Hard Working Immigrants - Go Home, Eh
Hard working immigrants.
What does that mean, exactly? Canada was populated by Indians before Europeans got here. Were Indians not hard working? How did they survive here so well for so long then? Or did they just work enough. Enough to stay warm and fed in winter and cool and fed in summer.
Because I've noticed how every time there's a racist flare-up, such as what's going on in Herouxville, politicians trot out the old, "Canada was built on immigration. Hard working immigrants made this country what it is today." And so on and so forth and more of the same etc etc until one is forced to ask, "But what about the ones who went on to go on strike every now and again? The immigrants who wanted more money for less work? The ones who maybe threw in the work towel altogether and went to drink and begging on street corners for money to support their drinking habits instead of their families?"
What about the immigrants who said, "This is too much work. I'm going back home across the ocean to the pub and coming back when the bush is cleared."
And not to put too fine a point on it, but... none of those immigrants were brown, like many of today's immigrants who we apparently expect to be hard working, either. They were all white. British white, more often than not.
Is it even true that OTHER immigrants worked hard? The non-agitating for higher pay for less work white British of some sort or another immigrants, I mean? Or even the non-agitating for higher pay for less work white NON-British immigrants?
Because I bet that's all bullshit. I bet all those other immigrants worked just hard enough to get by, too. Just like we seem to be saying Indians did before we got here to be harder hard working.
Sort of like how we do right now. Sit here being harder hard working than Indians while lauding new immigrants for being even harder hard working than our waves of immigration. The white waves, I mean.
So why, exactly, do our politicians et al still feel compelled to describe immigrants as hard working? Clearly it doesn't apply to ALL immigrants or we'd be super top of the heap of all the industrialized countries. Or is it because we don't want to be seen to be dissing previous generations of immigrants, thereby making our Judeo-Christian culture claims of superiority seem somewhat... lame. That we DON'T, in fact, possess a particular brand of hard working genes that have been passed down through the generations by virtue of our Canadianness.
I mean, didn't immigrants come here in search of a better life? An easier life? A way to make more money for less work?
So, why do we think NEW immigrants should be hard working and not here in search of less work for more money? And what's with this expectation that new immigrants should be grateful for the opportunity, anyway? Aren't we just lucky to have been born in a country where the whole idea is to do less work for more money? What's with wanting to hear: "Thank you, natural-born Canadian descendants of people who may or may not have been hard working depending on what your definition of hard working is and who you are comparing yourselves to by way of coming up with a definition that really doesn't mean what it is to be Canadian anyway."
And who is it that the thanks is to be directed at, exactly? Factory owners? Union organizers? Government workers? What's with us acting like we have a monopoly on hard work? That we invented it? And what's with the assumption of moral superiority believing that it's true - even if it is? What is it that makes us think hard work is superior to just enough work to survive?
I dunno. Sometimes I go down that road and end up wanting to live in a tent just to get away from our own bullshit.
A pox on hard workers.
Wherever they are. Whoever they are. Me? I want what the guys at the top have - more money for less work.
Bonus - eh?
