In the News: August 17, 2012

Today is turning out to be a big day in the news for ethnic, cultural, and immigration stories. Here are some of the stories I read this morning that I think are worth taking a look at!

On Focus Groups, Ethnicity Debates, and Banknotes: http://www.edmontonjournal.com/business/Bank+Canada+bans+image+Asianlooking+woman+from+banknotes/7105230/story.html

On Line-ups and Canadian Passivity: http://www.edmontonjournal.com/entertainment/Staples+queue+jumping+This+Canada/7102390/story.html

On the Possibility That a Member of the Russian Punk Group, Pussy Riot, and Charged with Hooliganism is a Canadian Permanent Resident: http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/08/17/pussy-riot-case-takes-canadian-twist/

http://visalawcanada.blogspot.ca/2012/08/pussy-riot-canadian-residency-connection.html

On Whether or Not Quebec’s Election is Showing Signs of Racism and Xenophobia: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/08/16/tasha-kheiriddin-in-quebec-xenophobia-is-alive-and-well/

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/08/15/chris-selley-intolerance-is-intolerance-even-in-quebec/

Systematic Discrimination in Canadian Immigration (Historical)

Systematic Discrimination in Canadian Immigration (Historical)

Today I want to take a closer look at a part of Canadian history than Canadians don’t like to talk about. There are significant spans of time in Canadian history where our government created and upheld some very racist laws pertaining to refugees, immigrants, and immigration. Some of these laws were very overt and blatantly discriminatory while others were more subtly non-inclusive. As Canadians we should be ashamed of these terrible laws that are a part of our past. However, that shame should not cause us to sweep these horrible bits of history under the rug because we need to remember them in order to ensure that they never happen again.

Here are some examples for Canada’s past that we should keep in mind and prevent them from happening again:

1. The Chinese Exclusion Act (1885-1923)

This act “imposed a head tax on Chinese immigrants of $50, [which] increased to $100 in 1900 and to $500 in 1903” (Canadian Council for Refugees 2000). During the years of this act “more than $22 million were collected in head tax payments” (Canadian Council for Refugees 2000).

2. The Chinese Immigration Act (1923-1947)

This act meant “almost total prohibition of Chinese immigration in Canada” (Canadian Council for Refugees 2000).

3. Order in Council (1908)

This was known as the “’continuous passage rule’ which had the effect of excluding from immigration people who could not make a direct journey to Canada” (Canadian Council for Refugees 2000). Who were they discriminating against and trying to keep out? Reportedly, “immigrants from India, since there was at the time no direct voyage from India” (Canadian Council for Refugees 2000) to Canada. This rule did not apply to Europeans however, except in the 1920’s when it was used to discriminate against Eastern Europeans (Canadian Council for Refugees 2000).

4. Order in Council (1911)

This “prohibited ‘any immigrant belonging to the Negro race, which race is deemed unsuitable to the climate and requirements of Canada’” (Canadian Council for Refugees 2000). This order was “never proclaimed” (Canadian Council for Refugees 2000) but the government clearly tried to discriminate against immigrants from the African continent in even proposing such a law.

5. Prohibition of Immigration by Doukhobors, Mennonites and Hutterites (1919-1922)

What reason did the government give for prohibiting these individuals? Apparently it was their “’peculiar habits, modes of life and methods of holding property’” (Canadian Council for Refugees 2000). Apparently, communal agrarian communities were against Canadian values at the time. I suspect this had to do with the Bolsheviks in Russia at the time and the fear that Communism would spread, which ties back into the information in my previous post: discrimination towards immigrants often happens during troubling times, and immigrants are the target because they are convenient scapegoats.

Responding to Discriminatory Comments

Now, I’m an avid reader of blogs and online news from both sides of the political spectrum. I like having a complete picture of any issue and the discussion surrounding it before I form my own opinion. (This is one of the most valuable skills I have picked up from my university courses in Political Science.)

