Just to let readers know that I will restart blogging in September, with Twitter being intermittent.
For the fall, working on a series of articles on what the Census says in terms of economic and social outcomes and profiles of all 338 federal electoral districts looking at key demographics, social and economic indicators.
How we debate immigration and related issues is as important as the issues themselves. Whether these be broad political or media debates, or more focused consultations or workshops, care needs to be taken to ensure respectful discussion.
Given the need for a diversity of views and the desire to protect free speech, are there criteria that should be used to assess who is likely to contribute to a constructive conversation and dialogue? Should these criteria be used to select speakers and panelists, or perhaps participants and audiences?
Canadian scholar Keith Banting’s one-third snapshot of the population — one-third favouring more immigration, one-third favouring less, and one-third in the middle — is a useful suggestion as to the possible groups that need to be engaged in this debate. But within these broad groupings, there is considerable variation. Moreover, this variation includes both “elite” and “populist” discourses.
Given the importance of immigration, citizenship and multiculturalism to Canada’s overall success as a country, it is essential that people be exposed to and discuss a variety of perspectives, that we get out of our bubbles, whatever viewpoint our “bubble” represents. This would also shed light on opinions that might not have been be aired, and it would encourage a more open conversation.
My goal in writing this article is to provide practical guidelines for organizers of workshops and consultations on the issue of immigration.
Except for the possibility of violence, threats or disruption, audiences should not be preselected. (However, asking panelists to suggest invitees can ensure the audience includes those interested in respectful dialogue.) In contrast, the selection of panelists must be done to at least ensure the dialogue is meaningful, and the exchange in the panel is respectful and polite. To guard freedom of speech there must be an atmosphere of decorum and mutual respect.
Respect also requires some exclusions: for example, of speakers who promote hatred or whose specialty is generating outrage. But within these limits, it should be possible to broaden discussions to help address some of the political and populist undercurrents in Canada that are not being openly expressed.
It may also be easier to have a constructive conversation and to air the deeper motives and values behind specific issues and concern when the focus is on practical issues rather than beliefs and values. But even practical issues can be controversial and divisive. For example, what should the number and mix of immigrants (economic, family, refugees)? What should the requirements of citizenship (language, knowledge, residency) look like? What is reasonable in reasonable accommodation (specific religious exemptions within the overall legal and constitutional framework)?
The objective should be not to convince one’s interlocutors but to increase mutual understanding of various positions and the perspectives, and the biases and values that underlie them. This must go beyond a discussion of mainstream views and engage more populist discourses.
Nevertheless, even conversations focused on practical issues should be guided by some “ground rules”; an agreed-upon etiquette. These include the need to
Listen and be open to hearing other perspectives
Be aware of conscious and unconscious biases that may inform assumptions and selection of evidence
Stick to the evidence, however imperfect, rather than anecdotes, and recognize that people may not interpret evidence in the same way
Be respectful in one’s language and tone to and avoid “demonizing” those with perspectives that are different from one’s own
Avoid personal criticism or labelling
Don’t assume that all members of specific groups have the same beliefs, values and perspectives.
But will a potential panelist want to follow these ground rules and actually enrich the discussion? It’s helpful to consider in advance the tone and language of an individual’s writings and public appearances. Do they focus on the substance of issues or do they engage in personal and/or group attacks? Does their written work appear in mainstream media, whether right- or left-of-centre, or rather in media that has a more extreme/xenophobic political agenda?
Partisanship, meanwhile, is not a reasonable reason for ruling out a potential panelist. Most people have partisan leanings and may approach issues from a specific political perspective.
In applying these guidelines, it is better to adopt a more inclusive approach to diverse views, including populist perspectives, to ensure greater understanding and dialogue. This means risking more uncomfortable conversations.
While these guidelines are written from the perspective of individual events, they are also broadly applicable to general conversations and dialogue. As such, hopefully they will contribute to more civil and informed discussion in general.
To date, Canada has not fallen prey to the world trend of declining support for immigration. Our history of accommodation, our relative geographic isolation, and the large number of immigrant voters mostly protect us from these trends. However, Canada always needs to be attentive to the potential for pressures toward anti-immigration populism and critics who say the country cannot manage its immigration. Greater engagement with diverse perspectives may help in dealing with these pressures.
Two good op-eds by Andrew MacDougall, calling on both parties to tone down the virtue signalling and name calling:
Stop me if you’ve heard this one.
Gerald Butts, the Prime Minister’s principal secretary, Ahmed Hussen, the federal immigration minister, and Lisa MacLeod, Hussen’s provincial counterpart, walk into a bar and…
Fine. I’ll spare you the joke, which (believe me) requires a mountain of set-up, and instead leave you with the punchline: Lisa MacLeod is a white supremacist!
