April, 2005
                                              (Number 173)

Tories Reject Screening for Job Skills & Security
At their March policy conference, heeding the urgings of leftish editorialists and columnist pundits, the Conservative Party lurched to the "pragmatic", "moderate" mushy centre. [These terms indicate the approval of leftist commentators.] On immigration, following opium dreams of huge breakthroughs in various Third World communities, the Tories once again rejected a chance to stand for the ROC -- the Rest of Canada, not minority special interest groups. A policy resolution originating in the West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast riding association, and attracting considerable support from other B.C. riding associations, made the seemingly common sense demand that future immigrants should be screened for employability and job skills and for security. Doesn't seem especially radical. However, at a committee discussing this resolution, where speakers were limited to two supporting and two opposed, a turbaned gentleman rose and said such a resolution would be seen as hostile among visible minorities. A Moslem echoed him and said Moslems might take exception to the concerns about security. No problem. Tories voted down the resolution. So, under a Harper government employability and security clearance will not be high priority in deciding who'll flood into this collapsing Dominion.


New Package, Same Old Disease
You might have thought we'd scraped bottom with Judy Sgro's pizza 'n' pasties administration, but the talent pool in a more-than-a-decade-old single party state is getting perilously shallow.  The current capo di tutti capi at Immigration has told 5,000 Sikhs to keep it under their headgear when immigration scandals hit the community.  In effect, "Why should you allow them -- those tax paying donkeys slurping up brain-atrophying propaganda -- to know what's going on?"  Depressing as it was to learn that immigration meddling now accounts for the majority of MPs' constituency work, it marks a new low when a Minister of the Crown counsels newcomers to avoid transparency and openness like the plague.  If he can no longer summon a show of confidence in how our system is meant to work, must he really infect others?  At Mississauga's Ontario Khalsa Darbar Gurdwara, (Sikh temple), the huge crowd listened attentively as "Immigration Minister Joe Volpe urged [them] not to spread negative stories about the Indo-Canadian community after the publication of a Globe and Mail article detailing an RCMP investigation into a Liberal MP for alleged immigration irregularities.  [As briefly as possible, the RCMP supposedly investigated Gurbax Malhi, Liberal MP for Bramalea-Gore-Malton, for the improper issuance of temporary resident permits to East Indian players of kabaddi, a Punjabi amalgam of rugby and wrestling.   Although Mahli was never actually interviewed, the so-called investigation allegedly looked into accusations that he had handed out permits as a reward for favours and financial support for Mr. Dithers' 2003 leadership campaign.  As is always the case now with immigration scandals, the matter became public knowledge, not because a smoothly functioning system flagged suspicious activity, but because disgruntled immigrants complained that they were being ripped off, or weren't getting fair value for money.  The investigation went nowhere, primarily because the complainants themselves refused to co-operate with investigators, although several did ask for police protection.  Mr. Malhi vociferously denies any wrongdoing: 'If people want to donate to anyone, I cannot stop it and I can't tell them not to donate the money.'  There was also some very minor sidebar concern that some of the players had mysteriously vanished when it came time to head home.  In India, using kabaddi as a cover to smuggle people into North America and Britain is such a common ruse that it has a name: kabootar baazi, 'helping people land overseas on a genuine visa obtained by pretending to be an athlete.'  Evidently our present immigration minister either doesn't know this or doesn't much care.  Volpe] reassured the crowd that he understood the importance of kabaddi ... and would continue to help them bring in players from India for their annual tournament.  [Former immigration minister Denis Coderre suspended permits for kabaddi players; good old Judy Sgro reinstated them]  ... In his speech, Mr. Volpe mentioned his opposition to a private member's bill that would let Canadians post bonds for visiting relatives [and again urged his listeners] not to air their dirty linen in public, but to keep it 'inside the family' or risk damaging their community.  ... 'Basically, whichever community member is giving the media this negative information should be ashamed of himself.'  ... Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla, also present at the temple ... suggested that those 'badmouthing' the community to mainstream newspapers refrain from doing so.  ... Stephen Heckbert, spokesman for Mr. Volpe, said the minister supports freedom of the press."  (Globe and Mail, March 31, 2005)  Oh, goodie!

