Doug Ford (A Canadian Precursor to Trump) Declared Leader Of The Ontario PC Party

[The Romulan Republic]

I'll add that at this point, I really do not care about parsing definitions or making excuses. What I know is this: there are, all around the world, tens of millions of people who have left their homes and all they have known, often at extraordinary risk and with little or nothing in the way of possessions. Some of them are leaving the US, because the US government has made it abundantly clear that they are not welcome or safe there. They are not just lazy, or criminals, or unskilled. They are not doing it because they want to leach off our (mediocre) welfare system, or because they want to take our (unavailable) jobs or housing. They are doing it, by and large, because they are desperate, and they will keep doing it because, for many of them, the alternative is death. Were I in their place, I'd be doing the same damn thing, unless my nerve failed me. They deserve nothing but compassion and respect, and when some of them arrive here, in one of the countries on Earth most able to help them, and are labeled as criminals taking jobs and homes from "our" people, I am not fucking interested in quibbling over whether the motive is technically racism or some other form of prejudice or just plain selfishness and cowardice. I. Don't. Give. A. Shit. Nor do I care about giving the people doing it the benefit of the doubt as to their motives. I watched people give Trump the benefit of the doubt for three years, and the result was putting children in cages, using them as hostages to force their parents to accept deportation if they want to see their children (yes, they're doing that), and discharging and deporting soldiers who joined the military and fought America in exchange for being promised a pathway to citizenship (yes, they're doing that too).

So I'll be damned if I give that shit the benefit of the doubt here.

[Wild Zontargs]

1. Legal skilled immigrants are required to show proof. Yes, I assume "proven to be skilled" is, on average, going to be more skilled than "random individual".

2. Legally, they are a safe country. "Won't let us stay without being vetted just because we want to" does not make them unsafe. If they're not eligible for asylum there, they probably aren't eligible for asylum here.

3. Many of them are coming illegally because they know they're not eligible to cross legally. By definition, if they're not eligible, they do not get to stay here.

4. This isn't anti-immigrant sentiment. This is anti-illegal-immigration sentiment.

Take Toronto as an example. They are out of places to put asylum seekers.

“We have exhausted our available sites, our resources and our personnel,” Tory said. “We need the other levels of government to step up and assist Toronto.”

All of that makes sense. More than 3,300 asylum seekers were spread across the Toronto shelter system as of June 24, according to city staff. The city’s existing shelter infrastructure, threadbare to begin with, was overwhelmed months ago. Today, asylum seekers are sleeping in press-ganged hotels and college dorms. And the latter is where the coming crisis lies.

Centennial and Humber colleges need their dorms back by Aug. 9. By then, the city expects 800 asylum seekers, including 200 children, will be living in those rooms. When that happens, Tory said, those 800 people will have nowhere to go.

“Relocating just this population of 800 would require the emergency closures of multiple community centres across the city and the cancellation of public programming in those centres,” he said. “And this is a step the city is not prepared to take.”

Most of them are Nigerians (note the complete lack of a shared border with Nigeria; they specifically came here instead of to any closer safe country) who illegally crossed into Quebec and were sent to Toronto by the feds:

The city knows how many asylum seekers are in the system, Tanner said — 3,305 as of June 25. They know most — 85 per cent to be precise — are from Nigeria. They know the majority crossed into Canada at Roxham Road, on the Quebec border with New York. They know how many are women and how many are children. They know how long they’re staying in the shelters.

They are not fleeing the US. They are getting travel visas to the US "with the express intent to actually go to Canada", then illegally crossing the border and claiming refugee status.

“The U.S.A. is not an attractive place to most Nigerians right now. It used to be the most attractive place, but with the Trump factor – the old-style immigration climate in the U.S. compared to Canada – most people are going to find their way to Canada.”

I reject your appeals to emotion and support the rule of law.

[Zaune]

Three thousand people need emergency accommodation in one of the largest and most prosperous cities in all of Canada and suddenly they're stretched to the breaking point? Come the fuck on. It cannot possibly be insurmountably difficult or expensive to find an empty building or a place to put some prefabs. Or work something out with another city where real estate's not in such high demand: A friend of mine in Windsor was complaining they've got loads of boarded-up empty houses not so long ago, at least some of which are still habitable with only minor renovation.

[The Romulan Republic]

1. Legal skilled immigrants are required to show proof. Yes, I assume "proven to be skilled" is, on average, going to be more skilled than "random individual".

This does not prove that illegal immigrants are unskilled. There might be many reasons why a skilled immigrant is unable to enter legally (more on that shortly). But this runs counter to the dehumanizing "parasites" narrative about immigrants.

