E.J. Dionne: Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are equally wrong

2019/03/14 Leave a comment

Good commentary:

The polling is imperfect, but it’s fair to say that more than 70 percent of American Jews and Muslims vote Democratic.

They do so, in part, because Democrats have spoken out strongly against both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. And now, both groups are horrified by Trumpism’s embrace of discrimination against Muslims and its trafficking in anti-Semitism.

Just watch the Trump campaign ad attacking what it claims is “a global power structure that is responsible for economic decisions that have robbed our working class,” while flashing images of prominent Jews.

And you can’t help but cheer the fact that Jews and Muslims across the country have stood in solidarity when local institutions of either group have been defaced or attacked.

Bigotry is bigotry. It must always be opposed.

This is why the dangerously careless use of language by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) about Jews and Israel — she spoke of people who “push for allegiance to a foreign country” — has been cause for both heartbreak and anger.

I get that some readers will see my use of the word “careless” as too soft because the dual-loyalty charge has historically been so poisonous. But in refraining from stronger language I’m putting my bet on hope. I’m wagering that Omar’s personal history ought to mean that she understands the dangers of prejudice better than most.

In November, many of us celebrated her breakthrough election. She won strong backing from the Jewish community in her district. Maybe I’m also giving her a break because she’s progressive. Anti-Semitism is utterly antithetical to anything that deserves to be called liberal or progressive. Surely Omar doesn’t want the Democrats ensnared in the sort of left-wing anti-Semitism now haunting the British Labour Party.

Opposing anti-Semitism should be axiomatic for everyone. And for me, it’s also personal.

My observant Catholic parents moved to our city’s most Jewish neighborhood shortly after I was born, and my sister and I were raised to see anti-Semitism as sinful. My very first friends in the world were Jewish, and my mom regularly sat down with our next-door neighbor to compare notes on Catholic and Jewish views about the nature of God. As I’ve written before, my informal second father was Jewish. A dear man named Bert Yaffe informally took me into his family after my dad died when I was a teenager, and his kids welcomed me as a brother.

Partly because of this history, but also in common with almost all liberals and social democrats of a certain age, I have always — and will always — support the existence of Israel as a democratic Jewish state.

I spent a month in Israel in the spring of 1974, as the country experienced searing existential anxiety after its close call in the Yom Kippur War, and I visited Kiryat Schmona, a development town in the north that suffered under regular Palestinian attacks. It was an enduring lesson in the constant fear that haunts Israelis over the prospects of their country’s survival.

But Israel’s commitment to democracy is also an important reason for my admiration, which is why I support a two-state solution and oppose continued settlements in Palestinian areas. Israel will not remain democratic if it continues to occupy the West Bank and Gaza, and justice requires Palestinian self-determination.

When I covered the war in Lebanon in the 1980s, a Palestinian friend underscored for me the cost of being stateless. All he wanted, he would say, was the legitimacy that citizenship and a passport confer. It did not seem too much to ask.

Thus, my sympathies have always been with the beleaguered peace camps on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides. This has led to deep frustration with Palestinian rejectionists, but also with the politics of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu has done enormous damage to Israel’s standing with young Americans who did not grow up with my gut commitment to Israel’s survival. His appearance before Congress in 2015 to trash President Barack Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran greatly aggravated this problem. His alliance with a virtual fascist party leading into next month’s elections is unconscionable and a gift to anti-Israel propagandists.

So, yes, I know full well that you can love Israel, be critical of its current government and truly despise anti-Semitism, all at the same time. What you cannot do is play fast and loose with language that cannot help but be seen as anti-Semitic. I pray Omar now realizes this. At this moment, opponents of bigotry must be able to rely on each other.

E.J. Dionne’s email address is ejdionne@washpost.com. Twitter: @EJDionne.

Source: E.J. Dionne: Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are equally wrong

Filed under Antisemitism, Islamophobia, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Just 1000 third-generation foreigners apply for Swiss passport under easier citizenship rules

2019/03/14 Leave a comment

Interesting explanations of the restrictions responsible for the relatively low take-up:
Only a small percentage of the estimated 25,000 third-generation foreigners who can now take advantage of rule changes that make it easier for them to obtain Swiss citizenship have done so to date, but the current requirements may be partly to blame, a report published on Tuesday suggests.

Third-generation foreigners are those who were born in Switzerland and may have spent their lives here but who do not have Swiss citizenship because their parents and grandparents did not.

In 2017, the Swiss public voted in a referendum to allow this group to access to facilitated (or simplified) naturalization– a far simpler citizenship process usually reserved for the foreign spouses and children of Swiss citizens.

In February last year, the news rules came into effect.

However, a new report (here in French) published by the Federal Commission on Migration (FCM) shows just 1,065 third generation foreigners have applied for citizenship under the new rules so far, while 309 have already obtained the Swiss passport.

Eighty percent of applicants came from four countries – Italy, Turkey, Kosovo and Spain, according to the report.

Meanwhile, two thirds of the applications came from just six cantons, five of which are considered to have restrictive citizenship processes (Aargau, St Gallen, Solothurn, Thurgau and Basel).

The report had allowed applicants to sidestep restrictive cantonal policies, its authors said.

Parents school requirement as a legal obstacle

However, the FCM also recognised that the current rules for facilitated naturalisation for third-generation foreigners made it difficult for some applicants – specifically the requirement that they prove their parents had completed five years of compulsory schooling in Switzerland.

The FCM noted that this requirement did not match up to the immigration reality of many of Switzerland’s third-generation foreigners. The commission said that many of these people’s grandparents had come to Switzerland as seasonal workers and had only brought their children to the country when they had secured a residence permit.

