Why would the Canadians want Huntley?

Why didn’t former Capetonian Brandon Huntley get off his skinny backside and apply for permanent residence in Canada through the normal channels like everyone else?

Oh, for sure, the emigration process involves spending a lot of money, filling in lots of forms, and spending a lot of time in queues at home affairs, which is enough to make anyone want to slit their wrists in despair. So Huntley’s desire to get around the process is understandable. But what makes him so special? Why should he get away with not having to go through the angst and frustration of the emigration process?

Why should he enjoy treatment different from that meted out to his compatriots?

The truth is that if Huntley had applied for permanent residence like so many other South Africans — and, indeed, citizens of a vast array of other countries (why South Africans continue to think that they are so terribly unique in their desire to move elsewhere is beyond me) — the Canadians would never have allowed him in.

Why should they? He has nothing that they want. No skills, no education. The only thing he did have on his side was his age, and now that he is on the wrong side of 30, even that’s looking doubtful.

That’s the truth about labour and mobility in Thomas Friedman;s flat world. It’s all about what you have to offer. Ask yourself not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for the country you want to live in. And someone like Brandon Huntley doesn’t have very much except a sob story and a good lawyer.

For those of you who have never attempted to emigrate, I can tell you this: nothing alerts you to the brutal arithmetic of how much you are worth like applying for permanent residence in another country. You are allocated points according to your age, your education level, your fluency in English, your occupation and your experience. Later, you are poked and prodded to check that you’re healthy enough not to be a burden on the system.

You are not an individual, you are potential asset or a potential liability, and you either make the cut, or you don’t.

Don’t assume that there is any correlation between education levels, social class and your chances of getting in either. Huntley might have been an unemployed lawn sprinkler salesman — South Africa is “one redneck lighter”as Chris McEvoy put it — but that does not mean that fitters and turners are less valued than psychologists. Anything but: in fact, it is far easier to get into Australia as a tradesman than as a professional.

Besides, if we’re talking about genuine South African refugee cases, a Sudanese shopkeeper in Khayalitsha or an MDC activist surviving in the Central Methodist church probably has a far better case than Huntley. Or a farmer in a region subject to farm attacks. There, the case might have served to highlight something of genuine value, a cause that would otherwise be swept under the national carpet (which, incidentally, needs a good vacuum with some sort of national Kirby, and is now lumpy with so many other issues that have neatly covered up).

Instead, we get Brandon Huntley.

And Huntley, for all his wiles — not that it’s hard to convince the Canadians, because they are so terribly nice and polite and, as it turns out, ignorant — is a horrible embarrassment. White South Africans like to trot out a well-worn narrative about skills loss as a result of crime and affirmative action. You need us, we argue, we’re valuable, and you don’t value us enough. Ja, right. As it turns out, we’re just as happy as the most venal of ANCYL politicians to use the race card when it suits us.

As a white South African, I cringe. Maybe the Canadians will boot Huntley out after all. If he does get sent back to South Africa, perhaps somebody should advise him to get off his backside and get his head around the ins and outs of a toilet. After all, if he qualifies as a plumber, maybe the New Zealanders will want him.