Joseph Butson

It is hard to argue that President George Bush is regarded in Canada as being a progressive. Yet he has struck a chord with his proposal for US immigration reform. It resonates in Canada so much so that when you have the National Post’s Terence Corcoran lobbying the Conservative government to adopt the Bush Immigration doctrine, how far behind are all progressives publicly advocating the sensible, humane idea of amnesty championed by President Bush.

Canada’s immigration laws are as balkanized as could be. Keep the pressure on Terence!

Well it seems that the Alberta Human Rights Commission is venturing into the frivolous. Apparently The Western Standard magazine is being sued by an Imam in Calgary.

The publisher of the Western Standard, Ezra Levant, has made a plaintive call for support. It seems he needs more than just moral support. I think he deserves some support and encourage you to pony up.

The Bush Administration cuts off ties to Hamas

Stephen Harper’s Cabinet: the same prescription.

And Israel? Later.

Continuing on the theme about how immigration problems extend into every workplace, every community and is much more than the plight of the illegal aliens. The WSJ explains that the system is broken and sclerotic.

The Other Immigrants
March 27, 2006; Page A16

Lost in the heated debate about the future of millions of illegal laborers in the U.S. is that our system for admitting foreign-born professionals is also in tatters.

While globalization has increased the competition for international talent, U.S. businesses are frustrated by processing delays, long backlogs and especially the failure of Congress to increase the annual limits on visas for skilled immigrants. The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to resume its mark-up of Arlen Specter’s immigration bill today. And the good news is that it contains long-overdue provisions for hiring more of the foreign professionals who help keep our economy competitive.

Under Mr. Specter’s proposal, the annual cap on H-1B guest worker visas for immigrants in specialty fields like science and engineering would rise to 115,000 from 65,000. Moreover, the new cap would not be fixed but would fluctuate automatically in response to demand for these visas. We don’t think any cap is necessary. But if a Republican Congress feels it must impose one, the least it can do is let market forces have some say in the matter.

Another important reform addresses foreign students who want to work here after graduating from U.S. colleges and universities. It doesn’t make a lot of sense in today’s global marketplace to educate the best and brightest and then send them away to England or India or China to start businesses and develop new technologies for U.S. competitors. But that’s exactly what current U.S. policy encourages by limiting the employment prospects of foreign students who would rather stay here.

Mr. Specter would let more foreign students become permanent residents by obtaining an advanced degree in math, engineering, technology or the physical sciences and then finding work in their field. It’s unfortunate that the U.S. isn’t producing more home-grown talent in these areas, and the fault there lies with our K-12 educators and their political backers who tolerate poor performance. The reality today is that the U.S. ranks sixth world-wide in the number of people graduating with bachelor’s degrees in engineering. Jobs will leave the U.S. and our economy will suffer if bad policy limits industry’s access to intellectual capital.

Anti-immigration groups and protectionists want to dismiss these market forces, arguing that U.S. employers seek foreign nationals only because they’ll work for less money. But it’s illegal to pay these high-skill immigrants less than the prevailing wage. And employers are required to document their adherence to the law.

According to a new study by the National Foundation for American Policy, our broken system for admitting foreign professionals also contributes to outsourcing. Since 1996 the 65,000 annual cap on H-1B visas has been reached in most years, sometimes only weeks into the new year. This leaves employers with the choice of waiting until the next fiscal year to hire workers in the U.S. or hiring people outside the country.

“Many companies concede,” says the report, “that the uncertainty created by Congress’ inability to provide a reliable mechanism to hire skilled professionals has encouraged placing more human resources outside the United States to avoid being subject to legislative winds.” Last week computer maker Dell Inc. announced that it hopes to double its workforce in India to 20,000 within three years. There’s another such announcement by some company nearly every day.

This weekend’s big-city immigration demonstrations focused on the debate over the estimated 11 million illegals already in the country. But the U.S. labor market has also long been a magnet for highly skilled and educated foreigners, many of whom attend school in America at some time in their lives. In a world where these brains have more options than ever in Asia and Europe, we drive them away at our economic peril.

In a rare but encouraging step, President Bush met with a members of Canada’s press a few days in advance of the NAFTA summit in Cancun, Mexico.

It has been a very long time since earnest dialogue or hopeful rhetoric between the NAFTA partners has surfaced. Quoted online in the Toronto Star:
“It’s a vital relationship but it’s also one in which there is a certain skepticism about the United States,” he admitted.

“I will do my very best to find common ground and, through my relationship with the prime minister, convince the people of Canada that we genuinely care about our friends and neighbours to the north and will work to resolve different issues in an above-board way that is mutually beneficial.”

In a roundtable session with journalists, he emphasized that he’s not resentful about some “harsh words” that have characterized relations in the past few years, acknowledging that Canadians have every right to their own opinions.

“Part of the problem that we had was because of my decision to go into Iraq,” he said.

“The government of both countries didn’t agree. And I understand that. War is terrible, it’s an awful thing,” he said in remarks released Tuesday by the White House.