As a result, many parents of potential candidates for facilitated immigration had not attended five years of school in Switzerland. However, many had completed professional training here.

The FCM recommended that the rules be changed to reflect this situation, with that professional education being recognised in place of the five years of compulsory schooling.

The commission also called on communes and cantons to do more to encourage third-generation foreigners to take out Swiss citizenship.

A flop?

Geneva newspaper Tribune de Genève labelled the results of the first year of the rule changes a “flop” but the woman behind the initiative, Ada Marra, whose grandparents emigrated to Switzerland in the 1960s, told Swiss news agency SDA she wasn’t disappointed at all.

She said the figures indicated that their was “a real need” in cantons with more restrictive citizenship policies.

The military service issue

Under the rules, only third-generation foreigners under the age of 25 can apply for facilitated citizenship. This was a proviso added in by parliament over fears people could shirk their military service obligations by only applying for citizenship after that age – though those currently aged 26-35 will be able to apply if they do so in the first five years of the new system.

Source: Just 1000 third-generation foreigners apply for Swiss passport under easier citizenship rules

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Trump administration preparing to close international immigration offices

2019/03/14 Leave a comment

Yet another change that will likely adversely impact immigration processing:

The Trump administration is seeking to close nearly two dozen U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services field offices around the world in a move it estimates would save millions per year. But critics argue the closures will further slow refugee processing, family reunification petitions and military citizenship applications.

USCIS spokeswoman Jessica Collins announced on Tuesday the agency is in “preliminary discussions” to delegate its international responsibilities to the State Department, or to its own personnel in the U.S. In some cases, the workload would be absorbed by U.S. embassies and consulates abroad.

“The goal of any such shift would be to maximize USCIS resources that could then be reallocated, in part, to backlog reduction” at the agency, Collins told NPR in an emailed statement.

In a cost analysis conducted last year, USCIS officials estimated phasing out its international offices would save millions of dollars each year.

The USCIS field offices currently assist with refugee applications, family reunification visas and foreign adoptions. They also consider parole requests from people outside the U.S. for urgent humanitarian reasons and process naturalization documents for military members who marry foreign nationals, among other responsibilities.

Another “important function” of USCIS’ international offices is “to provide technical expertise on immigration-related matters to U.S. government agencies abroad, including other Department of Homeland Security components, the Department of State and the Department of Defense,” the agency explains on its web site.

In the statement, Collins downplayed the potential impact of shuttering all 23 field offices across 20 countries. She provided assurances that the transition would be coordinated with the Department of Homeland Security as well as the State Department, “to ensure no interruption in the provision of immigration services to affected applicants and petitioners.”

Additionally, the agency says the U.S. refugee program would not be affected because refugee interviews are conducted by U.S.-based personnel who travel around the world.

But Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute argued the plan will likely exacerbate a processing bottleneck of refugee applications that has led to fewer opportunities for people to seek asylum in the U.S. She noted the Trump administration slashed the ceiling on the number of allowable refugees from 45,000 in fiscal year 2018 to 30,000 in 2019 due to “a massive backlog of outstanding asylum cases.”

“It’s yet another step that USCIS has taken that slows the processing of refugee applications and will slow customer service in general,” Pierce said, adding that an increase in the backlog could fuel calls for further refugee cap reductions moving forward.

The USCIS International Operations department employs approximately 70 staffers in its offices around the globe. Foreign nationals make up more than half of its staff working abroad and approximately one-third of all its employees.

Source: US Citizenship and Immigration Services Moves To Close All Field Offices

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ICYMI – Douglas Todd: China’s long surveillance arm thrusts into Canada

2019/03/14 2 Comments

Chinese students understandably do not wish to be openly critical of the Chinese government. But it is another matter when they try to shut down or intimidate persons critical of China or Chinese policies:

….

The only hope is this culture of watchfulness doesn’t always work. A University of B.C. professor who specializes in Asia tells me how an apparent culture of subjugation is playing out on campus.

The majority of the many students from China that the professor comes across are self-censoring.

They don’t go to possibly contentious events about China. They don’t speak out in classes. A few patriotic ones feel it’s their duty to criticize the professor for exposing them to material that does not hold the world’s most populous country in a positive light. A few very privately offer the faculty member their thanks for the chance to hear the truth.

“Mostly, however, I find my undergrads in particular to be profoundly uninterested in politics and proud of their country’s rise,” said the professor, who, like many academic specialists on China these days, spoke on condition of anonymity. Metro Vancouver campuses host almost 50,000 of the more than 180,000 students from China in Canada.

Mandarin-language students in Canada are “the major beneficiaries of the rise” of China, said the professor. “They don’t want to rock the boat and the more aware ones are discreet about their critiques. They have decided to tread carefully, which suggests a consciousness that they could be under surveillance.”

If that is the look-over-your-shoulder reality for students from China in B.C., imagine how it is for those on some American and Ontario campuses, which have had high-profile outbreaks of angry pro-China activism.

National Post reporter Tom Blackwell has covered China’s recent interference in Canadian affairs. He’s dug into how University of Toronto student president Chemi Lhamo was barraged with a 11,000-name petition from people with Chinese names, demanding she be removed. Raised in Tibet, which China dominates, Lhamo was also targeted by hundreds of nasty texts, which Toronto police are investigating as possibly criminal threats.

A similar confrontation occurred in February at McMaster University in Hamilton, where five Chinese student groups protested the university’s decision to give a platform to a Canadian citizen of Muslim Uyghur background. Rukiye Turdush had described China’s well-documented human-rights abuses against more than a million Uyghurs in the vast province of Xinjiang in China.

