By Mike Archer, http://www.abbotsfordtoday.ca,
Shame on Canadians who hide their racism under the guise of our collective fear of terrorism, worries about the costs to our safety social net, or the costs to our healthcare system of accepting the desperate Tamil refugees who turned up on our shores this week.

The manner in which these unfortunate human beings were greeted by calls for their immediate deportation, accusations of queue jumping and arguments that they should simply have been turned away in the same manner the US does, are a blot on what Canada stands for.

That the Canadian government gave serious consideration to simply turning them back to die on the high seas, only to change their mind based on legal advice is similarly shameful.

Legitimate fears of terrorists in their midst are being dealt – their welcome has been to a Maple Ridge prison – with as they should be and, thanks primarily to the Tamil community in Canada, fears that these men, women and children will become a burden on Canadian society are also being dealt with as they are provided legal and medical care and welcomed into the law abiding Canadian Tamil community, mostly from Toronto.

The queue jumping argument is particularly loathsome as it divides people into different categories of desperation. The UN declaration we signed, unlike the US, establishes that not all immigrants are wealthy, educated, and well healed enough to qualify for our annual quotas. It recognizes that some people in this world live in such horrible conditions that they will give all the money they can muster (rumoured to be about $15,000 Cdn per person) just in order to send their children to Canada in the hopes they will have a chance at a life without hate and fear of death for being who they are.

When did we forget that we are a nation of immigrants? None of us, other than the First Nations, can claim to trace our ancestry and our origins from this country. In some people’s minds there is a distinction between immigrants be they Scots, Germans, Ukrainians, Greeks, Dutch or Italians and other, apparently ‘acceptable’; i.e. ‘European’ immigrants, or the ‘others’.

The ‘others’ seem to share a complexion problem. They invariable turn out to be brown, yellow or black.

For those who argue that it is their poverty from which we must protect ourselves, go to ancestry.com and find out how wealthy your own immigrant ancestors were. What happened to the old stories about our great grandparents who showed up in Halifax ‘with only the clothes on their back and a dream.

The story of immigration in Canada is one of hard work and contribution to the country. Desperate immigrants tend to appreciate the fact that what they heard was true – Canada is a country of hope where you can build yourself a better life without fear that the government, the police or the more established immigrants will take it from you.

As far as the costs of dealing with this small number of desperate people and the threat to our social safety net and our healthcare system … the Canadian government deals with this many refugee claims on an average weekend. The Canadian government just spent $1 Billion dollars entertaining 20 world leaders in Muskoka and Toronto. For the price of the canapes served to those 20 rich people these unfortunate souls could be housed and fed for several months.

How Soon We Forget

On July 23, 1914 the ship Komagata Maru which had carried 400 Punjabis into the Vancouver harbour and been prevented entry by the port authorities for two months, was forced back to India accompanied by dockside cries of “white Canada forever.”

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

The ship had been docked in Vancouver for two months but Sikhs were not allowed to disembark. The ship forcefully returned to India where many of the passengers were shot or imprisoned.

Denied the vote and facing racist attitudes and low wages, many early immigrants from India to Canada either traveled south into the United States or returned home. Later, nativist attitudes prevailed to such an extent that even those individuals who had resided in Canada or had business interests or owned property there, but had returned for a time to India, were denied passage back to Canada. Racist attitudes against Indians continued until after the Second World War, when the Canadian government began instituting corrections and reparations.

At least our current laws prevented our government from making the same mistake. We’ve come a long way. Let’s not go back to being victims of those among us who, to this day, still cry “white Canada forever.”