International students warming to US after Biden victory

2021/03/08 Leave a comment

We shall see how this affects Canada’s relative position but the largest source country for international students is also India as is the case in the US survey. Certainly the Trump administration did result in increased interest in studying and working in Canada:

International students’ perceptions of the United States as a study destination have significantly improved following the presidential election win by Joe Biden, according to new research by IDP Connect. 

The improved perceptions of the US among students surveyed in early 2021 could impact on the pulling power of rival destination countries Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia, the research suggests. 

A survey of more than 800 prospective international students in more than 40 countries who are interested in studying in the US – albeit with more than half of respondents based in India – has found that more than three quarters (76%) have improved perceptions of the US since the 2020 presidential election, with 67% stating they are now more likely to study there. 

“I really hope that the result of the election helps students like me to move to America and pursue our dreams,” said one respondent.

Simon Emmett, CEO of IDP Connect, said US higher education institutions should review their marketing and recruitment programmes to take full advantage of the change in perceptions. 

“Since the election in November 2020, we’ve seen higher search activity for the US, with the US now overtaking the UK in regard to international student search volumes.” 

He said: “US universities, colleges and education institutions should be looking at their recruitment strategies and practices to ensure they capture this momentum and support students in their decision-making process.”

When asked how nine key factors would be affected by the Biden administration, respondents expected all to improve, with the welfare of international students, safety of its citizens and visitors, and post-study work visa policies perceived to see the most improvements. 

Furthermore, the majority of students (69%) expected the new presidential administration would have a positive effect on their home country. 

As the students surveyed were at the early stages of their journey, many indicated they are still considering other destinations. Of those surveyed, half (50%) were also considering Canada, while 41% were considering the UK, just over a quarter (28%) were considering Australia and 13% were considering New Zealand as their study destination in addition to the US. 

Increased competition

This suggests that rising demand for study places in the US could mean increased competition for market share among these rival destination countries, the research notes.

The survey also showed that students from Africa were more likely to be exploring their study options in the US and Canada, while Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian students tended to look at the US and UK, IDP Connect said. The country from which students had the most improved perception of the US was Kenya.

A prospective graduate student from Nigeria said: “With this new administration, the United States will favour citizens of my country to study appropriately with due consideration.”

Emmett said the findings of the research are a reminder that students are tuned into global political discussions. 

“Of the students who stated they have a high awareness of US politics, 86% reported a better perception following the election,” Emmett said. 

Respondents were asked to rate how they feel the new administration would affect nine key factors on a scale of 0-10, with 0 representing ‘will become much worse’ and 10 representing ‘will become much better’. Overall, students expect all nine factors to improve. 

This list was topped by ‘welfare of international students’ (7.52), followed by ‘safety of citizens and visitors’ (7.48), ‘post-study work visa policies’ (7.32), ‘economic stability of the US’ (7.28), ‘perceptions of the US overseas’ (7.24), ‘response to coronavirus’ (7.17), ‘political stability of the US’ (7.11), ‘management of social issues, eg community divisions’ (7.10) and ‘travel restriction policies’ (6.94).

Among respondents, 13% indicated they had high awareness of US politics (‘I follow US politics closely’), compared with moderate awareness (34%), low awareness (42%) and no awareness (‘I do not follow US politics’) (11%). 

Biden’s first steps

On his first day in office, Biden revoked former president Donald Trump’s travel bans blocking people from seven mostly Muslim-majority nations from entering the United States, a critical first step towards rebuilding the reputation of US higher education in a global context.

Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education (ACE), in late November wrote to then President-Elect Joe Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris on behalf of 43 US university associations calling on them to move to ensure that American colleges and universities are “once again, the destination of choice for the world’s best international students and scholars”.

They urged Biden to withdraw Trump administration proposals to limit international students’ duration of stay and make it harder and costlier to obtain H-1B visas, which provide a pathway for foreign-born researchers to stay in the US on a long-term basis.

They also urged him to make it clear that the Optional Practical Training programme would remain in place. 

Biden has since proposed across the board changes to US immigration laws, including a step to make it easier for international graduate students with advanced STEM degrees to stay in the US by exempting them from immigrant visa caps. 

The draft immigration bill also includes permission for ‘dual intent’, which would mean student visa applicants no longer have to promise that they intend to leave the US when they finish their studies. Under the current single intent requirement, nine in 10 visa denials – close to a quarter of all applications – relate to a failure to convince officials that they solely intend to come and study and then leave.

However, it is not clear yet if the bill could garner enough political support.

Emmett said: “While the new administration has a more welcoming stance towards international students than the predecessor, it will be interesting to see if student perceptions of the US as a study destination continue to improve over the long term.”

Motivations for study in US

When asked why they are interested in studying in the US, the top motivation among respondents was ‘quality of teaching compared to my home country’ (64%), ‘modern, progressive, dynamic’ (59%), ‘institution or university of choice is located there’ (46%), ‘availability of part-time work’ (43%), ‘multicultural’ (33%), ‘attractive climate, weather, environment’ (30%), ‘safe country’ (29%), ‘Optional Practical Training or post-study work programme’ (26%), ‘affordable place to live and study’ (18%) and ‘family or friends recommended’ (14%). 

Among those who responded, 51% were interested in graduate programmes, 30% in undergraduate programmes and 19% in other (non-degree) programmes. Their expected start date of studying abroad was April to July 2021 (19%), August to October 2021 (38%), January to March 2022 (12%), April to July 2022 (6%), August to October 2022 (15%) and ‘beyond 2022’ (8%).

The survey results come with the caveat that they are dominated by views of students in India, one of the largest source countries for international students in the US. A majority and by far the largest group of respondents were located in India (483), followed by Kenya (74), Bangladesh (74), Indonesia (50), Egypt (29), Pakistan (27), Nepal (22), Philippines (22), Vietnam (16) and Cambodia (15). 

In 2019-20 the top five source countries for the more than one million international students in the US were: China, 372,532 students (34.6%); India, 193,124 (18%); South Korea, 49,809 (4.6%); Saudi Arabia, 30,957 (2.9%); and Canada, 25,992 (2.4%), according to datafrom the Institute of International Education’s Open Doors report.