The animosity and harassment is escalating. Even longtime champions of trade and investment in Canada from China and its well-off migrants are taken aback. Ng Weng Hoong, a commentator on the Asian-Pacific energy industry, is normally a vociferous critic of B.C.’s foreign house buyer tax and other manifestations of Canadian sovereignty.

But Ng admitted in a recent piece in SupChina, a digital media outlet, that Chinese protesters’ in Ontario “could shift Canadians’ attitude toward China to one of outright disdain and anger at what they see is the growing threat of Chinese influence in their country.”

It certainly didn’t help, Ng notes, that the Chinese embassy in Ottawa supported the aggressive protesters. “The story of Chinese students’ silencing free speech and undermining democracy in Canada,” Ng said, “will only fuel this explosive mix of accusations.”

Some of the growing mistrust among Canadians and others has emerged from multiplying reports of propaganda and surveillance in China.

China’s president, Xi Jinping, is attempting to control followers through a dazzling new app, with which China’s Communist Party members are expected to actively engage. The New York Times is reporting China has been swabbing millions of Uyghur Muslims for their DNA, with human rights activists maintaining the genetic samples could be used to track down those not already sent to “re-education” camps.

China’s pressure tactics are also coming down on journalists. The Economist reports students from China trying to enrol in Hong Kong’s journalism school are being warned against it by their fearful parents. They’re begging their offspring to shun a truth-seeking career that would lead to exposing wrongdoing in China, which could result in grim reprisals against the entire family.

Within the Canadian media realm there are also growing private reports that Mandarin-language Chinese journalists at various news outlets across this country are being called into meetings with China’s officials, leading some Chinese reporters to ask editors to remove their bylines from stories about the People’s Republic of China and its many overseas investors.

It’s always wise to be wary of superpowers. But China’s actions are cranking suspicion up to new levels. Compared to the flawed United States, which somehow still manages to win grudging admirers around the world, China’s surveillance tactics are making it almost impossible for that country to develop soft power with any appeal at all.

While some observers say many of the people of China are primed for more reform, openness and media freedom, it’s clear the leaders of China have in the past year been going only backwards, intent on more scrutiny and repression.

Source: Douglas Todd: China’s long surveillance arm thrusts into Canada

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2019 TRUDEAU REPORT CARD C+ Overall, Immigration B

2019/03/13 2 Comments

The intro to the section on immigration, largely written by Howard Duncan (I participated in an earlier report card). A downgrade from last year’s A-.

A bit overly harsh, as any government whatever its stripe would have found the influx of asylum seekers difficult to manage given the legal, policy and operational constraints.

The critique of the government’s communications, while valid in terms of its overly downplaying the issue and too much “virtue signalling,” underestimates the challenge given the tenor of debates south of the border and in Europe, and their crossover into some Canadian debates:

The influx of irregular border crossers continued to rise this year,and so have public discourse and import. On the one hand, the Trudeau government should be commended for its response in balancing between two very different views on the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA); demands to ‘close the loophole’ and outlaw any asylum claimants from the US, and calls for the complete suspension of the STCA, questioning whether the US can be considered a ‘safe third country’ at all. The Trudeau Government managed these conflicting calls by upholding Canada’s legal and moral obligations to allow individuals claiming asylum to have a fair hearing.

While practically and programmatically, the government has done an acceptable job at responding, they haven’t done a good enough job of explaining what they are doing, and why they are doing it. The Liberals have allowed the Canada-US border issue to develop into a very volatile political issue due to an outrageous lack of communication and coordination.

This is exemplified in the way the government has responded to provincial governments that raised concerns (such as the Ford government in Ontario). The Liberal response was not aimed at addressing legitimate concerns of the governments, but rather deflected all concerns by pointing fingers and labelling governments as racist, exclusionary and a disgrace to Canadian values. This attitude along with the divisive comments has only antagonized those who don’t share Liberal political ideologies. Concerns from major host cities such as Montreal and Toronto about the mounting costs of refugees and the strain of refugees on public housing and social services reflects a complete lack of coordination in all levels of government.

The failures in communication are mounting. The failure by Minister Hussen to clearly communicate to the Canadian public what’s happening in Roxham Road (a favored border crossing in Quebec) and Emerson, Manitoba (another border crossing) is a case in point. Trudeau’s own town hall comments have further managed to blur the line between refugees and asylum seekers in public discourse.

These lapses reveal a very large weakness within the Liberal government in building
and sustaining the consensus and support necessary to see difficult policies through to fruition. By taking a moral high ground, the Trudeau government has yet to demonstrate true leadership on immigration. The Liberals have allowed a policy problem, key to realising Canada’s future prosperity, to become an issue of politics. As a result, immigration has become a deeply divisive political issue and will be a subject of much debate in the upcoming elections.

While practically and programmatically, the government has done an acceptable job at responding, they haven’t done a good enough job of explaining what they are doing, and why they are doing it. The Liberals have allowed the Canada-US border issue to develop into a very volatile political issue due to an outrageous lack of communication and coordination.

This is exemplified in the way the government has responded to provincial governments that raised concerns (such as the Ford government in Ontario). The Liberal response was not aimed at addressing legitimate concerns of the governments, but rather deflected all concerns by pointing fingers and labelling governments as racist, exclusionary and a disgrace to Canadian values. This attitude along with the divisive comments has only antagonized those who don’t share Liberal political ideologies. Concerns from major host cities such as Montreal and Toronto about the mounting costs of refugees and the strain of refugees on public housing and social services reflects a complete lack of coordination in all levels of government.

The failures in communication are mounting. The failure by Minister Hussen to clearly communicate to the Canadian public what’s happening in Roxham Road (a favored border crossing in Quebec) and Emerson, Manitoba (another border crossing) is a case in point. Trudeau’s own town hall comments have further managed to blur the line between refugees and asylum seekers in public discourse.

