Migrants are feeling like gaslit scapegoats

Memory is an imperfect tool, but one worth sharpening every so often in times that call for us to open our democratic tool box and question our identity and positionality as Canadians. With a federal election pending, this is one of those times.

- WILL TAO AND KARINA JUMA

We seem to forget that our takeout food is often delivered by an immigrant worker, made with ingredients picked by migrant farm workers and cooked by a migrant chef.

When our community members were sick with COVID-19, it was often migrant nurses who took care of us and migrant caregivers who watched our children and our elderly parents.

We seem to have forgotten, over the course of Canadian history, the separation of loved ones by explicit and implicit race-based laws. Today’s social media algorithms shield us from a history replete with narratives of turning away boats and refoulement to torture and punishment and the destruction of migrant businesses and communities. Less viscerally, exclusionary bars were placed on individuals that had the direct impact of separating families, still today healing from the trauma of generations past.

This collective amnesia, with an election looming and amidst shifting global political tides, has seemingly replaced the amnesty we were initially proposing for those who had served as guardian angels in times of need.