Refugees reporting more income than investor-class immigrants

2015/03/04 Leave a comment

More evidence on the design flaws of the immigrant investor program. Not sure that the changes will correct the overall picture of lack of commitment and a more instrumental view of immigration and citizenship:

According to CIC, business immigrants have accounted for seven per cent of Canada’s total immigration since 1980 and in 2010 investor-class immigrants — who, as a condition for entrance, were required to prove net worth in the millions and invest $800,000 in Canada — accounted for 88 per cent of all business immigrants.

According to CIC, investor immigrants reported average earnings of about $18,000 in their first year and just $28,000 after 15 years. After three years, only 47 per cent of such immigrants reported any income. The Canadian average is 67 per cent.

After five years, only 39 per cent reported income, suggesting investor immigrants may leave the country (or declare non-residency) after the citizenship process is complete.

Meanwhile, refugees (those who come to Canada under hardship) reported first-year average incomes of $20,000 and after 15 years those incomes rose to $30,000. Two-thirds of refugees reported income by their fifth year, on par with Canada’s average.

More troublesome for Young is that similar rates of income after 15 years are found with the spouses and children of the initial, principal applicant.

“It’s particularly worrisome considering that the biggest cohort (40 per cent) of dependents upon arrival is made up of children aged 10 to 19. These (children) would be 25-34 after 15 years, and should be earning good money. But they aren’t.”

As well, Young adds, “the same phenomenon of a decline in tax-reporting rates could be seen in spouses and children, suggesting some of them, too, head for the exits.”

“The issue is not with immigrants or immigration in general, it is with wealth migration schemes in particular. …Should Canada wait for the grandchildren of investor immigrants to join the workforce before seeing the supposed benefits of millionaire migration?” asked Young on his blog.

Refugees reporting more income than investor-class immigrants

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Many older Canadian immigrants live on less than $11,000 per year

2015/03/04 Leave a comment

Some of the challenges facing older refugees:

Immigrants and refugees who come to Canada later in life face unique challenges in terms of income, livelihood and social integration, said Chris Friesen, director of settlement services for the Immigrant Services Society of B.C. The problems are especially acute for seniors who are not from one of the region’s larger ethnocultural communities, such as Chinese, Indian or Filipino, where larger social networks are in place. They represent a small but growing share of immigrants to B.C. and Canada, Friesen said.

“The new and few, we call them.”

On Tuesday, Khaleghi and other immigrant seniors will have the chance to share their stories with key decision-makers and recommend changes to help others like them. The forum, called Moving Forward: Unheard Voices, will include representatives of city governments, health authorities, Citizenship and Immigration Canada and the B.C. Seniors Advocate, among others.

Recent policy changes have made things more difficult for immigrant seniors, who typically come to Canada either as sponsored family members or refugees, Friesen said. Citizenship and Immigration Canada recently increased the amount of time families must commit to financially supporting relatives to 20 years from 10 years, which means that only the wealthiest families are able to be reunited on a permanent basis. On the refugee side, Canada now selects people based on need of protection versus ability to settle.

“All these things are colliding together that impact the livelihood and life and dignity of these folks as they age in Canada,” Friesen said. “What was kind of an eye opener for me is, if you arrive at 65 and you have no financial means, your baseline entitlement is under $11,000 (per year) that you have to live on. On top that, if you’re a refugee, not only is it less than $11,000 but you also have to repay your transportation loan that provided you the opportunity to come to Canada.”

Many older Canadian immigrants live on less than $11,000 per year.

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5 head-covering controversies in Canada

2015/03/04 Leave a comment

CBC put together a short list of the major public controversies, given the latest one, the decision by a judge in Quebec not to hear her case given she was wearing a hijab:

1. Sikh Mounties permitted to wear turbans

2. Turbans on the soccer pitch

3. Taking a citizenship oath

4. Testifying in court

5. At the voting booth

5 head-covering controversies in Canada – Canada – CBC News.

