Watering down the citizenship test

The following article was first published in early 2008, prior to the Rudd Government's watering down of the citizenship test.

From The Independent Australian, Issue No. 14 (Summer 2007/08):

Ethnic Leaders Attack Citizenship Test

A new chorus of opposition to the citizenship test introduced by the former Howard Government late in 2007 has predictably arisen from ethnic leaders now that Labor is in power in Canberra, writes Alan Fitzgerald.

The push is on for the new government to dismantle the Citizenship Test. Much is made of the fact that 20 percent of those who sit the random choice test fail, which actually suggests that the test is working. Labor's Immigration Minister Chris Evans has said that in view of the failure rate he would review the test with the intention of making substantial changes to it.

Surely, if the Minister's aim is to ensure a 100 percent pass rate then it would not be a test at all.

Ethnic Communities Council of Victoria chairman Sam Afra said his organisation always believed the new test was discriminatory (what a surprise!) and would stop many lawful migrants from becoming Australian citizens.

"The news that 20 percent of applicants are failing the test confirms our fears", he said.

However, these critics often do not mention that a person who fails the test can continue to sit for it as many times as they want to, until they pass.

The questions, chosen at random from a resource book, are hardly difficult. If you aspire to be a citizen of this country, out ought to know the date Australia came into existence as a nation, the name of the city where the Commonwealth Parliament is located, or the colours of the Australian flag. To pass the test you are required to correctly answer 12 of the 20 questions that are drawn at random from a pool of 200 questions. As they say, "it's not rocket science" [But it was evidently still all too hard for some of the "skilled", "hard-working", "intelligent" immigrants arriving on our shores - R.E.]. Migrants under the age of 18 to 60 years of age and older do not have to sit for the test, and there exemptions for persons with physical or mental incapacities. Illiterate migrants may take the test in an alternative format.

The questions are selected at random to prevent those sitting the test from learning the answers by rote. One enterprising company is charging migrants $20 to sit 15 mock exams over 90 days online in preparation for the real test. A migrant is eligible to take the test after four years residence in Australia [In most other immigrant-receiving countries, it is at least five - R.E.]. Failing the test does not affect their residency rights but means they cannot take the oath of citizenship until they pass the test.

Further, Australia is not alone is asking potential citizens to demonstrate they know something about the nation that is offering them the benefits and privilege of citizenship. The USA, Canada and the UK all require persons to sit a test.

Critics of the test appear to be quite happy to misrepresent it. Joseph Wakim, a former multicultural affairs commissioner and founder of the Australian Arabic Council, claimed that if the test had been around when his family arrived in Australia, his mother being illiterate would have failed the test, and therefore "I would have not here to tell this story". This is rubbish [And thankfully so. Just think, where would Australia be without such perennially aggrieved ethnic minority activists? - R.E.]

Academic Dr Gwenda Tavan claims the test indicates a narrowly conceived cultural-nationalist model of citizenship that undermines the appeal and advantages of citizenship by defining social membership in overly exclusive, vague and sometimes facile ways.

NSW Anti-Discrimination Board president Stepan Kerkyasharian said the test should rely less on culture and more on practical knowledge of Australia, "not about what happened 20 years ago in some cricket match."

Max Jeganathan, spokesman for Civil Liberties Australia, claimed the test was an attempt to promote Anglo-Celtic culture as being the dominant part of the overall Australian culture at the expense of multicultural identity.

Objection to the test seems more to do with objection to the idea that Australia has a culture of its own and that the nation's institutions, laws, politics, flag and history reflect that reality. The multicultural lobby would argue that mainstream Australian culture has nothing to offer them, but they have everything of value to offer Australia.

Which begs the question of why are they here in the first place?

There is no doubt that some minority cultures reject Australian values in favour of their own traditions which they are determined to maintain. For them, being in Australia - if not being an Australian citizen - is a matter of convenience. For them citizenship is just a ticket to social welfare benefits, job and educational opportunities and a guarantee against deportation should they or their kin embark on a career of crime.

