Throwing my two cents in here, but no one seems to be complaining about all the Canadians in LA, illegal and legal and there are seriously a lot of them, due to our sucktastic film industry up here in the north, mainly I think because we mostly speak English without a noticeably "different" accent. What's sad is that cultural similarities don't seem to count when it comes to immigration, university applications or anything else, you could grow up speaking English watching American TV, (even like my Dad) paying American taxes, with most of your family members born south of the border, but if you were born in the Canadian part of Niagara Falls (yes the city is part in the US and part in Canada) it's a huge deal. Thirty years ago, when I was a kid people went back and forth all the time, but having lived in the US for half your life and you're still considered a "foreign applicant"

I've been raised in border cities in New York State and Ontario on both sides of the border and my siblings who were born on the American side (getting dual citizenship due to American parents) and me (born on the Canadian side, so only Canadian citizenship) are treated completely differently and we are all in one family!  I love Canada but you cannot make a living as an entertainment professional and stay here.  I imagine it is far far worse for the many families who are half in the U.S. and half in Mexico!

Children having to leave behind parents for a better life in the States or parents having to leave behind children is a horrible thing. I know when NAFTA was signed here in Canada most of us thought with an opened trade relationship individuals would be allowed to move more freely between the three NAFTA countries. This hasn't been the result at all. Individuals are still forced to stay in their own countries, while corporations take the abundant natural resources from Canada that we don't have enough capital of our own to fully exploit, use cheap Mexican labour to make goods with them and then sell them to the large American population. Individual citizens don't get any benefit other than more choices of stuff to buy. We should be allowed to move freely between the three countries if corporations are given the freedom to move around without control.

What is weird is that my sister and brother now live in Boston, which is basically pretty much like Toronto, only with more universities, (also full of Canadians) and I felt completely culturally at home there. However going to Quebec City or Whitehorse which are in my own country, I feel like an alien culturally and linguistically. New York State and Southern Ontario were once part of the same British North America at one point so the culture and language is far more similar from Niagara Falls to Toronto than from Niagara Falls to Louisanna, for example. The border was also completely permeable until the 1970s as I can attest to family members going back and forth and living in both places without hassle.