some thoughts about immigration
Sitting at the coffee table in my friend’s apartment. We went for breakfast at Cafe Lanwar again. I got an omelette. We went to BMO they also didn’t really know how to open an Official Agent candidate account. That makes 3 for 3 in banks that don’t really have any idea what we are trying to do. The guy who helped us was nice though I guess. It is an annoying request I guess; the bank was dead but for some reason they couldn’t open it today so he made us an appointment for Monday. I suspect we will have similar problems as before; let’s see I guess.
I asked the guy who helped us today what he would like to see from politicians; his main thing was safety. He recounted a story of a a co-worker getting attacked by a homeless guy in the foyer of a Tim Horton’s on break. He thinks the guy got put in jail but was not happy about how much support there is for the criminal as opposed to the victims of crime in Canada. I’ve been fortunate to not have much exposure to violence in Canada in my 29 years. Whether that’s luck, skill, or circumstance I don’t know. But it does not sound nice. And I know that is a big thing for people.
I was grateful he shared that story. I wasn’t happy about being pushed to Monday but I did like the guy.
Immigration is a weird issue to talk about as a Canadian. There is a lot of baggage that gets carried into the conversation. I am technically a third generation immigrant. My Dad’s parents were born in Italy. My Dad was born in Calgary. My Mom and both her parents were born in Calgary. Her Mom’s parents were born in England I think. Her Dad’s Dad was born in England and her Dad’s mom was born in Calgary. Her Dad’s Mom’s Mom was born in Italy, maybe. She emigrated near the time of the First World War so we think she called herself Italian but the town she was from was actually in Hungry. It’s tough to say for sure because the borders changed slightly during the world wars.
The friend whose place I’m staying at comes from a Chinese background. My other friend who I am going to play Settlers of Catan with a Malaysian background. My friend who I saw yesterday has a jewish background. Another friend multiple generation Canadian background. All of them, plus me, were born in Canada.
I was talking earlier about the Canadian experience with my friend with the Chinese background. And I think it is different depending on the person, the race, the class, the location, and the context. But there are some larger universal Canadian things that do unify the experience to an extent.
One of those is teletoons, YTV, the house hippo. Another interesting one is just being exposed to different cultures. Primarily your culture of origin. So for me “Italianess”, the Malaysian “Malayness”, Chinese “Chineseness”, the white guy “Whiteness”. To me that is kind of part of the Canadian experience. And then the unifier to an extent is the that we all ended up at same school, taking similar classes, watching similar shows, somehow coming from such different contexts yet still sharing a unifying context.
I don’t know if that makes sense.
I guess, with all this political stuff I am getting faced with some of those trickier conversations. Conversations around immigration, race, ethnicity, who’s Canadian and who’s not. It’s on people’s minds you can tell. And it’s interesting.
My general take is that, for the most part, there is an assimilation that occurs. The first generation that comes over works and tries to learn the system while mainly practising their culture of origin and finding other immigrants, typically of same the ethnicity, as friends. They are after all in a similar boat; pun intended.
The second generation feels a split in the identity. Half their parents culture; half Canadian culture, which is loosely defined and perhaps has always been in flux.
The third generation (me) is mostly Canadian by culture. Depending on the parents and grandparents the original culture will still be there but there is an integration into the new system, that takes generations, that makes it easier to get ahead in the system. But then again; it depends on the person or family and that is not always the case.
Perhaps I am far off. Perhaps I am simplifying it. I just know that immigration is a tough subject for Canadians. I often think that the immigrant gets blamed for the problems immigration causes. But no, it is the system itself that is to blame I think.
And because Canada is a traditional white man’s colony of the British Empire I do think there is an element of racism. Or is it racial and cultural protectionism? Perhaps both.
Racism is a funny word. In university I remember getting into it many times with my now ex. She took sociology and psychology and was exposed to a far larger range of sociological terms and theories than I was in engineering. One of the things that always took me as strange was definitions. To her, and to many, the textbook was correct. And the textbook would say that racism (this is paraphrasing) is the unfair treatment of people based on their skin colour or ethnicity, but does not include white people because they are the ones who benefited.
So, whether or not you agree with that definition or not, a whole generation of university “educated” people got set out into society with that definition. And people don’t really like to argue definitions that much. Especially if they see themselves in/as the superior class. So when we got hit with the inevitable clashing of the gen-x colourblind world of before we got friction.
And I think largely that friction is what we are seeing in Canada and we are seeing its consequences. And that friction is tough to see because that colourblind, merit based society brought a lot of pride and acted as one of those unifying contexts that allowed Canadians of different backgrounds to share a context together. A shared mythos of what it means to be a Canadian.
Did that actually exist? Does it matter if it did? As a belief it existed, I remember. It was and arguably can still be one of the best parts of being Canadian. I think it is there. In people that is. People want to believe in that version of the country still. It’s just hard to. The rhetoric doesn’t support it, people’s eyes don’t support it, companies and the government don’t really support it. So I don’t blame people for their demoralization. I get demoralized by it too.
Anyways, that’s just some thoughts. Getting tired of writing for now.
But I guess tl/dr immigration is complicated, the Canadian experience is complicated, life is complicated, large groups of people are complicated. It would be nice if things were more simple but I’m not sure if that’s going to happen.
I'll have more to say as we go along. Just some half baked thoughts.
Keep it real out there. Peace.