Canadian Politics Today

Actually they have done that before, yes.

Really? When?

The term 'liberal' is relative - ie. liberal people support liberty generally.

How many of those people in chadors do you think believe in the liberty of gays and Jews?

Blaming Muslims for Muslim terrorism is not helpful.  You can get away with 'screening immigrants for Canadian values' but not much more.

Someone posted a video the other day of a woman pointing out the obvious. Some portion of Muslims, between 15-25%, are extremists by our terms. Therefore, the more you bring in the more extremists you bring in. And those extremists have a disproportionate influence in that few wish to challenge them. This is the rich soil in which religious violence is grown.

The odd things is, btw, that those western Muslims who do challenge extremist doctrine are attacked not just by their own extremists but by progressives and liberals in the greater non-Muslim culture.

During the Gulf War when I was there.  In the 1980s when I was there. 

So in other words, for fear of Muslim terrorism.

Maybe not a lot.  What of it ?

So then saying these people had liberal values is idiotic.

If we can also deport native born Christians and inspect people for their personalities then we should be good.

Your position seems to be that Canadians have no more rights to be here than, say, a guy in Pakistan who has just applied for immigration. I disagree, and think that is borderline insane.

Why do you globalists refuse to accept that there are certain rights and privilages which accrue to Canadians and are not applicable to every single individual on the planet?

Right.  Following your plodding course we have arrived at the obvious.

Ah, so it's OBVIOUS! 

Well, it's obvious to me. It's clearly NOT obvious to liberals and progressives in Canada, who assume we can continue to bring in large numbers of Muslims and grow the Muslim population in Canada and that such things WON'T happen here. Nope. Not ever. Not a chance!

It's a relative term.  It is fine to call people who want to form a caliphate conservative though.  And you.

And me? Hmm. There seems to be a strange equivalency among progressives. Extreme right = centre right. No difference.

Your issue is to protect women and homosexuals from harassment isn't it ?  Or are you just admitting that the real concerns are that we don't like Muslims ?

My issue is that having standards is not abnormal. It is the Left's desperate desire to have NO standards in immigrants which is abnormal. Preferring immigrants who not only are more likely to be economically successful but are much less likely to want to attack Jews or desire a Caliphate is NOT xenophobia. It is common sense. Again, something the Left is repulsed by, for they have none themselves.

Legal rights? Boy... we are enjoying a smorgasbord of obvious facts today.

Obvious to me. Clearly not obvious to you.
Foreigners have NO legal rights except what their own government grants them. People only get legal rights when they arrive here.
The idea we can't bar people with extremist beliefs because we have people with extremist beliefs here is one which never fails to get my eyes rolling. It's akin to being indignant we would refuse an immigration visa to a  child molester because we have child molesters already here. And it's not like we're deporting THEM.

I can say that terrorism by Muslims is prevalent, but it still doesn't mean that it makes sense to blame individual Muslims or solve the problem by creating barriers to contact between these two groups.

Okay, how about this. There are two boxes of apples. Each has 100 apples. You can eat from either box. Oh, the one on the right, has 20 apples which, if eaten, will poison you, perhaps kill you.

Now you, not wanting to generalize, will simply say "I shall take apples from both of these boxes regardless of the possibility of being poisoned. Anything else would be unfair to the second box! After all, most of the apples there are fine!"

I, on the other hand, being a nasty old conservative will say "Screw this. I'm only taking apples from the box on the Left."

This is precisely the liberal argument about immigration. We must be 'fair' to foreigners, and not show preference to other groups which aren't likely to kill us because... because... just because!

The fact that you continually make that association is an example of WHY we can't have conversations, and why people refuse to allow generalizations about crime.

We generalize about everything in life. I see no reason why we shouldn't generalize about crime and social values. I go with the statistics that show Muslims (in general) make poor immigrants. I'll pick people from the other box, thanks.

You are a smart person, and yet you yourself make connections like that.

Because I"m being coldly logical and you're being emotional and using ideology to backstop your beliefs.

It would be akin to banning black Americans from visiting Canada because of their per-capital crime risk being higher.

We're not talking about refusing entry to visitors. We're talking about immigration.

And among conservatives to find some reason to declare 'other' groups as undesirable.

Well some groups are certainly less desirable than others based upon their demonstrated behavioural characteristics.

I don't see any 'left' parties proposing no standards on immigration,

The left has fought furiously against the very idea we ought to test potential immigrants for values and ability to fit in here. Because the left despises the very idea that all cultures aren't 100% equal in value, and denigrates Canada as a land without any culture anyway. Most of the people here consider it 'unCanadian' to even consider, despite the face the vast majority of Canadians support the idea.

