Ethnic Chinese in Malaysia are celebrating China’s rise – but as multicultural Malaysians, not Chinese

2018/05/12 Leave a comment

Interesting:

In 2015, China’s then ambassador to Malaysia, Huang Huikang, visited Kuala Lumpur Chinatown just ahead of a planned pro-Malay rally. Huang’s walkabout, during which he spoke out against racism and extremism, defused a potential ethnic showdown. But it earned the ambassador a summoning to the foreign ministry to explain his perceived meddling in Malaysia’s domestic affairs.

The Kuala Lumpur incident is a portent of things to come as China steps up efforts to connect as well as protect overseas Chinese communities. During the 19th Communist Party congress, last year, President Xi Jinping reaffirmed China’s strategic policy of co-opting the Chinese diaspora into Beijing’s grand push to internationalise the “Chinese dream”.

Xi’s overture is hitting some wrong notes. In the United States, lawmakers have complained that mainland Chinese students there have come under pressure from Beijing after criticising China. In Australia, Canberra is proposing countermeasures for alleged interference by the Communist Party in the country’s internal affairs and in the Chinese Australian communities.

The Chinese diaspora is a global phenomenon unlike others because immigrants from China have, over the centuries, planted roots in almost every continent. More crucially, the crisis-stricken homeland they left behind generations ago is today a rejuvenated, self-confident modern nation-state. And this re-emerging superpower is eager to re-enter the world stage and shape the existing international order.

For this reason, Beijing’s harnessing of the overseas Chinese population could have far-reaching global ramifications.

In Malaysia, the complexion of the Chinese diaspora bears certain distinct features. Numbering about 7 million, Malaysia’s ethnic Chinese community is one of the largest concentrations of overseas Chinese in any country. And nearing 25 per cent of the population, they exert considerable economic sway and, to a lesser extent, political leverage.

Perhaps what is unique is the pristine preservation of the Chinese heritage, a legacy of Malaysia’s acclaimed multiculturalism. One example is the national vernacular school system, where ethnic minorities can learn and sustain their mother tongues. This has enabled the Chinese communities to keep alive their culture and beliefs in a manner unmatched anywhere else – even to the envy of mainland Chinese whose traditional way of life was decimated during the Cultural Revolution.

Yet Malaysia’s celebrated diversity is a double-edged sword, as it has slowed assimilation. The country is trapped in a race paradigm where racial dynamics dictate public policy and colour national discourse. Intended to protect the rights of the Malay majority, the bumiputera policies continue to draw a wedge between the races.

Discontented, some have chosen to leave, precipitating a brain drain, chiefly to Australia and neighbouring Singapore. In fact, Malaysians are the biggest group of overseas Chinese to re-migrate.

Fortunately, these setbacks do not round up the Malaysia story. There are alternative narratives, where the aspired “1Malaysia” is a lived reality. Malaysians do come together as one, especially when engaging the world at large. Successes by international sports stars, such as diver Pandelela Rinong, badminton player Lee Chong Wei and squash player Nicol David, have fired up patriotic displays of emotions that transcend race.

One way to explain this seeming anomaly is that most Malaysians at the personal level do experience genuine friendship across racial lines. Interpersonal contacts such as these have slowly but steadily fostered mutual respect and goodwill.

There are alternative narratives, where the aspired ‘1Malaysia’ is a lived reality

Regrettably, this grass-roots bonding is often undermined and overshadowed by racialised national politics. Even so, under certain favourable conditions, these contained but enduring feelings of kinship do break to the surface, showcasing to the world the true 1Malaysia spirit.

It is within this broader context that we see the Chinese in Malaysia wrestle with their own conflicted devotion to past memories and present realities.

Firstly, like Irish Australians’ love for all things Ireland, Chinese Malaysians, too, follow with keen interest China-related developments. The miraculous turnaround of the People’s Republic in recent decades, for example, has thrilled overseas Chinese.

At the same time, Chinese in Malaysia are unreservedly Malaysian, just as the Irish in Australia are true-blue Aussies. And there is no better demonstration of this than the Chinese Malaysians’ impassioned support for Lee Chong Wei, even when he faces off against his arch-rival, Lin Dan of China.

Powered by its ambitious “Belt and Road Initiative”, China’s inroads into Malaysia are expanding by the day. And this is inducing some shocks to the country’s rich yet fragile social landscape.

Indeed, when ambassador Huang stepped into the Chinatown fray, he also waded into a long-standing controversy surrounding insinuations of Chinese Malaysians’ divided loyalty. The ambassador’s intervention was manipulated by some as proof of China acting as a protector of the Chinese minority in Malaysia, casting further aspersions on these Malaysians’ national allegiance.

To Chinese Malaysians, this was a most unfair and unjustified accusation.

True, the Chinese still embody the civilisational inheritance of their ancestral land. But these multigenerational Malaysians have also been indelibly transformed by the land of their birth. Like descendants of immigrants everywhere, they are turning into cultural hybrids, metamorphosing from a mono-cultural Chinese towards a more pronounced multicultural Malaysian. To use an agricultural metaphor, the born-and-bred-in-Malaysia ethnic Chinese are now the fruit of the land – sprouting and flourishing with textures and flavours unique to the Malaysian ecology. With time, these Chinese have become truly Malaysian, exuding the cultural DNA of their new homeland.

Thus, as China rises, like most overseas Chinese communities, ethnic Chinese in Malaysia are revelling in spontaneous flushes of cultural pride. But they do so not as Chinese, but as Malaysians. Or, to put it in the phraseology familiar to Beijing: as proud “Malaysians with Chinese characteristics”.

Source: Ethnic Chinese in Malaysia are celebrating China’s rise – but as multicultural Malaysians, not Chinese

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A Sudanese teenager killed her rapist, and Muslim women are fighting for her life

2018/05/12 Leave a comment

Noteworthy:

Violence against women does not discriminate. One in three womenacross the globe experience physical or sexual violence in their lives, regardless of race, age or income. Intimate partner violence is the most common form, with physical violence occurring to as many as two out of three women who have ever been in an intimate partnership.

This is not news, and yet, the difference in how this violence is discussed is stark, depending on where and by whom it has been perpetrated. When the violence occurs in majority Muslim countries, pundits are quick to blame Islam itself, instead of noticing the army of Muslim women who are fighting for their rights within the faith, and defending women – and themselves – at all costs.

