Middle-class Britons more likely to be biased about Islam, finds survey

2022/01/26 Leave a comment

Interesting, given that in most countries, the greater the education and income, the lower the level of prejudice and bias:

The middle and upper classes are more likely to hold prejudiced views about Islam than working-class groups, according to a survey from the University of Birmingham.

In one of the most detailed surveys conducted on Islamophobia and other forms of racism in modern Britain, data showed 23.2% of people from upper and lower middle-class social groups harbour prejudiced views about Islamic beliefs compared with 18.4% of people questioned from working-class groups.

The survey, carried out in conjunction with YouGov, found the British public is almost three times more likely to hold prejudiced views of Islam than they are of other religions, with 21.1% of British people wrongly believing Islam teaches its followers that the Qur’an must be read “totally literally”.

“It’s the people from an upper and middle class background, who presumably are university educated, who feel more confident in their judgments but [are] also more likely to make an incorrect judgment,” said Dr Stephen Jones, the report’s lead author. “It’s almost like because they’re more educated, they’re also more miseducated, because that’s the way Islam is presented in our society.”

The findings, presented in a report entitled The Dinner Table Prejudice: Islamophobia in Contemporary Britain, were based on interviews with a sample of 1,667 people between 20 and 21 July 2021.

The survey found more than one in four people, and nearly half of Conservative and Leave voters, hold conspiratorial views about Sharia “no-go areas”, while Muslims are the UK’s second “least liked” group, after Gypsy and Irish Travellers, with 25.9% of the British public feeling negatively towards Muslims.

The survey also found 18.1% of people support prohibiting all Muslim migration to the UK, a rate 4-6% higher than the same view for other ethnic and religious groups.

The report suggested a lack of public censure for Islamophobia, citing the example of Conservative MP Nadine Dorries supportively tweeting remarks made by anti-Islam activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (also known as Tommy Robinson), was one reason why prejudice was so widespread.

“There’s a lack of criticism that follows Islamophobia, and that seems to correspond to the way in which Islamophobia is dealt with in public life,” said Jones. “The survey shows quite clearly it’s a very widespread prejudice. But it’s just not given the same kind of seriousness as other forms of prejudice.

“People who work in public office, whether MPs or councillors, who have got away with saying things about Muslims that they simply would not get away with if they were talking about other kinds of minority. That’s not to say those other issues don’t need to be taken seriously as well, it’s simply to say that this particular form of prejudice doesn’t get due recognition.”

Researchers recommended the government and other public figures should publicly acknowledge the lack of criticism of Islamophobia, and how it stands out compared with other forms of racism and prejudice. The report also suggested civil society organisations and equality bodies should recognise how systemic miseducation about Islam is common in British society and is a key element of Islamophobia.

Jones said: “No one is calling for laws regulating criticism of religion, but we have to recognise that the British public has been systematically miseducated about Islamic tradition and take steps to remedy this.”

Source: Middle-class Britons more likely to be biased about Islam, finds survey

Filed under Islamophobia, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

More migrants seek asylum through reopened Canadian border

2022/01/26 Leave a comment

Highest level ever since 2017. Will likely become political issue again:

Whenever a bus arrives at the Greyhound station in Plattsburgh, New York, a small band of taxi drivers waits to drive passengers on a half-hour trip to a snowy, dead-end dirt road.

There, at the border with Canada, refugees pile out of taxis or vans several times a day, and Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers warn that they will be arrested for illegal entry if they cross, which they do. Most are soon released to pursue asylum, living and working freely while awaiting a decision.

“We have the hopes of everyone — be successful and have a change of life,” Alejandro Cortez, a 25-year-old Colombian man, said as he exited a taxi last week at the end of Roxham Road in Champlain, New York. The town of about 6,000 is directly across the border from Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, Quebec.

Cortez joins a renewed stream of migrants seeking refuge in Canada after a 20-month ban on asylum requests designed to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Families are once again lugging suitcases and carrying children across a remote, snow-covered ditch to the border.

Canada’s decision to lift the ban on Nov. 21 stands in marked contrast to the approach in the United States, where the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has extended indefinitely a similar restriction on the border with Mexico that will enter its third year in March.

On Wednesday, a Justice Department attorney vigorously defended the ban against sharp questioning from federal appeals court judges about the scientific basis for such a far-reaching move against asylum.

The U.S. expelled migrants nearly 1.5 million times from March 2020 through November under what is known as Title 42 authority, named for a 1944 public health law that the Trump and Biden administrations have used to deny migrants a chance to seek asylum on grounds that it will curb the spread of the coronavirus. That accounts for about two of three arrests or expulsions at the border, most involving single adults and some families. Unaccompanied children have been exempt under President Joe Biden.

Fully vaccinated travelers have been able to enter the U.S. and Canada since November, but Canada went a step farther by reinstating a path to asylum.

Cortez arrived in the United States on a tourist visa five months ago. He said he couldn’t go back to Colombia because of violence and the disappearance of thousands of young men.

“All of that hurts a lot,” he said. “We have to run from our country.”

Asylum-seekers on the Canadian border began appearing at Roxham Road around the time Trump became president. How it became the favored place to cross into Canada isn’t clear, but the migrants are taking advantage of a quirk in a 2002 agreement between the U.S. and Canada that says people seeking asylum must apply in the first country they arrive in.

Migrants who go to an official crossing — like the one where Interstate 87 ends just east of Roxham Road — are returned to the United States and told to apply there. But those who arrive in Canada at a location other than a port of entry, like Roxham Road, are allowed to stay and request protection.

Nearly 60,000 people sought asylum after illegally crossing the border into Canada from February 2017 through September, many at Roxham Road, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) south of Montreal, Canadian government statistics show.

Of those, more than 45,000 claims have been finalized, with almost 24,300 approved, or almost 54%. Another 17,000 claims were rejected while over 14,000 are still pending. Other claims were abandoned or withdrawn.

In December, the number of asylum-seekers at the border in Quebec jumped to nearly 2,800. That’s up from 832 in November and 96 in October, according to the statistics.

Canada lifted the asylum ban with little fanfare or public backlash, perhaps because the numbers are small compared with people crossing into the U.S. from Mexico.