These lapses reveal a very large weakness within the Liberal government in building and sustaining the consensus and support necessary to see difficult policies through to fruition. By taking a moral high ground, the Trudeau government has yet to demonstrate true leadership on immigration. The Liberals have allowed a policy problem, key to realising Canada’s future prosperity, to become an issue of politics. As a result, immigration has become a deeply divisive political issue and will be a subject of much debate in the upcoming elections.

The concern is not with immigration numbers, but with the government’s ability to project the public’s opinion and manage these flows in a financially responsible way. Irregular border crossings have come to a halt during these vicious winter months, following several cases of frostbite. Yet another run at the border is expected in the coming months.

All eyes are focused on how the Liberal government will respond.

….

Source: Trudeau Government Report Card 2019

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TTC officers have collected more than 40,000 records on riders who weren’t charged. A disproportionate number in the database are Black

2019/03/13 Leave a comment

I would be interested in a comparative study to see for any differences between those given cautions and those charged.

There is a certain paradox in race-based (visible minority) data collection: if collected, perceived as intrusive but yet data may indicate singling out certain groups, if not collected, we will only have anecdotes to rely on.

Hard to see the justification for keeping the “field information cards” for 20 years rather than just the aggregated data:

For years, the TTC has been quietly maintaining a database that includes thousands of records detailing personal information collected from transit riders who weren’t formally charged with any offence — records it keeps for 20 years and, at times, will share with police.

In the course of their daily duties, the agency’s fare inspectors and enforcement officers stop people on the transit system who, the TTC says, they believe have committed fare evasion or other offences. If the officers decide not to issue the person a ticket, they can record sensitive information such as the person’s name, address, driver’s licence number, physical appearance and race on “field information” cards, and then enter those details into a database that transit officers access daily but which most transit users aren’t even aware exists.

Data obtained by the Star through a freedom of information request shows that TTC officers filled out more than 40,000 of the cards between 2008 and the end of 2018. Once a rider’s information is in the system, the TTC says city bylaws dictate the agency must retain it for 20 years.

TTC officers recorded the race of the person they stopped on about three-quarters of the cards. An analysis of that information performed by the Star suggests a disproportionately high number of cards, 19.3 per cent, were filled out for interactions with Black people. Black residents make up about 8.9 per cent of Toronto’s population.

Civil rights experts say the practice sounds a lot like carding, the controversial tactic police have historically used to collect citizens’ personal information, and warn it could amount to racial profiling and a widespread invasion of privacy.

The TTC and the union that represents the officers firmly reject that characterization. Transit agency spokesperson Stuart Green said officers will use the form “as a formal caution in lieu of charges,” and will only fill one out if he or she has “reasonable and probable grounds that an offence has been committed and then uses their discretion to caution rather than lay a charge.”

Green said the purpose of the database is “to assist (the TTC enforcement unit) in its daily functions.” For instance, TTC officers can check the database to determine whether someone they’ve stopped for suspected fare evasion or another offence has been stopped before, which helps determine if they should receive a ticket or merely a warning.

Green said the TTC is not engaged in any form of carding.

“We do not random stop customers and investigate them,” Green said, and Black riders are “absolutely not” targeted, intentionally or otherwise.

Jake Mahoney, secretary of Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 5089, which represents TTC officers, also strongly rejected the idea its members are performing discriminatory carding.

He said the field information cards are “a useful investigative tool” that officers only use “in a scenario where we observe an offence committed.”

“The union members that are out there doing this job, they don’t have any control over the race of the person,” he said. “I go back to the fact that everyone we stop and talk to, we have a legal authority to do so.”

Noa Mendelsohn Aviv, director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association’s equality program, said the database raises serious concerns about racial profiling and privacy.

“Any database that’s retaining information about people for no justified reason could be seen as carding. And where there’s a disproportionality of personal information being stored unjustifiably about racialized and marginalized people (that) certainly sounds like carding to me,” she said.

According to Mendelsohn Aviv, while the TTC is entitled to enforce its fare policies, there’s no justification for collecting and storing a rider’s personal information if they haven’t been issued a ticket.

“For a $3 fare, to record somebody’s personal information seems completely out of proportion,” she said.

She described the 20-year period for which the TTC retains the information as “outrageous.”

“The very fact of it being obtained, and then the added problem of it being retained, is certainly a violation of privacy,” she said.

The TTC database isn’t secret. But nor is it widely known to the public. The transit agency publishes voluminous data about its operations, but regular reports about how it’s collecting information from people on the transit system are not among them.

Even those riders who provide their information to TTC officers can be unaware of where it goes or how it could be used.

Although the TTC says the cards are used to issue warnings to people suspected of breaking the rules on the transit system, the person receiving the caution isn’t given a copy of the card, meaning they have no official record of the interaction and no easy way to identify the officer involved.

The TTC says officers aren’t required to provide a copy because a caution isn’t a formal charge, and that transit users can request information the agency may have on them by filing a freedom of information request.

Septembre Anderson was on her way home one sweltering evening in July 2016 when she was pulled off a streetcar by a fare inspector for not paying for her ride.

Anderson says she had a TTC token in her hand at the time, but she boarded the car by the back doors and it was too crowded for her to get to the fare box at the front.

Anderson, who is now 36 and works as a front-end web developer, recalls that the officer was going to write her a ticket for fare evasion, but decided to let her off with a warning instead.

To her surprise, she says he began asking her for personal details, such as her name, address and health card number. She asked what he would do with that information, and reacted with concern when he told her it would be put into a database.

“I wanted to know why my information was being put in a database if I wasn’t actually being given the ticket. How do I remove it from the database? Where does that information go?” she told the Star.

