Opposing Anti-Semitism Is Great—But Don’t Forget Islamophobia

2019/03/28 Leave a comment

Indeed (and if one doesn’t want to use the word Islamophobia, one can always use anti-Muslim hate):

You are Jewish,” the young man who had knocked on my hotel room door in Tampa told me.

I told him I wasn’t. “No, you are Jewish,” he replied. “I can tell by your smell.”

The exchange, though back in the 1990s, shows how people can be quick to make ignorant stereotypes, loading them with hate. Similar animosity is being spread around today.

Chelsea Clinton is getting a lot of praise for standing her ground after being unfairly blamed for the New Zealand massacre of Muslims. And Donald Trump Jr. rightly stood up for the former first daughter. The question is whether those who oppose anti-Semitism will also take a stand against Islamophobia, as Clinton has done.

Clinton, who opposed Rep. Ilhan Omar’s recent anti-Semitic comments, incredibly found herself accused by some students of being culpable for the New Zealand Mosque massacres.

“This right here is the result of a massacre stoked by people like you and the words that you put out into the world,” the student said to Clinton, directly confronting her. “I want you to know that, and I want you to feel that deep down inside. Forty-nine people died because of the rhetoric you put out there.”

Clinton found herself defended by Donald Trump Jr., who tweeted, “It’s sickening to see people blame @ChelseaClinton for the NZ attacks because she spoke out against anti-Semitism. We should all be condemning anti-Semitism & all forms of hate. Chelsea should be praised for speaking up. Anyone who doesn’t understand this is part of the problem.”

Trump’s defense of Clinton is laudable. What is needed however is to also speak out against Islamophobia and caustic comments that promote the same malignant stereotypes as attacks on Jews.

This all started when Minnesota Rep. Omar accused a colleague of only supporting Israel because of Israeli money.

Omar probably didn’t give it a second thought. If she had thought about things from the other person’s perspective, she might have thought better of her comments. Imagine if someone accused one of Omar’s defenders of being motivated by Saudi money.

As unhelpful as those comments were, they pale in comparison to a lot of anti-Semitic vitriol spewed out by neo-Nazis and white supremacists, as well as odious comments from the Nation of Islam, which is far more deserving of our scorn.

Furthermore, those unfair attacks on Clinton are typical of the type of hatred out there that needs to be opposed.

But let’s not pretend that we’re elevating Jews, or even Muslims, by attacking the pair of speakers.  Remember that the Christchurch shooter was motivated by hate speech and horrible rhetoric lambasting Muslims, not Chelsea Clinton.  I doubt his “manifesto” even mentioned her. Similarly, the synagogue shooter in Pittsburgh was not inspired by Muslims like Omar. Most of our efforts against the hate that leads to killings and massacres should be redirected elsewhere to be more effective.

The NYU student accusing Chelsea Clinton was a Bernie Sanders supporter. Though he’s under no such obligation, the Vermont senator might express his own opinions on the attacks of the daughter of his former primary opponent, a person his supporters accuse of “stealing” the primary election. Does he agree that her words were responsible for the attack? Probably not, but clearly someone’s not getting the message of “stop the hate.”

Omar needs to understand how her comments feed into the old Nazi stereotypes about Jewish money and get a chance to make amends. If she uses her position as a platform for continued anti-Jewish rhetoric, the party needs to think about who will be a better representative for the people of that district. Given that she apologized for her words, it’s a positive start.

But now we need those unloading on these two speakers to call out Islamophobia for what it is. It goes against American values. Left unchecked, such a tragedy like the one in New Zealand can and will be repeated in this country. It would be sad if we said nothing when there was a chance to do something positive.

Source: Opposing Anti-Semitism Is Great—But Don’t Forget Islamophobia

Filed under Antisemitism, Islamophobia Tagged with

Poland Bashes Immigrants, but Quietly Takes Christian Ones

2019/03/28 Leave a comment

Telling:

The far-right Law and Justice party came to power in 2015, at the height of Europe’s migrant crisis, after running a campaign that inspired choruses of “Poland for Poles.” With national elections due in October, the governing party is once again promoting its vision of “Poland First.”

The party’s loud, anti-immigrant rhetoric has created special headaches for the European Union, which has largely failed to distribute quotas of migrants from North Africa, the Balkans and the Middle East around the Continent because of resistance from Poland and other hard-line member states.

So it may come as a surprise that the Polish government has, very quietly, presided over the largest influx of migrant workers in the country’s modern history — though they are mostly Christians from neighboring Ukraine.

Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has not been shy about promoting the government’s agenda. “We want to reshape Europe and re-Christianize it,” he said in 2017 in an interview with a Catholic television station. The government recently ordered all new passports include the phrase, “God, Honor, Motherland.”

But immigration is Poland’s paradox. It has benefited greatly from the European Union’s open borders, earning billions of dollars in remittances from the hundreds of thousands of Polish workers who have migrated to other countries in the bloc, especially to Britain. Yet with Poland now facing labor shortages, the government is failing to lure back the diaspora — and is restricted by its political stance against migrants.

If government officials rarely speak about needing migrant workers, the infusion of Ukrainians is apparent in many Polish cities. According to Eurostat, more than 683,000 foreigners received their first residence permits in Poland in 2017, the highest number for any country in the European Union. There are now over two million Ukrainians working in Poland, most flocking to cities that are the engines driving the Polish economy.

The question is whether they will stay. Last year, the European Union began allowing visa-free travel for Ukrainians, and Germany is easing work requirements for skilled workers, targeting Ukrainians. A recent newspaper survey in Poland found that 59 percent of Ukrainians in the country said they would leave for Germany if the labor market opened up.

“There is no ownership of the issue by the government,” said Anna Wicha, a director at the Adecco Group, one of the largest employment agencies in Poland. “You ask how many Ukrainians are working here and they will say 500,000. But it is more than two million. And many may be going to Germany.”