Not Just ESL
"We've had a growing population of kids and youth who experienced wars coming to this country. We need to help them cope with their past or it will play itself out in their schooling, behaviour, mental health, and interaction with other kids and adults."  (Sharron Richards, community development and prevention programme manager of the Toronto Children's Aid Society, March 30, 2005)

Diversity: Don't Say You Haven't Been Warned
"Diversity" is normally marketed under the jolly banner of enrichment rather than menaces, but it is worth noting a sea change when you see one.  In an article gloating over StatsCan projections that minorities will constitute majorities in Toronto (East Indian), Montreal  (black) and Vancouver (Chinese) by 2017, the Toronto Star harangues: "While our demography has changed, our public discourse, especially in the media, hasn't to the extent it must. ... If immigrants continue to be portrayed as 'problem people,' when they are clearly not, municipalities will face an uphill battle getting their New Deal for Cities.  ... Non-white foreign-trained immigrants are being denied access to trades and professions far more than their European counterparts with similar education and experience.  ... There will be an increased need to debate systemic discrimination in the workplace, already well documented, especially in the federal civil service.  [So that explains it]  Employment equity and the need for adequate ethnic representation on boards and commissions are on the top of the agenda of most visible minority groups.  Neither the media nor our politicians would be able to sweep those issues under the rug much longer.  Policy makers will have to 'put visible minorities front and centre on the national agenda heading towards 2017,' says a paper released along with the StatsCan study.  If we fail, we risk 'a potential environment of large-scale political unrest and revolt among ethnic minority groups.'"  (Toronto Star, March 27, 2005)  Do we really need them?

Blessed Be The Jihad Welcome Mat
Fateh Kamel, aka Moustapha, aka El Fateh (Fateh means "conquest"), aka Brother Fateh, aka Fateh-the-Algerian, has been likened to celebrity terror artist, Carlos, the Jackal. Fateh gifted himself to Canada in 1987, and, between business trips to Afghanistan and Bosnia (somehow his work always took him to wherever mujahedin brothers were waging holy war) managed to court, wed, and produce a male heir with a Gaspé-bred special-ed teacher named Nathalie Boivin. The couple set up housekeeping in Montreal's toney Outremont district and, more importantly, secured Fateh's citizenship. The 90s were busy years: In addition to participating in fraud and a string of violent robberies, Fateh headed the Montreal branch of the Algerian GIA or Armed Islamic Group (most famous alumnus, failed millennial bomber Ahmed Ressam). GIA ideology was so rabidly fundamentalist that bin Laden and top lieutenant Al-Zawari distanced themselves from a movement cheerfully slitting the throats of whole villages of Algerian Moslems if Islamic piety fell short of GIA expectations. The Algerian bloodletting would have worked for brother Fateh and brother Ahmed on several levels once trusty old Canada put Algerian deportations on hold. Two Montreal associates would later recount the rigidity of Fateh's world view: He bought a craft shop but rejected its inventory of animal figurines (representations of life were unIslamic); a cigar importing venture was equally out of the question (smoking was unIslamic). CSIS agents, nevertheless,  observed the sanctimonious fellow shoplifting. But mostly Fateh travelled, to Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia, Turkey, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany and Italy. His number was a fixture on captured Moslem extremists' phone lists. In 1994, Italian counter-terrorism intercepts would establish that the movement of mujahedin fighters into Bosnia fell under the exclusive dominion of someone called Fateh-the-Algerian. Around the same time, France's central anti-terrorism unit, UCLAT, identified Fateh as a key figure in the wave of Islamo-terror attacks against France. He was arrested, tried where Marie Antoinette had been tried, and sentenced to eight years for supplying fraudulent passports to militants and "participating in a criminal association for the purposes of preparing acts of terrorism." On the day of his release, this past Jan. 29, Fateh flew "home." (No, not Algeria!) Needless to say, the RCMP did not bother to put in an appearance. Then, on Feb. 18, Federal Court judge Simon Noel released Montreal-based Moroccan Adil Charkaoui -- a suspected al Qaeda sleeper -- eight days after the government's lawyer reluctantly admitted that CSIS had destroyed transcripts and notes from two separate 2002 interviews -- evidently something of an agency speciality. "Defence lawyer Dominique Larochelle ... said she wanted to see the notes or hear a recording of those meetings because she felt they might cast her client in a favourable light." (CBC, January 12, 2005) Less than a week later, Moroccan Justice Minister Mohammed Bouzouba said that, had Canadian authorities troubled to inform his government that Charkaoui (a Moroccan national) was under security certificate detention for nearly two years, Morocco would most certainly have made application to extradite the man who has been implicated by Morocco's top terrorist. On the day before the courts released Charkaoui, the 25-year-old loud-mouth, twice-divorced (once to a Yemeni sharp-shooter) eldest daughter of Canada's leading mujahedin family, Zaynab Khadr, arrived at Pearson Airport with teenage sister and 4-year-old daughter in tow. This time an RCMP reception committee was waiting and, armed with a search warrant, seized her laptop. (Since Zaynab has invited those who object to her views to communicate via e-mail, let's assume the machine will be parsed for the express purpose of laying "hate" charges.) Khadr family mala fides are well known: the hey-maybe-they'll-vote-Liberal bestowal of citizenship, jihad patch-up services, prime ministerial intercessions, $325,000 extracted from captive taxpayers to prop up the family's sham charity -- but brood mother, Maha, probably said it best: As she watched the surreal footage of airliners bearing down on the twin towers, she rooted: "Let them have it!" Asked if family exploits mightn't alienate moderate Moslems, the chador-clad Zaynab snapped, "There's no such a thing as moderate Islam. Islam is Islam. It's been there and it's been the same. Fourteen hundred years ago the same book. The same prophet. That's how it's going to be for until the day of judgement [sic]." Of papa (now deceased) an old Afghanistan hand observed, "I never met such hostility, someone so against the West."  Encouraged by the fact that the West has so rarely been against the Khadrs, the coven has a convened to carpetbomb the landscape with lawsuits; the clangorous Zaynab has presumably returned to wage fiscal jihad, with help from legal aid. If her lawyers are wise, they will have her fitted for a muzzle. Of brother Omar's detention at Guantanamo, she rolled her eyes and snapped (she does a lot of that), "Why does everybody say you killed an American soldier. Big deal." There have been timid calls for revocation of citizenship under the anti-terror bill, but "Wesley Wark, a history professor at the University of Toronto with an expertise in international relations, says it would be difficult to prove the family helped al-Qaeda. 'I think the government wants to reserve the use of this legislation for the most serious cases and I think they'd have a difficult job putting together a criminal case against the family.'" (CBC, April 16, 2004)  It's not a perfect fit -- Zundel was never granted citizenship as were the entire Khadr clan -- but neither reasonable doubt nor an apprehension of bias proved any serious impediment in deporting him.

