Conservatives prefer an authoritarian God, liberals like younger, more feminine face, study says

2018/06/18 Leave a comment

Interesting and not surprising how preferences reflect values and ideologies:

Gone are the days when God was an old man up in the clouds, peering down with stern, aged eyes.

According to a new study, modern American Christians now picture God as a younger, cuter and more approachable guy who could just as easily be drinking a beer at the bar.

However, the tendency to group the apparent divine makeover with celebrities such Elon Musk and Ryan Gosling has left researcher Joshua Jackson shaking his head. Jackson stressed that the goal of the study was not to compile an absolute result but rather compare individual features that 511 American Christian participants chose out of more than 300 face samples, all constructed off an demographic average of the American face.

“The strength of the study is that the features people constantly collected aligned with their view of God and those are the features that you should compare,” he said.

On comparing the faces chosen by study participants, Jackson and his colleagues at University of North Carolina, were surprised to see a face ‘much more kinder and loving’ than the authoritarian old man painted on the Sistine Chapel, giving life to Adam.

Michaelangelo’s iconic painting of God giving life to Adam, on the 16th century Sistine Chapel.

Furthermore, comparing the study results with earlier studies that compared verbal descriptions of God, has Jackson and his colleagues revisiting the stereotypical notion of the old, bearded man altogether. “People were generating these benevolent, warm adjectives much earlier than the kind of authoritarian figure we see,” he said.

That’s not to say that the authoritarian description was thrown out of the mix altogether. Conservative participants still visualize a face that was relatively ‘masculine, older, more powerful and wealthier’, reflecting what the study called, their ‘motivation for a God who enforces order.’

Liberals, on the other hand, sought a God is socially tolerant and were therefore more lenient in their choices, picking faces that were younger, more feminine and more African-American than that of their political counterparts.

It all comes down to individual motivation, according to Jackson. “Some theory in research has argued that people’s views of the divine figures are related to their motivations,” he said. “And so people are more inclined to conceptualize a God that’s more suited to their needs.”

So, African-Americans chose someone who was marginally more black while Caucasians chose someone who was more white. People who perceived themselves as more attractive chose a better-looking God, fitting in with the researcher’s hypothesis that people would choose faces that matched their own.

Gender did not play a significant role in the choice of the divine. “It could be that people don’t naturally use their gender a reference point when they think of divine figures, compared to other physical features,” said Jackson.

Jackson said researchers were ‘surprised’ to not see a face that was more authoritarian.

“It could suggest, but not prove, that our view of God has been changing throughout history as this is naturally something people have definitely chosen,” he added.

Would researchers be able to expect similar results on surveying American Muslims, or a Chinese community? It’s hard to say. While it is possible to predict a face based on overall cultural motivations, Jackson does note that there will be ‘cultural differences that they won’t be able to account for, which can amplify across a geographical region’ and impact the results of their study.

Using the study composite comes with its own set of constraints as Jackson acknowledges that there are some features that have not been included in the base face. “We were never going to faces (in the study result) with a dramatic change, like the face of a brunette, or someone who has a beard.”

It is the first time that a study of this kind has used this method of ‘reverse correlation’, i.e., asking participants to choose randomly generated facial samples with subtle changes. While the method has been used for other purposes, i.e., to determine how participants visualize trustworthiness, previous studies on visualizing the divine have relied on using verbal adjectives.

Source: Conservatives prefer an authoritarian God, liberals like younger, more feminine face, study says

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Le Danemark déclare la guerre aux ghettos ethniques

2018/06/18 Leave a comment

Interesting reporting:

En ce matin de printemps, tout semble paisible à Mjolnerparken. Des pères accompagnent leur enfant à la garderie, des vieux discutent sur un banc et les coquelicots décorent l’ancienne voie ferrée devenue depuis longtemps un parc linéaire où s’ébrouent les enfants.

Comment imaginer qu’il y a un an, jour pour jour, un jeune homme de 22 ans a été abattu ici en pleine rue ?

« L’été dernier, pendant six mois, les fusillades se sont succédé. Les tireurs arrivaient en vespa et tiraient sur tout ce qui bougeait », dit Soren Wiborg, de la société Bo-Vita, qui loue ces appartements à loyer modique dans le quartier de Norrebro, à Copenhague.

Soren connaissait bien le jeune musulman tombé sous les balles des tueurs. « Il sortait de prison et essayait de s’en sortir. Il voulait se faire une nouvelle vie. Je l’aidais à chercher du travail, mais la guerre des gangs aura eu sa peau », dit cet ancien policier.

En six mois, la guerre entre les LTF venus des quartiers alentour et les Brothas de Mjolnerparken a fait trois morts et une vingtaine de blessés. Une trentaine de jeunes de cet ensemble qui compte 2000 habitants sont aujourd’hui en prison.

Dans son petit bureau, qui jouxte le Café Nora qui tente d’aider les femmes somaliennes à sortir de chez elles, Soren Wiborg a pour rôle d’aider les 300 chômeurs de ce groupe d’habitations à se trouver du travail.

« Et quand des parents me disent que leur jeune ne veut pas aller à l’école, je vais lui donner un petit coup de pied dans le derrière. Ça peut faire du bien parfois », dit-il en éclatant de rire.

C’est aussi Soren qui supervise les 15 jeunes du quartier engagés quatre heures par semaine pour nettoyer les parties communes. « Au Danemark, on n’a rien pour rien, dit-il. On a des services exceptionnels, mais il faut travailler pour ! »

La guerre aux ghettos

Avec sa population à 92 % étrangère (surtout somalienne, pakistanaise et arabe), Mjolnerparken est ce qui ressemble le plus à ce que le gouvernement a officiellement désigné comme des « ghettos ». En mars dernier, sans prévenir, huit ministres, dont le premier ministre libéral Lars Lokke Rasmussen, ont débarqué avec force police et mesures de sécurité dans la petite salle commune du quartier. Ils avaient choisi Mjolnerparken pour annoncer un vaste programme destiné à démanteler les 16 zones urbaines du Danemark que le gouvernement considère comme des « ghettos ».

