Captures well some of the inherent discrimination of citizenship –who is in and who is not. Completely divorced from some of the practicalities and political realities undermining some of this discrimination but nevertheless an interesting and challenging interview:
Accounts of the glories and dignity of citizenship are everywhere, yet it is the arbitrariness, violence, and servility attending the concept that we must focus on when we interrogate it, argues Dimitry Kochenov, an expert on citizenship, nationality, and immigration law, in his book “Citizenship.”
1) One of the more popular politicians in our country often talks of “pull-effects” on immigration, claiming that allowing “too many” migrants or making the path to asylum or citizenship too easy increases the number of immigrants and refugees coming to our country. Is there any evidence for this? Additionally, and more controversially maybe: I hang with often radical people who are often very into open borders (or more precisely, claiming that borders shouldn’t exist). What’s your view on that?
Dimitry Kochenov: Having no borders is not really as radical as it might seem: We have this in the majority of modern democracies today (unlike the states in the past) — and even at the level of larger entities, offering free movement, which includes settlement and work rights to citizens of several countries at once. The EU or the GCC are great examples. Citizenship is thus not always about creating the borders — it can also be about, precisely, removing them. And on this count being an Icelander with dozens of countries welcoming you to stay is much better than holding a passport of Madagascar, opening zero doors for settlement and work outside of the country. Given that no borders works for the Icelanders and it is perfectly fine, to claim that it is outrageous and radical for the citizens of Madagascar seems somewhat unfair.
And concerning “too many” and “too few” immigrants, the world is too diverse to make easy generalizations — the “immigrant,” just like a “citizen,” is the creature of the law: if naturalizing is easy, immigrants are never in the majority. If naturalizing is virtually impossible, like in the Gulf, then everyone is suddenly an immigrant. This is exactly the totalitarian nature of citizenship at play: The persons themselves have zero say in the matter, while public authorities claim people right from the moment of birth (or later) and these claims cannot usually be refused.
2) Would you be able to summarize your suggested improvements or replacements for citizenship? Example: One of the advantages of citizenship is the fact that you can get a passport, which is a way for your home country to vouch for you. Absent citizenship, what mechanism would you propose to control travel across borders?
D.K.: This is a wonderful question, which takes the current shape of the world for granted: Borders are taken for granted, passports are taken for granted, just as the hostility to someone, who is not “from here.” This world, the world of nation-states, is quite new and will obviously not last forever. One of my main problems with citizenship, as I try to explain in the book, is that the idea of citizenship goes radically against all the core ideals our current notion of freedom, liberty and deserving are building upon. That this is the case had great reasons in the past. Citizenship as an absolute abstraction from the individual features of the bearer had to emerge when the core struggle was the struggle against caste systems in society: The vote of a baron had to count the same way as the vote of a peasant. The contemporary world, however, is radically different. The legal fiction — the absolute abstraction — which is citizenship has a difficult time when discrepancies between different citizenships in terms of the rights one can enjoy on the basis of these statuses are huge, while the status of citizenship as such is distributed purely at random. Consequently, from an instrument to guarantee and promote equality, citizenship emerged as the key tool of suppressing the idea of giving reasons to underpin the distribution of the most important rights. The question of “how can the world be without citizenship?” is thus a question, in essence, about how to stop distributing privilege at random, while using randomized distribution in order to impose glass ceilings and be legally allowed as well as morally safe to say “she is not a citizen, she has no rights, reasons do not matter.”
To come to the bottom of the question, the Schengen zone offers an excellent example of “mechanisms to travel across borders” — the borders are sometimes marked and crossed by speed train lines and wonderful highways.
From an instrument to guarantee and promote equality, citizenship emerged as the key tool of suppressing the idea of giving reasons to underpin the distribution of the most important rights.
3) Do you think the non-EU part of Eastern Europe will ever have a visa-free regime with the EU (I mean Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, etc.) in the same terms as there is within the EU right now?
D.K.: Borders, suspicions, and hatreds are policy choices. It is important to realize, however, that borders exist at different levels: These can be the boundaries for simple travel for a short-term stay (on this count Ukraine is already part, together with Moldova and Georgia of the larger European space); boundaries for settlement and work (on this count Ukraine is out, but Switzerland, Iceland, and Norway still are in); and the boundaries of citizenship, when the nationals of some countries would be excluded from the beginning. Take a national of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus or South Ossetia, for instance. Such people are legally claimed by the entities too questionable to be palatable for the majority of the European nations, so they cannot even naturalize in the EU, should they meet all the conditions of the country of residence, with such documents.
To move closer to your question: Russia is currently the most atypical country in the world from the point of view of tourist and business visa policy, since it lets all the nationals of the poorer and less developed nations in visa-free, locking its doors behind a visa wall for Europeans and Americans. All the other countries are the exact opposite, offering visa-free travel to the citizens of richer and higher-developed nations. Picking friends is a matter of taste though, even if taste is peculiar. In the long term it would be illogical to keep the European continent cut by visa walls. The world, however, is frequently illogical.
4) What’s your take on abusive spouses that don’t let you leave, that is, states that make it extraordinarily difficult for people to renounce their citizenship?
D.K.: Not all the states refusing their citizens the right to renounce could correctly be compared to abusive spouses, it seems to me. The inability to renounce can definitely be an asset, a weapon against a different kind of abuse, when states of naturalization require the renunciation of previously held citizenships, thereby legally mandating a sacrifice of rights, which is difficult to justify. Both the inability to renounce and the obligation to renounce thus can be problematic. The core of the matter, of course, is whether the citizen herself can decide.