Insta-Citizens
We wish, we really do, that immigration could be regarded as the boon to the nation it should be, but thanks to crackbrained schemes like multiculturalism -- abetted by a dangerously out of touch court system -- public confidence in immigration continues to wither on the vine.  Ipsos-Reid, performing a four-part 'annual tracking survey' for the immigration department (well, actually, for $142,090), has framed the problem in a masterstroke of understatement: "Many Canadians feel that the programme's current ability to screen out criminals from among legitimate immigrants or refugees is poor.  ... Moreover, Canadians feel that the programme is not quick enough to deport those whose refugee claims are rejected.'  [No kidding.  In an earlier instalment, the survey discovered the extent of cynicism: Canadians 'place a higher measure of trust in the refugee system's ability to protect the rights of refugees than they do in its ability to protect the safety and security of Canada and Canadians.'  The survey also reveals that, where the courts prove remarkably unhelpful, a solid majority are prepared to endorse extraordinary measures] three out of four Canadians would support revoking the citizenship of people who obtain it and go on to commit serious crimes [and, as a measure of the frustration out there] more than a third of respondents (35%) deems the measure appropriate even if the offenders are born in Canada."  (National Post, March 21, 2005)  See more on this below.  As the law now stands, citizenship is a dawdle (park it here for three out of four years and you're in) and can be revoked only if it can actually be substantiated that the person lied to obtain it.  That, however, precludes those under 18 and is no serious hindrance to those determined to stay at any cost (to the legal aid system).  "Overall, the national poll suggests Canadians don't confer citizenship easily; ... it also suggests Canadians feel immigrants should have to actually live here for nearly four years before they may even apply for citizenship."  (National Post, March 14, 2005)  Naturally, Ottawa doesn't see it that way: "Immigrants who arrive in Canada are much more likely to become citizens than immigrants to any other country ... 84 per cent of eligible immigrants were Canadian citizens in 2001.  ... In the United States, only 40 per cent of foreign-born residents are citizens. In Britain, only 50 per cent. [Our astronomical rates do us little credit when the decision to seek citizenship is a complex weighing up of what one hopes to gain against what one expects to lose.  If other countries have lower rates of citizenship seeking, it only suggests they are dealing with a class of immigrant that may actually have something to lose.]  The 1991 Census showed that 51 per cent of immigrants who had been residents for four to five years had become citizens. In 1981, it was only 42 per cent....Immigrants from Asia or Africa are more likely to become citizens than those from Europe or the United States [and] refugees from developing countries are most likely to become Canadian citizens." (Globe and Mail, March 8, 2005)

