Lorne Gunter, a Western Canadian conservative, (who wrote an article for VDARE.com in the year 2000,) has just written a column in Canada’s National Post–Commit to Canada if you expect it to commit to you
[January 2, 2006]

During the latest Lebanese crisis, various nations evacuated their citizens from Lebanon. It turned out that there were 50, 000 Canadians in Lebanon who wanted to be evacuated. Or rather, 50, 000 Lebanese with Canadian passports, including people who hadn’t been to Canada in years. They demanded to be evacuated, complained that the ships sent to evacuate them (at a cost of $100 million Canadian dollars)were crowded–and half or more of them returned Lebanon within two months. (Which may be better for Canada, of course.)

Gunter writes that

And you can bet it was the more ungrateful half who flew home to Lebanon and that they were fully convinced they were entitled to a free ticket to do so.

Canadian citizenship was nothing more to them than a dirt cheap insurance policy — $87 every five years for a new Canadian passport. Most came here in the 1980s, when their country was racked with civil war, went back the moment it was safe to do so and thought no more about their Canadian citizenship (or about what they could do for Canada) until fighting broke out again and they needed a lift to safety.

Then it was, “Where’s my boat? Are we there yet? What’s taking so long? What do you mean you don’t have a cabin for me?”

Indeed, in 15 years as a journalist, I have never written anything that has generated more response — over 700 e-mails in all, of which only eight disagreed with my position.

Canada’s dual citizenship policy is incredibly lax, permitting triple and quadruple citizenship. In fact, Canadian historian Jack Granatstein writes that “there is effectively no limit on the number of different passports a Canadian can hold.”

The latest proposal is that a Canadian who lives overseas should pay $500 dollars every five years to pay for potential evacuations, which wouldn’t be enough, and would penalize people who live in civilized countries.

It would not however, solve the problem of people with passports and no basic connection to Canada. But look at the paragraph about the over 700 emails, 8 of which disagreed with him. That’s the kind of response the immigration issue and the National Question raise among the general public. Too bad it isn’t covered more in the press–too bad politicians don’t want to run on it.

Patterico has a year-end round-up of LA Times horribleness. For your entertainment pleasure, I’ve extracted the sections that deal with immigration and race below.

A couple of Vdare.com points: while it’s true that the LA Times has ” confused opposition to illegal immigration with opposition to immigration in general” there’s nothing wrong with opposition to immigration in general–it’s a legitimate public policy issue.

The “segregation in prison” Supreme Court decision was discussed by Steve Sailer, [SCOTUS: Segregation Worse Than Interracial Homosexual Rape!] and I mentioned Patterico’s item about it here.

And finally, he’s got an item about the Times uncritically publishing “the results of a study finding racial discrimination in the setting of mortgage rates, without looking at factors that would tell readers whether or not the study was legitimate.”

This is an idea that was more or less demolished by Peter Brimelow 14 years ago in Forbes. See The Hidden Clue, By Peter Brimelow and Leslie Spencer, Forbes, Jan 4, 1993.

The secret is in the default rates–if African-Americans were being held to higher standards than white borrowers, they’d have lower default rates. But the default rates are the same, showing that private lenders neither discriminate invidiously, nor practice affirmative action in lending decisions.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

The paper continually confused opposition to illegal immigration with opposition to immigration in general.

The paper seemed to show an acute sensitivity about reporting the immigration status of people who committed serious crimes. This became obvious in February, when a drunk driver killed a CHP officer. A paper in the California desert reported that the suspect had fake documents of the type that an illegal immigrant might have — but the L.A. Times didn’t breathe a word of it. Another desert newspaper reported that the culprit was a “suspected illegal immigrant.” Finally, after I had harangued my readers about the issue for days, the paper finally whispered something about the suspect’s immigration status — on Page B6.

