What it means to be a refugee has
either been completely misunderstood in Canada or it has been expropriated for political
reasons. Even the federal government seems to have misunderstood what it means
to be a refugee.
The 1951 Geneva Convention defined a ‘refugee’ as “a person
who is outside their country of citizenship because they have well-founded
grounds for fear of persecution because of their race, religion, nationality,
membership of a particular social group or political opinion, and is unable to
obtain sanctuary from their home country or, owing to such fear, is unwilling
to avail themselves of the protection of that country.”
Essentially, a refugee is someone
looking for or is living in a place of refuge. However, when a ‘refugee’ finds
a home and becomes a citizen of the country in which she/he had sought refuge
then that person ceases to be a refugee. The country of refuge or asylum
becomes his/her country of residence or citizenship. They are no longer in such
of refuge: they are home! How can you be a refugee in a country in which you
are a citizen? You can vote and run for an office yet you are still referred to
as a ‘refugee.’ This is simply a refusal
to think!
Unfortunately, this refusal to
think speaks volume about the way in which North Americans perceive issues that
originate from outside their borders. The level of scrutiny given to issues
within North America and Europe is not extended to issues outside. Things are
taken at face-value or in the way the ‘experts’ see them.
As refugees come to Canada, they
acquire the status of ‘Permanent Resident’ and become like other permanent
residents. The only difference in Canada between the supposed ‘refugee’
(except of refugee claimants) and other classes of immigrants, is HOW they came
to Canada. But this rather becomes a historical subject rather than a Status-in-Canada issue.
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| picture: Globe and Mail |
I came to Canada as a refugee and I’m
now a Canadian citizen so I travel with my Canadian passport. However, some Canadians
still refer to me as a “South Sudanese Refugee.” To someone who takes things at
face-value, this would sound like an intentional exclusionary politics.
However, it’s not! People aren’t excluding me from Canadian citizenship; they
are simply saying what they hear being uttered by authority without thinking seriously
about it.
The only people who have a status
of ‘refugee’ in Canada are refugee claimants in search of refuge in Canada.
Even the recent ‘refugees’ from Syria became landed immigrants the moment they
enter Canadian airports. They get the same landing paper with the UCI or Client ID numbers
and later Permanent Residents (PR) cards. They were refugees before coming to
Canada, however, Canada is now their ‘Permanent Home’ unless they choose to
leave.
Someone might say that this doesn’t
matter as this doesn’t affect these ‘refugees’ in any significant way. Of course it doesn’t, in a way.
However, it says something about us as Canadians because it begs this question:
How many other issues do we do in that manner? How many political issues do we do
without thinking about their semantic realities? Because wording of things
affects how people perceive things, it's crucial to put these things into consideration in decision-making. And it also gives bigoted individual
arsenals to continue to see these new Canadians as only here temporarily. Canada
isn’t simply their place of REFUGEE; it’s their PERMANENT HOME!
When the experts who advise the
Prime Minister (PM) don’t see this fallacy and the PM doesn’t realize it, then
this gives me grave concerns about some things he might do in the same way.
