Man who used fraudulent passport to get in and out of Canada 16 times handed 2-year sentence

2026/11/11 Leave a comment

Presumably will be deported after completing his sentence:

A Ghanaian man who used a fraudulent Canadian passport to leave and re-enter the country 16 times has been sentenced to two years in prison for citizenship fraud.

Jefferson Zormelo, 22, pleaded guilty earlier this year to violating the Canadian Citizenship Act.

On Monday in Calgary, Justice Karen Molle said Zormelo’s act “attacks the integrity of the Canadian citizenship regime.”

“The offence jeopardized public safety and our national security,” noted Molle. “Fraudulent use of Canadian passports affects Canada’s international reputation.”

With credit for the time he’s served since his arrest, Zormelo has about 14 months left behind bars….

Source: Man who used fraudulent passport to get in and out of Canada 16 times handed 2-year sentence

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Elkouri: Laïcité de l’ÉtatCe qui répugne à Gérard Bouchard

2026/11/11 Leave a comment

Moi aussi:

…Rappelons que le rapport Bouchard-Taylor recommandait d’interdire le port de signes religieux non pas à n’importe quelle personne considérée comme en situation d’autorité, mais uniquement aux agents publics détenant un pouvoir de coercition et autorisés à exercer une violence à l’endroit d’un citoyen.

Que des étudiantes portant un foulard soient aujourd’hui forcées d’abandonner leur projet de travailler dans une école illustre une dérive dont les conséquences sont graves, croit le sociologue.

« Je me demande si les auteurs de la loi et ceux et celles qui l’ont adoptée se rendent bien compte des conséquences désastreuses que cela peut avoir sur la vie personnelle de citoyens et de citoyennes qui sont parfaitement légitimes, qui veulent s’intégrer au Québec et qui, un jour, occuperont des postes de responsabilité dont nous avons bien besoin. »

Pour Gérard Bouchard, l’appareil théorique et législatif qui a conduit à une telle dérive est vraiment « vicié ». « C’est tout à fait inacceptable. C’est même un peu révoltant quand on voit où ça peut conduire. »

Bien qu’il soit contre la Loi sur la laïcité de l’État, sur laquelle la Cour suprême devrait bientôt se prononcer, Gérard Bouchard ne renie en rien ses convictions souverainistes. « Même si le jugement de la Cour suprême allait dans le sens de mes positions, je serais quand même toujours très opposé à ce qu’une instance fédérale se mêle de nos affaires. »

Le sociologue considère que le scandale de l’école Bedford était « très évidemment un prétexte malicieux pour saisir l’occasion de donner un tour de vis à une politique qui était déjà discriminatoire et qui l’est donc encore davantage ».

Rappelons que parmi les professeurs mis en cause à l’école Bedford, on comptait des hommes musulmans qui ne portaient aucun signe religieux, ce qui, visiblement, n’a garanti ni leur neutralité ni leur professionnalisme. Rappelons aussi qu’il s’est écoulé sept ans avant que les premiers signaux d’alarme concernant l’incompétence et le zèle idéologique d’enseignants de cette école poussent les autorités scolaires à sévir. Une nonchalance insensée qui ne s’explique pas par un manque d’outils légaux en matière de laïcité, mais bien par un manque de courage.

Qu’une politique encore plus discriminatoire prive désormais des jeunes femmes désirant travailler dans une école de contribuer à la société comme elles le voudraient rebute Gérard Bouchard.

Source: Laïcité de l’État Ce qui répugne à Gérard Bouchard

…Let’s recall that the Bouchard-Taylor report recommended banning the wearing of religious signs not to any person considered in a position of authority, but only to public officials holding coercive power and authorized to exercise violence against a citizen.

The fact that students wearing a scarf are today forced to abandon their plan to work in a school illustrates a trend whose consequences are serious, the sociologist believes.

“I wonder if the authors of the law and those who adopted it are fully aware of the disastrous consequences that this could have on the personal lives of citizens who are perfectly legitimate, who want to integrate into Quebec and who, one day, will hold positions of responsibility that we really need. ”

For Gérard Bouchard, the theoretical and legislative apparatus that led to such a drift is really “corrupted.” “It is completely unacceptable. It is even a little revolting when you see where it can lead. ”

Although he is against the State Secularism Law, on which the Supreme Court is expected to soon decide, Gérard Bouchard does not deny his sovereigntist convictions in any way. “Even if the Supreme Court’s judgment goes in the direction of my positions, I would still be very opposed to a federal body interfering in our affairs.” ”

The sociologist considers that the Bedford school scandal was “very obviously a mischievous pretext to seize the opportunity to give a blow to a policy that was already discriminatory and is therefore even more so”.

Let us remember that among the teachers implicated at Bedford School, there were Muslim men who did not wear any religious symbols, which, obviously, did not guarantee their neutrality or professionalism. We should also recall that it took seven years before the first alarm signals regarding the incompetence and ideological zeal of teachers at this school prompted the school authorities to take action. This senseless nonchalance cannot be explained by a lack of legal tools regarding secularism, but rather by a lack of courage.

Gérard Bouchard is now disgusted that a more discriminatory policy is now preventing young women who want to work in a school from contributing to society as they would like.

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Nunez-Neto: The Inconvenient Truth at the Center of the Immigration [USA] Debate

2026/11/11 Leave a comment

Plague on both their houses, valid:

Have liberals learned anything from the border crisis that helped return Donald Trump to office two years ago? Many have not, if a recent report from the American Civil Liberties Union is any indication. The group claims to offer a “way forward” for the country’s asylum system, which has become a back door for economic migrants. But the ACLU instead recycles arguments that immigration advocates have made for decades. Too many progressives fail to understand, or acknowledge, the real reason migrants, including those intending to seek asylum, cross the border illegally: People come when they think they can stay.

I have been working on border and immigration policy for more than 20 years, serving in senior roles at the White House and the Department of Homeland Security as well as Senate staff. I have seen, up close, surges in illegal immigration under both Democratic and Republican presidents. Again and again, the loudest and most extreme voices have set the immigration agenda for each party, to the detriment of the country. Despite Trump’s concession in yesterday’s 60 Minutesinterview that his administration’s handling of immigration was “too tough,” his elevation of the anti-immigration hard-liner Stephen Miller as his chief of staff suggests that this trend will continue. Immigration advocates who deplore the Trump administration’s aggressive tactics have an obligation to propose realistic, constructive alternatives.

Yet on the left, the ACLU and other immigration advocates continue to argue that enforcement at the border, including restrictions on asylum eligibility, do not prevent or deter illegal immigration; they simply create pent-up demand and encourage migrants to attempt more dangerous routes. As a result, according to advocacy groups, the only way to stem the tide of illegal immigration is to address the underlying problems that push people to leave their countries, and to provide more legal pathways for these migrants to come to the United States.

In reality, the United States’ inability to promptly remove those who lack a legal basis to remain in the country has been the driving force behind every major surge in illegal immigration since the Obama administration….

Source: The Inconvenient Truth at the Center of the Immigration Debate

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Globe full-court press on immigration levels obfuscation: Editorial, Keller and Urback

2026/11/11 Leave a comment

Valid critiques in the Globe. Fail to see the policy and political advantages of not being as clear and transparent as possible. Just have a separate line for TR2PR under one-time measures along with a total. In any case, the distinction between Permanent Residents and TRs is increasingly irrelevant as the number of PRs that are formerly TRs was close to 50 percent in 2025.

….There is no valid reason to separate out these permanent residents from the broader number often cited by the media. It’s true that these aren’t new arrivals, so they won’t put additional pressure on the housing market and social services, but that has become the norm. In recent years, around half of new permanent residents were already living in Canada.

By separating out the numbers, the government makes it harder to do year-over-year comparisons, and it bolsters the impression that the immigration system has been stabilized. In reality, the government has been struggling to meet its goal of reducing temporary residents to 5 per cent of the population by the end of 2027, despite the fact it already extended its deadline. As of July, 2.8 million people had temporary status in Canada, which is 6.7 per cent of the population.

When the Trudeau government announced its plan to get to the 5 per cent target in October 2024, it said that in 2025, Canada’s temporary population would decline by 445,901 people. That’s not what happened. Last year, the temporary population declined by just 89,445, one-fifth of the goal….

The Trudeau government created a massive mess out of Canada’s immigration system. However, if the Carney government wants to fix it by boosting permanent resident intakes far past the record high, it should make that case, not come up with creative accounting to obscure that fact.

The key problem is not the numbers, it’s the shaken confidence of the public in the immigration system. On that front, the Carney government is making things worse.

An immigration numbers game is not the way to restore public trust. Ottawa should level with Canadians about the system’s problems, and what is being done to address them.

Source: The Liberals’ immigration numbers game

Tony Keller: The Carney government’s immigration targets are a fib and a dodge

…The Carney government is trying to reduce the huge temporary resident population – as it has promised to do – by making it ever easier for non-permanent residents to become Canadians.

There’s a logic to this. But lowering the bar will create new incentives for those on temporary visas or with expired status. That will foster yet more unintended consequences.

