One in 10 Black people living in the U.S. are immigrants, new study shows

2022/01/22 Leave a comment

By way of comparison, the percent of Blacks in Canada who are immigrants is 52 percent:

The demographics of America’s Black population are in the middle of a major shift, with 1 in 10 having been born outside the United States. That’s 4.6 million Americans, a figure that is projected to grow to 9.5 million by 2060, according to the findings of a Pew Research Center study published Thursday.

“When we talk about the nation’s Black population, we have to understand it is one that is changing and becoming even more diverse than it already was, and immigrants are a big part of that story and so the immigrant experience is a growing part of the experience of Black Americans today,” said Mark Lopez, Pew’s director of race and ethnicity research.

Black immigrants and their American-born children make up 21 percent of the nation’s Black population, with an increasing number of migrants coming from Africa, according to the report. Lopez said it’s a group that often is overlooked in discussions about immigration.

Source: One in 10 Black people living in the U.S. are immigrants, new study shows

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UN defines Holocaust denial in new resolution

2022/01/22 Leave a comment

Significant, at least symbolically:

The UN has adopted a resolution aimed at combating Holocaust denial and is urging member states and social media firms to help fight anti-Semitism.

The resolution, put forward by Israel and Germany, was passed without a vote by the 193-member General Assembly.

The move sends “a strong… message against the denial or the distortion of these historical facts”, the UN said.

Six million Jewish people died in the Holocaust – Nazi Germany’s campaign to eradicate Europe’s Jewish population.

On Thursday, the UN General Assembly said it “rejects and condemns without any reservation any denial of The Holocaust as a historical event, either in full or in part”.

“Ignoring historical facts increases the risk that they will be repeated,” Germany’s UN Ambassador Antje Leendertse said.

The text commends nations that preserve sites that once served as Nazi death camps and concentration camps and urges member states to provide educational programmes on The Holocaust.

Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and her Israeli counterpart, Yair Lapid, said in a joint statement they were concerned by a recent dramatic increase in Holocaust denial.

The resolution lists distortion or denial of The Holocaust as:

  • Intentional efforts to excuse or minimise the impact of The Holocaust or its principal elements, including collaborators and allies of Nazi Germany
  • Gross minimisation of the number of the victims of The Holocaust in contradiction to reliable sources
  • Attempts to blame the Jews for causing their own genocide
  • Statements that cast The Holocaust as a positive historical event
  • Attempts to blur the responsibility for the establishment of concentration and death camps devised and operated by Nazi Germany by putting blame on other nations or ethnic groups

While the resolution was adopted by the UN General Assembly, Iran – a member of the organisation – said it was disassociating itself from the text.

When the Nazis came to power in 1933, they began to strip Jewish people of all property, freedoms and rights under the law. At the Wannsee Conference in Berlin in January 1942, the Nazi leadership decided to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe, and deportations of Jews to extermination camps began.

Source: UN defines Holocaust denial in new resolution

Filed under Antisemitism, Holocaust

Thousands of Danish-born denied passport under tough Citizenship Law – The Post – The Copenhagen Post

2022/01/22 5 Comments

Of note:

An increasing number of people in Denmark have a so-called ‘Alien’s Passport’ recognising them as “stateless” because they can neither get a Danish passport, nor are eligible for a foreign one, reports DR.

While this is the case for many refugees and their reunified family members, tight Danish legislation means their children, born in Denmark, are too.

Many Danes affected
Zaniab Al-Ubboody, 22, was born in Viborg and went to school in Nivå and Helsingør, but rather than the usual red Danish passport, she has a grey ‘Fremmedpas’.

“I feel ashamed when I stand in line at the airport. Why do I have to have an Alien’s Passport when I was born here and my Danish friends have a red passport? It affects me a lot,” she told DR.

For Anders Maher, 23, who was born and raised in Frederiksberg and is studying medicine at the University of Copenhagen, it’s the same story.

“I was born and raised in Denmark. I think it’s absurd,” he says.

Why is this happening?
Between 2012 and 2014, some 8,000 to 9,000 people a year were issued an Alien’s Passport. In recent years, the figure has risen to around 14,000 annually, according to documents from the Danish Immigration Service.

The increase reflects a rise in foreign asylum-seekers, but also how it has become more difficult to become a Danish citizen thanks to amendments to the Citizenship Law, explains Jesper Lindholm, a professor at the Department of Law at Aalborg University.

Opposition on the right
Dansk Folkeparti asserts that the rising number of Alien’s Passports is the result of an immigration policy that is too relaxed.

“They are foreigners if their parents have not taken root in Denmark and do not have a right to be here. Denmark is not their home and cannot be. They have to go home to the country where their parents are from, even if they aren’t familiar with it,” contends DF spokesperson Marie Krarup.

Ny Borgerlige wants refugees and their children sent home faster and citizen rules tightened even more. “If people don’t live up to the requirements, it’s fine if they have a foreign passport for years,” according to spokesperson Mette Thiesen.

