A few years back there was a hue and cry for new immigrants to be taught to swim as part of their settling -in process in Canada. I originally balked at the idea, thinking that we shouldn’t be spending money accommodating immigrants from desert countries that get it in their heads to go swimming.

I want my readers to know I’ve changed my mind.

Every summer there are dozens of cases of immigrants and their children going boating and swimming in Canada, and drowning because they come from drought-ridden countries and have rarely bathed, let alone swam for pleasure. The cost of pulling their bodies out of swimming pools and running them through the autopsy process is far outweighing what it would cost to teach these people to swim.

Who knows, perhaps lifegaurds should be teaching swimming and ESL at the same time?

Almost 20 per cent of immigrants are unable to swim, compared with just 4 per cent of people born in Canada, according to the study, which polled 1,032 Canadians between the ages of 18 and 60 in April and May.

Provincial coroners don’t keep death statistics by ethnicity or nationality, so the Lifesaving Society’s research provides the first statistical-based look at drowning risk for this group.

The study comes in the wake of what is turning out to be a deadly month at pools and swimming holes in Ontario.

Since the end of June, 13 people have drowned including Deep Engineer, one of two 14-year-old boys who died after being pulled from a Scarborough condo pool. The boy didn’t know how to swim, friends say.

“In India, nobody has access to pools. You don’t learn to swim,” said the boy’s uncle, Veejay Sonal, adding that Engineer’s family immigrated to Canada in 2001.

At the same time, I have to ask where the parents are, and if they might be clinically retarded. If you know your kid can’t swim, and you let him or her in a pool without a lifejacket, should you not be imprisoned for neglect leading to death?

I’m a strong swimmer and a fantastic floater. Even when I was a skinny kid, you couldn’t sink me - big lungs and a large diaphragm. Even so, we always had a minimum of two parents on duty when we were swimming up at the cottage. We also wore lifejackets, which assisted Sheba - the German Shepherd - in dragging us back into the approved swimming zone if we ventured too far out into the lake. Sheba would grab us by the back of the lifejacket and pull us back to safety. So three kids had two adults and a dog, plus flotation devices, to keep us safe. Not bad, considering we were all good swimmers.

Yet our immigrant communities are allowing kids to swim without flotation devices or adequate supervision, and wondering why their kids die.

Oh, by the way, my mother - despite coming from a water-based community - couldn’t swim. This meant a few things in our house:

• Mom didn’t go in the water
• I wasn’t allowed in a pool without a lifejacket or lifeguard
• I was never allowed in the lake without one of the swimming parents

Despite my best efforts, I’m still alive. Thanks Mom.

Great headline:

Illegal immigrants plan to leave over Ariz. law

Um,  yeah, that’s kinda the point. However, this weepy AP story makes it all about the sad, starving Mexicans who entered the country illegally. It’s written like an Oprah magazine feature story. Cue the shmaltzy music…

Natalia Garcia, 35, from Mexico City, says she and her husband - a day laborer - will stay so their daughters - both born in the U.S. - can get a good education and learn English. The couple have been living in Arizona illegally for the last 10 years.

“Mexico doesn’t have a lot of opportunities,” she says. “Here, we work honestly, and we have a better life.”

Honestly? You work honestly? You mean for cash, as an illegal, without paying taxes or following the law, you work honestly? Natalia, you’ve been living in the US long enough to have two anchor babies, and you still don’t get the fact that you are a criminal? The very fact that the word “illegal” is part of the “illegal immigrant” moniker should have clued you in, despite the shitty education system you grew up under.

Jose Armenta, a 33-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico’s western coast, is already planning to move to Utah within the next 20 days because of a combination of the economy and the new law.

“A lot of people drive by,” he says as he watched nearby cars speeding past, “and they yell, ‘Hey, go back to Mexico!’”