Historian Ann-Mari Jordens (The Age, 10 January 2008) points out that citizenship for migrants involves a cost-benefit analysis. A sizeable proportion of migrants saw no tangible advantage in "making the leap". If migrants think so little of Australian citizenship - other than its economic aspects - who is to blame? Has Australia made it too easy for migrants to take up citizenship without demanding a real commitment to Australia? [The answer is, of course, yes. As Geoffrey Blainey once remarked, Australia hands out citizenship like fast food. - R.E.]

The absence of many persons of ethnic minority backgrounds in our armed forces and volunteer organisations suggests it is Australia which is being taken for a ride, not the migrants.

The Australian Government's embrace of dual citizenship only compounds the problem. Where do the newcomers' loyalties really lie? If they are only here for the money, where will they be in times of adversity? If they don't embrace Australian values - democracy, equality, freedom of religion, secularism - would they be prepared to embrace them let alone defend them if they came under attack?

To claim as the multiculturalists say, that there is nothing unique about Australian values is to deny reality. In most of countries of the world, from which we draw our migrants, these very values are either absent in the body politic or only honoured in the breach. How much democracy exists in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, or South America? The "all cultures are equal" mantra of the multiculturalists would leave a vacuum at the heart of the Australian story.

Objection to the citizenship test is a symptom of a larger problem - Australia's failure to promote its national story to its citizens - both native born and naturalised - through educational and cultural institutions. The idea that telling the national story - its achievements and failures - will cause newcomers to feel left out and alienated is a nonsense.

The 'progressive' left liberals who infest our universities and teaching professions are more at home in a global world than in a nation-state. To them national identity and culture are to be denigrated in favour of some woolly, basket-weaving world of cultural relativism.

The majority culture - the core culture of the nation - is entitled to its pre-eminent position for without it there wouldn't be a nation but a collection of tribes. To promote it is not to make newcomers unwelcome but hopefully remind them of why they chose to come in the first place.

Mass immigration and the intolerance of Western liberalism

British journalist Anthony Browne on mass immigration and the intolerance of Western liberalism:

The People Flow authors make a mistake common among pro-immigration advocates: seeing a nation as nothing more than a geographical entity with a functioning economy and a legal system. But a nation is first and foremost its people. It is the French people that define what France is, not lines on a map.

The pro-immigrationists are effectively trying to abolish nationhood, denying a country the right to sustain its own culture.

British-born white people, the progeny of the generation who survived the Nazi attempt to obliterate Britain as an independent nation state, now account for only 60% of the population of London. England has for more than 1500 years been a Christian country – its flag is a cross, its head of state is head of the national church – but in its second city Birmingham, Islam is now more worshipped than Christianity. In two boroughs of London, whites are already in the minority, and they are expected to become a minority in several cities in the coming decade.

If current trends continue, the historically indigenous population of Britain will become a minority by around 2100. Islam is the fastest growing religion, and much immigration to Britain comes from Muslims fleeing Muslim lands – around 75% of intercontinental asylum seekers are Muslim. But where are the limits? In an extreme example, would British Christians have a right not to live in an Islamic majority state?

For an answer to this, consider what that most liberal of American writers, Gore Vidal, said in a lecture in Dublin in 1999:

“A characteristic of our present chaos is the dramatic migration of tribes. They are on the move from east to west, from south to north. Liberal tradition requires that borders must always be open to those in search of safety or even the pursuit of happiness. But now with so many millions of people on the move, even the great-hearted are becoming edgy. Norway is large enough and empty enough to take in 40 to 50 million homeless Bengalis. If the Norwegians say that, all in all, they would rather not take them in, is this to be considered racism? I think not. It is simply self-preservation, the first law of species.”

But at what point are people of the west allowed to say that enough is enough, it is time for us to be allowed to preserve our culture? This is an issue of almost total, mind-numbing hypocrisy among western governments and political elites. They defend the inalienable right of other peoples – the Palestinians, Tibetans, native Americans – to defend their culture, but not the right of their own peoples.

It is vital to emphasise that mass immigration and the remarkably intolerant ideology of multiculturalism are exclusively western phenomena. Indeed, the striking thing about the global immigration debate in the west is its determined parochialism. If people in India, China, or Africa were asked whether they have a right to oppose mass immigration on such a scale that it would transform their culture, the answer would be clear. Yet uniquely among the 6 billion people on the planet, westerners – the approximately 800 million in western Europe, North America and Australasia – are expected by the proponents of mass immigration and multiculturalism to abandon any right to define or shape their own society.

