You can add the Angles & Saxon immigrants to old Romano-Celtic Briton, or the Frankish and Ostrogoth immigrants to old Gaul, or the Visgoth immigrants in Spain eventually supplanting the Muslim immigrants of Spain which supplanted the earlier Carthaginian-Roman immigrants to Spain as examples if you like.  I could probably list a few dozen more.

This is how I read the last exchange.

cauboi: Immigrants hurt nations.
Dormouse: Some nice places were built by immigrants.
[Dormouse to Fredledingue]
cauboi: Built with the bones of the natives.
Dormouse: History shows it happens that way a lot.
cauboi: I still think immigration hurts nations, I am an immigrant.

I'm a little confused. What's your point Dormouse? And cauboi does your being an immigrant mean you are being controlled by an international conspiracy, or are you helping to undermine your new nation? If not how does it support your point?

OK, I will give you a crash course of what's into an immigrant mind.

"Veni, vidi, vinci"

Which means in Latin language: I came, I saw, I conquered
Are you familiar with this Roman emperor ?

In other words: I came here, to Canada, to rape the land and the resources available, reap off the benefits of previous generations of development.

And I am not ashamed of doing that, you know why?
Because the Canadian government already reaped off the benefits of me being grown and educated in my native country, they didn't have to provide me health care and education while I was young, which we all know how expensive could be for any government. So, here I am, just ready to pay taxes. Good deal for them, huh?

Immigrants are easier to lead also, which come to my second point I made. When you are an immigrant you  try to integrate into a new society and you tend to loose your culture, ethnicity, land. Those are big pillars of human nature. If you don't have one or all these pillars, you don't belong to anything, you are lost in space. In my case, I lost my land and a small part of my culture, but there are immigrants out there that the new culture is a completely alien thing.

That's why the U.S. and Canadian governments (U.S. a lesser degree) let in so many immigrants that don't fit into. Do you think that if you are a WASP (white-anglo-saxon-protestant) your government cares more about you than me? Your government gave up, long time ago, to corporations interests, which are the real leaders of this country. You cannot compete with cheap labour, and even me I cannot compete with that after so many years of living here.

Dormouse,

There is no "animosity" against immigrant in Belgium. Belgium and most west european countries have always been recipient for a steady influx of poeple from all origines since the 60's and before.

Many belgians helped poles at the end of the 80's to live and find a job (illegal) because it was the time of Solidarnosc's struggle and we felt sympathy for them.
The biggest wave of Polish worker came after the fall of the Berlin wall. Of course many came before but it was not as easy.
What I mean is that there is a difference between what poeple think and what our governement decide.
The Belgian governement always rejected the policy of working permit a la UK.
Maybe that was not good, but it didn't change much. Many poles managed to settle in Belgium with a legal job, have kids at school etc. I don't know how they did because I don't know all the rules (and they change all the time) but many did it.
This question of working permit is not an immigration one. A Belgian who gets a legal job in France without working permit is also in illegal situation. I know some Belgian who lived in France for 20 years and has got this administrative problem and had to pay a huge fine. Belgians are hardly an immigrant population in France.
Even better, here in Belgian, we suspect our governement to postpone legality of work for poles indefenitely to keep the advantage of the black labour market (Our politicians have houses to repair too). Legal workers would be more expensive than illegal ones.



But Belgium has never needed to adapt to Poles to and Poles never needed to adjust to Belgium.
It didn't take a decade or two: It was done instantly as they were moreless like us already.
Their culture is slightly different of course, like every other european nationalities but nevertheless sharing a great part of european christian culture. It's not like he would be a chinese or something.
No, what has changed is that poeple coming from the other side of Europe doesn't look like they came from very very far away or from unkown region.
As I said above, a french or a german who lives in Belgium for ten years is not a fully belgian citizen neither. Who cares?


I don't think that our pension problem can be solved by importing young workers because that would imply our population to grow forever which is impossible (Maybe in Canada it is but not here).
One day these foreign workers would be old  and need pension too and we would need even more foreign workers at the next generation making the problem even worse.
No, I think that our pension system should adapt with a aging, stabilizing or even declining population. there could be incentive to work older for example.
I don't think that poeple who retire at 65, in practice at 60 inside pre-retirement sheme or at 50 capitulation unemployement, should spent 20 to 30 years doing nothing. That's insane. That's as long as their productive working time!

I don't think it's reason to let in millions of poeple from Asia Minor or Africa.
After all they don't come to finance our pension funds. If they work legaly, only a small portion will go to pension funds and we would need realy a lot of them to fill the gap.
And most of them won't find a legal job. They are useful mostly for small home aid or additional small jobs which are unafordable when legal taxes are to be paid.
That's why they end up ghettoized. They don't have the money to open their own business or the education to get official jobs. Those who do are out of the gettho.
Of course there is some discrimination against poeple of "arab" origins but this discrimination would vanish if there was enough jobs available and if those without a degree were not mostly from north-african descent.

here it's 10 years for extra-european (EU) poeple. They wanted to make it 5 years but it met stiff opposition. I don't know how much it is finaly.
The problem here, with the "without-paper" (so called because they pretend to have no documents which would proove they are illegals), is to wether or not give full citizenship to poeple who have never been supposed to be here.
I think it must be regulated somehow, some poeple must be expelled. If not it's anarchy.


Yes, but you still didn't understand the difference between Europe and North America.
We stand just near the source of a massive reservoir of immigration candidates. There are poeple crossing the Sahara desert on foot to go to Europe. Marroco and Algeria have themselves immigration problems with those who are in transit to Europe.
With your legislation, there would be millions of poor africans in our cities and god knows what they will do here and where they would find a place to live (ever tried to rent an apartment in Paris?).

No I don't. My point is that our philosophy (which is still different from applied politicies) is that local economic developement is a more viable solution than moving third-world populations to Europe.
Now if Corporate America invest more money in west-central Africa, north Africa and Turkey than our governements, we can only applaud that.


Well, moving from eastern europe to western europe is not even considered as a migration. How can we have an immigration issue with ourself?


The EU gives away money only under strict condition and never for the entire sum of the project. The recieving country must fund at least 30 % of the project.
The reason why the US want to send economic aid to Turkey and, btw, want Turkey in the EU, is different than European well being. It's indirectly beneficial to the EU policy of economical expansion, but they do it for Iraq, not for us.


Poeple with higher income either don't emigrate or are not a problem when they do.

Rich or poor, educated or not, they have to stay where they are indeed because they have to build their own country instead of escaping.
I don't see why they all "have to" come here. There is no job for them, no accomodation and they will stay poor anyway.
That a few of them come, no problem, but populations shouldn't move from one place to another.

Nothing. They are too far to make movement.


I still maintain that Somali and Ethipians who come by plane to Canada have higher income than those who arrive with empty pockets in Europe.