Why Citizenship for Undocumented Immigrants Matters for US Economic Recovery | Immigration

2022/03/10 Leave a comment

Of note:

There are 10.4 million undocumented immigrants working and living in the United States. Approximately 5 million of them are considered essential workers — serving as health care professionals and staff at hospitals, as agricultural and farm workers producing the country’s food, as delivery drivers and grocery store clerks, and in other industries that have helped keep the country afloat. Some of them are Dreamers, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients, or Temporary Protected Status holders. Yet they were excluded from federal pandemic relief efforts and unable to receive stimulus checks and many do not have access to health care.

The Center for American Progress, a Corporation grantee, makes the case for the Biden administration and Congress to create a pathway to citizenship and permanent protections for undocumented immigrants as they continue to aid the country’s economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The author, Trinh Q. Truong, writes that creating a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants would help ensure a robust economic recovery for all Americans. Should congressional efforts fail, Truong urges the Biden administration to take immediate executive action to promote stability in the lives of undocumented immigrants, their families, and their communities.

Source: Why Citizenship for Undocumented Immigrants Matters for US Economic Recovery | Immigration

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,

#COVID-19: Comparing provinces with other countries 9 March Update; New Zealand changes its tack on surging COVID-19 cases

2022/03/10 Leave a comment

Overall decline in infections and deaths continues. Numbers from China have a further significant increase since last week, from 315,000 to 608,000 infections and from 5,380 to 6,923 deaths.

Vaccinations: Some minor shifts but convergence among provinces and countries. Canadians fully vaccinated 82.4 percent, compared to Japan 79.5 percent, UK 73.5 percent and USA 65.9 percent.

Immigration source countries are also converging: China fully vaccinated 88.3 percent (numbers have not budged over past four weeks), India 58.9 percent, Nigeria 4.2 percent, Pakistan 46.6 percent, Philippines 58.4 percent.

Trendline Charts:

Infections: Ongoing signs of omicron and other variants plateauing, more so in Canadian provinces than comparator groups.

Deaths: G7 still not plateauing.

Vaccinations: No major relative changes although Japan is now ahead of California.

Weekly

Infections: No relative changes. Infections per million in China have increased from 226 per million to 436 per million.

Deaths: Major change again is with respect to China with deaths per million increasing from 3.9 to 5 per million.

New Zealand changes its tack on surging COVID-19 cases

Back in August, New Zealand’s government put the entire nation on lockdown after a single community case of the coronavirus was detected.

On Tuesday, when new daily cases hit a record of nearly 24,000, officials told hospital workers they could help out on understaffed COVID-19 wards even if they were mildly sick themselves.

It was the latest sign of just how radically New Zealand’s approach to the virus has shifted, moving from elimination to suppression and now to something approaching acceptance as the omicron variant has taken hold.

Experts say New Zealand’s sometimes counterintuitive actions have likely saved thousands of lives by allowing the nation to mostly avoid earlier, more deadly variants and buying time to get people vaccinated. The nation of 5 million has reported just 65 virus deaths since the pandemic began.

But virus hospitalizations have been rapidly rising, hitting a record of more than 750 on Tuesday and putting strain on the system.

Across the country, the explosion in cases has left people stunned. Just a month ago, case numbers were around 200 per day. Now, the outbreak is affecting everyone from frontline workers to lawmakers.

Opposition Leader Christopher Luxon became the highest profile politician yet to announce he was infected on Monday, saying he felt fine and would continue working from home.

One factor that hastened the outbreak was the return of thousands of university students to campuses around the country last month.

Ralph Zambrano, the student president at Victoria University of Wellington, said the virus had spread rapidly through hundreds of students in residence halls, taking a toll on their mental health and well-being.

“The campus would usually be buzzing at this time of year but it has a very eerie feeling to it,” he said, adding that most students were opting to learn remotely. “There’s lots of anxiety and tension.”

He said the outbreak had strained the food supply system in the halls, with some students being offered only a protein drink for breakfast or a piece of cold meat and some peas for dinner.

