Happy Holidays

2018/12/22 Leave a comment

Whatever you celebrate at this time of year, happy holidays and best wishes for the new year. And thanks for following my blog and tweets.

My blog will restart in early January.

Andrew

 

Filed under Multiculturalism

UK and German immigration: a tale of two very different laws

2018/12/21 Leave a comment

One of the better articles on planned changes to immigration policy in both countries:

Two European countries announced radical overhauls of their immigration rules on Wednesday, but there the similarity ended.

Britain, where concerns about long-term impacts of immigration helped drive the 2016 vote to leave the European Union, billed its stricter regime as “a route to strengthened border security and an end to free movement”.

Germany, however, facing such a shortage of workers that is threatening economic growth, said it was easing immigration rules to attract more foreign job-seekers.

In an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, the British home secretary, Sajid Javid, stressed that the Conservatives’ 2017 election manifesto had made clear the party’s “commitment to bring net migration down”.

His counterpart in Germany, Horst Seehofer, said: “We need manpower from third countries to safeguard our prosperity and fill our job vacancies.” The economy minister, Peter Altmaier, hailed the new law – keenly awaited by business – as historic.

Britain’s priority appears primarily to be establishing a system of tough controls capable of keeping certain people out. Business has accused the government of putting a political imperative for restriction before the needs of the economy.

In contrast, by introducing looser visa procedures and reducing red tape Germany’s emphasis appears to be on making it easier for certain people to enter and to stay. Some in Angela Merkel’s conservative alliance and in the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) have said such a move ignores public concerns about immigration.

The UK’s system does not put a cap on numbers but aims to reduce annual net migration to “sustainable levels”. It requires skilled workers to earn a minimum salary, to be decided next year. After Brexit there would be no more special treatment for EU citizens; a transitional temporary worker scheme would allow them, and workers of any skill level from other “low risk” countries, to enter Britain without a job offer for up to 12 months.

Business leaders have warned that the system will leave the UK poorer, depriving industry of a migrant workforce on which it has depended. The proposed £30,000 salary threshold for skilled workers would leave hospitals, the contstruction and hospitality sectors, manufacturing, agriculture and logistics desperately short of labour, they said.

Germany’s Fachkräftezuwanderungsgesetz, or skilled labour immigration law, will allow skilled workers such as cooks, metallurgy workers and IT technicians to enter the country for six months to try to find a job, provided they can support themselves financially.

More controversially, the law will offer the prospect of permanent residency to asylum seekers who have a job and speak good German but currently face deportation if their asylum applications are turned down.

Immigration has been a key political issue in Germany since Europe’s 2015 migration crisis, when the country absorbed more than 1 million mostly Muslim refugees and migrants, sparking a xenophobic backlash and surge of support for the anti-immigration AfD in federal and regional elections.

Ministers stressed the new rules were a “pragmatic solution” to a pressing economic problem. The AfD said they would fuel immigration, providing “a fresh incentive for people from around the world to come”. In Germany, however, those politics have not, so far, prevailed.

Source: UK and German immigration: a tale of two very different laws

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

Russia Used Identity Politics Against Us

2018/12/21 Leave a comment

Interesting angle with some valid points by Greenwald on this vulnerability:

Here’s a newsflash for progressives who think the Russians undermined the 2016 election via social media: Your obsession with identity politics did a lot of the work.

Judging from new (and old) reports about Russia’s propaganda campaign, it seems that Moscow put the most effort into stoking discontent among identity-mad leftists in hopes that they would turn away from the political process and not vote. Progressives divided. Moscow conquered.

Source: Russia Used Identity Politics Against Us

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A Toronto conference on racism will feature both anti-Islam speakers and Jewish groups

2018/12/21 Leave a comment

Strange bedfellows:

An upcoming Toronto conference is going to feature anti-Islam speakers, anti-hate advocates and some of the most recognizable Jewish organizations in Canada.

The “national teach-in” on hate and racism is organized by a group called Canadians for the Rule of Law, which argues on its website that “‘political correctness’ is distorting valid criticism” and “‘Libel chill’ is preventing the sharing of ugly facts.” The teach-in seeks to expose those who perpetuate these problems to the detriment of Canadian democracy.

To that effect, the March 17 conference will scrutinize “(A) the radical left; (B) radical Islamists; and (C) the radical right,” in that order of priority. The teach-in was supposed to take place at an important synagogue in Toronto until it pulled out last week over security concerns.

B’nai Brith Canada, one of the country’s most prominent Jewish advocacy groups, has agreed to their CEO Michael Mostyn moderating one of the panel sessions, while Robert Walker, the head of Hasbara Fellowships Canada, a pro-Israel group that works primarily on campuses, is also speaking at the event next March.

Though the conference features a number of well-known, mainstream anti-hate advocates such as Donald Carr, who sits on the board of CFTRL, David Matas and Anita Bromberg, a significant number of organizers and featured speakers are active in Canada’s anti-Muslim or alt-right circles.

Perhaps most notable among these are Charles McVety, president of Canada Christian College, and Christine Douglass-Williams, who was fired from the Canadian Race Relations Foundation board for being an active writer to Jihad Watch, a leading Islamophobic platform. McVety had a national TV show pulled off the air in 2010 for his remarks against the LGBTQ community. His college hosted a Rebel Media event in Feb 2017, emceed by prominent far-right propagandist Faith Goldy. He also hosted the popular anti-Islam activist and then Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders in 2011. At the time, McVety described the spread of Islam in Canada as a “demographic jihad.” “Islam is not just a religion, it’s a political and cultural system as well and we know that Christians, Jews and Hindus don’t have the same mandate for a hostile takeover,” he said in 2011.

“No reason whatsoever not to engage in a public discussion.”

John Carpay, who heads up Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, will also be at the conference. He spoke at a Rebel Media event in Calgary last month about the threat of totalitarianism in Canada partly by comparing the Nazi swastika to the “rainbow flag,” a comment he later said was “unintentionally” made. Rebel also fundraised on behalf of Carpay’s centre and some of its initiatives.

B’nai Brith Canada’s media liaison Marty York qualified his organization’s overall involvement when asked whether the decision to send its CEO to participate was made with the consideration that it features such a prominent anti-Muslim presence.

“Mr. Mostyn is moderating one single session on hate speech, which is something he does regularly,” York told VICE News. “He found out who the panelists are going to be and he was comfortable with their identities. Whoever else is involved during the day in other sessions, I’m not even sure if he even knows.”

He said Mr. Mostyn saw “no reason whatsoever not to engage in a public discussion” on hate speech in his one session.

“So there seems to be a smear by association campaign going on, and if that’s the case it’s very unfortunate.”

He added that B’nai Brith Canada “supports the rule of law” in Canada and thus “has no qualms at all about” Mostyn’s participation, regardless of who else is involved throughout the day-long conference.

David Matas, a noted human rights specialist and Senior Honorary Counsel for B’nai Brith, says he’s troubled by the anti-Muslim presence in the planned conference, but didn’t know until friends and colleagues emailed him their concerns.

“This all sort of just popped up and I have to go through all of it and make a decision collectively with my colleagues,” he says. “I admit that from what I’ve seen, there are obviously concerns that we need to discuss and I may end up not participating, but we have to look at all the information first.”

Robert Walker, executive director of Hasbara Fellowships Canada, cited addressing “anti-Semitism” and “anti-Zionism” as the main reasons for his involvement in the conference, preferring to offer no comment on the anti-Muslim participants.

“There are obviously concerns that we need to discuss.”

Hasbara is an initiative run out of Aish Hatorah, a major international network of Jewish educational centres and synagogues.

“Contemporary anti-Semitism often masquerades behind different masks, such as anti-Zionism, which is denying the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in their historic homeland,” he told VICE News. “I do not and cannot speak for other panelists or speakers.”

Among the conference’s main topics is “Actions Against BDS,” or the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against the state of Israel.

The conference was originally supposed to take place at the prominent Beth Tikvah synagogue in North York. But in an email to VICE News, Rabbi Jarrod Grover of the synagogue noted that it has pulled out of the arrangement, leaving CFTRL without a host.

Grover stated that the decision to pull out was based primarily on security concerns for participants and to avoid a “media circus” — not over any ideological concerns.

“I defend the right of CFTRL and their speakers to say what they want to say within the limits of Canadian law.”

“We like dialogue and free speech, but we are a religious, not a political organization,” he wrote. “I defend the right of CFTRL and their speakers to say what they want to say within the limits of Canadian law, despite the fact that I obviously have different beliefs than many speakers at this conference.”

According to the Canadian Jewish News, the decision to pull out came after Karen Mock, president of the progressive Jewish group JSpace Canada, reached out to Rabbi Grover to discuss “potential damage control” over media interest in the event due to “the Islamophobia and bigotry associated with some of these groups and individuals.”

A response for a media request to CFTRL’s general inbox was replied by board member David Nitkin, who rejected the request on the basis that VICE News is an “alt-left” publication. Carr did not respond to requests for comment. He told the Canadian Jewish News that the event will go on, and “we reject any attempt by those who wish to stifle free speech.”

Nitkin is also a leading organizer and board member of the anti-Islam group, Canadian Citizens for Charter Rights and Freedoms (C3RF), which indicates in its mission statement that “Islamophobia” is a concept invented by the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies to infiltrate Canada and implement Shariah law. It is listed as a “community supporter” of the conference, along with ACT! Canada, which is a prominent anti-Islam group.

Source: A Toronto conference on racism will feature both anti-Islam speakers and Jewish groups

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Kenya: High Court makes Final ruling on Miguna’s Citizenship

2018/12/21 Leave a comment

Dual citizen of Canada and Kenya (and active politician in Kenya) ruling (see earlier Miguna maintains stance on citizenship row – Daily Nation for background):

The High Court on Friday ruled that Miguna Miguna was legally a citizen of Kenya.