In the contemporary understanding of freedom and liberty, we expect to be able to make this kind of decision as we see fit. Yet, citizenship logic is quite different from the logic of liberty and freedom — since citizenship is a legal status attributed in the absolute majority of cases immediately following someone’s birth without any consent or ability to disagree with this attribution. A foreigner born to tourists passing through the U.S. is an American, however “incidental,” grandson of a Greek whose father has never visited Greece is of course Greek (and unable to renounce). The totalitarian logic of citizenship thus constantly clashes with our idea of freedom — and this is a constantly recurrent story, ultimately undermining citizenship’s justifications and annihilating its moral appeal.
5) Given that citizenship and ethnicity are often connected in the context of European nation-states, just look at Eastern Europe, should we be giving out citizenships to immigrants after a number of years compared to just some type of “long term residency”? What would be the advantages (if any) and disadvantages of that and how do you think the far right would react to such a move? Would such a move even matter in the EU?
D.K.: Citizenship and ethnicity is a difficult connection, since it breeds intolerance. In terms of equal human worth ethnicity is an irrelevant feature. Citizenship, as a status of legal recognition of full belonging to an authority cannot be made dependent on the color of someone’s eyes, or pigmentation of the skin. Nor only Eastern Europe, also many other countries and places not infrequently come with racist undertones in their citizenship policy. After all, citizenship has traditionally been a truly racist concept, since the Western empires dominating the world would not guarantee non-discrimination on this ground, often explicitly enforcing “whites only” policy. Their former colonies learned the lesson well — in Liberia one still needs to be a “Negro,” if I am not mistaken, to enjoy the status of citizenship. The official explanation, from the extreme right in Poland to the racist Liberian constitution, is always the same: social cohesion, culture and the like. Human culture is much richer, however, then policing the dispensation of liabilities based on the pigmentation of someone’s skin, and the developments of the second half of the 20th century allow us to trace a huge evolution on this count. The U.S., France, the Netherlands — formerly deeply racist countries as far as their citizenship policy was concerned, now play a totally different tune.
There is another side of this coin, which is not necessarily positive: Racist citizenship policy — that a Chinese or an Indian could not naturalize in the U.S.; that a woman marrying a colonial “native” in the Netherlands would lose her birthright Dutch citizenship, etc. gave way, with decolonization, to an essentially racist gradation of citizenship rights and liabilities around the world. Now that the former colonial subjects who used to have second-rate statuses in the Empires enjoy their own states, the citizenships those states distribute are often — in the majority of cases — steeply inferior in terms of the rights they bring to the citizenships of the former colonial masters. In other words, although individual citizenship outside of some African states are, by law, not any more racist, the world of rights and liabilities related to the different citizenship statuses in the world remains quite a racist place.
Yet another story on the obliviousness, wilful blindness and complicity of institutions and individuals with respect to serious human and minority rights violations in China:
A Vancouver conference promoting business links between Canada and China is under fire for inviting a company that’s blacklisted in the United States for its work monitoring the Uighur ethnic group in China.
Jimmy Zhou, executive director of SenseTime, is one of the Chinese corporate leaders invited to speak at the China Forum to be held Nov. 16 and 17 and sponsored by BizChina Club from the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business.
SenseTime is an artificial intelligence startup based in Hong Kong that has worked with Chinese tech giant Huawei to launch a facial recognition program, according to the latter’s website.
In early October, the U.S. Department of Commerce blacklisted SenseTime with other Chinese tech companies for alleged human rights violations against Uighurs in Xinjiang province. Facial recognition technologies from these firms have reportedly been used by the Chinese government to monitor the Muslim minority in the northwestern Chinese province.
Shalina Nurly, youth leader for the Vancouver Uighur Association, said the event at the Vancouver Convention Centre is a disappointment, and the group is considering mounting a protest.
“We have been let down by the UBC community,” said Nurly in an email to CBC News.
“At a time where the world is re-experiencing the Nazi concentration camps [in Xinjiang], we as Canadians should be joining the U.S. as it takes a stand against Communist China for the basic fundamental rights of the Uighur and other Muslim minority groups.”
Promoted as ‘great opportunity’
The event has been promoted by UBC president Santa Ono and George Chow, B.C. minister of state for trade, who describes the two-day conference in a promotional video as “a great opportunity to bridge Canadian and Chinese business and culture.”
The conference has also received support from the Chinese consulate in Vancouver, according to a message on the Chinese instant messaging platform WeChat.
Nurly, a 19-year-old student at Simon Fraser University, also expressed concern about Lina Chen, the chief editor of Sina Weibo, appearing at the conference.
“What is peculiar about Lina Chen is that she is the deputy secretary of the Chinese Communist Party for her company. How that works is in China, every private company has such a committee in place for the party to get control of the private sector,” said Nurly.
According to Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, 68 per cent of China’s private companies had an internal communist presence by the end of 2016, and that continues to grow.
Business with China carries ‘high risks’
Mabel Tung, the president of the Vancouver Society in Support of Democratic Movement, which organizes the Tiananmen anniversary vigils and rallies in support of Hong Kong protesters, said Canadians should be vigilant about Chinese business ties.
