June 7, 2001 A29
Letter to the Editor
Toronto Star
byMinaz Hirani
Re British envoy to probe woman's airport ordeal, June 4; Abuse of power, Letter, June 5.
Are the citizens of Canada really able or willing to do anything about the abuse that a person may face when immigration officials look at skin colour during the immigration process? Isn't it a fact that the decision made by the officer depends on skin colour?
Racial profiling is a fact of life in Canada.
This practice is especially common among immigration officers. If you take a person who has skin colour other than white, and you take a white person from, say, England or France, and watch the officer process these two people through the immigration system, most of the time, the coloured person will face more questions and scrutiny than the white person from the immigration officer.
On the other hand, observe the general Canadian public in its treatment, for example, of a coloured person, say a Sikh, whose family has been here for the past three generations (over 100 years), as opposed to a white-skinned immigrant who has just landed in this country.
How many times have you noted that the Sikh gentleman would be classified as an immigrant, while the white person would not be looked at twice, he would be considered a Canadian.
If this is the normal practice of the general public, how can we expect Canada's immigration officers to behave any different?