A ruined surprise: New visa regulations cancel a 50th birthday celebration
- July 15, 2009 12:00 PM |
- By Your Voice
Submitted by Debbie Armstrong
About: My friends and I travel to Mexico twice a year to see our very good friends, and extended Mexican families. We planned a big surprise 50th birthday party for one of our friends this year. We also paid for our friend and his wife to celebrate this birthday in Canada, this is their dream vacation.
My take: I am writing today as I am so upset with the new regulations the Canadian Government has enforced, effective immediately.
Tickets were already purchased via WestJet and all plans were in place, then this. I can't tell you how many tears have been shed, and that is only our story. I can't imagine how many other people this has affected.
I am praying that the government will retract their decision and put other plans in place to allow the tourists, and other migrant workers to come in to Canada, as they make this country what it is — a wonderful place to visit.
Does the government not want tourists? I hear that over 83,000 people from Mexico visited B.C. alone last year.
We have already lost the cruise industry in Vancouver, what's next?
Thank you for listening and I hope that this and the voices of many others will overturn the decision.
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Comments (2)
There is a group of individuals who decry the new visa requirements (me definitely among them) and some who consider them appropriate. It is to the last group I want to send these thoughts.
Yes the US has visa requirements for Mexican citizens for a very long time, but they have a tremendous problem with illegal immigration. Visa requirements will not solve illegal immigration, but rather encourage it now that economical refugees, the group of individuals our country should be concerned, apparently will be identified in Mexico and have their visa denied.
If they wanted to come to Canada for economic reasons they will still come. From now on they will come only as undocumented, illegal immigrants, rather than as documented refugee claimants. If they are registered refugee claimants, they have the right to work and guess what if they work they pay taxes as any person in Canada if permanent resident or citizen. Well illegal will not pay taxes. Hence, visa requirements do not address at all the point of illegal residence.
Why does anybody think the visa requirements will reduce the number of refugee claimants to Canada? What tools does the Embassy in Mexico has to identify the individuals (BTW I know the Canadian Embassy in Mexico, and it is completely inappropriate to handle the number of required visa applicants).
They will definitely reject about 30% of the visa applications and thereby achieve a 30% reduction in refugee claimants and our glorious government will book this as a success.
Last point, why was the government so quickly to state that migrant workers from Mexico, and there are a lot, are immediately excluded from this requirement? I guess the supporters for our government need the inexpensive labour and probably nobody checks if they receive paid minimum wage.
The person describing Mexican as loud tourists should go to Spain and have a look at the British and German tourist there. You have no idea what loud and obnoxious is.
I for my part hope that the EU retaliates against Canada for the Visa restrictions against the Czech and that all Latin American Countries show their solidarity with Mexico and require Visas for Canadians.
Maybe then it dawns on the supporters of these requirements and our glorious Government that Harper and his cronies isolate Canada to the same extend in the world as Regan and the Bushes did to the US.
I fully support the Government's decision. The fact is that a significant number of Mexican citizens took advantage of free access to Canada and abused our immigration system.
If we need to choose between the state interests and some perceived benefits of Mexicans travelling to Canada, I have no doubts in my mind the state interests prevail.
We should do what is right for us and while I sympathize with those who were inconvenienced by this decision, it was absolutely the right thing to do. We need to stop converting Canada into a waste yard of the world.