Long Live Multilateralism: Why the Global Compact for Migration Matters

2018/12/04 Leave a comment

Kind of ironic reading this commentary which includes the quote “It looked like an impossible bet, but the Global Compact has cut through the noise of xenophobia and populism” while seeing considerable anti-Global Compact messaging from many on the right (e.g., MALCOLM: The UN migration compact spells radical change for Canada) and far right:

U.N. MEMBER STATES last week finalized the text of the first ever international agreement on global migration. The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) is the result of nearly two years of intense and – at times fraught – negotiations. The U.S. left the negotiating table at an early stage and Hungary pulled out at the end of negotiations. Others have threatened to follow
suit.

But they did not leave. Instead, last Friday, national delegations from all over the world gave the Swiss and Mexican co-facilitators and the U.N.Special Representative on Migration Louise Arbour a standing ovationfor achieving an “historic breakthrough” on global migration.

Migration experts have a tendency to be skeptical of such language, usually with good reason. However, it would be a grave mistake to underestimate the political salience of the Global Compact, despite its limitations. It has the potential to help bring at least some real change to how the world approaches migration. In the current political climate, that is a significant achievement.

WHEN THE COMPACT PROCESS STARTED TWO YEARS AGO, MANY WERE SKEPTICAL ABOUT THE LIKELIHOOD OF THE GCMSEEING THE LIGHT OF THE DAY.

To begin with the limitations: Like most globally negotiated agreements, the GCM is far from perfect and is not a done deal. For a start, it is a voluntary non-binding agreement, unlike the 1951 Refugee Convention. While the text is now final, the GCM will not be formally adopted by U.N. member states until December at a global summit in Marrakech, Morocco. More states may still pull out of the deal. While it is unlikely that many other world leaders will want to be associated with Donald Trump and Hungary’s Viktor Orban, migration debates are highly sensitive and volatile in many countries, so it is possible that other states will pull out of the deal. Finally, the text is necessarily the result of several compromises, and not all issues have been adequately addressed or resolved. First and foremost of these is the relationship between irregular migration and diminishing legal pathways for people to migrate.

Yet let’s remember that when the Compact process started two years ago, many were skeptical about the likelihood of the GCM seeing the light of the day. Others believed that the text would have to be watered down as to become hollow. None of this was the case.

The significance of the political and diplomatic process leading up to the GCM agreement cannot be exaggerated. States engaged, discussed and found ways to compromise. Many non-state actors – including me – contributed and helped shape the ideas and innovations in the text. The co-facilitators listened and managed to translate the complex political dialogue into a text that, while not perfect and the result of many necessary compromises, is dense with proposals.

At a time when European states cannot reach a meaningful agreement to cooperate while an increasing number of people die at sea, and with Trump pushing an ever harder line on immigration at home and abroad, it is more urgent than ever to commit to discover and test new forms of international cooperation and to explore solutions and pragmatic ways forward. The GCM offers a framework to do just that. In the words of the Swiss ambassador for development, forced displacement and migration during Friday’s ceremony at the U.N.: “It looked like an impossible bet, but the Global Compact has cut through the noise of xenophobia and populism.”

So what to make of the text itself? I see it as a springboard for doing migration differently. Sure, it is long – with 23 objectives, limited internal coherence and perhaps not enough of a sense of purpose. It falls short of doing the right thing on something as important as child detention – where states could not agree to simply end detaining children, but rather to “ensuring availability and accessibility of a viable range of alternatives to detention in non-custodial contexts, favouring community-based care arrangement.”

“IT LOOKED LIKE AN IMPOSSIBLE BET, BUT THE GLOBAL COMPACT HAS CUT THROUGH THE NOISE OF XENOPHOBIA AND POPULISM.”

On matters of migration and development, the text recognizes that migration can help achieve development outcomes and as such it is a cornerstone of the Agenda 2030 on sustainable development. That’s no small result. However, the text also falls back into donor-convenient rhetoric of suggesting that development policies, programs and money can address the “adverse drivers” of migration, when there is little evidence that development aid can stem irregular movement.

Even so, the text is also rich in ideas and innovations; for example, the proposal to establish skills partnerships between countries to facilitate labor mobility.

Is it a “laughable wish list” as someone on Twitter suggested to me? I rather see it as a pragmatic and potentially very useful menu of options – or a “treasure chest”. It will be down to states but also political leaders, policymakers, mayors, businesses, activists, researchers and others to make good use of the ideas in the GCM and to put the text into action.

And when it comes to action, I believe that the non-binding nature of the Compact can be a blessing, not a curse. We have seen time and time again countries signing up to international agreements and failing to respect them. There are limits to how far legal frameworks can deliver on a phenomenon as politically charged and complex as global migration, where the appetite for international cooperation is, frankly, limited. It requires political leadership and long-term vision, fueled by innovation and experimentation. So a pragmatic voluntary agreement like the GCMcan come in handy, as a platform for negotiations, deals and dialogue.

What to expect next? In the months leading up to the Compact’s formal approval at the Marrakech Summit, it will be vital for action to take place at different levels: governments can begin to establish or re-energize bilateral or multilateral collaborations, commitments should be made to fund and deliver specific objectives and actions, mayors could proactively use the Compact objectives to form coalitions and agree action plans. In short, discussions should begin in earnest between all of us willing to make the best use of the GCM as a platform for action.

This is clearly just the beginning of the journey, and I am under no illusion that it will be an easy one. I also know that internationally negotiated agreements cannot resolve all the challenges or make the most of all the opportunities of global migration. But it feels so good – for once – to have something to build on rather than despair about.

Source: https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/community/2018/07/19/long-live-multilateralism-why-the-global-compact-for-migration-matters?utm_source=Refugees

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

Dubai firm named in St Kitts-Nevis citizenship-by-investment scandal

2018/12/04 Leave a comment

Yet another one:

Copies of letters, emails and other documents in the possession of Caribbean News Now reveal that Savory & Partners, a Dubai-based citizenship by investment (CBI) agent with a claimed 200-year British pedigree, has seemingly been diverting investors from the St Kitts and Nevis government’s Hurricane Relief/Sustainable Growth Funds into a real estate development.

As reported previously, a letter purportedly sent by the Citizenship by Investment Unit (CIU) of St Kitts and Nevis to a local authorised agent has been denied by both the CIU and the local agent, leading (if true) to the inescapable conclusion that it has been forged, probably using a genuine letter as a template.

