Racist White Anglo Chauvinist Conservatives seek the commodification and objectification of immigrants using a post-colonial British Imperialist mentality
robert...@aol.com
Bill C-50 is a prime example of a post-colonial state giving with one
hand what it takes away with the other. Globally, the hyper-rich
countries like Canada create the conditions for mass displacement and
immigration within and away from the Third World.
by Nathan Crompton
May 12, 2008
Harper's Conservatives are in the midst of an attempt to change
Canadian immigration policy. Significant amendments to the Immigration
and Refugee Protection Act are being added to a budget motion, Bill
C-50.
The changes are debatable in the way that all legislation is
debatable, since, of course, the bill is open to parliamentary
deliberation. The changes are also debatable in a second meaning, more
as a matter of judgment: the bill is questionable, problematic,
perfectly reactionary, and so on. Yet it seems that precisely on
account of its twice-debatable nature, the bill will not be debated
independently in Parliament. The government has found a way to pass
the debatable changes without debate.
Instead of being debated as a separate bill, changes to the
Immigration Act are tucked into budget bill C-50. Opposition MPs can
vote against Bill C-50 only if they wish to cause a federal election,
since a no-confidence vote on a budget bill would dissolve the
government.
The Liberals have refused to join the NDP in defeating the bill, which
they explain with the now familiar apology that they don't want to
trigger an election. But in fact the Liberals were given the
opportunity to support an NDP motion to split the budget bill into two
different bills, which could have allowed Parliament to vote against
the immigration changes without precipitating an election. The
Liberals rejected that option. It appears they will support Bill C-50
in spite of, or rather, because of the fact that the Conservatives are
seeking to pass anti-immigrant laws in a fundamentally undemocratic
way.
When asked why she refused to introduce the legislation as a separate
bill, Immigration Minister Diane Finley argued that democratic debate
could take too much time. "Up to two years," she exaggerated. "We have
to act now."
This paradoxical reality of "debate without debate" in fact matches a
contradiction in immigration law itself, where those affected by new
laws – immigrants – are not only absent at the time of the debate but,
also, excluded by definition of the law. The Canadian Charter of
Rights and Freedoms, for example, does not apply to immigrants and
thus, under C-50, the immigration minister has the authority and legal
right to discriminate against certain immigrants by ranking and
prioritizing different "categories" (racial, economic, etc.) of
applicants.
This paradox is a second state advantage added to the first: the
already-mentioned de facto evasion of Parliament by the Conservatives.
Not only are prospective Canadians being excluded from the debate on
Bill C-50, all Canadians are.
The changes would give Minister Finley centralized authority far
beyond what the position already allows, including the ability to
reject any application that comes to her office, even if the applicant
meets the official requirements for entry into Canada. The changes
also allow the minister to "hold on to, return, or throw out a visa
application and deny any opportunity to review that decision in
Court," according to the group No One Is Illegal.
Another change lessens the obligation of the minister to examine
application on humanitarian and compassionate grounds. Whereas before,
the minister "shall" examine such applications, the minister now only
"may" do so. The changes also give the minister the power to decide on
the order in which applications are processed, irrespective of the
order they arrive at her office. In addition, the minister would have
the power to give priority to different "categories" of immigrants.
In the words of Conservative Jim Flaherty, "[we need] a competitive
immigration system which will quickly process skilled immigrants who
can make an immediate contribution to the economy." Thus, rather than
being treated as a human individual, the immigrant is "processed" as a
prospective wage-labour commodity.
But why is the commodification and labour-ization of immigrants
racist? Abstractly, because commodification is like racism in
assigning value to individuals on the basis of superficial markings
and indicators rather than on the basis of the inherent dignity of
each human being. Concretely, because people of colour are first in
line for exploitation, both as wage earners at the hands of capital in
the de-unionized/"flexible labour" economy, and as subjects of the
administrative authority of the state.
It should not be controversial to note that Bill C-50 is, foremost, a
bill within the post-colonial universe of international immigration.
The changes in C-50 will allow for the "fast-tracking" of immigrants
from two overlapping groups, both of which have been formed out of the
centuries-long division between colony and Empire: 1) highly skilled
individuals, members of the investor class, importers of international
capital, etc and 2) wageworkers slated for hyper-commodification,
"flexiblization" and de-unionization.
For the most part, the first group is white and the second is non-
white. The two categories, of course, are by no means mutually
exclusive, as wealthy non-white immigrants continue to bring capital
into Canada.
We should acknowledge also that not all non-white immigrants are
racialized equally. For example, C-50 will allow Immigration Canada to
systematically discriminate against Muslims in our post-9/11 universe,
as argued by immigration activists and the well-known Toronto
immigration lawyer, Barbara Jackman.
Thus, the immigrant is either a "security threat" or a potential unit
of "human capital," reduced to a duel level of pure administration and
mere exchange value. So, then, what of immigrants who are not
immigrating for purposes of work or those whose labour is not demanded
by the market? When racialized immigrants are either "securitized" or
reified as labour, all other human reasons for immigration – family re-
unification, for example – become unimportant to the state.
It is precisely for this reason that the changes in Bill C-50 allow
the immigration minister to overlook applications made on humanitarian
and compassionate grounds: most such applications are family re-
unification applications that will not directly benefit the economy.
Any family re-unification applications will be de-prioritized under
Bill C-50 if the applicant cannot serve the highest requirements of
profit making, and thus Bill C-50 keeps families separate.
Bill C-50 is a prime example of a 21st century post-colonial state
giving with one hand what it takes away with the other. Globally, the
hyper-rich countries like Canada create the conditions for mass
displacement and immigration within and away from the Third World.
This inequality is maintained by means of the international trade
imbalance, practices of monopoly agri-business, large-scale and "low-
intensity" war and occupation, and major unsettling fluctuations in
the international economy due to the changing demands of the post-
colonial consumer nations, among other factors. At the same time,
countries like Canada are enacting measures to make immigration a
dehumanizing reality for thousands of workers and a virtual
impossibility for many families.
Bill C-50 has to be struck down and replaced with a positive
alternative that understands the world as a single global community,
in which all individuals are treated with dignity and respect.
http://www.rabble.ca/news_full_story.shtml?sh_itm=0bbd3e9977c3055d3d057cee0df2edb6&rXn=1&
jimjames5417
Old Boob and his LIEberal/Socialist rabble will not be satisfied until
Canada has been turned into a third-world relocation center - and Old
Boob would be very unhappy if any of the immigrants were white!!
Letting him into Canada was another big mistake!!