Full article

The cultural costs of immigration

In an article published back in 1994, U.S. conservative pundit Lawrence Auster warns of the threat mass Third World immigration poses to his country's culture and identity. It is a sobering read, and especially relevant to Australians given that we are facing the same threats in this country.

Massive immigration will destroy America
by Lawrence Auster
INSIGHT ON THE NEWS,
Oct 3, 1994

The current immigration debate, although a welcome change from the politically correct silence of earlier years, is still far too narrow in its focus, dwelling on largely technical matters such as methods of border control, the welfare and health costs of immigration, or the impact of immigration on the economy or on minority employment. As important as those issues are, they distract us from a much greater and more difficult question: What is the impact of immigration on the whole society--on America as a civilization?

To deal seriously with that question in today's climate is to provoke charges of nativism, racism and demagoguery. As immigration advocates are fond of pointing out, fears that immigration would undermine America's national culture were raised in the early 20th century--indeed they were raised against the grandparents of many of the people now opposing immigration. Since that threatened disaster did not occur, the advocates continue, similar warnings are utterly invalid now.

This ahistorical argument ignores the profound and decisive differences between immigration at the turn of the century and today. In the early 20th century, America had a vital and confident core culture and insisted that immigrants assimilate. The immigrants were predominantly European, sharing--despite ethnic differences--a common civilizational heritage with Americans. Most importantly, the great immigrant wave was drastically reduced after two or three decades, ushering in a long period of ethnic equilibrium and social peace. None of those factors obtains today.

The current legal and illegal immigration in excess of 1 million people per year, more than 90 percent of whom are non-European, combined with the higher birthrates of immigrant groups, is rapidly turning America into a multiracial country, with no racial majority, no common culture, and a population doubling to half a billion during the coming century. Despite the fact that many immigrants are good people who want to be part of this country, and despite the fact that immigration may provide some discrete and localized benefits, the overall result of this unprecedented demographic event is the erosion--and ultimately the submergence--of every defining aspect of American civilization.

Foremost of these is our tradition of individual rights. The growing numbers of minorities with distinct ethnic and cultural identities has led to a huge increase in race conflict and race consciousness in America. Each minority group is seeking official recognition and proportional representation as a group--in election districts, in employment, in education, in every area of life--and any failure to reach this utopian "cultural equality" is seen as further proof of America's inherent racism and of the need for ever-expanding state power to uproot the racism. While the problems of American blacks provided the original pretext for group rights, other minorities have acquired their own piece of the multicultural pie. Thus our newly multiracial society is becoming a multinational society, with the perpetual instability, conflict, suspicion and loss of freedom that characterize so many balkanized and Third World countries. Although proimmigration conservatives passionately insist that this shouldn't happen (since they believe that America is defined solely by universal ideas), the point is that it is happening. The assimilation into a common citizenship that was possible for people of European background is not happening for vast numbers of non-Europeans.

Next to pandemic violent crime, nothing so delegitimizes the social order as the presence of millions of persons residing illegally in this country and drawing on public assistance--combined with the government's inability or refusal to do anything about it. The more illegal aliens there are in a given city, all of whom have a powerful interest in the law's not being enforced, the more local officials accede to and even publicly welcome their presence, as Mayor Giuliani has recently done in New York City. When Orange, Calif., was overwhelmed in the early 1990s by a large illegal alien population standing on street corners seeking work, and living crammed into houses in numbers far above zoning limits, local authorities gave up enforcing the law and began instead to accommodate the illegals, building a hiring hall for them, refusing to cooperate with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, even firing a zoning officer who tried to do her job.

The rule of law is being further eroded by the fanaticism and violence characteristic of Latin American politics. When a federal investigator in San Diego County uncovered massive welfare fraud by illegal aliens and the welfare department, he was threatened by Hispanics and attacked as a "racist" by a Hispanic supervisor. Citizens in California, Texas and Florida who have spoken out against illegal immigration have received death threats and had their automobile tires slashed as a warning. As one border-control activist in California said, "It's war out here."

