gay rights back in citizenship guide. sort of.

Let it not be said that the Harper Government™ does not support equality! Why, there's an entire sentence about gay rights in the new version of the Citizenship Guide! And that's a full sentence more than when the guide was published. See?? Progress!!

(Thanks to West End Bob for alerting me to this.)

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congratulations to two more new canadians!

Major congratulations are in order! Our friends and fellow expatriates "Gito and Mrtew" are now Canadian citizens! Or soon will be: they've passed their test and are scheduled to take their oath.

These guys have been through a lot to be together. Because Gito is not a US citizen, they couldn't live together in the US, since their relationship is not legally recognized. They stayed together through deportation and then the long wait of immigration. In Canada, they were able to get married, buy an adorable house in Windsor, and make their life together. Gito is now attending university.

We finally met in person for the first time a few years ago, and I'm sure we'll all see each other again. The Red Sox in Detroit are a great excuse to visit friends in Windsor. You can see Gito's amazing and unusual photography at eggfactory and Arte is Foto.

Becoming Canadian means a lot to me, and our journey from that first thought - "Maybe we should move to Canada... Could we? Should we?" - to the day we took our citizenship oath has, in many ways, defined our lives. But no matter how much Allan and I wanted to leave the US, we could have continued living in New York City. Gito and Mrtew, like our friends Tom and Emilio, didn't have that option. Tom and Emilio lived in constant fear of deportation; Gito and Mrtew were forced apart. It doesn't have to be that way. One day, it won't be. Until then, how many lives will be ruined?

Most of our old moving-to-Canada crew - a bunch of US couples who applied to emigrate to Canada within a few years of each other and found each other online - are now either Canadian citizens or soon will be. As each of us gets citizenship, we all celebrate. I feel a real bond between us all. They're like my extended family, Canadian edition.

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congratulations from one new canadian to another

Nick, the very first person to find wmtc and ask me about moving to Canada, becomes a Canadian citizen today.

Nick's last appearance on wmtc was his It Gets Better video.

Congratulations, Nick! Canada is very lucky to have you.

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harper government's new citizenship test proves one more barrier to immigrants

Remember the Harper Government's new Citizenship Guide? It's working.

Massive failure rates follow new, tougher Canadian citizenship tests

Failure rates for immigrants writing citizenship tests have soared since the spring, when tougher questions and revamped rules made it harder for newcomers to become Canadian.

The new test, introduced March 15, was based on a bulked-up citizenship guide released a year ago to give immigrants a richer picture of Canada’s history, culture, law and politics.

The 63-page guide, Discover Canada, replaced a slimmer volume dating from 1995 that had fewer facts to memorize. The failure rate for the old citizenship test, with questions drawn from the smaller guide, ranged between four and eight per cent.

Failure rates for the new test, however, rocketed to about 30 per cent when it was first introduced — prompting officials to revise the rules to avoid clogging the system with thousands of would-be Canadians who, because they had flunked, often had to plead their cases before busy citizenship judges.

A reworked test introduced Oct. 14 is helping to cut the national failure rate to about 20 per cent, still far higher than historic levels and making the exam-hall experience much more nerve-wracking for newcomers.

People who are Canadian by accident of birth are required to do nothing but obey the law and pay taxes. Those who choose to become Canadian - people who uproot their lives and families, spend many thousands of dollars, often forced to start their educations and careers completely over, all for the privilege of living in Canada - are made to jump through hoops meant prove knowledge and loyalty.

Yet Canada cannot survive without immigrants. The country's non-immigrant population growth is less than zero. And once people are here, it should be as easy as possible to become citizens. Don't we want to encourage immigrants to have a full stake in the country? To put down roots, to build a future, to vote?

The idiots commenting on the news stories about this - themselves likely the grandchildren or great-grandchildren of immigrants - crow about Canada finally getting a grip, cracking down. About people "milking the system", the horror of hyphenated identity. Most sound like they can only dream of having the skills, resiliency and tenacity to emigrate to another country. Or for that matter, to brush their own teeth.