And to meet its promise of lowering and stabilizing permanent immigration – a government pledge that polls suggest is popular – Team Carney is resorting to fudging its immigration books. Fibbing.

I’m sorry to have to use this word: Lying.

Our immigration system has become extremely complex and opaque. The Carney government just made it more non-transparent.

For a government committed to restoring confidence in the integrity of the immigration system – and confidence in the integrity of government itself – it’s a move in the wrong direction. They will regret it. We all will.

Robyn Urback: Mark Carney cranks up immigration again, while pretending not to

….Immigration is an economic issue, to be sure, but it is also a social one. The previous government demonstrated how just a few short-sighted decisions could destroy a decades-long national consensus on immigration. That consensus can be rebuilt, slowly, but that won’t happen if the public feels as though it is being gaslit on the government’s plans – whether it’s through the apparent exclusion of “one-time measures” from the overall accounting, or through insistences that Canada’s labour supply is “resilient,” even as Ottawa simultaneously makes it easier for employers to hire low-wage workers from abroad.

And while it is true that the Carney government has scaled back immigration significantly compared to the peak Trudeau years, the reality is that Canada’s non-permanent resident population as a proportion of the total population is still higher than it was in 2023, which poses enduring challenges in terms of housing, health care and other social infrastructure. That’s a topic worth addressing, say, on a Wednesday morning.

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Why Ottawa’s move to grant 200,000 temporary residents permanent status is facing backlash

2026/11/11 Leave a comment

Some critic commentary on the “one-time” measure:

….Critics say that the Carney government has reneged on its promise to control immigration, while proponents say it was the right decision from both economic and humanitarian perspectives.

In a press release one day after the budget, Conservative Party immigration critic Michelle Rempel Garner slammed the measure, accusing the Liberals of a “hidden mass immigration agenda” to enrich their “wealthy corporate friends.”

Parisa Mahboubi, an economist with the C.D. Howe Institute, said in an e-mail that the government’s decision to add 200,000 permanent resident transitions outside the headline target of 380,000 ends up masking how many people Canada will actually admit as permanent residents in 2027.

“Repeating one-time initiatives such as that also signals that temporary residents who arrive and stay will eventually receive permanent status, which undermines efforts to reduce the number of non-permanent residents,” she said.

But regardless of the one-time measure, Ottawa is still trying to reduce temporary-resident levels to 5 per cent of the total population by the end of 2027. It is currently at 6.7 per cent and the government has committed to a temporary-resident target of 370,000 admissions annually over the next three years. That’s far less than the 971,000 foreign workers and international students admitted at the peak of the immigration boom in 2023.

Ottawa’s stricter approach to immigration has made Canada a less attractive destination for overseas workers and international students. The 2026 temporary-resident target was 370,000, but as of the end of August, only 195,000 people had arrived, according to government data.

“What’s missing from the headlines is that less people are arriving in Canada. Far less than our immigration targets. And that is impacting population growth and economic growth,” said Syed Hussan, executive director for Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, a migrant advocacy organization.

Adam Hajji, director of the Immigration Council at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, said there is a misconception that granting more permanent-resident cards to immigrants already working in Canada increases the number of immigrants in the country. “It does not. These are people who have lived here for years and made Canada their home.”

The chamber spent much of this year lobbying Ottawa to loosen permanent-resident targets so that many work-permit holders already in the Canadian work force could stay here long term, and businesses could have certainty about their employees’ work status.

“We were very appreciative of the government’s move to grant 200,000 people permanent status. We had been getting numerous calls from businesses in our network saying they were losing workers due to the immigration crackdown and could not find replacements,” Mr. Hajji added….

Source: Why Ottawa’s move to grant 200,000 temporary residents permanent status is facing backlash

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Canada launches first-ever attempt to count visa ‘overstays’

2026/11/10 2 Comments

Overdue and welcome:

Canada has begun its first-ever population count to determine the number of people who are in the country without legal status after having overstayed their visas and losing their right to remain in the country.

The federal government conceded that there is no reliable estimate because getting to a specific number is both complex and a priority.

Estimates of the number of people who have no legal status in the country have varied between 20,000 and 500,000,according to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, and two million people cited by Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre earlier this year.

The issue promises to be a political hot potato as the Conservatives last week called for a better system to track the departure of temporary visa holders.

The government is aware that the number of “unauthorized” immigrants in the U.S.,which in 2023 reached an all-time high of 14 million people, has been a polarizing issue in American politics for years.

New Canadian Media requested comment from IRCC and  Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) and Statistics Canada to confirm this unprecedented demographic exercise.

Statistics Canada, which has set up a special unit in its demographics section to calculate an estimate, has sought the assistance of academics including  Alain Gagnon, a professor in the Universite de Montreal’s demography department. Gagnon did not respond to NCM’s request for comment.