The loss of the rule of law goes hand in hand with the loss of national sovereignty. There are parts of the country, such as New York City's Chinatown and Washington Heights, that are already controlled more by foreign-based criminal gangs than by U.S. authorities. Crime networks from many nations, including Nigeria, Russia, Japan and Jamaica, are operating almost at will in this country. Meanwhile, many immigrant and ethnic leaders--including elected officials--openly state that because of its historic "sins" the United States has no right to control its borders.

The close proximity of widely divergent cultures, many of them lacking Western concepts of rationality, makes it difficult for people in this country to reason together or cooperate as citizens. As reported in the Los Angeles Times, juries in major criminal trials in southern California have been deadlocked because multicultural jury members did not share basic assumptions about right and wrong. Meanwhile, under the concept of "cultural defense," some immigrants charged with murder and rape have been let off with light sentences on the basis that people from non-Western cultures should not be held to Western standards.

On a deeper level, America's mind-blowing heterogeneity has helped undermine any common conception of human nature. Replacing the classic and Judeo-Christian allegiance to a moral truth higher than the individual, the mindless celebration of diversity has become America's new religion.

Thus Richard Barbieri, the head of the Independent Schools Association of Massachusetts, writes: "The essence of multicultural change is to listen to the uniqueness of others and to change our uniqueness to accommodate theirs.... True diversity will involve being humble, first of all, humble before the knowledge and experience of others." In a multicultural manifesto for the virtually all-white city of Dubuque, Iowa (pathetically titled "We Want to Change"), Dubuque's leaders declared: "Diversity calls us into a world that focuses on the many-splendored beauty of others." In all these calls to multicultural transformation, white Americans are never told why they must embrace the "experience," the "knowledge," the "beauty" of others. The diversity of others is supposed to provide some new and wonderful value--but what is that value? Well, the fact that the "others" are not like "us." They exist, therefore we must yield to them. Multiculturalism turns out to be a kind of mysticism.

Yet even as whites worship at the shrine of otherness, Third World advocates openly boast of their hatred for Anglo society and of their intent to destroy it. The publication Border Watch reports that a Hispanic activist told a California woman, who had publicized the problem of illegal aliens receiving in-state college tuition, that "You are the one that needs to go home. This is a Latino home. You people need to go back to wherever you came from.... Get with it. People of color are going to take over sooner or later." Third World intellectuals provide a more sophisticated version of the same message. "The great power of Latin America is its culture," says Gabriel Garcia Marquez in an interview. "We don't spend a dime trying to penetrate culturally, yet we're changing the United States.... We're changing the language, the food, the music, the way of being. We're changing you into a Latin country." Novelist Bharati Mukherjee--a multicultural "moderate"--speaks of Third World immigrants as "we, the new pioneers, who are thinking of America as still a frontier country." Enlarging on her imperialistic reverie, Mukherjee told Bill Moyers, "I want to conquer, I mean, I want to love and possess this country."

What such "possession" means in actual terms can be seen all over America. Areas dominated by immigrants from Third World cultures with low levels of skills and civility have ceased to be part of what most Americans think of as civilization. Vast stretches of Los Angeles, New York and Miami, have become Latin American or Caribbean slums, with deteriorating infrastructure, cheap wares sold on the sidewalk, cars fixed on the street, men loitering about all day in public, and high levels of noise, dirt, disease, disorder and violence. In step with this process of Third Worldization, there is an exodus of whites (and middle-class nonwhites) from immigrant-intensive states and regions. Thus, even as we are admitting more than a million immigrants and refugees into the United States every year, we are turning hundreds of thousands--and soon to be millions--of embittered and traumatized whites into refugees in their own country.

In cities with large Third World populations, the traditions of Western high culture--classical music, ballet, theater and libraries--are dying out through lack of support or face political pressures to change their entire character. Theater critic Thomas Disch writing in the Atlantic Monthly has said that a leading factor in the decline of the Broadway theater is that, as a result of New York's exploding ethnic and racial diversity, there is no longer a common culture to support the theater. Adapting to the demographic changes, America's powerful arts-funding organizations have given top priority to Third World folk arts, while withdrawing support from high-arts institutions such as symphony orchestras.

