Ugnayan ng Kabataang Pilipino sa Canada/Filipino Canadian Youth Alliance-Ontario (UKPC/FCYA-ON)
National Statement
November 23, 2010
On November 10th, 2010, two articles were published by Macleans’ Magazine and the Toronto Star newspaper fuelled anti-immigrant sentiments and racism, titled as “‘Too Asian’?: Worries that efforts in the U.S. to limit enrolment of Asian students in top universities may migrate to Canada” and “Educators encourage parents of Asian background to let their children study trades and arts,” respectively. The Filipino Canadian Youth Alliance–Ontario (UKPC/FCYA–ON), a progressive organization of Filipino Canadian youth and students, recognize that the articles fuel anti-immigrant sentiments and racism while masking the genuine concerns and issues that plague post secondary education and its students. Without a clear understanding of the social, political and economic situation of racialized communities in Canada, the experiences of Asian Canadian students are then seen within a vacuum devoid of a larger systemic context. The articles are not only examples of irresponsible and bad journalism, but they also represent propaganda that perpetuate racism, irrational anxiety and fear.
As the lessons of history have taught us, pitting white Canadians against immigrants of colour has been an all-too-classic tactic for carrying out racism in Canada. Reading the articles within this context starkly reveals even more pressing and prevalent issues: a full-time domestic student already pays exuberant amounts for post-secondary education, with Ontario having the highest tuition fees in the country. Despite years of student mobilizing, education remains as one of the last priorities of the province. Consequently, higher education becomes increasingly inaccessible to working-class and racialized communities in Canada. This is evident in the low enrolment, retention and graduation rates of disabled youth, Aboriginals, Blacks, Latinos and Asians, especially for those with refugee status who are required to pay international fees. Ironically enough, the recruitment for international students has become more vigorous as universities aim to play a larger role within neoliberal globalization. University administrations’ recruitment trips to Israel, India and East Asia are active efforts to yield higher profit through international tuition fees, consequently securing the role of Canadian universities as producers of neoliberal thought and commerce.
For the Filipino Canadian community, the stories behind the articles are all too familiar. We surely recognize that complaints of Asian youth stealing university spots and making academic institutions “too Asian” are in fact extensions of something far more dangerous. Such complaints are clear examples of racist and anti-immigrant sentiments, whose topsy-turvy logic condemn the struggles of immigrants and migrants for adequate livelihood and landed status simply as “foreigners stealing jobs from North Americans.” Aggressive recruitment techniques to attract international students are implemented by universities, similar to Canada’s continued importation of highly skilled, yet cheap labour from the Global South through Temporary Foreign Workers Program (TFWP), Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP) and The Live-In Caregiver Program (LCP). Such actions are fuelled by specific economic and political agendas. Therefore, it is sheer irresponsibility on the part of Macleans and Toronto Star to blindly miss out on the fact that the state has always used and excluded racialized bodies to build a globally competitive Canada. Let us not forget those who have been recruited from outside the country to construct and maintain our campuses, and to take care of and clean the homes of middle and upper class Canadian families.
The Filipino Canadian Youth Alliance–Ontario, whose mothers, sisters and cousins make up 95% of domestic workers in Canada, knows this all too well. By simple virtue of the women who have toiled under the LCP, insinuations within the articles of “Asians” having unhindered access to post secondary institutions and higher learning are proven to be wrong. Work permits of Filipino Canadians under the LCP specifically state their ineligibility to attend post-secondary education, even for those teachers and nurses who are then consequently deskilled and relegated to low-paying service sector jobs. Alarmingly enough, Filipino Canadian youth inherit this cycle of poverty and exclusion as proven by the high drop-out rates of our youth in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.
Youth coming from struggling communities of colour and low-income families face greater economic barriers than other prospective Canadian students. Contrary to the articles’ without accumulating large loan debts. For immigrant children, enrolling in traditionally recognized fields of study and occupations is not simply a choice. Instead, we are further motivated by instinctive survival strategies in the face of de-skilling and discrimination. Instead of promoting backwards sentiments of Asians being “too hardworking,” both print media and universities, as shapers of educators of Canadian minds, have a responsibility to demythicize such pathologizing claims.
According to the Maclean’s article, diversity enriches, but threatens the heterogeneity of the institutions of education itself on ethnic lines, and attempts to support this claim by referring to the segregation of the student body and the specified mandatory ethnic margins a university should follow or have. While the Canadian government and universities continue to promote and encourage diversity and multiculturalism, we would rather ask, “diversity for whom?” What is this irrational fear from the “too Asian” rhetoric diverting our attention from? Multiculturalism has played a crucial role in advancing Canada’s neoliberal agenda, as its contradictions are felt in the everyday lives of working-class and racialized communities. For universities, institutions, cities and the nation as a whole, multiculturalism has functioned as a major selling point as it has welcomed and streamed communities for particular cultural, political and economic uses.
We, UKPC/FCYA–ON and our sister organizations, the Philippine Women Centre of Ontario and SIKLAB Ontario, are adamantly angered and unimpressed at the writings published by Maclean’s magazine and the Toronto Star newspaper. Such writings promote racist attitudes and fuel antagonism within universities, while preventing solidarity to strengthen amongst marginalized communities along anti-neoliberal and anti-racist lines. We will continue to be steadfast and sharp in dismantling the frivolous efforts of the mainstream print media in perpetuating racism and backwards ideas and we will be quick to expose and oppose the continued attacks on communities of colour in Canada. Together with other racialized and working-class communities in Canada, we intensify our fight to assert that education remains to be a basic right for everyone – education that is useful for achieving our full potential and one that aids the advancement of our communities.
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For more information, contact:
Kim Abis or Reuben Sarumugam
(416) 519-2553
ukpc-on@magkaisacentre.org
www.magkaisacentre.org