“I don’t see what the problem is. You can have a good life in Denmark without being a Danish citizen. Denmark throws around far too much citizenship. It should be for the very, very few,” she added.

Support on the left
However, Radikale and Enhedslisten agree it has become too difficult to achieve citizenship.

“It’s a democratic disgrace that we have a growing number of citizens who have legal and permanent residence, but not full rights,” contended Enhedslisten’s Peder Hvelplund.

“Alien’s Passports are an eternal reminder that you are not a full member of society.”

Tesfaye won’t budge on the rules
Claiming to understand the frustration, the immigration and integration minister, Mattias Tesfaye, said: “If you were born and raised in Denmark and are active in society, then I also think that you should become a Danish citizen.”

But in 2021, he and incumbent party Socialdemokratiet stonewalled a proposal by Radikale that would have made it easier for young people born and raised in Denmark to become citizens.

“We previously had more lenient rules where people who did not speak Danish got citizenship. It’s good we have tightened the rules. I will only encourage people to apply if they feel like Danish citizens. Several thousand are accepted every year, and I’m happy about that,” said Tesfaye.

A lengthy process
The current citizenship process takes several years. Many young people can expect to wait until their late 20s to become Danish citizens, according to Kristian Kriegbaum Jensen, a professor specialising in politics and administration at Aalborg University.

“One of the rules is that young people must have worked full-time for three and a half years out of four to even be able to apply for citizenship – which is next to impossible while studying,” he explained.

On average, a citizenship application took 16 months in 2020. Applicants need to pass a written test and be approved via a constitutional ceremony in their municipality.

Still, according to many right-wing voices in Parliament, it’s too lenient.

“We wanted the rules tightened even more, and a limit imposed on how many non-European and Nordic citizens can get a Danish passport every year,” said Marcus Knuth of Konservative, who encourages young people with Alien’s Passports to be grateful and to “stop complaining”.

Source: Thousands of Danish-born denied passport under tough Citizenship Law – The Post – The Copenhagen Post

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In the story of Ethiopian Jewish immigration, is Israel really the hero?

2022/01/22 Leave a comment

Of interest:

When we hear about racism or discrimination in Israel, it is usually about Jewish-Arab relations. It is far more rare that we hear the complicated story of Beta Israel, the Ethiopian Jewish community, who also face discrimination in the country. Usually, if we hear anything about their plight, we hear of Israel heroically airlifting thousands of Ethiopian Jews out of the country in covert operations. The truth of the story if far more complicated.

“With No Land,” a documentary about the Ethiopian Jews and their immigration to Israel, directed by Ethiopian immigrant Aalam-Warqe Davidian and Israeli native Kobi Davidian, a husband-wife filmmaker pair, sheds some light on the complexities involved in the Ethiopian Aliyah, giving far greater agency to the Ethiopian activists who worked to evacuate their community.

“I was astonished to hear a lot of stories about their work and their struggle to come to Israel,” Davidian told the Times of Israel in an interview about the documentary. “What I learned [growing up] is that they didn’t do anything, we just came and took them.”

Discourse around Operation Moses and Operation Solomon, the missions which airlifted thousands of Ethiopian Jews to Israel, often portray Israel as the heroic rescuers of a persecuted Jewish minority. But in fact, activists from Beta Israel had to push the Israeli government to help their community immigrate, especially after the Israeli Ministry of Absorption decreed that they were foreign to the Jewish people and thus ineligible to make aliyah under the Law of Return; that decision was reversed in 1977 after hard advocacy work.

Even once the first major wave of Ethiopian migrants arrived in Israel after Operation Moses, in 1984, they did not find the safety and welcome they had hoped for. Activist Adiso Masala recalls being taken, without explanation or consent as almost none of the Ethiopian refugees spoke Hebrew, to a room to be vaccinated — and, it turned out, re-circumcised; the circumcisions only ceased after more than a month of protests.

The documentary interviews many of the major players in the movement to evacuate Beta Israel, largely Ethiopian Jews, discussing the larger politics at play that impacted the waves of immigration. Operation Moses, for example, depended on secrecy; a fragile agreement with Sudan allowed Israel to fly members of Beta Israel out, but once Israeli journalists broke the story, Sudan’s Arab allies began pressuring the country to put a stop to the operation.

We also learn that Operation Solomon, a high-pressure mission in 1991 evacuating over 14,000 Ethiopian Jews in 36 hours, was a result of Cold War politics. Ethiopia’s Soviet-supported Mengistu regime had been preventing the migration of the Ethiopian Jewry. But after the collapse of the U.S.S.R., Mengistu was struggling to maintain power and hoped to instead gain support from the U.S. — an opportune moment to push to evacuate the Ethiopian Jewry.

Most effectively highlighted by the documentary are the families often separated during the immigration process. The sudden end of Operation Moses in 1985 stranded hundreds of Ethiopian Jews — all of whom had risked their lives walking for weeks through the desert to arrive at the operation’s pickup point — in refugee camps in Sudan after the airlifts were stopped.

