Much has been posted of late on social media concerning immigration and refugees. Those who oppose allowing refugees into the country will post various inflammatory claims and half truths to convince us they are protecting us from violent extremists. Those in favour are equally guilty of exaggerating the truth by trying to convince us that we are their only hope, and our economy will collapse without them.
Frankly, I am ambivalent. More accurately, I am complacent. I have no political agenda either way and I have not expended much time or energy on the matter. I suspect this is because part of me (and I like to think it’s a small part), as a white upper class male with a university education and two cars in the garage, wants the refugees to go away. They represent change; they represent a contrasting culture and religion. They bring strange foods and languages and skin color. I grew up with white people who spoke English and believed in Jesus; ok, white and English perhaps but let’s not kid ourselves. Contrary to what the conservatives will tell you, our country was not built on so-called Christian values. We were built off of the greed of the fur trade and social policies that removed First Nations children from their communities and sent them to residential schools. Our country was built on barbaric capitalism governed by a dictator in England. Nevertheless, back in the 1970’s and 80’s white and English we were with our parents proclaiming Christianity as they drank beer beside their pool on Sunday afternoon.
I cannot tell you how much of a shock it was to discover that in fact I am not entirely English. My mother’s St John family came from Germany centuries ago and Hastings most likely is viking in origin. So in fact other than my language, I am not English at all. And as a Mormon, many are of the view that I am not Christian either. So this leaves me in a bit of a quandary. Looking back, none of my ancestors came here seeking permission from the indigenous nations. They just came and cared not whether locals lived or died.
And here is the hypocrisy of the left. Every Thanksgiving I see posts of how this holiday is a travesty, how we stole the natives land. But these same people remain in their homes and make no effort to repatriate what they have back to the first nations.
Whose Country Is This?
As I mull over the refugee problem, I am leaning towards the view that this country does not belong to anybody. This is the planet earth and we are all humans. I suspect if anyone of us were to go back in time to 18th century North America, we would rather live in modern day Kazakhstan than historic Kanata. Besides, populations move about all the time. Not even the First Nations are indigenous to the Americas. They came, by and large, from Asia and fought brutal wars and perpetrated their own genocides as effectively as their Asian cousins and African ancestors.
My forefathers came here to seek a better life for themselves, and they brought their religion and culture with them but over time, they became part of the Canadian culture. I saw an influx of Chinese immigrants in the 1970s, and an influx of Indian and Pakistani immigrants in the 1980s and 1990s. Their children are as Canadian as I. None of these countries are Muslim, but along with doctors and plumbers, there came drug lords and rapists. These bad guys are not an immigration problem, they are a human problem. A certain number of every population are bad. Stopping immigration will not stop crime. It just reduces our workforce. The current region of horror in the press happens to be largely Muslim. There are, however, plenty of refugees struggling to get in who are Christian, Buddhists, Sikh, Baha’i, and a host of other religious traditions. But we have decided to negatively focus on the Muslims for the time being. I get it. Each month has to have a flavour.
Who Are These Refugees?
As I try to set aside my own bigotry, I have to consider the conditions that refugees are coming from. Little children like my granddaughter are being raped, tortured and killed. Houses are being destroyed, and lives ruined. And these atrocities are not being committed by Islam, but by corrupt governments. These people are fleeing a barbarity that is so much greater than what my ancestors faced before they came here to supplant the Iroquois and the Algonquians. The scale of genocide is massive. And why are the opponents saying no? Here is an example:
And this:
Classic fear mongering.
Clearly the experience in Europe gives us pause. Mass unbridled migration can be very harmful, even destabilizing; so yes, controls need to be put in place. But we are not in Europe. The ocean that separates North America from the horrors in the Middle East protects us from the mass movements we see far across the Atlantic. We have both the capacity and the need. So what is the problem? I fear it comes down to them being different. There is, of course, no shortage of trumped up charges such as: they bring crime, they do not want to be Canadian, they bring their social problems, they take our jobs, they go on welfare. In short, to justify their concerns, they find the worst possible examples.
Ignorance is the Enemy
This approach is either intentionally deceptive or willfully ignorant. There is apparently no need to look at the actual statistics. Now, if the stats show that Muslim refugees are committing violent crimes at a much higher rate than average I will listen. The reality is, if these statistics existed the right-wing radicals would not have to post their inflammatory pictures. In this case, the emperor has no clothes.
