Kusha Dadui
In the dominant story of Canadian nationalism, the country has always been a safe haven for refugees. In the imagined past, the persecuted subjects finding shelter in Canada were Black people escaping from slavery south of the border. The “new underground railroad,” however, in terms of LGBTQ organizations such as Iranian Railroad for Queer Refugees and Iranian Queer Organization, is for queer and trans refugees from Iran. In this chapter, I will argue that the history of Canadian immigration, of which the refugee system is a part, is rooted in racism and colonialism.1 In recent years, this has taken the shape of a homonationalism that includes LGBTQ refugees, particularly those from Iran and other “Muslim countries.” This is accomplished at the expense of non-LGBTQ Muslim migrants and on account of the generalization that Islam is a “violent” and “homophobic” religion.2 However, the queer and trans “safe haven” claim ignores the tremendous barriers that LGBTQ refugees face in accessing life chances in Canada. In fact, as this chapter demonstrates, narratives of queer and trans refugee living in Canada brim with exclusion and discrimination.
Racism has pervaded Canada since the early days of white settlement. Its entrenchment in the Canadian immigration system clearly contradicts the dominant narrative of Canada as benevolent and welcoming to newcomers. Historically, immigration to Canada has followed a White Canada policy. While this policy was officially repealed in 1967, European settlement continues to be encouraged. People from the global south are allowed to immigrate only very selectively and in ways that benefit the Canadian economy.
Historically, border imperialism was especially pronounced on Canada’s west coast, which was the first point of arrival for immigrants from Asia. A well-known example is now widely remembered as the Komagata Maru incident.3 The incident happened in 1914, but its impact resonates well beyond.4 A group of economic migrants, most of whom were Sikh, had journeyed from Hong Kong to the west coast of Canada. When they reached Vancouver, their ship, the Komagata Maru, was denied entry since all its passengers were subject to the Continuous Passage Act of 1908, which “celebrated” its hundredth birthday in 2008. This Act was designed to keep out Asian immigrants. It prohibited any ship from landing if it had stopped in another country on its journey from its point of origin to Canada. When the Komagata Maru was on its way to the coast of Vancouver in 1914, the Canadian media reflected the sentiments of white Canadians. Examples include the Province newspaper’s headline “Boat Loads of Hindus on Way to Vancouver,” and other papers’ references to the “Hindu invasion” and the “Vancouver troubles.”5
This and many other xenophobic laws came into effect as a result of a dual system of white settlement and selective inclusion of migrants from the global south, who were from the start designated to remain a cheap migrant labour force for Canada’s capitalist economy. Harsha Walia coins the term “border imperialism”6 to link the facilitation of capital flows and the creation of an exploitable global migrant workforce to the ongoing dispossession and displacement of Indigenous peoples from their lands.
The history of Chinese immigration to Canada clearly illustrates how Canada has always used immigrants as a disposable pool of labour who are undeserving of and disentitled to status, proper health care, and other benefits reserved for citizens. As documented by the Calgary Chinese Cultural Centre,7 Chinese immigration to Canada began in 1858. It intensified in the 1880s when many Chinese men came to Canada to build the Canadian Pacific Railway. They were paid one dollar a day, two-thirds the wage of a white man doing the same work. At the same time, they were given the most dangerous work, such as handling explosives, tunnelling, and carrying big rocks. In 1885, the same year that the Canadian Pacific Railway was completed, the Chinese Head Tax legislation was passed. Every Chinese person entering Canada was forced to pay fifty dollars. In 1900, this was raised to one hundred dollars, and in 1903 again to five hundred dollars—the equivalent of two years’ wages for Chinese labourers. Unable to stop Chinese immigration, the federal government of Canada passed the Chinese Exclusion Act on July 1, 1923. Since then, many Chinese have observed that date in protest as “Humiliation Day.” Each year, people close their businesses and boycott the Canada Day festivities held on the same day.
Another early example of Canadian border racism that illustrates the anti-immigrant sentiments that have governed the Canadian immigration from the start are the “anti-Oriental riots” in Vancouver in 1907, as documented in “The Chinese Experience in BC: 1850–1950.”8 From 1906 to 1907, an “anti-Asiatic parade” was organized by the Asiatic Exclusion League, which ended in a riot, with extensive damage done to property in Chinatown and the Japanese quarter. This is also the year that 901 Sikhs arrived in Vancouver aboard the Canadian Pacific steamer Monteagle. Many white residents, feeling that their jobs were threatened, decided to prevent these passengers from entering Canada. They had the official support of the Canadian government. In 1908, the Municipal Elections Act made it illegal for “Hindus” to vote in municipal elections. It also excluded them from becoming lawyers, pharmacists, or accountants.
Anti-Asian mobilizing did not stop there. In 1914, Vancouver’s mayor Truman Baxter organized another anti-Asian rally. One of the main speakers was the Conservative Party MP Henry Herbert Stevens, who was a prominent opponent of Asian immigration. In his speech, Baxter said:
I have no ill-feeling against people coming from Asia personally, but I reaffirm that the national life of Canada will not permit any large degree of immigration from Asia. . . . I intend to stand up absolutely on all occasions on this one great principle—of a white country and a white British Columbia.9
One might argue that this statement is over a century old, but its spirit is very similar to recent pieces of legislation supported by Chris Alexander and Jason Kenney, who from 2006 to 2015 served as Immigration and Foreign Affairs Ministers in Stephen Harper’s Conservative government. Kenney’s 2012 Refugee Bill created a racist two-tier system based on nationality. In 2015, Alexander introduced the Barbaric Practices Act, supposedly to prevent “violence against women” and “terrorism” in immigrant communities. The Act targeted Muslims by rendering it illegal to wear the niqab in legal contexts, e.g., while appearing in court to testify or take a citizenship oath, and by making polygamy a ground of exclusion for immigration to Canada. In the same year, Bill C-51 was passed, the racist Anti-Terror Bill that both promotes Islamophobia in mainstream society and further circumscribes citizenship and immigration rights for people of colour in Canada. In promoting the Bill, outgoing Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper announced that “barbaric cultures who force their women to wear Niqab have no place in Canada.”10 While the Harper regime came to an end by the time of the writing of this chapter, it is noteworthy that many liberals, including the new prime minister, Justin Trudeau, voted for both the Barbaric Practices Act and C51. Not surprisingly, in such a climate, it has become increasingly difficult for refugees from Muslim countries to come to Canada.
While Canada prides itself on its progressiveness, current immigration laws are in many ways backward. They increasingly resemble the racist laws of 1914, which gave the government wide powers to arrest and deport immigrants under the War Measures Act. The main difference in the current laws is that the racism that governs them is more covert. In fact, there is a total denial of racism in the current immigration system. Nevertheless, the underlying attitude towards immigrants—as those who are undesirable and must be excluded—has not changed much. On August 13, 2010, 492 Tamil migrants arrived in British Columbia, on the west coast of Canada. The government claimed that all of the passengers were Tamil Tigers and therefore “terrorists.” Most of the passengers—even women and children—were arrested and deported. Especially disturbing was the public support for the deportation of these immigrants among the wider population in Vancouver, reflected in mass demonstrations.11
Current Canadian immigration law, although less overt, is still profoundly governed by border racism and imperialism, this time under the guise of anti-terrorism and safety. The exploitative principle of the immigration system is once again coming to the fore in recent changes that have made it much harder for immigrants from the global south to sponsor their family or immigrate to Canada as skilled workers or students. For instance, family reunification now takes longer.12 This may surprise less if we consider that it was only in the 1960s that immigration policy in Canada was changed to allow immigration from non-European countries. The same racism can still be felt in the ways in which nonwhite immigration is prevented while white immigration is actively encouraged.
That the main interest is the securing of Canada as white is also apparent when we look at the changing state treatment of homosexuality. When homosexuality was criminalized in the late nineteenth century, Punjabis in British Columbia quickly became major targets of criminalization.13 Then, in the 2000s, when hate crime became an issue in BC, Punjabis and other South Asians were the first to be criminalized as homophobic.14 As Jin Haritaworn asks in Queer Lovers and Hateful Others,15 why were nonwhite bodies then segregated for being “too queer” if they are now segregated (with the help of both prisons and borders) as “too homophobic”? Is the real interest the protection of queers or the segregation of racialized and colonized peoples from lands that must be kept white?
Indeed, the original seizure of these lands, later secured through borders, occurred not in the name of protecting queers from the excessive “homophobia” of the nonwhite population but in the name of controlling the excessive “queerness” of Indigenous peoples. As Indigenous queer, trans, LGBT and Two-Spirit communities have documented, the harsh sexual and gender violence that has dominated Canada since its birth contrasts with many Indigenous societies pre-contact, where “same-sex” relationships were valued and alternative gender roles respected.16 In fact, the first to be targeted for extreme violence and murder were often individuals who did not conform to the European gender binary. This throws into question the claim explored in the next section, that Canada is a “safe haven” for LGBTQ refugees escaping oppression.
The same contradictions that have underlain the colonial practices through which Canada was founded have also shaped the country’s border governance. The nationalist claim to be a “safe haven” for those escaping oppression has a long history in the Canadian nationalist imagination. One of Canada’s founding myths is that white Canadians, rather than actively participating and benefiting from the slave trade, rescued Africans escaping from slavery on the Underground Railroad.17 In common with other Western countries, Canadians see themselves as generous, benevolent, and open to refugees, even though most asylum seekers end up in neighbouring countries in the global south.18 As I will highlight in this section, the myth of the safe haven is further contradicted by the actual experiences of those who have arrived in Canada as refugees. This has especially been the case for queer and trans refugees.
On June 4, 1969, Canada belatedly signed the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees—eighteen years after it was adopted by the United Nations. In 1993, the country’s Supreme Court concluded in Canada (Attorney-General) v. Ward, in obiter that sexual orientation can constitute the basis of claiming refuge as a particular social group. Since then, prosecution based on sexual orientation and gender identity has been added to the list of legitimate grounds.
While this might be celebrated as a gain, it again happened at the expense of intensified racism. In order to demonstrate their legitimacy, refugee claimants must tell stories that conform to culturally racist and classist stereotypes that originate in Western fantasies of nonwhite people’s genders and sexualities. I argue that queer and trans refugees are mediating agents who are used to relay Canada’s “freedom” and “superiority” over other regions, particularly those identified as Islamic, to the rest of the world. Based on my decade-and-a-half experience as a support worker for trans and queer refugees, most refugee claimants to Canada from the global south, specifically African countries and countries categorized as Muslim, are now LGBTQ refugees. This contrasts with earlier years, when the majority of refugee claims were based on political affiliation.
This queering of the Canadian border regime produces several vital contradictions. It forces queer or trans people who are immigrants or refugees to conform to a nationalist discourse of Canadian superiority for their safety and their ability to stay in the country. In contrast, it positions other, especially Muslim, countries as “barbaric” towards sexually and gender nonconforming people. This ignores the aftermaths of a colonialism that introduced homophobic and transphobic laws into many global south contexts in the first place. Accordingly, claimants are encouraged to embrace the narrative that they are proud to have made it to a “free” country, and that they can only be free while they are in Canada and away from their community.
However, many queer and trans refugees face racism even (and maybe especially) in spaces that are LGBTQ-centred. Particularly those who do not fit the typical profile of what a queer person looks like to white Canadians are often excluded from LGBTQ communities. As a result, many queer and trans refugees are inhibited from accessing services in supposedly queer- and trans-positive spaces, which causes further isolation.
A key barrier that LGBTQ refugee claimants face is proving that they are queer. For example, one has to demonstrate involvement within the mainstream LGBTQ community in Canada and participate in Pride celebrations to prove that one is queer. For many queer and trans people of colour, these places and events are not necessarily safe, as most Pride events are Western, white, and homonormative. In addition, the refugee process disregards that gender and sexual expressions are culturally varied and do not look identical across diasporic formations, even after a long and ongoing history of racist and colonialist assimilation. Meanwhile, where cultural difference is taken into account, claimants are often forced to perpetuate the idea that their cultures and societies are inherently homophobic and transphobic.
Both my own experience of going through the refugee process and my participation in many refugee hearings suggest that determining one’s eligibility to become a convention refugee forces one to undergo a line of questioning that is intrinsically intrusive and traumatizing. Thus, LGBTQ refugee claimants are regularly asked questions to “verify” their sexual orientation and/or gender identity. Such questions include: “Do you have a partner or did you have a partner in your country? Are you active in the LGBTQ community back home? How and by whom do you fear prosecution?” The problem with these questions is not only that it is unsafe to be out in many countries because of government persecution, but also that not everyone experiences sexuality or gender in the same way. Furthermore, the majority of Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) members who decide on these cases are white, conservative men appointed by the Conservative federal government. Frequently, these members were appointed precisely because of their deeply xenophobic affiliations and their ignorance about queer and trans bodies. It remains to be seen how this will change under the newly elected Liberal Trudeau government.
Let me elaborate on the stipulation that, in order to be accepted as a convention refugee, a claimant needs to have some involvement in the local LGBTQ community. This is difficult for many newcomers as there is a lot of racism within this community. One illustration is the experiences of many refugee claimants who have attended a support group called “Among Friends” at the 519 Church Street Community Centre. The group meets in the heart of the gay village in the Church and Wellesley area in Toronto. Its stated aim is to support LGBTQ refugees in getting the resources they need and help them build community. At the end of the group, participants receive a letter documenting their involvement in the queer community. However, many newcomers and refugee claimants I have spoken to would not go to this group because they feel they would face racism in the group and at the 519. This includes white queer and trans organizers’ constant suspicions that queer and trans refugees are not really queer or trans, but pretend to be so in order to come to Canada. Indeed, organizations such as Iranian Railroad for Queer Refugees or Iranian Queer Organization, who are funded by the Canadian government, are encouraged to police their clients’ gender and sexuality by reporting any “frauds.”
This policing mirrors the first point of contact that queer and trans refugees typically have with Canada. Often the immigration officer at the border is the first person to whom the claimant has ever declared their gender identity or sexual orientation. This can be emotionally intense given the power relations involved. It is important to examine how race plays out in these scenarios. In order to assess the veracity of their claim to persecution based on gender or sexuality, the claimant is asked questions about the violence and trauma that they have faced from government officials, family, or society. However, claimants from Middle Eastern or African countries are often asked for more details, as these countries are perceived as more homophobic. The homonationalist fantasy of Western supremacy is particularly pronounced when it comes to Muslim countries. It unproblematically coexists with the use of sexual humiliation as torture by Western militaries, of which there has been little criticism. Clear examples of this are the American soldiers treated Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib and the sexual violence that prisoners faced in Guantanamo Bay.
When the claim is based on gender identity, the understanding of gender identity that is applied by the immigration officials does not take into consideration the claimant’s own cultural experiences of gender. At the same time, there is an expectation that the person who is claiming refuge based on gender identity has already started the process of physical transition. However, many trans, genderqueer or gender nonconforming folks might not want to use hormones and have surgery, or they find them very hard to access because they do not have status. This difficulty was exacerbated by the changes made to the Interim Federal Health (IFH) program by the Harper Government in 2012. The IFH program covers health care expenses for refugees who have not yet gone through the hearing process and do not have access to Ontario Health Insurance Program (OHIP) or other health care coverage. However, under the changes made to IFH, extended health care was cut for many refugees. They are no longer entitled to medication, vision (assessment and glasses), dental, or special devices coverage (wheelchairs, prostheses, orthotics, etc.). This is a clear example of not only the xenophobia and transphobia, but also the ableism of the Canadian border regime.
Like many other countries in the global north, Canada thus dehumanizes displaced people and refugees and treats them as burdens. In the case of trans and queer refugees, who have to prove their sexual orientation or gender identity, the process can be very demeaning. As I have argued, it is important to challenge the misconception that Canada is a “safe haven” for LGBTQ refugees. This is clearly reflected in the high suicide rate for refugee trans women in Toronto and other major Canadian cities.19 Trans women who are refugees have no or limited access to essential life chances such as housing, safe jobs, and health care. Most often they get placed in men’s shelters, which is extremely unsafe. Furthermore, they are routinely misgendered by immigration officials or even by members of the Immigration and Refugee Board who are the decision makers. The gender and sexuality policing that racialized Others routinely experience directly contradicts the homonationalist claim that Canada is a “safe haven.”
Unfortunately, even those LGBTQ rights and service organizations who invest in refugees have rarely considered how racism and the white saviour complex feed into their work. Newcomer trans folks frequently find it hard to access these organizations since they do not have ID. Many refugees have to escape their former homes abruptly and do not have access to their identification documents when they escape. Furthermore, trans people who have started transitioning often do not have identification that matches their gender presentation.
Another huge problem facing trans and queer immigrants is finding employment. This is despite the fact that, as my experience as a trans program co-ordinator at a major LGBT health centre in Toronto suggests, trans people have the highest level of education in the LGBTQ community.20 Additionally, queer and trans people who are nonstatus have no access to essential, life-saving services such as Ontario Works or Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) that provide financial support to people who face challenges in finding employment. As a result of this difficulty in accessing formal work and benefits, many trans and queer refugees become vulnerable to unsafe and life-threatening work environments.
In this chapter, I have argued that the oppression that queer and trans newcomers and refugees face at the hands of the Canadian state and civil society throws into question the claim that Canada is a safe haven for LGBTQ people. I have shown that, besides being inaccurate when compared to the realities of Canadian border imperialism and racism, this claim itself functions as a method of border fortification. In fact, the myth of Canadian LGBTQ-friendliness has been actively used to exclude immigrants who are constructed as threats to national security and Western values of freedom and democracy. For instance, there are many cases where immigrants and refugees from African countries are denied entry because they are deemed homophobic and therefore a threat to Canadian democratic values.
Far from “rescuing” trans and queer immigrants, Canadian border imperialism systematically inflicts violence on our bodies. I have shown how the attempt to make borders more permissible for the right kind of immigrants and refugees who are “deserving,” as many social movements have attempted, has in fact served to further fortify them. A better starting point might be to question how white Europeans derived the right and legitimacy to control the territory now often referred to as Canada in the first place, and what forms of violence—gendered, sexual, racial, classed, abled, and colonial—continue to be inflicted in the wake of this conquest.