The erosion of English as our common language (and our link with our historic and literary roots as a nation) is not merely due to ethnic elites forcing so-called bilingualism down immigrants' throats, as proimmigration conservatives argue. It is a direct outcome of the growing size and power of the non-English-speaking population, as could be seen last year when Hispanic-dominated Dade County, Fla., repealed an existing statute--passed by the former Anglo majority--that had made English the sole language of government. The lesson is clear: "Official English laws" by themselves are useless without restriction of immigration.

As a result of immigration, American national culture is being supplanted by Third World cultures. We are now experiencing the following phenomena in this country: a 25-foot-high statue of the Aztec god of human sacrifice is being erected in a public square in the Hispanic-majority city of San Jose, Calif.; Santeria, a cult that practices animal sacrifice, is now constitutionally protected under the First Amendment; huge festivals awash in pagan symbols celebrating "West Indian Day" and "Hispanic Day" regularly disrupt life in major cities; the passionate assertion of Latin American national symbols and myths are exalted by students and teachers in American public schools. At the same, time traditional American symbols and images are being discarded because they don't "represent" our new, non-Western population. Historical art works, such as a statue of a 19th-century pioneer family commissioned by the state of Oregon, and classic plays, such as Peter Pan, have been purged. The Alamo is reconceptualized as a Hispanic monument. The Pearl Harbor memorial is relativized so as not to offend Japanese-Americans.

The most significant change brought by multiculturalism is the total bowdlerization and rewriting of American history from an anti-Western, antiwhite perspective. Exposed to such "reeducation" through all their formative years, young white people coming out of the schools today have no sense of themselves as heirs of a historical nation and tradition--only ignorance and a pervading mood of estrangement. "We have come a long way from schooling that made Europeans into Americans," writer Jared Taylor has remarked. "We now make Americans into nothing at all." In the final stage of this process of dispossession, whites will follow the example of Kevin Costner in the film Dances With Wolves and spiritually abandon America for a non-Western culture.

There are many features in the unique complex of habits and institutions we think of as the American way of life: prosperity, well-functioning private and public institutions, a stable and democratic political system, liberty under law, respect for individual dignity, a high level of philanthropy and social cooperation, the sense of fair play, and the belief in reason and common sense. Multiculturalists may sneer at these values as mere masks of "white hegemony," but one thing is certain. These values have only flourished in white-majority societies, particularly in societies with an Anglo-Saxon cultural basis. As whites lose their numerical, political and cultural dominance, American civilization with all its constituent virtues will also come to an end. That process, already well advanced in our major cities, will only accelerate if America continues to receive a mass migration several orders of magnitude greater in scale and diversity than that which submerged the Roman empire.

Original article

Like in the United States, unfettered immigration into Australia threatens to bring about a massive increase in the size of our population, a radical change in our national culture and identity, and the gradual submergence of our current population by Third World peoples. Put bluntly, continued mass immigration threatens to destroy our nation as we know it.

Surely it is incumbent upon the Australian people to discuss whether or not they want their nation to be radically transformed through mass immigration. Immigration policy should not be decided solely by perfidious, short-sighted politicians, unelected bureaucrats, and self-interested business and ethnic minority lobbies. As Geoffrey Blainey wrote: "Immigration is everyone's business: it is one of the most important national issues. The idea that it is too dangerous to be debated is a mockery of democracy. It is too important not to debate."

The rise of the global suburb

For several decades now, Australia and Canada have been seemingly competing with other for the unenviable title of the country with the highest per capita immigration intake in the world. The huge, unrelenting immigration inflows into these countries essentially make them freaks among the world's nations.

The following article by Canadian academic Stephen Gallagher explores some of the immigration-related problems facing Canada, specifically the threat that sustained, mass Third World immigration poses to Canadian national identity and unity. As one reads the article, one could be forgiven for thinking that Gallagher was describing the situation here in Australia, especially when he talks of a country "with little underlying coherence in the sense of sustaining a primary national identity aside from being a desirable place to settle." As Gallagher explains, far from "enriching" the character of the host nation, the massive Third World immigrant deluge now swamping Australia and Canada threatens to eradicate the remnants of those countries' distinct identities and sense of nationhood.