“There was no information given to me at all about my rights, or what my personal information was being used for.”

She didn’t want to give her information, but says she did because she felt she had no choice. “He was just like, ‘well ma’am you can get a ticket instead,’” she says.

To Anderson, who is Black, the experience felt like a form of carding.

“If he was giving me a warning, he just could have given me a verbal warning … If someone can stop and detain somebody and collect their personal information, yes that falls under carding,” she said.

Legal experts who spoke to the Star said the law can be unclear on what information officers, including those working for the TTC, can request from citizens.

Mendelsohn Aviv of the CCLA said she believed that officers shouldn’t ask for a person’s name unless “at a minimum” they’ve witnessed the person committing an offence.

Green, the TTC spokesperson, said that “depending on what (transit users) are being investigated for, they do have a legal obligation to identify themselves.”

There are two types of TTC officers who interact with the public on the transit system: fare inspectors and enforcement officers. Inspectors are tasked with ensuring riders pay the proper fare, while enforcement officers patrol the system for security purposes. Neither are full-fledged police officers, but transit enforcement officers have been designated special constables under an agreement with the Toronto Police Services Board and have limited police powers on the network.

Both inspectors and enforcement officers can fill out field information cards about members of the public.

For years, TTC officers used the same Toronto Police Service “208” forms to collect information about people on the transit system that police used for their street checks, before switching to their own “718” forms that were identical in many ways.

The Star obtained nearly 11 years worth of data the TTC recorded on the cards, which is not the complete set of records the transit agency has on file. The data didn’t include entries for people who were ticketed for an offence on the transit system, which the transit agency keeps in the same database. The data provided to the Star was also redacted to remove any information that could risk identifying an individual.

It showed that between January 2008 and December 2018, the TTC enforcement unit filled out 41,833 of the cards. Officers recorded the race of the person they stopped roughly 33,000 times, or in about three quarters of the interactions.

Of the cards on which the person’s race was recorded, 19.3 per cent were identified as Black.

Black residents make up only about 8.9 per cent of Toronto’s population, according to the 2016 Census. And while the TTC says it doesn’t have data indicating the racial makeup of its ridership, the census shows Black people constitute just 10.7 per cent of those in Toronto who commute by public transit. That figure doesn’t include trips for noncommuting purposes, and does include journeys on other transit agencies such as GO.

The proportion of card entries that Black transit users accounted for varied from year to year, and generally trended downward over the 11-year period. The figure was highest in 2011 when it reached about 27 per cent, and by 2018 had fallen to about 16 per cent.

Black residents’ personal information was more likely to be recorded if they were young and male. Males between the ages of 15 and 25 made up about 35 per cent of all Black people whose information was recorded on the cards. Males of the same age made up roughly 24 per cent of white residents recorded on the cards.

Green, the TTC spokesperson, said that in many cases the person’s race recorded on the card is based on officers’ observations.

“So if a person does not offer a race association, the officer will use best judgment,” he said.

Green couldn’t say why Black people appear to be disproportionately represented on the cards. “However, the TTC’s customer base is wider than just Toronto residents and almost half of Toronto residents identify as racialized,” he said.

He said the transit agency “is fully committed to treating all customers equally and without prejudice,” and officers receive training on diversity, inclusion and preventing discrimination.

Green acknowledged that the TTC sometimes shares information collected on the cards with police. He couldn’t say how often that had happened between 2008 and 2018, but said police “rarely” request the information and the TTC would only provide it if served a court order.

Nigel Barriffe, president of the Urban Alliance on Race Relations, said the TTC data is “very representative of what we saw with carding and the police,” and shows Toronto’s public institutions “are constantly pushing away our young Black males in our society and making them feel as if they don’t belong in our city.”

He said if Black people are being stopped by TTC officers at higher rates than other groups, it sends the message to Black residents that they have no place in public spaces like the transit system.

“It’s like you have to think twice if you’re a Black male taking public transit in this city,” he said.

He called for the TTC to improve its anti-bias training and make hiring decisions to ensure its enforcement unit reflects Toronto’s diversity.

Some people who used to work for the agency’s enforcement unit say they were uncomfortable with the use of the field information cards.

A former member of the TTC’s transit enforcement unit contacted the Star to raise concerns about the database after the Star published unrelated allegations of misconduct by transit officers.

The former officer, who agreed to discuss the issue on the condition of anonymity out of concern for future employment prospects, said there were “no checks and balances” on the use of the database and he believed riders should be made aware of it.

“There’s no real oversight really,” he said, adding he was concerned the TTC’s practice was akin to police carding.

Ann Cavoukian, who was formerly Ontario’s information and privacy commissioner between 2007 and 2014, said the TTC should consider suspending the collection of riders’ personal information, or at least provide the public and riders with more information about their rights and how the agency is using the data.

“In my view, I think they should stop collecting this information. At the very least, if they must continue collecting it, they should start by giving notice, clear transparency about what they’re doing, how long they’re going to retain the data, and in what form,” she said.

“I’m just really disturbed by this … I had no idea they had a database or they keep this information.”

The Star’s investigation into the database follows separate incidents that have raised concerns about the TTC enforcement unit’s conduct related to issues of privacy and alleged racial profiling.

A 2018 TTC report determined a fare inspector had used information he collected from a female rider to contact her later and ask her on a date, an incident that caused the woman to “fear for her safety.” The inspector kept his job.

The TTC is also being sued by a young Black man who was pushed and pinned down by transit officers as he exited a streetcar in February 2018, in what he alleges was a case of racial profiling. The allegations haven’t been proven in court.

In part as a result of the Star’s questions about the database, the TTC said it is reviewing the forms and how officers used them.

