Reader\'s Digest Canada - 05.2020

2016, the federal government stopped

allowing Haitians who had arrived

since 2004 the opportunity to apply for

permanent residence and to stay in

Canada on humanitarian grounds. So

when the U.S. confirmed in late 2017

that Haitians would indeed lose their

protected status there by 2019, it would

have been fair to say the Americans

were simply following Canada’s lead.

(Lawyers continue to fight the admin-

istration in court, and the deadline for

Haitians to stay in America has been

extended until January 2021.)

In November 2017, Canada sent

Black government officials to the U.S.

to discourage Black migrants from

Haiti and African nations from walking

across the Canadian border to seek

asylum. One of the envoys, Haitian-

born Member of Parliament Emman-

uel Dubourg, described the effort by

saying, “The main reason is to tell them

we have a robust immigration law and

that they should use the right channels

to come to Canada instead of crossing

in between the borders.”

This isn’t a new strategy. Early in the

20th century, the Canadian govern-

ment also sent officials to the U.S. to

discourage Black migrants from coming

to Canada. In 2017, it was Black officials

like Hussen and Dubourg who put a

friendly Black face on an old message:

Canada thinks it would be better for

vulnerable Black people not to come, or

at least not to come and expect to stay.

It has been more than a century

since Canada denied entry to hun-

dreds of Indians of Sikh, Muslim and

Hindu faiths, and also some Japanese

immigrants, who landed in Vancouver

in 1914 on a ship called the Komagata

Maru. Canadian officials cited the

continuous journey regulation, a 1908

rule that said immigrants to Canada

had to travel here without stopping

anywhere. The rule was specifically

designed to deter Indian immigrants,

as there were no ships that sailed

directly from India to Canada. Prime

Minister Justin Trudeau apologized in

May 2016 for the 1914 detention and

eventual expulsion of Komagata Maru

passengers, saying in part, “Regret-

tably, the passage of time means that

none are alive to hear our apology

today. Still, we offer it, fully and sin-

cerely, for our indifference to your

plight, for our failure to recognize all

THE GOVERNMENT THINKS IT WOULD BE

BETTER FOR VULNERABLE BLACK PEOPLE NOT

TO COME, OR AT LEAST NOT EXPECT TO STAY.

reader’s digest

102 may 2020