“I bear no ill will whatsoever and I understand the strategic importance of being close to our friends.”

Nevermind the rhetoric of the former government and the US Ambassador’s ill advised comments during the recent Canadian federa election, the tenor of the debate seems to have turned to true concilliation.

To view video of an exclusive interview given by the President to Canadian news network CTV.

The President’s polls numbers are as low as they have ever been and his Immigration Reform plans have been usurped by the US Senate. So the President could use a shot of credibility from the NAFTA summit.

This link will take you to NPR’s coverage of the Immigration Debate.

I ran across an intrepid blogger who has warmed to a subject near and dear to my non-immigrant alien heart. As a Canadian ex-pat working via a NAFTA visa, I just might be in a position to understand the priviledge of working legally and being accepted while 11 million are here illegally and neither accepted or respected. I moved to a mid-west city from a very multi-cultural metro where, I suspect, many illegal aliens desired a citizenship I took for granted. I never once thought immigration reform in my native land should be a bureaucratic queue. In fact, if reform was needed, it had to regularize those already working and paying their way before setting up a new set of rules to smooth or correct the rules and practices that created the problem.

So, too, true reform in the US needs to be bold and accept all sponsored [I mean gainfully employed] illegals after fees are paid, backgrounds are checked and employment verified. The risk of this is not so much to punish those who wait have patiently waited to be processed but it would merge reality with perception. True reform doesn’t solve a conundrum but it introduces a new paradigm. The new world is one where a Green Card doesn’t take 5 years to process, and that is when it is submitted legally and after thousands in attorneys fees have been paid. It is a new paradigm wherein holders of processed visas are not looked at as suspect but legally entitled individuals who are neither corporate pawns or substitutes for Americans with similar skills. The H1B holders that I work with day in and day out are capable professionals who take nothing for granted, seek no entitlements and have skills many educated Americans desire. I can back this up with the “day in and day out” work of 2 years on a new financial system that is considered an intellectual and national asset for the domestic firm that had no other alternative but to import brains to build.

A new paradigm is needed that recognizes that between continental partners in NAFTA, Canadians and Mexicans offer America options other nations in the world covet, at least in terms of trading partners and security. The NAFTA continental trading bloc is over 10 years old [free trade beteen the U.S. and Canada is nearly 20 years old] and needs to mature to enable reform. Trilateral negotiations to create a customs and labor union would usher a new paradigm where the border is as irrelevant as the illegal aliens have made it already. It would regularize immigration along liberal and laissez-faire lines like the model that built America. A reciprocal customs union would be no less bold than Lincoln’s Homestead Act  that opened America to a prosperous, immigrant driven settlement of the frontier.
Reform is needed to whipsaw the cowards in the Republican party that would legislate regulations that convert law abiding individuals into felons; create rules that cripple businesses that are used to the hard work of earnest people; and that would introduce the kind of dysfunction incrementalism that created the damn 4 year wait for legal Green Card applicants.

As geopolitics go, British Prime Minister Tony Blair seems as discerning a stateman as one could find. Not once over a very difficult 3 years period in Iraq has his committment wavered to the war in Iraq. While many pundits take issue with the Bush Administration and their seeming “blindness” to the course of the war, Blair has been resolute while many in his party and the British House of Commons have withered.

Today, in Canberra, Australia, the Right Honourable Tony Blair spoke to both Houses of the Australian government. The grand Anglo-Alliance owes much to Prime Minister’s Blair and Howard. In time, the Democrats in Congress will need to abandon their untenable position on the war in Iraq. Yes, it is untenable to be sidelined by their preference to isolation and myopic opposition to the current administration’s foreign policy.

Reasoned and useful leaders of both center-left and center-right parties in Britain and Australia have taken difficult decisions and yet have won re-election in recent years. The electorate of both countries seem to prefer leadership and principled stands against terrorism. Why would the Democrats think they could win the mid-term election after “taking it to the limit” with John Kerry in 2004 and still ending up shut out by a vulnerable Republican ticket?

You’d expect that a couple of Professors from Harvard would have better things to do than engage in anti-semetic deconstruction based on nothing other than sophomoric conspiracy theories. Think again.

John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have published an anti-Israel screed recently reviewed in the London Review of Books. I suppose they are entitled to their opinion but either they take us for idiots or dull witted or both. Anyway, perhaps they want to swim against the tide of American opinion or they just don’t really think its wise to support one of the stablest democracies in the Middle East.

Apparently the editors at the Wall Street Journal agree:

By now the gist of the Mearsheimer-Walt hypothesis should be clear. So should its pedigree. The authors are at pains to note that the Israel Lobby is by no means exclusively Jewish, and that not every American Jew is a part of it. Fair enough. But has there ever been an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that does not share its basic features? Dual loyalty, disloyalty, manipulation of the media, financial manipulation of the political system, duping the goyim (gentiles) and getting them to fight their wars, sponsoring and covering up acts of gratuitous cruelty against an innocent people — every canard ever alleged of the Jews is here made about the Israel Lobby and its cause. No wonder former Ku Klux Klansman David Duke was quick to endorse the article, calling it a “great step forward.”

