No Stupid Questions

Lots of people seem to think it's either or, and it really shouldn't be, in my view. (I'll note I'm canadian, since it seems to matter to some these days).

The argument that foreigners shouldn't be allowed to protest is to me somewhat valid, but with a bunch of reservations. Peaceful protests, publishing op eds, (obviously) University papers, online posts, and other 'regular' forms of expression I'm totally in agreement that they should be allowed to express themselves/participate.

But we've also seen cases in Canada where our immigration levels got so high, that we literally had CCP organized protests in favour of a detained Chinese CCP Billionaire, as well as the tearing down of "peaceful protests"/awareness things in regards to HongKong and the crack down the CCP did there. We've seen large, organized groups of Indian students -- their messages of "go get free food" being amplified by foreign controlled social media -- draining our food banks dry, the loss of that social support helping to fuel class conflicts and increased animosity towards Indian people as a demographic. We've seen 'protests' leveraged by foreign powers to sow discontent and animosity intentionally, and/or to control the narrative around news stories.

And that's really no surprise: one of the stated methodologies of authoritarian regimes, for attacking democracies, is to basically sow civil unrest through the amplification of contested issues/topics. They'll amplify/fund controversial right-wing and left-wing viewpoints in order to cause internal conflict. They'll hype up race conflicts. Like how the majority of people are totally fine saying both "Hamas is bad" and "Israel's genocidal actions in gaza are bad", but somehow it's always framed as just a 2 sided thing where you're on one side or the other, is great for authoritarians: why fight a democracy, when you can make it fight itself. If we're accepting Students/people from authoritarian regimes, we have to be realistic in acknowledging many of these people will share the regimes beliefs, and will be actively working against our governments / peoples. They aren't the stereotypical refugee seeking a better/freer life, but rather people with malicious intentions and a desire to disrupt.

So I'm fine with such people having visas and non-permanent citizenship revoked if the person's involved in criminal activity (violent protests), and/or if they're a primary organizer/instigator/funder of such things, or (as was the case with some 'student' groups in Canada) they're actively coordinating their protests with foreign embassies/agents. I'd also be in favour of increased scrutiny of people from such regions when it comes to long term stays / partial immigration (where they don't renounce their former non-democratic country). Lots of countries also expect singular citizenship, I see no particular issue with western democracies at least requiring that their citizens not support/be registered citizens of authoritarian dictatorships. If you want to live in an egalitarian/democratic country, you shouldn't be supportive of authoritarian autocracies/dictatorships.

And again, similar to the note about 'one side or the other', in terms of free speech, most folks generally recognise that there are some reasonable restrictions / repercussions involved with it. Hate speech, explicitly calling for the killing of some group of people or what have you, clearly not a 'right' for most sane people -- at least, not one that wouldn't come with consequences. In the same way that the left is fine boycotting Musk for his Nazi salutes (he's free to express himself as a Nazi, and other people are free to take issue with that / not support him because of it), foreigners explicitly challenging the existing norms of society should be prepared for potential consequences if they do so in a manner deemed inappropriate.