“The recent case of Canada’s two Michaels [Kovrig and Spavor], arbitrarily detained in China since December 2018 without formal charges … serves as a blunt reminder to us Canadians that doing business with communist China carries very high risks that are entirely unpredictable.”
BizChina Club’s president, Michelle Lau, said she was “surprised to hear” about the concerns from local Uighurs, but added that her association “will certainly take these concerns into consideration moving forward.”
A UBC spokesperson said the university is “proud of the initiative and work of all students who are engaging on global issues and ideas.”
Both SenseTime and Sina Weibo have not responded to interview requests.
This latest study by Statistics Canada on the naturalization rate is both humbling and gratifying.
Humbling in its methodological rigour and thoroughness, compared to my more rudimentary analysis.
Gratifying, in that it confirms my earlier sounding the alarm that the recent naturalization rate has been declining, for lower income, lower educated and less official language fluent immigrants.
The paper also strengthens the case for IRCC to adopt a meaningful performance standard for the citizenship program, one based upon the naturalization rate for those immigrants who have been in Canada between five and nine years (previous census period) rather than the current meaningless performance measure related to all immigrants, whether recent or many years ago.
Conclusion excerpted below:
This paper uses census data from 1991 to 2016 to examine changes in the citizenship rate among recent immigrants who meet the residency requirement to become citizens. The results show that the citizenship rate among recent immigrants peaked in 1996 and declined considerably since then. This decline primarily occurred after 2006. Furthermore, the decline in the citizenship rate varied across socio-demographic characteristics, and the timing of the decline varied across immigrant groups as well.
Immigrants with lower family incomes experienced a much larger decline in citizenship rates than did those with higher family incomes. The decline among lower income immigrant families largely occurred between 2006 and 2011. The citizenship rate also declined much more among immigrants with poorer official language skills than it did among immigrants whose mother tongue was English or French. The citizenship rate among immigrants with poorer official language skills has been declining since 2001 and was observed over all intercensal periods. Education was also a factor, with citizenship rates declining much more among immigrants with lower than higher levels of educational attainment. This was primary observed between 2011 and 2016.
When all three of these factors—family income, knowledge of official languages, and educational attainment—are combined, the citizenship rate was more or less constant between 1996 and 2016 for the most advantaged group of recent immigrants (i.e., with a high income, university education, and English or French as a mother tongue). In contrast, it declined significantly among the more disadvantaged group (i.e., with a low income, high school or less education and mother tongue not English or French).
There was also significant variation in the extent to which citizenship rates declined among immigrants from different source regions. Most striking was the large decline in citizenship take-up among immigrants from East Asia—mainly China. Indeed, by 2016 the citizenship rate among recent Chinese immigrants more closely resembled the rate among immigrants from developed rather than from developing countries.
Fewer newcomers from disadvantaged groups became Canadian citizens during a 10-year period that coincided with the previous Conservative government’s changes to the citizenship program, new Statistics Canada research shows.
The decrease was part an overall trend in declining citizenship rates among those who have been in Canada less than 10 years, despite the fact the actual citizenship rate in Canada is among the highest in the Western world, Statistics Canada said in the study released Wednesday.
The researchers found that between 1991 and 2016, the citizenship rate in Canada – the percentage of immigrants who become citizens – rose about five percentage points, but the increase was largely driven by people who had been in Canada for over a decade.
But beginning in 1996 and until 2016, the citizenship rate for those who’d been in the country for less than 10 years began to fall.
Using adjusted income measurements, Statistics Canada found that for those with incomes below $10,000, the drop was 23.5 percentage points, compared to just three percentage points for those with incomes over $100,000.
In the same decade, the citizenship rate fell 22.5 percentage points among people with less than a high school education, compared with 13.8 percentage points among those with university degrees.
In the case of both income levels and education, the gaps widened between 2011 and 2016.
Between 2011 and 2015, the Conservative government of the day overhauled the citizenship program, hiking citizenship fees from $100 to $630 and implementing stricter language, residency and knowledge requirements.
The Statistics Canada research does not provide specific reasons for the decline in citizenship rates.
“Multiple policy changes were made throughout the 2006 to 2016 period,” Laurence Beaudoin-Corriveau, an agency spokesperson, said in an email. “It is difficult to pinpoint the effect of a particular policy change with the census data, which are collected every five years.”
The Conservatives defended the decision to raise citizenship fees – they had not increased since 1995 – by arguing that the fee didn’t come close to covering the cost of actually processing the applications. They had foreseen that the rise could impact applications, noting at the time it might mean people wait longer in order to save the money required.
In their platform during the recent federal election, the Liberals took the opposite approach, promising to eliminate the fee beginning next year.
“The process of granting citizenship is a government service, not something that should be paid for with a user fee,” the platform said.
The Liberals pegged the cost of removing the fee at $391 million over four years.
In 2017, they also eased other citizenship requirements, including residency obligations and the age range for being required to pass language and knowledge tests.
According to the latest numbers from Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada, 176,473 people became Canadian citizens in 2018, up from 106,373 the year before.
Another good and thoughtful column by Sheema Khan.
One point of interest is her call for the long-promised revision of the citizenship study guide to include everyday examples of what gender equality means, not the criminal ones cited in the current guide.
