"Hello there! We're your new neighbours!"

The four most feared words in the English language: "We're your new neighbours!"

Here's a little factoid for you. The Obama maladministration has welcomed 13,210 Syrian "refugees" to the Paranoid States of America. That number is up 675% -- six hundred and seventy-five percent -- from the same ten-month period in 2015.

Of those admitted, 13,100 (99.1%) are Muslims: 12,966 Sunnis -- they're the ones fighting for ISIS and the Syrian rebels -- 24 Shia, and 110 "other Muslims". Only 77 (0.5%) are Christians. Another 24 (0.18 percent) are Yazidis.

Think about that when you vote on November 8th.

Canadians need not bother to think. The damage is already done. Walt doesn't have up-to-date figures or a percentage breakdown, but has heard Justin Trudeau and his Elmer Fuddly "Minister of Refugees" boast of admitting 35,000 "refugees" up to the end of February 2016. That's nearly three times as many as were admitted to the USA, coming into a country just over a tenth the size (population-wise).

As in the USA, nearly 100% of the "refugees" admitted to Canada are Muslims. They get preferential treatment too: living quarters in hotels and motels until Habitat for Humanity or someone gives them a free house; food allowances; transportation allowances; instant access to medical and dental care (including psychiatrists to treat their PTSDs); and other kinds of welfare not available to ordinary Canadians. All on the taxpayers' dime, of course.

Hey, Canucks! That's what you voted for. There's no point in whining in the lamestream meeja now. Looks good on ya!

Canucks! Tell your government what you think about immigration!

Canadian Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship -- seriously, that's his title, in that order -- John McCallum visited the ghetto that is Brampton, Ontario recently to announce that the very progressive government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Himselfie is ready to introduce changes to the current immigration system. Top of their multiculti agenda, he said, is speeding up the process of "family class immigration". In Brampton, that means the south Asians who have flooded in will be able to bring even more of their elderly and sick parents, grandparents, uncles and aunties.

How do you feel about that? The minister's visit is supposed to be part of a "consultation process" to help the Gliberals understand how Canadians really feel about immigration. In Brampton, of course, all the turbanned citizens sitting at the table with Mr McCallum think opening the doors wider is a great idea. But what do Walt's readers in Otter Haunch, Saskatchewan and TROC think? Dear Canuck readers, your government doesn't want you to be able to say you weren't asked, so they've set up a web survey, with a short questionnaire which allows you to give your opinion. Watch your language, eh!

Canada backtracks on backpedaling on refugees

Apparently there was much soiling of shorts in the offices of the Hon. John McCallum, Canadian Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship (in that order) when news leaked out of the Canuck government's quiet wind-down of its ill-conceived and ill-received plan to bring in more 1000s of Muslim "refugees". See "Canuck government backpedals on admitting Syrian refugees", WWW 26/3/16.

Not wanting to be seen to be caving to the likes of Marine Le Pen, or -- heaven forbid -- listening to Canadian public opinion, Mr. McCallum announced today that his department will now process all applications for Syrians received as of March 31st, with an eye towards welcoming another 10,000 to Canada by the end of this year or early 2017. "We can’t go on to infinity, but we are doing the best we can to meet the demand," he told Canadian Press, speaking from Germany where he is studying Angela Merkel's successful policies of Willkommenskultur.

Mr. McCallum said the government remains committed to refugees, but has to manage the system in a responsible way. He said the increased number of Syrians will see this year’s admissions jump even higher than the maximum 18,000 privately sponsored refugees Canada had intended to accept. However, the roughly 10,000 applications for Syrians that will now be processed will not count against the global cap on applications, which means that Canada won't accept any fewer "refugees" from places like Afghanistan, Sudan, Libya, Morocco, etc etc ad nauseam.

Mr. McCallum also said his department will do its best to ensure processing the Syrian cases won’t mean further delays for refugees from "elsewhere". Only European Christians will be required to wait at the back of the line.

Canuck government backpedals on admitting Syrian refugees

During last fall's federal election campaign, Canada's Liberal Party -- pandering to Muslims, immigrants and Volvo liberals all in one go -- promised to bring 25,000 refugees from war-torn Syria to Canada by the end of the year. Canuck voters, moved by a picture of a little boy drowned on a beach, poured their compassion straight into the ballot box, making Justin Trudeau their new Prime Minister and John McCallum the new "Minister of Immigration and Refugees" (sic).

Hallowe'en and Christmas came and went. By New Year's Day the number of refugees admitted fell well short of the target. But don't worry, said the Hon. Mr. McCallum, we'll get 25,000 here by the end of February, even if we have to frogmarch them onto the planes. No matter that some contrarians called "Canada's welcome of 1000s of Muslim refugees 'reckless, politically correct thinking'", or that some of those living comfortably in hotels (on the taxpayers' dime) were already clamouring to go home.

As the Canadian winter wore on, it became clear that many Canadians (and wannabe Canadians pushed to the back of the queue by the Syrians) weren't happy with the favoured refugee status being accorded to 1000s of Muslims -- doubtless including at least a few Islamic extremists -- who cannot and will not be assimilated into Canadian society. A fierce anti-Muslim, anti-refugee backlash quickly became evident in the comments appended to pro-refugee propaganda planted by the Liberals every damned day in the lamestream media. See "'Real Canadians hate Syrians!' - Calgary graffiti reflect poll results", WWW 21/2/16.

But never mind. Now that the election's over, Messrs Trudeau and McCallum don't need to read the comments or pay attention to the polls. Indeed, Mr. McCallum (pictured before and after his Minoxidil treatments) was pleased to announce that the target had been met and 25,000 refugees -- oops, "New Canadians" -- had indeed been "welcomed" to the Great Not-so-white North, and were being fast-tracked to citizenship.

But wait, he said... there will be more! Why stop at 25,000?! Canada could easily take another 10,000 by the end of 10/6. Maybe even another 25,000! Wouldn't that be great?! That would win Canada a seat on the UN Security Council for sure!

And then came silence. Some idealistic Canucks are still read, even eager to take in more Muslims. Hundreds of Canadians who’ve come together to sponsor Syrian refugees are being told it could be next year before their new charges arrive, after a series of changes to the Liberals’ resettlement program. In Toronto, upwards of 600 private groups have spent months raising money, finding apartments and gathering supplies. But now some are being told it will be more than eight months before the families they are sponsoring arrive, while others hear that if they’ve not yet been matched with a family it’s unlikely they’ll see anyone before 2017.

Why so? Well, it seems the Gliberals have quietly put a cap on applications this year, and have cut back on staff handling the paperwork. Moreover, they're bring back -- very quietly, again -- the travel loan programme under which refugees have to repay the government for the airfare, rather than flying for free in RCAF planes. These changes essentially reverse much of what the previous Conservative government and then the Liberals did to respond to a surge in demand last fall for Canada to bring in more Syrians.

Questions were asked in the House of Commons this week, but M Trudeau wouldn’t directly address the cuts. "We continue to be engaged with the issue of Syrian refugees, making it a priority to continue to show that Canada is a strong and welcoming country," was his platitude for the week.

Meanwhile, John McCallum -- now referred to as the Immigration Minister (only) -- said he is "aware" that enthusiasm to support Syrians won’t last forever. Well, duh! But in spite of his statement that "We want to create the conditions where Canadians are able and as quickly as possible to sponsor those refugees," the flood of real or alleged refugees has been reduced to a trickle. Between February 27th and March 8th, 600 new government-assisted refugees and 433 privately sponsored arrived. In the 12 days after, only nine (9) government-assisted refugees and 16 privately sponsored arrived. Only one person who is part of a program that blends the two streams arrived in that time.

Walt advises Canadians to hold their applause until, say, November, when there may well be a surge in the number of refugee applications from, errr, the US of A!

Further reading: Are draft-dodgers or people who leave their country just because they don't like the government real refugees? See "The definition of a 'refugee' narrows", by Adnan Khan, in Maclean's.

UPDATE 31/3/16 - "Canada backtracks on backpedaling on refugees". I had to check twice to make sure I hadn't slept through a day and opened my eyes on April 1st.

UPDATED: The Economist on integrating Muslims into European society

This is a follow-up to "Speaking of integrating Muslims into European society...", posted here yesterday. The postman [letter carrier, surely! Ed.] just delivered this week's Economist (16/1/16), from which I've selected two interesting (and apparently contradictory) quotes.

A leader (= editorial, for North Americans) headed "Migrant men and European women", on p. 12 of the North American edition, has, as its subtitle: "To absorb newcomers peacefully, Europe must insist they respect values such as tolerance and sexual equality". Oh, hahahahahahahaha! See the last paragraph of yesterday's post.

From the same issue, "Cologne's aftershocks" (p. 57) concludes: "In retrospect it is clear that Mrs Merkel's hopeful New Year's address coincided with the appearance of immigration's dark side [Was that intentional? Ed.] on German streets, and that her warnings have not been heeded. Some refugees have not respected German rules and traditions. Germans are divided. Germany's neighbours, from Hungary and Poland to Switzerland and Denmark, have sneered at Mrs Merkel's 'welcome culture'. It now looks tenuous even at home."

