Can Canada Become Canada Again?
January 2, 2013
AT Camera Lucida, Kidist Paulos Asrat, who lives in Toronto, offers a plan for reversing the mass influx of Asian immigrants that has culturally transformed Canada:
One proposal I’ve made is to find incentives to send these immigrants and especially their “Canadian” children back to their original countries, either through monetary gifts, or by inter-governmental arrangements through employment centers and universities. And to make their stay in those countries permanent. In other words, once they accept these incentives, they cannot return back to Canada without a formal re-application for immigration. The acceptance of re-applying immigrants can be fine-tuned to reduce the re-acceptance level to a minimum, and preferably to zero.
The other strategy is to phase out and eventually remove “multiculturalism” in Canada, both legally and culturally. The Canadian documents which profess Canada to be a multicultural country should be revised, and state the Western, British nature of the country. All multicultural programs, whether on television or in other media institutions, schools, employment centers, and even business areas like shopping centers and restaurants, should be phased out. If a business wants to go “multicultural” as in a French restaurant wanting to be “French,” then it is up to the business to make that happen, and not some special government fund.
This true Canadianness will either be accepted or rejected by these immigrants, and their descendants. I would say that the majority of non-whites will reject it. This unwelcoming environment will eventually become difficult for them. And with the combination of strategies provided above, they will start to leave on their own. Already, Chinese and Indian immigrant off-spring are “re-acquainting” themselves with their ancestral countries by traveling there for vists, and some are staying and re-establishing their lives there.
The alternative is that there will be a confrontation between immigrants (this is now a generic word I will use for all non-white immigrants – first, second, third, etc. generation) and whites. Immigrants will refuse the white, European and Western nature of Canada, and will fight to have it resemble their own conditions. Whites are now beginning to realize what they’ve lost, or are losing, and will begin to start to reclaim their land and culture, since especially after their decades-long acceptance of these others, all they are getting is epithets of “racist” and “prejudiced” by these same immigrants.
This may take some time, but with incremental changes, and a combination of all the strategies and scenarios above, it may be sooner than we think.
Michael S. writes:
“Immigrants will refuse the white, European and Western nature of Canada, and will fight to have it resemble their own conditions.”
Then why do they immigrate, if they just want to make their new place like their old place? What’s the point?
I’ve heard enough Puerto Ricans gush about how lovely Puerto Rico is. Couldn’t have been THAT lovely, if you live in the Bronx. Just sayin’.
Ireland is beautiful, too, but I can see why my ancestors left.
S. Li writes:
I never thought of writing to you until I read this post, “Can Canada Become Canada Again?” today. I thought that I might have a few words to add.
I am Chinese and I have been reading your blog for quite a while. Previously I tried to learn English from CNN/NYT, then I gradually found them boring and spiritually and intellectually suffocating. After finding your blog, I have made your blog my daily/weekly read instead. I like your blog design and picture choices in the first place, which are really pleasant for reading. I like your posts about English literature, which are nourishing for the soul. I like your posts about traditional Christian values, which I believe are the real foundation that made the West great. (I wish the West had exported more of traditional Christian readings to China such as C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton, and I never regretted when Chinese government banned ‘artists’ such as Lady Gaga etc., or art such as most ‘Hollywood movies’).
In China, we call Chinese born in Canada/U.S. “Banana” (yellow outside, white inside) as very obviously they are culturally Western in our eyes. (Second-generation Chinese immigrants usually speak English even while they visit China, as they either do not speak Chinese well or do not bother to speak Chinese, and they almost always like to remind us that “I am American/Canadian, not Chinese” upon introduction). And we can easily spot that they are different from local Chinese by their appearance (maybe due to more dairy consumption), and because their knowledge of Chinese classics is close to none. It would be a blessing if they could spell their grandparents’ names in Chinese. I find it hard to believe that they could ever possibly “culturally transform Canada.”
Let us take Jeremy Lin, the NBA basketball player and a Chinese American, for example, even though he might look like Yao Ming (Chinese basketball player who also played in NBA previously), we Chinese do not find anything similar with regards to the ways they talk, think and act. Even though they both look Chinese by skin color, we can almost spot Jeremy Lin as “not from China” at first eyesight. The same is true to for Patrick Chan, the Canadian figure skater.
Also, I find the example Ms. Asrat used to support her “Chinese and Indian immigrants have no real etiquette” comment a little naive. We can easily substitute her “rude Indian” story to another “rude non-Asian” story, plus Ms. Asrat was not without fault (at least inconsiderate) at the confrontation.
Ironically, I found it hard to believe that Miss Asrat put her own picture along her post, as she looks Asian to me. Is the post or the picture a joke?
Laura writes:
Thank you for writing. Your command of English is good. I made a few grammatical corrections, but not many.
I understand that Chinese immigrants to the West are not fully Chinese in the cultural sense and have many Western mannerisms. However, that does not mean that they fully identify with the West or consider themselves Canadians in the sense that those whose ancestors came from Britain do. Many Chinese Canadians probably consider themselves a distinctive combination of East and West. In other posts, Kidist has more fully described what she sees as the differences between Asian immigrants and white Canadians. For some Asians, Canada is more a place to get ahead than a place to feel fully at home. When Kidist, who is Ethiopian, speaks of Asians culturally transforming Canada, I don’t think she means they are making it exactly like China or India. That could never be. Nevertheless, the influx of Asians into Canada has been enormous and however much prominent Asian Americans or Canadians may seem Westernized, there is no question that Canada is changed by the presence of large numbers of Asians and their distinctive characteristics, just as China would be transformed if millions of white Canadians settled in its major cities, even if those Canadians adopted many of the local customs and spoke the language.