However, at a TTC board meeting last month agency officials said they planned to make greater use of the database to help get a handle on the network’s costly fare evasion problem, which the city auditor general recently reported cost the TTC $61 million in foregone revenue last year.

The agency is also hiring an additional 45 fare inspectors and 22 enforcement officers this year, bringing their total complement to 186 officers and meaning interactions between officers and riders will likely become more frequent.

Source: TTC officers have collected more than 40,000 records on riders who weren’t charged. A disproportionate number in the database are Black

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

‘Good curling’: Calgary play uses iconic sport for message on new Canadians

2019/03/13 Leave a comment

In the spirit of Little Mosque on the Prairie, Kim’s Convenience Store and other cultural events that feature Canada’s diverse communities:

An iconic Canadian winter sport serves as the vessel for a Calgary play telling the story of new Canadians dealing with adversity and finding a way to become a part of their new community.

Alberta Theatre Projects is presenting “The New Canadian Curling Club,” a comedy that follows four new Canadians resettled in a small Alberta town.

They include a Chinese medical student, a widowed Tim Hortons manager from Jamaica who gave up her dream of being a fashion designer, a father of triplet boys from India seeking a better job, and a 17-year-old recent immigrant from Syria worried about the safety of her brother back home.

The community offers a ‘learn to curl’ class and when its instructor gets injured, the club’s ice custodian and former champion curler has to step in.

The instructor unfortunately has some negative views on Canadian immigration and refers to the team as “The International House of Pancakes,” and shows disdain for their lack of knowledge about curling.

“You start each game with a handshake. Wish the other team good curling. You don’t cheer, you don’t heckle. You call your own fouls,” growled curmudgeonly Stuart MacPhail, played by Saskatchewan actor Duval Lang, at a recent rehearsal.

“I start out as a crusty old fart and then gradually change into someone who is more accommodating and begins to enjoy life a little bit more,” Lang said with a laugh.

Lang has curled for decades and also serves as the show’s curling consultant.

“It’s come along. Everything from how to sit in the hack to how to extend yourself when you make a shot…how to sweep.”

The group eventually comes together to become a true team on a stage fitted with an authentic curling ring, complete with rocks, set in a small curling club.

“I think it combines the quintessential idea of curling with the other thing that Canada is know for, which is multiculturalism,” explains Toronto’s Richard Young, who plays Anoopjeet Singh.

“I’ve always wanted to be part of curling and I was just too scared to do it.”

There’s a lot of sight gags including Young’s difficulty in standing on the ice and being cautioned by his coach to throw the stone “nice and easy” and “not all the way home to India.”

“Thank God,” Young’s character retorts. “The postage on this thing would be a nightmare.”

Sepidar Yeganeh Farid was drawn to play the part of recent Syrian immigrant Fatima Al-Sayed.

“When I read the script it was obvious that I had to audition and my life story is very similar to the character Fatima so I have a very close connection to her,” Farid said.

Farid was born in Iran and her family eventually ended up in Montreal — sponsored by a church, like the character she portrays.

“As I see the interactions between Fatima and another character, Charmaine, I definitely see those characteristics in the relationships I had with the people that sponsored us.”

For Jenni Burke, playing the Jamaican-born Tim Hortons manager was natural.

“My parents were from Jamaica. I feel like I’m doing an homage of what happened to them,” she said.

“It’s a great Canadian story and it supports multiculturalism and everyone bringing their own colour to the mosaic.”

Jonathan Ho, who moved to Toronto from Hong Kong before his first birthday, plays medical student Mike Chang who’s also dating the granddaughter of the curling coach.

“It does speak to aspects of the immigrant experience particularly with interracial relationships and the difficulties of the culture clash there.”

Young managed to try the sport thanks to a friend who was a curling coach in Pickering, Ont.

“The first time I was slipping and sliding on the ice just like my character does here, but I was able to throw some rocks and to understand,” he said.

“So I got to learn a lot about the game and it is, as the play says, like chess on ice.”

Farid remembers her first impressions when moving to Canada.

“The first time I saw curling on TV with my family and we had no idea what it meant and we thought, ‘Oh, they’re sweeping, that’s very interesting,'” she said.

“It is super fascinating and now that I’ve watched curling it’s like ‘Oh my God I understand.'”

Source: ‘Good curling’: Calgary play uses iconic sport for message on new Canadians

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Study Finds Racial Gap Between Who Causes Air Pollution And Who Breathes It

2019/03/13 Leave a comment

Another interesting disparity but one that makes intuitive sense given income disparities:

Pollution, much like wealth, is not distributed equally in the United States.

Scientists and policymakers have long known that black and Hispanic Americans tend to live in neighborhoods with more pollution of all kinds, than white Americans. And because pollution exposure can cause a range of health problems, this inequity could be a driver of unequal health outcomes across the U.S.

A study published Monday in the journal PNAS adds a new twist to the pollution problem by looking at consumption. While we tend to think of factories or power plants as the source of pollution, those polluters wouldn’t exist without consumer demand for their products.

The researchers found that air pollution is disproportionately caused by white Americans’ consumption of goods and services, but disproportionately inhaled by black and Hispanic Americans.

“This paper is exciting and really quite novel,” says Anjum Hajat, an epidemiologist at the University of Washington who was not involved in the study. “Inequity in exposure to air pollution is well documented, but this study brings in the consumption angle.”

Hajat says the study reveals an inherent unfairness: “If you’re contributing less to the problem, why do you have to suffer more from it?”

The study, led by engineering professor Jason Hill at the University of Minnesota, took over six years to complete. According to the paper’s first author Christopher Tessum, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington, the idea stemmed from a question at a conference.