As the government did not manage to get its revision published during its first mandate, it should consider this suggestion if not already included in the revision:
Galloping from one controversial social policy to another, the government of Quebec recently unveiled its “Values Test” for prospective immigrants. Derided by some, the test requires newcomers to the province to be aware of a few “key” values. French is the official language of la belle province. Polygamy is illegal, whereas marriage between two individuals is not. Men and women are equal before the law. There’s nothing wrong in letting immigrants know what to expect about their future society. However, in view of Bill 21, one can’t help but be cynical about the Coalition Avenir Québec’s attempt to narrowly define who is – and who isn’t – vraiQuébécois.
Quebec’s stance on gender equality is laughable in view of Bill 21 – hijab-clad Muslim women are barred from teaching in public schools, whereas Muslim men are not. Jewish men who sport a kippa or yarmulke cannot serve as prosecutors or clerks in a provincial court, while Jewish women face no such restrictions. The courts will decide if the notwithstanding clause overrides the violation of gender equality (as enshrined in section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms).
Nevertheless, we should emphasize gender equality to those arriving from countries where women are accorded fewer resources and rights than men. According to the 2016 census, three of the top 10 countries of birth of recent immigrants were Pakistan, Iran and Syria – all of which finished in the bottom five (of 145 countries) of the World Economic Forum’s 2015 Global Gender Gap Index.
The culture shock can be great. I still remember my cousin’s surprise when he could not access his mother’s bank account as a matter of right, as he used to do in Saudi Arabia. Or one Middle Eastern relative who was dismayed that his wife was automatically a co-owner of the marital home. Or one husband’s disbelief that he would have to split marital assets 50-50 in the case of divorce. These are hard-won rights for women that should never be compromised. Immigrant men have complied and adapted to the new reality. And that’s a good thing.
While current guidelines from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada reiterate the equality of women and men before the law, they might want to add a line or two referring to everyday examples – such as financial independence and property rights of women. Instead, these guidelines leap to examples of criminal behaviour, stating: “Canada’s openness and generosity do not extend to barbaric cultural practices that tolerate spousal abuse, ‘honour killings,’ female genital mutilation, forced marriage or other gender-based violence.”
Such dramatic pronouncements, however, don’t help immigrants learn about the positive aspects of gender equality. And they lull Canadians into a sense of complacency that women in Canada are doing just fine. Not so fast.
In her compelling memoirs, Truth Be Told, Beverley McLachlin chronicles her own efforts to combat sexism within the legal profession but points to the broader fight for women’s equality throughout Canadian society. A fight that is by no means close to over.
According to the 2018 Gender Gap Index, Canada ranks 16th in the world (out of 149 countries) for its equitable distribution of resources between men and women. While we are tied for first in the field of education, we are 21st in political empowerment, 27th in economic participation and 104th in health/survival. The relatively high placements in politics and economics, however, mask absolute inequities.
For example, in 2018, Statistics Canada reported that Canadian women earned 87 cents for every $1 earned by men. A 2018 Angus Reid study indicated that women are more likely than men to experience poverty. Women in Canada live at greater risk than men of domestic violence, sexual assault and harassment, and sex trafficking. Even with the #MeToo movement, women still underreport sexual assault and harassment. Women and girls are often subject to online hate and sexualized abuse. While women make up roughly half the population, they are underrepresented in political and professional leadership positions. As MacLean’s Anne Kingston rightly observed, sexism permeated the 2019 election, culminating in a vicious, sexist slur painted on Catherine McKenna’s campaign office.
“Working toward gender equality is not only still relevant. It is urgent,” observes the Canadian Women’s Foundation. It’s a message we should all take to heart. The fight for gender equality begins here.
Overblown risk IMO. PPC did not even appear to influence CPC immigration-related positions. And as someone who spent some time looking at the bios, backgrounds and campaigns of PPC candidates, most of their candidates were more placeholders than active campaigners:
As Canada’s federal election fades from the headlines, temperatures drop, and the hockey season shifts into full swing, Maxime Bernier’s first campaign as head of the People’s Party of Canada (PPC) might begin to fade from memory. After all, the PPC’s results were forgettable. Bernier lost in his own riding, and PPC candidates tallied only 1.6 per cent of the national vote.
Yet progressive Canadians dismiss the PPC at our peril.
In the party’s first campaign, Bernier managed to find candidates for 94 per cent of Canada’s federal ridings.
These candidates delivered the PPC message at doorsteps, schools, and town halls from coast to coast.
The party received almost 300,000 votes in its inaugural run, a foundation on which it might well build.
Its ideology of exclusionary, anti-immigrant nationalism is eerily similar to political movements across Europe. The PPC derides the United Nations as “ridiculous” and “dysfunctional,” worrying that participation may “dilute” our “national sovereignty.”
It sees no moral justification for international aid.
This mashup of anti-globalism, hostility to immigrants, and cultural nationalism draws from an international populist right that, in most cases, was not taken seriously at first.
Not long ago, in countries such as Hungary and Poland, anti-immigrant nationalist parties were considered alien to a liberal, post-Communist political culture. Now they have swept to power.
The Lega in Italy was once frowned upon as a fringe regionalist party. It recently morphed into a nationalist-populist voice that, according to current polls, would win a plurality of seats if Italians voted today.
These movements distort national histories to buttress their exclusive visions of national community.
In Europe, right-wing nationalists replace the painful lessons of the 20th century with glorified national histories, and assert the cultural superiority of their own national community. According to the Alternative for Germany Party, Hitler and the Nazi regime were just a “petty mistake.” In Poland, the governing Law and Justice Party has introduced a law banning anyone from blaming Poland for crimes committed during the Holocaust.