« On doit pouvoir reconnaître notre pays. Il y a des endroits au Danemark où je ne reconnais pas ce que je vois », a déclaré le premier ministre. Au menu de ce vaste projet encore discuté au Parlement : la garderie obligatoire pour les enfants à partir d’un an, des cours obligatoires sur la culture et les valeurs danoises, un grand programme de rénovation urbaine, des aides majorées pour la recherche d’emploi et pour les étudiants étrangers ainsi qu’une peine qui pourrait aller jusqu’à quatre ans de prison pour les parents d’origine étrangère qui forceraient leur enfant à rentrer au pays, pour se marier par exemple.

Les demandeurs d’asile savent que le Danemark compte parmi les pays les plus généreux sur le plan social. Mais nous avons nous aussi des problèmes d’intégration. Il y a au Danemark des Somaliens qui vivent chez nous depuis 19 ans et qui ne parlent pas danois.

— Marcus Knuth

Intitulé Un Danemark sans sociétés parallèles, ce programme veut en finir avec les ghettos ethniques d’ici 2030. Afin de faciliter l’intégration, il veut notamment limiter à 30 % la proportion d’enfants étrangers dans les écoles. Parmi les mesures plus contestées, la ministre de l’Intégration, Inger Stojbert, surnommée « la Dame de fer danoise », a aussi proposé de pénaliser les bénéficiaires d’allocations sociales qui s’installent dans ces logements ainsi que des peines majorées pour les crimes commis dans ces zones sensibles. Il faut dire que la ministre n’en est pas à ses premiers coups d’éclat médiatiques. En 2016, c’est elle qui avait proposé de confisquer les biens des demandeurs d’asile qui dépassaient 2000 $ (excluant évidemment les bijoux et objets personnels). Plus récemment, à l’occasion du ramadan, elle s’est inquiétée de la sécurité dans les transports publics où certains employés pouvaient passer 16 heures sans boire ni manger.

« Tough love » à la danoise

Le porte-parole du gouvernement en matière d’immigration, Marcus Knuth, le reconnaît, la politique du Danemark en matière d’immigration ressemble un peu à ce que les psychologues des années 1980 appelaient « tough love ». L’amour vache, diraient les Français. Il faut dire qu’au Parlement de Christianborg, les libéraux gouvernent avec le soutien implicite du Parti du peuple danois, dont la plateforme est férocement opposée à l’immigration.

« Les demandeurs d’asile savent que le Danemark compte parmi les pays les plus généreux sur le plan social, dit Marcus Knuth. Mais nous avons nous aussi des problèmes d’intégration. Il y a au Danemark des Somaliens qui vivent chez nous depuis 19 ans et qui ne parlent pas danois. Nombre de problèmes de criminalité, dans les écoles et au travail sont liés à l’immigration. Nous ne voulons pas des immenses ghettos que l’on voit aujourd’hui en Suède. » Les 70 mesures votées par le Parlement depuis trois ans semblent porter leurs fruits. En deux ans, le nombre de demandeurs d’asile a chuté de 21 000 à 3500.

« Le gouvernement confond égalité et identité », estime Mohamed Aslam, qui habite Mjolnerparken depuis 1987 même s’il possède aujourd’hui une compagnie de taxis et emploie six chauffeurs. « J’aime vivre ici. Je ne partirais pour rien au monde », dit cet homme qui semble surgir d’une rue d’Islamabad. Arrivé du Pakistan avec ses parents, Aslam préside aujourd’hui l’association des locataires. Selon lui, il n’y a pas plus de criminalité à Mjolnerparken qu’ailleurs. « Il n’y a pas de ghettos au Danemark. Tout ça, ce sont des inventions pour stigmatiser les étrangers. Des mesures électoralistes », dit-il.

Un programme généreux

Il règne pourtant au Danemark un surprenant consensus sur l’immigration. Malgré des débats en Chambre, le programme est soutenu pour l’essentiel par les trois principaux partis de la Chambre : libéraux, sociaux-démocrates et le Parti du peuple. Selon Marcus Knuth, il est peut-être difficile d’immigrer au Danemark, mais le pays compte parmi les plus généreux lorsque vient le moment de faciliter l’intégration.

« Être réfugié au Danemark, c’est un emploi à temps plein », confirme Karen-Lise Karman, responsable des services municipaux d’intégration de Copenhague. Une fois admis, chaque réfugié reçoit une allocation de plus de 1000 $ par mois, la même que reçoivent les étudiants. Le nouvel arrivant s’engage ainsi à suivre des cours de danois obligatoires et à participer à une série de stages en entreprise de 12 semaines, chacun interrompu par six semaines de cours. Ce processus peut durer cinq ans, jusqu’à ce que le candidat trouve un emploi.

« Certes, il y a de la démagogie et de la stigmatisation dans les politiques de ce gouvernement, admet le politologue Jorgen Goul Andersen. Mais aussi beaucoup de générosité. » Selon lui, le Danemark annonce souvent ce qui s’en vient en Europe. « Nous avons été les premiers, par exemple, à créer un ministère de l’Intégration. Il y a 30 ans, lorsqu’on disait qu’il y avait des problèmes d’intégration, on nous traitait de racistes. Nos élites ont trop longtemps fermé les yeux. Le reconnaître ne nous a pas empêchés de demeurer une société très tolérante. » À ceux qui traitent le Danemark de raciste, le politologue rappelle que, pendant la dernière guerre, le pays a été un des seuls occupés par l’Allemagne à protéger sa population juive des déportations. Le Danemark demeure aussi un des cinq pays du monde à consacrer plus que 0,7 % de son PNB à l’aide internationale, alors que le Canada est en dessous de 0,3 %.

