Dead sparrows

In Dutch, there is a pair of similar expressions: "to make someone happy with a dead sparrow" and "to be happy with a dead sparrow." The first one translates approximately as "to get someone's hopes up," in the sense that you tell them that they're getting something cool and they get all excited and then it just turns out to have been nothing but a dead sparrow. The second one doesn't quite have an English equivalent, but it's the same idea without an antagonist, i.e. when someone gets all excited about something and everybody else who's watching kind of shakes their head because they can tell that the thing the person is excited about is really just a dead sparrow.

I've been trying to come up with instances where these expressions fit, mostly because it's hilarious to me to use directly-translated weird Dutch expressions (I mean, there's pretty much nothing funnier than a bunch of people overhearing someone saying something pedantic, pointing at the offending individual, and saying: "antfucker!!!"). And the best one I can come up with is U.S. Democrats. The Americans who thought Barack Obama was going to be their saviour in the darkness, see, they were "being happy with a dead sparrow," and the Democrats who promised them the moon, they were "making the country happy with a dead sparrow." Except the saddest part is that the dead sparrow isn't Obama himself and his administration, but the whole country, and the system they're stuck with, and the backwoods culture/thinking of far too many of their compatriots.

I mean, right now the U.S. has a Democratic president, and a Democratic Congress. But even so, the closest they can come to fixing their travesty of a health care system is a piece of legislation that seems tied together with bits of string and twigs. Even if they manage to pass it (by no means a sure thing, at this writing, but even if), what they will have is a piece of legislation that keeps the "insurance" system as it is, but expands it to about 15 million Americans. And it does this by forcing people to buy health insurance from currently-existing private insurance companies and compromising on things like abortion rights for people who buy that private insurance with their own money. Um, yay?

Even with a brilliant, charismatic Democratic president and a Congress that's as firmly behind him as any Congress is ever going to be behind a Democratic president, they've still got a country where a mild-mannered Canadian writer can be pulled over by border guards, injured by them in several different ways, and then arrested, tried, and found guilty, all for the crime of looking suspicious around jumpy people. They've still got a country in which even a minority Republican Congressional contingent holds up every piece of legislation that doesn't suit them with the threat of a filibuster. They've still got a country that has decided a corporation has equal rights with human beings--because for all practical purposes, it is a human being. They've still got to grow old in a country where health care is considered "insurance", as if human beings were vehicles, and administered by private companies that can take it away. They've still got a country where sex education programmes called "Abstinence Plus" get torpedoed because they're not "Abstinence Only." They've still got a country that holds prisoners without rights on foreign soil. And come on, if you can't see that that's a freaking dead sparrow, you've got blinders on the size of Texas.

When people here in Canada find out that I was originally American, a lot of them assume that I left the U.S. in the Bush years. I didn't--I left during the Clinton years. And yes, a lot of that had to do with the timing of my job search, but what got me wanting to leave in the first place was the bleakness that comes with having the Democrats in charge. At least when the Republicans are in charge, lefty Americans can delude themselves by thinking that everything would be okay if only the Democrats had the reins. But whenever the Democrats do grab the brass ring, the thinking American public is always eventually forced to admit that things can never really get any better there than a dead sparrow.

P.S. Before you guys get all "she's back! she's back!" in the comments, I have to tell you that still not really up to talking about Canadian politics. But I had to get this one off my chest, anyway.

A question for supporters of the Conservative immigration legislation

I know a thing or two about Canada's immigration system, having been through it myself. I know that there's a rigorous points system that awards more points to people trained in jobs the country currently needs, to experienced workers, to educated people, to younger people, and to people who have ability in one or both of Canada’s official languages. I also know that it's quite difficult to get enough points to qualify--I myself barely did, once upon a time.

Now, the Conservatives are proposing to change that system. The changes would give new powers to the Minister of Immigration, allowing that office to do three things:

a) accelerate applications
b) reject applicants who otherwise meet all immigration criteria
and
c) discard applications from specific countries.

The current Immigration Minister, Diane Finley, is claiming that these changes are necessary in order to "make it easier to get more people here faster." But the thing is, only the first provision--the one allowing the minister to accelerate applications--could actually result in more people coming to Canada, more quickly. The other two new provisions must therefore have different aims. Supporters, such as this commenter at the Globe and Mail site, are saying that these changes would give preference to "those with the skills we need right now." But this is the very thing the existing points system already does. It's the whole idea behind it.

So, to supporters of this proposed legislation, I ask: what is the purpose of provisions b and c above, i.e., granting the minister the ability to reject applicants who otherwise meet all immigration criteria and discard applications from specific countries? And how would the new system help Canada reach its goals better than the current, points-based one?

An alternative for would-be Nader voters

I've never voted for Ralph Nader, but I absolutely understand the mindset of those Americans who do. It's not because they believed that there was literally no difference beween Bush and Gore in 2000, or that there's literally no difference between McCain and either Clinton or Obama in 2008. It's because they recognize that there's a lot more political diversity out there than they're seeing represented in their available choices, and so they're opting to use their votes not to vote for president, but to say: "hey, we deserve a broader spectrum of choice than we're getting."

