Posted on 01/03/2006 10:37:45 PM PST by F14 Pilot
It’s time to clear the air about our relations with the United States and how they impact on our immigration policy.
Recently, a very frustrated Paul Martin turned up the heat on the Americans after they persisted in refusing to play fair on the softwood lumber issue.
The prime minister’s message clearly got the attention of our southern neighbours.
Conservative pundit Tucker Carlson replied on Dec. 19 saying: “Anybody with any ambition at all, or intelligence, has left Canada and is now living in New York.”
As if that wasn’t enough, he added that Canada “is like your retarded cousin you see at Thanksgiving … he’s nice but you don’t take him seriously.”
I took far more seriously the comments of Montana Senator Conrad Burns who weighed into the fray by saying “We’ve got to remember that the people who first hit us in 9/11 entered this country through Canada.”
Within days he retracted his statement by saying he “misspoke on this matter.”
Burns is not the first senior American politician who has publicly expressed this view. Newt Gingrich made a similar statement in April 2005. He, too, retracted his statement and apologized for “perpetuating the error … one I am sure has been very painful to (Canadians).”
Apologies and retractions notwithstanding, many Americans still believe this urban myth. The fact is that the 9/11 hijackers were admitted to the U.S. by U.S. border officials. Not by ours. While sympathy is due, we bear absolutely no culpability for these events.
Unfortunately, since Sept. 11, 2001, our federal government has acted as if we were “guilty as charged.” To appease our American friends, we have adopted every idiotic airline security measure asked of us, such as confiscating tweezers and toenail clippers. We have removed our shoes when asked. We have surrendered our passenger manifests and even turned over our Canadian citizens for torture abroad just to make our neighbours feel like we are behind them.
Notwithstanding these concessions, the Americans also wanted to control Canada’s refugee program which they felt constituted a threat to the United States. How could they do this without appearing to violate Canada’s sovereignty? Simple.
Since many refugees can only reach Canada through a connecting flight somewhere in the United States, we would simply require claimants to advance their claim in the first “safe” country they reach and deny them the right to make a claim thereafter in Canada. And so, on Dec. 29, 2004, we entered into an agreement with the US declaring it a “safe” country. Accordingly, we have stranded thousands of asylum seekers in the U.S. and effectively subcontracted out a significant percentage of our asylum cases to the American refugee determination system, which can only be described one way: a joke.
This space is inadequate to expand on this assessment so I defer to a recent New York Times article at www.nytimes.com/2005/12/26/national/26immigration.html (free registration required).
In 1986, the UN’s Nansen medal was awarded to Canada for our treatment of refugees. As for the American system, this is what U.S. judge Ilana Rovner recently said to a U.S. government lawyer trying to defend her government’s decision in a refugee case: “It is so cruel to send a lovely human being like you in here to be a messenger of such madness, such nonsense.”
With an election looming, it’s time we return to our own values on immigration and end this absurd attempt to pacify our American friends who may need yet more time to realize that our immigration system had nothing to do with the tragedy of 9/11.
Guidy Mamann practises law in Toronto at Mamann & Associates and is certified by the Ontario Law Society as an immigration specialist. Reach him at 416-862-0000. Confidential e-mails may be directed to Mr. Mamann at metro@migrationlaw.com.
I guess your input is needed here
Thanks
I know you have an Immigration related ping list, Don't you?
WHAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!
If Canada keeps going on about this they'll become even more embarassing.
You guys can't take Tucker Carlson weeks ago? The US has to listen to that crap from your pissant little burg daily.
Go whine some more, and wave your good conduct medals from the UN. We'll do all the work--like giving you an economy.
So there aren't any Canadians in Australia?
Mmmm...Aussie women....mmmm...
Sorry, got lost for a sec... ;)
The Canadian regime and the corrupt ruling elite there are so completely worthless that one could almost make the case for sending in a platoon of 100 marines armed with Ruger Mini-14s to overthrow their stinking excuse for a government, if it would require even that many.
Problem is, the place is simply not worth the effort. Let's instead encourage the Quebecois to break away along with other provinces. I have more respect for Muslims than for these bedwetting leftists.
No self serving agenda with this guy (Liberal I bet).
Secondly, this person takes much too personal comments made by a nobody on an unwatched cable channel. Somehow this person should not get away with calling Tucker a conservative!
Does this person have an email address??
9-11 terrorists did not enter through Canada... is this Guidy happy?? Other terrorists HAVE entered through Canada...