The PPC likewise hearkens to an imagined past in decrying the supposed decay of the present.
In a speech at a July rally in Mississauga, Bernier claimed that immigration to Canada was once uncontroversial: “immigrants who came to Canada gradually integrated into our society . . . They became Canadian, but with a distinct flavour.”
It is only over the “past decades,” the Party’s platform explains, that immigration has become problematic — a period in which, not coincidentally, immigrants have been more globally diverse than ever before.
In reality, Canada has a difficult history of xenophobia.
It is also worth remembering that Canadian history has seen cross-burning, segregated neighbourhoods, race riots, and looting. Our recent turn away from race as the basis of national identity and immigrant recruitment has been a step toward social cohesion and justice, not the opposite.
Canada has struggled to become a more just, inclusive nation. What progress has been made on that front is by no means set in stone.
Government action is warranted to address the unease exploited by populism. Canada needs to bring its immigration and multicultural policies into the 21st Century:
In the economic hubs where we need immigrants, we have allowed housing to become unaffordable.
Annually, we accept thousands of workers on pathways to citizenship, but our laws prevent their families from joining them.
Accessing the labour market is a major challenge for many newcomers.
Our education and health systems need help to support the social, linguistic, and cultural needs of global migrants.
The list could easily be continued.
The European liberal political mainstream, like that in the United States, laughed at right-wing populism before awaking to falsified histories and an unrecognizable political landscape. Canadians should not make the same mistake.
The ideology of the PPC, and not recent immigration, constitutes a threat to the social cohesion and unity of Canada. Who we think we have been in the past will shape our answers to these challenges.
Canada has always struggled to integrate immigrants with decency, pragmatism, and justice. To achieve a more just Canada and safeguard against the politics of hate, we must preserve an authentic and critical memory of our past and build boldly for our future.
Draped in the Lebanese flag, 22-year-old Dana is bursting with pride at taking part in Lebanon’s “revolution” — even if her home country refuses to give her nationality.
Standing among other demonstrators in the capital, she explains she was born in Beirut to a Lebanese mother and has spent all her life in the country.But like thousands of others in Lebanon, her father is a foreigner and, with Lebanese women unable to pass down their nationality, she has been deprived of citizenship.
“My parents divorced before I was even born. I grew up with my mother,” Dana told AFP.
“I see myself as Lebanese, but they don’t want to recognize my identity,” she added.
The politicians who do not want to change the century-old law, she says, are “patriarchal” and “racist.”
The right to citizenship is one of many long-standing demands to have found new life in the mass protests sweeping Lebanon since October 17.
The unprecedented show of cross-sectarian anger in the street brought down the government last month — but many other of the demonstrators’ demands remain unmet.
Outside the seat of government, 17-year-old Omar said he’d only ever been to Syria once, but was consistently suffering the consequences of his father’s nationality.
Each year, he has to make his way to General Security headquarters to renew his residency permit — like all other non-Lebanese.
“They treat us like foreigners. It’s humiliating,” he said, holding the Lebanese red-green-and-white flag.
Last year, Human Rights Watch (HRW) strongly denounced the law, noting that Lebanon lags far behind some other countries in the region on the issue.
Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia and Yemen all provide equal citizenship rights to the children of both women and men, while Iraq and Mauritania confer nationality to those born in the country, according to HRW.
At a Beirut protest, Samer stood in a small crowd, raising his fist and chanting against political leaders he sees as inept and corrupt, the majority of whom have been in power since the end of the country’s 15-year civil war in 1990.
“But we need it (citizenship) to work, to sign up our children at school and receive social security,” said the 33-year-old, whose father is Palestinian and who is himself the father of three.
Despite activists campaigning to amend the 1925 nationality law, Lebanese authorities have been reluctant to do so.
In this small multiconfessional country of around 4.5 million, the political system relies on a fragile balance of power between communities.
Authorities fear that changing the law would open the door — especially through marriages of convenience — to the naturalization of some of the majority-Sunni 1.5 million Syrians and around 174,000 Palestinians living in the country, according to official estimates.
Last year, then foreign minister Gibran Bassil suggested amending the law to allow for Lebanese mothers to pass on their nationality — but only if the father was neither Palestinian nor Syrian.
“It’s racism,” said Randa Kabbani, coordinator of the “My Nationality, My Dignity” campaign demanding citizenship for children of Lebanese women.
Of the 10,000 impacted households identified by the campaign, some 60 percent are Syrian, 10 percent Egyptian, and just seven percent Palestinian, Kabbani said. Others are Jordanian, Iraqi, American or hold European nationalities, she added.
Around 80 percent are Muslim and 20 percent Christian.
Samer said those pushing for reform are not demanding the naturalization of all Palestinians living in Lebanon, “but only those born to a Lebanese mother. It’s a natural right.”
Kabbani said she was delighted the issue had gained new momentum in the ongoing protests.
“Before the movement, women were almost ashamed to speak up about it. But today they’re clamouring loud and clear,” she said.
On Sunday, hundreds of protesters took part in a march organized by “My Nationality, My Dignity” in the capital.
Volunteers with the campaign have erected a tent in the square by the office of the now deposed cabinet to discuss the issue.
When she is not protesting, Dana — the university student — helps spread the word among other protesters so they too can join in her fight.
But the young student says she is under no illusions.
Whether or not a new cabinet includes independent experts as demanded, the key to her finally obtaining her Lebanese citizenship will boil down to political will.