Other families were separated during the immigration process due to arbitrary rulings from Israeli immigration authorities. A mother and six out of her seven children, for example, were approved for entry to Israel but her daughter is still, even today, in Ethiopia — where she is now married and has children of her own, still hoping to one day unite with her family.

The amount of history that is covered in the documentary can be overwhelming and hard to follow, but that’s not entirely its fault. Documentaries on topics more well-known in the West can rely on their audience’s preexisting knowledge of the event; films on the Holocaust can focus on specific aspects of the Nazi regime because viewers already know the broad brushstrokes of World War II.

African politics and history, whether the Sudanese civil war that impacted Operation Moses or Ethiopian ethnic tensions,are often left out of our history books and mainstream news coverage. “With No Land” has to explain the entire landscape of the region as well as the Israeli government’s suspicion of Beta Israel and the tensions with the migration.

That tension continues even today; though immigration has become slightly easier, and the documentary ends with shots of planes from Addis Ababa filled with migrants in surgical masks — the universal visual symbol of our current era — Beta Israel is still not truly welcome in Israel. The Israeli Immigration and Population Authority released a statement just this past November casting doubt on the Jewishness of a group of migrants from Ethiopia. The Israeli National Security Agency similarly implied many Ethiopian migrants are lying about their religion and ethnicity to get into Israel.

There are few members of Beta Israel left in Ethiopia today; most have finally moved to Israel. But it’s clear that even after aliyah, the problems of the Ethiopian Jewry persist.

Source: In the story of Ethiopian Jewish immigration, is Israel really the hero?

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ICYMI: Insight Grant 2021 Birth Tourism and #Citizenship – Activist or Academic?

2022/01/22 Leave a comment

Some background of possible interest to this grant.

My initial 2018 analysis (Hospital Stats Show Birth Tourism Rising in Major Cities) provoked rebuttals from Jamie Lieu and Megan Gaucher.

While part of their arguments concerned my interpretation of the data (largely addressed given the sharp drop in visitor visas covered in my Birth Tourism in Canada Dropped Sharply Once the Pandemic Began), the bulk of their arguments were on policy grounds where we disagree.

Ironically, we had submitted a joint-proposal in 2019 for funding research looking at the policy issues, but were unsuccessful. It has now been successfully resurrected with the original researchers but without my “contrarian” presence and thus may well lack balance given the common perspective of the researchers.

Their concern that “proposed measures risk being driven by polarizing narratives about borders and citizenship rather than by evidence” is somewhat ironic as they contest the best evidence that we have regarding the likely numbers of birth tourists.

As a whole, the proposal reinforces critiques of universities and academics not having a diversity of views and perspectives in their work:

Birth tourist is a term used for non-resident mothers (NRMs) who come to Canada with the sole purpose of giving birth so that their child has a claim to Canadian birthright citizenship.

“They are accused of undermining Canada’s jus soli citizenship laws and subsequently labelled ‘queue jumpers’ and ‘system cheaters,’” says Megan Gaucher. “While both completely legal and statistically low, birth tourism continues to be identified by political parties as an issue in need of remedy.”

Gaucher, an associate professor in the Department of Law and Legal Studies, has been awarded a five-year $223,328 SSHRC Insight grant for the project, “Mapping the Discursive and Institutional Landscape of ‘Birth Tourism’ and its Perceived Attack on Canadian Birthright Citizenship.”

“Proposed measures have focused almost exclusively on refusing automatic citizenship to children born on Canadian soil unless one of the parents is a Canadian citizen or permanent resident,” says Gaucher. “Calls for legislative action however, remain reliant on an incomplete picture of the prevalence of and motivations for engaging in birth tourism, the socio-legal structures that facilitate it and the implications current political and public discourse present for NRMs.”

The project will provide the first comprehensive mapping of the state of birth tourism in Canada. Gaucher — along with team members Jamie Chai Yun Liew (University of Ottawa), Y.Y. Chen (University of Ottawa) and Amanda Cheong (University of British Columbia) — will conduct interviews with NRMs and their family members, birth tourism industry insiders, health care practitioners, government officials and local residents.

These interviews will be complemented by an analysis of pre-existing government data, Parliamentary Hansard, birth tourism promotional materials and media coverage from mainstream and ethnic media. “Current conversations about birth tourism tend to rely on data from health facilities,” says Gaucher. “Our project will bring together experts in political science, law, health and sociology to critically interrogate how multiple socio-legal spaces are used to both criminalize and restrict access to NRMs and their future children.”

This study will explore how constructions of foreignness undermine the longstanding assumption that formal legal citizenship is an uncontested condition for membership to the Canadian state and explore how political and public discourse around birth tourism ultimately reproduces settler-colonial imaginaries of “good” familial citizens.

“As debate around birth tourism in Canada and the appropriate policy responses continue to unfold against a backdrop of knowledge gaps, proposed measures risk being driven by polarizing narratives about borders and citizenship rather than by evidence,” she says.