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today... (drumroll, please!)

I am voting! In Canada! For the first time!

Please can I vote in a federal election ASAP????

Torontonians: Why you should vote.

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a trio of smackdowns for canadian conservatives: the u.n., the citizenship guide and fox news north

Stephen Harper and his merry band of Canadian Conservatives suffered a trio of defeats in the past week - which is another way of saying that we, the people who want to reverse the damage the Harper government has done to Canada, enjoyed a series of significant victories.

First, the world said no to the Harper foreign policy agenda when the UN denied Canada a seat on the UN Security Council. Haroon Siddiqui has an excellent round-up of why the UN very rightly said no to Canada, and how the Conservatives are typically and lamely trying to spin their defeat.

It’s not just his pro-Israeli stance that made Canada a pariah at the UN. He:

• Sabotaged the UN climate accord.

• Decried the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

• Downgraded UN peacekeeping — to 160 Canadian soldiers out of 105,500 worldwide, placing Canada 57th, behind Yemen and Uganda. (Tuesday, the day we lost the vote, was the anniversary of Lester B. Pearson’s Nobel Peace Prize for inventing peacekeeping.)

• Diminished our role at the UN and its agencies.

• Diverted Canadian funds from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency to the Palestinian Authority, to boost Mahmoud Abbas against rival Hamas.

• Thwarted a probe into the alleged torture of Afghan detainees.

• Left Omar Khadr to rot in Guantanamo Bay, while defending the policy of indefinite detention as well as the American military’s kangaroo courts.

In many of the above policies, Harper copied George W. Bush. Whereas America has shaken them off, the Prime Minister is still pursuing them.

Of course, that last paragraph is completely wrong. Obama hasn't "shaken off" the policies of his predecessors; he has reinforced and extended them. This is typical of mainstream Canadian commentary: the US taken at face value. But the column is well worth reading, especially for the neat summary of how the Tories are trying to spin this defeat as a victory.

It was announced that new editions of the guide to Canadian citizenship will refer to legal same-sex marriage and the fact that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. This wouldn't be news if it hadn't been proven - thanks to Access to Information requests by the Canadian Press - that Jason Kenney himself had all mention of LGBT rights stripped from the citizenship guide.

Internal documents show an early draft of the guide contained sections noting that homosexuality was decriminalized in 1969; that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms forbids discrimination based on sexual orientation; and that same-sex marriage was legalized nationally in 2005.

But Kenney, who fought same-sex marriage when it was debated in Parliament, ordered those key sections removed when his office sent its comments to the department last June. Senior department officials duly cut out the material, but made a last-ditch plea with Kenney in early August to have it reinstated.

"Recommend the re-insertion of the text boxes related to ... the decriminalization of homosexual sex/recognition of same-sex marriage," says a memorandum to Kenney from deputy minister Neil Yeates.

"Recommend the addition of 'equality rights' under list of rights. Had noted earlier that this bullet should be reinserted into the list as a means of noting the equality of all based on race, gender, sexual orientation etc..."

In the end, however, Kenney's view trumped that of the bureaucrats. The 63-page guide, released with fanfare last November, contains no mention of gay and lesbian rights.

Wmtc readers know that equal rights for LGBT citizens weren't the only good thing about Canada omitted from the new citizenship guide: peace, social justice and the environment were all cut, making for more room for war, distrust of immigrants and as many mentions of the Queen as they could stuff in. For more on that, see my comparison of the current citizenship guide with the previous version: short version here, full version here.

And finally, I hope you've all heard the good news about "Fox News North": Quebecor has dropped its bid for special treatment from the CRTC.

It was Quebecor's second shot at special treatment: first, in March, it applied for a rare licence from the CRTC, which would have required cable and satellite companies to carry Sun TV News on their services. That type of licence, known as Category 1 (soon to be Category A), is currently not being granted by the regulator, and it rejected Quebecor's application.