Biden’s decision to keep the Trump-era ban in place has come under scathing criticism from the United Nations refugee agency, legal scholars and advocates.

Under the ban, people from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, are bounced back to Mexico before being afforded rights under U.S. and international law to seek asylum. People from other countries are flown home without a chance at asylum.

Scientific arguments for Title 42 have met with skepticism from the start.

The Associated Press reported in 2020 that Vice President Mike Pence called CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield in March of that year and told him to use the agency’s special legal authority to slash the number of asylum-seekers allowed into the country.

Pence made the request after a top agency doctor who oversees such orders refused to comply with the directive, saying there was no valid public health reason to issue it.

Dr. Anne Schuchat, the second-highest CDC official when she departed in May, told a congressional panel last year that “the bulk of the evidence at that time did not support this policy proposal.”

On Wednesday, Justice Department attorney Sharon Swingle insisted the ban is based on scientific expertise and prevents disease at crowded Border Patrol holding facilities. Facing persistent questioning from judges on a three-member panel in Washington, she acknowledged there were no affidavits in court records to explain the order’s scientific foundation.

Within hours of the November change by the Canadian government, immigrants started arriving in large numbers at Roxham Road, said Janet McFetridge, of Plattsburg Cares, a group that provides hats, mittens and scarves to people crossing the border in the dead of winter. She said people are eager to cross while they can.

“There definitely is a fear that it’s going to close suddenly,” she said while waiting on Roxham Road for the next group of migrants.

A Canadian officer said in French to a woman and her traveling companion, who was carrying a baby, that it was illegal to enter Canada there.

“If you cross here, you will be arrested,” he said.

“Yes, it’s not a problem. It’s not a problem,” the woman said as her companion started to pull a suitcase across the border.

Source: More migrants seek asylum through reopened Canadian border

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Regg Cohn: Ignoring antisemitism hasn’t made it go away

2022/01/26 Leave a comment

Good reminder:

We haven’t heard much about deep-seated antisemitism in Canada since the notorious Jim Keegstra. Infamous and unforgettable, he taught Holocaust denial in Alberta classrooms and testified to it in Alberta courtrooms.

Well that was decades ago, you think. Not in Ontario today, you say?

You’ve likely never heard of Joseph DiMarco, because you probably haven’t seen his story anywhere.

DiMarco is an Ontario teacher fired for preaching Holocaust denial and spouting antisemitism in a Timmins Catholic school. After earning his education certificate at Nipissing University 16 years ago, he taught his students to question the deaths of six million Jews in the Holocaust.

After a hearing last November, based on an agreed statement of facts (DiMarco did not attend or contest the charges), the provincial regulator revoked his licence to teach. In the weeks since, there’s been barely a ripple in the mainstream media — I’d not seen anything on this until someone passed on a recent story in the Canadian Jewish News online.

“When students tried to challenge or question the … assertions about the figure of six million deaths not being accurate, the (teacher) was dismissive, reminding the students how much research he had done,” a discipline committee of the Ontario College of Teachers concluded.

The regulator noted that DiMarco “provided students with learning material about the Holocaust from disreputable and unapproved sources which contradicted the facts.”

He tried to justify his conspiracy theories as merely anti-Israel and anti-Zionist, not antisemitic as such. But he knew what he was doing when he curated his own “Zionism slide show” as a teaching tool.

DiMarco ridiculed a school field trip to a Nazi concentration camp as evidence that the “powers that be” were spreading propaganda. He also taught his students that Israel was the evil force behind the 9/11 attacks that killed thousands in the U.S.

The regulator quoted from DiMarco’s email to the school chaplain explaining that “If some people actually understood who was pulling the strings, and the truth came out — antisemitism will return with a ferocity seldom seen throughout history.”

What’s noteworthy is that his teachings, and his firing, never seemed especially newsworthy. 

We read a great deal in the media about the rise of racism and white supremacy in society today. Yet when we come across someone who denies the genocide that claimed six million Jewish lives in pursuit of Nazi ideals of white supremacy — in the guise of Aryan purity — it barely rates a mention.

Is it because most Jews immigrated and integrated so long ago that they are deemed well entrenched, and hence less deserving of coverage? Does the old media credo to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable” diminish journalistic interest in Jews (or anyone else) who might be comfortably established?

If Jews have agency, is there less urgency?

Behold the risk of complacency: After the terror of a rabbi and Jewish worshippers being taken hostage in a Texas synagogue this month, by a gunman ranting online about the putative power of Jews, the FBI reassured Americans that this was not, actually, an antisemitic act. The media dutifully, uncritically, incredibly, reported that as fact — until, days later, the FBI reassessed and recanted.

And yet according to FBI statistics, 60 per cent of all victims of anti-religious hate crimes in 2019 were targeted because of anti-Jewish bias. About 13 per cent were victims of anti-Muslim bias.

Well that’s just America with its own peculiar blinkers, you think. Not in Canada, you say?

A recent headline proclaimed: “Toronto saw an ‘unprecedented’ spike in hate crime in 2020, including rise in anti-Asian and anti-Black incidents, police say.”

Yet the headline skipped over the reality — noted in the story — that antisemitic attacks were as high as ever, and disproportionately so: “Although Jewish people represent just 3.8 per cent of Toronto’s population, the community saw 30 per cent of reported hate crimes in 2020” — less newsworthy because they’ve always been historically high, and hence old news?

I first wondered about this phenomenon last year after writing a column about the continued Islamophobic attacks on two high-profile Toronto Muslims — Paramount Fine Foods founder Mohamad Fakih, and Walied Soliman, chair of the Norton Rose Fulbright Canada law firm. The unprecedented success of these two in counterattacking in court — effectively silencing and subduing their tormentors — received remarkably little coverage despite the recent proliferation of racism stories.

Antisemitism and Islamophobia are close cousins. Will journalistic indifference to the same old same old antisemitism translate, increasingly, into a similar kind of Islamophobia fatigue if the targets are prominent, or prosperous, or well-protected?

