Elsewhere they get it but the Australian media is still living in White Australia

2020/08/19 Leave a comment

Haven’t seen anything as comprehensive with respect to Canadian media although there have been partial samples showing underrepresentatioon:

Few would argue that Australian media does well at representing cultural diversity. Certainly not in a way you’d expect when we are a multicultural society, often trumpeted as the most successful of its kind in the world.

Now, for the first time, we have the numbers that show us just how representative – or rather, unrepresentative – the state of play is.

In our report, Who Gets to Tell Australian Stories?, we gathered data to provide the first comprehensive picture of who tells and produces stories in Australian television news and current affairs. We examined about 19,000 news and current affairs items broadcast on free to air television during two weeks in June 2019.

In their frequency of appearance on screen, we found that more than 75 per cent of presenters, commentators and reporters have an Anglo-Celtic background. While about 18 per cent have a European background, only 6 per cent of those on screen have an Indigenous or non-European background. Within our sample, none of the commercial networks had more than 5 per cent of presenters, commentators and reporters who have a non-European background.

Compare this with the Australian general population. Based on the 2016 Census figures on ancestry, the Australian Human Rights Commission has previously estimated that 58 per cent of Australians have an Anglo-Celtic background, 18 per cent have a European background, 21 per cent have non-European backgrounds, and 3 per cent identify as Indigenous.

It has been nearly five decades since an official multiculturalism was adopted in Australia. Yet that has had limited visible impact on our media.

To be fair, Australian media isn’t the only arena where this is the case. Anglo-Celtic and European backgrounds dominate the leadership ranks of politics, business, the public service and our universities. Our institutions fail to make the most of the talents within our society.

Diversity is often embraced only in name, and not in norms. If there’s a glass ceiling that many women in work hit, then those from minority backgrounds hit a cultural one. According to a survey we conducted as part of our research, more than 85 per cent of non-European background journalists believe having a culturally diverse background represents a barrier to career progression.

Representation, though, matters. It particularly matters for our television media: the medium shows us who we are as a people and as a culture. News and current affairs media have a special role in identifying and telling stories about issues of importance to all Australians.

Yet it’s overwhelmingly journalists who have Anglo-Celtic backgrounds who report, select and produce these stories. The result? Too often, media does a poor job of covering race issues.

For example, just about every time there’s a panel discussion about racism on commercial breakfast television, it involves an all-white panel that has minimal understanding of what has happened. Worse, commercial breakfast television currently seems to thrive on stoking prejudice. For sections of the media, racism is part of their business model.

Even our public broadcasters have their blind spots. For the past 10 years, the ABC’s Insiders program had no journalist who was a person of colour on its panel – something it has only rectified last month. Multicultural broadcaster SBS has recently been criticised for how it treated Indigenous journalists, and for the lack of cultural diversity within its senior management.

It’d be unthinkable for any television network to have a football commentary team on air, where not a single commentator would have experience playing the sport. By the same logic, networks should understand it’s a problem, in a multicultural society, when there’s little or no diversity within its news and current affairs.

Media elsewhere seem to get it. Indeed, Australian media lags significantly behind English-speaking counterparts. What we look like on screen can seem decades behind the United States and the United Kingdom. While they are themselves far from perfect, US and British media organisations have better collection and monitoring of data on their diversity. They’ve also been bolder at setting targets for minority talent.

For change to happen here, Australian media organisations will need to take similar steps. But more than that, there needs to be a cultural change in mindset. Too often, there is unwarranted defensiveness about criticisms concerning diversity. People can wrongly feel that a critique of systemic patterns of under-representation amount to personal attacks, or even a form of “reverse racism”. Deflections and denials come all too easily.

Talk about diversity and race will always spark debate. But it’s hard to argue with the evidence. In the case of our media, the numbers tell us we are still living in a White Australia, even if the White Australia policy was dismantled nearly 50 years ago.

Source: Elsewhere they get it but the Australian media is still living in White Australia

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Le PLQ et QS dénoncent un programme de régularisation discriminatoire

2020/08/19 Leave a comment

Appropriate criticism over the narrowness of the program;

Le Parti libéral du Québec et Québec solidairejugent trop sévères les conditions d’admission au Programme spécial visant à faciliter l’octroi de la résidence permanente aux demandeurs d’asile qui, au plus fort de la crise sanitaire, suaient sang et eau dans les résidences pour personnes âgées assaillies par la COVID-19.

« On circonscrit l’accès à la mesure à un secteur [la santé], et à l’intérieur du secteur, même si tout le monde a eu un risque [de contracter le coronavirus], on circonscrit encore plus… Ça, ça ne serait pas discriminatoire ? » a demandé l’élu libéral Gaétan Barrette en commission parlementaire lundi.

Le Programme spécial des demandeurs d’asile en période de COVID-19 (PSDAPC) s’adresse aux « anges gardiens » qui étaient « sur la ligne de front » à prodiguer des « soins directs à la population pendant la pandémie », a expliqué la ministre de l’Immigration, Nadine Girault. « Ceux qui ont pris le plus de risque », a-t-elle résumé.