Source: https://www.universityworldnews.com/post-nl.php?story=20210303133839873

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The Robots Are Coming for Phil in Accounting

2021/03/08 Leave a comment

Implications for many white collar workers, including in government given the nature of repetitive operational work:

The robots are coming. Not to kill you with lasers, or beat you in chess, or even to ferry you around town in a driverless Uber.

These robots are here to merge purchase orders into columns J and K of next quarter’s revenue forecast, and transfer customer data from the invoicing software to the Oracle database. They are unassuming software programs with names like “Auxiliobits — DataTable To Json String,” and they are becoming the star employees at many American companies.

Some of these tools are simple apps, downloaded from online stores and installed by corporate I.T. departments, that do the dull-but-critical tasks that someone named Phil in Accounting used to do: reconciling bank statements, approving expense reports, reviewing tax forms. Others are expensive, custom-built software packages, armed with more sophisticated types of artificial intelligence, that are capable of doing the kinds of cognitive work that once required teams of highly-paid humans.

White-collar workers, armed with college degrees and specialized training, once felt relatively safe from automation. But recent advances in A.I. and machine learning have created algorithms capable of outperforming doctors, lawyers and bankers at certain parts of their jobs. And as bots learn to do higher-value tasks, they are climbing the corporate ladder.

The trend — quietly building for years, but accelerating to warp speed since the pandemic — goes by the sleepy moniker “robotic process automation.” And it is transforming workplaces at a pace that few outsiders appreciate. Nearly 8 in 10 corporate executives surveyed by Deloitte last year said they had implemented some form of R.P.A. Another 16 percent said they planned to do so within three years.

Most of this automation is being done by companies you’ve probably never heard of. UiPath, the largest stand-alone automation firm, is valued at $35 billion — roughly the size of eBay — and is slated to go public later this year. Other companies like Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism, which have Fortune 500 companies like Coca-Cola and Walgreens Boots Alliance as clients, are also enjoying breakneck growth, and tech giants like Microsoft have recently introduced their own automation products to get in on the action.

Executives generally spin these bots as being good for everyone, “streamlining operations” while “liberating workers” from mundane and repetitive tasks. But they are also liberating plenty of people from their jobs. Independent experts say that major corporate R.P.A. initiatives have been followed by rounds of layoffs, and that cutting costs, not improving workplace conditions, is usually the driving factor behind the decision to automate. 

Craig Le Clair, an analyst with Forrester Research who studies the corporate automation market, said that for executives, much of the appeal of R.P.A. bots is that they are cheap, easy to use and compatible with their existing back-end systems. He said that companies often rely on them to juice short-term profits, rather than embarking on more expensive tech upgrades that might take years to pay for themselves.

“It’s not a moonshot project like a lot of A.I., so companies are doing it like crazy,” Mr. Le Clair said. “With R.P.A., you can build a bot that costs $10,000 a year and take out two to four humans.”

Covid-19 has led some companies to turn to automation to deal with growing demand, closed offices, or budget constraints. But for other companies, the pandemic has provided cover for executives to implement ambitious automation plans they dreamed up long ago.

“Automation is more politically acceptable now,” said Raul Vega, the chief executive of Auxis, a firm that helps companies automate their operations.

Before the pandemic, Mr. Vega said, some executives turned down offers to automate their call centers, or shrink their finance departments, because they worried about scaring their remaining workers or provoking a backlash like the one that followed the outsourcing boom of the 1990s, when C.E.O.s became villains for sending jobs to Bangalore and Shenzhen.

But those concerns matter less now, with millions of people already out of work and many businesses struggling to stay afloat.

Now, Mr. Vega said, “they don’t really care, they’re just going to do what’s right for their business,” Mr. Vega said.

Sales of automation software are expected to rise by 20 percent this year, after increasing by 12 percent last year, according to the research firm Gartner. And the consulting firm McKinsey, which predicted before the pandemic that 37 million U.S. workers would be displaced by automation by 2030, recently increased its projection to 45 million.

A white-collar wake-up call

Not all bots are the job-destroying kind. Holly Uhl, a technology manager at State Auto Insurance Companies, said that her firm has used automation to do 173,000 hours’ worth of work in areas like underwriting and human resources without laying anyone off.

“People are concerned that there’s a possibility of losing their jobs, or not having anything to do,” she said. “But once we have a bot in the area, and people see how automation is applied, they’re truly thrilled that they don’t have to do that work anymore.”

As bots become capable of complex decision-making, rather than doing single repetitive tasks, their disruptive potential is growing.

Recent studies by researchers at Stanford University and the Brookings Institution compared the text of job listings with the wording of A.I.-related patents, looking for phrases like “make prediction” and “generate recommendation” that appeared in both. They found that the groups with the highest exposure to A.I. were better-paid, better-educated workers in technical and supervisory roles, with men, white and Asian-American workers, and midcareer professionals being some of the most endangered. Workers with bachelor’s or graduate degrees were nearly four times as exposed to A.I. risk as those with just a high school degree, the researchers found, and residents of high-tech cities like Seattle and Salt Lake City were more vulnerable than workers in smaller, more rural communities.

“A lot of professional work combines some element of routine information processing with an element of judgment and discretion,” said David Autor, an economist at M.I.T. who studies the labor effects of automation. “That’s where software has always fallen short. But with A.I., that type of work is much more in the kill path.”

Many of those vulnerable workers don’t see this coming, in part because the effects of white-collar automation are often couched in jargon and euphemism. On their websites, R.P.A. firms promote glowing testimonials from their customers, often glossing over the parts that involve actual humans.

“Sprint Automates 50 Business Processes In Just Six Months.” (Possible translation: Sprint replaced 300 people in the billing department.)

“Dai-ichi Life Insurance Saves 132,000 Hours Annually” (Bye-bye, claims adjusters.)

“600% Productivity Gain for Credit Reporting Giant with R.P.A.”(Don’t let the door hit you, data analysts.)

Jason Kingdon, the chief executive of the R.P.A. firm Blue Prism, speaks in the softened vernacular of displacement too. He refers to his company’s bots as “digital workers,” and he explained that the economic shock of the pandemic had “massively raised awareness” among executives about the variety of work that no longer requires human involvement.

“We think any business process can be automated,” he said.

