Posted by President Donald Trump, not surprisingly, has come back with a new ban on travelers from six predominantly Muslim countries after his previous executive order was blocked by the courts nearly a month ago. While Iraq has been removed from the list, visa processing for travelers from Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Syria and Libya will be suspended for 90 days. All refugee applications will be suspended for 120 days. Holders of existing valid visas, permanent residents (green card holders) and dual citizens are exempt from the new order. When the suspension is lifted, the number of refugees will be capped at 50,000 which is less than half of the 110,000 that former president Barack Obama set as goal for 2017. There are minor changes from his previous executive order probably designed to make them more defensible from a legal standpoint. My point of view remains unchanged in that the order is mean spirited and unlikely to achieve the goals that it is supposed to so therefore its resurrection is just a spiteful act to show that President Trump is still “the boss”.
Unfortunately, refugees and immigration has become a very charged political issue both in Europe and North America. Not surprisingly, both sides vilify each other although most of the name calling is from the liberal side referring to anyone who questions immigration policy as essentially a racist, xenophobe or the the most recent popular left-wing phobia, Islamophobe (even though that term is both factually wrong and a horribly incorrect use of the term phobia). Again, it is good to start with some basic definitions given how slanted views and arguments have become. For example, in a recent news article, readers comments include pithy sayings like “we are all immigrants… unless you’re a first nation” almost as if this was a deep and insightful philosophical statement rather than being the hollow and vapid catch phrase that it actually is. It also happens to be a factually untrue statement unless you are fond of liberal Orwellian “newspeak”. First, unless you were born elsewhere and moved here, you are, by definition not an immigrant. Period (full stop if you are British). Attempting to bastardise the meaning of the word to fit some politically-correct agenda only sows confusion. Second, if you want to attempt to redefine immigrant as your ancestors came from somewhere else in the past, then technically that means the “First Nations” are also immigrants because we all know that they came to North America from Asia tens of thousands of years ago. Essentially, to make that statement true, you have to redefine the definition of immigrant as being someone whose ancestors came here less than 1,000 years ago and then even that would be mostly incorrect given that only a small percentage of Native Americans are “pure blood”. So lets get the terminology straight first. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) differentiates between “refugees” and “migrants”.
Refugees are persons fleeing armed conflict or persecution… Their situation is often so perilous and intolerable that they cross national borders to seek safety in nearby countries, and thus become internationally recognized as “refugees” with access to assistance from States, UNHCR, and other organizations. They are so recognized precisely because it is too dangerous for them to return home, and they need sanctuary elsewhere. These are people for whom denial of asylum has potentially deadly consequences.
Migrants choose to move not because of a direct threat of persecution or death, but mainly to improve their lives by finding work, or in some cases for education, family reunion, or other reasons. Unlike refugees who cannot safely return home, migrants face no such impediment to return. If they choose to return home, they will continue to receive the protection of their government.
I would add there is probably a major sub-category to migrant: legal and illegal but the UNHCR makes no differentiation on this matter and doesn’t really care as it is only mandated with refugees. Migration (or immigration if you prefer) is the sole domain of national governments and the UN has no real say in the matter. In practice, this causes major problems as in the case of Europe which has to figure out who, on a boatload of people crossing the Mediterranean, are refugees and who are “economic migrants”. These distinctions are very important as the basis of the “international law” on refugees comes from the United Nations. More specifically, most of the world has signed the UN’s 1951 convention on refugees and the amendment made in 1967 with notable exceptions in the Middle East and South and South-East Asia. The United States, Venezuela and Cape Verde are signatories of the more broader 1967 protocol while Madagascar, St. Kitts and Nevis have signed the original 1951 convention but not the 1967 protocol.
The actual wording of Article 1 of the 1967 protocol is:
A person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.