Source: Friday, June 18, 2021 in Department of Law and Legal Studies, News, Research
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Nicolas: Les réacs attaquent

2022/01/21 Leave a comment

Of note:

Croyant que les «woke» posent une menace de censure, les républicains censurent.

Enfant, il m’arrivait d’être frustrée que mes séries américaines préférées soient télédiffusées avec deux, trois, voire quatre saisons de retard, dans leur version doublée, par rapport à leur version originale. Ça me donnait l’impression de vivre en décalage, et me donnait hâte de comprendre assez l’anglais pour « aller dans le futur ». Bien sûr, le « retard » n’existerait pas si on ne consommait que des créations locales. Ce sentiment qu’on absorbe des éléments de la culture américaine, comme francophones, avec quelques saisons de retard persiste encore souvent chez moi — et je ne parle pas ici seulement de télévision.

Du moins, c’est ainsi que je m’explique la mode des mots « woke » et « wokisme » au Québec depuis à peu près un an. Fox News et le Parti républicain ont mis en avant ce dispositif rhétorique il y a quelques années pour contrer la sympathie grandissante du public américain pour les revendications du mouvement Black Lives Matter. On s’en est aussi servi pour décrédibiliser toute mesure visant à rectifier l’exclusion historique des femmes et des minorités de la vie universitaire américaine. Du moins, c’est un synopsis qu’on pourrait offrir pour présenter une première saison de « Les wokes attaquent ». Une production de Rupert Murdoch, bien sûr.

Alors qu’on savoure ici les premiers moments de ce grand spectacle télévisuel, vous me permettrez de vous divulgâcher platement la suite. Quelques saisons plus tard, la série introduit un nouveau mot-clé : la critical race theory, ou théorie critique de la race (TCR). En juin et juillet 2021 seulement, Fox News a mentionné l’expression 1914 fois en ondes, selon le Washington Post. Un total de 1914 fois en deux mois. Qu’est-ce que la théorie critique de la race, au juste ? Au sens propre, il s’agit d’un champ de recherche des sciences sociales qui étudie l’histoire du racisme et ses effets contemporains. Au sens de Fox News, il s’agit, comme pour le mot « woke », d’une expression fourre-tout indéfinissable. On ne sait plus trop exactement ce que ça veut dire, mais on sait que c’est haïssable.

De manière générale, on comprend que la TCR, c’est l’opposé du patriotisme, voire une arme de culpabilisation et de dévalorisation massive de la fierté américaine (conservatrice). Le Projet 1619 du New York Times Magazine, qui raconte les origines de l’esclavage sur le territoire ? C’est de la TCR. Les activités de formation continue sur l’équité et l’inclusion dans les entreprises ? Encore de la TCR. Un enseignant qui parle en classe des privilèges sociaux ? Toujours de la TCR. De ses milliers de mentions en ondes découle une mobilisation de parents à travers le pays, qui implorent les conseils scolaires de bannir la TCR de l’enseignement primaire et secondaire (même si la définition pré-Fox News du terme se réfère à une branche de recherche en sciences sociales qui n’a jamais touché les enfants). Tout enseignant qui mentionne en classe un aspect de l’histoire qui ne glorifie pas l’Amérique blanche conservatrice risque de se faire accuser d’avoir « commis » de la TCR. Les enseignants qui ne sont eux-mêmes pas des blancs conservateurs sont particulièrement à risque, bien entendu.

Dans les derniers épisodes de « Les wokesattaquent », on s’est toutefois lassé de la rhétorique, et on est passé à l’action. Alors que Fox News a progressivement diminué l’emploi de l’expression critical race theory vers la fin de l’été, neuf États américains avaient adopté des lois « anti-TCR » à la fin de 2021 : l’Idaho, l’Oklahoma, le Tennessee, le Texas, l’Iowa, le New Hampshire, la Caroline du Sud, l’Arizona et le Dakota du Nord. En étudiant le recensement que l’Institut Brookings a fait de ses différentes pièces législatives, on voit qu’on a aussi profité du mouvement anti-TCR pour compliquer l’enseignement de notions liées au sexe et au genre. Certaines de ces lois posent des limites à ce qui peut être enseigné au primaire, au secondaire, et dans les universités de l’État. D’autres interdisent les formations en équité, diversité et inclusion pour les employés des services publics.

Leur vocabulaire a été choisi avec soin. Au Texas, par exemple, un enseignant causant de « l’inconfort, de la culpabilité, de l’angoisse ou toute autre forme de détresse psychologique » à des étudiants en lien avec leurs identités raciales ou sexuelles en abordant des sujets délicats contrevient à la loi. On interdit aussi de remettre en question l’idée de la méritocratie, d’avancer que l’esclavage est central à la fondation des États-Unis ou d’enseigner que le racisme est « autre chose qu’une déviation, une trahison ou un échec à faire vivre les authentiques principes fondateurs des États-Unis, qui incluent la liberté et l’égalité ». On prohibe aussi carrément le recours en classe du fameux Projet 1619 du New York Times Magazine. On ne manque pas de précision.