Mr. Kingdon tells business leaders that between half and two-thirds of all the tasks currently being done at their companies can be done by machines. Ultimately, he sees a future in which humans will collaborate side-by-side with teams of digital employees, with plenty of work for everyone, although he conceded that the robots have certain natural advantages.

“A digital worker,” he said, “can be scaled in a vastly more flexible way.”

Humans have feared losing our jobs to machines for millennia. (In 350 BCE, Aristotle worried that self-playing harps would make musicians obsolete.) And yet, automation has never created mass unemployment, in part because technology has always generated new jobs to replace the ones it destroyed.

During the 19th and 20th centuries, some lamplighters and blacksmiths became obsolete, but more people were able to make a living as electricians and car dealers. And today’s A.I. optimists argue that while new technology may displace some workers, it will spur economic growth and create better, more fulfilling jobs, just as it has in the past.

But that is no guarantee, and there is growing evidence that this time may be different.

In a series of recent studies, Daron Acemoglu of M.I.T. and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University, two well-respected economists who have researched the history of automation, found that for most of the 20th century, the optimistic take on automation prevailed — on average, in industries that implemented automation, new tasks were created faster than old ones were destroyed.

Since the late 1980s, they found, the equation had flipped — tasks have been disappearing to automation faster than new ones are appearing.

This shift may be related to the popularity of what they call “so-so automation” — technology that is just barely good enough to replace human workers, but not good enough to create new jobs or make companies significantly more productive.

A common example of so-so automation is the grocery store self-checkout machine. These machines don’t cause customers to buy more groceries, or help them shop significantly faster — they simply allow store owners to staff slightly fewer employees on a shift. This simple, substitutive kind of automation, Mr. Acemoglu and Mr. Restrepo wrote, threatens not just individual workers, but the economy as a whole.

“The real danger for labor,” they wrote, “may come not from highly productive but from ‘so-so’ automation technologies that are just productive enough to be adopted and cause displacement.”

Only the most devoted Luddites would argue against automating any job, no matter how menial or dangerous. But not all automation is created equal, and much of the automation being done in white-collar workplaces today is the kind that may not help workers over the long run.

During past eras of technological change, governments and labor unions have stepped in to fight for automation-prone workers, or support them while they trained for new jobs. But this time, there is less in the way of help. Congress has rejected calls to fund federal worker retraining programs for years, and while some of the money in the $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief bill Democrats hope to pass this week will go to laid-off and furloughed workers, none of it is specifically earmarked for job training programs that could help displaced workers get back on their feet.

Another key difference is that in the past, automation arrived gradually, factory machine by factory machine. But today’s white-collar automation is so sudden — and often, so deliberately obscured by management — that few workers have time to prepare.

“The rate of progression of this technology is faster than any previous automation,” said Mr. Le Clair, the Forrester analyst, who thinks we are closer to the beginning than the end of the corporate A.I. boom.

“We haven’t hit the exponential point of this stuff yet,” he added. “And when we do, it’s going to be dramatic.”

The corporate world’s automation fever isn’t purely about getting rid of workers. Executives have shareholders and boards to satisfy, and competitors to keep up with. And some automation does, in fact, lift all boats, making workers’ jobs better and more interesting while allowing companies to do more with less.

But as A.I. enters the corporate world, it is forcing workers at all levels to adapt, and focus on developing the kinds of distinctly human skills that machines can’t easily replicate.

Ellen Wengert, a former data processor at an Australian insurance firm, learned this lesson four years ago, when she arrived at work one day to find a bot-builder sitting in her seat.

The man, coincidentally an old classmate of hers, worked for a consulting firm that specialized in R.P.A. He explained that he’d been hired to automate her job, which mostly involved moving customer data from one database to another. He then asked her to, essentially, train her own replacement — teaching him how to do the steps involved in her job so that he, in turn, could program a bot to do the same thing.

Ms. Wengert wasn’t exactly surprised. She’d known that her job was straightforward and repetitive, making it low-hanging fruit for automation. But she was annoyed that her managers seemed so eager to hand it over to a machine.

“They were desperate to create this sense of excitement around automation,” she said. “Most of my colleagues got on board with that pretty readily, but I found it really jarring, to be feigning excitement about us all potentially losing our jobs.”

For Ms. Wengert, 27, the experience was a wake-up call. She had a college degree and was early in her career. But some of her colleagues had been happily doing the same job for years, and she worried that they would fall through the cracks.

“Even though these aren’t glamorous jobs, there are a lot of people doing them,” she said.

She left the insurance company after her contract ended. And she now works as a second-grade teacher — a job she says she sought out, in part, because it seemed harder to automate.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/06/business/the-robots-are-coming-for-phil-in-accounting.html

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The Bon Appétit and Reply All saga shows how far behind we still are in Australia

2021/03/06 Leave a comment

Interesting:

The editor of a well-known food publication resigns after numerous staff speak out about an alleged toxic work culture where people of colour are underpaid, underrepresented in senior roles and regularly face racism.

The team behind a wildly successful podcast decide to launch a new series investigating what happened. But halfway through the series the producers are themselves accused of contributing to a toxic work culture where people of colour are alleged to be underpaid, underrepresented in senior roles and regularly face racism. Key staff suddenly quit, the podcast is suspended, apologies are issued and everyone following the story is left dazed and confused.

Welcome to the Bon Appétit / Reply All saga.

What’s been playing out over the past few weeks and months is the culmination of a reckoning in US media workplaces that accelerated in the wake of last year’s Black Lives Matter protests. 

And it’s a reckoning that shows how far behind we still are here in Australia.

Bon Appétit, a monthly magazine published by media giant Condé Nast, has long been one of the most popular and influential food publications in the world. But it was in 2014, under the leadership of then editor Adam Rapoport that the outlet turbocharged its online presence and became a digital media powerhouse by creating fun, engaging and helpful cooking shows on YouTube, making stars out of staff who had largely remained behind the scenes.

When the pandemic hit and Americans were confined to their homes, the magazine’s YouTube channel had its biggest ever month, attracting a mammoth 77m views in March alone.

But just a few months later the magazine was rocked by a controversy that it’s still struggling to recover from.

The killing of George Floyd sparked global protests demanding racial justice, and the media was among the institutions put under the spotlight. In an Instagram post, Bon Appétit aligned itself with the Black Lives Matter movement but staff quickly accused the publication of hypocrisy, alleging they were subject to racism in the workplace.