In the words of one immigration official, this population count is not straightforward, “given this population generally tries to stay undetected.”

StatCan demographer Julien Berard-Chagnon, said his agency wants to avoid the sort of dramatic “correction” it had to do two months ago after it was revealed that a large number of temporary residents who had lost status after their visas or permits expired, had in fact renewed their visas.

The agency added more than 200,000 people to Canada’s population count on Sept. 23.

“We are in a period of historical demographic changes,” Berard-Chagnon said. Inter-provincial migration, historically low fertility rates and high immigration levels since the COVID-19 pandemic are driving factors of these changes….

Source: Canada launches first-ever attempt to count visa ‘overstays’

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Canada is turning back refugees under a U.S. border pact. Why it’s headed to the Federal Court

2026/11/10 Leave a comment

To watch:

…The lawsuit focuses on the three most vulnerable subgroups — women, children and LGBTQ individuals — who are disproportionately disadvantaged by the system, the lawsuit argues.

Canada returned 4,323 claimants to the U.S. between Jan. 1, 2025, and March 30, 2026, according to court submissions. Of the total, 2,078 were recorded as female and 860 were children under 17; the majority were racial minorities.

The lawsuit said female refugee claimants fleeing gender-based persecution face additional hurdles to seek asylum protection under U.S. law, which treats their claims as “private matters outside the scope of protection.”

Refugee claimant children who are detained upon return face conditions such as lack of access to clean water, adequate food and hygiene supplies, which harm them disproportionately, causing long-term trauma, the lawsuit alleges.

In contrast, Canada was among the first countries to recognize gender-based persecution as a ground for refugee protection, and the detention of children is only a measure of last resort here, the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit also claimed detained LGBTQ migrants are 97 times more likely to be sexually assaulted than other detainees, and suffer abuse by jail staff who regularly put them in danger by outing them. In addition, it said trans people are being issued identity documents in the wrong gender, which put them at risk for mistreatment or discrimination.

“Imagine your kid is being fed food with worms, cloudy water,” Sande said in an interview. “And then it’s like, ‘Well, if you want to sign your rights away, that’s the best way to get your kid out of detention.’ And so we see that, and kids are separated from their parents.”

What the lawsuit is seeking

The litigants ask the Federal Court to declare that the designation of the U.S. as a safe third country is “invalid and of no force or effect” under Canadian immigration law if it rules the agreement breaches the equality rights under the Charter.

“These claimants face a disproportionate risk of abuse in American immigration detention, as well as barriers to obtaining refugee protection,” said Prasanna Balasundaram, director of Downtown Legal Services in Toronto. The legal clinic represents the Salvadoran family named only as “ABC, DE and FG” in the lawsuit….

Source: Canada is turning back refugees under a U.S. border pact. Why it’s headed to the Federal Court

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USA: Immigrants Are Being Systematically Returned Home Despite Court Orders

2026/11/10 Leave a comment

Deplorable. Expect this may be raised by the organizations arguing for non-application of the STCA. Good detailed analysis:

…To deport these immigrants, the administration has partnered with foreign governments, many with spotty human rights records. In exchange for money and foreign policy favors, they have agreed to accept deportees who cannot be returned to their countries of origin.

But a New York Times investigation found that this program results in many of them being pushed back to the very countries where the Trump administration itself cannot legally send them. Some of the United States’ foreign partners have made clear that will happen. And when it does, the Trump administration continues sending planes full of deportees.

The Times identified more than 110 people who had court-ordered protections and were handed over to foreign governments, only to then be passed on to home countries where they risked torture, sexual abuse or persecution — risks that have been validated by American courts.

In these cases, America’s partners served only as intermediaries. Officers roughed up immigrants or forced them onto airplanes. Some were threatened with imprisonment or confronted by armed police officers until they “volunteered” to return. Some now live in hiding. Others have simply vanished.

Human rights groups say that figure, which is certainly an undercount, shows that the Trump administration has created a bank-shot way of evading court orders and international law.

“It’s undermining the idea of asylum on a global scale,” said Alma David, a consultant with the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, referring to such forced repatriations.

“It’s immigration colonialism — making these governments do the dirty work,” she added.

Returning people to their countries of origin in the face of court orders would normally qualify as refoulement, a violation of international law. The State Department would not answer questions about whether its program amounts to refoulement by proxy. The administration has maintained that it has no say in, or responsibility for, what happens to deportees once they leave the United States….The growth of the administration’s third-country deportation program is the story of how the Trump administration sought to remake the asylum system to fit with its views on who deserves protection. It is also the story of how one Trump appointee, working under Secretary of State Marco Rubio, helped transform a State Department office from one that aids refugees into one that oversees deportations.