There’s an option - go back where you came from. Another alternative would be to present yourself to the US government and apply to reside legally. Believe me, as a Canadian, I know how difficult that can be. Which explains why I’m still in Canada, despite my best efforts. But here’s the thing: I love America too much to be forbidden from ever entering it again. I could have stayed there illegally and found something to do to make a little money, but I didn’t want to risk never being able to return.

Jose, you are sending all your money back to Mexico to your wife and kid. How does that benefit America, especially at a time of depressed economy? You are using America like a drunk girl at a party, with no intention of ever even giving her a ride home. Get the fuck out, Jose, and leave our drunk girl alone.

Canada’s most outspoken MP is in hot water again with a special interest group - this time the LGBTTQ2SXYZ!!@#LMNOP lobbyists - the homos, in other words.

Gay and lesbian activists say Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney’s refusal to refer to gay rights and same-sex marriage in the Canadian Citizenship Guide was an effort to rewrite Canadian history.

And I agree with them, but not for the reasons they present. My concern isn’t about Canadian history - it’s about the Canadian present. That citizenship guide should have had gays and lesbians on every damn page, frolicking in their PRIDE attire or blowing each other in a bath house - for no other reason than to do exactly what the guide was supposedly designed to do: Weed out those who discriminate based on gender or orientation.

If Mohhamed Wahbbi from Wackistan looks at that guide and vomits, we don’t want him in Canada. If he reads that women are doctors and gays aren’t murdered or raped, and that the showing of ankles isn’t a crime here in Canada, he might get the idea that Canada isn’t for him. And good riddance to bad rubbish. We don’t want his kind here. We don’t need more honor killings, more gay bashing, more calls for shariah law to be put in place. If he wants to live like that, he can stay in Wackistan where he belongs. Leave us our flamers, and we’ll leave you your goat fellatio.

If Jason Kenney actually edited the manuscript for the guide - and he claims he didn’t - he made a huge mistake that actually undermines the position he has taken all along about radical elements entering Canada.

Ever hip to what today’s immigrants are into, Citizenship & Immigration Canada wants to hear from new Canadians. Despite the fact that in rural villages and big cities around the world, locals are using modern technology like cell phones and blackberrys to send rape videos to their friends, and YouTube to disseminate beheading videos, Canada’s bureaucrats want them to find a VHS recorder (why not Beta?) to tell them all about how to end racism.

1. be between 45 to 60 seconds in length;
2. be submitted on one Mini-DV tape, DVD or VHS tape per entry;
3. be accompanied by one entry form, which also includes a parent or guardian signature PER PARTICIPANT;
4. not contain any images not created by the entrants (such as pictures, photographs, stock film or images from the internet) without a letter of permission from the person having rights in the images to use them for insertion in the video for the purposes of the Competition and granting to the Department of Citizenship and Immigration and its agents the right to use all videotape images they receive as they see fit and allow any television station participating in this initiative to edit, reproduce and broadcast any and all video submissions or portions thereof. Remember to include, unless he/she stated otherwise, the name of the author of the images in the credits of the video; and
5. use only original music in your video (i.e. music you and your team composed), or use royalty-free and rights-free music.

Canada is very concerned about the right of those singers and bands to which it gives enormous and unnecessary monetary grants. As for the rights of the budding videographers… well, not so much.

All videotape entries become the property of the Department of Citizenship and Immigration, including all intellectual property rights, and will not be returned. It should be understood that this involves that the Department of Citizenship and Immigration will have the right to use all videotape images they receive as they see fit and allow any television station participating in this initiative to edit, reproduce and broadcast any and all video submissions or portions thereof.

Better hurry! If you get your entry in by January 19, 2009, racism will end. Actually, that’s kinda true. The next day is Obama’s inauguration, and I swear I will rip the head off of anyone who plays the race card for the next 4-8 years after that.

H/t Kathy.

As long as us “honkeys” keep being scared of being called racists, the Muslims will keep taking us over inch by inch.

A taxi driver who claimed his religion forbade him from giving a lift to a blind man and his guide dog has been fined £300.