The paper falsely described an activist against the Sensenbrenner immigration reform bill as Conor Friersdorf’s words) she had “plant[ed] pro-guest worker program quotes in multiple press outlets and back[ed] a specific faction in the immigration reform debate.” After four days passed with no correction or clarifying language, I wrote the Readers’ Representative to ask what was going on. Ultimately, the paper decided that it was going to leave readers in the dark about the extent of the woman’s activism. Mentioning the meeting in the Congressman’s local office, I was told, was disclosure enough.

Pattt Morrisson had a unique take on why the border fence was a bad idea — it might hurt the environment!

RACE

The editors of the L.A. Times routinely print sloppy stories that unnecessarily fan the flames of racial division. For example, the paper uncritically published the results of a study finding racial discrimination in the setting of mortgage rates, without looking at factors that would tell readers whether or not the study was legitimate. And the editors continued to profess befuddlement as to why George Bush would avoid the NAACP — even though the reason was obvious, if the paper had bothered to explain it: the organization’s affiliates and leaders had waged an active and ugly campaign against Bush in both his presidential elections.

Tennie Pierce hazes a colleague.

The paper consistently hid from its readers the real reason that firefighters played a prank on black firefighter Tennie Pierce — leaving readers to believe his spurious claim that the prank was an act of racism. After I complained about it, and talk radio continued to bang the drum, the paper finally revealed part of the truth, after hiding the facts from readers for weeks.

A black Democrat and former reporter criticized the paper’s lack of coverage of a black-on-white hate crime in Long Beach.

The paper ran a story that made a racially charged claim about movie roles being set aside for white males — but the entire premise of the article was later quietly retracted in a small correction on Page A2.

The editors, who last year excoriated California prison officials for segregating inmates on the basis of race, looked pretty naive when the race riots in L.A. jails started up in February — and some jail inmates literally begged to be segregated by race, for their own safety.

When he was writing What’s Wrong with the World G.K. Chesterton used to amuse himself by telling lady visitors that he had “been been doing ‘What is Wrong’ all this morning.”

This is me writing what think is wrong with me, by the standards of Eric Muller, who has posted the following list of things I wrote that thinks might display “invidious racism and hate” but with no explanation why. Of course, I’m just guessing, because he hasn’t said.

“How are Americans supposed to tell the difference between Meiji and Taisho? … Does that mean that the internment of the Japanese wasn’t so stupid after all?” — National Origins Quotas or Moratorium?

The United States got lucky, partly as a result of the 1924 cutoff–most of the Japanese emigrants came to America before the era of fanatical Japanese militarism–i.e., in the Meiji period, roughly speaking. Immigrants to Brazil, I pointed out, had come later, in the Taisho era, and were much more fanatical. Japanese-Americans were largely very loyal, despite the strains put on them by internment. If they’d been like that Japanese-Brazilians, there would have been trouble.

• Why This Is Invidious–(My guess)

  Americans should know the difference between Meiji and Taisho era Japanee, just like they should be able to tell Sunnis from Shiites from followers of the Seventh Imam, from–aargh. Anyhow, it’s wrong not to know.

  And it’s always wrong to take the American government’s side in defense of internment. It Just Is.

Next one:

“Of course, there is a simple answer to these problems: a National Origins system. Discriminate in favor of immigrants from civilized, culturally compatible countries. Alternatively, don’t have any immigrants at all.” — same article

• Why This Is Invidious–(My guess)

  It’s wrong to say that other countries aren’t civilized or culturally compatible. It’s also wrong to call for an immigration moratorium.

Of course, many countries are uncivilized. And the idea of an immigration moratorium, no immigration at all, is explicitly intended to be color-blind, because the US Government is likely to be unwilling to distinguish between civilized and uncivilized countries.

“Do you realize that if you made all the guns in the U. S. vanish, New Mexico, Texas, and California would vanish the same day? The Mexicans would just come and get them.” — Reconquista, Terrorism, and Gun Control

• Why This Is Invidious–(My guess)

  It’s wrong to suggest that Mexican Government, Mexican Army, and Mexican people want the Southwest.

Perhaps I should have said that Canada will retake Vermont. But Canada doesn’t want Vermont, or even Maine. Mexican irredentism, on the other hand, is a fact of life.