“The day decent leaders take power, the legal amendment will fly through,” she said.
Ascertaining the size of the undocumented population is difficult. Estimates vary according to the methodology used. While anti-immigrant groups maintain that the flow of undocumented immigrants has increased, estimates show that over a longer period the number has declined. An often-overlooked fact is that many illegal immigrants pay payroll taxes and sales taxes.
Estimates of the number of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. range from 10.5 million to 12 million, or approximately 3.2%–3.6% of the population.
Immigrants from Mexico have recently, for the first time, fallen to less than half of the undocumented population.
In evaluating the cost of illegal immigration, both benefits consumed and taxes paid must be counted.
A Closer Look
The issue of undocumented immigrants has been front and center in American elections since 2016; it has elicited passionate responses from all parts of the political spectrum. Here are a few facts voters need as they wade through the thicket of rhetoric on this issue.
How do we count people who are here illegally?
Ascertaining the size of the illegal population is difficult because, as is obvious, people who are here illegally don’t always want to tell pollsters their legal status (or absence thereof.) The first step estimators use is to take data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, or ACS, which interviews over 2 million households a year. This survey asks people where they were born and whether they are U.S. citizens, but it does not ask if they are here illegally. This yields a total number for the “foreign-born” population.
The next step is to subtract from that total the number of foreign-born residents who we know for certain are here legally. Among them are naturalized citizens, people who have permanent resident status (green cards), and people who have been admitted as refugees. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) keeps careful records of the first two groups and the Department of Health and Human Services keeps careful records of the third. By subtracting the number of people who we know for certain are here legally from the overall number of foreign-born in the ACS survey we can estimate the number of undocumented residents.
Of course, not all undocumented people take part in surveys, and for good reason—they do not want to be found out. So, most estimates assume that there is an “undercount.” The Pew Research Center relies, in part, on survey and census data from Mexico. They estimate the undercount to be somewhere in the range of 5 to 15 percent, which is then added to the number of undocumented immigrants. DHS believes that the undercount is 10% and adjusts its estimates accordingly.
The size of the undercount is a matter of controversy. Opponents of illegal immigration such as FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform) argue that the undercount is in fact much bigger. To get to their estimates they analyze other data such as the percentage of migrants who failed to show up for their immigration hearings and those who have overstayed their visas.
So, what are the numbers?
The numbers of undocumented vary according to the methodology used, and there’s also a lag in the estimates because it takes time for accurate data to become available. The last estimate released by the Office of Immigration Statistics at DHS came in December 2018: As of January 1, 2015, there were 11.96 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. The most recent Pew Research estimate puts the total number of unauthorized immigrants at 10.5 million in 2017. Overall, this represents a minority of the foreign-born population, which in 2017 numbered 44.5 million—45% of whom are naturalized citizens, and 27% of whom are lawful permanent residents.
While anti-immigrant groups maintain that the flow of illegal immigrants has increased, estimates show that over a longer period the number of undocumented immigrants has declined, from 12.2 million in 2005 to 10.5 million in 2017 according to Pew’s estimates. DHS figures don’t go beyond 2015, but they estimate that the population of undocumented immigrants increased by 70,000 people per year between 2010 and 2015, compared to increases of 470,000 per year between 2000 and 2007.
Who are the undocumented?
Immigrants from Mexico have recently, for the first time since 1990, represented less than half of the undocumented population. According to Pew, in 2017, about 4.95 million of the 10.5 million undocumented population were from Mexico, 1.9 million from Central America, and 1.45 million from Asia. About two-thirds of undocumented immigrants have been in the U.S. for 10 years or longer. In 2017, just 20% of undocumented, adult immigrants had lived in the U.S. for 5 years or less.
In contrast to the President Trump’s rhetoric about building a wall at the Mexican border, illegal migration has shifted since 2010 from border-crossing to visa overstays—the latter share has been greater than border crossings since 2010. The Center for Migration Studies estimates that in 2016, 62% of the undocumented were here because they overstayed their visas versus 38% who crossed the border illegally.
Another controversy is over how much illegal immigrants cost the system. An often overlooked fact is that illegal immigrants are taxpayers. The anti-immigrant lobby tends to ignore the money the immigrants often pay in payroll and sales taxes while counting the money spent on educating children born in the United States to immigrants. Numbers vary widely depending on the source, but undocumented immigrants are not eligible for most federal benefit programs, like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. In evaluating the cost of illegal immigration, the voter has to make sure that the argument takes in both benefits consumed and taxes paid.
What about the Dreamers?
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) was implemented by President Obama to allow many undocumented individuals who came to the U.S. before their 16th birthday to work in the U.S. and defer any action on their immigration cases for a renewable two-year period. About 800,000 immigrants have been covered by DACA at some point since it was implemented; 690,000 are currently in the program. According to Pew, the gap consists of approximately 70,000 who were rejected for renewal or opted not to renew, and 40,000 who were able to obtain a green card. At present no new applications are being accepted by USCIS, so the number of Dreamers is not likely to grow.
What are the candidates saying?
