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Periodically, especially when there isn’t enough
glitzy news to talk about, some media and
politicians resort to talking about immigration, a
phenomenon that has become a kind of emergency kit
for distressed journalists in need of news or for
politicians in need of headlines. This happens, and
check it out, especially during summertime when
politicians and journalists are physically ready for
a holiday.
So, here we go again. Over the last few days, we
have been educated by columnists and politicians on
how important immigration is to Canada.
They tell us that immigration is needed to keep the
economy and Canada alive. Oh yeah? Never heard that
before, eh? They tell us that Canada is a
compassionate country that has always had the door
open to people from all over the world searching for
a better life. This is very moving stuff. They tell
us that because Canadians are not procreating enough
that immigration is the major source of future
manpower.
That’s real deep economic thinking. So what’s the
solution? More immigrants in Canada or less condoms
on the store shelves.
The most erudite pundits tend to bring baby boomers
into the discussion and the fact that they’re
growing old, the government will have more pensions
to pay, more health care to pay, and less workforce
to generate incomes.
Wow, talk about Nobel Prize winning insights.
So now, with Prime Minister Stephen Harper back from
Afghanistan, the House closer to its summer recess,
the provincial election in Ontario too far away, and
some possible dramatic news from Quebec over the
daring Liberal Premier Jean Charest, media and
politicians will resort to this first aid kit for
gratuitous headlines: immigration.
The first salvo is to convince Canadians that
immigration is positive. With so many problems with
immigration, they start with a fake problem:
preaching to Canadians that immigration is positive.
Canadians already know that, so get over it and get
to the real problems which are the following: the
hypocrisy of media and politicians; the inability of
the media to expose people who take advantage of the
system; and the gutless politicians who dance around
the problems without solving them.
The first point is self-explanatory, so let me
elaborate on the second.
The immigration system, like any other system, deals
with millions of people who are honest and
law-abiding current citizens or future citizens.
Unfortunately, there are also people who abuse the
system. The failure of politicians and media is
their inability, or, lack of political will, to
separate the two groups by helping the first and
crushing the second. They instead prefer to
generally talk about “immigration” by painting
everybody with the same brush.
Why?
Well, it is not just plain ignorance or
incompetence. It is also, and I’d say mainly, the
result of a mentality that is still alive and well
on Parliament Hill that sees the residents of this
country divided in two groups: Canadians and
immigrants. The problem is that, aside from the
rhetoric of media and politicians (“We are all
Canadian, we are all immigrants”) everybody has
their own definition of who we are.
Politicians don’t have the will to accept
“immigrants” in the mainstream (and what happened
during the Liberal leadership race is still a stain
that will remain with the party for a long time).
Politicians don’t have the guts to tell some foreign
residents in the country that their Canadian
passports are not an insurance policy to use in case
it’s needed when going back to the home country.
Some examples?
The Air India bombing was an act against Canadians,
but for reasons that have nothing to do with Canada.
That problem is still alive and nobody is talking
about it. There is also the Lebanon events over the
last years that have cost Canadians millions of
dollars and the election in the Italian Parliament
of Canadian citizens.
It’s not important if I am in favour or against. The
point is that the Canadian government was against
but succumbed under pressure to the Italian Canadian
community not because the government believed it was
a good thing to do, but to protect its electoral
base in Toronto and mainly in Montreal. In the past,
immigration laws were drafted to respond to the
economic needs of this country. Nowadays they’re
written to appease electoral needs or cultural
disputes.
We want them to speak the official languages, to
protect French, but we don’t care if they’re able to
lay bricks or build roads. That’s why we have
engineers driving taxis in Montreal.
There is nothing more revolting than listening to
Liberals and the media attacking Harper’s government
for not solving Canada’s immigration problems, when
they had two former ministers of immigration—
Liberals Judy Sgro, and Joe Volpe— who had plans to
at least tackle the problems from the root but were
left to hang by their own government and their own
caucus, while the media had nothing to report on
other than pizzas and strippers. They didn’t even
try to understand what Sgro and Volpe were proposing
because they weren’t then and are not today
interested.
Yes, we need a campaign to explain what immigration
is all about, but it’s not a campaign aimed at
Canadians. Canadians already know it and live it
daily. The campaign should be aimed at the Hill in
Ottawa where some journalists and politicians have
mentally secluded themselves from the rest of the
country to defend the cuckoo-nest they have lived in
since 1867.
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