Quote:
Originally Posted by Harry Lime
Please elaborate. I vaguely remember the conversation, and I think it was during the time that Harper raised the immigration number to 500K without tying it to any metric. Trudeau then tripled down later.
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Sure, there are a few reasons it's xenophobic.
For background, there's almost zero evidence for any preferences by ethnicity, but the little there is suggests any preference that may have been held in the past has been significantly diminished. As with most things, it's a very nuanced issue and party preference is much more strongly correlated with population density, education, and regionality. Almost all evidence that does exist suggests there's some voter preference for Liberal party, but it's very specific and very small (ie. Sikh voters in Ontario, but not in BC. Sikh voters in Ontario but not Chinese voters in Ontario). This would be impossible to game plan for election purposes, especially considering recent immigrant turnout is extremely low and remains that way for a long time. Political parties simply do not plan for election strategy way beyond the current cycle because most of the actors know they may not be there for the next election. Political actors believe in individual survival far more than future party electability. They're not going to make plans that help them electorally in 15 years in my opinion.
As for the xenophobia, you need to think about how an opinion like this forms and why it perpetuates for centuries. There's a reason it resonates as a wedge issue and has for many, many decades, in almost every country that allows immigration: fear of others (xenophobia). How does someone start to believe allowing new immigrants is a cynical plot to get re-elected? Why does it gain traction? It's not because of evidence and critical thinking