Notice, this is a much broader definition than the one offered by the UNHCR on their “FAQ” definition that they have on their website. This is where the abuse of the system comes in as immigration and refugee lawyers know very well what the loopholes are and play them like a concert pianist. The actual treaty definition of a refugee puts the emphasis on the individual and his specific situation and thus makes processing a logistical nightmare as you have to determine for each person whether they have a “well-founded fear of being persecuted.” In today’s liberal West, that definition could amount to a host of a zillion things from homosexuality to being a political dissident. If the number of refugees were just a trickle, reviewing each case one-by-one for their individual merits would not be a problem. Unfortunately humanitarian catastrophes like civil war means that millions are being displaced at the same time. As a result, it is a virtual impossibility logistically to assess millions of applicants in a timely, accurate and orderly fashion on an individual basis. Especially given that, if they are fleeing a war-torn country the access and reliability of information, even basic things like criminal records, is clearly difficult if not impossible to verify.
I am not a big fan of the UN’s refugee laws and systems principally because they are massively flawed and difficult to apply in practice. It places a massive burden on the receiving countries when there is no formal channel for funding that cost. In the case of Syria, that burden has principally fallen on Turkey and to a lesser extent, Lebanon, Jordan and other Middle East countries. Herein lies another problem which is the application of the “safe country” concept; refugees are supposed to stop in the first “safe country” and seek asylum, not wander all over the planet in search of the best options to flee too. The UNHCR recognises this and “according to this use of the concept, asylum-seekers/refugees may be returned to countries where they have, or could have, sought asylum and where their safety would not be jeopardized, whether in that country or through return there from to the country of origin”
Naturally, if you’re going to flee your home anyway, you might as well go for gold and find a rich country that is going to provide you with free housing, education and money. It sure beats being stuck in some dusty refugee camp in Turkey, Lebanon or Jordan which is probably only mildly better than being in prison. You might even have better job opportunities in prison. But technically, if you flee the Syrian civil war as a refugee, you should probably end up in Turkey or Jordan; not Germany, Sweden or Canada.
Unfortunately, the left wing of western democracies are called bleeding heart liberals for a reason. They are often foolish and prone to making rash decisions based upon a short-term emotional response than any sane rational long-term policy making. It is precisely because of the ease that guilt can be thrust upon a Western liberal population that caused the current Syrian refugee problem to expand dramatically and become a “European refugee crisis”. A lot of the “throw the doors open to refugees” attitude can be traced back to after media went 24/7 with photo’s of three year old Syrian boy Aylan Kurdi body washed up on a beach. I mean who wasn’t moved by that photo and that story. It particularly resonated with us in Canada because the family was reported to be trying to get to Canada and was supposedly being sponsored by an aunt in Vancouver.
The devil, unfortunately, is always in the details. The problem is that while Abdullah, Aylan’s father, can (and does) blame Canada for rejecting their application (there was actually no record of an application from him or his family, just his brother Mohammed which was rejected for being incomplete) – he is ultimately to blame. To make things worse, “an Iraqi survivor from the same boat, Zainab Abbas, who also lost two children from the disaster, told reporters that Abdullah had been presented to her as the ‘captain’, that he was driving the overcrowded boat too fast, causing it to flip over, and that he pleaded with her while they were still both in the water not to report him to anyone in authority. Abbas said her family escaped out of Baghdad from ISIS.” Well, they’re all a bunch of liars and not very good ones either because if your claim to being a refugee is fleeing ISIS, then Baghdad is probably not the right place to say you come from given that ISIS never made it to the capital.
Canada has no legal requirement (despite what bleeding heart liberals want to guilt us into believing) to allow refugees in from countries thousands of miles away and just because you think it does doesn’t change that fact. You may argue that we have a moral obligation but then the definition of morality is pretty much ambiguous in any case. After two failed attempts to get to Greece (it is unclear how he thought reaching Europe would make his non-existent application to be a refugee in Canada easier), the third one was the one that led to the death of his son. They could have safely stayed in Turkey but wanted “better” which is understandable but doesn’t absolve him of responsibility for taking dangerous and reckless “short-cuts” for his family and children instead of sticking it out in relative safety and let the bureaucratic nightmare that is the UNHCR slowly plod their case along.
