Although living standards here may have declined somewhat, Canada is still a culture of relative comfort. Perhaps that’s largely why I’ve long noticed how the general work ethic practiced by new immigrants and migrants is commendable, perhaps even exceptional.

This also applies to their employment in the produce harvesting sector. And there, the jobseeker likely also finds that big business greed insatiably always seeks the cheapest labour possible. Migrants are an expedient means to this goal.

Nevertheless, it’s back-breaking work that almost all second- and third- generation Westerners won’t tolerate for themselves, myself included. I can truly imagine such labourers being more productive than their counterparts who were born and reared-here.

I’m not implying that a strong work ethic is a trait racially genetically inherited by one generation from a preceding generation. Rather, it’s an admirable culturally determined factor, though also in large part motivated by a culture’s internal and surrounding economic and political conditions.

However, I believe that once they’ve resided here for several decades, their strong work ethics and higher-than-average productivity, unfortunately, gradually diminishes as young people become accustomed to the relatively more slackened Western way of life.

One can already witness this effect in such youth getting caught up in much of our overall urban/suburban liberal culture – e.g. attire, lingo, nightlife, as well as work. Indeed, assimilation into Western ‘values’ often means theunfortunate acquisition of a distasteful yet strong sense of entitlement. … Ergo, welcome to Western culture!

PostScript: Interestingly yet disturbingly enough, before people of colour became the primary source of newcomers to the U.S. and Canada, thick- accented Eastern Europeans were targeted with meanspirited Anglo-Saxon bigotry. As a broken-English, 1950s Eastern-European immigrant to Canada, my (now long-deceased) father experienced such discrimination or at least attempts made to do so against him.

Hypothetically, if Canada and the U.S. were to revert to a primarily Caucasian populace, I wouldn’t be surprised if Eastern Europeans with a thick Slavic accent would eventually again become the main target of bigotry again.

Frank Sterle Jr.

White Rock, BC