Growing towards the light?
“We come here so that our children may grow towards the light and that something beautiful will come out of it”, states Andzrej Kuczynski—my father—when discussing his reason for emigrating from Poland to Canada. With this goal in mind many parents from the third world countries make the gruelling decision to leave their friends and family behind to help get their children ahead. As idealistic as these immigrants’ dreams may be, there are often many clouds in the growth cycles of these plants. For parents with legal status or permanent status it is easier for them to access all the resources available to children and their parents. Sadly, for those that have no status or hold pre-carious status these resources which are often available are hidden. “Canada is one of the many countries apart of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and is obligated to uphold the best interest of the child in all decision regardless of their legal status”( Human rights in the community: rights as agents for change pg 32). Should citizens of particular countries “support” children of undocumented and pre-carious status immigrants? This paper argues that citizens should work together to help children regardless of parental status. They are not the ones to blame for their parents decisions. Often times parents do not come here to create problems but, rather to find solutions. Parents are not simply free loading off tax payers money, they work hard and often do many jobs that rightful citizen would never imagine performing. This paper will also discuss possible solutions to this phenomenon of immigrant children being held out of the schooling system, quite like the first scenario I encountered. It is important to discuss why many children and parents are not granted access to the education system even though they have legal rights to it. One of the biggest arguments to support the limitation of undocumented or pre-carious status children out of the education system is that their parents are not registered to pay income taxes; therefore, they should not be taking money from hard working Canadian citizens. The discourse about the lazy immigrant or ungrateful refugee that comes to Canada is so that they can receive all the benefits that Canadians have worked so hard to give them; also playing a role in hindering access to the school system. Or perhaps it is the idea that these immigrants and refugees are up to no good, we pay for their living standards and they get involved with drugs and illegal social groups. Unfortunately, because these discourses have been circulating for so long and often resurface in news articles that represent a minority of the population of immigrants, people often believe this to be true. But immigrants pay taxes in the form of HST, GST, and PST and depending on their status; they may also contribute to CPP or EI.
Imagine being a citizen of a particular country that awards its citizens with abundant rewards and benefits yet, you do not receive them because your parents are not legal citizens. This is true in Canada where Canadian born children are denied their legal rights and freedoms because their parents may not have legal status. By denying the children’s legal rights they are entitled to affect encroaching the rights of a citizen. Would it not be in the best interest of the Canadian people and the Canadian economy if we took care of these children by turning them into productive citizens allowing them the right to grow? When the child reaches the age of maturity, his parents legal status no longer applies and he is now a citizen that has his whole life been denied his/hers simple rights. They will begin to pay taxes that could later be redistributed to pay for other things such as education and health care. Taking this into account they may feel a sort of resentment to the country that denied them their basic rights because of their parents legal status. An important issue