Which just shows how many progressives are unCanadian themselves.

The Liberals could declare diversity a Canadian value, by your logic, and ban anyone with a conservative worldview from immigrating.

That's bullshit. We're not talking about declaring a political ideology or social construct as necessary to being Canadian. But as long as you're going that route, if the Liberals ever declared 'tolerance' to be mandatory that would pretty much eliminate all Muslim immigration right then and there. An awful lot of Hindus and Sikhs too.

Care to quote where I said that rights accrued to Canadians should not be accrued to all ?

Sure. When I said we should test for values because the more Muslims we bring in the more extremists, you said   If we can also deport native born Christians and inspect people for their personalities then we should be good.

In other words, we can't test foreigners for their potential to be good Canadians unless we can deport native Christians in Canada we don't like (I notice you only mention Christians).

Applying group characteristics to all individuals without qualification could be used against you, and sometimes is in terms of whiteness and maleness.  Generalizations are tricky, but condemning people based on them is problematic.

First, group characteristics are routinely used against whites and men. In fact our prime minister trumpets his preference for advancing and promoting and hiring women without regard to qualification, and his female ministers put pressure on institutions to hire women, to promote women, to make women CEOs to hire more female professors in STEM subjects and bring in more women students in the STEMS etc. He is implementing a new trade program just for female run companies, and goes out of his way to insist women be included in military missions and the military is even being forced to examine everything from its uniforms to its decorations and music to ensure nothing is unfair to women. I mean, there's a very very clear anti-male tilt to everything this government does.

Which is why more and more men are being turned off by this government.

Second, we are once again talking about applying group characteristics to foreigners. There are things you can't do in Canada because of people's rights. There are NO things you can't do in judging and determining value among potential immigrants. I don't CARE about being fair to foreigners. We can actively discriminate if it benefits Canada.

And I disagree. Reform of Islam is not going to come here. It has to come there. It has to come in Indonesia, Malaysia, Egypt and Iran.

I agree reform has to happen around the world, especially in Muslim majority countries.   However, I think things like gay mosques, female imams and women-led mosques are an important part of that reform, and since at this time they are only available in Western countries, Western countries are an important part of that reform.

In terms of 'refusing entry' I would not be in favour of that. But in terms of immigration, in coldly logical terms, since people from Muslim countries tend to be economically less successful in Canada,

Just so I'm clear, what do you consider an acceptable level of 'economic success'?   Are immigrants economically successful as long as their entire income is not from social assistance?  Or is there a threshhold of earnings you would consider acceptably "successful", beyond minimum wage and government subsidies?

In any case in Canada in 2017, 5.4% of Canadians overall were unemployed.  More specifically, 9.6% of new immigrants (under 5 years) were unemployed, but after 5 years, that number dropped to 6.2%, and after 10 years it was 5.5%.   So, your contention that immigrants are 'freeloading' might be somewhat valid for the first 5 years in Canada, but after that they become virtually indistinguishable from Canadians. 

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/labor90a-eng.htm

and because of their cultural value set, I oppose bringing in Muslim immigrants.

If culture is a mix of religion and common social norms, wouldn't that mean you'd object to bringing in people from the Middle East and North Africa, as those are the regions where the practices you object to occur, regardless of religion?   Is a Christian from Uganda who believes homosexuals should be put to death, the wife should submit to her husband and his daughter should be circumcised any different than a Middle Eastern Muslim who believes the same?   Do you think Middle Eastern Christians are any less anti-Semitic than Middle Eastern Muslims?   If you do, you are mistaken.

https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/2018/04/why-is-it-hard-for-middle-eastern-christians-to-support-israel/
http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/184481/ted-cruz-exposes-christian-bigotry-against-jews-in-the-middle-east
https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/Middle-Eastern-Christians-and-anti-Semitism

But because a portion of them, a much higher portion than from any other group, is going to have those views. Which means that for every hundred thousand Muslims we bring here perhaps twenty thousand will be fundamentalists.

Cultural attitudes are part of a culture, which certainly includes religion, but the idea that it's the 'religion' that is the one and only indicator of cultural attitudes is wrong.  Coptics from Egypt are just as much fundamentalists as are Muslims from Egypt.  Their views on many issues is going to be pretty identical, simply because they live in that region. 

We see the results of this in Europe now. So why bother? We owe foreigners nothing. We owe it to ourselves to ensure only the best come here. Why take people from areas of religious fanaticism when we can take people from areas without religious fanaticism?

Can we, though?   I understand that your preference is for immigrants from Europe, but how do you know enough Europeans are interested in coming to Canada?    I understand you will also accept Asians, so presumably that would help - but again, are the numbers there to support our immigration needs?  There must be a reason that Canada accepts immigrants from around the world.   Right now, 75% of our population growth is due to immigration, and that will soon rise to 100%.  Given that in the 70s we had 6 people employed for every 1 person retired, we're now down to 4 employed per each retiree and that it will soon be 1 to 1, our Canadian-born labour force is clearly shrinking rapidly.  What would be the actual result of closing the immigration door to people from the Middle East, Africa and India?   

According to the Wiki link below, we get approximately 17% of our immigrants from
Asian countries, 8% from India, approximately 15% from Muslim majority countries and around 30% from European/Western countries.  Given the very low numbers of immigrants from places such as Austria, Australia, France, Sweden, and even the UK - I don't think there's a hope that we'd be able to bring in enough immigrants from your preferred countries to even maintain our economy, never mind expand it as capitalism demands. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Canada#Canadian_immigrant_population_by_country_of_birth_(2016)

Also, if you really want Canada's Muslims to integrate, stop bringing in a hundred thousand fresh Muslims from radical countries every damn year. Let them settle here, develop and have the majority's view rub off on them. Let them start having their own Canadian born mullahs and Imams instead of them all coming from foreign countries. Let them start having their services in English, not Arabic or Pashtun or whatever.

All of this is already happening; do you think it is not? 

You can't immigrate to the US at all, unless you have family there, or some employer can make the case you have skills they can't find where they are. Or through the green card lottery, which allocates a limited number of green cards to people from counties which send few immigrants to the US. We ought to do the same.

60% of our immigrants are selected because of their economic viability; the remaining 40% or so are mostly under family-reunification.  In 2016, the US limits were set at 226,000 green cards for family reunification, and 140,000 for economic immigrants.   Canada's point system, particularly the Express Entry program, screens people based on education, ability to speak English or French, work experience and need for their skills in the Canadian job market and whether or not you have a job offer.   Those with a job offer are fast-tracked.  Those without a job offer are selected based on how many points - the higher the points, the more likely they'll be successful at coming into Canada.    What you think we should have is already here.

https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/immigrate-canada/express-entry/become-candidate/eligibility/federal-skilled-workers/six-selection-factors-federal-skilled-workers.html

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/06/the-philosophical-differences-on-immigration-between-canada-and-the-us/488534/

And this is why we need immigrants, even ones you don't like:
https://globalnews.ca/news/4161338/canada-labour-shortage-job-vacancies/
https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/03/13/labour-shortage-canada-job-vacancies_a_23384818/

Our immigration system should have only one purpose and that is to improve Canada for Canadians. [/quote]
Does this include a Muslim with their brand-new Canadian citizenship?  Or does it mainly include old-stock WASP Canadians and new WASP immigrants with Canadian citizenship?

Letting in tens of thousands of people each year unable to work at any level but minimum wage does not do that.

So minimum wage workers are not 'economically successful' enough in your opinion?

PS:  The criticisms you are currently making against "Muslims" were made against Chinese 100 years ago, yet here you are, claiming Chinese to be a preferred immigrant to Canada.  Think about that.

Yes. As she says, the peaceful majority are largely irrelevant. They are not driving the agenda. They are simply going about their daily lives. Pakistan makes blaspheme a criminal offense punishable by death not because every Pakistani wants that, but because any time anyone suggests changing that they get murdered. When you live in a country where any public person who does not profess a devotion to Islam can find themselves targeted by radicals EVERY public person will vow devotion to Islam and go along with the zealots.

I agree that it is practically always the violent minority who ruins things for the peaceful majority.  Where you and I differ is that I don't think we should blame and punish the peaceful majority of Muslims for the actions of the violent minority, and we certainly don't do it for any other group.   There's no move to 'screen' every single male for violent urges and thoughts, even though the violent minority of males carry out the vast majority of violent attacks on women, children and other men.  We don't suggest that we should medically castrate all men because a minority of men **** women, children and other men.   There's a few bad apples in the States that have resulted in thousands of gun deaths in the US already in 2018 (http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/), yet the very idea that we should limit entry to or screen Americans in some way to 'protect' Canadians from them is laughable.   Relatively speaking, the number of Westerners killed by Islamic extremists is a fraction of the number killed by American gun owners, but we fear the Islamic extremist more.   Logically, that makes no sense although I understand the emotional sense it makes to people, and even why.

