Gerard Batten drags Ukip further right with harsh anti-Islam agenda

2018/09/22 Leave a comment

Sigh:

Ukip has proposed Muslim-only prisons, special security screening for Muslim would-be immigrants and a repeal of equalities laws before its annual conference, further indicating the party’s shift to the populist hard right under its leader, Gerard Batten.

The conference will be held from Friday. Other policies put forward in a so-called interim manifesto, which Batten said was aimed at making Ukip “a populist party in the real sense of the world”, include the abolition of the category of hate crime, as well as scrapping the Equalities and Human Rights Commission and the government’s equalities office.

The document also calls for a national inquiry into the abuse of children and women by sexual grooming gangs, something it calls “one of the greatest social scandals in English history”.

Batten, who took over the Ukip leadership from the beleaguered Henry Bolton in April, has allied himself with the far-right campaigner Tommy Robinson, who is the figurehead for an informal movement that uses grooming gangs as a means by which to campaign more widely against Islam in the UK.

The Ukip manifesto says the activity of grooming gangs had been covered up for years due to “political correctness and the fear of identifying the vast majority of the perpetrators as Muslims”.

Batten is vehement in his views on Islam, having described the religion as “a death cult”. His influence is clear in a policy programme that is likely to increase fears among more moderate Ukip members that he is seeking to create a nationalist, anti-Islam party.

Two key themes are measures connected to what it describes as “Islamic literalist and fundamentalist extremism”, and an emphasis on what the party calls a threat to free speech “driven by the political doctrine of cultural Marxism”.

On Islam, it proposes combating militancy in prisons with segregated sections of jails, or even entire jails, reserved for Muslim prisoners “who promote extremism or try to convert non-Islamic prisoners”.

As part of a wider crackdown on immigration, the manifesto suggests arrivals from Muslim countries should face a “security-based screening policy” to check their views.

In the document’s introduction, Batten says Ukip was “determined to protect our freedom of speech and the right to speak our minds without fear of the politically correct thought police knocking on our doors”.

Policies also include scrapping the concept of hate crimes, whereby prejudice can be considered an aggravating factor in offences. In addition to abolishing equalities organisations and banning positive discrimination, Ukip would aim to get rid of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and the British Council.

Other mooted policies include overseas nationals having to live in the UK for five years before buying homes, rail nationalisation, and the abolition of the Crown Prosecution Service, the Climate Change Act, the BBC licence fee, inheritance tax and stamp duty.

The programme would be both populist and popular, Batten predicted, in its stance against establishment ideas such as “open-border uncontrolled immigration, and imposing an alien politically correct cultural agenda on their peoples”.

Batten, who took over on an one-year interim term with a mission to stabilise a party that has floundered since Nigel Farage stood down in 2016, does face dissent from a number of insiders. Some senior figures have predicted that he could face mass departures if he moves Ukip further to the hard right.

The party’s conference in Birmingham will include addresses by two controversial YouTube personalities that Batten has brought into the party.

There will be a speech by Mark Meechan, who makes videos under the name Count Dankula. He styles himself as a comedian and free-speech advocate, but remains best known for being fined after he posted a video of his girlfriend’s pug dog giving Nazi salutes.

There will also be a video address by Carl Benjamin, otherwise known as Sargon of Akkad. His content is based around opposition to Islam, but he has been accused of misogyny and abuse.

Source: Gerard Batten drags Ukip further right with harsh anti-Islam agenda

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Hungary warns of retaliation if Ukraine acts on dual citizenship spat

2018/09/22 Leave a comment

Citizenship dispute over ethnic versus state loyalties?

Budapest has warned Kiev that it will respond to any action that it takes over secretly recorded footage that seems to show people in western Ukrainebeing granted Hungarian citizenship and told not to inform the Ukrainian authorities about it.

The spat further strains ties between the neighbours, who are already at odds over Ukrainian education reform that Budapest says discriminates against ethnic Hungarians; in retaliation, Hungary has blocked some co-operation between Kiev and Nato, at a time when Ukraine relies on western support in its struggle with Russia.

Footage emerged on Wednesday that appears to show people receiving Hungarian citizenship and swearing an oath of loyalty to Hungary at its consulate in Berehove, western Ukraine.

Consular staff offer them congratulations and a glass of sparkling wine and advise them, in Hungarian, not to reveal that they have a second citizenship to the Ukrainian authorities.

Highly sensitive

Ukrainian law neither recognises nor explicitly prohibits dual citizenship but the subject has become highly sensitive since 2014 when, following Ukraine’s pro-western revolution, Moscow annexed Crimea and fomented a separatist uprising in eastern Ukraine, where most of the country’s ethnic Russians live.

The Budapest government of Viktor Orbán, meanwhile, has been extending its influence among the two million or so ethnic Hungarians who live in neighbouring states, doling out more than one million passports – with voting rights – since 2011.

“We already knew full well that it was happening and we warned our Hungarian colleagues about it,” Ukrainian foreign minister Pavlo Klimkinsaid of Budapest’s alleged surreptitious distribution of passports to citizens of his country.

“But this is already proof and with this proof one can’t remain silent – one needs to react. I know how we will react – this consul will go to Budapest or some other Hungarian town but he, in actual fact, is just a cog in this diplomatic machine.”

On Twitter, Mr Klimkin added: “Hungary has two options. Either prove that the video of the granting [of citizenship] is fake, or take action immediately. I think only the second one is realistic.”

Mr Klimkin said he would discuss the issue with Hungarian counterpart Péter Szijjártó in New York next week at the UN General Assembly.

Budapest “will not allow the Ukrainian administration to further worsen the situation of [the country’s] Hungarians, and condemns the attempts to intimidate them in the strongest possible terms,” Mr Szijjártó said on Thursday.

The expulsion of the consul in Berehove “would place relations between the two countries in another dimension and would not remain unanswered”, he added.

“Hungary is continuously monitoring developments and it is possible that further measures to slow Ukraine’s integration [with the west] may also be required in future.”