Ali Raza Roshanmoniri arrived to pick up Christopher Odell from the school where he works as a voluntary counsellor - but then refused to take him as a passenger with his dog.

The driver told Mr Odell it was against his religion to carry dogs and eventually the car company sent a replacement taxi to collect the counsellor.

In Toronto, I would always tell the cab company if I was traveling with my dog, and that I didn’t want to hear one single word about Allah. Funny, but I always seemed to get a Greek or Italian cab driver when I did that. It got to the point where I would tell the cab company that I had a dog with me, even when I didn’t. Why? Because I can. I’m the customer.

In Minneapolis they had a problem with airport cabbies not accepting passengers carrying Duty Free alcohol. What if they chose not to pick up a drunk for that same reason, so that drunk got behind the wheel of his car instead?

There’s a word for cab drivers not willing to carry passengers: Unemployed.

Let’s make sure they’re always addressed that way, till they smarten up and get over their 6th century bullshit.

By the way, you bleeding heart liberals, do you realize that not only are these cabbies discriminating against the handicapped, they are also racists. Hear that? Racists. They don’t like us because us whities are Infidels. Why is it ok for them to dislike us, but not the other way around?

The soaring birth rate among immigrant mothers will soon become the main driver of Britain’s rapid population growth, Government experts predicted today.

Immigration has been the biggest factor in increasing the population in recent years, and with millions of new arrivals starting families the birth rate is soaring.

The Office for National Statistics said yesterday that it could be the main source of overall population growth as early as next year, overtaking immigration itself.

Almost a quarter of all babies in Britain are now born to immigrant mothers. In London the figure is 54 per cent, rising to 75 per cent in some boroughs.

Foreign-born mothers have an average of 2.54 children, compared with 1.79 for women born in the UK.

A wonderful letter to the editor of the Toronto Star:

PM apologizes for 1914 ship tragedy, Aug. 6

As a Canadian whose ancestors go back to the foundation of the French colony, I am fed up with all these apologies. First to the Indians, then the Japanese, followed by the Chinese, now the gall of the Sikhs to decline the latest of these apologies. Nobody apologized to the Acadians for their deportation. Nor to the English emigrants for their treatment when they arrived in what is now Nova Scotia.

Our ancestors built this country amid controversy, mutual distrust and a few minor civil disorders, and created a nation of people who learned to live with each other. We probably bickered more than any other nation on Earth, but we have remained Canadians sharing grief and glory.

It is high time to tell the rest of the world that Canada is still one of the finest countries in the world to live in, but if you come here, you become a Canadian and you live by our laws and you put up with our customs.

Your customs belong in the country you left behind.

J.P. Desjardins, Trenton

An interesting article about immigration and assimilation. Can’t we all just get along? No, probably not.

Richwine praised Krikorian’s book, but said he disagreed with its opening lines “It’s not the immigrants, it’s us. What’s different about immigration today as opposed to a century ago is not the characteristics of the newcomers, but the characteristics of our society.”

He agreed that our society changed, but made the blunt point that a major difference between today’s immigrants and yesterday’s is that today’s are almost all non-white while the earlier groups were almost all white. He went on to say this is important because whether we like it or not, people are naturally tribal and—to the gasps of many of the audience members—there are serious racial differences in IQ and that having groups with vastly different achievement levels will create more racial strife.

He said that the fact that saying that all European immigrants once thought unassimilable were eventually included into the Melting Pot in no way means that non-white immigrants will also be assimilated.

He pointed to Native Americans, African Americans, and earlier Mexican immigrants as examples of groups that have not assimilated after hundreds of years. He echoed Peter Brimelow by suggesting that Krikorian is triangulating between the Open Borders crowd and himself.

He ended by making a thought experiment: What if the earlier waves of immigrants had been Pakistanis and Australian Aborigines instead of Italians, Germans, and Irish? Would they have assimilated? In the Q&A, I brought up Pat Buchanan’s comments about Englishmen assimilating more easily than Zulus and asked a corollary question: If our immigrants were coming from Europe, would we have the problems we are having today with Third World immigrants?

