The Luck and Loss of Immigration

[karla_stephan]

I found that there is a weird relationship with luck when it comes to immigrating to the West. The ability to immigrate is considered a privilege nowadays, and that’s how I grew up with it. Interestingly, the ideas behind it change with different ethnic groups and the time. In the Ward reading, the East Indian immigrants, usually capable single sons, were seen as “making a sacrifice for the common good of his family.” Ward compares them to the Chinese before them, who had no “incentive to assimilate” and were there to work and send money back. It was a privilege to be able to immigrate, especially with the insane and harsh laws that closed the borders. As the quotas have increased over the years, the attitudes towards immigration from the places of origin have also changed. Something that was once a “sacrifice to leave” has become an act of selfishness and immense privilege and education to leave. Yet there is so much loss. It seems as though the hardest part might be the process of getting there, but the reality is that they are met with extreme cultural extension due to these legal discriminations once they arrive. To immigrate, one must have wealth, but how dehumanizing is it to go through so much to be called dirty, poor, and diseased once they arrive? What is peculiar is that the Chinese and Indian immigrants come from civilizations far older and more established than white settler Canada, which has far more hygienic and medical advancements. The entry monetary tax increased, and the emotional tax did as well. The ideas of racism rose with the rise of immigration. Some Canadian immigration legislation turns people away from the notion that it is too cold or too different for them and that things are just better staying where they came from. While it is true that Canada is cold as hell and that I would much rather prefer my sunny homeland, it is just so harmful to believe that some are more deserving of the opportunity for more economic and human rights that are presented to these immigrants. The notion of the “American Dream” has always been hard for me to grasp after experiencing how poorly immigrants were treated. How is it fair to create this propaganda of an idea of freedom and then do everything to take this freedom away?