Sohla El-Waylly, one of the most popular presenters on the magazine’s YouTube channel, accused the company of only paying its white staff for appearing in online videos. Condé Nast denied the allegations, but a number of senior staff said they would stop appearing on YouTube until pay equity concerns were addressed.

Like the US, Australia also has a deep history of structural racism embedded in our institutions

Then an image of Rapoport in brownface surfaced, leading to his resignation. Soon after, three other presenters, all people of colour, resigned. The magazine was in turmoil. A broader reckoning across the US media followed.

It was a strange thing to observe from Australia. Like the US, Australia also has a deep history of structural racism embedded in our institutions. But there was no comparative reckoning in our media organisations.

While the Bon Appétit drama was playing out in the US, the ABC’s flagship current affairs program featured an all-white panel discussing Black Lives Matter, the Melbourne Press Club elected an all-white board of 20 people, the most-read columnist in the country blamed the spread of Covid-19 on “multiculturalism”, the Age newspaper published an editorial asserting Australia did not have a history of slavery, and the list goes on.

While there have been some minor reforms in some of these areas, there was nothing like the wave of resignations and apologies we saw in the US.

Which brings us to Reply All. The podcast was founded by PJ Vogt and Alex Goldman in 2014 and described itself simply as “a show about the internet”.

In February the show shifted gears and announced it would be airing a new series called The Test Kitchen examining what happened at Bon Appétit, through exclusive interviews with former staff. The series was presented by Sruthi Pinnamaneni, a senior producer on Reply All.

The first episode of the series felt deeply cathartic. Pinnamaneni allowed those who had been marginalised, undervalued and mistreated to talk about their experiences on their terms. The series was accessible without being patronising. People of colour who had similar workplace experiences could relate, and white audiences could understand.

The “original sin”, as Pinnamaneni put it, was the decision by Rapoport to only hire white people in senior management roles. According to her, that decision is where the other problems – the racialised pay inequality, the everyday racism faced by staff – stemmed from.

It did occur to me that on that metric of an all-white leadership team, pretty much every news organisation in Australia deserved its own racism expose.

And that’s exactly what was being remarked upon in group chats across the country, full of journalists who worked at those organisations. I lost count of the number of people who messaged me saying that this exact story, the story being told on The Test Kitchen, could be done about their own media workplace. Many described it as triggering, and some said they didn’t even want to listen to avoid being re-traumatised over their own experiences.

After the second episode of The Test Kitchen aired, it was Reply All’s turn to face the music.

Eric Eddings, a former staffer at Gimlet, the company that produced Reply All, publicly accused Pinnamaneni and Vogt, one of the co-hosts of the show, of contributing to the same kind of toxic work culture that they were reporting on.

In particular, Eddings said that Pinnamaneni and Vogt had actively opposed efforts to form a union at the company, an organising push that was focused on pay inequality and mistreatment of staff who weren’t white.

Pinnamaneni and Vogt apologised and announced they were stepping away from the podcast.

Last week it was announced that the show had been suspended and no more episodes of The Test Kitchen would air. The show’s remaining original co-host, Goldman, said that the decision to make the series was a “systemic editorial failure”.

It was an extraordinary and abrupt conclusion to a story about two of the most popular and influential media organisations of their time.

While some listeners have applauded the apology from Goldman, others have interpreted the decision to cancel the series as a cop-out and pointed out that the former Bon Appétit staff who bravely told their stories publicly deserve better than an unfinished production subsumed by its own internal chaos.

In his apology, Goldman said Reply All should never have delved into this story. It’s an interesting question. There were clear warning signs that perhaps Reply All didn’t have the experience of self-awareness to undertake such a thorough examination of race.

In the first episode, Pinnamaneni admitted that it was only after the Black Lives Matter movement reignited last year that she understood for the first time how racism manifested in the workplace.

“If you’d asked [me] what does it mean to be an Indian woman in the workplace, I would’ve said it’s mostly fine,” she said. “Back then, I didn’t really want to think of my race as a disadvantage. Like I preferred to focus on how it actually helped me.”

It was a reminder that being a person of colour doesn’t automatically give you the authority or experience to explore complex racial dynamics, especially when as an Indian migrant to the US, she isn’t subject to the same kinds of oppression as the black colleagues who criticised her.

Reply All could have covered this story, but they couldn’t do it without acknowledging their own complicity and lack of self-awareness.

As depressing as elements of this saga have been, particularly the decision to not go ahead with finishing The Test Kitchen, it perhaps counterintuitively shows progress is being made. Powerful people in charge of influential institutions were forced to acknowledge their racism and apologise for it. Twice.

But looking on from here in Australia, I’m still waiting for the day our media organisations have enough staff who aren’t white to actually warrant a racism scandal

Source: The Bon Appétit and Reply All saga shows how far behind we still are in Australia

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Cherokee Nation Strikes Down Language That Limits Citizenship Rights ‘By Blood’

2021/03/06 Leave a comment

Of note:

The Cherokee Nation’s Supreme Court ruled this week to remove the words “by blood” from its constitution and other legal doctrines.

The words, added to the constitution in 2007, have been used to exclude Black people whose ancestors were enslaved by the tribe from obtaining full Cherokee Nation citizenship rights.

There are currently some 8,500 enrolled Cherokee Nation members descended from these Freedmen, thousands of whom were removed on the Trail of Tears along with tribal citizens.

“The Freedmen, until this Cherokee Nation Supreme Court ruling, they couldn’t hold office, they couldn’t run for tribal council and they couldn’t run for chief,” says Graham Lee Brewer, an editor for Indigenous affairs at High Country Newsand KOSU in Oklahoma. “And I would argue that that made them second-class citizens.”

Black Freedmen and their descendants have long fought to maintain their citizenship rights, which were stripped from them in 2007 with the “by blood” amendment.

Monday’s ruling calls those words “a relic of painful and ugly, racial past” and draws comparisons to the lingering effects the racist Jim Crow laws had on Black Americans.

The decision comes after a federal judge ruled in 2017 that by excluding Freedmen from its citizenship rules, the Cherokee Nation violated a treaty it signed in 1866 with the U.S. government. The treaty granted citizenship to the formerly enslaved people.