Source: Hungary warns of retaliation if Ukraine acts on dual citizenship spat

Filed under Multiculturalism

Refugee board releases guide to deal with bad lawyers, consultants

2018/09/22 Leave a comment

The twitter traffic I have seen from immigration lawyers applaud this (overdue) move:

The Immigration and Refugee Board has issued new guidelines to help its decision-makers and the public deal with complaints involving allegations of substandard legal representation.

“In the past, there were no formal procedures established at the board for dealing with allegations against former counsel, and each situation was dealt with on a case-by-case basis,” said spokesperson Anna Pape.

“Now, after internal and external consultation, the IRB has developed its own protocol to guide the decision-makers and the parties, based on the procedures in the Federal Court and in other courts.”

While some complaints about counsel raise legitimate concerns, others can be controversial because people may make them to try to delay proceedings or to demand that their case be reopened in the event of a negative decision.

Among the most high-profile complaints in recent years were from Roma refugees against three Toronto lawyers — Viktor Hohots, Joseph Farkas and Erzsebet Jaszi — who were later disciplined by the Law Society of Upper Canada, only after most of the complainants had their claims rejected and were deported with no redress.

The refugees’ complaints alleged the lawyers accepted legal aid retainers but abdicated their professional responsibilities, engaged in professional misconduct and negligently represented their clients, and ultimately led to their claims being rejected. Most only raised their concerns to Toronto’s Roma Community Centre when the majority of their claims were refused.

While critics welcome the guidelines and believe they can help ensure decision-makers take such complaints seriously, some said they are long overdue, coming four years after the Federal Court published similar protocol.

“It’s interesting that it took the board this long to develop a formal policy,” said York University law professor Sean Rehaag, co-author of a 2015 study that examined the odds faced by Roma in Canada’s refugee system, including inadequate legal representation.

“The biggest problem is these people are vulnerable. They may not know their rights or speak the language and are scared of retribution. There will never be full assurance against problematic counsel.”

The new guidelines apply to the board’s four tribunals that deal with asylum claims and appeals as well as immigration detention and appeals. They detail the steps individuals must take to complain against their counsel and the documentation they need when the issue arises in the middle of a proceeding or after a decision is made.

Complainants must provide the board with documentation showing they have informed their former counsel about the allegations and provided them 10 days to respond to the claims. They must also release their solicitor-client privilege to the extent necessary to allow former counsel to respond to the allegations.

Meanwhile, adjudicators can give direction or issue orders to make the proceeding fairer or more efficient despite the guidelines. They may also disclose a counsel’s breach of professional obligations, such as incompetence, negligence and misconduct to relevant regulatory body.

According to Pape, the board reported complaints against 10 lawyers and nine immigration consultants to their respective professional regulators in 2017. So far this year, they referred three lawyers and two consultants to their licensing bodies.

Source: Refugee board releases guide to deal with bad lawyers, consultants

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

The latest hiring taboo: class

2018/09/21 Leave a comment

Linda Nazareth on class bias in hiring decisions, citing a HBR blind cv study:

We love stories of rags to riches, and rightly so.

In North America, we adore hearing about the scholarship student becoming a CEO, or of the person who immigrates with a few dollars to his name then ends up a mega-success. We are all about income mobility, and are happy to talk about it. What we do not talk about is “class,” maybe because it is a so distasteful a topic as to be taboo. And yet, class diversity exists and arguably should be a consideration in building a balanced and effective workplace, and by extension a productive economy.

The issue of “class migrants” was bravely taken on by researchers Joan Williams, Marina Multhaup and Sky Mihaylo in a recent piece in the Harvard Business Review. Making the argument that those who started out in what they call “working class” backgrounds bring unique skills to the workplace, the authors assert that savvy companies should actively seek out those from diverse income backgrounds, or at least stop discriminating against them.

But wait, goes the argument, no one is likely to ditch a résumé from someone who started out with humble beginnings, because no one would know that they did, right? It is not like ignoring every applicant with a female-sounding name, for example. And while it is true that economic discrimination may not be as easy as ditching everyone named Jill in favour of all the Jacks, it tends to happen even if those who are discriminating do not realize it.

In a study done by researchers Lauren River and Adras Tilscik, fictitious résumés were sent to 316 offices at law firms across the United States, ostensibly from students looking for summer positions. All listed hobbies, although some were “upper class” (sailing, polo and classical music) while others were”‘lower class” (pick-up soccer, track and field and country music). The result? Sixteen per cent of the first group got a callback, compared to 1 per cent of the second.

The managers at the law firms may not have gone as far as thinking that they did not want to hang with the kind of people who ran track, but more that they felt that the polo players would be a good fit with their firms. In economics, this is known as the “signalling” hypothesis, whereby some characteristics are considered signals of other qualities even if the characteristics themselves are not being sought (unless there are billable hours for polo, which there might be).

From a job-seeker’s perspective, the best advice seems to be to just leave your hobbies off your résumé, or at least to lie about what they are (which is to say, if you like Lady Antebellum, for goodness sake keep it to yourself). Or, if you did not grow up with the right bona fides, do as legions of women have been told and just learn to play golf and talk about it as much as you can if you want to succeed in the corporate sphere.

The thing is, this is not just a job-seeker’s problem, but a company’s problem as well. For firms looking for the best talent, limiting the pool in any way seems kind of foolhardy. Leadership qualities are often correlated with having transcended income levels (one study of those in the U.S. Army, for example, found that class migrants were the most effective leaders). If you are trying to build the best workforce, you want to have access to the best workers, so figuring out how to attract those from a wide swathe of economic backgrounds should arguably be part of any policy on diversity.

In their Harvard Business Review article, the researchers assert that to do this you have to do more than just go to the top schools and look for diverse candidates when bringing in entry-level candidates, you have to actually look at schools that might not be considered top-tier: a top student from one of those schools could be a much better hire than an average one from the usual choices. Perhaps more controversially, they also suggest going easy on referral hiring (which many find an effective way to get good candidates) since the friends and relatives of employees are likely to give you more of the same in terms of economic characteristics.

