The lessons Canada should learn from Britain’s anti-immigrant politics: Julia Rampen

2018/01/19 Leave a comment

IMO, Rampen’s piece shows a limited understanding of Canada and Canadian federal politics. Given the large number of ridings in which immigrants form a significant number of voters, all major parties are essentially pro-immigration as I have argued elsewhere (The growing diversity within federal ridings), which essentially explains why Canada does not have an equivalent to UKIP in terms of popular support.

And she conflates anti-EU origin migration with immigration in general and overstates the importance of Rebel Media given the electoral realities (Sun Media is more representative of those with immigration-related concerns).

And while there are significant number of Canadians with concerns about number of immigrants (about one third), this group is not monolithic, ranging from those who are xenophobic to those who have legitimate concerns:

Nigel Farage, then the leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), poses for photographers holding a British passport at the launch of the party’s open-top bus that will be touring the UK for the campaign to leave the European Union, ahead of the referendum, in London on May 20, 2016. (Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images)

On Jan. 29, 2017, the newly inaugurated U.S. President Donald Trump got to work and announced a ban on travel and migration from a number of Muslim-majority countries—and in the world’s airports, chaos ensued. Passengers who boarded planes confident of their U.S. itinerary found themselves blocked on landing. Protesters and human-rights lawyers gathered outside airports. Security officials, surprised as everyone else, floundered.

Justin Trudeau, though, was quick to respond. “To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith,” he tweeted. “Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada.” To date, the tweet has been shared nearly 418,000 times.

It’s the kind of message that has helped Canada become a byword in the international community for a sensible, progressive attitude to immigration. In Britain, too—where 3.7 million European Union citizens spent 2017 waiting to hear whether they could continue to live in the country they had made their home, and where, after a rancorous Brexit vote that many saw as hinging on the issue of immigration, British Prime Minister Theresa May declared that “if you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere”—the message was received.

Yet not so long ago, Britain also celebrated diversity, and a U.S. president depicted his Kenyan father and Indonesian childhood as a modern version of the American Dream. Trudeau might declare, as he did in June, that “our differences make us strong,” but there are signs that not everyone agrees—signs that we missed in Britain, until the morning of Jun. 24, 2016, when the cost of missing them became impossible to ignore.

Multiculturalism, Trudeau said in that June statement, “is at the heart of Canada’s heritage and identity.” This may be true, but when it comes to views on immigration, Canada is almost indistinguishable from a European country. A 2017 study by University of Toronto political scientist Michael Donnelly found that seven in ten Canadians would only accept “a few” or “some” poor immigrants, a view most similar to public opinion in France. Most people were willing to be generous to refugees, but only to the extent that British people were. While Canadians were generally positive about the impact of immigrants on the economy—and here, it’s worth noting Canada did not have as bad a financial crisis as many European countries—one in five would support stopping all immigration to the country.

So far, it has been possible for Canada’s political establishment to ignore this awkward squad on immigration. But this may say more about their opponents’ organizational skills than Canadian exceptionalism. “Both countries have large blocs of people who are genuinely upset about immigration alongside many who are quite comfortable with it,” Donnelly said in an interview with Maclean’s, when asked about the U.K. and Canada. “Perhaps the anti-immigrant group is a bit larger in the U.K. than in Canada, but I’d say the major difference is the lack of a British National Party, or the UK Independence Party, to attract and, to an extent, legitimize the fringe right, which is present in both countries.”

The British National Party—a far-right group that, at its high point in the mid-2000s, managed to elect some local councillors—is unlikely to keep Canadian liberals up at night. UKIP, however, is a different story. Under the leadership of the beer-swilling, hat-doffing Nigel Farage, the party charmed its way into TV studios and foxtrotted a fine line between respectable, if anti-European Union, political rhetoric, and far-right xenophobic dog whistles. By 2015, Farage had still not managed to get elected to the Westminster Parliament, but two Conservative MPs had defected to UKIP, immigration was a dirty word, and a rattled David Cameron, then the Conservative prime minister, promised a referendum on EU membership.

Defenders of Britain’s anti-immigration turn will point out that there is one stark difference to Canada: the free movement rules which allowed up to 190,000 EU citizens a year to come to the U.K. and indeed, admiration for Canada’s immigration system is shared by some British Eurosceptics, who say they are in favour of control rather than ending immigration per se. Still, immigration was an issue that united voters across party lines, and against their own party leadership. The Lincolnshire town of Boston—christened Britain’s “most Brexit town” because of the high Eurosceptic vote—experienced a 460-per-cent rise in immigration between 2004 and 2014.

British liberals who reject anti-immigration sentiment, yet accept that after Brexit it has to be taken seriously, often argue that this is because immigration has become a proxy for economic concerns. It is true that in the years between the financial crisis and Brexit, Britain’s Conservative-led government inflicted a series of cuts on public services. Between 2007 and 2015, the U.K. was the only advanced country to see wages shrink while the overall economy grew. For older residents of post-industrial provincial towns, far from the cosmopolitan splendours of London, it would not take a great leap of imagination to believe that there were too many people in the country willing to work for too little. Although at first glance Canada is not plagued with these problems, liberals might want to take note of the fact that in 2014, the country was ranked third worst for regional economic disparity among countries in the OECD. 

Yet there is another bulwark against anti-immigration sentiment in Canada, and this one is far easier to overcome. While the majority of British MPs were in favour of remaining in the EU, the two biggest-selling newspapers in the U.K., The Sun and The Daily Mail, backed Leave. This was no surprise, not least given the same papers had already successfully been blurring the lines between immigrants, refugees and criminals for years. In the spring of 2015, after roughly 1,600 people had died trying to cross the Mediterranean in at the beginning of what would later be called “Europe’s refugee crisis,” Sun columnist Katie Hopkins wrote a piece entitled “Rescue boats? I’d use gunships to stop migrants.” The Daily Mail published a front page declaring: “MIGRANTS: HOW MANY MORE CAN WE TAKE?”