So, today I want to address a general statement that I often see on blogs and in comments sections. It usually goes something like this:

-          “I’m not a racist, but those immigrants…”

-          “It’s not racist to say that we need to stop accepting refugees…”

-          “It has nothing to do with race. I just don’t like foreigners…”

Right away from a rhetorical point of view I find it hard to believe these kinds of statements because of the stated or implied “but”. I have found that the conjunction “but” often indicates that faulty logic is about to follow a statement. (Of course, there are many arguments that use “but” and proceed to support their points wonderfully but the ones I am referring to rarely do this.) I find that “but” is not the best way for a logical argument to unfold, and more credible arguments usually make use of “if… then” statements instead.

I’ll just step down from the “rhetoric soapbox” now that I’ve said my peace on the matter, and get down to discussing the actual premise of the above example statements. These statements all have one thing in common: they are asserting that expressing distaste, dislike, and other negative emotions towards immigrants, refugees, or “foreigners” is not discriminatory or racist. Essentially, these statements are about justification. The author is trying to justify their judgment of individuals based on a group stereotype as being “okay” by stating that they are not being racist or discriminatory… while making racist or discriminatory statements. You can see the logical flaws here.

However, let’s put aside rhetorical issues and logical flaws for now. Let’s just look at the assumption that hating, being rude to, or openly disliking people simply because they are immigrants and refugees is not somehow racist, as authors of the above type of comments are suggesting. What evidence can be used to refute their claims? For this, I turn to the “Report on Systemic Racism and Discrimination In Canadian Refugee and Immigration Policies” put out by the Canadian Council for Refugees on November 1, 2000.

Their introduction states:

“Intolerance of refugees and immigrants, xenophobia and racism are intricately linked. Indeed, in Canada, where open expression of racist ideas is generally not tolerated, hostility towards newcomers serves as an outlet for the expression of underlying racist sentiments. This is especially true in times of economic or political difficulty, when those with less power, including newcomers, are easy scapegoats for the shortcomings of society.

Anti-refugee and anti-immigrant prejudices foster hostility and violence against newcomers…”

This passage asserts the exact opposite of what the above examples argue. That is, intolerance towards refugees and immigrants is racism and discrimination, plain and simple. It doesn’t matter how an author or poster or commentator “window-dresses” their intolerant comments; they are still expressing discriminatory statements. The motivations behind these statements, the passage contends are the result of tough times and the need for a defenseless social scapegoat.



Let me know what you think in the comments or on Twitter!

Busting Racism and Discrimination Myths About Immigrants

I wonder if much of the discrimination and racism that Canadian immigrants/new Canadians face is the result of ignorance. There are so many myths and stereotypes out there that if they were believed to be true, might make people more inclined to behave in a negative way towards immigrants.

All of the myths in this article are based purely off my own experience. These are things that I have personally heard people say or read in other blogs/web forums. These myths might not be representative of everything that is out there. Please comment on anything you feel was omitted in the comments section, on twitter, via email, or youtube.



Myth #1: “Immigrants get a free ride at Canadian universities and then go back to their home countries and use all that free education to benefit their home country instead of Canada.”

There are so many things wrong with the above statement. I’m going to have to break this myth down piece by piece:

-It seems that the people who say things like this are a little bit confused about the basic definition of an immigrant. They seem to be forgetting that immigrant implies “settling” in a new country instead of temporarily staying somewhere while going to school. They also do not seem to understand the distinction between an International Student (who comes to Canada on a student visa) and an Immigrant (who may come to Canada on a variety of other visas).

-International students do NOT get a “free ride at Canadian universities”. In fact, they have to pay higher fees than Canadian citizens do. Few Canadians that I have encountered, particularly here in Alberta, realize how heavily the government subsidizes post-secondary education for Canadian citizens. At many universities local students only pay a fraction of the tuition that international students do. The figures vary based on each province and university, but if you’re curious you should ask an international university student what their tuition is and compare it to the amount paid by a local student at the same institution. The results might surprise you. Now, to be absolutely fair in this discussion, I should point out that international students might have more scholarship and subsidization opportunities available to them. However, there are also many scholarship and loan/grant options available to non-international students. The whole point of scholarships, loans/grants, subsidies is to try to level the playing field as much as possible so that all qualified individuals can attend post-secondary education.