The company then tried again in July, asking for a much more common Category 2 licence to operate a specialty channel. But in that run-of-the-mill application, it included a request for "must offer" conditions – requiring distributors to offer the channel during its first three years, on at least one tier of their services. The company argued this was different from must-carry status because it let consumers decide whether to subscribe.

There can be little doubt that Quebecor was pushed into this retreat by public pressure. From Avaaz:

83,000 of us signed the petition, 25,000 sent letters to the CRTC and 4,000 donated over $115,000 - and last week SunTV, seeing they could not win, dropped their request to the government to force cable companies to carry them. A huge congrats to everyone on this amazing victory for Canada!

It wasn't easy -- the Sun media empire threw everything they had at us - smear pieces, legal threats, even insider knowledge of sabotage of our campaigns -- but our united voices proved more powerful than even a Harper-allied corporate giant.

I frequently hear progressive Canadian friends lament how Canada is "becoming the United States". I have a solid list of reasons why that isn't so, but this post points out a central difference: here, it's still possible to create change. Keep speaking out.

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quiet? invisible? as if: american immigrants to canada get noticed

We've been discovered! Globe and Mail editorial.

The quiet Americans who are Canada’s invisible immigrants

Research into the least studied immigrant group shows that many come in pursuit of ideals

Canada takes pride in being a country of immigrants. Scholars devote much time to researching the social and economic outcomes of newcomers, most of whom hail from visible-minority communities. It is fitting, then, that someone has delved into Canada’s fourth-largest immigration source: Americans.

These invisible immigrants – there are one million, more than at any time since the Vietnam War – are a unique group. According to a leading American geographer, they come to Canada not for economic opportunities, but for the country’s set of values.

Of course, every immigrant’s motivations are intensely personal. However, extensive research by Susan Hardwick, a professor at the University of Oregon, shows that the over-arching inspiration for moving north of the border is an idealistic one.

Americans are attracted by their view of Canada’s more liberal culture. That includes support for a universal public health-care system, positive attitudes toward gays and lesbians, gun control laws and multiculturalism.

In British Columbia, for example, Prof. Hardwick found that most recent arrivals from the U.S. reported their primary reason for leaving was the idea that Canada is a safe refuge for liberal thinkers and idealists.

There are also a growing number of what she calls “midlife mavericks,” who are seeking new lives in what they see as the promised land.

The trend, it seems, is enduring. Reciprocal migration means Canadians need not worry about the brain drain south.

Prof. Hardwick attributes the spike in American immigration, in part, to dissatisfaction with the conservative policies of former president George W. Bush’s years in office.

Now that President Barack Obama, a Democrat, is in the White House, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper leads a Conservative minority government, will liberal Americans sour on Canada? Early research results show that American immigrants are not inclined to move back, especially in light of Canada’s stronger economy.

As well, given Tea Party activism, anti-immigration policies in states such as Arizona, and popularity of commentators such as Glenn Beck, liberal Americans remain unsettled by U.S. political culture.

American-Canadians are enthusiastic Canadians. Even those who retain dual citizenship embrace their new identity. Two-thirds of American immigrants have a “very strong” sense of belonging to Canada, according to the Canadian Ethnic Diversity Study. For many, Canada is the “America idealized” in the post-9/11 world, says Prof. Hardwick.

American-Canadians also earn higher salaries and are more educated than other immigrant groups in Canada.

Canadians should embrace these newcomers, and be careful not to tar them as overly individualistic, flag-waving or materialistic – stereotypical traits often, wrongly, associated with Americans.

The presence of American immigrants is doing as much to shape Canada as the influence of newcomers from China, South Asia and the Philippines.

Canadians should resist the urge to repeat negative clichés about the U.S., and view Americans as among the most buoyant new Canadians.

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in which all questions about our new canadian passports are answered

The good news is the US border guards didn't care about my Canadian passport.

