IF THE Bread Not Circuses Coalition derailed Toronto's bid for the 1996 Olympics, an emerging coalition of disgruntled immigrant communities has the potential to puncture our high-flying bid for the 2008 Games.

The foreign-born now outnumber the Canadian-born in Toronto - the only city in the Western world where immigrants form a majority. Even New York, the most fabled of immigrant cities, boasts only 40 per cent of its current population as immigrant.

Another majority is about to emerge in Toronto. Visible minorities will soon outnumber whites, if they have not already done so, according to population projections.

Diversity, Our Strength, proclaims the city's motto. Diversity has also been one of the strongest selling points in getting Toronto short-listed as a site for the Olympics.

But such declarations are sounding increasingly hollow, given the maltreatment of minorities, most of them relatively recent immigrants, and most of them non-whites.

Premier Mike Harris, Mayor Mel Lastman and TO-Bid's David Crombie and John Bitove have their work cut out for them upon their return from the Sydney Olympics.

They should be talking to Professor Michael Ornstein of York University, and Professor Jeff Reitz of the University of Toronto, who have done separate studies on how racism is pigeonholing immigrants into poverty.

The politicians and our Olympic bid officials should also be inviting Debbie Douglas of OCASI, Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, as well as representatives of the most affected immigrant communities. They are indignant at how social inequalities are getting racialized, and how neither Queen's Park nor City Hall seem to care.

Ornstein measured how 89 ethno-racial groups are faring in Toronto. As reported by The Star's Elaine Carey, he found disturbingly ``huge inequalities'' in the levels of education, employment and income in many visible minority communities.

Ethiopians, Ghanians, Afghans and Somalis ``suffer extremely high levels of poverty,'' living 50 to 80 per cent below the poverty line. The next cohort includes Tamil, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Central American, West Asian and other African groups.

Some suffer unemployment rates of 45 per cent. Forty-five per cent! Or are clustered in dead-end jobs.

Our instinct is to blame them. Maybe they don't speak English. Not true. An overwhelming majority do. Maybe they are not educated. Not true. A majority have high school education. Maybe they are going through the initial pangs of settlement. Not true. European immigrants, who have arrived here at roughly the same time with roughly the same qualifications, have been given better job opportunities and a ticket to the mainstream.

Ornstein attributed the problems directly to our racism. ``The more visible you are, the more difficulties you have.'' This is a damning indictment.

Yet Harris, the most to blame for yanking away the support system for the poor, especially new immigrants, remains oblivious.

He has spent, by one count, about $185 million since April 1997 in partisan advertising, bashing Ottawa and other targets, but has no money to invest in turning newcomers into productive citizens.

And Lastman and city councillors are too preoccupied with re-election this fall to look at the ugly picture painted by Ornstein on commission from the city. Shamefully, they have shelved it, even as other groups are poring over it: the law society and the New Democratic Party caucus yesterday, in separate meetings, and the Trillium Foundation today.

Ornstein's study dovetails another by Reitz, issued last year, showing how immigrants, despite higher levels of education, are having a much tougher time than immigrants just 20 years ago. He, too, found a disparity in the welcome extended to Europeans as opposed to non-whites whose educational qualifications and experiences were being discounted by employers.

A StatsCan study also reached a similar conclusion. It found a decline from the 1970s in employment entry points for immigrants, and visible minorities among them earning only two-thirds of white immigrants.

We can no longer ignore such well-substantiated evidence of entrenched inequality based on race, and pretend that all is well in our beloved Canada, and peddle feel-good multiculturalism to the world.

We are also botching high-end immigration, as symbolized in a west-end apartment block dubbed Begum-pura - community of begums, or refined ladies. These are the wives of recent immigrants living with their school- and college-going kids, while their husbands have given up on Canada, at least temporarily, and returned to their well-paying jobs and businesses back in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and other oil-rich Mideast states.

These highly desirable immigrants, mostly educated and entrepreneurial Indian and Pakistani expatriates, have been frustrated at being denied even mid-level jobs, and in many cases access to their professions and trades. They are the latest manifestation of the ``cosmonaut immigrants'' of the early 1990s - the Chinese who parked their families in Canada and shuttled to their Hong Kong businesses because of limited opportunities and poor attitudes here.

Harris' minister for economic development, Al Palladini, bemoans the severe shortages of highly skilled workers. Yet when they come, we spurn them.

We are following a 19th century model into the 21st - abandoning poor newcomers into pockets of poverty, while not being very attractive for the bright and the well-to-do.

No wonder we are not meeting our target of 225,000 immigrants a year. The United States, courting the skilled with open arms, has seen 5 million jobs filled by immigrants since 1990.

Advice for potential immigrants to Canada: Only the desperate need come; those who have a choice should perhaps stay away until we can sort out all this mess.

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