Last week, the Toronto Star had an article dealing with Indian immigrants. The Indian government is encouraging Indo-Canadians to acquire dual citizenship:
**Canada may be home, but for Toronto’s Indian community, “the sacred motherland” will always tug at the heart, and often the wallet.
That deep sense of connection enticed about 500 GTA residents — Canadian citizens — to apply for a new form of dual Indian citizenship, even before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh formally launched the program at an expatriates’ conference here last week. Thousands more are expected to sign up in the coming months.
So-called “overseas citizenship,” available to anyone born in India, or whose parents or grandparents were born there, won’t allow the holders to vote, run for public office, or buy agricultural land. But it will offer the convenience of not requiring a visa for visits, or checking in with local police for stays longer than six months. And it will allow these partial citizens to invest freely in residential or commercial property and gives them parity under Indian tax laws.
“Every person of Indian origin living anywhere in the world can aspire to be a citizen of our sacred motherland,” Singh told the fourth annual Pravasi Bharatiya Divas conference, earning a standing ovation from a thousand delegates attending from around the world, including about two dozen Canadians.**
Notice how Indian citizenship is race-based. You qualify for Indian citizenship if your ancestors are Indian. Yet, if anyone suggested Canada should give preference to British or European immigrants, Indo-Canadians would be screaming racism. Canada and other western countries are expected to accept immigrants from all over the world even if that means replacing the native majority, but apparently it’s perfectly OK for India to give special treatment to people of Indian origin.
I don’t know how many Indo-Canadians are interested in this “overseas citizenship”, but if you choose to live here, Canada should be your “sacred motherland”. I’m not saying Indian immigrants shouldn’t have a sentimental attachment to the country they came from, but if you become a Canadian citizen Canada should come first. What are the implications for the Canadian state when large numbers of its people have dual citizenship, which implies dual loyalties? Of course, that’s a question you’re not allowed to ask in a multicultural country.