Le PLQ et QS se sont tour à tour désolés de voir les autres travailleurs du secteur de la santé — les préposés à l’entretien des résidences pour aînés frappés de plein fouet par le coronavirus, par exemple — laissés en plan par le PSDAPC. Un « vrai, vrai, vrai geste d’humanité » serait de « remercier […] tous les gens qui ont pris un risque ». « Que je sois préposé à l’entretien ménager ou gardien de sécurité, quand le virus je l’attrape, puis que je meure, c’est moi qui suis mort, c’est ma famille qui pâtit. C’est ça un risque », a souligné M. Barrette.

On circonscrit l’accès à la mesure à un secteur [la santé], et à l’intérieur du secteur, même si tout le monde a eu un risque [de contracter le coronavirus], on circonscrit encore plus…

— Gaétan Barrette

« On a envoyé au combat […] une armée de gens sans arme », a-t-il ajouté, tout en rappelant l’absence d’équipements de protection individuelle en quantité suffisante dans les milieux de vie pour personnes âgées après l’arrivée de la COVID-19 en sol québécois.

L’ex-ministre de la Santé soupçonne le gouvernement caquiste d’avoir « mis un frein » à la volonté du gouvernement fédéral de régulariser les employés du réseau de la santé en situation de précarité afin de respecter les seuils d’immigrationqu’il s’est fixés.

Le député solidaire Andrés Fontecilla a suggéré lundi d’accroître la portée du Programme spécial afin que les préposés à l’entretien, les agents de sécurité, les travailleurs agricoles, les travailleurs d’abattoirs ou d’entrepôts en situation de précarité puissent aussi s’y inscrire.

La ministre de l’Immigration, Nadine Girault, a dit être en paix avec sa décision de permettre seulement aux demandeurs d’asile ayant prodigué des soins directs à des patients — dont des préposées aux bénéficiaires et des aides-infirmières — de s’inscrire au PSDAPC, ce qui leur permettra de s’établir au Québec. « Ce n’était pas un programme discriminatoire. C’était un programme pour remercier les gens qu’on voulait remercier chez les “anges gardiens” qui ont pris soin de nos gens. C’est tout simplement ça », a-t-elle fait valoir.

Puis, elle a cédé, sans avertissement, la parole au nouveau sous-ministre de l’Immigration, Benoit Dagenais. Béant de surprise, le haut fonctionnaire s’est mis à la tâche d’énumérer les 10 orientations de la Planification pluriannuelle de l’immigration 2020-2022 léguée par l’ex-ministre Simon Jolin-Barrette.

Il a par la suite mentionné que le Plan d’immigration du Québec 2021 sera établi à la lumière de la situation économique du Québec, qui a été fragilisée par l’arrivée du coronavirus en sol québécois le printemps dernier. « La crise sanitaire, évidemment, on va la prendre en considération », a souligné M. Dagenais.

De son côté, Mme Girault a indiqué qu’« il n’y aura pas de baisse des seuils d’immigration ».

Lutte contre le racisme

Le PLQ a aussi jeté le doute sur la volonté du gouvernement de lutter contre le racisme au Québec, lundi, après que Mme Girault eut refusé net de nommer les groupes rencontrés jusqu’à aujourd’hui par le Groupe d’action contre le racisme (GACR), dont elle assure la coprésidence.

Le « groupe des sept » élus de la Coalition avenir Québec, qui a été mis sur pied au lendemain de la mort de l’Afro-Américain George Floyd sous le genou d’un policier de Minneapolis, doit présenter une série d’actions visant à faire reculer le racisme au cours de l’automne.

« C’est malheureux et c’est décevant de ne pas avoir l’information », a dit la députée libérale Jennifer Maccarone, tout en invitant le GACR à solliciter sans délai l’avis de la Ligue des Noirs, du Congrès maghrébin au Québec, de la Ligue des droits et libertés…

Source: Le PLQ et QS dénoncent un programme de régularisation discriminatoire

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New controversy flares up over Lynn Beyak’s Senate-appointed anti-racism training

2020/08/19 Leave a comment

Hard to see this ending:

The “flames of negativity” that were stirred up by Lynn Beyak’s racist statements as a senator are being “reignited” by a controversy at the University of Manitoba, according to a residential school survivor.

Garnet Angeconeb questions the suitability of the man tasked with overseeing Beyak’s second attempt at cultural awareness and sensitivity training after Jonathan Black-Branch quietly left his post as dean at the University of Manitoba.

The university is not saying why. In an email to CBC news, a spokesperson said Black-Branch is no longer employed by the University of Manitoba and that his leave began on June 5, but would not elaborate.

Black-Branch was also removed from his position on the governing body of the Law Society of Manitoba, a position reserved for the dean of the law school.

Both moves speak to the need for a wider probe into the handling of Beyak’s discipline and the qualifications of the man tasked with educating her, said Angeconeb who is from Lac Seul First Nation in northwestern Ontario.

“The issue with Lynn Beyak continues to throw flames on a fire that was under control,” Angeconeb said of the harm the on-going saga is causing. “It stirs up unresolved trauma for survivors.”

Beyak, who has publicly praised residential schools as “well-intentioned”, was first suspended from the Senate in 2019. The move came after she declined to remove letters from her website that described First Nations people as lazy and inept and refused to apologize for posting them.

