18 January 2008

C'mon... this is multi-cultural Canada

There's no such thing as too many refugees...
Ottawa is appealing a court ruling that has the potential to significantly increase the number of people making refugee claims in Canada.

On Thursday, a Federal Court judge struck down the contentious Safe Third Country Agreement between Canada and the United States.
Now, was this a law that made any sort of a difference?

Yup... it sure did.
Citizenship and Immigration Canada said the number of claims filed at its land border offices in the U.S. dropped by 40 per cent in the year after the change.
Was there a legitimate reason to enact this law?
When the agreement was put in place, the government said the aim was to end "asylum shopping."
Yup... there sure was.

Note also that this law did not, in any way shape or form... send refugees back to their countries of origin. It simply stopped them from getting to North America and shopping around for the best deal.

Call me crazy, but perhaps we should be trying to sort out Canada's very serious infrastructure, education and health care deficits... before throwing open the gates to extra-legal immigration.

Maybe we could start over here.

Just a thought.

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