Des élus de l’Alabama, de l’Alaska, de l’Arkansas, de la Floride, du Kentucky, de la Louisiane, du Maine, du Michigan, du Mississippi, du Missouri, du New Jersey, de New York, de la Caroline du Nord, de l’Ohio, de la Pennsylvanie, du Rhode Island, de la Virginie-Occidentale, du Wisconsin et du Wyoming ont déposé des projets de loi qui vont dans le même sens. Six initiatives législatives similaires ont aussi été proposées au Congrès américain. On parle ici d’interdire l’enseignement de concepts « divisifs » liés à la race et au genre, là de renvoyer des enseignants ou de réduire les fonds publics aux « promoteurs » de la TCR. Décidément, la saison 2022 de « Les wokes attaquent » s’annonce pleine d’action. Ne devrait-on pas renommer la série « Les réacs attaquent », d’ailleurs ?

Nombreux sont les fans de l’émission qui ont accroché à la saison 1 à cause de la force du thème de la liberté d’expression dans la trame narrative. Comme on vient de le voir, le récit évolue plutôt vers une campagne de censure étatique en bonne et due forme visant les milieux d’enseignement. Si ce que j’ai divulgâché nous intéresse moins, il est encore temps de changer de poste

Source: Les réacs attaquent

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Speer: Let’s not prolong this pandemic for the sake of the expert class

2022/01/21 Leave a comment

An uncomfortable insight and a reminder how we all need to be aware of the incentives and motivations that affect our behaviour and positions:

I saw a fascinating tweet last week that reflected something that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. University of Waterloo labour economist Mikal Skuterud wondered aloud whether the experts whose influence and profile have risen over the past twenty-four months or so may be consciously or subconsciously inclined to prolong the pandemic. 

Skuterud’s question doesn’t attribute malice or ill-intent. He’s not questioning whether academics or public servants would purposefully manipulate data or intentionally provide misleading advice. He’s making a far more subtle yet important point.  

He’s asking if our pandemic-induced emphasis on expertise may inadvertently create a powerful set of incentives in which these same experts may eventually find it challenging to surrender the sense of power and purpose that they’ve been given over the past two years. It’s a question worth asking.

As he rightly notes, the pandemic has necessarily elevated certain experts in our society. We’ve seen doctors, epidemiologists, and other public health experts come to have unprecedented influence over government policymaking and uncharacteristic prominence in the mainstream media and on social media. 

That’s somewhat natural in light of the circumstances. It’s to be expected that policymakers, the media, and the general population would come to value infectious disease experts in the face of a novel coronavirus. 

The result though is that a number of hitherto obscure academics and bureaucrats have never mattered this much before and probably never will again. It’s not normal for them to appear on television each day or increase their Twitter followings tenfold. 

Such a surge of influence and profile can bring with it a powerful set of incentives. It can contribute to a loss of perspective and an inflation of one’s ego. It can encourage individuals who may usually be scholarly and taciturn to be more quarrelsome and vehement. It can preference 280 characters over nuance. It can turn little-known academics into political actors. 

Skuterud’s question is therefore a good and honest one. How might this extraordinary yet temporary increase in the role of certain experts influence how they think about the pandemic and advise on pandemic-related policies including the continuation of public-health restrictions?   

The answer may lie in Public Choice theory, which the Nobel Prize-winning economist James Buchanan famously defined as “politics without romance.” Public Choice came about in the second half of the twentieth century under the intellectual influence of Buchanan, his regular collaborator, Gordon Tullock, political economist Mancur Olson, and various others. 

The basic idea is that our understanding of one’s motivations in the private economy ought to extend to his or her involvement in government, politics, and public policy. As economist Pierre Lemieux has succinctly put it: “He does not metamorphose into an altruist angel.” 

Most economic analysis starts with a basic premise: the market is comprised of rational actors pursuing their own self-interest. Yet these same assumptions about human behaviour aren’t always applied in the political sphere. The underlying presumption can be that activists, bureaucrats, and politicians are somehow beyond self-interest and are instead capable of making judgments about government policy without accounting for their own personal interests. 

Public Choice theory challenges this notion. It uses modern economics to analyse politics and political decision-making. It starts from the premise that different actors in the political process are self-interested agents who will seek to maximize their own utility function just like individuals do in the marketplace. 

In practice, it means that politicians may offer voters popular measures to get elected, public servants might conceive of new programs to obtain more funding and greater resources for their departments, and special interest groups—including unions and corporations—invariably lobby government to obtain new benefits such as tariffs to protect their businesses or laws or regulations that advance their own interests. 

This hardly seems like a revolutionary idea now. Public Choice theory has become a well-respected school of economic thought with a number of prolific exponents and a wide range of applications. But, at its infancy, it was seen as a radical proposition that brought into question the capacity of government to make collective decisions in the public interest.  