She was ordered to complete education and training to improve her understanding and awareness of Indigenous issues before returning to her senate seat.

Beyak failed her first attempt, when the Ontario Federation of Indigenous Friendship Centres said Beyak created an “unsafe learning environment” with false claims to a Metis identity and other comments. Beyak denied making those claims.

In May, the Senate appointed Black-Branch as an “eminently qualified” person to design and deliver a new training program for Beyak.

After delivering a total of 24 hours of training, by video, Black-Branch concluded that “Senator Beyak is now better equipped ‘for approaching her professional work and her personal beliefs'”, according to the report of the Senate ethics committee, in June.

Senators are set to discuss the report on September 22.

‘Racism is a disease’

“There are a lot of questions about how this training was delivered, how meaningful it was,” said Danielle Morrison, a spokesperson for the Coalition to Remove Lynn Beyak from Senate, of which Angeconeb is also a member.

Residential school survivors should have the final say when it comes to determining whether Beyak’s training was a success, she said.

“Racism is a disease. It is one of the biggest pandemics affecting our world right now,” Morrison said. “This is a moment when people should ask themselves ‘am I on the right side of history?’

“How do you measure someone’s success in being an anti-racist? That assessment has already been made by survivors.”

‘Political fluff’

Angeconeb said Beyak could show her training was a success through her actions. For him that means another apology, beyond the carefully scripted ones she gave in the Senate.

“It needs to come from somewhere in her home-town of Dryden, in front of Anishinaabe people,” he said. “Otherwise these are just apologies of convenience to save her Senate seat. It’s just political fluff.”

After decades of anti-racism work and advocacy on behalf of survivors, Angeconeb said he is heartened that residential schools are “at the forefront of the conversation” about reconciliation in Canada.

But he said “side-bar issues” such as Beyak’s behaviour and the on-going legal wrangling over compensation for survivors of St. Anne’s residential school are “really hurtful.”

“I continue to be upset and I continue to be angered by that,” he said.

Source: New controversy flares up over Lynn Beyak’s Senate-appointed anti-racism training

Filed under Aboriginal, Racism Tagged with ,

Ralentissement économique: Québec ne réduira pas les seuils d’immigration

2020/08/19 Leave a comment

Small step in their overall more restrictive immigration policies in ruling out further decreases to their already announced lower levels:

Le gouvernement Legault poursuivra l’augmentation du nombre d’immigrants admis annuellement, malgré la hausse du taux de chômage et le ralentissement économique causé par la COVID-19.

«Il n’y aura pas de baisse des seuils d’immigration dans les cartons pour les prochaines années», a déclaré la ministre de l’Immigration, Nadine Girault, au premier jour de l’étude des crédits à l’Assemblée nationale lundi.

«C’est évident qu’avec la COVID, on a eu moins d’immigrants qui sont rentrés, les frontières étaient fermées, a souligné Mme Girault. Mais ça n’a pas affecté les seuils d’immigration et ça n’affectera pas les seuils d’immigration pour les prochaines années.»

La ministre répondait aux préoccupations du député solidaire Andrés Fontecilla, qui s’inquiétait d’un retour à la baisse, comme ce fut le cas au début du mandat du gouvernement caquiste. Le nombre d’immigrants admis était alors passé de 51 118 à 40 546 et doit maintenant remonter graduellement au seuil original d’ici 2022.

Le 14 avril dernier, le premier ministre François Legault avait évoqué la possibilité d’accepter moins de nouveaux arrivants si la pandémie devait mener à une hausse importante du taux de chômage. «On n’est pas rendus là, mais effectivement, c’est quelque chose qu’on va regarder, avait-il déclaré dans les premières semaines de la pandémie. Je pense qu’il faut tout revoir puis, entre autres, le nombre d’immigrants avec le taux de chômage élevé qu’on va avoir dans les prochains mois. On pourrait effectivement réduire le nombre.» Au mois de juillet, le taux de chômage atteignait 10,7% au Québec.

Mais la ministre Girualt fait valoir que, même si le Québec ne sera plus en situation de plein emploi, «on va avoir quand même des gros manques au niveau de certains secteurs d’emploi».

D’autres «anges gardiens» à risque

Toutefois, c’est l’entente avec Ottawa pour permettre aux demandeurs d’asile du réseau de la santé de régulariser leur statut qui a surtout retenu l’attention du PLQ et de QS durant l’audience de quatre heures. Les deux partis d’opposition reprochent à Québec d’avoir restreint l’accès au programme uniquement à ceux qui ont donné des soins directement aux patients entre le 13 mars et le 14 août, et ce, sur une période d’au moins 120 heures.

«Je suis persuadé que les gens comprennent que ce qu’on fait, c’est parce qu’on voulait s’occuper et prendre soin de nos anges gardiens qui, eux, ont pris soin de nos gens», a martelé la ministre Girault.

Mais le critique libéral Gaétan Barrette fait valoir que le risque est le même de contracter le virus pour tous les employés d’un établissement de santé. «Que je sois préposé à l’entretien ménager ou gardien de sécurité, quand j’attrape le virus et que je meurs, c’est moi qui suis mort et ma famille qui en pâtit», a-t-il souligné.