Ontario Has Cause To Moan
"Ontario received $109 million from Ottawa for immigrant settlement services — language training, workforce integration and temporary financial assistance — last year. The province admitted 119,741 new permanent residents. That works out to $910 per immigrant in federal support. Quebec received $145 million from Ottawa for immigrant services over the same period. It admitted 39,551 newcomers. That amounts to $3,666 per capita [or a little over four times as much cash for each one of a little less than one-third as many people.  Quebec enjoys the unique right to cherry pick the immigrants it wants, but for whatever reason, an unusually high proportion of these simply move on -- usually to Ontario.  In the typically pandering arrangement, under a 1991 deal, Ottawa agreed to withdraw from the delivery of immigrant settlement services in Quebec and compensate the province for providing comparable services. It agreed to pay Quebec 62 per cent more than the federal government was spending on such services ($75 million as opposed to $46.3 million). Finally, it agreed that Quebec's compensation would go up at the same rate as federal programme spending, even if its immigration level dropped. The pact could only be terminated with the consent of both sides.  ... Not only is Ontario's funding per immigrant out of line with Quebec's. It is well below that of British Columbia ($1,039), Saskatchewan ($1,483), Manitoba ($1,241), New Brunswick ($1,375), Nova Scotia ($1,388) and Newfoundland ($1,622)."  (Toronto Star, March 16, 2005) 