Hopkins, who also compared refugees to cockroaches, ultimately proved too much for mainstream British audiences after she called for a “final solution” in the wake of a domestic terror attack. But she quickly found a new job—with the Canadian-based Rebel Media, where she hosts her own website, Hopkins World. (Her discussion of “shithole countries” has already prompted one Canadian reader to lament the “Clown Prince” of the liberals, “Justin Mohammed Trudeau.”)

According to Ryan Scrivens, an academic at Concordia University who has spent six years studying far-right extremism, some Canadians are receptive to a “traditional” racist skinhead message. More common, though, is the trend of being drawn to the alt-right, which inhabits the same, ambiguous area as UKIP and columnists like Hopkins. “The alt-right is watered-down hate,” said Scrivens. “It’s the more mainstream, palatable, and acceptable form of hatred, which seems to resonate with more people.”

While Scrivens echoes Donnelly’s view that the far right struggles to co-operate in Canada, he does identify one issue they can unite behind: immigration. Here, the concerns resemble those in Europe, with the focus on refugees from Muslim countries. “With that comes a (mis)perception that, with an increase in Muslim immigrants, Sharia law will be imposed on Canadians and terrorists will sneak into the country and cause harm.”

One year on from his tweet, Trudeau does not face an obvious ideological opponent on immigration, at least so long as Andrew Scheer, focussed on a message of inclusion, leads the Conservatives; Kellie Leitch, who brought anti-immigration ideas to the Tories’ leadership campaign, now faces a nomination challenge for her seat from within her own party in 2019. But the lesson from Europe and the U.S. is that anti-immigration movements do not come from within the establishment. Sites like Rebel Media have seized on the implications of Trudeau’s “Welcome to Canada” message, calling the movement of people from U.S. to Canada since Trump took power a “border invasion.” Leitch and movements like Canada First continue to depict welcoming refugees and Canadian values as incompatible, and despite her loss, a poll during the Conservative leadership campaign found that a majority of Canadians supported some form of values test.

With his personal popularity ratings slipping, and the influence of online media growing, Trudeau needs to beware an insurrection from below. Otherwise, he may be surprised about how quickly a country’s reputation can change.

Source: The lessons Canada should learn from Britain’s anti-immigrant politics

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Foreign spouses hit snags with ‘streamlined’ sponsorship program

2018/01/19 Leave a comment

As happens with so much reporting, the focus is on the personal anecdotes with minimal evidence as to the degree that the problems are widespread (20 cases flagged by the Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants (CAPIC) compares to January-June 2017 numbers of some 32,000 – number includes children). This does not, of course, some of the apparent slip ups in processing as described in the article and the consequent hardship on applicants:

The federal government’s streamlined spousal-sponsorship program was supposed to fast-track the immigration process for the foreign-born husbands and wives of Canadians.

But for a Swedish woman living in Ottawa, the process has been anything but smooth, with her application being sent back not once, but twice. Her immigration lawyer blames government error. Each time, Alexandra Dickenson’s application went back to the bottom of the pile.

“It’s just ridiculous,” said Dickenson.

In 2011, Dickenson married professional hockey player Lou Dickenson who had spent a decade playing in Europe. They had two children and decided to move to Canada when Lou hung up his skates and retired. In September 2016 they arrived in Ottawa to start the next chapter of their life.

Their children had no problems with their immigration paperwork. But for Alexandra, it’s been another story.

In one case, an officer with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) wrote that Dickenson didn’t include her birth certificate and passport photos in the application. However, her immigration lawyer who compiled the documents, says that’s not true. The returned application contains proof — the birth certificates and photos — remain clipped inside, said her lawyer.

“You should look through the whole application before you send it back,” said Dickenson.

It’s a problem that her lawyer, Kristen Dunbar Tobin, says she’s seeing more often since the government announced in December 2016 it was speeding up the processing time for spousal sponsorships — capping it at 12 months. The average wait time before that was two years. The changes were supposed to streamline the process to make it simpler for families.

‘This wasn’t happening before’

Tobin says her office dealt with multiple cases last year in which IRCC sent back applications erroneously.

The government said documents were missing that were actually there, according to Tobin. She knows because she made copies of the application packages before sending them in. And because, when those same packages were returned by IRCC, the “missing” documents were still there.

That said, in some cases, other key documents were not returned, she said.

“This wasn’t happening before,” said Tobin. “Ever since the processing times changed, something that was supposed to be easier and faster, got more difficult actually. Families are being lost in the process.”

Tobin first sent Dickenson’s application in January 2017. Both times it was sent back — over errors her lawyer said didn’t exist — it meant up to three months of delay. They had to start from scratch to re-apply.

Meanwhile, the clock was ticking on Dickenson’s visitor status that was only valid for half a year after entering Canada. It had expired by the time her second application was returned.

‘You want to start working’

For more than 10 months, Dickenson couldn’t work and her family had to live off one paycheque.

“You want to start working,” said Dickenson. “It’s hard not to know what your future looks like.”

It was only after Tobin complained to the government that it gave Dickenson a work visa in November 2017. But she’s still waiting for permanent residency and expects it’s likely to take longer than the government’s self-imposed one-year deadline since she’s already behind in the process.

The family is living in limbo while they wait.

It’s “definitely a frustrating process,” said Dickenson. “Something’s got to change. It feels like something’s wrong.”

Alexandra Dickenson, a Swedish woman living in Ottawa, says the government erroneously returned her spousal sponsorship application twice, forcing her to re-apply all over again. 0:32

Push to submit applications online

The CEO of the Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants (CAPIC), Dory Jade, says he received up to 20 complaints this past fall about IRCC and “missing” documents.

CAPIC complained to the government and says, in some cases, work permits for spouses were expedited. But the delays remain for permanent residency.