None of this is to diminish the impact of discrimination on other groups or individuals. But auspicious archetypes and hateful stereotypes have a way of blurring our vision and vigilance — Muslims aren’t all well-connected, just as all Jews aren’t well-established — and even if they were, would the hate be any less harmful? 

Intolerance strikes in all shapes and sizes — and all social classes of all societies. I got into journalism to “comfort the afflicted.” But not even the comfortable, of any race or religion, deserve the affliction of discrimination and persecution.

Source: https://www.thestar.com/politics/political-opinion/2022/01/24/ignoring-antisemitism-hasnt-made-it-go-away.html

Filed under Antisemitism, Holocaust, Islamophobia, Multiculturalism Tagged with

Rich Countries Lure Health Workers From Low-Income Nations to Fight Shortages

2022/01/25 Leave a comment

The costs to source countries:

There are few nurses in the Zambian capital with the skills and experience of Alex Mulumba, who works in the operating room at a critical care hospital. But he has recently learned, through a barrage of social media posts and LinkedIn solicitations, that many faraway places are eager for his expertise, too — and will pay him far more than the $415 per month (including an $8 health risk bonus) he earns now.

Mr. Mulumba, 31, is considering those options, particularly Canada, where friends of his have immigrated and quickly found work. “You have to build something with your life,” he said.

Canada is among numerous wealthy nations, including the United States and United Kingdom, that are aggressively recruitingmedical workers from the developing world to replenish a health care work force drastically depleted by the Covid-19 pandemic. The urgency and strong pull from high-income nations — including countries like Germany and Finland, which had not previously recruited health workers from abroad — has upended migration patterns and raised new questions about the ethics of recruitment from countries with weak health systems during a pandemic.

“We have absolutely seen an increase in international migration,” said Howard Catton, the chief executive of the International Council of Nurses. But, he added, “The high, high risk is that you are recruiting nurses from countries that can least afford to lose their nurses.”

About 1,000 nurses are arriving in the United States each month from African nations, the Philippines and the Caribbean, said Sinead Carbery, president of O’Grady Peyton International, an international recruiting firm. While the United States has long drawn nurses from abroad, she said demand from American health care facilities is the highest she’s seen in three decades. There are an estimated 10,000 foreign nurses with U.S. job offers on waiting lists for interviews at American embassies around the world for the required visas.

Since the middle of 2020, the number of international nurses registering to practice in the United Kingdom has swelled, “pointing toward this year being the highest in the last 30 years in terms of numbers,” said James Buchan, a senior fellow with the Health Foundation, a British charity, who advises the World Health Organization and national governments on health worker mobility.

“There are 15 nurses in my unit and half have an application in process to work abroad,” said Mike Noveda, a senior neonatal nurse in the Philippines who has been temporarily reassigned to run Covid wards in a major hospital in Manila. “In six months, they will have left.”

As the pandemic enters its third year and infections from the Omicron variant surge around the world, the shortage of health workers is a growing concern just about everywhere. As many as 180,000 have died of Covid, according to the W.H.O. Others have burned out or quit in frustration over factors such as a lack of personal protective equipment. About 20 percent in the United States have left their jobs during the pandemic. The W.H.O. has recorded strikes and other labor action by health workers in more than 80 countries in the past year — the amount that would normally be seen in a decade. In both developing countries and wealthy ones, the depletion of the health work force has come at a cost to patient care.

European and North American countries have created dedicated immigration fast-tracks for health care workers, and have expedited processes to recognize foreign qualifications.

The British government introduced a “health and care visa”program in 2020, which targets and fast tracks foreign health care workers to fill staffing vacancies. The program includes benefits such as reduced visa costs and quicker processing.

Canada has eased language requirements for residency and has expedited the process of recognizing the qualifications of foreign-trained nurses. Japan is offering a pathway to residency for temporary aged-care workers. Germany is allowing foreign-trained doctors to move directly into assistant physician positions.

In 2010, the member states of the W.H.O. adopted a Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel, driven in part by an exodus of nurses and doctors from nations in sub-Saharan Africa ravaged by AIDS. African governments expressed frustration that their universities were producing doctors and nurses educated with public funds who were being lured away to the United States and Britain as soon as they were fully trained, for salaries their home countries could never hope to match.

The code recognizes the right of individuals to migrate but calls for wealthy nations to recruit through bilateral agreements, with the involvement of the health ministry in the country of origin.

In exchange for an organized recruitment of health workers, the destination country should supply support for health care initiatives designated by the source country. Destination countries are also supposed to offer “learn and return” in which health workers with new skills return home after a period of time.

But Mr. Catton, of the international nurses organization, said that was not the current pattern. “For nurses who are recruited, there is no intention for them to go back, often quite the opposite: They want to establish themselves in another country and bring their families to join them,” he said.

Zambia has an excess of nurses, on paper — thousands of graduates of nursing schools are unemployed, although a new government has pledged to hire 11,200 health workers this year. But it is veteran nurses such as Lillian Mwape, the director of nursing at the hospital where Mr. Mulumba works, who are most sought by recruiters.

“People are leaving constantly,” said Ms. Mwape, whose inbox is flooded with emails from recruiters letting her know how quickly she can get a visa to the United States.

The net effect, she said, “is that we are handicapped.”

“It is the most-skilled nurses that we lose and you can’t replace them,” Ms. Mwape said. “Now in the I.C.U. we might have four or five trained critical-care nurses, where we should have 20. The rest are general nurses, and they can’t handle the burden of Covid.”

Dr. Brian Sampa, a general practitioner in Lusaka, recently began the language testing that is the first step to emigrate to the United Kingdom. He is the head of a doctor’s union and vividly aware of how valuable physicians are in Zambia. There are fewer than 2,000 doctors working in the public sector — on which the vast majority of people are reliant — and 5,000 doctors in the entire country, he said. That works out to one doctor per 12,000 people; the W.H.O. recommends a minimum of one per 1,000.

Twenty Zambian doctors have died of Covid. In Dr. Sampa’s last job, he was the sole doctor in a district with 80,000 people, and he often spent close to 24 hours at a time in the operating theater doing emergency surgeries, he said.

The pandemic has left him dispirited about Zambia’s health system. He described days treating critically ill Covid patients when he searched a whole hospital to find only a single C-clamp needed to run oxygenation equipment. He earns slightly less than $1000 a month.

“Obviously, there are more pros to leaving than staying,” Dr. Sampa said. “So for those of us who are staying, it is just because there are things holding us, but not because we are comfortable where we are.”

The migration of health care workers — often from low-income nations to high-income ones — was growing well before the pandemic; it had increased 60 percent in the decade to 2016, said Dr. Giorgio Cometto, an expert on health work force issues who works with the W.H.O.

The Philippines and India have deliberately overproduced nurses for years with the intention of sending them abroad to earn and send remittances; nurses from these two countries make up almost the entire work force of some Persian Gulf States. But now the Philippines is reporting shortages domestically. Mr. Noveda, the nurse in Manila, said his colleagues, exhausted by pandemic demands that have required frequent 24-hour shifts, were applying to leave in record numbers.

Yet movement across borders has been more complicated during the pandemic, and immigration processes have slowed significantly, leaving many workers, and prospective employers, in limbo.

While some countries are sincere about bilateral agreements, that isn’t the only level at which recruitment happens. “What we hear time and time again is that recruitment agencies pitch up in-country and talk directly to the nurses offering very attractive packages,” Mr. Catton said.

The United Kingdom has a “red list” of countries with fragile health systems from which it won’t recruit for its National Health Service. But some health workers get around that by entering Britain first with a placement through an agency that staffs private nursing homes, for example. Then, once they are established in Britain, they move over to the N.H.S., which pays better.

Michael Clemens, an expert on international migration from developing countries at the Center for Global Development in Washington, said the growing alarm about outflows of health workers from developing countries risks ignoring the rights of individuals.

“Offering someone a life-changing career opportunity for themselves, something that can make a huge difference to their kids, is not an ethical crime,” he said. “It is an action with complex consequences.”

The United Kingdom went into the pandemic with one in 10 nurse jobs vacant. Mr. Catton said it some countries are making overseas recruitment a core part of their staffing strategies, and not just using it as a pandemic stopgap. If that’s the plan, he said, then recruiting countries must more assiduously monitor the impact on the source country and calculate the cost being borne by the country that trains those nurses.

Alex Mulumba, the Zambian operating room nurse, says that if he goes to Canada, he won’t stay permanently, just five or six years to save up some money. He won’t bring his family with him, because he wants to keep his ties to home.

“This is my country, and I have to try to do something about it,” he said.

Source: Rich Countries Lure Health Workers From Low-Income Nations to Fight Shortages

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,

Journalists and News Orgs Including ESPN Snub Beijing Olympics of ‘Shame’

2022/01/25 Leave a comment

How is CBC and other Canadian media handling this ethical and moral quandary? CBC Sports seems to be a cheerleading mode, with little critical notes on issues related to China being the host and the restrictions it means:

For sports reporters, being sent to cover an Olympic Games has always been seen as a privilege, a career highlight, a chance to bathe in the reflected glory of the world’s top athletes while enjoying a couple of weeks in the sun or on the slopes, all expenses paid.

Now, not so much. Reporters assigned to next month’s Beijing Winter Olympics are being warned to leave their cellphones at home and pack “burner phones” and “clean” laptops to prevent Chinese spies hacking into their data. They have been sent a 36-page guide on how to navigate China’s ultra-strict COVID regulations just to get into the country, including a health-monitoring app and multiple PCR tests. Once inside the Olympic bubble, they could be served food by robots, prepared by robots, in order to limit unnecessary human contact. And if, after all that, they do test positive for the rampant Omicron variant, then it will all have been in vain; their Olympics will be over.

Not surprisingly, some editors are deciding it’s just not worth it and are keeping their staffs at home, including executives at ESPN, the U.S. cable sports giant that announced Thursday that the four reporters it had been due to send to China would be staying home and covering the Games from the U.S.

As a non-rights holder, ESPN was never going to be able to broadcast any actual sports coverage from Beijing. Its news reporters would normally be flitting between venues, catching up with American stars to generate stories off the field of play and filming video stand-ups before key venues. As part of their pandemic plan, however, Beijing Olympic organizers are treating all three Olympic clusters—in central Beijing and two mountain zones outside the capital—as Olympic venues in their own right, further limiting the activities of non-rights holders.

ESPN’s executive editor, Norby Williamson, displayed his frustration at those restrictions in a statement confirming the coverage plans. “With the pandemic continuing to be a global threat, and with the COVID-related on-site restrictions in place for the Olympics that would make coverage very challenging, we felt that keeping our people home was the best decision for us,” he said.

But even NBCUniversal, which has paid billions of dollars for the rights to broadcast successive Olympics, is cutting back on its team in China. Its anchors and announcers will cover the Games from the NBC sports hub in Stamford, Connecticut. They will be following the example of the BBC, which successfully covered last year’s Summer Olympics from a “greenscreen” studio in the suburbs of Manchester designed to fool viewers into thinking they were watching a live feed from downtown Tokyo.

With the U.S. leading a “diplomatic boycott” of the Beijing Games—which means Western political leaders snubbing the opening and closing ceremonies in the Bird’s Nest stadium—NBC has been stung by suggestions from human rights groups that its coverage could legitimize Chinese repression of Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang region. Molly Solomon, NBC’s Olympic production chief, told reporters this week that athletes would “remain the centerpiece of our coverage” but the “geopolitical context” would not be ignored.

That political pressure will remain, at least until American skiers, skaters, snowboarders, and hockey stars start showing off their medals. A bipartisan group led by Rep. Tom Malinowski, the New Jersey Democrat, called on Friday for the International Olympic Committee to explicitly guarantee athletes’ right to free speech in Beijing after a Chinese official warned that competitors who spoke about against human rights abuses could be sent home.

Some journalists have not even been allowed to go at all. Canadian reporter Devin Heroux tested positive for coronavirus late last year and has been told he cannot now cover the event. “Unfortunately my plans to cover the Olympics from Beijing have been derailed,” the CBC reporter wrote.

Reporters who are going admit they will not be allowed to report freely. “It’s naive to think the pandemic hasn’t played right into China’s hands,” Christine Brennan, a USA Today columnist told the Washington Post. “They would have wanted to control us, anyway. This just gives them another excuse. China will be China.”

Owen Slot, chief sportswriter at The Times of London, described his shock when he and other reporters assigned to the Beijing Games were invited to a security briefing at the Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper in December: “Don’t use your phones over there, we were informed. Take a burner phone. Take a clean laptop. And even then, if do you phone home, your friendly hosts may be straight into your wife’s data instead.”

Fortunately, Slot wrote earlier this month, he already has a burner phone at home on which he can call home to his family. “Yet we are just scratching at the surface here. How did we get to a point where we granted hosting rights to a nation where you can’t use your phone?”

He added: “The truth is that we are entering the most extraordinarily appalling year for our global sporting feasts. We start 2022 with the Olympics in Beijing and finish it with the World Cup in Qatar. It is a double whammy of shame. We will hold our noses, award the medals and leave behind us the empty rhetoric of disapproval.”

Source: Journalists and News Orgs Including ESPN Snub Beijing Olympics of ‘Shame’

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Sears: Canada is still admitting Afghan refugees at a glacial pace. Justin Trudeau must set a fire underneath our immigration officials

2022/01/25 Leave a comment

Overly harsh on IRCC staff and under-estimating the issues and processes involved but valid critique of the pace of bringing them to Canada in a more timely manner. Risks feeding the “over-promise, under-deliver” government narrative:

I suspect being a senior immigration official is only marginally less boring than being a night watchman, and that might sour their view of the world. Nonetheless, on three continents over several decades it has been my experience that those who control the visa stamps are all conditioned to find a way to say “No,” or “Later,” or “We’ll get back to you” — and then don’t. Ours are no different.

A young relative of mine was denied entry into Canada, after an especially obnoxious senior Canadian immigration official declared to her mother that they were not convinced that this was a “sincere adoption” — the staggering assumption being, I suppose, that the new mother would sell her beloved infant on arriving in Canada. Serious political pressure was required to reverse the insulting judgment. Plenty of Canadians have similarly awful stories to tell.

This is the reality that too many terrified Afghan refugees are facing today. The Taliban threaten their lives and their families constantly; Canadian NGOs desperately struggle to find paths out for them; and our senior immigration officials are unresponsive or unreachable. This too will require serious political pressure to fix, from the prime minister.

The parallel with Syria is quite plain. There, our immigration officials also tried their usual delaying devices until two very determined ministers, supported by PM Justin Trudeau, said, “Enough! Get this done.” Thousands of Syrians were quickly welcomed to Canada. Though the Syrians were fleeing a war zone, the risks the Afghans face are far more specific, urgent and life-threatening.

A favourite blocage used today is, of course, national security. As in “Yes Minister,” a Canadian Sir Humphrey might ooze, “Well, minister, that would be very courageous, questioning the advice of our national security advisers. Highly politically risky, but courageous, ma’am!” I was not aware that we have had a rash of terrorist attacks in the six years since thousands of Syrians built new lives for their families here.

We had little previous knowledge of many of the Syrians we admitted then. But many of the Afghans desperate to be rescued from tyranny now are men and women who put their lives at risk assisting Canadian soldiers, diplomats, journalists and NGOs. Hundreds of Canadians know these Afghan families personally.

It is especially embarrassing that we promised safe havens to 40,000 Afghans and have admitted fewer than 7,000. The United States, who have not outranked us in our welcome for immigrants and refugees for many, many years, have admitted over 10 times as many.

At this rate of foot-dragging — fewer than 50 refugees per day — we will be approaching the end of 2023 before we have kept our promise. By then, many of these desperate families will have been tortured and killed. Are we really willing to risk the humiliation and international opprobrium of having their blood on our hands?

The government has a very clear policy path forward before it — a plan that has been internally vetted, and endorsed by the many Canadian veterans’ organizations and other NGOs struggling to keep the faith. The policy framework describes in some detail how to remove, or avoid, the several bizarre policy roadblocks that have been placed in refugees’ way.

When cabinet next meets, let us hope that Trudeau turns to his colleagues and says, as he did in 2015 on Syria only days after being elected, “Get this done!” What an uncontestable political triumph it would be.

And what a huge morale booster for Canadians, as we plod our way through this increasingly brutal winter and the frustrations of a virus we must still fight daily. Imagine the sight of exhausted but ecstatic Afghans, falling into the arms of their waiting families, friends and Canadian sponsors, overseen at airports by the prime minister and other leaders. Imagine as well, how proud we would be to have once again shown leadership on refugees to the world.

We know how to do this.

Source: Canada is still admitting Afghan refugees at a glacial pace. Justin Trudeau must set a fire underneath our immigration officials

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with , ,

Canada pausing intake of highly skilled immigrant workers amid heavy backlog 

2022/01/24 Leave a comment

Money quote: “These reductions are due to admissions space required to accommodate the TR2PR [Temporary to Permanent Resident] stream and the resettlement of Afghan nationals to Canada.”

The former was a policy choice in order to meet the government’s fixation on meeting its target of 401,000; the latter reflected lack of foresight, common to many countries, and thus the need to deal with the crisis:

Canada’s immigration system for high-skilled workers is severely backlogged and even amidst a labour shortage, the government is pausing new invitations because the department simply can’t process them quickly enough, according to a briefing document.

Immigration lawyer Steven Meurrens obtained the document through access to information and provided it to the National Post. In the memo, department officials outline that “an estimated 76,000” applicants are in the inventory for federal high-skilled worker applications, which is more than what the government needs to meet targets all the way out to 2023.

The same memo says the express entry pool, which includes skilled workers, skilled trades and people with experience living in Canada, has more than 207,000 people in it.

Canada’s immigration plan has a variety of different classes, including skilled workers, provincial nominees, family reunification and refugees. The government has continued to process applicants nominated by the provinces, but other economic immigrants have been stalled since last fall.

People applying through the high skilled worker and trades program submit a variety of documents including a language test and then wait for an invitation to finish their application before it is processed.

With travel bans in place, high-skilled worker applications from overseas have been on pause since September 2021. Last year, the government still managed to hit its record-high immigration targets, but did so mostly by inviting people already in Canada on temporary permits or as students to become permanent residents through a new temporary resident to permanent resident program (TR2PR).

The government’s current immigration plan forecasts bringing in 110,500 skilled workers next year, but the department says in a memo that could have to be cut by as much as half, because the department has so much other work.

“These reductions are due to admissions space required to accommodate the TR2PR stream and the resettlement of Afghan nationals to Canada,” reads the memo.

The Liberals initially pledged to bring 20,000 Afghans to Canada, but during the fall campaign doubled the pledge to 40,000. As of the most recent update 7,000 of them have arrived in Canada.

A new departmental immigration plan will be tabled in Parliament when the House of Commons resumes in February.

The department aims for a six-month processing time for federal skilled workers (FSW), but in the memo they warned that could rise dramatically.

“Processing times are currently at 20.4 months (over three times higher than the service standard) and are expected to continue to grow as older inventory is processed. The FSW processing time is expected to rise to 36 months throughout 2022.”

Immigration Minister Sean Fraser was not available for an interview, but Rémi Larivière, a spokeswoman for the department, said the government will still bring in highly skilled workers, because so many are already in the queue.

“The already existing robust inventory of skilled candidates to process means that there won’t be a reduction in 2022 of the number of new skilled permanent residents arriving in Canada to work and settle,” she said in an email. “This pause is temporary; invitations to apply under the FHS streams will resume once the processing inventory is reduced enough to create space for new intake.”

Larivière said the fall fiscal update included measures to help reduce the backlog.

“The Government of Canada has proposed to provide $85 million in 2022-23 so it can process more permanent and temporary resident applications and reduce processing times in key areas affected by the pandemic.”

Conservative MP Jasraj Singh Hallan, the party’s immigration critic, said the delays are unacceptable.

“The massive backlog the Liberal government has created at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada is not only hurting hard-working newcomers, families, immigrants and business owners, it also threatens billions of dollars of much-needed economic growth in Canada,” he said in a statement.

He said employers need workers and the government has to act quickly.

“Immigrants and Canadian employers cannot wait three years to have Federal Skilled Worker applications processed. It’s time for the Liberals to announce a precise date for when the pause on processing federal skilled worker invitations will come to an end.”

A Business Development Bank of Canada study from last fall found 55 per cent of Canadian businesses were dealing with labour shortages. They found that number was as high as 80 per cent in hospitality type businesses.

Potential immigrants to Canada are scored based on their level of education, language proficiency and other measures under the government’s Comprehensive Ranking System. The memo outlines that with the current state of applications someone would need a score over 500.

Betsy Kane, an Ottawa Immigration lawyer, said that is a very high score.

“What that’s going to mean is basically a young couple with very high education for both applicant and the person concerned, potentially only with executive-type job offers,” she said. “What it’s telling you is that only basically power couples are going to be who’s going to benefit from the 500-plus scores.”

Kane said with this backlog there are also going to be a lot of people on work or study permits who will need extensions because their application hasn’t been processed.

The federal Liberals have set targets to bring in more than 400,000 immigrants a year. Kane said they need more than lofty goals.

”The department has the capacity to do it. It just needs tools.”

She said that should include getting people back into the office to process applications, many of which come in on paper.

“This department is an essential service just like Canada Revenue Agency and just like the Canada Border Services Agency,” she said. “These guys should be back in the office.”

Sergio Karas, a Toronto immigration lawyer, said the department also has to start focusing more on what Canada’s employers need.

“I don’t think it’s a matter of adding personnel. I think it’s a matter of realigning priorities, and reassigning personnel to process the type of applications that the Canadian economy requires,” he said. “Employers are desperate for skilled trades for people who are highly skilled typically in the construction industry.”

Source: https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/canada-pausing-intake-of-highly-skilled-immigrant-workers-amid-heavy-backlog

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Automation could make 12 million jobs redundant. Here’s who’s most at risk

2022/01/24 Leave a comment

Although a European study, likely more broadly applicable to Canada and other countries, something that advocates of current and higher levels of immigration to Canada understate or ignore:

Up to a third of job roles in Europe could be made redundant by automation over the next 20 years as companies battle to increase productivity and fill skills gaps created by an ageing population, according to Forrester. 

The tech analyst’s latest Future of Jobs Forecast estimates that as many as 12 million jobs could be lost to automation across Europe by 2040, primarily impacting workers in industries such as retail, food services, and leisure and hospitality.  

Mid-skill labour jobs that consist of simple, routine tasks are most at risk from automation, the report said. These roles make up 38% of the workforce in Germany, 34% of the workforce in France, and 31% of the workforce in the UK. 

In total, 49 million jobs in ‘Europe-5’ (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK) could potentially be automated, according to Forrester. This jeopardizes casual work, such as zero-hour contracts in the UK, and low-paid, part-time jobs where workers hold “little bargaining power”. 

A combination of pressures is prompting businesses to ramp up their investments in automation, particularly in countries where industry, construction and agriculture are big business. 

While small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with up to 50 workers capture two-thirds of European employment, their productivity lags that of larger corporations, according to Forrester. In manufacturing, for example, ‘microenterprises’ are 40% less productive than large companies. 

A five-year study of robot adoption at French manufacturing firms found that robots lowered production overheads by reducing labor costs by between 4% and 6%. 

Business leaders also see automation technology as a means of filling the gaps created by Europe’s ageing population, which Forrester describes as “a demographic time bomb.” By 2050, Europe will have 30 million fewer people of working age than in 2020, the analyst said. 

Productivity lost to the pandemic is seeing organizations look to machine processes to recoup efficiency, while industries that were already using automation to grow their revenues have invested even more heavily in the technology to increase service delivery and mitigate pandemic restrictions. 

“Lost productivity due to COVID-19 is forcing companies globally to automate manual processes and improve remote work,” said Michael O’Grady, principal forecast analyst at Forrester. 

“European organisations are also in a particularly strong position to embrace automation because of Europe’s declining working-age population and the high number of routine, low-skilled jobs that can be easily automated.” 

While many low-skilled and routine roles face being replaced by machine processes, nine million new jobs are forecast to be created in Europe by 2040 in emerging sectors like green energy and smart cities, Forrester said.

This means that, all told, only three million jobs will truly be ‘lost’ to automation by 2040 – the caveat being that people who lose jobs may not find new ones.

Business leaders outside of Europe are also exploring the role of automation in bridging skills shortages and speeding up processes in the enterprise. 

Polling of 500 C-suite executives and senior management personnel by automation platform UIPath found that 78% were likely to increase their investment in automation tools to help them address labor shortages. Business leaders are turning to automation because they are struggling to find new talent (74%). 

At the same time, 85% of survey respondents said incorporating automation and automation training into their organization would help them attract new talent and hold onto existing staff. Meanwhile, leaders said automation was already helping them to save time (71%), improve productivity (63%) and save money (59%). 

Academic forecasts of jobs that could be lost to automation vary wildly. The European Parliament’s 2021 ‘Digital automation and the future of work’ report found that estimates varied from as little as 9% to almost half (47%). 

“Machine-learning experts often drive this uncertainty,” said Forrester. 

“They imagine future computer capabilities without understanding enterprise technology adoption constraints and the cultural barriers within an organization that resist change.” 

Source: https://www.zdnet.com/article/automation-could-make-12-million-jobs-redundant-heres-whos-most-at-risk/?utm_campaign=David%20Akin%27s%20🇨🇦%20Roundup&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Revue%20newsletter

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Unlike Trump, Biden Plan Welcomes Immigrant Scientists And Engineers

2022/01/24 Leave a comment

Of note given likely impact on relative attractiveness of Canada compared to USA but degree not known:

Although Donald Trump said he favored “merit-based” immigration, his policy team never seemed to find high-skilled foreign nationals it wanted to let work in the United States. In contrast, the Biden administration has proposed new policies that take the opposite approach.

Announced January 21, 2022, the new Biden policies can be divided into four general areas. Each holds the potential for making America more welcoming for talented foreign-born individuals at a time when human capital and innovation have never been more valuable to a nation.

Improved National Interest Waivers For Employment-Based Immigrants: As reported earlier in an article previewing immigration in 2022, new guidance for “National Interest Waivers” in the employment-based second preference could be a significant improvement for many immigrants. “The USCIS [U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services] policy update clarifies how the national interest waiver can be used for persons with advanced degrees in STEM [science, technology, engineering and math] fields and entrepreneurs, as well as the significance of letters from governmental and quasi-governmental entities,” according to a Biden administration fact sheet describing the new policies. “This update will promote efficient and effective benefit processing as USCIS reviews requests for national interest waivers.”

The new guidance could expand the use of national interest waivers for immigrant entrepreneurs and potentially for a broader range of highly skilled individuals with expertise in science, engineering and other fields. The narrow interpretation in current USCIS guidance has frustrated immigrants since using such waivers allows foreign nationals to “self-petition.” That means (per USCIS) “they do not need an employer to sponsor them.” National interest waivers can also be a relief from the Department of Labor’s lengthy labor certification process. 

(See here for the USCIS policy manual update on national interest waivers.)MORE FOR YOUNATO’s Technology Innovation Initiatives Are Moving Into High GearAI 50 2021: America’s Most Promising Artificial Intelligence CompaniesImpossible Foods’ CEO Says Going Public Is ‘Inevitable.’ So Why Have Most Of 2021’s Food Listings Spoiled?

Updating O-1A Visas: “O-1A [are for] individuals with an extraordinary ability in the sciences, education, business, or athletics (not including the arts, motion pictures or television industry),” according to USCIS. However, in the past, USCIS has adopted a narrow view of who is eligible for the visas. A Biden administration official said on background the new policy is expected to expand significantly the eligibility for O-1A visas in STEM fields. (See here for the USCIS policy manual update on O-1A visas.)

“In this update, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is clarifying how it determines eligibility for immigrants of extraordinary abilities, such as Ph.D. holders, in the science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM) fields,” according to the fact sheet. “The new update provides examples of evidence that may satisfy the O-1A evidentiary criteria and discusses considerations that are relevant to evaluating such evidence, with a focus on the highly technical nature of STEM fields and the complexity of the evidence often submitted.”

Dan Berger of Curran, Berger & Kludt thinks the new O-1A guidance will be helpful. “O-1 visas had become more difficult to obtain,” he said in an interview. “New guidance is helpful to clarify how the statutory criteria apply to STEM fields and the modern world. Many of the criteria were written before the internet age.”

Expanding Eligibility For STEM OPT: As discussed here, the Biden administration has expanded eligibility for STEM Optional Practical Training (OPT), which allows international students to gain practical experience for 12 months and an additional 24 months in a STEM field. Many international students would not come to America without OPT and the ability to work in their field, including the potential later to obtain H-1B status and an employment-based green card. 

In a Federal Register notice (January 21, 2022), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced, “The Secretary of Homeland Security is amending the DHS STEM Designated Degree Program List [for OPT] by adding 22 qualifying fields of study.” The fields include Cloud Computing, Anthrozoology, Climate Science, Mathematical Economics, Business Analytics, Data Visualization, Financial Analytics and others. (More details are available in the Federal Register notice.)

Expanded Programs For J-1 Exchange Visitors: The Biden administration has also proposed two expansions in the use of J-1 visas that may represent new routes to America for individuals in STEM fields. “The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) is announcing an ‘Early Career STEM Research Initiative,’ to facilitate non-immigrant BridgeUSA exchange visitors coming to the United States to engage in STEM research through research, training or educational exchange visitor programs with host organizations, including businesses,” according to the administration’s fact sheet. “ECA is also announcing new guidance that will facilitate additional academic training for undergraduate and graduate students in STEM fields on the J-1 visa for periods of up to 36 months.” 

Without reviewing text on the new J-1 policies, Lynden Melmed, a partner at Berry Appleman & Leiden and former chief counsel for USCIS, said the changes could be quite positive. He also views the other policy proposals favorably.

“Immigration is often about fitting square pegs into round holes, and that won’t ever change,” he said in an interview. “But over the years, the policy guidance and procedures have become so inflexible that we risk losing employees who are working in developing fields critical to national security. The guidance on O-1 visas and foreign students restores some sanity to the process.”

“Expanding the number of STEM fields is long overdue and very welcome,” he said. “DHS took a careful approach when it first issued the STEM list. Today’s announcement is key because it signals the government will try to keep up with the rapidly changing academic environment.” 

Statistics on international students help illustrate why the Biden approach aimed at attracting international students makes more sense than the Trump administration’s restrictive policies. “At U.S. universities, foreign nationals account for 82% of the full-time graduate students in petroleum engineering, 74% in electrical engineering, 72% in computer and information sciences, 71% in industrial and manufacturing engineering, 70% in statistics” and over 50% in many other fields, according to a National Foundation for American Policy analysis. “At many U.S. universities, the data show it would be difficult to maintain important graduate programs without international students.”

The State Department and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services still need to improve processing, and Congress must enact many immigration reforms. Notable reforms would include increasing the number of employment-based green cards and H-1B visas and eliminating the per-country limit for employer-sponsored immigrants. 

It is easy to forget the Trump administration’s generally hostile policies toward foreign-born scientists and engineers. In 2020, Donald Trump blocked the entry to the United States of employment-based immigrants and H-1B visa holders via proclamations, and it took unfavorable court rulings on H-1B visas for USCIS finally to end four years of restrictive immigration policies against employers. Should the same policy team return to the White House in 2025, the goal on foreign talent likely won’t be to shut the barn door tighter but to dismantle the barn and close down the farm.

The Biden administration sees international education and innovation much differently from its predecessor, and the context from which these new policies have been proposed is clear. America is viewed as losing ground to China and other countries in the battle for talent. The latest proposals show the U.S. government is now attempting to join this battle and encourage talented foreign-born scientists and engineers to become part of the U.S. economy and the nation.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2022/01/21/unlike-trump-biden-plan-welcomes-immigrant-scientists-and-engineers/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=follow&cdlcid=5e4bc7f55b099ce02faa6b40&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=follow&cdlcid=5e4bc7f55b099ce02faa6b40&sh=3a3612d955f6

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China’s effort to force return of citizens who emigrated a ‘growing problem,’ RCMP Commissioner says

2022/01/24 2 Comments

Of concern (along with other issues):

RCMP commissioner Brenda Lucki calls Beijing’s interference and intimidation operations targeting people who emigrate from China to Canada a “problem,” and says victims can report the harassment to Canadian authorities without fear.

Commissioner Lucki said Friday in an interview that she had no details at hand about the scale of the issue, but is looking to step up actions the force takes against such operations.

“I would say yes, it is a problem, but the breadth and depth of it I couldn’t really say for sure,” she said.

“It’s a growing problem, obviously, and something we want to work together with our international and domestic partners on. A lot of it is about awareness and education, because things happen and we want to make sure people who are affected by this feel safe – that they can report this without fear of reprisal.”

To that end, Commissioner Lucki said, there is an RCMP phone number for people affected by such incidents to call. She said the number has been available at least since she became commissioner in 2018, but she could not immediately say how many people have called it.

The Globe and Mail reported this week that China has been expanding its use of coercion to force the return of Chinese citizens who have settled abroad, many of them in Australia, Canada and the United States, in a campaign targeting fugitives and dissidents.

The trend was identified in a new report by Spain-based rights group Safeguard Defenders.

Citing Chinese government data, Safeguard’s report says Beijing had surpassed 10,000 returns under one repatriation program, called Sky Net, by late 2021. This is the only program for which data are available, and the watchdog group says it is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to non-judicial efforts to secure the return of people wanted by the Chinese state in 120 countries.

The report identifies three methods China employs to forcibly retrieve citizens.

Chinese authorities first attempt to coax a return through the target’s family and relatives who still live in China. They harass loved ones and try to coerce them into passing messages to the person abroad.

A second method is directly approaching the target outside mainland China, including by sending Chinese agents. A third method is what Safeguard Defenders calls “kidnappings abroad,” in which Chinese authorities arrest targets on foreign soil and take them back to China.

Security flaw found in smartphone app for Olympians in Beijing

Cherie Wong, the executive director of Alliance Canada Hong Kong, an umbrella group for Hong Kong pro-democracy activists in Canada, said many have lost faith that law enforcement in this country can help stop harassment from Beijing.

“The community has lost trust in Canadian agencies to help them. Many individuals have approached RCMP for help, but are bounced between enforcement and intelligence agencies,” she said. “Canadian enforcement and intelligence agencies do not have the tools and resources to effectively counter foreign interference operations. Chinese party-state actors have long utilized legal grey areas to assert influence inappropriately.”

Ivy Li, a spokesperson for the Canadian Friends of Hong Kong, said Canada needs a foreign-agents registration act like those in Australia or the United States, as well as a centralized reporting centre for victims of intimidation by the Chinese government.

Mehmet Tohti, executive director of the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project, said the RCMP do not have a public record of successfully tackling foreign-based harassment in Canada. “Uyghurs and other China-related activists approached the RCMP numerous times without any tangible result. For that reason many activists have already stopped reporting to the RCMP,” he said.

He added that he personally tried after his organization’s smartphones were hacked. His legal adviser “was directed from one unit to another unit, one department to another department,” he said.

Former RCMP commissioner Bob Paulson has acknowledged that not enough is being to done to stop coercion activities by China in Canada.

Mr. Paulson, the commissioner from 2011 to 2017, told The Globe this week that Canadian laws relating to extortion and threatening behaviour forbid these activities. But, he said: “We hadn’t devoted resources to this. … I can’t think of an instance where we have succeeded on the back of a complaint that Chinese agents were strong-arming citizens. You have to throw your shoulder into it.”

Commissioner Lucki said the RCMP’s federal policing program includes monitoring for foreign interference in Canadian affairs, such as election processes. She added that she expects some change in the RCMP’s approach to the issue in the year ahead, but declined to describe any specific plans. “It’s probably too early to ask that question,” she said.

Source: China’s effort to force return of citizens who emigrated a ‘growing problem,’ RCMP Commissioner says

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