À Mjolnerparken, les changements sont déjà en cours. Une tour de 29 étages est sur le point d’être terminée. On y logera bientôt des étudiants et des familles de la classe moyenne. Dans deux ans, on ne reconnaîtra plus ce quartier, dit Hajji, un Ougandais de 53 ans. « C’est une bonne chose, dit-il. Ici, il y a trop de criminalité. Il faut plus de mixité. » Même s’il a quatre enfants au Danemark, il dit ne pas se sentir danois. « Le Danemark, c’est surtout pour les papiers, dit-il. Moi, je viens de l’Ouganda. D’ailleurs, j’y retournerai un jour… »

Source: Le Danemark déclare la guerre aux ghettos ethniques

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Harvard Accused Of ‘Racial Balancing’: Lawsuit Says Asian- Americans Treated Unfairly

2018/06/18 Leave a comment

Ongoing issue and debate in the US, which provokes the usual spill over in Canada:

In an intense legal battle over the role of race in Harvard University’s admissions policies, a group that is suing the school says Harvard lowers the rankings of Asian-American applicants in a way that is unconstitutional.

Harvard says that its admissions process is legal — and it notes that the plaintiff group, the Students for Fair Admissions, is backed by the same activist who previously challenged the University of Texas’ affirmative action policy.

The SFFA says Harvard uses “racial balancing” as part of its formula for admitting students and that the practice is illegal. In response, Harvard says the group is misinterpreting data that the highly competitive school shared about how it chooses students.

Citing a 2013 analysis by Harvard’s Office of Institutional Research, the SFFA said in a federal court filing on Friday that if academics were the only criterion, Asian-American students would have made up more than 43 percent of students who were admitted, rather than the actual 18.7 percent.

Even if other criteria — such as legacy students, athletic recruiting and extracurricular and personal attributes — are included, the plaintiffs say, the number of Asian-Americans at Harvard would still have risen to more than 26 percent.

Saying that the admission rate for whites outpaced that of Asian-Americans over a 10-year period — despite outperforming them in only the “personal” ratings — the plaintiffs allege that “being Asian American actually decreases the chances of admissions.”

In a statement, Harvard said on Friday that a full analysis of the data shows the school “does not discriminate against applicants from any group, including Asian-Americans, whose rate of admission has grown 29 percent over the last decade.”

Harvard says the OIR analysis was preliminary and that it will defend its approach to achieving a diverse school body and campus community.

Harvard told the court in Boston that the plaintiffs’ analysis paints “a dangerously inaccurate picture of Harvard College’s whole-person admissions process by omitting critical data and information factors, such as personal essays and teacher recommendations.”

The competing accusations are the latest salvos in more than 400 legal filings over the case, which pits Harvard against plaintiffs backed by Edward Blum, a former investment broker who has for decades challenged how institutions and governments incorporate race into their decision-making processes.

“We allege that Harvard has a hard, fast quota limiting the number of Asians it will admit,” Blum told NPR in 2014, when he first sued the school. “In addition to that, Harvard has a racial balancing policy that balances the percentages of African-Americans, Hispanics, whites and Asians.”

On Friday, the two sides put out a flurry of motions, memoranda and declarations, seeking summary judgments and showing how they intend to argue the case — which goes to trial in mid-October.

Citing “the undisputed evidence,” the SFFA said that Harvard intentionally discriminates against Asian-Americans and “engages in racial balancing.”

It also said, “Harvard neither gave serious, good faith consideration to nor took advantage of workable race-neutral alternatives.”

The university’s filings stated, “Harvard’s admissions process reviews each applicant as a whole person, using race flexibly and as only one factor among many.”

The school also said Blum’s group lacks the standing to pursue its case, saying, “SFFA is not a true membership organization that can sue on behalf of its members; it is a litigation vehicle designed to further the ideological objectives” of its founder.

To find plaintiffs for his case against Harvard (and a separate suit against the University of North Carolina), Blum’s organization put up the HarvardNotFair website, which asked, “Were You Denied Admission to Harvard? It may be because you’re the wrong race.”

Spurred by the SFFA case, Harvard has also drawn the scrutiny of the U.S. Justice Department, which opened a probe into the role of race in its admissions policies last November. The federal agency said it wanted to ensure the school was complying with the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In doing so, the Trump administration showed it was willing to explore a potential case over a complaint that the Obama administration had dismissed.

At least two of Blum’s earlier suits have reached the Supreme Court, including the Texas admissions case (which was referred back to lower courts) and a challenge to part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (which successfully argued that the law’s coverage formula was outdated).

Source: Harvard Accused Of ‘Racial Balancing’: Lawsuit Says Asian- Americans Treated Unfairly

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Bishops to supplement rather than revise Faithful Citizenship voter guide

2018/06/18 Leave a comment

Good debate and discussion. But if seems a bit ingenuous not to undertake a more fundamental revision given the times:

After nearly 90 minutes of fraternal debate about the future of their voter guide, Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, the U.S. bishops opted to supplement rather than revise or issue a new document, resisting a push from a group of bishops who believed the current version is outdated in light of “a radically different moment” brought by the presidency of Donald Trump.

The bishops voted 144 to 41, with one abstention, to complement the current version of Faithful Citizenship with a short letter and videos aimed at inspiring prayer and action in public life; an amendment added to the proposal also holds the efforts to apply the teaching of Pope Francis to present times.

The U.S. bishops have been issuing Faithful Citizenship documents, reflecting on election issues, every four years since 1976. The current document was crafted in 2007; a new introduction for it was written in 2011 and some revisions made in 2015.

The proposed supplemental elements were put forth by a working group of chairs of a dozen bishop committees, led by Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez, vice president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

In introducing their proposal, Gomez said their goal was to increase the document’s influence and reach more Catholics through it. He said the working group viewed the document as having “lasting value” as a resource for state Catholic conferences, priests and fellow bishops, but that it was “too long and not particularly accessible or practical in helping the ordinary faithful individuals.”

“In the process of learn, pray, act, Faithful Citizenship does a good job of helping our people to learn,” he said. “So the task for us is to motivate the faithful to pray and to act.”

Once the proposal opened to debate, disagreement broke out about whether the document, as it stood, still held relevance absent revisions in light of the teachings of Francis and the country’s political climate.

While his name was never said, the agenda of Trump was acutely in the mind of bishops pushing for a new or heavily modified Faithful Citizenship document.

One by one, they took to the microphone to make their case why simply reissuing Faithful Citizenship would miss the mark.

“I think it would be a missed opportunity and a big mistake not to move forward with an entirely new document,” said Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich, who led off the floor discussion saying he would vote against the proposal.

A new document is necessary, he said, in order to integrate the body of teachings from Francis — highlighting the issues of climate change, poverty and immigration — into the bishops’ own teachings and guidance. Cupich also said a new document would allow an opportunity for bishops to model how public discourse over issues of disagreement should play out during this time of political polarization.

“Even if it means that we have to stand up, and discuss, and yes, disagree with each other, we can do our people and our nation a great favor to model how that should take place,” Cupich said.

Bishop John Stowe of Lexington, Kentucky, argued there is a “different context that we find ourselves in after the last national election.”

“Even though our teachings don’t change, the context changes and the priority of issues change,” he said.

Stowe referenced the U.S. withdrawals from the Paris Agreement on climate change and Iran nuclear deal, and the increased focus on issues of gun control and immigration. The latter two issues he noted are important to young people.

“Even if it means that we have to stand up, and discuss, and yes, disagree with each other, we can do our people and our nation a great favor to model how that should take place.”

— Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich

“I think if the church doesn’t have something to say about those issues, we’re missing a very important opportunity, especially if we want to reach out to youth and incorporate them more fully in the life of the church,” Stowe said.

“There’s not much in the document about Pope Francis,” said Bishop Michael Warful, adding that in his Diocese of Great Falls-Billings, Montana, Faithful Citizenship is viewed as stale.

San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy pressed his fellow bishops that the “radically different moment” the country finds itself in requires from them a comprehensive statement “from the whole of the body, reflecting upon the signs of the times that we’re in.”

“We are living in a moment in which we witness the greatest assault upon the rights of immigrant people of the past 50 years. We live in a nation with racial and geographic and regional divides in which people of color feel victimized by institutional prejudice and violence and many white, working-class men and women feel dispossessed. We live in a time in which children are afraid to go to school because they may be killed. We live in a time in which we have the great challenge of bringing to the millennial generation an understanding that the instrumentalization of human life, at the beginning of life and at the end, is unacceptable and why laws should touch upon that,” he said.

“And yet, we see our institutions, legal and political, being distorted and atrophy. We need to speak to these questions and we need to speak as a collective body of bishops.”

McElroy said that Faithful Citizenship in its current form does not reflect Francis’ recent apostolic exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate (“Rejoice and Be Glad”) and that stated issues such as poverty, migration and the environment are not secondary but among “primary issues of claim upon the conscience of believers in public policy.”

More fundamentally, he said, the document has nothing to say about present moments “that traumatize us as a country.”

“Regarding the recision of DACA, it is silent. Regarding Charlottesville, silent. Parkland, silent. Faithful Citizenship of 2015 cannot be our response to the moment we are living in. It cannot engage with the signs of the times, it can only engage with the signs of the past and we should not move it forward,” McElroy said.

In response to calls for updating the document, Gomez and other members of the working group argued the document would only become longer and take more time to produce. Issuing videos from the current text, they said, could reach a new segment of Catholics who haven’t read Faithful Citizenship.

“We very much want to reflect this great Franciscan shift in emphasis,” said Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Robert Barron. “Our fear is that we have to retain a lot of the things in Faithful Citizenship, which are very well presented, well argued, we’d just be making a much longer document.”

Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, suggested that perhaps a new process was necessary, since the current one delays the conference’s ability to make “prompt and thorough and reflective responses” to what’s happening in the public square.

“Here, we’re a year and a half out from the elections, and we’re saying we don’t have enough time. I think that the process at least has to be questioned. And if this is the best process, we’ll stick with it. But maybe there’s a better way of doing things,” Tobin said.

A number of bishops took to the floor to voice support for packaging the same Faithful Citizenship in new, more accessible forms. Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, noted on his flight to the conference he saw few fellow passengers, if any, reading; rather, most were staring at some type of screen.

Still, other bishops pushed back, saying that reissuing the same message, regardless of medium, would fall short of its stated goals of articulating to Catholics that faith comes prior to political leanings, they’re called to be faithful citizens at all times and not just during elections, and the need for respectful, civil discourse.

“Faithful Citizenship of 2015 cannot be our response to the moment we are living in. It cannot engage with the signs of the times, it can only engage with the signs of the past and we should not move it forward.”

— San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy

Bishop John Michael Botean, head of the Romanian Catholic Eparchy of St. George in Canton, Ohio, said the bishops have developed a reputation of taking too long to address issues facing the country.

“I think we are running the risk of it appearing that we don’t care or aren’t paying attention,” he said.

At one point, amendments were proposed to allow for revisions, to scrap Faithful Citizenship entirely from the vote they were considering and to table the motion until their November meeting.

The latter two failed. The motion to table was defeated in a vote, but the text was edited from stating “rather than revise or replace” to simply “rather than to replace,” apparently leaving an opening for revisions at some point. A clause was also added stating the new elements for Faithful Citizenship would “apply the teachings of Pope Francis to our day.”

Source: Bishops to supplement rather than revise Faithful Citizenship voter guide

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The EU Is Demanding A Critical Change To Malta’s Sale Of Citizenship Scheme

2018/06/16 Leave a comment

Overdue (and likely not enough):

The European Commission demanded Malta revamp its controversial sale-of-citizenship scheme to ensure new Maltese citizens live on the island for at least a year.