The university said case numbers in the halls were now reducing as students recovered.

Professor Michael Baker, an epidemiologist at the University of Otago, said the variant had proved as ferociously infectious in New Zealand as it had in other countries.

He said cases appeared to be plateauing or even starting to dip in the largest city of Auckland, while still rising elsewhere.

While much of the world was breathing a sigh of relief after two years of terrible problems, Baker said, New Zealand was at its worst point yet in the pandemic and was coming to terms with the fact the virus would remain in the country permanently.

He said he was concerned health authorities had lost the ability to properly track the outbreak, as they struggled to shift from a system where they carefully monitored a few cases to dealing with thousands of self-reported results from rapid antigen tests.

Dr. Caroline McElnay, the director of public health at the Ministry of Health, told reporters the number of hospitalizations would grow, but that patients with omicron generally had less severe illnesses than previous patients had experienced with the delta variant.

She said the rising number of both patients and infected health workers had prompted the relaxation in the rules around when health workers could return to hospitals.

She said infected workers would only be allowed to work with patients who already had the virus, and if there were no other options.

“It’s an extra tool that enables our health system to keep running,” she said.

Source: New Zealand changes its tack on surging COVID-19 cases

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , , , ,

Barutciski: Roxham Road — Canadians deserve honest talk about this country’s asylum policy

2022/03/09 Leave a comment

Needed on both sides of the spectrum:

Despite international travel restrictions, the number of asylum seekers entering Canada through the unofficial Roxham Road border crossing between Quebec and upstate New York has reached winter-month record levels. Recent statistics indicate 2,367 migrants entered during a month of January that was particularly cold. Almost 3,000 entered in December. At this rate, the RCMP will intercept a record number of asylum seekers on the land border this year.

We have not heard about these irregular migrants in recent years for a simple reason: after insisting during the first three years of the Trump administration that it was impossible to block the border, the Trudeau government simply invoked public health safety and prevented them from entering at the start of the pandemic. The special Order in Council preventing entry at Roxham Road was lifted last November and, unsurprisingly, the number of asylum claims immediately shot up.

We are back to the controversial double standard that created controversy and contributed to record levels of asylum claims from 2017 to 2019. If migrants arrive at the Lacolle port of entry, border officials invoke the Safe Third Country Agreement with the United States to prevent them from entering to claim asylum. However, if the migrants go a couple of kilometres to the west at Roxham Road, the RCMP allows them to enter because of a loophole in the agreement. There is, however, no protection principle that could justify treating asylum seekers differently based on which part of the land border they use to enter.

Instead of explaining the problem in a transparent way so that pro-immigration Canadians could grasp the dilemma, the Trudeau government focused on signalling a supposedly virtuous policy and promoting a humanitarian brand. Observers who sympathized with this apparent openness are missing the underlying political cynicism. Canadian asylum policy has always been anchored to the basic concept of interdiction with strict visa issuance policies and airline sanctions for undocumented travellers. Despite the rhetoric, governments of all stripes have done everything possible to prevent asylum seekers from reaching our shores. It is not by chance that many migrants from poor countries obtained U.S. visas to fly to New York City before taking the bus/taxi to Roxham Road. They would never have received Canadian visas. Seen in this light, the recent decision to grant visas quickly to Ukrainians will eventually be seen as another double standard.

The ideological battle regarding Roxham Road is therefore misleading to the extent it has become a symbol dividing Canadians into supposedly pro-refugee or anti-refugee camps. Part of this context is that activists have opposed any idea of an agreement with the U.S. since the late 1980s (when enabling legislation was initially proposed) because they do not believe U.S. standards are good enough.

Despite its branding efforts, a closer look reveals the Trudeau government has always argued before the courts that migrants can be returned to the U.S. because it is a “safe third country” where rights are respected (under both the Trump and Biden administrations). So far it has not said this too loudly outside the courtroom because it clashes with a pro-refugee image.

Similarly, the Trudeau government does not explain what is meant by the commitment “to modernize” the agreement with the U.S. that is included in the immigration minister’s mandate letter. This would logically mean removing the loophole, but clearly saying so goes against brand.

Although unfashionable on campuses, there is nothing wrong with communicating to the public that border control is a legitimate state function. It explains why the federal government has always preferred to select and resettle refugees from overseas rather than deal with asylum claimants who arrive irregularly and undocumented. An honest discussion acknowledges potential problems with such uninvited asylum claims. The challenge is reconciling the need to control borders with a humane and fair approach to asylum.

Canada is not the only country facing asylum dilemmas. Even prior to the Ukrainian outflow, the number of asylum seekers increased over the last few months in the European Union. Likewise, the problem at the Mexican border is getting worse despite a new administration in Washington that does not want to appear anti-refugee. In a post-pandemic context that will see increased international mobility, Canadians have an interest in rejecting superficial image-based approaches to asylum policy. The government could improve public trust by eliminating the incoherence in the way asylum claims are handled at Roxham Road and being more upfront about our actual position. It is time our leaders’ role in elevating the public discourse overrides the fondness for political marketing.

Michael Barutciski is a faculty member of York University’s Glendon College and associate editor of Global Brief magazine. He has taught refugee law and directed public policy programs in several countries.

Source: Barutciski: Roxham Road — Canadians deserve honest talk about this country’s asylum policy

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with , ,

After years of US population growth, it’s time for a pause | TheHill

2022/03/09 Leave a comment

Rare questioning of the conventional wisdom of growth strategies and raising of related issues:

In the long run, no substantial benefits will result from the further growth of America’s population. The gradual stabilization of the U.S. population through voluntary means would contribute significantly to America’s ability to solve its problems.

That statement from a half-century ago was the unequivocal central finding of the groundbreaking report by the U.S. Commission on Population Growth and the American Future, submitted to the president and Congress on March 27, 1972.

However, rather than moving toward a gradual stabilization, as was clearly recommended, America’s population over the past 50 years has grown to 334 million, an increase of 123 million (about 60 percent) since 1972.

In addition, America’s population is projected to continue growing over the coming decades. According to its main projection series, the Census Bureau expects the nation’s population to be close to 400 million around mid-century.

Preceding the commission’s establishment by several years, former President Richard M. Nixon remarked that “One of the most serious challenges to human destiny in the last third of this century will be the growth of the population… Whether man’s response to that challenge will be a cause for pride or for despair in the year 2000 will depend very much on what we do today.”

Nixon’s observations are even more prescient today. Given climate change, environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, pollution and congestion, population growth in America and the rest of the world remains among the serious challenges to human destiny in the 21st century.

Similarly and more recently, naturalist Sir David Attenborough remarked, “It’s not just climate change; it’s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth, or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now.”

Without a doubt, America’s population growth is a major factor affecting domestic demand for resources, including water, food and energy, and the worsening of the environment and climate change. There is hardly any major problem facing America with a solution that would be easier if the nation’s population were larger. On the contrary, population stabilization would help to resolve several.

Stabilizing the population would reduce pressures on the environment, climate and the depletion of resources and gain time for America to find solutions to its pressing issues. If the United States intends to address climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, etc., it must consider how its population affects each issue.

In contrast to the commission’s central finding, some do not recognize the need to stabilize the population. Their reasons are largely based on profit, politics and power. They give little attention to the consequences of population growth on the nation’s future.

For instance, many economists contend that continued population growth is needed to fuel economic growth. Their “bigger-is-better” arguments simply ignore or dismiss the negative consequences for the country, which are threats to the wellbeing of today’s Americans as well as the long-term sustainability of the nation.

Others argue the nation would be “more happy” with more people. Slow population growth, they claim, hurts not only America’s economic growth but also the national mood. Concerns about climate change and the environment are omitted from their rhetoric.

Some advance nationalistic appeals for continued population growth, maintaining that the more patriotic one is the more one ought to believe in a large and growing America.

