I welcome immigrants, as my family was welcomed 60 years ago
I am an immigrant. Not that I had much choice in the matter; I was 10 years old when, 60 years ago this year, our family moved from The Netherlands to Canada. Nobody asked me if I was on board with that decision, but what child would turn down a chance for a new adventure?
It was a family decision. My sister and two brothers, all of working age, agreed that the family would stick together for two years and pool their resources to get the family established.
It was a sacrifice for my parents, that I know. My father had a good job in The Netherlands as a senior executive with a national grocery chain, which provided a decent income, and a company car. Okay, it was a Volkswagen bug, but it was a car! In a country where transportation commonly was by bicycle and train, that was something.
When we arrived at our first home in Canada, in Kitchener Ontario, my father and brothers found work in a furniture factory, sanding furniture. Not at all glamorous, and very hard work. But it was a job. My sister worked as a nurse in a sanitarium. I went to school, and although I was supposed to be in grade 5, I was placed in grade 2 because I knew no English. But that didn’t take long… kids learn fast and by next September I was in grade 6.
My mother? She was not at all thrilled at the prospect of uprooting, leaving family behind, and going to a strange land. That reticence lasted a good 20 years, until the first time my parents went back to the Netherlands for a visit. There she discovered how good life was in Canada by comparison: the housing, the relative prosperity, the open spaces.
Our family has done well by Canada and, I like to think, Canada has done well by us. None of us have ever been afraid of work, none of us have shirked our responsibility to give back, none of us, for what it’s worth, have been shy about making money and spending it, helping to keep the wheels of the economy moving.
What’s the point of it all, you ask? This: I am angered and extremely disappointed at the xenophobia, the anti-immigration, anti-refugee rhetoric I hear in Canada, south of the border, and in Europe. No, it’s not just Trump and Company in the US. It’s also Leitch and O’Leary catering to the worst instincts in the Conservative party, and it’s Trudeau and the Liberals not having the guts to do the right thing in larger measure than they have to date.
People who uproot their lives by choice to find a better place are not trouble-makers by and large. Nobody willingly gives up what they have, even if it isn’t much, to start over somewhere else without a strong determination to make it in a new world.
Nobody leaves a home behind, forced out by war and disasters, without a real sense of fear of the unknown and total uncertainty about their future.
No matter how bad things are, the places and people we know and the homes we have often provide a greater sense of security than a future that is a complete unknown.
Whether they land on our doorstep willingly or out of desperation, we need to give them every chance to find a home here, and contribute to our nation.
Will there be a few bad apples in the bunch? Yes, that is almost certain. Will some of them take jobs from Canadians who may not be all that interested in working to start with? Definitely, and deservedly so.
Should that be reason to shut our doors, our borders, and our minds to the opportunity to be a welcoming nation, as it was to my family? I say, never.
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