George Jonas: Multiculturalism encourages a new type of immigrant who shares our wealth but not our values
National Post
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It was in the past 40 years that the immigrant of dubious loyalty emerged, followed by 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 an asylum-seeker. 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. In 1985, a Sikh CNR railway worker refused to exchange his turban for a regulation hard hat. This was innocuous enough, but 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. Even ceremonial daggers were allowed in some 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 stand out.
One, we retreated from the principle that immigration should serve the interests of the host country first. We embraced the idea of non-traditional immigration.
We forgot that when groups of distant cultural and political traditions arrive in significant numbers, they may establish their own communities, not as 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 non-traditional immigration 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 something else.
By now multiculturalism has made it difficult to safeguard our traditions and 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 12 years ago) is the sharpening of their chisels. Increasing fees for citizenship applications from $100 to $300, as Bill C-24 proposes, is so small a step that it’s not worth wondering whether or not it’s in the right direction.
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