“Becoming a Maltese citizen means becoming an EU citizen and gaining the benefits of free movement,” EU Justice Commissioner Vĕra Jourová said during a visit to Malta this afternoon. “The European Commission must ensure that Malta only gives citizenship to people with a real link to the country and who reside in it for at least a year.”

Jourová’s warning will come as a blow to the Maltese government, which often rebuts criticism at the Individual Investor Programme (IIP) by insisting that the European Commission has no problem with it.

While acknowledging that member states have sovereignty over citizenship schemes, Jourová pledged to continue raising concerns about potential threats posed by the IIP.

“We must not enable suspicious people to acquire European citizenship through an easy way and use it to launder money or to pose some sort of security threats to the continent,” she said. “We have a legitimate right to require some basic parameters for citizenship scheme.”

She said the European Commission is currently analysing all EU citizenship schemes, including Malta’s IIP, ahead of a detailed report that will be published by the end of the year.

“If it turns out that this assessment isn’t favourable to the Maltese IIP, then I believe we will be able to work hand in hand with the Maltese authorities to improve the system.”

Jourová’s assessment came after she met key players in the industry today, including the IIP’s chief executive officer Jonathan Cardona.

The IIP requires applicants to pay €650,000 to the government as well as to invest in government bonds and to either buy a property worth at least €350,000 or to rent a property out for at least €16,000 over five years. However, it doesn’t require applicants to actually live on the island – a fact that was probed by the BBC alongside Daphne Caruana Galizia a few months before her assassination.

Source: The EU Is Demanding A Critical Change To Malta’s Sale Of Citizenship Scheme

Filed under Citizenship, citizenship-by-investment Tagged with ,

Prison system failed to ensure security tests aren’t racially biased against Indigenous inmates

2018/06/16 Leave a comment

Significant:

Canada’s prison service is using security tests that may discriminate against Indigenous offenders and keep them behind bars longer and in more restrictive environments, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled.

In a 7-2 decision, the court found that Correctional Service of Canada failed to take steps to ensure that risk assessment tests used for deciding such things as penitentiary placement and parole eligibility are valid and accurate for Indigenous offenders.

The case involves Jeffrey Ewert, a Métis inmate who was convicted of the murder and attempted murder of two young women. His lawyer argued the risk assessment tests were unreliable for Indigenous offenders, and that CSC had been aware of concerns about the tests since 2000 but had failed to confirm their validity.

The decision says that if CSC wants to continue to use the “impugned tools,” it must conduct research into “whether and to what extent they are subject to cross-cultural variance when applied to Indigenous offenders.”

“Any further action the standard requires will depend on the outcome of that research,” reads the majority decision, written by Chief Justice Richard Wagner. “Depending on the extent of any cross-cultural variance that is discovered, the CSC may have to cease using the impugned tools in respect of Indigenous inmates, as it has in fact done with other actuarial tools in the past.”

While the ruling found CSC breached its legal obligation, it did not find that Ewart’s constitutional rights were violated. There was no evidence that the assessment had no rational connection to the government objective of public safety, the decision states.

CSC has not said whether it will stop using the test as a result of the ruling.

“The Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) is reviewing the decision and will determine next steps. It is important to note that culturally appropriate interventions and reintegration support for First Nations, Métis and Inuit offenders is a priority of CSC,” spokeswoman Stephanie Stevenson wrote in an email.

Record percentage of Indigenous inmates

The ruling noted the troubled history of Indigenous people in the criminal justice system, saying numerous government commissions and reports have recognized that the discrimination faced by Indigenous people, “whether as a result of overtly racist attitudes or culturally inappropriate practices, extends to all parts of the criminal justice system, including the prison system.”

Data from correctional investigator Ivan Zinger’s office show that Indigenous offenders are less likely than non-Indigenous inmates to get parole, and spend longer portions of their sentences behind bars.

It also showed that Indigenous offenders’ share of the total inmate population reached a record high of 27.4 per cent as of August 2017.

Justice Malcolm Rowe, writing in dissent, said that in his view, CSC only needed to keep complete and accurate records of the results of the assessment tools. He said Ewert should have asked the courts to review the specific decisions that CSC made about him using the results of the tools.

Ewert’s case was filed against CSC and the wardens of Kent Institution and Mission Institution, both located in British Columbia.

Addressing high number of Indigenous inmates

A spokesperson for Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said the government is taking steps to address the disproportionate number of Indigenous people in prison.

“We take the views of the Supreme Court very seriously and are examining the decision closely,” said Scott Bardsley in an email. “More broadly, the overrepresentation of Indigenous people in correctional institutions is an intolerable situation that we’re working very hard to address.”

The government invested $10 million last fall to help provide safe alternatives to incarceration and promote rehabilitation, part of $120 million set aside in last year’s budget to support the reintegration of Indigenous offenders and advance restorative justice.

The British Columbia Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) and the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs intervened in the Ewert case. They argued that a bad risk assessment rating can mean an Indigenous prisoner is less likely to get parole, access to programs, or early or temporary release, and is more likely to experience solitary confinement and a maximum security setting.

Today, the BCCLA said meaningful changes to address over-representation of Indigenous people in prisons are long overdue.

“We are hopeful that the court’s emphasis on substantive equality in correctional outcomes for Indigenous offenders will assist over time in reducing the numbers of Indigenous people incarcerated,” said lawyer Jay Aubrey in a statement.

Source: Prison system failed to ensure security tests aren’t racially biased against Indigenous inmates

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Douglas Todd: Why the Greens don’t attract ‘ethnic’ voters

2018/06/16 Leave a comment

Interesting. There may be differences between first and subsequent generations:

Why do Green party candidates only win seats in ridings where the vast majority of voters are white?

Federal and B.C. Green candidates have won election in only one concentrated region of Canada, on Vancouver Island and the adjacent Southern Gulf Islands, in ridings that have scant visible minorities compared to most of the country’s cities.

