Humanitarian Mask, White Supremacy Uncovered!
-
The point system, a system of ranking candidates of immigrants attempting to come into Canada based on categories such as age, education, knowledge in English and French, occupational skills, the personal assessment of the individual agent, as well as many other aspects. At the end of this ranking, the candidate would be given a numerical score, and those with a score of 50 or higher were admitted into the country. In my opinion, this system was discriminatory for many reasons, but most importantly because many of the categories checked off by the agent in regard to the immigrant, were skills that were often inaccessible to many people in the developing world, especially lower-income individuals. Knowledge of English or French, in many countries in the developing world depends on the income of a person. Usually, English and French are taught uniquely in international institutions. International schools/institutions are usually only available to those who are rich, making this aspect of the point system discriminatory to those who are lower income. The same thing goes with education. In the developing world, though many people may be educated, even at a higher education level, many times, foreign education, especially from countries in the developing world, is discounted in the West. I believe that agents can often discount the education level of immigrants coming from the developing world, and devalue their experience, possibly tainting their results and wrongfully deciding the fate of a candidate due to the point system. I also believe that in general, the category of “personal assessment made by immigration officer” is problematic, given the fact that everyone has underlying biases, and can easily make a decision based on some discriminatory belief they hold, either consciously or subconsciously.
The Canadian public’s opposition to Ugandan Asian immigrants continued the trend of Canadian white supremacy, though this time, without the cover-up of Canada’s story of being an accepting, polite and multicultural-loving society. I believe that prior to the Ugandan Asian immigration influx, Canadian society was very accepting of immigration due to the flourishing of the economy, and thus the benefit working Canadians would gain due to the influx of immigrants ready to work. At this time Canada was seen as a haven for multiculturalism, especially compared to its southern neighbour. Canadians, especially liberals, were able to milk on this and present themselves as good, accepting, humanitarian, multi-cultural-loving people. I believe that after the decline of the economy, and the expulsion of Ugandan Asians, and the great, clear humanitarian problem that this was, Canadians could no longer hide under their humanitarian cover story now they could no longer economically benefit from these people. The humanitarian mask was pulled off and what was revealed was white supremacy.
Oftentimes, many of the debates about the racial classification of Iranians, happened without them present. Maghbouleh recounts how many discussions of the racial categories of different immigrant groups claiming whiteness for naturalization used their proximity or lack thereof, to Iranians in order to win their case. In the case of Armenians, they claimed whiteness by molding historical events, presenting themselves as the white Christian victims of foreign Iranian invasion from the east in front of American courts, involving Iranian racial discussions in an American context, before any Iranians had even arrived on Turtle Island. Similarly, though contrastingly, Indians would claim Parsi ancestry, a group linked to Persians, thus claiming whiteness due to their proximity to Iranians.