The letter states that “the application via real estate option” in a development for a specified individual “has been approved in principle for Citizenship by Investment”.

The letter goes on to say that “payment of US$150,000 must be made within six months”. However, the minimum amount required by law under the real estate option is an investment of $200,000, not $150,000 as stated in the letter.

The local citizenship agents concerned told Caribbean News Now that the firm “has never received such a letter from the unit and has never forwarded such a letter to anyone”.

Furthermore, according to Les Khan, CEO of the CIU, the letter does not conform to the Unit’s customary format and content. This prompts the question: who did the forgery; the remaining candidates being either Savory & Partners, the foreign agents for the application in question, or the local developer, or indeed both. Neither has yet responded to requests for comment.

According to the terms set out in the relevant documents signed by the applicant and the developer, the client is told he is purchasing a share in an approved development for an amount equivalent to the then CIP government “donation” option, but agrees immediately to transfer this interest back to the developer.

In other words, the applicant receives nothing of tangible value in return for his purported real estate investment except for St Kitts and Nevis citizenship, as would be the case if the applicant had instead made the optional contribution to the country’s Hurricane Relief Fund or Sustainable Growth Fund. However, under this scheme, others pocket the money instead of the government, without giving anything of concrete value in return.

Agents involved in this deceit can make upwards of US$100,000 per application, compared to the customary government commission of US$15,000, to the detriment of the people of St Kitts and Nevis.

Former St Kitts and Nevis prime minister, Dr Denzil Douglas, first raised the alarmover these questionable activities at a press conference last month.

Other Caribbean islands have been plagued by similar skullduggery. AAA Associates and Bluemina CBI consultants have been similarly promoting these dubious schemes.

With regard to the allegedly forged documents, Khan has stated that the matter is under investigation by the CIU.

However, since Caribbean News Now has also been provided with copies of text messages said to be from Khan to another citizenship firm encouraging the similar diversion of funds from the donation option into real estate projects of questionable feasibility, it would seem to be unrealistic to rely on the CIU to investigate itself. Indee,d Khan’s text messages are explicit, insisting agents follow his recommendation as to choice of developer when engaging in such activity.

Earlier this month Khan told Investment Migration Insider, an industry newsletter, that “Our real estate option is really taking off now […] It’s become a viable option and it’s now almost on par with the Sustainable Growth Fund […]”

In the meantime, Caribbean News Now also has copies of emails and written proposals from Savory & Partners sent within just the past few days to other potential clients offering St Kitts and Nevis citizenship at investment amounts far below what the CIU has confirmed are the legal requirements.

In addition, as reported earlier, a number of advertisements have been appearing on social media in the Middle East offering St Kitts and Nevis citizenship at investment amounts substantially below the legally mandated minimums.

It seems clear that the specific incident involving Savory and the other similar proposals and/or completed citizenship applications potentially give rise to criminal offences under the laws of St Kitts and Nevis as well as other jurisdiction. This is not the only example of forged letters in the possession of Caribbean News Nowrelating to other developers and agents, not just in Dubai.

There is, however, no word as to whether or not the matter will be referred to local police for investigation.

Further, since the available evidence suggests that the funds in question were or are to be transferred in US dollars through the US banking system, all parties involved should be concerned about their potential exposure to US federal investigation and possible money laundering charges, notwithstanding the claim by Savory on its website that its “British management team maintains a strict code of conduct based on professionalism, transparency and efficiency”.

All parties concerned have been asked for clarification or comment and any responses will be reported accordingly in due course.

Source: Dubai firm named in St Kitts-Nevis citizenship-by-investment scandal

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

Bar on low-skilled immigrants will hurt UK, say bosses

2018/12/04 Leave a comment

Of note. Canada also gives priority to higher skilled immigrants (save with respect to family and refugee classes), with lower skilled workers generally being Temporary Foreign Workers:

A new immigration system that places severe limits on low-skilled immigration risks inflicting “massive damage” to livelihoods and communities, one of Britain’s most senior business figures has warned.

Carolyn Fairbairn, head of the Confederation of British Industry, issued her sternest warning to date about the new “global system” being drawn up by the government, which is expected to place major restrictions on visas for low-skilled workers. The business community, she said, was very concerned about suggestions that migrants earning under £30,000 a year might struggle to win the right to work in the UK.

“This idea that there’s a £30,000 cap below which is described as low-skilled and not welcome in the UK is a damaging perspective for government to have for our economy,” she said. “People earning less than £30,000 make a hugely valuable contribution to our economy and society, from lab technicians to people in the food industry.

“Many of our universities have staff on less than £30,000. So our offer to government is to work with us. We understand the challenge of building public trust, but we think there are much better answers.”

Her comments came in the week that Theresa May claimed that British firms struggling to fill low-skilled jobs should train British workers to fill any gaps. While the cabinet has agreed on the principle that all migrants should be treated the same after Brexit, with EU citizens no longer given preferential treatment, the government’s white paper on the new system has still not been published.

Pro-business ministers such as the chancellor, Philip Hammond, and the business secretary, Greg Clark, have been keen to heed the warnings of industry about introducing strict rules too quickly. However, May won support for a tougher system after the independent migration advisory committee (MAC) backed a clampdown on low-skilled workers.

Fairbairn said: “Our economy is hugely reliant in absolutely critical sectors on people who are so-called low-skilled, such as our care sector, caring for the older generation. We have a nursing shortage. This is a massively important sector.

“It is reasonable to want to bring the level of immigration down. But we must not underestimate the scale of the change that this would mean to our economy and the massive damage it would do to livelihoods and communities if we move too quickly.

“At the very least, we need to recognise there needs to be a transition period that needs to be reasonably long. Businesses can adapt, but they can’t do that overnight. If we do procure a system like this quickly, and some of the talk is that we would bring it in very quickly after the end of the Brexittransition period, we would hugely damage our economy. Jobs will be lost, communities will be damaged. There is a strong alarm bell from business on this.”

MPs have been angered by the suggestion that they may not be able to see details of the white paper before they vote on May’s Brexit deal next week. Sajid Javid, the home secretary, said last week that the plan should be published before the end of the year.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “When we leave the EU, free movement under EU law will end and we will bring forward a new border and immigration system that focuses on the skills and talents people have to offer, not where they come from.

“It will ensure the UK continues to attract the people the nation needs to compete on the global stage, while ensuring that we take control of immigration, continue to secure our border, and reduce net migration to sustainable levels.”.

Source: Bar on low-skilled immigrants will hurt UK, say bosses

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

Chris Selley: Canada’s fantasyland politics can’t fix our refugee backlog

2018/12/03 Leave a comment

A good rant by Selley:

Coming up on two years since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s infamous “Welcome to Canada” tweet, and nearly 38,000 irregular border crossings from the United States later, it is still easy to argue the country does not face any kind of migration crisis. Few if any of those crossing the border seem to represent a security threat — and since everyone seeking asylum, by definition, has to check in with authorities, we can hope bad actors will be weeded out. Many of those applying for asylum may well be economic migrants, not bona fide refugees; but there are far worse things than being overrun with hard-striving immigrants eager to make a go of it in a new country. It remains true that compared to the number of asylum-seekers other countries have dealt with in recent years, Canada hardly faces a challenge at all.

The Conservative opposition in Ottawa, and more recently the PC government in Toronto, have rudely declined to be sanguine. The former has demanded the government stop the flow of migrants; the latter has stridently demanded compensation for the cost of caring for the new arrivals who can’t fend for themselves. There has been no shortage of progressive commentators eager to hold them to account, arguing they are misrepresenting the issues or “dog-whistling” to racists, and citing all the reasons listed above.

At some point those commentators will have to hold the government to account as well, I’m afraid. As the Parliamentary Budget Officer confirmed this week, the Liberals have allowed — at the very least — a bureaucratic crisis to firmly take hold. Manageable as Canada’s irregular migration problem ought to be, the feds have utterly failed to manage it. As of Sept. 18, the backlog of all asylum cases was nearly 65,000 people. That’s the most this century, and more than triple what it was at the end of Trudeau’s first year in office. The PBO projects the wait time for refugee claims to be finalized will be three years by 2020.

The government’s line is that the number of irregular crossers is decreasing. But the majority of the 65,000 aren’t irregular crossers. Even two years is completely unjustifiable from every perspective, including a humanitarian one. Imagine being convinced you have a solid claim to asylum in Canada, selling the proverbial farm in Nigeria, getting yourself firmly established in a new country — and then being told you have to go home to nothing.

No serious country would think this was no big deal. While the influx of irregular crossers isn’t the Liberals’ fault, it is their responsibility to address it. Adding people to a massive and ever-growing list doesn’t cut it. Doing so while prancing and preening about as the brave defenders of Canadian compassion, empathy and inclusivity is simply repulsive. They shouldn’t have gotten away with it for even a second. Yet they continue to.

Many have focused on the daunting cost of all this: the PBO estimates nearly $400 million in the 2019-20 fiscal year. But the simple fact is, the only real solution here is to spend more than that. No party is proposing physically stopping unarmed men, women and children from crossing the border. No party is proposing revoking the long-established right to a hearing before Canada sends you on your way. There is no reason to think Washington will “take them back” even if we could send them. The only way to fix this is to spend scads more money to hire scads more people to process these claims more quickly, and yet somehow this debate has boiled away for two years without that rising to the top.

But then that’s hardly unique in Canadian politics, is it? The Conservatives claim to support action on carbon emissions while treating the simplest and most market-oriented approaches as communist plots. The Liberals fill their speeches and social media feeds with talk of fending off global devastation while fronting a carbon tax plan that will absolutely not achieve Canada’s targets under the Paris Accord.

The Liberals promise to get pipelines built using understanding, consultation and patchouli oil. The Conservatives demand an aggressive approach the likes of which didn’t get the job done very recently, and probably won’t in future. We all know Trans Mountain is a political nightmare that’s unlikely ever to get built.

A group of asylum seekers arrive at the temporary housing facilities at the border crossing Wednesday May 9, 2018 in St. Bernard-de-Lacolle, Que.

Decade after decade we make a royal hash of military procurement — or we do if actually procuring military hardware is the goal. As a vote-buying scheme, military procurement works just fine. Thank goodness we don’t need all those ships and planes — not really; not living next to our American friends.

It’s often observed that Canadian politics is a ferocious battle over small differences. But it’s often worse than that: A ferocious battle over small differences in which “winning” has nothing to do with actually accomplishing the task at hand. We must be blessed to live in a country where it matters so little.

Source: Chris Selley: Canada’s fantasyland politics can’t fix our refugee backlog

Filed under Immigration Tagged with

Sweden’s Decades-Long Failure to Integrate: Leonid Bershidsky

2018/12/03 2 Comments

Excerpt from a good long and balanced read, along with the reminder of the links between integration and economic outcomes:

Media Vs. Reality

Having walked around Tensta after dark, I must admit it’s far nicer than any other bad neighborhood I’ve ever seen (I grew up in a concrete wasteland on the edge of Moscow). There’s no trash on footpaths between the boxy but well-maintained three- and six-story apartment blocks, built in the 1960s as part of Sweden’s “Million Homes Program” to provide affordable housing to workers. Socialist urban planning is often an underlying reason for the emergence of problem neighborhoods, but Tensta is fetchingly human-scale with a lot of small parks and footbridges spanning lanes of traffic. The absence of graffiti gave this Berlin resident an eerie feeling, and the lack of bars on ground-floor windows made me recall the complex gridwork necessary to keep out burglars in my country of birth.

From what I’d read in media accounts, I’d expected to see drug deals in progress, a common sight in some areas of Berlin. But no one lounged around Tensta looking like a dealer or offering illicit substances for sale. The area around the subway station used to have a lively scene, I’m told, but surveillance cameras, which are generally rare in privacy-minded Sweden, drove it to someplace I couldn’t find.

This isn’t just my impression or a situation unique to Tensta. The 176-page report of the National Council for Crime Prevention is based on a door-to-door survey of two “particularly disadvantaged” areas that yielded 1,176 completed questionnaires, a massive exercise conducted by young female field researchers. Johanna Skinnari, the project manager, told me that team members received strict instructions not to walk alone and not to knock on doors in the late evening, but learned to ignore these precautions because they never felt threatened. “These places are a long way from the banlieues,” Skinnari said, referring to the notorious Paris suburbs.

The “vulnerable areas” aren’t no-go zones in the sense that police and other emergency services avoid going there. “I’d have no problem going to Tensta with my daughter,” said Erik Akerlund, chief police superintendent for the Botkyrka municipality outside Stockholm, which includes a “particularly vulnerable” area of its own. The neighborhoods are, however, no-go zones in a different sense. Locals in Tensta complain of a shortage of government services and doctors’ offices. The neighborhood of 19,000 people doesn’t have a police station of its own, the nearest one is about four kilometers away in Sollentuna. The shopping center at the center of the area was nearly deserted at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, and the few shops open there looked like they were hanging by a thread. The area’s reputation doesn’t make it a desirable place of business or posting for a civil servant or, say, a tax-funded dentist.

The violence and insecurity are real, too. Skinnari’s survey showed that a greater share of people in the vulnerable areas are exposed to crimes, especially property ones, than the residents of other Swedish neighborhoods. Protection rackets are common, and teachers often face the threat of violence at school. Street gangs can be visible and abusive. As a result, 55 percent of the women and 24 percent of men in the disadvantaged areas reported feeling unsafe going outside, compared with 27 percent of women and 8 percent of men in other neighborhoods. After 7 p.m., there are barely any women on the streets of Tensta.

The oppressive atmosphere can be easily linked to the neighborhoods’ economic profile. The employment level in the ghettos was 47 percent last year compared with 67 percent nationwide; between 40 and 67 percent, depending on the neighborhood, make less than 100,000 kronor ($11,000) a year.

That’s an integration failure. According to official data, 50 to 60 percent of residents in vulnerable areas are immigrants or children of immigrants, compared with 17 percent nationwide. In hours of wandering around Tensta, I didn’t meet a single person who looked like a Swede.

The Swedish government has tried to get more ghetto residents into the labor market, even subsidizing employers who gave newcomers their first job. But the program backfired as the foreigners lost the jobs as soon as the subsidy period ran out.

“The government has often just thrown money at the problems — with good intentions, but now there’s a degree of project fatigue,” Skinnari said.

There are constant attempts to improve schooling in the vulnerable neighborhoods, but official statistics say that 40 percent of young people in the disadvantaged areas leave school before graduating.

The Sources of Gang Violence

No wonder the ghetto kids end up in gangs. Though Tensta is visibly segregated — you won’t see any Kurds sitting in the Somali cafe, and vice versa — researchers, locals and police officers told me that the modern Swedish gang is surprisingly multiethnic.

Earlier this month, Rostami published a report for the Stockholm-based Institute for Futures Studies in which he attempted to quantify Swedish organized crime and extremism by combining information from several government databases. He found “business” links spanning seemingly vast cultural divides, including between Islamic extremists and the Swedish nationalist far right. Of the 15,244 people who are part of the gang scene, according to Rostami’s data, 67 percent were born in Sweden. But many of them are second generation immigrant kids who grew up together in disadvantaged areas. They went into the drug business together, too.

This new generation is more violent than its predecessors. Rostami, an Iranian refugee who lived in a ghetto-like area in Gothenburg and worked as a cop before he became a researcher, told me that in recent years, competition from the new generation of gangsters has wreaked havoc with the self-policing of the traditional mafias — the Russians, the Italians, the Bosnians.

“They didn’t see the new generation coming up,” Rostami said. “There’s a cultural shift: For the new kids, violence is the language they speak. They don’t dream of becoming godfather, they want to be king for one day. They don’t care if they’re killed tomorrow, next week or next month.”

Akerlund, the police superintendent, has noticed the shift, too. “When I talk to older criminals,” he said, “I see they’re sometimes afraid of the younger members of their own gangs. They have a different mindset, more violent.”

This change has been brewing for years. Akerlund remembers how he started as an officer patrolling a difficult neighborhood in 2005; almost the first thing he remembers is a riot. The police made an arrest and stones were soon flying at the officers. Car burnings and rock-throwing, often in retaliation for a drug bust, were a frequent occurrence until the middle of the current decade. Now, they’re relatively rare: Akerlund says the police have a better idea of how to counteract rumors and inform the neighborhood what’s really going on.

But violence hasn’t gone away; it’s made a comeback in the shootings. The cutthroat gangland competition is a new phenomenon and researchers and police officials struggle to explain its roots or figure out why firearm use is growing despite restrictive gun laws. They all say, however, that the recent wave of immigration has nothing to do with it: The newcomers haven’t had time to integrate into the gang culture.

Trapped by Decades of Bad Policy

Although Skinnari’s report indicates some statistical improvement in the vulnerable areas — slightly less exposure to crime, more feeling of safety compared with a few years back —the prospects for residents may actually be getting worse. For decades, the bad neighborhoods were gateways for immigrants into the rest of Sweden. People settled in them for the ethnic support networks, learned the language, got better jobs and moved out in a few years, always replaced by more immigrants.

Now, people get stuck. Everyone I talked to named the Swedish real estate market as the reason. It’s almost impossible to rent an apartment in Stockholm or other big urban centers, and few can afford to buy one. Swedish housing prices were up 44 percent last year compared with 2012, and they’ve almost tripled since 2000.

“I remember, 20 years ago one could save, borrow and move out,” said Rostami, who’s done just that. “Now that’s a challenge: You need a very stable job and a high income.”

Fixing the housing market requires investment, political will and planning so skillful that I doubt it exists anywhere. Last year in the Netherlands, often touted as a model when it comes to creating neighborhoods for people with different income levels, residents of these mixed neighborhoods told me of powerful class and ethnic tensions. Sweden has even less experience with such projects.

Inadequate policing is at the core of the problem. Despite safety gains made in the past four years, Rostami said there aren’t enough officers to “shrink the space that organized crime occupies.” According to him, Germany has twice Sweden’s number of police officers per 100,000 residents.

Skinnari’s survey showed that in the vulnerable areas, the police and the court system often are mistrusted because they’re perceived as too soft: Known gang members are let out quickly and prisons lack space to accommodate everyone who’s sentenced, giving convicted gangsters a chance to keep terrorizing neighborhoods.

More prison cells — and, yes, a tougher deportation policy, as the Sweden Democrats suggest, could help.

Not even the nationalists propose going as far as neighboring Denmark with its infamous ghetto laws aimed at assimilating the immigrant population. The Sweden Democrat Bieler said she’d balk at the Danish idea of increasing punishment for crimes committed in problem areas. But it’s not unreasonable for a country to deport foreign nationals who have committed serious offenses. Though it offends liberal sensibilities, it’s also reasonable for a receiving country to try to instill some unifying values in newcomers, especially children. Not doing that has led to the emergence of parallel societies in the vulnerable areas, in which it’s normal to collect funds to refurbish a school in Baghdad but local schools are left to the Swedish government to worry about.

Interestingly, some of the younger immigrants, who yearn to become Swedes, don’t mind adopting a new identity as much as the previous generations of immigrants have done.

Ahmed Abdirahman, a 32-year-old integration policy expert at the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce and the founder of a non-governmental organization called the Global Village, was born in Somalia and lives in Tensta. He believes the immigrant areas, with a much higher proportion of children and young people, “are producing the future of Sweden,” a country with a low fertility rate. So the civil society in these areas shouldn’t aim simply to maintain the culture of the old home country, as has often been the case.

“We are the next generation, and for us it’s about being Swedes: we want to be part of the political conversation,” Abdirahman says.

Even if the Sweden Democrats ever become part of the establishment and succeed in restricting immigration, Sweden is stuck with a large, segregated immigrant population that both its high achievers and its criminals won’t let the rest of the country ignore.

Sweden has lived for decades with a blissful sense that a wealthy, tolerant society can iron out all its kinks. Now, there’s a widespread sense that the country’s social and law enforcement infrastructure is overburdened because too many immigrants are coming in, and time is needed to assimilate the earlier arrivals. But time isn’t the best doctor here: Problems with previous generations of immigrants and their kids were swept under the rug for too long.

What’s needed now is clearer awareness of where the problems really are. The police and researchers affiliated with them lead the way here with their attempts to pinpoint and study the problem neighborhoods and the gangs that operate in them. Superintendent Akerlund firmly believes that in 10 to 15 years, there won’t be any vulnerable areas in his district. But he understands that dream can only become reality with constant effort and learning.

The rest of Swedish society should concentrate on the real problem, too: It’s not the recent refugee wave, it’s decades of complacency and half-hearted integration policies. For Sweden, proud of its world-leading social policies, that’s a bitter pill to swallow, but better late than never.

Source: Sweden’s Decades-Long Failure to Integrate

Filed under Immigration, Integration Tagged with ,

Do Republicans Believe in Religious Liberty for Muslims?

2018/12/03 Leave a comment

Agree, this is a test:

Donald Trump and his GOP talk and talk about their love of “religious liberty.” In May, there was Trump declaring that religious freedom is a “priority” of his administration.  And in July, Trump’s Department of Justice even announced the formation of a religious liberty task force.

Well, if Trump and the GOP truly believe that religious liberty is not just for Christians, then here’s a no-brainer for them. The Republicans in the House should unanimously support a recently proposed rule to ensure religious liberty for a soon-to-be-sworn-in Muslim member of Congress and push back against the anti-Muslim voices in their party when they attack this change—which, if history is any guide, they will!

Come January 3, 2019, Rep.-elect Ilhan Omar (D-MN) will be the first Muslim member of Congress ever to wear a hijab (head scarf). The problem is that a House rule enacted in 1837 bans any type of headwear, which would include Omar’s headscarf.

In response, Democratic House leader and expected next speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has formally proposed to ditch this 181-year-old ban on headwear in order to “ensure religious expression.” As Pelosi explained to NBC News, “After voters elected the most diverse Congress in history, clarifying the antiquated rule banning headwear will further show the remarkable progress we have made as a nation.”

This rule, while on the books, doesn’t seem to have been enforced. As AshLee Strong, the spokeswoman for House Speaker Paul Ryan, explained in an email, “Under both Republican and Democratic Speakers, the House has never prohibited any kind of religious headwear.” That’s great to hear. But forgive me if I’m not quite reassured.

“In Minnesota, Republican activists this year pushed a resolution to prevent Muslims from even being a part of the GOP.”

So now, Pelosi and the Democrats want to take it one step further and go beyond ignoring a rule and instead affirmatively make it clear that they support religious freedom for all Americans. And Omar herself took to Twitter to celebrate the proposed change, writing, “No one puts a scarf on my head but me. It’s my choice—one protected by the first amendment.”

She added, “And this is not the last ban I’m going to work to lift.” Omar, a Somali refugee who would literally not be permitted to enter the United States today because of Trump’s current Muslim ban, clearly has her sights set on changing that Trump policy.

So why would GOP House members not support embracing religious liberty for Muslims? I suppose they still might in this case—we’ll see how they react when the next Congress starts. But the fact is that Republicans have a recent track record of being outraged over Muslims receiving equal treatment in this country. To many of them, we don’t deserve the same religious accommodations that Christians are afforded, and some don’t believe we belong in American politics—or even in America for that matter.

For example, several years ago the University of Michigan installed a number of foot-washing stations so that Muslims there could wash themselves before praying. (This washing ritual is called wudu and is intended to purify a person before prayer.)

The response by former GOP presidential candidate and Fox News staple Mike Huckabee summed up what we heard from others on the right as he vocally objected, saying, “the accommodation we’re making to one religion at the expense of others is very un-American.”

In Tennessee, GOP state legislators freaked out when they saw in their state capitol what they thought was a new sink installed to allow visiting Muslims to wash before prayers. These Bible Belt Republicans, though, were relived to find out the large sink was installed for washing mops, not Muslims.

And this year we saw two examples of Republican elected officials trying to prevent religious freedom for non-Christians. In South Dakota, a GOP state senator publicly objected to interfaith dialogue among Muslims, Jews, and Christians who had come to the state capitol to meet with their elected official because in his view, “Interfaith dialogue is a part of a war… of taking away the Christian fabric of our nation.”

And in Oklahoma, each session of the state legislature opens with a prayer by the “chaplain of the day.” Well a conservative Christian GOP state representative recently took over administering that program and changed the rules to so that only a Christian cleric would be eligible to deliver that opening invocation.

So much for religious liberty for non-Christians. And sadly, often when we hear the phrase religious liberty uttered by a conservative Republican, it’s not just to deny it to other faiths, but worse, it’s used to demonize or discriminate against the LGBT community.

So here’s a chance for the GOP to champion religious liberty in the best of ways. Not only should every Republican in the House vote for this proposed change; they should speak out publicly in favor it and push back against the extreme voices in their party who no doubt will declare sharia law has taken over the Congress. Expect these extremists to say things like, “Next, Muslims won’t want bacon served in the congressional lunchroom!” (Putting aside religion, turkey bacon is much better for you!)

Sadly, I doubt the GOP will do the right thing. Look what we are seeing now in Texas as Republicans are trying to remove a Muslim American from a leadership position in their own party because some there allege, without a shred of proof,  that he wants to impose Islamic law.

In Minnesota, Omar’s home state, Republican activists this year pushed a resolution to prevent Muslims from even being a part of the GOP, with two Republican elected officials claiming that Muslims are trying to “infiltrate” their party. But none of this is surprising given that the leader of the GOP is Trump, the most anti-Muslim president our nation has ever seen.

But with that said, here’s an opportunity for the GOP to evolve. Will they finally embrace an America for all faiths and push back against voices of intolerance within their own ranks? We will know soon enough.

Source: Do Republicans Believe in Religious Liberty for Muslims?

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , , ,

Jennifer Rubin: The illegal immigration ‘crisis’ is Trump-made

2018/12/03 Leave a comment

Good column by Rubin:

Those in the reality-based discussion about immigration have pointed out for years that the “crisis” of illegal immigration isn’t a crisis at all and, in fact, that the outflow of people along the southern border has topped the inflow. Pew Research has released a new study confirming exactly this — and demonstrating that the progress in thwarting illegal entries was made under the George W. Bush and Obama administrations (which did not resort to child separations):

“The number of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. fell to its lowest level in more than a decade, according to new Pew Research Center estimates based on 2016 government data. The decline is due almost entirely to a sharp decrease in the number of Mexicans entering the country without authorization. … The total is the lowest since 2004. It is tied to a decline of 1.5 million people in the number of Mexican unauthorized immigrants from 2007 to 2016.”

Illegal immigration from Central America remains an issue (“Central America was the only birth region accounting for more U.S. unauthorized immigrants in 2016 than in 2007”), but the total number of unauthorized immigrants living in the United States hasn’t been this low in 14 years.

The biggest deporter was — ready? — President Barack Obama. (“Deportations rose during the George W. Bush and Obama administrations — from 211,000 in 2003 to a record 433,000 in 2013, according to Department of Homeland Security statistics.”)

The composition of the population of illegal immigrants is increasingly made up of longtime residents (i.e., people connected to the workforce and in their communities) and those with children who are American-born U.S. citizens. “Today’s unauthorized immigrant population includes a smaller share of recent arrivals, especially from Mexico, than a decade earlier,” Pew reports. “Increasingly unauthorized immigrants are likely to be long-term U.S. residents: Two-thirds of adult unauthorized immigrants have lived in the country for more than 10 years. … As their typical span of U.S. residence has grown, a rising share of unauthorized immigrant adults — 43% in 2016 compared with 32% in 2007 — live in households with U.S.-born children.”

Anti-immigrant zealots have maintained that with enforcement the numbers of illegal immigrants could be greatly reduced, leaving just those who really are part of American society and the American workforce. Well, they’re right — and we’re at that point now! Of course, instead of recognizing that we’ve made huge progress in controlling illegal immigration and moving on to consider how to legalize those with substantial ties to the United States, the anti-immigrant crowd paints a dire picture, invents a crime wave (for which they hold immigrants responsible) and wants to cut the number of legal immigrants and/or repeal birthright citizenship.

This is precisely the kind of issue of which the Trump GOP cares not one wit about the facts. Tell them (truthfully) that immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born citizens, are catching up with native-born Americans on homeownership rates and are overrepresented among high-tech entrepreneurs, and they’ll scoff, dig up some worker who says “an illegal” took his job (more likely automation eliminated his position) and falsely insist that immigrants are a drag on the economy and responsible for high crime in Chicago because it is a “sanctuary city.”

It’s not possible to have a reasoned debate unless immigration opponents are ready to admit to facts. Like climate-change deniers, the anti-immigrant crowd resents elites who tell them they are wrong or uninformed. Well, sometimes reality isn’t what you’d like it to be. Nevertheless, the rest of us shouldn’t turn our economy inside out, engage in inhumane practices, waste billions on a wall, misuse our military and fan bigotry to preserve these people’s fantastical view of immigration, essentially a fictional creation that allows President Trump and his ilk to whip up their base.

It’s time to engage in good faith with those who demonstrate good faith — and that means agreement on a set of indisputable facts.

Source: Jennifer Rubin: The illegal immigration ‘crisis’ is Trump-made

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

Ethnic media on birth tourism (2): Spanish, Chinese (4 articles), Korean

2018/12/03 Leave a comment

MIREMS, Multilingual International Research and Ethnic Media Services, kindly shared what they are picking up on birth tourism in the ethnic media:

Federal government wants to better understand ‘birth tourism’ – Spanish

Description: A study shows that in 2016, many more babies were born to non-resident mothers in Canada than what official statistics indicate, which has led the federal government to analyze the phenomenon in order to better understand why women are coming to give birth here and make their babies Canadian citizens. Using data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI ), researcher Andrew Griffith found that in 2016, 3,200 babies were born in Canada whose mothers were not residents of this country. Statistics Canada’s data shows that there were only 313. The CIHI records invoicing and payment information directly from the hospitals and this is how the statistics were obtained. According to the findings, the numbers are not only higher than what was believed, but there is an increasing trend.
WEB – Noticias Montreal (30000 – Daily6) – Montreal, 26/11/2018 – NEWS, 1/2 page web, 1st Top, Spanish

Ottawa is finally paying attention to maternity tourism – Chinese

Description: Ottawa is now studying so-called “birth tourism” in the hope of better understanding how many women travel to Canada to have babies so that the babies can be born as Canadian citizens. New research shows that more babies are born in Canada to foreign residents than Statistics Canada realized. Using numbers from the Canadian Institute for Health Information, which captures billing information directly from hospitals, researcher Andrew Griffith found that over 3,200 babies were born here to women who were not Canadian residents in 2016 — compared with 313 babies recorded by Statistics Canada. The finding suggests not only that the numbers are higher than previously reported but that it is a growing trend, Griffith said.
PRINT – Epoch Times (54000 – Daily5) – Toronto, 26/11/2018 – News, 1/4 page, p. A4, Chinese

The birth rate of anchor babies in Canada is being significantly underestimated – Chinese

Description: RCI Ya Ming – Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen promised to study the issue of birth tourism. Researcher Andrew Griffith used numbers from the Canadian Institute for Health Information, which captures billing information directly from hospitals, and found that more than 3,200 babies were born here to women who aren’t Canadian residents in 2016, compared with only 313 babies recorded by Statistics Canada. Griffithsaid that this finding not only suggests that the numbers are higher than previously reported, but that it’s a growing trend. This trend exists in all Canadian provinces, with the exception of Quebec.
WEB – iask (Daily7) – Markham, 23/11/2018 – NEWS, 1 page web, 1st Top, Chinese

Birth tourism seeking citizenship is hiking up – Korean

Description: A new study shows that the number of births in Canada by nonresidents, known as “birth tourism,” is much higher than previously reported. The level of birth tourism nationally in Canada is at least five times greater than recorded by Statistics Canada while the number of babies in the case has been increased to 3,628 in 2017 from 1,354 in 2010. The majority of birth tourists are from Asia, including China, and prefers B.C. as the destination.
PRINT – Canadian Korean Times Weekly (Weekly) – Toronto, 26/11/2018 – NEWS, 1/4 page, 1st Top, Korean

Two thousand anchor babies are born every year; Metro Vancouver residents want to ban them from getting Canadian citizenship – Chinese

Description: Amy – Birth tourism figures in Canada are around 1,500 to 2,000, five times higher than Statistics Canada had estimated. Richmond resident Kerry Starchuk twice launched petitions to call on Parliament to ban anchor babies from automatically acquiring Canadian citizenship. One of the petitions she launched was supported by Alice Wong. Starchuk emphasized that the purpose of launching the petition was not to target babies born in the country. She is concerned that the large number of anchor babies will become a heavy burden on public spending in future. This August, the federal Conservative Party passed a motion that seeks to amend the law and ban anchor babies from automatically acquiring citizenship.
WEB – Vansky (Daily7) – Vancouver, 22/11/2018 – NEWS, 1 page web, 1st Top, Chinese

2,000 anchor babies are born in Canada every year – Chinese

Description: Sing Tao – A recent report pointed out that about 1,500 to 2,000 anchor babies are born in Canada (every year). Of the 25 hospitals where most such births occur, six are in Ontario, while two are in B.C. Among them, the Richmond Hospital recorded the largest number of anchor babies. The report made three recommendations, including requiring foreign female visitors to disclose the purpose of their visit to Canada, and considering a baby’s citizenship to be obtained through fraud if the mother came for birth tourism.
WEB – CFC NEWS (Daily4) – Ottawa, 22/11/2018 – NEWS, 1 page web, 1st Top, Chinese

Filed under Birthright Citizenship, Citizenship, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

BC MLA aims to address birth tourism as new data shows high non-resident birth rates

2018/12/01 Leave a comment

Given that most actions to curb the practice require at a minimum provincial cooperation if not collaboration, something to watch:

A new study came out last week suggesting the number of “anchor babies” in Canada, especially in Richmond, is much higher than previously expected, and MLA Jas Johal [Liberal, from Richmond] said he will introduce a petition to the B.C. government to “address the problem.”

An anchor baby is a term used to refer to a child born to a non-citizen mother at the time of the child’s birth in a country that has birthright citizenship.

Policy Options magazine published a new study last Thursday from the Institute for Research on Public Policy, suggesting every year, there are 1,500 to 2,000 “anchor babies” born in Canada.

Among all the hospitals in Canada, Richmond Hospital has the highest volume of babies born to non-resident mothers – 469 last year, taking up Richmond’s number of such births to 21.9 per cent of the total births in the hospital.

“I’m glad this national organization was able to shed light on this issue. It acknowledges for the first time everything everyone suspected and builds on the reporting the Richmond News has done,” said Johal.

“Every level of government has to acknowledge the issue and work together. We can’t just be polite Canadians and not deal with it. It has nothing to do with political correctness, but got everything to do with our healthcare system, for and by Canadians. Period.”

Johal said he is very concerned about the birth tourism industry, which “is not only allowed to exist, but to flourish.” He is working with some local residents to put together a petition, which he will introduce to the province in spring.

“There is a whole industry built on marketing these practices, attracting these individuals, housing these individuals, making sure they get proper medical treatment and care services,” said Johal.

“What are the companies being set up to bring these women here? How much do they charge? What’s the money they make? We need to shine some sunlight into an industry that’s being done in the shadows.

“And there is cost to taxpayers. I know they pay for natural birth and C-section, but the potential capacity could be used for somewhere else in the health care system in Richmond.”

The petition, according to Johal, will ask the provincial government to acknowledge that birth tourism exists and have a public say that the government does not support it.

“It will also ask the government to take concrete measures, to eliminate or very much reduce the practice,” he said.

Johal said as an immigrant moving from India when he was little, this issue upsets him on the personal level.

“I value the Canadian passport more than anything in my life, but this fundamentally debases the value of Canadian citizenship,” said Johal.

Source: MLA aims to address birth tourism as new data shows high non-resident birth rates 

Filed under Birthright Citizenship, Citizenship Tagged with , ,

John Ivison: Budget officer finds illegal migrants entering via a ‘loophole within a loophole’

2018/12/01 Leave a comment

The loophole, allowing those in the asylum process who arrived as irregular arrivals to sponsor their relatives during the determination process, should be relatively easy to close, in contrast to the provision in the Safe Third Country Agreement that it doesn’t apply to those not arriving at official border crossings, which would require highly unlikely agreement with the Trump administration:
While a politician may wish something to be true, simply saying it in the House of Commons does not make it so.

Bill Blair, the newly minted minister for border security, made a claim about the refugee system in question period Thursday that cannot be supported by the available facts.

“The system is working,” he said.

He was responding to questions about a new report by the Parliamentary Budget Officer, which pegged the cost of “irregular” — for which read “illegal” — migration at $340 million for the cohort of migrants who arrived in Canada in 2017-18 – a cost-per-migrant to the federal government of $14,321. (That does not include provincial expenses, which Ontario claims come to around $200 million. The PBO estimated a similar amount for Quebec. The federal government has reimbursed the provinces a total of $50 million.)

Technically, Blair is correct. The refugee system is working — in much the same way the Russian military’s Antonov Flying Tank worked during the Second World War.

In that case, the plane could leave the ground and drop a tank by parachute, albeit without crew, fuel or armaments. It worked. It just didn’t work well — and the project was rapidly abandoned.

A Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer in Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, Que., advises migrants that they are about to illegally cross the border from Champlain, N.Y., and will be arrested, on Aug. 7, 2017. Charles Krupa/AP

The federal government should adopt a similar approach and go back to the drawing board.

The PBO report is revealing, and not just for the cost estimates. In fact, it emerges in a footnote the costs are likely more than $14,321 per migrant — Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada estimates the number at $19,000.

But during its investigation, the PBO team elicited some interesting responses from government departments that show how bizarre the migrant story has become.

Another footnote revealed that Canada Border Services Agency officers have identified a phenomenon where one claimant enters Canada illegally and acts as an “anchor relative” for other family members. Those family members can then enter at a port of entry and not be considered illegal migrants. (The PBO asked for data but CBSA said it is not currently being tracked).

But think about that for a minute — a practice Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel has called a “loophole within a loophole.”

This means a migrant can cross into Canada from the U.S. between official entry points, avoiding the Safe Third Country Agreement that would have otherwise made them ineligible. (The agreement between Canada and the U.S. states that migrants seeking refugee status must make their claim in the first “safe” country they arrive in — either Canada or the U.S.)

Once a claim has been made, the migrant can access Canada’s generous welfare system as he or she navigates the asylum claims process that gives them multiple hearings and appeals. In the meantime, they can effectively sponsor other members of their family, who can then arrive as regular migrants — also avoiding the Safe Third Country Agreement.

Blair tried to sanitize this blatant abuse of process by pointing out that 40 per cent of migrants crossing illegally are children — postulating that this is a question of humanity and human rights obligations.

But due process should work both ways, and in this case the integrity of the system is being violated.

The anchor relative provision does not just apply to nuclear families but to parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, nephews and nieces.

The obvious solution is to close both loopholes in the Safe Third Country Agreement — amend it so it applies between official points of entry, and more tightly define who migrants can bring in.

But there appears to have been little progress in persuading the U.S. to change an agreement that sees people it clearly does not want within its borders effectively deporting themselves.

There are other reforms that could be undertaken. Experts who have looked at the system talk about the “failure of finality” — the endless appeals process that effectively gives migrants a new hearing at the Refugee Appeal Division if their claim is rejected by the Refugee Protection Division, and still another one at the Federal Court if the appeal fails.

The Liberals have done little beyond what they do best — throwing money at the problem. In response to the new arrivals, budget 2018 allocated $173.2 million over two years to “manage the border.”

But the PBO report gives lie to Blair’s claim the “system is working.”

In the 2017-18 fiscal year, the Immigration and Refugee Board had capacity to hear 24,000 claims. During that period there were 52,142 new asylum claims, of which illegal migrants represented 23,215. The system was flooded with claims beyond its capacity, creating a backlog of 64,929 cases.

More than half of the refugee claims were made by irregular migrants from Nigeria and Haiti. That is not a dog-whistle for swivel-eyed racists, or “fear-mongering,” as one senior Liberal put it. It is a fact.

They are flooding from those countries because word has got out that the Canadian system can be gamed with great ease — that an entire family can set up in the Great White North for the cost of a plane ticket from Lagos to New York City and a bus ride to the Quebec border.

Canada has seen similar surges in refugee claims before. In 2010, the Conservatives introduced visa requirements for Mexicans and Czechs, after a flood of bogus claims. The intake of refugees fell from 25,783 in 2010 to 10,227 in 2013 and the backlog halved. For the 2017 calendar year, claims were at 47,427 and the backlog was of a similar magnitude.

If the system was working, as Blair claimed, it would be fast, fair and final.

Currently, it is the very opposite — sluggish, arbitrary and inconclusive.

Source: John Ivison: Budget officer finds illegal migrants entering via a ‘loophole within a loophole’

And John Ibbitson on the potential electoral implications of the costs:

The problem of people crossing the Canada-U.S. border illegally and then seeking asylum just became a bigger headache for the Liberals, one they emphatically do not need less than a year before the next election.

The situation at the border appeared to be improving. In 2017, more than 20,000 asylum-seekers crossed illegally into Canada from the United States. In the early months of 2018, the flow was actually increasing, compared with the year before. But then the numbers started to taper off – at least on a year-over-year basis. Ottawa seemed to have things under control.

“There is a challenge, but it is not a crisis,” Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale insisted in July.

But if the numbers aren’t increasing, the cost sure is. In a report released Thursday, the Parliamentary Budget Officer estimated that handling the claims of asylum-seekers cost the federal government more than $14,000 a case in the last fiscal year, will cost almost $15,500 this year and will cost $16,700 next year. By that time, taxpayers will be doling out $400-million a year to handle these claims and to provide the migrants with health care.

As the Tories quickly pointed out, the accumulated costs will be more than $1-billion by the end of the next fiscal year.

“Justin Trudeau’s failure to address the crisis he has created has real consequences for Canadians,” Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer said in a statement, “and this report brings those consequences into sharp focus.”

These sums don’t include the cost of sheltering, feeding, clothing, educating and otherwise caring for the needs of these asylum-claimants, which are largely borne by provincial and municipal governments, and which has set the Ontario government back an estimated $200-million.

It gets worse. Asylum-claimants who cross the border illegally are overwhelming the tribunals established to hear refugee claims, creating a current backlog of 65,000 cases. It will take about three years to handle the claim of someone arriving this year. Next year, the backlog could stretch to four years.

Each individual claim is unique. Each person seeking asylum in Canada has a story to tell, and that story can be heartbreaking. But, on its face, most of the people crossing into Canada illegally from the United States appear to have a weak case.

Last year, many of the migrants were Haitian citizens who feared being forced to return to Haiti by the Trump administration. To be blunt, that’s not Canada’s problem.

This year, many of the claimants were Nigerians who obtained a visa to enter the United States and then headed straight for the border. These appear to be economic migrants, whose claims for protection as refugees should not be accepted.

What will happen next year? Will a fresh crop arrive at our border seeking asylum – Latinos who fear deportation from the United States, or nationals from Caribbean or African countries seeking a chance for a better life? Will the ever-lengthening wait times for hearings, which allow asylum-seekers to stay in Canada, convince more and more migrants that they have nothing to lose and everything to gain – including free health care – by crossing the border illegally? Or will the numbers drop down below 2017 levels? No one knows.

What we do know is that the problem of people crossing the border illegally corrodes confidence in Canada’s immigration and refugee system. This country’s future well-being depends on a robust intake of immigrants to compensate for a low natural birth rate. If people conclude that bogus refugee claimants are gaming the system, they could lose confidence in the entire program, which would be a disaster for Canada.

None of this is lost on the Conservatives, who will accuse the Liberals of failing to secure the border – which is, it must be said, one of the core responsibilities of any sovereign government.

Of course, the Tories have no good explanation for how they would handle things if they were in charge. But that may not matter. The opposition mantra will be: The Liberals can’t get a pipeline built. They can’t balance their budget. They can’t even secure the border.

Not a pleasant narrative for a governing party to confront in an election year.

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →