Tamil Migrant Ship in BC Waters
Many of these links are from thirusuj's "Till The Last Tiger" thread, but I thought due to the airplay this story has been getting lately it deserved its own thread. The BC press has been building itself up into a frenzy as the MV Sun Sea ha sbeen inching closer and closer to Canadian shores.
The MV Sun Sea entered Canada's exclusive economic zone — which extends 200 nautical miles, or about 370 kilometres — on Wednesday.
The cargo ship is thought to be carrying between 200 and 500 Tamil migrants from Sri Lanka.
The Star: How We Should Deal with the Tamil Boat People
If turning the boats away is not in the cards, then what options are available to Canadian policy-makers? The answer lies in a multi-faceted approach. The best long-term solution is to deal with the root causes of the problem. Given Canada’s obvious interest, we should lead the way in working with the Tamil minority and the government of Sri Lanka to seek a long-lasting and viable peace.
No One Is Illegal: Let Them Stay!
According to Magin Payet Scudalleri, a member of No One Is Illegal, “Public officials and the media must refrain from stereotyping these migrants as queue-jumpers or terrorists based on unsubstantiated speculations. The migrants have survived a long and arduous journey in the hopes that the Canadian state will fully comply with its international refugee and human rights law obligations to the right to asylum.”
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay has previously warned that “The association of irregular migration with criminality promotes the stigmatization of migrants and encourages a climate of xenophobia and hostility against them.”
The CBC reporting is Islamaphobic and dehumanizing of the people aboard this vessel. The last vessel that arrived here they arrested and detained everyone and not a single charge has been laid of terrorism against anyone. We are at war with the islamic world because they are evil is the messaging from the CBC daily. They don't say that directly but in many not so subtle ways. These people who have been ethnically cleansed out of their traditional lands are potential terrorists because they were the muslims in the civil war. These people are almost certainly all classic refugees and I hate hearing them dehumanized instead of treated with respect and empathy after all the hardships they have endured.
Vietnamese boat people good. Tamil boat people bad. Repeat until you understand.
I take your point, kropotkin, but Tamils aren't generally Muslim. They're mostly Hindu. Nevertheless, Canada has decided to insult one of its significant minority groups (the largest diasporic Tamil community in the world) by declaring the Liberation Tigers a terrorist group and associating all Tamils with this label.
TheStar: Let Tamils into Canada, advocates say
"These people are getting spectacular attention but the fact is they are 0.1 per cent of total refugees who apply for asylum in Canada every year," said Waldman. He represents about 25 of the 76 Tamils who arrived 10 months earlier, also by boat.
About 30,000 people apply for asylum in Canada every year.
The news conference was organized by a coalition of Tamil organizations, who are preparing for the arrival of the ship Thursday night. They are appealing to the Canadian government to treat the migrants fairly.
"These refugees are fleeing persecution from their own government," said Todd Ross of Canadian Human Rights Voice.
"The Canadian government should not forget that tens of thousands of Tamils have already been granted asylum in Canada as they were found to be victims of persecution at the hands of the Sri Lankan government," he said.
I take your point, kropotkin, but Tamils aren't generally Muslim. They're mostly Hindu. Nevertheless, Canada has decided to insult one of its significant minority groups (the largest diasporic Tamil community in the world) by declaring the Liberation Tigers a terrorist group and associating all Tamils with this label.
Thx for Catching that fire and putting it out. You are right the Tamil Tigers are Hindu, as are the majority of the people. I guess that is what happens when I lose sight of the basics and attribute things to religion that are merely based on the refugees relationship to the evil empire.
This crap from the media, especially the CBC, happens every time there is a ship and not just individuals arriving in airports. A few years back it was a Chinese ship. We seem to be fixated on not allowing ships crammed with marginalized people to land and have been for over a century. I wonder what that is in our media and culture.
Comments to online news stories are so damn depressing, I don't know why I read them. Were I moved to comment myself, I might make some reference to the voyage of the S.S. St. Louis in 1939.
Or Komagata Maru
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komagata_Maru_incident
Canada has boarded the ship:
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/847277--canadian-officials-board-tamil-ship?bn=1
This is what Toews has to say:
On board the cargo ship are 490 men, women and children who have claimed refugee status said Public Safety Minister Vic Toews.
"Human smugglers and human traffickers are now watching Canada's response," said Toews. "We will send a message to criminals."
Toews has said that among the migrants are terrorists associated with the Tamil Tigers.
Hmmm. Wonder what message he's going to send? I'm sure that they've got these "smugglers and traffickers" cornered and ready to be scooped up.
I take your point, kropotkin, but Tamils aren't generally Muslim. They're mostly Hindu. Nevertheless, Canada has decided to insult one of its significant minority groups (the largest diasporic Tamil community in the world) by declaring the Liberation Tigers a terrorist group and associating all Tamils with this label.
A small minority of Tamils are Muslim, around 10%, but most are Hindu.
The Tamil Tigers are a terrorist group. Whatever the ultimate aims of their movement, many of which are laudable, you can't sugarcoat the fact that the Tigers are a really nasty bunch, guilty of everything from extorting funds from the diaspora in Canada, to using pregnant women as suicide bombers. Look, I'm Irish-Catholic, but I'm not afraid to call the IRA a terrorist group. Please feel free to also do so, without fear of offending my fellow Irish-Catholic-Canadians. You can't be afraid to call a turd a turd.
The Canadian government has been suborning my taxes and using them to terrorize Afghans for nearly 9 years now, that does not mean that the Canadian government is a "terorist organization". "Terrorist" being another commonly used term that is entirely meaningless. Basically you seem to be asserting that the TamilTigers are somehow especially bad among military outfits because some of them have committed war crimes.
If committing war crimes makes a military organization a "terrorist" organization then all armies are terrorist organizations because I have never seen a single case where any military organization did not at some point commit war crimes. I guess this fact just underscores how stupid and politicized the term "terrrorist" organization is.
I would like some opinions please. Can someone tell me what the difference is between the people arriving from Sri Lanka in Vancouver and people like Samuel de Champlain, the Mayflower and the Hudson Bay Company?
I would be interested to know, however, the main difference for me, the ship just arrived, does not have guns.
The cargo ship MV Sun Sea, carrying nearly 500 Tamil migrants, has pulled into harbour at the Canadian naval base at Esquimalt, B.C., under a military escort.
A flotilla of ships, including the Thai-owned cargo ship and two vessels of the Canadian navy, arrived shortly before 9:30 a.m. ET.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/08/13/bc-tamil-ship-migrants-esquimalt.html#ixzz0wUcUtGFe
I can't believe the naked racism present in the Globe and Mail and other mainstream newspaper articles.
This truly is yet another low point for Canadian journalism, depicting the people on these boats as diseased terrorists.
Indeed, LS, the obsessive frenzy this very slowly moving ship has been stirring up amongst Canadian media organization has been shocking to me. And, like oldgoat, I made the terrible mistake of reading the comments. On each incremental update (Tamil Ship Coming, Tamil Ship Getting Closer, Tamil Ship Getting Real Close, Tamil Ship Almost here, etc.) there are hundreds of comments reading essentially the same thing: Intercept the boat and send it home.
The government, of course, is playing no small part in selling the xenophobic tale, but I am really worried these days. I don't think this is just another typical example of Western entitlement and run-of-the-mill immigrant hatred. Between Arizona (and now Florida), Britain's campaign against Eastern European and Muslim immigrants, and the hotbed of fear, hatred and violence brought on by less than 500 sick, frightened and desperate human beings here in Canada, I see a terrifying trajectory of a continent already in the process of ceding all economic and military power to the Far East.
And one wonders why they had to clean out two prisons for their arrival. Don't they have an empty olympic village with a ready-made security system already in place?
I would like some opinions please. Can someone tell me what the difference is between the people arriving from Sri Lanka in Vancouver and people like Samuel de Champlain, the Mayflower and the Hudson Bay Company?
I would be interested to know, however, the main difference for me, the ship just arrived, does not have guns.
Aboriginal people's were not powerful enough to successfully resist.
We are facing a problem, like it or not, that is more fundamental to world organization and that is the moral legitimacy of the nation state.
If we accept the legitimacy of states and with it the right to define a state's residents then that includes the right to decide who and how many come to join you (other than invasion which is the alternative-- and, yes, those voyages of "discovery" were in fact invasions). In that sense there is a reality for a few countries of low population and high wealth that if we allowed everyone who wanted to come here the state that is presently Canada would be replaced by a new one occupying the same territory as there would be no integration with that level of migration. From a political and social point of view there are problems with this on a few levels including the right of citizens to vote but not residents. Indeed for residents who are not citizens we already have "taxation without representation." In this context it is already difficult to justify the failure to give people we have welcomed here as residents the right to vote. Now what if they were suddenly in the majority-- and if we did allow the right to vote (which I argue we should) then the leadership of the country could change overnight unless there is a mechanism to slow the rate of migration. I am sure if Canada did not have immigration control we would double our population overnight and keep doubling it.That also has its problems if public investment does not keep up. There are many who favour high immigration but not uncontrolled immigration.
Furthermore there is a fact many do not realize: we have a long waiting list for non-economic immigration. The math works as follows: The government specifies the total number of immigrants it will let in. Then it has specified the percentage of non-economic (economic means people who have qualified to come based on the presumption they are helping our economy). That leaves a fixed total for non-economic immigrants. When we let in more people from one place we do not welcome them in to our Canadian family on top of everyone else. We replace the others who are in line as non-economic immigrants. Non-economic immigrants have three main categories: refugees, priority family reunification for spouses and non-priority family reunification for other family members. This means that when we let in a number of refugees their number are subtracted from the non-economic-non-priority immigrants who have paid fees and wait now over five years (and it looks like current applicants may be facing 10 years). So, for example, when the generous Stephen Harper said he would let in more Haitian immigrants he was essentially saying this generosity amounted only to replacing people who have paid fees and waited up to five years with new refugees we care about more. I am not against refugees being allowed in and there was a specific and urgent need from Haiti and there is now from Sri Lanka but we need to fix a system that makes a small number of people pay for what is touted as a nation's generosity. To put this in context, the number of non-priority economic immigrants are actually small to begin with and they are adult children, parents and grandparents etc. This tiny group represents a tiny fraction of the immigration total so when you extract from their numbers the total of any change in any other numbers, you can wipe out a half of that allocation in a breath. This is why an application process that was a year long only a few years ago has grown to ten years and is growing at a rate that effectively those who have applied cannot expect to ever come here as the process is slowing faster than it is moving forward. (I mentioned here my family's application that was made to a two roughly year process three years ago but it is now for those who are currently arriving a 5-6 year process and at that rate by the time we get to the front of the line it may be a 50 year process (certainly no parents or grandparents would be still alive to pass a medical). I put all this in because we need to see the context of the meaning of letting in anyone considering the current immigration set-up.
But the bigger point that I can't help but make is that if we no longer have control by states on who can come in and assume everyone is legal then practically speaking we need to do away with the states altogether. We have evolved to a point where we have a full planet and where free migration would swamp any society or country. Most world problems are global and increasingly it is recognized that moral questions are also global and where law does not at least loosely follow morality it lacks legitimacy. This story is one where we can see that we have outgrown as a species the entire concept of nation states.
To truly resolve this situation the world in fact needs to find some consensus on a world government that includes the equal rights of all humans, common respect and stewardship of the planet and other species and accountability to all people through whichever mechanism we can agree. The problem of people wanting to come to Canada cannot be separated from the most common reason for migration, inequality. At some point this world will face long, perhaps species-ending wars or it will have to share the planet's resources equitably. The moral reason those people have the right to come here is because we have more than they do and they have to go somewhere. Governance, taxation, law and resource sharing needs all to be global if we are to address this. Otherwise they in fact do threaten Canada, at least the Canada that thinks we have the right to have more than people in other countries and they will continue to until we fix that problem.