Brewer, who is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, explains that citizenship rights grant access to services such as tribal health care, scholarships, housing programs and more. For many descendants of Freedman, he notes, the Cherokee Nation health care system is their only option for health care.

“So the discussion about removing them from the citizenship status, it wasn’t just a citizenship question, it was a civil rights question,” he tells All Things Considered.

Here are excerpts from the interview.

What other legal implications, what other cultural implications are might flow from this change?

This really makes it possible that someday, a descendant of a Freedmen could be the chief of the Cherokee Nation. It would really illustrate the strength of tribal sovereignty because our citizenship laws are not based on race. They are based on community and belonging. And so it’s much more than just the “amount of Indian blood that runs in your veins.” It’s what community do you claim, and what community claims you?

As a member of the Cherokee Nation yourself, how do you find yourself feeling?

It was just such a relief to see that Supreme Court decision come down. And as someone who reads a lot of court documents for work, I would argue it was one of the most beautifully written ones I’ve ever read. It’s just really great to finally see the tribe fully and legally embrace the Freedmen. Their descendants went through some of the most horrific and just violent history that we did of genocide in this country. And I think they have every right to share in our prosperity today.

You said this is one of the most beautifully written rulings you have ever read. Is there a line or two that stands out?

On war-torn soil in Indian Territory during Reconstruction, thousands of miles from their respective homelands, the heartbeats of three First Nations, the Cherokees, the Shawnees, and the Delawares, and three continents of flesh tones and cultures, Native Americans, African Americans and adopted or intermarried European Americans, were forced to coalesce and weave together a single nation to be known by only one name henceforth: the Cherokee Nation.

Source: Cherokee Nation Strikes Down Language That Limits Citizenship Rights ‘By Blood’

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Douglas Todd: The ‘diversity’ beat is full of surprises, often conservative

2021/03/06 Leave a comment

Todd’s personal reflections on his beat:

“Migration, diversity and spirituality writer.” That’s how my signatureblock describes my beat specialties.

The “diversity” tag draws some funny reactions. I once went on a radio talk show where the host joked about it. To him “diversity writer” sounded like liberal-virtue signalling — conjuring up the dream of people of diverse creeds and colours sitting around campfires singing Kumbaya in mutual harmony.

While I quite like the song Kumbaya, as well as the ideal of intercultural harmony, covering the diversity beat for decades has led to the discovery of scores of surprising ethno-religious realities. The diversity beat offers a great journalistic ride for anyone who is curious, since, after all, the word diversity means “a range of different things.”

Source: Douglas Todd: The ‘diversity’ beat is full of surprises, often conservative

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PMO scrambled to contain controversy over pandemic early-warning system, internal e-mails show

2021/03/06 4 Comments

Makes pretty clear that failure was at the senior bureaucratic level:

Internal e-mails show the Prime Minister’s Office was scrambling last summer to contain the fallout over the silencing of Canada’s pandemic early-warning system after learning it was curtailed less than a year before COVID-19 struck.

The e-mails, which provide a rare look at exchanges between the Prime Minister’s top political aides, show the upper levels of government were caught off guard when details about the silencing of the Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN) were made public by a Globe and Mail investigation.

The internationally respected system was created to detect and monitor international health threats to help Canada and other countries respond faster and more effectively to a deadly outbreak. However, The Globe found that the operation’s alert system was silenced in early 2019 amid shifting government priorities.

During an exchange of early-morning e-mails on Aug. 13, advisers to the Prime Minister can be seen trying to figure out what went wrong with GPHIN, and whether the blame for its mishandling could be contained to the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), and decision makers within that department, without political ramifications for the government.

“Can you confirm all the decision are internal to PHAC?” Samantha Khalil, the PMO’s deputy director of issues management, said to a colleague in an e-mail at 8:33 a.m. “I’ve got a hard deadline of 8:45 now to update my senior team.”

That morning, The Globe reported the pandemic alert system was suddenly restarted about two weeks after it published its investigation that showed GPHIN had gone silent in 2019. The shutdown of the alert system, and its reinstatement, appear to have blindsided the government.

At 7:15 a.m., the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, Katie Telford, sent an e-mail to PMO staff with the article attached, saying, “Front page of globe. How will we respond to this?” The replies to that e-mail paint a picture of the Prime Minister’s Office trying to find answers, and concerned with whether the blame will spread beyond the Public Health Agency.

Responding to Ms. Telford’s e-mail at 8:03 a.m., PMO senior adviser Ben Chin told colleagues: “The thing I’d like to understand better is whether all decisions on this are internal to PHAC. I understand there was no funding reduction.”

In another e-mail, Ms. Khalil asks a colleague: “Can you send me any background there is on why this was stopped and restarted? As well as your messaging on it.”

At 8:53 that morning, Cole Davidson, press secretary to the Minister of Health, responds to Ms. Khalil, “We’re working on getting specifics and answers to some questions. … When did this change happen? Why did this change happen? Who made the decision?”

The e-mails are among thousands of federal documents being disclosed in response to a production order for COVID-19 records that the House of Commons approved in October despite objections from the Liberal government.

Before it was curtailed, GPHIN was internationally renowned for tracking deadly outbreaks, and provided the World Health Organization with 20 per cent of its epidemiological intelligence that fed global advance warnings. The system was used effectively during H1N1 and Ebola, helping governments respond swiftly to contain those deadly outbreaks. However, in 2018, with no pandemic threats on the horizon, senior management reallocated some of GPHIN’s resources to domestic projects.

As PMO officials arranged a 10 a.m. briefing from Public Health Agency officials that morning, they also worked on the messages that would be delivered to Canadians on the matter.

At 11:16 a.m., after the briefing, Mr. Davidson e-mailed Ms. Khalil with an update. That e-mail confirmed several key details of The Globe’s investigation, which reported that, in late 2018, managers at Public Health began requiring GPHIN analysts to obtain senior-managers’ approval before issuing alerts. This effectively suffocated the early warning system. When approvals never came, the international alerts stopped. Meanwhile, GPHIN analysts were reassigned to tasks that did not involve international outbreak surveillance.

“A new process was put in place requiring approval of all alerts by a VP at PHAC in fall of 2018,” Mr. Davidson reported to the PMO. “This change was not supported by the GPHIN analysts.”