Any further comment would be superfluous. However, thanks to Agent 3, we do have a

Footnote from Canada: Justin Trudeau, Canada's liberal Liberal new Prime Minister, won election in October on (among other things) a promise to bring 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada by 31 December 2015. The target date has since been pushed back to 31 December 2016. As of mid-January, about 10,000 have actually arrived, most being dumped into Toronto, Vancouver and Ottawa. Yesterday the mayors of Vancouver and Ottawa asked M Trudeau and his Minister of Refugees, John McCallum, to please hold the Mohammed salads -- thanks to Mark Steyn for that line -- for a while because, errr, there's no more room for them.

UPDATED 20/1/16: Vancouver and Ottawa have asked for a "pause" in bringing in more Syrian "refugees". And now it's Halifax and even Toronto (!!!) admitting they can't take any more... for now... you understand... Of course it has nothing to do with the backlash against queue-jumping asylum-seekers which has manifested itself in such things as a huddled mass of them being pepper-sprayed in Vancouver by some terrible racist who's against diversity.

Canadian government could fall over election dirty tricks

The lesson of Watergate was (supposedly) that in an election in a democractic (note small "d") country, the contesting parties are supposed to play fair. Rigged elections are for places like Russia, Egypt and Zimbabwe. But in the democractic west, dirty tricks are to be punished in the courts and at the polls. Anyway, that's the theory.

Canada -- a democractic and fair-minded country if ever there was one -- had a general election* last spring. On only the third try, "Call me Steve" Harper's Conservatives finally got the majority of seats in the House of Commons, something they'd been lusting for since Walt's little boy was a little boy.

Mind you, the result was pretty close, with the Tories winning 165 of the 308 Commons seats. 11 seats fewer, and they might be sitting on the Speaker's left. And of the Cons' 165 seats, at least 11 were won by narrow margins, often in tight three-way contests against the Liberals and NDP.

Suddenly all this matters, because the validity of the results in 34 ridings has now been called into question because of -- you guessed it -- dirty tricks.

The Mounties and Elections Canada, the government agency in charge of rigging elections ["running", surely! Ed.] are looking into reports that "robocalls" -- automated telephone calls -- falsely advised voters that the location of their polling stations had changed. In other instances, voters received harassing late-night or early-morning calls that purported to be from an opposition campaign office.

Another lesson learned from Watergate (and recent US elections) is that dirty tricks work only if you don't get caught. Unfortunately for whoever was making the robocalls, many people now have "caller ID" on their phones. And some had the wit to write down the number from which the robocalls originated.

It has now been revealed that the calls were made by a company based in Edmonton, Alberta -- Canada's version of Texas and, like Texas, a hotbed of conservatism. And sure enough, the company, RackNine Inc., frequently works on Tory campaigns. But who was their client, and who actually ordered the calls to be made?

So far no-one has stepped forward to say "I am the one." Just by coincidence, though, a Conservative staffer named Michael Sona resigned from his junior position in the office of a Conservative MP. Neither his reported departure nor whether there was a connection to the robocall controversy could be confirmed, owing to Sona's virtual disappearance. What is known is that during the election campaign, he was working for the Conservative candidate in Guelph -- one of the targetted ridings.

Kneedipper MP "Pusillanimous Pat", speaking in the Commons on Friday, said it would be unacceptable for the Conservatives to scapegoat a junior staffer for the matter. He called for a public enquiry to get to the bottom of the affair, because "the facts as we know them to date would indicate a well-orchestrated, widespread conspiracy from the top, not some rogue punk out in the boondocks."

Liberal MP John McCallum said he hopes the investigation by Elections Canada will be a deterrent against the proliferation of "US-style political tactics". "Even if it’s just one seat, it’s important," he said. "I’m not saying this would make a difference in terms of a Liberal majority government, but in a democracy those who practise dirty tricks to subvert democracy should be caught and punished."

And it was McCallum's fearless (but "interim") leader, Bob "Ray" Rae, who brought Watergate into it. "We are entering into a kind of Nixonian moment in our political culture, where all kinds of dirty tricks seem to be possible, all kinds of dirty tricks seem to be encouraged," said the white-haired boy.

Who, then, was the mastermind of the robocall disinformation campaign? Here's all you need to know. The Conservative Party of Canada is led by the aforementioned Stephen Harper -- the Prime Minister -- who under that bland exterior is the meanest, surliest, dirtiest Canadian politician of the last half-century.

Harpoon's mentor (and former Tory PM) Brian Mulroney was described as a street fighter. Harper, by comparison, is an alley fighter. And he is the ultimate control freak. Not one freakin' thing goes on in his party or his government that he doesn't know about and approve.

The Liberals are demanding an emergency debate on the issue in the House of Commons on Monday. Will it do any good? Will Elections Canada or a public enquiry succeed in pinning anything on Harper? Walt's prediction: no. Lifetime pct .985.

* From Ed.: Do you know when the Chinese have their best elections? Just before bleakfast.