On the campaign trail, Donald Trump pledged to crack down on companies that hire foreigners over Americans.
Now that he’s in the Oval Office, his administration is taking aim at some of the high-skilled visas that Silicon Valley seeks so it can hire foreign engineers.
Beginning Monday, the Department of Homeland Security promised greater scrutiny of the H-1B program, which began accepting applications for a lottery that will award visas in 2018. The government’s immigration enforcers plan to heighten their “site visits,” they said, to “determine whether H-1B dependent employers are evading their obligation to make a good faith effort to recruit U.S. workers.”
The Justice Department, meanwhile, issued its own stern warning Monday. “The Justice Department will not tolerate employers misusing the H-1B visa process to discriminate against U.S. workers,” said Tom Wheeler, the acting assistant attorney general at the DOJ’s civil rights division.
Both swipes at the program come days after U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services issued a policy that rethinks the way the government awards H-1B visas to computer programmers. Now, companies must prove that the programmers they’re hoping to hire are doing special, complex jobs requiring unique technical expertise.
Taken together, the steps seem to point most directly and immediately at outsourcing companies like Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services. But it’s still sure to send a major chill down Silicon Valley’s spine, after an election season in which Trump and his allies took aim at the industry’s hiring practices.
In March 2016, Trump specifically promised to “end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor program, and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first for every visa and immigration program.” Others, like then-Senator Jeff Sessions — since tapped as the country’s attorney general — criticized the likes of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for seeking to expand the program.
Many in the tech industry later expected Trump to issue an executive order clamping down on the H-1B program, a draft of which began circulating earlier this year. He never issued the directive, but DHS did suspend expedited processing for those visas, it announced in March.
“The Trump administration will be enforcing laws protecting American workers from discriminating hiring factors,” said press secretary Sean Spicer at his briefing Monday.
A rare column by Wente that captures the issues well:
We do a pretty good job of welcoming newcomers to this country. It’s one of our great strengths. I don’t buy the myth, beloved of some, that Canadians harbour deep racist and xenophobic tendencies that are just waiting to be set alight by the likes of Kellie Leitch.
But some days, I have to wonder what’s gotten into people. Who, for example, would want to deny Muslims the right to bury their dead?
It seems that there are more than you might think.
The terrible massacre in January of six worshippers at a mosque in Quebec City revealed a problem: Quebec Muslims have few places to bury their dead. The only Muslim-run cemetery in the province is in Montreal, several hours’ drive away. After the massacre, the small town of Saint-Apollinaire (population 6,000) found some land that would be suitable for another one, and quickly struck a deal to sell it to the Muslim community. It seemed like a neighbourly way to help. But as The Globe and Mail’s Ingrid Peritz found, the plan was met with a storm of protest.
“This cemetery is just the embryo of other projects,” one person wrote in an e-mail to the town’s mayor. “These people are here to grab religious and political power.”
The mayor, Bernard Ouellet, is staunch in his support for the plan, and believes most townspeople support it too. But he’ll have to work hard to quell the fears. As Quebec imam Hassan Guillet says, “If the project is refused and we’re not allowed to be buried in this land, how are we going to be accepted to live in this land?”
Religious accommodation is always a touchy subject, but the opposition to this plan is simply wrong. There is no place for it in my Canada.
Here in Ontario, we have our own hysterias. A strident group of anti-Muslim activists have been waging a noisy campaign to end Muslim prayer at schools in a big district near Toronto. At one school-board meeting, someone tore pages from the Koran and stomped all over them. At others, people leaped to their feet to denounce Islam. A parents’ group launched a petition complaining that “unsolicited exposure to religion” could “create subconscious bias in the minds of impressionable children for or against a faith.” In the latest bit of hate-filled showmanship (as a school-board spokesman aptly called it), a local agitator offered a $1,000 reward to any student who surreptitiously recorded hate speech during a Muslim prayer service.
Needless to say, Muslim prayer in schools has always been contentious. You may believe, as I do, that any type of prayer – including this type – has no place in the public schools. But I also believe it’s not the worst idea. Like it or not, religious accommodation is the law, and the schools are devoted to inclusiveness. Our interest is to integrate new Canadians, not segregate them. We want their children to be educated in the public schools, not religious schools. So we’d better make sure the kids (and parents) feel comfortable there. And if an optional 20-minute prayer session once a week helps them feel more welcome, then why not?