And then there are posts such as this that I found on Facebook:
“And here we are in 2015 with a new kind of immigrant who wants the same rights and privileges, only they want to achieve it by playing with a different set of rules – one that includes a Canadian passport and a guarantee of being faithful to their mother country”
This is a very convenient statement, particularly when he could post it without providing any evidence. Nothing he is saying is even remotely true; what I find even more troubling is that people repost this not because he is telling the truth but because deep down they are just like me. They are white, English (or so they suppose) Christians (or so they claim) who want the refugees to go away because they represent change; they represent a contrasting culture and religion. They bring strange foods and languages. They are different, and therefore they are wrong.
Let me tell you about immigrants today. They work 12 hours a day/ 7 days a week. They live in cramped quarters and they live prudently. They take jobs as janitors, landscapers, farm workers and cashiers. They work at whatever job they can get and make sure their children do well so that they can get a proper education. And what do their sons and daughters do? They become doctors, pharmacists, radiologists, lawyers, dentists, structural engineers and computer programmers. When you go to a medical facility today in a cosmopolitan city such as Vancouver, you will see a disproportionate number of non-white medical practitioners compared to the city’s population. According to the facebook poster, this should not be the case. These people should be on welfare, or working dead end jobs in retail. The evidence tells us that the author of the above quote is either willfully ignorant or intentionally deceitful.
I recall the uproar when the Sikh RCMP members were permitted to wear a turban as part of their uniform. You would think that police caps were sacred relics. Allowing turbans was a slippery slope, a desecration of a time honored Canadian icon. Yes, before you know it, cops would be racing around town with colanders and fruit baskets on their heads. Well, I think I have met just one Sikh RCMP officer with a turban and frankly, he looked sharp.
The problem with refugees today is our own ignorance and intolerance. There are horrible crimes being committed in our cities but by and large they are perpetrated people whose grandparents were born here, not by people who were born in Syria, Libya or Iraq. Is there a problem in Islam? I know there is a problem in some countries that are predominantly Muslim, but I also know there are many predominantly Muslim countries that are very peaceful and democratic. Is there a danger of radicalized Islamic terrorists coming into our country through immigration? If a terrorist wanted to get into Canada, they would not spend months languishing in a refugee camp risking death by starvation, and go through a prolonged application process to get accepted as legitimate refugees.
Who Are the Radicals?
There are problems with radicalization all around us. I see American citizens rioting in the United States because they are not happy with their democratically elected president, be he ever so unfit for the job. They disrupt traffic, damage property, and shout obscenities at the police who are just doing their job trying to protect innocent bystanders. We have radicalized non-Muslim young adults targeting police officers because they feel the police are oppressing them. We have radicalized Christians writing dishonest hateful polemic material against any religion that disagrees with them. Violence and acrimony is not unique to Islam. Go to any inner city neighborhood in the United States and you will see this for yourself. That is, if you live long enough to talk about it. The rampant violence in Central America, we need to remember, is perpetrated by Christians.
And then I see people posting something like this:
Veterans and refugees are not mutually exclusive, they can both be helped. American veterans are not languishing because of immigration; they are languishing because of a lack of social programs – the same social programs that the anti-immigration right wing radicals condemn. So the story goes like this – do not help refugees until we have helped our veterans, but don’t help our veterans because social programs are a slippery slope to communism. This is a simple minded recipe for disaster. It is profoundly ignorant and short sighted but all part of the vicious cycle. We send weapons and soldiers abroad to defend our economic interests, and then refuse to care for the soldiers we sent over or the citizens we displaced.
What about Christmas?
And then I hear arguments like this:
“And while we’re on the subject – allow CHRISTMAS back in stores and our schools! I want back the country of my birth”.
This argument is, perhaps, the silliest of all. The argument that these refugees are forcing us God fearing Christians to abandon Christmas. When I drive through Surrey B.C. through neighborhoods largely populated by people from India and Pakistan, I find Christmas more gloriously displayed than in any other neighborhood in all of Canada. They love Christmas. Muslims love Christmas too. It is the local multi-generational Canadian citizens who have been calling to remove Christmas from the schools, and it is the marketing departments that are pulling it out of the stores. Blaming this on immigrants is embarrassingly ignorant. It goes along with the argument that, if the immigrants come here they have to adopt our culture. So I ask, exactly what is our culture? We certainly are not a culture of Christian church goers.
I have met the refugees. They come here because, as with my great grandparents before me, they want a better place for their children. They enhance our country by bringing their wonderful foods and traditions. And on Canada Day they are out in force, far outnumbering the descendants of British immigrants.
The problem with the refugees is me. I am afraid of change.
