By: Michelle Young, Opinions Editor
Content warning: mentions of colonialism
As far back as I can remember, I pushed down my Spanish. Whenever my mom picked me up from school in first grade and spoke Spanish, I quickly looked around to make sure no one was listening. Then, embarrassed, I would respond in English. I’m angry that I ever felt this way. When my aunt and uncle immigrated here years later, I understood what they were saying but could barely communicate with them. I had forgotten everything and I only learned to speak once again with years of practice. I felt sad I could barely speak to my own family, and it didn’t feel right to make them speak English to me. In the years I made an effort to relearn Spanish among my friends and family, I became increasingly frustrated with conversations around “assimilation.”
Overhearing other people talk about immigrant groups and how they “don’t try hard enough” to merge into so-called “Canadian” society never fails to make me think of all the other hardships immigrants face here. People who have often uprooted their entire lives to come to Canada for an ounce of opportunity don’t need to earn the approval of those born here. There are many reasons immigrants come to Canada: it could be as a refugee, coming to Canada for a better quality of life, or simply looking for different work or opportunities.
Something I would like to note is the politics around how we define immigrants, refugees, and undocumented people. The refugee and immigration process can take years, as the state judges whether someone is valuable or in crisis enough to “legally” migrate. These labels and definitions are often based on technicalities and shouldn’t be used to moralize anyone who is moving from their home. In this piece, I use “immigrant” as an umbrella term, but don’t want to discount the various experiences and reasons someone might come to Canada.
I’ve heard Canadian-born people point their fingers at groups of ethnic grandmas and grandpas, international students, or large families and complain about how speaking their native language is somehow exclusionary. Even in my own high school, speaking Spanish among my friends made people desks away, turn their heads and shame us about how we are excluding them and “should speak English.” I’m sorry, but if you’re not even sitting with me, you weren’t a part of the conversation to begin with. What’s the eavesdropping about? Why are you assuming I care enough to gossip about you in Spanish?
There is a poor conception that immigrants have certain obligations to seamlessly blend into Canadian society. Stories in media and pop culture around immigration often revolve around hardworking immigrants who are struggling to make ends meet — and how that’s not fair because they were educated in their home country and since they are hard workers, Canada should welcome them with open arms. Part of this struggle often includes immigrants trying their best to learn English and fit in with “the culture” they are immigrating to. There are many things to dissect in how we view immigration, but the first thing I would like to examine is — what culture?
According to Statistics Canada, “Vancouver had the second-largest proportion of immigrants, at 41.8%. Within the large urban centre of Vancouver, immigrants accounted for three-fifths (60.3%) of the population of Richmond and half (50.4%) of Burnaby’s population.” Some would argue Canadian culture is defined by influences of the British and French — but how can that be entirely accurate when Indigenous peoples, all who have different languages and traditions, were forcefully displaced? Culture changes over time, and that’s largely due to how people and populations change over time. We ourselves are currently changing the landscape of Canadian culture, and that’s a good thing.
Despite the evident changes in demographics over time, there is a clinging to the idea that immigrants do not automatically “deserve” to come to Canada, but rather, have to work hard to come here and find their place in society. I would like to ask any settlers who hold this belief — why do you “deserve” to be here? Because you were lucky enough to be born into a country where your ancestors killed so many people they were able to establish themselves centuries ago? Indigenous families have been arbitrarily separated and split due to colonial borders and they are the only people who have a genuine right to this land. Yet, their culture was violently ripped away from them to “assimilate” into “Canada” too.
Though it hasn’t been thoroughly studied, existing research shows Indigenous perspectives in opposition to Westphalian sovereignty, which “refers to the governance of bounded territory over which the nation state has supreme authority.” As immigrants, we are not bound to assimilation — but we do have a responsibility to learn about reconciliation and engage in Indigenous knowledge and learning.
A person’s value is not equivalent to how hard they work or how much they could potentially contribute to society. The points system — which ranks someone’s education and skills — likes to pretend otherwise, but settlers are no more entitled to life in Canada than immigrants are. Immigrants typically need to work hard out of necessity, but their value shouldn’t be defined by that. Immigrants are inherently valuable, as people. Society holds immigrants to a standard of whiteness and capitalism which doesn’t acknowledge the colonial history behind this country.
Immigrants shouldn’t need to abandon their entire language and culture to thrive here. If you’ve ever been to Richmond or Chinatown, these are wonderful examples of immigrant communities building spaces for themselves here. For me, watching other immigrant kids speak in their home language with their family was so much more comforting than watching white kids speak English. Doesn’t being “integrated” in society imply comfort in the people around you? That can’t happen if we are forcing people to whitewash themselves. We shouldn’t be pressuring immigrants to forget all the different aspects of their culture. There’s nothing wrong with holding onto traditions, customs, and languages and trying to find a space for that in your new home. Immigrants connecting with one another should be celebrated — not looked down upon.