Source: https://www.journaldequebec.com/2020/08/17/ralentissement-economique-quebec-ne-reduira-pas-les-seuils-dimmigration

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Does COVID-19 mean the age of global migration is over?

2020/08/18 Leave a comment

Good overview of one of the more significant papers on immigration post-COVID by Alain Gamien that policy makers need to consider and reflect upon:

Is the age of migration coming to an end?

For decades, easy air travel, globalization and international competition for talent in some sectors have made the growing movement of people around the world seem unstoppable.

Until now.

With the pandemic leading to less demand for skilled labour, a smaller aging population to support, and a proliferation of travel restrictions, the future of human migration looks pretty grim post-COVID-19.

“We have had the migration boom, now we are heading into the bust,” said Alan Gamlen, a human geographer at Monash University in Australia and author of a new paper about the outlook of migration, Migration and mobility after the 2020 pandemic: The end of an age?

If Canada’s immigration numbers between April and June — the first full quarter under the influence of the pandemic — are any indication of what is to come, things don’t bode well.

According to a new study to be released later this week by the Association for Canadian Studies, the number of permanent residents admitted to Canada dropped by 64 per cent to 34,260 in the second quarter of 2020, compared to 94,275 during the same period last year.

Those who came under the skilled economic class fell a whopping 52 per cent to 24,805 from 51,665; the family class is down 78 per cent to 5,990 from 27,080; and resettled refugees and protected persons declined by 83 per cent to just 2,685 from 14,570.

While much of that is due to border closures, experts say it’s not immediately clear if the downward trend will be totally reversed once travel restrictions are eased.

In his paper, released in August as part of the International Organization for Migration’s “think series,” Gamlen posed ten key questions that guide future migration and mobility trends.

The No. 1 question on the list is whether countries will need less labour migration.

Unemployment has skyrocketed during the pandemic. With corporate borrowing at a historic high, Gamlen said many companies now lack the revenue to service debt and are either folding or cutting staff.

The net result will be a reduction in demand for migrant labour, with a large pool of unemployed domestic workers and mounting political pressure to hire them over migrant workers.

“It is hard to find grounds for much optimism regarding the short- to medium-term outlook,” Gamlen told the Star.

“We will continue to see dependence on migrant labour in certain sectors of the economy, particularly at the high and low ends of the skills spectrum. This is because some sectors involve work that native workers can’t or won’t do, and because innovation will remain a key driver of prosperity.”

Further complicating the forecast is the uneven death toll COVID-19 has taken on the elderly population, a group that’s particularly vulnerable to the virus as seen in the death rates around the world.

“If high mortality rates persist until a vaccine can be mass produced, the overall death toll could amount to a significant portion of the elderly cohort,” said Gamlen, a long-standing research associate at Oxford University’s Centre on Migration, Policy and Society.

“If the pandemic devastates a specific generation, it will affect long-term dependency ratios and dynamics of demographic transition. It could reduce the proportion of dependent elderly people in the population and the financial cost of aged care, while generating a boom of babies conceived in lockdown.”

Places where people can move freely to another country by choice will likely see a decline in those rates as they put their migration plan on hold, but the traditional labour-sending countries in the developing world will see a “buildup” of people longing to leave their homelands, said Gamlen.

“The interaction of these changing flows from different places will, I think, lead to a period of unstable, non-linear changes in migration patterns,” he argued.

“The overall volume will decrease, but flows might be less predictable — like when you turn the kitchen tap halfway off, and the water starts spraying out sideways instead of flowing nicely down into the sink.”

Gamlen said it’s inevitable that the numbers of people crossing borders, especially on a permanent and long-term basis, will fall further before they bounce back — if they ever do.

“A huge amount depends on how governments manage all this. They will have a lot of control over when and how borders start to reopen and their choices in this regard will affect both the recovery timeline from the pandemic and from the economic crisis,” he said.

“Opening too early could reignite the spread of the virus. Opening too late could stifle growth and lead to a new era of closed-shop nationalism — which has ended very badly in the past.”

In its immigration study, the Association for Canadian Studies polled 1,531 Canadians between July 31 and August 2 about their attitude to immigration. Forty-six per cent of respondents still believed immigration would have a very positive or somewhat positive impact on Canada while 26 per cent of people held the opposite view.

Given the pandemic, 36 per cent of the respondents said Ottawa should prioritize the admission of those with family members in Canada, followed by refugees (16%), temporary foreign workers (12%), skilled immigrants (8%) and international students (7%).

Jack Jedwab, the academic association’s president, said whether the pandemic will mark the end of migration depends on how long the contagion lasts.

“Canadians seem comfortable with the reduced numbers and are still positive about the impact of immigration and committed to immigration as a strategy for medium to long term economic growth,” Jedwab said.

“But it is not clear when the medium term will occur. The contagion does not provide us with a time frame. There will be a need to reassess the needs regarding immigration given the economic uncertainty and what the changing circumstances call for.”

