I hear a lot these days about how an influx of Third World refugees and immigrants is destroying our country culturally and economically; how newcomers live off government handouts in perpetuity, diverting revenues from helping our veterans, and other deserving Canadians who need a hand-up; and how they bring with them radical religions that threaten the cultural fabric and the security of our nation.
But I wonder how many of you have actually met a Second or Third World immigrant or refugee and taken the time to talk to them and get to know a bit about them. I have had that opportunity and will share the experience here.
Immigrant # 1: A political refugee from the former Soviet Bloc, who was warned by the security police in his home country that he would end up dead if he did not go elsewhere. The last time I talked to him, he was holding down a job as a midnight shift cleaner in a Canadian railway station. Which was convenient for him, because he spent his daytime hours operating a series of sideline businesses. Who would have thought that an émigré from a communist nation could turn out to be such a capitalist? He is a money-making, tax paying machine.
Immigrant # 2: A former citizen of South Vietnam who made the mistake of helping the Americans during their police action there. When the Americans departed, he was arrested by communist North Vietnamese forces and imprisoned in a brutal re-education camp.
Several years later he and his family escaped, but only after being relieved of all their belongings by corrupt coastal patrol officers. After nearly drowning in a typhoon in the South China Sea, he and his family were rescued by the Canadian crew of an offshore oil rig.
A couple of years in a refugee camp later, he was sponsored to come to Canada by a church group. Last I heard he was operating a photography shop in southern Ontario. He is a taxpayer and potential employer of Canadians.
Immigrant # 3, 4 and 5: These two former residents of Somalia, and one from Djibouti, work the midnight shift as security officers in a northern Alberta oilsands complex. No welfare for them. They pull their weight and pay their taxes like everybody else, but in an environment about 50 degrees colder than what they were used to in their countries of origin.
They marvel that older Canadians, folks in their 50s, are still able to do a day’s work. Where they come from people are so beat up by the hardships of life riddled with poverty and disease that they are worn out or dead by mid-40s.
Immigrant # 6: An escapee from the civil strife in Syria, this new resident runs a barbershop in a western Canadian city. He worries about extended family left behind. He too pays his taxes to the government of Canada, and affords a place for other barbers to ply their trade.
Immigrant # 7. An escapee from the brutal Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq who came to Canada when he was 18, this man now manages a restaurant in a western Canadian city. He receives periodic visits from operatives from CSIS, the Canadian spy agency, who are suspicious perhaps of where he came from, and when.
Immigrant # 8: A defector from the former Soviet Union, who made a daring escape at age 18, while travelling in Western Europe with the sports team of which he was a member. He spent his first night of freedom in a vacant jail cell in a small west-European city, before being directed to a rail station the following morning so he could travel to a larger centre where officials had experience dealing with defectors.
Now a Canadian citizen with a Canadian wife and family, this man is a tradesman by day who, in his spare time, manages a string of rental accommodation he owns, as well as a number of beehives in rural Western Canada. He pays taxes to various levels of Canadian government, provides rental accommodation, and is a producer of honey.
Of the immigrants/refugees I have met and talked to, none were on welfare. All had jobs or were self- employed. All were contributing to Canadian society if, by no other means, through the taxes they pay.
Some of them are from Muslim countries. If any of them are religious extremists, they hide it very well. Indeed, I find itinerant door-to-door Christian missionaries to be more extreme and advocating of their religions than the Muslim immigrants and refugees I have met.
The eight people I have described above were an investment of sorts for Canada. We are a country with a birth rate that is sufficiently low that we cannot maintain our population levels without immigration. If population declines so does the tax base, and the ability of our provinces, and the nation as a whole, to provide the services that Canadians have come to expect – things like free, universal health care, old age and Canada pensions, assistance and support for our veterans. We need immigrants to maintain our tax base.
– Terry Storey,
Olds
