The Importance Of Immigrants In Canada

In 2017, Canada announced their plan to fill a 300,000 quota number of incoming immigrants. That is a large number and appears like Canada is showing such openness for incoming immigrants. But this innocuous sentence can be problematic. It can be difficult to gage the problems of Canadian perception of immigration when one’s family arrived in the country several generations ago and now identify as a native Canadian. The word “quota” is problematic in describing immigration for its inferred meaning.
That the way we speak about immigration is devoid of humanity, it devalues the people coming into this country as anything, but a number to pat ourselves on the back for graciously allowing in downtrodden peoples. The anti-immigration or anti-refugee narrative is often projected onto the United States, and rightly so, but Canadians cannot look at their southernly neighbour so condescendingly. Canada cannot think itself so superior to the U.S. On a bright Toronto morning, a man of Costa Rican origin was bicycling down the street returning from a night shift at a factory. He went to pick up bread
for his children’s breakfast before they would set off for school. As he was crossing the street, a reckless driver struck him. As the bicyclist attempted to flee, his dislocated shoulder and head trauma prevented him from escaping before the authorities arrived. He woke up in his hospital bed handcuffed. The injured man was deported and his wife and children pressured by the Canadian government fled the country before they could be subjected to an undignified deportation. The driver was let go without being charged for his distracted driving. In Canada, striking a dog will get you charged, but not a man without papers.
You can’t find this story in the newspaper, there are no flowers by the road side, no protest or picket sign with a slogan, nor any footnote to reference this event. These are the types of stories that many immigrants and their children left in Canada know with personal accounts. Sadly, these stories about violations of human rights continue to go unheard in the voices of those with no political power. There is a narrative that those who enter the country undocumented; not illegally. It is not a criminal act to exist within foreign borders. It’s only a bureaucratic problem when people are unaccounted for in the process. This is another argument used against undocumented immigrants, but who benefits from this logic? Certainly not the undocumented since they fill hard manual labor jobs that regular Canadians are not willing to do.
Undocumented immigrants often fill these jobs while being underpaid by the employer, so the company and CEOs win. Since undocumented immigrants are not in the system they cannot collect any income tax or go to the hospital and take advantage of our free health care. Income to undocumented immigrants is still taxed, but they do not see any of it’s benefits. They are too afraid to report crimes because of the threat of deportation, so now perpetrators of crime win. They do not form unions, report workplace injuries, get driver’s licences, or open bank accounts. In the end it is the system that gains tremendously from the work of immigrants that they have no responsibility over in providing health care or legal representation when businesses take advantage of
them.