Noura Hussein, a young woman from Sudan, provides an instructive and urgent example. At the age of 16, Noura was forced into a marriage by her father. She refused and escaped from her family home near Khartoum to stay with her aunt in Sennar, around 250km away. She lived there for three years, determined to finish her education, when she received word that the wedding plans had been cancelled, and she was welcome to come home.

On her return, it became apparent that she had been tricked. The wedding ceremony was underway, and Noura was duly “given” to the groom. Distraught, the 19-year-old refused to consummate the marriage for a number of days. Within the week, her husband’s tactics became increasingly aggressive. Noura’s husband raped her, with the help of relatives who pinned her down during the act.

When the husband returned the next day to repeat the crime, Noura retaliated. She stabbed her husband a number of times, ultimately killing her rapist. She thereafter returned to her family, who reportedly then disowned her and turned her over to the police.

Over a year later, on 29 April, 2018, Noura was convicted of murder. On 10 May, she was sentenced to death. His family was offered the choice of either accepting monetary compensation for the crime, or execution. They chose the latter. Now the family and community have 15 days to appeal the sentence. They are hoping to overturn the decision to execute Noura for defending herself against physical and sexual violence, and navigating an impossible situation that no young woman should ever face.

Noura’s story is perhaps not unusual in a world where intimate partner violence is rife. However, there is something about Noura’s case that is indicative of a wider truth. The majority of people involved in raising awareness about this young woman’s case are other Sudanese Muslim women. The lawyers working on the case in Washington DC are members of the Sudanese diaspora, and word of the case reached me through another Sudanese writer’s Instagram and blogposts. The majority of people fighting for Noura are women, Muslim women.

This reality flies in the face of those who claim that Muslim women are oppressed, submissive or believe in a religion that takes away their rights. It also stands in complete opposition to men who try to use a warped version of sharia to justify any part of such a situation – the forced marriage, the rape, the sentencing. The women arguing on Noura’s behalf point to both law and theology: to be wedded without consent is forbidden in Islam. Child marriage is still practiced, although women continue to fight the laws and traditions that allow it.

However, as happens so often in cases like this, the story becomes an opportunity for the airing of grievances and prejudices about Islam, through the argument of advocating for women’s rights. Islam is violent, people will say, because of how they treat their women – and look, here is an example that reinforces that argument!

Let the women who are advocates for #JusticeForNoura be an example of how that is fundamentally incorrect. The burden on Muslim women is impossibly heavy – to defend themselves against both the ignorance of non-Muslims with an Islamophobic agenda, and the deeply patriarchal norms that exist within interpretations of sharia around the world. To paraphrase Dr Susan Carland, Muslim women forever face a catch-22. However, when the fight truly is on, as in the case of Noura, they are the first to step up to fight for each other’s rights and protection. Tell me, how is that oppression?

Source: A Sudanese teenager killed her rapist, and Muslim women are fighting for her life

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Canada’s oldest Jewish congregation, a civil rights champion, marks 250 years

2018/05/12 Leave a comment

Some early Canadian history:

The Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of Montreal was a forerunner of multiculturalism before the word had been invented.

Its members were among the founders of Canada: fur-traders, captains of industry and scholars.

Their struggle for civil rights made Quebec the first place in the British Empire where Jews could hold office.

So how come so few people know its amazing story?

Canada’s oldest Jewish congregation is celebrating its 250th anniversary this year. On Thursday, the synagogue is holding a gala dinner to mark the anniversary.

For Rabbi Avi Finegold, it’s an opportunity for the congregation on St-Kevin St. in Snowdon to celebrate its storied past and contribution to intercultural harmony.

“I like to think multiculturalism and religious pluralism started with us,” Finegold said.

“Diversity starts with our congregation. We represent something much bigger than us,” he said.

Montreal city council passed a resolution marking the anniversary in March and the synagogue is planning other events throughout the year, including a speaker series, travelling exhibition and the commissioning of a new Torah scroll.

Founded in Old Montreal in 1768, the synagogue, also known as Shearith Israel (remnant of Israel), was founded by Quebec’s first Jews — an enterprising group of merchants who arrived with British troops starting in 1759.

Its origins are rooted in the military and religious struggles that shaped the modern world, from the Spanish Inquisition to the age-old rivalry between France and England for world domination.

And its membership would include some of the brightest denizens of Montreal’s elite Square Mile, from streetcar magnate Jesse Joseph, president of the city’s streetcar company, to Clarence de Sola, a leader of Canada’s Zionist movement at the turn of the 20th century.

One of the rare surviving mansions on René Lévesque Blvd., the Judah house at 1980 René-Lévesque W., just west of the ramp to westbound Highway 720, belonged to another congregation member, the prominent lawyer and real-estate owner Frederick Thomas Judah.

Never heard of any of those gents?

Not surprising, because there was something of the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie about Montreal’s Jewish community in its first century of existence.

“It was a community that was quite discreet,” said Éliane Bélec, a doctoral student in history at Université du Québec à Montréal who wrote a 65-page commemorative booklet on the congregation that will be distributed to members.

Unlike the Ashkenazi Jews who poured into Canada from 1880 to 1920, fleeing pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe, the earlier community (which included Ashkenazi Jews but practised Sephardic rituals) was numerically small, wealthy and assimilated, she noted.

“I think the Spanish and Portuguese, the Sephardic community, was very Westernized while the Ashkenazi who arrived from Europe had their own way of dressing and their own foods,” Bélec said.

During the 1880s, Montreal’s Jewish population rose from 811 to 2,473 and in the 1890s it rose to 6,941, according to Taking Root: the Origins of the Canadian Jewish Community by Gerald Tulchinsky (Brandeis University Press, 1993).

Fast forward to the 1960s, when the arrival of Sephardic Jews from the Middle East and North Africa again changed the Jewish community.

“When we first came in 1970, the congregation was 85 per cent Ashkenazi,” said Norma Joseph, a professor of religion and cultures at Concordia University and the wife of Rabbi Emeritus Howard Joseph, who led the congregation for 40 years.

Within a few years, the membership had become 85 per cent Sephardic, with substantial contingents from Iraq, Lebanon and Morocco, she said.

The couple will be honoured for their long service to the synagogue at Thursday’s gala.

“One of the things my husband excelled at was making the different communities feel welcome and telling them that their own traditions were valuable, wonderful and that we could all live together in our multicultural synagogue,” Joseph said.