What? That’s not funny? Well, I suspect that’s in the ear of the beholder. In any case, please direct all complaints to the Prime Minister’s Office, ℅ Mr. Butts, the author of the joke.
To be fair, the Butts quip wasn’t that blunt or direct. He wouldn’t dare call MacLeod a white supremacist outright. His dig was of the dog-whistle variety, one the federal Liberals have been blowing with increasing frequency as we approach the next election. And so let’s just say it wasn’t a surprise to see it deployed following the acrimonious federal-provincial meeting on immigration starring Hussen and MacLeod.
“Enough is enough,” Butts tweeted after the meeting. “It’s time to stand up to this divisive fear-mongering about asylum seekers. Let’s not allow the alt-right to do here what they’re doing elsewhere.”
And what were the particulars of the Hussen-MacLeod dispute, that it devolved to “fear-mongering”? It hardly matters. It’s the use of “alt-right” that’s key. Indeed, it’s the latest slur gifted to the right from the left. That’s why Doug Ford is now “alt-right.” It’s why Andrew Scheer is “alt-right.” And it’s why cookie-baking hockey mom MacLeod is “alt-right,” too.
And as with so much else in the world today, we have Donald Trump to thank for it.
It was Trump who brought the “alt-right”—then, as now, a bunch of white supremacists and violent fascists—into the light. But the President’s tacit acceptance of these “deplorables” gave license to Trump’s political opponents to paint all of his support—the vast majority of which are neither racist or supremacist—with the alt-right brush, especially those who oppose the current immigration system, which no one can describe as perfect. This is the dynamic the Liberals—once the purveyor of sunny ways, let’s not forget—seem to be trying to import into Canada.
Although the migrant problems facing Canada’s borders are nowhere near the scale of those between Mexico and the United States, they are as complex, and nearly as intractable, absent a willing partner in the White House. Hence the PMO’s desire to reach for the shorthand of the “alt-right”: It’s better to brand your opponents than explain why you can’t get the job done.
Because MacLeod is certainly correct that the feds don’t (yet) have a workable plan to stem arrivals at non-designated border crossings. She’s also correct when she says the provinces are bearing a lot of the costs of housing and caring for refugees and asylum seekers. Nor is she the only one raising the alarm; it’s been a constant criticism from the federal Tories as well. No wonder it rankles the PMO. I’d be yelling “alt-right” too, especially if I knew my opponents didn’t have a workable plan either.
Now, Butts doesn’t actually think MacLeod is a noxious white supremacist like Richard Spencer, the lodestar of the U.S.’s alt-right movement. But he is certainly happy to have that association linger in your mind, no matter how untrue or uncharitable it might be. Here, the application of the label “alt-right” is meant to stifle debate on immigration, not encourage it. If there can be no reasonable critique made on immigration then the status quo, no matter how bad, will carry the day.
It’s a trick the right has pulled on the left on many occasions. A school shooting? Can’t criticize the Second Amendment, my fellow American, or else you ain’t a patriot. Or, to pick a less noxious example, any plan by a left-of-centre party to raise a tax—any tax—is evidence of economy-killing communism or socialism. Again, it’s a tactic meant to kill nuance and throttle debate. Just ask Stéphane Dion about his “Green Shift,” aka the “permanent tax on everything.”
The Liberals are clearly casting around for slurs that stick in a similar fashion. They’ve largely leaned on using Stephen Harper’s name as a bogeyman; voters grew tired of the Harper government’s perceived nastiness in the last election, hence the longtime Liberal habit of shouting “Harper” in every crowded theatre. It’s why Trudeau himself fronted the “it may be Andrew Scheer’s smile, but it’s still Stephen Harper’s party” attack line at the recent Liberal convention. Slagging Harper sells.
But it doesn’t work nearly as well when speaking about problems the Liberals have created, like the deficit, or inherited and made worse, like the border. Tweeting “Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada” might have won a news cycle, but it’s come back to bite the Liberals in the backside in the form of multiplying “temporary” asylum shelters and an overwhelmed processing system.
Step forward the “alt-right.” And even if the shoe doesn’t quite fit, the Liberals are going to try their damnedest to make the Conservatives wear it. Because, whether Canadian conservatives like it or not, a lot of their European brethren are piling in against immigration in a nasty fashion. And the reality is that Canada’s vaunted all-party support for immigration might crumble all the same if it faced European-like numbers of asylum seekers, too—just the kind of circumstance that birthed such alt-right movements elsewhere. No conservative party is truly safe.