There are those who call these kinds of votes "protest votes," but really, that's too simplistic a description of the thought process behind them. What it's really about is how, when your Political Compass score is way down in the lower left quadrant, the differences between any of the multitudes of candidates in the upper right one just don't look that major to you. They certainly seem a lot less important than working toward a more diverse political spectrum that might actually stand a chance of someday encompassing your own views.

The problem, though, is that any hope of increasing that diversity is a vain one. The combination of direct voting for president and the first-past-the-post electoral system does an excellent job of decreasing the chances of any third-party emerging in the U.S. from "not very likely" to "no chance in hell." It just ain't gonna happen, ever. And there's the rub: if voting for Nader has no chance of changing anything, that means that the effect of voting for Nader is zero. In the short term, and in the long term as well. Anyone voting for Nader is essentially opting out.

If you're already opting out, then, why not really opt out? And no, I don't mean "don't vote," I mean "leave the U.S. behind in favour of a country that already runs political candiates who represent your views." The bureaucracy of such a move is maddening, but trust me, the relief at regularly having more choices than "right-wing" and "righter-wing" is worth any amount of paperwork. You've already reached the conclusion that you don't fit into the political and cultural mainstream of your country, so isn't emigration the logical next step? And for that matter, if what you're really interested in is sending a message, just imagine the message that would be sent by masses of lefty Americans stampeding across the border! It'd be a sight to behold.

Chosen

I came of age politically as a teenager in Germany, and a lot of my baseline political assumptions stem from that place and time. This means that I kind of inevitably spend a lot of time in this blog talking about how Canadian politics doesn't live up to some of the political-cultural ideals I embraced there. But there are also a lot of areas where the reverse is the case. And the biggest and most obvious one is something that matters a great deal to me: immigration.

While Germany has laudably liberalized its immigration laws in recent years out of a desire to attract more skilled professionals, citizenship is still based on the very outdated European "blood and soil" concept. In other words, if you came to Germany from somewhere else, then you just aren't gonna be viewed as German, no way, no how. The result? To the huge waves of immigrants who have come to the country since the postwar period, Germany may be a place of opportunity, but it isn't a second home. They can't vote, so they have no voice. Integration is difficult, leading to huge schisms between the immigrant population and the native one. Oh, and then there are the many handwringing journalists wallpapering the editorial pages with laments about the perpetual failure to raise the German birth rate--a problem that could be solved so easily simply by redefining what it means to be "German."

This is the context in which I read this wonderful speech from Canada's own John Ralston Saul, given back in the spring of 2005 on the occasion of the new Canadian embassy in Berlin. The whole thing is just terrific, but here's the part that the Germans really need to hear:

So how do you deal with high levels of immigration when what you are isn't written down, this sort of unspoken and unwritten agreements of a civilization? The solution Canadians seem to have decided upon is to create a very positive atmosphere around becoming Canadian, which then produces a desire to belong.

In other words, we look upon the idea of immigration as an invitation which carries with it the obligation. The invitation to come to Canada is an invitation to become a citizen; and we are extremely annoyed if people don't quickly become citizens. It's sort of an insult to us if they don't want to become citizens. They can become citizens after three years. Some do it after four years, most have done it within five years.

That sense that we want them to be part of our civilization is key to creating this atmosphere of belonging.

Obviously, as soon as an immigrant arrives, they have rights. But the trick is that as soon as they become citizens, they have responsibilities and obligations. If they know that the invitation to come to our country is going to involve obligations and responsibilities within three to five years, they're going to be very eager to seize them. They're going to speak out. They're going to join political parties. You may agree or disagree with some of what they'll say, and that's fine. The point is they're going to want to show that they belong and what they realize is that the invitation is conscious and intentional, not accidental or unconscious. They are chosen.

This rings remarkably true for me. I have a pretty inherent distrust of patriotism, and so I didn't really expect to feel more like I belonged in Canada after becoming a citizen. My decision to officially apply for citizenship was really more about gaining the right to vote than anything. But the process did change me, in subtle but profound ways. I'd always been engaged in Canadian life, but citizenship strengthened that engagement. I began saying 'we' when talking about Canada, without even thinking about it. And yes, I also began to feel a responsibility to this culture and society that I hadn't felt before--a responsibility to give something back to the country that had taken me on.

There's an awful lot we can learn from Germany and other European countries about things like political culture and sensible environment policies, but when it comes to immigration and 21st-century population issues, there's at least as much they can learn from us.

Dual citizenship: "loyalty," "convenience," or an acknowledgement of facts?

You may not have noticed if you're not an immigrant yourself, but the big national discussion about dual citizenship that has culminated with Stéphane Dion has actually been going on for over a year now. It began with Michaëlle Jean's appointment to Governor-General, continued with the evacuation of Lebanese Canadians from Lebanon over the summer, and raised its ugly head once again this fall when Stephen Harper's Tories floated the idea of doing away with it. In each of those discussions, people who are uncomfortable with dual citizenship have brought up two words that have puzzled and frustrated me: loyalty and convenience. But it wasn't until this week that it gelled for me why those sentiments feel like such a betrayal of Canadian values.

See, for me--and, I suspect, for many other immigrant Canadians--citizenship is neither a matter of loyalty nor a matter of convenience. My Canadian citizenship is an acknowledgement both of the steps I've taken to become a part of this culture and the way that culture has rubbed off on me and gotten under my skin. My American citizenship is an acknowledgement that because I was born and raised in the United States, the idealistic pragmatist you see before you today spent most of her formative years being influenced by that culture. And while it may be true that those citizenships come with certain rights and certain responsibilities, those rights and responsibilities are not what citizenship is. Citizenship is no more and no less than an acknowledgement of the fact that one is an X.