“On Rosh Hashanah, we have five different services. We have the main Spanish and Portuguese tradition, we have an Iraqi service, a Moroccan service, a Lebanese service, and an authentic Ashkenazi service.

“When you walk into each one of these services and close your eyes, you think you’re transported back 100 years to the different countries. It’s the most amazing, wonderful feeling,” she said.

For more information on the 250th anniversary, visit thespanish.org/250th-home or call 514-737-3695.

Why Spanish and Portuguese?

When Spain and Portugal expelled the Jews in 1492 and 1497, hundreds of thousands of “conversos,” Jews who had converted to Christianity — often under duress — remained. They now became the main targets for persecution. Over time, some escaped to other parts of Western Europe and returned to the Jewish fold. In Amsterdam, the world’s leading trading city and a centre of religious tolerance, they founded a thriving community, supplemented by the arrival of Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe. It sent out offshoots to New York (then New Amsterdam) and London, where Spanish and Portuguese Synagogues were founded in 1654 and 1657 respectively. (The New York synagogue credits its founding to 23 Jews who escaped from Brazil after Portugal re-conquered it from the Dutch.)

Hart and Soul

Jews, banned from New France, began arriving in Quebec with the British army from 1759 onward. Among them was Aaron Hart (1724-1800), a sutler who sold provisions to the British troops. A protégé of commander and later governor Frederick Haldimand, Hart founded a dynasty in Trois-Rivières, where he became a successful merchant and landowner. Despite the distance, Hart maintained close ties to the Montreal synagogue.

Fight for rights

In 1807, Hart’s second son, Ezekiel (1770-1843) won a by-election in Trois-Rivières, becoming the first Jew elected to office in the British Empire. But the majority Canadien party (later the Patriotes) refused to let him take his seat in the assembly of Lower Canada because he was a Jew.

In 1832, the assembly passed a motion introduced by newspaper publisher John Neilson extending political rights to Jews, who were still barred from holding office in Britain.

 

Source: Canada’s oldest Jewish congregation, a civil rights champion, marks 250 years

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Douglas Todd: Amazon’s Vancouver ‘news’ lacks facts on jobs, migrants coming this way

2018/05/12 Leave a comment

More on the Canadian advantage in hiring talent and the mobility in the tech sector, written from a somewhat ambivalent perspective:

….The extent to which Canadian high-tech companies rely on foreign workers, international students and would-be migrants is explained in the book Trans-Pacific Mobilities: The Chinese and Canada (UBC Press), edited by the University of Calgary’s Lloyd Wong, with a key contribution by SFU’s Karl Froschauer.

Although Wong and Froschauer have never responded to my requests for interviews, they wrote in Trans-Pacific Mobilities that Metro Vancouver’s high-tech companies assertively look abroad for workers, mostly from Asia, and especially in India and China.

They do so, the sociologists write, because it means they can “spend a very small fraction of their salary budget on training and because B.C. universities produce relatively few graduates in the technology field … High-tech computer programming and computer systems analysis have been the two most common intended occupations of all skilled immigrants to Canada.”

Some international financial experts, however, are beginning to be more upfront about how one reason Canada’s high-tech sector is growing, particularly with satellite U.S. companies, is it is easier to get a visa to work in Canada than south of the border.

To put it simply, Canada’s open attitude to tech talent is the opposite of Trump’s, where the current national motto is, “Buy America. Hire America.”

Trump talks about further cracking down on the country’s coveted H-1B visas, which are used to place foreign workers in high-skilled U.S. jobs. As the BBC reports, U.S. politicians place a tight cap on H-1B visas because many do not want to see them used to replace skilled American workers with cheaper overseas counterparts.

Trudeau, on the other hand, is fast-tracking offshore high-tech workers and students. He’s brought in efforts like the Global Skills Strategy, which builds upon the 2015 “Express Entry” program; a free, online process that allows skilled workers to apply easily to immigrate.

Of the 500,000 international students in Canada in 2017, which was a 20 per cent jump from 2016, many are studying in technology fields.

One advantage in their coming to Canada is that — unlike in the U.S. where they are normally not allowed to stay in the country after they graduate — they can stay at least three years extra in Canada to work and go to the front of the queue for immigration. Another advantage of starting in Canadian high-tech is that foreign nationals who work for an American satellite company for one year can then get an inter-company transfer to the U.S.

Data is not available on how many Canadian-born or raised young people are getting jobs in the high-tech sectors in Vancouver, Toronto and across Canada. While employers routinely claim there is not enough local talent to hire, some B.C.-based business professors counter that there aren’t enough jobs for students graduating out of Canada’s high-tech programs.

In the midst of such trans-national confusion, shortage of facts and sometimes fantastical claims, there are pros and cons to the way the high-tech sector in Canada has become key to what Brock University researcher Zachary Spicer calls a globalized “brain churn.”

The world’s skilled workers, whether in Asia or North America, are not just flowing in one direction. They’re “churning,” shifting rapidly from country to country while chasing the most strategic jobs, with the restrictive U.S. generally being most sought-after, in large part because of its stronger salaries.

Raza Mirza, a high-tech worker in Vancouver who was recruited from Pakistan by a U.S. high-tech company, is not following the lead of many of his colleagues and moving to the U.S., even though he could make at least $40,000 Cdn more.

Separate from his own interests, he’s among many convinced the United States’ relatively protectionist approach to foreign labour, compared to Canada’s open policy, is definitely  boosting the high-tech sector in Canada.

“I believe the shortage of U.S. talent, and the U.S.’s unwillingness to let companies bring in more global talent, has been a huge factor in why U.S. technology companies are increasing their Canadian footprint.”

Source: Douglas Todd: Amazon’s Vancouver ‘news’ lacks facts on jobs, migrants coming this way

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It’s time to abolish the inhumane Canada-U.S. deal on asylum-seekers: Sean Rehaag

2018/05/11 2 Comments

Although I am a great admirer of the work Rehaag has done with his analysis of IRB decisions and decision makers (see Refugee approval rates reflect subjectivity of decision-makers, prof says – Montreal – CBC News), his article proposing abolishing the STCA would lead to a further sharp increase in the number of asylum seekers (already controversial), further overwhelm the IRB (already overwhelmed) and undermine overall support for immigration in this country.

Evidence-based policies need to consider the operational aspects, as well as the trade-offs between overall immigration levels and classes:

The Canadian government reportedly wants the United States to close a loophole in what’s known as the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA).

The agreement allows Canada to send asylum-seekers back to the U.S. if they come to the border. But the deal only applies at official ports-of-entry, and not when asylum-seekers cross the border elsewhere — the loophole that Canada apparently wants eliminated.

Expanding the STCA to cover irregular crossings would mean that thousands of asylum-seekers would be sent back to the U.S. after making their way to the Canadian border in the wake of worsening conditions there under President Donald Trump.

The current American administration, however, is unlikely to tweak the agreement. Trump doesn’t like refugees. He has imposed travel bans on refugees selected for resettlement; attempted to block entry to asylum-seekers arriving in a “caravan” at the southern U.S. border; he’s scorned an agreement to transfer 1,250 refugees from Australian detention facilities to the U.S. as “the worst deal ever.”

The STCA has barred thousands of asylum-seekers from Canada. Prior to its implementation, approximately 10,000 asylum-seekers entered Canada via the United States each year. Some 200 went in the other direction. In this context, Trump is unlikely to expand the STCA. If anything, he’d want to cancel it outright to decrease the number of refugees in the U.S.

The STCA’s 9-11 history

It’s worth recalling the history of the STCA. Canada had long pushed for the STCA because of the lopsided flow of asylum-seekers, but the U.S. refused for years. After the 9-11 attacks, when border security was of utmost concern, Canada essentially pulled a fast one by offering enhanced information-sharing and common border security measures in exchange for the STCA.

However, Canada would have agreed to these measures regardless because disruption to the cross-border flows of goods and services hurts Canada’s economy. In essence, Canada got the STCA for nothing.

In the Trumpian world view, this is another “worst deal ever,” and it fits into his claim that “very smooth” Canada has “taken advantage” of the U.S. for years.

If the United States isn’t likely to agree to expand the STCA, what is going on here?

Simple. This is crass political theatre.

‘Beating up on refugees’

The ruling Liberals are facing attacks by the opposition Conservatives who have returned to beating up on refugees as a show of “toughness.” In response to growing numbers of asylum-seekers irregularly crossing the Canada-U.S. border, the Liberals must be seen to be taking action, even if that action is futile.

Still, something meaningful needs to be done.

One could debate whether the agreement was ever good policy. There’s a Constitutional challenge under way about whether it’s even lawful. But, regardless, it’s clearly not working now.

The more asylum-seekers resort to irregular crossings to circumvent the STCA, the more these sites are normalized as unofficial crossings. The longer this goes on, the less effective the STCA will be at deterring future asylum-seekers from coming to Canada via the U.S.

At the same time, if specific unofficial crossings are blocked off, asylum-seekers will simply move to other, more dangerous crossings. Every country that has built barriers has seen asylum-seekers driven to increasingly desperate and dangerous measures.

Alan Kurdi — the child whose death en route to seeking asylum in the European Union sparked Canada’s most recent refugee resettlement program — and the thousands of migrants who have died trying to evade ever-increasing surveillance at the U.S.-Mexico border are stark examples of this tragic phenomenon.

In other words, if Canada blocks places like Roxham Road on the Québec/New York state border, refugees will cross remote fields in Manitoba during snowstorms. Asylum-seekers take these kinds of risks on a daily basis around the world.

If expanding the agreement is not viable, if erecting barriers is terrible policy, and if the status quo is not working — what can be done?

Also simple.

Do away with the STCA

It’s time for Canada to suspend the STCA. Asylum-seekers should be able to make refugee claims at regular ports-of-entry. At the same time, the government should calibrate funding and staffing levels for the Immigration and Refugee Board to the number of claims in the system.

This would ensure that people who meet the refugee definition are recognized in a timely manner and put on the path to successful settlement, while those who do not need Canada’s protection can quickly be removed. And it’s worth a reminder: Most are likely to meet the legal test to stay.

Suspending the STCA is not a radical proposal. Asylum-seekers made claims at the Canada-U.S. border for decades pre-STCA and the system worked fine.

Suspending the STCA will not harm Canada’s relationship with the U.S., or the ongoing NAFTA negotiations. The Americans would happily discard the STCA.

Suspending the STCA is also politically viable. It will not end Conservative opposition attacks. But rather than defending inaction on so-called “illegal” border crossings, the Liberals can instead punch back and say that they respect international refugee law.

They can ask whether the Conservatives want Canada to deport refugees — and how that squares with the lessons that Canada was supposed to have learned from the days of none is too many, when Canada had one of the worst records among Western countries of providing refuge for European Jews fleeing the Holocaust. They can ask whether the Conservatives care about the tragic deaths of Alan Kurdi and thousands of other desperate asylum-seekers around the world.

Most importantly, by suspending the STCA, Canada can show that there is an alternative to the xenophobic extreme-right policies taking parts of the world by storm.

Instead of building walls, we can adopt evidence-based policies that comply with international law and that make our country a better place for everyone. And we can show that the sky will not fall if Canada hosts a few thousand more people who face persecution, torture and even death.

If not now, when?

via It’s time to abolish the inhumane Canada-U.S. deal on asylum-seekers

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TV show Roseanne tackles xenophobia with good old-fashioned humanity: Sheema Khan

2018/05/11 Leave a comment

Humanity and understanding are good approaches:

It seems that everyone has an opinion about the reboot of the TV show Roseanne. This stems from the support by Roseanne Barr (and her TV character Roseanne Conner) of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Nonetheless, the show has tackled contemporary issues with nuance, comedy and good old-fashioned humanity.

Take the most recent episode, in which a Muslim refugee family (the al-Harazis) from Yemen moves next door to the Conners. Roseanne is immediately suspicious about the “large amounts” of fertilizer stacked near their garage. They could be a sleeper cell planning a terrorist attack, she surmises to her sister, Jackie, and a friend, who push back against the naked bigotry.

Later in the evening, Roseanne’s visiting granddaughter, Mary, is scheduled to Skype her mother who is stationed in Afghanistan. There’s a glitch in the internet connection − so Roseanne does what she’s always done – hack her neighbour’s WiFi. However, the WiFi password next door has changed. Roseanne’s guess? “deathtoamerica.” When that doesn’t work, she tries “deathtoamerica123.” Her feisty daughter Darlene responds derisively to a thought process steeped in stereotypes.

