Friday, November 18, 2011

More Bad Government: Afghan Immigration

Canada's Conservative government has found itself caught between three different aspects of its Right Wing ideology.

Ideology #1: Support the War Machine
Right Wing policy dictates that you support the war machine unequivocally.  This means supporting soldiers and their causes, veterans and their causes, military contractors and their causes, and a generally Hawkish stance on just about everything.  In this case, there is an issue of fulfilling a promise that helped support the Canadian military in their mission in Afghanistan.

Ideology #2: Immigrants Need Not Apply
Right Wing policy also dictates that immigration is overwhelmingly bad.  As result, you can expect a tightening of the rules concerning all aspects of immigration, including refugee claimants.  The only possible exception are wealthy immigrants that pay their way into the country and (hopefully) come to spend their wealth locally, stimulating the economy.  This theory tends not to happen in reality, but ideology is ideology and reality seldom matters.  In this case, Afghanis that assisted the Canadian mission as interpreters in Afghanistan are seeking to immigrate to Canada.  This can be viewed as repayment for taking on a job with such a high mortality rate or for assisting Canadian soldiers and helping keep their mortality rate lower by  helping them communicate effectively with the locals.

Ideology #3: Don't Tell the Public Anything
This particular nugget of Right Wing ideology borders on neo-fascism.  Sometime it actually crosses that line. This Government has shown a resolute refusal to let any information about the workings of government, decision making and implementation of policy.  Freedom of Information access requests are illegally ignored or refused on the grounds of national security.  Not even the courts can sway this Government to fulfill its legal obligations to the people of Canada.  Apparently, everything that happens in the governance of Canada is a matter of national security.  Here, this ideology rears its ugly head in the form of punishing someone who dared breach the wall of silence and informed the public of what is actually going on.

If you want to be particularly critical of this Conservative Government you could add another ideological stance:
Ideology #4: Promises Are For Elections, Not Policy
This one is fairly self-explanatory.  The Government will fulfill the promises that Canadians generally don't want because they fit the Government's ideology.  But promises that swayed middle- and lower-class Canadians to cast a ballot for the 'Party For Plutocracy' (governance by the wealthy, for the wealthy) will uniformly go unfulfilled.

To tie these together, what is happening is the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) has been dragging its heels in general on a Government promise refused to help Afghanis that assisted the very recent Canadian military peace mission in Afghanistan relocate to Canada.  Further, they have actually refused to admit interpreter Sayed Shah Sharifi.  In the eyes of the CIC Sharifi exercised 'terrible judgement' in speaking to the Press about the frustration he was feeling about the delays in processing his immigration request.  What he should have done is sat silently and suffer the stress over the molasses-like CIC.  And if the slow progress turned to no progress or a denial then he should have quietly accepted the reneging on the Government's promise, as though that is their imperial right.

So what we have is a case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing.  In the case of this Government it would be more accurate to say that the Right hand doesn't know what the other Right hand is doing.  When Conservative ideology ends up being at odds with itself you can be reasonably certain thet the Government will make the most incorrect choice, and by that I mean the one that is worst for Canadians.  Failing to live up to the promise of granting admittance to interpreters endangers the ability of future missions to obtain local allies for any tasks, including interpreting.  This is a slap in the face to the military, every soldier that served in Afghanistan and every member of their families.  It is bad enough that the Government is doing what it can to shut down the borders, but now they are promising people admission and then quietly refusing them.  And when someone dares break their Vow of Silence meant to keep Canadians unaware of what is happening in their own country you can expect punitive action.

Perhaps, before this matter is resolved, the Government will do the right thing instead of the Right thing.  It is perhaps more likely, however, that the matter will drag on until the Press and public have tired of it and/or forgotten about it entirely and then thy will do the most wrong thing, as they seem to be doing now.

As the instances of misbehaviour and bad governance pile up, I have to wonder how many, if any, of these issues will be recalled by the Canadian electorate when called upon to vote once more.  That is so far in the future that there is ample opportunity to even forget Syrian- or Iranian-style wholesale slaughter of citizens that dare disagree with the Government's ideology.  (Maybe this will be the fate of the Occupy movement?)  Canadians certainly didn't hold the Conservative Government to task for their political and/or ethical indiscretions as a minority government!  Now that they are a majority it only makes logical sense that the indiscretions are going to get larger and harder to ignore or forget.  I have full faith in the bulk of my countrymen to manage to ignore and forget everything no matter how serious, personally relevant, or even criminal, they may be so long as they are presented with the promise of a reduction in taxes by a single penny.  That's what they have always done and I suspect it is what they will always do.  And so long as this Government is allowed to manage the flow of information even tighter than Bush-Cheney-Rove what manages to enter the public consciousness/domain will only be the tip of the iceberg.

Canada is in trouble.  Big trouble.

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