Many benefits of immigration

Dear editor: Immigration was as politically potent in the early 20th century, as it is in the early 21st century.

Long before Donald Trump’s election, there was a regular trickle across our borders. By 2013, it was 3,000 and by 2016 it spiked to 7,000. Since Trump was elected, Canadian officials say it averages 20 a day; this is not a tsunami, Canada takes more migrants applying for legal refugee status at our legal border crossings and airports than we have taken illegal asylum seekers.

The 1957 UN convention on refugees set up a universal regime for people fleeing oppression, disaster and conflict. This is the only legal mechanism that gives people general rights to seek their fortune abroad. To which all UN member nations agree to uphold.

Canada has a relatively small population compared to our geographic size. Our birth rate is not high enough to adequately replace aging Canadians with younger ones. We need immigrants to prosper and whether multiculturalism works is important to us.

Efforts to tweak our multiculturalism to fit ever new issues of accommodation, sometimes move too fast for some Canadians. Much of multiculturalism’s success requires a delicate mix in equal parts of tolerance, acceptance and time.

My immigrant grandmother came from war-torn Macedonia at the end of the First World War and lived a full and happy life for 48 years in her adopted country until her death; she knew maybe a hundred English phrases.

The true benefits from immigration are multi-generational. Though, finding the sweet spot of tolerance and acceptance is difficult. My grandmother experienced periodic outbursts of discrimination in pre and post Second World War Toronto. On streetcar trips to market; strangers would tell her, “go back to your own country;” but, my Baba had a world-weary stoicism. Get use to it, she would remind us, ugliness happens everywhere.

Angus Reid says 89 per cent of Canadians put the Charter of Rights and Freedom as Canada’s most cherished Canadian ideal. Both new and old-stock Canadians rally behind Canada’s version of individual liberty and equality. This gives Canada a strong reliable cohesiveness as we shift into a more multi-hued social mix. Demographic studies predict by 2030 non-white ethnic groups in Canada will triple in size.

Nonetheless, no matter our social mix, luck is with us; our strong willingness to choose to co-operate under the Charter of Rights will help define Canadian multiculturalism going forward. Jon Peter Christoff

West Kelowna