She never fails to remind me that immigrants need our compassion, generosity and support, because it is a hard road to go down, as she can attest to.
Were times tough on her and my dad?
Although my mother spoke six languages (including Latin), my father four, neither had any French or English, and so the first few months were particularly difficult, until they learned both French and English.
Almost penniless when they arrived, they shared a seedy apartment with my aunt and uncle (also immigrants) and when winter rolled around, the two pregnant women had but one pair of winter boots between them, so alternated going out.
The small apartment was dingy and poorly maintained. My mother did the washing at a neighbour's house in return for baby-sitting, a washing machine, a luxury completely out of reach. Meals were sparse and clothing donated. The only entertainment, card games with other greenhorns. My mother told me the story of looking in on my older brother sleeping in the hand-me-down crib, right beside a rat.
Yep....
Of course my father took whatever work he could get, two jobs that paid less than a decent one, with the road to middle class, decades in the making.
Their's is the story of that particular immigrant generation, perhaps an experience similar to your parents or grandparents, be they Italian, Jewish, Greek, Portuguese or East European. In those days, if you didn't work, you didn't eat.
I imagine it's a bit easier today to be an immigrant but still, every time the television airs a news story of another Montreal slum lord and the condition of his apartment building, full of vermin, bedbugs, mould and cockroaches, there is almost always a poor immigrant family staring out from behind the door.
These living conditions shouldn't be tolerated in our society, but for many immigrants, there aren't any alternatives, nobody is putting them up at the Ritz.
I imagine it's still not easy to be an immigrant, especially now with all the wealth around us, unattainable to the newly arrived.
So how should we treat these newcomers?
With respect, compassion, generosity and inclusiveness, or should we do as the PQ instructs us to do....bash them mercilessly.
Coming to a new country is hard, but infinitely harder, when you are treated as a second class citizen and that dear readers, is exactly what the PQ wants us to do, bash the immigrants into submission, reminding them that what and who they are, is unacceptable, constantly hectoring them that their upbringing, their customs, their religion and orthodoxy is unwelcome in Quebec and that they must make themselves over, forgetting the old axiom that You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
There is something perverse about a society that invites foreigners to fill the void of a falling birth rate and then complains that these newly arrived immigrants are too 'foreign.'
Let us make no mistake about it, immigrants are doing us a favour, otherwise we would never allow them in, Quebecers generally loathe immigrants and consider them little more than a necessary evil.
Quebec takes in 50,000 immigrants a year because the province is desperate to fill the void of a falling birthrate.
Without immigration Quebec's population would fall by about 25% each generation. At the present pace of re-productivity, without immigration, Quebec's population would fall from 8 million to 4.5 million people in just fifty years and that doesn't even consider the negative inter-provincial outflow. (the difference between Canadians moving into Quebec, versus Quebecers moving to the ROC.)
Those are some pretty stark numbers, representing a harsh reality.
So it remains a choice between asking Quebec families to have about 1/2 a child more per family or inviting foreigners to make up the difference.
It remains a mystery why no Quebec politician, language militant or separatist, dares bring up the subject.
Probably, because Quebecers would scoff at the idea of making any real effort or sacrifice to save their own culture or language, it's much easier to put the onus on the backs of Anglos, Ethnics and immigrants.
How is it that not even the most militant and stringent separatists like Mario Bealieu or Jean-Paul Perreault, ever bring up the subject of re-productively and the very real solution that would preclude the loathsome immigrants?
It is probably because anyone asking Quebecers to have more children will be laughed out of the room. Quebecers want their culture preserved, but not at any personal sacrifice, that is the simple and irrefutable truth.
And so it is much easier to bring in foreigners and bash them mercilessly for not acting like locals, with the smug undertone that Quebec is doing them a big favour by allowing them to settle among us.
Most immigrants come to this country for the sake of their children and toil for decades in poverty to give their children the possibility of a better life.
Those that are unemployed of their own volition are a testament to the failure of the selection process and again who is really to blame? The politic of language weighs heavy, with those doing the choosing, making the ability to speak French more important than anything else.
If you went into a bakery and purchased a frosted cake that turned out to taste pretty awful, would you go back and buy the exact same cake week after week, year after year, all the while bitching to the clerk that the cakes the bakery sells are crappy?
At a certain point, is it the bakery's fault for your bad experience, or your own idiotic decision to return over and over again, expecting a different cake?
Do you really think that if you add some whipped cream or remove the crappy frosting, the cake will be acceptable?
There is an obvious problem here, and if you can't see it, welcome to the politics of Quebec immigration.
Quebec has a love/hate relationship with its immigrants, they love to hate them and the real definition of Quebec-bashing is the treatment of immigrants by Quebec society.
The banning of the Hijab is just the latest element in immigrant-bashing, where in Quebec those who look different, wear different clothes or speak with an accent are systematically discriminated against in the workforce at a level unparalleled in the ROC.
Quebec suffers from the worst assimilation record in Canada vis-a-vis immigrant employment and while unemployment rates for immigrants and native-born is just about the equal across Canada, in Quebec, immigrants suffer double the unemployment rate of native-born Quebecers.
The discrimination exists across the board and even in government.
The perverse result is that immigrants are more accepted in the English milieu and so seek employment in Montreal where Anglo employers are more tolerant and where there is less workplace discrimination.
It's ironic that French language militants scream blue murder that the immigrants are working in English, at too high a proportion.
Again who is to blame... must be those nasty English for being so welcoming and yes, horrors of horrors... so accommodating.
This is the reality of Quebec immigration, the bubbling latent racism that has finally surfaced courtesy of the PQ who are encouraging Quebecers to embrace the Dark Side of racism, à la Darth Vader.
Every time I hear a francophone militant or journalist claim that Quebec is a welcoming and tolerant society, I don't know whether to laugh or cry, the notion delusional at best and dangerous at the worst.
I don't like to cherry pick, but a recent story on TVA underscores the reality of attitudes, especially among older Quebecers, who never really had much contact with the outside world or foreigners for that matter. The story details rampant racism in the CHSLDs, state run senior's homes, where most of the attendants are immigrants and where the residents, who are fossils, heap abuse upon their caregivers for being what they are.
"It hurts, that's for sure," said a forty year employee. A patient even hit and scratched me. "I am told: Don't touch me, I don't want to get dirty," told another clerk, who said that he often had to deal with racist behaviour. Link{fr}And racism permeates Quebec's public service, where immigrants and minorities are badly under-represented, with defenders of the system claiming sanctimoniously that it is 95% white and francophone, because 'les autres' don't have the language skills.
Read another story : Racism rocks PSAC
Here's another story of a city employee suing over racism Link{fr}
A couple of years ago, I detailed the story of an Arab who submitted his C/V complete with his Arabic name for a job with a para-government agency and who was refused an interview. When he re-submitted the exact same application using a francophone name, he was immediately contacted.
Of course, he didn't get the job when they got a look at his face in person.
He successfully sued over racism and received a lump sum payment, but no apology.
A judge recently handed down a judgment in favour of a City of Montreal employee who was systematically passed over for promotion because he was Black. Link{fr}
Louise Harel, the long time Vision Montreal leader (who lost her seat in the last election) complained in a policy statement that the City of Montreal was consistently racist in relation to its hiring and promotion policies. Link{fr}
What is the point I trying to make?
...This is the government, which is supposed to set a good example!
Hundreds, if not thousands of professional immigrants are held back by provincial licensing boards who consistently bar them from entering their fields, choosing to call into question their qualifications, offering few programs to get them up to snuff and accredited.
And so immigrant doctors are forced to drive cabs and engineers must content themselves with menial labour.
Welcome to Quebec, we are open to immigrants.....but.
I cannot imagine what Muslim women who wear the veil out of conviction, must be feeling now.
Betrayal, shame, anger, fear, humiliation?... I imagine some degree of it all.
Never mind the Jews and the kippah, they are a highly successful, resourceful and mature community. They will cope well, most of the children will leave the province, not because they wear the kippah, but because they are not welcome and have the skills to leave.
This after a 250 year history of contribution and good citizenship.
The Jewish community understands all too well that they are being thrown under the bus, collateral damage in Quebec's attempt to rein in what it considers Muslim extremism and that the banning of the Kippah, a necessary trade-off if the Hijab ban is to appear even-handed.
No matter, young Jews will this leave this province, taking away their McGill and Concordia degrees, paid for by Quebec taxpayers, to contribute as successful tax-paying adults in Toronto, Vancouver, New York, Calgary and Los Angeles.
And those communities will be better for it.
But the Muslim immigrants don't have as many options because quite frankly, they are generally on the poor side of the economic scale and paradoxically those that the PQ is targeting the most, are the Maghrebiens from North Africa who only speak French.
These women have few options and leaving to parts unknown, an impossibility without English.
The Charter of Hate is a poison that will infect our entire society and as the government signals that the Hijad is unacceptable, common citizens will take up jihad to sanitize our society, even where the law doesn't apply. It is inevitable, something I told you would happen many months ago.
It doesn't take a genius to understand that the law will lead to confrontation and conflict and for Drainville and company to denounce incidents of immigrant-bashing, a hollow and meaningless gesture because they absolutely knew the consequences of enacting hate legislation.
To Muslim women, even those without a Hijab, I suggest carrying around a camera or smart phone and become familiar with how to take videos.
When next accosted by a 65 year-old pur-laine idiot with purple hair and a foul mouth, just press record. These people are cowards and most will run away but the idiots who continue their nasty civics lesson, a video record will serve to show the world how far our society has degenerated.
To those who are passionate about removing these religious symbols in public, I ask the simple question;
What will all this hullabaloo accomplish?
Will the Muslim women who remove their Hijabs magically transform into different people, poutine and maple syrup loving separatists? Is that the fantasy?
Or are these immigrants more likely to become embittered and angry.
How will it end...badly.
Quebecers remain naïvely deluded that there will be no consequences over a religious ban, in spite of the fact that they've already had their first taste of push back, a slap in the face by the international soccer community who told the provincial soccer association that if they wished to ban head wear on the pitch, they could play with themselves (and yes, the pun was intended.)
It is the same attitude that tells us that Bill 101 never affected Quebec's prosperity, another delusion impossible to dispel.
I hope the Charter of Hate is passed in the most violent form, it will hasten the judgment day and like an addict, nothing can get better until we hit rock bottom.
