by Abbie Bakan
Since July 20, over 600 Chinese migrants have arrived in unmarked boats on Canada's west coast. The vessels have been seized, and the passengers are treated as criminals. Lawyers have charged that Canadian immigration officials have assaulted the detainees, including young children.
"One migrant reported being hit over the head with a clipboard, another of being punched in the throat by an RCMP officer and another of being kicked while being strip-searched," stated lawyer Vaughan Barrett to The Globe and Mail.
Welcome to the best place in the world to live.
The attacks on the Chinese boat people in the media and among politicians has reached the point of hysteria. Immigrants are accused of "exploiting" Canadian immigration laws, threatening to take away jobs from Canadians, and spreading crime and disease.
But there is absolutely not a shred of evidence to suggest any correlation of unemployment, crime or disease with high rates of immigration. In fact, all the indicators show that the Canadian economy is desperately dependent upon immigrants.
Canada is a nation of immigrants. The new Chinese migrants should be treated as our welcome guests, not enemies. They are poor peasants and workers seeking a new life. They are often the pawns of immigrant smugglers, mortgaging their lives for a dangerous voyage on a leaky boat. But they are victims of an abusive system, not the abusers.
Let's look at the facts. Take the case of jobs. Canada's unemployment rate was at its highest level for the longest period of time during the 1930s.
But this was the lowest single point in Canada's rate of immigration.
Even Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi concentration camps were not allowed entry into Canada. Irving Abella and Harold Troper, in their book None is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe, 1933-1948, summarize the position of the Canadian government at the time:
"Canadian immigration policy had always been ethnically selective as it was economically self-serving. . . The onset of the depression then gave the government the opportunity to complete the restrictionist ring around Canada. . . .To all intents and purposes, Canada had shut itself off from the rest of the world just at the time when it was needed most. And for the remainder of the decade -- and beyond it -- a determined federal government fought every attempt by the wretched European refugees to break through this protective wall of legislation."
Canada's lowest rate of unemployment, conversely, was during the economic boom from the end of World War Two until the mid-1970s. This was a period of the mass immigration. Between 1945 and 1971, 4.4 million immigrants arrived in Canada.
In fact, immigrants were part of the reason for the period of prolonged economic prosperity. Without large scale immigration, the "natural" rate of reproduction in the Canadian labour force could not keep up with the demands for new workers.
Immigrants and refugees arrive in Canada, usually at the peak of their working lives, ready and willing to take any job that is available. These include jobs that no one else with any other options will accept. Immigrants are the least likely to become dependent on employment insurance or welfare.
And what about crime?
According to Statistics Canada, the crime rate is currently at its lowest level in twenty years. The three regions that showed a slight increase in crime between 1997 and 1998 -- Newfoundland, Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories -- are those with the lowest rate of acceptance of new immigrants.
The Canadian Human Rights Commission findings are absolutely conclusive regarding the impact of immigration in Canada:
"There is no dependable evidence of any sort to suggest a disproportionate number of immigrants or refugees are abusing the system of falling foul of the law. If anything, the evidence points in the opposite direction. . . .[I]mmigrants tend to be better educated, more likely to be part of the labour force and more often members of a stable family unit than their more established Canadian peers."
There is also no evidence to suggest that infectious diseases increase with immigration. Any highschool health education class teacher can tell you that the key to preventing the spread of AIDs or hepatitis-B is education of the Canadian population and increased funding for research -- not border controls.
If the Canadian government was so concerned about the spread of infectious diseases, why did it take years to expose the tainted blood supply that poisoned so many Canadian citizens? Why is there still no effective compensation program for the families of those whose lives have been lost, or those threatened by tainted blood?
Immigration controls have nothing to do with "protection" of Canadian citizens. Instead, the controls are a way to increase the power of the Canadian state.
Immigration controls are enforced by a series of secret directives to low level civil servants who have tremendous arbitrary powers. These directives are inherently racist.
Some people are considered "good immigrants" and some are considered "bad immigrants". Those who have large amounts of capital, and especially those who come from Anglo-celtic stock, have historically been favoured to enter Canada's doors at will.
People who travel from the Third World, and especially poor people from the Third World, are treated as "dangerous foreigners" who threaten the Canadian dream.
Multinational corporations and the managers of their investments have no trouble traveling across the borders of the world's capitalist states. When corporate magnates comes to Canada, they are not shoveled into detention centres, strip-searched and accused of criminal activity just because they want to step foot on Canadian soil.
We should oppose all immigration controls. They are a means to divide the working class of one nation from those of another. And they are enforced by racism, pure and simple.
Don't let them divide us. Immigrants are welcome here.