And so do most Americans: The WSJ adds:

But here’s a puzzle: If Israel is so damaging to U.S. interests, why do consistent and broad majorities of Americans support it? A Gallup poll from last month shows that Americans are more sympathetic to Israelis than to Palestinians by 59% to 15%. Among Americans who claim to follow world affairs “very closely,” Israel’s favorable ratings rise to 66%. I went back over polling data since the mid-1970s, and the percentages hold roughly constant. Americans also tell pollsters that Israel deserves support even if it puts the U.S. at greater risk of oil boycotts or terrorist attacks.

It seems the Dalton McGuinty government is blowing money on the feeble network around the GTA and Andrew Coyne is all over him!

“Here’s another suggestion: Instead of paying all these offsetting, overlapping subsidies to lure travellers down this road or that railway, why don’t we just stop subsidizing any of them? The one indispensible ingredient of rational resource use, in transportation as in other areas of economic life, is for consumers to pay the full cost of their choices. That can’t happen so long as governments are paying the freight on their behalf.

The reason Ontario roads are so clogged isn’t for lack of public subsidy. Quite the contrary: The more we spend building new and wider roads, the more congested they become. That’s not accidental. By building and maintaining roads at public expense that drivers could perfectly well pay for themselves — Britain is in the process of implementing a nationwide, satellite-guided system of road tolls — we are in effect paying drivers to use the roads.”

Go get him Andrew! But it is a little late to appeal to common sense. The best thing for Ontario is to throw the liar out in 2007. He had no right to form a government, ever! But the feeble policies of the Conservatives….don’t get me going! Instead, here is what the Globe and Mail thinks [and they endorsed him!] I have to include the whole bit instead of a link because the crummy people running the rag think it’s worth paying for [it isn’t!]

Now guess which shell Ontario’s pea is under

You would never know that the Ontario government is still in deficit from its brazen plans for new big-ticket spending. Worse, you probably wouldn’t believe that this continuing deficit is its own choice, or that it has essentially decided to stay in the red until election year. (How convenient!) You might also be surprised to learn how Finance Minister Dwight Duncan devised a perfect shell game so that he might look like a fiscal darling at election time — while siphoning off the cash this year. It might be crafty politics, but it entails fiscal risk if the economy sags.

It was clear when the budget made its debut two days ago that somehow the Liberals had found the money for a lot more spending. A second look reveals how they worked their sorcery. There were unexpectedly pleasant surprises during the fiscal year that ends next Friday. Revenues were $2.2-billion higher than anticipated in last May’s 2005-06 budget. Debt service costs were $700-million lower than predicted. And the Liberals did not need to use their $1-billion contingency fund. That windfall added up to almost $4-billion in extra cash. Excellent. The expected 2005-06 deficit of $2.8-billion was history.

But Mr. Duncan had a wee problem before he could go on a spree. He had to allocate that leftover money in the 2005-06 fiscal year or, by law, it had to go toward the deficit. The solution was easy enough: He craftily scheduled his 2006-07 budget before the end of this fiscal year. Bonanza. He found $1.6-billion for new transit projects. There was $125-million for agricultural producers and the livestock industry. The forest sector got $28-million. There was $162-million for research and innovation. The list adds up to $2.5-billion. That leaves Ontario with a 2005-06 deficit of $1.4-billion. Too bad.

Obviously, that sudden splurge pushed up the growth in Ontario’s spending. Suddenly, the 2005-06 increase over the previous year climbed to a hefty 7.4 per cent, which perhaps unsurprisingly is in keeping with spending increases during the Liberals’ two previous years. Program spending itself jumped to a new nine-year high of 13.9 per cent of provincial GDP.By comparison, Ottawa’s 2005-06 budget pegs spending at 11.9 per cent of GDP.

It gets even more startling. Mr. Duncan now calculates that he will have $1-billion more in revenue in each of the next three fiscal years than he assumed in last year’s budget. So he spent it, adding an extra $1-billion to budget projections for each of the next three fiscal years — even though the deficit for 2006-07 alone is estimated at $2.35-billion. As TD Bank senior economist Derek Burleton observed, “The government has shifted its approach from tackling its deficit towards addressing its spending priorities.”

This is all working out quite tidily for the Liberals. With this week’s budget, they can brag about their spending on health, training, postsecondary education and transit. But because most of that spending is counted in 2005-06, they can also boast that they are holding spending growth in line with revenues in the upcoming year, at 2.1 per cent. Next year, unless the economy flags, there will no doubt be a grand announcement in the 2007-08 budget, on the brink of the Oct. 4, 2007, election: no more deficit. By then, after promising that they would never run a deficit, the Liberals will have run four consecutive deficits. And the taxpayers will have footed the bill for that conjuring trick.