What makes a rejection of dual citizenship so offensive to me, then, is that it tells me that I can't be both X and Y--I have to choose. But this is not a simple matter, because the fact is, I am both. In every sense of the word, I am Canadian and American. Giving up my dual citizenship wouldn't change that; it would only force me to pretend it wasn't the case for the sake of appearances. And that forced pretense would go against everything Canada claims to stand for as a multicultural country.

For years, Canadians have been telling me, proudly, that while the U.S. is a "melting pot," Canada is a "cultural mosaic"--a patchwork of cultures that all work together to form a cohesive whole. But how on earth does that ideology stand up when the supposed "melting pot" thinks dual citizenships are just fine, and the supposed "cultural mosaic" is telling immigrants that they have to pretend they're nothing but Canadian or else be branded as disloyal? It doesn't--it collapses like a house of cards. And if this country is going to start telling people they have to choose between being an X and a Y in order to be truly Canadian, we're going to have to accept the consequences of that line of reasoning and be willing to change our policies and our ideologies to go along with it.

As for loyalty, well, that’s a far more complicated matter that--at least for me--has little to nothing to do with which country's or countries' passport(s) I hold. I am fully loyal to Canadian ideals--that's why I came here in the first place. I am thrilled to have an opportunity to help realize them more fully. But here's the rub: if those ideals changed--if Canada rejected the things that brought me here and became someplace I didn't want to live--I would want to leave Canada just as I left the United States. My loyalty isn't to the passports I hold, and it's not to the land mass encompassed by the political boundaries of the place I live, either. It's to the things this country--this place that I chose--says it wants to be. And quite frankly, this big national discussion about dual citizenship has been the first thing since I came here almost ten years ago that's shaken my faith in that.

You're stuck with me

On this U.S. election eve, it looks as if the Democrats will be taking over at least the House, if probably not the Senate as well. And blogger Altavistagoogle asks whether this means that dissatisfied Americans who move to Canada will suddenly want to return, since it will mean Democrats being in charge in the U.S. while Conservatives are in charge in Canada. Now, I can't speak for the primary protagonist in that post (though she can certainly speak for herself), but in my case it's a resounding no. Why? Let me count the ways.

1. Altavistagoogle's characterization of Stephen Harper being "firmly in control of Canada" defies reality rather handily. Harper is the leader of the weakest minority government Canada has ever seen, and he has to put up with things like meddling social democrats in order to keep that government alive. Furthermore, far from receiving a post-election bounce during his so-called "honeymoon period," his polling numbers have consistently shown his government's inability to do any better than they did in the election. Canada may elect a Conservative government, but they'll never completely fall for one. This delights me.

2. Further, Altavistagoogle's characterization of Michael Ignatieff as the leading Liberal candidate, while technically correct, ignores some of the facts (can we say "Anybody But Ignatieff movement?" can we say "almost no second- or third-place delegate support"?). And the characterization of him as the "next Canadian Prime Minister" in the post's addendum seems...unlikely, to put it kindly. Even if he does manage to pull off the win within his own party.

3. Next, Altavistagoogle's summary of the situation in the U.S. also leaves much to be desired. While I'd love to see the voters defy the polls on this one, the numbers certainly don't show that the Democrats will "probably take back both houses." The peace movement becoming cool? Among peace activists, maybe, but not among those in charge. And the anti-gay aren't "coming out of the closet," they're being forced out by the other side of a radically polarized electorate (right-wingers vs. centrists, natch). Meanwhile in Canada, we have polls that reveal just how unpopular even a minority Conservative government can be, people marching in the streets to protest a war that hasn't even come close to being as screwed up as the one in Iraq, and a Liberal leadership candidate who posed nude to raise money for charity whose homosexuality is a mere afterthought in the news story.

4. And finally, even if the U.S. does manage by some miracle to take back both Houses, the people in charge of Congress will be...the Democrats. I don't know about L-girl, but in my case they convinced me of the need to get the hell out of Dodge far more than the Republicans ever could have. Because of the U.S.'s hopeless two-party system, when the Democrats are in charge, lefty Americans are forced to look around and see the centre-right policies they implement and know that things can never get any better than that. The Democratic frontrunner for the 2008 presidential race, Hillary Clinton, is to the right of Stephen Harper on almost every issue. Think about that. I for one would be thrilled to see the Democrats take both Houses, but only because the resulting subpoena power would make for some fine schadenfreude, not because they offer a leftist alternative.

Yeah, not so much with the going back, thanks.

When titles go very, very wrong

That new book by U.S. Liberal Oasis founder Bill Scher, called Wait! Don't Move To Canada! : A Stay-and-Fight Strategy to Win Back America, is out now. Unsurprisingly, it's been discussed a great deal in blogs.

Unfortunately for Scher, though, many of the comments sections of the blogs that have discussed it haven't focused on the content of his book, but have devolved (evolved?) into discussions about the pros and cons of...emigrating to Canada. Oops.

