Czechs to blame for Canada's reintroduction of visa requirement

A sharp rise in the number of Czech Roma seeking asylum in Canada has prompted the North American country to announce the reintroduction of the visa requirement for Czech citizens. Jiří Franěk says in the left-leaning daily Právo the Czechs only have themselves to blame: "We have problems with our Roma fellow citizens. Among them are people who are unemployed and receiving social security the costs of which the taxpayers have to cover. And in their excessive free time they annoy other people with their noise, disorder and petty crime. Our prisons are full of them. Unlike the hyper-correct civil rights activists I am not convinced that they themselves are not also partially to blame for their situation. But it is not their fault alone. In the times of socialist construction their horses and wagons were taken away from them and they were handed spades. During the development of capitalism even their spades were taken away from them. … This is not Canada's problem. We must ask ourselves why the most recent exodus of Roma coincided with the moment when Nazis marched through their ghettoes."

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