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‘Soft security’ measures also needed to battle home-grown radicalism, experts say

2015/03/03 Leave a comment

More coverage of the work by Lorne Dawson and Dan Hiebert on the need for greater emphasis on anti-radicalization and de-radicalization programming, the softer yet necessary prevention programming:

It would take an immense public education effort and support for families and Muslim communities to have difficult conversations, to provide support and resources. Dawson draws the comparison to how we now approach suicide. Just as parents and teachers should never ignore a 14- or 15-year-old who says he’s going to kill himself, Canadians have to respond to young people espousing sympathetic feelings for extremist ideologies from the get-go.

“If someone says, ‘Anyone who is not a Sunni is a kuffar and they should all be killed,’ that’s not a line you let pass. The trouble is if your only recourse right now is to phone the police or the RCMP, it’s not going to happen,” says Dawson.

That’s because the Canadian government has chosen to focus on “hard security” — boosting investigative powers, intelligence gathering, arrest powers. There is no provision in the Conservative government’s massive anti-terror Bill C-51 to provide new resources for de-radicalization programs — the kind of “soft security” measures that Dawson, Hiebert and others say are key.

By that they mean interventions involving law enforcement, teachers, social workers and psychiatrists — resources that are woefully lacking at the moment for Muslim communities across Canada, the Senate committee has heard.

The researchers say Ottawa should look to other countries, pointing to a program in Britain called Channel that draws in police, social workers, psychiatrists and teachers “to deal with the other aspects of that person’s life that need to be fixed, to get them to divert from that path towards radicalization and violence.”

“That’s expensive, but, again: an ounce of prevention, a pound of cure.”

And they urged continued funding for research projects such as theirs. “We don’t adequately understand radicalization yet,” said Dawson. “To put it in simple terms, we’re very worried . . . . If you don’t have a fine enough conception of what’s causing the problem, it’s difficult to develop the most effective counter measures.”

‘Soft security’ measures also needed to battle home-grown radicalism, experts say | Toronto Star.

And a good interview with Dawson:

The lure of terrorism: Q&A with cult expert Lorne Dawson (with video)

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Sex-Ed Not Welcome at Any Age for Many Immigrant Parents – New Canadian Media – NCM

2015/03/03 Leave a comment

Some good reporting on the sex-ed debate within different communities. Not surprising, but I think that many are living in denial of reality:

Politicians in the South Asian community also spoke out against the curriculum. The Weekly Voice and South Asia Mail reported former MPP Harinder Takhar (who served under Premier Dalton McGuinty) as saying that he had advised McGuinty against implementing the curriculum in 2010. He maintains this view stating that, “a serious debate is required in the community on this issue.” The same report also states Conservative MP Parm Gill’s apprehensions. Gill said that being the father of three children, the new syllabus is a cause of concern for him. He was of the opinion that the Liberal party had, “destroyed the institution of marriage and now it is (sic) on its way to put our children on the wrong track.”

There are some who support the provincial governments move, though their voices may be barely audible amongst the loud clatter of all the protestors. Two of the five parents interviewed by Can-India News thought it was, “about time.”

“Parents opposing the new sex-ed curriculum are living in denial. Schools should be discussing these issues and giving students the information they need,” said one parent, identified only as Parineet. “They should know about these things because everyone talks about it in schools and it is easy for them to get the wrong idea or information from friends or the Internet. The school would do it scientifically and professionally.”

Irrespective of how parents feel, Premier Kathleen Wynne is determined that the new sex-ed curriculum will be implemented this time. How much of a difference it will make is another matter though, as parents will have the option of pulling their children out of sex-ed classes.

Sex-Ed Not Welcome at Any Age for Many Immigrant Parents – New Canadian Media – NCM.

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Canada’s refugee acceptance rate up despite asylum restrictions | Toronto Star

2015/03/03 Leave a comment

Some of the initial comparative data on the impact of refugee reforms of 2012:

Canada received 20,223 refugee claims in 2012 but the number dropped to 10,356 in 2013 after the asylum reforms. The number of claims climbed last year to 13,652.

The main refugee source countries have remained steady, led by China and Pakistan, with Hungary, Colombia, Syria, Nigeria, Afghanistan and Haiti next; their overall acceptance rate was at 67 per cent in 2014.

The Conservative government introduced the changes to the refugee system in 2012 to crack down on bogus refugee claims from democratic countries and reduce the then growing backlogs by expediting the process.

Processing of new asylum claims is down to three months from more than 20 months under the old system, with the backlog reduced by two-thirds to 9,877 claims — one-fifth of them in the system for more than three years — from the peak of 30,750 in 2012.

“I’m heartened that under the new system, Canada is still granting refugee protection to a significant number of claimants,” said Osgoode Hall Law School professor Sean Rehaag. “The overall figures challenge the government’s assertion that Canada is having its generosity abused by fraudulent claimants.”

Canada’s refugee acceptance rate up despite asylum restrictions | Toronto Star.

The attached table provides the details:

2014

2013
China

42%

34%
Pakistan

78%

72%
Hungary

35%

20%
Colombia

52%

38%
Syria

93%

90%
Nigeria

53%

35%
India

18%

15%
Korea (North)

0%

0%
Afghanistan

77%

71%
Haiti

41%

40%
Congo

43%

49%
Iraq

82%

63%
Sri Lanka

58%

51%
Croatia

11%

11%
Slovakia

52%

8%
Ukraine

59%

41%
Bangladesh

64%

39%
Iran

71%

75%
Egypt

86%

89%
Somalia

54%

59%

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Teaching The Holocaust: New Approaches For A New Generation

2015/03/03 Leave a comment

One of the many approaches to Holocaust education and awareness, building on comparisons and parallels for a more universalist message:

In a conference room recently at the main library at Duke University, middle and high school teachers, many from North and South Carolina, watched a video exploring the parallels between Nazi Germany’s anti-Semitic Nuremberg codes and the racist Jim Crow laws in the American south.

“July 1938: Aryan and non-Aryan children cannot play together.”

“In Alabama, all passenger stations shall have separate waiting rooms,” intones the video, “Cause and Effect.” It was created by Centropa with teachers from the U.S. and Europe.

“1938: Jewish children are no longer allowed to attend public schools.”

“In Georgia it shall be unlawful for a white person to marry anyone but another white person.”

The teachers were not suggesting a moral equivalency between dehumanizing and repressive Jim Crow laws and genocide. But they were looking at how the two racist codes might become teaching tools, to explore what dialogue might be sparked with students.

The teachers trade ideas on reaching kids in their world and through their news feeds.

“That’s awesome. I’ve never thought about it that way. It’s like ‘tweet’ is the new telegram,” one teacher says. “That could be the title of the lesson: Tweets Are Telegrams.”

The teachers gathered at Duke were part of a recent seminar run by Centropa, which is dedicated to preserving stories of Jewish life in 20th century Eastern and Central Europe.

Several prominent Holocaust remembrance and education groups have long used survivor interviews and other first-person accounts and pictures to educate about the genocide of European Jewry. The USC Shoah Foundation and its online visual history archive has taken the lead, along with the United Holocaust Memorial Museum, and other organizations in the U.S. and abroad.

Centropa takes a slightly different approach, centering its work on the wider personal family stories, pictures and memories of a lost era, not just the unbelievable darkness of the Nazi years.

“We’re about searching for human values in the darkest times. It is about showing teenagers there is always a true north,” says Director and founder Edward Serotta.

Teaching The Holocaust: New Approaches For A New Generation : NPR Ed : NPR.

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BUDAPEST, Hungary: Hungary’s premier rejects immigration, multicultural society

2015/03/03 Leave a comment

Not new as his messaging has been consistent but nevertheless alarming for Roma and others targeted:

Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban denounced multiculturalism and liberalism Friday and vowed to fight a rising wave of migration that he said is threatening to turn his country into a “refugee camp.”

In his annual state of the nation speech, Orban called a multicultural society “a delusion” and defended his conservative government’s attempts to abandon “liberal social policies” that he accused of rejecting Christian culture.

