Canada is STILL not the United States

Gosh... it has really been more than two months now that I last posted! But before you think that I am probably the laziest person in the world, here’s to my defence: It actually took me a long time to recover from the hockey-stick beat-up and the maple syrup massacre after my last post, and the mob threatened to make me listen to Avril Lavigne.

To avoid such a special treatment in the future, I thought it would be a nice gesture to encourage Canadians in their national identity of being “not American” by writing this post. Well, as you can see, it took some time to come up with something to support that outlandish theory. However, I eventually found a very good reason to say: Canada is still not the United States, but this can also be a GOOD thing!

Especially for somebody like me, who was born in Algeria and whose last name for some people sounds familiar to the one of America’s Most Wanted, Canada is a much better choice over the United States, because it is much easier to get in! Every time I travel to the US, I “coincidently” get “randomly selected” by the airline for a “special screening”, which of course has “nothing to do with my last name”. So just imagine what would happen if I wanted to study or live in the United States. Even if average Joe wants to get a visa for the US, he has to fill out two visa forms, send in his passport, make an appointment at the consulate, sit through an interview and get all his fingerprints taken. So I bet if I wanted one, I would at least have to go through an additional lie detector test, a rectal examination and fill out twice as many papers.

Not so in Canada! Letter of acceptance, passport copy, visa application form, envelope and stamp – there we go! Six weeks later, and your visa certificate arrives in your mailbox - courtesy of the Canadian embassy. No muss, no fuss. I think both the United States and Amazon Canada could learn a lot from these guys! Easy ordering, fast delivery, no “random selections” at the airport, and not even the Immigration Officer wanted to have my fingerprints when I arrived to Canada.

But it gets even better. If you want to immigrate to the US and are no 16-year-old Chinese programming Wunderkind, you can either try to climb the fence at the Mexican border without getting shot, or find an American who is stupid enough to marry you. If you want to immigrate to Canada and are halfway intelligent – no problem! 'Citizenship and Immigration Canada' came up with a hilarious idea: Who wants to be Canadian? Forget all the other quiz shows, this is the real deal! Take the eligibility test on their page; if you score more than 67 points, you are eligible to immigrate! I actually passed the mark even without having a prospective job offer - amazing! If you then stay for three years and pass the citizenship test: Congratulations! - You are an official citizen of Canada! And you didn't even have to marry an ugly Canadian!

Yet, as great awesome as Canada's immigration policy might, it leaves me with one very inconvenient thought: I have the bad feeling that Canada might soon have to face a huge immigration wave of unemployed potential terrorists – because Canada is NOT the United States, but it is right next door ;)