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Mark Steyn: Reverse Assimilation
Western Standard - Canada ^ | April 9, 2007 | Mark Steyn

Posted on 04/24/2007 7:13:50 AM PDT by UnklGene

Reverse Assimilation -

It seems increasingly likely that Canada will change to accommodate new immigrants' values, rather than the other way around

Mark Steyn - April 9, 2007

What is immigration for?

I don't mean what are immigrants for. I myself have lived hither and yon over the years, and at a personal level I vaguely feel individuals who aren't a charge on the state ought to be able to move around the world with reasonable ease. As it happens, Canadians do this a lot. You can meet the Dominion's finest in Brussels, Delhi, Hong Kong, almost anywhere on the planet. And I've yet to be in a taxicab anywhere on earth and be told by the driver, "We're now passing through Little Canada." Canadians emigrate as individuals.

But in the western world "immigration" is a phenomenon distinct from "immigrants." For a start, it's not about the immigrants, but about the host society. At some point, most advanced democracies decided that mass immigration was a virtue regardless of who's coming and any economic or other consequences. This is a relatively novel way of looking at a nation-state. A few years back, Hedy Fry sneered that she couldn't see why people were making such a fuss about illegal immigrants given that the first white men hadn't asked permission from the people who were already here, either. Which in its delegitimization of the Canadian state, not to mention its other implications, might be considered somewhat inflammatory. Yet Ms. Fry was a minister of the Crown and no one seriously expected M. Chrétien to reprimand her. By contrast, to question immigration in even the most cautious way is to risk being demonized as a racist. Canadians see themselves as a nice people, and so even to raise the subject of immigration feels like an assault not on distant foreigners so much as on our self-image.

But here's the thing. Whatever the virtuousness of immigration, a dependence on it is a sign of profound structural weakness, and, when all the self-congratulation about celebrating diversity has died down, that weakness ought to be understood as such. For example, the other day Statistics Canada released its 2006 census figures, and the press coverage was mostly the usual boosterism--"Canadian Census Sees Cities Surging" (The Globe and Mail). This is true: we are an increasingly urban nation. But it is not the most salient fact from the numbers. Canada, reported the CBC, "had the highest population growth rate among G8 countries." Also true, and closer to the core statistic. Of the 1.6 million new Canadians added to the population between 2001 and 2006, only 400,000 came from natural growth--i.e., kids. The other 1.2 million--i.e., 75 per cent--came from immigration.

Compare this to the United States, where over 60 per cent of population increase comes from natural growth. That's to say, this is not a good-news story but a bad-news story. Canada remains demographically weak: the American fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman is enough to sustain the population even without immigration; the Canadian fertility rate of 1.5 children per woman leads to steep population decline. Ten million parents have seven-and-a-half million children and 5.6 million grandchildren and 4.2 million great-grandchildren: an inverted family tree. You can imagine what shape Canadian social programs would be in under that scenario, and that's before Junior decides he'd rather head south than pay 70 per cent tax rates just to prop up medicare for Gramps and his buddies.

So immigration seems like an easy way to pick up the slack--until you unpick what the census is actually saying, and The Globe and Mail and CBC are so artfully avoiding. If native Canadians (if you'll forgive the expression) are already a 25 per cent minority in the country's population growth, they will be a small and ever smaller minority in the Canada of the future. Indeed, they're already at such a low demographic ebb that it calls into question any kind of trans-generational inheritance: "Canada" is in danger of becoming merely a zip code. The novelty junkies have a point: maybe it is time to rewrite that "home and native land" lyric.

Prior to the boom of the nineties and oughts, the all-time blockbuster immigration year was 1913, when 400,000 "new Canadians" arrived. Whether they looked at it like that is another matter: most of them were British subjects moving from one part of His Majesty's realms to another. In that sense, it was not "immigration" at all, or not as currently understood. The 2006 census numbers take as a given that the Canada of the 21st century will be a project built almost exclusively by foreigners.

Not only is the Canadian state insouciant about this ultimate outsourcing, it welcomes and celebrates it. For example, anti-monarchists such as John Manley and Brian Tobin routinely build their case on the line that in an ever more diverse Canada immigrants from Syria and Belarus can't be expected to relate to the Royal Family. This would be a very curious argument even in countries with robust immigration traditions--that a foreigner admitted by the state at its discretion should have the right to decide not which of his old country's customs he was going to retain but which of his new country's customs he was prepared to accept. It would ring very odd in most places--go on, get a job in Saudi Arabia, and try the same line on their royal family. So, when we buy the Manley-Tobin pitch, we're essentially accepting the principle of reverse assimilation, the obligation that Canadians assimilate with immigrants rather than the other way round.

