The substantive things that the outgoing federal government has been doing to attack the rights of refugee claimants who somehow make it to Canada (we’re a little far for thousands arriving on boats) pale in comparison to the tactics used to try to turn Canadians against these people.
“Illegal” “Queue-jumpers” “Bogus refugee claimants” are just some of the terms that have come out of the mouths of government ministers, including Ministers of Immigration. If you think about how the government will clam up when one of its own is accused of fraud or influence peddling (the issue is “before the courts”), you have to wonder how it can be that a Minister of Immigration and Citizenship can describe people whose cases are waiting to be heard by the Immigration and Refugee Board can be described in such terms.
It’s all a part of the political game that tries to stir up fear of the other to unify those who feel afraid of differences. The queue-jumping accusation is meant to appeal to people who might be immigrants who are waiting for family members to be able to join them here. It’s clever, really, to be able to play the “stranger among us” card to people who may have arrived here relatively recently. It strikes me as not very credible that a process that unfolds here with a very specific system of hearings has anything to do with the giant backlog of applications for family reunification from around the world.
I guess the only way to really get in first and not be demonized is to buy your way in as an “entrepreneur” class immigrant. That sounds fair.
Further reading here.
If I call you names
I can distract from my own
incompetence, right?
I can distract from my own
incompetence, right?
No comments:
Post a Comment