LL-L "In the news" 2002.10.02 (12) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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 L O W L A N D S - L * 02.OCT.2002 (12) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: In the news

Lowlanders,

Canada, Steinbach, Mennonites and their "archaic German dialect" -- as well
as multicultural and multilingual situations -- all mentioned (though
somewhat buried in economic reports) without real reference to the United
States in a U.S. newspaper article? Yes, the weirdest things do happen!
Please read below!

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

===

Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Wednesday, October 2, 2002

As provincial tax base shrinks, 'the very future of our country' at stake

Canada has open arms for rural immigrants

CANADA: Many rural newcomers speak no English

BY CLIFFORD KRAUSS
The New York Times

STEINBACH, Manitoba -

   Udia Tschritter comes to the door barefoot to meet her nine children as
they return home from school. Her hair is tied in a kerchief and she wears a
homemade flower-print dress that reaches her ankles just as she did in her
native Mennonite village in Kazakhstan.
   The front yard of her six-bedroom house has a trampoline for the children
next to a sumptuous fruit and vegetable garden. Her husband, David, a
carpenter who makes patio doors in a local window factory, will be home any
minute to care for the family's barn full of animals.
   "Canada is wonderful!" exclaimed Tschritter, 39, in her archaic German
dialect. "We can buy everything we need, worship as we wish, and it's nice
and peaceful."
   This is the snapshot the Canadian government hopes to duplicate thousands
of times over as it embarks on a new immigration policy designed to attract
young, preferably large foreign families to rural Canada. The goal is to
send 1 million immigrants into the hinterlands over the next decade by
matching workers with remote businesses and farms that are starved for
skilled labor, and to spread Canada's multiethnic rainbow across the
country's vast prairies, tundras and forests.
   Officials hope to remold an immigration policy that has turned Toronto,
Vancouver and Montreal into three of the most ethnically diverse cities in
the world, and to distribute the labor riches of places such as China, India
and Ethiopia more equally.
   With Canada's population of 30 million aging and its birth rate
plummeting - Canadian women currently have 1.49 children on average - the
government says that it, like some European countries, must rely on
increasing immigration to ward off a population decline. But with the
populations of Newfoundland falling by 7 percent between the 1996 and 2001
censuses, Yukon by 6.8 percent, Northwest Territories by 5.8 percent, New
Brunswick by 1.2 percent and Saskatchewan by 1.1 percent, populations in
some rural areas are already in calamitous decline.
   "We need to create more magnets for immigration everywhere," said
Minister for Citizenship and Immigration Denis Codere, in an interview.
"It's a matter of population growth, labor supply, quality of life, the very
future of our country."
   Not only is the centuries-old dream of populating Canada's vast-ness at
stake. The solvency of national health care, and educational and housing
programs that are financed by provincial tax bases, which are shrinking, may
also hang in the balance.
   Enormous stretches in the prairies are suffering a slow death from cuts
in farm subsidies, shrinking agricultural profit margins and drought. The
decline of the farm economy has throttled businesses and compelled young
people to take their skills and ambitions to large cities or to the United
States.
   Along the frigid Atlantic coast, a depletion offish stocks has converted
entire fishing communities into ghost towns.
   Looking to immigration to meet its needs is not new for Canada. Pew
industrialized countries have so consistently used immigration as a tool for
nation-building. Canada populated its vast west in the 19th century by
handing out land to European immigrants, much as its southern neighbor did.
   Today Canada's per capita immigration rate is twice that of the United
States, and about 17 percent of the population is foreign-born.
   Canadian authorities, noting negative demographic trends 25 years ago,
opened Canada's doors to people from the Caribbean, Asia and Africa. But the
new arrivals duster in a few cities - 53 percent of the 250,000 who arrive
every year settle in Toronto, 15 percent in Vancouver and 13 percent in
Montreal.
   Now, though, the earnings for new immigrants are declining in saturated
labor markets, strains have been put on services, and urban neighborhoods
and schools are growing increasingly segregated into a racial and ethnic
checkerboard.
   The imbalance also threatens to produce a balkanized Canada, with three
metropolitan areas becoming increasingly distinct from the rest of the
country.
   "We just don't know how a Toronto of the future, which is 60 percent
non-white with 110 different ethnic groups and languages, is going to relate
to the rest of Canada," said Larry Bourne, a geography professor at the
University of Toronto.
   Codere has embraced the efforts and will unveil a new federal policy in
mid-October that would grant thousands of immigrants three- to five-year
work permits under the proviso that they live in rural communities.
   If they comply, they will be automatically granted permanent resident
status, with the right to apply for citizenship after another three years.
By then, officials hope they will have planted roots in the small towns and
will stay
   Codere also will propose ways to quicken retraining and licensing for
foreign engineers, teachers and medical professionals seeking work in rural
communities.
   Skeptics say immigrants will continue to gravitate to cities and some
question the constitutionality of limiting people's freedom to move around.
Furthermore, they say, not every province is able to build on ethnic
populations already present.
   But at Loewen Windows here in Steinbach, founded a century ago by the son
of Russian Mennonites, the owners turned to Mennonites as they sought 150
new workers. Originally from Germany, the Mennonites have a 200-year history
in Russia and Kazakhstan. During the Soviet period, they were encouraged to
go to Kazakhstan for much the same reason that Canada is seeking them as
set-tiers today. Many of the newcomers here speak no English, although many
of the older Mennonite supervisors speak at least some German learned from
their grandparents.
   The housing boom in the United States had propelled the company's sales,
and Loewen needed more skilled workers.
   "I could have put a plant in Georgia, Mexico, Malaysia or China," said
Charles Loewen, the chief executive officer, "but we prefer to grow here and
immigration helped us hugely."
   In nearby Winnipeg, the 15,000-member Jewish population has helped
attract Jews from economically depressed Argentina by sending delegations,
helping with job interviews and English lessons and making sure prospective
immigrants have a Friday night Sabbath dinner during exploratory visits.
   The 35 Argentine families who have arrived over the last year have given
the Jewish community here renewed confidence it can survive, and hundreds
more have expressed interest in coming.
   Martin Wayngenten, 30, an accountant, remembered when his rabbi in the
city of Parana took him aside and asked him toconsider moving to Winnipeg.
The rabbi suggested that he and his wife, Agustina, 29, a bio-medical
engineer, would be welcomed with open arms.
   "We took out a map and looked up Winnipeg," Agustina Wayngenten recalled.
Her husband chimed in, "When you don't have a job, you don't worry about the
weather."
   They have found jobs, are saving for a house and are expecting their
first baby. "I am going to speak to my child in Spanish," Agustina said,
smiling, "but he'll be a Canadian."

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