Agree or not (I do), it’s nice to see some debate. Differences between our cultures and their abilities to integrate based on tribalism and IQ levels are taboo subjects in a multicultural society, even if it means that silence leads to poverty, crime and death.

I had never heard of Richwine before this speech. It turns out that he is currently finishing his dissertation at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government on the topic of immigration and IQ. He will then stay on as a research fellow at AEI focusing on “applying the science of mental ability to better inform public policy on a variety of issues, including immigration, race relations, education, and welfare.” Definitely someone we want to keep our eye on.

Indeed. H/t Kathy.

Immigration has ‘no positive effect’ on Britain, finds landmark report

The Government’s claims to justify mass immigration was last night demolished by experts who demanded a cap on future arrivals.

The landmark study, the most authoritative ever carried out by a Parliamentary committee, dismissed out of hand the Government’s “preposterous and irrelevant” assertion that migrants boost the economy by £6 billion.

The cross-party panel - which includes ex-Chancellors, economists and captains of industry - said there was “little or no positive impact” on the living standards of the existing UK population.

It’s because, like Canada, the UK has no standards for who they let in. Really. how many cab drivers do we need?

I’m not sure what the certification rules are in the UK, but here in Canada, even if you have a skill, you aren’t allowed to use it. So even doctors are driving taxis.

Tory ex-Cabinet Minister Lord Wakeham, who chaired the inquiry, said: “The Government’s use of impact on overall GDP as the key measure is preposterous and irrelevant because it does not reflect the economic well-being of the existing population.”

The committee said: “There has been little or no positive impact on the living standards of the existing population.

“The biggest beneficiaries of international migration are migrants themselves, as employment in the higher income countries enables them to earn higher wages and incomes than in their home countries.’

Asked if the economic policies pursued by Labour over the last decade had been a mistake, Lord Wakeham replied: “We have made it abundantly clear we do not believe there has been any great economic benefit from the policy it has pursued.”

From the comments on the article:

Do you think that they are finally realising what the ordinary person could have told them years ago?

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day is calling for a review of border security in Halifax after several stowaways managed to disembark from a container ship and slip through customs unchecked on the weekend.

The men made it as far as Truro, N.S., about 100 kilometres from the border point where they entered the country on Sunday before police nabbed them, The Canadian Press reports.

After crossing the border the men tried to board a train in Halifax before taking a taxi to Truro, where they again tried to take a train that could have taken them to Montreal, Staff Sergeant Randy MacKenzie told CP.

The stowaways speak French and are believed to be from Algeria, according to reports.

Police have said that only a single commissionaire was on duty at the gate on Sunday when the stowaways passed through.

Sleep well tonight, Canada.

Toronto, with its growing immigrant population, will likely see an increase of deadly, contagious tuberculosis, experts say. The current system simply couldn’t handle an outbreak, but the province has yet to make the changes required to protect citizens

Something to think about the nest time you are on a crowded subway, running under Chinatown or Little Somalia.

TB is not going to disappear from Toronto as long as we are an immigration centre. We need to plan for cases to continue to arrive here and to be able to deal with them at the highest level of care.

Yup, those ethnic restaurants were totally worth it. Right?

PS: It may also be worthwhile to remember that our immigrant darlings from Islamic countries are a bit needle-shy when it comes to vaccinations. But we must respect their faith, at all costs. To do otherwise would infringe on their human rights. Think about that when you are shipping your kid off to school with their kids.

Whether it’s Polio vaccines in their countries (and sometimes here, because we don’t enforce it), or the MMR vaccine in Britain, or countless other measures (including their own doctors and nurses having sub-standard levels of hygiene because female medical practitioners do not practice safe hand-washing), or the fact that countries like Somalia would rather spend money on warfare than on sanitation (expecting our evil, Infidel Christian charities to foot the bill for that), we are going to continue to have a problem with 19th century diseases resurfacing from 7th century countries.