To Canadians there is no question that the result would be a lower standard of living and different expectations once resources are shared globally but that is indeed where the moral and logical arguments go and there is not any justification for anything less. I also believe that the arguments we have for maintaining borders as they are and keeping wealth concentrated in to the hands of a small few lucky rich countries also can only lead to one place ultimately and that is mushroom clouds.
The sad thing is that when you look at the G8/20 in this context, we are making no significant progress.
Now finally I'll clarify one thing -- even if we had global resource sharing and global governance we would still have a need and purpose for migration -- I am not denying that-- but then it would be sustainable and healthy. The reason we cannot manage migration as it is now on the planet is due to the global gaps between rich and poor. If humanity is to survive, wealthy people in wealthy countries will have to make do with a lot less and many of us who do not consider ourselves wealthy would have to be part of that.
I would like some opinions please. Can someone tell me what the difference is between the people arriving from Sri Lanka in Vancouver and people like Samuel de Champlain, the Mayflower and the Hudson Bay Company?
I would be interested to know, however, the main difference for me, the ship just arrived, does not have guns.
Aboriginal people's were not powerful enough to successfully resist.
That's not true in all cases.
They kicked the scandinavians out of Vinland (and possibly from as far inland as Minnesota). They also played a role in the destruction of the Roanoake colony.
There are also plenty of examples of Native people saving Europeans and showing them how to survive where they would have otherwise died. If they had not shown Jacques Cartier the cure for scurvey Champlain and his men would have all died when they had to overwinter. Their aiding the Puritan colonies and the Lewis and Clark Expedition are two other examples.
In the long term they probably were not strong enough to fight European firepower. But they were far from powerless.
And there were cases in which Europeans were exactly like those refugees when they encountered Native people.
I definitely agree with your conclusion Sean: Canada and other Western States would like to believe that the problem of immigration stops at their borders. They prefer to ignore the determining factors which encourage migration, and for which Western capitalism is undeniably responsible. Canada, in fact, is well placed to temper the conflict in Sri Lanka, yet has shown no interest in doing so aside from the ignorant, insulting and biased action of declaring the Liberation Tigers terrorists.
However I want to address two errors in your preamble. First:
This is demonstrably false. In fact, European settlers would not have survived and would have been easily repelled if they attempted invasion, were it not for First Nations' assistance, cooperation and sympathy.
Secondly:
This comment is utterly unfounded, and it is part and parcel with common anti-immigrant rhetoric (like the yellow peril and so on). Putting aside the fact that you were problematically exaggerating to make your point, "too many immigrants" has never been a problem for Canada. Indeed, we can't get enough of cheap immigrant labour, even repackaging it into the national myth of multiculturalism, giving our country pride as we drink bland coffee in the tepid beiges of Tim Hortons from coast to coast.
Nice piece Sean. Now back to the lack of empathy for people who are being subjected to ethnic cleansing and systemic discrimination bordering on genocide.
The public in Canada is being "groomed" to accept that which they know to be inherently wrong. Detention centers for suspected "terrorists" in Kingston, detention centers for protesters in TO and detention centers for refugees in BC are accepted as the norm in all the media coverage. There is no commentary on the excessive nature of the response to people huddled aboard a small cargo ship. What the fuck is with the millions we are spending on this circus?
IMO It is more of the grooming. We are being normalized to the little touches of the state that don't feel right. After awhile us citizens come to expect a militaristic police presence anytime the government deems it necessary. There is no reasonable suspicion of this vessel being a threat to Canada but if you watch the coverage it is presumed the police are right to arm for the worst case scenario. Just more totalitarian grooming from the evil empire and its propaganda machine.
Here's an interesting bit of serendipity.
I just 15 minutes ago heard a radio interview with Cree historian Tyrone Tootoosis about the reenactment of the "siege" of Fort Battleford, which was actually Poundmaker and his people showing up starving at the gates of Fort Battleford for help and to show their committment to the treaty, and the white people with all the food on the inside being too scared to open the door and talk to them (never mind share their food).
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/prairies/parks-canada-draws...
The radio interviewer (CBC) as much as accused him of trying to rewrite history, and Mr. Tootoosis asked him why there was the assumption of attack and no trust when in fact they had a treaty. It was a tense and embarrasing radio moment. plus ça change, eh?
The Canadian government has been suborning my taxes and using them to terrorize Afghans for nearly 9 years now, that does not mean that the Canadian government is a "terorist organization". "Terrorist" being another commonly used term that is entirely meaningless. Basically you seem to be asserting that the TamilTigers are somehow especially bad among military outfits because some of them have committed war crimes.
If committing war crimes makes a military organization a "terrorist" organization then all armies are terrorist organizations because I have never seen a single case where any military organization did not at some point commit war crimes. I guess this fact just underscores how stupid and politicized the term "terrrorist" organization is.
However much you despise Canada's military, they don't do things like this:
http://www.marieclaire.com/world-reports/news/international/female-suici...
Or this:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/srilanka/5250091/Former-T...
"Terrorism" has different aims than combat. The point isn't to degrade the enemy's men and materiel, but to rattle people by slaughtering civilians, in order to make a political "statement." 9/11, the Air India bombing and the things the LTTE were up to are all examples. This is not definition creep. Shooting someone who's setting up an IED is not the same thing as blowing yourself up in a crowded place.
There was also the case of how the LTTE got ahold of voters' lists, trolled for Tamil names, then hit those people up for "donations." The voter's list was widely suspected to be leaked by someone in an NDP constituency office in Toronto. The LTTE have run a protection racket against expat Tamils' families in 'Lanka, in order to get money from their relatives. The LTTE also is interlinked with the Tamil narco and extortion gangs run amok in Toronto, kicking drug and protection money back to the Tigers, to buy guns and bombs.
You support Tamil autonomy--fine. You accuse the Sinhalese-run government in Sri Lanka of abuses and bigotry--good for you. You support safe harbour for women and children refugees from the conflict in Sri Lanka--I do too. The Tamils have a right to autonomy and freedom from abuse. But shame on you for sympathizing with the Tigers. They are vicious, civilian-murdering terrorist thugs, no ifs ands, or buts.
You have a very selective view of the good ol' boys in the Canadian military, Green Bone. May you continue to be granted your daily illusion.
6079 and Catchfire-- perhaps I was not clear enough --
I did not say that the Aboriginal people's did not resist, nor did I say that they did not help at times very compassionately and effectively when needed (although that was not the point I was making). The point was that in the end they were not able to resist SUCCESSFULLY and in spite of the few good interactions that occurred, I think it is fair to say that Aboriginal people eventually realized that the European presence here was not a plus and that the determining factor after that realization was that they were not powerful enough to kick them out. Is there anyone here who thinks Aboriginal people would not have booted the Europeans out if they had the firepower? Now there is no question that different Nations at different times had better or worse relations and that some would have been more inclined to want the Europeans gone. But I can't say we were welcomed when we held guns to the heads of our hosts if not directly certainly metaphorically given the displays of military power. I don't think that anyone believes that Aboriginal people gave up all they did because they welcomed us-- they did not have enough power to resist us successfully in the end.
I can't see what is controversial about this and I certianly think it is a fair statement and to deny that denies the fact that this is largely conquered land that we live on-- treaties signed under unequal power circumstances or not at all and territories occupied. How is this not about power?
And I'll reply to the second thing in your reply Catchfire-- The question is would about 30 million people come to Canada if they could (that would double the population). I think yes. There are well more than that number starving, in war zones etc. This is a small country in terms of population. While we do not have that number trying (knowing they cannot succeed) I think if there were no controls over who was let in then we would recieve well more than 30 million. This would be of course due to the fact that we would be the only rich country without such a control. In that circumstance we would recieve all people the world over who wanted to leave home and could muster up the means to get here. If you think that's less than 30 million I think you are kidding yourself. Think: Africa+Asia+Europe+Americas-- you don't think that there are 30 million that would think anywhere is better than here? I think much of the world lives in misery.
Further the fact that we have had high barriers there is more latent demand as well and that is why I am saying it would be almost overnight.
As for my opinions on immigration, I do believe in immigration controls just to manage the flow and build social infrastructure. I also beleive in high rates of immigration and not for economic purpose. I think it is essential simply on the grounds of the proper sharing of resources. But, that is a different thing than sayign there should be no controls as of right away.
Nice piece Sean. Now back to the lack of empathy for people who are being subjected to ethnic cleansing and systemic discrimination bordering on genocide.
I can't disagree with the rest of your post although you stasrted it in a way that suggests you missed my point.
I am not blind to discrimination as you describe although I do beleive a lot of this is in fact sourced in unequal resource distribution. People become more and more tribal when resources run out (think even the rise of Nazis in Germany and how the inflation and depression played a role). I think we could manage human conflicts much more easily on a planet that did not have resources this badly divided. My compassion and empathy also recognizes that we will keep seeing this as long as we continue to have this North-South economic gap. I am also blaming western empires for the stresses that may boil over in to foreign conflicts when those stresses leave the bulk of the world's population below any human standard of living while we take the best and the most for ourselves. I am making a connection here and it is founded in empathy and compassion, if not in the individual details of this particular conflict. I have no doubt that absent poverty, the people who live in Sri Lanka would find it easier to live together. And this is what western countries like Canada need to consider as we cannot address the local issues related to those conflicts but wee can address the pressures placed on those societies by our economic imperialism. When they show up on our shores and we send out gun boats I can't help but think of this fact. This is not a foreign problem. This is in part created here-- that part -- the economic part. The reason many of us wanted the G8/20 to do something about global poverty.
Green Bone -- take a good look at how much money this country has made on land mines before we decided to get sanctimonious about them. Let's start there. But I am sure others will have other ideas where we can go with this.
The weapons you use have a lot to do with the power you have.
this does not justify either-- but it sure puts a dent in to that sanctimonious crap about us being better than those over-matched people we are fighting.
Sorry I lack the time to be nicer about it as I have to go...
@ Sean in Ottawa
Yes, I did get it, and I agree with you that ultimately the Europeans had the greater firepower (and the assistance of smallpox which cleared whole areas of the continent before they even got there). But Native people DID repel several invasions, There are examples as late as the last century. If the people of Red River had not wanted to let the Canadians in they were in a strategic position to prevent the invasion. They did not use that advantage.
Superior power is not just a matter of arms. Look at the Greenland Norse, who lived for almost 500 years but died out because they refused to learn how to live there, and were replaced by the Innu. Had Aboriginal people chosen to not share their technology there are plenty of European ventures which would have also gone the way of the Franklin expedition and Roanoake.
I also got your point but quite frankly I think this story is not about immigration policy it is about desperation. It is also about our xenophobic media that drums up hysteria against the "other".
What you're neglecting to address is where these people will settle (on what is now farmland, in the GTA, Southern Alberta and Lower Mainland?) and where the fresh water will come from (the Southern Alberta water supply is maxed-out). Canada is a geographically-large country, but less than 5% of the land is arable, freshwater resources are very scarce, recent immigrants only seem to want to settle in sprawling metro areas, and transfering massive numbers of people from warm countries to chilly Canada inevitably means more CO2 output from heating. You are either in favour of increasing immigration, or protecting Canada's environment against urban sprawl and excessive freshwater use. You can't have it both ways.