The Peel District School Board, where the current commotion has broken out, serves a sprawling, suburban multiethnic community whose Muslim population is around 10 per cent. Muslim students have been observing Friday prayers for 20 years. Other schools around the province make the same accommodation. It’s been a work in progress. One heavily Muslim school in Toronto faced tough questions a few years back because menstruating girls weren’t allowed to take part in the prayer service. There have been concerns about sexism, as well as worries about just what kind of Islam is being preached. The Peel board has conducted lengthy consultations about whether the students who lead the sessions may write their own sermons, and by whom, if anyone, they must be approved.
To be honest, I have no idea how all this will work out, and neither does anybody else. It will take a generation or more to tell. Canada is not immune from the ethnoreligious tensions that are rocking the world and there’s no way we can avoid them. But we can discourage the fear-mongers and the hate-mongers from poisoning our public discourse. We won’t always agree, especially over symbols that touch our deepest values. Let’s just hope we can keep finding ways to disagree politely. That’s supposed to be the Canadian way, and I don’t want to lose it.
I have some sympathy for the arguments of Fraser and MacDonald. Yet another example of the Senate exercising more independence:
Some members of the Senate are determined to stop Parliament from changing the words of the national anthem, with one senator deriding the late Liberal MP Mauril Bélanger‘s proposed amendments to O Canada as “clunky, leaden and pedestrian.”
Liberal Senator Joan Fraser, a self-described “ardent feminist,” said the new phrasing is both grammatically incorrect and a misguided attempt to make the song reflect “today’s values.”
“It’s a fine example of what happens when you let politicians meddle,” she said of Bill C-210 to amend the National Anthem Act. “Politicians are not usually poets.”
Bélanger, who passed away last summer after a battle with ALS, sought to make the anthem gender-neutral by removing the phrase “all thy sons command” and replacing it with “all of us command.”
The bill passed in the House of Commons largely along party lines, with all Liberal and NDP MPs voting in favour of the changes, while most Conservatives opposed. Some notable female Tory MPs, including Michelle Rempel and Lisa Raitt, backed Bélanger’s bill.
Nearly a year later, the bill is now in its last legislative phase — third reading in the Senate — awaiting a final vote. As per the Senate’s procedural policy, debate on the bill can be continually adjourned by critics, punting a vote on the matter to a later date.
‘Sloppy’ legislation
The bill’s backers, including Liberal MP Greg Fergus, hope to see the bill passed into law in time for Canada’s 150th birthday celebrations on July 1.
While others, including Conservative Nova Scotia Senator Michael MacDonald, have said the “sloppy” legislation should be defeated in its present form because it’s simply an attempt to sanitize a national symbol.
“If we are constantly revising everything because it was written in another generation, our national symbols will have no value. Our history means nothing in this country anymore, and it’s a shame that we’re doing this,” he said in an interview with CBC News. “The Senate should not be reticent in defending and preserving the heritage of Canada.”
Fraser, a journalist and editor appointed by former prime minister Jean Chrétien in 1998, said it is a dangerous precedent to start fiddling with lyrics written by a man long dead.
“If we are to become engrossed in the idea that we must at all times be correctly modern, we lose a part of our heritage,” Fraser said in a recent speech to the Red Chamber. “It may not be a perfect heritage — I’m not suggesting it is — but it is ours. I suggest that it deserves respect and acceptance for what it is: imperfect but our own.”
Fraser said if inclusion is the primary goal, it makes little sense to leave overtly Christian references untouched. Former prime minister Pierre Trudeau’s government added the words “God keep our land glorious and free” in 1980, she noted, the same year the song officially became the country’s national anthem.
“Make no mistake about it, colleagues: we’re talking about the Christian god here, not just anyone’s god,” she said.
Since 1980, 12 private member’s bills have been introduced in the House to strip the gendered reference to “sons,” which some have argued is discriminatory. All attempts have failed.
“It is something that will make our national anthem more inclusive,” Independent Ontario Senator Frances Lankin said in defence of the bill last month. “This change might be small, but it may very well have a major impact on how the next generation views our evolving history.”