More Americans by birth, Canadians by choice

Over here in the political blogosphere, we all have a tendency to have blogrolls that consist exclusively, or almost exclusively, of other political blogs. But political blogs aren't the Alpha and the Omega of the blogging world, and last year, this recognition even led to Robert expanding his Canadian Blog Awards beyond just the political. Recently, I was excited to find that there's a whole subcommunity of bloggers out there who are blogging about their personal journeys as Americans who have decided to emigrate to Canada. Some of them are lefties, some of them are queer, some of them just felt out of place in the U.S., and some are all of the above. And while I've got a rather different sort of blog over here, I still feel an affinity with all of them.

There's Laura from We Move to Canada, a freelance writer who shares a bloggy tagline with me, and who left New York City for Toronto along with her partner Allan last summer. She details her journey not only in her blog, but in a Cafepress book.

There are the two gay men from Florida who write the Moving to Vancouver blog. They already sport a "No Deep Integration with the USA" banner on their blog, despite still being in the process of applying for permanent residency in Canada.

There's Daniel and his husband Alan from Would-Be Canadians, who hope to move from Seattle to Vancouver. Their blog details the anxiety over the limbo that immigrants can feel as they're wondering when and if their applications will be accepted.

There's Juan and Mr Tew of Wondrous Canadian Renewal, a binational (U.S. and an unknown Latin American country) couple who are currently living in Michigan and hoping to move just across the border to Windsor.

There's Tom of Canadian Hope, one half of another binational gay couple living in New Jersey. Due to his mother's recent illness, he's been thinking a lot about what it means to move far away from his close-knit family to an entirely different country. But he seems grounded in his decision to move to Canada when he writes about everything that's going wrong in the U.S. and its politics, and his hopes to find something different in this country.

There are the two women of Two Moms to Canada, a couple from Minnesota who have delved deeply enough into Canadian politics to link to the Centre for Policy Alternatives, the Council of Canadians, and Rabble. They were recently in Montreal for the national conference connected with the OutGames, and were particularly impressed with Louise Arbour and Irshad Manji.

There's Mason and Nick of Life Without Borders, who after several long years of waiting, have just received their official permission to come to Canada (congratulations, guys!). Their recent posts are eloquent statements of the combination of sadness and happiness, of trepidation and excitement that inevitably surrounds any decision to leave the country where you've spent your whole life.

I've long maintained that becoming an immigrant is about more than just deciding you're unhappy where you are; it's also about choosing a particular other place and doing the work that's necessary to be happier there. It's an act not just of despair and rejection, but also of hope and acceptance. These people embody both sides of that sentiment. Their stories take me back to my own fears and worries about coming here for good, and my own process of figuring out what makes Canada tick and affirming the reasons why I wanted to live here. If you found my recent post about my own immigrant journey interesting, you might want to check some of them out.

Who's Canadian enough, take three

I'd like to start this post with some kudos for Stephen Harper and his government. No, really, I mean it. Despite the incredibly daunting task of removing 8700 some-odd Canadian citizens from Lebanon over the last couple of weeks, they came through. There were some snags (some would say a lot of snags) but despite repeated protests of "undeservingness" from the likes of Garth Turner and various right-wing talk show hosts, our government went to great lengths to make sure every Canadian who wanted to be removed from Lebanon was brought to Canada at the government's expense. It wasn't just the right thing to do; it was the only thing to do, given current Canadian policy on these matters. As I said in my last post on this subject, current policy doesn’t state that if you fail to take advantage of the right to live in Canada, you don't have the right to be evacuated from a war zone along with the Canadians who are just visiting. And as I'm sure most of us will agree, the middle of a humanitarian crisis is hardly the time to change a long-held policy.

Now that the immediate crisis has abated somewhat, though, Harper's government is thinking about reconsidering the rights that go along with Canadian citizenship. They're not, it should be said, thinking about dividing Canadians along the lines of immigrant citizens and non-immigrant citizens; they're saying that any Canadians, whether they were born in Canada or not, should have Canadian residency if they want to be evacuated from war zones at Canada's expense. On the face of things, this seems like a perfectly reasonable change--it favours those who have really "made a commitment to the country" over those who've "put other allegiances first." Nonetheless, I'd strongly encourage the government not to give in to the pressure to rethink the current policy. And in order to explain why I feel that way, I'd like to describe my own journey toward becoming a Canadian. This is important, I think, because there seems to be a popular notion that an immigrant's journey is simply "too damn easy," and many of the people making assertions about that don't have much first-hand knowledge of what goes into making a new Canadian.

It was 1993 when I first decided that I wanted to emigrate to Canada. I'd known for a while that I didn't want to spend the rest of my life in the U.S., but it took a trip to Ottawa during the momentous federal election that occurred that year for me to stop looking across the ocean and start looking north. Unfortunately, I was a graduate student at the time, preparing for an academic career in a very narrow field in which there are usually no more than two or three jobs world-wide in any given year. And while I really did want to come to Canada, I knew that realistically I had to go where the jobs were. To make a long story somewhat shorter, I happened to be ready to go on the job market during a year where one of the two available tenure-track jobs was in Edmonton, and I was fortunate enough to get it. Because the process of attaining permanent residency is so long and complicated, though, I initially came to Canada in 1997 on a temporary work permit. This permit allowed me to work here, but threw up a number of obstacles in my path at the same time. My U.S. credit history wasn't recognized, for example, so I couldn't buy a house or even qualify for a credit card. To get a bank account, I had to get a letter from the chair of my department detailing my salary and the fact that he intended to keep me on. I was required to get a Canadian driver's license, but because I wasn't a permanent resident, it had to be renewed yearly rather than every five years. And finally, I also needed to renew my work permit each year.

