WHY EMIGRATION FROM HAITI SHOULD NOT BE A SOLUTION TO HAITI’S PROBLEMS
Canada’s primary focus in the Haitian earthquake tragedy should be to help Haiti to get back on its feet. Most Canadians have great sympathy for what has happened to Haitians and they think that they should do all they can to help. But evacuating large numbers of Haitians and taking them to Canada or other parts of the world should not be part of the answer for Haiti or any other country. Here’s why:
(1) Helping Haiti to solve its long-term problems will do much more good than advocating emigration of a significant part of its 9 million people. The damage done by Haiti’s earthquake is a very serious short-term problem, but Haiti’s most serious problems are long-term. After Canada has helped Haiti to stabilize itself, it should co-operate with other countries to assist Haiti in formulating a future vision of itself and in re-building itself in that vision. For example, Haiti should be allowed to opt out of any trade agreements that force it to become dependent on other countries for its food supply. In fact, Haiti should be encouraged to grow enough food to feed itself. It should also be encouraged to determine its own carrying capacity and calculate how many people it can support. It should be encouraged to take future measures to bring the size of its population into harmony with its carrying capacity. Above all, the aid that is currently going to Haiti should be directed to ensuring that the future needs and interests of the majority of Haitians, not a minority, become the primary focus of Haiti’s government.
(2) Emigration from Haiti gives in to Canada’s immigration industry and to a number of Canadian politicians at all three levels of government. These people want to exploit the earthquake crisis for their interests. To gain favour with ethnic groups, these people are now saying that Canada should allow large numbers of Haitians to become immigrants to Canada. If Canada should do anything at all on the occasion of the Haiti earthquake, it should use the earthquake tragedy to take a thoughtful look at all of its immigration policies. In particular, it should take a long look at how, in the past 20 years, immigration lawyers, immigrant advocacy organizations, ethnic groups and many politicians have grossly abused Canada’s immigration system. The big question should be: How do we permanently de-commission these abusers? One suggestion has been to conscript them, send them to Haiti or Afghanistan for the next 10 years, and give them real humanitarian jobs there. We welcome other worthy ideas.
(3) Emigration from Haiti will further legitimize the abuse of Canada’s “Family Class”. Note how the abusers of Canada’s immigration system continue to intone the word “family” and present it in virtually sacred terms to achieve their ends. The idea that a “Canadian Family” already exists and that unemployed, disabled or homeless Canadian-born are part of it is ignored. So is the idea that the interests of the already-existing “Canadian Family” have precedence. Not long before the Haitian earthquake, Canadians will recall how our CBC, in particular, described the 76 Sri Lankan boat people who arrived on our west coast. According to the CBC, the 76 claimed they had “family” already in Southern Ontario. Therefore, this had to be true and was sufficient reason for allowing the 76 to stay. As usual, it did not occur to the CBC to ask if the 76 really were related to Canadians. Nor did it occur to the CBC to consider in what way the 76 were related and whether this qualified them to remain in Canada. Similarly with the Haitians now, our “humanitarian” CBC is suggesting to Canadians that any Haitian remotely related to any Haitian-Canadian should be allowed into Canada. For the information of lazy CBC and other media, being a relative of someone classified as Canadian does not entitle one to Canadian citizenship. Canada instituted rules like this to prevent this country from being flooded with both real and fake “family” members, and to prevent human smuggling. Even international adoption agencies have warned that large-scale adoption of orphans after crises like the Haiti earthquake is unwise and potentially very dangerous.
(4) Emigration from Haiti will cause economic problems for many of Canada’s own unemployed. As most Canadians know, our CBC and private media are the same people who in the past year have reported that hundreds of thousands of Canadians have lost their jobs. These reporters seem to have conveniently forgotten in all their comments about Haiti that immigration creates competition between immigrants and Canadians for a scarce number of jobs. It is easy to see CBC’s ideological bias against its own people. One of the more glaring examples was a CBC Radio summer series called MASH-UP. The female host devoted considerable publicly-paid-for air time to tell us that Canada should continue high immigration in this recession. According to her, by continuing high immigration, Canada could attain more diversity in its workforce and, most incredible of all, it could prepare itself for the economic recovery. The logical questions to ask should have been these: What good is “diversity” to Canada’s unemployed? What were these new immigrants going to do here while they waited for the recovery? Other questions are the following : In the entire country, has any CBC or private media reporter ever asked why Canada continues to bring in 250,000 immigrants a year and, incredibly, why Canada is allowing another 250,000+ temporary foreign workers to work here in times of such high unemployment? Do our media need CPR?
(5) The claim that Canada has boundless riches is false. If it were true, then why is Canada on the way to a $40 to $50 Billion deficit this year and probably again in each of the next few years? Canadians often say that Haiti is an economic “basket-case”. But let’s remember that in the mid-1990’s, with a debt of around $500 Billion, Canada was considered an economic “basket-case”. Let’s remember also that Canada’s efforts in the past decade to pay back that debt will be completely erased by the deficits that our federal government is now assuming. In fact, Canada is like the proverbial one-step-forward, two-steps-back drunk with a dysfunctional memory.
(6) The claim that Canada has endless space is ridiculous. Let’s remember that about 40% of Canada’s land mass is north of 60 degrees latitude. At this point in Canada’s history, a significant part of Canada’s high energy consumption is the result of its people trying to stay warm in winter. What would our energy consumption be like if large numbers of our population were living in our so-called “boundless spaces” north of 60 degrees latitude? Let’s also remember that the Science Council of Canada in its very significant 1976 report made two important recommendations about the ability of Canada’s resources to support an ever-increasing population. One was that Canada’s resources were limited and that Canada should cap its population at roughly the population we have now. The other was that Canada should concentrate on producing food for both itself and the rest of the world, not cover its farmland with housing and asphalt. In the wise words of Canada’s most eminent scientists, by focusing on food production, Canada could do much more good in the world than by having a virtually open door immigration policy.