Looking at this from a wider perspective, we are not exactly serving the wider economy by making it difficult for people to be accepted and assimilate into the workforce in a way that makes the best use of their talents. We have long talked about the barriers that stop some from making their way through high school and getting into postsecondary institutions. More recently, there has been a recognition that those who come from a background where acquiring a postsecondary education is unusual are much more likely to drop out without finishing than those where it is the norm. In both cases, there has been a recognition that fully engaging people helps them, but also helps create a better labour force and a stronger economy.

And so perhaps we need to take it one step further and talk about the last thing we want to talk about.

Source: Linda Nazareth

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Chantal Hébert: Quebec provides a warning that Scheer should be careful about making immigration a campaign theme

2018/09/21 Leave a comment

Good insightful column as usual:

Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives may want to push pause on plans to make immigration a signature federal campaign theme next fall long enough to take stock of the turn in the Quebec election conversation.

Coalition Avenir Québec Leader François Legault thought he was reaching for a low-hanging fruit when he embraced the issue. With less than two weeks to go until the Oct. 1 vot,e it has turned into a poisoned apple.

Since midcampaign, the CAQ has lost a significant amount of support.

The latest Léger sounding — done between last Thursday’s French-language debate and Monday’s English-language debate — found a six-point drop in the party’s lead among the francophone voters who will determine the outcome of the election.

Legault’s hopes for a governing majority are fading fast. It could still get worse. With the last leaders’ face-off set for Thursday, only half of his supporters say their choice is final.

The decline in CAQ fortunes essentially comes down to one issue: immigration and the party’s bid to both reduce Quebec’s overall intake of immigrants and accelerate, by coercive means if necessary, their integration into the province’s French-language mainstream.

Under the party’s plan, Quebec would cut its annual intake of immigrants by one fifth and those who after three years fail to meet the province’s language requirements would be made to leave. (It remains unclear how that would be achieved.)

At the time the policy was conceived last spring, Legault and his brain trust believed they had come up with a winning combination, a way to tap into longstanding francophone concerns over the preservation of Quebec’s French-language identity without alienating the province’s non-francophone voters.

Instead the plan has become a millstone.

Many voters are repulsed by the coercive regimen his party is proposing to impose on future immigrants. Others question the notion that Quebec’s immigration intake should be reduced.

On the latter, Legault has managed to run afoul of the mayors of Montreal and Quebec City and of many smaller towns spread out across the province.

They are all arguing that with Quebec plagued by labour shortages caused by the fast-aging of its population, the time is particularly ill chosen to cut down on immigration.

The Léger poll found Quebecers divided over the issue with 45 per cent in favour of a reduction and 47 per cent against.

But with the bulk of the province’s chattering class along with his election rivals aligned against his proposals, Legault is clearly losing the air war.

He has been in damage-control mode for most of the past week, scrambling to put the issue of his own signature policy to rest. But with every new explanation, there have been more questions as to how much actual thinking has gone into the crafting of the CAQ’s immigration platform and what the many unanswered issues it raises say about the party’s competence to run a government.

As the Léger poll was putting a number on the rising toll Legault’s decision to fight part of the campaign on the immigration minefield is taking on his party’s fortunes, the Conservative opposition in the House of Commons was accusing the Trudeau government of having eroded voters’ confidence in Canada’s immigration policy.

But in the province where the issue has been top of mind for weeks — the very place that is ground zero for the influx of irregular border crossers transiting from the U.S. to Canada — the evidence suggests otherwise.

For the first time in decades, there is an expanding Quebec audience, outside of the already diverse Montreal area, supporting the notion that immigration is part of the solution to the province’s economic challenges.

At the same time, the federal Conservative party’s summer-long effort to highlight the irregular refugee issue has had little or no echo in the provincial campaign. The refugee file started to drop from the Quebec radar around the time the Trump’s administration’s policy of separating the children of illegal immigrants to the U.S. from their parents surfaced in the media. That is probably not a complete coincidence.

And then for all the talk about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau losing the argument over irregular border crossings, it has so far had no significant impact on his party’s fortunes. At the end of a difficult summer for his government, his ruling party continues to enjoy a prohibitive lead in Quebec. At the national level, the gap between the leading Liberals and the Conservatives has widened.

There is a reason why mainstream provincial and federal parties have rarely if ever made immigration a major campaign plank in the past. As Legault’s experience is demonstrating, it is easy to lose control of the narrative.

Source: Chantal Hébert: Quebec provides a warning that Scheer should be careful about making immigration a campaign theme

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

Inside YouTube’s Far-Right Radicalization Factory

2018/09/21 1 Comment

Interesting study, symptomatic of the problems with social media companies:

YouTube is a readymade radicalization network for the far right, a new study finds.

The Google-owned video platform recently banned conspiracy outlet InfoWars and its founder Alex Jones for hate speech. But another unofficial network of fringe channels is pulling YouTubers down the rabbit hole of extremism, said the Tuesday report from research group Data & Society.

The study tracked 65 YouTubers—some of them openly alt-right or white nationalist, others who claim to be simply libertarians, and most of whom have voiced anti-progressive views—as they collaborated across YouTube channels. The result, the study found, is an ecosystem in which a person searching for video game reviews can quickly find themselves watching a four-hour conversation with white nationalist Richard Spencer.

Becca Lewis, the researcher behind the report, calls the group the Alternative Influence Network. Its members include racists like Spencer, Gamergate figureheads like Carl Benjamin (who goes by ‘Sargon of Akkad’), and talk-show hosts like Joe Rogan, who promotes guests from fringe ideologies. Not all people in the group express far-right political views themselves, but will platform guests who do. Combined, the 65 YouTubers account for millions of YouTube followers, who can find themselves clicking through a series of increasingly radical-right videos.

Take Rogan, a comedian and self-described libertarian whose 3.5 million subscribers recently witnessed him host a bizarre interviewwith Tesla founder Elon Musk. While Rogan might not express extreme views, his guests often tend to be more fringe. Last year, he hosted Benjamin, the anti-feminist who gained a large following for his harassment campaigns during Gamergate.

Rogan’s interview with Benjamin, which has nearly 2 million views, describes Benjamin as an “Anti-Identitarian liberal YouTuber.” It’s a misleading title for Rogan fans who might go on to view Benjamin’s work.

