I made an idle observation to a friend recently. It had appeared to me that there are a lot of Canadians in the Bay Area. I wonder if it is a matter of convenience and economic disparity, or if it was intentional selection.

On the one hand, Canadian culture and education are very similar. Most Canadians would even argue with you that they have better schools and universities than America. They also speak English. This means it is very easy to replace an American worker with a Canadian one with zero loss of efficiency.

On the other hand, since they are so similar to Americans in culture and training, there is no real value in bringing a large number of them here. Why give an opportunity to a Canadian when a equally experienced American exist to take the job?

I believe American schools are still very good and still very competitive. But the graduates cannot really exercise their pursuit of happiness if it is overshadowed by political agenda to integrate more Canadian educated persons… Hypothetically speaking, that is, in the case there is an over representation of Canadians in our immigrant pool.

Does that make sense?

If there is merit in the argument that diversity begets synergy beyond that of an undiversified work force, then Canadian immigrants are least bang for the buck in terms of synergy synthesis due to their cultural and political proximity to the US. They… do not add to our distinctiveness, not worthy of assimilation… to apply an aphorism from American culture.

And admittedly there are a lot of talented and accomplished Canadians in the US. Not all Canadian imports take opportunity unfairly from Americans. The trouble is that there are also a lot of talented Americans, and we should give ample chance to our own, even if another suitable talent can be cheaply imported, we have an obligation to our own people. We should strive despite our fear of isolation. If there is an aspect of American schools or culture that is less than other countries, let that be improved. Let that be our salvation and not the fact that we can always just buy a cheap imported replacement.

A related question then arises. Although we have an obligation to our own people, we also have obligation to humanity. What if we didn’t import that one Canadian who single handedly changed the course of humanity for the much better? Add the brassy presumption that if US didn’t admit him then our humanity would not be much better improved at all.

The answer to that is really subtle. It really takes some introspection of the reader. It also depends on who you are and how you think. Inspect that question and try to write an answer.

Ps a few weeks after writimg this, years before publication, the FAM blog receives a large volume of readers from Canada(and only from canada). I wonder if scheduled publication some how leaked the content out? Am I being watched by some kind of secret Canadian police now? Whats going on here?