His lawyer Nelson Havi confirmed that the ruling made ensured that Miguna was lawfully a Kenyan Citizen.

“Miguna Miguna is a citizen by birth, never lost his citizenship by acquiring Canadian citizenship. Respondents had no power to revoke his citizenship. Even if they could, they never acted procedurally,” stated Havi.

The ruling made by Judge Chacha Mwita stated that the government did not follow the correct process in the removal of Miguna.Mwita further pointed out that citizenship by birth could not be cancelled.

“Even if the petitioner (Miguna) acquired Canadian citizenship, he did not lose his Kenya citizenship.

“He remains a citizen of Kenya,” remarked the judge.

Havi, When questioned of what will happen after the ruling, the lawyer stated that, “We did our part, it’s up to him to decide what to do next,”

The controversial politician attempted to return to the country in March but was denied re-entry despite an order by the court to allow him.

The Nasa Activist was held in a tiny room in the JKIA airport before he was forced on to a Dubai bound flight, deported for a second time.

Lawyer Cliff Ombeta who was part of the legal team that represented Miguna, at the time confirmed that his client had been drugged and put on the flight.

Miguna had however vowed that he would have returned to Kenya in September.

Source: High Court makes Final ruling on Miguna’s Citizenship

Filed under Citizenship, Dual Citizenship Tagged with ,

Trump Is Making Americans More Immigrant-Friendly

2018/12/21 Leave a comment

The irony:

President Donald Trump may ultimately be a unifying force on one of the most divisive issues in U.S. politics: immigration.

That’s not Trump’s intent, of course. Having launched his presidential campaign in 2015 with a demagogic assault on immigrants, Trump has been a reliable fount of calumny ever since. His policies, from brutalizing children at the border — a 7-year-old girl died in U.S. custody last week — to terminating Temporary Protected Status for refugees, appear designed to convince his MAGAnauts that he can, and somehow will, forestall the further browning of America.

In public opinion, immigration is an imperfect substitute for “race.” However, Trump has succeeded in making it a more meaningful one. As numerous political science analyseshave determined, Trump’s racial animus is the sticky goo that binds him to his most enthusiastic followers. That goo may be a potent political force, but it’s not a boundless one. Trump appears to have found its limits.

The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll has been asking survey respondents since 2005 whether “immigration helps the United States more than it hurts it.” In December 2005, 37 percent said immigration helps more, while 53 percent said it hurts.

That anti-immigrant sentiment, regularly measured by the poll, largely prevailed until 2012, when opinions started gradually to shift. In the most recent poll, taken in September, the pro-immigration “helps” line reached a peak of 61 while the anti-immigration “hurts” side hit a new low at 28. Measured from December 2005 until September 2018, there is a 49-point swing in favor of immigration “helps.”

Likewise, in June this year, Gallup recorded a new high of 75 percent of Americans saying they believe immigration is a “good thing.”

In the 2018 midterm elections, Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg wrote, Democrats ran as a “self-confident multicultural party” against a GOP running as an “anti-immigrant party.” The results were not good for the anti-immigrant side.

The greatest risk for Republicans is that Trump’s racial malice will energize nonwhite voters to be more politically engaged while also alienating them, long-term, from the GOP.

That’s what may have happened in California after the state GOP’s anti-immigrant turn under Republican Governor Pete Wilson, who won election in 1994 with a sharp anti-immigrant campaign. “The California GOP went from virtually splitting the Hispanic vote in 1990 to only capturing 17 percent of it in 1998,” wrote Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration expert at the Cato Institute, in an analysis of the electoral consequences. By contrast, during the same period Republicans in Texas continued to be competitive with Hispanic voters and in Florida, then-Governor Jeb Bush claimed to have won 60 percent of the Hispanic vote in his 2002 re-election.

I asked veteran Democratic consultant Bill Carrick, adviser to California Senator Dianne Feinstein, whether he sees Trump cultivating a California-style backlash. “Trump is doing for immigration nationwide what Pete Wilson did in 1994,” Carrick emailed. “The more we debate the immigration issue, the more supportive voters become of immigration reform.”

Political scientist Dan Hopkins of the University of Pennsylvania wrote in 2017 that “Americans became more liberal on immigration at exactly the time that Trump and the Republicans turned more hard-line.”

However, in an email last week, Hopkins said that his research, using a survey group that has been stable over several years, suggests that the pro-immigrant drift in the electorate has slowed. “The big-picture summary from my data,” he wrote, “is one of remarkable stability since Trump took office.”

That’s largely what Republican pollster David Winston sees as well. In a detailed report on the 2018 midterms, Winston concluded that the immigration debate did hurt Republican candidates. “The focus on the immigration/caravan issue instead of the positive jobs report in the last days of the campaign had a net result of late deciders breaking for Democrats by 12 points,” Winston wrote.