Here are some figures I found from a sampling of Canadian Universities:

My sources:
http://www.students.ubc.ca/coursesreg/tuition-fees-deposits/tuition-fees/
http://www.registrarsoffice.ualberta.ca/Costs-Tuition-Feesaspx
http://www.mcgill.ca/student-accounts/tuition-charges/fallwinter-term-tuition-and-fees/undergraduate-fees

As you can see, based on a data from these three well known Canadian Universities, the average international student pays $13, 044.00 more than a Canadian citizen or resident. That’s a far cry from a “free ride”.



Myth #2:“You let one immigrant in and then they bring over their entire family, who will just sit on welfare, use and abuse our healthcare system, and never get jobs or contribute to Canadian society!”

You see this myth emerge often in comments on news stories about immigrants who are trying to sponsor their families for Canadian residence. Now, with any system there will be people who take advantage of it, but there are measures in place to ensure that the family members that are brought over on sponsorship will not be a burden to Canadian tax payers. (People should also keep in mind that immigrants and permanent residents are also taxpayers in this country when they work here, so it’s not as though they aren’t contributing to the system.) These measures are (according to the CIC official website):

1.      Only Canadian citizens and permanent residents can sponsor their spouses, common-laws, conjugal partners, and dependant children. This means that the immigrant in question has to have already worked in Canada, contributed to taxes, and jumped through all the other hoops in place. (BTW, this is “Family Class” sponsorship that I’m talking about here.)

2.      When sponsoring a family member, the sponsor has to sign documents that commit them to provide for their family member/dependant financially. They must provide financial support for that person for 3 years after they become a permanent resident. If the person they are sponsoring is their child, they have to provide financial support for 10 years, or until the child turns 25 (whichever comes first). This means that “Joe taxpayer” isn’t supporting these people, the individual immigrant is.

3.      If an individual signed the above agreement before to get a family member residency and failed to deliver (ex the family member ended up using social assistance before the 3 years were up) they are NOT eligible to sponsor a family member again.

4.      A person cannot be a sponsor if they receive financial assistance (unless it is for a disability).

5.      There’s a minimum income require to sponsor a given number of people. See here (search LICO): http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/information/applications/guides/5196ETOC.asp#table3 This means only financially viable individuals can sponsor relatives.

6.      Currently there is a hold on applications to sponsor Grandparents and Parents. These applications are not being processed. So, contrary to popular belief young people are not coming here, and then bringing over their elderly relations to use up our healthcare resources. http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/sponsor/index.asp




Myth #3: "Immigrants get let into Canada all the time and they don’t even speak our language(s)!”

This is another argument you often see in the comments section on news stories relating to immigrants.

However, if people making these comments read the news more carefully they would know about the recent changes that require immigrants to demonstrate a given competency level in either of our two official languages.

Also, why does it seem that many people are afraid of people speaking in languages they don’t understand? Do you honestly think the Russia mother and daughter on the bus are whispering about you or something? It’s pretty self-involved to think that just because someone can speak in a different language that they are conspiring against you/Canadians/English-speakers when they do it. Different languages shape the way we form our thoughts, so it might be much easier for someone to express a given though in their native tongue or in a second language other than English or French. Why do you think translation is hard to do? Some thoughts just don’t have an equivalent in all languages!



Myth #4: “Immigrants are destroying Canadian culture! We let them keep their cultures, and we lose our own. They are colonizing us!”

This is something I’ve seen on some right-wing blogs/sites/comments.

To bust this myth, there isn’t much I can provide in terms of hard evidence. I can only offer this argument against the myth:

If someone claims that “immigrants are destroying Canadian culture” I always find myself asking the question: What is Canadian culture anyway? Do we even have one unified culture that can be destroyed, in the first place? Just asking these kinds of questions chips a hole in the Canadian culture myth.

