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Thursday, October 07, 1999

Lurking refugee rhetoric

Ian Hunter

Although he took a while to find his voice, Reform Leader Preston Manning was the only Canadian politician to offer a constructive proposal for dealing with the boatloads of Chinese migrants who have washed up on Canada's West Coast. Mr. Manning proposed a policy of automatic detention, followed by a fair but expeditious (within seven days) hearing designed to sort out genuine refugees from opportunistic queue-jumpers. Many Canadians will think his proposal too little, too late, but if you want to know why other politicians kept silent, consider this reaction to Mr. Manning's suggestions.

In the current issue of Law Times, Professor Dianne Martin of Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto writes: "I suspect this is intended to guarantee no refugees will ever be accepted, while appealing to the lurking thug in each of us. The part of humanity that takes part in lynchings and supports ideas like slavery and apartheid."

In contrast to the silence from the Liberal government, the leader of the Opposition makes a modest, eminently sensible proposal to expedite the determination of refugee claims, and for this he is accused of appealing to lurking thuggery and wanting to bring back lynch mobs, slavery and apartheid. Ah, how refreshing to hear the calm, dispassionate voice of the academy.

Had Preston Manning made comments half as inflammatory as Ms. Martin's he would by now have had a visit from the "official straighteners" (C. S. Lewis' term) at the Canadian Human Rights Commission. Indeed, he might well be facing criminal prosecution for "hate crimes." But Mr. Manning is white, male, and a Western politician; therefore neither the protections of the law nor the canons of civilized discourse apply to him.

Ad hominem aside, Ms. Martin advances two arguments, both of them spurious.

First, she disputes that anyone can possibly know that these recent arrivals are illegal, since no judicial determination of their status has yet been made. To say otherwise is "prejudging" and, according to Ms. Martin, "a civilized country, governed under law, does not prejudge."

No, other civilized countries (the United States, for example, or Australia) send naval gunboats into international waters to turn back the rusting hulks before they ever reach their shores. But perhaps, according to Ms. Martin's frenzied ideology, the United States and Australia are not "civilized countries"? It would be interesting to know exactly which countries qualify for Ms. Martin's encomium. In any case, her point is meaningless because Mr. Manning did not propose "prejudging" but rather "expeditious judging," and surely there is sufficient difference between those two positions to be recognized even at Osgoode Hall.

Although Ms. Martin asserts that we are all know-nothings about the legality of the migrants, we do know something conclusively: We know "absolutely and without any doubt that injustice is done when bureaucratic processing is used to replace due process."

Whatever can she mean? Was it bureaucratic processing to herd the new arrivals to an army base? Was it bureaucratic processing to interview them, to try to separate the (perhaps blameless) dupes from the controlling minds (the "snakeheads") of international people-smuggling? I have seen no evidence of bureaucratic injustice, and if Ms. Martin is doing more than blowing smoke perhaps she will bring the evidence of bureaucratic injustice to the attention of the authorities.

Second, Ms. Martin complains there has been no reporting about the real villains -- "namely the entrepreneurs who will employ them illegally to great profit and the consumers who will use and purchase the products of their indentured labour." No problem pre-judging prospective future employers without due process. After all, these are capitalists who will seek to turn a profit; and then, of course, we are all guilty because as consumers "we receive the benefits of their misery."

Mr. Manning objects to migrants who bypass Canada's immigration laws and this is thuggery. The running dogs of capitalism, who may eventually give these people jobs, are the true villains. And we voracious consumers who keep the capitalist Moloch devouring the indigent are not blameless.

After the collapse of the Berlin Wall it used to be said that one could no longer find a Marxist anywhere in the Soviet Union. But Marxist rhetoric survives at Osgoode Hall. Law students of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your reason!

Ian Hunter is professor emeritus in the faculty of law at the University of Western Ontario.

 
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