From Immigration Watch Canada:

Canada and Mass Immigration: The Creation of a Global Suburb and its Impact on National Unity

Stephen Gallagher
McGill University

Recently, the National Post ran a contest to describe Canada “in six words or less.” The winner of this ‘motto contest’ was: ‘Canada – a home for the world’. Given the arrival of 10 million immigrants of diverse origins since the end of the Second World War, this motto is revealing of the new Canada. This is Canada perceived as a country with little underlying coherence in the sense of sustaining a primary national identity aside from being a desirable place to settle. This is Canada viewed as a home away from home for a range of peoples whose identities are rooted not in Canada but in countries and regions of origin. It foresees Canada’s evolution into a global suburb; a comfortable, secure and tolerant bedroom community.

The question I am asking here is how Canada came to have such permissive and non-controversial migration policies and practices. Of course, Canada is not alone in sustaining a mass immigration policy but it stands alone in the world as a country where mass immigration is so fully accepted as a policy norm. I also want to examine some implications of mass immigration for national unity and identity in Quebec and the Rest of Canada (ROC).

To begin with, Canada is not unique in having a contemporary policy of mass immigration although in comparison with other countries of immigration its flow rate is higher. On a per capita basis in 2007, Canada is estimated to have a net migration approximately four times that of the EU, double the US and a third greater than Australia. In addition, Canada’s annual flow of around 250,000 immigrants is very diverse in terms of origins and ethnicity unlike the US where the Latin American influx makes up more than half. With respect to Australia, immigrants from UK and New Zealand made up about 30% of the inflow. As a result, in other words, Canada is undergoing a social and demographic evolution that is much more rapid and profound than that in the other immigrant-welcoming countries. Toronto and Vancouver have majority populations that do not trace their primary roots to Canada prior to the Second World War. In 2006, 46% of the population of Toronto and 40% of Vancouver were born outside Canada and, according to Statistics Canada, it is very likely that in less than ten years from now, Toronto and Vancouver will both have majority ‘visible minority’ populations. Of course the US also sustains a large immigration influx, so fundamental demographic change is also occurring albeit at a slower rate. For example, according to a recent demographic study published by the Pew Centre, if present trends continue by 2050 the non-Hispanic white population will be a minority of the US population.

In Canada, the implications of social and demographic change have not been the subject of much political or public discussion and little effort has been expended considering what Canada will look like 20, 50 or 100 years in the future. Basically, a commitment to a high flow rate constitutes the sum total of Canada’s ‘population policy’. The situation is so unmanaged that studies of new census reports are greeted with careful media review and even amazement as if demographic change was some uncontrollable natural process as opposed to the result of an identifiable public policy.

Regardless of its unmanaged nature, unlike the situation in other developed countries, a review of opinion polls suggests that, in general, the Canadian public appears to support mass immigration.

Also unlike the situation in other developed countries, immigration has not been a significant election concern. In Canada’s most recent election (2005), the governing Liberal Party reiterated its commitment to raise Canada’s immigration intake, from around .7% of the nation population, to 1% of the population. This rate would see an immigration intake of over 300,000 which would be proportional to a French or UK annual intake of 600,000 or an American annual intake of approximately 3 million. An election promise such as this would be political suicide in these countries. The Conservative Party did not challenge the Liberal party on this issue and won a minority government focusing on unrelated issues.

Why is this? I would argue that with the exception of francophone Quebec, the importance, need for, and acceptance of immigration has become an article of faith and almost a litmus test of Canadianism. In other words, immigration acceptance is part of a new Canadian creed. This creed includes the protection and promotion of openness, tolerance and diversity which is operationalized programmatically in a policy of mass immigration, multiculturalism and the defence of human rights viewed broadly.

As a result, mass immigration is celebrated in ROC without much evidence of the fundamental intellectual engagement on these questions taking place in the rest of the developed world.

So the questions I want to address is given Canada’s objectively astonishing migration rates, why is it that immigration-related discussion is marked by a level of passivity which has no parallel in the developed world?

First, there is no political leadership on migration-related issues essentially because Canadian politicians have shown an unwillingness to talk about immigration costs and trade-offs. The foremost reason is straight electoral expediency. The Liberal party has in recent years strongly supported policies of mass immigration and holds the ridings in Canada’s largest cities where most new Canadian communities are centred. In order to form a majority government, the Conservative party needs these ridings and must compete for these votes by delivering benefits to these communities. In addition, the slightest slip up and the Liberal party will paint the Conservatives as intolerant, racist and extremist which will hurt the Conservatives in their own areas of support outside urban areas where there are relatively few immigrants. This is because, as I said before, Canada’s identity is now strongly associated with acceptable immigration-speak. Name calling attacks on the Conservative party and any who question immigration policy are clearly thought to be effective. Otherwise they would not be such a regular feature of the Canadian political landscape.

A second reason there has not been much opposition to mass immigration is that there has been relatively little questioning of Canada’s immigration policies in the media or academia. On certain issues such as security and Canada’s refugee system, there has been a degree of concern expressed, but in terms of connecting this to the core reality of mass immigration, there is hardly a mention. The fact is that the media in Canada broadly and consistently views immigration positively. Even the National Post, which is generally perceived to take a conservative approach to issues, responded to a Statistics Canada report that showed significant immigration-driven demographic change with an editorial entitled “Statistics Canada counts our blessings”.

As for academia, it is awash in government money but little attention is given to assessing the real social, economic and political impact of entry flows. Also, little effort is made to seek out ways to more effectively and efficiently manage the flow in order to optimize the benefits for all Canadians. Instead, academics are primarily focused on concerns related to integration, social justice and the battle against intolerance. From this perspective, nationalism with a focus on the national interest is generally viewed with suspicion and is often associated with xenophobia or racism. In fact, the current head of the Canadian Political Science Association, Keith Banting, argues that this struggle may have ‘reinvigorated’ the left which has been in somewhat of a funk given the success of neo-liberal economic policies. Overall, the preponderance of migration-related Canadian academic activity has come to assume an aggressive ‘progressive’ orientation.

Thirdly, the basic facts about the costs and trade-offs related to immigration in Canada are not commonly known, nor have governments made much effort to make such information available. In the absence of such data, debate more easily spirals from trade-offs to name calling which in turn discourages political and public discussion.

In the US and UK, there is a vast literature on the costs and benefits of immigration. When the US Senate passed Comprehensive Immigration reform in 2006, the Congressional Budget Office produced a cost estimate. In the UK, a special committee of the House of Lords has just completed an extensive public investigation of the costs and benefits of immigration.

Certainly in the past, many countries of the developed world held an elite consensus on the need to depoliticize immigration issues. Academics refer to this as an ‘antipopulist norm’. In such an environment, the dissemination of statistical and cost information was purposefully limited. But the logic of this consensus is premised on migration policy being a relatively peripheral concern which could be managed effectively, more or less, administratively. These conditions no longer hold in most of the developed world and in the Canadian context, the absence of cost data simply limits the transparency of the issue area and works to the advantage of those that resort to emotional appeals. According to James Freeman, evidence suggests that emotional appeals are generally to the advantage of those seeking to maintain a permissive migratory environment.

Fourth, there is the impact of professional advocates: lawyers, rights activists, interest groups, many of whom represent new Canadian communities or service organizations. They all work hard to keep the door open. Immigration is a big industry in Canada. The effectiveness of this lobby can be seen in the general incapacity of the government to effectively legislate, regulate and manage the immigration system. The build up of a backlog of nearly a million approved immigration applications is a symptom of this incapacity. I’m sure the immigration industry will be looking for some kind of one time massive expansion of the immigration intake to clear the backlog. But I would agree with Joe’s (James Bissett's) proposal that we should simply put in place a moratorium on new applications until the backlog is cleared.

Canada simply does not have a high profile immigration advocacy or research organization which questions the need for a mass immigration policy.

So what does all this mean for Canada’s national identity and how does it affect national unity? I would argue we are approaching a crossroads because the implications of Canada’s transition into a diasporatic country are so profound and manifest that the current studied disregard coupled with on-going fundamental demographic change is not sustainable. The implications of this transformation can be broken into the reality in Quebec and the ROC. In ROC , the rooted British and ‘northern’ connected identity has been largely buried and forgotten.

But Francophone Quebec has not forgotten its roots. In Quebec, collective memories, stories and symbols are deeply rooted and the French language constitutes a formidable nexus of identity. In addition, given sovereignty fears and general economic sluggishness, Quebec has not been a relatively attractive destination for immigrants. Therefore, compared to Toronto and Vancouver, Montreal with 20% foreign born population in 2006 has better preserved its rooted character. Overall, unlike in the ROC, the national re-branding exercise of the sixties and seventies with its new Canadian creed and Charter of Rights did not replace the admittedly evolving Quebecois identity.

