Image via WikipediaAfter reading this article it is really disheartening that one could speak so highly of immigration, and the tremendous positive effect it has had on shaping Canada, and then to hear a year later the exact opposite in slanderous remarks that these Sri-Lankan's must suffer before any due process has been completed. The lack of humanity and the two-faced statements of this should be cause for alarm. Let's not forget history and where such xenophobia leads! We are humans and have a capacity for memory, imagination and ethics, let's use them and learn from our history, put ourselves in the shoes of others and treat them fairly.
These kind of xenophobic statements leads me to believe that the thought process is something along these lines "What Canadians feel, at a base level, is that these people don't look like them or have the same customs and are therefore alien." Now the conservative think tanks, with either this pessimistic view of us or through transference of their own lowered consciousness, build on that idea buy creating an atmosphere of fear surrounding this, once in a blue moon event, ie..,. a boat load of refugee claimants. They cloud peoples minds with the idea that these people are not only bogus but are terrorists and are abusing our good will, and that it's already going on and these are the people to blame for all our nations and world problems.
Now they've created an us and them scenario, we are now the victims, not these people coming from poverty, war and totalitarian governments. This makes it easier for the conservative government to implement their ideology in immigration policy, they are protecting us Canadians from these would be terrorists, we no longer feel a human connection to these people so it makes it easy to treat them harshly.
This also allows the current government and neo-liberals to skirt around the fact that many economic policy's and so called free trade agreements around the world, implemented by the the first world nations, help create situations that lead to an exploitation of labour markets, resources, land and people. This exploitation leads to an ever increasing amount of desperately poor and disadvantaged people and to fewer and fewer people who hold all the wealth and power of the world! It's only logic that people will try and escape desperate and impossible situations by any means necessary to something better. And until governments and those of us in the first world recognize these facts and find positive and constructive ways to allow all people to live a reasonable standard of life, than the influx of refugees will not subside.
Sincerely,
Blaine
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