Because of these bureaucratic tangles, I was especially eager to apply for permanent residency. I spent a few months getting the extensive paperwork together and finally sent in my application that fall. I was a bit nervous, though, because of Canada's rigorous points system. To obtain permanent residency, immigrants have to qualify as skilled workers, which means coming up with at least 67 points awarded for factors such as educational background, work experience in fields Canada needs workers in, age (young people are drastically favoured), ability in one or both of Canada’s official languages, et cetera. In my case, I had a Ph.D., a tenure-track academic job in Canada, I was twenty-seven years old, I spoke English natively and some French as well--and yet I still only barely made it over the top because I was straight out of graduate school and had no real experience in my chosen field. Definitely a bit nervewracking.

In addition to my worries over the points, I also had to be concerned about money. The non-refundable application fee is $550 for each of the principal applicant and any accompanying family member over the age of 22, and once the application is processed, they require an additional $490 from each immigrant in the form of a "right of permanent residence fee." There are also hidden worries in terms of qualifying for residency medically (you’re out of luck if you have any serious or costly medical conditions), the list of the names and addresses of every organization you’ve ever been a member of that you have to make and let the government comb through, and being fingerprinted by the police in every country you’ve ever lived in and allowing all of those governments to do a lengthy background check. For me the whole process took only a little over a year, but due to stricter requirements that were put in place a few years ago, it can now take up to three or four years. And I was also very lucky in that my employer helped me out both financially and in terms of moral support. When I think about the many people who go through all that without the benefit of a secure job, and usually with much fewer financial resources, much less of an education, and much poorer language skills, I can't help but be impressed with their tenacity.

After receiving permanent residency, I was required to wait three additional years before I could apply for citizenship. Because I travel quite a bit for work, however, and because every day spent outside of Canada counted against my residency requirement, I had to wait much longer. I not only had to submit to yet another lengthy background check, I also had to justify every single trip I'd ever taken outside of Canada, with a detailed assessment of the specific dates I'd been gone and my reasons for being out of the country. I finally had all my paperwork ducks in a row a few years later, and sent in my application (along with yet another application fee). After about six months, though, my application was returned because there had been some errors in my residency calculation and I was being asked to correct them and resubmit the application from the beginning. I did so, and another few months after that, I was finally sent the study guide for the citizenship exam in the mail.

Next came the studying. Despite my clear advantages both linguistically and in terms of educational background, there was still an awful lot in that guide that I didn't know, and I did have to spend quite a bit of time preparing. All together, it had been just shy of two years before I was informed that they were ready for me to take the test. (I lucked out here, too, by the way--if you're not a native speaker of one of Canada's two official languages, you get called in during this time for an interview, during which you have to prove sufficient proficiency in one of those languages. This can prolong the process.) I detailed that experience in an old post, but to sum up: I passed the exam, waited another month or so, and finally received Canadian citizenship in September of last year.

At this point, I think it would be difficult to say that I haven't proven my loyalty to Canada. I've paid my dues (literally and figuratively), and I've jumped through all the bureaucratic hoops they required of me. I've held a full-time job in Canada for nine years, paying Canadian taxes all the while. I've participated avidly in Canadian society (I hold a position in my political party of choice, and I've worked on five campaigns, four of which were before I was allowed to vote), and I shout from the rooftops to anyone who will listen about how thrilled I am to be living in a country I can respect. I even swore a loyalty oath to Queen and country. But the fact is, I still have an academic career to think about--one in which we all have to go where the jobs are. And if one of the top U.S. universities in my field made me an offer I couldn't refuse, I'd have to give it a lot of thought. I'd rather stay in Canada, of course, but depending on the offer, it would be an awfully hard decision.

Let's imagine, then, that I did get offered my dream job somewhere in an American "blue state" I could bear living in, and I reluctantly went back to the U.S. to pursue my career aspirations. And let's imagine that a few years after I had done this, the U.S. became a terrible war zone in which cities were being bombed daily and the countryside was plagued with a lack of edible food and potable water. Under those circumstances, I'd absolutely want to chuck my career out the window and come back and rebuild what was left of my life in Canada. And I ask you, would the few years I'd spent back in my country of birth really negate the huge commitments I've made to Canada by this point? Enough that you'd want to tell me that I didn't quite count as Canadian enough for the country I spent all those years in to spend taxpayer money to save my life? Honestly? People say that dual citizens should appeal to their other country of citizenship to bail them out, but in such a dire situation the U.S. would be facing bigger problems than how to get me to Canada. And for anyone who wants to claim that my situation is different--that not every dual citizen has the extenuating circumstances I've described--I can only say this: you're right, it is different. The difference, though, is that I have a ready-made audience and the ability to tell my personal story to get my point across, while the Canadian citizens that got bailed out of Lebanon are nameless, faceless masses that people can project any generalizations they want onto.