Nor should liberals rest easy either. The European left is struggling mightily too, and it’s largely because they underestimated the people’s tolerance for an immigration system that clearly could no longer deal with what was coming its way.
To fight back against the alt-right slur, Conservatives in Canada need to do three things: keep supporting much-needed immigration and legitimate refugee claims; avoid hyperbole while making valid criticisms of the government’s actions; and uprooting any actual and visible forms of alt-right support in their party. The Republicans missed their weeding moment; the Tories can’t afford to miss theirs.
Because if they do miss it, it will be Trudeau’s Liberals who have the last laugh—no matter how poor their joke.
…First and foremost, opposition politicians need to stop performing for their bases and begin the challenging task of reaching out to Ford’s supporters. This is both the path to a more civilized discourse, as well as the eventual route back to power.
This isn’t to suggest the opposition remain quiet or docile. Far from it.
Ontario’s system of government requires a strong opposition, especially in holding a majority to account. But a sober critique can land as effectively as a headline-searching cheap shot. Mr. Ford’s support isn’t a monolith; it can be picked off if done reasonably. If he bungles government, people will notice.
And the opposition’s lessons apply equally to the media.
So much of today’s surging populism is fuelled by the sense the arbiters of a society’s discourse – including the press and the politicians they hold to account – are happy to ignore their views. And right now a lot of people are worried about crime and border security. Mr. Ford understands that. Their fears might not necessarily be backed up by statistics, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem. Here, the sneering tone of journalism on platforms such as Twitter does the profession no favours.
The media need to remain clear-eyed in their work, even if the Premier isn’t their cup of tea. It was a mistake to equate Ford Nation with Mr. Trump and his “deplorables” during the campaign, and it remains a mistake now that Mr. Ford is in government. One thing is certain: The “fake news” drumbeat, still quiet in Canada, will surely grow louder with every unforced reporting error and torqued editorial position.
Premier Ford might not like the press (what politician does), but he isn’t in the class of Mr. Trump. For the moment Mr. Ford is busy running his government, not running against the media. That Mr. Ford doesn’t court or flatter the press shouldn’t count against him, even if it does ultimately make his job more difficult.
For his part, the Premier would do well to keep his ears open to legitimate criticism. Yes, “the People” have spoken and, yes, there are still many promises to keep, but there is also wisdom to be found on all sides. Lashing out at critics isn’t a plan; Mr. Ford must keep his famous temper in check if he is to keep “the People” on his side.
Governing is a marathon, not a race. Mr. Ford won’t secure his re-election in a single day, nor will he be defeated in one. Keeping the hysteria to a minimum gives voters the best chance to make a reasoned decision the next time around.
A few months ago, Muslim leaders placed full-page ads in two broadsheets, the Telegraph and the Times, condemning antisemitism. The ads, stating that British Jews did not stand alone in the fight against antisemitism, came as the Labour party’s handling of the issue within its own ranks was dominating the national news (much as it is today).
After months of media-relayed accusation and denial over the issue—during which British Jews often felt like unwilling pawns in a political game—these ads were a welcome message of solidarity. They were also an echo of previous acts of collectivism, such as when Muslim and Jewish organisations jointly complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) last year over a column in the Sun that referred to a “Muslim problem”.
This phrase, they noted, “harked back to the Nazi use of the phrase ‘The Jewish Problem’ in the last century, to which the Nazis responded with ‘The Final Solution’—the Holocaust.”
Such cross-faith unity shouldn’t be hard to comprehend. Racialised minorities know all too well that race-hate is a shape-shifter, attacking and scapegoating different groups interchangeably depending on the social standards of the day.
In 2011 the Conservative Baroness Sayeeda Warsi said that Islamophobia had “passed the dinner table test” of social acceptability in the UK. By that time, European far-right parties had, in attempts to rehabilitate and go mainstream, dropped the overt antisemitism and taken instead to hating Muslims and migrants.
Sometimes, though, antisemitism is too hard a habit to even pretend to break. Hungarian far-right prime minister Victor Orban’s attacks on philanthropist George Soros depict him not just as a “billionaire speculator” but as one who is trying to “Muslimise Europe.”
Such hateful scaremongering casts Muslims and Jews as united in a secret mission to destroy Christian Europe, by which, presumably, Easter eggs and Christmas trees will be banned, but bagels and falafel are fine (not together, though. Obviously.)
Earlier this month, Baroness Warsi reiterated her call to the UK Conservative party, of which she is former co-chair, to tackle the Islamophobia within its own ranks. In this, she is echoed by the Muslim Council of Great Britain and other Muslim groups.
There are ample examples to warrant the concern and calls for an inquiry—Warsi describes the scale of the problem as “more than weekly incidents.” Just for starters, there’s the anti-Muslim post retweeted by Tory MP Bob Blackman, and the Conservative councillor Mike Payne, who shared an article that called Muslims “parasites.”
Going further back, there is the anti-Muslim London mayoral campaign run in 2016 by Conservative Zac Goldsmith standing against Labour’s Sadiq Khan. More recently, conservative MP Michael Fabricant had to apologise for reposting an appalling image involving Khan and an inflatable pig.
The baroness also signposted a corollary problem: that the Conservative party cannot call out antisemitism within Labour if it then ignores its own Islamophobia. Bluntly, that would reek of hypocrisy.
But in some ways, the consequences go deeper. Asking that different prejudices be taken equally seriously is not an attempt to equate the two. They are different; there are specifics—among them, of course, the systematically murderous history and distinct perniciousness of antisemitism.
The trouble is that, with the Tories ignoring Islamophobia and Labour trying to deal with antisemitism (badly, but at least the party isn’t denying it), an impression may be transmitted of a sort of hierarchy of race hate.
Already toxic, this is made more damaging still because the idea of Jewish people seeking special treatment is itself an anti-semitic trope. And it means a grim competitiveness has emerged, whereby denials of a prejudice problem in one party are packaged with claims the other party is worse.
This harmful asymmetry is maintained by Labour evidently taking its own racism more seriously, which is one reason there are people inside the party pushing it to tackle antisemitism, which then creates media attention over the issue—in a way that does not happen to the same degree over Islamophobia. (Yes, antisemitism is also sometimes weaponised to attack the Labour leader, but let it go for once. This is not the point we’re exploring here.)
Meanwhile, we have an overarching climate in which Islamophobia, as Baroness Warsi noted, is more socially acceptable—to the extent that it is routinely on display within our national press. Worse, it is sometimes denied as being a prejudice at all, even while hate crimes committed against Muslims spiral and police launch an investigation into “punish a Muslim” letters, promising rewards for violence against Muslims and sent out in UK cities. Indeed, much of the work of the far-right has been to conflate manufactured fear of Muslims with fear of migrants, so that hostility to the latter is a proxy for hostility to the former.
At a time of far-right resurgence globally, when we are witnessing the most appalling racism and bigotry go mainstream, it’s more urgent than ever to fight back against hatred of Jews and Muslims alike.
This isn’t just a matter of how our political parties handle prejudice within their own ranks. It is about the poisonous, rupturing effect on our society and our communities when they fail to tackle such hatreds consistently, clearly—and with equal commitment.
The 14th Amendment, which declared that African-Americans were citizens, turned 150 earlier this month. But even as it was being commemorated as one of the signal achievements of post-Civil War Reconstruction, its bedrock provisions were colliding with the furious 21st-century debate over immigration.
In June, President Trump tweeted that undocumented immigrants should be sent home “immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases”— a direct contravention, legal scholars pointed out, of repeated Supreme Court rulings saying that the amendment’s guarantee of due process applies to all people in the United States, whatever their status.
This week, Michael Anton, a former national security official in the Trump administration, wrote an Op-Ed article in The Washington Post saying that birthright citizenship — the longstanding principle that anyone born in the United States is a citizen — rests on a “deliberate misreading” of the 14th Amendment.
We talked with Dr. Jones about how the idea of birthright citizenship was created, and how it connects with the current debate about who belongs in America. The interview has been edited and condensed.
The idea of “jus soli,” the right of the soil, goes back to English common law. Where does the American idea of birthright citizenship enter our political tradition?
In the United States, it is the African-American community that first begins to articulate the claim to birthright citizenship. They do it because they need it. Other folks do not.
By the 1830s, African-Americans in what we call the Colored Conventions Movement are crafting an argument that will help defend them against colonization schemes that involve trying to get them to leave the country, and also trying to resist state “black laws” that regulate where they can travel or gather in public, whether they can go to school, own guns and so on.
They look at the Constitution, which doesn’t really define who is a citizen, but does have this clause saying that the president must be a natural-born citizen. They ask, if the president is a natural-born citizen, why aren’t we? The Naturalization Act of 1790 says that only white people can be naturalized. But there is no color line in the Constitution.
We tend to think of the 1857 Dred Scott decision — which declared that back people could never be citizens — as definitively slamming the door shut, until the 14th Amendment came along. How much resistance was there to the decision?
Roger Taney [the chief justice, who wrote the decision] was very aware of the history of African-Americans’ efforts to claim citizenship. And after the decision, we see African-Americans continue to resist, to critique Taney’s decision from the podium, in newspapers. At the same time, lower courts are narrowing the scope of the decision, or refusing to defer to his reasoning.
