What is the difference between a settler and an immigrant?
I’m not trying to ruffle any feathers here, but I’ve always been perturbed by the logical incompatibility between denouncing Canada as a settler-colonial state built on stolen land and supporting the government of Canada’s current immigration policy. For instance, when Jully Black complains that Canada is built “on native land,” this seems to imply that her mother was a settler when she came here from Jamaica. Yet the way that Black talks about these issues gives the impression that she does not regard her mother as having participated in the theft, and she does not consider either of them to be a part of the settler-colonial project. But why not? If you’re squatting in someone’s house, and you invite me to move in as well, do I not become a squatter (especially if I know that you’re squatting)?
The answer, I suspect, is that many people think there is a distinction between “bad immigration,” of the sort that happened back in the 19th century and earlier, that was done by Europeans, and “good immigration,” of the sort that is happening now, which most of us are the product of. But what is the difference? It cannot be that current immigration is occurring with the consent of Indigenous peoples – because it isn’t. (I hope that no one will be shocked to discover that the dramatic increase in immigration levels that has occurred over the past decade was done without consultation with Indigenous leaders.)
Indeed, from a First Nations perspective, what’s going on now doesn’t look very different from what has been going on since the last treaty was signed over a century ago: you get your little parcel of land, we get everything else, and we then open the doors to millions of people who want to come here. I have on occasion asked Indigenous scholars that I bump into at conferences what they think about current immigration policy. Most find the question rather uncomfortable to answer, because they want to play nice with the left, but when pressed a bit they admit that, to them, we are all just settlers. The reason for this – and this is the crucial point – is that they do not recognize any difference between the colonial states established on this territory by the French and the British, the Dominion of Canada established in 1867, and the constitutional government created in 1982.
In other words, the reason they consider everyone a settler is that they don’t recognize the legitimacy or the territorial claims and sovereignty of the Canadian state. Because the colonial state was established by conquest, it has no legitimate authority, and every subsequent incarnation is just fruit of the poisoned tree. (Note that this is not the universally held position, but rather a fairly radical one, because it assigns no legitimate weight to treaties. The fact that I often hear this view says more about the political leanings of the academics I interact with.)
A lot of people, however, think that there is an important difference between what was going on in the 19th century and what is happening now. What makes the people arriving now “immigrants,” and not “settlers,” is that they are not engaged in the violent dispossession of the original inhabitants of this land, but are arriving in the territory through an orderly and lawful process. But as we all know from Political Philosophy 101 (or Law School 101), a lawful process is also backed by force, the difference is simply that law involves the application of force by a legitimate state.
So if you really believe that the Canadian state is illegitimate, then it seems to me you’re forced to admit that current mass immigration is part of an ongoing settler-colonial project that should probably be stopped. (Indigenous communities, kind of by definition, are closed to immigration. Membership is acquired by birth, and sometimes by marriage.) And yet somehow I do not think the “anti-Canada 150” poster reproduced above was intended as an anti-immigrant statement. Personally, I’m a strong supporter of immigration and multiculturalism, and so I have no problem recognizing both the sovereignty and legitimacy of the Canadian state. (I also endorse the wisdom of the common-law maxim, that possession is 9/10ths of the law, when it comes to dealing with stolen property.) A lot of people, however, seem to want to have it both ways. (It is astonishing how many meetings and conferences I attend that begin with an immigrant standing up and, without any apparent sense of irony, reciting a land acknowledgement that basically denies the legitimacy of the Canadian constitutional order.)
The weirdest thing, to me, is the number of first and second generation immigrants I speak to, who far from seeing themselves as complicit in colonialism, actually think they are on the same side as Indigenous peoples, simply because their ancestors were not European. Their reasoning seems to be something like this: “Hey Indigenous people, your ancestors were victims of colonialism, my ancestors were victims of colonialism, so we are both victims of colonialism, united in common struggle!” But it doesn’t work that way (as should be obvious to anyone applying an intersectional lens). My Irish ancestors were victims of colonialism at the hands of the British, but the moment they came to Canada they stopped being victims and became perpetrators. Or did they? My grandfather arrived in Alberta in 1899 (before Confederation), my grandmother in 1910 (after). Was one a settler and the other an immigrant?
I guess it’s also worth pointing out that some people see the distinction in crude racial terms, where settlement and colonialism are bad things done by white people, whereas immigration is a completely justified thing done by everyone else. People don’t usually say this out loud though, because as soon as you say it the objections become obvious.
Unfortunately, because of these confusions there has been practically no discussion of the tensions that arise between current immigration policy and the commitment to Indigenous reconciliation. The government of Quebec has been quite explicit about the demographic threat posed to their culture by mass immigration, simply because they accept less than a proportional share of immigrants. Indigenous communities accept zero immigrants, and so are destined to be demographically overwhelmed. (At the breakneck pace set in 2022, the entire Indigenous population of Canada makes up less than two years worth of migrants.) And yet the way that I see people thinking about reconciliation seems fundamentally inadequate to this reality (and is thus, at some level, deeply unserious).