“You are in a pending situation,” he said. “The longer this pending situation remains the more stressed, the more unstable situation you are in.”

Jade says he’s been pushing the government for two years to create an online application system for spousal sponsorships to help eliminate mistakes like this. Other types of applications are accepted online.

“Either you upload the right documents in the right box or you can’t click submit,” said Jade. “This makes it very difficult to submit an incomplete application.”

IRCC did not make anyone available for an interview and has yet to comment on lawyer concerns over applications being erroneously returned.

The department did however say that IRCC has no immediate plans to accept spousal sponsorship applications online.

In a statement to CBC News, IRCC says that despite spousal applications being submitted via hard copy, it has been working to improve the process.

“That’s why we made updates to the new checklists and guides in June 2017,” IRCC wrote. “With the changes introduced to the application kit in December 2016 and June 2017, the Department has received fewer incomplete applications than when the old kit was being used. These changes demonstrate our ongoing commitment to enhancing client service.”

Source: Foreign spouses hit snags with ‘streamlined’ sponsorship program

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UK’s Falling Immigration Is a Boon for May, But Not for Business

2018/01/19 Leave a comment

Not surprising given Brexit and the related uncertainty:

Net immigration to the U.K. is likely to fall to 180,000 in 2018, the closest the government has come to meeting its longstanding target of a reduction to the “tens of thousands.”

That’s the forecast on Tuesday from the Institute of Directors. The decline by at least 50,000 is good news, on the face of it, for Prime Minister Theresa May, who failed to get anywhere close to the goal during her six years in charge of immigration policy as home secretary and, latterly, 18 months as premier.

But business doesn’t see it the same way.

Small and medium-sized ones in particular, “will find it more difficult to recruit the people they need for our economy to prosper, resulting in a labor market tightening,” the institute said. “Some firms will feel pressure to raise wages but others will struggle to cope and will consequently stagnate or downsize.”

That’s hardly the picture of a vibrant economy that May’s seeking to project as Britain negotiates its departure from the European Union. But for May, meeting the target — which dates back to 2010 — is one of the keys to delivering on the verdict of the Brexit referendum in 2016.

Her Conservatives have stuck doggedly to their immigration target even as net migration soared as high as 336,000 in the year through the end of June 2016. Since the referendum, quantities have been falling, a combination of EU workers feeling less welcome and less secure, and net immigration for the year through June 2017 was 230,000.

Source: UK’s Falling Immigration Is a Boon for May, But Not for Business

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‘Racial Impostor Syndrome’: Here Are Your Stories

2018/01/18 Leave a comment

Have just included a few of the mixed identity anecdotes but as mixed union rates increase, more people will be grappling with these identity issues:

It’s tricky to nail down exactly what makes someone feel like a “racial impostor.” For one Code Switch follower, it’s the feeling she gets from whipping out “broken but strangely colloquial Arabic” in front of other Middle Easterners.

For another — a white-passing, Native American woman — it’s being treated like “just another tourist” when she shows up at powwows. And one woman described watching her white, black and Korean-American toddler bump along to the new Kendrick and wondering, “Is this allowed?”

In this week’s podcast, we go deep into what we’re calling Racial Impostor Syndrome — the feeling, the science and a giant festival this weekend in Los Angeles that’s, in some ways, all about this.

All Mixed Up: What Do We Call People Of Multiple Backgrounds?

Here’s how we got started down this track. A couple months ago, listener Kristina Ogilvie wrote in to tell us that “living at the intersection of different identities and cultures” was like “stumbling around in a forest in the dark.”

She asked, “Do you hear from other listeners who feel like fakes?”

Good question. So we took it to our audience, and what we heard back was a resounding “yes.”

We got 127 emails from people who are stumbling through that dark, racially ambiguous forest. (And yes, we read every single one.)

Here are excerpts drawn from a few of the many letters that made us laugh, cry and argue — and that guided this week’s episode.

Let’s start with Angie Yingst of Pennsylvania:

“My mother is a Panamanian immigrant and my father is a white guy from Pennsylvania. I’ve always felt liminal, like I drift between race and culture. When I was young (20s) and living in the city, I would get asked multiple times a day where I was from, where my people were from, because Allentown, Pennsylvania, clearly wasn’t the answer they were looking for … It always felt like the undercurrent of that question was, ‘You aren’t white, but you aren’t black. What are you?’

“But truthfully, I don’t feel like I fit with Latinas either. My Spanish is atrocious and I grew up in rural PA. Even my cousin said a few weeks ago, ‘Well, you aren’t really Spanish, because your dad is white.’ Which gutted me, truly. I identify as Latina. I identify with my mother’s culture and country as well as American culture. In shops, I’m treated like every other Latina, followed around, then ignored at the counter. I married a white guy and had children who are blonde and blue eyed, and I’m frequently asked if I’m the nanny or babysitter. And white acquaintances often say, ‘You are white. You act white.’ And I saltily retort, ‘Why? Because I’m not doing your lawn, or taking care of your kids? You need to broaden your idea of what Latina means.’ ”

Jen Boggs of Hawaii says she often feels like a racial impostor, but isn’t quite sure which race she’s faking:

“I was born in the Philippines and moved to Hawaii when I was three. … I grew up thinking that I was half-Filipina and half-white, under the impression that my mom’s first husband was my biological father. I embraced this ‘hapa-haole’ identity (as they say in Hawaii), and loved my ethnic ambiguity. My mom wanted me to speak perfect English, so never spoke anything but to me. After she divorced her first husband and re-married my stepdad from Michigan, my whiteness became cemented.