Another argument is the view that “America isn’t full” and can accommodate many more people, particularly more immigrants. Those advocates, however, rarely ever specify how large the population must become to be considered full nor do explain why America needs to be full.

Thousands of scientists worldwide take an opposing view. Among their major recommendations for governments to address the climate emergency is a call for the stabilization of the world population, or ideally, a gradually reduced population within a framework that ensures social integrity.

Gradually stabilizing America’s population will provide an exemplary model for other countries to emulate. Rather than racing to increase the size of their respective populations in a world with 8 billion humans and growing, nations would see America moving away from the unsustainable demographic strategy.

As American couples are having fewer children than in the past for a host of social, economic and personal reasons, the nation’s fertility rate is unlikely to return to the replacement level any time soon. And pro-growth calls for Congress or the administration to establish pro-natalist policies to raise fertility appear unlikely to be adopted.

So, with the nation’s fertility below the replacement level, stabilizing America’s population will necessarily involve substantially reducing immigration levels, estimated at approximately 1.1 million per year. If immigration levels were, for example, close to zero, America’s projected population in 2060 would be 320 million versus 405 million if immigration continued at the same pace.

After 50 years since the commission presented its central finding, it is well past the time for the White House, Congress and the American public to embrace the gradual stabilization of the population, which is essential for ensuring the country’s vitality, prosperity and sustainability.

Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division and author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Births, Deaths, Migrations and Other Important Population Matters.”

Source: After years of US population growth, it’s time for a pause | TheHill

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Manitoba town influences Alberta immigration strategy | The Star

2022/03/09 Leave a comment

Of note, too exceptions to the national trend, Morden and Brooks:

While many rural communities across Canada have shrinking or stagnating populations, a town in Manitoba has found a way to use immigration to help bolster its workforce and keep the town thriving.

In February, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney announced two new programs to help bring new Canadians into rural communities that were dwindling due to the trend of urbanization in the province.

The town of Morden, Man., has been using immigration to support the community’s population and economy for years, and Kenney said the programs being introduced in Alberta were influenced by the success seen a few provinces away.

“There has been a huge success. … Morden, Manitoba, has doubled their population over the last decade through smart use of the provincial immigration … program,” Kenney said.

“They actively promoted immigrants to settle there, and it’s really revitalized towns like that.”

Morden Mayor Brandon Burley said the program, now known as the Morden Community Driven Immigration Initiative, started informally around 10 years ago when the town, which is currently home to 9,929 people, struggled to fill jobs.

“It was designed to address labour shortage in the region,” Burley said.

At first the area was looking to fill highly skilled jobs, such as accountants, doctors, and dentists, but then started to find they also needed tradespeople and other people with specialized skills. The town then turned to the provincial immigration program to help bring newcomers into the community.

The program operated unofficially for around seven years, but over the past three years, Burley said the town has publicized it more to help tell the story of Morden’s success.

“Over the last few years, [it has] been a cog of our economic wheel, rather than just a spoke,” Burley said.

As the town welcomed more new Canadians, there was an unforeseen impact, Burley said — the town promoted so much economic activity in the community that more children who grew up there were able to stay or move home because of the job opportunities.

Since the program began, Burley estimates it has brought more than 1,000 people into Morden, with members hailing more than 90 countries of origin. Per capita, the mayor said he thinks the town is the most diverse in the country.

In the recent census data released from Statistics Canada in February, Morden was the fourth fastest-growing community in the province, with an increase of 14.5 per cent since 2016. The community grew from 8,668 people to 9,929 people and the mayor said the immigration program has played a big role in that growth.

Other rural communities across Canada have seen a trend in the opposite direction.

In Alberta the fastest growing communities are bedroom communities around the big cities, including Beaumont, Airdrie, and Cochrane, while rural communities are shrinking. Athabasca County, Lac la Biche County, Brazeau County, and Barrhead County saw rapidly-shrinking populations, ranging from a decrease of 11.6 per cent to 6.5 per cent.

