When you leave your native country for an adopted country, it’s generally to find economic stability there, because you dream of having a quality paid job; social stability, through a social network and universal and accessible social services; political stability, because the country you left is experiencing political problems that often have disastrous impacts on security; and personal stability, because, like everyone else, we want happiness and peace. So why think that immigrants can represent a danger to the security and stability of Quebec?
Their only fault would be to aspire to a better quality of life in this vast country full of potential. And yet, how many have a job that matches their aspirations, their skills, their diplomas and their experiences? How many husbands and fathers, accustomed to providing for their families, are unemployed, forced to live off their wives, their children or the social security system? Some accept work that does not value them, that is underpaid and falls short of their expectations. Others leave far from their home for a more stimulating, more dignified, better paid job, when they do not return definitively “home”.
In these different situations, there are doctors who have become orderlies; lawyers turned taxi drivers; accountants turned security guards; teachers turned customer service agents; engineers turned delivery people; And the list is long. How many young graduates from diverse backgrounds, trained in educational and research institutions in Quebec, with master’s and doctorate degrees in hand, occupy menial jobs for lack of choice? Their only fault would be to have darker skin, to speak with an accent (the accent is always the others) or to have a name that is difficult to pronounce.
Every well-established immigrant knows stories of failure happened to members of his network, who had in common this inaccessible dream of a better elsewhere. Living in a new culture has its share of challenges, including understanding the codes. You have to make yourself understood despite the differences that are visible, audible and those that are less so. Finally, to feel welcomed, accepted, valued and respected in one’s choices: choice to speak one’s mother tongue in the private sphere so as not to lose one’s culture; to live and educate one’s children at home according to one’s values, which are often more universal than one might think; and to live according to its principles and beliefs.
However, it is here that the malaise is felt which can lead to so much “confusion” leading to words and acts of a certain violence. Experiencing humiliation, denigration, rejection, prejudice, the unacceptable is the lot of immigrants who do not feel (anymore) in their place in this Quebec which wants to remain “small”, those who see “big” . Behind each unintegrated immigrant, reclusive in himself, hides a personal, family and community drama. When you don’t know his story, his trajectory and his aspirations, it is better to refrain from giving him intentions. Locking it up in a system where it cannot unfold is an act to be “banned”.
Each immigrant is rich with their different culture and spoken language which gives a diversity of perspectives on the world. To want to restrict one’s life to a single cultural perspective, which is not one’s own, is to imprison it; worse, make it disappear. And it is there, back to the wall, that he rebels. And this is where we are going to talk about violence, when he is only protecting himself from the systemic violence in which he (re)finds himself without having chosen it. The “between us” makes us blind to ourselves. Quebec needs to get out of itself to see itself better.
When you have your nose too far in, you see blurry. And it is there that we judge without knowing, that we exclude without reason, that we condemn without proof and that we attack without realizing it. Immigrants chose Quebec for its peace, freedom and promises. What Quebecers must be taught is to speak with intelligent words in an intelligible and diversified vocabulary; it is to break with the emotions and the consecrations which take over reason and benevolence; it means being open to the world in order to take root better; it is to stop this violence which is a very present reality in Quebec society before it is associated with immigrants.