'Paki go home" was a refrain I heard a lot in Toronto as a kid growing up in the seventies. Today, I am wondering if my family should have taken that advice -- or if others should.

What spurred this thought were the sickening images of protests in my hometown of London by a gang of mostly masked men who call themselves "Muslims Against Crusades." They want things like shariah law invoked, and they criticize the values of democracy, secularism and liberalism in the West. On Remembrance Day, when the world observed two minutes of silence for the war dead, these men stood in front of the Victoria and Albert museum in Kensington and stomped on and burned a giant poppy. They carried placards with slogans like "British Soldiers Burn in Hell" or "Our dead are in Paradise your dead are in Hell."

Now, my blood has been boiling a lot in the past few weeks: Our car was stolen, school fees went up and there was a tube strike. But nothing sent my blood pressure as high as these disgusting images. Yes, I recognize that these men are hardcore fanatics -- that they are hugely outnumbered by peace-loving Muslims. The "Muslims Against Crusades" and their ilk are in the minority. So, let me just speak to this minority.

If this country is so awful, if you are so repelled by women not being covered up and by the absence of shariah law--why not just go home?

Many of these fundamentalists' heads and hearts are back in their homeland. Psychologically and socially they are still stuck in their hereditary villages and cities. But they choose to migrate because they know that economically life is better in the West.

I can only speak from experience, and here it is. As a child, my parents had no specific interest in the Canadian culture and were deeply entrenched in their own insular world: Indo/Pakistani friends, food, music, etc. There were -- briefly -- a couple of white friends, one even Jewish, but in a short time they let these people go for a myriad of reasons (they required alcohol, they didn't speak the language, they didn't like our food). After that, the people who came into our household were all friends in the community or relatives -- all Sunnis, and all Indian/Pakistanis.

Growing up, I may as well have been in Hyderabad or Karachi. I asked my parents all the time -- why did you immigrate? Why don't you go back? I usually got some grumbling about the heat and the filth, and the great medical treatment here.

And that is what irks me. My parents came to the Western world and led a better life, but they didn't integrate or ever aspire to. They were the poster immigrants for the Trudeau era, except that their community didn't slot itself in the mosaic as Trudeau so ardently wanted. In fact, looking back, my parents probably should have just gone back home.

I wonder how many of the Remembrance Day protesters were jobless "asylum seekers" (a euphemism for putting one over on the taxpayer) or on "benefits" (U. K. speak for welfare). Last week it was revealed that Abu Hamza -- the jailed hate preacher whose family lives on an eye-watering £3,000 a month of "benefits" for a posh London house -- has charged £40,000 in renovations to us hapless taxpayers. The imprisoned Hamza faces U.S. attempts to extradite him over allegations that he tried to set up a jihadi training camp in Oregon. But on his release, he cannot be deported since a court last month allowed him to keep his British passport, to protect his human rights.

As I stared in shock at the pictures of the protests, my husband pointed out that if it weren't for the soldiers who gave their lives in the Great Wars, we probably wouldn't have this debate, as we would be living in a fascist world where immigration would have been completely shut down. If there was ever a case of the biting the hand that feeds you, here it is.