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As if they didn’t already have enough trouble over the
Chuck Cadman affair, NAFTA-gate, the cover-up of torture of Afghan detainees,
20 year old Canadian citizen Omar Khadr still held in
Guantanamo Prison after nearly five years, and the RCMP raid on
Conservative Party headquarters in Ottawa
over allegations of violating the election expenses law, the federal
Tories seem to be cruising for a bruising on their proposed changes to
the Immigration Act. They aim to empower the Immigration Minister
to increase discrimination against Muslims, Arabs and South Asians, while
simultaneously promoting a “guest worker” programme to intensify the
exploitation of migrant labour.
Tory policies are generating a rising chorus of
outrage, which may force them to retreat, even as they try to make
political in-roads into immigrant communities. Such in-roads should
prove increasingly elusive for the not-so-subtle racists of corporate
Canada, given the shifting composition of the population.
According to 2006 census data just released by
Statistics Canada, the rise in the number of visible minority persons to
more than 5 million, out of a population of 32 million, indicates how
immigration has shifted away from Europe.
About 80 per cent of newcomers to Canada are
from Asia, Latin America and Africa. The
intake from Europe is down to 16 per cent.
The top sources of immigration are China,
India, Philippines
and Pakistan. There are now 684,000
South Asians in Toronto. That’s more than the
population of Hamilton.
Nearly 96 per cent of non-whites live in urban
centres, compared with 68 per cent for the total population. Presently,
the proportion of visible “minorities” is, in Toronto nearly
50 per cent, in Vancouver 40 per cent, and in Calgary
25 per cent. It is not surprising that big urban centres, which
provide a modicum of social, cultural and other supports, attract the
bulk of newcomers - nor that those centres and their increasingly
multinational working class residents are grossly under-represented in
decent jobs and in official political life. This is precisely why
labour and the NDP should make common cause with immigrants, seek to
mobilize them now, and sharply press the Liberals to defeat the federal
Tory immigration bill and force an election.
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