China fights back with sanctions on academics, institute

2021/03/29 Leave a comment

No surprise. Pleased that we were able to pressure steering committee members of International Metropolis to abandon holding their 2020 conference in Beijing:

The imposition of tit-for-tat sanctions on researchers by China after the European Union imposed bans on Chinese officials, has ratcheted up pressure on academics, particularly those whose research involves topics deemed sensitive to China.

Experts said the sanctions further narrow the space for China research and increase fears in the academic community that China could target more overseas academics in future because of their China-linked work. 

On Friday China announced sanctions against four organisations and nine individuals in the UK, mainly parliamentarians but also including Joanne Smith Finley, a reader in Chinese studies at Newcastle University, for what the Chinese foreign ministry called “maliciously spreading lies and information” about Xinjiang.

Smith Finley said on Friday: “It seems I am to be sanctioned by the PRC [People’s Republic of China] government for speaking the truth about the Uyghur tragedy in Xinjiang, and for having a conscience. Well so be it. I have no regrets for speaking out and I will not be silenced.”

Newcastle University said in a statement: “Academic freedom underpins every area of research at Newcastle University and is essential to the principles of UK higher education. Dr Jo Smith Finley has been a leading voice in this important area of research on the Uyghurs and we fully support her in this work.”

Andreas Fulda, associate professor at the University of Nottingham in the UK and an expert in Europe-China relations, said via Twitter that “this uncalled-for escalation by the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] means that there cannot be ‘business as usual’ for British academia. We need to start a vigorous debate about how to deal with the CCP’s political censorship. Self-censorship is not an option.”

This latest announcement came three days after China named two researchers – Adrian Zenz, a German expert on Xinjiang who is currently senior fellow in China studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in the United States, who has been targeted by China recently; and Björn Jerdén, director of the Swedish National China Centre at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs in Stockholm – as well as an entire institution, the Berlin-based Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS), as being barred, along with their families, from visiting China, Hong Kong and Macao, it was announced on Tuesday.

MERICS is one of Europe’s biggest China research institutions with over 30 scholars and specialists on China affairs turning out major reports.  

“They and companies and institutions associated with them are also restricted from doing business with China,” China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. 

The ban comes as the EU on 21 March imposed its first sanctions on China since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, imposing travel bans and asset freezes against four Chinese officials and one organisation over the mass persecution of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. In coordinated action, the United Kingdom and Canada this week also announced sanctions on Xinjiang officials.

China’s official Global Times newspaper claimed Jerdén “fabricated rumours about Confucius Institutes describing them as China’s ‘brainwashing’ tools and ‘espionage’ institutions”. 

Jerdén has firmly rejected “the sweeping and groundless charges” that he had been spreading ‘lies and disinformation’.

“China’s sanctions against scholars and thinktanks are unprecedented but not surprising,” Jerdén said via Twitter. The Chinese Communist Party “has made clear that it doesn’t tolerate independent research on China”.

Jerdén also alluded to the tightening space for China research, saying: “It has become difficult to do research about China without interference from the Chinese government. As China becomes more important around the world, this highlights the need for a strong and independent China research community in Europe.”

“It is completely unacceptable that China imposes sanctions on academics who conduct free and open research,” said Marie Söderberg, chairperson of the board of the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, where Jerdén works, in a statement issued on Tuesday. Sweden’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Ann Linde also denounced the ban on researchers. 

Targeting of a research institute

Global Times claimed MERICS “has actually been colluding with anti-China forces over the years since it was established in 2013”. 

MERICS said in a statement on Monday that “MERICS very much regrets this decision and rejects the allegations”. 

“As an independent research institute, we are dedicated to fostering a better and more differentiated understanding of China. We will continue to pursue this mission by presenting fact-based analysis, also with the aim of creating opportunities for exchanges and dialogue – even in difficult times,” it said.

But academics note that the sanctions went beyond tit-for-tat action. In a separate editorial on 23 March, Global Times said MERICS was sanctioned not simply because of its research but because “it is the largest Chinese research centre in entire Europe. Cutting off ties with China means its research channel will hardly be sustainable and its influence will be critically hit.”

Sheena Greitens, associate professor and expert on East Asia at the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin in the United States, said that in the past the party state used “uncertainty” to get people to self-police. Beijing “is now making parameters much more clear” with its statement that it wants to cut off MERIC’s research pipeline, she said. 

“Repression tactics against China scholars used to be ‘rare but real’. They are increasingly not rare,” said Greitens. 

The blanket targeting of an entire research institute is “something entirely new”, said Thorsten Benner, director of the Global Public Policy Institute, a think tank in Berlin, Germany. He said the move was designed to intimidate other China scholars in the West into reining in criticism of the Communist Party.

Rory Truex, assistant professor at Princeton University in the US and an expert on authoritarianism and repression in China, said: “This does constitute a real shift in rhetoric and has implications for China studies. The [Communist] Party is now making it explicit that if you study the wrong thing, you will face consequences.”

Directors of a range of major European research institutes and China studies centres at universities said in a statement this week: “We are deeply concerned that targeting independent researchers and civil society institutions undermines practical and constructive engagement by people who are striving to contribute positively to policy debates. This will be damaging not only for our ability to provide well-informed analysis but also for relations more broadly between China and Europe in the future.

“We believe that mutual dialogue is crucial, especially at difficult times, and deeply regret the inclusion of academic researchers and civil society institutions in the current tensions. We will stand by our colleagues who have been targeted this way.”

China’s sanctions, announced on 22 March, also included European parliamentarians pushing for action on the rights of the Uyghur Turkic minority in Xinjiang, as well as those pushing for changes in China’s policy on Taiwan which it claims as a Chinese province, and rights agencies and organisations which the Chinese government considers to have been “interfering in China’s internal affairs for a long time.”