And African-Americans are not retreating to their homes, or living quiet lives in response to Dred Scott. In Taney’s home state, Maryland, there are about 75,000 to 80,000 free blacks. When the state legislature proposes a new set of draconian black laws that would either remove them or re-enslave them, people organize, gather petitions, go to Annapolis, the capital, as part of an effort that ultimately defeats the legislation.
Black voting rights, which were guaranteed in the 15th Amendment, came under sustained attack for more than a century. Were there similar efforts to roll back birthright citizenship itself?
After 1868, African-Americans are citizens, if they are born in the United States. Now they have a tool that protects them from any effort to remove them from the country. With citizenship, there really is a there there, even as the struggle over civil rights continued, arguably into our own moment.
Good analysis of some of the administrative measures being implemented:
While President Trump has failed to build a wall across the southern border, his administration is constructing a wall nonetheless—just one made of paperwork, rather than concrete, and targeting legal, rather than illegal, immigrants. Last week, the administration released its latest brick in this virtual wall: a policy that would give government officials the ability to deny legal immigrants outright with no opportunity for them to correct mistakes on their applications and then attempt to deport them.
This latest policy is the culmination of a year-and-a-half of groundwork. First, the administration massively expanded the amount of paperwork in immigration forms by double or, in some cases, triple. The new forms asked vague and legally complex questions, which require a lawyer to answer and make it far more likely mistakes will happen. The administration continues to euphemistically refer to this as “extreme vetting” when it is nothing more than extreme bureaucracy.
Second, pursuant to the president’s protectionist Buy American, Hire American executive order, the government began to issue far more Requests for Evidence (RFE) to support visa petitions. RFEs are issued when adjudicators demand new evidence before issuing an approval or denial. For H-1B high skilled visas, employers saw a 45 percent increase in the number of RFEs. RFEs lengthen the process of applying, increase attorney fees, and raise the cost of hiring a foreign worker overall.Third, just this month, the Trump administration rolled out a policy that would allow certain legal immigrant applicants whose petitions are denied to be placed in removal proceedings—the start of the deportation process—if the denial results in their permission to stay in the country expiring.
This is a common scenario because employers can wait until just prior to the expiration of their status to file a renewal request. If the request is denied, the legal employee—who likely had no control over when the employer filed—is suddenly an illegal immigrant. Under prior administrations, the person could voluntarily leave the country or potentially reapply, but this administration would seek to deport them, which—if successful—results in a decade ban on returning.
Finally, we have last week’s policy that brings together the entire effort so far. Now, rather than issuing RFEs for mistakes in applications, the government will give adjudicators the ability to deny the application outright. An outright denial would require the applicants at a minimum to refile or file an appeal with all the fees and attorney time that those options entail.
This policy is misguided in part because the adjudicators often simply overlook evidence already provided. Applicants resupply it and are approved. In fact, the overwhelming majority of applications that receive RFEs are ultimately approved. Despite a 45 percent increase in the number of RFEs last year, the denial rate for applications only increased slightly.
For this reason, this new policy allowing outright denials rather than an RFE is likely to get the results that the other policies failed to achieve: more denials and fewer foreign workers in this country. Higher costs and risks will lead fewer to apply, and more legal immigrants to seek out other countries that could use their talents.
With each new brick, the virtual wall against legal immigration grows higher. The costs and risks are clearly having an effect. Immigration is down. Visits to the United States are down. These policies harm America’s economy by keeping foreign talent overseas and driving away potential customers for U.S. businesses. With a booming economy, and more job openings than unemployed workers, legal immigration policy should welcome foreigners willing to work, not seek to drive them home.
David Bier is an immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute.
Reasonable political and operational management approach to address the influx. Having a more dedicated junior minister, with law enforcement experience, won’t change the fundamentals of the impact of US policies but may help both internal government discussions and public debates:
Former Toronto police chief Bill Blair has been given the task of managing the migrant crisis at the border as part of his new cabinet appointment – a move that will require him to work directly with Ontario Premier and long-time adversary Doug Ford.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau chose Mr. Blair, an experienced senior public servant, to lead the new ministry of Border Security and Organized Crime Reduction as a part of a federal cabinet shuffle Wednesday. Mr. Blair will oversee the surge in asylum seekers at the Canada-U.S. border, gun violence and the cannabis file. Mr. Trudeau said he trusts Mr. Blair to counter the “politics of fear” that he says the Conservatives have been using, especially when it comes to asylum seekers.