In the Southern Gulf Islands — the heart of the region that has handed victories to the lone federal Green MP, leader Elizabeth May, and to B.C. MLA Adam Olsen — only two per cent of residents belong to a minority ethnic group. That compares to 51 per cent of people in Metro Vancouver, where the Greens struggle.

Political observers believe the Greens’ poor showing among immigrants, ethnic Chinese and South Asian voters, and others, is the result of a common perception the party puts environmental protection before economic prosperity. The Greens have also had fewer resources to woo ethnic voters.

“The first generation of immigrants often leave their homelands for economic reasons,” says Shinder Purewal, a Kwantlen Polytechnic University political scientist. “They’re willing to work in any sector that provides jobs. Early Sikh immigrants, for instance, worked in the lumber industry. Environmentalists calling for preservation of trees were often seen as a threat to their livelihood.”

Purewal routinely hears Indo-Canadians remark on how “the Greens would destroy the economy. Not only do they think this would mean lower living standards, it would lead to the state not being able to provide social programs. … Immigrants, who come from countries with almost no social programs, appreciate Canada’s health care and public education, along with workers’ compensation, employment insurance and old age pensions.”

Regardless of which factors are strongest, it’s clear that visible minorities in Canada, many of whom are immigrants, are far less inclined to vote Green than are whites. Along with Green candidates drastically under-performing in ridings in which ethnic groups predominate, polls have revealed the party’s demographic affliction.

A Mainstreet Research poll conducted last year found 21 per cent of Caucasian British Columbians were ready to vote for the Greens. But support for the Greens dropped to eight per cent among ethnic Chinese in B.C., seven per cent among South Asians, 10 per cent among Filipinos and five per cent among Koreans.

The so-called ethnic vote is a major factor in B.C. elections, since at least one in five provincial ridings contains fewer white people than the combined totals of ethnic Chinese, South Asians, Koreans, Filipinos, Koreans, Persians and Pakistanis.

Most people of Chinese origin in B.C. “are still under the impression that economic development and environmental protection are incompatible, or even mutually exclusive,” says Fenella Sung, former radio host of a Chinese-language current affairs program in B.C.

The more than 470,000 ethnic Chinese people in Metro Vancouver, who predominate in ridings in Richmond where the Greens performed badly in last year’s B.C. election, tend to believe, rightly or wrongly, that the Greens are a single-issue party, Sung said.

“Since prosperity is their main priority, they think the environment can take a back seat,” Sung said. Chinese-Canadians generally believe protecting nature is something to be addressed only “after economic growth is sustained and job creation is guaranteed.”

Sonia Furstenau, the B.C. Greens’ deputy leader, said, “We’re really committed to improving the diversity of our candidates. It’s a real priority.”

The party is stepping up its message to ethnic minorities and others that protecting the environment does not threaten personal livelihoods, but will help create “more stable, long-term jobs than we have now,” said Furstenau, MLA for Cowichan Valley, where nine of 10 report English as their mother tongue, the fourth highest proportion of B.C.’s 87 ridings. The Greens, she said, also want to strengthen public education and the high-tech sector.

Stefan Jonnson, communications director for the three-seat B.C. Greens, which is supporting the NDP government, said up until recently most candidates in the small party have lacked finances to publish Chinese- or Punjabi-language campaign material or to appear at ethnic events. But that, he said, has been rapidly changing.

Hamish Telford, a political scientist at the University of the Fraser Valley, said the Greens “have to become a multicultural party if they’re going to break out of Vancouver Island. It’s not a party that speaks to immigrants.”

The tip of Vancouver Island and the Southern Gulf Islands are Green strongholds in part, Telford said, because they’re home to many Caucasians who have moved there from others parts of the province and country “to retire and enjoy the beauty of the place, the peace and outdoors.”

After travelling to the Punjab in India, the homeland of hundreds of thousands of B.C. residents, Telford was strengthened in his perception that “Punjabis are a very political people.” While Sikh and Hindu nationalist parties are notable in the Punjab, he said, there are few signs of an environmental movement.

Since roughly a quarter of the students in Telford’s classrooms on the Abbotsford campus are South Asian, he has learned many are keen about economics, immigration, racism and social programs.

But hope for the Greens may lie in such students, he said. “The ones born and raised here tend to skew to the left and to have the same concerns as other young Canadians. Some are interested in the Greens. That’s not so much the case for the older generations.”

Source: Douglas Todd: Why the Greens don’t attract ‘ethnic’ voters

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Conservative Religious Leaders Are Denouncing Trump Immigration Policies – The New York Times

2018/06/16 Leave a comment

Significant. Unlikely that it will make any difference to the administration or congressional Republicans:

Conservative religious leaders who have long preached about the sanctity of the family are now issuing sharp rebukes of the Trump administration for immigration policies that tear families apart or leave them in danger.

The criticism came after recent moves by the administration to separate children from their parents at the border, and to deny asylum on a routine basis to victims of domestic abuse and gang violence.

Some of the religious leaders are the same evangelicals and Roman Catholics who helped President Trump to build his base and who have otherwise applauded his moves to limit abortion and champion the rights of religious believers.

The Rev. Franklin Graham, a son of the famed evangelist the Rev. Billy Graham and an outspoken defender of President Trump, said in an interview on Tuesday on the Christian Broadcasting Network, “I think it’s disgraceful, it’s terrible to see families ripped apart and I don’t support that one bit.”

He quickly made it clear that this had not dimmed his enthusiasm for Mr. Trump, adding, “I blame the politicians for the last 20, 30 years that have allowed this to escalate to where it is today.”

Leaders of many faiths — including Jews, Mainline Protestants, Muslims and others — have spoken out consistently against the president’s immigration policies. What has changed is that now the objections are coming from faith groups that have been generally friendly to Mr. Trump.

A coalition of evangelical groups, including the National Association of Evangelicals and the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, sent a letter to President Trump on June 1 pleading with him to protect the unity of families and not to close off all avenues to asylum for immigrants and refugees fleeing danger.

