Legitimizing discrimination

Awhile back, a couple of comments on this blog dealt with Maher Arar's inability to find regular work after his return to Canada, despite his training as a computer engineer. At that time, Mike and I agreed that something smelled fishy about the lack of employers interested in Arar's services. But especially after recent news about the scope of U.S. surveillance (and Canada's complicity in some of it), the decision not to hire Arar may well make perfect sense from an employer's standpoint.

After all, Arar is both an outspoken critic of Bushco and the plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the legality of his rendering which the U.S. claims could be harmful to national security. Meanwhile, U.S. has refused to admit that it was wrong to subject Arar to torture, based presumably on its continued belief that the available evidence on Arar justified the rendering. Based on the continued suspicion going both ways, one has to figure that whatever Arar does in the future, he's likely to live under every bit of surveillance the U.S. can muster.

And there shouldn't be much doubt that the surveillance on an employer could have harmful effects to that employer's interests. Even if a given piece of surveillance wasn't immune from all review, there's no apparent way to trace the way information obtained in a Patriot Act request which is then misused to undermine the company's economic interests.

According to the link on Echelon above, there's already speculation that a system in which Canada willingly participates has been misused for commercial purposes. It's far from sure that any information obtained under surveillance would be misused, but why take the risk?

What's worse, the harm could go beyond the firm's information to the well-being of its employees - both for business and personal purposes. Remember that Arar himself was rendered for his association to people alleged to have terrorist links, and not based on any real evidence against him personally. Assuming that Arar is still on U.S. watchlists, the act of hiring Arar could then put both the employer and any other co-workers on watchlists as well.

No matter how highly valued Arar should rightly be for his skills, it's probably fair to say it's not worth an employer's while to add those skills at the cost of preventing everybody involved in the company from flying to or through the United States, particularly if anybody could potentially face Arar's fate.

Mind you, it's far from clear to what extent any of the above risks would ultimately materialize. But while it would be nice to see a private employer take the risk, it's difficult to blame anybody for believing that the potential downside of hiring Arar could exceed the upside by far too much to be worth the danger.

That type of equation is unfortunate enough in a single case such as Arar's. But what if the same type of decision-making also affects a wider range of corporate hiring or promotion decisions? The effect could well be that individuals seen as likely to make a watchlist would be systematically avoided by employers...with the result that many entirely innocent people could be shut out of positions which they would win on merit alone. This in turn would both reduce the ultimate productivity of employers, and create a class of people rightly frustrated with a system that discriminates against them.

Even if employers are relatively blameless for the reasons pointed out above, there's plenty of blame to go around for those who have allowed this type of situation to develop. Naturally, Bushco should bear the brunt for its insistence on claiming that all's fair if it claims national security as the justification. And to a somewhat lesser degree, Canada's government also deserves blame for its cooperation in the U.S.' actions, and for its apparent acceptance of Bushco's position when it comes to civil rights in Canada.

Something fishy is indeed afoot, but it could well be less a conspiracy among employers so much as a reasonable response to known government policy. And any discussion of the proper response to terrorism should acknowledge the discriminatory effect of both increased surveillance and a "guilt by association" standard.