Ashes, a TIFF reflection
My husband and I had a rare date night yesterday at the Toronto International Film Festival to see Ashes, the newest movie from Diego Luna, which was recently picked up by Watermelon Pictures for wider distribution. The movie was incredible, and so well received in the audience. We were very lucky that Diego Luna, Anna Diaz (the lead actress), a producer, and a screenwriter were there to give us a Q&A after the movie.
The movie’s one that will hit home for every immigrant - and every immigration lawyer. It was high on my priority list for getting tickets to this year. It follows Lucila and the myriad of ways migration affects her childhood and life. From her mother leaving her at 14 to try and make a new life for herself in Spain, to her and her brother following them from Mexico years later, to her longing for “home” after experiencing tragedy, it’s a story that certainly every immigrant (and immigration lawyer) knows well (even those of us who work primarily in corporate immigration law).
It’s a poignant movie to watch in this moment in time politically, where even our current Liberal government is tightening immigration pathways. It’s also a poignant movie to watch as my parents and their siblings get older and pass away in a Bangladeshi diaspora that spans Canada, America, England, Ireland, and Australia. It’s also a poignant movie to watch as I take on the responsibility of clients on my own, without a larger firm support system, and have the ability to get more personal with those clients.
The truth that immigration passes through every country, class, and geopolitical situation (even stable democracies go through ‘brain drain’) is often something completely lost in political and policy discourse around immigration. We very easily categorize migrants into “skilled” and “unskilled”; “good” and “bad”; “helpful” and “harmful”. But this misses the larger picture that, as Diego reflected yesterday, “people are always going to move, and we have to be ready for it”.
The need to find home, family, safety, success, and a better future for our children is always going to compel global migration. Personally, I don’t think Canada’s policies right now are up to the task.
We’ve gone from a somewhat predictable set of immigration pathways into a labyrinthian network of temporary public policies that no Immigration Minister wants to commit to; Ministerial regulations that bypass parliamentary commentary; arbitrary immigration targets with no real economic science behind it; and bureaucratic austerity that is absolutely a fetish, despite Prime Minister Carney’s words yesterday in Toronto.
After all, he is cutting bureaucratic capacity just for the heck of it, without any care for how it impacts the policy goals the government says they’re prioritizing. A recent example is the opening of Canadian citizenship to more than just the first generation born abroad (as required by the Courts), and the inevitable increase in processing time that’s resulted from the higher application intake coming at the same time that IRCC is cutting its workforce. We’ve made thousands of people automatic Canadian citizens overnight, but they’ll now have to wait 33 months (a number likely to rise) before they can get proof of that citizenship.
We should be talking about the disconnect between public statements of priority and processing capacity more. Immigration lawyers who have first hand insight into this disconnect should be talking about it more. Not privately in closed door meetings with the government, but publicly, to try and get some accountability.
Diego said at the end of the night (I took notes quickly, so forgive me if the quote isn’t 100% accurate): “The countries we live in, the reality we live in, is based on migration. The only certainty in life is that people will move.” We need to be ready for it.
My family certainly lives up to Diego’s words.
I lived in 4 countries before I turned 7 (the UAE, Bangladesh, UK, and Canada). Both of my parents’ families are marked by the need for a better life for future generations (my mother and all of her siblings are immigrants; my dad and his brothers are too). All of those journeys for my parents, my aunt, and my uncles came with traumas that I’m only now really starting to understand (and hopefully bring into my work). I’m a sponsor, having met my husband in England before we settled in Canada. Who knows what lies ahead for my daughter (who, at 4 and a half has already visited 10 countries).
If you get a chance to see this movie in theatres, please take it. And please look around at your community to get to know the migration stories that are inevitably right next to you right now. I hope that we can have the patience, and curiosity of others, needed to make sure we’re ready for the migration flows of yesterday, today, and tomorrow.