2. Legally, they are a safe country. "Won't let us stay without being vetted just because we want to" does not make them unsafe. If they're not eligible for asylum there, they probably aren't eligible for asylum here.

I am aware of the law, but that the US is legally a safe country does not mean that it is actually safe. It means that the law is outdated. And even if you believe that the law should be upheld (as I generally do), your response to an unjust law should be asking how the law can be changed, not saying "This is the law, end of discussion." Would you have hidden behind the law to deny letting Jews emigrate here from Germany in the '30s, if the law had said that Germany was a "safe country"? Because that's where we're at, now.

Of course, the bare fact that you equate asylum eligibility in the US of Trump with asylum eligibility in Canada proves that you are either utterly ignorant, or a liar.

3. Many of them are coming illegally because they know they're not eligible to cross legally. By definition, if they're not eligible, they do not get to stay here.

No shit. They're crossing illegally because Canada won't let them in due to a laughable policy that says the US under Trump (you know, the country that is constantly making the headlines for banning entire nationalities from entering, trying to expel hundreds of thousands of people who were previously granted permission to stay, and locking both illegal immigrants and lawful asylum seekers in cages) is a "safe" country for them.

You are again arguing by definition, rather than actually justifying your position. Just repeating "this is the law" rather than explaining why you feel that law is necessary or just.

4. This isn't anti-immigrant sentiment. This is anti-illegal-immigration sentiment.

So:

Step One: Make it impossible for refugees to come here legally.

Step Two: Blame them for doing so illegally.

Yeah, this is totally just about the rule of law.

Take Toronto as an example. They are out of places to put asylum seekers.

“We have exhausted our available sites, our resources and our personnel,” Tory said. “We need the other levels of government to step up and assist Toronto.”

All of that makes sense. More than 3,300 asylum seekers were spread across the Toronto shelter system as of June 24, according to city staff. The city’s existing shelter infrastructure, threadbare to begin with, was overwhelmed months ago. Today, asylum seekers are sleeping in press-ganged hotels and college dorms. And the latter is where the coming crisis lies.

Centennial and Humber colleges need their dorms back by Aug. 9. By then, the city expects 800 asylum seekers, including 200 children, will be living in those rooms. When that happens, Tory said, those 800 people will have nowhere to go.

“Relocating just this population of 800 would require the emergency closures of multiple community centres across the city and the cancellation of public programming in those centres,” he said. “And this is a step the city is not prepared to take.”

Most of them are Nigerians (note the complete lack of a shared border with Nigeria; they specifically came here instead of to any closer safe country) who illegally crossed into Quebec and were sent to Toronto by the feds:

The city knows how many asylum seekers are in the system, Tanner said — 3,305 as of June 25. They know most — 85 per cent to be precise — are from Nigeria. They know the majority crossed into Canada at Roxham Road, on the Quebec border with New York. They know how many are women and how many are children. They know how long they’re staying in the shelters.

They are not fleeing the US. They are getting travel visas to the US "with the express intent to actually go to Canada", then illegally crossing the border and claiming refugee status.

“The U.S.A. is not an attractive place to most Nigerians right now. It used to be the most attractive place, but with the Trump factor – the old-style immigration climate in the U.S. compared to Canada – most people are going to find their way to Canada.”

Of course you cite a Right-wing news outlet like the National Post. Also, I cannot imagine any asylum-seeker going out of their way to pass through a country that is likely to take away their children and put them in cages, if going to Canada directly was an option for them.

The US isn't an option for refugees any more. That means that Canada has to stop kidding itself, and start picking up the slack. And Canada has always done this. When the US loses it, we're the country people turn to for help. We took in Loyalists fleeing the Revolution. We took in slaves on the Underground Railroad. We took in draft dodgers in Vietnam. This is a proud part of Canadian heritage.

I reject your appeals to emotion and support the rule of law.

Get off your high horse. I'm sorry that you regard basic sympathy for the less fortunate an "appeal to emotion", and that you apparently believe "rule of law" is an absolute rebuttal against criticizing or disobeying an unjust law. But I regard this issue as a fundamental moral litmus test, and one that you have thus far failed.

Three thousand people need emergency accommodation in one of the largest and most prosperous cities in all of Canada and suddenly they're stretched to the breaking point? Come the fuck on. It cannot possibly be insurmountably difficult or expensive to find an empty building or a place to put some prefabs. Or work something out with another city where real estate's not in such high demand: A friend of mine in Windsor was complaining they've got loads of boarded-up empty houses not so long ago, at least some of which are still habitable with only minor renovation.

Also this. Problems like this are not unsolveable with the resources we have. They are simply problems that many of those in power do not want to solve.