The song itself has been changed many times since the English version was first penned in 1908 by Robert Stanley Weir, a judge and poet. Indeed, shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, Weir changed the line in question from “thou dost in us command” to “in all thy sons command.”
‘Social justice warrior seal of approval’
MacDonald is vehemently opposed to Bélanger’s wording because he believes the “politically correct” changes were rammed through the House despite little or no public demand for such a modification.
He said the Liberal government used Bélanger, a man who was near death, as a “vehicle” for the changes.
“That’s not the way to use Parliament. Everybody knows the tragedy of his circumstances, a very tragic thing — but, with respect, it’s the government that treated it like the Children’s Wish Foundation,” MacDonald said.
“This is just change for the sake of change, and just catering to a very narrow group of people who want to impose their agenda on everything,” he said. “Leave the anthem alone.”
The Cape Breton senator also takes issue with the bill because it only changes the English-language version of the national anthem, even though the French words would have a hard time getting the “social justice warrior seal of approval.”
“Why should one official version of the anthem be exempt from re-examination?” MacDonald said. “It is, without question, an ethnic French-Canadian, Catholic, nationalist battle hymn, certainly non-inclusive, yet I am not offended. It is just part of Canada’s history in song.”
MacDonald said he has consulted with English and linguistic professors about the wording change, and they agree that the bill’s authors “botched” the language.
“The proper and only acceptable pronoun substitution for the phrase ‘All thy sons command’ is ‘All of our command,'” MacDonald said. “This is not opinion. This is fact.” (The full text of his speech can be read here.)
A somewhat complex read on the metholology of official language statistics, arguing that the maternal language, rather than language most used, understates the relative decline of French:
Le poids du français au Québec recule de façon jamais vue, alors que l’anglais s’est mis à progresser. Dans sa récente étude Projections linguistiques pour le Canada, 2011 à 2036, Statistique Canada s’emploie à minimiser cette nouvelle dynamique.
Selon l’étude, le poids du français, tant langue maternelle que langue d’usage, continuerait de chuter rapidement, tandis que l’anglais poursuivrait sa lente progression. Mais le français reculerait nettement moins comme la première langue officielle parlée, ou PLOP, voire pas du tout sur l’île de Montréal.
La PLOP se calcule à partir des données sur la connaissance des langues officielles, la langue maternelle et la langue d’usage. Rappelons que la Commission Laurendeau-Dunton avait jugé que la langue maternelle ne nous renseigne pas sur la langue courante des personnes recensées. Elle avait suggéré d’ajouter une question sur leur langue d’usage à la maison, en précisant que « nous croyons qu’on devrait utiliser [les réponses] par la suite comme base de calcul ».
Statistique Canada a choisi d’accorder néanmoins priorité à la langue maternelle sur la langue d’usage pour répartir les individus en quatre groupes qui ont comme PLOP le français, l’anglais, le français et l’anglais, ou ni le français ni l’anglais. Pour abréger, appelons-les francoplops, angloplops, biplops et niplops.
L’organisme fédéral compte d’abord tout unilingue français comme francoplop et tout unilingue anglais comme angloplop. Parmi les individus restants, qui sont bilingues ou encore ne connaissent ni le français ni l’anglais, il compte comme francoplops ceux qui ont comme langue maternelle le français ou le français et une langue non officielle, et comme angloplops ceux qui ont comme langue maternelle l’anglais ou l’anglais et une langue non officielle. Il fait ensuite de même avec la langue d’usage pour définir d’autres francoplops et angloplops. Enfin, Statistique Canada compte les allophones qui ne connaissent ni le français ni l’anglais comme niplops et compte tous les autres individus non encore répartis comme biplops. La grande majorité des biplops sont des allophones bilingues qui parlent encore leur langue maternelle comme langue d’usage.
Il est instructif de suivre plutôt la Commission Laurendeau-Dunton et d’inverser les étapes de ce calcul qui font appel à la langue maternelle et à la langue d’usage. La PLOP de Statistique Canada compte 7 507 885 francoplops au Canada en 2011. La PLOP Laurendeau-Dunton, qui priorise la langue d’usage, en compte 7 173 425. D’une PLOP à l’autre, leur poids au Canada passe de 22,7 % à 21,7 %.