The bad news is the US border guards didn't care about my Canadian passport.

Several people had warned me that as a dual Canadian-US citizen, I could be hassled, denied entry or - as one person put it - "face certain criminal prosecution" for entering the US without a US passport. I know many dual citizens who hold only Canadian passports, and who regularly travel back and forth to the US without the slightest hitch, so I knew this wasn't true. I understand it may technically be true, a law on the books, but it's obviously not enforced in any way.

The only unanswered question was whether my troubles at the border would continue - whether, without my US passport to scan, if I would be flagged. That question has now been definitively answered. Border hassles are now a way of life.

The border guard saw the US birthplace on our passports, typed in our names, and we were off to the races: surrender the keys, escort into the building, the long wait, the questions they already know the answers to. This one took about an hour and 15 minutes.

Once we were cleared, Allan asked the guard returning our passports, "Can you tell us why we were brought in here?"

The guard was clearly uncomfortable with the question. "Don't you know?"

We both said, "We have no idea. No one ever tells us anything. We just come in, answer questions, and they let us go."

Guard: "Have you ever been in trouble?"

Us: "No, never."

Guard: "I'm not at liberty to tell you." He said he could give us a paper explaining how to apply for more information. We said we'd like that, and he went off to get it. When he returned, he was downright chatty. "Here's the information, you fill this out, and you will get a response. I'm sorry, I'm not at liberty to tell you more, but you can apply here, and they will respond. . . . "

Yeah thanks have a nice day.

So. I am flagged with the US state department, and that is that.

* * * *

We had dinner with our friends Bruce and Mary and Russell, great peace activists from Buffalo, then stayed up til all hours talking. Bruce Beyer is kind of a legendary figure in the peace movement, a Vietnam draft resister who turned in his draft card, lived in Sweden and then Toronto, returned to the US without amnesty, and continues to work tirelessly for peace and on behalf of military resisters. Bruce is a mainstay of the War Resisters Support Campaign. And becoming friends with him is one of my favourite benefits of this blog.

We had a really good time last night, and we're now groggy and sleep-deprived. (Those things often go together, eh.) Now we're in JFK Airport with about a five-hour wait for our flight to Oakland, equipped with music, netbook and plenty of reading material.

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FROM THE COUCH OF MUNCHKIN -OR WHO LET THE DOG OUT #11

WE THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES COURT OF NO APPEALS

You are the TRIER of the FACTS in the following case;

THE PEOPLE V. OBAMA

Who or what is Barack Hussein Obama, is he an American born citizen or does he hold dual citizenship with the U.S. and Great Britain, or is he citizen of Indonesia?

Is he a Christian as he claims or a Muslim? Does he stand for American values and interests or is he out to destroy America?

Obama has demonstrated some rather troubling behavior that leaves one wondering if he may not be planning a surprise total public split with Christianity and put out a bombshell announcement that he is in fact a Muslim, which would explain his disrespecting of Israel and cozying up the Muslim countries in the Middle East.

I shall lay out the facts and each of you is to examine the facts in an unbiased fashion and then render your decision.

Let me start with:

ISSUE A: Just where exactly was Barack Hussein Obama Born?

FACT #1: Barack Hussein Obama claims that he was born in the State of Hawaii, but to date he has absolutely refused to prove this claim by producing is original vault (long form) birth certificate. The Governor of the State of Hawaii claims that such a long form Birth certificate for Barack Obama is on file with the State, but Obama refuse to grant permission for it to be made public. Why? Under those circumstances, how do We the People know that it does exist? Somebody saying so does not make it true.

FACT #2: What Obama did produce was a copy of a Certificate of Live Birth, which is NOT the same as a Birth Certificate. The State of Hawaii allows for parents of children born on foreign soil to file for and receive a Certificate of Live Birth.

FACT #3: There is an article in a Hawaiian Newspaper that lists the birth of Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. to Mr. and Mrs. Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., but a newspaper notice is not proof that he was born in Hawaii.

FACT #4: Barack’s paternal grandmother, along with his half-brother and half-sister have stated, on more than one occasion, that he was born in Kenya. Reports reflect that Obama’s mother traveled to Kenya during her pregnancy; however, she was prevented from boarding a flight from Kenya to Hawaii at her late stage of pregnancy (which, apparently, was a normal restriction, to avoid births during a flight). By these reports, Stanley Ann Dunham Obama gave birth to Obama in Kenya, after which she flew home and registered Obama’s birth. There are records of a “registry of birth” for Obama, on or about August 8, 1961 in the public records office in Hawaii, but that is NOT the same as a long-form Birth Certificate. Also, Barack’s mother Stanley Dunham was, at the time of his birth and the laws in place at that time, too young to pass U.S. citizenship to Barack. Also, at the time of his birth, if he was born in Kenya, Kenya was under colonial control of Great Britain, which would then have made him a dual citizen of both Great Britain and the United States.

FACT #5: The Constitution of the United States does not provide for a dual citizen to hold the office of the President, only natural born citizens.

ISSUE B: Barack Obama’s Passport:

This issue can also be easily resolved by Barack Obama answering one very simple question:

What passport did he use when he was shuttling between New York, Jakarta, and Karachi?

How did a young man who arrived in New York in early June 1981, without the price of a hotel room in his pocket, suddenly come up with the price of a round-the-world trip just a month later?

Then once he was on a plane, shuttling between New York, Jakarta, and Karachi, what passport was he producing when he passed through Customs and Immigration?

FACT #6:

Question: Did Obama travel to Pakistan in 1987, at age 20?

Answer: Yes, by his own admission.

FACT #7:

Question: What country’s passport did he travel under?

Answer: There are only three possible answers:

1. He traveled with a U.S. Passport;

2. He traveled with a British passport, or

3. He traveled with an Indonesian passport.

FACT #8:

Question: Was it possible that Obama traveled with a U.S. Passport in 1981?

Answer: No. It is not possible. Pakistan was on the U.S. State Department's "no travel" list in 1981. That means that American citizens were NOT allowed to enter Pakistan by both U.S and Pakistani law.

Conclusion to this particular Issue:

When Obama went to Pakistan in 1981 he was traveling either with a British passport or an Indonesian passport.

If he was traveling with a British passport that would provide proof that he was born in Kenya on August 4, 1961, not in Hawaii as he claims. And if he was traveling with an Indonesian passport that would tend to prove that he relinquished whatever previous citizenship he held, British or American, prior to being adopted by his Indonesian step-father in 1967.

ISSUE C: What religious beliefs does Barack Obama hold to, if any?

This issue is important, because the citizens of the United States have a right to know on just whose side Obama is on. Is he on the side of Freedom, defending the Constitution of the United States and our way of life, or is he beholden to Islam and Sharia Law.

FACT #9:

Something took place shortly after Obama took office, under the radar screen of most Americans. There was barely any mention of it by the MSM. What was it?

Barack Obama funded $20 million of taxpayer money in H.R. 1388 which was passed by the House, to pay to settle Hamas Refugees to the United States.

Barack Obama, through an executive order, has ordered the expenditure of $20.3 million in “migration assistance” to the Palestinian refugees and “conflict victims” in Gaza, and very few of our elected officials on Capitol Hill, or members of the media took any notice that Obama’s order provided not only a free airline ticket, but also housing and food allowances to individuals who have displayed their overwhelming support to the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in the parliamentary election of January 2006.

FACT #10:

Let’s take a look at some of Barack Obama's most recent actions since his inauguration:

1.) His very first call to any head of state, as president, was to Mahmoud Abbas, leader of Fatah party in the Palestinian territory.

2.) His first one-on-one television interview with any news organization was with Al Arabia television.

3.) His first executive order was to fund/facilitate abortion(s) not just here within the U. S., but within the world, using U. S. Tax payer funds.

4.) He ordered Guantanamo Bay closed and all military trials of detainees halted.

5.) He ordered overseas CIA interrogation centers closed.

6.) He withdrew all charges against the masterminds behind the USS Cole and the "terror attack" on 9/11.

Oh, but there is more:

FACT #11:

You all remember the trip that Obama made to France, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, don’t you? Well if you remember, Michelle, Obama’s wife, traveled with him, but she suddenly headed back to the U.S. from France as her husband continued on to Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Why?

Well, according to some Arab/Americans, they claim that Michelle couldn't go

to Saudi Arabia, Turkey, or Iraq. Why not, after all, Laura Bush went to Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Dubai with her husband, President George W. Bush?

The answer, according to these Arab/Americans, "Obama is a Muslim, and by Muslim law, he would not be allowed to bring his wife into the countries that accept Sharia Law."

They also said that that's the same reason he bowed to the King of Saudi

Arabia, and it was a signal to the Muslim world.

FACT #12:

After Stanley Ann Dunham (Obama’s mother) divorced Barack’s biological father, she took up with and married an Indonesian citizen, whose last name was Sotoro. Sotoro was not only an Indonesian citizen, he was also a Muslim. Ms. Dunham herself was an avowed atheist and a Marxist/Leninist.

After Dunham married Sotoro, they all moved to Indonesia, where little Barack Obama, A.K.A. Berry Sotoro, attended school. Now according to Indonesian Law (at least at that time) ONLY Indonesian citizens were allowed to attend school. Well, lo and behold, Obama’s school records from Indonesia show that he HELD Indonesian citizenship and that he was a Muslim after being adopted by step-daddy Sotoro.

FACT #13:

When Obama returned to the U.S. from Indonesia, around the age of ten or eleven, he could have reclaimed his American citizenship (if he ever had it to begin with) at the age of eighteen by taking the oath of allegiance before any federal court judge or member of the United States State Department. There is NO record of his having done so.

FACT #14:

Despite Barack’s claim of being a “life-long devout Christian”, all evidence shows that his only connection to anything even remotely Christian, came about in 1989 when he joined the church of Jeremiah Wright in Chicago. This was a rather radical “Christian” church headed by a pastor who preached hate against the U.S.

Obama attended this church for twenty years until he started to campaign for the office of President, then like everyone else in his life, who could not be of any more use to him, he kicked Jeremiah Wright under the bus. He then claimed that he was seeking another church in Washington, DC, but the truth is, that since the day he was inaugurated, neither he nor any member of his family has graced the inside of any Christian Church.

FACT #15:

Barack Obama, since his inauguration, has shown a full hearted support for abortion, including late-term (partial-birth) abortions, fetal stem-cell research, and he openly supports gay and lesbian rights groups.

He declared June as Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Awareness Month, and he refused to honor the National Day of Prayer. He did allow for the annual Easter Egg Hunt on the White House Lawn, but it was primarily for Gay and Lesbian “families”.

And when he gave a speech at the Catholic George Town University in Washington, DC, he ordered all the Christian religious symbols, behind his podium, to be covered up.

CLOSING:

I have laid out all of the facts for you, now it is up to each of you to decide the following:

A.) Does any of the above show that Barack Hussein Obama (A.K.A., Barry Sotoro) possesses any Judeo/Christian ethics?

B.) Is Barack Hussein Obama (A.K.A., Barry Sotoro) a Christian, a Muslim or an atheist?

C.) Of what country is Barack Hussein Obama (A.K.A., Barry Sotoro) a citizen, and even if he now holds U.S. citizenship, is he constitutionally qualified to hold the office of president, by being a natural born citizen of the U.S.?

D.) Does the evidence show that Barack Obama has the best interests of the United States at heart, or is he looking out for the best interests of Islamic nations?

Please give your unbiased opinion to each of the above and feel free to give any of your personal thoughts.

This Court is now recessed until you have delivered your verdicts.

The Honorable Judge Munchkin

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