Damn ‘Singhs’: Queen
The Canadian government backed down yesterday from banning immigrants named Singh or Kaur. The immigration service says providing an additional name is optional and blamed the lafda on a poorly-worded letter:
Asking applicants to provide a surname in addition to Singh or Kaur has… [reduced] incidents of mistaken identity. This was not a mandatory requirement.There is no policy or practice whereby people with these surnames are asked to change their names. An applicant with the surnames Singh or Kaur may apply for immigration to Canada. [Link]
But immigration attorneys says in practice, this was a firm ban:
Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla… says in the past three years she’s received about 500 complaints from constituents whose family members were told to change their names when applying to immigrate… Brampton lawyer Harinder Gahir, who routinely takes on immigration cases, says he’s had about 100 clients complain… “They were told, unequivocally, `You can’t apply with the surname Singh or Kaur…’”
Gosal, who was aware of the policy, is glad Sikh organizations finally complained publicly. “This goes back to my father’s days in England, during the post-colonial days of the ’50s and ’60s, when administrative convenience was the justification for changing names that were too common or hard to pronounce.” [Link]
The sad part is that it’s usually the amritdharis, the most religiously devout, who usually drop surnames and caste identifiers in favor of Singh or Kaur:
… for those Sikhs who choose to be baptized, or initiated into the orthodox order of the faith, their previous surname is dropped for Singh or Kaur to symbolize unity and to remove names used to identify social standing within India’s caste system. [Link]
Though the government backed down, I recommend good Canadians cooperate anyway. The name all half million Canadian Sikhs should put down?
Related post: Green card with a catch
on Thursday, July 26th, 2007, 9:38 am in Issues, Religion, Sikhs › 
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Happened on your site. Impressive.
saw this on the sm news tab. couldn’t believe our friendly ol’ canadian neighbor would discriminate in such an absurd way.
Shlok… if you read the star article, you’ll note that the CIC reacted within 24 hours of the report being released by the WSO. That’s not a bad response time. The fact that this seems to have flown under the radar for so long mystifies me - because the morbidity of the proposition seems to be beyond question.
That said, I am sure at some point there was some bureaucrat out there who lamented that not only do all the guys look the same, what with their beards and the turbans, but now we cant even tell them apart by name. I can understand the concerns - I know a guy who used to hand over his license to his underage brother for clubbing etc - but that’s not the CIC’s mandate, so this wwas totally out of order.
On a positive note, the mp for Brampton got her face plastered wide across the Star front page. There’s no derision with being desi in TO, that I can assure you.
Though the government backed down, I recommend good Canadians cooperate anyway. The name all half million Canadian Sikhs should put down?
Stephen Harper.
LOL. Nearly wet myself over that one. :-) Say, I’ve actually only just discovered Ultrabrown, despite frequenting a goodly number of other desi blogs for quite a while now. (I don’t think you’re linked from SM’s blogroll, which surely is an oversight?) I’m glad I found you though: it’s really very well done, and I like the writing, yours in particular. You’re paying attention to subtle stuff that, while easily overlooked, is often important to address thoughtfully (e.g., the Apu issue). Keep it up.