“Except. As it turns out, my biological father was a Filipino man whom I’ve never met. I didn’t find out until I tried to apply for a passport in my late twenties and the truth came out. So, at age 28 I learned that I was not half white but all Filipina. …

“This new knowledge was a huge blow to my identity and, admittedly, to my self esteem. ‘But I’m white,’ I remember thinking. ‘I’m so so white.’ After much therapy, I’m happy and comfortable in my brown skin, though I’m still working out how others perceive me as this Other, Asian person.”

Source: ‘Racial Impostor Syndrome’: Here Are Your Stories

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Religious groups meet to discuss concerns over abortion clause in summer jobs grant application

2018/01/18 Leave a comment

Will be interesting to see how this continues to play out, and whether the requirement is interpreted broadly, as some faith groups fear, or narrowly as the government is trying to signal:

On a wintry Tuesday afternoon, in a small conference room at the back of a Pentecostal office building in the Toronto suburbs, 60 people representing Muslim, Jewish, Sikh, Christian and other faiths spent two hours debating whether the government is violating their religious freedoms — and if so, what to do about it.

The concern arises out of the Canada Summer Jobs program, which this year comes with a new “attestation” box that all applicants must check off before submitting. The wording of the attestation, which many still find confusing, seems to require a declaration that the applicant does not advocate an anti-abortion position.

A growing number of faith-based groups see the attestation as a threat to the principle of religious freedom in Canada. While some of them are staunchly pro-life, others don’t take a firm stance on abortion rights but don’t want to be forced to take a side in order to apply for a grant.

Tuesday’s discussion was closed to the media, but a few of the attendees spoke to reporters afterward.

Ibrahim Hindy, an imam at the Dar Al-Tawheed Islamic Centre in Mississauga, said his mosque is struggling over what to do.

“I came to take it all in and hear the concerns that people were having,” he said. “We were going to apply this year, and we’re still discussing whether or not we will…Some people are asking, does this conflict with our beliefs? If the person has an orthodox understanding of scriptures, is this asking the person to contradict those?”

Father Niaz Toma, a Chaldean Catholic priest, said his community of Iraqi Christians won’t be able to apply for the grant, and referred to the attestation as a “persecution” of his people.

“We will never compromise our faith for the sake of grants to be received from the Canadian government,” he said. “Seemingly, the attempt is to be inclusive. But the end result is exclusivity, blocking certain groups.”

The meeting, which was spearheaded by Conservative MP Alex Nuttall, featured a panel of speakers from Islamic, Catholic and evangelical organizations outlining their interpretation of the attestation, taking questions from the crowd, and moderating a discussion of what should be done in response.

Nuttall — who got involved due to his role as Conservative critic on the youth portfolio — said those in attendance included representatives from Baptist churches, Hindu temples, Sikh temples, Coptic Christians, the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, and many others.

Concerns over the attestation have been popping up around the country, as religious groups grapple with the implications of signing a grant application that includes an attestation about reproductive rights. Some have decided to send in paper applications with their own attestation, rather than sign the government’s.

The attestation requires stating that the organization’s core mandate respects individual human rights as well as the “values underlying the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,” going on to say this includes “reproductive rights.” The accompanying Applicant’s Guide identifies “the right to access safe and legal abortions” as a human right that the attestation is referring to.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Employment Minister Patty Hajdu have both made it clear the aim is to block federal grants from going to organizations that have the explicit purpose of anti-abortion political activism. They have encouraged faith-based organizations to still apply for the grants.

But religious groups are left with the question of what “core mandate” means, and whether signing the attestation compromises their own religious beliefs. And compounding this is the concern the attestation requirement will spread to other federal programs.

On Tuesday, it was revealed that the new federal youth volunteer program, the Canada Service Corps, also has similar strings attached to it.

The program provides funding for volunteer projects around the country, but the guidelines say the government won’t approve funding for any projects deemed not to respect individual human rights — including reproductive rights. In this case, instead of applicants having to sign an attestation, it will be up to the government department reviewing the applications to decide if the qualifications are met.

Hindy said many of the attendees at Tuesday’s meeting worried that attestations would start to become the norm in Canada, and “values tests” would be applied to more federal programs.

“For example, we’ve seen in Quebec with the niqab issue where the government there said, ‘We don’t like the niqab, so if you wear the niqab you don’t get access to any public service,’” he said. “We’ve seen these kind of values tests before, and they’re not in the spirit, I believe, of what Canada’s all about.”

Source: Religious groups meet to discuss concerns over abortion clause in summer jobs grant application

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Trump’s revenge on California: The Census – POLITICO

2018/01/18 Leave a comment

The US Census and the fear regarding the possible  impact of the addition of a citizenship question on California and other states:

Fear is rising among Democrats over the prospect that President Donald Trump’s hard line on immigration might ultimately cost California a seat in Congress during the upcoming round of reapportionment.

Top Democrats here are increasingly worried the administration’s restrictive policies — and the potential inclusion of a question about citizenship on the next U.S. census — could scare whole swaths of California’s large immigrant population away from participating in the decennial count, resulting in an undercount that could cost the state billions of dollars in federal funding over the next decade and, perhaps, the loss of one of its 53 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The fears are well-founded: According to the population formula used by Congress to distribute House seats every 10 years, California is currently on the bubble in 2020, on the verge of losing a seat for the first time in its history.

California’s Democratic governor, Jerry Brown, on Wednesday proposed spending more than $40 million on the state’s own census-related outreach efforts to avoid that fate.

“There’s a lot of fear” about the census count, said Paul Mitchell of Political Data Inc., the voter data firm used by both Republicans and Democrats in California. “The state is starting to get together resources, because it does have an actual direct impact … on state revenues if we have a severe undercount.”

California Secretary of State Alex Padilla told POLITICO the Trump administration’s management of the census could have “devastating effects” on his state.

“The citizenship question is just the latest red flag — maybe one of the biggest — but just the latest red flag,” Padilla said.

Angst about the 2020 census took hold nationally long before the Justice Department urged the U.S. Census Bureau last month to ask people about their citizenship, a request first reported by ProPublica. The bureau has been hampered by management questions and funding shortages that voting-rights advocates fear could hinder efforts to reach immigrants and other hard-to-count groups.

Those populations are especially prevalent in California. And even before Trump’s latest broadside at immigrant communities — asking why the United States should admit people from “shithole countries” — Democrats and voting-rights advocates warned that Trump’s rhetoric on immigration could chill participation.

“It’s already a toxic environment coming forward from D.C.,” said Daniel Zingale, of the nonpartisan advocacy group The California Endowment. “When you add up all of these things — the abandonment of competent leadership, the proposed citizenship question, the hostile environment toward a state like ours and our diverse population, it is perceived here as a less than act of good faith coming from Washington, D.C.”

Zingale added, “I think Californians have never felt less represented in the national capital than we’re feeling right now.”

According to a study last month by Virginia-based Election Data Services, California could come “very close” to losing a congressional seat following the 2020 census regardless of immigrant participation in the count, a result of the state’s flattening population growth.

Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina, Oregon and Texas could all gain seats, according to the study, while eight or nine states, including New York, Illinois and West Virginia, could each lose one.

Yet uncertainty about demographic changes and the Trump administration’s handling of the census continues to cloud those projections. Kimball Brace, president of Election Data Services, cautioned in a prepared statement that “the change in administration and the lack of a Census Director could have a profound impact on how well the 2020 Census is conducted, and therefore the counts that are available for apportionment.”

The prospect of losing a congressional seat is a familiar predicament in Rust Belt states. But it’s unheard of in California, which has added 42 House seats since 1920 due to nearly nonstop population growth. In such a solidly blue state, the loss of a seat would have a disproportionate impact on the Democratic Party.

“If millions of non-citizens refuse to participate in the US Census, the Democrats will take [a] massive political beating,” Tony Quinn, a political analyst and former Republican legislative aide, wrote in the Fox & Hounds political blog last week. “That’s because electoral districts must be drawn based on population. The non-citizen population resides in heavily Democratic areas; if they are not counted, those areas will not have sufficient population to support Democratic congressional and legislative districts, especially in the big cities.”

Garry South, a longtime Democratic strategist, accused the White House of “trying to turn [the census] into essentially a gerrymandering process.”

The Trump administration has not yet moved to add a citizenship question to the census. And many Republicans, who have long called for its inclusion, downplayed concerns about a significant undercount in California or any other state.

Harmeet Dhillon, a San Francisco attorney and member of the Republican National Committee, said that “by the time we have to get closer to actually performing [the census] … this is the type of thing where there’s a legion of bureaucrats who are tasked with doing this” and “it gets done somehow.”

In a state where Democrats control every statewide office and overwhelming majorities in the Legislature, Dhillon said Democrats can only blame themselves if California loses a House seat. More people would come to California or stay here, she said, if taxes and other regulatory burdens were not so high.

Taking aim at one liberal firebrand, Dhillon said, “My only request is if we end up losing a seat, if it could be taken from Maxine Waters’ congressional district.”

The results of the 2020 census on California’s congressional representation (which could also mean the loss of a vote in the Electoral College) will not be felt until after the next presidential election — an eternity in politics. But California politicians are acutely aware of the significance of the count, having been stung by the census before.

Following the 1990 census, the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office estimated that a higher undercount in California than in other states — with difficulty counting non-white people, young people and renters, among others — “likely cost California one seat in the U.S. House of Representatives and at least $2 billion in federal funds during the 1990s.”

Ten years later, the state undertook a more aggressive outreach effort of its own. In an effort similar to what California Democrats are contemplating today, the state employed local organizations to promote the census in their communities and financed a multilingual, multimedia advertising campaign.

via Trump’s revenge on California: The Census – POLITICO

 

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Toronto Sun editorial: Learning from the hijab hoax

2018/01/18 Leave a comment

Unfortunately in the era of social media, immediate responses are required. However, the suggested disclaimer – “If what has been alleged is true” – is sound advice:

Since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne and Toronto Mayor John Tory didn’t say it, we will.

The problem with Toronto’s now infamous hijab hoax is that it will make Muslims and others who are actual victims of hate crimes more afraid to come forward for fear of not being believed.

And it will make the public more cynical about the reporting of hate crimes.

We aren’t going to fault the prime minister, the premier or the mayor for assuming the initial report of an 11-year-old child describing how she had been attacked by an “Asian man” who twice tried to cut her hijab with scissors was true.

Many people believed it was true. We reported it on our front page.

But once Toronto police said, following their investigation, that no attack had occurred, it was incumbent on Trudeau, Wynne and Tory to stress the dangers of anyone falsely claiming to be the victim of a hate crime, or for that matter any crime.

Instead, they ran for cover, saying only that they were glad that no attack had occurred but that it was important to continue to be vigilant about fighting hatred and racism.

Of course it’s important to fight hatred and racism, but that’s not the lesson to be learned from what happened in this case.

The lesson in this case is that when a school board and municipal, provincial and federal politicians leap to conclusions before all the facts are known, the revelations of those facts can lead to the very thing they hoped to avoid — public cynicism about the reporting of hate crimes.

When the media wrongly identify a member of a minority group as the perpetrator of a crime, politicians are the first to condemn them.

Why then their silence when they wrongly identify a member of minority group as the victim of a crime?

The next time a crime of this nature is alleged, we suggest our political leaders say words to the effect of: “If what has been alleged is true, it’s completely unacceptable in our city (or province, or country) and we are confident the police will treat this matter seriously and investigate it thoroughly.”

Which, by the way, is exactly what happened.

Source: EDITORIAL: Learning from the hijab hoax

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with

‘No longer a citizen’: Government letter tells mom of 4 she’s not Canadian | CBC News

2018/01/18 2 Comments

IRCC has to do better in these cases, both substantively as well in their communications with those who fell between the cracks. The Mennonite Central Committee, referred to in the article, has been productive and helpful in resolving comparable cases:

Anneliese Demos thought she was a Canadian until she got a letter in the mail last Friday.

