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Comment by bobzibub | Hacker News Reader

I think that their desire for safety is not valid either. If an immigrant population believes they are unwanted by the majority, they'll tend to have "no skin in the game" for the society which they live and be much more open to political violence, crime etc. I believe if you compare (in this case) Muslim immigrants to England vs Muslim immigrants to Canada you'll see a difference in acceptance by the majority. Obviously Canada does not have universal acceptance of Muslim immigrants or any immigrants, but Canada does try to integrate immigrants more. I believe this is reflected in the number of terrorist attacks in those countries. If the Muslim immigrant minority (or any other) becomes more alienated, expect poor outcomes. Just like some poor Americans feel alienated by their country and some have fewer qualms about violent political acts.

I'm a Canuck and so I may be biased. But if my understanding is incorrect, I'd be interested in hearing.

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"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American ... There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag ... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language ... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."

-Theodore Roosevelt 1907

That's why I favor outlawing things like St Patrick's day parades - do these people want to be Irish or American?

I think it's disingenuous to say there's no difference between celebrating your cultural origins and refusing to adopt American ideologies.

I'm of Finnish descent. I have a Sisu bumper sticker and eat pulla. Do I refrain from making small talk with strangers at a bus stop? Of course not! Americans tend to be more open to strangers than Finns.

The Amish though, they should definitely be sent back to Germany where they belong.

The problem is that it's so easy for bigots to conflate one with the other - if you see some lady in a headscarf she might just be carrying on the sartorial tradition she grew up with, but a bigoted person might say she's a harbinger of Islamic radicalism.

And there's no question that such radical Islamists exist, are generally strongly against the western-liberal-pluralist tradition, and that some of them are willing to commit heinous acts of violence. It would be a logical mistake to conclude that every Islamic person must necessarily be an extremist, but sadly it's not hard to think of politicians and pundits willing to mine that particular fallacy for all the political capital they can extract from it, and sadly there's a large portion of the population that is too dumb to spot the difference and who can easily be talked into scapegoating anyone who looks or acts differently, regardless of whether they actually pose any danger.

Thank you for this excellent reply. I understand the argument and agree with you. I guess we really can't have nice things.

BTW for confused readers I'm actually Irish and have nothing against parades - this was a satirical argument.

Pretty sure that at the St. Patrick's parade, they just want to get drunk on green beer.

On one hand, Teddy wasn't a very nice man. On the other, the US had a German and Irish problem then.

Canada does not have anywhere near the same amount of skin in global geopolitics as the US, consequently it has not pissed off large number of people in other countries making it less of a target for bad things. I do appreciate the immigration system in Canada and such, I'm only pointing out why the comparison b/w US and Canada is not correct in this particular matter.

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