Will see if this leads to curbing this citizenship for sale practice:
A blacklist of 21 countries whose so-called “golden passport” schemes threaten international efforts to combat tax evasion has been published by the west’s leading economic thinktank.
Three European countries – Malta, Monaco and Cyprus – are among those nations flagged as operating high-risk schemes that sell either residency or citizenship in a report released on Tuesday by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
In exchange for donations to a sovereign trust fund, or investments in property or government bonds, foreign nationals can become citizens of countries in which they have never lived. Other schemes, such as that operated by the UK, offer residency in exchange for sizable investments.
The programme operated by Malta is particularly popular because as a European member state its nationals, including those who buy citizenship, can live and work anywhere in the EU. The country has, since 2014, sold citizenship to more than 700 people, most of them from Russia, the former Soviet bloc, China and the Middle East.
But concern is growing among political leaders, law enforcement and intelligence agencies that the schemes are open to abuse by criminals and sanctions-busting business people.
Transparency International and Global Witness, in a joint report published last week, described how the EU had gained nearly 100,000 new residents and 6,000 new citizens in the past decade through poorly managed arrangements that were “shrouded in secrecy”.
Also on the OECD blacklist are a handful of Caribbean nations that pioneered the modern-day methods for the marketing of citizenship. These include Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Dominica, Grenada, St Lucia, and St Kitts and Nevis, which has sold 16,000 passports since relaunching its programme in 2006.
After analysing residence and citizenship schemes operated by 100 countries, the OECD says it is naming those jurisdictions that attract investors by offering low personal tax rates on income from foreign financial assets, while also not requiring an individual to spend a significant amount of time in the country.
Second passports can be misused by those wishing to “hide assets held abroad”, according to the thinktank. Its flagship initiative is a framework for countries to cooperate in the fight against tax evasion by sharing information. Known as the Common Reporting Standard, the framework allows for details of bank accounts an individual might hold abroad to be sent to their home tax office.
The OECD believes the ease with which the wealthiest individuals can obtain another nationality is undermining information sharing. If a UK national declares themselves as Cypriot, for example, information about their offshore bank accounts could be shared with Cyprus instead of Britain’s HM Revenue and Customs.
“Schemes can potentially be abused to misrepresent an individual’s jurisdiction of tax residence,” the OECD warned.
The final names on the list are Bahrain, Colombia, Malaysia, Mauritius, Montserrat, Panama, Qatar, Seychelles, Turks and Caicos Islands, United Arab Emirates and Vanuatu.
Together with the results of the analysis, the OECD is also publishing practical guidance that will enable financial institutions to identify and prevent cases of avoidance through the use of such schemes, by making sure that foreign income is reported to the actual jurisdiction of residence.
Time to set the stage for a detailed analysis comparing decisions by judges from the previous administration to see if these fears are warranted:
Dorothea Lay was on track to become a member of the Board of Immigration Appeals, part of the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review. Her 25-year government career had prepared her for the post, as reflected in four letters of recommendation from academics and current and former officials. In December 2016, nine months after submitting her application, she was offered the job. But administrations changed, Jeff Sessions assumed the role of attorney general, and by early 2018, the offer was withdrawn.
Why?
That’s the question at the center of a complaint filed by Lay, an Idaho native, with the Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal investigative body. In a letter to Lay, 53, the Executive Office for Immigration Review said it rescinded her offer because “the needs of the agency have evolved,” even though the agency announced around the same time that it wanted to expand the size of the appeals board. The complaint suggests that political considerations may have been taken into account in reviewing Lay’s background, citing Lay’s letters of recommendation from people who “had liberal backgrounds or were perceived as having liberal backgrounds.”
The suspicion of politically based hiring has lingered among Democrats, who raised concerns in April and again in May. In the May letter, directed to Michael E. Horowitz, Democrats urged the inspector general of the Justice Department to investigate “allegations of politicized hiring practices,” citing cases in which offers for immigration judges and Board of Immigration Appeals positions had been delayed or withdrawn. (Lay’s attorney, Zachary Henige, is also representing two other people who claim their offers were withdrawn over political differences.) Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd responded to the Democrats’ allegations in a letter: “As stated in every immigration judge hiring announcement, the Department of Justice does not discriminate on the basis of political affiliation.”
The investigation into Lay’s complaint is ongoing, so it’s still not clear whether there were ulterior motives behind the withdrawal of her offer. But the case speaks to how DOJ can pick and choose who fills roles and in doing so, influence who’s at the helm of deciding immigration cases.This isn’t unique to this administration. The Justice Department has considerable leeway when appointing immigration judges—the immigration courts are part of its direct purview. The attorney general therefore has unique authority to overrule decisions and hire immigration judges. To that end, Sessions appears to be shaping the court by, at the very least, hiring former law enforcement officials as immigration judges.
“The more you bring people from the same background, the same set of experiences, the same perspective, the more you expose the court to criticism,” said Ashley Tabaddor, the president of the National Association of Immigration Judges. “Those decisions will be more open to being questioned.”
Of the 140 judges hired since Donald Trump’s inauguration, more than half have past prosecutorial experience or some other government experience. The pace of hiring has also stepped up: In fiscal year 2017, the Justice Department hired 64 immigration judges, compared to 81 in fiscal year 2018—bringing the total of immigration judges to 395, according to data released by EOIR. Sessions’s hiring spree is not unusual—and it’s also not unwarranted: His predecessors brought on new immigration judges, and the immigration court backlog also continues to creep up, with the latest figure at more than 760, 000 pending cases. Of the newly hired immigration judges, at least half had received conditional offers during the Obama administration, said Kathryn Mattingly, assistant press secretary at EOIR, in an email.
It’s not just how many immigration judges are being brought on but where they’re being located. EOIR has hired immigration judges for two adjudication centers—in Falls Church, Virginia, and Fort Worth, Texas—where cases from around the country will be heard through video teleconferencing. Judges will be located at the centers, while attorneys and respondents will be in separate locations. According to Rob Barnes, a regional public information officer for EOIR, immigration judges at these centers will be evaluated like others. It’s likely then that thousands of immigration cases will be heard with respondents never seeing a judge face to face.
Across the board, there appears to be a preference for people who come from an enforcement background, according to biographies of newly hired immigration judges posted by the Justice Department. Of the 23 judges announced in August, more than half previously worked with the Department of Homeland Security, and of those remaining, most came from a law enforcement background. In September, EOIR announced 46 new immigration judges, two of which will serve in a supervisory role: 19 previously worked for ICE, 10 had served at DOJ or as a former local prosecutor, and seven had a background in military (one of whom previously served in Guantánamo). It’s not yet known how these judges will rule once they’re on the bench and whether their enforcement background will inform their decisions. But experts, attorneys, and current and former immigration judges have warned about hiring too many people from government before.