He also confirmed the silencing of the alert system, which Public Health had initially told The Globe last summer did not occur. “From May, 2019, until last week, no alerts were issued,” Mr. Davidson told the PMO.

“PHAC is getting us answers on these questions: Who made the decision to change the approvals? Why was this change necessary? Was MinO briefed on this change? (we don’t believe so),” Mr. Davidson wrote, referring to the Health Minister’s Office as MinO. “Why did the alerts nearly stop after the change?”

Three weeks later, Health Minister Patty Hajdu ordered an independent federal review of the way GPHIN was handled. The Auditor-General has also launched an investigation.

Department management has also been shuffled amid the GPHIN controversy. The president of the Public Health Agency stepped down in September, and was replaced by the head of the National Research Council, while the government appointed a new vice-president to oversee GPHIN.

Source: PMO scrambled to contain controversy over pandemic early-warning system, internal e-mails show

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Dual citizenship: Zelensky enacts NSDC decision on threats to national security

2021/03/06 Leave a comment

Aimed at Russian citizenship, will likely impact some Ukrainian Canadians:
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has put into effect the National Security and Defense Council’s decision to counter threats to national security in the field of citizenship, the President’s Office has reported.

“President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky signed decree No. 85/2021, which puts into effect the National Security and Defense Council decision of February 26, 2021 ‘On urgent measures to counter threats to national security in the field of citizenship’,” the document reads.

According to the NSDC decision, the Cabinet of Ministers, together with the Central Election Commission and the Security Service of Ukraine, must conduct an inventory and analyze Ukrainian legislation on issues related to dual (multiple) citizenship within two months.

In particular, it is necessary to establish the presence or absence of legal certainty of the prohibition of citizens of Ukraine, who have the citizenship of a foreign state, to hold certain state and political positions or to perform the functions of state or local self-government.

Based on the results of such an analysis, the government must submit to the Verkhovna Rada within six months the draft laws that would prohibit Ukrainian citizens, who have the citizenship of a foreign state or have submitted documents (undergoing the procedure) for acquiring foreign citizenship, to apply for performing state or local government functions, to apply for holding senior positions at strategic state-owned facilities, to have access to state secrets, to be a member of an election commission, an official observer or to conduct election campaigning in national and local elections, and to be a member of a political party.

“It is also necessary to develop and submit to parliament a procedure for confirming the refusal and renunciation of the citizenship of a foreign state for citizens of Ukraine who apply for the above positions,” the statement said.

In addition, a procedure should be introduced at the legislative level for citizens of Ukraine to submit declarations on the acquisition of foreign citizenship. This procedure will be put into effect for residents of the temporarily occupied territories of Donetsk, Luhansk regions and Crimea only after the restoration of the territorial integrity of Ukraine.

Liability must be established for the submission of inaccurate information in declarations about the absence of foreign citizenship.

According to the NSDC decision, the government should also start an interstate dialogue on concluding bilateral agreements with interested states, except for the aggressor state, aimed at resolving issues related to dual (multiple) citizenship.

Source: Dual citizenship: Zelensky enacts NSDC decision on threats to national security

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Women at risk of long-term work disruption as pandemic alters jobs market, RBC warns [also visible minorities and immigrants]

2021/03/05 Leave a comment

More on the “she-cession” and “imm-cession:”

Women in Canada are at risk of prolonged unemployment as the COVID-19 pandemic accelerates structural changes to the job market, RBC Economics warned Thursday.

The health crisis has dealt uneven blows to the labour market – and often, to the greater detriment of women. There’s been a substantial increase in the number of women who are jobless for six-plus months, while many have dropped out of the labour force entirely.

At the same time, the pandemic is forcing many companies to adopt new technologies sooner than planned, while some consumer spending habits may have shifted permanently, the RBC report said. That could spell trouble for jobs at risk of automation, and in particular, for the women who staff the service industries most affected by health restrictions.

“As we reopen, the economy is changing,” Dawn Desjardins, deputy chief economist at Royal Bank of Canada and one of the report’s authors, said in an interview. “We need all hands on deck … in trying to get people re-engaged” in the labour market.

Using data from Statistics Canada, RBC pointed to a handful of indicators where women are lagging, and where the recovery process could prove challenging.

For instance, employment for women earning less than $800 weekly was down nearly 30 per cent from February, 2020, while for men it fell 24 per cent. Women have also sustained roughly two-thirds of the job losses in the struggling hospitality sector.

As well, nearly 100,000 women aged 20-plus have dropped out of the labour force – meaning they aren’t working or searching for a job – while fewer than 10,000 men have done so. Young and racialized women, female immigrants and mothers are among those who have suffered outsized work disruptions.

“The longer these women are out of the labour force, the greater the risk of skills erosion, which could potentially hamper their ability to get rehired or to transition to different roles as the economy evolves,” the report said.

Ms. Desjardins and economist Carrie Freestone wrote that accessible and targeted training is needed to help displaced workers, and that digital skills are crucial.

Such efforts could be unveiled in the federal government’s spring budget. Ottawa has said it will spend up to $100-billion over three years in fiscal stimulus, to help with the recovery process. And in a mandate letter sent to Employment Minister Carla Qualtrough in January, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called for “the largest investment in Canadian history in training for workers.”

Much like RBC, the Bank of Canada has flagged concerns over structural changes to the job market. In a recent speech, Governor Tiff Macklem said automation helps companies become more productive and creates new work opportunities. But the pandemic has sped up the transformation, and that comes with collateral damage.

“Some of the jobs that have been lost during the pandemic will not return,” Mr. Macklem said. “Many low-wage jobs have a high potential of being automated. And some jobs that are disproportionally held by women and youth, such as retail salesperson and cashier, are also the kinds of jobs where the pandemic has accelerated structural change.”

The RBC report also called for “more options” in affordable child care. “But it’s no solution if [low-earning mothers] don’t have jobs to return to.”

Ultimately, Ms. Desjardins said Canada should be working toward women participating in the labour force at the same rates as men. It’s a gap that predates the pandemic, but if closed would result in a much larger and dynamic economy.