La différence provient pour l’essentiel de l’anglicisation des francophones. En 2011, le Canada comptait 448 805 individus de langue maternelle française mais de langue d’usage anglaise. Ce sont des francoplops, selon Statistique Canada, mais des angloplops, selon l’approche Laurendeau-Dunton. L’organisme gonfle ainsi le nombre de francoplops au Canada, en particulier à l’extérieur du Québec.
L’anglicisation sévit aussi, toutefois, dans l’île de Montréal, qui compte 59,7 % de francoplops, manière Laurendeau-Dunton, comparativement à 60,6 % selon Statistique Canada.
L’étude nous induit en erreur sur un autre point. Elle redistribue arbitrairement les biplops de façon égale entre francoplops et angloplops. Appelons donc francobiplops et anglobiplops les nouveaux regroupements grossis par ce forcing arbitraire. L’étude affirme que les biplops ne représentent pas plus de 0,5 % de la population, autrement dit que son forcing ne modifie pas de façon significative notre perception des choses.
C’est faux. En 2011, les biplops représentaient au Canada 1,1 % de la population. Au Québec, c’était 3,1 %. Dans la région de Montréal, 5,7 %. Dans l’île, 8,2 %.
Nous sommes maintenant à même de saisir comment l’auteur de l’étude, Jean-Claude Corbeil, a pu prétendre le 26 janvier dernier dans Le Devoir que « si on utilise plutôt la PLOP, on constate que les deux tiers des Montréalais sont plus à l’aise en français [qu’en anglais] ». Et qu’« en 2036, on devrait toujours, selon les divers scénarios, demeurer à ce niveau-là ».
Il faut d’abord faire semblant que la PLOP façon Statistique Canada indique correctement dans quelle langue officielle un individu se sent le plus à l’aise. Cela produit 60,6 % de francoplops pour l’île de Montréal en 2011. Outre ce que donne ainsi la PLOP, proprement dite, il faut ajouter la moitié du 8,2 % de biplops. Cela donne presque 65 % de francobiplops. D’où le «deux tiers». Puis, on fait de même pour 2036. L’étude ne révèle pas le détail de ses projections, mais elles font sans doute passer les francoplops – même calculés façon Statistique Canada – sous le seuil de 60 %, et hissent en même temps les biplops au-dessus de 10 %. Ce qui donnerait de nouveau quelque 65 % de francobiplops.
Or, en 2011, l’île de Montréal comptait trois allophones bilingues (anglais et français) de langue d’usage anglaise pour deux qui s’étaient francisés. Le temps seul nous dira comment les allophones bilingues se répartiront à l’avenir entre le français et l’anglais. Cela dépendra notamment du rapport de force entre le français et l’anglais, comme langues d’usage. Selon l’étude elle-même, si rien ne change, ce rapport continuerait à se détériorer. Deux choix s’offrent à nous : nous laisser endormir en comptant les francobiplops ou agir pour mettre fin à la dynamique actuelle des langues au Québec.
It is always easy (and valid) to focus on the people at the top as there are relatively few positions given their prominence and the relatively small numbers that one can easily analyse.
What is harder and takes more time, is to go through the entire list of some 65,000 names and do diversity analysis (based on names) to see the overall pattern.
To the Ontario government’s credit, the information is provided directly in spreadsheet form. If I get bored …
Naureen Rizvi says she was disappointed when only four women cracked the top 20 spots on Ontario’s annual Sunshine List, even as the province says it’s “on track” to close the wage gap.
“I always feel it’s not fast enough,” Rizvi told CBC Toronto at a Ryerson University event focused on women’s economic empowerment.
“I don’t accept that it takes 90 years to get to parity.”
At her job as the Ontario regional director with Unifor, Rizvi represents hundreds of thousands of unionized employees across a huge range of sectors, and she says there are wage gaps everywhere she looks.
‘We know that transparency is really important for achieving gender equity.’– Sarah Kaplan, Director at Rotman’s Institute for Gender and the Economy
A quick scan of the top of the Sunshine List merely confirms it. At universities, not one woman making a six-figure salary made as much as the top 20 men. At municipalities, only three women were among the best-paid.
