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Posted Mar 11, 2017, 1:11 AM
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Registered User
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Join Date: Jun 2006
Posts: 3,911
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 1overcosc
Canada is removing visa restrictions for Bulgaria & Romania later this year, after the EU threatened to do the same to us. Australia and Japan were also given similar ultimatums and they complied.
Similarly, a few years back, we removed visa restrictions for Czechia after their government threatened to block CETA talks over the issue. Slapping the visa requirement on Czechs was probably one of the dumbest foreign policy moves Harper ever made.. seriously, pissing off a NATO ally that has the ability to veto a strategically important trade deal? Glad we gave Harper the boot.
You are right though in that the EU only recently started actually caring beyond token complaints.
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Ok you are correct. May 1st Bulgaria and Romania will have it somehow easier and December 1st will be visa free.
As for Czechia, the problem was not Harper it was the Liberals. Literally. The Liberals were the problem. In 1997 they officially said Czechs were treating the Roma/Gypsies poorly, this allowed Czech gypsies to claim refugees status in Canada. What followed was a Czech documentary that aired in Czechia about how great life in Canada is and how they are taking gypsies as Refugees and giving them so much more state money etc. This was followed by a wave of literally thousands of Czech gypsies flying to Canada and claiming asylum, successful because of the short sighted Liberals and their idiotic statements.
It took just a few month for Canada to slap visa restrictions on Czechia because they could not stop the flow of very "difficult" people that they could not get rid of once they landed. This restriction was lifted under the Conservatives, and the gypsies begun to come again, so the visa ban was re instated again. It was only after the Conservatives passed some immigration/refugee changes that no longer allowed gypsies to successfully claim asylum here that they lifted the restrictions for good.
So let me repeat it was the Liberals and their your all welcome attitude that led to visa restrictions being imposed on Czechia and it was the Conservatives that finally managed to lift them. And it was all to do with gypsies, who to be honest have serious issues within their communities.
Found the beginning, article in 1997:
Quote:
About 550 Gypsies have arrived in Canada this year, claiming status as refugees from racial persecution in the Czech Republic. The numbers are still small, particularly for Canada, a country that accepts approximately 30,000 refugees among 200,000 annual immigrants.
But the number of Gypsies has still been enough to fill Toronto homeless shelters and force local social service agencies to house them in suburban hotels. It also has forced Canadian immigration officials to puzzle through a gathering refugee wave apparently started by word of mouth but stoked by a Czech television documentary, aired Aug. 7, that portrayed Canada as a promised land of spacious housing, plentiful welfare, jobs for the asking and trips to Niagara Falls.
"All you Gypsies, if you have money, jump on a plane and come over," said a woman identified on the Nova TV show as Margit Bangova, surrounded by children and speaking Czech. "There you will be hungry and pushed aside. And you'll always be judged. . . . Here, you will live like kings, like the Canadians."
Nova reporter Josef Klima, in an interview in Prague, acknowledged that the documentary erred on the positive side in portraying Canada and excluded comments from some Gypsies who said their main reason for emigrating was Canada's reputation for rich social programs – not the type of persecution in the Czech Republic that would qualify them as refugees.
Gypsies have been arriving steadily in Canada at least since last year, after the country lifted its visa requirement for Czech travelers. The Nova TV images may quicken the pace. In an interview in Toronto last week, Slovak-born lawyer George Kubes, who was featured on the documentary and is representing several hundred of the new arrivals, said he thinks the migration has just begun.
"The flood has not even started yet," Kubes said. "Whole towns are eyeing this situation."
Concerned that he may be right, Canada took the unusual step of sending a delegate from its embassy in Prague to conduct television interviews and speak with Gypsy groups. The envoy was not, as Canadian diplomats often do, spreading the gospel that Canada heads the 1997 U.N. list of national economic and social development. The mission, rather, was to remind potential immigrants that it's hard to find a job if you don't speak English or French, that housing is expensive and hard to acquire and that no one will greet you at the airport with a welfare check.
"Nobody is waiting for them with open arms. Nobody is giving them money. There are no jobs waiting for them. That's the message we're trying to get across," said Terrance Mooney, Canada's acting charge d'affaires in Prague. "What we've been attempting to do here is bring some truth to the matter."
It is a truth, however, that varies with perspective. A nomadic people who originated in India and are currently scattered in pockets throughout Europe, the Gypsies have long been at the bottom of the continent's social and economic scale. Persecuted and killed by the Nazis in World War II, they still suffer widespread discrimination. Employment, even restaurant service, is denied them in some areas, and they are frequently the target of beatings and violence that some courts are reluctant to punish.
In the Nova TV documentary, the tension between Czech and Gypsy residents is clear. In Ostrava, an eastern Czech town where many Gypsies now live, Mayor Liana Janackova said she wants to help them buy plane tickets so they would leave. "If more Romany leave, we could pull down their housing" in a decrepit area of town, she said.
Human rights organizations have repeatedly criticized the Czech Republic for not doing more to eliminate discrimination against Gypsies, which they say has grown since the fall of Communist rule and the end of laws designed to force their assimilation into the Czech majority.
From that perspective, Canada looks pretty good, welfare payments or not. Canada allows anyone to apply to become a refugee; following a U.N. convention, it accepts those who are persecuted because of their race, religion or political views. Kubes said Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board has ruled on 22 Gypsies' cases this year and that all have qualified.
On the other hand, the Czech Republic has taken steps, and is pledging more, to protect a prominent minority in a country whose population is largely homogenous. A citizenship law widely viewed as discriminatory against Slovak-born Gypsies has been relaxed. And as the country positions itself for NATO membership in 1999, the government is preparing to announce a new policy to aid its approximately 300,000 Gypsies.
A draft of the new policy points candidly to some of the same abuses noted by such groups as Human Rights Watch, and it appeals to Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus to address the problem so the country can continue its economic progress and integration into the European and world economies.
Whether the predicted flood of Romany refugees to Canada materializes, Gypsies on both sides of the Atlantic say they have been educated about the ways of both countries. They now know Canada is not perfect – and not just because of skinheads.
As the summer's arrivals trickled in, Canadian police and diplomatic officials talked publicly about the threat of increased crime the Gypsies might bring, and immigration officials are investigating whether clerks at Toronto's Pearson International Airport so discouraged some Gypsy families that they waited at the airport for the next flight home.
But Czech Gypsies also learned that the lure of Canada can be a handy political tool in their homeland. On a mud path outside Ostrava, a group of Gypsies gathered to discuss their problems, shouting and cursing about their treatment in Europe.
"Why don't we like it here? They won't serve us coffee in restaurants. We're afraid to go out at night. . . . But do you know what's interesting?" said Helena Sivakova. "We've been having these problems for 40 years and nobody's cared. Only when we want to go to Canada, all of a sudden people pay attention."
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http://www.druzin.com/macleans.html
Last edited by cornholio; Mar 11, 2017 at 1:24 AM.
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