China also sanctioned the Political and Security Committee of the European Council, the Subcommittee on Human Rights of the European Parliament and the Alliance of Democracies Foundation in Denmark.

Source: https://www.universityworldnews.com/post-nl.php?story=20210325144041486

Filed under foreign policy Tagged with , ,

Why Pandemics Give Birth To Hate: From Bubonic Plague To COVID-19

2021/03/29 Leave a comment

Useful historical reminder:

The pandemic has been responsible for an outbreak of violence and hate directed against Asians around the world, blaming them for the spread of COVID-19. During this surge in attacks, the perpetrators have made their motives clear, taunting their victims with declarations like, “You have the Chinese Virus, go back to China!” and assaulting them and spitting on them.

The numbers over the past year in the U.S. alone are alarming. As NPR has reported, nearly 3,800 instances of discrimination against Asians have been reported just in the past year to Stop AAPI Hate, a coalition that tracks incidents of violence and harassment against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the U.S.

Then came mass shooting in Atlanta last week, which took the lives of eight people, including six women of Asian descent. The shooter’s motive has not been determined, but the incident has spawned a deeper discourse on racism and violence targeting Asians in the wake of the coronavirus.

This narrative – that “others,” often from far-flung places, are to blame for epidemics – is a dramatic example of a long tradition of hatred. In 14th-century Europe, Jewish communities were wrongfully accused of poisoning wells to spread the Black Death. In 1900, Chinese people were unfairly vilified for an outbreak of the plague in San Francisco’s Chinatown. And in the ’80s, Haitians were blamed for bringing HIV/AIDS to the U.S., a theory that’s considered unsubstantiated by many global health experts.

Some public health practitioners say the global health system is partially responsible for perpetuating these ideas.

According to Abraar Karan, a doctor at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, the notion persists in global health that “the West is the best.” This led to an assumption early on in the pandemic that COVID-19 spread to the rest of the world because China wasn’t able to control it.

“The other side of that assumption is, ‘Had this started anywhere else, like in the U.S. or the U.K. or Europe, somehow it would’ve been better controlled, and a pandemic wouldn’t have happened,'” says Karan, who was born in India and raised in the U.S. He has been working closely with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health to respond to COVID-19.

China’s response was not without fault. The government’s decision to silence doctors and not warn the public about a likely pandemic for six days in mid-January caused more than 3,000 people to become infected within a week, according to a report by the Associated Press, and created ripe conditions for global spread. Some of the aggressive measures China took to control the epidemic – confining people to their homes, for example — have been described as “draconian” and a violation of civil rights, even if they ultimately proved effective.

But it soon became clear that assumptions about the superiority of Western health systems were false when China and other Asian countries, along with many African countries, controlled outbreaks far more effectively and faster than Western countries did, says Karan.

The Twitter Blame Game And Its Repercussions

Some politicians, including former President Donald Trump publicly blamed China for the pandemic, calling this novel coronavirus the “Chinese Virus” or the “Wuhan Virus.” They consistently pushed that narrative even after the World Health Organization (WHO) warned as early as March 2020, when the pandemic was declared, that such language would encourage racial profiling and stigmatization against Asians. Trump has continued to use stigmatizing language in the wake of the Atlanta shooting, using the phrase “China virus” during a March 16 call to Fox News.

A report by researchers at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF), released this month, directly linked Trump’s first tweet about a “Chinese virus” to a significant increase in anti-Asian hashtags. According to a separate report by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, anti-Asian hate crimes in 16 U.S. cities increased 149 percent in 2020, from 49 to 122.

“Diseases have often been racialized in the past as a form of scapegoating,” says Yulin Hswen, an assistant professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at UCSF and lead author of the study on Trump’s tweet. Sometimes, it’s to distract from other events that are occurring within a society, such as the early failures of the U.S. response to the pandemic, says Hswen.

Suspicion tends to manifest more during times of vulnerability, like in wartime or during a pandemic, says ElsaMarie D’Silva, an Aspen Institute New Voices fellow from India who studies violence and harassment issues. It just so happened that COVID-19 was originally identified in China, but, as NPR’s Jason Beaubien has reported, some of the early clusters of cases elsewhere came from jet setters who traveled to Europe and ski destinations.

“What you’re seeing in the U.S. is this pre-existing, deep-seated bias [against Asians and Asian Americans] – or rather, racism – that is now surfacing,” says D’Silva. “COVID-19 is just an excuse.”

A Racist History In Global Health

For Karan, though, the problem lies deeper — with the colonialist history of global health systems.

“It’s not that the biases are necessarily birthed from global health researchers,” he says. “It’s more that global health researchers are birthed from institutions and cultures that are inherently xenophobic and racist.”

For example, the West is usually regarded as the hub of expertise and knowledge, says Sriram Shamasunder, an associate professor of medicine at UCSF, and there’s a sense among Western health workers that epidemics occur in impoverished contexts because the people there engage in primitive behaviors and just don’t care as much about health.

“[Western health workers] come in with a bias that in San Francisco or Boston, we would never let [these crises] happen,” says Shamasunder, who is co-founder and faculty director of the HEAL Initiative, a global health fellowship that works in Navajo Nation in the U.S. and in eight other countries.

In the early days of COVID-19, skepticism by Western public health officials about the efficacy of Asian mask protocols hindered the U.S.’s ability to control the pandemic. Additionally, stereotypes about who was and wasn’t at risk had significant consequences, says Nancy Kass, deputy director for public health at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics.

According to Kass, doctors initially only considered a possible COVID-19 diagnosis among people who had recently flown back from China. That narrow focus caused the U.S. to misdiagnose patients who presented with what we now call classic COVID symptoms simply because they hadn’t traveled from China.

“Inadvertently, we [did] a disservice both to patients who need[ed] care and to public health,” says Kass.

