Conservatives play to irrational fears about immigrants

The Sixth Estate always has thoughtful posts that force me to think differently about issues facing us. The following post on he issue of illegal immigrants makes me think that the Harper government is not above isolating immigrants to deflect from their failures. The ideas in this post pose some interesting and tough questions for the main stream media and for all of us as Canadian citizens about how we value immigrants and how we value our society.

 The entire post is here: The following are excerpts from the post:

There’s nothing like illegal immigrants, it seems, to send our country into a foaming, irrational rage. That quote was the first sentence in the Globe & Mail’s fawning praise of Kenney, and it typifies the quality of our national media. I didn’t “earn” my Canadian passport. The majority of my readers didn’t “earn” their passports. Most of the Globe’s editors probably didn’t earn their passports, and Jason Kenney didn’t earn his either. So don’t give me this nonsense.

More to the point, it’s frankly astonishing that the government could announce it was exiling 3100 citizens of this country without raising a peep of at least apprehension from the national media. I’m not defending fraud here. Fraud should be identified. But are mass revocations really the best way to do it? And do you really trust this government to do it without being require to go to court and prove their case?

Let’s not forget what’s going on here. We’re taking the solemn word on this of a man who spent his formative years crusading as an anti-abortion activist at a religious school in California and who has, in just the recent past, ordered political criticsbarred from entering the country, staged bogus citizenship ceremonies for the benefit of the news media, and argued that he doesn’t have to allow Canadian citizens — genuine ones, mind — back into the country because as a Cabinet minister he is above the law. This is the man you’re trusting when he says that he’s satisfied that 3100 Canadians acquired their citizenship fraudulently.

...Third, although none of this is good, there are some steps that the government could take to assure Canadians that it is not targeting innocent people in this matter:

• What percentage of the people targeted are living in Canada?Previously, Kenney has argued that mass revocation of citizenship is necessary because many people who don’t even live in Canada have obtained citizenship papers through fraud. So far, Kenney has chosen to conceal from the public how many of the people he has targeted are actually living abroad.

• What process has the government followed to ensure that everyone who has been targeted is actually guilty? This one should be an obvious point. So far, nada.

• How many mistakes have been made in the past? Last July, the government kicked off its current wave of exiles with an announcement that it would revoke 1800 citizenships. What happened in those cases? How many filed in court to protest the decision? Were there any who turned out to be innocent? What was the error rate?