We need to be more like canada. Funny that while we are busy getting our liberal on, canada straightens up and flies right.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...+Article+Links
"It has been more than four years since the MV Sun Sea arrived in Esquimalt, bearing 492 Tamil passengers claiming to be refugees. Many people feared that more ships would come to our shores, bearing thousands of claimants. But that didn’t happen, because of root-and-branch reforms to Canada’s immigration system brought in by the Harper government.
Those reforms – some of which are already in place, with the rest slated to take effect January a1, 2015 – are changing the nature of immigration to this country.
Entrepreneurial, well educated, with skills that fit the job market and a good command of English or French, immigrants today are better equipped than ever to integrate successfully into our economy and society. Such immigrants are likely to believe that people can and should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, just as they did.
You could call them “bootstrap immigrants.” They are contributing mightily to Canada’s transformation from an Atlantic nation to a Pacific nation. And they are making this country a more conservative place.
I examined the changes to immigration and refugee policy in a policy brief released this week by the Centre for International Governance and Innovation, which you can find here.
The paper examines how the Conservatives have made immigration and refugee policy less compassionate and more economically focused than it was under previous Liberal governments.
For example, refugee claimants from 42 countries designated as safe now have their claims rejected essentially out-of-hand. The reasoning is that someone from, say, the United States could not possibly be at risk of persecution because the United States does not persecute its citizens.
Claimants from less safe countries have their cases dealt with in months rather than years. As a result, the number of people arriving at our borders unannounced and claiming refugee status has shrunk dramatically – by 80 per cent, from designated safe countries.
The Conservatives still admit as many refugees as previous governments – about 12,000 a year – but these are either privately sponsored or brought in under the Office of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In either case, refugees to Canada are now far more carefully screened than in the past to ensure that they can integrate successfully.
Family-class immigration has virtually vanished under the Tories. Instead, parents and grandparents can visit for up to 10 years using a new super visa, provided their families are able and willing to pay for health care and other costs."