The 39-year-old Winnipeg woman has four kids, has been married for 19 years, works two full-time jobs and pays taxes every year.

“My life is here.”

She came to Canada when she was just two years old and still has the government-issued citizenship card she received when her parents moved to Steinbach, Man. from Paraguay in 1980.

“This is my home. It’s Canada. I’ve lived here all my life,” she said.
But the government has informed Anneliese she’s in fact not a Canadian citizen and has cancelled the certificate that had proved she was.

“I have determined that you are not entitled to hold a Canadian citizenship certificate,” reads a letter from Citizenship and Immigration Canada dated Dec. 22, 2017.

The letter from the registrar of citizenship then asks for Demos to return her citizenship certificate to the citizenship and passport division in Ottawa.

“It kind of makes you worry, like what are they going to do to me?” Demos said.

2009 law repeal wasn’t retroactive

Anneliese is a so-called “Lost Canadian” due to a law that required second-generation Canadians who were born outside Canada to re-apply for citizenship before turning 28.
The Harper government repealed the law in 2009 but didn’t make it retroactive, meaning it was too late for anyone who missed the deadline before their 28th birthday. It is an issue that has affected many Mennonites such as Anneliese.

Many people, including Anneliese, weren’t even aware of the law.

Advocate says hardship ‘so unnecessary’

Bill Janzen, ​retired ​director of the Ottawa office of the Mennonite Central Committee, said ​he’s worked on more than 200 Lost Canadian cases since retiring in 2008.

​That’s usually meant doing extensive research into a person’s past, searching for records that prove where they went to school and lived and then taking the case with a plea to Canada’s immigration minister asking citizenship be granted due to unusual or special hardship.

To do that, it’s meant looking for documentation that doesn’t always exist anymore, especially for Mennonites who went to school in one-room country schools. “It just seemed so unnecessary that one had to deal with this on an individual basis in such detail when there could have been and should have been a global solution,” Janzen said.

Anneliese’s problems began in 2012 when she tried to get a passport to travel as a celebration of beating breast cancer. Anneliese said a clerk advised her she might have an issue because of her birth year and home country.

Officials denied her passport application and sent her a proof of citizenship form to fill out. She completed it and received a certificate and letter in the mail telling her she was a Canadian citizen, and allowing her to get a passport. She thought the issue was resolved until last Friday.

“Just when you thought it was fixed then you’re like, ‘oh now you’re like no longer a citizen.'”

Anneliese said two out of her six siblings have also had the same problem. Her sister was able to get it fixed after three years but her brother is still in limbo and she said a cousin was deported for two months because of similar circumstances. “It’s stupid,” she said.

Anneliese worries she may now be deported back to Paraguay even though she hasn’t been there since she was two. “We don’t know that family from a hole in the wall.”

‘I don’t even dare try to leave the country’

Her passport is set to expire in April but she fears she wouldn’t even be able to get back in Canada if she tried to use it.

“I don’t even dare try to leave the country.”

Her husband is worried, too.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do [if Anneliese is deported], like who would drive the kids to school?” said John Demos.

Anneliese is planning on holding on to the proof of citizenship document issued in 2012 the government now wants back. “I’m tempted to keep it.”

​Janzen said he had hope the Liberal government would fix the problem but nothing changed.

“I thought we could go somewhere but we didn’t.”​

Ahmed Hussen, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, holds a news conference to update Canadians on the possible impacts of recent immigration-related decisions made by President Donald Trump, in Ottawa on Sunday, January 29, 2017. (Fred Chartrand/Canadian Press)

Janzen has spent years working on this issue and said government staffers were aware of the problem — and hoped to fix it years ago — but they were too late.

​”The officials then told me that ‘we know it would be a mess and we hope to abolish this provision before anyone turns 28 under it.'”

Government aware of problem

The Liberal government is aware of people who have lost or never been able to get citizenship due to the issue and is considering making legal changes, said Jaswal Hursh, a spokesperson for Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen.

Hursh said “a small number of affected individuals remain” and the government encourages people with similar stories to come forward as they are being dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

The government didn’t respond to questions about how Anneliese was able to obtain a Canadian passport if she wasn’t considered a Canadian citizen.

via ‘No longer a citizen’: Government letter tells mom of 4 she’s not Canadian | CBC News

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Lifting barriers to citizenship for low-income immigrants

2018/01/17 Leave a comment

This is a good long article outlining the efforts made to increase citizenship take-up of low-income immigrants in New York (the US Citizenship and Immigration Service also has a fee waiver program, Canada does not despite high fees CAD 630 for adults):

Taking the Oath of Allegiance at a naturalization ceremony is an emotional moment for many immigrants, and for good reason: it is the culmination of an often arduous process and many years of striving. Citizenship also opens a new chapter marked by possibility, from better job prospects to full participation in civic life.

Yet for many immigrants who aspire to become U.S. citizens, that moment never arrives. Since the 1970s, naturalization rates in the United States have lagged behind those of other major host countries. It’s a striking disparity given that the vast majority of immigrants in the United States express interest in . And since gaining citizenship often boosts immigrants’ social mobility and integration, the fact that so many are left behind points to a troubling loss of solidarity for their host communities.

What holds them back? Why are some immigrants more likely than others to complete the naturalization process?

New research from Stanford University’s Immigration Policy Lab, in collaboration with researchers at George Mason University and the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy at the University at Albany, provides the first concrete evidence of a major barrier to citizenship for low-income immigrants. The findings help explain why citizenship-promotion efforts face significant challenges, and they provide a blueprint for solutions to ensure that all immigrants have equal access to citizenship and its benefits.