But Winston doesn’t think Democrats are necessarily gaining ground. The basic values debate between the parties, Winston said in a telephone interview, is that the U.S. is a “country of laws” (Republican) versus a “country of immigrants” (Democratic). “The public believes in both of these values,” Winston said. The job of politicians, he said, is to figure out how to make those values work together.

Making things work is not Trump’s strong suit. Consequently, there is a high probability that the immigration issue will fester until a new president is sworn in. But even if Trump doesn’t drive still more Americans into the pro-immigrant camp, the next president appears poised to have a stronger pro-immigrant constituency than Barack Obama had at any point during his presidency.

“There is a Trump effect,” said immigration advocate Frank Sharry, via email. “When it comes to the public’s view of immigrants and pro-immigration policies, Trump has made them more popular than ever.”

Source: Trump Is Making Americans More Immigrant-Friendly

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

Steven Spielberg on Storytelling’s Power to Fight Hate

2018/12/20 Leave a comment

Good long read and interview with Spielberg:

Pinchas, how old are you?” Steven Spielberg asked the wall screen, a life-size video image of an elderly man in a cardigan, who blinked and answered without missing a beat.

“I was born in 1932, so you can make your own arithmetic,” responded Pinchas, in a Polish accent.

“He asked me to do the math!” Mr. Spielberg laughed. “How did you survive when so many did not?”

“How did I survive?” the screen responded. “I survived, I believe, because provenance watched over me.”

The chat went on for five minutes, and while the artificial intelligence looked eerily reminiscent of Mr. Spielberg’s earlier films, the goal wasn’t entertainment — it was education. On the sound-sensitive screen was an interactive biography of Pinchas Gutter, a Polish Holocaust survivor and part of a tour the director was leading through the redesigned headquarters for the U.S.C. Shoah Foundation, the organization he founded in 1994 to collect testimony from Holocaust survivors. Now Mr. Spielberg has expanded the foundation’s footprint on the University of Southern California campus, along with its mission and public focus: to fight hate, which he says has become commonplace globally.

“The presence of hate has become taken for granted,” Mr. Spielberg said. “We are not doing enough to counter it.”

The prerecorded video conversation is part of a series using playback technology that invites visitors to converse with 16 survivors of genocide, based on specific word patterns and more than 2,000 questions that vary from views on God to personal history. Earlier this month, the testimony of Pinchas was displayed at the United Nationson the 70th anniversary of the adoption of genocide laws, a storytelling tool to raise awareness.

While the foundation continues to archive stories from victims of anti-Semitism, and advocate on their behalf, it is also collecting what Mr. Spielberg calls “living testimony” from modern genocide victims. “The Holocaust cannot stand alone,” he said with conviction. “We decided to send our videographers into Rwanda to get testimony. From there we went to Cambodia, Armenia — we’re doing a critical study in the Central African Republic, Guatemala, the Nanjing massacre. Most recently, we’re doing testimony on the anti-Rohingya violence in Myanmar and the current anti-Semitic violence in Europe. We’re expanding our scope to counter many forms of hate.”

The 10,000-square-foot space — which opened to the public last month — is a far cry from the organization’s beginnings following “Schindler’s List,” in 1993. Mr. Spielberg sent an army of videographers around the globe to record Holocaust survivors’ stories. Betamax tapes of the interviews were stored at his Amblin Entertainment offices on the Universal Studios lot, and then at a storage company before the foundation’s move to U.S.C.’s Leavey Library in 2006. (There are a little over 51,000 recordings of Holocaust survivors in the visual history archive, a staggering 115,000 hours.)

Today the group has 82 employees and an annual budget of about $15 million, which includes $3 million from the university. It also has received millions in donations. Its new home — part office, part media lab — is packed with video testimonies from 65 countries in 43 languages, along with survivor-inspired artwork (a hanging steel sculpture by the British artist Nicola Anthony incorporates phrases from filmed testimony.) Visitors can tour the offices Monday through Friday, between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.

“Everyone thinks the Shoah Foundation is about archiving the past but it’s about understanding empathy and using testimony to shine a light,” Stephen D. Smith, its executive director, said.

Reflecting its founder’s legacy, the organization has produced multiple films, including the recent documentary “The Girl and the Picture,” about 88-year-old Xia Shuqin, who witnessed the murder of her family in the Nanjing Massacre in 1937. It was directed by Vanessa Roth, whose mother was an interviewer for the foundation in the early 1990s. “The Last Goodbye,” a virtual reality memorial screening at Holocaust museums in Florida, New York, Illinois and California, takes audiences into the Majdanek concentration camp in German-occupied Poland, with Pinchas Gutter as guide, using thousands of photos and 3-D video to explore a railway car, gas chamber and barracks. David Korins, the scenic designer of the musical “Hamilton,” is now the foundation’s director of museum experiences, with the goal of getting the collection of archival footage into more museums.

Rising anti-Semitism is providing fresh impetus for the foundation’s relaunched efforts. “Not only are people willing to forget about the Holocaust, they’re willing to deny it,” said Aaron Breitbart, a senior researcher at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the human rights organization that has worked with the foundation since the 1990s. “The Shoah Foundation has made a great contribution in that battle for memory.”

The relaunch coincides with the theatrical rerelease of “Schindler’s List.” In her 1993 review of the film for The Times, Janet Maslin wrote: “Rising brilliantly to the challenge of this material and displaying an electrifying creative intelligence, Mr. Spielberg has made sure that neither he nor the Holocaust will ever be thought of in the same way again.”

The film ran in about 1,000 theaters in mid-December and was screened free for students nationwide. Although it was digitally remastered in 4K resolution, Mr. Spielberg said, “I didn’t touch a frame.” The original version of the film is currently available on Netflix.

A quarter century on, it remains a complex depiction of Nazi horrors.

“We were surprised that somebody even attempted to make a film about it,” said Renee Firestone, 94, whose story is told at the foundation.

Despite the expansion, some challenges remain, Mr. Smith said. Most testimonies are unavailable online, which means they can only be seenat the foundation or the 146 partner libraries and universities (links are free for families of those interviewed). There are no transcripts of the recordings yet, but the foundation is spending $10 million building a free online platform for researchers, schools and the general public starting in late 2019, Mr. Smith said.

Days before Mr. Spielberg’s 72nd birthday, wearing a suede jacket and 1860s-style boots from his 2012 opus, “Lincoln,” the director munched a granola bar at the foundation’s headquarters. The color of his beard is now saltier, he has a few more inches around the middle, but his gray-green eyes still shine boyishly when he’s discussing his foundation and his seminal film. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.

Why expand the mission of the Shoah Foundation?

I think there’s a measurable uptick in anti-Semitism, and certainly an uptick in xenophobia. The racial divide is bigger than I would ever imagine it could be in this modern era. People are voicing hate more now because there’s so many more outlets that give voice to reasonable and unreasonable opinions and demands. People in the highest places are allowing others who would never express their hatred to publicly express it. And that’s been a big change. There’s all kinds of efforts to take the truth and subvert it to twisted ideology. We saw it happen in Europe first, in France, then Poland again — I never thought it would come back home to us like it has existed over the last two years.

Many groups are clamoring that they have it harder than others — how do we overcome that?

We can commiserate with each other about suffering and pain, but we should never compete that way. Being marginalized, being discriminated against, having racist and anti-Semitic slurs hurled is something that unites [all people]. Everything against black society is also against the Jewish community. Everything against the gay and lesbian, LGBTQ community is against black and Jewish communities. Hate is hate and the spillover makes us all responsible for watching each others’ backs and standing up for each other. None of us could ever be bystanders again.

How can Hollywood combat this?

Look how many movies are now telling the stories of women. There’s a huge shift that is gender-centric, and we saw it happen at the beginning of the Harvey Weinstein downfall. Storytelling is fundamentally human. But the art of listening is what I’m hoping the Shoah Foundation is able to inspire.

[In 2018, Amblin Television, a division of Amblin Partners, Mr. Spielberg’s production company, was one of three parties to a $9.5 million settlement agreement with an actress on the CBS show “Bull” who was dropped after she confronted its star about inappropriate comments. A representative for Amblin declined to comment, directing inquiries to CBS, “the sole owner of the show.”]

You are rereleasing “Schindler’s List” after 25 years. Do you believe it can still make an impact?

At the Tribeca Film Festival, I experienced my first audience in 25 years watching “Schindler’s List.” It was a full house, and the reaction — I turned to Kate [Capshaw, his wife] and said “Oh my God, they’re still listening.” With this renewed cycle of hate, and initiatives at the Shoah Foundation, I thought it could open up a conversation that genocide can happen anywhere when an ordinary society goes wrong. Charlottesville and the aftermath made a huge impact on wanting to reissue the film.

If you made the film today, what are the things you would have changed?

No. There’s nothing I would have changed, absolutely nothing. I stand by the film as it has stood its own test of time.

What sticks with you 25 years later about filming in Poland, where the carnage happened?

In four months’ filming in Krakow, the hair on the back of my neck never went down. It was really hard every morning to simply get out of the car and walk to the set. I wanted to use the locations where Schindler stayed in Krakow, including the Jewish Ghetto, even shooting very close to the Płaszów forced labor camp. We shot just outside Auschwitz, building a barracks and backing the train into Auschwitz proper, so when the train exits Auschwitz, it appeared in the film as if it’s entering the death camp. That was one of the coldest nights I ever experienced. That mournful silence within the company of actors — you could hear a pin drop.

The foundation decided to include modern testimonies about genocide when it already has over 51,000 testimonies on record about anti-Semitism. My grandparents were filmed by the foundation in 1996; is video the best teacher?

Look, we’re all storytellers. There’s no one alive who isn’t a storyteller, even if they don’t think they are. Every day is a story. Maya Angelou said: “History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”

What are your earliest memories of being different?

My grandmother taught English to Hungarian Holocaust survivors in Cincinnati. I was 2 or 3, and I would sit with them around the table. That’s where I learned my numbers — on the arm of an Auschwitz survivor who showed me the numbers of his forearm. That was my “Sesame Street.” That’s how I first learned to count.

What more can we do? What do you plan to do?

Teachers and parents who need to take responsibility for the acceptance of hatred in the fabric of society. I’m working with the Discovery Channel and the Academy Award-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney on a six-hour study called “Why We Hate.” I’m not planning any more dramatization on the Holocaust itself. I’m putting all my attention on the documentary format.

Filed under Antisemitism, Holocaust, Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with

Trump’s battle against H-4 visa holders

2018/12/20 Leave a comment

Spousal employment, another Canadian immigration advantage compared to the USA:

When Molika Gupta immigrated to the U.S. in 2013, after marrying her husband who was already working in the states, she had no idea she would be unable to work. In India, she had earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees and worked in patent licensing—but once she came to the U.S., she found she could not work on the H-4 visa, which is given to immediate family members of an H-1B worker. (The H-1B is a temporary visa awarded to highly skilled foreign workers, to fill specialized jobs for which there aren’t enough qualified American workers. An H-4 visa allows immediate family members to legally accompany H-1B holders to the U.S. and study here, but it does not authorize them to work.) She decided to get a second master’s degree, which put her on a student visa, but two years later, she was forced to switch back to the H-4 after striking out with the H-1B lottery. (There’s a cap of 85,000 H-1B visas per year—a lottery system is now used to determine which petitions will be approved.)

“That’s when the darkness and depression and loneliness started,” she says. “I was not expecting something like this would happen to me.” When her H-4 work authorization was finally granted in 2017, employers were wary of hiring someone with a gap in their employment history. “Hiring managers couldn’t understand what happened because they’re not really aware of the immigration process,” she says. Now, she works as a freelancer—and advocates for other H-1B spouses in her situation.

“IT’S JUST FUNDAMENTALLY WRONG”

Gupta is one of about 100,000 women who could lose the ability to work if the Trump administration follows through on yet another anti-immigration measure, which would revoke work permits for H-1B spouses—more formally known as the employment authorization document (EAD). Since 2015, when President Obama introduced EAD, H-4 visa holders have had the ability to work without a green card. At the moment, the green card wait time for highly skilled Indian immigrants—who account for more than 75% of H-1B holders—is decades long, which means that without being granted work authorization, their spouses could be barred from working for the foreseeable future.

An overwhelming majority of those spouses are women, for whom the ability to work secures their economic independence—and helps bolster the U.S. economy. In a survey of 2,411 H-4 holders, the advocacy group Gupta works with (which started as a Facebook page, “Save H4EAD“) found that 94% of respondents were women. Nearly 60% of the people surveyed have postgraduate or professional degrees, and about 57% have lived in the U.S. for more than five years and have U.S.-born children. The women who could be affected don’t just work in the tech industry; they are teachers and nurses and architects.

“These are people who are on a path to becoming permanent citizens,” says Todd Schulte, the president of immigration advocacy group FWD.us. “It’s just fundamentally wrong.”

The Trump administration already cracked down on the H-1B visa last year, when he issued an executive order that led to a more stringent review of H-1B petitions as well as increased scrutiny of compensation and why the job in question requires a foreign worker. Immigration lawyers have reported a higher rate of denials and delays issuing visas. But the decision on H-4 work authorization—which was first proposed over a year ago—has been delayed for months, leaving H-4 holders in a state of fearful anticipation. The EAD work authorization was initially introduced through an executive order by Obama, and Trump could similarly revoke it by executive order, although it could potentially be challenged in court.

According to Schulte, the White House has not made a move to revoke H-4 work permits in part because they don’t have a good reason to do so. “Take a step back and think about how unprecedented this move is,” he says. “This is a successful program. There is nobody saying this is somehow bad for the economy and country who can back it up with economic stats. They don’t actually have economic justification for it.”

WHAT IT MEANS FOR U.S. TECH JOBS

For tech companies, which have historically employed tens of thousands of H-1B workers, a decision to revoke work permits for spouses could compromise their ability to attract talent from countries like India and China. (Microsoft president Brad Smith has cautioned that the decision could force them to move jobs out of the U.S.) In Congress, there is bipartisan support for H-4 work authorization: Earlier this year, Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Mia Love (R-UT) penned a letter with the support of 130 bipartisan members of Congress, imploring Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to preserve the current regulation. Jayapal also has legislation drafted that can be introduced in the event of a decision.

“I think it’s absolutely ridiculous to welcome one person to contribute their considerable skills to our economy, but tell their spouse that they have to stay home,” she says. “Everyone—regardless of gender—deserves to be able to use and enhance their skills, be financially self-sufficient, thrive mentally and physically, and pursue their dreams. Moreover, it hurts our ability to attract and retain workers. Many of our peers, like Canada and Australia, provide work authorization for accompanying spouses. It’s simply the right thing to do.”

Congressman Ro Khanna, whose district falls within Silicon Valley, says that while people in his town halls sometimes express concerns over the H-1B visa, nobody ever speaks out against the H-4 work permit. “I’ve never had a single constituent in my two years of Congress say that the spouses of H-1B visa holders should not be able to work,” he says. “I think people view that as inhumane or cruel.” That economic independence is particularly important, he says, given there is higher incidence of domestic abuse or violence when a spouse can’t work. And in places with a high cost of living—such as the Bay Area—Khanna says the loss of a second income could significantly impact the livelihood of many families.

The one upside of Trump’s rhetoric is that it has raised awareness and shed light on the plight of H-1B spouses, many of whom only realize they can’t work without the EAD aftercoming to the U.S. And some people have a “distorted” image of the women who carry the H-4 visa, according to Gupta. “It’s not like I was waiting for someone to appear as a knight in shining armor and take me to the U.S.,” Gupta says. “That’s not the case for many women out there.”

Gupta and other advocates—the Save H4-EAD group is led by a group of about 20 people—have drawn more attention to their cause by meeting with lawmakers to share their stories. Raising awareness in the U.S. has also enlightened many women in India who may have to move to the U.S. (Though Gupta adds, “Nobody should be forced to choose between their freedom to work and marriage.”) The group is also preparing for a commenting period if and when the Trump administration makes a decision on work permits.

But Gupta says there is little she can do to brace herself for what could be her new reality. “Nobody can prepare for a situation that they don’t deserve to be in,” Gupta says. “Fighting for your work rights in a country that is the most developed in the world is ironic. I don’t know what should be my next action.”

Source: Trump’s battle against H-4 visa holders

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Stars of ‘Intellectual Dark Web’ Scramble to Save Their Cash Cows

2018/12/20 1 Comment

Of note:

Members of the so-called Intellectual Dark Web are taking a financial beating and scrambling for funds because their followers are reluctant to continue pledging money on Patreon after the crowdfunding platform jettisoned another right-wing provocateur over hate speech.

Fans of the internet’s contrarian wing don’t want Patreon taking a cut of the money they send to their heroes for premium content and have stopped making pledges.

The boycott may be hurting Patreon’s bottom line, but it’s also hurting personalities like right-wing author Jordan Peterson, comedian Dave Rubin, and other big names—who have resorted to begging their acolytes to keep the cash coming or are looking for another way to raise money.

Peterson, for his part, in a video posted online Sunday, begged his fans to be “reasonably patient” and keep up the monthly payments they send him through the crowdfunding site.

“It’s not so good for me on the financial front,” said Peterson, who lost nearly 10 percent of his Patreon supporters over the past week.

“My business side is going: that’s not great,” Rubin added in the same video.

Peterson, Rubin, and other pillars of the Intellectual Dark Web, an amorphous group of conservative internet political personalities defined by their willingness to buck political correctness and tweak liberals, have seen their Patreon payments battered this month by a controversy starring one of their movement’s own members.

Now Intellectual Dark Webbers like Rubin and Peterson are faced with a tough choice.

They can follow their fans and leave Patreon, abandoning the platforms that earns them each hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in exchange for another crowdfunding platform that could be shut down at any moment. Or they can stay, and risk being branded as sellouts to their free speech-obsessed fanbases.

The Intellectual Dark Web’s Patreon gravy train is under threat over Patreon’s treatment of Carl Benjamin, a pugnacious right-wing personality who poses as ancient Mesopotamian ruler “Sargon of Akkad” online. On Dec. 7, Patreon banned Benjamin, who was making more than $12,000 a month on the platform.

Patreon kicked Benjamin off for “racist and homophobic slurs,” an apparent reference to a February rant in which Benjamin called his foes on the extreme right “niggers” and “faggots.”

Peterson, Benjamin, and Rubin, as well as Patreon’s press office, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Benjamin’s supporters on the right have mostly ignored his hate speech, framing him instead as just the latest right-wing figure to be kicked off a tech platform over his politics.

Despite his use of racial and homophobic slurs, Benjamin’s friends in the Intellectual Dark Web have cast him as a martyr to free speech. Peterson, who has been lauded in mainstream outlets like the New York Times, called Benjamin “a brave guy” and said he was “extremely upset” by the ban.

On Sunday night, “new atheist” author and Intellectual Dark Web figure Sam Harris, who had one of Patreon’s highest-earning accounts until Monday, said that he was quitting the fundraising platform over recent Patreon bans.

“These recent expulsions seem more readily explained by political bias,” Harris said in a statement.

Benjamin’s ouster left fans of the Intellectual Dark Web urging other personalities like Rubin and Peterson to quit Patreon, too. But their options are limited.

SubscribeStar, an upstart Russian crowdfunding site, initially offered to take in right-wing figures who were kicked off Patreon. But payments giant PayPal closedSuscribeStar’s account over the weekend, making it nearly impossible for the site to process credit card transactions.

That puts SubscribeStar in the same spot as other crowdfunding sites that have courted the extreme right, only to be banned from the major financial tech platforms. Over the weekend, SubscribeStar stopped accepting new members.

Other personalities are attempting to raise money through membership programs of their own. Some have urged their fans to just send them money directly through PayPal, while Harris has directed his thousands of Patreon subscribers to sign up to pay for his content through his own website.

Peterson, an idiosyncratic Canadian professor and bestselling author who subsists on an all-beef diet, isn’t about to go broke if he loses the Patreon money. Neither is Rubin, who has other income streams, including YouTube ads for his online talk show.

Still, Peterson and Rubin have a plan to save their fan payments: launching a Patreon-style website of their own. On Sunday, Peterson and Rubin urged their Patreon backers to hang tight as they work on the new site.

“We have not been sleeping on this front, man,” Peterson said in a video. “People are trying to figure out what to do so this stops happening.”

But Rubin and Peterson don’t have a launch date for their Patreon clone, and it’s not clear how many of their fans would follow them to a new, untested website. And they’ll have to contend with the biggest issue of all: keeping publicity-conscious payment processors like PayPal happy, while not alienating their hard-right fans.

Source: Stars of ‘Intellectual Dark Web’ Scramble to Save Their Cash Cows

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Suspensions Are Down In U.S. Schools But Large Racial Gaps Remain

2018/12/20 Leave a comment

Not sure what the latest Canadian trends are but in Toronto, believe overall pattern similar:

Students in U.S. schools were less likely to be suspended in 2016 than they were in 2012. But the progress is incremental, and large gaps — by race and by special education status — remain.

This data comes from an analysis of federal data for NPR in partnership with the nonprofit organization Child Trends. And it comes as the Trump administration is preparing the final report from a school safety commission that is expected to back away from or rescind Obama-era guidance intended to reduce racial disparities in school discipline.

The commission, led by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, is expected to release its final report in the coming days.

The Child Trends analysis highlights findings that when a student disrupts class, a school can disrupt that student’s education — and his or her entire life. Research suggests suspension and expulsion, arrests and referrals to law enforcement, is associated with dropping out of school and going to jail. All of these consequences happen more frequently to black students, even in preschool. Sometimes they are punished more harshly for the same behavior as white students; often for nonviolent offenses. Students with disabilities are also punished more often and more harshly.

In 2014, with this body of evidence growing, the U.S. Department of Education issued detailed guidance on “how to identify, avoid, and remedy” what they called “discriminatory discipline.” They promoted alternatives to suspension and expulsion, and opened investigations into school districts that had severely racially skewed numbers.

In the wake of that guidance, more than 50 of America’s largest school districts instituted discipline reform. More than half the states revised their laws to try and reduce suspensions and expulsions. And, our indicators are, they succeeded.

At NPR’s request, the nonprofit Child Trends analyzed the federal Civil Rights Data Collection, which includes reports from every public school in the nation, over three years — the 2011-2012, 2013-2014, and 2015-2016 school year. They caution that this analysis, which is based on numbers self-reported by schools, can’t cover every possibility — for example, if schools are calling parents to pick students up instead of putting an official suspension on the books. Or if they are suspending fewer students, but suspending them for longer periods of time.

Still, they documented some heartening changes between 2012 and 2016.

  • The proportion of all students suspended from school at least once during the year fell from 5.6 percent to 4.7 percent.
  • Among high school students, the percentage suspended fell even more, from 9.6 to 7.6 percent.
  • Suspension rates fell around the country, in each of the biggest-population states. Only one state, Mississippi, saw a persistent increase year by year.
  • Hispanic students experienced the largest decrease –a 30 percent drop in suspensions.
  • Suspension rates fell faster for those most often suspended — Black students and students with a disability.

But, on the flip side:

  • Black high school students are still twice as likely (12.8 percent) to be suspended as white (6.1 percent) or Hispanic (6.3 percent) high school students.
  • And students with a disability are also twice as likely (12.8 percent) to be suspended as those without a disability (6.9 percent).

“This progress is incremental and large gaps by race and disability still remain,” says Kristen Harper, who directs policy development for Child Trends. She says there’s “a long way to go” and a continuing need for federal leadership. “Any efforts that could suggest that these issues are not important could undermine the work of states and districts.”

We should note that NPR previously collaborated with Child Trends on a look at the Civil Rights Data Collection’s school shooting indicator. That analysis found serious problems with the data reported. But Harper says that the out of school suspensions indicator is far more robust and reliable, partly because the data has been collected for longer, and also because suspensions are more common than shootings, so a few data entry errors are less likely to skew the overall trend.

Source: Suspensions Are Down In U.S. Schools But Large Racial Gaps Remain

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