No matter what people say, the facts remain: coming to Canada as an immigrant isn't at all easy, and attaining Canadian citizenship on top of that isn't exactly a cakewalk, either. In fact, just being an immigrant here can be difficult as well--you have to cope with cultural expectations that are different from what you're used to, and with practical problems like recognition of your foreign credentials and starting from zero on your credit rating. The people who go through all that don't do it because they're masochists with too much time on their hands; they do it because they care enough about this place to devote the necessary money, time and energy to earning the right to stay. And if for whatever reason some of them eventually decide that some other part of the world needs them more, that decision doesn't make them any less Canadian than those who stick around.

First the bumper sticker, now the book

There's a new book coming out in September called Wait! Don't Move to Canada: A Stay-and-Fight Strategy to Win Back America.

Damn, I think they're on to our little scheme.

Who's Canadian enough, take two

Okay, once more, with feeling.

What do you call someone who was born in Lebanon, came to Canada as a refugee in the 1970s, adopted Canadian citizenship and built up a successful small business, and then 20 years later decided to expand that business into the now much calmer Lebanon, living part-time in Canada and part-time in Lebanon?

What do you call someone who was born in Canada to Lebanese immigrant parents, married a Lebanese man and moved to Lebanon with him in order to invest in and rebuild that country? Even if she "considers herself Lebanese" as well as Canadian?

What do you call someone born in Canada, who decided to go to university in Lebanon so as to pursue a degree in Middle Eastern Studies with some hands-on experience? Even if he didn't work or pay taxes last year in Canada, or vote in the 2006 election?

If your answer to any of those questions is anything but "a Canadian," you'd better be able to explain why. And you'd better be willing to accept the consequences of that line of reasoning, and support changing our current policies to correspond with it. Because at the moment, we have only one class of Canadian citizenship and one set of rights and responsibilities that go along with that citizenship. At the moment, if you're a Canadian, you don't have to choose between being that and being something else. At the moment, dual citizenship has no influence whatsoever on the rights afforded you as a Canadian. And at the moment, Canadian citizenship grants you the right to live in Canada; it doesn't say that if you fail to take advantage of that right, you will suddenly become less Canadian than those who currently reside somewhere between Victoria and St. John's.

Slap your national identity on your car

My goodness. There's even a bumper sticker. Who knew?

More on birthrates and immigration

Remember the kerfuffle about Canada's sinking birthrate and what should be done about it? All solutions proposed involved some form of government intervention, but while some seemed to prefer their social engineering to be about convincing more Canadian women to have babies, others argued that it should be about removing the barriers to meeting our current immigration targets.

Well, as of today it seems pretty clear which side of the fence our new Conservative government is coming down on:

The previous Liberal government's target of 300,000 new immigrants to Canada each year was too high, Immigration Minister Monte Solberg said Wednesday.

Appearing before a House of Commons committee, Solberg did not reveal exactly how many new immigrants he believes should be allowed into the country.

However, he said last year's level of about 260,000 new permanent residents was acceptable.

If the issue is not wanting to overstrain immigrant-heavy cities like Toronto and Montreal, then why not provide incentives for new immigrants to move to places like Calgary--places that are just clamouring for more skilled workers? Perhaps the esteemed minister thinks the monthly $100 baby bonus from the new budget will make lots of women want to get a piece of the action, so we won't have to bother. It's a pity their kids won't be starting work for another nineteen or twenty years.

Also related: it sounds like there's a baby boom currently going on in Edmonton. Maybe we'll just have to start relying on the City of Champions to populate the rest of the country.

Canada goes to Germany

I've been watching with a growing sense of horror as all the conservative Canadian bloggers I know have been voicing sentiments about how Canada needs to "get its birth rate up" or else our culture as we know it will disappear. As far as I'm concerned, this line of thought goes beyond disconcerting and straight to creepy. It reminds me of a line of thought that's already familiar to me from my years living in Germany--a line of thought that always felt about fifty years out of date in that country, if you get my drift. And hearing it from Canadians has made me wonder where the Canada I know went and how I managed to miss its passing.

But since even several bloggers I greatly respect have been saying this sort of thing, I'm going to assume I'm just misunderstanding something, here. I'm going to assume that they're not actually saying "pretty white Canadian babies will pay our pensions better than brown immigrant babies would." I'm going to assume that they're not actually saying "when Canadian women choose not to have children, they aren't fulfilling their duty to country and culture." I'm going to assume they're saying something a little vaguer, something that compares Canada to a stodgy old business that they have to grow in very particular conventional ways if they don't want it to change beyond its middle-aged CEOs' recognition. That, at least, is more annoying than gross.

That argument, paraphrasing several comments on the posts linked above, seems to go like this: "If we don't get the birth rate up, our culture as we know it will change. This is a fact, and we have to decide whether that's okay with us." But my question for the conservatives who agree with this sentiment is this: do you really think that if Stephen Harper starts doling out $1200 a year to stay-at-home moms, the culture as we know it won't change? Seriously, now? Every generation prior to ours has had to deal with their kids doing things that they don't really understand--from two-piece bathing suits to tattoos and piercings--but not us? We're going to be the first ones to preserve our precious culture exactly the way it is in 2006, and all we have to do to make this happen is get more Canadian-born Canadians making babies?

And they say Dippers are idealistic.