Unfortunately, the road to hell is paved with good intentions and that is precisely what has happened with liberal policies towards immigration and refugees in the West. They have made matters far worse and all for the sake of making a few political brownie points and bolstering their “street cred” for being the biggest “humanitarian” around. Here’s some simple logic. As I alluded to earlier, it is obvious that when faced with the options of going back into a war zone, staying in some crappy refugee camp in Turkey, or going to Germany… well that’s a no-brainer. Now why would you select Germany or Canada as your goal? Because there is a thing called the internet and even before that, (despite Einstein saying it is theoretically impossible) rumour and gossip travelled through refugee camps faster than the speed of light (kind of like how rumours and gossip spread in an office). Then we have a German Chancellor who is basically holding up a huge neon-lit sign that says, Willkommen to any refugee that can reach us; much to the surprise and consternation of many other EU members. What the hell do you think the response would be from the millions of Syrian refugees sitting in camps in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan? If I was a refugee living in a discarded cargo container in some desert shit hole eating bad food with no job and future prospects sure as hell I would look at a map and say, “hey, Germany doesn’t look too far away, all we have to do is get across this tiny bit of sea to a Greek Island”. A million refugees did come to that same exact same conclusion and somehow made it to Germany and we all know enough about the European refugee crisis of 2015 to see what a fiasco that has been. Like I wrote before, I think history will see that event as one of the major catalysts and turning points that propelled far-right movements to power (think Trump and Brexit so far) in the West.
Not to be outdone (we’re Canadian and more liberal and politically correct than you Europeans), Junior posts this on his Twitter. Well, what do you think the response of that is going to be? Fortunately for us, to most refugees, Canada looks really far on a map and there is that huge body of water called the Atlantic Ocean that makes attempting the voyage on a leaky raft problematic. But even Junior isn’t liberal and left enough for the whackos in Ottawa and Toronto. Green party chief-loon, Elizabeth May doesn’t think Canada goes far enough.
“To say we are open, we are an inclusive society, we welcome Muslims and refugees here, you have a home here, that needs to be backed up,” May told reporters. Canada should ramp up the number of refugees it is prepared to accept, and federal Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen should immediately suspend the Safe Third Country agreement, she said. The bilateral accord, which took effect in 2004, allows Canada to turn way most refugee claimants if they arrived via the United States. “What matters is actions,” May said. “Open up our doors. Let in more refugees. Get rid of the safe party agreement that makes it harder for people to get here from the United States. The U.S. is no longer a safe country for Muslims.”
Seriously? Because throwing open the doors was such a success for Germany? Politicians are such power-hungry slime-balls that you have to question the motives of anything they say, especially if it seems altruistic and humanitarian. As recently as last summer, Merkel continued to be adamant that her open door policy to refugees was the right one regardless of how many violent attacks by refugees on Germans hit the headlines. Six months, a couple of lost local elections and a surprise Trump electoral victory later and the volte-face in policy by Merkel could not have been more startling. Apparently, the open door policy was not the right one now and that if she could she would “turn back time by many, many years” to prepare Germany for the influx of refugees. Apparently, her priority is now, “For the next few months, what matters most is repatriation, repatriation and more repatriation.”
Here’s a question to Elizabeth May. As an inclusive society, why should including Muslims have priority over including others which is what her moronic statement basically states. If inclusiveness really is your goal, shouldn’t we be actually inclusive and not selectively inclusive? What about all the Sikhs, Tamils, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews and non-affiliated people waiting to get into Canada? What about my wife whose freaking permanent residency application took over two years to process (to result in a five minute interview and a rubber stamp) because our system (legal and bureaucratic) is clogged and backlogged by thousands and thousands of refugee claimants, legitimate or otherwise. Where are my goddamned human rights as a born and raised citizen of Canada that you don’t have a problem of separating my family for years but think we should let in “refugees” automatically and give them access to our social welfare system immediately. Why am I and my family not “included” and a “priority” in your “inclusive” society?
Just like what Merkel did in Germany, if you stick out a giant sign that says we will welcome everyone regardless, then guess what the result will be? Oh darn, you guessed it, there has been a spike in asylum seekers crossing illegally into Canada, but RCMP lay no charges. “Between Jan. 1 and Feb. 21 this year, there were 290 illegal crossings in Quebec, 94 in Manitoba and 51 in British Columbia, totalling 435. That compares with 2,464 illegal entries apprehended by the RCMP in the same regions in all of 2016.” Liberals hate Trump. You think he’s a racist, misogynist, homophobic, islamophobic, right-wing foaming at the mouth zealot. I wouldn’t completely disagree with that assessment but to argue that America is not longer free and safe and that we should repeal our treaty is insane. It is the only thing (well that and two giant oceans) standing between us and a flood of refugees and we are already incapable of processing the ones we have now properly let alone bring in more. I mean, America only accepts about the same number refugees as we do despite being 10 times larger; how much more “street cred” do you need to prove that Canadians are good humanitarian?
If Junior and Elizabeth May want more refugees, they are welcome to pay for them out of their own pocket or from donations and fund raising like other private citizens. I don’t have a problem with that, although I feel sorry for regular Canadians (like me) who want to be reunited with their families from abroad and other potential immigrants whose applications are stuck in bureaucratic limbo because of the lack of capacity in the system to absorb the number of people these liberals are gunning for. But asking the Canadian taxpayer to foot out more to pursue their narrow agenda of social justice is only going to result in a political backlash as we have seen in Europe and America. And the left will deserve it as well because its a self-inflicted wound with an obvious outcome which they remain oblivious to.
There really is no point in debating the issue as there is no common ground to be had. Liberals want to save and give the good life to every last perceived poor and persecuted person on the planet which, despite being a noble goal, is unachievable. Those of us who want more realistic and sensible long-term policies on immigration, not knee-jerk reactions to Donald Trump’s latest crazy tweet are automatically branded as racist, xenophobic, etc. As I wrote in my piece about Sweden, a recent government sponsored survey of over 1,000 Ontarians revealed that the vast majority support immigration and believe immigrants bring positive things but also believe we should be more selective in who we admit. For that “radical belief” they have been labelled racists and islamophobes by the media. Yup, that’s seriously what the left-wing thinks so do you really want to engage in a conversation with these nutters just so they can accuse you of being a Nazi? I have better things to do with my time. Nor, does it seem, do we ever learn anything from our own past; as the famous saying from the Battlestar Galactica reboot goes, “All Of This Has Happened Before And Will Happen Again.”
The Economist recently ran an article titled “Asia’s looming labour shortage.” The article basically makes the the case that aging populations in North Asia (including China) means they need to import labour over the next few decades to keep their economies afloat. As the sub-title to the article suggests, “there is an obvious solution”, but not the one that the West finds palatable.
Practice, however, is less accommodating than theory. The Asian “model” of migration tends to be highly restrictive, dedicated to stemming immigration, rather than managing it. Entry is often severely curtailed, permanent settlement strongly discouraged and citizenship kept out of reach… Some countries have become more flexible. Foreign workers are around 40% of Singapore’s workforce, with slightly less than half of those on restrictive domestic-work and construction visas. To prevent foreigners from undercutting domestic wages, employers must pay levies for each foreign worker they hire. Such financial incentives can help regulate inflows of foreign workers. They can also help encourage outflows, ensuring that temporary migration does not become permanent. In 2003 South Korea introduced a quota scheme allowing small firms, mostly in labour-intensive manufacturing, to employ foreigners from poor countries for limited periods—“sojourns”, as the authorities put it, of up to four years and ten months. To make sure that the sojourners do not overstay their welcome, they are charged in advance for the cost of returning home. Their employers also deduct a percentage of their salary, which is given back to them only as they leave the country. (It can be paid to them in person after they pass the immigration desk.) These temporary workers account for about a quarter of the 962,000 foreigners (3.5% of the labour force) now working in South Korea.
The same happens in Hong Kong where there are more than 340,000 domestic helpers who are primarily from the Philippines and Indonesia and act as live in maids and nannies. Even I had one when I was living in Hong Kong from the day my first child was born to when I left. The difference is that under all these programs, those on restricted work visas do not have the right of abode, permanent residency or citizenship regardless of how many years they work and stay in the foreign country. I find that perfectly acceptable and, legal formalities aside, don’t understand why the West doesn’t take this view more often. Yes, we want diversity and skilled immigrants from around the world; for those we can offer citizenship and permanent residency. We also want people to pick our fruits, clean our toilets and do the crappy so-called 3D (dirty, dangerous and demeaning) jobs that locals don’t want to do. Why not legally bring in Mexicans (or whomever) like Hong Kong does with Filipina domestic helpers or Saudi Arabia does with Pakistani construction workers on temporary work visas for those specific jobs but without the prospects of citizenship? That would be certainly better than having illegal (and undocumented) migration for all parties concerned.
The different view on immigration in Asia doesn’t end with work visas and permanent residency. The South China Morning Post ran this very good article titled, “How Europe can learn from the hard lessons of Hong Kong’s Vietnamese refugee crisis.” The first refugees from Vietnam came to Hong Kong in May 1975 as American abandoned its war in Vietnam and the South fell to the advancing communist forces. More than 230,000 “Vietnamese boat people” arrived in Hong Kong and were held in a series of camps across the city. Just remember, that is relative to the population of just under 4.5m in Hong Kong in 1975 or about 5%. Hundreds of thousands more ended up as refugees in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore (more on that later) and Thailand. Ultimately, of the refugee claims, 143,700 Vietnamese refugees were resettled in third countries while about 67,000 Vietnamese migrants were deported back to Vietnam. Only about 1,000 Vietnamese refugees were granted permission to reside and assimilate in Hong Kong when the last camp closed 25 years later on 21 June 2000.
The Vietnamese refugee problem in Hong Kong was still going full tilt when I arrived in 1994 as large-scale riots at camps broke out a few years later in 1996. Because Hong Kong was still under British colonial rule, it adopted the “Western” model towards refugees. Clinton Leeks, the official in charge noted “We always knew in reputational terms we had little choice but to try to treat the people coming in a humane way and try to find a solution for them,” he recalled. “The obvious alternative, to turn boats back to sea, would have greatly damaged us at a time when Hong Kong needed international support and understanding,” On the topic of the riots at the refugee camps, “The main difficulty was being accountable for a problem Hong Kong had very little control over,” Leeks said. “We did not control the numbers coming from Vietnam and could not force other countries to help. The growing but understandable local criticism of our policy to allow Vietnamese ashore and spend money accommodating them [stood] against a background of forcing back to China any Chinese who tried to enter illegally, even if they had close relatives in Hong Kong.” The Vietnamese refugee crisis cost Hong Kong HK$8.7 billion and the UNHCR still owes the territory HK$1.16 billion.
Contrast that policy to Singapore where between 1975 and 1996, Singapore hosted some 32,000 Vietnamese refugees. They were allowed into Singapore only if a third country gave written guarantees of their removal within three months. As a polar opposite to Hong Kong, Singapore’s policy was exactly to turn boats back to sea, by force if necessary. The last 99 refugees returned to Vietnam voluntarily in 1996. Singapore has never signed any of the UN conventions on refugees and therefore is not bound by any of its rules. It’s official position has been, “As a small country with limited land, Singapore is not in a position to accept any persons seeking political asylum or refugee status, regardless of their ethnicity or place of origin.” But Singapore’s population has grown dramatically in the past few decades on the back of a surge in immigration so the idea that Singapore is a small country with limited land rings a little hollow. Nonetheless, its policy on refugees and immigration are Singaporean Machiavellian governance at its best. Is it racist and xenophobic? Not really given that Singapore is a multi-cultural society and goes to great lengths to maintain racial harmony. Singapore also promotes immigration of “foreign talent” to take permanent residency while keeping low-skill 3D jobs in the domain of restrictive temporary work visas. But most westerners, especially liberals and certainly human rights activists, would find most Singaporean policies abhorrent.
The different approaches that Hong Kong and Singapore take on refugees is I think, a microcosm of the differences between the two cities. Hong Kong has always been more open, free, entrepreneurial and laissez-faire while Singapore has always had more than a tint of dirigiste government intervention and nanny-statism in its DNA. As a result, Hong Kong is always more chaotic, dirty and loud while Singapore is more orderly and clean. But despite the differences on the surface, at its core the end results and goals of the two cities remain very similar. Although they take a very different approach to refugees, both cities don’t want them to stay and assimilate; both cities want immigration of the educated and value-added kind while restricting low-end migration to temporary work visas that don’t end in permanent residency. That’s the Asian model in general, even in democratic Japan, Korea and Taiwan. But it is one that Westerners are always critical of (if they actually bother to find out the facts that is) and find difficulty accepting because it doesn’t fit into their pre-defined mould of what liberal values a “democracy” should have. Given the chaos and problems that the refugee crisis has caused in Europe, one might have thought at least some introspection was due. But for most liberals, that’s impossible because of the innate belief and conceit that Western liberal democracy along with a market economy is the pinnacle of human sociological evolution and therefore must always be correct. As a result, nothing changes because nobody wants to be politically incorrect and challenge the basic assumptions underlying the system… until one day a dangerous demagogue comes along and smashes the entire facade to bits.
UPDATE 1 (4 April 2017): It takes a while but even Liberals eventually have to succumb to the logic of reality. We now have the Canadian Brainwashing Corporation running opinion pieces telling Prime Minister Junior that he should probably stop running his mouth off that Canada will welcome all refugees. “On top of irresponsibly encouraging vast swaths of people to try their luck at residency, Trudeau’s words risk inciting Canadians who are already feeling anxious about letting in too many newcomers.” Really? It took you this long to come to that conclusion and only after months of refugees trying to cross the border illegally in snow storms? Then comes another CBC report saying that money for refugees is running out although I expect that article is more of an appeal for the government to fleece the taxpayer more to fund their pet social justice projects rather than a clarion call for a return to sanity. Canada’s immigration and refugee policy is a mess and one we can ill afford given a shaky economy dependent on property bubbles in Vancouver and Toronto. Eventually economic realities will force even liberal demagogues (yes, you can be such a thing on the left as well as the right) to change direction. I can only hope that sanity returns to La La Land North before the collapse as having both an economic crisis and a reticent socialist government at the same time is not pretty as New Zealand learned over 30 years ago.
UPDATE 2 (10 January 2018): Despite how obvious it was that Trudeau’s immigration and refugee policy and statements were stupid beyond belief, it has taken a long time for reality to set in. The lesson from the flood of Haitians crossing illegally into Canada this summer following the rumours that their Temporary Protected Status (TPS) was about to be rescinded (it eventually was in November) has finally sunk in. As the USA prepares to withdrawal TPS for 200,000 El Salvadorans living in America, Canada’s response this time is quite different. So different that the government is sending a Spanish speaking member of parliament to California to tell Salvadorans living there not to come to Canada. Whatever happened to “Canada will welcome you… Diversity is our strength?” I’ll tell you what happened: reality sunk in long before Trudeau’s vision of unicorns flying on rainbow roads to the land of milk and honey came to fruition.
Cad