And thereby lies great peril. Not for the Queen. She'll get by, whatever Canadians decide. But the Manley-Tobin line raises some very interesting questions. If our Liberal grandees are so convinced new Canadians won't accept the Crown, what other features of our inheritance will they also reject? How many Canadians will be saying "eh?" in 20 years' time? Or following hockey (assuming there are still any hockey teams up here)? How many will recognize "Sir John A. Macdonald"? What would such a nation be remembering on Remembrance Day?

Commenting on the latest census trends, the Toronto blogger Mark Collins remarked that "it's not one's grandfather's Canada." Mr. Collins was referring to the accelerating urbanization of the country, but it might be truer to say that contemporary Canada is a land without a grandfather, a land without an inheritance, and that the remorseless shrivelling of a continental nation a mari usque ad mare into half-a-dozen megalopolises is merely a symptom of that. According to StatsCan, 93 per cent of immigrants who arrived between 1991 and 1996 live in urban centres. Again, this is a point of divergence with Canada's neighbour: in the U.S., the population is moving to exurbs and rural districts. That, in turn, helps explain the healthy fertility rate: America is one of the cheapest places in the developed world in which to find a four-bedroom house with a big yard. Who wants to raise three kids in a city apartment?

So Canada's urbanization seems unlikely to do anything for that near European fertility rate, but it will inevitably place strains on our constitutional settlement. Can six metropolitan areas still be governed as a confederation of ten provinces? To be sure, the CBC will conjure the usual fantasies--wacky sitcoms about a lovable Janjaweed militia living on Newfoundland, et cetera. But the reality is that nothing but nostalgia will justify maintaining the Atlantic provinces as separate jurisdictions, and how nostalgically inclined the multicultural utopia of Greater Toronto will be inclined to be is anybody's guess.

In 1913, when those 400,000 newcomers arrived, we knew more or less who they were. We have no very clear idea who the 300,000 or so immigrants per annum of the next few years will be. We assume it's like those Immigration Canada posters from 1997 marking the 50th anniversary of Canadian citizenship and showing people of many lands holding hands around a globe: Canada is like a neat stamp collection, with one of everything. In practice, it's not like that. There will be more of some, less of others. Will the Chinese decide there's greater economic opportunity at home? Will fading European populations prefer to spend their sunset years far from the turbulence of the Continent? Will the recent upsurge in French Jews emigrating to Quebec continue? Or will it degenerate further into, as Le Journal calls it, Montrealistan?

Well, StatsCan is rather coyer on those details. But that's the reality: the Canada of tomorrow will be built by who shows up. For the sake of multicultural virtue, we decided to outsource the future. Nothing much to do about it now except hope the gamble pays off.


TOPICS: Canada; Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs
KEYWORDS: aliens; immigration; marksteyn
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1 posted on 04/24/2007 7:13:52 AM PDT by UnklGene
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To: Pokey78

Ping


2 posted on 04/24/2007 7:14:32 AM PDT by UnklGene
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mark for later


3 posted on 04/24/2007 7:20:28 AM PDT by eureka! (The 'rats have made their choice in the WOT and honest history will not be kind...)
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To: UnklGene

Canada’s government, through its immigration policies, has destroyed Canada. Did any of its elected leaders tell the people that this was going to be the outcome? How are they all going to like living under Sharia law? Is there a lesson to be learned here for the United States?


4 posted on 04/24/2007 7:21:19 AM PDT by 3AngelaD (Enoch Powell was right.)
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To: UnklGene

The word “immigrant” basically stands for the self invited. Mr. Steyn should spend his time asking these “immigrants” themselves what they think of Canada, the people who created Canada and the West in general. Even conservatives such as Steyn (and he is one of the more courageous) make the same assumptions about the self invited as liberals out of misguided respect for the worthless tenets of self-hating PC.


5 posted on 04/24/2007 7:24:45 AM PDT by junta (It's Jihad stupid! It's the borders stupid! It's Political Correctness stupid!)
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To: UnklGene

“And I’ve yet to be in a taxicab anywhere on earth and be told by the driver, “We’re now passing through Little Canada.””

He must have not yet visited Little Canada, MN on the east side of St Paul, MN.


6 posted on 04/24/2007 7:25:50 AM PDT by DancesWithBolsheviks (Demands, marches and media sob stories diminish my compassion.)
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To: UnklGene
"...we decided to outsource the future.."

Steyn never fails to have at least one brilliant zinger in every piece.

7 posted on 04/24/2007 7:27:21 AM PDT by jim macomber (Author: "Bargained for Exchange", "Art & Part", "A Grave Breach" http://www.jamesmacomber.com)
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To: UnklGene

reverse assimilation is a tenet of university multicultural programs.

the denver koa radio signal comes into socal and i was listening to a woman explain to the radio host the the local university

deliberately segregates freshmen minority students so that

they will not assimilate into white culture.