“The idea of women participating at the same level as men in the labour market, and what that can add to our economy – it just makes that pie bigger,” she said.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-women-at-risk-of-prolonged-unemployment-rbc-warns/

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USA: Immigration Bill Shows Need To End Employment-Based Immigrant Backlog

2021/03/05 Leave a comment

Good backgrounder:

Without a change in immigration law, it will be sometime in the year 2216—195 years from now—when the last person born in India waiting today in the employment-based immigrant backlog is expected to receive a green card. Barring advances in human longevity, businesses and high-skilled foreign nationals must rely on Congress to solve this problem and enact reasonable policies to welcome highly skilled people who want to become Americans.

The Scope of the Problem: H-1B and L-1 (intracompany transferee) are temporary statuses, meaning if someone wishes to remain in the United States, they must obtain an employment-based immigrant visa (or green card) that grants permanent residence. However, there is far greater demand for high-skilled individuals than the limited number of employment-based green cards allotted by Congress.

Since 1990, when Congress set the annual limit on employment-based immigrants at 140,000 (and 65,000 H-1B temporary visas), changes in technology have accelerated the demand for high-skilled technical labor. Congress established the current employment-based limits before the internet became a part of daily life. It also predates the iPhone, the iPad, YouTube, e-commerce, Netflix, Google, cloud computing and thousands of innovative companies and technologies that have come into existence and fueled the demand for high-skilled labor.

U.S. businesses would still need more scientists and engineers to grow and innovate even if the number of Americans earning degrees in science and engineering had exploded—and it hasn’t.

Between 1995 and 2015, full-time U.S. graduate students in electrical engineering decreased by 17%. The number of full-time U.S. graduate students in computer science increased by 45% from 1995 to 2015, while international graduate students increased by over 480%. (H-1B visa fees paid by employers have funded approximately 100,000 college scholarships for U.S. students in science and engineering.)

As of March 2020, the backlog in EB-1, EB-2 and EB-3—the employment-based first, second and third preferences—was 915,497, according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS).

Without Congressional action, notes CRS, the problem will grow worse: “The total backlog for all three categories would increase from an estimated 915,497 individuals currently to an estimated 2,195,795 individuals by FY 2030.”

Let that number sink in: Within a decade, more than 2 million people will be waiting in line, most for many years or even decades, for employment-based green cards. And there are indications this underestimates the problem.

Table 1 shows that in FY 2018 only about 4,500 Indians obtained permanent residence in the employment-based second preference and fewer than 6,000 received green cards in the employment-based third preference. (The National Foundation for American Policy obtained the data via a Freedom of Information Act request.)

CRS estimates the annual demand for employment-based green cards in the three preference categories is 262,376 (including dependents). This is based on petitions U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) approved in FY 2018. CRS explains the backlog grew because there is a “current limit of 120,120 green cards for the three employment-based immigration categories.”

Another problem is that Congress established a per-country limit of 7% for each country that burdens mainly potential employment-based immigrants from India but also affects people born in China and the Philippines. The law, in effect, gives the same number of green cards for employment to India as it does Iceland.

In the employment-based second preference (EB-2): “Under current law, and owing to a limited number of green card issuances, the current backlog of 568,414 Indian nationals would require an estimated 195 years to disappear,” according to CRS. David Bier of the Cato Institute predicts “about 186,038 Indian immigrants will die . . . before they receive green cards even if they could remain in line forever.”

“By FY 2030, [the] estimated wait time would more than double,” according to CRS. “Under S. 386, the estimated wait time for newly approved EB-2 petition holders would shrink to 17 years, and in FY 2030, the wait time would be 37 years, the same as for all other foreign nationals.”

S. 386 was a bill in the last Congress sponsored by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) that would have eliminated the per-country limit for employment-based immigrants. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) wrote H.R. 1044 with Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) and it passed the House in July 2019. The companion bill, S. 386, was blocked in the Senate for more than a year. It became a Christmas tree for extraneous immigration provisions. The Senate finally approved S. 386 near the end of the session but the House found the provisions to be objectionable and it did not become law. The bill would not have increased the number of employment-based green cards but would have reduced the wait times for those waiting the longest for permanent residence, particularly professionals from India.

Without any change in the law, CRS predicts: “Currently, new Indian beneficiaries entering the EB-3 [employment-based third preference] backlog can expect to wait 27 years before receiving a green card.” (The wait time would be much longer in the EB-2 category.)

Scientists and engineers waiting for their green cards may see their children who have lived in the United States for years be forced to leave the country when they “age out” of their place on a mother or father’s immigration application when reaching 21 years old. USCIS policies during the Trump administration caused many spouses of H-1B visa holders waiting for green cards to lose their work authorization due to long processing delays.

New Immigration Bill Would End the Employment-Based Backlog: The U.S. Citizenship Act, developed by the Biden administration, would eliminate the employment-based backlog within 10 years through various provisions, according to a National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) analysis.

First, the bill would no longer count spouses and children toward the annual limit, which would approximately double the annual number of employment-based green cards. Second, the legislation increases the annual limit for family-sponsored immigrants and allows unused numbers from the family categories to be used by the employment categories. That means once the family backlog is eliminated, which NFAP predicts could happen within 5 or 6 years, backlog reduction in the employment-based categories would accelerate.

Third, the bill eliminates the per-country limit. Fourth, the legislation allows unused green cards from earlier years to be redirected to reduce family and employment backlogs.

The bill also contains a provision, which NFAP has recommended, to allow any individuals who wait at least 10 years with an approved immigrant petition to receive permanent residence without numerical limit. If Congress passed only this reform, it would help many people and bring certainty to otherwise interminable waits for many employment-based immigrants.

Related to the backlog, in its final days, the Trump administration published a final rule designed to price employment-based immigrants and H-1B visa holders out of the U.S. labor market. The regulation would boost required wages 23% to 41% depending on the occupation, according to an NFAP study. The regulation could block people waiting for green cards if the new required salary is too high for an employer to retain them in H-1B status. (Individuals can be extended in H-1B status while waiting for an employment-based green card.)

If the Biden administration keeps the rule, it would be a significant victory for former White House adviser Stephen Miller and opponents of immigration.

