SFGate

It is a little-known-but-still-factual fact that the Idaho Legislature passed an anti-illegal-immigrants law very similar to - indeed, modeled upon - Arizona's controversial law that has the same goal. Now, I disapprove of that law and have written about it, but a majority of Americans like it very much, so I lose that fight - for now.

I can understand why Arizona might be the first state in the union to pass that law: long border with Mexico; conservative political culture; two largish cities; and just a refreshing hint of xenophobia. Idaho also has a conservative political culture, but it is a long way from Mexico, and I'd be surprised if some guy stumbling over the border gets a ride from a pal and says, "Take me to Boise."

Of course, wherever there is agriculture, there are undocumented workers, so I bet the farmers with potatoes to harvest aren't thrilled by this bill. Already, farmers in Arizona are feeling the pinch as day laborers take their custom elsewhere, to some state where you can't be stopped by the police just for being brown.

The Idaho bill, as originally written, would penalize employers who hire illegal workers, but that provision was quickly voted down. Mustn't make the employers mad - they vote. So once again it's just the workers who suffer.

So here I am, brooding about Idaho, which is not a familiar brood, when I realize: Idaho shares a border with Canada. It's a short border, but it's also lightly policed, and I can see those Canadians, their belongings in a plastic bag, sprinting through the evergreen forests under cover of darkness, seeking a better life away from the violent and corrupt Canadian government.

Some of them might even be carrying poutine, a dangerous concoction that could very well catch on among the thrill-seeking youth of Washington, Idaho and Montana. No wonder people in Idaho are worried. And there are other problems with detecting and rooting out the "Canadian contagion."

First, they "fit in." There's no way of differentiating someone from Canada from, say, someone from Michigan. There are several distinctive vowel sounds that make it easier to identify Canadians, but your truly motivated emigres can erase those sounds from their speech in mere weeks. I bet you thought Pamela Anderson was an American, didn't you? And Glenn Ford and Sandra Oh and k.d. lang and Bif Naked? No, they are Canadians who walk among us freely, except for Glenn Ford, who is dead. They could handle the vowel problem, which means that ...

They can speak English with an American accent. Indeed, all along the "aboveground railroad" that helps Canadians breathe the air of freedom, there are "vowel schools" held in living rooms and basements. The "lobos" who run these schools often use bait-and-switch tactics to get students, and if an immigrant can't pay the inflated prices, back to Toronto he goes, sadder but wiser.

Some up-to-date police departments carry "cheesealyzers." If you blow more than .08 on the cheesealyzer, that is prima facie evidence that you are Canadian. If you haven't got your papers handy, it's off to a Canadian detention center, where the televisions are never tuned to hockey games. Cruel and unusual, you say? Well, certainly unusual.

In cities like Spokane, Tacoma and Boise, there are Canadian ghettos, usually identifiable by the sad sight of a Tim Hortons masquerading as a Chinese restaurant. There Canadians gather, swap stories about Ogopogo (a mythical beast said to live in a lake in British Columbia), drink Molson's and play checkers. At some covert Hortons, there's even a miniature ice skating pond in the back room, where Canadians can strap on their skates and take a spin around a very tight track. Why the police have not raided these hotbeds of illegal Canadian immigrants is not known. Some suspect these establishments are protected by the Canadian Mafia, which is loosely affiliated with the Brotherhood of Canadian People, led, it is said, by Alex Trebek.

Those who have worked with Canadians say they are industrious, loyal and very, very clean. (Quebecois, it should be said, are just industrious and loyal.) Their wages are sometimes higher than those of Americans doing the same job, puzzling economists. Perhaps one reason is their insatiable desire to hear "Big Yellow Taxi" by Joni Mitchell. Put that song on the loudspeaker, people say, and Canadians won't stop until the music does.

They took all the trees, put 'em in a tree museum, and they charged the people a dollar and a half just to see 'em. Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone; they paved paradise and put up jcarroll@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page F - 8 of the San Francisco Chronicle