Rather than insisting that developed countries "share their resources," why not demand that people in developing countries bring their birthrates in line with developed countries? This is too terribly politically-incorrect for progressives to contemplate, and anathema to various religious crazies (Christian, Muslim, Hindu) who believe it's mandated by the gods to pop babies like bunnies. The huge family sizes in much of the third world simply mean more mouths to feed and more people fighting over scarce resources like potable water and grazing land. The Countries of The South have to accept responsibility for their huge family sizes, kleptocratic governments and ethnic hatreds that got them into their messes. True, British, Japanese and other imperialism left toxic legacies, but most of the messes in the third world, along with their economic retardation, are the work of these people alone.
And do you think the majority of Canadians will tolerate such a massive ethno-cultural change, brought by the immigration of so many people from completely different cultures? I know this can't be discussed in polite, progressive circles, but racism and intercultural friction is the explosive consequence of large-scale demographic change. This is something we're seeing in Outremont, between Quebeckers and Chassidim. We're also seeing this in U.S. border states (e.g., Arizona), with large Hispanic populations. In both those cases, the majority statuses of both the host cultures are not seriously threatened by what's no more than around 10% of the population. 50%, as you're advocating, is something else entirely. How many people now living in Canada would like to have, say, family law re-written along Hindu, or Muslim cultural norms? You are seriously overestimating the elasticity of Canadians' tolerance. Euro-Canadians, however open and tolerant they are now, won't take such a massive social change peacefully. Advocating something like that is simply stupid and dangerous.
Canada currently receives, on average, roughly 400 000 immigration applications per year, of which they accept around 250 000. Canada already has the highest proportional immigration in the world. You are speculating, based on nothing but your own belief, that these applications would increase by a factor of 100 (actually, according to you, they would increase by a factor of 36 500, since it would apparently happen in one day). The 490 Tamil refugees on the MV Sun Sea reportedly spent $50 000 each to get on this boat, a relatively paltry price to escape abject living conditions, yet of course far beyond the purse of most Tamils. Immigration is not cheap, and is not within the realm of possibility for most of the world's poor. Even a $2000 plane ticket--indeed, even a $50 car ride to the airport--would be beyond the means of most of the world's poor.
Regardless, it is exactly this kind of speculative, hypothetical example--which is firmly situated in the world of fiction is in no risk of coming true--which inflames and motivates xenophobic fear. It is patently ridiculous to think that Canada will be swarming with brown people in this century, let alone this decade. So it does us no good to employ such bombastic, hyperbolic rhetoric when talking about immigration control. It's part of a world which privileges the free truck and exchange of capital, but not humans.
Finally, even just the negative phrasing you use implicitly adheres to other xenophobic tropes which hold that immigrants are a drain on our resources rather than a boon to our economies; a danger to our values and ethics rather than a diversifying and pluralizing force; a threat to our democracy rather than its saviour. I know, Sean, that you do not think these things--I am only pointing out how such rhetoric and conceits operate in a deeply racist society, and how even when we try to think complexly about these problems (which you clearly do) we resort to conventional and reactionary strategies sometimes, even in spite of ourselves.
Hi Green Bone, I'm a moderator here on rabble. This is a progressive site which embraces anti-racist, pro-human rights values and doesn't tolerate posters who refuse to respect that mandate. What you have just posted, the cream of which I've quoted above, is racist, xenophobic garbage. I've had the impression for awhile that we moderators have basically been waiting you out untill you make a post that crosses the line, and the above post just crossed it. Characterizing people of colour and third-world peoples as sex-crazed, fundamentalist breeders is not acceptable, nor is voicing fears that immigrants pose a threat to "Canadian" culture (which in your parlance apparently does not include people of colour or non-Christians). It is, in fact, racist and xenophobic. This is your last warning. Post anything like the ignorant screed above, and you'll be taking a long walk off of a short pier, like my mother used to say. I trust that's clear.
...You are either in favour of increasing immigration, or protecting Canada's environment against urban sprawl and excessive freshwater use. You can't have it both ways.
You started here and it got worse...
First, urban sprawl is about city planning and not immigration. In much of Canada we have cities that are not dense at all and the majority of newcomers want to go to cities. My reason for wanting some control to manage the influx was to to manage infrastructure such that we can receive people properly. But certainly it is ridiculous to be framing this as a choice between severe immigration restriction and urban sprawl. I'd frame it differently our current city planning is not even sustainable for those who live here and what would be sustainable for those already here would also be for newcomers. And North Americans need to give up on their monster-hom fantasies that is now way to live while others are desperate.
As for the focus on other customs, I don't think there has been even a majority of people in any given religion to see Canada adopt religion-based law. Certainly not among Muslims whose representatives only ask for acceptance, tolerance and no discrimination. Please back up the contention that there is any desire among religions (other than Christian) to control any apparatus of the state.
Catchfire, I can't agree with you. There may be a small number who apply knowing most will be refused or that they do not qualify. But if you allow everyone to qualify and do so all of a sudden then there are indeed many who can -- that does not mean that it would not be a burden but it is fanciful to assume that there are not millions of people in the world who can in fact find a plane ticket who would want to leave where they are. That the $2000 ticket might be more than an annual income for most does not mean they would not do it. Applications are low because it is difficult to qualify and the wait is long. If it were quick and anyone was approved 30 million would not be unrealistic at all.
Even in my own small world of people I know-- I am aware of many times the number of people who would come here if they could compared to the number actively applying. These people live in the countries where I know people-- China, Africa, Eastern Europe, Pakistan. I am sure if I knew more people out of Canada the list would be longer. Apart from the fees to apply and the long wait most people who can't come don't apply because they know they would not qualify. If everyone qualified the word would get out. Right now unfortunately the dishonesty of Canada's immigration policies and the unreasonableness of our policies and the difficulties once people get here is already out there. Put bluntly, while we let in a lot of people, our immigration department does not have a good reputation anymore, at least in some countries-- China being one and this is holding back larger numbers of applications from that country.
None of this is racist or anti-immigrant and none implies that we would not be better off increasing our immigration -- or that as I have said us being better off is only part of the equation -- there is a moral obligation here.
Still from a almost closed immigration policy that is in fact one of the most open in the world to an open one would overwhelm opportunities to settle.
Now I think policies asking for an immediate opening of all borders to any number of people is more likely to cause racism and more likely to feed those who want the border shut. I would like to see a dramatic increase in immigration together with a building plan and settlement strategy for receiving them -- I do believe with the right investment we could take in perhaps as many as ten times what we do now but that is much less than an open border.
Further, I think we need to reconsider how our cities work-- in part to avoid the sprawl but also to make liveable communities. There is a lot of ground between we can't do more and there is no limit to what we should try to do in the immediate future.
As well, I think we need to show leadership in terms of world governance initiatives, we need to legislate a form of transfer payment system to replace foreign aid that is a fixed percent of our economy and rises over time.
Now finally I'll clarify one thing -- even if we had global resource sharing and global governance we would still have a need and purpose for migration -- I am not denying that-- but then it would be sustainable and healthy. The reason we cannot manage migration as it is now on the planet is due to the global gaps between rich and poor. If humanity is to survive, wealthy people in wealthy countries will have to make do with a lot less and many of us who do not consider ourselves wealthy would have to be part of that.
That would be all well and fine, if it were not for the case that we can see a direct link between Canadian foreign policy and the collapse of the Tamil autonomous zone in Sri Lanka. Indeed, Canada was part of an international effort designed to delegitimatize and undermine a national resistance movement using the device of identifying it as a "terrorist" organization, cutting of funding from the diaspora, and ensuring the defeat of the Tamil Tigers. This humanitarian catastrophe not only included major war crimes by the government of Sri Lanka, which wantonly slaughtered Tamil civilians as part of its military campaign (which we supported), but also a massive internal refugee crisis caused by the collapse of the Tamil Tiger movement. which has been resolved by housing a huge number of Tamils in "refugee camps" (concentration camps?).
Spinning a yarn about resource competition, overpopulation, population migration, and a global gap between rich and poor, as if these things just happened out of the blue is simply naive. Indeed, our responsibility for the present conditions in Sri Lanka are not even the result of negligence on our part, it is, at least in part, a direct result of our foreign policy position.
The fact that these refugees had the temerity to show up on our doorstep, is not just some unlucky turn of fate due to processes beyond our control, and our reputation for being "soft on refugees", but the result of our complicity in the destruction of the Tamil autonomous zones in Sri Lanka. It is one thing to talk about over-population and population migration and the gap between rich and poor in the abstract, quite another to do so without recognizing our part in making it happen in the first place.
Yes, Cue, there is some nerve with Vic Toews self-righteously declaring how "human trafficking" and "human smuggling" are crimes, as if one day a few Tamils or Sri Lankans woke up and decided on a career change. Meanwhile, his government's direct influence on creating the determining factors for such a choice somehow escapes his notice.
Why isn't anyone asking the west coast FN's opinion about this? Oh, right.......
Of course all the migrants on the ship are terrorists, Vic Toews even said..
We outta send these terrorists back to the middle east!
Yesterday, Vic Toews' initial comment on the boatload of Tamils then approaching the West Coast enraged me. I emailed his office the following comment:
"I find your attitude to these would-be refugees to be ignorant, intolerant and beneath contempt.
Just to set the record straight: "Trafficking" is a term applied to those who seek to make a profit by bringing would-be immigrants to a country, most often in order to use them in virtual slavery as workers. "Refugees" are those who have a credible fear of persecution and/or death in their own country.
You obviously have no respect for the laws of Canada or for international laws on migration and refugees."
Today, I no longer see his comments as merely another attempt by the Conservatives to "play to their base."
From the vast majority of the comments I have heard and seen on radio, TV and in newspapers, I believe that most Canadians don't want these people in our country under any circumstances. The Conservatives and conservatives are not playing to their base but to our basest selves. And they are winning.
I heard a report on CBC Radio today that the Concervatives were thinking of intercepting them out at sea and turning them around. Don't have a source, sorry.
I wonder if they might have done so if the polls had been a bit different. It's not often that they take a less-than-extreme approach unless they have a motive for doing so.
It is with much sadness I make this statement. Having been born in Australia and now living in Canada, I have spent most of my life listening to one of the main issue been discussed in both places. Both places have had similar histories although Australia did not have the influence of Franco culture.
Both places , the white Europeans and most of the later migrants that joined the colonisers in solidarity have missed one major point! I keep reading and hearing all these hippocritical words. Firstly, every culture that arrived in these places are immigrants except the people living in those places originally. From then on, the sadness both places began and continues until now.
Here in Canada I have seen the argument that even the First Nations came from somewhere else, this for me is the ultimate epitomy of disrespect! Both places consider themselves young nations, again hippocracy! Why are not nations like Italy or Greece seen as young nations, afterall the former was unified at 1870 and the latter came to existence as we know it today, in 1948!
Some of the ideas proposed in this thread, again are continuing this hippocracy. I cannot accept the proposal that the European is here because the aboriginals could not put up a resistance. How ridiculous! Again, very European thinking. Very linear and simplistic thinking. The European thinks that resistance only happens in out right war. The fact that there are cultures that have existed for forty oand ten thousand years, is resistance to me! And again, I know what most are saying and thinking. I can hear them alreaady! "Humanity4all we do not call today' "existence" of the aboriginals existence, we beat them. What arrogance I say!
Now, The European is here because the aboriginals of both places offered a way of living to the new arrivals which we guests have never accepted, even as I write these words. You can see this non acceptance on a daily basis by the way the European and all the other migrants that followed have acted. The aboriginal proposed the idea of everyone eating from the common bowl. As many many leaders from the First Nations endeavoured and are still endeavouring, "Welcome, what is ours will be yours and what is yours will be ours". I am not going to discuss what happened in history, we all know what happened and it is continuing. Just this fact alone, one would think that the European would show some remorse, but again Hippocracy. You here all these inhumane, indecent words, "oh, well it is always happened, invasions and killings, everyone else did it in history, so, why not us, why blame us". And many more hollow words!