Finally, Roseanne and Jackie decide to visit their Muslim neighbours at 2 a.m. to ask for their password, with Mary yearning to connect with her mother. While Jackie brings a houseplant as an offering, Roseanne arms herself with a baseball bat. They are greeted by Salim al-Harazi who opens the door, also armed with a baseball bat. Fear meets fear in the heart of America. After initial mutual awkwardness, Roseanne explains the reason for their visit. Salim’s wife, Fatima, joins the conversation and we begin to witness the humanization of the “other.” The stacked bags of fertilizer? Too many inadvertent hits on the Amazon cart. There is a poignant moment when the couple’s young son awakens and worries about the commotion. Fatima reassures him with soothing words and a kiss, sending him back to bed. What’s striking is the bulletproof vest worn by the child. Fatima explains that the family has been subject to harassment that has frightened their son; he sleeps with the vest to feel safe.

This scene is transformational, as fear is vanquished with the discovery of common decency. While the Conners and al-Harazis may come from different sides of the globe, they arrive at a common point of compassion, where families strive to provide the universal goals of safety and security.

The next day, Roseanne meets Fatima at the local grocery checkout. When Fatima’s food stamps and debit card are not enough to pay for her groceries, the cashier makes snide remarks to Fatima about fleecing American taxpayers and her “camel” waiting outside. In spite of her own dire finances, Roseanne steps in to pay for Fatima and then berates the cashier, while emphasizing the need to understand the everyday struggles of a new family fleeing war.

I must confess that this was the first time I have watched Roseanne. My TV staple includes The Good Fight, Black-ish and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Nonetheless, I was moved by this episode – for the simple truths it portrayed.

It also made me reflect upon my own anxieties – some absurd, some well-founded.

For example, there is the annual spring debate: Should I stack the fertilizer bags outside the garage (since I have nothing to hide), or inside the garage (to avoid prying eyes)?

Or, the time I was walking through Trudeau airport with my husband, lagging behind him since I was tired. I then realized that people would see a Muslim woman walking three steps behind her husband, thus confirming stereotypes. I rushed to join his side.

The anxieties heighten when children are involved. Once, my son returned with excitement after his bantam hockey team meeting: The players had chosen “Bombers” as the team name. I was horrified, emphatically advising my son to make it clear that he was talking about hockey when mentioning the “Bombers” in every phone and internet conversation. Prior to our trip to a Vermont hockey tournament, I worried that a U.S. border guard would ask my Muslim son the name of his team.

I can laugh at these incidents now. But the anxieties remain – especially in light of the Quebec City massacre.

And let’s not forget the damaging effect of xenophobia on children, who only crave safety in a complex world.

When Fatima shares her password (“goCubs”) with Roseanne, so that the girl can connect with her mother, she shares a message we should all take to heart: “children should never suffer from the ignorance of adults.”

via TV show Roseanne tackles xenophobia with good old-fashioned humanity – The Globe and Mail

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Two different takes -John Ivison: With another apology, Trudeau tries to right — and rewrite — the past, Emma Teitel: Formal apologies may be most useful not for the oppressed, but for the clueless

2018/05/11 Leave a comment

Interesting contrast between Ivison, going back to Pierre Trudeau’s position, and Emma Teitel’s greater recognition of the value. Starting with Ivison:

In the early 1940s, Pierre Elliott Trudeau flirted with politics that, in the words of his esteemed biographer John English, were “not only anti-war and anti-Liberal, but also clandestine, highly nationalist and, at least momentarily, separatist and even violent.”

In a speech in support of a nationalist candidate in a Montreal by-election, Trudeau minimized the German threat and, according to Le Devoir, said he feared “the peaceful invasion of immigrants more than the armed invasion of the enemy.

“Bring on the revolution,” he concluded.

It should be noted the immigrants he feared in Montreal in those days were mainly Jews.

None of the above reflects well on the current Prime Minister’s father. But as English noted, Trudeau was party to the kind of half-baked plotting that was common in the basements of middle-class houses in Montreal — plots that no-one ever dreamed of acting on. “This was the spirit of the age,” said English, in his peerless book Citizen of the World.

Perhaps at some future date Trudeau’s actions will be used as a pretext to remove his name from Montreal’s airport or from the high school in Markham, Ont., that bears his name. The spirit of today’s age is a revisionism that never ends — the application of today’s mores to periods in history when ethics and standards were very different.

In isolation, Trudeau senior’s comments are shocking. But thankfully they do not stand in isolation. Separatism, revolutionary politics and racism were not his legacies. Quite the contrary.

His comments were made in the context of the time and place in which they were made — and they were decidedly unexceptional for the era.

Yet the current Liberal government is encouraging this impulse toward “presentism” — by changing the name of the Langevin Block that houses the Prime Minister’s Office in Ottawa (named after Hector-Louis Langevin, a Father of Confederation and strong proponent of the residential school system) and through its apparent attempt to break the world record for official apologies.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Wednesday that he looks forward to offering a formal apology on the floor of the House of Commons for the turning away of a boat full of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany in 1939 — the result of a “discriminatory ‘none is too many’ immigration policy.”

Make no mistake, the decision to turn away the MS St. Louis, with its 907 German Jewish passengers, is a stain on Canada’s history. A historic injustice was done and it should be held in the collective memory to guard against a revival in anti-Semitic sentiment.

But does a formal apology really ensure those mistakes are not repeated?

Arguably, an apology allows the government to turn the page and hope everyone forgets the inconvenient past.

Are they sincere? At one point during question period on Wednesday, Trudeau blustered that he would not apologize for Canada “swaggering” on the world stage. That would seem to be about the only thing for which he is not apologizing.

The MS St. Louis mea culpa will be the fourth delivered by this prime minister. We have already had formal apologies for the Komagata Maru incident, in which another ship carrying Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus was denied entry to Canada in 1914 because of the immigration laws at the time; to residential school students in Newfoundland and Labrador; and to members of the military and federal public service who were persecuted because of their sexual orientation.

It is hard to escape the feeling that political expediency is at work for the Liberals; each apology was targeted at a key political constituency — Sikh, LGBTQ, Indigenous and Jewish Canadians.

That is not a partisan point — Stephen Harper made apologies to Canada’s Chinese community for the imposition of a head tax, which looked electorally motivated, and to its Indigenous population for residential schools, which was perhaps less so.

History exists in context and should not be rewritten or tampered with to suit political ends.

This was recognized by the current prime minister’s father, who in 1984 resisted pressures to apologize to, and compensate, Japanese Canadians who were interned and stripped of their property during the Second World War.