More on packing your bags vs. erecting a firewall

American blogger Pam Spaulding of Pandagon reveals that far-right Canadian social conservatives may actually be considering moving to the U.S. over differences with the path Canada is on. I'm sure they don't agree with much of anything that's gone on here in recent years, but they seem to be particularly up in arms over same-sex marriage:

The Reverend Tristan Emmanuel says that for evangelical Christians, "there is a form of persecution taking place in Canada." Emmanuel says the legalization of same-sex marriage, and hate crimes laws that criminalize discrimination against homosexuals, have fueled an intolerance against Bible-believing Christians.

The executive director of the Ontario-based Equipping Christians for the Public-Square Centre warns that that's what American evangelicals could face in the years ahead. Emmanuel is urging his fellow believers to help vote Canada's Liberal government out of office in next months' national election. But he says many Canadian Christians tell him they are ready to give up and move to the United States.

I found that I couldn't help but read that post in the context of the discussion we've been having about western separatists in the Conservative party. I've talked before about just how rare the emigration sentiment is among Canadian conservatives, but even aside from Emmanuel, I've noticed that this might be changing. I find that oddly heartening. Pam is clearly making fun of Emmanuel and the people he represents, but I actually have a great deal of respect for people who would consider a southward migration over political differences with the direction their country wants to take. As an immigrant who once faced a similar situation, that still makes a great deal more sense to me than trying to carve off a piece of Canada--against the wishes of many who live there--and make a separate country out of it. Not to mention that it's more of an individualist's response, which would seem to fit in rather well with many Canadian conservatives' other beliefs.

Who's Canadian enough?

When the new Governor-General was sworn in yesterday, I found myself breathing a sigh of relief. I don't have a particular stake in seeing Michaëlle Jean occupy Rideau Hall, but the controversy surrounding her had left an incredibly bad taste in my mouth. I've already blogged about the inherent sexism in the questions that came up about her husband's ties to separatist groups, but even more unnerving than that was the ordeal about her dual citizenship. Jean is married to a French citizen, and in 2004 she naturalized as French through marriage, becoming one of the 600,000-plus Canadians with multiple citizenships. But on Sunday, she bowed to some combination of public, political, and internal pressure (precisely how that combination of pressures played out is something I don't think the public will ever know) and renounced that citizenship again.

I was travelling in August and missed out on a lot, and so it was an American journalist friend who first pointed this controversy out to me. "So this is your tolerant, immigrant-friendly Canada?" she said, taunting. She had a point. The published comments on that Globe and Mail story I linked to above include people arguing that "for this matter to even reach this stage is ridiculous" and that "the leader of Canada must have Canada as their first priority." In the 'citizen journalist' realm, similar sentiments are also not hard to find. And now that Jean has given in and renounced her newly-acquired French citizenship, those sentiments seem to have prevailed. The same country that boasts many of the most multicultural cities in the world, the same country that teaches its youth about how we're not a "melting pot" like that big bad ogre to the south, but a "cultural mosaic"--that country is sending the message that having more than one citizenship is inherently problematic, and if you want to be considered pure enough to take on a position like Governor-General, you'd better make sure you have only one passport.

Canadian law doesn't forbid multiple citizenships; in fact, it doesn't even prevent the Governor-General from having multiple citizenships. This means that the pressures that caused Jean to renounce her French citizenship aren't pressures of legality, but of ideology. I'd like some clarity, though, on exactly what that ideology consists of. What is it that makes someone Canadian enough for a position like Governor-General? Who decides what those criteria are? And if we as a society are saying--whether legally or merely through ideological disapproval--that a certain class of Canadian citizens qualifies, while another class doesn't, are we not also saying that latter class of Canadian is inherently second-tier? I find it difficult to interpret this in any other way, but if that is what we're saying, then we'd better be sure we're ready for all the things it implies, because some of those things aren't at all consistent with what Canada claims to be.

At the end of August, blogger James Bow wrote the following:

I understand the need for a distinction between landed immigrants and citizens in this country. Citizenship should take some time and effort to receive. But once achieved, that should be it: a Canadian citizen should be the equal of any other Canadian citizen regardless of whether or not that citizen was born in Canada, or in the United States, or elsewhere.

Unsurprisingly, I agree with him. But more than that, I'm disturbed that so many others don't seem to. As an immigrant, I'm offended by the precedent this sets. As a Canadian, though, I'm just disappointed.

A look at the Canadian citizenship test

My tagline reads "American by birth, Canadian by choice," but I have to admit that I'm not quite there yet. It is true that I've chosen to be Canadian, but I'm actually still in the last stages of the citizenship process. This morning I finally got to take my citizenship test, which is the last step before being allowed to take the oath. I thought some of you Canadian-born Canadians might be interested in hearing what it's like for the rest of us, so I figured I'd write it up.

A few weeks ago (after over a year of patient thumb-twiddling), I received a letter telling me to be at the Edmonton Citizenship and Immigration Canada offices by 9:15 on August 17th. I was far from the only one, though; when I got there this morning at 8:55, the whole area outside was already filled with fresh-faced wannabe new Canadians, all clutching their "A Look At Canada" study guides. This is a little booklet that immigrants receive immediately upon applying for citizenship, to help us prepare for the test. It's written in very simple language, but it's actually pretty informative, and the ideologies behind it are really quite endearing (how much do I love that they actually have a sustainable development section?). In any case, I'd guess that there were about 75 people there in total, and they varied in age, but most looked to be in their thirties or forties. I was one of only two Caucasian faces in the bunch; most seemed to have been of Chinese, Korean, or Japanese origin, but the whole range of visible minorities were represented. Two were in wheelchairs: one older woman, and one woman about my age.