Well my friends, if the Europeans and everyone arriving after them had any any decency we would have a need to have this particular discussion about some people arriving from Sri Lanka. Firstly, shame on the white people of Australia. Shame I scream! And now shame to Canada! How dare these societies react in this manner! Both places, the right of refusal of people being allowed in these places was lost from the first arrivals to these lands. It was lost because in the manner their arrival took place! The only people that have the morality on accepting or not accepting other peoples to these lands, are the aboriginals. And we already know their response. They have shown that!
How dare these societies keep coming up with all this vile of ideas about resources and population. It is becoming ridiculous eveytime they open their mouths! These societies were built on imperialism and they continue on imperialism. This can be seen by an array of comments that "we" this and "we" that and so on and so on. This paternalistic perspective towards the rest of the planet because they all think that progress is having the strongest armies. As I keep saying, this family of nations(like Australia and Canada) are in for a shock in the coming years. These two nations have not realised much from their dealings with some of the oldest people on the planet.
The problem with the planet has nothing to do with limited resources! I say it again, the problem with the planet has nothing to do with limited resources! Calm down and just go and look at three places in their world, The Netherlands, Mauritius and Singapore.No, go and have a look. You want to see sustainability and how some societies use limited resources!
The problem on the planet is not very old, although we are made to believe that it is. It is not very old, because, before this problem, existed societies that ate from the common bowl or took from the environment enough without destroying it. The problems on the planet exist because of what the European set up in these "new world" countries. This is another hippocritical term! How can nations that existed for tens of thousands of years be disregarded by new arrivals and think the rest of the world would miss all that and call these places "new"!
The everyday lifestyle of places like Canada and Australia cannot be sustained. Five per cent of the world's population cannot harness forty per cent of the world's resources. It cannot be sustained because these places are not just happy with what they took away from the peoples in those lands originally(although the aboriginals wanted to share). Not also did they take away everything from the original peoples in those lands, they also want to do this now to the rest of the planet! I assume that is why their armies are everywhere!
Finally, both Canada and Australia reap with sadness, the only hope that these places have is the fact that the original peoples of both those lands are still there. The Aboriginals of Australia and the First Nations of Canada are some of the most wisest cultures on the planet and for me continue to give us what not many other cultures have given us! I originate from a culture that gave birth to these imperialistic cultures because my culture(and most hippocritically agree) thinks it created democracy! No my friends, democracy came from these cultures here in Canada and Australia! That is why these lands will continue to accept many more people arriving, because thanks to its original peoples they are places of democracy and not what the European has tried to do!
S
@ humanity4all #39
Thanks for those very good words. I agree the tendency to use up resources in an unsustainable way is mostly a disease of the developed world. By contrast, those people who we see living sustainably for millennia are the ones who learned to survive; we don't see those who did not survive because they died out.
I know there are not as many of them, but we can look at the Maya, who completely destroyed themselves, the decline in the fertile crescent, or the destruction of large land mammals from overhunting after the end of the ice age as a couple of examples that the tendency is more common than we might think
Ironically, the potato was introduced to Europe as a means of preventing famine. It did that, and made the population of Europe double in the space of 100 years. Learning to self-limit, rather than being forced to do so by nature is something that not all people managed to accomplish.
But as to the question of these refugees, they're not fleeing overpopulation so much as political strife. And for us to be begruding them a place when our society already takes far more than our share of the world's resources is galling. We're talking about shutting doors to people, but nobody is considering turning back ships from Asia full of goods and resources.
Yesterday, Vic Toews' initial comment on the boatload of Tamils then approaching the West Coast enraged me. I emailed his office the following comment:
"I find your attitude to these would-be refugees to be ignorant, intolerant and beneath contempt.
Just to set the record straight: "Trafficking" is a term applied to those who seek to make a profit by bringing would-be immigrants to a country, most often in order to use them in virtual slavery as workers. "Refugees" are those who have a credible fear of persecution and/or death in their own country.
You obviously have no respect for the laws of Canada or for international laws on migration and refugees."
Today, I no longer see his comments as merely another attempt by the Conservatives to "play to their base."
From the vast majority of the comments I have heard and seen on radio, TV and in newspapers, I believe that most Canadians don't want these people in our country under any circumstances. The Conservatives and conservatives are not playing to their base but to our basest selves. And they are winning.
I heard that same report from unnamed sources on the CBC. These insiders said that federal lawyers had to explain how such a move would contravene human rights, maritime and international laws. The government was pissed that they couldn't act against these refugees the way Australia has been doing. That's why today, there are reports about revisiting legislation to strengthen the government's ability to turn away or arrest refugees.
I also read an editorial in the trashy Winnipeg Free Press that claims these refugees were in Thailand where they paid $45,000 each to gain passage on the steamer. I'm no expert on refugees or the situation in Sri Lanka, but I find it hard to swallow that these individuals had that much money, let alone the ability to escape to Thailand with that much money.
If they'd been Nazi war criminals or brutal dictators fleeing Haiti etc and so on, our colonial administrators would welcome them with open arms. They need a good cleaning out in Ottawa.
The only concern on the minds of conservatives is "how many of them will be collecting welfare?!? Will I have to pay the bill??"
Why we should welcome boatful of Tamil refugees into Canada
[...]
Relying on sound-bites about organized crime and terrorism is the best way to close public debate about government actions. Instead of relying on sensationalism, let us ask: On what basis are the Tamil migrants being declared terrorists? Is it even logical that well-financed and often state-backed terrorists or traffickers would suffer in a three-month long, arduous journey risking death? Even if we believe that women and children were forced onto this boat, how do we justify jailing them as a humane response?
What we do know is that United Nations Secretary-General Ban Kimoon has appointed a panel to investigate war crimes committed by the Sri Lankan government against Tamils. Human rights organizations have documented government and military atrocities including indiscriminate killings, arbitrary detentions and imprisonment, and mass displacement of Tamils. Canada has itself accepted more than 90 per cent of refugee claimants from Sri Lanka in the past two years.
I just 15 minutes ago heard a radio interview with Cree historian Tyrone Tootoosis about the reenactment of the "siege" of Fort Battleford,
Serendip was the first name/one of the first names given by westerners to what is now called Sri Lanka.
Paul Fromm was quoted in mainstream media about immigration, and why we should be worried about the people on this boat. Paul Fromm. Without any context about who Paul Fromm is. And which newspaper published a piece about this oversight? The National Post.
Paul Fromm's efforts to rouse public opinion against the Tamil migrant ship began last month from his home in Ontario, with impassioned messages posted to Stormfront.org, the Florida-based neo-Nazi website of which he is a "sustaining member" and radio host.
It continued last week in Calgary, when he led a group of Aryan Guard skinheads to Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney's constituency office, and so terrified the receptionist that she locked the door and would not accept Mr. Fromm's delivery of a letter until police arrived.
But for Canada's best known racist agitator, things did not really get going until he reached the Pacific shore at Esquimalt, B.C., on Saturday, where the boat was docked.
There, accompanied by Doug Christie — famous as the go-to civil liberties lawyer for every top Canadian racist of the last 30 years — Mr. Fromm got himself front and centre on the national weekend news, flanked by his small group of two dozen protesters.
Mr. Fromm, whose license to teach high school in Ontario was revoked in 2007 for his activism against non-white immigration and ties to groups like the defunct neo-Nazi Heritage Front, appeared in reports by three major news outlets, identified only as the leader of a group called "Canada First," or "Canada First Immigration Reform Committee."
“If we do need immigrants, the public opinion polls show that the majority of Canadians don’t want the ethnic balance upset,” Mr. Fromm said, according to the Toronto Star story.
'White supremacist' puts a genteel face on racismThanks, writer. It is truly shocking what a travesty our media has made of "balance" when a neo-nazi is quoted in its name.
Rocking the Boat: A Brief History of Anti-Migrant Hysteria in Canada
Myths and Realities about 490 Tamil Refugees on MV Sun SeaThere is no ‘queue’ for refugee claimants. Refugees are forced from their homes in emergency situations due to human rights abuses committed during wars, military occupations, or persecution against a minority group. We cannot expect refugees to wait for Canada to select them from overseas. We must understand that they undertake long and dangerous journeys to protect their lives and the lives of their families. According to the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees, to which Canada is a party, there are no penalties on refugees who arrive without pre-authorization and irregularly.
Myth 2: They are terrorists.
There is no evidence to substantiate this. Rohan Gunaratna, the government’s primary source, has already been discredited by lawyers as well as an Immigration and Refugee Board adjudicator for being uncredible. Last October, when the 76 Tamil asylum-seekers came on Ocean Lady they were similarly labeled as terrorists and security threats. However by Jan 2010, they were all released from detention when Canadian Border Services Agency admitted they had no evidence of a terrorist connection.
Furthermore, officials are just relying on stereotypes of Tamils as all being associated with the Tamil Tigers to create unnecessary racist hysteria and mistrust of asylum-seekers. National security laws in the post-911 climate have directly targeted and marginalized immigrants, refugees, and racialized people. These laws and policies are less about protecting society than creating a culture of fear. Many of these policies – such as Security Certificates – have been struck down in the Courts after years of human rights and anti racist campaigning. The rhetoric of the War on Terror serves as a convenient distraction from the reality that people’s daily lives are increasingly unsafe and insecure due to global neoliberal economics and war-mongering that leads to mass displacement, poverty, and human rights atrocities.
Myth 3: The situation is getting better in Sri Lanka.
According to a 2010 Amnesty International report, in the past 12 months the Sri Lankan government has continued to jail critics and clamped down on dissent. Some 80,000 Tamils remain in refugee camps, while 400,000 displaced Tamils survive in communities where homes and infrastructure were destroyed. The government continues to extend a state of emergency, restricting many basic human rights, and thousands of arbitrary detentions are justified under the guise of detainees being suspected Tamil Tigers. This past month, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon appointed a panel to investigate war crimes and genocidal acts committed by the Sri Lankan government against Tamils.
Myth 4: They are a burden on tax payers.
The biggest resource expenditure has been the government’s choice to spend thousands of dollars in an unnecessary security operation, including resources spent on incarcerating women and children. Only a tiny fraction has been spent on the health and well-being of the migrants, whose lives are worth more than dollars. Furthermore, scapegoating migrants for being a financial burden lets the government off the hook. All residents continue to receive inadequate access to necessary social services because of misplaced government priorities – choosing to bail out banks and sink billions into the police and military – not because of the lack of resources to provide a social safety net for all in need.
Myth 5: Canada has a generous refugee system; we cannot keep accepting people.
Despite border panics, only a small minority of asylum seekers make claims in the Western world. There are about 20 million refugees worldwide and most migrate into neighboring countries of Africa, Middle East, and South Asia. Canada accepts fewer than 20,000 refugees per year, which is less than 0.1% of the world’s displaced population.
Furthermore, Canada’s system is not generous. Deportations from Canada have skyrocketed 50% over the last decade, with 13,000 deportations in the past year. With the Conservatives, the number of approved asylum claims has dropped by 56%. Minister of Immigration Jason Kenney’s recent refugee reforms create two tiers of refugees, establishing a hierarchy based on nationality. There are countless structural flaws in the system, designed to make it near impossible to claim asylum. Immigration and Refugee Board members are political appointees; certain avenues such as the Pre Removal Risk Assessment have acceptance rates of 3-5% while others such as the Humanitarian and Compassionate claim do not have to be processed prior to deportation. In addition, the refugee system has been termed a “lottery system” because acceptance rates can vary from 0-80% depending on the judge. The Safe Third Country Agreement between the US and Canada creates a “Fortress Canada” by disallowing up to 40% of asylum seekers.
