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By George Jonas
National Post Op-Ed
March 10, 2006




As a footnote to Martin Collacott's outstanding report on Canada's
refugee system, excerpted in these pages, I'll revisit a topic I've
touched upon many times since the mid-1980s. It's a topic of increasing
importance, I believe.

Until recent times, the West has been spoiled by the loyalty of
immigrants, even from hostile regions or cultures. During the First
World War, with negligible exceptions, immigrants from enemy countries
as well as their children remained loyal to Canada and the U.S.
throughout the hostilities. During the Second World War, although we
treated German, Italian or Japanese immigrants and their descendants
shabbily, as a rule they responded with unfailing patriotism. For every
Tokyo Rose (the American GI's nickname for Ikuko Toguri, a
Japanese-American woman, born in Los Angeles, who broadcast Japanese
propaganda during the war) there were thousands of Japanese-American
soldiers who gave their lives to fight fascism.

The pattern continued during the Cold War, when former nationals of
hostile communist countries often found refuge in North America. These
newcomers of various ethnicity and religion, from Eastern Europe to
Vietnam, were as supportive of the values and interests of their
adopted countries as native-born citizens of Western descent. Few
Americans opposed the anti-American antics of Fidel Castro more
resolutely than Florida's ex-Cuban community.

This started changing. In the last 30 years, a new type of immigrant
emerged: the immigrant of dubious loyalty. Then, even more alarmingly,
came a third phenomenon: the disloyal native-born, sometimes of
immigrant ancestry, sometimes of Islamic conversion.

The new immigrant seemed ready to share the West's wealth but not its
values. In many ways, he resembled an invader more than a settler or a
refugee. Instead of making efforts to assimilate, the invader demanded
changes in the host country's culture. He called on society to
accommodate his linguistic or religious requirements. Some were
innocuous: In 1985, a Sikh CNR railway worker refused to exchange his
turban for a regulation hard hat. In 1991, less innocuously, a newly
appointed Toronto police board commissioner of Asian extraction
declined to take the traditional oath to the Queen.

The host societies' usual response was accommodation. Turbans were
substituted for hard hats; the language of the police oath was changed.
Recently, ceremonial daggers were allowed in schools. But accommodation
only escalated demands. Requests for cultural exemption were soon
followed by openly voiced sentiments of disloyalty. By the late 1990s,
a Muslim group in Britain saw fit to express the view that no British
Muslim has any obligation to British law when it conflicts with the law
of Allah.

Disturbing as such talk was, it wasn't unlawful. Dissent was within our
democratic tradition. Unfortunately, the new dissenters weren't
democrats. Their "dissent" culminated in threats, fatwas,
assassinations and finally massacres in American and European cities.
How did this come about? Three reasons seem to stand out.

One, we retreated from the principle that immigration should serve the
interests of the host country first. We forgot that when groups of
distant cultural and political traditions arrive in significant
numbers, they may establish their own communities not merely as
colourful expressions of ethnic diversity -- festivals or restaurants
-- but as separate cultural-political entities.

Next, we tried to turn this liability into an asset by promoting
multiculturalism. We stopped ascribing any value to integration, and
began flirting with the notion that host countries aren't legitimate
entities with their own cultures, only political frameworks for various
co-existing cultures.

Finally, in fundamentalist Islam, we've come up against a culture for
which the very concept of rendering to Caesar what is Caesar's and to
God what is God's is alien. Puritanical Islam considers that everything
belongs to God (or rather, some mullah's idea of God). This concept
doesn't envisage one's citizenship commanding a higher loyalty than
one's faith.

It's not a matter of where immigrants come from, but where they're
going. Refugees from the East are no threat; colonizers are. That's
where current immigration trends and multiculturalism become a volatile
mix. Extending our values to others is one thing, but modifying our
values to suit the values of others is a vastly different proposition.

By now, multiculturalism has made it difficult to safeguard our ideals
against a new type of immigrant whose goal is not to fit in, but to
carve out a niche for his own tribe, language, customs or religion in
what we're no longer supposed to view as a country but something
between Grand Central Station and an empty space. When Canada is no
longer regarded as a culture, with its own traditions and narratives,
but a clean slate for anyone to write on what he will, immigrants of
the new school will be ready with their own texts, including some that
aren't very pleasant. The sound you hear (as I wrote in 2002) is the
sharpening of their chisels.



(citeret efter canadafirst.net)




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