“I am reminded of the very first conversation I had with Bill Blair years ago when I was asking him to think about running for the Liberal Party,” Mr. Trudeau told reporters in Ottawa on Wednesday.
“One of the things he said stuck with me and certainly echoes in my mind today as we give him these new responsibilities − he said the No. 1 enemy of public security is fear.”
Mr. Blair’s new role puts him on a potential collision course with Mr. Ford, with whom he has a fraught history. Mr. Blair infuriated Mr. Ford in 2013 when the then-Toronto police chief said he was disappointed by a video of Mr. Ford’s brother and then-Toronto mayor Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine. Doug Ford, a city councillor at the time, unleashed on Mr. Blair and called on him to step down as police chief.
Nearly five years later, now in new political jobs, the pair will face off once again. As a part of his irregular migration portfolio, Mr. Blair will have to navigate a tense relationship between the Trudeau and Ford governments over the resettlement of asylum seekers who cross the border illegally. Earlier this month, Mr. Ford withdrew the province’s support for the resettlement, saying that the federal government created the problem and should pick up the tab to fix it.
Speaking to reporters in Ottawa on Wednesday, Mr. Blair said he looks forward to working with all three levels of government, which “have a responsibility for the safety of their communities and to uphold the rule of law.”
In a statement, Mr. Ford’s office maintained the the federal Liberals are to blame for the influx in border-crossers.
“Premier Ford is hopeful that Minister Blair will be interested in standing up for respect of the law, and encourages his Liberal colleagues to take responsibility for the mess they’ve created,” spokeswoman Laryssa Waler-Hetmanczuk said.
The Prime Minister’s Office said Mr. Blair will head up the government’s work on the migrant issue, while working closely with Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, who is responsible for the border agency, and Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen, who will still oversee the refugee determination process.
Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel said the appointment of a new cabinet minister to the migrant file is yet another sign that the Liberal government is “normalizing” the situation at the border. More than 31,000 asylum seekers have entered Canada between authorized points of entry since January, 2017. She invited Mr. Blair to testify to the House of Commons immigration committee this summer when it holds a series of emergency meetings on asylum seekers.
Refugee advocates expressed concern about the government’s decision to put the migrant issue under the ministerial umbrella of border security and organized-crime reduction.
“Now they are going to have an enforcement approach, to be stronger at the border,” said Francisco Rico-Martinez, co-director of the FCJ Refugee Centre in Toronto.
“Don’t forget that people in the middle are human beings, refugee claimants … . Don’t blame them.”
Without this kind of data, can’t identify issues and possible policy approaches and solutions. One of the better elements of the former Liberal government was the emphasis its anti-racism strategy placed on better data (unlikely to survive under the current government, however):
Not enough snacks, not enough privacy, not enough allowance: Many of the complaints shared by the teenagers at the Power Up conference in Mississauga were common, even timeless.
But other concerns voiced by many of the 130 attendees, all black and all current or former Ontario foster youth, were less universal.
Some spoke about not being invited out to restaurant dinners with their foster families, or not being trusted with a house key. One 19-year-old young man started crying at the microphone. He had bumped into his sister at the conference, but they’ve been in different foster homes for so long that he didn’t recognize her.
After the formal workshops and panel discussions, kids hugged, took selfies and made plans to hang out again. “This cannot end here,” one girl declared loudly. It was a sweet, important gathering and it wouldn’t have happened without race-based data.
“The issue of the African-Canadian community and how it experiences child welfare is something that the community has been speaking to for decades,” said Kike Ojo, the program manager for One Vision, One Voice, an organization dedicated to improving the lives of black youth in foster care.
For years, she said, black parents had been sharing their anecdotal experiences of children’s aid services across Ontario: of being watched more closely than white parents; of having their children apprehended at higher rates; and of having black youth placed largely with non-black foster families, which might be loving but were often unable to help them cope with the daily realities of racism.
But it wasn’t until 2015, when the Toronto Children’s Aid Society released race-based data of the children in its care, that those who work in child welfare began taking the issue seriously. That year, 30 per cent of children in Toronto foster care were black, though only 8.5 per cent of the city identifies that way.
“That was the first time that I saw the data in print,” Ms. Ojo said in an interview. “I can’t overstate how important Toronto doing that was to getting to this moment.”
One Vision, One Voice was formed within months of the data release. It’s since toured cities around the province to give presentations on anti-black racism and equity practices, as well as to hear the experiences of youth, care workers and both biological and foster parents.
It’s also made a list of 11 recommendations to the Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies (OACAS), which cover everything from recruiting more black foster parents, especially those who can care for babies, to providing better transition services for youth approaching the age of 21 to help them avoid poverty and homelessness as adults.
