During the Harper nightmare our country really took a shameful backward direction regarding immigration. While flinging wide the nation's portals to well-educated immigrants carrying bags full of money we suddenly fell into step with Australia, becoming hostile, unwelcoming and hateful towards the most vulnerable refugees. In 2010 a rusted Thai freighter, the Sun Sea, carried four hundred ninety-two impoverished Tamil refugees to the west coast of Canada. The paranoia inflamed by the Harper administration led many to believe that the poor refugees were terrorists and that somehow these poor, hungry and broken down Tamils might pose a threat to the Canadian people. Did I already mention that they were poor? Very poor. Fleeing from violence and deprivation. Traumatized.
Our government's reaction? Mandatory detention. They were treated like criminals. And further traumatized. Not only because they came as refugees, without invitation, outside of the due process of law, but because they were so deeply impoverished and so profoundly needy. That Conservative government paranoia flowed from the right wing collective amygdala much as the toxic waters of the River Styx flows from the mouth of Hell. I remember having coffee with an ex-friend during that time. In the coffee shop she opened her mouth and crowing like the rooster of the damned expressed loudly and with obscene glee her agreement with the government-sanctioned abuse of those Tamil refugees. I did say she's my ex-friend, didn't I? What was especially discouraging was that she by far wasn't the only Canadian channelling the right wing hate and paranoia of the Harper Conservatives.
This was such an about face from Canada's traditional role of welcoming refugees, be they Vietnamese boat people when I was twenty-four, Ugandans of South Asian heritage when I was twenty, or people fleeing from the devastation that resulted from the Hungarian uprising the year I was born.
Meanwhile, well-heeled foreigners, many of them millionaires, were welcomed here from China and other countries, but principally from China, where they transformed my city, Vancouver, into a gigantic Chinese laundry as they invested money gained often through corrupt means in China into local real estate, thus helping to push to stratospheric levels housing costs, making my home city one of the most unaffordable in the world.
I am entirely in favour of multiculturalism. I welcome newcomers to this country. But I am at least a little bit disgusted with our government`s cynical greed for foreign investment, especially given that they already know that none of this foreign money is going to be rediverted to affordable housing or childcare. Because wealthy immigrants are deemed as more equal than poor refugees, At least prime minister Junior is getting the optics right by letting in the Syrian refugees. His and other levels of government would immeasurably improve said optics by extending the same kinds of benefits and supports to poor and vulnerable Canadians who were born in this country and yes we can afford it.
By the same token, it would also be nice if our new Canadians would be a little better educated about the social and economic realities of many Canadians not fortunate enough to enjoy the same largesse that they are getting to share in. I am thinking here of one particularly objectionable and obnoxious Filipino-Canadian. His name is Rudy and he works in Vancouver as a paralegal. I believe him to be in his fifties. He speaks Spanish in addition to English and his native Tagalog and I used to see this unpleasant individual regularly in a Spanish meetup group I was part of. In July 2014 this unpleasant individual began shooting his mouth off, spouting his ignorant hate and venom for homeless Canadians, describing them all as lazy bums and social parasites. He sounded disturbingly like the homicidal maniac who currently is leading the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, who glories in murdering people who use drugs. I told Rudy off in front of everyone, and was myself particularly upset, given that I was also once homeless and unemployed and I did not appreciate the way he was slagging my people. The incident threw me into a suicidal depression which I fortunately pulled out of within a day or so, but I left the group and I was able to convince myself that I was worth every bit as much as anyone else who lives in this country, regardless of country of origin, ethnicity or income.
And, Rudy, if you don`t like it that I am openly shaming you then I have only three little words to say to you:
So sue me.
Never piss off a blogger.
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