I agree reform has to happen around the world, especially in Muslim majority countries.   However, I think things like gay mosques, female imams and women-led mosques are an important part of that reform, and since at this time they are only available in Western countries, Western countries are an important part of that reform.

Such things are a tiny minority and considered fringe even here. Few Muslims here respect them or even consider them to be true Muslims.

Just so I'm clear, what do you consider an acceptable level of 'economic success'?

The answer to that is based on the question "Why do we bring immigrants here?"
All of the answers given, even if one presumes they are true (I don't) revolve around economic improvement to Canada. I do not mean simply increasing the GDP. That's a false improvement. More people will certainly increase the GDP. So what? Does that help me? Nope. Therefore, my answer is "An immigrant is at an acceptable level of success if he has a good job which requires that he pay taxes which at the very least cover his/her/their share of the  cost of government services.

People often say things like "You'll need these immigrants to pay for your pension." That logic fails if the immigrant has a low paying job which means he pays NO taxes. If he's not even paying enough to pay for his health care and that of his family, then he's certainly not going to be paying my or anyone else's pension.

If culture is a mix of religion and common social norms, wouldn't that mean you'd object to bringing in people from the Middle East and North Africa, as those are the regions where the practices you object to occur, regardless of religion?

To a degree, yes. The problem is I'm far less worried about, say, Lebanese Christians than Lebanese Muslims. Lebanese Christians will and have assimilated into the larger Christian community much as Italians and Portuguese have before them. Muslims, on the other hand, have that constant power of Islam shaping their views, and Islam is based in the middle east and continues to be largely interpreted there. I do not think there can be real assimilation as long as Muslims here look to the Middle East as their guide to cultural values and beliefs, and as long as tens of thousands of Muslims arrive every year to reinforce the societal normal of other lands.

I understand that your preference is for immigrants from Europe, but how do you know enough Europeans are interested in coming to Canada?    I understand you will also accept Asians, so presumably that would help - but again, are the numbers there to support our immigration needs?

I would 'prefer' immigrants who can pay their own way, and not add to those supported by my taxes. According to the government's own studies that means Europe is indeed number one. But India is number two. Indian software engineers who want to come here are, as far as I'm concerned, more than welcome. Open the doors wide.

Are the numbers there to support our immigration needs? What are our immigration needs? For the last thirty years our immigration needs have been entirely based on the political needs of the party in power. Remember that we tripled immigration in 1985 not because Canada needed it but because Barbara MacDougal convinced the Mulroney cabinet that those immigrants would vote Tory. So who's to say that the 85k immigrants we were getting aren't enough, as compared to the 240k the tories increased it to?

I would WAY rather bring in 100k software engineers who will be paying taxes than 400k taxi drivers, Walmart greeters, janitors, security guards, retail store clerks and welfare lifers. That's for damn sure.

Right now, 75% of our population growth is due to immigration, and that will soon rise to 100%.

I'm not interested in population growth. The population of this country was about 20 million when I was young. Now it's 35 million and I fail to see one single solitary way that has made life any better for me or the rest of us. The population of Finland is less than 5.5 million and they seem to have a pretty decent time of it.

60% of our immigrants are selected because of their economic viability; the remaining 40% or so are mostly under family-reunification.

That's a somewhat deceptive figure. The 'economic class' includes spouses and children. And since the spouses, like the family class, are not assessed for economic or educational abilities, one can say that only about 15% of our immigrants are actually brought here due to their economic viability. And this disregards just how poorly government bureaucrats often are at assessing economic viability. One other thing, an economic immigrant from a Muslim country almost certainly will arrive with a non-working wife who has no job skills. An economic immigrant from Europe will almost certainly arrive with an educated wife who has been working and is  eager to go into the workforce herself. That makes the immigrant from Europe twice as good, all things being equal, as the one from a Muslim country.

PS:  The criticisms you are currently making against "Muslims" were made against Chinese 100 years ago, yet here you are, claiming Chinese to be a preferred immigrant to Canada.  Think about that.

First, I don't claim Chinese to be my preferred immigrant. They're actually next to last, because according to the government study they, in general, perform poorly in economic terms. I would prefer Europeans, Indians, and Filipinos. As to 100 years ago, that's irrelevant. A hundred years ago we needed strong backs. No education or language skills needed. We no longer need such people. However, I would point out that after 100 years we still have Chinatowns in major cities.