In my previous post I stated why I thought the Canadians finally clamped down on the Mexicans. I blamed all the Mexicans who took advantage of Canada's relaxed immigration policies and ruined it for everyone.
Now it's the Canadian governments turn.
Who is the Canadian Brain Surgeon/Rocket Scientist who came up with this idiotic, one-day-to-the-next policy that will affect not only hundred if not thousands of perfectly legit people who are planning to visit Canada and have already purchased flights, prepaid hotels and cruises? Not only that side of the coin, but all the cruise ships, hotels and restaurants as well as tourist attractions in Canada? This isn't September, it's the middle of the tourist season! What was this bureaucrat thinking? Was he thinking?
Even the US Government, when they issued their new proclamation regarding passport requirements for US citizens, had a timetable.
Canada has really dropped the ball on this one; another fabulous accomplishment for the cheesehead government of Steven Harper.
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For the conspiracy theorists...
Here's a thought: CIA/FBI discovers an imminent attack on Canadian soil originating in Mexico; the CIA advised Canadas' CSIS, who take it to Canada Immigration.
Immigration responded by immediately issuing a blanket visa requirement for all Mexicans, thereby thwarting the plot.
Everything is hush hush for now.
Just a thought...
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6 comments:
The implementation of this new requirement leaves me shaking my head and as you point out, giving a couple of days notice is and was unbelievable.
On the other hand we accept immigration from certain parts of the world and those applicants do not even have a birth certificate, all they need to do is have a friend or family member swear that the applicant is who they say and that they are the age they say. This becomes critical as most of those applicants will then recieve a pension from the government even though they have contributed zero dollars to it.
Besides the pension, they will also qualify for medical care and choke a system at the hospitals which gets worse by the day. Of course talking about our medical system is a completely different rant for me.
One day we will get to the Canadian Medical system, Ray! Thanks for stopping by.
Hi -- I too was taken aback by the suddenness of the visa requirement. But two opinion pieces (in the Diario de Yucatan, of all places) gave me a different perspective.
The first, by Miguel Granados Chapa (who as you probably know is reliably left-of-center, to say the least, but also a very straight talker)did an excellent job of explaining the rationale for the visa change (abuse of refugee status petitions by, primarily, Mexicans and Czechs in the last several years). The second, by Ligia Beatriz Duran (who I know nothing about) (but won me over by the title of her piece: Hasta la visa, baby) pointed out that the precipitate enforcement of the new regulation was to avoid a rush of last-minute "refugee" applicants swampling the system. Both point out that the many are paying for the misdeeds of the few (refugee status abusers), but that is life.
Here's a link to Duran's opinion piece: http://www.yucatan.com.mx/noticia.asp?cx=11$2900000000$4116641&f=20090717
Here's a link to Granados Chapa's
http://www.yucatan.com.mx/noticia.asp?cx=9$2900000000$4116698&f=20090717
mcm - true that. i have absolutely no beef with the reason behind the visa implementation; that was the gist of my first post. what i do take issue with is the way this was handled, which is what the second post was about.
It is true that the number of Mexican refugees in Canada is big. But changing visa policy, during the summer, when most of people (non-refugees) come to visit the country for a holiday, was just silly. I am quite sure there were many people who did not have time to apply for visa and thus had to change their holiday plans just because of this step.
Regards, Julie.
Totally in agreement with you.
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