TIM BELFORD

Now, about who comes to Canada, and when

I'm a little bit concerned with the immigration agreement we just signed with the Americans.

Now, I know we've got to tighten things up a bit if only to please our neighbours to the south.

We can't very well go on with the general impression that our border is as porous as the Toronto Argonauts' offensive line.

At the same time, there's a distinct danger that while we're turning away anyone with an Uzi hidden in their shaving kit will also be turning back genuine refugees.

If the agreement that was signed this week had been in force back in 1783 my own ancestors wouldn't have made the cut.

They arrived in Upper Canada claiming refugee status just ahead of an American mob.

Which only goes to show you one man's Loyalist is another man's treacherous supporter of Perfidious Albion.

And what about Thomas d'Arcy McGee?

Here's a guy who could justly claim to be one of the forefathers of the IRA.

Queen Victoria, in one of her "we are not amused" snits gave him the boot from Ireland. And instead of sending him back we let him become a Father of Confederation.

Not a bad decision.

Under today's agreement with the Yanks half of the eastern Europeans that arrived here in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century would still be in Minsk.

If every so-called anarchist, union activist and self-proclaimed socialist had been turned back, Winnipeg would have a population of eight.

All you have to do is look at the case of my old friend Three-fingered Mickey.

He got the name on account of the fact he's missing the thumb and index finger of his right hand.

He lost those digits when a pipe bomb he was trying to wedge into the tread of a Soviet tank exploded prematurely.

Now, depending on who you asked at the time, he was either a Hungarian patriot or a terrorist.

The thing is, he's since proven to be - apart from one perfectly explainable incident involving two Portuguese soccer players and a blind referee - a valuable asset to the country.

Tying ourselves to an American vision of what is an acceptable immigrant is fraught with danger.

My best friend growing up once missed a wonderful pub crawl in Niagara Falls, New York simply because when asked where he was born he answered, truthfully, Romania.

The fact that he had left Europe as a babe in arms with little or no communist sympathies at the time, meant nothing.

Nor did the fact that the immigration officer's family had probably left Europe under similar circumstance two generations earlier.

Let's face it. If Native Americans had had the same immigration laws when Columbus stopped at the duty free, none of us would be here now.