Immigrate if you want to assimilate

Re: “It’s not immigration, it’s a takeover,” Letter, Sept. 21, and “We have a duty to help refugees,” Letter, Sept. 23.

Maybe Karla Swanzey’s letter sounded paranoid, but Rich Paxton’s letter sounds naive. He says we’re a nation built on immigration: no, we built it on land away from previous owners, who seemed to have been forgotten.

That’s what can happen when a massive immigrant culture has no respect for the original culture. That’s why many Europeans are worried, instead of sympathetic. That’s why some Balkan countries with a history of oppression and conquest by “unjust wars” are blocking their borders.

If immigrants come to Canada because they want to be Canadian, if they want to assimilate eagerly like previous immigrants, then no problem. If they want to be in a country that will never become Islamic and that will never install sharia as the rule of law, fine.

If they disagree with that last sentence: then a problem. We just don’t know which sort of immigrant we’re now dealing with. And to say that a speech 40 years ago is outdated is very naive when cultures commonly base decisions on speeches, declarations and treaties from a hundred years ago, or even a thousand years ago. History counts.

David Worsick, Calgary