What does Quebec’s social contract for immigrants really add up to?

There is so little liberalism today that is even remotely principled that I wanted to give Monique Gagnon-Tremblay her due. In reality, her social-contract liberalism (she actually calls it a “moral contract”) adds up to little more than a pro forma gesture. As she put it in a letter to the Montreal Gazette, when she was immigration minister,

I personally made certain this was clear in the Québec Immigration Act and in the “moral contract” applicants are asked to respect. Applicants are made aware of the situation and are then free to choose whether they still want to come to Québec. If they do, by the very fact of immigrating, they agree to abide by our legal system and values. It is then up to us to facilitate their integration into Québec society.

Immigrants by choosing to immigrate have tacitly agreed to support Quebec’s social system, and in exchange for their tacit agreement, the Quebec government has the duty to “facilitate their integration” into Quebec. But what if they didn’t really mean it? What if, despite these Moslems’ constructive assent to the Quebec social contract, they seek to institutionalize sharia in Quebec ? And what if, despite official rejection of official sharia, the number of Moslems keeps increasing to the point where they will have the political power to impose sharia, regardless of what Gagnon-Tremblay may want? Furthermore, since the Quebec government now has the duty to “integrate” the immigrants (a duty not qualified by any quid pro quo other than their initial tacit agreement to respect Quebec’s social order), how can the government cease its efforts to integrate into Quebec its population of non-assimilating, sharia-seeking Moslems? To substantive questions such as these, no liberal—whether of the openness type, the social-contract type, or even the “hard-line conservative” type, has any answer.

The answer, inconceivable to all types of liberals, including the “conservatives,” is that a society is not formed from a mere agreement, but from shared qualities, shared allegiances, and shared memories. If you tell prospective Moslem immigrants that they must formally agree to support your social system in order to immigrate into your country, many of them will agree to that condition. But, as long as they remain Moslems, they can never existentially agree to that condition. Once they enter your country, whatever their agreements or conscious intentions at the time they entered, they will inevitably begin to change it.

A society that defines itself solely by liberal rights and liberal proceduralism, and not by substantive cultural qualities, cannot maintain its own existence. This is especially the case when the society is operating within a multi-civilizational, multi-racial environment, and the society, extending its liberal rights and procedures to all humans equally, must, in principle, open its membership to all people regardless of their culture. Under such circumstances, the liberal social contract is little better than a collective suicide pact.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 20, 2005 04:10 PM | Send