Monday, August 16, 2010

letting a boatload of refugees stay in canada? why wouldn't we?

since when do the "majority of canadians" not want to allow refugees into the country?

harsha walia reminds readers that "there is more reason to be mistrustful of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney and Public Safety Minister Vic Toews than of the migrants."

Their regime has advanced an agenda of corporate bailouts and economic austerity; ballooning military, police and prison budgets; unmitigated resource extraction and environmental destruction; and an immigration policy that is moving toward the repressive Australia and Arizona models of accepting fewer refugees and jailing more asylum seekers and undocumented migrants.

These politicians sell us strange paradoxes - military occupation as liberation, refugees as terrorists."

it always blows my mind when people bang their drum for canada occupying afghanistan but then say that refugees and immigrants shouldn't be allowed into the country. but then, of course they do that. occupations like those in afghanistan reaffirm the military might and colonial status of canada, the "this is for the women and children" bullshit is just a more convenient banner to carry.

remember refugees?? remember what that means?? refugees don't just go "hey, you know what family? canada looks nice, let's pack up and move there."

no, usually they don't pack and usually it isn't a decision. these people have to leave their country of origin because they can't remain there any longer safely.

sri lanka, for instance, is a country whose government is under investigation for war crimes against tamils. it is a well known fact that tamils are persecuted in sri lanka and atrocities have been documented widely. according to walia's article, canada has accepted more than 90 % of refugee claimants from sri lanka in the past two years.

you know what, canada? we've had a lot of shitty things happen the past few years in this country. mainly because we were stupid enough to allow a conservative government to happen.

let's just calm down and think for a second about the kind of country we really want to be. do we WANT to be australia??? the united states? maybe the people who do want regressive policies like australia and the united states should move to those countries because the rest of us think that turning away a boat of refugees is just gross.




2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why should our country let others in?? We need to take care of the people of Canada first. We can help others from other countries if we feel we need to...I don't see why we need to bother....in their own country. Let people in from other countries and we will end up getting their problems in return.

tee said...

I really dislike anonymous commenting for a few reasons:

-the person who writes them doesn't have to be accountable to their own opinion.

-because of the lack of accountability, people can say things and not really justify them.

Why should " our country let others in?" For starters, unless you were one of the first peoples on this land, it isn't your country--or mine, for that matter. Ignoring for a moment the idiocy of borders in general, Canada is a country built on immigration and colonization. So, to disallow immigration or refugee claims is to completely ignore the history of "your" country, and ignoring history is stupid.

" Let people in from other countries and we will end up getting their problems in return."

What problems? Like, poverty? Because we have that. Racism? Got that too. Sexism? Rampant here. What problems, exactly, are you talking about?

"We can help others from other countries if we feel we need to." That's just gross, and also gross to comment under an anonymous mask.

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