Numerous studies and private wage surveys show that there is no evidence high-skilled foreign nationals are paid less than comparable U.S. professionals. If employers were forced to pay high-skilled immigrants 41% more than comparable U.S. workers, one would expect critics would still claim the immigrants were paid less because that is typically the only argument put forward against high-skilled foreign nationals who work in America. Members of Congress are repeatedly told to believe the only value someone born in another country offers a U.S. business or the U.S. economy is a willingness to work for less money.

If we have learned one thing from the pandemic, it is how valuable immigrants are to America. Immigrants play key roles in the two companies responsible for the Covid-19 vaccines Americans are receiving to protect their lives. Moderna’s leaders, two cofounders and critical scientific personnel are immigrants, as are the chief executive (and chief science officer) of Pfizer and a key scientist (Katalin Karikó) who made a crucial breakthrough on messenger RNA,” as noted in a December 2020 article. Even the founders of Pfizer were immigrants.

“We have blown the opportunity to maximize the incredible high-skilled immigrants in this country,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) at a recent hearing. “The backlog of green cards is immoral to me.” Will this be the year moral outrage and economic sense lead to a solution for employment-based immigrants?

Source: Immigration Bill Shows Need To End Employment-Based Immigrant Backlog

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Canada kept doors open to temporary foreign workers during 2020’s pandemic lockdown, new numbers reveal

2021/03/05 Leave a comment

The project that Dan Hiebert, Howard Ramos and I have been working on:

Despite its pandemic lockdown, Canada managed to keep its doors open to temporary foreign workers last year, new numbers reveal.

Amid travel restrictions and vastly reduced immigration, 322,815 people were issued a work permit under various temporary foreign worker programs, according to a joint project that tracks the pandemic’s impacts on Canadian immigration. 

Although that represents a drop of 10 per cent from the year before, temporary foreign workers appear to have been substantially less interrupted by COVID-19 than those in other streams of immigration to this country.

Here are some of the highlights:

  • The number of permanent residents admitted to Canada last year nosedived by 45.7 per cent, to just 185,130, from 2019;
  • The number of study permit holders also dropped by 33 per cent to 277,720, with the enrolment in primary and secondary schools down 32.3 per cent and in post-secondary education down almost 32 per cent. Those in language programs fell by 54 per cent; and
  • A total of 23,845 people sought asylum in Canada, compared to 64,045 in 2019. Claims made at airports and land borders dropped by 77 per cent and 72 per cent, respectively, due primarily to border closures. 

“Canada has been pretty dedicated to bringing in the people that it needs on a temporary work side,” said University of British Columbia professor Daniel Hiebert, a co-founder of the COVID research project. “There’s a Canadian interest story to be told.”

According to the immigration data, 215,080 work permit holders were admitted under “Canadian interests,” which include athletes, scholars, those in culture and entertainment, youth in international exchange programs and international students who graduated from a designated Canadian college or university. The group fell by just eight per cent from 233,430.

Migrant farm workers made up the second largest group, accounting for 54,145 of the work permit holders, representing a 6.1 per cent decline from 2019.

Those temporary foreign workers who required a labour market assessment to prove they’re not taking a job from a Canadian dropped by almost 13 per cent to 30,890 from 35,365 in 2019.

The biggest losers were foreign caregivers and foreign workers under trades agreements such as intra-company transferees, down by 49 per cent and 31 per cent respectively.

Andrew Griffith, another co-founder of the COVID and Immigration research project, said it makes sense for Ottawa to prioritize processing temporary residents such as migrant workers and international students, who are of Canada’s short-term economic interest and a crucial group in the country’s permanent resident pipeline.

Just in February, with the border still closed to prospective immigrants overseas, Ottawa invited a record 27,332 people to apply for permanent residence, and 90 per cent of the invitees are already living in Canada, with at least one year of Canadian work experience. 

With the immigration shortfall in 2020, Ottawa plans to welcome more than 1.2 million permanent residents over the next three years.

“I’m worried about the impact of COVID on those already in Canada,” said Griffith, a former director general at the immigration department. “Is it fair and ethical to encourage a large number of immigrants at a time when their economic prospects are not that great?” 

The immigration data also showed the number of permanent resident applications plummeted in 2020 by a whopping 54.6 per cent to 186,000 from 409,500 in 2019.

Applications from the Americas fell by 64 per cent, followed by those from Europe (57 per cent), Asia (56 per cent), Africa and Oceania (both at 46 per cent).

“Everywhere around the world people are hunkering down a little bit more, just thinking, ‘Why do I want to move thousands of kilometres away during a crisis?’ What’s on people’s minds is, ‘Who’s going to let me in as an immigrant now anyway?’” said Hiebert.

“There’s a sense that this isn’t the right time to try to get into another country. People are just being realistic.”

While it’s hard to predict how global migration will transform as the world digs itself out of the pandemic, Western University professor Howard Ramos said the notion of emigration out of the traditional source countries such as China, India and the Philippines in 2021 and going forward is different than before COVID-19.

“In any of those countries, they are now wrestling for the first time an aging population and potentially shrinking populations as a result of lower child births. The level of development is higher and people are more urban and have more education and affluence at home. The appeal to going abroad is not as it once was,” said Ramos, who works with Hiebert and Griffith on the COVID immigration tracking project.

“North America and Europe look very different than what they once did before the pandemic, as you see some of the chaos experienced with the rollout of the vaccines or when you look at public attitudes. We’ve seen an ugly turn in Canada with anti-Asian hate crime that certainly gives a different lens of Canada as a welcoming country.”

Permanent residents eager to become Canadian citizens were another group that suffered during the pandemic. Only 108,159 immigrants were granted citizenship in 2020, down by 56.8 per cent from 250,083 the year before as officials struggled to transition to offer virtual citizenship tests and oath-taking ceremonies.

While the research project has so far been operating more in a record-keeping mode, Griffith said the data will provide a better sense of the Canadian government’s immigration policy responses to the pandemic and their impact down the road.

“In the end, the interesting question is not just what happened, but why it happened. Did the policy responses have an impact? Was it good impact, bad impact? Was there something that needs to be done differently with hindsight?” Griffith asked.

“Those are the deeper questions, but it’s too early to answer them. This has been the year that the world has gone to hell. Hopefully, starting sometime in late summer we’re getting out of that hole.”

Source: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2021/03/03/canada-kept-doors-open-to-temporary-foreign-workers-during-2020s-pandemic-lockdown-new-numbers-reveal.html

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