Here’s a story you don’t see every day – “Gay Nicaraguan Man Goes Into Hiding After Refugee Bid Denied“:

His case made headlines in Canada and Nicaragua in February when the Immigration and Refugee Board denied him asylum saying they didn’t believe he was gay.

Is that what Canadian immigration officials do all day? “Funny. You don’t look gay. Walk across to the men’s room again and this time put a bit of life into it.”

I appreciate their concerns. Being gay isn’t exactly one of those jobs Canadians won’t do. Let a lot of squaresville straights stand muscling in on the gay immigrant fast-track, and there goes the neighborhood. But contrast the exacting entry qualifications for the gay refugee line with those for the terrorist refugee line. Ahmed Ressam, the famous “Millennium Bomber” arrested at the British Columbia/Washington State border en route to blow up LAX, was admitted to Canada because he told them he was a convicted Algerian terrorist.

That’s right: As Mme Shouldice of the immigration service explained, being a terrorist was a legitimate criterion for admission, on the grounds that you had a reasonable fear of being ill-treated if you returned to the country where you were trying to blow people up. And, unlike gay refugees, terrorist refugees weren’t asked to prove it: “Go on, then. If you’re such a bigtime terrorist, blow someone up. Try the laughably obvious heterosexual at the payphone frantically trying to order up a Judy Garland boxed set.”

I’m not sure what lessons to draw from this, except that, if you’re a gay guy landing at Toronto, things’ll go a lot quicker if you claim to be a practising jihadist. Get a turban and a beard if you like (not Nicole Kidman, the other kind).