Tessum presented earlier research on how blacks and Hispanics are often more exposed to air pollutants than whites. After he finished, someone asked “if it would be possible to connect exposure to air pollution to who is doing the actual consuming,” says Tessum. According to Tessum, no one had ever tried to answer that question.

It’s a big, complicated issue, but studying it could address a fundamental question: Are those who produce pollution, through their consumption of goods and services, fairly sharing in the costs?

What kind of data could even answer such a multifaceted question? Let’s break it down:

For any given area in the U.S., the researchers would need to know how polluted the air was, what communities were exposed to pollution, and the health effects of that level of exposure.

Then, for the same area the researchers would need to identify the sources of that exposure (coal plants, factories, agriculture to name a few), and get a sense of what goods and services stem from those emissions (electricity, transportation, food).

Finally, whose consumption of goods and services drives those sectors of the economy?

“The different kinds of data, by themselves, aren’t that complicated,” says Tessum. “It’s linking them where things get a little trickier.”

The most relevant air pollutant metric for human health is “particulate matter 2.5” or PM2.5. It represents the largest environmental health risk factor in the United States with higher levels linked to more cardiovascular problems, respiratory illness, diabetes and even birth defects. PM2.5 pollution is mostly caused by human activities, like burning fossil fuels or agriculture.

The EPA collects these data through the National Emissions Inventory, which collates emissions from specific emitters, like coal plants or factories, measures of mobile polluters like cars or planes, and natural events like wildfires, painting a detailed picture of pollution across the U.S.

The researchers generated maps of where different emitters, like agriculture or construction, caused PM2.5 pollution. Coal plants produced pockets of pollution in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, while agricultural emissions were concentrated in the Midwest and California’s central valley. “We then tied in census data to understand where different racial-ethnic groups live to understand exposure patterns,” says Hill.

Tessum then used previous research on the health effects of different exposure levels to estimate how many premature deaths per year (out of an estimated 102,000 from domestic human-caused emissions) could be linked to each emitter.

“We wanted to take this study further by ascribing responsibility of these premature deaths to different sectors [of the economy], and ultimately to the consumers, and maybe consumers of different racial and ethnic groups,” says Hill.

To do that, the researchers actually worked backwards, following consumer spending to different sectors of the economy, and then ultimately to the main emitters of air pollution.

Consider one major contributor to emissions: agriculture. Consumer expenditure surveys from the Bureau of Labor Statistics provide detailed data on how much money households spend in various sectors of the economy, including food.

These data gave the researchers an idea of how much blacks, Hispanics, and whites spend on food per year. Other expenditures, like energy or entertainment, are also measured. Taken together these data represent the consumption patterns of the three groups.

To translate dollars spent on food into air pollution levels, the researchers traced money through the economy. Using data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the researchers can estimate, for example, how much grocery stores or restaurants spend on food. Eventually, these dollars are linked back to the primary emitters — the farms growing the food or the fuel that farmers buy to run their tractors.

The researchers have now completed the causal chain, from dollars spent at the grocery story, to the amount of pollution emitted into the atmosphere. Completing this chain for each source of pollution revealed whose consumption drives air pollution, and who suffers from it.

After accounting for population size differences, whites experience about 17 percent less air pollution than they produce, through consumption, while blacks and Hispanics bear 56 and 63 percent more air pollution, respectively, than they cause by their consumption, according to the study.

“These patterns didn’t seem to be driven by different kinds of consumption,” says Tessum, “but different overall levels.” In other words, whites were just consuming disproportionately more of the same kinds of goods and services resulting in air pollution than minority communities.

“These results, as striking as they are, aren’t really surprising,” says Ana Diez Roux, an epidemiologist at Drexel University who was not involved in the study. “But it’s really interesting to see consumption patterns rigorously documented suggesting that minority communities are exposed to pollution that they bear less responsibility for.”

Diez Roux thinks this is a good first step. “They certainly make assumptions in their analysis that might be questioned down the line, but I doubt that the overall pattern they found will change,” she says.

Tessum points to some hopeful results from the study. PM2.5 exposure by all groups has fallen by about 50 percent from 2002 to 2015, driven in part by regulation and population movement away from polluted areas. But the inequity remains mostly unchanged.

While more research is needed to fully understand these differences, the results of this study raise questions about how to address these inequities.

Tessum stresses that “we’re not saying that we should take away white people’s money, or that people shouldn’t be able to spend money.” He suggests continuing to strive to make economic activity and consumption less polluting could be a way to manage and lessen the inequities.

Diez Roux thinks that stronger measures may be necessary.

“If want to ameliorate this inequity, we may need to rethink how we build our cities and how they grow, our dependence on automobile transportation,” says Diez Roux. “These are hard things we have to consider.”

Source: Study Finds Racial Gap Between Who Causes Air Pollution And Who Breathes It

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Far fewer unauthorized immigrants living in Arizona cities than 10 years ago, Pew says

2019/03/13 Leave a comment

Interesting mix of factors, ranging from increased enforcement to improved economic circumstances in Mexico:

There are a lot fewer unauthorized immigrants living in key Arizona metropolitan areas than a decade ago, the Pew Research Center says.

New figures Monday show there were about 210,000 undocumented immigrants in the Phoenix metro area in 2016, the most recent estimates available. That compares with about 400,000 in 2007, though there is a margin for error.

Only the New York City and Los Angeles areas had a larger drop, though both decreases were smaller on a percentage basis.

It’s not just Phoenix reflecting the decline.

Tucson’s unauthorized immigrant population dropped about 25 percent, from 50,000 to 35,000.

The latest estimate for Yuma is 15,000 immigrants without documents, which may be a drop of about 5,000, though with the smaller numbers Pew reports the margin of error makes the accuracy less clear.