But in Britain, packing C4 in your lunchbox is ok, I guess.

FURY erupted last night after it emerged that a boy of 12 who trained to be a suicide bomber is being allowed to attend school in Britain.

Parents of his classmates are unaware of the Afghan child’s terrifying past. MP Philip Davies said the youngster should be removed from school immediately so a proper investigation can take place into any potential danger he poses.

Surely there must be a spot at a seminary school somewhere where he can be deprogrammed of his Islamic upbringing? I would have a lot more faith in him (no pun intended) being watched over day and night by nuns than I would were he watched by bureaucrats. At least the nuns don’t hang it up at 3pm, and take all bank holidays to go drink in the Algarve.

Just sayin’…

Teachers, police and councils are afraid to take action against so-called honour crimes for fear of being accused of racism, it is claimed.

The threat of being called a racist and having your name smeared is so real these days, that authorities are leaving women to die in the hands of their zealous menfolk. Why would a white cop or teacher speak out, if it means they’ll be vilified by the “religion of peace” representatives, or worse yet: brought in front of a thought-crime tribunal?

It found that “political correctness” was preventing bodies from tackling crimes which exist in the country’s Muslim, Sikh and Hindu communities.

The authors said families withdraw teenage daughters from school because they fear men will be unwilling to marry them if they are educated.

Many men brought up here want “freshies” - women “uncontaminated” by ideas of independence.

Rahni Binjie of the Roshni Asian Women’s Aid, a refuge in Nottingham, said: “We’ve had women who have disappeared from the education system. We don’t know if they’ve been taken abroad or killed or anything.”

Activists say there are particular problems with taxi firms who return women fleeing from abuse.

Jasvinder Sanghera, of the Karma Nirvana refuge in Derby, said: “We just can’t trust them. This can be a matter of life and death for these girls.”

Nice. Cabbies returning abused women to their abusers. Tell me again why we keep letting these people in?

A Dutch police station trying to help Muslim detainees face Mecca for their prayers painted arrows in cells pointing in the wrong direction.

The Segbroek police station in The Hague borrowed the idea of putting compass marks on ceilings from an Amsterdam hotel, the Dutch daily De Telegraaf reported on Friday.

Muslims pray five times a day, facing east in the direction of Mecca. But the arrows in Segbroek pointed west.

There are 1 million Muslims in the Netherlands. The overall population is 16 million. One has to wonder just how many of those 1 million Sons of Allah are heading to jail that it necessitates painting arrows in the first place. And while we’re asking, let’s ask why their going to prison, and then decide if criminals are actually worth such apparently limitless accommodation.

I think it’s more than just the arrow painters who have lost their sense of direction.

Common sense has prevailed in Quebec, where Muslim women will have to show their faces before voting in tomorrow’s election.

“What’s at stake here is the integrity and, as I said, the serenity of the electoral process,” Mr. Blanchet said at a press conference. “Since yesterday, the chief electoral office has received numerous emails and numerous telephone calls that have raised concern about inappropriate actions being taken at the polls. Suggestions were also made, notably on the Internet, that voters should show up at polling stations with covered faces or in silly disguises.”

Quebec has had issues in the past with voter fraud (remember them being ridiculed back in 1995 for having the roll of every cemetery voting YES in the referendum, yet they still lost?), and the idea of letting Allah’s whores show up in disguise was raising the ire of many Quebecois.

Earlier this week Mr. Blanchet, the top civil servant in charge of running Quebec elections, said that women wearing the niqab, a full-face veil that leaves only the eyes exposed, or the burqa, a head-to-toe covering, could vote without exposing their faces if they brought photo identification to the polling station and a second person vouched under oath that they were who they claimed to be. He made the ruling in accordance with a Quebec law that wasn’t necessarily designed for that purpose. After the Journal de Montreal uncovered the story, outrage erupted–fuelled by concerns an exception for Muslim women would facilitate fraud, such as people casting multiple ballots or without being qualified.