Source: https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2020/08/17/does-covid-19-mean-the-age-of-global-migration-is-over.html

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Canada’s federal security and intelligence establishment encouraging employees to self-identify

2020/08/18 Leave a comment

Further to the earlier Hill Times story. Having gone through some of the recent reports (still awaiting a few), my general observation is the lower the representation numbers, the longer the reports and the more words describing the various initiatives underway). That being said, their cultures are different from elsewhere in the public service and thus the challenges greater:

A number of organizations in Canada’s security and intelligence establishment, including the Communications Security Establishment, the Canadian Security and Intelligence Community, the Department of National Defence, and the Canada Border Services Agency have been conducting campaigns to encourage employees who belong to one of the four designated groups listed in the Employment Equity Act—women, Indigenous people, members of a visible minority, and people with a disability—to self-identify, as part of their efforts to improve data collection and hiring practices.

The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, composed of 11 MPs and Senators and chaired by Liberal MP David McGuinty (Ottawa South, Ont.), focused on diversity and inclusion issues in the security and intelligence community in its most recent annual report.

The report notes that one of the challenges in the security and intelligence committee surrounds voluntary self-identification.

But the report also notes that “self-identification campaigns and internal communications are [a] way organizations try to increase awareness on these issues,” and that the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), and the Department of National Defence (DND) have conducted campaigns to “demystify the self-identification process and encourage employees to self identify.”

The Hill Times reached out to the four organizations noted in the report for more information on how they have done that.

Communications Security Establishment

Diversity and inclusion is an important element in ensuring that the Canadian security and intelligence community can effectively protect Canada, said Ryan Foreman, a media relations representative with the Communications Security Establishment (CSE).

Mr. Foreman outlined a number of initiatives undertaken by the CSE to encourage self-identification, including a 2017 push to increase organizational awareness of the requirements of the Employment Equity Act, and to explain how a diverse workforce strengthens CSE’s ability to deliver on its mandate.

“This included providing data to managers, and developing strategies to attract job applicants from underrepresented groups,” said Mr. Foreman, who also noted that CSE launched a self-identification campaign called “Show us what CSE is made of,” which was designed to encourage employees to self-identify.

“The messaging for this campaign communicated the importance of employment equity data and its impact on other organizational initiatives, such as recruitment and training,” said Mr. Foreman. “Both the 2017 initiative and the self-identification campaign started in 2018 are on-going.”

Canadian Security and Intelligence Community

“As Canada’s security and intelligence service, it is critical that CSIS reflects the communities it protects, wrote CSIS spokesperson John Townsend in an email to The Hill Times. “To this end, CSIS has implemented an ongoing internal communications campaign to encourage employees who belong to one of the four designated groups listed in the Employment Equity Act to self-identify.”

“The campaign includes an annual Employment Equity questionnaire among other tools to advise employees on the importance of self-identification.”

Ninety per cent of CSIS employees have engaged with these tools, according to Mr. Townsend.

“The work of making CSIS more representative of Canada is never finished but our commitment is steadfast and our efforts continue,” wrote Mr. Townsend.

Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces

Staff at the Department of National Defence and members of Canadian Armed Forces have returned self-identification forms at a greater rate this year than in the past, thanks to organizational efforts to spread the word about the importance of self-identification, according to Major Smyth, spokesperson for DND.

The Employment Equity Act requires that every member be provided the opportunity to self-identify as a member of a designated group, but it remains voluntary to do so.

As such, employment equity representation rates are based on a voluntary process and may not represent the actual employment equity representation in CAF, according to Mr. Smyth.

“Overall, the CAF continues to improve upon its self-identification return rates,” said Mr. Smyth. “The first part of the self-identification form is a personal identification portion. For this portion, the regular force achieved its highest return rate yet with 97.5 per cent of [members] having had the opportunity to self-identify as a member of a designated employment equity group.”

“While the return rates are lower in the primary reserve units, the CAF saw an overall increase in self-identification as designated group members from both regular force and primary reserve members compared to 2017/18.”

“Current representation rates, as of July 2020, for the regular force and the primary reserves combined, were as follows: women, 16 per cent; visible minorities, 9.3 per cent; and Indigenous Peoples, 2.8 per cent.”

DND/CAF did not identify the representation of persons with disabilities as of July 2020 in their response to The Hill Times.

The CAF works closely with Statistics Canada to ensure that “labour market data they provide, and upon which the CAF sets its employment equity representation rate goals, is reflective of the unique occupations and employment criteria of the CAF.”

“DND/CAF is committed to reflecting the Canadian ideals of diversity, respect and inclusion. Both long and short term goals have been created, based on the labour market analysis provided by Statistics Canada. We review our progress regularly to ensure that we are always working towards increasing representation rates,” said Mr. Smyth.”

Canadian Border Services Agency

The Canada Border Services Agency’s campaign encouraging self-identification began in 2017 and was repeated in 2018, according to Jacqueline Callin, spokesperson with the agency.

“They stressed the importance of understanding our workforce composition and reinforced that employee information would be protected. Recognizing that the Agency’s manual process might be contributing to response rates of 61 per cent, an online form was piloted with success in 2019 and was set to be launched in March 2020 as part of our ‘Your Voice Matters’ campaign. It has been postponed due to the current COVID-19 pandemic and current efforts are focused on how best to virtually promote self-identification,” she said.