We'd been told to bring with us two pieces of picture ID, our permanent residence cards, and all of the passports we've ever had, current and expired. They let us in at 9:00, and we had to line up single-file (which made for a rather long line), and as we went up one-by-one, they checked our signatures against our driver's licenses and permanent residence cards, and our pictures against our faces. In my case, they also spent a lot of time checking the stamps in my various passports against the list of dates I'd said I'd been out of the country in the last eight years; apparently the sheer amount that I travel had set off some red flags! Eventually, though, I was given a clipboard with a pen and told to go in the other room and sit down in seat #90. I was one of the first people in, so I had about 45 minutes to sit there and read through my study guide again while the others filed in. They staggered the seating in the room so as to make cheating less likely.

Once everyone was inside, a CIC worker (most of whom seem to be immigrants themselves, incidentally) came around and told us that we were going to be given a written test that had twenty questions, and we were expected to get twelve right. We would have thirty minutes to complete it, and the questions were all multiple choice. We were told that we could ask questions before the test and after the test, but not during the test, so a few people asked things like how long they could expect to wait before taking the oath (1-4 months) and what would happen if they didn't pass the test (they could retake it orally with an immigration official). I raised my hand and asked if there was any chance that if a federal election was called within the next month or so, if they might put a rush on that oath thing. Everyone laughed, but unfortunately the answer was no. (Dammit.)

After all that, the actual test was uneventful, and in places, even funny. It was all based on information from the study guide, but it was mostly really basic stuff like "which provinces originally joined together in Confederation" and "what are the levels of government". My favourite question was the one about what the responsibilities of Canadian citizenship are (one of the possible answers was "be loyal to Canada and drive a car"). In any case, I was arrogant enough to stop by the passport office (conveniently located just downstairs from Citizenship and Immigration Canada) and pick up an application before heading back to my bus. Here's hoping.

Canadian immigration resources, by popular demand

I woke up this morning with an inbox full of requests for information about how to immigrate to Canada. I'm willing to provide that information, but first, a disclaimer:

Emigration is a long, tedious, annoying, and expensive process, and as such it's not something to be undertaken on a whim. It's also not enough to have reached the conclusion that you can no longer believe in the U.S.; you also have to be willing to believe in Canada. In order to emigrate, you also have to immigrate, and that isn't about despair, it's about hope. In the end it has to be about more than giving up on something; it has to be about being willing and eager to invest yourself wholeheartedly in something new.

In other words, if you still retain a belief that the United States is the best country in the world, then save yourself the trouble and stick around. Stand up and fight, and help make some of the things you stand for happen. (I, for one, will be cheering you on: I'm rather fond of the United States and I'd sure like to see what that country would look like after an organized left has its way with it.) If, on the other hand, you look north and see a country that you feel you could genuinely contribute to, with values you believe in and ideologies and a political system that you can embrace, then by all means you should consider immigration to Canada. I did it, and I'm glad I did.

This is the Citizenship and Immigration Canada main site. You will want to have a long look at the types of immigration there are; most of you will be most suited for the "skilled worker class immigration." The site contains a very simple test you can take to see whether your application is likely to be accepted in that category. It's based on a points system, and although it's changed a little since I immigrated, it's still the same basic idea.

Here is the official site's companion piece, a list of frequently-asked questions about Canadian immigration. It's actually the page of a private immigration lawyer, but he's long maintained the best additional source of easy-to-understand information around, and he's quite well respected among people who've actually Done It.

LEGIT is a volunteer-run grassroots lobby and support group which exists to help same-sex couples (or Canadians and their same-sex partners) immigrate to Canada. Questions about how the same-sex marriage rulings in either country would affect your application? Ask them.

If you're not ready to immigrate, but want to try working in Canada for a while to see whether it's a place you want to invest that kind of commitment in, then you might want to consider a TN or NAFTA visa for professionals. Basically the idea is that once you have a job offer to work for a Canadian company in your chosen profession, you can get a visa like this very easily. There are no long wait times or expensive application fees, as with actual immigration. The visa is granted for a year but as far as I know it can be renewed more or less indefinitely (as long as you're willing to live in a country where you have no permanent status, which in my experience got very old very quickly, but hey, it might be your bag). There's more information about this type of visa to be found here -- though it's actually a site intended for Canadians who want to live temporarily in the U.S., it's the same visa going either way. I also know a few people who are currently working under this visa who might be willing to answer questions about their experiences if you wanted to ask them.

This is a site about one woman and her family's personal experience with coming to Canada on the skilled worker class of immigration, though it was called something different when she did it. The other sites will give you all the official details, but this one will tell you what it's really like to actually do it. I found it invaluable when I came here.

After you've lived in Canada as a permanent resident for a certain length of time, you can apply for citizenship, which gives you all the rights of a Canadian-born Canadian. If you're like me, you'll want to keep your American citizenship as well. The dual citizenship FAQ can answer any questions you might have about that.

And finally, there's An American's Guide to Canada, an occasionally tongue-in-cheek picture of the kinds of things that seem weird to Americans about my adopted country. It's a fun site, and informative as well.

Best of luck in your decision.