“I do not think the purpose of a government is to right the past. It cannot rewrite history. It is our purpose to be just in our time,” he told the House of Commons.

Prophetically, he worried that once the government started down the path, there would be no end to the apologies and the compensation demanded.

“I know we’d have to go back a great length of time in our history and look at all the injustices,” he said.

Pierre Trudeau, more than most, appreciated that it is often the spirit of the age that is responsible for injustice — and that apologies do not erase iniquity.

Source: John Ivison: With another apology, Trudeau tries to right — and rewrite — the past

Teitel focusses on the educational value of such apologies:

Since its release in 1970, many people (married ones especially) have taken issue with the signature line from the hit movie Love Story: “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” But I imagine the person most constitutionally averse to this notion is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a man who says sorry more often than a Canadian tourist in a crowded airport.

Where his Prime Minister father, the late Pierre Trudeau, wasn’t a fan of state-issued apologies, our rueful leader appears quite comfortable doling them out.

The PM has made a series of official apologies addressing various historical wrongs since he took office in 2015. Two years ago, for example, he issued an apology for the 1914 Komagata Maru incident, in which hundreds of Sikh, Muslim and Hindu passengers were unjustly turned away at the Canadian border. Their Japanese steamship returned to India, where 19 passengers were shot and killed upon arrival and many others imprisoned.

Last year, the PM issued an apology to survivors of Canada’s residential schools. He also asked the Pope himself to apologize for the church’s role in operating the notoriously exploitative, abusive institutions. (Unfortunately, the pope declined).

And just this week the PM announced plans to formally apologize on behalf of the Canadian government, in the House of Commons, for the tragic incident of the MS St. Louis in 1939, when Canada refused asylum to the more than 900 Jewish German refugees on board. The MS St. Louis was forced to return to Europe, where 254 of its passengers were later murdered in the Holocaust.

“When Canada denied asylum to the 907 German Jews on board the MS St. Louis,” Trudeau said in a recent statement, “we failed not only those passengers, but also their descendants and community. It is our collective responsibility to acknowledge this difficult truth, learn from this story, and continue to fight against anti-Semitism every day, as we give meaning to the solemn vow: ‘Never again.’ I look forward to offering this apology on the floor of the House.”

Unfortunately, not everybody is looking forward to hearing it.

Many critics of the Prime Minister, some of them Jewish, are a little annoyed by the prospect of a staged mea culpa that will address a tragic event whose victims are, by and large, not around to receive it. Some of these formal apologies are, after all, rather bizarre, because the people saying “I’m sorry” are so rarely the wrongdoers and the people saying “I forgive you” are rarely the wronged. As a result, they can come off as cheap and hollow, even to the ears of the people you think might appreciate them most.

Here’s Sally Zerker, whose Jewish, Polish ancestors were denied visas to Canada in the 1930’s, writing about the prospect of a government apology for the MS. St. Louis tragedy in the Canadian Jewish News last year:

“It will not bring back my relatives, or offer me any solace. Instead, it will whitewash a government that did nothing to help the Jews who were fleeing the Nazis and ignored the type of anti-Semitism that was endemic in Canada until the 1970s. Ultimately, it is nothing but a shallow, empty, meaningless act. An apology can’t right this wrong.”

But it can publicize it. And this is where I disagree with Zerker and other critics of government apologies. We’re living in a world where the United States government appears allergic to facts and routinely winks at white supremacists. A world where the leaders of the women’s march, arguably the largest feminist movement on the continent, can pal around with horrendous anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan and retain their status as heroines of an intersectional movement.

A world where, according to the Anti Defamation League, anti-Semitic hate crimes — from violent assaults, to Jewish kids being harassed at school, to vandalism of synagogues — surged 57 per cent last year. Meanwhile, according to a survey released on Holocaust Remembrance Day (Jan. 27) this year, 22 per cent of American millennials haven’t heard of the Holocaust or are unsure of what it is, and two-thirds do not know what Auschwitz is.

All of this is to say that while I agree with Trudeau’s critics that formal apologies are sometimes silly and performative — and perhaps lacking in meaning for some victims and their families — they are also factual and newsworthy. They breathe new life into old wrongs and in doing so they bring awareness to those wrongs.

It’s for this reason that I find it difficult to object to a perfectly harmless government statement that might, even if it doesn’t heal any wounds, inspire an uninformed Canadian to Google “MS St. Louis.”

It’s a sorry thing to say, but formal apologies may be most useful not for the oppressed, but for the clueless.

Source: Emma Teitel: Formal apologies may be most useful not for the oppressed, but for the clueless

Filed under Historical Recognition, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Accommodement raisonnable: la règle du cas par cas s’appliquera

2018/05/11 Leave a comment

In other words, sounds like the overall Canadian approach to accommodation requests:

Près de sept mois après l’adoption de la « loi 62 », la ministre de la Justice, Stéphanie Vallée, a dévoilé mercredi les lignes directrices visant à « guider » les organismes publics dans le traitement de demandes d’accommodement pour un motif religieux reçues à compter du 1er juillet prochain.

Ces lignes directrices ne forment pas un « cadre d’analyse unique », a-t-elle souligné à gros traits en conférence de presse mercredi après-midi. Du coup, chaque demande devra continuer d’être traitée au « cas par cas ».

Installation d’une vitre givrée dans un gymnase, aménagement d’un lieu de prière dans un établissement public, octroi d’un congé lors d’une fête religieuse, Mme Vallée a refusé d’illustrer l’application des nouvelles lignes directrices au moyen d’exemples de demandes d’accommodement raisonnable ou déraisonnable. « Vous me faites une demande très générale dans un contexte très général. Ce qui est important de bien saisir dans les demandes d’accommodement, c’est que ces demandes-là sont formulées dans un contexte particulier, à un organisme particulier, par une personne particulière », a-t-elle fait valoir à la presse. Chaque demande d’accommodement pour un motif religieux sera « étudiée au cas par cas », et ce, « en fonction du contexte au moment où la demande est formulée », a-t-elle ajouté.