“(A Hungarian) does not want to see throngs of people pouring into his country from other cultures who are incapable of adapting and are a threat to public safety, to his job and to his livelihood,” Orban said.

He was referring to the torrent of migrants who have entered European Union-member Hungary this year, many of them fleeing poverty in Kosovo and seeking to reach Germany and other western nations.

Orban has been criticized in the West for declaring last year that he wanted his nation to be an “illiberal” state and that he considers Russia, Turkey and Singapore to be models of success.

BUDAPEST, Hungary: Hungary’s premier rejects immigration, multicultural society | World | SanLuisObispo.

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Racism casts long shadow over Canada’s past, present | The Chronicle Herald

2015/03/02 Leave a comment

Former Senator Don Oliver, on the persistence of racism in Canada:

But even today, studies continue to show that if you’re a black Canadian, you are more likely than any other ethnic group not to get a job or a promotion. You are also more likely to get pulled over —“driving while black” — or to be discriminated against in the courts. What is more, there are very few blacks occupying the corner offices of Canadian companies or key political roles. That’s because racism still exists — in an undercurrent of apathy and ignorance that continues to impede people’s advancement.

Consider these statistics from Ryerson’s Diversity Leads. In the Greater Toronto Area, Canada’s most diverse region, the representation of blacks and other visible minorities in senior leadership roles inched up from 11.6 per cent in 2009 to 12.8 per cent in 2014, yet visible minorities account for 53.7 per cent of the population studied.

It’s not better in Greater Montreal, where only 5.9 per cent of senior leaders are visible minorities when they account for 22.5 per cent of the population. On corporate boards, the numbers are particularly dismal. The 2014 report of the Canadian Board Diversity Council reveals that visible minorities hold only two per cent of board seats when they make up 19.1 per cent of the population.

To change the future of black history in Canada, we urgently need more eminent black role models like Lincoln Alexander, Michaelle Jean, Julius Isaac and others to be appointed to senior government and corporate positions. We need all Canadians to embrace our country’s diversity. Once and for all, we need Canadians to demand an end to racism.

Racism casts long shadow over Canada’s past, present | The Chronicle Herald.

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Fighting for more diversity at the top: Hepburn

2015/03/02 Leave a comment

More on DiverseCity onBoard:

And the latest Annual Report Card by the Canadian Board Diversity Council shows the proportion of visible minorities on corporate boards fell from 5.3 per cent in 2010 to 2 per cent in 2013.

So why isn’t there widespread outrage over these troubling statistics? Why do our leaders, especially in public agencies, tolerate such situations?

Is it a question of a lack of talent in minority communities, which is hard to believe? Or are we missing something here?

“We have to see more diversity at our decision-making tables,” Toronto Mayor John Tory admitted this week at an event showcasing a small program that identifies, trains and helps place talented ethnic and minority candidates with boards of public and voluntary agencies.

The event, attended by political, business and community leaders, marked the national launch of DiverseCity onBoard, a successful made-in-Toronto program that traces its roots back to 2005.

This unique project was started by the Maytree Foundation with the goal of addressing the lack of diversity on boards of directors at public agencies, boards and commissions in the GTA.

Operating without much fanfare, DiverseCity onBoard has recruited more than 1,700 candidates, registered 650 organizations and successfully matched some 720 people from visible minority groups and under-represented communities to boards of directors with such bodies as hospitals, museums, local agencies and voluntary community associations.

The program staffers pre-screen candidates, teach them about how governance boards operate, and try to match qualified people with board openings.

Indeed, the program is so successful that it’s now being launched in six other major cities across Canada, including Hamilton, London, Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal and Ottawa.

At the same time, the program is unveiling a new online training program that will let residents learn about corporate governance practices at home, at work or anywhere they have access to a computer.

If the program can succeed in Toronto, then there is little doubt it will work in these other urban centres, said Ratna Omidvar, executive director of the Global Diversity Exchange at Ryerson University, which now oversees the DiverseCity onBoard program.

Fighting for more diversity at the top: Hepburn | Toronto Star.

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