Quickie: It’s Victim Blaming and It’s Racist

The comment that influx of migrants and refugees disproportionately affects the poor is actually and demonstrably false. The biggest increase I saw to my ODSP came around when Canada accepted a large contingent of Syrian and Somali refugees.

In addition, historically, forced improvements to social safety nets to deal with the sudden influx of new users actually strengthen those safety nets and tend to improve services for existing citizens and users of those services.

Where it does affect the poor is when conservatives make cuts to those social safety nets, then blame it on refugees. It’s literally them taking food out of our mouths, then blaming it on the person starving next to us. It’s a diversionary tactic that allows politicians to redirect the anger legitimately directed at them [the service cutting politicians] towards a more vulnerable population by playing on existing, unacknowledged, ignored, and normalized social racism.

It’s practically a political cartoon of someone physically stealing something from you in front of you then pointing at another person saying, “hey, they look different than you, clearly they must have stolen it.” without even bothering to hide what they’re doing.

To blame an influx of refugees for a rise in white supremacist sentiments is literally to blame the victims of racism for the existence of racism. That racism was already present, it just wasn’t talked about or more accurately was claimed to no longer be a problem despite all evidence to the contrary, making it easy for anyone to harness those sentiments for political gain.

It’s victim blaming, and it’s racist.

Quickie: It’s Victim Blaming and It’s Racist
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Ableism Kills

A while back, I wrote a post begging the Canadian Government to open it’s borders to Americans with Disabilities as refugees from a slow-motion genocide. Someone left a comment on that post to which I’ve been meaning to respond for a long time.

CYNTHIA: I had previously mentioned this to Michael.

Reluctantly, as a fellow Canadian, I cannot fully support this.

As you know, the United States has 10x the population of Canada. It is a first-world country.

There is no way that the math works for Canada to be able to support the complex heath care needs of Americans with pre-existing conditions. As you mention, the system is already at capacity when it comes to providing proper health care with disability support programs for Canadians. No system can function unless you have a large base of relatively healthy people paying into the system to cover the costs of those who are using it more.

Of course, in a situation of someone being a genuine refugee from any country, humanitarian considerations should come into play. That can’t be extended to American “medical costs refugees”, though, because it would break our system.

In the long run, Canadians need a system that is sustainable – and ultimately, that benefits all Americans as well. Americans are looking at us to see how our single-payer system is functioning. If it works relatively well, that increases political support for it. If it doesn’t, that increases the dire warning about “socialized medicine”. The most vulnerable Americans ultimately need an American health care system that works, and they are less likely to get it if the Canadian health care system breaks or if ordinary American voters stop fearing the consequences of repealing Obamacare because they think that free health care will always be available to them in Canada. Right now, that fear has managed to stop the repeal attempts, to the benefit of all Americans who will ever need health care.

Continue reading “Ableism Kills”

Ableism Kills