Re: ASCII Art Fart for Thu, 2004 Nov 25

Michael M. <hfr...@msbx.net> wrote:

<snip>
> 
> You mean when Canada chooses to let non-white immigrants in?  Didn't
> Canada institute a complete ban on all Chinese immigrants in the 1920s?

Possibly, we also killed off a lot of our natives with smallpox... but
we didn't have slavery so...

> Didn't Canada impose a half-million dollar savings requirement on anyone
> seeking to emigrate from Hong Kong before the handover to China?

That rings a bell... and don't get the impression that I'm at all
condoning our government or its policies.

>  Doesn't
> Canada currently have hundreds (thousands?) of would-be refugees locked
> up?

I doubt it... even illegal immigrants who have been officially deported
usually end up wandering the streets at will. Keeping people locked up
costs money.

>  I'm not *that* conversant with Canada's immigration policies, but its
> been my impression that Canada is generally less welcoming -- historically
> and in the present day -- than the U.S.

Where I live (on the godforsaken prairie) we have a relatively large
Central American population (which includes my in-laws)... almost
without exception these are people who fled Nicaragua and El Salvador in
the 1980s and were then denied citizenship in the US. At least in this
case we were more welcoming... (yeah, I know that's an isolated bit of
anecdotal evidence, but it's what I _know_).

According to the US .gov, on the other hand, Canada is far too lax in
welcoming all manner of riff-raff to our terrorist haven. Maybe our
immigration policies favour the rich and murderous... I don't know.

<snip>

>  I can hear more languages and dialects and
> encounter people from more countries on a two-block trip to and from the
> supermarket here than in a long weekend in Toronto...

Okay, you win. USA #1

I've only been (briefly) to Washington state and Montana. Didn't see
_any_ non-whites... though we did see a lot of gun-toting rednecks. It
really was quite scary.
Seattle seemed to be more black and white compared to Vancouver which is
predominantly white/asian, but again this is just a passing observation.

> 
> >> Whether or not one values diversity (personally, I do), it goes
> >> hand-in-hand with conflict, and often with violence.
> > 
> > Are you insinuating that cultural diversity is largely to blame for the
> > USA's abundance of shooting deaths?
> 
> No, I'm saying that ethnic and cultural diversity is a cause of violence,
> tension and strife.  A country that is largely homogeneous is going to be
> less violent than another that is more diverse, other factors being equal.
>  I think it is a much larger factor than the "culture of fear" Michael
> Moore posited in his movie, when trying to explain the rates of gun
> violence in Canada vs. the U.S, and it's a factor he ignored.

Haven't seen the movie... but I don't think you can discount the
"culture of fear" angle entirely. I know a lot of gun owners here in
.ca, and I've never heard anyone talk about using their weapon in
self-defence. OTO, almost every US gun proponent I've spoken to will
bring up the self-defense argument within a few seconds. It seems
logical to me that if the society is more violent (due to its diversity,
or any other reason) then there will be more fear of violence in the
society at large.

Of course, having not seen the movie, I might just be whistling up my
own ass here...
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