Zahra Kazemi
Only in Canada could a Romanian stripper and an East Indian pizza man club together to topple a serving immigration minister.  This surreal result came as a seemingly endless stream of abuses were exposed in policy and practice (which explains why the actions of this particular government department are generally immune from criticism).  Another such perfect storm ought to be brewing around the Zahra Kazemi file, but this one is all martyrdom and tub-thumping rights rhetoric with honest broker Canada doing its level best to gentle the global condition.  Nothing if not immune to irony, Ottawa eulogizes Kazemi for taking on Iran, her country's holy shibboleths, but meets any challenge to its own fixed ideas (however recently acquired) with turgid nastiness.  Still, it has to be asked: What role did our cultish devotion to multiculturalism play in the Iranian-Canadian woman's demise?  Kazemi's hyphenate nature (Canada is unique in actively encouraging dual citizenships) may have made her uniquely vulnerable to inquisitors who saw in her, not a foreign national, but one of their own.  Indeed, while she was under detention, Foreign Affairs acknowledged that her dual citizenship "limited" what Canadian officials could do.  So, they did nothing?  A second point is the curious deposition of the emergency room physician (Tehran denies that he ever worked there, but Tehran's assertions are perhaps even less credible than Ottawa's).  What we do know is that Kazemi was arrested on June 23, 2003 while photographing a demonstration outside of Tehran's Evin Prison and died July 11.  Four days after her arrest, her broken body was taken from Evin to Baqiyatollah Azam, a hospital controlled by hard-line revolutionary guards.  There  she was examined by Dr. Shahram Azam, a former physician with the Iranian security police.  This naïf says he squirreled away Kazemi's case notes because he had never before seen evidence of torture.  If so, his was a most unusual career trajectory for a doctor employed by a military hospital in a theocratic state practising the roughest kind of sharia law.  A St. Paddy's DayNational Post describes the entertainment on offer in Pakdasht, Iran, during which a murderer was flogged 100 times "with electrical cables and stabbed in the back by a furious brother of one victim before a blue nylon rope was placed around his neck by the mother of another ... then hauled into the air by a crane to cries from the crowd of 'Make him twist.'  'Dance and think of what you did.' [and] 'Hit him harder, the bastard.'  ... Hanging by crane does not involve the neck being broken [but] throttled to death over several minutes."  If Dr. Azam says he was spared exposure to torture in such a society -- a society in which doctors perform punitive amputations -- Canada should either revisit all previous Iranian refugee/torture claims or ask itself whether doctors from sharia states form an inadmissible class of persons.  But with Dr. Azam's (and wife and daughter's) own refugee status hanging in the balance, the worse the better.  All of which is not to suggest that something dreadful did not happen to Ms. Kazemi, or even that the doctor lied, only that Canada gave him every reason to.  But veracity is the last thing on Ottawa's mind: According to "a spokesman for Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew ... it's not up to Ottawa to confirm the doctor's story.  'We have to take it for what it is,' said Sebastien Theberge.  'There's no corroboration and we're not in the business of corroboration.  That's the business of the courts.'"  (Canadian Press, March 31, 2005)  And they say Canadians are losing confidence in the refugee process.  The doctor's family will certainly not fault Canada's prompt service: Kazemi's son, Stephan Hachemi, flew to Stockholm  (Although doctor and family's first port of call was Finland, they did not launch a refugee claim there as the law requires.  They moved on, instead, to Sweden, but the Swedish rate of acceptance among Iranian asylees is discouragingly low, and, in this instance, perhaps, discouragingly impersonal)  On the day after doctor and son met, Hachemi was already pressing Foreign Affairs to transfer Azam's claim to Canada, a very delicate diplomatic process, but, hey, presto.  A week later, "Alan Kessel, deputy legal adviser for Foreign Affairs, flew to Stockholm ... and so began a highly unusual refugee case that was marked 'secret and confidential.'  ... In mid-December, [just a month after Kazemi's son and doctor first met] Foreign Affairs officials told Mr. Hachemi that Dr. Azam's immigration interviews were very positive, and that his case would be decided in a matter of weeks pending a medical and security clearance.  But then [came l'affaire Sgro, and unavoidable delays]  However, on March 3, he had word: Canada would grant Dr. Azam asylum."  (Globe and Mail, April 1, 2005)  From first meeting with victim's son to full asylum in a breakneck 107 days.  Last year, reporter Michael Petrou travelled to Iran to meet with dissidents whose incarceration at Evin Prison coincided with Ms. Kazemi's.  What he learned cultivates fresh misgivings about multiculturalism and the schisms that come with migration between vastly different cultures: Petrou was told that at the notorious prison, "some of the guards and soldiers sympathize with the political prisoners.  ... Before his release from Evin Prison last year, Kianoosh Sanjari, a student who is only 20, had a forthright conversation with one such prison guard about Zahra Kazemi's arrest and detention.  ... Ms. Kazemi made an immediate impression with her defiance.  'Right from the start, she insisted on her rights,' Mr. Sanjari says.  ... [According to the dissidents, the inconclusive show trial of a low level security officer was just so much window dressing.]  The real murderer, they believe, is the man at the heart of Iran's religiously conservative judiciary, the chief prosecutor, Judge Saeed Mortazavi.  ... Known throughout Iran as 'the butcher of journalists,' Mr. Mortazavi had been responsible for shutting down more than 100 newspapers and for frequently jailing Iranian journalists.  ... But students who were detained at Evin that summer believe Mr. Mortazavi also delivered the fatal blow that killed Ms. Kazemi.  ... One rumour has it that Mr. Mortazavi had wanted to visit or study in Canada and Ms. Kazemi told him this would never happen, or that she had threatened to prevent it."  (Ottawa Citizen, May 22, 2004)  Sound far-fetched?  Last autumn, a Calgary woman (back home in Iraq) beguiled her kidnapper into releasing her with an offer to pave the way for immigration to Canada.  And consider what Kazemi's son accomplished for Dr. Azam and family.  Of course Canadians born and bred have no such expectation of influencing the outcome of individual cases, much less immigration policy over all -- at least not since Brad Love was jailed for writing letters critical of the process to public servants.  Meanwhile, "the Prime Minister's Office quickly agreed to a request for a meeting with senior advisors even though they know what demands the Kazemi family will make.  ... For one thing, they will ask the government to amend Canada's State Immunity Act so that the families of victims of torture can sue foreign countries in Canadian courts; ... in addition, the Kazemi family is calling for Canada to demand that they negotiate a claim for a financial settlement."  (Globe and Mail, April 2, 2005)  As we said, Ottawa is immune to item in the for a preliminary interview with Dr. Azam on Nov. 14, 2003. irony. 