Indira Naidoo-Harris, the province’s minister for the status of women, says the province is well aware there’s more work to do. Within the public service, she said, women make up some 55 per cent of the workforce, but take home about 12 per cent less money than their male counterparts.
The province has a strategy to deal with this, which includes setting targets for the number of women it wants at top levels.
“I think these are important targets because they really show that we are committed to really making sure that we’re putting those women in those positions of leadership where they belong,” Naidoo-Harris said.
“And that will absolutely open doors.”
Province setting targets to get women in top jobs
While the province is hoping to lead by example, it’s also asking companies listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange to alter their boards so they’re made up of at least 30 per cent women by 2020 (internally, the government’s target for women on boards is 40 per cent).
Naidoo-Harris also touted the government’s recently announced investments in child care, and called on women in this province to demand equality.
Sarah Kaplan, the director of Rotman’s Institute for Gender and the Economy, says the Sunshine List is a “small window” into the equity issue. But, she said, women should take advantage of any transparency when it comes to information about pay.
And Kaplan, who is on the list along with many of her colleagues, has done exactly that in the past.
“I said. ‘Here are the people that were promoted at the same time I was promoted — why are they getting paid more than me?'”.
It may not always work, Kaplan says, but it does lead to pointed questions.
“We know that transparency is really important for achieving gender equity,” she said.
Income inequality tougher for women who make less money
Sheila Block, senior economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, says it’s an “excellent idea” to use the list’s information to bargain, and that people from racialized groups, or those with different levels of ability, could do the same.
Block said the information can also be revealing about the biases that exist at certain institutions — something either employees or the employers themselves can question.
While it’s far from perfect, both Block and Kaplan note the public sector tends to be a fairer place for women.
“One of the things we’re most concerned about is the income inequality at the bottom end of the income spectrum,” Block said.
The Sunshine List itself doesn’t track gender, and crunching those numbers can be difficult due to androgynous names like Erin or Kim.
While I can understand the rationale for its removal (country of origin would be a better way to highlight the concern), we have to find a way that we can talk about particular practices or concerns related to country of origin and related risks in an evidence-based manner.
Being silent also has consequences.
And it is hard to have much sympathy for realtors given their inherent conflict of interest and lack of regulation compared to financial institutions:
Canada’s money-laundering watchdog drafted a document warning the real estate sector to be on guard for “specific ethnic communities” dealing with terrorism and war, before removing the reference at the behest of an industry association, documents show.
Correspondence between FinTRAC and the Canadian Real Estate Association, obtained by The Canadian Press through an Access to Information request, shows that the industry group was concerned that the reference would encourage agents to stop doing business with people based on their ethnicity.
The draft guidance document was aimed at helping companies meet their obligations to detect money laundering and terrorist financing.
It lists several examples of factors that may increase a company’s risk of becoming entangled in financial crimes, including dealing with “a specific ethnic community that is currently dealing with specific events (e.g. prevalence of terrorism or money laundering, war etc.) in the home country.”
Such a reference would constitute a violation of the Human Rights Act, the real estate association said in its letter.
“Canadians are rightly proud of the Human Rights Act, and especially in this day and age when we see what’s happening south of the border,” said CREA spokesman Randall McCauley.
“Our lawyers would have rightly pointed out or reminded FinTRAC that no Canadian can discriminate against another, or deny access to a service based on where they’re from.”
The federal agency says it was not referring to any particular ethnic community in the document.
“The intent of the guidance was to highlight, broadly, that regulated businesses may deal with clients that have a material connection to high-risk jurisdictions or other jurisdictions that are currently dealing with specific events, including terrorism or money laundering, war, a high level of corruption, or organized crime,” FinTRAC spokeswoman Renee Bercier said in an e-mail.
“FinTRAC chose to remove the terminology as it recognized the potential for misinterpretation and misrepresentation.”
Companies in certain sectors – including banks, casinos and real estate firms – are legally required to identify their clients, keep records and report suspicious or large cash transactions to FinTRAC. They are also required to assess their exposure to money laundering and terrorism financing risk.