Cela dit, un accommodement sera octroyé seulement si une série de conditions prévues par la Loi favorisant le respect de la neutralité religieuse sont respectées, a expliqué Mme Vallée. Parmi elles : « le demandeur doit croire sincèrement qu’il est obligé de se conformer à cette conviction ou cette pratique dans le cadre de sa foi ». L’accommodement demandé ne doit pas entrer en collision avec, d’une part, le droit à l’égalité entre les femmes et les hommes et, d’autre part, le droit de toute personne d’être traitée sans discrimination. Autrement dit, le droit des autres usagers ou employés de l’organisme assujetti à la « loi 62 » de ne pas subir de discrimination fondée sur leur sexe, leur race, leur identité de genre, leur orientation sexuelle ou tout autre motif interdit par la Charte des droits et libertés de la personne doit demeurer intact.

Les fonctionnaires devront aussi avoir « en tête les principes de sécurité, de communication et d’identification » lorsqu’ils analyseront les demandes d’accommodement faites par une personne tenant à garder le visage couvert lorsqu’elle reçoit un service public en raison de ses convictions religieuses, a rappelé la ministre de la Justice.

« Les demandes d’accommodement pour motif religieux sont déjà traitées dans les organismes en ce moment, à la lumière des règles élaborées au fil du temps par la jurisprudence. […] La publication des lignes directrices facilitera une meilleure compréhension de la loi, mais aussi, et surtout, une mise en oeuvre plus harmonieuse. »

Gérard Bouchard et Charles Taylor, qui ont coprésidé la Commission de consultation sur les pratiques d’accommodement reliées aux différences culturelles il y a dix ans, ont mis la main à la pâte, a mentionné Mme Vallée au détour d’une réponse.

Un répondant sera désigné dans chaque organisme pour traiter les demandes d’accommodement pour motif religieux. « Ce n’est pas chaque chauffeur, ce n’est pas chaque employé qui est responsable de [traiter] la demande. Ce seront les répondants », a martelé Mme Vallée en conférence de presse.

Un demandeur qui essuie un refus pourra interjeter appel devant la Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse. « Comme c’est le cas actuellement », a précisé Mme Vallée.

La sous-ministre à la Justice a transmis mercredi après-midi les lignes directrices à ses homologues dans les autres ministères. Les commissions scolaires, les cégeps, les universités, les municipalités, les sociétés de transport recevront également un exemplaire. Des « formations » y seront organisées prochainement, a indiqué Mme Vallée.

Les organismes ont les coudées franches pour rejeter toute demande d’accommodement non raisonnable, selon le gouvernement libéral. En effet, l’accommodement demandé ne doit pas imposer une contrainte excessive à l’organisme visé, c’est-à-dire « nui[re], de façon importante à sa prestation de services, à sa mission [et] à la qualité de ses services ».

D’ailleurs, le demandeur devra « collabore[r] à la recherche d’une solution satisfaisante et raisonnable », notamment en faisant « des compromis pour limiter les contraintes que sa demande peut causer », peut-on lire sur la fiche d’information produite par le ministère de la Justice.

Le coin droit du document est orné d’une fleur de lys formée d’individus, tandis que le coin gauche loge le slogan du gouvernement, « Ensemble… on agit pour une société juste et équitable ».

« Les demandes d’accommodements ont comme objectif d’assurer le respect des droits fondamentaux individuels, d’éviter les situations de discrimination entre les citoyens, elles visent à atteindre l’équité au sein de la société québécoise et non, comme certains le perçoivent, à accorder un traitement de faveur », a souligné Stéphanie Vallée. « Ce ne sont pas toutes les demandes présentées qui constituent une demande d’accommodements, et ce ne sont pas toutes les demandes d’accommodements qui peuvent être accordées », a-t-elle ajouté.

Le Parti québécois et la Coalition avenir Québec ont réagi au quart de tour.

Les lignes directrices n’ajoutent rien à la « loi 62 », déplore la députée péquiste Agnès Maltais. « Ça [en] laisse encore beaucoup sur les épaules des employés », a-t-elle dit.

Selon sa compréhension, les femmes de confession musulmane pourront porter le niqab ou la burka au Québec, « sauf dans le cas où un employé [d’un organisme] — et c’est là que ça revient sur les épaules de l’employé — demande une identification pour des raisons de communication ou de sécurité ».

« Stéphanie Vallée ouvre la porte à un accommodement religieux pour le niqab et la burqa si la croyance est “sincère” et elle ajoute encore plus de confusion à sa loi 62. C’était un fouillis, c’est maintenant un foutoir ! » a poursuivi la députée caquiste Nathalie Roy mercredi après-midi. Elle promet de commenter plus longuement le dossier à l’Assemblée nationale jeudi.

La ministre Stéphanie Vallée tâchera de démêler les incompréhensions des partis politiques d’opposition en commission parlementaire d’ici la fin de la session parlementaire, prévue le 15 juin prochain.

La totalité de la loi favorisant le respect de la neutralité religieuse — y compris l’article 10 indiquant qu’une personne offrant ou recevant un service public « doit avoir le visage découvert », qui a été invalidé par la Cour supérieure en décembre dernier — pourra être appliquée à compter du 1er juillet prochain, est-elle persuadée.

Source: Accommodement raisonnable: la règle du cas par cas s’appliquera

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Australia: Citizenship inquiry to recommend referendum, which Turnbull rejects

2018/05/11 Leave a comment

Although I believe that s. 44 of the Australian constitution is a historic anachronism, holding a referendum would be  high risk and divisive:

Malcolm Turnbull has given a strong indication that the government will oppose a referendum to fix the citizenship crisis, arguing they are hard to win and that aspiring politicians should “get their act together” and renounce foreign citizenship instead.

The prime minister’s opposition to a referendum puts him at odds with the Liberal senator Linda Reynolds, who has spearheaded a six-month inquiry into section 44 of the constitution. She believes there are “no easy options” to fix the crisis and a referendum is needed to reform or repeal the “profoundly undemocratic” section.

Guardian Australia understands that the joint standing committee on electoral matters will meet to finalise its report on Friday and will lay out a series of options – all of which involve a referendum.

These include options to remove section 44 entirely, to replace the ban on foreign citizens with a requirement for parliamentarians to swear an oath of allegiance, or to allow parliament to set the disqualifications in legislation, not the constitution. The overwhelming weight of evidence to the committee supported constitutional change.

It is understood that the government is keen to make only administrative changes – such as improved disclosure or new Australian Electoral Commission powers to check compliance – but these options are not supported by the electoral committee.

On Thursday the Labor leader in the Senate, Penny Wong, reiterated that a section 44 referendum was not a priority for Labor, citing the need to make other constitutional changes first.

