So I was the fittest I’ve ever been in my life at 50 but I am still wondering about the various meanings of “fitness.” I’ve been thinking about it lots in light of arthritic knee, recent limits on my mobility, and my knee brace. (See snazzy knee brace photo above.) Am I really fit if I can’t run? What if I can’t walk very far at all? My body performs pretty well, given its limits, but sometimes I am not so sure how to think about those limits.
What prompted it most recently was a trip to Germany to visit the University of Bremen, a university with which Guelph has an exchange program. I blogged about biking in Bremen here.
But it wasn’t all bike riding and meetings and dinners. We also had one day for group tourism and so took the train to Bremerhaven with an exchange student from Guelph to visit the German Emigration Center, a museum dedicated to the history of German emigration, especially to the United States. It is Europe’s largest theme museum about emigration. Here is a NYT piece on Bremerhaven.
In the museum, visitors can experience the emigration process through interactive exhibits. We walked through the docks and visited a ship and could see all the various classes of rooms. We then exited in New York. In New York immigrants were examined on Ellis Island. Part of the test included climbing a steep flight of steps. Potential immigrants were observed and given a score for “fitness.” I thought about that while visiting the museum and climbing the steps because my knee was particularly sore that day. I could barely put weight on it and stairs were a real challenge. There was an elevator but you had to leave the interactive tour to go find it. Instead, I took the steps slowly, one at a time, and thought about almost certainly failing the immigration fitness test. I’d be seen as a burden.
Of course, it’s not just history the link between disability and immigration. It was only this year that the Canadian government ended barriers to immigration for disabled immigrants.
From the article linked above: “After four decades, the federal government is getting rid of rules that turned away would-be immigrants with intellectual or physical disabilities, Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen said Monday.The government will no longer be allowed to reject permanent resident applications from those with serious health conditions or disabilities. Most of those impacted by the policy have been economic immigrants already working and creating jobs in Canada, but whose children or spouses may have a disability, Hussen said.”The current provisions on medical inadmissibility are over 40 years old and are clearly not in line with Canadian values or our government’s vision of inclusion.”
And lots of countries still have limits on immigration that rule out people with disabilities. It’s unlikely they use the “observe the person walking upstairs” test but it doesn’t matter. It’s still unjust.