Benjamin, in turn, has also claimed not support the alt-right. Like other less explicitly racist members of the network, he’s hyped his “not racist” cred by promoting livestreamed “debates” (a favorite term in these circles) with white supremacists.

But the line between “debate” and collaboration can be indistinct, as Lewis noted in her study. She pointed to one such debate between Benjamin and Spencer, which was moderated by white nationalist creep Jean-Francois Gariepy, and which briefly became the world’s top trending live video on YouTube, with more than 10,000 live viewers.

“In his video with [Richard] Spencer, Benjamin was presumably debating against scientific racism, a stance he frequently echoes,” Lewis wrote in her study. “However, by participating in the debate, he was building a shared audience—and thus, a symbiotic relationship— with white nationalists. In fact, Benjamin has become a frequent guest on channels that host such ‘debates,’ which often function as group entertainment as much as genuine disagreements.”

Debates are often better measures of rhetorical skill than they are of an idea’s merits. A well-spoken idiot might stand a good chance against a shy expert in a televised argument. When they disagreed during the four-hour livestream, Spencer, a more practiced speaker, mopped the floor with Benjamin. The debate earned Spencer new followers, some of whom appear to have been lured in by the other YouTubers’ thinly-disguised bigotry.

“I’ve never really listened to Spencer speak before,” one commenter wrote. “But it is immediately apparent that he’s on a whole different level.”

And Benjamin has been willing to collaborate with further-right far right YouTubers when the circumstances benefited him.

“In many ways, we do have similar objectives,” he told the openly racist YouTuber Millennial Woes in one video cited in the study. “We have the same enemies, right? I mean, you guys hate the SJWs, I hate the SJWs. I want to see the complete destruction of social justice. . . . If the alt-right took the place of the SJWs, I would have a lot less to fear.”

“Some of the more mainstream conservatives or libertarians are able to have it both ways,” Lewis told The Daily Beast on Tuesday. “They can say they reject the alt-right … but at the same time, there’s a lot of nudging and winking.”

Her report cited other instances of this phenomenon, including self-identified “classical liberal” YouTuber Dave Rubin, who promotes anti-progressive views on his talk show, where he hosts more extreme personalities, ostensibly for debate. But the debates can skew friendly. The study pointed to a conversation in which Rubin allowed far-right YouTuber Stefan Molyneux to make junk science claims unchecked. A description for the video encouraged viewers to do their own research, but provided links to Molyneux’s own content.

“It gives a generally unchallenged platform for that white nationalist and their ideas,” Lewis said on Tuesday.

YouTube’s algorithms can sometimes reward fringe content. Researcher Zeynep Tufekci previously highlighted the phenomenonwhen she noted that, after she watched footage of Donald Trump rallies, YouTube began recommending an increasingly radical series of white supremacist and conspiracy videos.

Lewis said YouTubers have learned to leverage the site’s algorithms, frontloading their videos with terms like “liberal” and “intersectional” in a bid to “hijack” search results that would typically be dominated by the left.

YouTube, which is built to keep users watching videos, might be a perfect recruiting platform for fringe movements, which want followers to remain similarly engaged.

“One way scholars of social movements often talk about recruitment is in terms of the capacity of the movement to bring in new recruits and then retain them,” Joan Donovan, a research lead at Data & Society said on Tuesday.“Social media is optimized for engagement, which is both recruitment of an audience and retention of that audience. These groups often use the tools of analytics to make sure they continue to grow their networks.”

Source: Inside YouTube’s Far-Right Radicalization Factory

Filed under Other Tagged with , , ,

Analysis – Merkel takes a gamble with new immigration law

2018/09/21 Leave a comment

Skilled labour focus:

Chancellor Angela Merkel hopes a new immigration law will make it easier for foreign workers to find jobs in Germany, but her push to fill a record number of vacancies risks angering voters who still resent her open-door refugee policy.

With an ageing population and a shrinking workforce, Germany needs greater flexibility to fill more than a million empty positions, business leaders say.

“We will continue to depend on foreign professionals,” Merkel said in the Bundestag last week, defending her immigration plans against criticism from opposition politicians.

“Companies should not be leaving the country because they can’t find staff,” Merkel said, adding that many entrepreneurs were more concerned about hiring skilled workers than getting tax relief.

The new law to be discussed by Merkel and her cabinet later this month aims to attract workers from outside the European Union, although they will need a professional qualification and German language skills when applying for a work visa, according to a paper drawn up by officials.

Government officials see the law, which is welcomed by employers, as a game-changer in the global race for talent since other countries are espousing stricter immigration rules.

But it could anger voters who feel left behind after Merkel’s decision to welcome more than a million refugees in 2015.

An opinion poll this month showed 51 percent felt her government did not take Germans’ concerns about immigration seriously. In eastern Germany, the figure was 66 percent.

There are regional elections next year in the eastern states of Saxony, Brandenburg and Thuringia, where the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is expected to make strong gains at the cost of Merkel’s conservatives and her centre-left coalition partners, the Social Democrats (SPD).

INFLUX

The unprecedented 2015 influx of asylum seekers, mainly from Muslim countries such as Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq, has already caused popular anger and propelled the AfD, which rejects the new immigration law, into the national parliament.

Deep divisions became apparent last month in the eastern city of Chemnitz, scene of violent far-right protests after migrants were blamed for the fatal stabbing of a German man.

Referring to Chemnitz, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, leader of the Christian Social Union, Merkel’s Bavarian sister party, described migration as the “mother of all political problems” in Germany.

Merkel may escape a political backlash if she can convince voters the new law will address specific labour shortages and not increase overall competition in the jobs market.

“If she can credibly make the point that this is about Germany’s economic self-interest, it won’t fuel angst among those who already feel alienated in their own country,” said Gero Neugebauer, a political expert at Berlin’s Free University.

“But if not, then this law will backfire on Merkel, especially taking into account that there are three local elections next year in eastern Germany,” he said.

There are also regional elections next month in Bavaria and Hesse, where the rise of the AfD could make it harder to form coalition governments.

