Myth # 15 "But immigrants are so rich!"
That's nice. If it really is true, why aren't they helping their own
people in a real hands-on, financial sponsorship kind of way? (Or, once
again, did that just apply to Europeans?) Agitating for more and expanded
immigration programs just doesn't seem as meaningful. Traditionally, immigration
didn't COST the 'beneficiary' nation a thing.
For example, while we're informed that our Chinese community is unimaginably
wealthy, we also discover that the new Chinese Canadian Cultural Centre
in Toronto (costing $5.2-million) will receive major funding from the big
five banks, the near-bankrupt Canadian Airlines, a radically down-sized
Bell Canada and a cool million each from the hard-pressed provincial and
federal governments. In a September 1997 poll, 78% of Canadians felt immigrants
shouldn't be allowed to sponsor their families into the country until they're
off welfare.
Note the presumption that welfare is an intrinsic part of the immigrant
process. Thirty years ago, as we celebrated Canada's centenary, we had
every reason to believe that by now we would be routinely travelling to
the stars. We got immigration instead. We got a stagnant, dying economy
where one of the few 'growth' (in the malignant sense) industries feeds
on the identification and suppression of 'hate' and, just co-incidentally,
free speech. The assurances of Medicare, pensions and welfare plans (created
BY Canadians FOR Canadians) are extinct and none of us really expects an
old age with security by the time we get there.
Then,
there's the fundamentally unsavoury issue of 'spreading 'em wide' for an
infusion of cash. There's a term for it and it isn't 'refugee haven'. In
the process of slurping up real or imagined Third World wealth, there's
another unsavoury question: under the desperate and difficult conditions
'back home', how was that money was accumulated in the first place? Given
the number of recent apprehensions of triad and gang leaders, maybe we
shouldn't ask. Canada's 'Investor Class Immigrant Program' is a classic
case of wrong headedness. Just recently reanimated following an 18 month
moratorium in the face of widespread fraud and corruption, Ontario has
honed the program to not only offer citizenship, but guarantees 100% repayment
of the 'loan'. (Lucienne Robillard, Minister for Immigration boasts that
this program has brought Canada the princely sum of $3.6-billion since
1986. She did not mention that foreign investors withdrew $3.5-billion
from Canada during the month of May 1997, alone).
Some investor class immigrants who made poor investments are considering
launching a class action suit against the federal government to recoup
their losses. OF COURSE, NO ONE CAN EXPLAIN WHY AN INVESTOR 1/2 A WORLD
AWAY IS SOMEHOW BETTER PLACED TO RECOGNIZE A "GOOD" CANADIAN
INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY WHEN THEY SEE ONE. The welfare of the average Canadian
has been callously compromised by elected swine to an extent that Canadians
have grown so supine and enfeebled, we are terrified to speak up in our
own defence for fear of being labelled 'racist'.