A Life-Changing Program

In seeking to understand disparities in naturalization patterns, previous studies have focused on the immigrants themselves—individual characteristics like language skills, resources, or country of origin. Here, the researchers considered an external factor out of immigrants’ control: the high costs of the citizenship application process.

For many low-income immigrants, the price tag is daunting: $725 just to file the application, plus hundreds or even thousands more if you need English classes or consultations with immigration lawyers. Charitable organizations have stepped up to provide free language training, legal advice, and help navigating the paperwork. But the application fee has only become more burdensome, rising by 800 percent in real terms since 1985, when it was $35 (or $80.25 in today’s dollars). The federal government offers a fee waiver for the poorest immigrants—those with incomes below 150% of the poverty line—but for many others who aren’t destitute but struggle to make ends meet, that fee alone can put citizenship out of reach.

To address this potentially pivotal financial obstacle, IPL teamed up with the New York State Office for New Americans (ONA) and two funders dedicated to improving the lives of vulnerable New Yorkers, Robin Hood, and New York Community Trust. Together they developed an innovative, public-private program called NaturalizeNY, which offers low-income immigrants an opportunity to win a voucher covering the naturalization application fee.

Veyom Bahl, a managing director at Robin Hood, said, “Robin Hood is proud to partner with the world-class researchers at the Stanford Immigration Policy Lab. Like us, they are committed to helping families build a strong footing for a new life in the United States. This research will help foundations, community-based organizations, and policymakers alike re-think how we invest in our communities for maximum impact.”

NaturalizeNY also connects registrants with application assistance from ONA’s network of nonprofit service providers. New York’s leading immigrant service organizations, including CUNY Citizenship Now!, Hispanic Federation, and Catholic Charities, were also integral in promoting and implementing the program.

“This was a truly first-of-a-kind program, where a state agency, philanthropies, academics, and nonprofits created a way to provide direct financial support to help low-income immigrants apply for citizenship. The Immigration Policy Lab was excited to partner in its design and evaluation so everyone involved could understand its impact on immigrants and the New York community,” said Michael Hotard, an IPL program manager.

New York is home to the nation’s second-largest immigrant population, and its metro area has about 160,000 low-income immigrants eligible for citizenship. With a registration website in seven languages, NaturalizeNY focused on relatively poor New Yorkers who, by virtue of income or lack of eligibility for government benefits like food stamps or cash assistance, did not qualify for the existing federal fee waiver program.

NaturalizeNY used a lottery to award the 336 available vouchers, leaving 527 registrants without one. By following the two groups to see how many completed the citizenship application, researchers could measure the power of financial assistance, and in turn determine how much the costs may discourage others from naturalizing.

The results were unequivocal: the vouchers roughly doubled the application rate, from 37 percent among those without a voucher to 78 percent among recipients. The vouchers proved particularly effective for those who registered in Spanish; their application rate rose by 51 percent compared to a 36 percent rise among English speakers.

“Because NaturalizeNY uses a lottery system to equitably distribute vouchers to eligible registrants, for the first time we have clear causal evidence as to the effect of application fee vouchers on citizenship decisions. The magnitude of the effect suggests that it’s a critical lever to improve low-income immigrants’ access to citizenship”, said Jens Hainmueller, a professor of political science at Stanford and IPL co-director.

The Deeper Challenges of Poverty

For the poorest immigrants, however, even eliminating the application cost isn’t necessarily enough to pave the way toward citizenship. They may not know that they’re eligible for a fee waiver, or they may find the process too difficult if they’re working several jobs, caring for children or elderly relatives, or unable to get assistance with the application.

Do these kinds of disadvantages keep these immigrants from becoming citizens? To find out, researchers identified 1,760 immigrants who registered for NaturalizeNY but weren’t entered into the lottery because they likely qualified for the federal fee waiver. While the voucher group’s average annual household income was $19,000 per person, this group’s average was just $7,500. Everyone in this group received a message during registration informing them that, based on their responses, they likely could apply for citizenship without cost and that assistance was available. 1,124 then received various “nudges” encouraging them to apply and to visit a local service provider for help navigating the process.

These nudges mimicked the real-world interventions many groups rely on to reach immigrants in need: emails, phone calls, text messages, an official letter by regular mail, and a $10 MetroCard intended to allay the cost of commuting to a service provider. Yet none of these encouragements made a significant difference in application rates beyond the 44 percent for those who received no additional encouragements.

In follow-up surveys, many participants said they had been too busy to apply. But when researchers returned to the data, they found that busyness couldn’t be the whole answer: the nudges were just as ineffective for single people as for members of large households, and for those of working age and retirement age.

“That so many ended up not applying indicates that challenges to naturalization run deeper than financial constraints,” said Duncan Lawrence, IPL executive director. “It’s clear that we have more to learn about what sorts of cost-effective nudges may or may not work. Raising awareness of the fee waiver itself may be an important piece of the puzzle, and we are actively working to understand how learning about the fee waiver affects application rates.”

Citizenship and Social Mobility

For policymakers looking to address social inequality and give low-income immigrants a potential pathway to the middle class, the voucher results speak volumes. The current naturalization system imposes prohibitive costs on exactly those immigrants who might stand to benefit the most from the opportunities citizenship brings.

NaturalizeNY could inspire other cities and states to create similar public-private partnerships. ONA director Laura Gonzalez-Murphy emphasized the project’s actionable insights, saying, “The New York State Office for New Americans Opportunity Centers are leaders on the ground, establishing strong relationships and trust with immigrants and refugees from across the world. We are always eager to eliminate barriers for these individuals and help them on their path to citizenship. Thanks to our partners, including Stanford, George Mason, and SUNY Albany, we now have a unique project to paint a real picture of the current immigration system and see where opportunities for positive change may arise.”

At the federal level, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) recently lowered the fee for applicants between 150 and 200 percent of the poverty level. As this research illustrates, however, the financial barrier remains decisive for low-income immigrants above that range. Expanding this tiered system, with wealthier applicants paying more, would allow USCIS to cover its administrative costs while keeping citizenship affordable for all.

These are relatively simple projects to fund and administer, and they have a potentially big long-term payoff: if becoming an American citizen makes immigrants more likely to pursue higher education, start a business, or enter a profession, then boosting naturalization rates would make for better integrated, more prosperous communities.

Source: Lifting barriers to citizenship for low-income immigrants

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Memo to Donald Trump: Canadian immigrants from ‘shithole’ countries are thriving: Arvind Magesan

2018/01/17 Leave a comment

Good analysis by Magesan (my ongoing analysis of census data has similar results):

Defenders of Donald Trump say his “shithole countries” remark regarding people from Africa, Haiti and other nations was just Trump being Trump — the president may have used salty language, but it’s really just his way of saying the United States should have a merit-based immigration system like Canada’s.

A generous interpretation of Trump’s comments are that immigrants from certain so-called “shithole” countries—African nations, Haiti and El Salvador—are not typically highly skilled or economically self-reliant, and if admitted would need to depend on the state.

In fact, Trump apologists—and the president himself—might be surprised by what the economic data says about immigrants who come to Canada from the “shithole” countries.

John Fredericks, who was Trump’s campaign chair in Virginia, told CNN that immigrants from those countries “come into the United States and they do nothing to increase the prosperity of the American worker. They lower wages or go on welfare and extend our entitlement system …. Australia and Canada have a merit-based system. You know why they do that? Because they want to bring people into their country who are going to enhance the prosperity of their citizens.”

Trump himself tweeted a similar sentiment.

The conclusion we are expected to make, it seems, is that if the United States was to adopt a purely merit-based system, immigrants would not come from these countries—they would come from countries like Norway, and immigrants from these Norway-like countries would not put pressure on blue-collar U.S. workers because they would be highly skilled and, more importantly, they wouldn’t be a drain on the system because they would be economically self-reliant.

A merit-based system

Canada offers an opportunity to take a look at this hypothesis because our points-based immigration system screens immigrants on merit to a large degree. So when we screen immigrants on merit, who do we let in and how do they do?

The first thing to note is that Canada admits many immigrants from the “shithole” countries.

Data from the 2016 census shows over the last five years there have been more than twice as many immigrants from Central America and the Caribbean (which includes Haiti and El Salvador) than there were from the U.S. There were also more immigrants from the African continent than from the U.S. and North and Western Europe combined.

Clearly a merit-based system does not mean we only admit people from the “Norways” of the world—and in fact, the census data shows only 230 people immigrated from Norway over the five-year period.

https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/vLx64/2/

The next question is how do these immigrants fare?

To look more closely at this, I used individual 2011 Canadian census data (detailed 2016 data isn’t yet available) to look at three groups: Canadians whose families have been here for three generations or longer; immigrants from the “Norways” of the world (Northern and Western Europe, including the U.K., Germany, and Scandinavia) and immigrants from Trump’s “shithole” countries (Central America, the Caribbean, Africa).

I looked at the skill levels of the different groups, as measured by their education level, and then at their economic self-sufficiency: employment, wages and how much they receive in transfers and employment benefits from the government.

https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/7ATin/2/

Let’s start with skill level.

Forty per cent of Canadians who have been here for three generations or longer have at least some post-secondary education, and 18 per cent have a bachelor’s degree. By comparison, a much larger percentage of immigrants of either type (53 per cent) have some post-secondary, and 27 per cent of immigrants from “Shitholes” have a bachelor’s degree. So by this standard measure of skill, immigrants from “Shitholes” have a slightly higher skill level than do immigrants from “Norways,” and a much higher skill level on average than Canadians who have been here for generations.

What about self-sufficiency?

It is commonly argued that immigrants, particularly from poorer countries, are “expensive” because they receive a disproportionate amount of government transfers and unemployment benefits. The truth is, though Canadians who have been here for generations are more likely to be employed and earn (slightly) more on average than either immigrant group, immigrants from the “Shitholes” are far more likely to be employed than immigrants from the “Norways.”

Fewer transfer payments

Perhaps more interestingly, immigrants from the “Shitholes” receive fewer transfer payments from all levels of government than “Norwegian” immigrants.

Finally, looking at employment insurance benefits alone, Canadians who have been here for generations receive more than either group.

What can we say about these numbers?

Firstly, immigrants from the “Shithole” countries are not typically low skill and in principle, should not be putting pressure on employment or wages of blue-collar workers in Canada. Then why is this such a common perception?

It’s likely due to a different issue, that high-skilled immigrants are unable to get high-skill jobs for other reasons (discrimination in the labour market, an inability of employers to recognize or evaluate credentials, or even language issues) and then do end up competing with lower-skilled Canadian workers.

Secondly, immigrants from the “Shithole” countries are generally no more dependent on the state than other Canadians. Though they earn less than those from the “Norway” countries, they are more likely to be employed and they receive less total government transfer payments.

Many differences

As an economist, it’s important to state that we shouldn’t interpret these relationships between country of origin and economic outcomes as causal—workers from different countries are different for many reasons (demographics like age, as well as occupation, etc).

But that doesn’t at all affect the main point—Trump’s perception of the differences in the average immigrant from countries like Haiti and Norway is at the very least a consequence ignorance, or as many have suggested, racism.

One thing that can’t be rationalized by the raw numbers here: The course of history and the current plight of many of the “shithole” countries is at least partly a consequence of U.S. foreign policies, that the position of relative economic superiority of the U.S. is partly an outcome of these policies, and that this above all might imply a moral obligation on the part of the U.S. when deciding who to let in and from where.

via Memo to Donald Trump: Canadian immigrants from ‘shithole’ countries are thriving – Macleans.ca

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