Immigration is a global issue. It’s three o’clock in the afternoon, the business hour of my day. I’ve just returned from an uncommonly pleasant though admittedly repetitive drive along the Appleton Side Road into the urban periphery and back. I am sipping chilled black coffee and nibbling on sliced green Granny apple. As I stare with wandering mind out of my drawing room window onto the balcony with its artful metal railing and matching black patio chairs overlooking the verdant lush field and the distant river plateau, listening to Solstice d’été by Dirk Maassen, I recall the Indian chap at the gas station moments ago.
In fact there were two Indian gentleman. The first approached the entrance of the kiosk and, when he saw me hobbling with my stick, he waited then held the door for me. I naturally thanked him. The second was the chap behind the counter. He assisted me in the purchase of lip balm using my Petro-Canada points card and my iPhone to pay the small balance owing. We together joked about him having to instruct me (a confessed old fogey) in the use of the device and the modernity of technology. He said his father in India was amused by it as well, or something to that effect. I didn’t clearly hear that detail but I definitely heard him mention his father. The mention of his father instantly catipulted my mind abroad a vast separation and triggered a remorsefulness. The chap had a soft spoken voice. His eyes were dark and clear.
Every year, 2.5 million (25 lakh) Indians migrate overseas, which is the highest annual number of migrants in the world.
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September 15, 2024
Hello William and Denis,
Here is a story from the French press bearing what seems to me to be bad news.
Face à la crise du logement, le Canada restreint son accès aux nouveaux immigrants
Faced with a housing crisis, Canada restrains access for new immigrants
It’s from the French press commenting on the change of Canadian sentiment toward immigration.
For as long as I have been in France, Canada has always been held up by politicians, the media, and just about everybody else, as a model for attracting and managing immigration through fostering of immigrants’ original cultures blended into a uniquely Canadian state of getting along, good relations, multicultural integration without assimilation.
Not that French people think that the Canadian model would work here because the popular uproar over “les immigrés” is actually directed at the Muslim component of that immigration.
I would be interested to read or hear your comments. From here, it looks like a morph of Trumpian populism.
Daniel
Daniel Arthur Laprès
Avocat au Barreau de Paris
Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society (Life member)
11 boulevard Sébastopol
75001 Paris France
Tel: 01.53.32.50.77
web site: www.lapres.net
e-mail daniel@lapres.net
September 15, 2024
Salut, Daniel!
Thank-you for your email.
My overall reaction to any perceived problem, whether immigration or any other matter, is that human beings have the capacity to resolve the dilemma, to “work it out”, to change something perceived to be bad into something good.
The model is however ruled by two precepts: one, nobody leaves the room until we have an answer; and, two, there is going to be compromise and accommodation (that is, nobody will get everything they want at the outset though with time and further negotiations further advancement and advantage are similarly possible).
This model, like Christianity, is uncompromising; that is, there is one and only one way to go. Speaking of religion, I include it as one of many ingredients of confrontation which must be compromised and accommodated for the sake for mutual benefit. In short, there is no resource – religious, spiritual, medical, political or philosophic – which is not “fair game” for compromise and accommodation.
In conclusion, the object is overcoming the problem. There can be no objection to the model since without submisssion to its principal tenets there can be no resolution. It is axiomatic. If however the game is to resist the model for selfish or political or any other purpose, then the problem is not the initial conundrum, it is the nature of the players in the game. Those perverse players have to be called out; their rants and grandstanding cannot be withstood and substituted for plausible argument. The model is not the time for rhetoric; rather time for resolve.
Bill
PS This is not a “Don’t worry, Be happy” model; it is not one that avoids the issue; rather it is one that confronts it. If on the other hand one chooses to ignore the model, then it is transparent that the adherents to the problem are unmoveable. Call it what it is.