It’s reminiscent of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, Kass says. Because itwas so widely billed as a “gay disease,” there are many documented cases of heterosexual women who presented with symptoms but weren’t diagnosed until they were on their deathbeds.

That’s not to say that we should ignore facts and patterns about new diseases. For example, Kass says it’s appropriate to warn pregnant women about the risks of traveling to countries where the Zika virus, which is linked to birth and developmental defects, is present.

But there’s a difference, she says, between making sure people have enough information to understand a disease and attaching a label, like “Chinese virus,” that is inaccurate and that leads to stereotyping.

Karan says we also need to shift our approach to epidemics. In the case of COVID-19 and other outbreaks, Western countries often think of them as a national security issue, closing borders and blaming the countries where the disease was first reported. This approach encourages stigmatization, he says.

Instead, Karan suggests reframing the discussion to focus on global solidarity, which promotes the idea that we are all in this together. One way for wealthy countries to demonstrate solidarity now, Karan says, is by supporting the equitable and speedy distribution of vaccines among countries globally as well as among communities within their own borders.

Without such commitments in place, “it prompts the question, whose lives matter most?” says Shamasunder.

Ultimately, the global health community – and Western society as a whole – has to discard its deep-rooted mindset of coloniality and tendency to scapegoat others, says Hswen. The public health community can start by talking more about the historic racism and atrocities that have been tied to diseases.

Additionally, Karan says, leaders should reframe the pandemic for people: Instead of blaming Asians for the virus, blame the systems that weren’t adequately prepared to respond to a pandemic.

Although WHO has had specific guidance since 2015 about not naming diseases after places, Hswen says the public health community at large should have spoken out earlier and stronger last year against racialized language and the ensuing violence. She says they should have anticipated the backlash against Asians and preempted it with public messaging and education about why neutral terms like “COVID-19” should be used instead of “Chinese virus.”

“Public health people know there is a history of racializing diseases and targeting particular groups,” says Hswen. “They could have done more to defend the Asian community.”

Source: Why Pandemics Give Birth To Hate: From Bubonic Plague To COVID-19

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Tackling racism against Asian-Canadians as multiculturalism turns 50

2021/03/29 Leave a comment

Legitimate concerns among Asian Canadians. Just as there are legitimate concerns among Black Canadians, Muslim Canadians, Jewish Canadians etc. My bias is for more programming that crosses all groups as the default, with any community-specific programming aimed at addressing issues that are truly unique to the particular community, as I think that the commonalities of racist behaviour are greater than the differences:

Fifty years ago, Canada became the first country to adopt multiculturalism as an official policy. Multiculturalism seeks to preserve the distinctiveness of individuals and cultures while recognizing that diverse ethnic groups can co-exist and contribute to the Canadian society. Over the last five decades, the policy has evolved from an ideal laid out in a policy document to a quintessential aspect of Canadian national identity. Not only is diversity our strength, we have come to celebrate our diversity and uniqueness – the mix of respect, humility and openness that define Canada’s image on the global stage stems from who we are at home. The diversity it promotes and helps institutionalize makes our country stronger.

Reflecting upon my own experience growing up in Toronto, multiculturalism was a fact of life. I arrived in Canada as a young girl from South Korea who barely spoke English. In Toronto, where over 180 languages are spoken every day, I was proud of my Asian heritage and it was absolutely normal for me and my student peers to celebrate the Lunar New Year, Diwali, Nowruz, Hanukkah, Christmas and Eid, and to try different cuisines packed by our mothers at lunchtime. My experience of growing up in Toronto – and later studying and teaching Canadian history at the University of Toronto – was largely inspired by curiosity and the conviction that every one of us has a role to play in shaping the Canadian society.

Much has changed since the COVID-19 pandemic began. I have recently returned to Canada after a few years of working and living in Italy. In the past year alone in Ottawa, I can recall about a dozen racist incidents where I was either yelled at, denied service, or verbally harassed. Despite working as a human rights advocate for the past decade, I found myself completely helpless when an angry stranger at the grocery store suddenly told me to get out, yelling “Go back to China.” In each instance, I was alone and often feared for my safety and rushed back home.

Sadly, studies show that my experience is not an isolated case – there has been a rise of anti-Asian racism and violence since the outbreak of COVID-19, with young Asian women being disproportionately targeted, particularly in Ontario and British Columbia. In Vancouver, for instance, hate incidents targeting East Asians increased sevenfold between 2019 and 2020. A recent study by the Chinese Canadian National Council’s Toronto chapter revealed more than 1,000 cases of racism against Asian-Canadians since the COVID-19 outbreak, and the actual numbers are likely higher considering that in East Asian culture, it is considered more appropriate to brush off these negative incidents rather than speak up.

The recent attacks in Atlanta, as well as various reports of physical, verbal and online attacks against Asians in Canada since the pandemic began, all point to a troubling reality of ignorance and hatred. These attacks are taking place in grocery stores, sidewalks, parks and restaurants in daylight, with bystanders behind their masks and perpetrators walking away unpunished, leaving victims with deep psychological and physical wounds. Many of the recent attacks targeted frontline workers such as nurses, transit operators, and small business owners, many of whom have risked their own lives and safety to serve Canadians during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Canada, despite our celebrated history of multiculturalism, is clearly not immune to anti-Asian sentiment or the prejudiced misconception that Asia – or China – bears responsibility for the spread of COVID-19. Neither Donald Trump’s “China virus” reference nor general discontent with the Chinese government’s current policy stance justifies such harassment or the racist comments that Asian-Canadians face today. Canadians should know better. We have never been perfect, which is why we vowed to never forget painful incidents in our history like the Chinese Head Tax, the turning away of the Komagata Maru, the internment of Japanese-Canadians during the Second World War, and even post-SARS racism.