For now, the government lacks a long-term strategy to expand the labor pool. Many experts and some opposition politicians in Poland say the situation will only be resolved if political leaders soften their resistance to migrants and embrace plurality. But at the national level, even talking about immigration can be politically lethal.

When Pawel Chorazy, the deputy minister of investments and development, said during a televised debate before the October local elections that “the inflow of immigrants to Poland needs to be increased to sustain economic growth,” he was met with scorn.

Joachim Brudzinski, the interior minister, said that Mr. Chorazy’s comments were “not a position of the government.” The prime minister, Mr. Morawiecki, said that Mr. Chorazy “got seriously ahead of himself.”

Then he fired him.

“Politicians are dancing on the line, well aware that you can wake up demons,” said Irena Kotowska, head of the center for demography at the Warsaw School of Economics. “It is easy to play into nationalist feeling with anti-immigrant rhetoric. But the reality of the need in the labor market is more and more clear every day.”

“This is a defining moment for the country,” she added. “Some decisions simply have to be made.”

Here in the central city of Lodz, the contradictions of Poland’s migration dilemma are evident. Unlike national leaders, however, the local mayor, Hanna Zdanowska, has embraced immigrants. When she ran last October, she called for an inclusive Poland that welcomed newcomers.

The governing party campaigned hard against her, but she won with 70 percent of the vote, which she credited in part to the city’s history of tolerance. It was once a manufacturing center of hundreds of red brick factories, with a diverse population of Dutch, English and German residents, and a strong Jewish contingent.

Henryk Panusz, 89, whose family were leaders in the knitwear industry and part of a boomtown that was an eclectic mix of ethnicities and cultures, said Lodz “was the promised land.”

“Until the Second World War, there were so many cultures and ethnicities and nationalities,” he added.

After the war, Lodz struggled under Communist rule before the Iron Curtain started disintegrating in Poland in 1989. After the country joined the European Union, providing a chance for people to leave more easily, Lodz saw its population decline to under 690,000, from more than 850,000. That was part of an exodus since 2004 of about 2.5 million people from a nation of around 38 million.

But Poland has also benefited from billions in European Union subsidies that have helped turn the country into one of the Continent’s fastest-growing economies. Lodz has attracted international companies, while reinventing many old factories as cultural spaces to attract a new creative class.

Even as the economy thrives, however, the Polish government has had little success in luring home many of those who went abroad in search of better pay and greater opportunity, despite spending millions on a publicity campaign.

Aleksandra Modrzejewska left Lodz in 2014 and found a job as a waitress when she first arrived in Britain. She now lives in Chelmsford, England, and works as an insurance broker. She says she believes the assurances of the government in London that no matter what happens when Britain leaves the European Union, a process known as Brexit, she will be able to stay.

“No one I know is thinking of leaving,” she said. “Brexit may have an impact on new people coming but, as far as I can tell, for people who have built their lives here, it is not going to change anything.”

“It was just a different quality of life,” she added, explaining her decision to leave Poland. “People are much more open and inviting of different cultures and nationalities.”

For officials in Lodz, and elsewhere in Poland, the labor shortage is a problem that could curb economic growth. More than half of the companies in Poland reported having trouble finding workers, according to a survey by Work Service, Poland’s largest employment agency.

Antonina Marushko, 30, came to Lodz from Ukraine three years ago with her husband and two children. She says the move has been difficult. But, she adds, she does not want to leave. She worked and saved and recently was able to open her own beauty salon.

“Our life is here now,” she said.

To reconcile the new arrivals with the government’s anti-immigrant, Christian identity, Poland’s leaders have gone to great lengths to create narrow policies that almost completely limit the influx to Christians. That goal was all but stated in proposed legislation that would make it easier for people from former Soviet satellite countries that are “culturally similar” to Poland to become permanent residents.

Polish immigration officials declined to be interviewed for this article. But the government has worked so hard for so long to build a narrative that bolsters suspicion of all outsiders that even an immigration policy built on proximity and cultural affinity is fraught.

The influx of Ukrainians has come at the same time as a straining in the relationship between the Polish and Ukrainian governments over the politicization of history and the difficult pasts of the two nations, which share a border that has shifted multiple times over the decades.

For Ukrainians migrating to Poland, those tensions can ripple into daily life. Ms. Marushko, the beauty parlor owner, said that her son was the only Ukrainian in his class and that some of the other children — presumably repeating talk they heard at home — had told him that Poland was for the Poles.

Ms. Marushko said that one of her older Polish clients routinely mocked Ukrainians, calling them radioactive because of Chernobyl, a bitter reference to the nuclear disaster in 1986.

“Things are better now,” Ms. Marushko said, referring to her experiences of prejudice.

Perhaps the biggest problem for Poland is that another generation, despite growing up in an era of economic growth, also seems eager to leave.

“There is still the perception here that you ‘make it’ outside of Poland,” said Ms. Wicha of the Adecco Group.

Ms. Modrzejewska, the insurance broker in Britain, agreed. “Even if you have the worst job, it is a better life,” she said.

She talks frequently with her family and her 14-year-old sister, Magda, who seems to have taken the message to heart.

“I want to be a doctor or a medical engineer,” Magda said. “We also have family in Florida. I am too young to know what I will do, but I think about it and going to Florida is my dream.”

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Why the ‘Life in the UK’ test alienates new citizens

2019/03/28 Leave a comment

The perils of citizenship tests based on “values” with some counterintuitive results.

I think overall the Canadian questions are reasonable with fewer marginal questions (and telling that the Liberal government, despite having worked on a revision to Discover Canada, and presumably associated questions, has yet to release it and, IMO, is unlikely to do so 6 months before the election):

The UK’s citizenship process subjects immigrants to requirements intended to enhance their identification with ‘British values’. Does the current process do that, or does it exacerbate immigrants’ marginalisation? David Bartram finds evidence in support of the latter: citizenship policy does more to alienate new citizens than it does to facilitate their political integration.

