Canada’s keep-them-out immigration policy

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/09/2015 (3860 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper began this election campaign by describing the issues as the economy and security. Other party leaders took his bait.

And so it has been through the early weeks. It has played well to the insularity of Canadians easily persuaded to be concerned for their financial well-being and their safety.

The photo of one three-year-old refugee boy, dead on a beach with the Mediterranean lapping at his sad little body, has created a tidal wave that is threatening to sink the usual, and maybe even lift all party boats to a higher level of debate.

Perhaps there is now room to consider matters of morality, of conscience, of compassion and simple decency, of humanity’s interconnectedness, and the role Canada should play once again — as it did years ago.

This time, it is immigration and refugee policy that is both the Achilles heel of the Harper government and the litmus test of its attitude. But the same thing can be said of the NDP, and of the Liberals whose “labour market strategy” the Tories inherited and is the shallow bedrock of policy today.

The refugee crisis has global impact even though its immediate effect is upon Europe. Refugees are pouring in by the tens of thousands from the Middle East and from Africa. Harper, like British Prime Minister David Cameron, dwells on the need to address the root causes.

No wise person can deny the importance of attacking the root. But in the face of screaming human tragedy now, the Harper-Cameron stance is not even rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic; it’s only talking about it. The need is now. The image of that little dead boy, Alan Kurdi, confirms it.

Thus it becomes a numbers game and a confusing one, a bidding contest among party leaders. How many Syrians will Canada take, has it taken? Or other refugees, too?

There are, however, some fundamental issues.

There are 24,000 refugees already privately sponsored by Canadians who have been waiting for years to get here. The typical wait time is four or five years. It can be longer. People living at risk must somehow survive while Canada’s immigration mills grind slowly.

Even Syrians marked for priority processing must wait, despite their life-threatening situations. Three families sponsored by a Winnipeg group have been waiting about a year.

The refugee processing system is damned by its own paperwork. Canadians have read that one of little Alan’s relatives was already refused by Canada because the paperwork wasn’t right. The Orwellian aspects of refugee policy and processing make one wonder whether it is designed to rescue refugees, or keep them out.

For corroborating evidence of the keep-them-out scenario, one can look to the Harper government’s track record. It cancelled the interim federal health plan for refugees in 2012 (in place since 1957, the era of prime minister John Diefenbaker).

It has made the process for asylum seekers so difficult (and labeled many “bogus”), that the number coming here has plummeted to all-time lows. It has changed the definition of family for all classes of immigration so that children aged 19 and older are excluded.

Even if little Alan and his family had made it to Europe, like so many Syrians already, they would have been denied sponsorship to Canada because of our “durable solution” premise that refuses all refugee applicants deemed safe where they are.

The Harper government has made it much harder to qualify for Canadian citizenship (and easier to lose it), and much more expensive to get, thus likely to create an underclass of non-voting immigrants of the arriving generation.

Immigration is capped at about 270,000 a year even though the demand is three times that. The piece of the larger pie assigned to privately sponsored refugees is capped at 6,500 admissions a year. Syrians and Iraqis are currently allowed to be an exception, but still within limits.

The desire to sponsor refugees in Canada is severely constrained by policy. Because of the large unprocessed backlog already waiting, the Sponsorship Agreement Holders of Canada were held to less than 2,000 refugees allowed to be sponsored this year. One organization operating in Winnipeg has turned down 5,000.

It’s a stretch to see Canada’s government as anything but mean-spirited toward refugees. Perhaps one dead little boy on a beach will change that.

Remember his name: Alan Kurdi.

 

Tom Denton is a Winnipeg writer.