To: fresc who wrote (8440 ) 2/19/2006 2:44:34 PM From: seventh_son Read Replies (1) | Respond to I don't believe in painting any ethnic group as bad. There are bad apples in any group and good apples in any group as well. At the same time, we as Canadians have a right to a system of immigration that works to our benefit. That means if you get a disproportionate amount of problems with people from certain countries, we have a right to raise the immigration standards and do something. If you look at Jamaica -- it is a tiny island, but it seems a significant percentage have managed to transplant themselves to Canada and cause a disproportionate amount of violent crime. If you look at Ghanians, apparently a large percentage are on welfare. Should we ask, are they discriminated against, or is the average Ghanian going to come here with a laid-back attitude towards life and work, and wondering why the jobs and riches are not coming to them? Is our immigration system working? If you look at the Russians, and apparently a lot of sophisticated organized crime going on -- in fact many came as a result of growing rich on crime in Russia -- should we ask, were we naive to let so many of these people come in so easily under the terms we did? Can we ask that? I'm not saying, don't let in anyone from countries X, Y, or Z. I'm saying, we need to develop a system to screen people properly so we don't see these problems because anything less is naive. If we can't do that, cut back immigration by raising the bar and raising the burden of proof on them until the system is working to our benefit (as it was in fact in the 60's and 70's when the restrictions were greater). This is only fair to the immigrants who do come here to work hard and integrate -- how people perceive them is partly a function of how many undesireable immigrant squeeze in due to faults in our system. I've talked to several immigrants who are mad about how going through the system honestly was hell and how many others jumped the queue with false claims including of being refugees.