CRIME WATCH

Come, Grow In Canada
A month before four young RCMP officers were ambushed and executed at an Alberta grow-op, "a couple caught running a marijuana-growing operation in the Fraser Valley [saw the case against them] thrown out by a judge because police did not wait long enough before forcing entry.  In a ruling released [February 4], Mr. Justice Brian Joyce of the B.C. Supreme Court ruled that the RCMP breached the Charter rights of Li Qing Mai and Zhi Wen Tang because police failed to give the married couple adequate time to answer the front door.  ... Constable D.M. Duplissis told the court he knocked and shouted: 'Police. Search warrant.'  His partner, Constable Steven Huntenburg, yelled: 'Search warrant.  Open up.'  Then 'a couple of seconds' later, the two officers bashed open the door with a 40-kilogram battering ram ... Ms. Mai and Mr. Tang only had time to jump up from the couch, where they were watching television, before the police were on them.  Marijuana plants and related paraphernalia were found in the basement.  But Judge Joyce refused to allow any of that evidence to be used in court, saying the search was a violation of their rights because the two-second delay was not long enough.  ... Judge Joyce said ... 'the police suggested that this manner of searching the residence was necessary for officer safety but they did not provide me with a satisfactory explanation why that is so.'  ... He noted that [extra time] may be needed 'to permit the occupants to prepare to be safely detained or arrested and to put down toy guns, channel changers or other objects that have the potential to mistakenly [signal] life-threatening danger to the police officers.'"  (Globe and Mail, February 5, 2005)  And here we were, thinking that judges had to approve search warrants.  It would have been helpful if the story had mentioned whether Ms. Mai or Mr. Tang spoke English well enough to comprehend what was occurring on their porch.

Next Stop Lagos
Ontario's Credit Valley Institute of Business and Technology was just one of many Potemkin schools operating across Canada as visa entry point and/or Ye Olde Studente Loane Shoppe.  Under the expert guidance of (Nigerian) owner Lawrence Mpamugo, his sons, his younger brother Ernest, and sister-in-law Justina, the institute very generously "accepted students in its computer courses who could barely speak English and, in one case, could not even find the letter A on a typewriter."  (Toronto Star, November 9, 1999)  Surprisingly, this was not taken as heart-warming evidence of an immigrant bootstrapping, but of fraud on a massive scale.  On December 9 this year, Mpamugo was sentenced to six years in prison and ordered "to repay a total of $5.7 million of the $18 million which police estimate Mpamugo and Marygold Technologies Inc. took from two Canadian banks and the Ontario government student loan programme.  [This was a determined siphoning project. After the school had been approved for students to apply for Ontario Student Assistance Programme loans,  it operated for just 14 months.]  About one-third of his assets were frozen by the Canadian Imperial Bank of CommerceRoyal Bank moved too slowly and lost millions.  ... Mpamugo's 'agents' recruited men and women with poor credit, and who paid hefty fees to get OSAP loans. ... Some may have existed only on paper, but 1,257 awards made the school the leader in Ontario for OSAP loans.  Mounties testified they learned that most of the so-called students had defaulted and the conman and his sons scrambled to fake tests and attendance records after the police probe began.  About 90% of students who signed up for classes at the Mississauga, Toronto, Scarborough and North York campuses either never attended class or dropped in only long enough to qualify for OSAP.  ... Mpamugo, who [is naturally going to] appeal, was ordered to surrender his passport to the RCMP.  Opening arguments are to begin this morning at the Ontario Court of Appeal in downtown Toronto, where his lawyers plan to argue for their client's release from custody."  (Toronto Sun, December 10, 2004)  Don't falsified passports work equally well when leaving after the investigation began, but staff at the Canada?

Canadian Immigration Hotline Index

Canada First Immigration Reform Committee