This article is based on a review of U.S. and foreign government documents, interviews with current and former U.S. and international officials, as well as interviews with deportees and their lawyers. Some spoke to The Times on the condition of anonymity, either because they were in perilous situations and feared for their safety, or because they feared retribution for speaking to reporters.

Administration officials say that immigrants who are sent to third countries and then return home often do so voluntarily. But a video from Equatorial Guinea shows immigrants being threatened with imprisonment if they do not agree to leave. Some people who agreed to do so said they felt they had little choice after arriving in a strange country with no documents and no hope of resettling there. Others said they agreed only when armed police officers showed up.

Records show that immigration agents specifically targeted for deportation people who had court-ordered protections. There is no evidence that this was done with the intent of evading court orders. Rather, American officials said the goal was deporting them from the United States. Whatever happened next, they said, was not a priority….

Source: Immigrants Are Being Systematically Returned Home Despite Court Orders

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Su | GTA election results show how immigrants are shaping communities

2026/11/10 Leave a comment

I think the lack of significant differences among generations, including non-immigrants and “old-stock” Canadians is one of the more significant findings:

…The swing back suggests a welcoming country that has lost confidence in how the system was being run, after years in which population growth outpaced housing and services. And the data support this. Among those who still say there is too much immigration, the most common explanations are that it is poorly managed by the government and that it hurts the economy. Meanwhile, 3-in-4 Canadians say immigration has a positive economic impact.

On the numbers, the generations barely differ. Between 46 and 52 per cent of first-generation immigrants, and their Canadian-born children say there is too much immigration, close to the national figure.

On values, they split. Asked whether too many newcomers are not adopting Canadian values, 63 per cent of first-generation immigrants agree, more than any other generation. Among the second generation, it is 52 per cent.

This is an old pattern. Immigrants who chose Canada often believe in it more fiercely than people born here. A Statistics Canada study found immigrants more likely than the Canadian-born to say Canadians share values like human rights and diversity, while those who arrived as children see things much like everyone else.

Anyone raised in an immigrant family, like I was, will recognize the result. Newcomers who worked hard to belong hold new arrivals to standards they set for themselves. Their children, who grew up in classrooms where diversity was ordinary, take it for granted. Every generation of newcomers becomes, in some measure, the gatekeeper for the next.

Future gatekeepers

What is changing is who those gatekeepers will be. Statistics Canada projects that by 2041, immigrants and their Canadian-born children will make up 52.4 per cent of the population under its main scenario, up from 40 per cent in 2016. Those projections were made before Ottawa announced cuts to immigration levels in 2024, so the crossover may come later. But the composition has already shifted.

In 1971, 12 per cent of recent immigrants were born in Asia, including the Middle East. By 2021, 62 per cent were. By 2041, Statistics Canada expects 1-in-4 Canadians to have been born in Asia or Africa. The immigrant-origin majority of the 2040s will look very different from the one that produced Lastman and Crombie.

Yet, Canada’s future majority will not be a voting bloc. It will be a conversation between generations, with different memories of arrival and differing ideas of what belonging requires.

Chow, Tedjo and Brown are living proof of what welcome makes possible. But leaders are not the whole story. When my children are old enough to answer the Environics survey, I hope they remember that someone once had to make room for each side of their family, and that it will soon be their turn to make room for others.

Source: Opinion | GTA election results show how immigrants are shaping communities

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Mark Carney to appear in video played at Canadian citizenship ceremonies

2026/11/09 Leave a comment

Other PMs have attended citizenship ceremonies and delivered remarks (e.g., PMs Trudeau and Harper). Trudeau apparently had a pre-recorded message but unclear how widely used. Couldn’t find Trudeau text but Harper speech had a political aspect with respect to asylum seekers. Carney video not yet up on IRCC website. Not as fussed about this as some as long as the message is non-partisan and general welcome to Canada:

New citizens of Canada will soon see a video featuring Prime Minister Mark Carney at citizenship ceremonies, according to access-to-information records obtained Blacklock’s Reporter.

Though government guidelines permit elected officials to attend in-person citizenship ceremonies, the ceremonies are officially supposed to be non-partisan.

“The Department of Immigration confirms that Prime Minister Carney’s bilingual congratulatory video should be received by the department in the near future,” said a French-language memo, per Blacklock’s Reporter.

The Prime Minister’s Office did not respond to Blacklock’s questions yesterday regarding the video.

Source: Mark Carney to appear in video played at Canadian citizenship ceremonies

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