An article in The Canadian Press by Gregory Bonnell announces that one in five Canadians are immigrants, that most immigrants are Asians, and that Canada is "grappling" with racism:
One-in-five people in Canada is foreign-born according to census numbers... an immigration surge unprecedented in a quarter-of-a-century and one that comes as the country grapples with acts of overt racism that fly in the face of Canada's reputation for tolerance.[One in five people foreign-born stats reveal as Canada struggles with overt racism, December 4, 2007]
According to the latest Canadian census reports,
... 19.8 per cent of the population in 2006 was foreign born, the highest proportion since 1931 and up 13.6 per cent from five years earlier. By contrast, the entire Canadian population grew only 3.3 per cent in the same period.
Also, immigrants are highly concentrated:
Almost two-thirds of the nation's foreign-born population resided in Canada's three biggest cities: Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal.
In contrast to traditional immigration, which was from the British Isles and Europe,
The highest percentage of newcomers to Canada were from China (14 per cent), followed by India (11.6), the Philippines (7) and Pakistan (5.2). For the first time, the proportion of foreign-born immigrants from Asian and Middle Eastern countries (41 per cent) outstripped those of European heritage (37).
The article reports that
Among Western nations, only Australia had a higher percentage of foreign-born residents (22.2 per cent) than Canada in 2006. The United States had 12.5 per cent foreign-born.
Yet ugly things have happened in Canada lately, such as attacks on Asian fishermen in Ontario, Quebeckers making Muslims feel unwelcome, and violence between "Indo-Canadian" gangs.
So the article includes various quotations from the Canadian chattering class: from the government, academic world and ethnic activism, who are concerned about the problem.
Nobody in the article, however, actually asks the question "Does Canada really need all these immigrants?"
