D6fer asked for more blogging and I am going for controversial today. I can’t remember all the details but I think the bare facts should be enough for the question.
When I was home for Christmas I heard a story on the news about two Afghanistan youths who were up for the death sentence. They had been fighting at their high school and one student was killed. The two responsible for the death were sentenced to beheading.
Why this made news in Canada was because the two boys are Canadian citizens and there was a lot of pressure from support groups for the Canadian government to intervene. As the youths were Canadians we should help them. The government was slow to act and at the time of the story there was finally a response saying that something should be done to help bring them back to Canada and save their lives.
Where the story took a foul turn for me was
that these youths were born in Afghanistan
and came to Canada
with their mother as immigrants. They stayed long enough to be eligible to
apply for citizenship and once they got it they went back to their motherland. Apparently
many people do this. They leave their troubled homeland to get citizenship in Canada and then
go back. When trouble arises they flee back to Canada, easily getting in because
they are “Canadians”.
Now, of course I don’t agree with the two being beheaded but my immediate response to the news was, “Why do we have to help them? They are not really Canadians. They only came here to get that magic status and then they left again. They had no intention of actually living in Canada, abiding by Canadian law, attempting to integrate to some degree with Canadian culture (however you want to define it) and the Canadian way of life. They committed a crime in Afghanistan as two boys who are well familiar with the Afghani way of life and the law. So now the Canadian government is obligated to help them out? I don’t really think so.”
This of course broaches the topic of exactly how do you define what a real Canadian (or American, or British subject, or whatever) is and at what point does the Canadian government have an obligation to do something. To me it seems that many people simply abuse the system. We have many immigrants who collect welfare as an income source to cover-up their drug selling. We have a lot of people who just come to Canada to collect social handouts and do nothing to contribute to the country or their communities. Some people are serious about making their way in our nation. Others are just freeloaders. And for those who just leave again and keep their citizenship as a safety ticket, should we help them?
Maybe we should. But I don’t agree exactly with the government helping in this situation.