“It’s not that we’re saying [those] with law enforcement or military background are unqualified,” Tabaddor, the head of the immigration judges association, told me. “A diverse bench is what brings fairness and legitimacy to court. It’s very important for a court to be reflective of the people it serves and the community at large to gain legitimacy and respect.”
Mattingly, the EOIR spokeswoman, has provided a series of specific qualifications that all candidates for immigration judge must possess.
Previous administrations also pulled from within government, reasoning that candidates have already passed background checks and can therefore be hired more quickly. But that can present some challenges. It’s possible that having spent years fighting in court on behalf of the government, an individual might be biased, said Jeremy McKinney, an immigration lawyer in North Carolina. The American Immigration Lawyers Association, of which McKinney is a part of, and National Association of Immigration Judges, have called for the pool of immigration judges to also include people from private firms and academia.
Their concerns were backed up by Booz Allen Hamilton, which conducted a year-long study of the immigration court system at EOIR’s direction. The April 2017 study found that at least 41 percent of immigration judges previously worked in the Department of Homeland Security, and nearly 20 percent worked at other branches within the Justice Department. The report recommended broadening “hiring pools and outreach programs to increase diversity of experience among [immigration judges].” It’s not clear whether the Justice Department took the study into account in putting together its hiring plan in April 2017, the same month the study was presumably handed over.
The hiring of immigration judges has always been a contentious issue: complaints have been lodged about there not being enough career diversity; it often takes months to hire judges (though the Justice Department recently pushed the time it took down from an average of 742 days to about 266 days); and political affiliations have previously been weighed in selecting judges. In 2008, the Inspector General issued a report on the hiring practices of DOJ in selecting attorneys, immigration judges, and members of the Board of Immigration Appeals. The report concluded that hiring based on political or ideological affiliation is in violation of department policy.
The fear, as expressed by some Democrats, legal experts and immigration advocates, is that Sessions is improperly seeking out conservatives in order to to influence the tilt of the nation’s immigration courts and hire a large cadre of immigration judges who will likely far outlast his tenure.
“I think he’s trying to get a complacent judiciary: ‘Forget the title, you guys are really DOJ employees, you’re out there to carry out my policies,’” said Paul W. Schmidt, former chairman of EOIR’s Board of Immigration Appeals from 1995 to 2001 and a former immigration judge.
Beyond who the Justice Department decides to bring on board, the message Sessions sends down to judges can also heavily influence their decisions, as direct reports to the department, Schmidt and others argue.In September, for example, Sessions delivered remarks to a new class of immigration judges, the largest in history, according to the Justice Department, in which he pressed them to decide cases swiftly. “You have an obligation to decide cases efficiently and to keep our federal laws functioning effectively, fairly, and consistently,” he said. “As you take on this critically important role, I hope that you will be imaginative and inventive in order to manage a high-volume caseload. I do not apologize for expecting you to perform, at a high level, efficiently and effectively.”
The message was striking given who it’s intended for. “If he was speaking to attorneys, that’d be normal. He has the right to set prosecutorial policy,” McKinney said. “That doesn’t translate to immigration judges.” Judges—even when they are DOJ employees—are expected to be independent. By effectively telling them how to handle cases and how quickly, the Justice Department is infringing upon that independence, McKinney said.
And Sessions’s words weren’t just an expression of what he hopes judges will do either. As of October 1, the expectation to “efficiently and effectively” adjudicate cases is being enforced. Earlier this year, the Justice Department took the unprecedented step of rolling out quotas for judges. To receive a “satisfactory” performance evaluation, judges are required to clear at least 700 cases a year. According to the Justice Department, judges complete 678 cases a year on average now, meaning they will have to pick up the pace to remain in good standing.
This fall, DOJ expects to bring on at least 75 more immigration judges. Even if Sessions days as attorney general are numbered, as Trump has suggested, his selections will decide the fate of immigrants, for years to come.
Good commentary by Rothman. Largely a “plague on both houses” on liberal and conservative hypocrisy regarding their respective extremists, he is particularly pointed in his critique on conservatives:
Like so many terrible things, it all began with a broken window.
Stewards of the historic Metropolitan Republican Club on Manhattan’s Upper East Side awoke on the morning of October 12 to see their institution vandalized. A brick had shattered two windows. The front locks were caulked shut. The entryway keypad was smashed. And the building’s two oversize wooden doors had been marred by graffiti—the anarchist’s wreathed “A.”
“Our attack is merely a beginning,” a message left by the gang of vandals began. “We are not passive, we are not civil, and we will not apologize.” The attackers were as hostile toward the “spineless” Democrats as they were toward the Republicans being targeted, but they were not ambiguous about what had motivated them on this particular night. “The Metropolitan Republican Club chose to invite a hipster-fascist clown to dance for them,” the note read. It was a warning, and not a hollow one. This was a sign of things to come.
The “hipster-fascist” to which they referred was Gavin McInnes, a broadcaster and instigator who has aligned himself with the right’s racially antagonistic elements. He is the founder of the “Proud Boys,” an organization that promotes the superiority of Western heritage and that has some members who have an affinity with the alt-right’s most violent activists. McInnes was invited to put on a show for a GOP audience, and he delivered. On social media, McInnes advertised his intention to reenact the 1960 assassination of a Japanese Socialist Party leader at the event, and he was seen by reporters outside the venue carrying a mock Samurai sword.
Both the Proud Boys and the counter-demonstrators were primed for violence, and violence is what they got. Two blocks away from the club, reporters shooting video captured the start of a fight that clearly shows McInnes supporters beating several counter demonstrators. Police were not present at the scene and no arrests were made, but the photographic evidence is clear enough as to which party was responsible for the altercation. Elsewhere, officers were privy to an attack on one of the event attendees by three counterdemonstrators. Those assailants, who were described by a Legal Aid Society attorney as “anti-racist protesters,” were arrested and processed.
It was a sadly familiar scene. These violent spasms occur with grim regularity now. Right-wing proto-fascist elements coming to blows with left-wing socialist demonstrators is a fact of our politics. In Chicago, Sacramento, Saint Paul, Berkeley, Portland, and elsewhere, the vicious and radicalized are playing at Weimar provocation. If they are not careful, they might get what they’re looking for.
Much has been made in these pages and elsewhere of the institutional political media’s sympathy for one half of this detestable equation. The New York Times write up of these clashes described the counter-demonstrators as “anti-fascist” activists, a curious title to bestow upon a group that resorts to the political intimidation tactics of Mussolini’s Black Shirts. It is a lexical tell that showcases the ideological homogeneity within professional media reminiscent of the ubiquitous notion that the Antifa demonstrators who faced off against white supremacists in Charlottesville were the moral heirs to the Boys of Pointe du Hoc. Only after Antifa began attacking journalists did the soundness of this appraisal get a critical once over.