Canada’s real estate sector has become an area of particular concern after a report released last fall by the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force said it is susceptible to the illegal dumping of cash.
FinTRAC provided CREA with the draft of its guidance document in 2014.
In a letter to FinTRAC dated Dec. 23, 2014, CREA calls the reference to ethnicity in the document “inappropriate,” particularly if read alongside another section of the guide that encourages companies to introduce measures that can be used to terminate business relationships, a process referred to as “de-marketing.”
“If this guidance were followed it could result in realtor members being liable for violating human rights law,” the letter reads, before going on to cite Sec. 5 of Canada’s Human Rights Act.
That section says it is a discriminatory practice to deny access to any good, service, facility or accommodation to someone for any of the prohibited grounds of discrimination. In a response letter dated Feb. 6, 2015, FinTRAC says it opted to remove the references to ethnicity and de-marketing.
The reference to ethnicity – and the decision to remove it – illustrates just how controversial the issue has become in the debate over foreign capital flowing into Canada’s real estate market.
Thomas Davidoff, an associate professor at the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business, says affordability concerns in markets such as Vancouver and Toronto have in some cases resulted in ethnic divisions.
“People get their underwear in a bunch when they’re feeling threatened about having a roof over their head,” Mr. Davidoff says.
For instance, reports of money flowing into Vancouver’s housing market from China have resulted in some Vancouverites blaming the Chinese for pricing them out of the market for single-family, detached homes, Mr. Davidoff says. “Politicians and government needs to protect citizens while being tolerant and encouraging people to behave decently towards other people,” he said. “That can be a challenge.”
The large number of deportations to China reflects in part the large number of immigrants from China: 1,386 deportations compared to over 78,000 immigrants, or 1.8 percent (2013-15).
However, this is more than other large source countries like the Philippines and India. Given lack of due process in Chinese courts, this concern is not misplaced with respect to corruption cases:
The Canadian government is deporting hundreds of people to China each year without receiving any assurances that they will not be tortured or otherwise mistreated, statistics provided to The Globe and Mail reveal.
Canada and China do not have a formal extradition treaty, and the Trudeau government has signalled that it may not complete such a deal out of concern about abuses in the Chinese justice system.
The lack of such a deal has not, however, stopped Canada from sending people back to China. The Canada Border Services Agency has used deportation, expelling 1,386 people to China over the past three years, according to agency statistics.
It’s a process that lawyers, academics and former diplomats say offers too few protections against the mistreatment deportees might endure.
It also places Canada at risk of using evidence rooted in coerced confessions as Canadian authorities make decisions on ejecting people, particularly those sought by Beijing as part of its sweeping global Skynet operation to chase people it calls corrupt fugitives.
When people are returned to a country such as China, “there’s a need for very significant and enforceable assurances about the treatment they will receive and monitoring on the part of Canada – which Canada has not done,” said Sharryn Aiken, an expert on immigration and refugee law at Queen’s University.
“And in the absence of monitoring, people die in jail.”
The United Nations Committee against Torture has said that in China “the practice of torture and ill-treatment is still deeply entrenched in the criminal-justice system.”
Canada’s own foreign service recently signed its name to a letter saying there are “credible claims of torture” against people under interrogation in China.
Before deporting someone, Canadian immigration officials can conduct what is called a “preremoval risk assessment,” designed to evaluate whether a person is in danger of mistreatment upon return. “Due diligence is important before undertaking any removal measures,” said Nicholas Dorion, a spokesman for the Canada Border Services Agency. That assessment is “in place to ensure that a person will not be removed to a country where they could face death or torture.”
But risk assessments are done entirely in Canada and do not include demands that China guarantee it will abide by certain standards of conduct, or allow Canada to monitor deportees.
“Many of us don’t feel it’s really an effective safeguard,” said Vancouver immigration lawyer Douglas Cannon. “Especially in the case of people who are being sent back to face prosecution in China.”
The potential for problems is serious enough that David Mulroney, the former Canadian ambassador to China, says Ottawa should refuse to co-operate with Beijing on most corruption cases, limiting joint law-enforcement work to public-safety cases involving people accused of murder or drug offences.