First off nobody in the US believes Tucker Carlson is a conservative. Nobody really watches that poor excuse for a channel anyway. Besides who cares? Why throw a hissy fit over what some weirdo on TV said about your country? It's meaningless.Nobody I know thinks the 9-11 terrorists came throght Canada, although we know the millenium bomber did and probably wanna-be bombers are probably coming over the border right now.
Your article states that Canada agreed to the asylum 'safe country' rule. Maybe you should gripe to them. Except that bashing the US for your own countrys problems is easier than fixing them.
Now stop whining.
Floyd
flogerloon.blogspot.com
"We are an Al Qaeda family." So spoke one of the Khadrs, a Muslim Canadian household whose near single-minded devotion to Osama bin Laden contains important lessons for the West."
Wife Maha Elsamnah took her then 14-year-old son Omar from Canada to Pakistan in 2001 and enrolled him for Al Qaeda training.
Daughter Zaynab, 23, was engaged to one terrorist and married, with Osama bin Laden himself present at the nuptials, a Qaeda member in 1999. Zaynab endorses the 9/11 atrocities and hopes her infant daughter will die fighting Americans.
Son Abdullah, 22, is a Qaeda fugitive constantly on the move to elude capture. Canadian intelligence states he ran a Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan during the Taliban period, something Abdullah denies.
Son Omar, 17, stands accused of hurling a grenade in July 2002, killing an American medic in Afghanistan. Omar lost sight in one eye in the fighting and is now a U.S. detainee in Guantánamo.
Son Abdul Karim, 14, half-paralyzed by wounds sustained in the October 2003 shoot-out that left his father dead, is presently prisoner in a Pakistani hospital.
many Americans still believe this urban myth.
What planet has this writer been living on. I don't know of anyone who thinks that the 9/11 hijackers came into the US through Canada. In fact, I seem to remember there being widespread outrage and anger (rightfully so) after it was discovered, and widely publicized, that they came in to the US right through the front door.
This guy certainly does have an inflated sense of importance when it comes to Canada. If he wanted to be really truthful he wouldn't have to do much research to figure out that most Americans don't really give a damn about Canada at all.
Who or what is this Canada thingy you speak of?? Sounds creepy.
:-)
Wow, what a hard-hitting expose this clown wrote....I like Canada a lot, but have a difficult time liking some of the US bashers that live up North. Tell them to go back to France and leave the real Americans alone!! What a crock this guy writes, and in a way, I feel sorry for his being so stupid and insipid!
How do the Canadians explain the presence of Ahmet Resseni, arrested at the US border in December 1999 while driving a carload of explosives to attack LA airport? Resseni was An Algerian of an Arab-Afghan background who was in contact with Al Qaeda cells in Bosnia and Germany. Though considered a dangerous individual in Europe, he somehow managed to enter Canada. And how about Human Concern International, headquartered in Ottowa, Canada, which was supplying aid and comfort to Islamists in Afghanistan, and then using the name Mercy International continued to support Islamists by funding Algerian and Egyptian radicals? And what of the Benevolence International Fund of Canada, which was in bed with AQ, and the phoney Bosnian-Canadian Relief Association of Toronto?
Finally, it must be noted that Abudhamid Abdulrahim, AKA, Abu Obeida, a special confidante of OBLaden, set up the first radical Islamist charity in the West, Human Concern International, and he did so in Canada in 1982. Simply put, it is time for Canadians to quit playing the game of "holier than thou."
Please FReepmail me to get on or off this Canada ping list.
Sounds to me like Mr. Mamann, is just whining about a lack of business.
Bio:
Mamann & Associates
74 Victoria Street> Suite 303
Toronto, Canada M5C 2A5
Tel: 416-862-0000
Fax: 416-862-0625
Website: http://www.migrationlaw.com
E-mail: gman@migrationlaw.com
Founding Principal
Mr. Guidy Mamann is the founding member of Mamann & Associates (formerly Mamann, Kranc) and has been practicing primarily in the field of immigration law since 1987.
Mr. Mamann is one of only 20 lawyers in Ontario who has been certified as anImmigration Law Specialist by the Law Society of Upper Canada.
He has also been rated as one of Canada's "frequently recommended" immigration lawyers by Lexpert, Canada's leading lawyer rating service.
Mr. Mamann was formerly employed in 1984 as an immigration officer by the Department of Citizenship and Immigration at Toronto's Pearson International Airport. He graduated in 1985 from Osgoode Hall Law School at York University in Toronto.
Mr. Mamann has been interviewed extensively by The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Toronto Sun, LA Times, as well as CTV, CBC, City TV, BBC etc. He also writes a column on Immigration each Monday in Toronto's Metro News.
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