Employment Equity Act ‘has served Canada and the public service well,’ says expert

Andrew Griffith, who is the former director general for Citizenship and Multiculturalism and has worked for a variety of government departments in Canada and abroad, told The Hill Times that the Employment Equity Act has served Canada and the public service well, and that the diversity of virtually every group has increased since the act was introduced.

“So the basic structure of the act, I think, has worked in the reporting structure and the data collection, and the publicity that comes with the results,” said Mr. Griffith, who is a fellow of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute and Environics Institute.

“But if you re-open the act, I’m just not sure that it’s worth all that much effort, time, and invariable divisiveness and controversies that it will raise,” said Mr. Griffith. “I’m thinking that if you want to use government time wisely, it would be more effective, I would think, [to look] at specific anti-racism initiatives and look at some of the specific barriers rather than a wholesale of revision of the act, because I think the challenge is less with the act and more with some of the practical stuff.”

Source: Canada’s federal security and intelligence establishment encouraging employees to self-identify

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Looming Fee Increase Could Thwart Many U.S. Citizenship Applications

2020/08/18 Leave a comment

Yet another Trump administration anti-immigration initiative. Cost matters, and fees need not to pose an excessive financial burden on immigrants:

When Guadalupe Rubio, 41, contracted the coronavirus in July, she struggled to make the few steps to the bathroom in the mobile home that she shared with her teenage daughter in Kent, Wash.

The pandemic had already shuttered her small construction business, which also provided for her parents and three children in Sinaloa, Mexico. Now, the virus left her struggling to breathe, trapped inside without any means to support the six family members who depended on her.

Around the time the pandemic hit Washington State, Ms. Rubio became eligible to apply for United States citizenship. She made a bit too much money to qualify for a reduction in the application fee, currently $640, and the economic effects of the pandemic and her illness sapped away her savings. She applied for food stamps, a benefit that could also provide a break on the fee, but has so far been unable to reach the overwhelmed social services agency that could help her.

If she cannot save the money or obtain a fee waiver before the fall, Ms. Rubio’s prospects of becoming a citizen will become more remote. The Trump administration moved late last month to raise the cost of naturalization applications by more than 80 percent and to substantially tighten eligibility requirements for a subsidized application.

The price for naturalization will jump to $1,160 or $1,170 for online applications. The rule will also lower the income threshold to qualify for a fee waiver and eliminate the partial subsidy for the application.

Almost all other exceptions that allowed immigrants to waive the fee will be eliminated, including extenuating financial hardship and means-tested public benefits, like food stamps. Only some protected immigrants, including victims of domestic violence and human trafficking, will remain eligible.

Ms. Rubio is one of many who would no longer be eligible for a waiver. Immigration lawyers across the country are rushing to submit their clients’ applications to the already backlogged agency before the fee increases are introduced on Oct. 2.

“It’s a low blow during a pandemic,” Ms. Rubio said through a translator. “I have worked a lot for this country, and if I’m a citizen, I can — not just contribute more — but I can also better reap the benefits of all of my hard work in this country.”

Advocates for immigrants say the fee increase is intended to stymie legal immigration and deprive immigrants of their right to vote before the election in November.

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COVID-19’s latest victims: Would-be citizens waiting to take their oath face new delays over expired clearances

2020/08/18 Leave a comment

Appears to be a case for some flexibility on a case-by-case basis as has been done elsewhere:

The backlog and wait time for new citizenship ceremonies are bound to grow due to a new complication brought on by COVID-19.

The traditional in-person oath-taking mass ritual has already been cancelled since March as a result of public health concerns during the pandemic. As long as someone hasn’t sworn their allegiance to the country, they are still just permanent residents and are unable to vote or run for political office.

The immigration department has since slowly moved the citizenship ceremonies online.

But in the meantime, some would-be citizens who have already passed their exam and are in the queue to go in front of a citizenship judge are being told they can’t take their oath because their criminal clearances expired while they’ve been waiting for their turn.

“As required by the Citizenship Act, all citizenship candidates must meet the requirements for citizenship, including being free of prohibitions prior to taking the oath of citizenship. As such, individuals must have valid clearances in order to be permitted to take the oath,” said immigration department spokesperson Lauren Sankey.

“The criminality clearance is valid for 12 months and must be valid at the time citizenship is granted and the oath of citizenship is taken.”

According to a response to an access to information request, at least 76 virtual citizenship ceremonies were cancelled in Montreal, Greater Toronto and the Atlantic region up until the end of June as a result of expired criminal clearances.

A would-be new citizen told the Star his original in-person citizenship ceremony for March 20 was cancelled and he was then rescheduled for a virtual ceremony for June 25. But less than 24 hours before the event, he was told by email that it was cancelled because he needed a new clearance certificate.

“Getting citizenship is like being adopted by Canada. Imagine you’re in an orphanage waiting to be adopted. You met your adopted parents and they said they’d pick you up and take you home on a certain day. Before that day comes, they call the orphanage and say they can’t come,” said the American immigrant, who asked that his name not be used for fear of repercussions.

“You don’t hear anything for several months. Then less than 24 hours before the next pickup day, they call and cancel again. That’s pretty deflating there.”