When China demands the return of people it calls corrupt, it is asking Canada “to send people back into a very murky and worrisome Chinese system,” he said. “You have to be very sure that you are not on the Canadian side enabling the Chinese to unfairly prosecute someone.”
Using Interpol
Ottawa does have the ability to demand assurances from countries such as China, as it did in the high-profile deportation of notorious smuggler Lai Changxing in 2011. Beijing pledged not to torture or execute the man it then considered its number one most-wanted. China also promised Canada extraordinary rights to monitor his treatment. Mr. Lai’s case, however, was a notable exception.
Canada maintains lists of countries to which deportations are either permanently or temporarily blocked, although it has exceptions for criminals and people deemed to be a security risk. Canada deported 6,964 people in 2016. Of those, 382 were sent to China, just more than 5 per cent of the total, CBSA statistics show. In recent years, Chinese citizens have been the fourth-most regularly deported from Canada, behind citizens of Hungary, the United States and Mexico.
While I think he overstates the case and is unduly alarmist, there is more than a kernel of truth in ensuring that any messaging that contrasts US to Canadian policies needs to be carefully calibrated to reduce expectations:
Are you one of the millions of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. afraid of being deported? Come to Canada! An asylum-seeker worried your refugee claim will be denied in America? Welcome to Canada! Paid a paltry wage in Mexico? Head on up to Canada!
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau began broadcasting this heart-warming message in late January as a not-so-subtle subtweet about President Donald Trump’s travel ban.
“To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada” he tweeted on Jan. 28, followed by a picture of him greeting a refugee family.
The two tweets garnered over a million likes and half-a-million retweets, creating millions of misleading impressions about Canada as a sanctuary for all the world’s displaced. Anyone with the smallest bit of knowledge about the immigration process understands that Canada’s doors are anything but wide open, but Trudeau isn’t just blatantly spreading falsehoods by sending that message — he’s actually enticing people to uproot their lives, throwing another wrench into an already chaotic immigration system, all based on disingenuous messaging.
Armed with the fallacious belief that Canada will absolutely offer them residency, many asylum-seekers will gamble all their money and risk their lives trying to make the dangerous journey to Canada. Indeed, we’ve seen how quickly would-be immigrants will flood the borders if they believe their chances of staying have improved.
The Liberals’ elimination of the visa requirement for Mexican travellers at the end of last year, for example, has led to a 1,000 per cent increase in Mexican refugee claims this year. We know based on data from before the visa restriction, however, that only a fraction of those applicants will be allowed to stay, meaning that many Mexicans will spend thousands coming to Canada with only a slim chance of actually gaining residency.
Nevertheless, Trudeau’s rhetoric will surely resonate among asylum-seekers currently in the U.S. who are considering entering Canada illegally in order to bypass the Safe Third Country Agreement. Already, in the first two months of 2017, Canadian police intercepted 1,134 asylum-seekers crossing the border illegally, which is half of all of last year’s total.
If we’re seeing these sorts of numbers in the dead of winter — and Trump has only begun his crackdown on illegal immigrants currently residing in America — surely we will see even greater numbers as the weather gets warmer, especially as Trudeau continues to peddle the notion that refugees can find a home in Canada.
But of course, many refugees will not find a home in Canada, even if they are granted temporary asylum. According to data supplied by the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, out of the 15,196 in-country refugee applicants processed in 2016, a total of 4,970 were rejected for various reasons, such as applicants not being considered in enough danger in their home country — and that was only after hundreds of other applications had already been terminated because the applicants had criminal records, abandoned claims, etc.
There’s a compelling question at the heart of a report released this week by the Metropolitan Planning Council: If more people — especially educated professional white Americans — knew exactly how they are harmed by the country’s pervasive racial segregation, would they be moved to try to decrease it?
Researchers from the MPC, a Chicago-based nonprofit, and from the Washington-based Urban Institute tried to create a workable formula for estimating the cost, collectively and individually, of the persistent problem in their report, “The Cost of Segregation: Lost income. Lost lives. Lost potential. The steep costs all of us in the Chicago region pay by living so separately from each other.”
The researchers analyzed segregation patterns in the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the country and found that if Chicago — the fifth most racially and economically segregated city in the country — were to lower its level of segregation to the national median of those 100 cities, it would have a profound impact on the entire Chicago region, including raising the region’s gross domestic product, raising incomes and lowering the homicide rate.