Tackling anti-Asian racism is not just a moral issue. It is also in Canada’s interest to recognize the important contributions Asian-Canadians have made to our economy. The largest source of immigration – the lifeblood of Canada’s economy – now comes from Asia, and Canadians with Asian heritage comprise the largest and fastest-growing ethnic minority group in Canada, at about 6 million. These are hard-working Canadians who have made enormous contributions to Canada and who will play crucial roles in our recovery post-COVID.

Asia is also the biggest source of international students in Canada – over 50 per cent of all international students come from India and China, followed by South Korea and Vietnam. In 2018, international students in Canada contributed an estimated $21.6 billion to Canada’s GDP and supported almost 170,000 jobs for Canada’s middle class, according to Global Affairs Canada. These are our neighbours, friends and colleagues who are facing threats, abuses and even violent attacks, simply because of the colour of their skin. An attack on one of them is an attack on fundamental Canadian values that took years of hard work by millions of Canadians to build a society of respect and inclusion.

As we reflect upon this important 50th anniversary of the advent of official multiculturalism, we must therefore face, head-on, the rising discrimination against Asian-Canadians. There are several concrete measures that can be undertaken immediately to confront the situation and renew our commitment to diversity and inclusion:

  • The Senate and House of Commons should strike a joint parliamentary task force to conduct a comprehensive examination of the current state of harassment and racism against Asian-Canadians and recommend legislative and policy measures. The task force should make diligent efforts to consult with provincial and municipal representatives in Ontario and British Columbia as well as key civil society organizations and community representatives to provide concrete recommendations.
  • The Department of Justice should sponsor a wide consultation with provincial and territorial attorneys general on possible amendments to section 718.2 of the Criminal Code with respect to sentencing for hate-inspired crimes to better define hate based on race. There is a serious lack of legislative and judicial guidance on how much impact hate motivation should have on the quantum of a sentence.
  • Private-sector actors such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google, as well as major media outlets in Canada should take initiative for a coherent public awareness campaign on the history of Asian-Canadians, as well as underling the unacceptable incidents of harassment in recent months, in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of multiculturalism policy.
  • The federal government should provide a new funding package for the Federal Anti-Racism Secretariat to monitor discrimination against Asian-Canadians across the nation, promote preventive measures and a hotline for victims to report incidents, and report to Parliament by the end of this calendar year on progress.
  • The Department of Public Safety should prioritize the enforcement of anti-racism policy as a key aspect of our national security.
  • History education across provinces must be amended to shed light on the evolution of multiculturalism and include specific references to the contributions of Asian-Canadians, as well as negative incidents from the past, so that we may better educate our next generation of Canadians.

The continued expression of empathy and support from political, business and public institutional leaders in the wake of the massive ramp up of anti-Asian slurs, harassment and violence is welcome. But the true measure of Canada’s response to the surge in anti-Asian racism will depend on how quickly serious policy measures are undertaken at various levels of jurisdiction, to educate the public, punish the perpetrators and provide a solid source of support for those who are affected.

We must not allow recent incidents to become media headlines and produce another policy paper that will be forgotten in the next election cycle. As Sir Winston Churchill once said, “Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision.” Instead of being paralyzed by fear and paranoia, we must stand up in solidarity with our Asian-Canadian neighbours and friends, and systematically examine ways to break the cycle of hate and violence and invest our energy and resources for a better future.

The time for this kind of leadership has come. The costs of avoiding that leadership are, on so many levels, deeply problematic for the nation we love and the values that underlie the future of Canada.

Source: https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/march-2021/tackling-racism-against-asian-canadians-as-multiculturalism-turns-50/?mc_cid=78562fcf44&mc_eid=86cabdc518

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with ,

Nanny state? Hardly. Canada has left its foreign caregivers in a stalled system that’s derailing lives, critics say

2021/03/29 Leave a comment

Likely more than COVID slowdown at play:

The system that is supposed to help foreign nannies and care workers build a new life in Canada is, simply put, a hot mess.

That’s the conclusion of caregivers, their advocates and their lawyers, two years after reforms were brought in by the federal Liberal government.

Just how bad are things?

Until this past November, over an 18-month period, not a single work permit was issued under two new pilot programs. Meanwhile, there’s a backlog of at least 9,100 applications for permanent residence. That matches the kind of numbers that government saw back in 2017, when the processing time was known to be as long as five years.

Some say new data shows applications were moving at a snail’s pace even before the COVID-19 lockdowns reduced the immigration department’s processing capacity last year.

There’s more.

The system is ensnarled in six overlapping programs. Critics say the pathway for foreign caregivers is far from clear and secure, and that added language and higher education requirements may end up slowly phasing out what has been a unique immigration approach that set foreign caregivers apart from other temporary foreign workers.

“We’ve said time and again these changes were not going to work,” said Vilma Pagaduan, a longtime advocate for foreign caregivers in Toronto.

“Things were bad even before the pandemic.”

For decades, Canada has relied on foreign caregivers to look after our children and elderly.

To entice foreign workers to take up the jobs that few Canadians were willing to do, the Live-in Caregiver Program, which ran from 1992 to 2014, provided what’s called an automatic pathway to permanent residence, allowing them to pursue permanent status here in Canada in exchange for the work they put in and the sacrifices they made.

The scheme has gone through multiple changes since 2014. The former Conservative government eliminated requirements that workers live with their employers, but imposed new language and education standards as well as an annual cap on the number of caregivers who could take advantage of the program.

It also raised the employers’ application fee.

The fee was later removed by the Liberal government, which in 2019 introduced the two new pilot programs. The Liberals changed caregivers’ work permits so they could freely change jobs as long as they stayed in the caregiving occupation. The government also moved to grandfather those caregivers already in the system so they could pursue permanent residence in spite of the changing requirements.