The Southern Baptist Convention, a conservative evangelical denomination that is the nation’s largest Protestant church, passed a resolution on Tuesday at its meeting in Dallas calling for immigration reform that maintains “the priority of family unity.” The measure called for both securing the nation’s borders, and providing a pathway to legal status for undocumented immigrants living in the country. It passed on a near unanimous vote of the thousands of delegates in the room.

“We declare that any form of nativism, mistreatment, or exploitation is inconsistent with the gospel of Jesus Christ,” the resolution said.

The Rev. Alan Cross, a Southern Baptist minister from Montgomery, Ala., who works on immigration issues, and attended the meeting, said, “It was motivated by what is happening at the border with parents and children being separated, and messengers were affected by that and submitted resolutions.”

“It was a really strong statement,” he said. “We’re saying we love these people, they’re made in God’s image, we should care for them, we don’t want families to be separated.”
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When Vice President Mike Pence addressed the Southern Baptists, his speech hailing the accomplishments of the administration received only a mixed reception.CreditAndy Jacobsohn/The Dallas Morning News, via Associated Press
The resolution also called for elected officials, especially those who are Southern Baptists, “to do everything in their power to advocate for a just and equitable immigration system,” and for Southern Baptist churches to reach out and serve immigrant communities. This is not a new initiative for Southern Baptists, but it comes at a time when white evangelicals, according to polls, are strongly supportive of President Trump’s moves to limit immigration.

A White House representative did not respond to a request for a comment.

When Vice President Mike Pence addressed the Southern Baptists on Wednesday, his speech hailing the accomplishments of the administration received only a mixed reception.

On the same day, the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops, opened their meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., with a strong statement from the group’s president that cast asylum as a “right to life” issue — language usually applied only to issues like abortion and euthanasia.

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the United States Catholic bishops’ conference and archbishop of Galveston-Houston, denounced a recent decision by Attorney General Jeff Sessions that women fleeing domestic violence and families fleeing gang violence are not eligible for asylum.

“At its core, asylum is an instrument to preserve the right to life,” said Cardinal DiNardo in a statement he read aloud to the bishops.

The Catholic church has long advocated for the rights of immigrants and refugees, and while the bishops have criticized Mr. Trump’s immigration policies before, this letter amounted to their strongest censure yet.

“Families are the foundational element of our society and they must be able to stay together,” the Cardinal wrote. “Separating babies from their mothers is not the answer and is immoral.”

Bishop Edward Weisenburger of Tucson, Ariz. suggested to the meeting that “canonical penalties” be imposed on Catholics “who are involved” in the policies of family separations, though he did not specify what he meant. Canonical penalties can involve denial of the eucharist or even excommunication. His suggestion was not adopted.

But they did take up a suggestion by Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark that a delegation of bishops go to the border to inspect the detention centers where children are being held. The visit would be, he said, “a sign of our pastoral concern and protest against the hardening of the American heart.”

via Conservative Religious Leaders Are Denouncing Trump Immigration Policies – The New York Times

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Trump Refuses to Release Data on Immigration Crackdown – Bloomberg

2018/06/16 Leave a comment

Never a good sign when governments use press releases rather than regular data releases but in keeping with the Trump administration’s overall approach:

Five days into his presidency, Donald Trump took aim at illegal immigration with executive orders signaling a new era of heavy enforcement. Not only did he threaten to go after undocumented immigrants, many of whom he labeled violent criminals, he also vowed to crack down on so-called sanctuary cities that thwart the federal government’s attempts to round up people who are in the U.S. illegally. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security promised to put out weekly updates that would include information on localities that release immigration violators and the criminal records of those released.

The first reports were filled with inaccuracies and in several instances called out counties for not cooperating with detainer, or detention, requests that were actually sent to other places with similar names. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency had to issue a list of corrections, and soon it simply stopped putting out the reports. For the past 18 months, ICE has also refused to release other key data about its enforcement activity that had been routinely available.

This disappearing data is at the heart of two lawsuits brought against ICE by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a small research group at Syracuse University. As of January 2017, ICE stopped handing over records it had provided under the Freedom of Information Act for years, including any details about how effective Trump’s crackdown has been. If ICE prevails in court, it could give other agencies a legal rationale to deny public access to the vast cache of government data now kept in electronic databases.

At a time when U.S. authorities are separating children from their parents at the border—and then losing track of them—and the president continues to assert that many immigrants are violent criminals, the lack of basic data on government enforcement has created a fog of uncertainty over an already charged issue. TRAC was founded in 1989 by co-directors Susan Long, a statistician, and David Burnham, an investigative journalist, specifically to cut through this sort of political rhetoric by amassing data on federal policy. It uses FOIA requests to pull in 250 million records from various agencies each month, and its website offers tools to help analyze the data. TRAC had long requested and received information on detainers, as well as deportations aimed at removing undocumented immigrants with criminal records. After ICE abruptly stopped providing the information last year, Long and Burnham sued it in federal court in New York to regain access to the detainer data, and then in the District of Columbia over the missing deportation records.

“We have this huge political debate going on in the country over secure communities and sanctuary cities and all the claims that the government is making about how essential this is, and the very data that would allow you to evaluate the program, they’re withholding,” Long says. ICE argues that many of the records TRAC has asked for don’t exist in the form requested and says producing responses would require searching its database, a process the agency claims amounts to creating new records, which isn’t required under FOIA. ICE didn’t reply to a list of questions and a request for comment.

“If they’re going to court to try to keep information hidden about the detainer policy, they’re probably hiding something,” says Peter Boogaard, a former DHS press secretary in the Obama administration. More broadly, transparency has become a function of political convenience, Boogaard says. “They’re happy to say that immigration is causing huge problems, but at the same point, they are not sharing information.”