But liberal hypocrisy does not excuse conservative hypocrisy, and there’s enough of that to go around.
What value did this intellectual Republican institution hope to impart by hosting an accomplished provocateur—a man who has repeatedly insisted that “fighting solves everything,” that Israelis have a “whiny, paranoid fear of Nazis,” and that the starvation of millions of Ukrainians under Stalin was the work of “commie, socialist Jews?” Surely the Metropolitan Republican Club is aware that McInnes’s following has been implicated in the incitement of violence before. They must know that this group not only courts controversy but also attracts an unhinged response from the maniacs who fill the ranks of Antifa. In fact, that was most likely this act’s biggest draw.
We’ve seen this before. On college campuses, the local student-led political establishment is increasingly drawn to firebrands and agitators, not because of their challenging insights, but because they have the unique capacity to drive their untethered political opponents to fits of self-destructive rage. We’ve even seen it, writ large, in Virginia, where the GOP’s U.S. Senate candidate, Corey Stewart, is a Confederate apologist whose antics thrill the rank and file but are turning this once reliably red state a shade of dark blue.
There is some instrumental utility in transforming your adversary into a frothing bedlamite if only to present yourself as a calm and rational alternative. But no one with any coherent political philosophy believes that Milo Yiannopoulos is a great intellect because he inspires his detractors to set their surroundings on fire. No one of value believes that Stewart is onto something because the people who are offended by his frequent appeals to unalloyed racism are passionate about it. This is provocation for provocation’s sake, but it is not a sign of strength. It is the language of the fearful.
There’s a through-line that connects Manhattan’s Upper Eastside, the average college campus, and the state of Virginia. For Republicans, that through line is increasing irrelevance. In these places, they see their power wasting away, and they’re appropriately terrified. The provocation and incitement to which they gravitate isn’t just an attempt to recapture some lost attention, though that is surely the primary conscious drive. The radicalism to which they are attracted mirrors their anxieties.
For fringe factions on the right and the left, incitement and violence has become the weapon of first resort. Incidents of political violence are still few and far between, but we’re getting more accustomed to them. It’s just another part of the political landscape. That is the precipice of the abyss. And we’re staring right into it.
Understand the rationale behind closed-door consultations but at a minimum, the government should be disclosing the names of those consulted shortly after each session to ensure basic transparency and a check to ensure that a balance of perspectives is being heard.
Hard to understand the Minister’s reluctance to use the term “systemic racism” beyond the political. A more constructive approach would be to acknowledge that it exists (e.g., blind cv tests, incarceration rates) but find a way to explain it as patterns of discrimination and prejudice if the “S” word is viewed as too polarizing:
The federal government has quietly launched a series of closed-door consultations on the issue of racism, hoping to avoid heated public debates on issues such as Islamophobia and systemic racism.
“The meetings are not held in public for the simple reason that we want to be able to have in-depth discussions with experts across the country, in which the participants’ comments are not misconstrued or judged,” Pablo Rodriguez, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Multiculturalism, said in an interview on Monday.
While no news releases or media advisories were sent out, Mr. Rodriguez has already attended three invitation-only sessions in the Greater Toronto Area, with his department planning on holding a total of 22 meetings before the end of the year across Canada. Mr. Rodriguez said he wants to focus on concrete solutions to specific problems, deliberately avoiding a debate over the issue of “systemic” racism.
“That expression is not a part of my vocabulary,” he said. “Canada is not a racist society, wherever one lives.”
However, two of Mr. Rodriguez’s caucus colleagues, Liberal MPs Celina Caesar-Chavannes and Greg Fergus, have both said they believe in the existence of systemic racism in Canada. The expression is also used in the federal consultation documents, which define the term as “patterns of behaviour, policies or practices that are part of the social or administrative structures of an organization, and which create or perpetuate a position of relative disadvantage for racialized persons.”
Jasmin Zine, a professor of sociology and Muslim studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, said she is afraid the federal consultations are off to a false start in these circumstances.
“If you take out systemic racism, what is left is the idea that people don’t like each other and don’t get along on the basis of negative attitudes about people from different backgrounds. It becomes an individual problem, in other words,” she said in an interview. “So to move away from systemic racism … takes away all issues around power, which is crucial to understanding the system of racism, and it takes away all responsibility from the state and institutions.”
However, Mr. Rodriguez said he wants the consultations to focus on specific issues such as higher unemployment and incarceration rates among members of particular communities, or access to affordable housing. In addition to the working groups, Canadian Heritage has launched a website to gather public comments on the issue of racism.
“Identity issues will always fuel passionate debates. Our goal is to get to the bottom of things without getting into a political debate. We want this to be neutral in political terms and to be done professionally,” Mr. Rodriguez said. “We are looking for facts and, most importantly, solutions.”
Mr. Rodriguez, 51, replaced Mélanie Joly as Heritage Minister in a cabinet shuffle in July. His family arrived in Canada in the 1970s when his father – a lawyer and politician – fled political persecution in Argentina.
Mr. Rodriguez said the consultations on racism will cost up to $2-million, with the funding announced in the most recent budget as part of efforts to develop a new national anti-racism strategy. Over all, the federal government awarded $23-million toward new multiculturalism programs earlier this year.
“Unfortunately, Canada is not immune to racism and discrimination – challenges remain when it comes to fully embracing diversity, openness and co-operation,” the federal government says in its consultation documents. “Acknowledging that racism and discrimination are a part of our lived reality is a critical first step to action.”
The issue of racism has fuelled heated debates in the country in recent times. There were acrimonious discussions last year over a motion in the House of Commons (M-103) to condemn Islamophobia across Canada. While the motion did not affect existing legislation, it was roundly criticized in conservative circles and media as preventing any legitimate criticism of Islam.
Consultations on the issue of racism proved controversial in Quebec last year, when the government scrapped planned meeting on “systemic racism” over an outcry among media commentators and talk-show hosts. Instead, the Quebec government rebranded the mandate of the exercise to “valuing diversity and fighting against discrimination.”
Worth noting this more nuanced critique, both of the book as well as the review. More from an assimilationist rather than the more nuanced integration approach that allows for more varied identities within the context of national laws.
Will be interesting to see how this debate plays out among thoughtful conservative circles:
What does it mean to be an American? Who should get that privilege, and what benefits should it entail?
Reihan Salam, executive editor of National Review, confronts these questions in his new and provocative book, Melting Pot or Civil War: A Son of Immigrants Makes the Case Against Open Borders. It’s a must-read for anyone with an interest in immigration policy, as a book that combines significant policy expertise with a clear and cogent argument. Even if (like me) you are ultimately skeptical of Salam’s approach, this book is well worth engaging.
As a conservative who favors a tighter immigration policy, Salam is superficially in sync with President Trump. But this book isn’t Trumpian. Far from embracing a resentful ethno-nationalism, Salam seems motivated above all by a sincere concern that we haven’t done enough to help disadvantaged Americans succeed. Slowing immigration is just one of his recommended steps towards the creation of a new “middle-class melting pot,” in which all American children (including undocumented immigrants) can have a secure future.
A successful melting pot, as Salam sees it, is just like a good stew. It won’t come out well unless we pay proper attention to the ingredients. As a second-generation Bengali American, Salam understands how high levels of immigration can actually hinder recently naturalized citizens in their efforts to join the cultural mainstream. When overall levels of immigration are low, the immigrants we do have will be highly motivated to adapt and assimilate. First-generation immigrants may have varied levels of success here, but their children will integrate more fully, quite possibly without much resistance from the surrounding culture. Small numbers of newcomers are likely to be perceived as an interesting curiosity more than a threat, so most people won’t object to befriending, employing, or even marrying them.
As immigration levels rise, however, the story changes. Large-scale migration has a far more significant impact on the economy and surrounding culture. Not everyone will welcome the changes. As tensions rise, newcomers may find it more comfortable to stick to neighborhoods dominated by co-ethnics, who speak familiar languages and retain familiar customs. Unsurprisingly, the range of available opportunities within these subcultures tends to be small, and residents are normally poorer than the population at large. That might seem acceptable to first-generation immigrants, who still feel on balance that they have bettered their lives by immigrating. The next generation will be less sanguine though, and their frustration, juxtaposed against the rising resentment of the surrounding population, is a recipe for ethnic conflict.
To the cosmopolitan mind, this logic is thoroughly depressing. Is it fruitless even to try to encourage an ethos of tolerance? Is nativism simply imprinted onto the human soul?
Salam argues that people can be persuaded to tolerate differences, provided we don’t ask too much from them. In concert with most elite leftists, he wants to move toward a culture that’s highly educated, technologically advanced, and cosmopolitan in its embrace of a multi-ethnic population. But he thinks this will be achievable only if we manage immigration carefully, limiting our welcome to immigrants who seem well suited to rapid assimilation. In practice, that means saying “yes” to the educated and affluent, and “no” to the huddled masses.
I have argued before that citizenship has in our time become a kind of global caste system. In that context, Salam might be seen as a modern-day Lord Salisbury, prioritizing social stability and accepting that this can be preserved only in an exclusive society. It’s a strong argument, as even his detractors should acknowledge. If we want to secure certain goods for all American citizens (including decent health care, a quality education, and real inclusion in mainstream society), we’ll necessarily have to be choosy about who’s admitted to the club. Our resources aren’t infinite, and there’s a limit to how much diversity we can absorb while still maintaining a cohesive society.
Of course, caste systems have obvious moral shortcomings. Recognizing that, Salam includes a complete chapter on foreign aid, which he would like to increase as a kind of compensation for his less-generous immigration policy. This segment of the book is illuminating in many ways, and Salam has some interesting ideas. But he is noticeably loathe to acknowledge the limitations of foreign aid. Good intentions notwithstanding, America’s capacity to improve life across the globe is quite limited. That will become even more true if the Pax Americana continues to erode (which is not something Salam has in general been inclined to lament).
Two or three decades ago, things might have seemed different. At that time many people really believed that the planet could be moving toward an era of widespread peace, prosperity, and freedom. Today, that’s not looking like a strong bet. A sizable percentage of the world’s population lives under politically oppressive regimes, and that number seems if anything to be growing. If Western nations are unwilling to resettle refugees and migrants, the reality is that many will end up stuck in places where life is generally bad. Salam would prefer to see these unfortunates settled someplace else, so that we can focus our energies here on helping second- and third-generation immigrants, impoverished urban blacks, and the underemployed denizens of the Rust Belt. But of course, other developed nations are likewise struggling to persuade their citizens to be open to immigrants. Why should other societies be more generous, if we ourselves are willing to do almost nothing in this regard?
No matter what policy we adopt, Salam’s concerns about integration are surely worth considering. No one will benefit if we adopt a naively ideological immigration policy, without regard for the consequences. At the same time, his position is itself based in ideological commitments that some of us may question. In Salam’s mind, the quintessentially American society seems to be a kind of managed middle-class culture, in which carefully crafted government interventions help to keep class stratification in check. To me, that sounds more like a Scandinavian ideal, and I’m not sure how close we can get to it anyway. The United States is already a huge and wildly diverse nation, riven by deep religious and philosophical differences along with the ethnic and cultural ones. Technological advancement seems if anything to increase inequality further, none of which has much to do with immigration. We should still care about helping marginalized groups to flourish, insofar as we are able. But it might also be good to accept that Americans just don’t specialize in creating high-solidarity monocultures. Historically we’ve been better at negotiating a strained-but-usually-livable peace between more widely divergent groups, who are united at least in their commitment to building a life outside of the shadow of political oppression. Is this really the right moment to walk away from those commitments?
As the world becomes more and more interconnected, nationalists will increasingly struggle to justify the priority they want to place on citizenship as a moral category. This obviously represents a major shift in human perspective, which is worrisome; transformations of that magnitude have real potential to create instability. That is in itself an excellent reason to give due credit to nuanced anti-immigration arguments, such as Salam presents in this book. Over the longer run though, is an “America first” immigration policy sustainable? Will our children thank us for doubling down on a robustly egalitarian vision, which may just not fit the contours of our freedom-loving society? I’m inclined to doubt it. But read the book before you answer.
Interesting analysis and commentary placing the legitimate fears regarding the rise of the far right and antisemitism in Ukraine in context. Look forward to comments from others who know Ukraine better than me:
October 14 saw the latest in a string of annual mass marches by the far right in Ukraine. As many as 10,000 people participated, mainly young men, chanting fiercely. A nighttime torchlight parade with signs proclaiming “We’ll return Ukraine to Ukrainians,” contained echoes of Nazi-style symbolism.
Lax law enforcement and indifference by the security services to the operations of the far right is being noticed by extremists from abroad who are flocking to Ukraine. German media reported the presence of the German extreme right (JN-NPD, Dritte Weg) at the rally. According to Ukrainian political analyst Anton Shekhovtsov, far-right Norwegians, Swedes, and Italians were supposed to be there too. And on October 15, they all gathered in Kyiv for the Paneuropa conference organized by the Ukrainian neo-Nazi National Corps party. “Kyiv,” says Shekhovtsov, “has now become one of the major centers of European far-right activities.”
Such activism, naturally, unnerves liberals as well as Jews, and national minorities. And they often result in alarmist headlines in Western and Israeli newspapers.
Coming in a year in which the white supremacist C14 group engaged in savage beatings at a Roma encampment near Kyiv, one could draw the conclusion that the far right is on the rise in Ukraine.
But such a reading would be mistaken. Far-right sentiments exist in Ukraine, but these ultranationalist groupings attract little public support. As the March 2018 presidential election approaches, recent polls show that the combined vote of far-right presidential candidates amounts to around 4 percent. A similarly paltry level of support is to be found for the far-right Svoboda and National Corps parties. Compared to the support of far-right parties such as the AfD in Germany (12.6 percent support), Marine Le Pen’s Rally for the Nation (13 percent) and Italy’s Northern League (17.4 percent), Ukraine’s public has little sympathy for the far right.
Nor can these fringe Ukrainian parties be labeled pro-Nazi, though their leaders initially were drawn to proto-fascist ideas.Ukraine is a country on whose territory two million Jews died in the Holocaust. It is also a country in which five million non-Jewish Ukrainians perished in combat as a result of Nazi occupation. Virtually every family has the memory of Nazi brutality etched into its memory. Ukraine’s nationalists of the 1930s and 1940s, who advanced anti-Semitic and proto-fascist ideas, were also eventually hunted down for extermination by the Nazi regime.
To be sure, casual anti-Semitism and Jewish stereotypes persist in everyday life. And anti-Semitic graffiti appears with regularity near Jewish synagogues, cemeteries, and cultural institutions. Even still, this regrettable phenomenon is widespread in most advanced industrial democracies.
At the same time, in the last two years there has been not a single recorded violent attack against a Jewish person. The last such attack occurred on October 7, 2016, against a Hasidic rabbi visiting the city of Zhytomyr.
Between 2016 and 2017, acts of vandalism against Jewish targets increased from 19 to 24, but were still far below those reported in many European countries. While an Israeli government report issued in January 2018 alleged a doubling of anti-Semitic incidents in Ukraine, it failed to provide detailed answers about its methodology or sources.
Unlike two decades ago, when Silski Visti, an anti-Semitic newspaper reached millions of readers, today there is no mass circulation periodical spilling out anti-Semitic bile.
Moreover, in comparison with its Central and East European neighbors, Ukraine remains a remarkably tolerant society, even as it faces Russian occupation in part of its territory. A 2016 Pew Research Center poll found that among South, Central, and East European countries, Ukraine had the highest level of acceptance of Jews as fellow citizens, with only 5 percent of the public disagreeing.
The leadership role of Jews in the country’s economic and political life is rarely a topic of public discourse and is accepted as normal.
The country has a Jewish Prime Minister, Volodymyr Groisman.The president’s chief of staff is Jewish, as was his last chief of staff, Borys Lozhkin, who now heads the Ukrainian Jewish Confederation and is a vice president of the World Jewish Congress.
According to the Ukrainian Jewish Confederation, more than thirty of 427 members of parliament are Jewish. And the Committee on Interparliamentary Relations with Israel is the largest of all such groupings in the Ukrainian Rada, numbering nearly 140 deputies, a third of the legislature.
Ukraine’s religious leaders have regular access to key government leaders. And Ukrainian government and state leaders routinely take part in commemorative ceremonies of remembrance of the Holocaust.
All this is not to say that there are serious problems.
Ukraine’s memory politics reflect too much heroization of a complex past and not enough acknowledgment of such issues as indigenous anti-Semitism and collaboration with the Nazi occupation. More, too, needs to be done in restoring the killing fields in which Jews were murdered in the Holocaust.
More ominously, Ukraine’s far-right, para-military formations and their penchant for vigilantism remain a problem that must be more vigorously countered by the state and their sources of funding investigated thoroughly.
Anti-Semitic vandalism needs to be rooted out and hate speech handled in accordance with Ukrainian law. Government reactions to acts or expressions of anti-Semitism remain far too slow. And incidents of violence against Roma by members of far-right groups such as C14 must be swiftly prosecuted.
However, Western and Israeli governments, media, and NGOs should be sensitive to Russia’s hybrid warfare and disinformation around the topic of anti-Semitism and the far-right in Ukraine. Russia’s deployment of actors who wittingly or unwittingly are encouraged to engage in hate speech, incite anti-minority tensions, commit vandalism, and employ violence is another phenomenon that must be better understood. In a poor country, it is easy to buy or win the allegiance of alienated youth and enlist them in fringe politics either by far-right operatives or Russian agents.
Ukraine’s far right may not be a rising force. But in a poor country facing external aggression, it is a force that cannot be ignored.
Adrian Karatnycky is a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council, and co-director and board member of the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter.
Potential future waves of asylum seekers via irregular arrival border points (e.g., Roxham Road):
The Trump administration has been eliminating the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program, which has allowed more than 300,000 people from countries hit by war and natural disasters to legally stay in the U.S. for decades.
To end TPS protections for 98 percent of those recipients, the Department of Homeland Security has claimed that conditions in those countries are now suitable for thousands of their residents to return home.
A federal judge this month ordered a temporary halt to the administration’s actions – a ruling the Justice Department is appealing – leaving TPS holders facing an uncertain future as they weigh their options.
Here’s a look at the current conditions in the six countries that have lost their TPS status, listed in order of their deadlines for immigrants to leave the U.S. All TPS populations are estimates from the Congressional Research Service.
Sudan
TPS ends: November 2, 2018
TPS first granted: 1997
Reason for TPS designation: Civil war
Estimated number of TPS recipients: 1,040
TPS was first granted to Sudan as the country was being torn apart by a decades-long civil war. When the country officially split in two in 2011, the U.S. granted TPS status to the newly-created South Sudan as well.
In the years since, deadly fighting has continued throughout South Sudan. Based on that ongoing conflict, the Trump administration announced in September that TPS status would be extended for that country.
But Sudan was cut off, with the administration arguing that armed factions are largely honoring cease-fire agreements that have been brokered in recent years. In its justification for ending TPS, the administration said armed conflict “is limited to” two southern provinces and the western province of Darfur, which rose to international prominence in the early 2000s when hundreds of thousands were killed and millions forced to flee as refugees.
The United Nations Security Council paints a more dire picture. A December report on the Darfur region found that food insecurity remains at crisis levels, human rights abuses continue, and the region is being flooded by people fleeing violence in South Sudan, with 89,000 refugees arriving in Darfur in 2017, further hindering the region’s recovery efforts.
Muna Ndulo, a law professor and director of the Institute for African Development at Cornell University, said the safety of returning Sudanese will depend on what specific corner of the country they’re from. If they go to the capital city of Khartoum or northern provinces, they should be fine.
“But if they’re from Darfur, they have nowhere to go,” Ndulo said. “The situation there is still very precarious. And my assumption would be that most of these (TPS holders) would be from that conflict area.”
Nicaragua
TPS ends: January 5, 2019
TPS first granted: 1999
Estimated number of TPS recipients: 2,550
Reason for TPS: Hurricane Mitch
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights estimates that since April, at least 322 people have been killed in the violence, and hundreds more have been arrested. The White House even issued a round of sanctions in July against three Nicaraguan officials, accusing them of human rights abuses, and suspended the sale of any U.S. vehicles or equipment “that Ortega’s security forces might misuse.”
That nationwide dysfunction has sent the country’s economy, which was meager but had been one of the most stable in the region, into a free-fall. That combination makes Nicaragua a dangerous place for anybody to return to, according to Geoff Thale, vice president of the Washington Office on Latin America.
Thale recently spoke with a group of Nicaraguan priests who have been using churches and other buildings to hide protesters who have become targets of the regime. Thale said those are the very same priests who would help returning Nicaraguans safely reintragrate into society. But now, with the country beset by so much chaos: “They’re a little busy with other things.”
Nepal
TPS ends: June 24, 2019
TPS first granted: 2015
Estimated number of TPS recipients: 8,950
Reason for TPS: Earthquake
Sitting atop the Himalayas, Nepal was rocked in 2015 by a magnitude-7.8 earthquake that led to an avalanche on Mt. Everest and a major aftershock weeks later. The combination left nearly 9,000 dead and millions displaced.
The Nepalese government, with the help of more than $4 billion in international aid that has been pledged by donors, has taken many strides to rebuild the country, but conditions remain far from normal.
More than 270,000 homes have been rebuilt, but more than 800,000 are still listed as undergoing reconstruction from the quake, according to a May update from Nepal’s National Reconstruction Authority, a government task force created to oversee rebuilding.
The country has rebuilt more than 3,800 schools, about half of the agency’s target of 7,500. The country has only rebuilt 49% of its medical facilities, 21% of its security buildings, 18% of its drinking water systems, and 13% of its cultural heritage sites, which form the basis of much of the country’s tourism industry.
Prabha Deuja, president of the Virginia-based America Nepal Society, visited the region in January and said she saw construction efforts all around. But she said the country’s isolated location, and it’s limited government resources, has made it difficult to complete reconstruction and prepare Nepal for an influx of new residents.
“This is a third-world country. We have to get sand and supplies from different countries,” she said. If TPS holders had to return, “I can’t tell you what they will do. The job market, where they’re staying, it’s a really gray area.”
Haiti
TPS ends: July 22, 2019
TPS first granted: 2010
Estimated population: 46,000
Reason for TPS: Earthquake
Rioting in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince grew so intense in July that the U.S. sent in the Marines to secure U.S. interests there, according to CNN.
That unrest forced the nation’s prime minister to resign, just the latest step in a seemingly never-ending series of calamities plaguing the country.
Frank Mora, director of the Kimberly Green Latin American and Caribbean Center at Florida International University, said all of those ensuing problems have exacerbated Haiti’s earthquake recovery and cannot be treated as separate, individual crises. “Haiti is still living with the consequences of the earthquake,” he said.
Throwing tens of thousands more Haitians back to the island right now, Mora said, will only strain the government’s limited resources and endanger the Haitians who will be returning to a country with problems at every turn. The majority live in South Florida and New York.
“They’ll have to face the constant political uncertainty, the energy crisis, the food distribution challenges that still exist,” Mora said. “If there’s any country in the Western Hemisphere where these people will be going into a near humanitarian disaster, it would be to Haiti.”
El Salvador
TPS ends: Sept. 9, 2019
TPS first granted: 1991
Estimated number of TPS recipients: 195,000
Reason for TPS: Earthquake
Using any metric, El Salvador is considered one of the most dangerous, deadly countries on the planet.
In 2016, the Central American nation was deemed the murder capital of the world with a homicide rate of 104 people per 100,000, the highest for any country in nearly 20 years, according to data from the World Bank. The homicide rate reportedly fell in 2017, but crime remains so rampant that only 12% of Salvadorans believed that drop, according to InSight Crime.
In July, the U.S. State Department issued a Level 3 Travel Warning (on a scale of 1 – 4) urging Americans to reconsider traveling to El Salvador. “Violent crime, such as murder, assault, rape, and armed robbery, is common,” the advisory read.
Yet that is where the Trump administration has decided to send the largest group of TPS recipients, nearly 200,000 of them.
Mora said the situation only becomes worse as the U.S. continues deporting gang members from the U.S. back to El Salvador, bolstering the ranks of the gangs and drug cartels that control so many aspects of day-to-day life.
“That situation is difficult for people who live in El Salvador, who’ve been living that situation day in and day out,” Mora said. “So you take someone who has lived in Miami or New York, and you’re going to throw them into that situation. No one has the tools to prepare themselves for that.”
Honduras
TPS ends: Jan. 5, 2020
TPS first granted: 1999
Estimated number of TPS recipients: 57,000
Reason for TPS: Hurricane Mitch
The homicide rate in Honduras dropped significantly in 2017, down to 42.8 per 100,000 inhabitants, the country’s lowest in a decade. But the country remains one of the most dangerous and politically unstable in the hemisphere.
The re-election of President Juan Orlando Hernandez to a second term in November led to violent protests that were met by intense government crackdowns.
Thale says the country remains in the grip of drug cartels who use kidnappings as a standard way to generate income. He said that makes any returning Honduran a “walking invitation for extortion.”
He said gangs will undoubtedly know who is returning to their neighborhoods, and will target people who are returning with cash after selling off their homes, cars, businesses and other goods before leaving the U.S. So how, Thale wondered, could anyone think that Honduras is in a position to successfully, and peacefully, welcome an influx of 57,000 people.
While I suppose the Canadian government has to offer some form of consular assistance, never seen anything to indicate that “Jihadi Jack” had any substantive connection to Canada except for the genes from his father as he spent most of his life in the UK and thus substantively, if not legally, is the UK’s responsibility.
So while I remain opposed to revoking citizenship in cases of terrorism or treason, no great efforts should be expended on consular support in such cases even if I understand that parents will explore all opportunities for their child:
“I’m from the government of Canada. Do you want assistance from us?”
With that, a Canadian consular official began an hour-long online exchange with Letts, a British 22-year-old with Canadian citizenship who is imprisoned by Kurdish forces in Syria.
A transcript of the conversation, which Global Affairs Canada sent to his parents, who then shared it with Global News along with other documents, offers a rare look at how Ottawa is handling such cases.
They show that Canadian consular officials have been trying to find out where the Canadians are being detained in order to give them consular assistance.
The officials have communicated with the Kurdish authorities over concerns about torture allegations and medical attention for the detainees, the documents show.
But they also told the parents in an email that while they would try to get Letts to a third country, likely Turkey, they could not make any promises.
Jack Letts, who is British but has Canadian citizenship through his father, is being held by Kurdish forces in northeast Syria.
Hundreds of ISIS foreign fighters, as well as ISIS wives and their children, have been captured by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.
The Canadian government has said little about how it is assisting at least 13 Canadian detainees, who are being held in prisons and camps in northeast Syria.
But the transcript of a January 10 conversation between Letts and Global Affairs Canada shows that while officials have reached out to some of the detainees, they have also cautioned there’s not be much they can do.
“If it would be possible, would you like to come to Canada? Back to the U.K.?” the consular official asked.
“I want to live a normal life. I want to come to Canada,” Letts replied.
A Muslim convert, Letts traveled to Syria in 2014, leading the British press to dub him Jihadi Jack. But while he was in ISIS-controlled territory, he has denied being an ISIS member and his parents said there was no evidence he ever joined the terrorist group. Because the U.K. has shown no interest in assisting him and he is Canadian through his father, Ottawa has taken on the case.
Jack Letts said he was imprisoned near Qamishli, the hub of the Syrian Democratic Forces.
“Can u help me,” Letts wrote to the consular official.
He said he was imprisoned near Qamlishi, the hub of the Kurdish-controlled region of Syria known as Rojava. He said he had been there 10 months.
“We have limited capacity to provide consular service in Syria but we will try to help you,” the official responded.
The consular official asked Letts whether he had been charged, how he spent his days, what he ate, when he last saw a doctor, whether he was taking medications and had access to the Internet.
“Are they going to kill us,” Letts wanted to know.
“As I said, we have no access in Syria at the moment, but are working on your case.”
Letts asked the official if he intended to get him to Canada.
“I promise not to blow anyone up with fertaliser [sic] or however they do it,” Letts wrote, adding “that was a joke.”
“We have the intention to help you,” the official wrote.
“Obviously I’m not going to blow anyone up.”
“Canada is an option,” said the official.
Letts then said he was “going insane” and had tried to hang himself. He said he was experiencing kidney problems but had not seen a doctor in seven months.
“I made a mistake coming here, I know that. If you want to put me in prison, I understand that I do not mind,” Letts told the official.
“I have made mistakes, probably prison is good for me. But just not here. The situation here is terrible.”
“Tell my mum I am sorry. Tell my dad I am sorry. Tell them if I ever get out of this place I am going to try and be a better person.”
Towards the end of the exchange, the official assured Letts the government was working on his case, but within limits.
“We don’t have people in Syria and it is a complex environment so I can’t give you definitive timelines, but we are working on your case.”
Global News revealed last week that high-profile Canadian ISIS member Muhammad Ali had been captured by Kurdish forces. His wife, former Vancouver resident Rida Jabbar, and their two kids were also detained, along with women from Toronto and Montreal who married ISIS foreign fighters, and their five children.
Letts and a Montreal man are also being held.
A Kurdish official told Global News there had been “dialogue” with Canada over the detainees, including a meeting in Iraq, but that “suddenly the Canadian government stopped this process and we don’t know why.”
Asked to comment on the transcript, Global Affairs Canada said it was aware that Canadians were detained in Syria but its “ability to provide consular assistance in any part of Syria is extremely limited.”
In a podcast, national security law expert Craig Forcese said that because the Canadians were detained abroad, the government could not facilitate their return to Canada.
The best they could do was negotiate the conditions of their detention, he said, adding the matter was complicated because the Canadians were held by insurgents rather than a state.
But even engaging with their captors diplomatically could cause problems for Canada, he said. Turkey views the Kurdish forces as part of the PKK terrorist group. “So it’s a very difficult consular dance.”
Conservative foreign affairs critic Erin O’Toole said the government’s primary focus should be public safety.
“I’m very, very reluctant to repatriate known ISIS fighters, unless they’re charged and imprisoned in conjunction with their return,” he said.
He also said he supported the revocation of citizenship for terrorism and treason.
“You know, unfortunately these people made very bad decisions and demonstrated that they were a risk to the public and that’s how they should be treated.”
But NDP public safety critic Matthew Dubé said that while public safety is paramount, Canada was obliged to take responsibility for its citizens.
“As much as we may loathe what these people stand for and what they’re doing in some cases, I think that putting them into prisons here and having them go through the Canadian justice system is obviously at the core of a society that’s rules-based and respects the rule of law,” he said.
“Again, it’s not to condone in any way these atrocities. Quite the contrary. I believe that if we truly believe that this is wrong then we should be making sure that they are seeing justice through the Canadian system.”
Dubé also said Ottawa should bring back Canadian wives of ISIS fighters and their children. “It doesn’t sound like that’s the case at the moment, but I would hope that they would make every effort to bring the women and children back.”
Contrast between the local integration approach of a small Italian town in southern Italy and the “separation” approach of the current Italian government:
The alleyways of the Italian town of Riace are adorned with dozens of murals that show its long-standing relationship with migration.
But the country’s new populist government is threatening a project locals say successfully integrated hundreds of refugees and migrants into the town of just over 2,000 people.
Mayor Domenico Lucano, the project’s figurehead, was placed under house arrest earlier this month on charges of involvement in organising “marriages of convenience” for asylum seekers.
On Saturday Italy’s interior minister, Matteo Salvini, ordered all migrants in Riace be transferred to refugee centres next week.
Mr Salvini hailed the arrest as proof that the country’s new government was serious about ending the “immigration business”.
“What will all the do-gooders who want to fill Italy with immigrants say now?” Mr Salvini wrote on Twitter.
Mr Lucano, who was also accused of skipping a tender process in order to award a waste-management contract to cooperatives with ties to migrants, spearheaded Citta Futura – Future City – in 1999.
For almost two decades the project welcomed migrants to the sparsely populated Calabrian town in a bid to boost jobs and development. Known as the Riace model, the programme led to abandoned houses being restored and craft workshops being reopened, providing work for locals and foreigners alike.
The project was lauded by many as a model of integration.
But Riace’s efforts risk being dismantled by Mr Salvini as it runs out of money due to the interior ministry’s block on funds.
As a result, Riace’s local government accumulated a debt of €2 million (Dh8.49mn).
Before his arrest, Mr Lucano – known as Mimmo – could be found on the steps of the Donna Rosa restaurant in the town’s central square.
“They are destroying the area. We risk everything being closed down, even the kindergarten,” he said. “We might have continued even without European funds as an independent self-sustaining project, but two years has been too long and we have accumulated too many debts.”
On Saturday protesters gathered outside Mr Lucano’s window to demand the release of their mayor, chanting “keep strong, continue fighting”. The mayor could be seen raising a fist in support.
The political differences between Mr Salvini’s anti-immigration, hard-right Lega Nord and left-leaning Mr Lucano has compounded the widening rift.
Riace’s residents claim Mr Salvini is purposefully sabotaging the project. In response they gathered in a collective hunger strike since July and shut down all of the workshops tasked with creating embroidery items, ceramics, kites and glass crafts. The sign “I, too, support Riace” can be seen hanging in many shop windows.
“The funding blockage is like having suffered a bereavement,” said grocery shop owner Mimma. “The migrants have taught us to live. When new ones arrive they feel immediately at home, and it is as if they have always lived here with us.”
Because of its location Italy is a gateway into northern Europe – but the country’s weak economy and inadequate help from the European Union has aided Mr Salvini’s propaganda about a so-called “invasion” of the country.
Although current and past governments increased their popularity by tapping into a widespread fear of foreigners, Riace often put itself forward to host new arrivals, especially those most in need.
Mohammed is a 64-year-old Iraqi of Palestinian origin. He fled Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and today has both a home and a monthly stipend of €260.
This may end if Mr Salvini succeeds in relocating Riace’s guests to a camp.
Bayram, a 65-year-old Kurd, arrived in 1998 from Turkey. He helped reconstruct hillside terracing and is currently working as a carpenter and driver.
“Whoever is blocking this model should see how Riace was twenty years ago,” says 29-year-old Antonio, who works as an assistant in Bayram’s carpentry shop.
“There was absolutely nothing and the only event was the annual patron saint festival. Young people were forced to emigrate, which I will probably have to do next year,” he says, sitting nervously amid other protesters.
Next year Mr Lucano’s second and last term will end. Meanwhile Mr Salvini is rallying to win local elections in the country’s south, despite his northern secessionist movement’s hostility towards them.
“In the past we were the ones who left for the cities in the north of Italy or for Australia, but now there are new people coming here, the new migrants,” says Raffaele, a local farmer who sells home-grown fruit.
Far from Italy’s growing isolationism, residents of Riace hope they can overturn Mr Salvini’s decision to relocate their guests. But the future remains unclear.
And as the children of immigrants chase each other on Riace’s football pitch, shouting at each other in the Calabrian dialect, they are oblivious to the fact they could soon lose everything their parents risked their lives for – and so are their Italian peers who, amid the south’s interminable afternoons, have, at last, found someone to play football with.
Was fortunate enough to attend a briefing on their activities, where their approach was interesting.
But the one thing that struck me was just how glossy was their information package, violating one of my first rules of government publications: use obviously recycled non-glossy paper:
Le Centre de prévention de la radicalisation menant à la violence (CPRMV) traverse des difficultés financières importantes au point de mettre sa survie en jeu, a admis le président de son conseil d’administration à La Presse.
«Il est minuit moins cinq», a affirmé Richard Filion au cours d’une brève conversation téléphonique. L’homme dit travailler «pour assurer la pérennité des opérations du centre».
Le versement des salaires des employés a été suspendu pendant quelques semaines, plus tôt cette année, et cette situation risque de se reproduire à court terme, selon nos informations.
En cause : le non-renouvellement d’une entente de financement avec le ministère de la Sécurité publique et la rétention de certains versements par la Ville de Montréal, qui presse l’organisme de «réviser son modèle d’affaires à la lumière de sa capacité financière». Le Ministère et la Ville étaient les deux bailleurs de fonds du CPRMV depuis sa création.
«Je confirme que [les problèmes financiers] sont une préoccupation sur laquelle travaille le C.A. pour trouver des solutions définitives», affirme M. Filion.
Dans les couloirs du centre, selon trois sources, on attribue ces problèmes à des tensions avec les milieux policiers, ainsi qu’à l’embauche controversée de Sabrine Djermane et El Mehdi Jamali juste après leur acquittement d’accusations de terrorisme, l’hiver dernier.
Défaut de paiement
Du côté du ministère de la Sécurité publique (MSP), on indique que «des démarches ont été entreprises en vue d’élaborer une nouvelle entente visant à octroyer à l’organisme un soutien financier». La dernière est arrivée à échéance en mars, mais le dernier paiement a seulement été effectué il y a trois semaines, à la fin de septembre, a ajouté Patrick Harvey, responsable des communications du MSP.
À la Ville de Montréal, on se fait plus clair : la municipalité est devenue le seul bailleur de fonds du CPRMV depuis la fin de son entente avec le MSP et elle «ne peut soutenir des interventions à l’extérieur de son territoire». Celles-ci représentaient 50% du travail du centre jusqu’à maintenant.
En outre, la Ville de Montréal a expliqué qu’elle retenait actuellement un versement de 400 000 $ destiné au centre parce que celui-ci est en défaut de paiement. Il «doit à la Ville des loyers et le remboursement d’un salaire à hauteur de 58 000 $», a indiqué Linda Boutin, chargée des communications.
«La Ville de Montréal, à titre de bailleur de fonds unique, veut s’assurer que le financement municipal soit utilisé pour accomplir des actions auprès de la clientèle montréalaise en fonction des champs de compétence municipale.»
Lancé en grande pompe par Denis Coderre et le ministre Pierre Moreau en 2015, le centre constituait alors «une première en Amérique du Nord», de l’avis du maire de Montréal. «Le vivre-ensemble requiert un équilibre entre l’ouverture et la vigilance», avait-il affirmé, reprenant le mantra de son administration et de ses ambitions sur la scène internationale.
Un projet d’expansion du centre à Québec, exprimé l’année dernière, avait été accueilli très négativement par le maire Régis Labeaume. «On n’a pas besoin de ça à Québec», avait-il réagi, excluant toute possibilité de financer un tel projet.
349 demandes d’assistance
Contrairement à d’autres services du genre dans le monde, le Centre travaille de façon indépendante de la police et refuse de partager les informations obtenues des individus radicalisés ou de leurs proches, sauf autorisation ou danger imminent.
L’organisation compte 18 employés. Selon son dernier rapport annuel, il a reçu 349 demandes d’assistance en 2017.
Le recrutement par le centre du couple Djermane-Jamali comme «consultants en prévention» avait causé la controverse, l’hiver dernier. Ils auraient été chargés de contribuer à la rédaction d’un guide sur la prise en charge des accusés de terrorisme et auraient apporté leur vision du «processus d’endoctrinement des jeunes au Québec». Ils ont toutefois démissionné rapidement après que leur embauche a été dévoilée par La Presse.
Multicultural Meanderings 