Myth 6: It is not our problem.
The Canadian government has recently been forced to apologize for racist and exclusionary historical measures including the Chinese Exclusion Act and Komagatamaru incident. These apologies and the rhetoric of multiculturalism is hollow when current policies and practices perpetuate racism and exclusion. The recent backlash that repeats the tired-old refrain about ‘illegals’ and ‘criminals’ has meant that right-wing neo-nazis such as Paul Fromm and the Aryan Guard have resurfaced publicly and are being given a platform to spew their hate about sending the boat back. Is this really the side that we are on?
Immigration and refugee issues are not simply about Canadian benevolence or charity. We need to rethink what function and whose interests the state border actually serves. The current trends of global migration reveal the ways in which patters of Western domination and corporate globalization have enriched some countries by creating economic and political insecurity that forces people indigenous to their lands to migrate. The Canadian government continues to maintain economic and diplomatic ties with the government of Sri Lanka, instead of supporting those who have survived the brutality of that government, which makes us complicit in their displacement. Also, we must always remember that Canada is a settler country, built on the theft of Indigenous lands and the forced assimilation of Indigenous communities. On what basis is a colonial government denying colonized people their right to livelihood? Finally, we must challenge the idea that some are more worthy than others to a life of dignity; instead we should reaffirm the universal value that people have the freedom to move in order to seek safety and to flourish.
Thanks, writer. I saw a photo of a small protest and couldn't place Paul Fromm. It wasn't the np either - Vancouver Sun, maybe? I'll have to look. Again, no context. The Victoria-Times Colonist reports that many people are sympathetic - offering rooms in their homes, etc.
humanity4all, not sure when you left Australia. Were there any particularly effective actions at the refugee camps? I seem to recall people just going out to stand at the fence to show some solidarity. Haven't seen much here, yet. The men have apparently been moved to Maple Ridge here on the mainland and the women and children remain in Victoria.
Jumping the queue is a total myth. If you have refugee status and the situation in your home country changes for the better, then you get deported.
Just ask the thousands of portuguese deported in the 80s and 90s after claiming refugee status on the basis of religious persecution (fake claims of being Jehovah Witnesses) but after decades in Canada, once Portugal passed a freedom of religion law, back they went, kicking and screaming.
To get citizenshep while a refugee is possible, but takes the same time and actions as anyones application
It is not the same process-- in some cases better and some cases worse when it comes to the right to be here. For landing, refugees mostly go through that process here while the immigration process you wait overseas-- not a small distinction. At the end of your post you are speaking about citizenship which is an entirely different issue than permanent residency. Those who have become citizens here do not get deported and those who were sent back to Portugal were people with their refugee status still not determined therefore lacking both their permanent residency and certainly citizenship. It seems you are going back and forth between definitions of citizenship, refugee status and those of permanent residency. You seem confused about all three.
And as I explained here-- in post 15 (starting with paragraph beginning with furthermore), in fact refugees do in fact "jump the queue." Or, more fairly, are forced in to it. That is not their fault and largely the rest of Catchfire's paragraph on the topic is accurate. It is government policy to count refugees in with the quota for non-economic immigrants.That means if we take ten more refugees in this year we will take ten fewer non-economic immigrants from other categories. Refugees should never be included in the same quota as non-economic immigrants but they are.
Of course the way they are currently handled-- which I totally disagree with-- impacts on the other points.
I'll try to explain this. Non-economic immigrants (other than spouses) are non-priority and therefore people that could qualify as an economic immigrant would never go in this category. Therefore non-economic immigrants are generally considered the least able to contribute to the economy. When we accept more refugees we deny those non-economic immigrants. Refugees, on the other hand come here immediately because of need without consideration for other qualifications and they figure out their status here. Naturally they will include some who can make little economic contribution but they also include a percentage of people who could in theory qualify as an economic immigrant but just cannot wait due to the emergency that made them a refugee. So Refugees may include people of skills, high education, language skills etc. Therefore 1000 refugees are likely better for the economy (when looked at coldly) than 1000 non-economic immigrants. You could argue that non-economic immigrants represent a potential drain on our economy (although that is actually debatable), economic immigrants a potential gain and refugees for the most part are a wash with some more able to contribute than others. Since I live in Ottawa it would be wrong of me not to mention the most famous wave of refugees to arrive in this region: the Vietnamese boat people. As a group they have contributed hugely to the local and national economy and represent a huge pool of wealth creation for Canada. They included people with no skills who worked hard to acquire them as well as highly skilled and educated people.They are recognized as an incredibly successful wave of refugees and a huge asset to the economy. (Reasons for their success include both the characteristics of that group as well as the steps taken to bring them here and settle them- other groups of refugees have lacked adequate settlement efforts.)
So out of fairness, I have said that non-economic immigrants and refugees should not be placed in the same category. There are two reasons for this:
1) non-economic refugees are already waiting longer than any others to come here and should not have their places given to others.
2) refugees as a group are not a burden anyway since while they may include some who the state will have to care for they will also include many others who will contribute economically so as a group they are not a loss for Canada.
The fact that refugees are queue jumpers is not a given. This is a construct of unreasonable immigration policy for which there is no justification.
When it comes to international law, refugees should be allowed in period. There is no justification to make other immigrants step aside for them but that is government policy.
I hope I am providing an explanation useful to some who are not aware of the way this is done. For more information there are reports and quotas filed by the minister that can be read on the CIC website. These documents, once found, do describe this in detail as the government announces the quotas each year.
I just 15 minutes ago heard a radio interview with Cree historian Tyrone Tootoosis about the reenactment of the "siege" of Fort Battleford,
Serendip was the first name/one of the first names given by westerners to what is now called Sri Lanka.
It's the Persian name for Sri Lanka, apparently.
Thanks for that. I only knew about the book in translation and knew bugger all about its history.
Sean, I find your characterization of refugees troubling. Throughout this thread, you have analysed refugees from an economic view (their ability to help the economy and so on, and equating them with non-economic immigrants) albeit with a few platitudes thrown in. It does no good to conclude "refugees should be allowed in period" when you make no attempt to acknowledge their constituent characteristic; to wit, the fact that they are fleeing their country of birth and everything they have ever known out of fear or necessity.
It comes out in your unfounded and arbitrary speculation upthread where you state that simply because (according to you) life in Canada is better than elsewhere, untold millions of people worldwide would give up their family, their friends. their livelihood, their culture, their homes, their neighbourhoods, their communities, their entire world as they know it purely for economic reasons. It's patently absurd, contrary to history and reality, reduces refugees to their commodity value and ignores everything about them that is not an exchangeable currency--that is, everything that makes them human.
There is a reason that Canada distinguishes between refugees and non-economic, non-priority immigrants (as you call them): because they are members of different queues, different contexts and different motivations.To pretend that they are related or interchangeable (indeed you criticized kropotkin for committing the same slippage) is to feed into the anti-immigrant, xenophobic rhetoric disseminated by the Conservative Party.
The larger question in this of course is how Canada can somehow assume the right to determine which human beings have value and which do not. Simply by conjuring up the spectre of "queues" in the first place crowns Canada the arbiter of human worth, as if we have done something to deserve to be born on one of the world's richest nations--completely disregarding the fact that the greater population is not indigenous to this land, and that our largesse is purchased through exploiting, violating and enacting violence upon the world's poorer classes. What right, I ask you? What right?
The larger question in this of course is how Canada can somehow assume the right to determine which human beings have value and which do not. Simply by conjuring up the spectre of "queues" in the first place crowns Canada the arbiter of human worth, as if we have done something to deserve to be born on one of the world's richest nations--completely disregarding the fact that the greater population is not indigenous to this land, and that our largesse is purchased through exploiting, violating and enacting violence upon the world's poorer classes. What right, I ask you? What right?
Does a country not have three basic choices? (1) Allow no immigration, (2) allow unfettered immigration, or (3) allow immigration but impose subjective (and arbitrary) constraints on immigration?
Any time a country embarks on course #3, isn't that country, by definition, "determine[ing] which human beings have value" to be immigrants and which do not?
I suppose there is a fourth alternative: Limit the number of immigrants but make access entirely subject to a lottery.
A country has three basic choices only if they refuse to make the connection between immigration (and the desire to migrate) and their economic and political position in the world. As Cueball and I pointed out upthred, Canada actually has a very short and direct connection to the Tamil's impetus to migrate in the first place. What makes Canadians' response to the Tamil migrants particularly audacious is that Canada has a direct responsibility for the outcome of the civil war, and moreover failed to use their substantial influence (as home of the world's largest communtiy of diasporic Tamils) to broker a peaceful and just solution to the conflict. To then turn this boat around, a boat created as much from Canada's paucity as a middle power as it is from rusted steel, with the refrain: "we can't let everyone in!" is the kind of pathological repression that would make Jacques Lacan swoon.
Immigration policy is bulit on divorcing itself from economic necessity. Such a question as you posed, Sven, is an emblematic example par excellence.
A country has three basic choices only if they refuse to make the connection between immigration (and the desire to migrate) and their economic and political position in the world. As Cueball and I pointed out upthred, Canada actually has a very short and direct connection to the Tamil's impetus to migrate in the first place. What makes Canadians' response to the Tamil migrants particularly audacious is that Canada has a direct responsibility for the outcome of the civil war, and moreover failed to use their substantial influence (as home of the world's largest communtiy of diasporic Tamils) to broker a peaceful and just solution to the conflict. To then turn this boat around, a boat created as much from Canada's paucity as a middle power as it is from rusted steel, with the refrain: "we can't let everyone in!" is the kind of pathological repression that would make Jacques Lacan swoon.
Immigration policy is bulit on divorcing itself from economic necessity. Such a question as you posed, Sven, is an emblematic example par excellence.
The third choice is not limited to economic constraints (though it would include such constraints). Any time a country imposes restraints on who can and who cannot be an immigrant, the country is sitting in judgment over who should be allowed in and who should be excluded. As you asked, "The larger question in this of course is how Canada can somehow assume the right to determine which human beings have value and which do not." If Canada adopts any form of immigration policy which falls within choice #3, then by definition Canada is sitting in judgment and making a decision as to who is and who is not worthy of immigration to Canada, even if the standard is divorced from making an economic valuation of a potential immigrant.
Yes, that's pretty much right.
Sean, I find your characterization of refugees troubling. Throughout this thread, you have analysed refugees from an economic view (their ability to help the economy and so on, and equating them with non-economic immigrants) albeit with a few platitudes thrown in. It does no good to conclude "refugees should be allowed in period" when you make no attempt to acknowledge their constituent characteristic; to wit, the fact that they are fleeing their country of birth and everything they have ever known out of fear or necessity.
It comes out in your unfounded and arbitrary speculation upthread where you state that simply because (according to you) life in Canada is better than elsewhere, untold millions of people worldwide would give up their family, their friends. their livelihood, their culture, their homes, their neighbourhoods, their communities, their entire world as they know it purely for economic reasons. It's patently absurd, contrary to history and reality, reduces refugees to their commodity value and ignores everything about them that is not an exchangeable currency--that is, everything that makes them human.
There is a reason that Canada distinguishes between refugees and non-economic, non-priority immigrants (as you call them): because they are members of different queues, different contexts and different motivations.To pretend that they are related or interchangeable (indeed you criticized kropotkin for committing the same slippage) is to feed into the anti-immigrant, xenophobic rhetoric disseminated by the Conservative Party.
The larger question in this of course is how Canada can somehow assume the right to determine which human beings have value and which do not. Simply by conjuring up the spectre of "queues" in the first place crowns Canada the arbiter of human worth, as if we have done something to deserve to be born on one of the world's richest nations--completely disregarding the fact that the greater population is not indigenous to this land, and that our largesse is purchased through exploiting, violating and enacting violence upon the world's poorer classes. What right, I ask you? What right?
Catchfire you are missing the point--
These are not MY characterizations-- this is government policy.
I am not sorting people based on their economic value the government is.
I am not calling people economic and non-economic immigrants the government is.
Indeed How many times do I have to say it is wrong for the government to do this in order for you to get that I am not arguing that they should be treated this way?
So, let me say again I completeley disagree with it but the government of Canada sorts all immigrants in to economic and non-economic and includes refugees in the non-economic category.
I believe this is wrong. But this is how they do it and since this is how they do it, people should know that. To oppose it.
I believe this is wrong. But this is how they do it and since this is how they do it, people should know that. To oppose it.I believe this is wrong. But this is how they do it and since this is how they do it, people should know that. To oppose it.
I believe this is wrong. But this is how they do it and since this is how they do it, people should know that. To oppose it.
I believe this is wrong. But this is how they do it and since this is how they do it, people should know that. To oppose it.
I believe this is wrong. But this is how they do it and since this is how they do it, people should know that. To oppose it.
I believe this is wrong. But this is how they do it and since this is how they do it, people should know that. To oppose it.
I believe this is wrong. But this is how they do it and since this is how they do it, people should know that. To oppose it.
I believe this is wrong. But this is how they do it and since this is how they do it, people should know that. To oppose it.
I believe this is wrong. But this is how they do it and since this is how they do it, people should know that. To oppose it.
I believe this is wrong. But this is how they do it and since this is how they do it, people should know that. To oppose it.
Catchfire your statement that the government distinguishes in different queues between refugees and noneconomic immigrants is ABSOLUTELY FALSE.
The government uses a formula system where they fix the total number of immigrants including refugees and then sets a fixed percentage that must be economic. The others are not to go over the amount allowed and that includes spousal applications, children of residents, parents of residents and refugees. Any sub quota the government might anounce is secondary to this basic formula so if one category goes over the other must come under.
I am not pretending these facts they are government policy!!!!!
Stop mis-characterizing what I am saying.
Now for your statement that I said Canada is better than elsewhere-- no I did not say that. I said that there are millions and millions of people in the world for whom almost anywhere is better.
Some have no food.
Some face persecution.
Some face violence.
Some have no water.
While a small number might try to enter Canada illegally risking their lives after paying thousands to do so-- it is a fair assumption that it would be a huge number more if they could just board a plane. Remembering that the people whoa re arriving we hear may have paid some $45,000 each to risk their lives to get here.
If anyone could for a much smaller amount come across the border legally and not be refused that number would be much, much higher.
Do you now have an idea how hard it is for people from developing countries to put together such huge sums of money? if the cost was about 1/25th of the amount, safety assured and acceptance assured you don't think the number would be much higher?
And yes living conditions in the world are affected hugely by economic reasons. Most of the people starving, if not all do so for economic reasons. If we did not have such huge disparities due to the western empires, we would have a lot less demand to come here and it would be manageable with a complete open door policy. My argument was you have to address the global economic disparity as a part of addressing this not because all refugees are economic but because if we managed the global economics better there would no longer be as many people wanting to leave their own countries such that we could manage those forced out for other reasons.
I am not clear on why you seem to want to repeatedly twist my words in to something else to make a more convenient straw man argument.
To clarify: the government has a class called "economic" migrants. It often refers to the others as non-economic but they can further be broken down in to two categories the government calls humanitarian which includes refugees and family class which includes spouses. If you spend enough time on the CIC website you will find that the government in one place states overall quotas. It may also provide quotas fro the humanitarian and family categories but it also has a fixed goal to make sure that the total number of economic immigrants is no less than a fixed number of total migrants including all who come to Canada. They can make targets for each category but in the end for the economic-non-economic split to come out any non-economic category that increases must be matched by another that decreases.
Again for Catchfire's benefit: I do not endorse this -- it is government of Canada policy.
Canada and Australia contain many people that lack the courage to look at themselves in the mirror! They are both lands of immense hippocracy. The funny side is that these people that refuse to look themselves in the mirror and hide behind lies, think that the rest of the planet does not know what these two places are about.
Both these places have attained their wealth from the ground, in other words, by pure chance, not to mention for the millionth bloody time, that there were civilisations living on these lands already, before the arrival of the Europeans!
Therefore, what is this baloney about how we should choose who comes here?!
Please, lets put our energies on how we, the fortunate and privilege can offer assistance to the less fortunate. Again, this privilege stems from our nations' exploitation of others, with everyone knowing, except us!
In the end, words are futile because time is God. Times change and history moves on. What history has taught us is that nothing stays the same. All I know, as I grow old, these societies cannot sustain themselves because they are constructed on greed. Greed is corrosive, therefore, eventually the lifestyle that the European has imposed in these two places cannot last. The lifestyles of the European in both these places is not indigenous, therefore, the European will eventually leave. I think most people find my words offensive and unreal, however, history is not to be counted in one or two or three generations but in tens of thousands of years. And history has shown us that resistance outlasts empires.
As I mentioned in my earlier post, we have the lost the right of refusal to newcomers to these lands by our ongoing disrespect to the original peoples of these lands. Until both places address their treatment towards our aboriginals then both places cannot advance in their development! I do not think saying sorry and then sending in the army into aboroginal communities amounts to much(www.stoptheintervention.org) or in Canada's case having a Truth and Concilliation commission without the participants being able to give names and only given five minutes each to tell their story(www.hiddenfromhistory.org/RecentUpdatesampArticles/June202010OpenLettertotheGovernorGeneral/tabid/134/Default.aspx)!
The whole world knows that both places were built on stolen lands and genocide. Now, in both places, the majority of the population object to more people coming to these lands. What a joke!
To clarify: the government has a class called "economic" migrants. It often refers to the others as non-economic but they can further be broken down in to two categories the government calls humanitarian which includes refugees and family class which includes spouses. If you spend enough time on the CIC website you will find that the government in one place states overall quotas. It may also provide quotas fro the humanitarian and family categories but it also has a fixed goal to make sure that the total number of economic immigrants is no less than a fixed number of total migrants including all who come to Canada. They can make targets for each category but in the end for the economic-non-economic split to come out any non-economic category that increases must be matched by another that decreases.
Again for Catchfire's benefit: I do not endorse this -- it is government of Canada policy.
Right. So, I am not sure how the "economic migrants" issue entered this thread. We are talking about a group of people who are fleeing a brutal war waged against Tamil's in Sri Lanka, the consequent refugee crisis, the massive camps that pass as "refugee" camps but look more like concentration camps, and political repression. This war was endorsed by the Canadian government through its bogus classification of the Tamil Tigers as a "terrorist" organization, and the present situation is a not unforseeable consqequence of the Canadian governments decision to support the destruction of the Tamil autonomous zone.
So, none of what you are talking about here applies Sean. You are just feeding the governments red herring, in what appears to be an effort to make it large enough that it will obscure the truth.
Indeed, Canada in times past. often helped refugees who found themselves on the wrong side of a political situation, even ones where we supported the other side, such as the coup in Chile against Allende. I have no idea why you are making such an effort to cover up the politicization of the refugee process under the conservative government by trying to make it appear that these Tamil refugees are self-servingly trying to escape economic hardship, and not what is obviously a politically volitile and still very violent situation, where Tamils are the main target of government repression.
No one ever suggested we should discourage the Vietnamese "boat people" from seeking refuge in Canada in order to escape the repression against ethnic Chinese-Vietnamese in the 1980's? In fact, Canada's refugee system positively encouraged such attempts to escape Communist Vietham. No one ever suggested they were merely "economic migrants".
We took in a wopping 50,000 of these.
Please screw a new light bulb into your head tomorrow morning.
Cueball I can't find a substantial connection between what you say I said and what I actually said.
I see you are on a roll with the personal attacks and innuendos. But what will you do if people actually read what was said instead of your bullshit characterization of it?
That is because you said nothing on topic. That was the point. For some reason you are nattering on about "economic migrants", when this is a story about people fleeing government repression in a war zone? My conclusion was that you were deliberately helping the government cover up this fact by going on about unrelated issues, such as "exonomic migrants."
What do "economic migrants" have to do with a boat load of people from a persecuted minority trying to escape a war zone?
"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes."
No global inequality just can't be relevant here. Limited resources cannot explain pressure on peoples to come in conflict with each other.
No I must have been wrong to suggest that global inequality is the elephant in the room that is behind these conflicts, interferes in them and then denies them a fair share of what the wealthy have. Why that whole idea would be --- aacck Socialist. Wouldn't want to have ideas like that floating around here-- let's insult them and pretend this is all about people on the other side of the planet who can't get along now shall we Cueball?
That is a rather twisted way of using Marx to justify these peoples exclusion on the grounds that the local conflict proves that these persons are essentially "economic migrants" and therefore the CIC definition applies.
Straight up: that is an appalling piece of intellectual dickwaddery. masquerading as socialist humanism, as I have ever seen. That kind of distortion would make a Soviet commissar blush with envy. Say what you like, but please don't take me as the kind of fool who will swallow that load.
Regrettably, I have to say I agree with Cue, Sean in Ottawa, notwithstanding your valid claims about other going ons around here. Although I do believe the "yes, sir, massa sir" was addressed. Perhaps not to your liking but nonetheless.
Once again cuball your interpretation bears no resemblance to the point being made or the words actually said.
And I had said that these migrants were not considered economic migrants by CIC-- and never offered that they were.
You also have misunderstood the CIC definition of economic migrants-- this is the CIC definition for those admitted to Canada to help the Canadian economy. It was not a definition I supported and I pointed out that it was the government's definition not mine.
You missed my initial point and found yourself getting more and more confused as you kept refuting things I was not saying from then on.
When you cool off -- go back and have a read and see what was really said.
There were three points:
1) the government system of sorting people in to econmic and noneconomic migrants is fucked up and unfair and 2) there is a context behind all these conflicts that includes severe economic inequality and that on the one hand creates addition demand for migration beyond normal (hey argue with Stephen Lewis he said it first) and that makes it harder to manage crises like this and 3) Even conflicts of a local nature are pressured by the economic imperialism of rich western countries where countries that have a lot of resources are left impoverishesd and fighting among themselves for what we leave behind.
However, you have a talent for arguing against what has never been said.
Regrettably, I have to say I agree with Cue, Sean in Ottawa, notwithstanding your valid claims about other going ons around here. Although I do believe the "yes, sir, massa sir" was addressed. Perhaps not to your liking but nonetheless.
Are you agreeing with Cueball's argument against what I was not saying (an argument I could agree with if anyone actually had said it)--
Read the damn posts if you want to get all bothered about them but stop going by one misinterpretation after another.
A lot has been said. If you want to not bother that's fine but if you are going to judge comments read them first because the artful Cueball is putting words in my mouth that remarkably close to the opposite of what I have been saying.
There are things that are implied. That's PR101.
It's fair for you to back off what you wrote Sean but it's also fair to wonder why you wrote it? What were you trying to accomplish in such a rabid environment? Thirisuj has posted almost a hundred links of the kerfuffle in Canada. Do we need more fuel for the fire?
I haven't a clue what you mean -- I have not backed off anything and stand by what I wrote-- can you point to what you had trouble with? It is possible I may not have expressed something clearly but I am certainly not changing anything and I have some very strong feelings about where the government is taking immigration and these ideas are not formed here all of a sudden.
The only thing I said that I can understand being controversial here is that I would not abandon all control to completely open borders -- overnight-- instead I would increase the numbers being let in dramatically for a while. I say this because we need to invest in social supports here. I say this i part because I know too many immigrants who have come here and found the experience devastating as things were not what they were told they would be and the governemnt is not supporting settlement adequately. As well, I believe we need to do a lot of work internationally to reduce the gaps between rich and poor-- I have proposed here somethign like transfer payments fixed percentages of GDP and taxation.
Otherwise, making an economic connection to the developing world's misery, I would never have thought it would cause such controversy in this place.But indeed it hasn't-- it is only a twisted interpretation of things I did not say that have become controversial.
Oh and what was I trying to accomplish?
1) greater awareness how the government pits one group of migrants against another and truly offers no generosity.
2) awareness and connections that there is a serious economic dispartity crisis that is in the background of most world conflict and rich countries with massive resources are at the centre of it-- and even conflicts that are not directly related are pressured by this and harder to manage because of it
Agreed Sean, I don't think you meant malice from your postings but just as an aside, it's easy to juxtapose them that way. Jus' sayin'.
The outrages against Tamil refugees can be traced in part to the popularity of Rob Ford as the candidate for Toronto Mayor. It might not be politically correct to say that we cant afford any more immigrants and refugees in Toronto, but its what a lot of people feel and I share that frustration even though I was an immigrant and still feel like one a lot of the times. Even ordinary Canadians are suffering from the lack of jobs, and as a whole, we feel disempowered, and we feel that so many people in the public sector are being over paid; in a way, the left wing sympathizer David Miller and his gangs have contributed to the rise of the right wing idiot candidate in Toronto. (and btw, I voted for Miller and am disappointed at him)
Principled solidarity doesn’t put food on the table.
Since it doesnt seem like people with little power can rage against those with more power, refugees become a new scapegoat and no academic or political arguments can change that.
Principled solidarity doesn’t put food on the table.
Since it doesnt seem like people with little power can rage against those with more power, refugees become a new scapegoat and there no academic or political arguments can change that.
Wow! I'm sure there are some but perhaps you're right, we need more writing...
What a joke to read these folk are paying $50,000 each.
A lot has been said. If you want to not bother that's fine but if you are going to judge comments read them first because the artful Cueball is putting words in my mouth that remarkably close to the opposite of what I have been saying.
Ok, enough of putting words in your mouth. What do you think? Should these people stay or should they go?
A lot has been said. If you want to not bother that's fine but if you are going to judge comments read them first because the artful Cueball is putting words in my mouth that remarkably close to the opposite of what I have been saying.
Ok, enough of putting words in your mouth. What do you think? Should these people stay or should they go?
Wow- finally would be nice if that lasted.
Of course they should stay. I have never said otherwise.
And the point I made upthread --their numbers should not be part of a quota system and should not come out of other quotas.
Refugees currently are part of the overall immigration quota system and they should never be.
There are two other issues that have not been covered above although they need to be so I'll add them:
1) The media comments I read today are making a big deal about "illegal immigration" in the context of refugees. This is part of the problem of the government lumping in refugees with other so-called non-economic immigrants. The assumption being made is that legal people follow the long process and those who don't including refugees are illegal immigrants. It is of course necessary to remind people (perhaps not people here but we can be reminded to remind others) that it is not illegal to save yourself from harm or threat by being a refugee. Refugees are by definition legal under international law wherever they turn up. the minister is steadily making comments about smuggling and human trafficking that cannot apply here-- nobody is being smuggled (hidden from view on entry to Canada). It may be immoral to ask for large amounts of money to get passage on an overcrowded ship to Canada but that is not illegal by Canadian law. There is a concerted effort by the government, and it is working, to have Canadians identify refugees as illegal migrants. That characterization, I suspect may in itself be illegal. I do see the quota practice of including refugees in immigration quotas as being at least part of the problem and feeding this perception.
2) When it come to refugees, which I have pointed out are legal, we have to remember another series of facts about Canada. I pointed out that Canada is high on the list of places would-be immigrants consider-- that is those who have the means to choose and apply as immigrants. We disagreed about the size of that potential which I think is very high representing both a challenge and an opportunity. Things are very different when it comes to refugees. Refugees walk to their destination more than not. The countries closest to the conflict zones receive the most refugees. Indeed, we have a number of immigrants to Canada who at one point became refugees in a third country before beginning the process of immigrating to Canada (I know some stories personally). So while Canada has received high numbers of immigrants and there is high demand for more, we actually receive few refugees compared to other countries located close to where people are displaced. Canada has also been highly critical for many decades of countries that would turn away refugees, even when those countries are poor, and the refugees are in the hundreds of thousands. A recent example was the issue of Uganda wanting to limit Somali refugees but there are many others. It is therefore important to note that for a rich country to be speaking in the way our government has about a paltry number of refugees in the hundreds rather than the thousands reeks of hypocrisy. The idea that the government of Canada would consider boarding the vessel on the high seas, changing law to give it more power, and characterizing without process hundreds of refugees as illegal is a huge problem and this context should not be avoided.
I do think it is important that people in Canada learn about how the process works and inform themselves not just about the immediate issue but all that remains in the background-- including, as I have said many times here the issues of economics especially when a rich country like Canada takes the positions it is taking on people coming here after having lectured developing countries on refugees and international law in the past. So as I say there is much for the public to learn about our system, the economic and social context of migration (even when you might think it does not have an immediate application), international law etc.
I'll also add that the question of whether the people aboard this ship should be allowed in to Canada was not addressed directly by anyone here until Cueball raised it a couple posts up is not because it is not important but because I believe it was self-evident and a given behind the conversation here.
My posts above that were seeking to clarify secondary issues that I thought were not being presented correctly was my priority. I want to add to the awareness people rather than repeat and rank in order of importance a pile of issues that are a given here even if they are debated elsewhere. Perhaps my assumptions of what was a given was in part what lead to the mischaracterization of what was actually said. Indeed, I did not feel the need to assert all those issues which are not in dispute here before adding detail to issues I think need to be considered. For that I have been faulted by some who think it is important to go back over that ground each time. And perhaps there is a need to in retrospect, although having to do that really limits the progress you can make on awareness beyond those things that should be taken for granted.
In any case, I much prefer a direct question such as that in post #80 to an ongoing debate over what has been said or when no evidence can be found references to unsaid "implications." It is not surprising that a person will be more angry when they are accused of saying things that are the opposite of what they believe and have said than when they are accused of saying something they in fact did say. It is certainly worth asking yourself why else someone would be so upset at the characterization of their words if indeed that was accurate. If I was ashamed of an opinion, I hardly think I would share it here. I am not ashamed of my opinions so will not be angry when someone is fairly representing what I've said. I hardly think I am alone in that.
Sean, the problem is the double register you employ when you speak about this topic. One one hand, you conclude variously that the refugees should be allowed in, that there is an economic divide which compells migration to Canada and other rich Western countries, and that Canada's immigration policy is deeply flawed. Wonderful. But on the other hand, in order to get to this point, you counterintuitively employ the same rhetoric which justifies the government's position: that billions of refugees would flood our borders if we "let" everyone in, that "these refugees do, in fact, 'jump the queue,'" and then going through great lengths to "explain" the government's racist and hypocritical immigration policies. It is the second Cueball and I (among others) are critiquing, and perhaps this is why you feel we are referencing unsaid implications, or putting words in your mouth and so on. In fact, it is precisely your words we are reading and critiquing. That said, with your last post, you are adjusting your reasoning and rhetoric (and, it seems, your conclusions) and broadening your inclusion of the geopolitics at play here.
No-- not at all
You keep insisting that you are not confused but you use immigrants and refugees interchangably at moments and you accuse me of doing the same. Then at other times when convenient you make the distinction.
I have said that immigration should not be unlimited in the imediate. Instead it should be ramped up dramatically and planned for with both physical and social infrastructure built. It is immigration that could spike if there were suddenly no limits on it not refugees. I said this in response to another person who said there should be no limits on immigration. Further I argued that if we could address economic disparities, and ramp up immigration now to clear backlogs we could eventually see a time when there would need to be no limits.
Refugees are another matter-- these are people moving due to emergency and I have never, ever suggested there should be a limit to who we accept in that category.
That said I object and continue to the government policy of using a quota system that puts immigrants and refugees in the same quota such that they do through no fault of their own effectively jump a queue-- one they should not even be in in the first place.
There is no contradiction here other than your, Cueball's and Kropotkin's repeated refusal to read what is actually being said-- even when I go back and underline it over and over for you. Do you need neon lights or what?
My critique begins in part with a criticism of the government lumping in and confusing refugees and immigrants. Throughout this conversation you have selectively confused and or defined them as seperate as long as it supported your ongoing mischaracterization of what I wrote.
I cannot help but conclude that what is at stake here is a mistake made early on in reading a post I made followed by a deepening pile of bullshit being placed on top to avoid admitting it. In the meantime, instead of reading what I wrote others got committed to the vision of it presented in that mistaken interpretation.
Now I realize my posts have been long and detailed on this and if you are not that interested may not want to read them entirely-- but if you want to criticize with any credibility you do actually have to read that. Clearly, if you have indeed read what I wrote you have not read it very well since your summary is inaccurate starting with the confusion between when I am speaking of refugees and immigrants-- these are two issues being discussed and they are being discussed together because the government continues to mix them in its policies. The least we can do is get them straight here. Constantly when I was saying refugee some people were hearing immigrant and when I was saying immigrant some were hearing refugee. that is the problem from the get-go but with all the venom flying around a closer reading would seem fair. Otherwise, you won't mind I am sure if I characterize these critiques as lazy.
Ok-- while I have clarified it at least ten times now-- I can say that it would have been better in my first post on the topic if I had put quotation marks around the word immigration when it appeared in the context of government program design since the government has defined all migrants as economic or non-economic immigrants including refugees (wrongly) in the non-economic category.
There are two definitions that are out there and one means immigration in terms of a program that decides who comes or not to Canada. The other definition includes all who arrive be they refugee or immigrant in the first definition as immigrant. Obviously under international law if someone is a refugee they should not be part of any program to decide who is or is not allowed since refugees as I have said upthread are by definition legal.
I don't see that this has been that difficult to follow although there is a lot to read here and a lot more added due to obstinate refusals to discuss what is actually being said rather than interpretations of it that are so extreme as to defy logic-- particularly after the first time I went back and explained the differences.
Now if you want to go after the organization of my posts or to say I was not clear enough for you that is fine and a fair opinion. You can also criticize my choice if you wish to want to give a wider context to the discussion. also fair enough although I think the context is important. But your insistence that only your (wrong) interpretation of what I wrote could be correct and that even when it is not supportable by quotation should prevail over my repeated attempts to correct you is grating. You are loosely summarizing my words into different meanings and insisting that they are correct and then you are holding me to account for YOUR interpretation rather than anything I actually said.
ETA: Actually what is the most aggravating is your dismissal that my interpretation of my own words is even worthy of acknowledgment as if your is the only one there. It is easy enough to examine how rhetorically I may have been less clear or ordered than I should have been (and a professional standard is not the one we employ here since this is not paid writing), but this business of continually saying I could not have meant what I keep saying I mean over and over preferring your own version that you insist on remaining stuck in is pretty harsh and unreasonable. Now at least can you acknowledge at least the possibility that I meant what I said I meant when you read the words I wrote? Because, you know the alternative is that you keep effectively calling me a liar here and I can't stop correcting you and calling you on it until you stop. And no, it is not a pleasant process.
All this is to say-- While I insist that your interpretation of what I said was wrong and that I never ever meant that and did not say that, my writing could be a factor in what is a wrong interpretation so I am not claiming to be completely not at fault.
However, your insistance that I had to MEAN what you think I meant even though I did not say it and that your interpretaion is infallible and I must be changing my position somehow is deeply offensive to me. Especially as the opinions you are trying to pin on me are the polar opposite of anythign I have believed in decades and that should be clear enough from the reponses I have made.
Can you acknwoledge that you are not perfect and that your interpretation is not infallible -- otherwise this conversation can't go very far and I ask you to drop it since this is an interpretation of someone else's words in a direction that that person is saying makes them uncomfortable. As a mod can you not see a problem with this???
All this is to say-- While I insist that your interpretation of what I said was wrong and that I never ever meant that and did not say that, my writing could be a factor in what is a wrong interpretation so I am not claiming to be completely not at fault.
However, your insistance that I had to MEAN what you think I meant even though I did not say it and that your interpretaion is infallible and I must be changing my position somehow is deeply offensive to me. Especially as the opinions you are trying to pin on me are the polar opposite of anythign I have believed in decades and that should be clear enough from the reponses I have made.
Can you acknwoledge that you are not perfect and that your interpretation is not infallible -- otherwise this conversation can't go very far and I ask you to drop it since this is an interpretation of someone else's words in a direction that that person is saying makes them uncomfortable. As a mod can you not see a problem with this???
Gee Sean I often think you are arguing from positions that you later then claim too be the polar opposite of what you mean. Can you acknowledge that you are not perfect? Maybe you should spend some time analyzing your very wordy posting style and take out the superfluous points to your argument. Many of us seem to mistake your "teaching moments" for your actual beliefs.
All this is to say-- While I insist that your interpretation of what I said was wrong and that I never ever meant that and did not say that, my writing could be a factor in what is a wrong interpretation so I am not claiming to be completely not at fault.
However, your insistance that I had to MEAN what you think I meant even though I did not say it and that your interpretaion is infallible and I must be changing my position somehow is deeply offensive to me. Especially as the opinions you are trying to pin on me are the polar opposite of anythign I have believed in decades and that should be clear enough from the reponses I have made.
Can you acknwoledge that you are not perfect and that your interpretation is not infallible -- otherwise this conversation can't go very far and I ask you to drop it since this is an interpretation of someone else's words in a direction that that person is saying makes them uncomfortable. As a mod can you not see a problem with this???
Gee Sean I often think you are arguing from positions that you later then claim too be the polar opposite of what you mean. Can you acknowledge that you are not perfect? Maybe you should spend some time analyzing your very wordy posting style and take out the superfluous points to your argument. Many of us seem to mistake your "teaching moments" for your actual beliefs.
Just read the part you quoted -- the answer to your question was already there.
Yes I write a lot- some people are interested and some are not. I don't tend to post recipes and crap though and I try to make it informative. Please feel free to block my posts and not read or reply to them. I certainly don't need any reply you are likely to post to complete my day.
And the many of us seems to be you, Cueball and Catchfire-- over and over then a break for a while and then again. So I assume that the three of you constitute the many.
Or if you want me to be more blunt: [expletive deleted] why don't you speak for yourself and let others speak for themselves?
I was asked for some stats and found them interesting so will share them here:
2009 stats Canada
Economic immigrants: 153,458 (including over 12,000 live-in caregivers)
Refugees: 22,844 (Including only 7,202 who actually landed here the balance sponsored by individuals or government)
Other humanitarian: 10,522
Family class 65,187 including Spouses and partners 43,887 and parents grandparents 17,175
The total allowed in is about 250,000 with about 60% by quota to be economic immigrants.
I don't have any stats for 2010.
To compare the Canadian data with other western countries:
Refugees claims only -- not approved cases in 2009
Canada about 35,000 (I don't have exact numbers-- as you can see above we accepted 22,844 of them)
Total Europe 246,000
US - about 50,000
Australia and NZ 6,500
Japan/Korea 1,700
So in fact Canada still has more claims per capita than most Western countries
Here is a site with info: http://www.unhcr.org/4ba7341a9.html
Also there are between 11 and 12 million refugees today worldwide. So the big bad Tamil boat represents a whopping 0.000043% of the current global number. Not very significant.
Our entire annual take of total global refugees is 0.0019%.
Canada's share of the world's GDP (before the recession -- it has risen since) 0.023%.
So we take in a far smaller share of refugees than we do of the world's wealth.
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DATASTATISTICS/Resources/GDP.pdf
Those who are actually interested might find the stats interesting. The main point is the huge gap between Canada's wealth and refugees coming in and between Canada's rhetoric and the numbers of refugees actually coming in.
I trust these numbers will help provide further context to the small number that came of this boat.
Oh and for those interested there are over 900,000 refugees from Somalia in neighboring African countries that Canada keeps reminding have a responsibility and legal obligation to recieve. This is an important context to the crap coming out of Ottawa about options for amending the law or turning boats around on the high seas.
It also puts the lie to the notion that we should in any way be making other migrants to Canada abosrb these numbers in shared queues.
I'll add -- there is also the fact that the entire so-called developped world absolutely stinks when it comes to this-- not a single one of those wealthy imperial powers is pulling their weight in spite of all the BS rhetoric in G8/20 summits. While Canada can comfort itself that it does not stink as much as some others that is the only consolation to be found. Wouldn't want to put that on the resumé.
why don't you speak for yourself and let others speak for themselves?
Posted by Sean the Holier than Me
I am not sure that the ties to the monarchy are necessarily related to the reform of the GG position in other respects.
The first step can be made simply by eliminating the ties to the monarchy and leaving the current GG selection, powers and position in all other respects as it is. Then we can look at how we want to reform that role.
I am not sure that a public election is a good idea-- for one if elected the GG or President would likely reflect the same forces and party in power. That would be unhelpful.
As well, the role of the GG does not demand public election or politicization. Selection through nomination from provincial legislatures is one alternative. Another could include a form of alternation between representative communities within Canada so the position could be held by FN, Inuit, new Canadian (immigrant like the last two) etc. while alternating in gender. It could effectively employ a legislated equality that we are still unable to achieve through electoral politics.
I'd consider the notion that we make GGs come from Aboriginal populations indefinitely as they representaiton elsewhere in the political power process is severely wanting. That would certainly reflect a greater understanding of who we are as a people and our history to make that choice.
Selection could in part be made through a consensus requirement. Depending on how we settled the selection to the Order of Canada the selection could be made out of that group.
As far as legal and political advice, I see no problem having a new position of legal/constitutional adviser to the GG created. I do agree that the GG needs to have access to specialized knowledge but object to the limiting of the position only to those with a specific type of legal background because in acquiring that there is likely an accumulation of a certain set of social and political biases.
But we can have this debate later on our own schedule- let's snip the irrelevant tie to Buckingham Palace right off-- nothing else actually depends on it.
What's your fucking point asshole?
There is nothing in that post that has anything to do with this thread-- unless the point is that I am capable of using more than one pronoun.
Get a fucking life.
I appreciate the statistics Sean. It puts things in perspective. At the same time even though Canada is a wealthy country, the wealth is not being trickled down, thats why so many Canadians are intolerant of any newcomers seeking for jobs and a better opportunity in Canada.
Sean, there is more to babble land than meets the eye. Rabble may bill itself as a progressive website catering to the left but real leftists are routinely harassed and driven away like what happened to me, to b*star and I'm sure others before. The only ones left active to "contribute" are people like cueball, kropotkin, stockholm and their likes. They are the constant on babble through the years, and this did not occur by accident.
Hope you won't quit because I enjoy reading what you write. But prepare yourself for continued harassment sanctioned by babble from certain "long time members". I think the best way to deal with them is to just ignore their posts.
kropotkin, you are baiting Sean with personal attacks. That is not acceptable. Stop it.
Sean, thanks for those statistics. I think I said upthread that Canada accepts more immigrants per capita than any other country, but it's nice to see it illustrated so clearly. I think you know what is wrong with your post #94, even if you were provoked. That's unacceptable, and you know it.
Thanks for your editorial, c_t. It's nice that you read babble in order to ignore it.
Yeah well I had this theory that the only way you would wade in and ask that this crap stop was after I used the same kind of abusive language like that you routinely tolerate from Cue and Krop. Looks like it worked. I'll have to remember that for next time.
As long as I remain civil you will let these two do whatever they want including lie about private posts to mods that they are not supposed to be privy to. That they got it wrong is only part of the story. That you did not have a particular problem with people speculating about private posts to mods is more disturbing and has made a complete farce of the moderating here. But I'm glad to know that if I chuck in a couple swear words I can get your attention that there is a problem here.
As such by your behaviour you have not only not shown me that there is no problem with my post #93 but in fact that is exactly the way to go as long as a thread is moderated by you and something unacceptable is going on.
Remember also that the previous time it was the mods crying foul that I had not made a complaint to them as that had been a problem, then it was tolerance of abuse for making a complaint followed finally that in this place abuse should be returned until the mod stops the process and we can go back to normal. If that's the way you deal that's the way it has to go.
It is very sad to hear this discussion about people that find the lives so distressing, are willing to risk their lives by crossing the largest ocean in the world. It is obvious from this discussion, that most people have never gone to sea and do not appreciate the dangers.
I find it offensive that there are citizens of one of the wealthiest places in the world, that are spending their time arguing statistics, definitions of words like refugee and immigrant!
We need to concentrate our thoughts constructively on compassion, all eating from the same bowl and hopefully, hopefully one day, coming to the realisation that we are not in a position to even discuss whether or not people shyould be allowed here! We do not have this right!
I assume that one can only appreciate what I am trying to say, if they have been shot at by organised armies or their country has been driven to annihilation by policies enforced by the family(mafia) of nations that dictate the planet!
It is important to know that statistics represent real people. It is not a lack of compasion or concern that leads people to make these arguments. They are relevant and this is political board so discussing this from a policy point of view in terms of programs statistics and government policy to try to press for changes of a political and policy nature is what we can do here and what we do here.
I also find your post which seems to imply I am not compassionate since I have been the one bringing the most stats and definitions here a bit offensive to me. I remind you that I have spent a lot of time writing on this thread about these issues, and have taken a real load of shit in this thread to keep coming back with information to share and so I ask you why you think that is. I am not paid. I am writing and sharing information about this because I care about the issue.
I am also aware that the context here is political and policy so I naturally interpretted this in that context. I'll also point out that the difficulties in this area are in no small part attributable to governemnt policies (ours and others). This is not some human tragedy without political undertones. This is a real-life misery with people dying that is all avoidable and all due to government policies. Stats and definitions are not cold things they are the means for governments to act affecting thousands at the same time. The stats measure that and the definitions when wrong can destroy lives.
So you say we need to concentrate our thoughts constructively-- since we can't go out in rowboats and welcome people off the high seas-- I assume that means constructively addressing those same definitions, and statistics you take issue with.
Your last paragraph is also a problem as you suggest taht only those people who have been victims of crimes that are rare in this country can speak to this. I disagree, we all must or this will only get worse. Also problematic is your assumptions about who is here and what their individual expreiences are. You can't know that.
I know we're not taking a poll here, but I for one appreciate Sean's posts - not only in this thread, but wherever he decides to apply his thoughtful analysis. He posts in good faith, whether someone agrees or disagrees with his particular stand on an issue. I trust he will continue.
I'm now back to lurking in this thread.
Closing for length.