Tim Neufeld 15 December 2015 · So many letter writers have explained how this land is made up of immigrants. Maybe we should turn to our history books and point out to people why today's Canadian is not willing to accept the new kind of immigrant any longer.

Not really a “bad” article however there are a few areas in which the author is; to use modern terminology; “sucking slough water”.

“So many letter writers have explained how this land is made up of immigrants. Maybe we should turn to our history books and point out to people why today's Canadian is not willing to accept the new kind of immigrant any longer.”

[Several important changes took place in the late 19th century. First, around 1870, Germany became the new leader in European industry. Germany far exceeded the production of any other European nation in chemicals and electrical equipment. The nation continued to expand its trade networks and soon enjoyed a flood of new plants and factories. Great Britain tried to retake its position as industrial leader, but Germany would not give up its newly acquired title so easily. The United States also enjoyed success during the Second Industrial Revolution. In fact, greed and the industrial revolution had by then, on paper, made the U.S. the richest nation in the world.]

“Back in 1900 when there was a rush from all areas of Europe to come to Canada, people had to get off a ship and stand in a long line in Halifax and be documented. Some would even get down on their hands and knees and kiss the ground. They made a pledge to uphold the laws and support their new country in good and bad times. They made learning English a primary rule in their new Canadian households and some even changed their names to blend in with their new home. They had waved good bye to their birth place to give their children a new and better life and did everything in their power to help their children assimilate into one culture.”

[The Second Industrial Revolution caused growth in industry and transportation, which allowed increased trade between nations. Combined with a merchant marine capable of transporting goods by sea, a world economy began to form. What exactly is a world economy? Well, a world economy, or global economy, is simply a description of the integration of trade in goods, services, and money worldwide. The spread of trade and investments abroad is linked with a process called imperialism.

Between 1870 and 1900, European imperialism increased tremendously. Historians sometimes refer to this as new imperialism, which basically meant that Europeans were making a mad dash for pieces of Asia and Africa. Why this sudden need for colonies? Well, colonization was basically the domination of Europeans over non-Europeans. A major factor that influenced colonization was competition between different countries.

In a quest for greater wealth, countries, such as Britain, sought colonies in Africa and Asia that would provide ports and perhaps even offer material resources. So, the possible economic benefit of having colonies was a big motivation. Many of the colonies could offer material resources, such as oil, tin, gold, and diamonds.

By taking these areas, European countries cut out the middle-man. They did not need to trade because they now controlled the resources directly. Portugal, France, Britain, Belgium, Spain, and Germany had all set up colonies in Africa by 1914. In Asia, the British, Dutch, Russians, French, and Portuguese had taken pieces, as well.

In addition, since competition between countries was so fierce, sometimes one country would set up colonies in an area just to keep another country out. For instance, France would scramble to set up colonies in an area just to make sure Britain, Russia, or Germany would not have access. Once the colonization process started, all the major powers in Europe wanted a piece of the action. If a country was not taking part in the process, they were viewed as weak.

The South African War (1899-1902) or, as it is also known, the Boer War, marked Canada's first official dispatch of troops to an overseas war.

In 1899, fighting erupted between Great Britain and two small republics in South Africa. The two republics, settled by Boers, descendants of the region's first Dutch immigrants, were not expected to survive for long against the world's greatest power. Pro-Empire Canadians nevertheless urged their government to help. The war, they argued, pitted British freedom, justice, and civilization against Boer backwardness.While many English-Canadians supported Britain's cause in South Africa, most French-Canadians and many recent immigrants from countries other than Britain wondered why Canada should fight in a war half way around the world. Concerned with maintaining national stability and political popularity, Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier did not want to commit his government. Yet the bonds of Empire were strong and public pressure mounted. As a compromise, Laurier agreed to send a battalion of volunteers to South Africa.

Over the next three years, more than 7,000 Canadians, including 12 women nurses, served overseas.]

“Nothing was handed to them. No free lunches, no welfare, no labour laws to protect them. All they had were the skills, craftsmanship and desire they had brought with them to trade for a future of prosperity”.

[In the 18th to 19th century, the only immigration western Canada or Rupert's Land saw was early French Canadian North West Company fur traders from eastern Canada, and the Scots, English Adventurers and Explorers representing the Hudson's Bay Company who arrived via Hudson Bay. Canada became a nation in 1867, Rupert's Land became absorbed into the North-West Territories. To encourage British Columbia to join the confederation, a transcontinental railway was proposed. The railway companies felt it was not feasible to lay track over land where there was no settlement. The fur-trading era was declining; as the bison population disappeared, so too did the nomadic bison hunters, which presented a possibility to increase agricultural settlement. Agricultural possibilities were first expounded by Henry Youle Hind. The Dominion government with the guidance of Clifford Sifton, Minister of the Interior in charge of immigration, (1896–1905) enacted Canada's homesteading act, the Dominion Lands Act, in 1872. An extensive advertising campaign throughout Western Europe and Scandinavia brought in a huge wave of immigrants to "The Last, Best West". (In 1763 Catherine the Great issues Manifesto inviting foreigners to settle in Russia, and in 1862 the United States of North America enacted a Homestead Act inviting immigration.

