBC Anapharm lab in Montreal last fall and 50 employees have been tested. … ‘There’s really not a lot I can say because it is a clinical trial and the investigation is ongoing,’ Vlk said.” (London Free Press, March 10, 2006) So we gathered. “Beyond confirming the cases, Health Canada officials have said little, noting that the investigation is ongoing. … Trudo Lemmens, a professor of health, law and policy at the University of Toronto, … said paid human volunteers are an essential part of the medical testing process. There is an inherent danger, however, because of the intense pressure testing companies face to conclude trials quickly. That means that in some cases, financial interests trump safety and precautions. … That could explain how someone with an active case of tuberculosis could slip through the screening process for a medical test.” ( CTV, March 10, 2006) The other media outlet to cover (up) the story, the Montreal Gazette, reiterated the twin themes of Health Canada’s reticence and SFBC‘s negligence. To learn anything at all about the central, contagious character, one must resort to the American media: “An immigrant from Haiti with active tuberculosis among test subjects … coughed up blood during the trial, according to fellow participant Mohsen, a 37-year-old man from Toronto who was assigned by SFBC to share his room. Mohsen, who contracted latent TB from that exposure, according to health officials, says he reported what he saw to SFBC’s staff. SFBC said it kept the sick Haitian in the trial, in the same room with Mohsen, for four more days. Mohsen, who emigrated from Kuwait in 1990, asked that his last name not be published because he hasn’t told his family or friends that he has latent tuberculosis. … Health Canada, which oversees clinical trials, is continuing its investigation of the tuberculosis incident.” (Bloomberg News, March 8, 2006) But isn’t the detection and treatment of tubercular immigrants one of Health Canada’s primary mandates? In overseeing the clinical trial, Health Canada evidently managed to miss the infected Haitian, again. Not to alibi for anyone in this sorry spectacle, but SFBC may have assumed, wrongly, that Health Canada had actually done its job during one of these repeated encounters. No, SFBC does not come out of this smelling like a rose, any more than Health Canada or our keep-em-ignorant media. Twenty people infected at that drug trial face a 9-month course of treatment with Isoniazid and/or Rifampin-pyrazinamide — all drugs that pose such clear risk of liver injury and even death, that the Centres for Disease Control is now questioning whether a preventative course of treatment is really such a good idea after all. The threat is elevated among people suffering from hepatic (hepatitis) diseases, and, as with TB in Canada, hepatitis is essentially an immigrant disease: “HBeAg-positivity [chronic hepatitis B] ranges from less than 9% in the Inuit population, to less than 15% for non-immigrants [IV-drug users, prison populations, homosexuals, the promiscuous and children born in Canada to persons from endemic regions], to 46% for Asian immigrants and 55% for Indochinese immigrants,” according to a 2004 release from the Canadian Association for the Study of the Liver.

Not Enough Nutters

In an article detailing the unusually high prevalence of mental disorder among immigrants, the British Medical Journal posited two possible explanations: “The first is that people who are mentally ill are the ones most likely to emigrate; the second is that the stress of migration results in mental breakdown. … The rate of schizophrenia in immigrants from West Africa aged 25-35 has been estimated at nearly 30 times that of the native British population. (BMJ, 1997; 315:473-476, 23 August)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *