Tories strike another blow to Canada’s once-humane immigration policy
TheStar.com – Opinion/Editorials – The federal Conservatives have further eroded immigrant and refugee protections based on dubious economic arguments and at a great moral cost.
Aug 04 2014. Editorial
Last week, the federal government made a small change to Canada’s immigration rules, lowering the maximum age of a “dependant child” and eliminating any recourse for immigrant or refugee parents seeking an exception to the new definition. It’s a subtle shift, to be sure, but its subtlety belies the cruelty of its future impact and the utter lack of human feeling that underlies it and so much of our recent immigration policy.
Until this month, any unmarried child of 21 or younger could qualify as a dependant under Canada’s immigration rules and be automatically accepted along with his or her parents. Accommodations could be made, too, for full-time students older than 21 who were financially dependent on their family. But as of Aug. 1, the federal government lowered the maximum age to 18 and eliminated all exceptions.
Ottawa’s argument for doing so is two-fold. First, the government says it wants to bring the definition of dependant children in line with the Canadian standard. Never mind that more than 43 per cent of our 20-somethings still live at home or that so many other young adults are otherwise dependent on their parents.
More importantly, the government argues that the labour market contributions of immigrants who receive their post-secondary education in Canada are significantly greater than those who are educated in their home countries. Bring them over later, the government claims, and we’ll get less out of them.
But how many attractive immigrants will we lose by disallowing prospective new Canadians to bring their families with them? And how much productivity will be squandered amidst the strife of family separation? If we choose to look at this issue only through the technocratic lens of the government, surely we must try to quantify, as the government has not, the real economic cost of lost human capital and divided families. Even from that point of view, the policy is dubious.
From a human perspective, on the other hand, it’s appalling. As Ashley Chapman of Citizens for Public Justice pointed out in a recent Star opinion piece, “the changes go against one of the official objectives of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act — to reunite families.” The government estimates that roughly 7,000 young adults – some 800 children of refugees among them – will no longer be eligible to immigrate along with their families as dependants this year.
To abandon these youths, often in dangerous countries, without the financial or psychological support of their parents, is morally backwards. The children of those fleeing persecution are known to be at higher risk of violence themselves, especially without the protection of their family. As the Canadian Council for Refugees has pointed out, the dangers are particularly grave and abundant for isolated young women.
And what of the family members who do make it to Canada? Can we expect them to navigate the many stresses and trials of adjusting to their new home while burdened by worry and without the psychological support of their children? Surely this is not the best chance at success we can offer new Canadians.
From the government that axed refugee health care, weakened citizenship for naturalized immigrants and otherwise eroded our long-standing and much-celebrated focus on family reunification and other humane immigration policies, this latest shift should come as no surprise.
Yet it’s no less of a shame for being predictable. And so we have closed the door a little further, become yet a little less welcoming and a little less caring. And all this because of a foolish and dangerous abstraction: the fallacious idea, ever more central to our immigration policy, that people can be reduced to mere economic units.
< http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2014/08/04/tories_strike_another_blow_to_canadas_oncehumane_immigration_policy_editorial.html >
Tags: economy, ideology, immigration, rights
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