Canada should join the States - here's why

What do you call it when someone's movements are confined and limited? It's the definition of imprisonment, isn't it?

What then does it mean when states allow citizens to certain parts of the world, under certain conditions, for certain amounts of time?

Our countries have imposed a massive system of human imprisonment, often on perfectly well-intentioned people whose departure in one country and arrival in the other would perfectly benefit all people involved.

On the flight back from Atlanta a few days ago I sat next to a quiet young woman from Florida who looks a little like Drew Barrymore. She's from central Florida, has a university degree in finance and had decided to move to Montreal. She's a legit professional and has been working at a well-known investment firm. She attends the downtown Lutheran church and planned to set here. She recently learned that her company has fouled up her papers and her dream of moving to Montreal has been shattered due to incompetent administration. She's leaving probably never to return.

Many of anglo Montreal's smartest people over the last few decades were Americans who moved here as conscientious objectors to the Vietnam War (including Mike Farber, Terry Mosher, Kevin Cohalan, etc). When smart, young, well-educated professionals from the States want to move up here, we should fling open the doors and lay down the red carpet.

When the big boys negotiated free trade a few years back they rigged it so you could send any variety of items over the border and make all sorts of deals happen. But for a human to settle in the other country continues to be an unreasonable hassle. In this new world of mobilized talent, borders largely represent an unreasonable tool of repression and tyranny.

If Canada simply joined the states, we would not longer have this problem.

Many might think this a bad idea because the political culture there is more conservative than ours, but that's the same narrow thinking practiced by the local anti-merger people here in Montreal.

Canada - as part of the USA - would have a major influence on the most powerful country in the history of the world. Our electoral input would swing the balance to the left and another Bush-like government might taken centuries to get elected.

Uniting with the USA should be the Canadian Dream.

Failing that, we should negotiate a deal that would facilitate human passage and settlement between Canada and the USA, such as that which already exists in Europe.

Canadians should be allowed to wander and settle anywhere to the Mexican border without having to worry about papers and the same goes for Americans coming North.