Denying birthright citizenship is xenophobia pure and simple

If you’re born in Canada, you’re Canadian.

It doesn’t matter who your parents are, or when and how they came to Canada. If you are born here, we claim you as our own.

It was the fundamental compact we made with the immigrant settlers who left their homelands behind to take a risk on a new life in a new land.

Yes, we told them, it may be tough to start over again in a different country. But your children will be Canadians, no matter what, equal to all other Canadians.

For me, that commitment to birthright citizenship has always been a point of patriotic pride. Citizenship by birth is part of our Canadian identity, something that sets us apart from many other countries that simply don’t work that way.

Of course, Canada didn’t make up that rule. It’s a British legacy, a legacy of Empire. Anyone born in the British Empire was a British subject — whether they wanted to be or not. The British, in turn, borrowed it from the Roman Empire. It was the Roman emperor Caracalla who established jus soli, or right by soil, which made every free person born in the Roman Empire a Roman citizen — largely so he could tax them and add them to his armies.

But here, we put a more welcoming spin on jus soli.

We don’t define Canadian-ness based on ethnicity or language or blood. If you’re Canadian-born, you belong.

So what are we to make of the new policy, adopted by the Conservative Party of Canada, to eliminate jus soli citizenship?

This past weekend, delegates at the Conservative convention in Halifax endorsed a motion to grant citizenship only to babies who have at least one parent who is either a citizen or a permanent resident of Canada.

Ostensibly, this policy is designed to combat the practice of “birth tourism” — a small but growing trend in the Vancouver area, particularly in suburban Richmond.

According to the B.C. government, as of 2016, there were approximately 26 “baby houses” in the region: upscale bed and breakfasts where pregnant women, primarily from China, come to await their births.

The South China Morning Post reported in June that non-resident mothers were responsible for 19.9 per cent of all births at Richmond Hospital in 2017-2018. That was up from 17.2 per cent, or 384 out of all 2,228 births, in 2016-2017.

Taken in isolation, the idea that almost 20 per cent of all babies born in Richmond are the children of “maternity tourists” is shocking. But it’s a very local phenomenon. Only two per cent of all births in British Columbia are to non-resident mothers.

The idea of rich women coming here to exploit our citizenship compact is distasteful. It feels as though we’re debasing the value of citizenship when wealthy parents can effectively buy their babies Canadian passports.

But we’re talking about just a few hundred births a year. And who knows? Those tiny little citizens may return to Canada one day, as scholars or investors or entrepreneurs, and become real assets to the country of their birth.

Now, though, in an effort to close this infant loophole, the Conservative policy could disenfranchise thousands of others.

What about babies born to parents who have immigrated legally to Canada, but who are still awaiting their status as permanent residents? What about babies whose parents are waiting for refugee claims to be heard?

We’d run the risk of creating two-tiered citizenship, a system that could even leave some children stateless and in legal limbo.

Are we now willing to give up a fundamental precept of Canadian identity, all because a few foreign parents are gaming the system in B.C.?

If we’re sincerely worried about birth tourism in Richmond, B.C., I’m pretty sure we could find a way to address that specific local problem without surrendering one of Canada’s defining principles.

But let’s be honest. Birth tourism is just the moral panic du jour, a thin excuse for noxious nattering nativists to incite xenophobia. Canadian identity isn’t at risk from some alien baby invasion. If anything, Canadian values are at risk from those who would fearmonger to score cheap political points.

In a country that needs more young citizens, let’s not let those who would sow discord among us rob the next Canadian generation of its birthright.