Andray Domise: What's behind hardening attitudes towards migrants? Some basic ignorance about the life of refugees and the reality of immigration in this country.
Last week, Frank Graves of EKOS tweeted a rather alarming finding. According to a poll conducted between April 3 to 10, 40 per cent of Canadians said they believe there are “too many “visible minorities coming to Canada.”
Statistics Canada tracks immigrants by their country of origin, not their ethnic self-identification. An immigrant from the U.K., for example, might likely identify as Black, and have a Nigerian background. On the other hand, an immigrant from Jamaica might likely identify as white, and have a British background.
Overall, refugees represent a rather small portion of Canada’s total immigration targets , which are set for 350,000 by the year 2021. That number has managed to spark a widespread backlash from anti-immigrant groups, as well as right-wing columnists, who seem to be more concerned with how Canadians “feel” about immigrants, than with the realities of Canada’s need for them.
Political conflict over the Haud and the broader Ogaden region—under Ethiopian control yet heavily populated by Somalis—was further inflamed after both Somaliland territories achieved independence and unified in 1960 as the Somali Republic, re-fashioned as a Marxist-Leninist state after a 1969 military coup led by Major General Mohamed Siad Barre , and fashioned into Cold War proxy heavily influenced by Russia.
He worked his way through university, landed a job with a provincial political party, and later applied to law school in order to become a better advocate for Somali communities in Canada. With his law degree, and what was described in the Times article as an “encyclopedic grasp of world history,” Hussen would go on to open a law practice which, in part, represented asylum-seekers.
But refugees are, quite literally, the world’s most vulnerable people. They flee their homes with what little they can carry, leaving behind not only the lives they made prior to the conflicts that drove them out, but leaving behind their national belonging as well. They are preyed upon by smugglers and traffickers, attacked en route to safe havens and exploited by criminals after they have arrived.
This is why, for example, Ontario MPP Lisa MacLeod can flippantly call Hussen a “bully,” when called to the carpet on her government’s misinformation campaign on the “housing crisis” in Ontario, supposedly created by asylum-seekers . This cancer in the discourse isn’t limited to the body politic. It’s long since spread into broader society, with real repercussions for those who can be categorized into that bottom caste. This is why, for example, Jama Hagi-Yusuf allegedly had his job application rejected on the basis of his ethnic background in the spring of 2015.
In other words, Syrian families survived bombs being dropped over their homes—the outcome of a series of political conflicts rooted in the French occupation of former Ottoman regions—only to be categorized as terrorists by a French Canadian, as an excuse for the hate crimes he committed against their community after their arrival in Calgary.
So when Doug Ford’s government presents a budget that slashes legal aid services to refugees—again, the most vulnerable people on earth—after months of slagging both asylum-seekers and the federal government’s immigration policy, Ford’s supposed bona fides with non-white communities in Ontario ought to weigh far less heavily in the conversation than the actual effects of his government’s policies.
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