The consequence of Public Choice isn’t to challenge government’s basic legitimacy or reject it altogether. It’s instead a call for a clear-eyed assessment of the impulses and motivations behind different actors involved in politics and public administration. This extends to the experts and journalists who form part of the overall system and must be similarly understood as influenced by a broadly defined notion of self-interest. It’s not narrowly about monetary reward either—though financial gain may be a factor for some. It can extend to other rewards including influence, profile, or the sense of meaning and purpose that the pandemic’s emphasis on expertise has granted. 

It’s important to emphasize that this isn’t a description of moral failing. Recognizing the pull of self-interest isn’t a judgement of particular people in positions of authority. It’s an observation about human nature and the fact that government and politics are fundamentally comprised of humans and their inherent fallibilities. 

Which brings us back to Skuterud’s question. There’s no reason to think that most experts haven’t acted in good faith during the pandemic and sought to make a positive contribution to solving the extraordinary public health crisis. But, as Public Choice tells us, it’s also quite possible that at some level these incentives are shaping the questions that they’re asking, the data that they’re collecting, the analysis that they’re bringing to bear, or how they’re engaging in the public sphere.

The risk, of course, is that these forces come to obtrude collective decision-making and in turn prolong the pandemic. It’s hard to know the magnitude of the risk. But it’s presumably not zero. It must be something that we are cognizant of—especially as the policy choices become more complex and the subject of greater debate. 

The ultimate solution to the COVID-19 pandemic is imperfect: it will require a combination of critical thinking and judgement calls without any altruistic angels. This pandemic’s end will necessarily involve a series of trade-offs, calculated choices, and second-best options. It must in short be an exercise in a politics without romance. 

Source: https://thehub.ca/2022-01-20/lets-not-prolong-this-pandemic-for-the-sake-of-the-expert-class/?utm_source=The%20Hub&utm_campaign=dd5b5eb714-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2022_01_19_06_47&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_429d51ea5d-dd5b5eb714-475403886&mc_cid=dd5b5eb714&mc_eid=7832dd2817

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Antonius: Réflexion critique sur l’usage du terme «woke»

2022/01/21 Leave a comment

Balanced perspective:

Le terme « woke » est utilisé de façon tellement polémique par divers acteurs politiques qu’il a perdu sa valeur analytique. Il est trop chargé de jugements (généralement négatifs) et son sens est imprécis. Je préfère l’éviter.

Dans les luttes contemporaines pour la justice sociale aux États-Unis, être woke (« éveillé » en slang américain), c’est :

a) être conscient des injustices sociales, surtout quand elles sont masquées par le discours dominant et encore plus quand on les subit soi-même, et

b) en fonction de cette prise de conscience, prendre position contre une hégémonie culturelle des dominants dont le discours tend à nous rendre aveugles aux injustices sociales. C’est dans ce sens, par exemple, que la « critical race theory » vise à rendre visibles les logiques raciales qui ne disent pas leur nom et qui se déguisent en postures universalistes. J’estime que ces logiques raciales sont beaucoup plus marquées aux États-Unis qu’au Canada ou au Québec.

En somme, le terme a désigné une posture de prise de conscience des injustices, et de la nécessité de mener des luttes pour dénoncer leurs manifestations dans le langage et la culture. C’est là que la posture woke s’exprime, et elle tire son sens positif (aux yeux des militants pour la justice sociale) de la contestation des rapports de pouvoir qui s’expriment dans le discours.

Mais comment a-t-il fini par prendre des connotations négatives ? Et négatives pour qui ?

Pour diverses raisons, les postures woke ont fini par donner lieu à des dérapages, c’est-à-dire des actions injustifiables, qui les ont discréditées et qui sont responsables de l’usage péjoratif du terme « woke ». Mais qu’est-ce qui constitue un dérapage ou une action injustifiable ?

Deux perspectives

La première perspective (qui est la mienne) se situe en appui aux luttes pour la justice sociale, et elle est globalement de gauche, mais elle est critique de l’usage inadéquat de certaines accusations de « racisme » ou de « transphobie », surtout lorsqu’elles sont accompagnées d’actions pour « faire taire ».

La deuxième perspective est celle des groupes hégémoniques, qui voient d’un mauvais œil la contestation de l’ordre établi. Ils vont alors se saisir de chaque dérapage pour accentuer son danger. Et leur critique portera d’autant plus que les dérapages se multiplient.

Quand une militante contre le racisme, qui encourage ses étudiants et étudiantes à participer aux manifestations de Black Lives Matter, se fait traiter de raciste par certains de ses étudiants et étudiantes parce qu’elle a utilisé le fameux mot en n pour analyser les stratégies de retournement du stigmate, il y a là un dérapage qui ne sert pas la cause des luttes pour la justice sociale. Mais jusque-là, il n’y a encore rien à signaler. Il y a une longue tradition de radicalisation des luttes pour la justice sociale, et particulièrement des luttes étudiantes. On ne peut pas reprocher à des jeunes de 19 ans de faire ce que les jeunes de 19 ans font souvent : contester. Le problème survient quand l’université, sous couvert d’appui aux luttes pour la justice sociale, appuie des actions de censure, et valide, à tort, les accusations de racisme contre l’enseignante avant d’avoir examiné adéquatement si ces accusations tiennent la route.

Dans cette logique, il est arrivé que plusieurs établissements d’enseignement, ou encore de grandes institutions médiatiques regardent d’un œil favorable ces excès, pour diverses raisons qui méritent une analyse séparée. J’ai examiné dans une publication récente* deux aspects de ces dérapages, dans lesquels : a) la posture morale remplace souvent la posture analytique, et b) les concepts (racisme, « phobies » diverses) sont étirés bien au-delà de leurs limites de validité. Et cela a pour conséquence que les « détenteurs et détentrices de la vertu inclusive et de la vérité absolue » se sentent le droit de faire taire les discours qu’ils n’aiment pas, y compris au sein de l’université. C’est cela qui permet de considérer que la posture woke, au départ libératrice, est devenue contre-productive dans les luttes pour la justice sociale.

Dans ce contexte, les groupes hégémoniques (porteurs d’une perspective de droite) ont beau jeu de délégitimer ces formes de critiques de l’ordre social dominant, à cause de ces dérapages. Cette situation permet alors un discours démagogique qui associe à une posture de droite et à une « panique morale » toute critique des dérapages associés à la posture woke.

Voilà pourquoi il est urgent que les forces contestataires de l’ordre dominant restent critiques et vigilantes face aux dérapages qui discréditent leurs luttes.

Source: https://www.ledevoir.com/opinion/idees/661371/idees-reflexion-critique-sur-l-usage-du-terme-woke

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Themrise Khan: The incoherence of Canada’s refugee policy

2022/01/20 Leave a comment

Overly simplistic in its focus on the “whiteness” of refugee policy given the many restrictions on refugees and discrimination of minorities in non-white countries.

And while one can characterize Afghan interpreters and the like as “helping imperial forces during an (illegal) occupation,” seems a bit divorced from the reality of the Taliban’s rule.

As for her recommendations, fine as far as they go but the challenge is not at the general principles, which most policy makers agree with, but actually implementing them in a real-time basis, where I believe the main failures likely were:

Over the past year the lives of refugees and asylum seekers of the Global South have been put at risk more than ever by potential receiving countries of the Global North. Militarized migrant pushbacks at the Poland-Belarus border. Increasing migrant deaths in the English Channel. Draconian asylum and refugee policies being proposed by the U.K. A United States that continues to be refugee-averse despite a change in government. In essence, we are witnessing the “whiteness” of refugee policy – a shift by countries of the Global North toward using the lives of refugees to wield greater power over the Global South, all the while retaining the false narrative of the white saviour.

Canada’s current refugee policy is nowhere as extreme as those examples, but it is not so distanced from this narrative either. The Afghan refugee crisis in the summer of 2021 was meant to be a moment for Canada to exhibit its good policy, particularly since it played an active part in post-conflict Afghanistan and maintained a presence in the country. Instead, the Canadian response exposed the contradictions in its refugee policy, many of them a long time coming. Whiteness does not only mean discriminating against the “other.” It also means being completely disconnected from the situation outside the Global North. Canada’s response to the Afghan crisis has provided us with several illustrations of this disconnect.

Canada’s response – gaps and discrepancies

From being one of the first northern countries to shutter its embassy when the Taliban took over to when it ended its evacuation mission in the following days, Canada’s disconnect from reality was clear. There were thousands of refugee and asylum cases that had been pending since at least 2014, and the decision to create new refugee programs or expanding existing ones at the 11th hour was a bureaucratic scramble, rather than a well thought out policy response. It stranded people in other countries, which meant Canada had to negotiate special agreements so these countries would temporarily house refugees destined for Canada. The ethics and optics were particularly weak when this involved countries like Pakistan that had closed their borders and were hostile to Afghan refugees.

The situation of Afghan interpreters and fixers who assisted Western forces, including Canada, illustrates the biggest policy disconnect from reality. Their roles were prone to being romanticized in the media, as they perfectly invoke the image of the Western white saviour and the oppressed Afghan working together against a common evil. However, Afghans did not necessarily help Western forces because the West came to save them. They did it primarily for economic survival, as some studies have found, and as a way out of the country for their families in the aftermath of a brutal conflict. This does not negate their right to seek refuge. But suggesting the prospect of asylum in return for helping imperial forces during an (illegal) occupation is a flawed and incoherent premise in the context of refugee policy.

In effect, Western interventionism created multiple tiers of refugees in a system that was never meant to view some as being more deserving than others. In Canada’s case, this threatens the lives of Afghans who directly worked with us by encouraging them with the prospect of asylum and then failing to deliver even before it was too late – all because such cases required a force-fit within a law that recognizes them as just one of many deserving groups.