The man, who moved to Toronto 12 years ago after marrying a Canadian, said he was told by his MP’s office that the citizenship application process is all paper-based. Hence, there are no automated systems warning immigration officials when a criminal clearance is about to expire.

He said he’s still waiting for instructions from the immigration department about what to do next.

Sankey said immigration officials will request new criminal checks from other federal agencies in the event clearances have expired before a citizenship ceremony.

“It is not necessary for applicants to reapply,” she said. “Once valid clearances are returned, these clients will be prioritized and rescheduled at the earliest opportunity.”

Additional delays are expected because the department depends on its partners to complete the process.

“Generally, clearances should take about a week to complete, however in the current context, our partners are making assessment on a case-by-case basis, consequently IRCC (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada) cannot provide specific processing time frames,” Sankey said.

Source: COVID-19’s latest victims: Would-be citizens waiting to take their oath face new delays over expired clearances

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Knesset demands answers after some Negev Bedouin have citizenship revoked

2020/08/18 Leave a comment

Of note:

Salim al-Dantiri, a Bedouin man from Israel’s southern Negev desert, used to regularly vote in elections. As a young man, he served in the Israel Defense Forces, as did his father, his brothers and his sons.

Then, around 20 years ago, he visited an Interior Ministry office for a routine matter, only to be told by a clerk that he was in fact merely a permanent resident, that the citizenship he had enjoyed to date had been given “by mistake” and that he would have to reapply for citizenship status. He did that, so far to no avail.

“My entire family has citizenship except for me,” Salim, from the the village of Bir Hadaj, told a Knesset committee last week.

The main difference between being a citizen and a permanent resident in Israel is that the latter is not eligible to vote or obtain a passport.

Around 370,000 Bedouin live in Israel, some 250,000 of them in the Negev. Unlike most Israeli Arabs, some Bedouin, like the Druze, serve in the IDF.

Salim is an example of what the Interior Ministry confirmed in 2016 is a policy to correct “ministry mistakes” in registration. The ministry insists that it is not removing citizenship — that would evidently be illegal.

Clause 11 of the 1952 Citizenship Law states that the Interior Minister may annul a person’s citizenship only if it was obtained on the basis of false information, and was given within the previous three years. If three years have passed, an annulment can only be decided by a court.

Nobody actually knows what “mistakes” specifically were made, because the Interior Ministry has not published the information. But they apparently relate to the way in which the Population Authority initially registered the Bedouin in the chaotic, early years of the state, compounded by typing errors when clerks later computerized hand-written personal files in the 1980s.

Military rule imposed on all Israeli Arabs between 1951 and 1967 meant that movement was subject to permits and that not everyone could get to the Interior Ministry to register, if they even understood that they needed to do so.

The registration “mistakes” seem mainly to apply to groups within the al-Azazme tribe, who live in the Negev Highlands, from south of Beersheba down to Mitzpe Ramon.

Last week, MK Said al-Harumi of the predominantly-Arab Joint List party, a member of the al-Azazme himself, told the Knesset Interior Affairs and Environmental Protection Committee that beginning around 2002, efforts to review the rights to citizenship of Negev Bedouin were stepped up. That year also marked the point when the government decided to freeze providing citizenship to Palestinians on family reunification grounds.

 

From that point on, some Bedouin visiting Interior Ministry offices for any number of services, from passport renewal to replacement of lost documents, began to experience such purported “corrections”: Walking in as citizens and leaving as permanent residents. Ministry clerks simply changed their status on the computer, with no explanations given and no opportunity to explain or appeal.

“When they take a person’s citizenship away, a long journey begins without answers,” al-Harumi said. “It causes terrible suffering.”

People who lost their citizenship were unable to move beyond Israel’s borders, for example to visit Mecca for the Hajj pilgrimage, he said. Nor could they exercise their right to vote.

“If their fathers or grandfathers registered in this year or that, why should they have to pay the price 70 years later?” he said.

Fellow Joint List MK Sondos Saleh added that the policy was only deepening community distrust toward authorities.

The issue first came to prominence in 2015, when Joint List MK Aida Touma-Sliman visited Bedouin villages in the Negev as chairwoman of the Committee on the Status of Women and Gender Equality. Many there told her that they had had their citizenship taken away. In some families, one child was a citizen and another only a permanent resident.

At a Knesset Internal Affairs discussion in December of that year, the Interior Ministry confirmed the policy, while the committee’s legal adviser, Gilad Keren, challenged its legality in reference to the 1952 Citizenship Law.

Last week, at a second Knesset committee meeting held to examine whether such “corrections” were still being made, Keren said that his position had not changed.

To committee members’ bewilderment, a legal adviser to the Interior Ministry’s Population and Immigration Authority maintained that “This is not about cancelling citizenship, because these people did not acquire citizenship. [For example,] a person’s file will say that he is a permanent citizen born to permanent citizens, but on the computer, he’s been mistakenly registered as a citizen.”

Senior officials from the authority admitted that Bedouin with Israeli identity cards who were found to have been descended from permanent residents would not be able to apply for a passport.

Committee chairwoman Miki Haimovitch retorted: “If you don’t issue a passport, that means you’re canceling their citizenship… There’s something twisted about people who have been citizens for years having to prove that they’re citizens. These people have not broken the law.”

Ronen Yerushalmi, Head of Citizenship at the Population and Immigration Authority, said research into the status of Negev Bedouin with citizenship had turned up 2,626 cases of questionable status. Of these, 2,124 had been confirmed as citizens, while the remaining 500 had “failed to meet the conditions” for citizenship because when they were born, neither of their parents had been citizens.

Yerushalmi said that the interior and justice ministers had agreed to deal with the issue by speeding up the citizenship application process for those who would need to apply. Out of the 500 summoned to ministry offices for the purpose, 362 had received citizenship “very quickly.” Of the remaining 140, 134 failed to respond, while six have not yet been given citizenship “for other reasons.” A Justice Ministry official insisted that “there have been no refusals so far.”

Oded Feller, director of the legal department at the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, proposed that the Interior Ministry should use its authority under Clause 9 of the Citizenship Law to fix the situation. The clause enables the minister of the interior to grant citizenship for special reasons to people such as Righteous Gentiles or outstanding athletes, and to do so retroactively.

 

MK Ram Ben Barak (Yesh Atid-Telem), a former deputy director of the Mossad and former director-general of the Intelligence Ministry and the Strategic Affairs Ministry, said: “Without doubt, there is a sense of discrimination on racist grounds… In the case of the Negev Bedouin [in general], the state should first of all feel shame.

“They should be dealt with like all citizens, by whichever ministry is relevant. We’re in 2020. There are nine million citizens here. All are equal and need to be related to in an equal way,” he said.

The committee instructed the Interior Ministry to provide it with the relevant written regulations or guidelines, while Touma-Sliman vowed to build up an alternative database of cases to check whether the Population Authority figures were correct.

Source: Knesset demands answers after some Negev Bedouin have citizenship revoked

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‘Why not us?’: Asylum seekers on COVID-19 front lines demand permanent residency

2020/08/17 Leave a comment

All too predictable, the understandable debates over who’s in and who’s out, which happens with respect to most government programs, whether immigration or other:

Doll Jean Frejus Nguessan Bi says he couldn’t sleep at all last night.

The asylum seeker from Ivory Coast works as a security guard in hospitals and long-term care homes in the Montreal area, where he watched many of his colleagues stop coming in as deaths linked to COVID-19 began to mount this spring.

But while Nguessan Bi kept working, he said he found out Friday that he would be excluded from a new government program to fast-track the permanent residency applications of some asylum seekers working on the front lines during the pandemic.

“Why (not) us? We who gave our hearts and our love… Why are we abandoned?” he said in an interview at a protest camp across the street from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Montreal riding office Saturday. “What did we do to deserve this?”

Ottawa announced Friday that asylum seekers working in specific jobs in the health-care sector would be eligible for permanent residency without first having to wait for their asylum claims to be accepted, as is typically the process.

Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino said the move came in response to public demand for so-called “Guardian Angels” — many in Quebec — to be recognized for their work.

“They demonstrated a uniquely Canadian quality in that they were looking out for others and so that is why is today is so special,” Mendicino said in an interview Friday afternoon.

But asylum seekers and their supporters say Ottawa’s plan excludes thousands of workers without permanent status in Canada who have laboured on the front lines during the pandemic, often at great personal risk to themselves and their families.

That includes security guards and janitorial staff, factory workers, and farm labourers, among others.

“I have friends who worked with me in security that abandoned (their posts) because they were afraid of getting infected. But I stayed,” said Nguessan Bi.

He said he wants Trudeau and Quebec Premier Francois Legault to do something to help asylum seekers who are not eligible for the new program.

Several dozen people rallied in front of Trudeau’s office on Saturday to demand permanent residency for all asylum seekers.

“It’s an act of recognition. They deserve status,” Joseph Clormeus, a member of Debout pour la dignite, a Montreal advocacy group that organized the rally, told the crowd.

Anite Presume, a Haitian asylum seeker who came to Quebec in August 2017 from the United States, was among the protesters.

She works in a medication factory, and said she kept working during the pandemic despite the risks.

“To take the bus, we were all stressed, but we still went to work because it was essential. They needed medication for the hospitals,” she said in an interview.

She said she has not received a response yet to her application for asylum in Canada, and lives under a cloud of uncertainty and stress about her future.

“It’s a feeling of rejection,” Presume said, about not being included in Ottawa’s regularization program. “They rejected us as if we did nothing.”

To apply for residency under the new program, applicants must have claimed asylum in Canada prior to March 13 and have spent no less than 120 hours working as an orderly, nurse or another designated occupation between the date of their claim and Aug. 14.

They must also demonstrate they have six months of experience in the profession before they can receive permanent residency and have until the end of August 2021 to meet that requirement.

The program was the result of negotiations between the federal government and Quebec, who have had a strained relationship on the question of immigration, and in particular the asylum claimants, in recent years.

Public support has been building for asylum seekers’ demand for permanent residency after it was revealed that refugee claimants were among those toiling in Quebec’s long-term care facilities, which were hard-hit by COVID-19.

Source: ‘Why not us?’: Asylum seekers on COVID-19 front lines demand permanent residency

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