Both British and Canadian immigration policies need a total overhaul. Let me give you an example. I have a friend who just recently took her citizenship test. When she came to Canada, she could speak enough to get by, but not enough to get ahead. So she took the time and took some courses to upgrade her English, in which she has made a marked improvement. When it came time for her to take the citizenship test, she was told she could take it in Spanish if she wanted to and apart from her and one or two other people, almost nobody else in the room taking the test could speak a word of English or French.
Now, the last time I checked, Canada has two official languages: English and French. So, in order to become a citizen of this country, one should be able to show at the very least a passable working knowledge of either of those languages, at least enough to write a pretty simple test. But we as a country do not hold these people accountable to learn such things, nor do we hold the government accountable for not giving people the tools and training to teach them. If the government made this a requirement for immigrants and funded such programs to properly naturalize them, a lot of the racial tension that exists here wouldn't. I bet the same would be true in Britain if they adopted such a policy.
In Quebec, they are much more strict about such things and there the ghettoisation that exists here is far less prevalent than in places like Montreal because everybody is pretty much forced to learn French. Different cultures co-mingle and get to experience each others differences and at the very least learn to except them (at least was my experience there). I find it appalling that businesses in Vancouver or Richmond or Surrey have only Chinese or Punjabi writing to identify them. To me, that is breaking the law. This is why muliculturalism doesn't work. It doesn't bring people together, it segregates them because it doesn't force people to naturalize. I'm not saying this excuses racism, but it certainly explains some of the frustrations people feel.
I have friends from all parts of the world and they all love that Canada is their home and want to be Canadians. Not INDO Canadians, not CHINESE Canadians, just Canadians. When people move to another country, they should be doing it because they like their customs, their culture, their lifestyle, their laws and want to live and abide by them. They should know that going there means they will have part of their culture usurped for the one in that country. That's not right or wrong, it's just the way it is. If I moved to China, I have to become Chinese and I can tell you for damn sure I couldn't write any citizenship test in English. We need people in Canada who want to be Canadian in the fullest sense of the word and I don't think it's fair for those who don't to get a free pass.