8 posted on 04/24/2007 7:31:40 AM PDT by ken21 (it takes a village to brainwash your child + to steal your property! /s)
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To: 3AngelaD

Michigan has a pretty good head start.


9 posted on 04/24/2007 7:43:53 AM PDT by JZelle
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To: ken21

“Fundamental Bible-believing people do not have the right to indoctrinate their children in their religious beliefs because we, the state, are preparing them for the year 2000, when America will be part of a one-world global society and their children will not fit in.”

—Nebraska State Senator Peter Hoagland, speaking on radio in 1983.


10 posted on 04/24/2007 7:51:49 AM PDT by B4Ranch ("Steer clear of entangling alliances with any portion of the foreign world." -George Washington-)
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To: B4Ranch

who is this guy?


11 posted on 04/24/2007 7:54:58 AM PDT by ken21 (it takes a village to brainwash your child + to steal your property! /s)
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To: ken21

Peter Hoagland was a Nebraska Democrat State Senator back in the early 70’s and early 80’s. He missed one term then got reelected.


12 posted on 04/24/2007 8:49:21 AM PDT by B4Ranch ("Steer clear of entangling alliances with any portion of the foreign world." -George Washington-)
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To: UnklGene; Howlin; riley1992; Miss Marple; deport; Dane; sinkspur; steve; kattracks; JohnHuang2; ...
Thanks!

Steyn ping!


13 posted on 04/24/2007 8:56:41 AM PDT by Pokey78 (Steyn: Al Qaeda wants tio party like it's 799.)
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To: Pokey78

bttt


14 posted on 04/24/2007 9:00:33 AM PDT by aculeus
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To: DancesWithBolsheviks

http://www.ci.little-canada.mn.us/


15 posted on 04/24/2007 9:06:37 AM PDT by toast
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To: B4Ranch; ken21

That’s a great quote. The guy’s a real visionary.

Wiki says he also moved up to the federal level:

He was elected to the Nebraska Unicameral in 1978 and served until 1986 when ran as a Democrat successfully for the One Hundred First United States Congress. He ran three more times, being reelected twice and being defeated in 1994. He is a member of the Episcopalian church, a member of the American Bar Association, and a member of Common Cause. He now lives in Bethesda, MD


16 posted on 04/24/2007 9:54:46 AM PDT by siunevada (If we learn nothing from history, what's the point of having one? - Peggy Hill)
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To: Pokey78

Thanks for the Steyn ping, Pokey!


17 posted on 04/24/2007 1:10:58 PM PDT by alwaysconservative (Thank you, President Bush, for your brilliant picks of Roberts and Alito!)
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To: siunevada; Czar; glock rocks; Brad's Gramma; yoe; archy; stephenjohnbanker; janetgreen; AuntB; ...
Read these words again;
“Fundamental Bible-believing people do not have the right to indoctrinate their children in their religious beliefs because we, the state, are preparing them for the year 2000, when America will be part of a one-world global society and their children will not fit in.”

—Nebraska State Senator Peter Hoagland, speaking on radio in 1983.

It certainly answers our questions regarding the unresponsiveness of the President and the legislators to the voices of the people.

__________________________

The Plan is in place and nothing is going to cause our chosen leaders to veer from their chosen course.

Please continue to pay your taxes so that we have all the funds necessary to continue the decline of our American sovereignty, Independence, Liberty and Freedom.

Please continue to re-elect the men and women who have chosen to ignore The US Constitution and their Oath of Office. These men and women are determined to allow the continued invasion of the United States by illegal aliens from every nation in the World.

We will NEED sincere RINO’s and Progressive Democrats in Washington, DC who will continue to see that the word of God is not permitted to be spoken in our public education centers. We must not raise our children in the belief that God gives us our Rights in America. That belief would forbid our government from removing them! Help to crush Christianity and bring forth the pagan society. Accept the Muslims as the people who preach Peace amongst Nations.

Take the cause of a New World Order to heart and help kill this nation.

18 posted on 04/24/2007 1:18:39 PM PDT by B4Ranch ("Steer clear of entangling alliances with any portion of the foreign world." -George Washington-)
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To: UnklGene
Mark Steyn points out what Canada's Left refuses to see: there may not be a Canada around in our own lifetimes. So much for the Maple Leaf and "our home and native land." We may be witnessing the extinction of the last outpost of the late British Empire thanks to Third World immigration and multiculturalism. Who will be the last native Canadian to turn the lights out?

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

19 posted on 04/24/2007 1:23:58 PM PDT by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives In My Heart Forever)
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To: B4Ranch

“Take the cause of a New World Order to heart and help kill this nation”

Any form of amnesty will signal the end.


20 posted on 04/24/2007 1:25:12 PM PDT by stephenjohnbanker ( Hunter/Thompson/Thompson/Hunter in 08! Or Rudy/Hillary if you want to murder conservatism)
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