Saturday, January 21, 2006

RESPONSE: The Dutch Transformation

RESPONSE: The Dutch Transformation [Toronto Star]

http://waymoresports.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1096539410014&call_pageid=1096063291893&col=1096063291594


In his Toronto Star article on Oct.1, 2004, “The Dutch Transformation”, Andrew Duffy depicts the recent backlash against immigrants in Holland and examines the possibilities of similar occurrences in Canada.

According to the article, both countries, until recently regarded as “immigrant havens”, had similar liberal and accepting attitude towards immigrants despite having the similar problems of the concentration of immigrants in few big cities and the creation of extremely poor ethnic enclaves. But in the post-9/11 era, the generous attitude toward immigrants, especially of Muslim origin, started to change all over the world. As a consequence, populist demagogues in Holland have attained prominence by espousing racist policies and exploiting xenophobia of the “erstwhile-generous” native population

Since Canada has, so far, avoided such reprisals against immigrants, the author tries to analyze the dissimilarities with Holland to discover probable reasons. The principal differences between the two countries appear to be how they have chosen the immigrants. While Holland emphasized inviting “guest workers” to do menial jobs on a temporary basis, Canada has been keen to accept only educated professionals or business investors with prior knowledge in either of the official languages. Moreover, while Holland was over-generous offering children of immigrants education in their own languages and allowed, if not encouraged, segregation, Canada has been pragmatic enough to make education available only in the official languages; this policy made the assimilation process easier for the immigrants, and the immigrants have become more successful in society than their Dutch counterparts. But despite this economic and social success, experts, according to the report, believe the possibility of a future hostility cannot be ruled out altogether.

The report, however, fails to identify the most significant difference between Holland and Canada concerning immigration, which parallels the difference between Europe and the “New World”: unlike Holland and rest of Europe, Canada, along with rest of the Americas, is built by European immigrants, and has been inhabited by them for a few centuries. Though there had been strong opposition to non-European immigration, recently, even these groups are considered, correctly, essential to sustain this development as the population growth without immigration has become negative, which forces the Canadian government to allow up to 300,000 immigrants, roughly 1% of the population, a year to settle in the country. Thus, the importance of continuation of immigration, for Canada’s own interests, cannot be overstated.

Another important issue is Canadian society is far less monolithic in ethnicity than the Dutch one. This country has two official languages instead of one. It also has a significant number of “invisible minorities” preferring their own languages among themselves; therefore, Canada doesn’t have a very strong “national-cultural identity” compared to the Dutch “nation state”. With the largest ethnic group, the Anglo-Saxons, forming only 45% of the population, compared to 90% of the Dutch in Holland, questions like, “who are we? And who are they? And how can we make them more like us?” are not as strong. Furthermore, “they”, the immigrants, are also more diverse than those in Holland, where words like “immigrant” and “Muslim” are synonymous because of overwhelming majority of the immigrants also being Muslims (though of different ethnicity). In Canada, Muslims do not form such a significant portion of the immigrant population. As a result, terrorist attacks by Muslims do not foment as violent anti-immigration passion as it does in Holland and other European countries.

Nevertheless, such terrorist attacks result in uncritical media propaganda against Muslims in general in this “Clash of Civilizations” and create anti-Muslim feelings. Therefore, future backlashes against Muslim immigrants, even by immigrants of other ethnicities, are not entirely impossible. Unfortunately, Canadian history has witnessed some horrible injustice: internment of the entire Japanese immigrant population as “enemies” during the Second World War. Strangely, this important example of racial oppression by the government, as well as its US counterpart, against a minority immigrant group remains unmentioned in this article

Finally, anti-immigration and anti-Muslim attitudes are two different phenomena. While terrorist attacks might result in future reprisal against Muslims or blocking further immigration for people of Muslim origin even in a “liberal” country like Canada, with a negative population growth rate, Canada do not have the luxury to declare the country “full” and is unlikely to close its doors to immigration to people other than Muslims in foreseeable future.

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