For the Prescott area, Pew reports that the number of unauthorized immigrants in 2016 may have been anywhere from 25 to 50 percent smaller than the 10,000 living there in 2007.

Pew researcher Jeff Passel said the reductions may partly be due to the change in immigration patterns from other countries.

“We know there’s been a significant drop in Mexican unauthorized immigrants over that decade,” he said.

“And Arizona’s unauthorized immigrant population is largely Mexicans,” Passel continued. “The fact that many fewer Mexican immigrants are coming into the country and more are leaving than coming is a big factor behind this.”

Some research suggests policies adopted by Arizona lawmakers also may be a factor, Passel said.

For example, Pia Orrenius, vice president and senior economist with the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas, looked at the requirement for employers here to use the federal E-Verify system.

That requirement is part of a 2007 law, formally known as the Legal Arizona Worker Act.

It allows a state judge to suspend all business licenses of any firm found guilty of knowingly hiring those not in the country legally. A second offense within three years puts the company out of business.

Another part of that law spells out that employers must use the online system to determine whether new employees are legally entitled to work here.

There is no penalty for failing to make the checks. But those who use E-Verify have a legal defense against charges they knowingly broke the law.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-3 decision in 2011, upheld the Arizona law, rejecting arguments by the business community, Hispanic-rights organizations and the Obama administration that it infringes on the exclusive right of the federal government to regulate immigration.

“The work that we found on E-Verify found that it actually has a significant impact on the wages of likely undocumented workers,” Orrenius said, with a specific finding of an 8 percent reduction in hourly wages.

But Orrenius said there also are larger issues at work, including an improved economy in Mexico and the changing demographics there.

Orrenius said the age of most migrants for economic purposes is between 18 and 24. As the number of people in that age segment decreases, she said, there are fewer to emigrate to the United States.

She had no specific studies on the effect that Arizona’s SB 1070 had in reducing the number of unauthorized immigrants living in the state.

That 2010 law contained several provisions aimed at illegal immigration. While some were struck down by federal courts, the U.S. Supreme Court did give the go-ahead for Arizona to require that police ask the immigration status of those they stop if they have reason to suspect they are undocumented.

The Pew study also finds mixed results across the country.

Overall, the report says the unauthorized population in the United States dropped from about 12.2 million in 2007 to 10.7 million in 2016.

While most of the metro areas showed a decline or no significant change, there were a few areas with increases.

Most notable is the Washington, D.C., area where the number of people not in this country legally is estimated to have increased by 100,000 between 2007 and 2016, to 425,000.

Source: Far fewer unauthorized immigrants living in Arizona cities than 10 years ago, Pew says

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Opinion: EU immigration policy is grist to the far-right mill

2019/03/12 Leave a comment

Would appear to be a similar dynamic at play in the U.S.:

Seven different EU immigration policy reform bills have been on the table for the last three years. And for three years, the bloc’s interior ministers have been fighting over them. They have been unable to come to an agreement, and they end each negotiation with the same lament: Something has to happen. Yet, nothing ever does.

The old Dublin Regulation, which stipulates that the country of first arrival is responsible for an immigrant, is still the law. Although almost all of the EU’s 28 interior ministers agree that the rule no longer works —  although they give very different reasons for why they think this is — they have yet to come up with a better solution.

A joint immigration and asylum policy that is somehow carried by all has failed to materialize.

Italy and Greece insist that new arrivals be distributed across the bloc. Hungary and Poland don’t want to take anyone. France and Germany see the countries of first arrival as bearing responsibility.

Now, at the last meeting of interior ministers before May’s European parliamentary elections, national representatives have officially admitted that they cannot come to an agreement. And with that admission, they are giving right-wing populists highly welcome campaign ammunition.

Far right will exploit the EU’s weaknesses

These will happily exploit the emotionally charged topic of immigration when making their plea to voters, as well as pillorying the EU’s inability to find a solution to this so-called crisis ahead of the May ballot. Italy’s radical right-wing interior minister, Matteo Salvini, will use that inability to justify closing Italian ports to refugees rescued at sea.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban will use the collapse of negotiations to prop up his abstruse theory that Brussels seeks to flood his country with Muslims to “replace the people.”

Far-right parties across Europe, from the AfD in Germany and the FPÖ in Austria to the EKRE in Estonia, will no doubt spew similar nonsense.

German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU), who last year used immigration policy to instigate a coalition crisis in Berlin and promised to deliver a European solution to the issue, also went down in flames — having achieved absolutely nothing.

His immigrant repatriation agreement with the populist government in Italy has yet to come about  in fact, the opposite is now the case. Contrary to Germany’s wishes, Italy is threatening to put an end to Operation Sophia, the EU’s naval rescue mission in the Mediterranean. And despite having happily shaken hands with far-right radical Salvini over a done deal in June, there is not a thing Seehofer can do about it.

Empty hands

Now it will be easy to make the case for closing oneself off entirely, for borders, higher fences, and walls. The utterly divided EU has nothing to offer on immigration policy. The migration crisis that the right is always talking about does not exist at the moment; the number of arrivals to Europe has dropped dramatically.

But the EU is woefully unprepared for another rush like that of 2015. Europeans are not prepared for the next civil war, the next famine, or for immigrants fleeing their homes due to climate change. It is a scandal that this is the case just 11 weeks before European parliamentary elections. And it should surprise no one if the populists and anti-EU parties gain seats.

The real test, however, will come at the end of the year, when the EU negotiates the distribution of grant money for the next decade. Will states that take more immigrants get more money? Will those that take none be penalized by receiving less? The showdown has the potential to paralyze the EU, or even worse, destroy it entirely.

Source: Opinion: EU immigration policy is grist to the far-right mill

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

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