It’s still possible to track the overall number of detainers ICE issues—about 14,000 a month on average through November 2017. That’s up from the last months under Obama, but much lower than the peak of close to 28,000 in 2011. Left out are details on whether ICE takes custody—or the criminal records of those targeted. Under Obama, TRAC found that even when local law enforcement held an individual under a detainer, more than half the time ICE agents didn’t show up to take custody—and that few ICE detainers targeted serious criminals. That sort of analysis is now impossible to do. “It’s really frustrating to not be able to get a holistic picture of what’s happening,” says Emily Ryo, an associate professor of law and sociology at the University of Southern California, who’s tried with TRAC to get data on detentions. “It really is an important moment for the public to understand what’s happening and for researchers to be able to document what is going on.”

In place of detailed reports, ICE issues press releases describing raids and arrests, citing criminal records of detainees, and complaining about the lack of cooperation from sanctuary cities. “I don’t want bullet-pointed press releases that say some large numbers of people were apprehended over the weekend and here are five examples of how dangerous these individuals were,” says César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, an associate professor of law at the University of Denver. “I want to know details about the large number of people. I want percentages. I want actual numbers about what kinds of crimes.”

The data García Hernández has been able to cobble together show a reality at least partly at odds with Trump’s rhetoric. In fiscal 2017, a period that covers the end of the Obama administration and the beginning of the current one, the average daily population held in immigration detention centers rose by 3,730 people, an 11 percent increase from fiscal 2016. The average length of stay has also risen, to 43.7 days, up from fewer than 35 the previous year.

The number of prosecutions for immigration crimes fell by more than 10,000, or 15 percent, over the same period. That’s striking given the emphasis the Trump administration has put on prosecuting undocumented immigrants. It’s an incredibly complex system that’s shifting all the time, making accurate data more important than ever. Data from this year that TRAC got using another FOIA request show a jump in prosecutions of border crossers. And the detention system may be nearing its limit: This month, authorities are transferring 1,600 detainees to federal prisons while they await civil court hearings.

The inaccuracies in ICE’s statements about enforcement actions have caused a furor within the agency in recent months. James Schwab, a spokesman for ICE in San Francisco, resigned in March over misleading statements from agency leaders about an ICE raid in Oakland. The bigger implication is how agencies are allowed to draw the line when it comes to producing electronic records, and the distinction between creating a record and just extracting one from a database, according to Sean Sherman, a lawyer at Public Citizen Litigation Group who’s representing TRAC in Washington. “ICE is saying that by basically searching for these electronic records, that constitutes creating new records,” he says. “That just can’t be right, because that’s basically true of all government records right now.” Meanwhile, ICE is withholding data in many more of TRAC’s FOIA requests. Says Long: “We could file a new suit every week, if we were going to aggressively litigate this.”

via Trump Refuses to Release Data on Immigration Crackdown – Bloomberg

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Canadian Immigrants in the United States: Migration Policy Institute study

2018/06/15 Leave a comment

Good overview of Canadians abroad, with detailed numbers:

Canadian migration has generally been a small share of immigration to the United States, historically fluctuating according to economic factors in the two countries. In 1960, Canadian immigrants made up about 10 percent of the total U.S. foreign-born population. Though the number of Canadians in the United States has decreased and levelled off since then, this population has grown more diverse, and today includes students, family migrants, skilled professionals, and retirees. As of 2016, about 783,000 Canadians lived in the United States, accounting for less than 2 percent of the roughly 44 million U.S. immigrants.

The motives of Canadian migrants have changed over time. Beginning in 1867, migrants from Eastern Canada came to the United States to work in the burgeoning manufacturing sector. In 1900, the U.S. Census recorded 747,000 English-speaking and 440,000 French-speaking Canadian immigrants. The two groups settled in different regions: Most Anglophone Canadians took up residence near the border, in states such as Michigan, New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Rhode Island, allowing them to easily move between the two countries, while Francophone Canadians largely moved to New England and California. French Canadian migration increased between 1900 and 1930, driven by discrimination as well as poor economic conditions in Quebec. After 1930, increased political autonomy for Quebec and the growth of the Canadian economy following World War II led to a steady decline in Canadian arrivals.

In the second half of the 20th century, Canadian migration shifted and diversified significantly, especially after enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994. Canadian immigrants now include highly educated professionals, students, those seeking family reunification, and “snowbirds,” people in or near retirement attracted by warmer southern climates. Canadian students are the fifth-largest group of foreign students enrolled in U.S. higher education, and high-skilled Canadians receive the third-largest number of employer-sponsored H-1B temporary visas. Many Canadians also come to the United States on NAFTA Professional (TN) visas to work in a variety of professional occupations, although the exact number is unknown.

Click here to view an interactive chart showing trends in the size of U.S. immigrant populations by country of birth, from 1960 to the present.

The United States is by far the top destination for most Canadian emigrants, with others settling primarily in the United Kingdom (92,000), Australia (57,000), France (26,000), and Italy (26,000), according to mid-2017 estimates by the United Nations Population Division. Click here to view an interactive map showing where migrants from Canada and other countries have settled worldwide.

Most Canadians in the United States who obtain lawful permanent residence—also known as receiving a green card—do so either as immediate relatives of U.S. citizens or as employer-sponsored immigrants. Compared to the overall foreign-born population, Canadians have a higher median income, are less likely to live in poverty, and are more likely to have health insurance and to be college educated. They are significantly older, on average, than the overall immigrant and U.S.-born populations.

Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau (the most recent 2016 American Community Survey [ACS] as well as pooled 2012–16 ACS data) and the Department of Homeland Security’s Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, this Spotlight provides information on the Canadian population in the United States, focusing on its size, geographic distribution, and socioeconomic characteristics.

Note: Data from ACS and DHS represent persons born in Canada; they do not include immigrants born outside of Canada who then gained Canadian citizenship via naturalization and later moved to the United States.

via Canadian Immigrants in the United States | migrationpolicy.org

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