Canadian citizenship tests successful approach to Canadian citizenship test is being threatened by current trends in immigration policy
By Michael Adams, Writer and Founder of the Environics Institute, and Ratna Omidvar, President, Maytree
(Originally published in The Mark)
Last
weekend, German Chancellor Angela Merkel summed up her country’s
failure to integrate a large number of Turkish “guest workers” and their
children with a stark statement: she announced that multiculturalism in
Germany had “failed utterly.”
It would be understandable if this remark agitated
Canadian citizenship test.
Canadian society, arguably more than any other, has adopted
“multiculturalism” not just as a policy framework but as a cornerstone
of our national identity. When
Canadian citizenship test
are asked to state, in their own words, sources of their pride in
Canada, multiculturalism comes in fourth – tied with health care and in
line behind our democracy, our quality of life, and a
caring/humanitarian outlook.
Does the fact that Germany’s Turkish
guest workers (and even their German-born children) are isolated and
frustrated hold lessons for Canada? It certainly does. The crux of
Germany’s current challenge, however, is not multiculturalism. It’s
Canadian citizenship test.
Germany’s
Turkish guest workers had no path to citizenship and were thus excluded
from many important aspects of German life, from educational
opportunities to entrepreneurship (not to mention political rights).
They lived in ethnic ghettos, and their children, even those born in
Germany, were also denied citizenship. (Germany has changed its
citizenship policies in recent years, but Merkel’s speech addressed the
social conditions that have resulted from the policies of the foregoing
decades.)
In contrast,
Canadian citizenship test has encouraged its newcomers to acquire
Canadian citizenship test
after three years of permanent residence, and any child born in the
country is automatically granted citizenship. Approximately 84 per cent
of all eligible immigrants to Canada have attained
Canadian citizenship test.
These high rates of
Canadian citizenship test
acquisition have enabled immigrants’ political participation. It is not
a mere coincidence that Canada has proportionally more foreign-born
legislators than any other society and that Calgary recently became the
first large
Canadian citizenship test to elect a foreign-born, visible-minority,mayor. Broad
Canadian citizenship test
uptake has ensured that immigrants have equal access to public life and
social services, and it has produced an atmosphere of formal equality
that is far from universal among countries with substantial immigrant
populations.
But
Canadian citizenship test’s
approach to citizenship, while broadly successful to date, remains a
work in progress and is being threatened by current trends in
immigration policy. In 2009, temporary workers living in Canada
outnumbered permanent residents arriving in the country. Many of these
temporary workers will have access to permanent residency, but a
significant and growing proportion will not.
The assumption of the
temporary foreign worker program is that the workers who arrive under
its auspices will leave when Canadians no longer need their labour. The
reality in Germany and other European countries tells us that these
people do not simply go home for
Canadian citizenship test.
(The Swiss playwright Max Frisch sums up the complications of shifting
labour across a map: “We called for workers, and human beings came.”)
Many remain in their new country and become part of an unrecognized,
undocumented, and vulnerable underclass.
Over time,
Canadian citizenship test’s
temporary foreign worker program – and especially a pilot program that
focuses on drawing low-skilled temporary workers into the country – is
creating an ever larger group of people who do not have access to
permanent residence and who may end up living within our borders as
undocumented workers. Even those who do have access to permanent
residence will have to wait longer than previous cohorts to gain
Canadian citizenship test,
since their years spent in Canada as temporary workers or students will
not count toward residency requirements. The delay – and especially the
denial – of
Canadian citizenship test acquisition are worrisome trends because seeking
Canadian citizenship test is both a sign of integration and an enabler of engagement, contribution, and participation.
At the very least,
Canadian citizenship test needs to make sure that no one living in this country ends up in permanent
Canadian citizenship test
limbo – especially not the kind of intergenerational limbo that the
children of guest workers in Germany have experienced. To let this
happen would be to replicate Germany’s failures at precisely the moment
some German leaders are resolving to replicate
Canadian citizenship test’s successes by adopting a real policy of integrative multiculturalism (by whatever name).
But
we need to do more than merely avoid the obvious problems of
guest-worker marginalization: we need to talk frankly about the nature
of
Canadian citizenship test in a world increasingly defined by mobility and migration.
Some
Canadian citizenship test
were dismayed when, in the summer of 2006, thousands of Lebanese
Canadians who had been living in Lebanon or visiting for extended
periods were evacuated at
Canadian citizenship test
expense amid Israeli bombing in the region. If these people were
Canadian, why were they living abroad? Were they “Canadians of
convenience” as some commentators alleged, or can good Canadians spend
time outside
Canadian citizenship test
– as thousands of “snowbirds” do each winter in Florida and Arizona? Is
citizenship about taxes for services? Voting? Residence? Military
service? Speaking French or English (or French and English)? Is
citizenship a passport or is it a sensibility – a feeling of belonging
and a willingness to contribute?
A robust national conversation about the nature of
Canadian citizenship test and how people can act as good citizens is overdue. This conversation has important implications for newcomers and the
Canadian citizenship test alike.
We believe
Canadian citizenship test
should be talking seriously about what is working and not working when
it comes to the integration of immigrants and their children. But we
must work hard to avoid the trap of attacking or defending a nebulous
notion of “multiculturalism.”
Canadian citizenship test multiculturalism
is not a single, static practice that we can declare to have succeeded
or failed. It has been evolving since it was adopted from “celebrating
differences” to successful integration and will continue to evolve. Part
of helping it evolve toward greater
Canadian citizenship test success and effectiveness is to talk openly about how
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live, work, and govern themselves and how our policies and institutions
can promote full participation in this society, which has already cast
its lot with diversity and immigration. A thoughtful conversation about
Canadian citizenship test is a great place to start.
Michael
Adams of Environics Research Group and Ratna Omidvar of the Maytree
Foundation are co-partners along with the CBC and the Institute for Canadian citizenship test on a new research and dialogue project on the meaning of citizenship in the 21st Century.
