Uighurs, Gypsies and Mexicans -- what's the difference?

Agent 78 takes me task for having written disapprovingly of the Chinese treatment of Uighur refugees (see previous articles) who she says are, after all, Chinese citizens and "splittists" who want to separate their homeland from the glorious Chinese People's s Republic. (The "treatment" involves the sudden injection of rather large pieces of lead.)

She makes the point that Canada has just announced that it is going to step up the deportation of refugees -- notably gypsies and Mexicans -- to the place from which they came. I've written about this recently too. So what's the difference, she asks?

In the first place, those Canada is deporting are not true refugees, according to the Geneva convention, at all. They are not seeking political asylum, for politics has nothing to do with the reasons why they left Mexico or the Czech republic or wherever. 99% of them are economic migrants, seeking to get their noses in the huge trough that is the Canadian welfare system. That's all.

Secondly, the refugees being deported from Canada are not Canadians. They are being sent back to their countries of origin. As my earlier post today explains, the Uighurs are being returned to the country (China) in which they were born. They are Chinese citizens, even though they may not like being so. China has already executed dozens of what it says are its own citizens, and will likely deal with these returnees in the same way.

Which brings us to the final point. The few "refugees" who Canada succeeds in deporting to Mexico or Jamaica or Nigeria or wherever do not face being deprived of not only their liberty but their lives. So far as we know, not one deportee from Canada has been executed by their country of origin.

Please dear readers keep these things in mind as you ready about the US and Canadian governments cozying up to China...in the interests of better relations and improving the balance-of-trade figures of course. I'd ask you to boycott Chinese-made goods but you'd die, starving and naked. Beats dying at the wrong end of a rifle though.