And it’s recruiting both youth and black care workers for advisory councils, meant to be a permanent resource for OACAS to draw on when needed.
“So often the system could use a resource to help them … understand how a particular policy or program could impact black youth,” Ms. Ojo said. “Today, other than tapping a random black youth on the shoulder, they don’t have somewhere to go to kind of get that support.”
The Toronto CAS has committed to collecting and releasing race-based statistics annually: In 2017, 34 per cent of children in care were black, compared with 9 per cent of the city’s population, a small but disappointing increase that shows that identifying a problem is just the first step in solving it.
Elsewhere in the province, the current state of such data is patchwork and full of holes. In April, an Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) report on black and Indigenous youth in care stated that a full 20 per cent of the province’s 49 children’s aid societies aren’t collecting it. Perhaps worse, some that do use cringe-worthy, outdated terminology: More than one tracks “mulatto” or “Gypsy” children.
In December, 2017, the Liberals’ Ministry of Child and Youth Services made collecting race-based data on foster children mandatory. All children’s aids societies were supposed to start entering information into an online portal this past February, but a number still don’t have access to the tool.
And while analysis is meant to start in early 2019, there’s been an election in the interim, and the new Conservative Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services hasn’t yet made any announcements about foster care.
That’s a tenuous state for information that’s crucial to providing Ontario’s 12,000-plus foster children with services that allow them to become healthy adults with a strong sense of self. A sense of belonging was another common desire shared by the youth at Power Up, the first gathering solely for black Ontario foster youth.
One 15-year-old said she had been to 15 different schools. She had also never had a black foster parent. “This is the family I’ve been searching for, for a really long time,” she said. A hopeful moment, thanks to good data.
At least 70 children under the age of 1 have been ordered before immigration judges since last October, some without any form of legal representation present, according to newly released government data.
Information from the Department of Justice (DOJ) reported by the Texas Tribune on Wednesday states that the number of infants summoned before immigration judges tripled in 2017 compared to the previous year.
A total of 1,500 “unaccompanied” children ages 3 and younger have been ordered before immigration judges since October 2015, the Tribune reported, citing DOJ data provided by Kaiser Health News.
About three-fourths of those children had legal representation, while the remainder only had access to a list of legal aid attorneys their caregiver can contact. In some cases, young children appear before judges with little to no knowledge of their situation or where their families are, the report noted.
While officials said many children under the age of 1 come into the U.S. with a parent and their case proceeds together, some of the children arrived in the U.S. without their parents or legal guardians, according to the Tribune.
Others were only deemed to be “unaccompanied” minors after being separated by their parents under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” border policy, which prioritized prosecuting all illegal border crossers.
President Trump signed an executive order last month to end the separation of families at the border, and his administration has been working to reunite affected families after thousands of young children were separated from adults.
“This is to some extent a … crisis of the creation of the government,” Robert Carey, the former head of the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement, told the Tribune. “It’s a tragic and ironic turn of events.”
One immigration attorney based in Virginia noted to the Tribune that many children are unaware that they face life-threatening situations in their home country.
“Think about it as a parent. You’re not going to tell your child they might be killed, right?” Eileen Blessinger told the newspaper. “A lot of the kids don’t know.”
Asylum claim denials, according to the data, are at an all-time high of 42 percent.
Earlier this month the Trump administration issued guidance ending asylum claims for migrants fleeing domestic abuse or gang-related violence, a move that was heavily criticized by immigrant rights activists.
“The Trump administration just handed a death sentence to thousands of women and families fleeing domestic and gang violence by barring them from accessing asylum in the U.S.,” Jess Morales Rocketto, political director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, said in June.
The Trump administration was warned by intelligence analysts that ending protections for hundreds of thousands of Central Americans living in the US would likely drive a spike in illegal immigration. They did it anyway.
That intelligence assessment was made public late Tuesday as part of an ongoing lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security over the termination of Temporary Protected Status for citizens of multiple countries, many of whom have lived in the US upwards of two decades.
Questions have swirled since the administration began systematically terminating the majority of TPS designations on the books, impacting more than 400,000 immigrants who have lived in the US for years. The administration justified the moves by citing the law, saying that the Department of Homeland Security was compelled to end the protections because conditions from the original disasters that precipitated the protected status had improved.
But the intelligence report and another email from the acting secretary last year to White House chief of staff John Kelly add to other uncovered documents that raise serious questions about whether the Trump administration ignored its own experts’ analysis and recommendations to fulfill a pre-ordained objective.
The email explains that the administration was intending to “send a clear signal that TPS in general is coming to a close.”
The analysts’ report and email were revealed as part of a dispute in the lawsuit over the production of the internal documents that were used to come to the decision. Attorneys representing the immigrants suing in the case argue the government has been too slow to produce the documents.
The immigrants suing the government allege, among other things, that the decision to end the protections was racially motivated and not based on reasoned decision-making.
In supporting their request to the judge to order more document production, the attorneys released the assessment and a November email from then-acting Secretary Elaine Duke to Kelly laying out her reasoning to postpone deciding on TPS for Honduran immigrants for six months. Current Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen ended it this spring when that time ran out.
DHS did not immediately respond to request for comment on Tuesday’s documents.
Intelligence analysts warned of illegal immigration
The intelligence assessment, dated November 2, 2017, concluded that there was a chance of “illegal return” for protected immigrants from the four main countries covered: El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Haiti. The analysts found the first two would have the “highest rates” of individuals trying to sneak back into the US, whereas Haitians would be impeded by the island’s location and Nicaragua would be mitigated by the low numbers of protectees relative to the other countries.
The report cited terrible conditions in the home countries, including an inability to absorb the returning immigrants, as well as deep ties to the US.
TPS beneficiaries have more than 200,000 US citizen children, analysts said. Many beneficiaries have home mortgages and far higher incomes than available in their home countries.
The assessment’s confidence level was “medium,” since the information was based on a lot of NGO reports and because migration is based on a number of complicated factors.
The email from Duke to Kelly last November came a few days before CNN reported alongside other media outlets that Kelly tried to pressure Duke to change her mind on Honduras — the only Central American country covered by TPS that had its status extended temporarily under this administration.
he email is dated November 6, the date the TPS decision was publicly announced.
DHS decision to end Haitian immigrant protections questioned
In the email, Duke went to great lengths to explain to Kelly that she believed postponing a decision on Honduras would still “send a clear signal that TPS in general is coming to a close” and “is consistent with the President’s position on immigration” — an apparent attempt to pre-empt any objections that she was not living up to the administration’s goals.
“This decision is a strong break with past practice and sends a strong message that this Administration will no longer routinely end TPS with little for the statute (sic),” Duke wrote. “By not affirmatively extending, I’m stating that I’m not satisfied that the country conditions remain — but not yet sure how to best end TPS for this country.”
The administration has denied, in general, that their objective was ending TPS overall. In public they have mainly said that they are merely restoring the law when it comes to TPS and have to end TPS for these countries because conditions have improved.
Announcements on the termination of protections have emphasized a “review of the disaster-related conditions upon which the country’s original designation was based … as required by statute.” Officials and the statements have also placed the responsibility on Congress to come up with a more permanent solution.
Duke wrote to Kelly that she had received “multiple intelligence reports” the prior week that “TPS termination for Honduras could have strong consequences for other immigration, (transnational criminal organizations), and drug reduction priorities.”
“I want to understand this better so I can adequately determine the appropriate plan and path for termination,” she said, adding it would be critical to work with Honduras on the plan.
How Trump’s policies could worsen the migration issue he says he wants to solve
Duke also denied that she is making the choice “for fear of criticism” because “every decision” she makes gets criticized.
“I take seriously my role as Deputy and currently acting Secretary and would not make a decision based on anything but the facts,” Duke wrote. “While some are portraying this differently, this decision is really just a difference in strategy to get to the President’s objectives.”
In response to reporting that she and Kelly had clashed over the decision, Duke days later released a statement saying she had “received input” from across the administration, and that “at no time” did Kelly “pressure” Duke to terminate TPS for Central American countries.
Previous doubts raised
CNN has previously reported that ending TPS for Central Americans and Haiti ignored the recommendations of diplomats and that a staff-level report contradicted the idea that Haiti had recovered from the initial conditions that precipitated its TPS designation.
In response to the attorney’s allegations of not producing enough documents, attorneys for the government said it was actually their opponents who were acting in “bad faith.”
“Defendants have been working around the clock to respond to Plaintiffs’ ever-increasing volume of discovery requests and to comply with the Court’s orders,” the government wrote. “Agency counsel have been working weekends and through the night with no sleep to review and produce the documents Plaintiffs identified as being necessary for their preliminary injunction motion. Yet, at every turn Plaintiffs have demanded more and repeatedly threatened to go to the Court.”
Canadian scholar Keith Banting’s one-third snapshot of the population — one-third favouring more immigration, one-third favouring less, and one-third in the middle — is a useful suggestion as to the possible groups that need to be engaged in this debate. But within these broad groupings, there is considerable variation. Moreover, this variation includes both “elite” and “populist” discourses.
Multicultural Meanderings 