In the 2020 campaign, President Trump has continued his push for a wall at the southern border, on top of increased enforcement both at the border and in the interior. On the Democratic side, all the candidates support a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, which would require getting legislation through Congress. There are also shorter-term proposals that a new president could enact on their own, like Elizabeth Warren’s plan to reinstate DACA and to expand deferred action to include more than the Dreamers. Kamala Harris has said she would reinstate DACA and implement DAPA, the shelved policy to protect the Dreamers’ parents. Pete Buttigieg has stated that he would restore the enforcement priorities set by the Obama administration. A number of the Democratic candidates have voiced support for repealing the law that makes it a crime to cross the border without authorization.
As we have seen during the Trump administration, the president can do a great deal even absent legislation to affect the situation of those seeking to come to the United States.
Hopefully, some lessons learned, for both the Premier and the Minister:
« Je m’excuse pour le travail qui n’a pas été fait de façon aussi parfaite qu’on l’aurait souhaité. […] L’objectif était le bon, mais l’exécution n’a pas été bien faite », a affirmé mardi le premier ministre François Legault.
« À l’avenir, quand [on fait] des changements importants, [on va] s’assurer que nos listes sont bien faites », a-t-il ajouté.
Un peu plus tôt, le ministre de l’Immigration, Simon Jolin-Barrette, a affirmé qu’il « [s’] excuse auprès des Québécois » et qu’il prend « l’entière responsabilité des erreurs qui ont été commises dans la réforme du Programme de l’expérience québécoise [PEQ] ».
Une semaine de crise
Cette réforme en matière d’immigration, qui a plongé le gouvernement Legault en crise, la semaine dernière, a été mise en application trop rapidement, a admis mardi M. Jolin-Barrette.
« J’ai voulu aller rapidement relativement à la réforme du PEQ. J’aurais dû prendre davantage mon temps », a dit M. Jolin-Barrette, le teint blafard.
Le PEQ est un programme qui sert de voie rapide pour les étudiants et les travailleurs étrangers temporaires présents au Québec afin d’obtenir leur certificat de sélection du Québec (CSQ), nécessaire à la résidence permanente. Dans sa réforme, Québec a établi une liste des formations et d’emplois pour accéder au programme, mais cette liste était remplie de désuétudes.
Dans un premier temps, la semaine dernière, le gouvernement Legault a accordé un droit acquis aux étudiants et travailleurs étrangers qui étaient présents au Québec avant la mise en place de sa réforme. Vendredi, il l’a finalement suspendu en début de soirée.
« J’aurais dû davantage consulter les différents partenaires du milieu économique et du milieu éducatif. C’est ce que je vais faire au cours des prochaines semaines », a dit M. Jolin-Barrette, mardi.
« J’aurais dû mieux faire les choses. Pour la prochaine, je vais m’améliorer. Ce que je peux vous dire, c’est qu’une telle erreur ne se reproduira pas », a-t-il dit.
L’opposition veut un nouveau ministre
En matinée, le chef de l’opposition officielle, le libéral Pierre Arcand, a demandé au premier ministre François Legault qu’il retire au jeune ministre ses responsabilités en immigration.
« Ce qui m’apparaît aussi très clair, c’est qu’à plusieurs reprises le premier ministre a passé l’éponge parce qu’il y a eu beaucoup de gaffes faites par M. Jolin-Barrette. Il ne doit plus passer l’éponge », a affirmé M. Arcand.
« Avec tout le cafouillage qu’on a vu, avec l’insensibilité qu’on a vue par rapport à la question de l’immigration, nous, à Québec solidaire, ça fait un petit bout qu’on dit : Bien, enlevez-lui, s’il vous plaît, ce portefeuille-là », a pour sa part affirmé la cheffe solidaire, Manon Massé.
« Ça a passé plusieurs étapes, des comités ministériels. Personne n’a rien vu. Alors c’est une erreur de tout le gouvernement au complet, y compris du premier ministre qui a défendu jusqu’à la fin, bec et ongles, ce règlement », a pour sa part affirmé Pascal Bérubé du Parti québécois.
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority signaled support on Tuesday for President Donald Trump’s bid to kill a program that protects hundreds of thousands of immigrants – dubbed “Dreamers” – who entered the United States illegally as children, even as liberal justices complained that the move would destroy lives.
The court’s ideological divisions were on full display as it heard the administration’s appeal of lower court rulings that blocked the Republican president’s 2017 plan to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, created in 2012 by his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama.
DACA currently shields about 660,000 immigrants – mostly Hispanic young adults – from deportation and provides them work permits, though not a path to citizenship. Trump’s bid to end it is part of his hardline immigration polices.
Conservative justices questioned whether courts even have the power to review Trump’s action and also seemed to reject the views of lower courts that his administration had failed to properly justify ending DACA, a program Obama implemented after Congress failed to pass bipartisan immigration reform.
The court’s 5-4 conservative majority includes two Trump appointees – Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh – who both indicated support for the president’s action.
Liberal justices emphasized the large number of individuals, businesses and others who have relied on the program and indicated that the administration did not sufficiently weigh those concerns. Justice Sonia Sotomayor referred to Trump’s decision as a “choice to destroy lives” and indicated that his administration had failed to supply the required policy rationale to make the move lawful.
Kavanaugh said he assumed that the administration’s analysis of the impact rescinding DACA would have on individuals was a “very considered decision.”
“I mean, this is a serious decision. We all agree on that,” Kavanaugh added.
A ruling is due by the end of June.
Trump’s administration has argued that Obama exceeded his constitutional powers when he created DACA by executive action, bypassing Congress. Trump has made his hardline immigration policies – cracking down on legal and illegal immigration and pursuing construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border – a centerpiece of his presidency and 2020 re-election campaign.
The challengers who sued to stop Trump’s action included a collection of states such as California and New York, people currently protected by the program and civil rights groups.
Even if Trump were to lose this time, his administration would be free to come up with new reasons to end the program in the future, a point picked up by Gorsuch.
“What good would another five years of litigation over the adequacy of that explanation serve?” Gorsuch asked.
Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, who could be the pivotal vote in deciding the case, likewise indicated he was satisfied with the administration’s rationale.
Roberts, however, had appeared sympathetic to Trump in a case this year on the administration’s attempt to add a contentious citizenship question to the 2020 census – a move critics said was intended to deter immigrants from being included in the nation’s official population count. Roberts cast the decisive vote against the president in a 5-4 ruling.
TRAVEL BAN
The Supreme Court previously handed Trump a major victory on immigration policy last year when it upheld as lawful his travel ban blocking people from several Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States, finding that the president has broad discretion to set such policy.
Lower court rulings in California, New York and the District of Columbia left DACA in place, finding that Trump’s move to rescind it was likely “arbitrary and capricious” and violated a U.S. law called the Administrative Procedure Act.
The young people protected under DACA, Obama said, were raised and educated in the United States, grew up as Americans and often know little about their countries of origin.
Sotomayor, the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice, wondered if the court should take into account the fact that Trump has said he would look after “Dreamers.”
“He hasn’t” taken care of them, she said. “And that, I think, is something to be considered before you rescind a policy.”
Much of the administration’s reasoning was based on then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ conclusion in 2017 that the program was unlawful. Liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg pressed U.S. Solicitor General Noel Francisco, who argued the case for the administration, on the government’s reliance on the assertion that DACA was unlawful.
The administration could have just said “we don’t like DACA and we’re taking responsibility for that instead of trying to put the blame on the law,” Ginsburg said.
Francisco, who also argued the travel ban case, said the administration was not trying to shirk responsibility for ending a popular program.
“We own this,” Francisco said, referring to Trump’s decision to kill DACA.
Trump has given mixed messages about the “Dreamers,” saying in 2017 that he has “a great love” for them even as he sought to kill the program that protected them from deportation.
Trump on Tuesday took to Twitter to attack “many” DACA recipients as “tough, hardened criminals,” without offering evidence, and again dangled the possibility of a deal with congressional Democrats to allow people protected under the program to remain in the United States. Trump has never proposed a detailed replacement for DACA.
Several hundred DACA supporters gathered outside the court on a gray and chilly Tuesday morning, chanting, banging drums and carrying signs that read “home is here” and “defend DACA.”
Not particularly surprising. Mirrors what I hear anecdotally:
Those who legally enter Canada from other countries have a disdain for illegal immigrants who jump the queue, according to research by the country’s immigration department.
According to the government administration news website Blacklock’s Reporter, a survey conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs stated there’s an “underlying sense of unfairness when compared to experiences of other immigrants.”
“Some felt this situation was unfair, that these individuals are jumping what they view as an immigration queue,” the survey noted.
An official estimate pegs the federal government has lost $1.4 billion in three years thanks to illegal immigration.
Between January 1, 2017 and October 1, 2019, the RCMP has picked up 52,097 people entering the country illegally, Blacklock’s Reporter reported. Those individuals mainly composed of Haitians and Nigerians.
Hosting the illegal immigrants comes with a cost — which includes food, shelter, transportation and schooling. According to the Parliamentary Budget Office, about $1.1 billion in direct federal costs were spent on hosting, with an additional $371.5 million paid to authorities in Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia and Manitoba in cost compensations.
The Ipsos survey, entitled 2018-19 Annual Tracking Study, got feedback from landed immigrants who participated in focus groups. The groups called the number of asylum seekers “a significant number” with some Chinese participants noting the number is “disproportionately higher than Canada’s population can absorb.”
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada paid Ipsos $249,823 to conduct the survey.
Ipsos interviewed 4,004 people in 14 focus groups in Toronto, Mississauga and North York, Ont., Winnipeg, Vancouver and Moncton. Participants were from Chinese, Filipino, Middle Eastern, Caribbean and African descent.
One of the participants reportedly told Ipsos researchers that there’s an apparent “loophole in the system” that allows illegal immigrants to “cross (the border) and just put in their papers.”
“They can lie to the Canadian government,’ another told researchers, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.
Others in the focus groups told researchers they worked really hard to get here and there was no support and no help”, or that they are angered that “everybody is coming in.”
One citizen survey noted: “Your English has to be good, you do all these tests, your health has to be good, then you land in Canada and find people here who don’t speak English and you wonder, are there double standards?”
Those surveys felt the federal government was doing a poor job at regulating illegal immigration and felt the United States should take some responsibility to prevent irregular crossings in order for Canada to “effectively screen asylum seekers.”
Blacklock’s Reporter noted officials previously told the Senate national finance committee that asylum seekers spend an average of two years in Canada waiting to hear if they will be deported.
Associate deputy immigration minister Michael MacDonald said the processing time for illegal immigrants has gone up to about 24 months.
In testimony to the Commons immigration committee in March 2018, Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen told MPs he considered asylum seekers as illegal immigrants.
“I’m happy to use ‘illegal’,” he said. “I have used the word ‘illegal’ and I have used the word ‘irregular’ and I think both are accurate. I have no qualms in using the term.”
Multicultural Meanderings 