Canada is not a nation in the ethnic or cultural sense. We are a nation purely in the political understanding of the term. Since the time when the first non-Aboriginals settled here we have not been ethnically or culturally homogenous. Even before the Europeans arrived on the scene, the territory we now know as Canada was one of diverse religious beliefs, languages, and cultures. So, if we have ever had a “Canadian culture” to destroy it was always a culture comprised of many diverse cultures. And how does on destroy a culture of diversity? By imposing homogeneity on it. So, those who argue that immigrants are destroying Canadian culture by bringing their diversity with them, are really the one destroying our culture.

Secondly, if part of knowing and embracing Canadian culture is learning about our nation’s history, then immigrants are likely more up-to-date on Canadian culture than most born-in-Canada Canadians. Why? Well to become a Canadian citizen, permanent residents have to pass a Citizenship test which includes questions about our political and judicial systems, history, and “culture”. I bet many Canadians would do very poorly on this exam if they were to take it.



Myth #5: “Immigrants don’t contribute to Canadian society! They’re all about doing things for their home countries and even if they live here, they don’t care about Canada!”

This myth is usually something I hear uttered, and from that moment on decide to avoid that person completely. Saying something like this is a big mark of ignorance in my books.
So, to bust this terrible myth here’s a list of successful/famous Canadian immigrants and refugees:

1.      Adrienne Clarkson: Refugee. Was the Governor General (the Queen’s top representative in Canada) and is reportedly good friends with British actor Alan Rickman.

2.      Alexander Graham Bell: Immigrant. Invented the harmonic telegraph, which later became the telephone.

3.      Peter Mansbridge: Immigrant. Famous Canadian newscaster.

4.      Robert Herjavec: Immigrant. Wealthy businessman featured on the show Dragons Den.

5.      Olivia Chow: Immigrant. Member of Parliament and wife of the late Jack Layton.

6.      Mike Lazaridis: Immigrant. Founder of Research in Motion (RIM), the BlackBerry company.

7.      Michael Ondaatje: Immigrant. Author.

8.      Gideon Sundback: Immigrant. Inventor of the zipper.

Multiculturalism and Discrimination

Multiculturalism: it’s a word we associate closely with Canada, a country that is composed, like a patchwork quilt, of various cultures and ethnicities. This is enshrined in the Multiculturalism Act. We are a country built by immigrants and the word “multiculturalism” implies that we embrace each separate immigrant culture instead of forcing new Canadians to abandon their cultures and assimilate. Multiculturalism implies that we want immigrants to feel integrated in Canadian society while being able to comfortably express the culture of the places they came from. 

Immigrants in Canada are protected from many forms of racism in Canada by Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Human Rights Commission, the Multiculturalism Act, and the Employment Equity Act. (Side note: these items also benefit and act as protections for those born in Canada.) Whether or not these protections are used enough, or too much, or not effectively enough, or whether they are manipulated for unethical gains is still very much up for debate.

However, all of this doesn’t change the fact that racism still exists in Canada. Discrimination is part of many new immigrants’ realities in this country. Do you doubt what I’m saying? Look at any news story about immigration in Canada on the web and scroll down to the comments section. You will find it to be full of people who are judging immigrants as a whole based on some stereotype or another. Although everyone is entitled to their opinion, (provided they do not act in a harmful way based on that opinion) when someone judges an individual based on a racial-group or ethnic-group based stereotype that is racism. And racism and discrimination tear our multicultural society apart instead of building it up.