Under the Conservatives’ and Liberals’ reforms, temporary foreign workers who were already in Canada but did not come here through the caregiver programs could also apply to the programs and access the pathway for permanent residence if their experience fit.

When the Liberals announced the changes in early 2019, they said they had reduced the backlog in processing caregiver permanent residence applications by 94 per cent and shortened the processing time to 12 months.

Immigration officials said the changes had been made after extensive consultation with the community.

“Caregivers provide a vital service for many families and, like any other worker in Canada, they deserve to be treated with respect and dignity,” said department spokesperson Rémi Larivière.

“We value their critical contributions, which is why we’re removing barriers and keeping families together by allowing their family members to work and study in Canada.”

But the latest numbers don’t show the success story for which many might have hoped.

Ottawa received a total of 13,230 permanent residence applications from foreign caregivers between January 2019 and November 2020, according to new data obtained by Vancouver immigration lawyer Steven Meurrens.

Only 4,140 were processed and the approval rate was 74 per cent.

And, among the applications received, 4,206 or 32 per cent came under the Liberals’ two new pilot programs. Officials processed only 279 — or less than seven per cent of them. Some 69 per cent of those were approved.

As of Nov. 27, the total number of permanent residence applications in the backlog stood at 9,094 applications — surpassing the 9,000 cases in the backlog in 2017.

The permanent residence backlog does not even include someone such as Merynold Magallanes, who came under the old Live-in Caregiver Program.

The Filipino woman was brought to Canada by an Oakville family of five in 2013 before any of the changes to the caregiver programs. She applied for her permanent residence three years later after fulfilling her two-year full-time live-in employment requirement.

She was refused in 2017 because of a consultant’s mix-up, and her divorce paper and police clearance certificate were missing from her application. She reapplied in 2018 but pulled out because she was told the elder of her two daughters was too old to be a dependant child and should be dropped from her application.

Magallanes then enlisted the help of a lawyer and submitted a third application in August 2019. Over the years, she’s kept renewing her work permit to maintain her status in Canada and keep her hope for permanent residence alive.

That decision has cost her years with her family.

“I have only visited my two daughters (now 23 and 24) once since I came to Canada in 2013 because I need to save all my money to support my family in the Philippines,” said Magallanes, who also provides for her widowed mother, her nieces and nephews, and occasionally her siblings.

“We work hard so our kids can have better opportunities here. Life is easy in Canada if you work hard. Back home, life is hard even if you work hard.”

Pagaduan, the advocate, said caregivers working in Canada suffer from prolonged family separation as they await the processing of their permanent residence applications.

The work itself is no picnic. Sometimes they have to put up with abusive work conditions due to their precarious immigration status.

The changes made to the caregiver scheme are confusing and the new requirements for post-secondary education and language tests have created additional hurdles and further bureaucracy, she noted. Furthermore, language test results, medical and police clearances do expire and have to be redone if applications are not processed in time.

“Applicants need to get their credentials assessed and must pass the English test. They have to keep renewing their work permits until they get permanent residence,” said Pagaduan. “All these cost money.”

Unlike the previous programs, the Liberals’ two pilots do offer the opportunity for caregivers to bring their dependants with them to Canada from the outset and mean that they are no longer restricted to working for one specific employer.

“These pilots make it easier for caregivers to quickly switch employers, provide open work or study permits for their immediate family members so that families can come to Canada together and create a clear transition from temporary to permanent status,” said Larivière, the department’s spokesperson.

“We will continue to work closely with the caregiver community to make further improvements to the system.”

However, Vancouver immigration lawyer Deanna Okun-Nachoff said that these improvements are meaningless if no foreign caregivers are getting their work permits to come to Canada under the new programs.

“The program has been there since June 2019,” said Okun-Nachoff, who helps a lot of caregivers in her legal practice.

“I have not seen one work permit approved and I have applied for many.”

According to the government data, the immigration department received 1,055 new work permit applications under the recent pilot programs in 2019 and 2020 (up to November). Only five were processed: four were withdrawn and one was refused.

Meanwhile, 4,234 work permits were issued to general temporary foreign workers who were listed as caregivers under their occupation code. These could be work permit holders who initially came as international students or were admitted in other occupations.

Given that the programs are a pathway to permanent residence, immigration officials said work permits under the current pilots can only be issued after permanent residence eligibility has been thoroughly assessed. Hence, the processing speed is compromised.

“As you know, global migration has been upended by the pandemic. Yet we’ve taken quick action and come a long way since the onset of the pandemic, while also managing lockdowns at processing offices within Canada,” Larivière said.

While the old live-in caregiver program took a long time for applicants to get permanent residence due to the overwhelming demand, Okun-Nachoff said it was the most straightforward scheme: one automatically qualified when the two-year live-in requirement was met. The permanent residence grant rate hovered above 90 per cent then.

Critics say the Conservatives’ program was flawed because caregiver work permit applicants were admitted without being assessed under the new education and language requirement they needed to become permanent residents. Hence, many only found out later that they couldn’t qualify for permanent residence.

While the Liberals’ changes were meant to address these problems, the new programs are “mind-bending” and muddied the whole caregiver scheme even further.

“People complained about the changes made by the previous government, but what we’re seeing is worse. Before they were able to come in, now we can’t even get them in (under the caregiver programs),” said Manuela Gruber Hersch, a co-founder of the Association of Caregivers and Nanny Agencies Canada.

“An aging population and lack of national child care are two of the greatest challenges of our government, so why are they not prioritizing the caregiver programs?”

The bottleneck in processing work permits for overseas caregivers could lead to caregiver shortages in Canada as in-Canada caregivers become permanent residents and seek other job opportunities, Hersch warned, and it would ultimately kill the designated caregiver program.

Last year, as a result of the pandemic, Canada saw the overall number of permanent residents admitted to the country nosedive by 45.7 per cent, to just 185,130, from 2019, far below its 340,000 target.

Last month, in anticipation of another potential shortfall, Ottawa invited 27,332 people in one draw to apply for permanent residence — five times more than its previous high of 5,000 — 90 per cent of the invitees were already living in Canada.

Francia Rafallo, who came to Canada in 2017 under the Conservatives’ caregiver programs, applied for permanent residence under the interim pathway in 2019 and has been waiting in queue since, so her husband and their two sons can join her here.

She says it’s an affront to the caregiver community that their immigration applications are not being prioritized even though the pandemic has shown caregivers are providing an essential service to Canadians.

“Canada has accepted a lot of other immigrants, approving international students and other workers. It is unfair that foreign caregivers are left behind,” said Rafallo. “We are taxpayers, too, and we are not treated equally and fairly. There’s been no improvement.”

York University professor Ethel Tungohan, who has researched extensively on labour migration, said it’s short-sighted for Ottawa not to prioritize caregiver applications — whether it’s for permanent residence or work permits — especially in the wake of the pandemic.

Many caregivers do become personal support workers and even nurses, she said.

Tungohan, who is the Canada Research Chair in Canadian Migration Policy, Impacts and Activism, has been part of multiple consultations under both the Conservatives and Liberals but said there’s always lip service paid to the value of care work.

“What this whole exercise is showing is that regardless of the government in power, care work remains undervalued. These changes that are put in are meant to improve the lives of caregivers. It’s sad that they are actually making it harder for them to come and get citizenship,” she said.

“All caregivers want is to be treated like other immigrants to Canada and be able to come and live with their families.”

Source: Nanny state? Hardly. Canada has left its foreign caregivers in a stalled system that’s derailing lives, critics say

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U.S. research shows race, age of jurors affects verdicts but Canada lacks data

2021/03/29 Leave a comment

Of note:

The race and age of jurors has a noticeable effect on trial verdicts, American studies indicate, but Canada has no data allowing similar research here.

Experts in Canada said it’s imperative to gather such demographic information to better understand systemic biases in the criminal justice system.

One 2012 study in Florida found all-white juries convicted Blacks at a rate 16 percentage points higher than whites. The gap disappeared when the jury pool included at least one Black member, the research found.

“The impact of the racial composition of the jury pool — and seated jury — is a factor that merits much more attention and analysis in order to ensure the fairness of the criminal justice system,” the study concludes.

Another U.S. study, in 2014, showed older jurors were significantly more likely to convict than younger ones:

“If a male defendant, completely by chance, faces a jury pool that has an average age above 50, he is about 13 percentage points more likely to be convicted than if he faces a jury pool with an average age less than 50.”

“These findings imply that many cases are decided differently for reasons that are completely independent of the true nature of the evidence,” it says.

Shamena Anwar, co-author of the papers, said in an interview this week that juries can be highly unrepresentative of their communities as a result of the selection process.

The research, which shows age of jurors and race play a substantial role in verdicts and convictions, indicates demographics “definitely” matter, Anwar said.

As a result, collecting the data was important in understanding that role, said Anwar, an economist who studies criminal justice and racial disparities at the non-profit Rand Corporation.

“If you don’t collect it — you don’t have access to the problem,” Anwar said. “This work shows you that (jury demographics) can have a big impact on (trial) outcomes.”

However, a survey by The Canadian Press found provinces and territories collect almost no demographic data of jurors, despite concerns about systemic bias and government promises to address it.

The absence of information makes it all but impossible to discern whether juries reflect the makeup of the community, experts said.

Colton Fehr, an assistant criminology professor at Simon Fraser University, said bias can infiltrate a trial in many ways, but the lack of data makes it difficult to track and study.

“I’d rather know just how bad it is, so that we can try to fix it, as opposed to just not know where things are going wrong,” Fehr said.

Source: U.S. research shows race, age of jurors affects verdicts but Canada lacks data

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Wolfson: Without good data, we’re flying blind on good health care

2021/03/27 Leave a comment

Hard to disagree:
Yet again, the provinces are wailing about the need for more federal money for health care, with no strings attached. These are the same provinces who have for decades grossly underfunded long-term care. And as we are seeing in real time, many of the provinces are scrambling last minute to have the data to understand and manage the pandemic, most recently in rolling out vaccinations.Of course, the federal government should not cave in to these unwarranted provincial demands. It is entirely within the federal government’s constitutional authority, despite what the provinces are saying, to play all kinds of roles in the health sector. The provinces never object to the billions of dollars the federal government pours into health research every year.

But many of the provinces are still in the dark ages when it comes to collecting and making available for crucial health services research the kinds of data essential to understanding how well health care is being delivered.

Car dealers and airlines have for years had far better computer systems to keep track of the health of your car, and every airplane seat in the world. The Big Tech software companies not only collect humongous volumes of data on many of us, with their real-time technologies; they are continually doing experiments to see what will induce us to click more on their sites and advertisements.

Yet our public health authorities are having difficulties even connecting our COVID-19 tests, our vaccinations, and any hospital visits, as in many cases these software systems are completely separate silos.

So, what’s wrong with the federal government saying to the provinces, if you want more cash, you first have to implement decent real-time data systems? Indeed, the constitution expressly assigns jurisdiction for statistics to the federal government, hence the authority to play a strong leadership role in health data systems in the provinces.

The federal government has to be accountable to us in our role as federal taxpayers, not only as provincial taxpayers. It is incumbent on the federal government to ensure that any monies it transfers to the provinces are used for the purposes intended.

If the transfer is for health care, a province cannot use the cash received to finance tax cuts. If the transfer is to push the provinces to improve the generally awful state of long-term care, then it is entirely reasonable for the federal government to impose requirements on the ways the provinces spend the money, including collecting data and other reporting to ensure that provincial promises are more than rhetoric.

These requirements are more than just reasonable; they are based on the federal government’s constitutional authorities for the spending power, and for peace, order and good government.

At the same tine, the federal government sorely needs to up its game.  For example, the most recent speech from the throne committed the federal government to take the lead in developing national standards for long-term care. But one has to wonder how this can be achieved when there is virtually no nationally comparable data on one of the most crucial aspects of long-term care quality, namely staffing.

The federal government was negotiating the purchase of COVID-19 vaccines many months ago. That should have been more than sufficient lead time to ensure that there would also be a national system in place when the vaccines started arriving to track how the vaccine rollout was progressing.

Yes, it can and should be left up to each province to decide vaccine allocation. But with the current hodge-podge of computer, fax and email systems, there is no way to keep track in real time of what’s being done across the country. There’s also no way to connect vaccinations to rises and falls in outbreaks at the level of detail needed to inform lockdown policy.

Health care and public health are quintessentially knowledge industries. It should be obvious that they should be organizations that learn from experience. But it is impossible to learn from experience if you have no way of knowing just what you are experiencing.

Proper data collection and analysis are essential.

It is long past time that the federal government stiffened its spine and, in addition to saying it will work collaboratively with the provinces, put some muscle into meeting nation-wide concerns.

Michael Wolfson, PhD, is a former assistant chief statistician at Statistics Canada and a member of the Centre for Health Law, Policy and Ethics at the University of Ottawa.

Source: Wolfson: Without good data, we’re flying blind on good health care

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New tool could help immigrants decide where to live in Canada

2021/03/27 Leave a comment

Of interest. Useful experiment and it will important to see how much it is used and the extent that it improves immigrant outcomes:

Researchers are working on a new tool that will help newcomers identify which Canadian city they are most likely to be successful in.

Most immigrants end up choosing to live in one of Canada’s major cities. In fact, more than half of all immigrants and recent immigrants to Canada currently live in Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver, according to Statistics Canada.

However, there may be better opportunities for these immigrants elsewhere. Perhaps a film director or a tech worker may be suited to Toronto, but a petroleum engineer may not.

Since 2018, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has been working on a research project alongside the Immigration Policy Lab (IPL) at Stanford University that may pave the way for this tool, dubbed GeoMatch, to come to fruition.

The project attempts to repurpose an algorithm that is used in resettlement efforts, to work for Canadian immigration. It uses historical data to help immigrants choose where they might thrive the most, IRCC spokesperson Isabelle Dubois told CIC News.

“The study suggested that prospective economic immigrants who followed the GeoMatch recommendation would be more likely to find a well-paying job after they arrived,” Dubois said in an email.

“Currently, newcomers tend to gravitate to cities they’ve heard of— which tend to be the largest. Yet such a tool could help change that by promoting different localities across Canada, beyond major urban centres like Toronto and Vancouver.”

According to their website, GeoMatch uses machine learning capabilities to make its predictions. It considers factors such as previous immigrants’ work history, education as well as personal characteristics. It then finds patterns in the data by focusing on how these factors were related to economic success in different locations.

GeoMatch may then be able to predict an immigrant’s likelihood of success in various locations across Canada.

“Research suggests that an immigrant’s initial arrival location plays a key role in shaping their economic success. Yet immigrants currently lack access to personalized information that would help them identify optimal destinations,” said a report published by the IPL.

The report reiterates that the approach is motivated by data that show an immigrant’s first landing location is influential in their outcomes.

“We find that for many economic immigrants the chosen [first] location is far from optimal in terms of expected income,” the report adds.

The report suggests that many economic immigrants choose Toronto simply because that is all they know of Canada, but they may be in “the wrong place” for their skillset. For example, Toronto is ranked number 20 out of 52 regions in terms of maximizing income in the year after arrival. This means that for many immigrants, there were 19 other regions where they would have likely made a higher income.

Immigrants may, of course, choose not to use the tool. However, it is worth mentioning that GeoMatch takes into consideration not just “data-driven predictions” but immigrants’ location preferences as well.

Source: New tool could help immigrants decide where to live in Canada

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Canada votes to collect data to document ‘environmental racism’

2021/03/27 Leave a comment

Interesting, likely correlates with lower income as well:

Canada will collect data on the impact of siting a disproportionate number of polluting industries and landfills in areas inhabited by racial minority communities, federal lawmakers voted Wednesday.

The bill aims to tackle “environmental racism,” where Indigenous, Black and other racial minority communities are exposed to higher levels of dirty air, contaminated water or other toxins and pollutants.

One of the most famous cases is in the Indigenous Grassy Narrows First Nation community in Ontario, where residents have since the 1960s suffered health impacts from mercury contamination produced by a former pulp and paper mill.

Source: Canada votes to collect data to document ‘environmental racism’

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There’s an Immigration Crisis, But It’s Not the One You Think

2021/03/27 Leave a comment

Good long interview with MPI’s Andrew Seles with a good overview of the substance and politics of immigration in the USA:

It’s become the Old Faithful of American politics: Every two or three years, there’s a crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. It follows a predictable script: White House aides shy away from the term “crisis,” lest it suggest they’re to blame. Leaders of the opposition party repeat the term ad nauseam, spreading the perception of a crisis through sheer force of will. Media coverage features the same tired clichés: sensationalized “caravans,” b-roll of border fencing and windbreaker-clad TV reporters doing live hits from the Rio Grande or some dusty, mud-cracked vista. The immediate crisis passes, but the underlying problems go ignored, all but ensuring another crisis in a few years’ time. Lather, rinse, repeat.

“When something keeps happening to you over and over, you should ask why,” says Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank that studies immigration. “Every two or three years, we get a spike of migrants coming to the U.S.-Mexico border. Yet we deal with this each time as though it’s a separate incident that can be controlled, rather than looking at the larger forces at play.”

