National Post
Published: Saturday, July 22, 2006
Holiday Inn Canadians
The British have a term for them: bolt-holers. A bolt-hole is a secret route an animal digs from its burrow, out through which it can escape if ever a predator enters the main tunnel. In the human sense, bolt-holers are dual citizens who live in one country more or less permanently, yet retain a passport for a second, more stable country to which they can bolt if things get too "hot" at home.
It is hard to know just how many of the 40,000 Canadian citizens registered with our embassy in Beirut are bolt-holers, but even a conservative estimate would place their share at 50%. While they are Canadians, and Canadian law requires that all citizens be treated equally, it is hard to work up as much sympathy for Canadians living full-time overseas as it is for those short-term Canadian visitors toLebanon who suddenly found themselves trapped there.
Census records place the number of naturalized Canadian citizens originally from Lebanon at nearly 150,000, although the Foreign Affairs department estimates the total could be nearer 250,000. Most arrived during that country's bloody 15-year civil war from 1975 to 1990. Compared to migrants from other nations, the Lebanese have been especially diligent at taking out Canadian citizenship. According to Immigration Department figures, over 80% have become Canadians versus an overall average of just 68% of all immigrants landed during the same period.
In other words, there is no reason to doubt that the majority of Lebanese immigrants to Canada were grateful to be here and eager to join in Canadian society, at least initially.
But in recent years, as strife in Lebanon has eased, the Canadian-Lebanese Chamber of Commerce estimates that between 25,000 and 30,000 moved back with little or no intention of returning to Canada. Others in the Lebanese-Canadian community believe that of the 16,000 evacuees expected on Canadian soil in the coming weeks, 4,000 or more will have no Canadian homes to go to, nor any family here to call on, so completely had they severed their ties with Canada before the current hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel broke out.
This group might be called "Holiday Inn Canadians." They do not work here, pay no Canadian taxes, have little or no property or ties here. But they did have a Canadian passport.
The situation is not unique to Lebanese-Canadians. There are thousands of bolt-hole Canadians living in Hong Kong, and other countries and regions around the world. Indeed, there are so many that Ottawa has over the years had to develop policies on how to deal with them and what rights and privileges they should have.
In short, federal policy says that whenever a Canadian with dual citizenship is in the other country for which he holds a passport, he is the responsibility of that country's government, even if he is merely vacationing there.
If that rule were applied rigorously to the current crisis, many of those Canadians clamouring for government assistance to get out of Lebanon would have to turn to the government there for help. Yet this fact seems lost on most of the Canadian media, who instead seem single-mindedly focused on manufacturing a phony scandal out of the fact that it's taken more than a few days to evacuate thousands of people stranded an ocean away. And so Canadians have gotten the false impression that our government is being derelict -- when in fact it is doing far more for many of these citizens than is owed under established policy.
Obviously, Canadians returning to their countries of origin for a few weeks' holiday with family and friends should be treated no differently from Canadian-born citizens touring a foreign country when hostilities break out. But for the rest, for those who are Canadians on paper but Lebanese in fact, Ottawa's policy makes sense. And Canadian diplomatic officials should begin informing our globe-trotting citizens of it.
That way, the next time war breaks out, Holiday Inn Canadians will have been given fair warning: If your commitment to Canada is passport-thin, you won't get a free trip down the bolt-hole.
© National Post 2006 |
