Zarf beats the crap out of puppeteer Mollie Ingebrand before showing her the door.
Posted on 07/26/2003 11:49:10 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
NEW YORK -- For all they share economically and culturally, Canada and the United States are increasingly at odds on basic social policies -- to the point that at least a few discontented Americans are planning to move north and try their neighbors' way of life.
A husband and wife in Minnesota, a college student in Georgia, a young executive in New York. Though each has distinct motives for packing up, they agree the United States is growing too conservative and believe Canada offers a more inclusive, less selfish society.
"For me, it's a no-brainer," said Mollie Ingebrand, a puppeteer from Minneapolis who plans to go to Vancouver with her lawyer husband and 2-year-old son.
"It's the most amazing opportunity I can imagine. To live in a society where there are different priorities in caring for your fellow citizens."
For decades, even while nurturing close ties with the United States, Canadians have often chosen a different path -- establishing universal health care, maintaining ties with Cuba, imposing tough gun control laws. Two current Canadian initiatives, to decriminalize marijuana and legalize same-sex marriage, have pleased many liberals in the United States and irked conservatives.
New York executive Daniel Hanley, 31, was arranging a move for himself and his partner, Tony, long before the Canadian announcement about same-sex marriage. But the timing delights him; he and Tony now hope to marry in front of their families after they emigrate to British Columbia.
"Canada has an opportunity to define itself as a leader," Hanley said. "In some ways, it's now closer to American ideals than America is."
Thomas Hodges, a computer systems major at Georgia State University, said his dismay with American politics started him thinking last year about going abroad. He recently wrote an article in a campus journal titled, "Why I Am Moving To Canada."
"I'm thinking about Toronto, though I hear it's cold up there," Hodges, a lifelong Southerner, said in a telephone interview.
Hodges, 21, complained about a "neo-conservative shift" in the United States and praised Canada's approach to health care and education.
"The U.S. educational system is unfair -- you have to live in certain areas to go to good schools," he said.
Rene Mercier, spokesman for Canada's immigration department, said any upsurge in U.S.-to-Canada immigration based on current political developments won't be detectable for a few years, because of the time required to process residency applications.
During the Vietnam War, U.S. emigration to Canada surged as thousands of young men, often accompanied by wives or girlfriends, moved to avoid the draft.
But every year since 1977, more Canadians have emigrated to the United States than vice versa -- the 2001 figures were 5,894 Americans moving north, 30,203 Canadians moving south.
Mollie Ingebrand, 34, said she has felt an affinity with Canada for many years, fueled partly by respect for its health care system. Her doubts about the United States go back even further, to a childhood spent with liberal parents in a relatively conservative part of Ohio.
"In school I was always told this is the best country on earth, and everyone else wants to be American, and that never really rang true to me," she said. "As I got older, it occurred to me there were other choices."
Ingebrand says some of her friends -- people who share her left-of-center views -- argue that she should stay at home to battle for changes here.
"I've been there and done that," she said. "I don't want to stay and fight anymore. I can have that bittersweet love for my country from somewhere else."
Sounds to me like they're into freeloading off their fellow man.
A PUPPETEER? Good...and please do us a favor and take all the mimes with you too.
Buh-bye, Mollie. Don't let the door hit you in the buttocks on the way out.
Many Venezuelans moving to Central Florida came here first as tourists. Back in the '70s and '80s, it was cheaper to catch a flight to Florida than to stay in Venezuela for vacations; cheaper to fly to Miami for a shopping trip than to buy the same goods in Caracas; cheaper to purchase a vacation home in Orlando than a second house in their homeland.
Back then, the Venezuelan motto was Está barato; dame dos -- "It's cheap; give me two."
It's that level of affluence and the pride Venezuelans have in their country -- beautiful beaches, beautiful mountains, beautiful women -- that contributed to the perception of Venezuelans as the most arrogant of Latin Americans. And it's their recent history -- soaring crime, inflation, poverty, a crippling strike, a failed coup -- which has deflated that conceit.
"We were the paradise of Latin America. Now we're just another third-world country struggling economically and politically," Rodriguez said. "It's very hard for Venezuelans to deal with that."
………..For the expatriate community of Venezuelans in Orlando, paradise became a prison under Hugo Chavez.
"You don't feel safe in the streets. You don't want your kids playing in the streets or they might get kidnapped," Roche said.
About a fifth of the nation is unemployed. An estimated 80 percent are poor. In the first quarter of the year, the economy shrank 29 percent. Inflation is approaching 35 percent.
And so they come here, a place where Venezuelans can earn a living, raise their children, walk the streets without fear, and live inside houses with glass doors.***
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I'll take "arrogant, conceited" contributors over "what's in it for me" bloodsuckers any day. Given time, it can only improve Florida.
Hopefully, she'll be taking her whiny, liberal parents with her.
Whether the care I received in the United States was medically better, I cannot judge. But I did buy something you can't buy here: Civility.
In Wednesday's Star, Joe Fiorito recounted his experience renewing his Ontario health card: a senseless bureaucracy making him shuffle about the city; rude bureaucrats; stupid rules.
His story rings uncomfortably true. Health-care workers I've met in Toronto don't care.
Bump!
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It's a society where she can play at life and play with puppets and still be supported.
Zarf beats the crap out of puppeteer Mollie Ingebrand before showing her the door.
If the article title reflect the content, it should have said:
Neo conservative America is attracting five times as many people from Canada then Americans to the super liberal Canada.
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