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Immigration lawyer Ravi Jain, who is a first generation immigrant of Indian background, was on Steve Paikin's panel on dual citizenship: "Dual Citizenship, Dual Loyalties?". He was behaving in a manner typical of immigrants. He has an automatic, knee-jerk, expectation that the whole world (or more precisely, the non-Western world) is entitled to immigrate to U.S. and Canada, and once there, to obtain an uncontested guarantee of citizenship. I don't know why immigrants such as Jain (that is 99.9% of immigrants) never question the logic of their argument. Still, Jain is an immigration lawyer, so part of the answer lies in his professional background. He has to accept and support the concept of immigration to win his clients' cases. And if I were a little more cynical, I would have to say that it is a lucrative business being an immigration lawyer.
But this arrogant sense of entitlement goes deeper than career opportunism. I've thought long and hard about it, and I think that non-Westerners come to Canada or the U.S. (and to European countries as well) with a "they owe us" dig. Of course, this hails back to all the perceived insults and oppressions of the colonial period, and the American influence around the world since then.
The contradiction is that Jain's India is one of the more prosperous countries in the world, and I would say that it is thanks to the institutions the British left behind, and the economic benefits Indians reap from American businesses.
And the fact that many of these immigrants are opting for dual citizenship shows that their countries are no longer the dismal, economically non-viable back waters which they presumably left never to return to again.
The phenomenon of dual citizenship has been brewing for the past twenty years or so, with about 150 countries (including Canada and the U.S.) now accepting such a status compared to only a handful in the early 1990s.
I would like to say that claiming dual citizenship is a good thing. After all, if more Indians return to India, they will find much to attract them there, including living happy Indian lives with their relatives, their traditions, their cultures and the many beautiful things that are part of their Indianness. And then they will stay in India.
But what the modern non-Western immigrant does is keep all his options open. For Indians, it would be to live and enjoy their Indian life, but keep the other foot firmly planted in Canada, including encouraging (coercing) more, ever-increasing Indian immigration to Canada. And going through impossible hoops to change Canada into their version of a Nordic India (if ever possible).
The objectives of non-Westerners like Jain is not Canadian nation building, but the acquisition of the rights and privileges of living in a prosperous nation and to glean as much as they can from it. Such “Canadians” will never publicly admit this, but their hearts and minds, all the way down to their second and third generation offspring, are back in their ancestral lands. The “We Love Canada” mantra of many non-Western Canadians is easily dismantled when asked what their affiliations to their non-Western lands are, and more succinctly, if they have, or agree with dual citizenship.
So, this is all a tidy(!) quagmire the thoughtless wielders of our immigration policies have come up with. A set-up for people like Jain, whose loyalties, despite his family living in Canada for multiple generations, will always be as an Indian first (a non-Westerner), and when push comes to shove, a Canadian next. When pressed, “Why Canadian” his reply will eventually reveal that all he wants is the gains, and let’s face it, it is mostly economic gains, he will get from Canada. In the mean time, he will be busy working under the radar to make sure that this prosperous Canada will continue to be a temporary haven (or a displaced haven) for people like him, and for thousands more whose entrance to Canada he will facilitate.
This is the stark reality of non-Western “Canadians”. Don’t listen to what they say, look at what they do. Or, if you’re Steve Paikin, bring them on TVO and ask them pertinent questions to reveal the truth behind their layers of lies.
Below is the full hour panel on dual citizenship with panelists:
- Martin Collacott, senior fellow at the Fraser Institute.
- Rudyard Griffiths, co-founder of the Dominion Institute
- Ravi Jain, partner with Green and Spiegel
- Audrey Macklin, associate professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto
- Michele Wucker, executive director of the World Policy Institute
