musicmic...

"If I didn't hate cold weather, I'd probably love living there." (Scandinavia)

Yeah, me too! ;-D Although there's a lot of cold weather in Canada too...but I was born here, so that makes for a prior commitment to the place, despite the weather. If I'd been born in Denmark, Norway or Sweden, I'd probably still be living there too and quite happy to be there.

"How come the Canadians only have to deal with an ocean of immigrants?"

I think that is partially because our government has encouraged high immigration to this country for a long time. Why? Well, it provides a lot of people who are willing to work lousy jobs for low pay, and the business community really likes that. The Liberal Party has always liked it too, because the immigrants tend to vote Liberal. Furthermore, we have a lot of land here and not a very big population, so immigration kind of makes sense, doesn't it? (as long as it's kept within reasonable bounds).

So many immigrants have come to Toronto that it doesn't even really seem like a Canadian city any longer (in the sense of the Canada that existed in my youth). Neighborhoods that were all white middle class when I was in my teens are now mostly Asian or African or Middle Eastern or some other ethnic group, and the white population that used to live in them has pretty much fled the city and moved north to the smaller towns and cities beyond Metro Toronto.

"tell me why, Sweden and Norway aren't dealing with hordes of people trying to get in"

Because of their geographical location, I would think, and perhaps because of their immigration policies. Holland, however, is having a social crisis due to a huge amount of immigration from places like Turkey, and it's creating real problems there. Most of western Europe offers a desirable destination for people from Africa and Asia and the Middle East who want to move up to a better lifestyle....but don't you think that Scandinavia is a bit far away to have to be worried about an influx of boat people? ;-D You ever try to take a small boat across the North Sea?

The USA is one hell of a big place. It's not in the far North. It's famous all over the world due to Hollywood movies, wars, American music, political propaganda, etc, and it's right NEXT to Latin America....why wouldn't millions of poverty-stricken 3rd worlders dream of going there?

And they dream of going to Canada too. But we're a lot harder to reach from where they are. You know, this is the land of opportunity too, from their point of view, and so is most of western Europe. The USA is not unique in that respect. The USA is far from the only place where a person can have "a shot at success".

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Sawzaw...give me time. I do have another life to live besides this forum. ;-) I'll get back to you in a bit.