Posted at 1:00 p.m.
Can we calmly debate immigration to Quebec? To ask the question, is to answer it.
Too often, one has the impression that the theme of immigration is reserved for the sole progressive ideological family, which jealously guards its monopoly, and takes care never to recognize legitimacy in anyone who deviates from the common dogmas of “all going well” and “always more”.
Indeed, anyone who dares to question the quantity of immigrants that Quebec receives annually or the quality of the integration that actually takes place risks being accused of the worst moral faults.
The text published by columnist Vanessa Destiné1 in The Press is just one example among many that illustrate the extent to which a certain left is deaf to the discourse that opposes its own. Thus, criticisms of immigration would automatically come from “white people who grew up in a homogeneous environment”, people who would never have seen “racialized” people except in taxis or on trips, a gratuitous assertion which would apparently suffice to discredit them. Worse still, those who stray from permitted positions are immediately suspected of touching the darkest part of the human soul, by appealing to “fear and resentment”.
In other words, the criticism of immigration would be the sole act of the ignorant and the intolerant. With such a Manichaeism, who knows why Quebec is more polarized than ever around identity issues.
However, with a little good faith, it is quite easy to understand this existential angst, because that is what it is all about for a small nation whose persistence has always been uncertain. For decades we have been saying that everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, but reality has caught up with discourse and can no longer be ignored. That there are great stories of integration, no one disputes that and everyone is delighted, but that does not change the fact that Montreal is becoming more English, and that it is increasingly difficult to get there. serve in French. Nevertheless, when we denounce this worrying trend, we always find people to say not only that it is inadmissible to talk about it, but also – and moreover – that Quebec is too white, too French-speaking and too closed to ” diversity “. That’s strong coffee.
It is not a question of denouncing immigration in absolute terms, but of realizing that our capacity for integration is not infinite. In the case of Quebec, it is quite appropriate to speak of massive immigration: proportionally speaking, we are among the states that welcome the most immigrants in the world, i.e. 2.4 times more than the United States and 2 times more than France2. Who sincerely believes that the Quebec nation has a capacity for integration twice that of these great nations?
2. Houle, Jacques. (2018). Vanish ? – Migration flows and the future of QuebecMontreal, Liber.