As Bill Nye the Science Guy used to say “Consider the following”:

A 2009 Article by Lesley Ciarula Taylor in the Toronto Star (http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/634117) discussed a then recent study of immigrants and discrimination. The study of “41,666 people interviewed in nine languages… found skin colour – not religion, not income – was the biggest barrier to immigrants feeling they belonged…” (Taylor 2009) The study determined that the failure to integrate into Canadian society and the entrenchment of ethnic enclaves was not the result of multiculturalism allowing them to not adopt Canadian values if they chose not to, but because of the racism that they experienced. Or as Taylor puts it: “The more discrimination someone faced, the more likely they were to identify with their ethnic group, rather than Canadian” (2009).  That is, new immigrants do not choose to be isolated, but are forcibly isolated by their experiences with discrimination in Canada. Clearly, racism is undermining the multicultural society we like to tell the world that we have in Canada.

You can read more about what the Federal Government is doing on the subject of multiculturalism here:
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/multiculturalism/funding/index.asp
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/publications/multi-report2011/index.asp

Topic of the Week: Enough with Immigrant Stereotypes

So, let’s kick this discussion off by going back to one of my initial posts about what the definition of an immigrant is. Notice that the definitions of immigrant, emigrant, refugee, and expatriate DO NOT involve race. These definitions are open and allow for this truth: anyone from any country, region, ethnicity, race, gender, creed, or belief can immigrate/emigrate from anywhere to anywhere else. At its core, the word immigrant does not denote any particular “kind” of person. Anyone could potentially be an immigrant.

So why is it that so many Canadians conjure up a racially/ethnically-specific image in their minds every time they hear the words “Immigrant” and “Refugee”? Why is it that so many people are shocked when their Caucasian neighbors are in fact proud immigrants? Why do people say things like “oh, but you’re the kind of immigrant we want” to immigrants from certain regions of the world while behaving rudely towards those from other areas? Where does all of this discrimination and racism come from?

Do people forget that if you’re living in Canada today, you are the result of immigration? Even Aboriginal peoples, the original inhabitants of our country, are said to have come to Canada in the distance past from somewhere else. If the theory that human life emerged out of Africa and spread from there is held to be true, nearly everyone everywhere is an immigrant.

I’m proud to be the descendant of immigrants. On my father’s side, my great-great-grandfather immigrated to Canada from the United States. And yes, that counts as immigration. Immigrants don’t have to come from half a world away! Remember: an immigrant is just any newcomer to a country who has settled there. My ancestor was a newcomer to Canada from the United States who settled here. He, his family, and another family went on to found a town which still exists today. On my mother’s side I am also the descendant of immigrants. My great-grandparents came from Europe after the First World War. They were newcomers who settled on farms in the west. Today, my grandparents and my one aunt have carried on the family tradition of farming food and raising livestock to help sustain our country.

My family is the result of immigration. If both sides of my family hadn’t come to Canada I wouldn’t exist today. We’ve done relatively well for ourselves in Canada. However, my family is not representative of the whole picture of immigration in Canada. Then again, no one family can ever be representative of what it means to be a Canadian Immigrant because Canadian immigrants are a diverse bunch! Immigrants come from all over the globe; near as well as far. Immigrants come from all kinds of backgrounds, occupations, races, genders, religions, and situations. Every immigrant’s story is different. Some of the challenges Canadian immigrants face are the same, but many of them are unique to their particular situation.

So, the next time you think of an immigrant as a stereotype stop yourself. Immigrants don’t just come from one or two countries. They don’t conform to stereotypes. They are individuals. It is unfair to everyone to generalize about who is an immigrant.

LETS START A MOVEMENT:
Shake up the stereotypes and show Canada that anyone can be an immigrant by making and Immigrant Pride video on www.youtube.com or...
If you are an immigrant:

And if you are the descendant of immigrants:

Topic of the Week: Discrimination and Racism

So this week’s Topic of the Week is a heavy one (and fairly controversial) so I ask that you bear with me as I try to present it as best as I can based on my own experiences. If I leave anything important out, I urge you to please comment and let me know. Thanks.

The Topic of the Week is: Discrimination and Racism (as it relates to immigration in Canada)

If you have any stories about this topic, I would love it if you would share them with me in the comments of the blog, on www.twitter.com @MBlogger2, or via email at comingtocanadablog@gmail.com, or on www.youtube.com (search via the email address).