 Ethnic or religious groups seeking asylum or independence no longer travelled to Russia or the United States where lands were taken or homestead acts were cancelled. The Red River Colony population of Manitoba allowed it to become a province in 1870. In the 1880s less than 1000 non-Aboriginal people resided out west. The government's immigration policy was a huge success, the North-West Territories grew to a population of 56,446 in 1881 and almost doubled to 98,967 in 1891, and exponentially jumped to 211,649 by 1901.[8] Ethnic Bloc Settlements[9] dotted the prairies, as language groupings settled together on soil types of the Canadian western prairie similar to agricultural land of their homeland. In this way immigration was successful; new settlements could grow because of common communication and learned agricultural methods. Canada's CPR transcontinental railway was finished in 1885. Immigration briefly ceased to the West during the North West Rebellion of 1885. Various investors and companies were involved in the sale of railway (and some non railway) lands. Sifton himself may have been involved as an investor in some of these ventures.[10] Populations of Saskatchewan and Alberta were eligible for provincial status in 1905. Immigration continued to increase through to the roaring twenties. A mass exodus affected the prairies during the dirty thirties depression years and the prairies have never again regained the impetus of the immigration wave seen in the early 20th century.

History of immigration law/Canadian nationality law

Come to Stay, printed in 1880 in the Canadian Illustrated News, refers to immigration to the "Dominion". Today, there is a debate about immigrants who do not stay, but instead leave soon after securing citizenship. They are becoming known as Canadians of convenience.

In 1828, during the Great Migration of Canada, Britain passed the first legislative recognition that it was responsible for the safety and well-being of immigrants leaving the British Isles. It was called An Act to Regulate the Carrying of Passengers in Merchant Vessels. The Act limited the number of passengers who could be carried on a ship, regulated the amount of space allocated to them, and required that passengers be supplied with adequate sustenance on the voyage. The 1828 Act is now recognized as the foundation of British colonial emigration legislation.

Although Canadian citizenship was originally created under the Immigration Act, 1910, to designate those British subjects who were domiciled in Canada. All other British subjects required permission to land. A separate status of "Canadian national" was created under the Canadian Nationals Act, 1921, which was defined as being a Canadian citizen as defined above, their wives, and any children (fathered by such citizens) who had not yet landed in Canada. After the passage of the Statute of Westminster in 1931, the monarchy thus ceased to be an exclusively British institution. Because of this, Canadians — and others living in countries that became known as Commonwealth realms — were known as subjects of the Crown. However, in legal documents, the term "British subject" continued to be used.

Canada was the second nation in the then British Commonwealth to establish its own nationality law in 1946, with the enactment of the Canadian Citizenship Act 1946. This took effect on January 1, 1947. To acquire Canadian citizenship on 1 January 1947, one generally had to be a British subject on that date, an Indian or Eskimo, or had to have been admitted to Canada as landed immigrants before that date. A British subject at that time was anyone from the UK or its colonies, or a Commonwealth country. Acquisition and loss of British subject status before 1947 was determined by United Kingdom law (see History of British nationality law).

Irish Potato Famine, also called Great Potato Famine, Great Irish Famine, or Famine of 1845–49, 

Irish Potato Famine [Credit: The Print Collector/Heritage-Images]famine that occurred in Ireland in 1845–49 when the potato crop failed in successive years. The crop failures were caused by late blight, a disease that destroys both the leaves and the edible roots, or tubers, of the potato plant. The causative agent of late blight is the water mold Phytophthora infestans. The Irish Potato Famine was the worst famine to occur in Europe in the 19th century.

By the early 1840s, almost one-half of the Irish population—but primarily the rural poor—had come to depend almost exclusively on the potato for their diet, and the rest of the population also consumed it in large quantities. A heavy reliance on just one or two high-yielding varieties of potato greatly reduced the genetic variety that ordinarily prevents the decimation of an entire crop by disease, and thus the Irish became vulnerable to famine. In 1845 Phytophthora arrived accidentally from North America, and that same year Ireland had unusually cool, moist weather, in which the blight thrived. Much of that year’s potato crop rotted in the fields. This partial crop failure was followed by more devastating failures in 1846–49, as each year’s potato crop was almost completely ruined by the blight.

The British government’s efforts to relieve the famine were inadequate. Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel did what he could to provide relief in 1845 and early 1846, but under the Liberal cabinet of Lord John Russell, which assumed power in June 1846, the emphasis shifted to reliance on Irish resources and the free market, which made disaster inevitable. Much of the financial burden of providing for the starving Irish peasantry was thrown upon the Irish landowners themselves (through local poor relief). But because the peasantry was unable to pay its rents, the landlords soon ran out of funds with which to support them. British assistance was limited to loans, helping to fund soup kitchens, and providing employment on road building and other public works. Cornmeal imported from the United States helped avert some starvation, but it was disliked by the Irish, and reliance on it led to nutritional deficiencies. Despite these shortcomings, by August 1847 as many as three million people were receiving rations at soup kitchens. All in all, the British government spent about £8 million on relief, and some private relief funds were raised as well. Throughout the famine, many Irish farms continued to export grain, meat, and other high-quality foods to Britain because the Irish peasantry lacked the money to purchase them. The government’s grudging and ineffective measures to relieve the famine’s distress intensified the resentment of British rule among the Irish people.

The famine proved to be a watershed in the demographic history of Ireland. As a direct consequence of the famine, Ireland’s population of almost 8.4 million in 1844 had fallen to 6.6 million by 1851. The number of agricultural labourers and smallholders in the western and southwestern counties underwent an especially drastic decline. About one million people died from starvation or from typhus and other famine-related diseases. The number of Irish who emigrated during the famine may have reached two million. Ireland’s population continued to decline in the following decades because of overseas emigration and lower birth rates. By the time Ireland achieved independence in 1921, its population was barely half of what it had been in the early 1840s.]

“Most of their children came of age when World War II broke out. Canadians fought alongside men whose parents had come straight over from Germany, Italy, France, Japan, China, Czechoslovakia, Russia, Sweden, Poland and so many other places. None of these first generation Canadians ever gave any thought about what country their parents had come from. They were Canadians fighting Hitler, Mussolini and the Emperor of Japan. They were defending the Freedom as one people. When we liberated France, no one in those villages was looking for the Ukrainian-Canadian or the German-Canadian or the Irish-Canadian. The people of France saw only Canadians.

And we carried one flag that represented Our Country. Not one of those immigrant sons would have thought about picking up another country's flag and waving it to represent who they were. It would have been a disgrace to their parents who had sacrificed so much to be here. These immigrants truly knew what it meant to be a Canadian. They stirred the melting pot into one red and white bowl.”

[Up until 1947 the people living in Canada were British Subjects they fought under the union jack or the red ensign- there was no red and white flag; so nothing could have stirred “one red and white bowl]

“And here we are in 2015 with a new kind of immigrant who wants the same rights and privileges, only they want to achieve it by playing with a different set of rules - one that includes a Canadian passport and a guarantee of being faithful to their mother country. I'm sorry, that's not what being a Canadian is all about. Canadians have been very open-hearted and open-minded regarding immigrants, whether they were fleeing poverty, dictatorship, persecution, or what ever else makes us think of those aforementioned immigrants who truly did ADOPT our country, our flag, our morals and our customs, and left their wars, hatred, and divisions behind. I believe that the immigrants who landed in Canada in the early 1900s deserve better than that for the toil, hard work and sacrifice of those legally searching for a better life. I think they would be appalled that they are being used as an example by those waving foreign country flags, fighting foreign battles on our soil, making Canadians change to suit their religions and cultures, and wanting to change our countries fabric by claiming discrimination when we do not give in to their demands.

[The economic impact of immigration is an important topic in Canada. While the immigration rate has declined sharply from its peak early in the 20th century, Canada is still among the countries in the world that accept most immigrants per capita.

The per capita immigration rate to Canada has been relatively constant since the 1950s, and recent years have seen a steady increase in the education and skill level of immigrants to Canada. However, over the last 25 years the economic position of newcomers to Canada relative to the native population has steadily declined. A 2007 Statistics Canada study shows that the income profile of recent immigrants deteriorated by a significant amount from 2000 to 2004.[1] Recent immigrants themselves are far more likely than native born Canadians to initially have low incomes, with income and employment rates increasing towards the national average with more time spent in Canada.]

“It’s about time we get real and stand up for our forefathers rights. We are CANADIAN. I am a Native of this Country and proud of it!

NO MORE POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

And while we're on the subject - allow CHRISTMAS back in stores and our schools! I want back the country of my birth. “