My son received his Canadian citizenship certificate this week, at a
ceremony in Montreal. He was with about 200 others, a group
unsurprisingly as diverse as you can imagine. The ceremony itself
consisted of a group oath-taking, presided over by a judge, then the
newly-minted citizens received their certificates. Finally, they
sang the Canadian national anthem. The whole thing took about two
hours, and was quite well-run. I imagine it has to be to keep 200
people moving along.

My wife noted the absence of any police officers. Given the number
of people (200 attendees plus two or three family members each), in
the US we would have seen at least a few police officers at or near
such an event. To be clear, there was security of sorts - you were
stopped and questioned twice before entering, by CIC employees. But
they weren't armed and certainly would not have stopped a determined
attacker. It's a contradictory testament to both the peaceful nature
of Canadian society, and a sign of the times that we even thought
about such a thing.

Anyway, today we submitted Canadian passport applications for both
of our children, ending several years of excruciating paperwork,
expenses and delays since we hatched our immigration plans. Worth
it, but not for the faint of heart. Legal immigration to another
country is difficult and expensive. Harder still would be just
deciding to move to another country, pesky immigration laws be
damned. I imagine the story of the border-hopper who somehow manages
to evade authorities and find gainful employment and housing is a
myth. It's not surprising that the most common form of illegal
immigration nowadays is due to people overstaying their visas -
i.e. legal, temporary immigrants who just don't go home. It's far
easier to do that than to enter illegally in the first place.