Targeting the wrong illegal immigrants

Those who know me may be surprised, and you can call me whatever you want: a racist, a bigot, or even a right wing wacko. However, someone of my ilk has to step forward and say that immigration has gotten out of hand. I know they are our “next-door neighbors,” but that doesn’t mean they can crash into “our house” whenever they want. These people have a different culture, and I don’t think we should weaken our culture by having so many of them around. That’s why I feel we definitely have to address the situation of Canadian immigrants.

I’m not talking about profiling. I’m not suggesting that border guards be guided by skin color. People should not automatically be considered to be Canadians just because they look like they’ve never been in the sun. A law enforcement official should not just walk up to somebody and ask, “Are you from Canada?” They have to be more sensitive. For example, the official can walk up to a man and say, “May I help you, sir?” If the guy answers, “I’m just going to be hanging oot here for aboot five more minutes, eh?” the cop is within his rights to ask for the Canadian’s papers.

There is probably nothing as controversial as the problem of children who were born in this country to immigrant parents. It’s a tough question. Take the actor, Brendan Fraser. His story is typical. He was born in this country, but both of his parents are Canadian. In other words, they obviously came into this country so their unborn child could be an American citizen and then could star in some really goofy movies.

This year might be remembered as the “Year of Health Care.” The Canadians can mess things up there, too. If you travel around Canada, you won’t hear people complaining about their health care like we do here. Canadians are happy with their system. Disgusting. If more and more Canadians move to this country and start talking to their new U.S. neighbors about how health care works in Canada, more Americans are going to want the same kind of health care set up here. Think of what that’s going to do to our poor drug and insurance companies.

Don’t even get me started on Canadian football, which will probably be invading us soon. It’s just what you want your kids to be exposed to: a 110-yard field and three, not four, downs per series. You might as well just show them pornography.

Here’s why we should be upset in a nutshell: A Canadian invented instant mashed potatoes. Why would anyone want dehydrated potato flakes instead of good-old American mashed potatoes?

There are few things more insidious than the way Canadians have infiltrated our culture though the toothless sport of hockey. You don’t have to drive very far from Santa Monica to see an NHL game, and you can probably hear screaming kids playing on some rink no matter where you live. When I was a boy, there were only four National Hockey League teams in the United States. Today, there are 24 U.S. cities that host NHL teams. That’s a 600 percent increase of this Canadian sport, gaining a foothold in American life all over our country. At that rate, the next generation of Americans will be hosting 144 hockey teams and the one after that, 864, and the one after that? 5,184. And after that, there will be 31,104 hockey teams in America — 31,104.

It’s a slippery slope. You let a few teams into the country, then they tell other teams back in Canada how great things are here, and before you know it, there are 31,000 of them in our country. Where are we going to put all of them? Who’s going to pay the medical bills when some goon smacks another player on the head? At the very least, are we going to insist that they speak American English?

There are fathers and grandfathers of today’s U.S. children who never thought they’d say the words, “Even Phoenix has a hockey team.” Phoenix! They’re playing a sport on ice in Phoenix, a city who was used to only seeing ice when it was in a cocktail. That’s right. A cold weather, winter Canadian sport is being played in the middle of the desert. No wonder all those people in Arizona are upset about immigrants.

Lloyd Garver has written for many television shows, ranging from “Sesame Street” to “Family Ties” to “Home Improvement” to “Frasier.” He has also read many books, some of them in hardcover. He can be reached at lloydgarver@gmail.com. Check out his website at lloydgarver.com and his podcasts on iTunes.