Have you taken the ‘Life in the UK’ test? If you’re already a UK citizen, then of course you don’t need to – but if you did it out of curiosity you’d likely find it very difficult to pass. Some of the questions involve obscure historical dates (in what year did Richard III die?). Even for more meaningful events it is not clear why one should know the year (e.g. re when women gained the vote – an important issue, but why is knowing the date a basis for citizenship?).

Immigrants wishing to gain citizenship (or even permanent residence) have to pass it. The only way to succeed is to study. Now, some of the questions pertain to more useful matters, so perhaps there’s some benefit from the learning one does. And, once you’ve passed, perhaps you’ll feel (on the basis of the knowledge gained) that you’ve earned an entitlement to participate more fully in British public life and core institutions. Academics tend to be critical of the test requirement, but the idea that some good could come of it – possibly even a set of outcomes that looks something like enhanced integration – is not completely implausible.

Propositions of this sort can be tested, with the right data. With colleagues at the University of Leicester(and funding from the ESRC), I have investigated whether becoming a UK citizen (thus, passing the test and participating in a citizenship ceremony) helps foster integration specifically in terms of political engagement. My answer: the core citizenship requirements do more to impair integration in the political sphere than to enhance it. Immigrants who become UK citizens end up less interested in politics, relative to those immigrants who remain non-citizens. That’s a very counterintuitive result; only slightly less shocking is that new citizens do not participate more in civic/public organizations than those who remain non-citizens.

That finding comes from analysis of data from ‘Understanding Society’ (the UK household panel survey). The longitudinal nature of the data helps minimize the prospect of reverse causation (the possibility that it’s a matter of naturalization by already less-engaged people). The analytical sample comprised almost 1000 people who in Wave 1 (2009/10) were not UK citizens. By the time of Wave 6 (2014/15), roughly half of these respondents had gained citizenship – and the core of the analysis involved comparing them to those who remained non-citizens while taking into account their initial conditions including their extent of political engagement.

Now, perhaps it’s somehow misguided to connect the empirical pattern to the specific requirements for UK naturalization. Maybe naturalization led to decreased political engagement even before the introduction of the test and ceremonies. Not a terribly plausible idea, surely. We can’t test it directly: the ‘Understanding Society’ project began several years after the policy was implemented in 2005 (and the predecessor dataset, the British Household Panel Survey, doesn’t enable tracking changes in citizenship status). We do however have earlier research on the question more generally in Europe including the UK – and in analysis of data from 2002-2003 they find that naturalization is generally associated with increased political engagement (in other words, the outcome one would expect). So, perhaps something did in fact change in the UK after the requirements were put in place.

We can then ask: why would the UK citizenship process lead to lower political engagement? The process involves jumping through some meaningless hoops, so it might be a simple matter of annoyance, possibly to the point of fostering alienation. We can however go a bit further, via further consideration of the types of questions the test poses about political matters.

Many of these questions strike me as having something significant in common. There is a clear tendency to ask about the ‘rules of the game’. For example: what is the role of the Whips in Parliament? Or, what is the current minimum voting age? Or, what time of year are local government elections held? Questions like this imply acquiescence to ‘the way things are’: we tell you what the rules are, and you can then play by those rules. There’s nothing about fundamental rights of citizenship – say, the right to demonstrate and to participate in other forms of collective action. The subtext here is a politics of obedience, perhaps even docility. If this is what we tell immigrants about the nature of our politics, who can blame them if they then say: who needs it?  Why bother? Democratic politics is supposed to engage big questions, about justice, fairness, freedom, equality – but through the ‘Life in the UK’ test Britain teaches new immigrants that it’s all just a matter of fitting in and doing what is expected of you.

There is another significant angle to consider. Anne-Marie Fortier argues (very persuasively) that the real motivation behind the requirements of the UK citizenship policy is not to achieve integration for immigrants but rather to alleviate the anxieties of ‘natives’. The policy sends a signal to people worried about immigration: we hear you, and we’re doing something about it. Whether it has any impact on the immigrants themselves is decidedly secondary. One might be sanguine about that idea as long as the impact is merely nil (rather than positive). But if instead the tests and ceremonies have a genuinely negative impact on immigrants in the UK it becomes less feasible to justify an attempt to mollify voters this way.

The original goal of the requirements (as articulated by the then-Home Secretary, David Blunkett) was to foster participation, in hopes of reinforcing ‘social cohesion’. The requirements are plainly not helping to achieve that goal and might be actively undermining it – even for those who succeed in demonstrating knowledge about ‘Life in the UK’ that most ‘natives’ don’t have.

Source: Why the ‘Life in the UK’ test alienates new citizens

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Taking stock of Ottawa’s diversity promises

2019/03/27 Leave a comment

My latest in Policy Options:


Each of the mandate letters given to cabinet ministers by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over the past three years has included the following commitment: “You are expected to do your part to fulfill our government’s commitment to transparent, merit-based appointments, to help ensure gender parity and that Indigenous Canadians and minority groups are better reflected in positions of leadership.”

With three years of appointments under the Trudeau government’s belt, it’s possible to conduct an analysis of its record with respect to judicial, Governor-in-Council, deputy minister, head of mission and Senate appointments, using available data and public records.

The government has largely delivered on its commitment, but with mixed results on its promise to be more transparent on appointments…

Full article: Taking stock of Ottawa’s diversity promises

Filed under gender, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , , ,

ICYMI – Federal budget: Most government programs fail, but there are strategies for success

2019/03/27 Leave a comment

Good suggested strategies. Easier to state than implement, unfortunately:

In its federal budget, Canada’s Liberal government announced plans to create a Canadian Drug Agency to reduce the costs of drugs for Canadians and to expand a program to create 40,000 work placements for students within five years, among other initiatives.

But the documented litany of failures by governments of all levels, far and wide, to effectively implement policy and build programs and infrastructure doesn’t always provide much hope for the future.

Are governments bound to chronically fail, go over-budget or botch the big projects necessary to make major policy changes and introduce new systems or infrastructure to the public? There’s a mountain of research suggesting government projects routinely fail in Canada, the United States and Great Britain.

But now let’s look at a list of key success factors gleaned from the research into failure.

1. Sticky governance

This is more than setting up an oversight process for major implementations. It’s about avoiding the turnover of project leadership, running the project in a consistent way over time and sticking to the objective.

This takes not just dedicated staff — that’s a given — but also a consistent oversight by the real owner of the project. That means regular executive review, real challenges built into the system to protect everyone and an effective and speedy way to make decisions.

2. Multiple-channel risk analysis

A common theme in major implementation failure is that the whole team and organization was working in an echo chamber when it came to risks.

In major implementations, risk abounds since there are so many unknowns. This is new territory much of the time. And so effective risk management is key to dealing with those inevitable twists and turns of doing something differently. So many stories of failure will feature the deliberate glossing over or ignoring of warning signs, mostly in the interest of time or pressure to produce.

As the U.K. National Audit points out in its 2013 study: “The challenges of delivering government projects are compounded by the endemic over-optimism.”

Success is built on a clear understanding of the risks, gathered from a variety of sources, not just the echo chamber that reinforces your world view. That means looking for the requisite variety in both risk analysis and governance. As Karl Weick, a University of Michigan scholar and student of organizational resilience, points out: “…organizations with access to more varied images will engage in sense-making that is more adaptive than will organizations with more limited vocabularies.”

What does that mean for success? You need an organizational curmudgeon. You need to ensure differing views are expressed and not published. You need to fight the tendency for groupthink.

3. Test drive and shop around

The arc of so many failures often starts with a solution in pursuit of a problem. Options for implementation are often ignored in favour the bright shiny object that will solve all the problems.

Look at the recent announcement of a single health agency for Ontario. Much is being promised but there is no clear link between the problems in health and the way the health-care system is organized.

Success seems to lie in the very difficult process of selecting the solution. Central to this effort is to have different perspectives at play and to try out the potential solutions before committing to them.

Part of the test drive is to engage both the end user of the new system or policy and the client as well. They are the two players who will remain when the big project is done.

The end user is the field staff or operational unit that actually has to operate the changed systems. The client is, of course, the beneficiary or recipient of the changes.

In fact, the end user, is often ignored until the solution has been designed. And the commitment to that sole solution is so unwavering that the people who actually have to make it work in the real world had little say.

So get those people involved at the planning and thinking stages. Their real-life experience is an absolute necessity.

4. Bias recognition & the curmudgeon

Cognitive biases can often impinge clear thinking and cause people to ignore major warning signs.

Successful organizations build in many forms of the aforementioned curmudgeon, including process audits, end-user testing and feedback, client feedback and, most importantly, people who do not have a stake in either the favoured solutions or just pleasing the boss.

But it’s critical that the boss commits to protecting them if their input is negative.

5. Memory capture as a survival tool

Failure has a familiar character to it. In fact, many organizations seem doomed to a Groundhog Day existence of one failure after another, with new teams, new directions and new resolutions not to make the same mistakes —and then proceeding to fail again.

Escaping that syndrome requires organizations to learn from their mistakes and successes. How many times have you heard someone say: “You really messed that up. Can you tell me what you did? How can we learn from that?” I’m guessing not often.

That’s because generally, people are running for cover. Too bad. There are a variety of ways to escape the syndrome. Unfortunately, in the public sector, there is also a tendency to avoid even admitting errors to avoid political embarrassment.

But organizations can and should build case studies of both their successes and failures. There are also structured debriefs of the type that first responders use to assess their performance. There are a variety of tools. The key is wanting to use them.

Think small, then big

If one theme is consistent in failure, it’s that the implementers took on too much, too soon, too fast, assuming their premises were right and would, when put out into the real world, stand up to that harsh climate. All studies of the Canadian government’s Phoenix pay system crash point to the fast start, the removal of staff with expertise and the ramping-up of new staff and systems too quickly as central to the failure.

Many successful implementations, on the other hand, began as pilot projects, demonstration projects and localized start-ups that were then rolled out based on the lower-risk, less costly, less visible environment. A ready example of this approach is the successful implementation of full-day kindergarten in Ontario.

The rollout was staged. Many problems were handled as they occurred with a very responsive and consistent leadership team. The process was highly adaptive as new problems arose.

Implementing major policy changes or projects in government is a messy business. Starting with that understanding, adding a heavy dose of humility and learning from others is a good place to move closer to success.

Source: Federal budget: Most government programs fail, but there are strategies for success

Filed under Government Tagged with , ,

ICYMI: Australia – Multicultural programs get $71m investment

2019/03/27 Leave a comment

In contrast to some of the anti-immigrant language and more restrictive immigration policies:

The federal government is putting $71 million towards ensuring multiculturalism blossoms across Australia.

Immigration Minister David Coleman announced the scheme on Wednesday as part of the government’s migration plan.

The money will go towards various programs to “promote, encourage, celebrate multicultural Australia”, the minister said.

Religious tolerance education charity Together for Humanity, chaired by retired teacher and former Liberal Party president Chris McDiven, will receive $2.2 million.

“It is so important as a society that we are cognisant and accepting of our differences,” Mr Coleman told reporters in Canberra.

“Religious freedom is so fundamental to this nation.”

Mr Coleman said $10 million will be provided to community languages schools, with grants of up to $25,000 on offer to help young Australians connect with cultures.

“It helps to enable them to learn more about the culture that maybe their parents or grandparents have come from,” the minister said.

“Of course, there are other kids who learn languages that are not their background culture but also enable them to learn more about the diversity of our nation.”

Source: Multicultural programs get $71m investment

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Closing the Canada-U.S. asylum border agreement loophole? Not so fast

2019/03/27 Leave a comment

Sean Rehaag of Osgoode Law School on the STCA and discussions regarding expanding it to cover non-official points of entry:

According to media reports, Bill Blair, Canada’s minister of border security, is attempting to close a loophole in the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA).

The agreement allows Canada to send asylum-seekers back to the United States without hearing their refugee claims (and allows the U.S. the same option for those going in the other direction). The loophole is that the STCA only applies to asylum-seekers who present themselves at official land ports-of-entry.

Since President Donald Trump was elected, around 40,000 asylum seekers have used this loophole by crossing into Canada from the U.S. at places other than official ports-of-entry. They are not trying to sneak into Canada undetected. Rather, they cross the border irregularly to avoid being turned away under the STCA and then approach Canadian authorities to make refugee claims.

The number of irregular border-crossers has declined recently, with fewer than 1,000 in January 2019. What’s more, while the overall number of refugee claims made in Canada has been higher than usual in the past two years, it is not far off historical norms.

Nonetheless, the additional 40,000 refugee claims have produced pressures on the refugee determination system and on provincial social programs. There has also been political pushback, with calls from the Conservative party for the government to stem the flow.

However, closing the STCA loophole is a complicated proposition.

Blair reportedly wants irregular border-crossers to be taken to official ports-of-entry and processed as if they had presented themselves there directly. In other words, the STCA would apply both at official ports-of-entry and elsewhere.

To make this work, the U.S. would need to agree, which is the first complication.

More asylum-seekers come to Canada

The purpose of the STCA from a Canadian perspective was to force the U.S. to take responsibility for asylum-seekers who travel to Canada via the United States. Canada had long wanted the STCA because the flow of asylum-seekers is asymmetrical. Far more asylum-seekers come to Canada from the U.S. than the reverse.

For the same reason, the United States has long refused to agree to the STCA. That only changed after 9-11, when Canada offered the U.S. greater border security integration in exchange for the STCA.

Canada now wants to expand the STCA, so the question is: What will Canada have to give the U.S. to get them to agree?

One might expect quite a lot, given that Trump has shown little interest in taking steps that would result in thousands of asylum-seekers who would otherwise go to Canada remaining in the U.S.

The need for a quid pro quo raises a second complication. The STCA is being challenged in Canadian courts by human rights organizations who say that the U.S. is not safe for refugees and that the STCA violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Given the anti-refugee policies of the Trump administration, there is a good chance that courts will strike down the STCA. By negotiating expansions to the STCA without waiting to see whether the regime is upheld, there is a real risk that anything Canada gives to the U.S. in exchange will be for naught.

A third complication: Even if Canada gets the U.S. to agree to expand the STCA, and even if the regime is upheld by the courts, the impact of any expansion is likely to be both counterproductive and dangerous.

A dangerous incentive

If asylum-seekers who are intercepted at irregular border crossings are returned to the U.S., this will create a strong incentive for such asylum-seekers to cross the border without being intercepted.

Currently, irregular border crossings are manageable and organized. Most occur in a single, well-monitored location in Québec. That crossing is not dangerous. Border officials and RCMP are present. Irregular border-crossers immediately enter into immigration and refugee processing, which includes health, criminality and security screening.

Other countries that have tried to stem flows of asylum-seekers by closing off safe and manageable routes have had a common experience. The flows do not stop but are instead diverted into more remote and hence more dangerous routes. Organized crime gets involved, bringing increased security risks and violence. The inevitable result is lost lives and decreased border security.

In the end, the political pressure on the government to be seen doing something on this file may outweigh these policy considerations. But politics lead to a fourth complication.

During the last federal election campaign, Justin Trudeau distinguished himself from former prime minister Stephen Harper partly through a more compassionate response to the Syrian refugee crisis and the death of Alan Kurdi — himself a tragic victim of cat-and-mouse games between smugglers and governments seeking to keep refugees at bay.

Shortly after Trump’s inauguration, Prime Minister Trudeau further sought the moral high ground when, in response to the president’s anti-refugee policies, he famously tweeted Canadians will welcome those fleeing persecution.

There is no way to close the STCA loophole without the Liberal party turning its back on those progressive values, on the eve of a federal election campaign.

In this context, attempting to expand the STCA may not only be bad policy, it may also be bad politics.

Source: Closing the Canada-U.S. asylum border agreement loophole? Not so fast

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

Previous housing data understated number of non-resident buyers in Vancouver and Toronto

2019/03/26 Leave a comment

The importance of good data and how it could have made a difference in public discussion and debate (not that the real estate industry is likely to change its position given its business interests). Particularly worrisome that a government agency, CMHC, got it so wrong in 2015 with a flawed methodology:

Not so long ago, real estate industry and government officials were doing their best to shut down concerns that skyrocketing housing prices in Vancouver and Toronto were related to non-resident buying.

As it turns out, they were very wrong.

“Basically, if we put every residential property unit that was built in the city of Vancouver from 2006 to 2017 into a single building, every tenth unit [and a bit more] would have been owned by somebody who doesn’t live in the country,” says Andy Yan, urban planner and director of Simon Fraser University’s City Program.

The CMHC condo survey of 2015, a busy year for the real estate market, maintained that foreign ownership of condos was low in metro Vancouver and metro Toronto, at 3.5 and 3.3 per cent respectively.

In 2016, Canada Housing and Mortgage Corporation chief executive Evan Siddall told the Vancouver Board of Trade that blaming foreign buying was creating an “unhealthy tension” between “existing residents and newer arrivals.” Instead, he pointed to local investors, population growth and lack of supply as the big factors in Vancouver’s affordability crisis.

But the CMHC’s latest Housing Market Insight report, released last week, shows the previously released data were off by as much as two to three times the actual rate of non-resident participation in home ownership. Based upon the new study, the numbers are actually 11.2 for metro Vancouver and 7.6 for metro Toronto.

The CMHC’s new Housing Market Insight report, in partnership with Statistics Canada, now reveals the extent of non-resident buying in Vancouver. The CMHC had begun releasing its Condominium Apartment Survey in 2014, after collecting information on non-resident ownership, in response to the affordability crisis. But the CMHC only had access to condo data and its methodology was limited. It partnered with Statistics Canada to form the Canadian Housing Statistics Program (CHSP), to address the major gaps in data on housing. In 2017, as part of the federal budget, StatsCan got extra funding to delve deeper into offshore buying, which is when the data got more interesting – and far more accurate. It meant that instead of interviewing building managers about the number of foreign owners in the buildings – an obviously problematic method – the CMHC had data from Canada Revenue Agency and the provincial land titles office to verify tax residency.

Perhaps the most surprising revelation is the rate of non-resident participation in the buying of newly built condos across the region.

“Of the housing units owned by non-residents, 55 per cent are condos,” says Jordan Nanowski, senior CMHC analyst and co-author of the report.

Where non-resident ownership is concerned, metro Vancouver overshadowed Toronto by a wide margin. And new builds were a particular draw. Non-resident owners played a part in 19.2 per cent of Vancouver condos built between 2016 and 2017. In other words, almost 20 per cent of condos built that year had at least one non-resident on title. In Toronto, meanwhile, the number falls to a mere 9 per cent.

Mr. Yan dug deeper into the CHSP data, and came up with more numbers. Non-residents have participated in the ownership of a shocking 14 per cent of all housing types built in the city of Vancouver in the past decade (as in, at least one person who owns the property is a non-resident). For metro Vancouver, that rate is 11.2 per cent. For the city of Toronto, the rate is 8 per cent; metro Toronto is 5.2 per cent.

In Coquitlam, B.C., 20.8 per cent of new condos had at least one non-resident on title. In Surrey, B.C., the figure is 20.5 per cent of condos in that time period. Burnaby, B.C., is at 25.1 per cent. Richmond, B.C., has the highest percentage of all, at a whopping 25.8 per cent, he says.

“In Richmond, condos built between 2016 to 2017, we’re talking about 26 per cent have non-resident participation. That’s one in four.”

The numbers are big in the broader housing market picture as well, with 7.8 per cent of all single detached houses built in metro Vancouver from 2006 to 2017 owned by at least one non-resident purchaser. For condos, the numbers jumps to 18 per cent of all condos built in that time period.

“This is something that people have denied for so long,” Mr. Yan says. “It measures a form of foreign ownership that many have denied was happening, and in proportions that few could imagined.”

Mr. Nanowski says that non-resident participation tended to increase when density increased and prices increased. Across all age groups, non-residents tended to own more expensive homes. But a number that stood out for him was the higher prices of detached homes owned by non-residents in the city of Vancouver. Detached homes in the city owned by non-residents were, on average, assessed at $1.1-million more than those owned by residents. In Toronto, the difference of a detached house owned by resident and non-resident was only $89,000.

“Big difference,” Mr. Nanowski said. “Yes, non-resident premiums are largest in Vancouver and the prevalences are largest in Vancouver as well.”

Using new methodology, the crown corporation has revealed that many properties have a mix of resident and non-resident ownership. They analyzed this mix in the category of “non-resident participation,” meaning at least one owner on title was a non-resident. Put another way, at least one person on title is a non-tax resident, which means they do not have a principal tax residence in Canada. They earn their income and pay their income taxes elsewhere. This is a key difference from the CMHC’s previous methodology, which was to define “non-resident” ownership as a property that was owned entirely by non-residents, or majority-owned by non-residents.

The definition of a “non-resident” is someone whose principal residence is outside of Canada, irrespective of their nationality.

Also, these rates do not include pre-sale purchases, or what units were not owner-occupied and held as investments. The study authors did not provide data on the source countries of origin for non-resident owners.

“The summary of all this is the globalization of Canadian residential real estate,” Mr. Yan said, “and what are you going to do or not do about it, on a federal, provincial and local policy basis? This is about transparency, taxation and fairness, and how we build housing and for who, in our communities.”

Mr. Nanowski says the previous data they used weren’t flawed, but useful for following trends. The new data is much more comprehensive, he says.

“When we look at this data, we want to compare it to itself only, as a kind of cross section and not compare it to previous data. Because there is a change in methodology,” he says.

Josh Gordon, assistant professor at the School of Public Policy at Simon Fraser University, says that the delay of such important data has likely been a setback. He points out that industry voices used the previously limited CMHC data to bolster their arguments that foreign buying was exaggerated. Prof. Gordon had questioned the CMHC’s reports at the time, and received some flak for it.

“Imagine in 2015 if we had a sense that non-resident buyers were buying 15 per cent or so of new condos. How would that have changed the nature of the debate? Would that not have indicated that there was an issue that needed addressing?,” Prof. Gordon asks.

“Those who wanted to push back against possible restrictions were able to use the ‘authority’ of the CMHC in the debate to good effect, and this delayed possible policy action. More accurate data would have helped build the case for policy restrictions, and that might have mitigated the sharp escalation of prices.”

Mr. Yan found it ironic that the report was released the same week as the City of Vancouver announced its annual homeless count was underway.

“Perversely, this week saw the release of measures on two drastically different ends of Vancouver’s housing situation. With the CMHC release, we see the numbers of homeowners who don’t live in the country, juxtaposed with Vancouver doing its homeless count of those who actually live here, but don’t have the benefit of a home.”

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UN Compact needs a substantive discussion, says ex-Harper aide

2019/03/26 2 Comments

Interesting the focus on the Global Compact but I understand that the panel’s discussion was more wide ranging. It is hard to argue against more discussion and debate over any issue, including the Global Compact (although I find the fears overblown).

However, the question arises whether a more open discussion of the Global Compact in the Citizenship and Immigration committee have assuaged fears over its actual and potential impact and altered some of the political posturing (virtue signalling) on both sides or not:

Canada needs to have a substantive policy debate about the UN Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, and how it will influence domestic law, said Rachel Curran, former Harper-era staffer, at a panel discussing Canada’s immigration policy.

Speaking at the Manning Networking Conference on Sunday, Ms. Curran recalled that, last year, when the Trudeau government announced it would sign the first-of-its-kind compact on migration, there was immediate backlash from the other side.

There’s been a lot of rhetoric, but not enough policy analysis, she said, attributing the lack of substantive debate prior to its adoption to the Trudeau government. “[It] does Canadians a real disservice,” Ms. Curran, who served as then-prime minister Stephen Harper’s director of policy, said in a post-panel interview.

When asked why the Conservative party itself hasn’t had the policy conversation, Ms. Curran said she doesn’t think political parties have the appropriate resources to do a detailed policy analysis.

“When a party is in opposition, in particular, its capacity to do policy work and policy analysis is eroded quite significantly,” she said.

She would like to see the Opposition Leader’s Office and the Conservative Party to do some more digging, but the primary responsibility lies with the government, she said, as it has more resources.

“The opposition party, its primary role is to oppose the government, right? They don’t have a policy shop, or a host of policy analysts or experts who are on call to answer those questions,” she said after the panel.

Ms. Curran spoke alongside Tim Uppal, a former Harper-era minister of state for democratic reform, and later multiculturalism, and Eric Duhaime, Quebec radio host and commentator. The panel, centred on a discussion about Canada’s immigration and refugee policies, including the arrival of irregular migrants and the contention that conservatives are anti-immigration, was moderated by Andrew Lawton, an unsuccessful Progressive Conservative candidate in last year’s Ontario elections. The annual Manning conference is organized by the Manning Centre, headed by former Reform Party leader Preston Manning, and brings together conservatives to discuss and debate political issues.

The rhetoric around the UN migration compact has deemed those opposed to it as racist, said Ms. Curran, and given that Conservatives won’t want to talk about “issues around racism for the entire campaign,” they probably won’t bring it up.

“But again, that does a real disservice to Canadians who want to know what’s in it,” she said.

In response to a question about how Canada should address the UN Global Compact, Ms. Curran said during the panel that the point of these international agreements is to influence international law, and eventually, domestic policy. Canada should figure out, for example, if it would have an impact on how it responds to the issue of irregular migrants from the U.S.

“There’s never been really, I think, a truly honest and detailed discussion about what’s in the compact and how it’s intended to influence our domestic law over time,” she said.

The compact is not a legally binding document and is grounded in state sovereignty, responsibility sharing, non-discrimination, and human rights. It aims to foster a collaborative approach among the 160 signatory nations in their response to the leveraging the benefits of migration and addressing the challenges. While Canada was among the 160 countries that signed the agreement in December, the U.S did not.

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer (Regina-Qu’Appelle, Sask.) opposed the signing in December, saying it would give foreign entities influence over Canada’s migration system and would erode nations’ sovereignty. “We don’t need a global compact that binds Canada to provisions that are agreed to at the United Nations. We can do that already. … By signing onto this compact, our sovereignty to make those decisions ourselves will be eroded,” Mr. Scheer told reporters in December. Mr. Scheer’s statement on the issue drew criticism from Chris Alexander, an ex-Harper minister of immigration, who said that the compact is “not a legally binding treaty” and that has “no impact on our sovereignty.”

Some demonstrators in the United We Roll rally also expressed their opposition to the compact. Mr. Scheer netted further criticism for speaking at the rally, which was attended by Faith Goldy, a white supremacist and former Rebel Media personality.

Mr. Uppal agreed during the panel with Ms. Curran’s suggestion that it sets a direction, and added he’s happy that Mr. Scheer opposed its signing.

Mr. Duhaime, for his part, said during the panel that, Canada needs to close its borders in all places other than designated ports of entry.

“We cannot welcome people by asking them to break the law,” he said, adding the government should negotiate with Washington so that, no matter what, no one can cross at non-official points of entry.

All three panellists said they supported a fair, compassionate, and orderly migration system, suggesting that anti-immigrant rhetoric gains traction only when the file is mishandled by the government, but there is still strong support for immigration in Canada. Canada takes in about 300,000 immigrants annually, but the numbers are expected to rise to 340,000 by 2021.

Irregular migration issue also discussed

On the issue of irregular migration, the three panellists said the Liberal government has failed to get a handle on it.

Policy decisions by U.S. President Donald Trump have led refugee claimants in the U.S. to seek refugee status in Canada in fear that their claims will be denied. Under the Third Safety Country Agreement between Canada and the U.S., those who cross at official ports of entry in Canada from will be forced to turn back. That has led refugee claimants to cross the border at non-designated entry points, where they are apprehended by the RCMP, and are able to file their claims.

International refugee agreements mean the government must allow those on Canadian soil to make claims, regardless of how they got across the border.

Quebec and Manitoba, in particular, have had to contend with the arrival of refugee claimants more so than other provinces, according to numbers from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. In 2017, there were 20,593 RCMP interceptions that resulted in asylum claims. About 18,000 were in Quebec, while about 1,000 were in Manitoba. In 2018, that total number dropped to 19,419 claims, with roughly 18,500 in Quebec,  and some 400 in Manitoba.

So far this calendar year, the RCMP has intercepted 1,696 refugee claimants, with about 1,670 in Quebec and two in Manitoba.

The Liberals have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the issue since early 2017. Budget 2019 budget proposed another $1.18-billion over five years, with the aim of strengthening the border. Some $55-million for year after was proposed.

“In recent years, elevated numbers of asylum seekers, including those that have crossed into Canada irregularly, have challenged the fairness and effectiveness of Canada’s asylum system,” according to the budget.

Some $450-million of the money is earmarked for the Immigration Canada, while $382-million will go to Canada Border Services Agency, and $208-million is for the Immigration and Refugee Board, which reviews claims.s

Mr. Duhaime said the current backlog of claims is unsustainable and is “going nowhere,” and a new government should better secure the borders.

“It’s not fair for those people; it’s not fair for those who entered legally; and it’s not fair for taxpayers,” he said.

Refugee advocates have disputed the notion that there’s a queue for making a refugee claim.

Ms. Curran said that a new government should work with other countries to stop the flow in the first place, but also to work at speeding up the claims process. The hearings  can take years and are likely to be appealed.

People know how long the process takes and use it to their advantage, Ms. Curran said, so speeding up the process could create a disincentive for those trying to game the system.

Source: UN Compact needs a substantive discussion, says ex-Harper aide

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Douglas Todd: Offspring of Chinese and South Asian immigrants reaping high-skilled jobs

2019/03/26 Leave a comment

The overall national numbers somewhat amplify the differences between visible minorities and not visible minority given rural Canada is overall not visible minority, and where levels of university education are lower. However, even at the city level, the differences are significant in terms of income but with the same relative pattern of visible minority groups that are doing better compared to those that are not:

Second-generation immigrants are proving adept at moving into high-skilled careers in Canada.

The offspring of Chinese and South Asian immigrants, especially women, stand out for obtaining a much higher percentage of high-skill careers in Canada than the rest of the population.

A new Statistics Canada analysis reveals more than 40 per cent of second-generation Canadians of Chinese or South Asian background — the two largest minority groups in Canada — have found mid-career jobs in high-skill sectors.

That compares to less than 30 per cent of second-generation male Southeast Asian or white immigrants — and 20 per cent of white males whose parents are not immigrants. The study’s surprising, mixed results may cause some public-policy makers to re-think their traditional understanding of employment equity.

The StatsCan analysis, by Wen-Hao Chen and Feng Hou, shows children of nearly all immigrants are significantly more educated than their parents. And second-generation Chinese, South Asian, Japanese, Korean and West Asians are obtaining the highest proportion of university degrees and strongest percentage of jobs that rely on such educations.

But other second-generation immigrants — particularly Filipinos, blacks and Latin Americans — are not doing nearly so well at snagging high-skill jobs.

Neither are whites whose parents are not immigrants, whom the report refers to as “third-plus generation whites.” The StatsCan analysis did not include data on Indigenous people, who tend to score low on educational and labour rankings.

“Second-generation Chinese and South Asians, in particular, are over-represented in high-skill occupations relative to third-plus generation whites,” say Chen and Hou.

“About 40 per cent or more of second-generation Chinese, South Asians and West Asian or Arabs worked in high-skill occupations, compared with 20 per cent of men and 31 per cent of women among third-plus generation whites,” says their February study, titled Intergenerational Education Mobility and Labour Market Outcomes.

“The shares of second-generation Filipinos, Latin Americans and blacks working in high-skill occupations were similar to or smaller than those of third-plus generation whites,” said the report, noting that less than 22 per cent of Filipino, Latin American, black immigrants, or white males of Canadian-born parents, were employed in the high-skill sector.

Canadian women are in general doing better than men at obtaining high-skilled work.

Especially excelling are second-generation women of Chinese, South Asian and West Asian/Iranian origins. More than 43 per cent of women in these cohorts work at high-skilled jobs, compared to just 31 per cent of white women who are not the children of immigrants.

The StatsCan report, based on the 2016 census, defines high-skill occupations as those that generally require a university education, such as senior and middle management roles, as well as professions in business, finance, health, applied sciences, education, law, community services, arts and culture.

The report shows a strong link between obtaining a university degree and, before age 45, getting a high-skilled job. The exception was among Filipino, Latin American and black women, whom the report suggested may be vulnerable “to a certain degree of over-education.”

Table 4: Percentage of workers aged 25 to 44 in high-skill occupations among second-generation groups. (Source: Excerpt from Statistics Canada analysis.)

One of the paradoxical findings in the report is that there is not always a direct parallel between getting a university education, obtaining a high-skill job and achieving a strong salary.

“All second-generation groups, both men and women, had higher university completion rates than third-plus generation whites,” write Chen and Hou. Many of the minority cohorts had twice the university completion rate of whites whose parents are not immigrants.

Yet the veteran researchers found university-educated second-generation male Chinese and South Asians end up having roughly the same annual earnings — in the low-$60,000 range — as male whites whose parents have resided in the country for decades.

The levelling out of annual wages among the different ethnic and immigrants cohorts is partly owed to the way the Statistics Canada report tallies only people who obtain university degrees, not those who finish college or technical-school degrees or diplomas.

Chen and Hou note the children of the Canadian-born tend to go to colleges. Other demographers point to how white Canadian males are increasingly avoiding university and finding employment in the trades, such as plumbing, carpentry and electronics, which can often be well compensated compared to jobs in the arts, community and culture sectors.

One factor that might hold back some second-generation Canadians could be language. Chen and Hou suggest male offspring of Latin American and Southeast Asian immigrants end up earning less per year than most males, roughly $45,000 annually, in part because they tend not to speak English at home.

Women in general also earn less per year than most males, regardless of immigration status, according to the Statistics Canada analysis, which suggests that “discrimination” and “cultural factors” could be relevant in regards to the differences between male and female annual earnings.

All in all, data show offspring of immigrants are doing either decently or exceptionally in both higher education and the job market. And this StatsCan analysis of the 2016 census complicates the picture of who is flourishing and struggling in the Canadian workplace.

Source: Douglas Todd: Offspring of Chinese and South Asian immigrants reaping high-skilled jobs

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