The high court decided to disqualify the Labor senator Katy Gallagher on Wednesday, triggering the resignation of four MPs – including three Labor MPs – over dual-citizenship issues.

Turnbull told ABC’s AM that the high court’s decision meant “you have got to get your act together before you nominate”. He noted that most of the cases had been dual citizens with UK citizenship, which he said was “very straightforward” and “not complex” to renounce.

Pressed on whether Australia should have a referendum on section 44, Turnbull said the government had put forward its preferred interpretation of the disqualification of dual citizens in the “citizenship seven” case last year but the high court had not accepted it.

In that case, the commonwealth argued that parliamentarians who were unaware of their dual citizenship could not have allegiance to a foreign power but the court held that the section barred all foreign citizens.

Turnbull said changing the constitution “is very hard and [it’s] very hard to get support for [a referendum]”.

“So I think the best advice, given that the election will be next year, is for everyone to get their act together and make sure they are not a citizen of anywhere else before they nominate.”

Turnbull played down expectations that the Coalition could win seats in byelections to be held in Fremantle (Western Australia), Braddon (Tasmania), Mayo (South Australia) and Longman (Queensland), arguing that “byelections are always tough for the government”.

He said it would be up to state divisions to decide whether to run candidates in those seats but the Liberal party believed in fighting for government.

Turnbull said the byelections were “a test for Bill Shorten” who had failed to take responsibility for the Labor MPs’ refusal to resign after the Matt Canavan decisionset the test for dual citizens in October.

On Wednesday Shorten refused to apologise for allowing his MPs to sit in parliament while ineligible, citing the fact they had relied in “good faith” on legal advice.

On Thursday the manager of opposition business, Tony Burke, offered that Labor was “sorry it has turned out this way” while Wong told ABC Radio National: “We regret voters are put to the inconvenience and cost of byelections.”

In reference to warnings from academics that, after the Canavan decision, “reasonable steps” to renounce were not sufficient, Wong said “lawyers say a lot of things” and Labor had acted on its advice.

She said the test for dual citizens was strict but Labor would rather have referendums on Indigenous recognition in the constitution and other “more important issues”.

“Parties just now have to apply the high court decision to their processes,” she said.

Before the Gallagher decision, Linda Reynolds, the chair of the joint standing committee on electoral matters, said her view was “the evidence to the committee is the only way these problems will stop is via a referendum”.

The deputy chair of the joint standing committee on electoral matters, the Labor MP Andrew Giles, said the uncertainty about eligibility “can’t continue” as it was “compounding frustrations with the state of politics today”.

“It’s a collective responsibility to resolve this uncertainty, and also to make sure that all Australians can have their say in what restrictions should apply to running for election to our national parliament.”

Source: Citizenship inquiry to recommend referendum, which Turnbull rejects

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with , ,

Kurl: Canadians are now confronting how generous we really are

2018/05/10 Leave a comment

While overall support for immigration remains high, and Canadians believe in the economic benefits of immigration, valid to ask how these macro numbers will continue to hold up should the asylum seeker numbers continue to grow and the government measures, current and likely those under consideration, do not result in a decline:

This is soon to be our summer of our discontent, disagreement and discomfort, as Canadians watch increasing numbers of people claiming asylum try their luck at undesignated border crossings

Discontent over Justin Trudeau’s government’s handling of the file. Disagreement over how it should be handled, and discomfort over the realization that despite the often-proffered narrative of Canada’s endless, unconditional welcome of newcomers, we’re wary to say the least, about this phenomenon.

As they try to escape the ever fear and uncertainty of Donald Trump’s ever-tightening restrictions on immigration, and spurred on by that now infamous prime ministerial tweet, they do so by circumventing Canada’s Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA), which denies entry to those who have already claimed or obtained status in the United States, by crossing into Canada not at airports or other, staffed border crossings, but anywhere they can, along thousands of kilometers of unmonitored perimeter.

Who doesn’t remember the iconic photograph early last year, of a smiling Mountie lifting a little girl in a pink coat over the U.S.-Canada border near Hemmingford, Que? What came to national attention as something of a curiosity – and for many a representation of the “best of Canada” – has since given way to pointed questions about how officials plan to deal with the tens of thousands and counting who are seeking to make a home on this side of the 49th parallel.

When the issue again dominated headlines last fall, slightly more than half of Canadians (53 per cent) said the country has been “too generous” to the border crossers, more than eight times as many as those who said Canada hasn’t been “generous enough” (six per cent). Politics drives those opinions: past Conservative voters are overwhelmingly more likely to say this, although it should be noted that at least 40 per cent of 2015 Liberals and yes, even past New Democrat voters agree.

As to where they wanted government focusing its attention, seven-in-10 said they’d prioritize assigning more staff to monitoring and securing unguarded parts of the border. The rest (30 per cent) said they’d prioritize assisting those seeking asylum.

Little wonder then, that at the time, the majority (57 per cent) disapproved of the Liberal government’s handling of the situation, including one-third of his own party’s past voters.

Even less wonder, for reasons practical and political, the government which last year rejected calls to suspend the STCA, is now calling on the U.S. to agree to amendments that would have it apply to the entire length of the border.

How did we get here? Didn’t Trudeau proclaim that “diversity is our strength?” Wasn’t the popularity of his stance on accepting 25,000 Syrian refugees part of what convinced centre and centre-left voters to spur the Liberals to a majority?

The thing is, feel-good rhetoric is easier to accept when a complex issue isn’t staring you right in the eyeballs. Before this, incidents of irregular asylum seekers suddenly reaching our borders were largely limited to a handful of boats that managed an arduous ocean journey; Indian nationals arriving off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador in the ’80s. Migrants from Fujian arriving in the late ’90s. Sri Lankans who made a similar trip about 10 years later.

Not until now have we had to answer uncomfortable questions about how welcoming we really are. The vast majority of people in this country (79 per cent) have said our immigration and refugee policy should give primacy to national economic and workforce needs over those in crisis abroad (21 per cent).

Given the more than 150,000 economic class immigrants who came from every corner of the world in 2016, diversity is indeed our strength. What Canadians perceive as a government weakness, however, is equating diversity with an open invitation followed by an ill-prepared response, to unchecked migration as Canada confronts its own mini-Greece moment.

via Kurl: Canadians are now confronting how generous we really are | Ottawa Citizen

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

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