Amanda E. Lewis, director of the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy at the University of Illinois-Chicago, called the MPC report “very important.”
“The findings are pretty stark,” Lewis said. “They’re hard to ignore.”
The report concluded that the Chicago region would gain many benefits from lowering its segregation level to the national median. Chief among them would be that incomes for African-Americans in the Chicago region would rise an average of $2,982 per person per year, which would increase the earnings of the region by $4.4 billion and raise the Chicago region’s gross domestic product, a leading measure of economic performance, by approximately $8 billion.
Chicago’s notorious crime would also be positively impacted. The region’s homicide rate would drop by 30 percent, which would have saved 229 lives in Chicago in 2016. In 2010, the last year for which regional numbers are available, a 30 percent drop in the homicide rate would have saved 167 lives and saved $65 million in policing costs and an estimated $218 million in corrections costs. In addition, residential real estate values would have increased by at least $6 billion.
Less segregation would also make Chicago and its environs more educated, with an estimated 83,000 more people who have bachelor’s degrees, bringing the region an added $90 billion in total lifetime earnings.
Marisa Novara, vice president of MPC and one of the report’s authors, said the MPC was trying to change the narrative around segregation away from the commonly held view that white people clustered in upper-income communities are not touched by it. “That has absolutely been the way our society has understood this,” she said in an interview. “This report really changes that. It shows that it’s not true that segregation only works in white people’s favor. We all pay a price — billions of dollars. The way we’ve talked about segregation to this point has really left a big part of our region feeling like segregation is not their problem and they don’t need to be part of the solution. That’s problematic.”
Novara said the MPC will follow up “The Cost of Segregation” with another report that details the steps the region needs to take to decrease segregation.
“I think it’s interesting to try to say, ‘Hey this is your problem, too,'” said Anne Dodge, executive director of UChicago Urban, an institute at the University of Chicago that focuses on research on cities. “I like that the report talks collectively about the city. This is one place and we all own it, and we need to own each other’s problems and each other’s successes.”
The MPC report points out that racist government policies initially created segregated neighborhoods in Chicago, when the Chicago Real Estate Board (CREB) instituted racially restrictive covenants in the early 20th century that prohibited African-Americans from purchasing, leasing and occupying housing outside of a small area on the city’s South Side. The covenants led to widespread “redlining” by denying black communities access to financial capital and resources to purchase homes and start small businesses. That kind of institutional racism has continued in the modern era by banks disproportionately saddling African-American home buyers with predatory loans.
At its root, Lewis of the University of Illinois-Chicago said, the issue is racism and the too-pervasive white view that anything associated with black people is bad.
“This isn’t some abstract thing about the market — it’s because white people don’t tend to want to buy in black neighborhoods, and they are still the majority of people buying homes. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy,” said Lewis, co-author of Despite the Best Intentions: How Racial Inequality Thrives in Good Schools, a book about how even liberal white people make individual decisions that exacerbate inequality. “If you don’t have the largest group in society, who happen to control the greatest amount of resources, being interested in buying in certain neighborhoods, the market forces suggest those neighborhoods won’t accrue value as quickly. It has serious consequences for middle and upper middle-class black folks who want to be in communities with folks who look like them.”
Amara Enyia, a municipal policy consultant and 2014 Chicago mayoral candidate, complained on social media that the report spent too much time focusing on getting black people and white people to live together and not enough on gaining equity for black communities. “Yes, I believe there is a significant societal value to diversity and inclusion, but for now I’m focused on the premise of this report as it relates to the public space and public goods (i.e. education, housing, healthcare, etc.),” she wrote.
While she feels the report is valuable, Lewis, who is white, said she is disturbed that it is even necessary to make the case to white people that segregation also hurts them in order for white people to care about segregation.
“Why isn’t it enough to show negative consequences for black and brown people?” she asked. “Why wouldn’t that be enough to motivate us? Why shouldn’t that be the driving thing that says to us, ‘This is unjust.’ Having to make the case that all of us lose says a lot about our society writ large and why we are so segregated.”
Multicultural Meanderings 