Allowing even more foreigners into the country is a risk for Merkel – even if the labour force in Europe’s biggest economy is forecast to shrink drastically and can only be stabilized with net immigration of 400,000 people every year until 2060. [http://tmsnrt.rs/2edwT7n ]

Due to a prolonged economic upswing, job vacancies have hit a record high of 1.2 million while unemployment is at its lowest since German reunification in 1990, according to the Labour Office. [http://tmsnrt.rs/2edwT7n ]

Labour shortages cost the economy up to 0.9 percentage points of output every year, according to the IW German Economic Institute.

STRUGGLING

Among companies struggling to find staff is Eyeem, a Berlin start-up that connects millions of photographers globally with agencies and clients through an online platform.

“We’re 100 percent affected by labour shortages,” Eyeem’s personnel chief, Michael Jones, said at the company’s headquarters in Kreuzberg, a multicultural Berlin district that is home to many European immigrants.

“We’re struggling to fill numerous vacancies in areas such as software engineering and sales,” Jones said. In some cases, it can take six months for a foreign candidate to get the green light from immigration authorities.

In one case, Eyeem wants to hire a specialist from Egypt but is still awaiting final confirmation. This makes it hard for Eyeem to plan and for the Egyptian worker to get on with moving to Germany.

Other sectors affected by labour shortages are construction, education, child care and geriatric nursing.

Arno Schwalie, chief executive of nursing home operator Korian in Germany, says the number of elderly people needing permanent care will rise by more than a quarter over the next 15 years.

“By then, we might have to deal with a shortage of more than 250,000 workers in the care sector,” Schwalie said. “Qualified immigrants can help close this gap. This is not the only solution, but part of the solution.”

Health Minister Jens Spahn has said young people from Kosovo and Albania could help fill 50,000 geriatric care vacancies.

Labour unions say nursing homes could attract local workers by improving pay and conditions.

The AfD rejects the new law, saying it will encourage immigration and lead to “wage dumping” at the expense of less-educated locals.

“If you look at the very small wage rises, then you don’t need to be an expert to say that there actually is not a lack of skilled workers,” AfD lawmaker Uwe Witt said.

Merkel stresses that the immigration law is accompanied by a 4 billion euro programme to help Germany’s 800,000 long-term unemployed find work.

CHANGE

While a growing number of the 2015 migrants are finding jobs, the process is slow given the urgency of the need for workers. It takes three to five years for a poorly-educated Syrian or Iraqi to learn German and get a professional qualification.

In addition, the coalition parties disagree over whether refugees should be allowed to shed asylum status if they have found a job and learned German.

The conservatives say this will encourage immigration by asylum seekers without the right skills. The SPD want a more pragmatic approach.

“It’s about preventing a situation where we send back the right people – and then have to painstakingly search for skilled workers abroad,” SPD Labour Minister Hubertus Heil told Reuters.

A compromise floated by officials envisages that only asylum seekers currently in Germany can make the switch, with future refugees excluded.

Germany has become the second favourite destination for immigrants after the United States, attracting more than 1 million in 2016, according to OECD figures.

Of those, more than 600,000 are European Union nationals, who can choose where to live and work in the bloc.

But Germany expects these numbers to fall as the economic upswing in Europe means people can find work at home. In addition, the number of working age people in Europe is declining due to low birth rates.

“We must make full use of all the domestic potential. But this simply won’t be enough, we also need skilled workers from countries outside Europe,” said Ingo Kramer, president of the BDA employers’ association.

For Kramer, Germany’s economic future is at risk if the government fails to adopt a modern immigration law. For Merkel, the enterprise is part of her efforts to secure her legacy.

Source: Analysis – Merkel takes a gamble with new immigration law

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

Quebec: Rich investors granted Canadian residency despite fake documents and dubious assets, ex-officials say

2018/09/21 Leave a comment

Good in-depth reporting. Investor immigration programs invite abuse as the former federal and Prince Edward Island programs also attest. In Quebec’s case, back door entry to British Columbia and Ontario with minimal benefits:

Some rich foreigners seeking Canadian residency under a special Quebec program for wealthy investors couldn’t point to the province on a map, while others submitted fake documents or disguised their assets — yet many of them were still accepted for immigration, former civil servants say.

The officials, charged with administering the Quebec Immigrant Investor Program (QIIP), say they were sometimes pressured into ignoring signs that applicants’ fortunes were founded on corruption or other ill-gotten gains.

“It’s a program that has lots of gaps, that permits people with dubious or even illicit business to launder money through the program and to buy themselves citizenship inexpensively,” said one former immigration officer.

Numerous current and former civil servants in Quebec spoke to Radio-Canada’s investigative program Enquête on condition of anonymity, revealing what they see as major flaws in an immigration program that has granted permanent residency to tens of thousands of people since it began in 1986.

QIIP applicants must have at least $2 million in assets and agree to loan $1.2 million of that to the Quebec government interest-free for five years. The government invests the money and uses the interest to provide grants to small- and medium-sized businesses.

“We were under a lot of pressure to approve applicants in order to meet annual financial targets,” said one ex-bureaucrat.

Staff were overwhelmed

The federal government used to have a similar immigration track for rich investors seeking to settle in Canada, but shut it down in 2014 due to concerns about its effectiveness.

The Quebec version still accepts 1,900 people a year, plus their family members, with two-thirds coming from mainland China. Last year alone, more than 5,000 people obtained their permanent residency through the program.

All of the applications from China would’ve pass through Quebec’s immigration office in Hong Kong, until it closed last year. The office was overwhelmed by the workload, with staff working 60 to 70 hours a week to keep up, according to the former officials who spoke to Enquête.

The provincial government allotted seven hours to screen each application — including verifying that applicants had come by their fortunes honestly. But as one former immigration officer said: “It takes time to do proper due diligence, and we didn’t have it.”

Officials’ suspicions could be raised by any number of things, including copycat submissions.

“The applicants were all heads of sales, then became assistant managers,” the ex-bureaucrat said. “The first time you have an applicant like that, you tell yourself, ‘Why not.’ Then you get 10, 20, 30 more from the same immigration consultant. It raises serious doubts about their back story.”

In the early 2000s, the Quebec government hired an outside firm to help vet applications. It was found that more than 65 per cent of them contained forged documentation.

And according to data obtained under Quebec’s access-to-information law, from 2013 to 2017, a total of 1,783 immigrant investor applications were rejected by the province’s officers in Hong Kong due to faked documents.

‘Really shocked me’

But even as dodgy candidates were flagged, immigration officers say they felt pressure to overlook many applications with apparent shortcomings.

One former bureaucrat recalled rejecting a candidate on suspicions their assets were corruptly obtained. His boss instructed him to be more lenient next time because corruption existed in Quebec too.

We knew they weren’t coming to Quebec and we also knew they weren’t going to learn French.– Former immigration official

Around the same time, the Charbonneau Commission was investigating corruption and collusion in Quebec’s construction industry. “It really shocked me to hear that,” he said.

Another civil servant said they were told by a senior official at Quebec’s Immigration Ministry not to dig too deep into each applicant’s background. Some immigration staff bowed to those pressures and accepted more applicants, the people interviewed by Enquête said, while others refused.

Government claims credit for job creation

In a statement, Quebec’s Immigration Ministry said its vetting process is effective at maintaining the integrity of the immigrant-investor program. It said applicants and their assets are examined multiple times: by financial institutions that help recruit them, by governmental financial analysts, and by immigration personnel. Finally, FINTRAC, the federal financial intelligence agency, verifies the funds that successful applicants lend to the Quebec government.

The province also says the program has had important economic benefits, allowing for $695 million in grants to small- and medium-sized businesses since 2000 — which it says has translated into tens of thousands of jobs.

But those numbers may be overly rosy.

Grants from the Quebec Immigrant Investor Program are limited to a maximum of 10 per cent of a business’s expansion or modernization project. Nevertheless, Investment Quebec, the provincial agency that administers the grants, counts all the jobs created or saved by the expansion projects it supports — meaning the employment gains seem to be inflated by a factor of 10.

Investment Quebec maintains it’s a standard method of calculating and it doesn’t deem every one of those jobs to stem from its grants.

Westward bound

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of QIIP is that while it’s meant to draw wealthy investors to la belle province, the vast majority who have taken up residency in Canada under the program settle in other provinces.

As part of the process, applicants have to sign two forms declaring their intention to reside in Quebec.

But once in Canada, the law allows anyone to move freely. Data reported earlier this year by Global News shows that 85 per cent of Quebec’s immigrant investors — since the program began in 1986 — have ended up in British Columbia and Ontario. Only 10 per cent remained in Quebec.

“We’re way off our immigration targets under this program,” said Suzanne Ethier, who served as Quebec’s associate deputy minister of immigration from 2005 to 2006.

“We knew they weren’t coming to Quebec and we also knew they weren’t going to learn French,” said one of the former bureaucrats who helped run the program.

Quebec Immigration Minister David Heurtel told reporters in March that he wasn’t fazed by this tendency. “Even if an immigrant investor goes elsewhere in Canada, their money stays here,” he said.

Other provinces aren’t so keen to welcome Quebec’s immigrants, though, and to bear the costs of providing health care and education. Freedom-of-information records obtained by Enquêteshow the B.C. government complained to Quebec several times in 2015 and 2016

Former federal immigration minister Chris Alexander, who served in Stephen Harper’s last government, said he brought up the issue with his Quebec counterparts, and while they “recognized there were problems, they weren’t ready to move forward with any changes.”

Quebec has since taken steps to retain more of its immigrant investors, Heurtel said, including prioritizing applicants from francophone countries and sending out videos and brochures promoting living in Quebec.

But that hasn’t been enough to alter how the program’s critics see things.

“The Quebec Immigrant Investor Program is a scam from start to finish. I think that everyone who’s involved in the program knows that,” said Ian Young, the Vancouver correspondent for Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post newspaper and a seasoned observer of immigration patterns from China to Canada.

“I think that includes policy-makers, the people who facilitate it and the immigrants themselves.”

Source: Rich investors granted Canadian residency despite fake documents and dubious assets, ex-officials say

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

Revealed: how Canada border agency tried to conceal Chinese immigration mega-fraud files from tax collectors

2018/09/20 Leave a comment

More good reporting from Ian Young of SCMP:

Last year, Canadian tax collectors and border officers were hailing their cooperation on the biggest immigration fraud case in Canadian history – that of unlicensed consultant Xun “Sunny” Wang, who helped Chinese millionaires fabricate evidence needed to maintain residency and obtain citizenship in Canada.

“The CRA [Canada Revenue Agency] works closely with other law enforcement agencies and departments, including the CBSA [Canada Border Services Agency], to help maintain the integrity of the tax system,” said Elvis Dutra, Assistant Director of Criminal Investigations for the CRA, in a press release about the sentencing of Wang’s staff for their role in the scam. “Tax evasion costs all of us,” Dutra added.

But in contrast to that depiction, a 2013 court ruling reveals how the CBSA resisted the CRA, and tried to conceal the vast haul of evidence about Wang and his wealthy clients, hundreds of whom have since been blacklisted from the country for fraudulent behaviour.

The failed effort to impede the tax collectors is described in a judgment by Associate Chief Justice Austin Cullen; listed as the applicant in pursuit of the files in the Supreme Court of British Columbia is the CRA, while the CBSA is listed as a respondent alongside Wang himself and his firm, New Can Consultants.

Cullen’s April 8, 2013, ruling describes the respondents attempting to withhold from the CRA 90 boxes of files and 18 computers that were seized from Wang by the CBSA in 2012 raids. The CRA’s demand for the material was an invasion of privacy, the respondents said, and the tax agents should be required to demonstrate probable grounds for suspicion of an offence – but not based on the contents of the actual documents being sought.

The respondents also offered an alternative argument – that handing over the files would amount to a breach of a sealing order imposed on “records pertaining to [the] search warrant”.

Cullen was dismissive.

“I conclude that the CRA is not obliged to demonstrate the existence of reasonable and probable grounds to be permitted to examine the materials seized by the CBSA pursuant to a valid warrant. Nor do I find that the provision of information from CBSA to CRA implicates a reasonable expectation of privacy on the part of the respondents in the circumstances.”

Cullen also said the sealing order on the search warrant did not cover the actual material seized in the searches, which were conducted on Wang’s home and offices on April 17, 2012. “It is apparent from reading the sealing order that what it refers to is ‘the records’ comprising the basis for obtaining the search warrant and the search warrant itself, not the fruits of the search,” he said, as he ordered the CBSA and Wang to relinquish the files to the CRA within 14 days.

‘Protecting taxpayer information’

In response to questions lodged separately with the CRA and CBSA, the agencies issued a joint statement to the SCMP, saying that “the opposition of an action does not reflect on the level of cooperation between the two agencies.”

“Federal partners must exercise due diligence when exchanging information with each other, and ensure they do so in accordance with the legislation and policies in place,” the response said. “At times, requests for information exchanges will not be covered by these policies and as such, could be subject to specific rules or require that requests be made to the courts to support transparency and to protect taxpayer information.”

It added: “In cases in which another Government Department or entity are seeking access to evidence seized through a warrant execution it must apply for a court order to obtain copies.”

In a response to a follow-up question, the CRA refused to describe what actions it was taking against Wang’s clients, saying “the CRA does not comment on other compliance actions related to this case that it may or may not be undertaking”.

However, a large number of possible tax offences are outlined in court cases and immigration hearings resulting from the demise of Wang’s scam (Wang was sentenced to seven years’ jail in 2015 but was freed late last year after serving a third of his time).

“In fact, 146 [of Wang’s] clients received a total of almost C$188,000 in Working Income Tax Benefits meant for working taxpayers with low incomes,” wrote immigration tribunal panellist Susy Kim in a November 2017 ruling, that imposed an exclusion order against Wang’s client Rui Zhang, husband Zhe Li and their minor son.

Other cases involving Wang’s clients feature immigration tribunalists loudly flagging a core problem – the clients’ failure to properly declare worldwide income.

One such client was Ying Wang, who was deemed “vague and evasive” about her millionaire husband Pi Long Sun’s business activities and earnings in China.

Sun’s “nominal income tax returns in Canada” did not represent his global income” and “he was evasive about his actual income,” wrote tribunalist Craig Costantino in a 2017 ruling that the couple be excluded from Canada for five years. “On a balance of probabilities, Mr Sun was not reporting his worldwide income to the Canada Revenue Agency,” Costantino added.

Another Wang client – whose exclusion order was overturned last year, and who the SCMP has therefore decided not to name – lived in a C$10million Vancouver mansion, on which he was paying a C$2 million mortgage on his son’s behalf. But he too was deemed to have filed “only nominal” tax returns in Canada.

“[These] I find do not represent his global income. I find that he was evasive about his actual income,” wrote the tribunalist. “I find that it is clear that his business activities in China generate significant income as nothing he or his family have done in Canada can account for the value of their properties in Canada, let alone the C$6 million worth of assets that the appellant stated he currently holds in China.”

Current and former CRA auditors have previously complained to the SCMP about a historical lack of cooperation from immigration officials. CBSA was carved off from the immigration department and other agencies in 2003.

In 2016, one former veteran auditor, who acted as a go-between for the SCMP and a current auditor, said “there was/is no cooperation between CRA and Citizenship and Immigration Canada [the former name of Immigration and Refugees Canada] that we are aware of.

“If there is, then a memorandum of understanding would have to exist. There may in fact be one – but no one I talked to knows of it,” the ex-auditor said. “And even if there is then you have to go through an intergovernmental affairs officer to get anything – red tape and time. There is no bulk data that we ever knew of, no database easily accessible by an auditor.”

Both the current and former auditor requested anonymity to discuss CRA matters without authorisation.

This month, the SCMP reported that 860 of Wang’s clients had already either lost immigration status – resulting in expulsion and five-year bans from entering the country – or been reported for inadmissibility. The CBC has separately reported that more than 200 others face the potential loss of their Canadian citizenship.

Source: Revealed: how Canada border agency tried to conceal Chinese immigration mega-fraud files from tax collectors

Filed under Citizenship, Immigration Tagged with , , , ,

If you want a fair definition of Zionism, it’s best to ask a Palestinian

2018/09/20 1 Comment

Interesting and provocative column on the IHRA definition of antisemitism and its use:

There are lots of good reasons to think the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism, now adopted “in full” by Labour’s national committee and by Labour MPs, is, well, a bit rubbish.

  • The actual definition of anti-Semitism is not up to much
  • The illustrations are a legal mess
  • It appears to be having no impact on anti-Semitism in the (few) countries which have endorsed it
  • And it’s already being used to prevent open debate on university campuses

A recent article by Tony Lerman gathers together all of these points and more.

It was short-term political expediency which drove this week’s decision-making, necessitated by an ongoing high-stakes campaign of vilification that takes no prisoners.

The Liberal Democrat Party has also fallen into line, no doubt realising that attempting to conduct a rational discussion over the merits of the IHRA burns up too much political capital. And now we read that the Church of England wants to adopt it too. The sanctification of this document is going ecumenical.

But there’s a further problem which should be reason enough to dump the whole IHRA definition, and its illustrations, in the rubbish bin. And it goes beyond the need to guarantee freedom of speech.

The truth of the matter is, the Jewish community can no longer define “Zionism,” or indeed “anti-Semitism,” without the help of Palestinians.

The right to define

I know what some people will be thinking.

Surely, it’s for the Jewish community, through its leadership, to determine what anti-Semitism is? What Zionism is? Surely, an oppressed people should have the right to define the nature of the oppression perpetrated against them? Hence the insistence that the Labour Party adopt, in full and without amendments or caveats, the IHRA definition and illustrations.

That’s what the Board of Deputies of British Jews has asked for. So surely, that’s what it should get?

It’s become a politically difficult task, if not impossible, to challenge this assertion of the right to define what’s perceived as exclusively Jewish experience and terminology, especially at a time when identity politics rules our daily discourse.

The President of the Board of Deputies, Marie van der Zyl, provided a good example of the accepted parameters of the debate in her statement welcoming the National Executive Committee’s (NEC) decision.

“It is very long overdue and regrettable that Labour has wasted a whole summer trying to dictate to Jews what constitutes offense against us.”

Similarly, the NEC’s addition of a one-sentence free speech caveat was characterized by Simon Johnson, CEO of the Jewish Leadership Council, as driving “a coach and horses” through the anti-Semitism definition:

“It is clearly more important to the Labour leader to protect the free speech of those who hate Israel than it is to protect the Jewish community from the real threats that it faces.”

Devoid of context

But this is a perspective devoid of historical context. It just doesn’t work for the situation in which we as a Jewish community now find ourselves, and which our leaders have done so much to create.

If defining “anti-Semitism” has become, to a considerable extent, what can and can’t be said about Israel and Zionism, then how can it be a question which only (some) Jews get to answer?

And if this is really all about the right to define your own oppression, then why does this rule not apply to the Palestinians?

It’s a bit like trying to define “British colonialism” by only asking the opinion of a 19th-century British diplomat. Or praising “American freedom and values” without acknowledging the experience of Native Americans or African Americans. It makes no sense because you only get half the story, half the lived experience (at most). The language and the ideas in question have more than one owner.

Inextricably linked

For more than 100 years, the history of the Palestinians and the Jews has been inextricably linked. Neither of us can understand our past or present condition without reference to the other. Neither people’s story is complete without the other.

Of course, our interlinked relationship is not one of equality. Our story is shared but the consequences of our entanglement are vastly different.

One side has rights and national self-determination. The other side is denied those same things in the name of Jewish security and Jewish national sovereignty. In short, one side has been empowered by dispossessing the other.

The Palestinians have even become caught up in the telling of the Holocaust. Successive generations of young Jews have been taught to see Israel, as it’s currently constituted, as the only rational response to our 20th-century catastrophe. The Palestinians are seen as attempting to thwart that response.

It’s this entanglement of narratives and the need to defend Israel’s legitimacy that have led to the muddle, the confusion and the deliberate politicization of “anti-Semitism” as a concept. And, by contrast, it’s led to the spiritualization of “Zionism” so it has become not a political project but an expression of Jewish faith.All of this has forfeited our right to independently define our oppression without consulting the victims of our new faith in Jewish nationalism. The meaning of “anti-Semitism” and “Zionism” is no longer ours to determine alone. These words, and most importantly the experiences they bring with them, now belong to the Palestinian people too.

To get beyond this, we as a Jewish community, need to confront Zionism’s past and present. We need to rethink Jewish security in a post-Holocaust world. We need to build broad coalitions to tackle all forms of discrimination. That must include antisemitism from the left, and more often the right, which uses anti-Jewish myths and prejudices to promote hatred of Jews for being Jews. And that includes those who use anti-Jewish tropes to critique Israel.

Above all the though, if we want to be serious, rather than tribal, about a fair definition of Zionism, we need to ask the Palestinian people what they think and believe and feel about it. And if they tell us “Zionism is a racist endeavor” we’d better pay attention.

Reflection and repentance

The Jewish High Holidays are coming up. They are a time for reflection and repentance as an individual Jew and as part of a Jewish community. I doubt we’ll see much sign of reflection or repentance on the question of Israel/Palestine. The denial is too deep. The fear of “the other” is too great. The emotional layers of self-preservation are too many.

Not all Jews can or should be held responsible for what’s done in the name of Zionism or the actions of the State of Israel. That’s anti-Semitism. But all Jews ought to feel obligated to speak out against the discrimination, ill-treatment, and racism carried out in the name of protecting Israel. To me, that’s Judaism. And if you don’t see the discrimination, ill-treatment and racism – then read more books, listen to more Palestinian voices, open your heart.

But whether we choose to face into it or not, our relationship with the Palestinian people will remain the single most important issue facing Jews and Judaism in the 21st century.

To my Jewish readers, Shana Tova! A good New Year! May our names be written in a Book of Life that is filled with love and justice for all who call the Holy Land home.

Postscript

Ten questions to the President of the Board of Deputies

For those not following me on Facebook or Twitter, I’ve been asked to reproduce the ten questions I put earlier this week to Marie van der Zyl, the President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. No response forthcoming so far.

In a critical week for Labour and the Jewish community in Britian, here’s my ten questions to the president of the Board of Deputies, Marie van der Zyl.

1. Why are you ignoring the Jewish academic experts, notably: David Feldman, Director of the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism; Dr. Brian Klug of Oxford University; and Tony Lerman, the former Director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, who have all made critical studies of the IHRA document and found it inadequate and unhelpful in numerous ways?

2. Why are you ignoring the concerns expressed by the original drafter of the IHRA definition and its illustrations, Kenneth Stern, who has said the document is already being used around the world to chill free speech?

3. Why are you ignoring the legal opinions of the document provided by Sir Stephen Sedley, Hugh Tomlinson QC and Geoffrey Robertson QC, who have drawn out its failings in detail?

4. Why do you defend Jewish rights to determine antisemitism but support a document which will deny the Palestinian people their right to define their experience of racism caused by Zionism?

5. Can you explain why you think that Israel’s 51-year occupation of the West Bank does not meet the international definition of Apartheid?

6. Will you acknowledge the findings of the 2016 Home Affairs Select Committee report on antisemitism which noted that “there exists no reliable, empirical evidence to support the notion that there is a higher prevalence of antisemitic attitudes within the Labour Party than any other political party”?

7. Are you able to provide evidence that antisemitism is “rife” among the Labour Party’s half a million members?

8. Can you explain why the Board chose to pursue its campaign against the Labour Party only after Jeremy Corbyn became its leader and despite a YouGov survey indicating a fall in anti-Semitism among Labour voters since 2015?

9. Are you at all concerned that the Board’s campaign against Jeremy Corbyn is creating an environment of fear within the Jewish community in Britain which is unjustified and disproportionate?

10. Having stated your commitment “to being a leader for the entire community,” when do you plan to meet formally with Independent Jewish Voices, Jews for Justice for Palestinians, Jewdas, Jewish Voice for Labour, or Na’amod – British Jews Against Occupation?

Source: If you want a fair definition of Zionism, it’s best to ask a Palestinian

Filed under Antisemitism Tagged with , , , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →