Immigration: Language & Culture
My morning
cup of coffee was curdled with an on line opinion piece from an analyst.
The analyst
shall not be named. During the past decade, Ms. “no name” paid her bills by
confusing conservatism with the previous government’s brand of tribalism.
In any
event, Ms. “no name” stated unequivocally, this morning, that Canadian immigration must be culture based
and that culture is language based.
Spooky as
it is, the language–culture–immigration cult has a powerful following,
especially among “pure laine” Francophones and third world Commonwealth paper
pushers. Perhaps these are the folks who cannot compete unless they fix the
rules of the game by making language perfection a nonnegotiable barrier.
There is no
way that a cult will change direction. Evidence based discussion is a waste of
time.
My
suggestion is a compromise. There should be room in the immigration process for
both the linguistic –cultural cultists and the economically driven tax payers.
But there should be no room for economic
immigration programs that are culturally–linguistically based.
In true
Maoist fashion, the past government bastardized the concept of economic
immigration by demanding that language serve as the sole, non-debatable barrier
in determining an economic applicant’s productivity. The result is French
speaking cement finishers from the Congo looking for work in Toronto. They go
on EI and then welfare because:
1. They
can’t speak English, Italian or Portuguese
2. They
can’t fathom how the cement business works in frost or snow
Meanwhile,
European cement finishers with a decade of proven Canadian cement finishing
experience get deported because they only write enough English to pay their
taxes.
Let the
cultural purists have their toy. Set up an immigration program for language and
culture. But don’t let the cultists run the economic agenda.
Richard Boraks, February 9 2016
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