Source: There’s an Immigration Crisis, But It’s Not the One You Think

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Supporting Canada’s COVID-19 Resilience and Recovery Through Robust Immigration Policy and Programs

2021/03/26 Leave a comment

While I have a great deal of respect for all the people involved in this useful overview and discussion of the issues, disappointing that no serious discussion about the advisability of the government plans to increase immigration to catch up for the 2020 shortfall, given that we know from previous downturns of the short and medium-term “scarring” of immigrants who arrive during economic downturns.

Of course, some of the specific recommendations (e.g., the annual levels plan should include temporary residents as well) are long overdue:

“Canada has been seen globally as a leader in immigration and integration policies and programs, and as an attractive and welcoming country for immigrants, refugees, temporary foreign workers, and international students. The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed some of the strengths of Canada’s immigration system, as well as some of the fault lines that have been developing and have deepened over the last few years. In this briefing, we provide an overview of Canada’s immigration system prior to the pandemic, and the policies and programs in place to support immigrant selection, settlement, and integration. We then discuss the system’s vulnerabilities as revealed by the pandemic, and explore a post-COVID-19 immigration vision. 

Canada’s immigration process has been highly selective, garnering support from the Canadian public for its strong focus on highly skilled immigrants and the economic contributions they can make, while overlooking the fact that many temporary foreign workers in Canada who are deemed low-skilled are in fact involved in essential work. Canada has created a bifurcated migration system with high-skilled migrants becoming permanent residents, and migrants deemed lower-skilled becoming permanently temporary. Yet as the pandemic has revealed, many temporary foreign workers, including agricultural workers, are essential to the functioning of our economy and the food security of our country. The pandemic has also highlighted the vulnerability of a variety of permanent and temporary resident groups in Canada (e.g., refugees, refugee claimants, temporary foreign workers, international students, immigrant women), the drive for family reunification and the constraints therein, the benefits and particular challenges of regionalization, and the difficulties involved in meeting targets for Francophone immigration and sustaining these immigrants in Francophone minority communities in Canada. To address these issues requires a consolidated re-evaluation of Canada’s immigration program and policies, engaging Canadians in these discussions.

It is also the case that despite Canada’s focus on bringing in highly skilled immigrants, a long-standing problem in Canada is the underutilization of these immigrants’ skills, leading to a waste of human capital. This has been especially salient during the pandemic in terms of internationally educated healthcare professionals. Many immigrants in health-related occupations have experienced deskilling, which is particularly noteworthy given the large number of jobs in health occupations in Canada that are unfilled. With the urgent need for health workers to be mobilized for testing, tracking, and provision of health services during the pandemic, it is time to revisit the need to more fully use the skills of immigrant healthcare professionals who are in Canada but not working in the professions for which they were trained.

Canada has a highly respected settlement sector that provides a variety of services to immigrants and refugees settling in Canada, and these services have also been deemed essential during the pandemic. These services have traditionally been provided in person and the pivot to online delivery has not occurred without difficulty. Agencies often lack the equipment and digital expertise to provide all services online, and immigrant and refugee digital literacy and access to technology is at times lacking. It is also the case that the pandemic has highlighted a variety of additional services and supports that are required during, and beyond, the pandemic. The pandemic has also underscored the lag between eligibility for settlement services, which is organized around a historical norm of direct entry of immigrants as permanent residents, and Canada’s current immigration regime, in which more newcomers enter with temporary status, with the hope or intention of transitioning to permanent residents. The need for international students, temporary foreign workers, and refugee claimants to receive some of these services has become especially salient at this time.

The settlement and integration of immigrants also requires the support of Canadians, and public attitudes toward immigrants in this country are not fully immune to xenophobia, especially at a time of higher unemployment and when uncertainty and feelings of threat dominate. It is thus essential to closely monitor Canadians’ attitudes toward immigrants, temporary residents, and immigration, and to proactively engage in efforts to promote positive attitudes while reducing the racism that these groups may experience.

This report provides a set of recommendations for action by the federal and provincial/territorial governments designed to optimize immigration to Canada: see Appendix A. At a broad level, these include: 

·       A public education program on immigration (to promote an informed public), followed by a comprehensive review, whether in the form of a Royal Commission, task force, or other mechanism, to engage Canadians in a discussion of the future of immigration to Canada, and a recalibration of its policies and programs to meet Canada’s own current and future needs and its global responsibilities

·       Immigration planning and federal settlement funding that takes into account both permanent and temporary residents

·       Expanded pathways to permanence for temporary residents

·       Targeted policies and programs that address the needs of vulnerable permanent and temporary resident groups

·       Special consideration of Francophone immigration

·       Public campaigns and civic engagement program expansion to promote positive attitudes toward immigrants, refugees, and immigration among established Canadians and to promote smaller jurisdictions to newcomers 

·       A coordinated network of national promising practices in the incorporation of skilled immigrants in the workplace

·       Research to drive evidence-based policy and program redesign during the pandemic and beyond

·       Leadership on the Global Compacts on Refugees and Migration

As of the third quarter of 2020, Canada’s population growth has stopped, and all future growth will solely rely on immigration. Over the next three years, the Canadian Government intends to bring to this country the population equivalent of the Province of Manitoba through permanent resident streams. Additionally, Canada will continue to accept many international students, refugee claimants, and temporary foreign workers for temporary residence here. The importance of immigration for Canada will continue to grow and be an integral component of the country’s post- COVID-19 recovery. To succeed, it is essential to take stock, to re-evaluate Canada’s immigration and integration policies and programs, and to expand Canada’s global leadership in this area. The authors offer insights and recommendations to reinvigorate and optimize Canada’s immigration program over the next decade and beyond.”

Read or download the full report:

https://rsc-src.ca/en/research-and-reports/covid-19-policy-briefing/supporting-canada%E2%80%99s-covid-19-resilience-and-recovery

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