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Canada’s bulky new citizenship guide has come under some controversy for its fairly explicit declaration of Canadian values (and condemnation of “barbaric cultural practices”). Still, perhaps the document didn’t go quite far enough in detailing the sort of behavior that will not be looked kindly on by our fellow citizens — not least, our border services personnel.

He also had nearly $1 million in gold coins on him, though he had declared only $10,000, to avoid paying tax on the funds. That’s according to his lawyer. So, assuming he has no ties to militant extremists, our newest potential citizen is only a confessed tax evader. How nice for us.

Read the full article in the Vancouver Sun’s Community of Interest

… the sovereigntists are going to hate it.

“There’s probably some political risks here,” Mr. Griffiths said. “The Bloq Quebecois and sovereigntists aren’t going to like the focus on military history or Canada’s journey from colony to nation state.”

Well, yeah. Isn’t that the point? How about we ignore the dead-enders and focus on promoting the values we want to our newest citizens who actually want to be here.

Were the fellows caught off the waters of Vancouver Island trying to sneak into Canada really refugees? It’s not looking that way so far. If they’re not, they ought to be sent back, and fast — or we’re going to be promoting even more queue-jumping ahead of the refugees who are truly in need of a safe harbor.

First of all, if the first reports that these men are from Sri Lanka are to be believed, then they are part of the mass migration of Sri Lankans leaving their country to avoid “the aftermath of a bloody civil war”. But with the war over, and no reports of violent reprisals from either the government or now-defunct Tamil Tigers, the threat of violence is really hypothetical — as opposed to the actual rampant violence faced by nationals in Afghanistan, Iraq, Myanmar, Mexico, Sudan, Somalia… well you get the idea.

Some might bring up the horrible conditions of those Sri Lankans stuck in the refugee camps in the newly captured northern territory of their island. Undoubtedly, those people in the camps should be given help and resettled… in their homes, in Sri Lanka. But it’s beside the point anyway, since the men taken off the boat are clearly not stuck in tents eating gruel on the other side of the world. Instead, they’ll be housed here on the taxpayers’ dime until we make a decision about what to do with them.

When we typically think of refugees, we typically picture them as desperate people seeking a better life free of bullets, starvation and red-hot pokers. You would expect such people to first seek the geographically closest nation that could take them in. The Sri Lankan asylum seekers landing in Australia and Indonesia seem to fit that bill better than all the way across the Indian and Pacific Oceans to our neck of the woods (and India’s coast is practically a swim from Sri Lankan territory). So why did they come out all this way?

Longtime support of the Tamil community from Canada (even when a lot of the dollars that got sent appeared to end up in the hands of terrorists) may have something to do with it. A reputation for having a broken immigration system is another. Sri Lankans aren’t coming here because they fear bullets in the back of their heads — they’re coming here because Canada is a rich country, and they want the opportunities for themselves and their families that they just can’t get in their own country. These are laudable reasons for coming here and Canada absolutely needs enterprising individuals to come and work, build businesses and contribute to our communities — but if that’s what they want, they should arrive after fulfilling immigration requirements, not as fake refugees.

If these boat people are the real deal, in immediate danger from war or political violence, then they ought to be let in as refugees. If not, we should deport them. We can and should let refugees into our country to live lives in peace and freedom — the real refugees, that is.

Mark Steyn says the end for the West will come through cultural and demographic suicide. According to Jeff Rubin, the end of cheap energy will herald the death of our civilization.

But those of us who have opened our eyes thanks to our magic sunglasses know the awful truth: They Live.

Ah, well. It could have been worse.

Here’s hoping I don’t get rejected at the airport and thrown into the clink on my way back from New York City later this year.

In my most recent passport picture, my cheeks appear to be a little sunken. Apparently, I’ve been eating better in the last four years. Also, my eyebrows have gotten a bit bushier. It happens when you reach a certain age. But I don’t know if the Canadian High Commission is going to buy that.

The case of Suaad Hagi Mohamud, following so soon from the disgrace of the Abdelrazik affair, is leaving a lot of Canadians wondering just what the hell is going on here. I’m aligned with my friend Raphael Alexander’s latest outraged take on this troubling trend:

The Suaad Hagi Mohamud affair is a whole other kettle of fish. Here is a Somali-Canadian who did nothing more than take a 2-week vacation, something a vast majority of Canadians do every single year. She left her 12-year-old son in Toronto, intending to return after visiting her mother in Kenya. That was almost three months ago. Kenyan officials arrested her after pronouncing her an impostor because she did not look entirely like her passport photograph. This, despite being in possession of 12 additional forms of identification, and a letter from her employer in Canada.

The shocker: Canadian consular officials agreed with the verdict, and declared her an impostor, canceling her passport and requesting that Kenya prosecute her for identity theft. They did.

Is this latest stupidity a case of bureaucratic bungling, or was there direction (as with the Abdelrazik case) from the civil service’s political masters? We want answers.