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Comment by Waterluvian | Hacker News Reader

I think it may help that Canada is so young. Nobody can pretend to have a claim to this land above anyone else (except for the aboriginals, who we continue to fail.) I'm as Canadian by way of British colonization as it comes and I grew up hearing stories about how my ancestors immigrated here due to tough times at home through the 1800s. We are all immigrants.

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I have to be more than a little bit skeptical with that premise.

There are 600+ million hispanics in North and South America, Canada has managed to allow a whopping ~400,000 of them in, representing a minuscule 1.2% of the country. The US is over 20% hispanic and about 16% black; Canada is 2.9% black. It sure looks like someone has a claim to the land.

Canada's merit based immigration system was designed to intentionally keep poor immigrants out (ie the majority of the population of Latin America).

Not disagreeing with your overall claim but it's worth pointing out that not all Hispanics in the US are descendants of immigrants (into the US).

New Mexico for instance still has families with large tracts of land granted by the Spanish Crown before the US even existed.

That's definitely understood. It's a small percentage of the number however. The US was about 81% white in 1980 and 6.4% hispanic. It's now ~63% white, with the hispanic percentage having more than tripled (~14 million to ~70 million in raw numbers (not implying all is first gen immigration obviously); an increase equal to 160% the entire population of Canada). The extreme bulk of that demographic shift is derived from relatively recent immigration (last 40 years), overwhelmingly from Latin America (the remainder mostly from Asia), and overwhelmingly relatively poor immigrants that would be mostly barred from Canada under their merit system (which is why they have so few hispanics, why they didn't participate in the hispanic population boom the US has seen, and also why that's not going to change any time soon). I'm pro immigration, and it's kind of obnoxious to watch Canadians try to stand on a soapbox while ignoring the facts.

Canada does allow a limited number of refugees to enter, but for the most part our immigration system isn't altruistic. We don't allow people to enter and stay on the basis of their need to live here, but on our need for their skills. We have to have an expectation that immigrants will earn a reasonable income, or they will become a burden on our already strained social services. If they are unskilled (i.e. poor) or their skills are not in demand in Canada, then we can't afford to allow them to stay here in poverty.

The parent was talking about how recently the Canadian (vs pre-Canadian, for lack of a better distinction terminology) population has moved there, which isn't long enough to "feel" like ancestral connections claiming the land as theirs by family roots and birthright. A side effect is that settlements, cities, and expansion are quite new, globally-speaking, so there's not a lot of related deep physical history there either.

All of those are orthogonal to the demographics.

Where demographics come into play is that, in my experience, the issues of First Nations people are more a part of common Canadian politics than Native American issues are in the USA. That focus likely also plays against a sense of other Canadians feeling too rooted there.

Former Canadian PM Harper gave an interesting talk earlier this year[1] where he touched on this. In short, Canada is incredibly lucky to be geographically protected from immigration. Its only land neighbour has a comparable quality of life, similar culture, and is vast enough to act as a natural buffer. This means that Canada can implement its immigration policies quite well because the gap between policy and reality is quite low.

Contrast this to places like continental Europe and the US where geography has not provided natural barriers and the gap between immigration policy and reality can be considerable. This gap leads to a high degree of immigration cynicism from the local populace because they perceive the government to be unable to control it. He considers this unaddressed cynicism to be a contributing factor to the wave of nationalism that's going around.

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[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvOqeaVWYe4

20.6% of Canada's population (circa 2011) is foreign born (compared to 12.9% in the US.)[0]

"In Toronto, three-quarters (75.8%) of its population consisted of people who were foreign-born or had at least one parent born outside Canada." [1]

Canada has a LOT of immigrants.

It's true that Canada doesn't have a lot of black or Hispanic people, but a quick look at a few sources suggests they have at least as many visible minorities as the US. (Both countries are close to 20% visible minorities, but I'm having trouble finding comparable numbers.) Most of Canada's visible minorities come from Asia.

[0] http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/as-sa/99-010-x/99-01... [1] http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/as-sa/99-010-x/99-01...

> Most of Canada's visible minorities come from Asia.

Grandparent comment is talking about how most Canadian immigrants are filtered via k-selection.

On the other hand in America the Black and Hispanic minorities did not arrive here via a k-selection strategy, however Asian immigrants did, and it is reflected everywhere.

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