What the Afghanistan situation most clearly illustrates is the absence of mechanisms within Canada’s refugee policy to respond to complex emergencies on the ground. Canada’s refugee system, like many others, looks to the United NationsHigh Commissioner for Refugees’ (UNHCR) referral program. Inthis program the UNHCR refers the applications of refugees officially registered with the organization to third countries thatare offering resettlement opportunities. These third countries, such as Canada, then select who to admit by applying their own criteria to the applications referred to them by the UNHCR. This is how Canada responded to the Syrian refugee crisis in 2015. In the recent Afghan case, however, the system was redundantsince the urgency created by the Taliban takeover was to removeAfghans from within Afghanistan, not from refugee camps elsewhere. Not anticipating this, and also leaving existing Afghan applications stagnating within our refugee system, was perhaps Canada’s worst failing in this crisis. 

Recommendations for better policy and practice

The Afghanistan case blindsided Canada’s refugee response system, but it didn’t have to. We must redesign our refugee policy to be proactive instead of reactive. For this, Canada must:

  • Design better mechanisms to predict and understand conflict-induced displacement

The West obsessively predicts large-scale displacement related to climate change and hunger. But it does little to predict or understand how armed conflict or political power imbalances can force people to flee, especially in the Global South. This includes ignoring voices within the Global South that are better able to judge tension and displacement in their countries. Afghanistan has been a location of conflict for as long as the Taliban have existed. Misjudging this was a tactical error that exposed Canada’s disregard for the views of potential refugees themselves. Refugee policy must invest in a more Southern-led understanding of how conflict manifests over time and can affect people’s lives, including the voices of refugees. It must move away from being simply a paper-pushing exercise.

  • Integrate inter-departmental efforts to respond to refugees and displacement 

Canada was involved in pre- and post-conflict Afghanistan not just militarily, but also via its development programming and humanitarian support. Information gathered by the various departmental channels is vital to developing an integrated response to potential human displacement across government. Better inter-governmental co-ordination would improve refugee response systems, particularly in countries where Canada is diplomatically present.

  • Adopt emergency measures to respond to crises

Canada rather proudly states that it responded to the Afghan crisis by effectively accommodating on-ground challenges. This included bypassing and altering screening and documentation requirements. But this was done only after the realization that regular, peace-time processing measures were not working. Precious time was lost in the process of coming to this realization. Had such measures been in place beforehand, the response would have been immediate. Therefore, it is imperative to acknowledge the distinction between and the need for peace-time and conflict-related refugee processing mechanisms.

A Canadian government official recently commented on Canada’s refusal to bring in relatives of Afghan refugee applicants who were deemed inadmissible. He said: “the hard part of the job has been telling people: ‘I’m sorry, this is the policy.”

This comment in a nutshell sums up Canada’s disconnect from reality as it relates to its refugee response. The Afghan case has demonstrated that whiteness manifests itself not only in racial discrimination but also in policies that are largely oblivious to reality outside our borders. Canada prioritized its bureaucracy and interventions over the risks faced by the Afghan people, and the system ignored the urgency of a country on the brink of collapse. If this is what our refugee system is built around, it is clearly geared toward helping Canada, and not the vulnerable.

Source: https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/january-2022/the-incoherence-of-canadas-refugee-policy/

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with ,

The Decline of Legal Immigration | Cato at Liberty Blog

2022/01/20 Leave a comment

Useful stats. MPI had a very good webinar assessing the Biden administration immigration policy and program changes. Lot more happening through executive orders (close to 300 in the past year, about 100 related to reversing Trump administration measures) than the high level debates would indicate:

Legal immigration collapsed in the last year of the Trump administration. The number of green cards issued abroad were declining prior to the pandemic, partly for policy and other reasons, but the American government’s overreaction to COVID-19 caused immigration to collapse as we’ve detailed here, here, here, here, and here.

Since President Biden took office in January 2021, the recovery of legal immigration has been much slower than we anticipated. The new vaccine mandate for immigrants (as we’re seeing in other countries with the Novak Djokovic scandal), the remaining closure of many embassies and consulates that reduce interviews for visas and their subsequent issuance, the delayed release of extra visas approved by Congress, and additional haphazardly imposed travel restrictions have greatly reduced the scope of legal immigration.

Despite those restrictions, the number of legal immigrant visas issued abroad has partly recovered from a low of 697 (that’s not a typo) in May 2020 to 35,647 in November 2021 (Figure 1). That’s 16 percent below the average of 42,390 immigrant visas issued monthly from January 2017 through February 2020, during Trump’s presidency but prior to COVID-19. December 2021 and January 2022 will likely show lower numbers.

As bad as the numbers for immigrant visas are, the number of non‐​immigrant visas issued abroad every month is even worse. Non‐​immigrant visas are for students, temporary workers, tourists, and others who can temporarily travel to the United States or reside here for a specific time and purpose. Figure 2 shows that 40,939 were issued in May 2020, the low point of the series, down from a monthly average of 738,642 from January 2017 through February 2020 – a 95 percent decline. The numbers have since climbed to a paltry 391,022 in November 2021 – far shy of their pre‐​pandemic numbers.

The Biden administration needs to rapidly reverse this situation, recover the lost visas through legislation, and go even further or the U.S. economy will suffer long run drags on its growth.

Source: The Decline of Legal Immigration | Cato at Liberty Blog

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