[RICHLER:] “Do you think that the nature of immigration has changed?”
[M.G.VASSANJI] “People who came earlier on escaped war, they came in boats, they left their countries, and knew they would not see their home again. There was no looking back. Now we live in a different world. We come by plane. We hold dual passports, we have e-mail, we have telephones, we have families that are split all over the world.”
“And today there are few currency controls — “
“Yes. Now economies are interlinked so that when people come to Canada they spak the old language and even refresh it, so that it doesn’t happen that Gujarati disappears, just as English or German won’t disappear. But for me, the redeeming feature is that every year immigrants are not coming to an insecure country, they are coming to a country that is sure of itself.”
– Noah Richler, This is My Country, What’s Yours?, p. 29