He floods the country with 250,000 immigrants a year, even though most cannot find jobs commensurate with the education and skills they were selected for. Tens of thousands of Canadian-educated graduates cannot find jobs either. His is an exploitative model that suits only the corporate sector — driving wages and worker demands down, profits up.
This arrangement is augmented with his even more blatantly exploitative temporary workers program. Employers get foreigners at a legislated lower wage than Canadians. The scandalous RBC case is one twist in a complicated labour scam, as fellow columnist Tom Walkom explained on Wednesday.
Kenney does not know how many temporary workers leave at the end of their visas and how many disappear into the underground economy, thereby exposing themselves to further exploitation and also lowering wages for others. Canada is on the same disastrous course as the U.S., which has millions of illegal immigrants, who are exploited and resented at the same time.
He has upended our traditional immigration system, wherein newcomers were seen as future citizens (not just fodder for corporate greed or a force to undermine the ostensibly spoiled homegrown workforce).
Immigrants were entitled to family reunification and citizenship, the latter after three years if they stayed on the right side of the law. Now they struggle for ages to get their families united and become citizens. This is a matter of policy or bureaucratic incompetence. Either way, it is not good for them and not good for Canada.
Kenney courts selected ethnic communities, turning up for their festivals and dinners, and gaining just enough votes to win targeted ridings for the Tories.
At the other end of the electoral spectrum, he manages anti-immigrant backlash, especially in his conservative constituency, by harping about how he’s “fixing the broken immigration system”; keeping out bogus refugees, such as the Roma; and standing on guard against “barbaric cultural practices” being imported into the country.
This last bogus claim is repeated in a new federal guide for immigrants.
Designed to help newcomers navigate their way here, the 146-page guide also serves as a tool of Kenney’s political and cultural warfare.
It promotes the values his government has systematically rebranded Canada with — the monarchy, the Armed Forces, the War of 1812, the two world wars, the military mission in Afghanistan, etc. It ignores or downplays that which he thinks carries a liberal and Liberal imprimatur, such as our historic peacekeeping and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The guide warns immigrants not to import such horrors as female genital mutilation, polygamy, honour killings, forced marriage, spousal abuse, etc.
Such references stigmatize certain cultures, says the NDP’s Jinny Sims, opposition immigration critic. She’s being politically correct. We should not hesitate to denounce awful practices.
The really offensive part is the guide’s working hypothesis and message: that immigrants are prone to such behaviour; that they are flooding Canada with such practices; and that Kenney and Co. is civilizing the barbarians arriving at our gates.
But there’s no proof that such practices are proliferating here.
Genital mutilation: In the 1990s, there were whispers of this practice in the Ethiopian and Somali communities. The government of the day amended the Criminal Code to make that a crime, to remove any doubt.
Honour killings: There have been a dozen in the last decade, according to one study. While one is too many, the context is that there were 598 homicides in 2011, the last year for which statistics are available, and in most cases the victim knew the killer.
Polygamy: We know of no convictions among immigrants. However, we do know of the practice being prevalent for decades among the followers of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in British Columbia.
Forced marriages: One hears of these occasionally, but usually with a he said/she said complication.
Spousal abuse: We do hear of this. But there’s no study showing it is more prevalent among immigrants. The studies consistently show that the practice cuts across income, ethnicity, religion, geography, etc.
Kenney justifies hectoring new immigrants on these subjects in the name of familiarizing them with the laws of their new land.
That doesn’t wash. Immigrants, like anyone else, must obey all the laws of Canada, not just those he chooses to highlight.
It would have been more useful to include a reminder of the laws that the newcomers are more likely to run afoul of, such as making rolling stops at stop signs and running red lights — routine infractions in China, India, the Philippines and other places where we are drawing most of our immigrants from.
He is posing as our spear-carrier against practices that fuel anti-immigrant discourse, especially in his right-wing constituency.
Or he is using inflammatory rhetoric to deflect public attention from ruthlessly exploiting immigrant and non-immigrant workers — and that during a prolonged period of high unemployment.
Original Article
Source: thestar.com
Author: Haroon Siddiqui
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