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Not All Immigrants are Newcomers
… and “immigrant” is not a bad word. Let’s focus on what’s most important
I recently came across this article: Immigrant or Refugee? In Canada, All Are ‘Newcomers’. Its opening paragraph says:
Where is an immigrant not an immigrant? Increasingly, in Canada, where the federal and regional governments, along with companies and private support groups, are adopting the word “newcomer” as a more inclusive term that avoids the stigma sometimes attached to the words “immigrant” and “refugee.”
The article, published on Voice of America (VOA), goes on to describe how the term newcomer is used across various government websites, and attempts to clarify when a person immigrating to Canada ceases to be a newcomer.
I sensed the urge to leave a comment but there was no such option on the site, so I decided to write this article to express my viewpoints as an immigrant to Canada.
First of all, immigrants in Canada or elsewhere will always be immigrants. Rather than thinking that the Canadian government is replacing the words immigrant and refugee with newcomer, we should look at the reasons why they use this term. When we go to the websites of the federal and provincial governments as well as other organizations, we learn that the word newcomer is used…
