Even by “60 Minutes” standards, last weekend’s piece on Canada as a terrorist haven was outrageously stupid and biased. The premise was, Canada is a potential terrorist hotbed because of its lax immigration policies and its large immigrant (read: Moslem) population. And watch out – those terrorists could be using Canada as a staging ground for more attacks on the North Americans that matter!
In addition to being incredibly xenophobic, the piece was laughably hypocritical. As one Canadian official finally pointed out, all the 9/11 hijackers were living in the United States at the time, with up-to-date papers.
The graphic for the piece was a Canadian flag with smeared Arab faces peeking through it. I’m not making this up. I kept thinking that Stan, Kyle and Cartman were going to pop onstage and sing “Blame Canada!”
We live in strange times.
As an American living in Canada, I can say with some assurance that Canada doesn’t have lax immigration policies. It took me forever to get my papers — had to fill out a pile of paperwork and get a load of background checks, medical exams, etc. Despite being a healthy, law-abiding good neighbor from the South, I still had to jump through hoops. I imagine the process is even tougher for someone not from U.S. or the Commonwealth countries.
Those dead terrorists got their papers in the U.S. before I got mine in Canada.