It seems the
$63-million paid by Canadian taxpayers to bring thousands of people with
a Canadian passport from Lebanon last summer has finally caught the
attention of media and politicians of one of the most dramatic problems
Canada is facing: immigration.
It's dramatic
because immigration is going to influence the future of our country,
affect our economy and is having dramatic social impact on human beings.
At the present
time, there are four pressing issues Canada is facing, vis-à-vis
immigration: the fact we need more immigrants, the presence of thousands
of un-documented workers especially in the Greater Toronto Area, the
800,000 potential immigrants knocking at our doorsteps for years without
an answer, and the issue of dual citizenship.
I want to start
with the last issue because the use, or the abuse, of citizenship is
creating a whole new class of citizens.
This is not just
a Canadian issue. A few years ago some foreign governments had to deal
with the same "problem" and how thousands of people with, for example,
Italian or Portuguese passports living abroad should be considered in
Rome or Lisbon?
The problem was
not easy to solve, especially if the "emigrants" with the passports
claim their constitutional rights to vote to elect a government in a
country where they do not live. For those countries, it's not easy to
cut ties with their own citizens who, in most of the cases, are forced
to leave their homes in search of better lives for their families.
Canada, and this
is the irony, is considered a country of immigrants, and now is becoming
also a country of "emigrants." Technically, it is the same problem that
the Italian government had to face a few years ago: how to deal with
people with Italian passports living abroad.
However, even if
technically the issue appears the same, there are some fundamental
differences.
I am one of
those with two passports and, if, one day I decide to leave Canada and
go back to Italy, can I be considered a Canadian emigrant in Italy?
Furthermore, if I leave Canada freely, does Canada have the same moral
obligations like Italy has towards its citizens who are forced to leave?
Legally, there
might be no difference, but in reality, a passport without residence, is
just a piece of paper, like an insurance policy: you use it if you need
it, otherwise you leave it in the glove compartment.
Then someone can
ask me, a Canadian citizen with an Italian passport, but living in
Canada, why I voted to elect an MP in the Italian Parliament. I might
have thousands of answers to justify the apparent contradiction, but
that is going to be an issue for future stories.
The point I'm
trying to make is that the concept of immigration, due to globalization
and new technology, has dramatically changed and Canada, a country whose
history and its future hinges on the management of this issue, has no
plans to deal with those changes.
The debate is
vague, with reforms that start and end nowhere. It is frivolous and
concentrates on marginal issues that have no relevance to the solution
of the problem. It is froth saturated with political hypocrisy.
For example,
we're talking about the Lebanon issue for the wrong reason:
$63-million. In
reality, the problem of "Canadian emigrants" abroad, is much more
widespread than we believe or realize. For example, according to a study
conducted a few years ago by the Canadian government, there were 254,000
people with Canadian passports leaving in Hong Kong. And this is a
common practice in many other countries. Nobody talks about it.
Just to
understand the chaos we're in, here there are some examples.
Governments say
we should allow in Canada a number of new immigrants close to one per
cent of the population in order to survive has a country: that quota has
never been met. Furthermore, we don't know how many people are entering
our country and how many people are leaving.
We have
thousands of illegal immigrants and we don't know where they are and
what they do. A former minister of immigration asked staff to put a
number on those people and the answer was "it is between 10,000 and
250,000." The only thing the government did in the last few years is
they found a new definition for them: it's called un-documented instead
of illegal (people in Canada without documents, I thought, were
illegal).
Furthermore,
they don't know how many of them are going back into their home country.
Hong Kong and Lebanon are just the tip of the iceberg: thousand are
going back in other countries too: how many? Nobody knows and, of
course, nobody can assess what impact they have on incoming quotas.
So, basically,
the industries need skilled workers and the government gives them
illegal immigrants; thousands are knocking at our doors seeking,
legally, to enter in Canada, and nobody answers; our Canadian
citizenship has become a kind of international policy insurance for
those who hope not to use it, but think it is prudent to have. The
difference is that the premium for this policy is not paid by the
insured, but by the insurance company, the Canadian taxpayers.
The worst of
all, however, is the hypocrisy.
I hear Liberal
MPs attacking the decision of the new minister of Immigration Monte
Solberg for not granting the amnesty to the thousands of illegal workers
in Canada (and I too, believe Mr. Solberg is wrong), when they have been
in power for 13 years and the only thing they have done have imposed a
new kind of "head tax" on new immigrants, creating a convoluted family
point system to enter Canada based on education that allows a
non-English or French speaking carpenter to enter Canada only if the
wife has a PhD.
But what upsets
me the most is the fact that the last two Liberal ministers of
Immigration, Judy Sgro and Joe Volpe, proposed to their government a
program to deal with the undocumented immigrants and their proposals
were stopped by the Cabinet. When they asked their colleagues in caucus
to put pressure on their government to allow the reform, their requests
were completely ignored by the same MPs who now are assaulting the
Conservative government for not doing what they did not do in 13 years.
And, what a coincidence, the only time that the national media wrote
about the last two Liberal ministers of immigration, was when pizza was
involved. What's worse than a wrong policy or no policy is only one
thing: hypocrisy.
