The Garden City Refugee

Dear Crabby: Welcoming Immigrants

September 19, 2024

Dear Crabby:

It’s Welcoming Week here in Canada, where we encourage Canadians to do what they can to make newcomers feel welcome. Whether we initiate conversation with newcomers and share information about the community; challenge a racist joke, generalization or stereotype; invite newcomers to community events, birthday parties or potlucks; or simply make the effort to learn someone’s name and the proper way to pronounce it. It’s important to take the time to welcome every new neighbor.

We need immigration and we have an obligation to lend a helping hand to those coming from war-torn countries. Yet you don’t seem to agree. In this day and age, I’m ashamed to still see such anti-immigrant attitudes. There’s no place for bigotry in Canada.

– Ashamed in St. Catharines

Dear Ashamed:

First of all, it is the responsibility of newcomers to adapt to and integrate into their adopted home country, just as I did when I defected from the Socialist People’s Republic of Manitoba and came to Ontario more than 10 years ago. No one fawned over me, nor is not my responsibility to fawn over these newcomers.

In fact, rather than trying to encourage us to welcome them, how about encouraging them to start showing some gratitude to Canadians for allowing them into the country? Though people like you would likely disagree, we have no obligation to admit anyone, even as a tourist. As a Canadian, I don’t have a right to go to the Great State of New York for something as trivial as a bike ride. It is a privilege granted to me by the U.S. government, one which they may rescind at any time for any reason. I may vehemently disagree with those reason(s), as I did during the war in which I was prohibited from entering the U.S. for more than three years for the “crime” of having my DNA intact, but as a foreign national, there’s really nothing I can do about it. Then maybe you’d start seeing the masses being a little less hostile to the unfettered mass immigration flooding our country and overwhelming our infrastructure.

You see, most Canadians, in spite of being bombarded by endless state-sponsored propaganda telling them how much we allegedly “need” these immigrants (have you noticed that the government has stopped calling them “refugees?”), oppose mass immigration, particularly from those who have illegally entered the country or remained here after the expiration of their visas. Of course we welcome newcomers. This is a country founded on immigration. But only those who come through legal channels and share our values. I am proud to know such people and Canada is better for them having come here. In general, however, the immigrant needs Canada much more than Canada needs the immigrant.

Let me ask you a question. What if you got up one morning and found some stranger who had broken a window, climbed in and was sleeping on your sofa? Would you “welcome” them by offering to cook breakfast for them and offering your bed to them? Or would you freak out and call the police? Methinks you would do the latter. So spare me the holier-than-thou attitude. Charity begins at home.

In any event, you do know the real reason why the Liberal government is opening the doors wide open to foreigners, don’t you? No, it’s not because they’re so kind-hearted, as people like you expect us to be. It’s because they’re trying to flood the country with future Liberal voters. Canadians are fed up with the Liberals. If there was an election held tomorrow, it’s no secret that the Liberals would be decimated. They likely wouldn’t even come in second place. So since we won’t be voting Liberal, they’re bringing in those who will. It’s the same strategy being employed by the Democrats in the U.S. and the far-left elements in the EU. Immigration is just a political tool for the Liberals to stay in power, or at worst, regain power in 2029 with a new leader at the helm. Anyone who believes otherwise is naive in the extreme.

In the meantime, if all you can do to support your argument is call me names, kindly put a sock in it. It is people like you who should be ashamed, not me.