In Quebec the majority of rooted francophone Quebecers have recently and clearly woken up to the implications of mass immigration on their lifestyle and identity. By setting up the Bouchard-Taylor Commission, the Charest Government inadvertently gave the Quebecois majority an unmediated forum to speak their concerns which, if not pretty, has led to a substantial lifting of public consciousness on migration-related issues. Now both the Parti Quebecois and Action Democratic (ADQ) appear to be considering following in the footsteps of numerous European populist parties that have gained control of their Parliaments on a platform of control of migration which has clearly been identified as the main factor in the decline of the use of French especially on the island of Montréal. This is not surprising because there are real similarities in the demographic situations of the Quebecois, Danes, Dutch, Flemish and others. No low-birth-rate/smaller-population nationality wants to ‘go gentle into that good night’.

The ADQ has recently advocated cutting immigration numbers and both the ADQ and the PQ have argued for the need to assess immigrants based on their capacity to integrate and for the use of ‘integration contracts’ for new arrivals. For its part, the Liberal government of Jean Charest has not been slow to insinuate that the policy proposals of the opposition parties are “driven by fear and intolerance”. At the same time, Charest has not avoided expressing the same sort of concerns and has also proposed a robust range of measures to address the perceived erosion of the French language in Quebec.

In the Canadian context, all this has real implications for national unity. Immigration has already relegated ‘British North America’ to the history books and more recently rendered national bilingualism and biculturalism unrealistic.

The danger for Canada’s national unity lies in the possibility that both conservative and socialist nationalists in Quebec will reach the conclusion that the French language and culture is more secure outside of Canada than in it.

Overall, at some point at current rates of immigration, Canada will cease to be anything approximating a nation and be best described as a global suburb. Canada is becoming a prosperous and secure home in a nondescript neighbourhood which makes no effort to assimilate new-comers because real identity is associated with the country and/or region of origin. Integration, on the other hand, is very much encouraged and the indicators of success relate to the incomes of new arrivals compared to earlier arrivals. Therefore, capacity in English or French, acceptance of rules and regulations and a commitment to consumption are the touch-stones of success. Perhaps by giving up all pretence to cultivating a separate and unique society, Canada is truly leading the way to the dissolution of the nations system on the road towards a global culture and citizenship. Success in this project might enhance the possibility of international peace and security.

But I have several concerns about this model of Canada, the first being that history is full of examples of societies in which even small cleavages have resulted in major problems. Given the stakes, one would think that, at the very least, prudence would be advised. Regardless, current policy sees a very diverse population equal to that of Manitoba’s arriving in Canada every four years.

Secondly, although Canada is certainly a leader in promoting cosmopolitan objectives, there appear to be few if any enthusiastic followers. Certainly tension, debate and reflection on the need for migration controls and a strengthening of integration policies which cross over into assimilationism are mainstream preoccupations in Australia, UK and US. For continental European countries and Japan, the draw bridges are up when it comes to mass immigration and diasporatic communities are being strongly directed towards full integration. This should give Canadian decision-makers pause and stimulate a thorough review of the issues related to immigration, integration and citizenship.

Finally, Canadian national unity may be endangered by unmanaged immigration. There is an emerging sense among Francophone Quebecers that the French Fact in America may not be compatible with high levels of immigration. At one level, there is a concern that new-Quebecers tend to assimilate into English cultures. This may not be objectively true but regardless, should a consensus arise among rooted Quebecers that participating in the new Canada (with its new creed and demographic reality) is endangering the French language in Quebec, then national unity will indeed be threatened.

In conclusion, I believe that Canada is going to have to come to grips with the implications of mass immigration. This should be done sooner rather than later. Issues related to citizenship, integration, composition, disposition, asylum and enforcement need to be addressed. Overall, Canada needs to understand what it has become to allow for the development of a much needed population policy. Furthermore, Canada must find a way to discuss the many implications of mass immigration in a fashion that transcends the superficiality of progressive advocacy and disconnects the objective and long-term needs of the country from the cut and thrust of partisan politics.

Original article