Immigration not a threat

Editorial

Canada is changing, and Vancouver is at the forefront of a significant alteration in the racial makeup of this country's population.

The Vancouver Sun's front-page headline Tuesday declared: "Forty-six per cent of Lower Mainland adults born outside Canada," the number reflecting newly released Census figures.

Few people who are familiar with Vancouver and its region would be surprised by these statistics. The number reflects a trend that has been evident for several decades now. For local Jews – who represent just over one per cent of the population of Greater Vancouver – the report raises interesting realities and presents a few concerns, as well as opportunities.

Seventeen per cent of the Vancouver area's immigrants arrived in the past 13 years, said the report, while the vast majority arrived before 1991. The largest single proportion of immigrants living in British Columbia came from Britain (about 21 per cent) while 10 per cent cited French origin, 19 per cent "European" and 13 per cent cited "non-European" origin, the largest groups among these being from East Asia or India.

It is an old Canadian dichotomy that newcomers are encouraged to achieve the seemingly incongruous balance of "fitting in" while contributing aspects of their heritage to the larger Canadian mosaic. Critics of large-scale immigration, including some members of Parliament, argue that Canadian values are challenged by the influx of newcomers from what are sometimes dubbed "non-traditional sources" of immigration. Defenders too often suggest that even posing such a suggestion is tantamount to racism.

The fact is that immigration often does challenge the status quo. When Jews first came to this country in large numbers – at the end of the 19th century, the beginning of the 20th century and again after the Second World War – the substantial migration, settling mostly in urban centres, challenged the assumptions of Canada as a primarily Christian country.

When sources of immigration in the 1960s and '70s shifted from Europe to, increasingly, Asian and other non-European countries, a new discussion emerged in Canada, which led to a further change in the way Canadians view themselves. We had, over the course of the period after Confederation, come to view ourselves as a country founded by two national peoples, the English and the French. By the 1960s, we were reconsidering Canada as a "multicultural" mosaic, an ideal that was particularly welcomed by many Jews, who had been subtly (or not-so-subtly) excluded from the two-founding-nations view.

Though the past decade has seen a spike in the number of Jewish immigrants to Canada, primarily from the former Soviet Union, the bulk of new immigrants are, needless to say, not Jewish.

The challenge this presents for Jewish Canadians is not so much the possibility that these immigrants come from places where hatred of Jews is endemic, but the fact that many immigrants come from places where Judaism is virtually unheard of.

The Jewish experience, including the Holocaust, is widely understood by Europeans and North Americans. With few exceptions, the Jewish experience is barely on the radar screen of many people who were educated in China, India or many other countries in the world that supply increasing numbers of immigrants to Canada.

What should Jews do? Just as previous generations of Jewish immigrants sensitized unfamiliar Canadians with the nature of Jewish culture and sensibilities, including the Holocaust, we have an emerging challenge of liaising with the newcomers to Canada to share experiences and expand understanding.

Ironically, a parallel, though officially unrelated, report also released this week indicated that one in three visible minorities in Canada has suffered forms of discrimination, most of these in the workplace. Though institutionalized anti-Semitism has been almost eradicated in Canada, the Jewish community has been a leader in this country in fighting the emergence or even the threat of prejudice or bigotry. Perhaps the place where we can best meet new immigrants is in the context of working together against hatred and misunderstanding.

New Canadians have much to offer this country. The established Jewish community has much to offer new Canadians. Changing immigration patterns need not be viewed as a threat, but rather as an opportunity to share the lessons of different life experiences.

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