PhilPaine.com

I just sent this let­ter to my Mem­ber of Parliament:

To Hon. Bill Morneau, House of Com­mons, Ottawa, Ontario Cana­da K1A 0A6

Bring­ing in large num­bers of refugees from for­eign lands, often with lan­guages, cus­toms and reli­gions that we find exot­ic, many of them trau­ma­tized by ter­ror and war, and with the dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty that there will be some bad apples among them (plant­ed agents, crim­i­nals, faked iden­ti­ties) is noth­ing new to Cana­di­ans. We have done this over and over and over again in this coun­try. Scots flee­ing the bru­tal high­land clear­ances, the six Iro­quois Nations flee­ing eth­nic cleans­ing, African-Amer­i­cans escap­ing slav­ery through the Under­ground Rail­road, Irish peas­ants flee­ing the pota­to famine, Arme­ni­ans flee­ing mass killings, Ukraini­ans flee­ing Stal­in’s ter­ror, Jews flee­ing the Holo­caust, Hun­gar­i­ans flee­ing the Com­mu­nists, African Gujaratis flee­ing Idi Amin, Viet­namese boat peo­ple, Sri Lankan Tamils flee­ing civ­il war, Rwan­dans flee­ing eth­nic slaugh­ter.… peas­ants and slumd­wellers from around the world flee­ing pover­ty and sta­t­ic soci­eties that keep them at the bot­tom. Yes, there are costs and dif­fi­cul­ties involved in tak­ing in strangers in this way. But we know how to do it, prob­a­bly bet­ter than any­one in the world. It’s our spe­cial­ty. This time is no dif­fer­ent. Years ago, I saw my neigh­bours roll up their sleeves and vol­un­teer to wel­come, spon­sor, house, and help fright­ened boat peo­ple who arrived after weeks on flim­sy rafts, being attacked by pirates, then months in grue­some intern­ment camps. Now those for­mer refugees are fel­low Cana­di­ans we point to with pride, and they in turn vol­un­teer for the same task. Yes­ter­day, a Toron­to cou­ple were mar­ried cheap­ly at City Hall, and turned over the full cost of their planned fan­cy wed­ding to spon­sor Syr­i­an refugees. They, and oth­ers like them, are the spir­it of our coun­try. We must nev­er for­get this.

As a his­to­ri­an, I sel­dom read the news with­out hear­ing echos from the past. Here a quote from a his­to­ry of Irish immi­grants to Cana­da, flee­ing the pota­to famine:

Shocked by the num­bers flood­ing Boston, New York and oth­er ports, the Unit­ed States Con­gress passed two Pas­sen­ger Acts. One lim­it­ed the num­ber of pas­sen­gers a ves­sel was per­mit­ted to car­ry. The oth­er increased the price of the cheap­est pas­sage to sev­en pounds, an amount that was well beyond what most poor Irish could afford. Start­ing in May of 1846, this result­ed in increased traf­fic to Cana­di­an ports. In fact, dur­ing one occa­sion, Grosse Isle [the immi­grant pro­cess­ing point in Que­bec] had a line of 40 ships, car­ry­ing 15,000 souls, wait­ing to land there. Of that num­ber, many were seri­ous­ly ill with fever and some were already dead.

This cre­at­ed thou­sands of orphans, most of whom were assigned to Cana­di­an fam­i­lies. A spe­cial decree ruled that these chil­dren, to be raised in French-speak­ing Cana­di­an fam­i­lies, would retain their Irish names out of respect for their her­itage. Con­ser­v­a­tive news­pa­pers and the Orange Lodge — influ­en­tial in Cana­di­an pol­i­tics and high soci­ety — screamed that these refugees would all be nasty, bomb-throw­ing Catholic ter­ror­ists, and that the streets of Mon­tre­al and Toron­to would be seething with ape-like, sub-human Irish crim­i­nals. Those orphaned Irish names — Riley, Kel­ly, Ryan, John­son… now resound in Cana­di­an his­to­ry and culture.

Sound famil­iar? Here’s the lat­est news from the Unit­ed States:

While Democ­rats ini­tial­ly stood up to Repub­li­can fear-mon­ger­ing and big­otry, too many of them lost that con­vic­tion on the final vote for a bill that cre­ates addi­tion­al bar­ri­ers for Syr­i­an and Iraqi refugees com­ing to the U.S. Forty-sev­en Democ­rats vot­ed with Repub­li­cans in a final vote of 289–137.

The same ass­holes are always around. We have such ass­holes in Cana­da, but, hope­ful­ly, few­er of them. At least we don’t have, as Amer­i­cans do, the major­i­ty of our politi­cians falling over them­selves to sup­port ISIS. The Syr­i­an and Iraqi refugees turned away by the tri­umph of the stu­pid in the U.S.A. should be wel­comed to Cana­da with open arms. And we will end up all the wealth­i­er, hap­pi­er, and wis­er for it — for we are the future, not the past.