Burley said using immigration to help bolster the economy can be a good solution to help battle the trend of shrinking rural municipalities.

To make the program work, Burley said the town listens to local businesses to find out what jobs they are struggling to fill. Then the town looks at a roster of resumes they have on hand from thousands of people who want to come to Canada and select someone who can fill the vacancy.

The town contacts the candidate, who then comes to the community for a five-day exploratory visit. The person then meets with the Manitoba immigration program, and returns to the country of origin, and waits to get a permanent residency.

When they come to the community, they don’t always come to fill the specific job that started the search.

“That’s kind of the peculiarity of our program. They’re not coming over with a job offer in hand all the time,” Burley said, adding the community always has more jobs and nearly every company in town is hiring.

Right now, recruiting for the town isn’t difficult, as Morden has a big reputation for being a community that welcomes immigration.

Since the town has had so much success, many of the people looking to come to Morden already have friends or family in the community, who let them know it’s a fairly quick process and many opt to apply directly with the town, rather than through a third-party immigration service.

“People coming to Canada don’t have to pay a consultant to enter our program. They can directly apply and there’s no middle man,” Burley said, adding it can take anywhere from three months to two years before the process is complete.

Once the new Canadians arrive in town, Burley said the town seems to do a good job of keeping them in the community.

The whole community has embraced the identity of being a town of newcomers, Burley said.

“We don’t want to be a stopgap. We want to be a place where people live and work and raise their families,” Burley said.

The program is supported from the top down and has been the centre of the local council’s attention to help ensure Morden is recruiting and retaining newcomers.

“We’ve adopted it as an identity,” Burley said.

The town has events and programs for newcomers, such as nights where new Canadians can get together and play games.

The town also has a multicultural winter festival where people of different cultures come together to share their food and traditions with the town.

The mayor takes the immigration plan personally. Once a month he drives to Winnipeg to greet and pick up a bunch of exploratory visitors. Once people arrive and settle in Morden, the mayor said it’s important to pay attention to how they settle in and make sure they are doing well in the community.

“You have to be prepared to invest in [it] yourself — not just taxpayer dollars or resources, but actually investing people into these efforts,” Burley said.

The town offers settlement services and transitional housing to help remove some of the stress of the first months in a new country.

Burley said it is important to listen to and adjust the program to their needs, as they have made a major life investment to be part of the community.

Burley said while the program is highly successful for Morden, it might not be the right fit for every community.

“I would caution communities that are going to do it to know what they’re doing, and to make sure they’re ready to invest in these programs, because it takes a substantial amount of leadership,” Burley said.

“If you have a city council that isn’t prepared to embrace immigration, it’s not going to be for you,” Burley said, adding if communities bring in new Canadians but don’t offer the right services, those people will leave and live in a different city.

A town in Alberta has also been using immigration to help support its population, and Kenney, and the new immigration streams could produce similar results.

Brooks Mayor John Petrie said its meat-packing plant has been a bring driver to attract immigrants to the community and now Brooks is made up of at least 30 per cent new Canadians.

“When our meat-packing plant expanded, most of the workers had come from Africa at that time. They were refugees and they needed work,” Petrie said of its expansion in the early 2000s.

Once the plant expanded, it started a wave of immigration into Brooks, Petrie said, and the community worked hard to embrace the new Canadians.

“We often call ourselves the community of 100 hellos, because even at the JBS meat-packing plant there are about 50 or 60 languages spoken out there,” Petrie said.

The new Canadians were brought in by the meat-packing plant, which has switched ownership several times, and the owners would travel across Canada to recruit for jobs they needed to fill. The town worked with the plant to bring in Canadians and temporary foreign workers to fill the vacancies, Petrie said.

The plant has remained in the community as a large employer and has helped continue to sustain the population in Brooks.

“A lot of our rural communities are struggling with population,” Petrie said. “We were lucky in Brooks. We had 3.3-per-cent growth, which is about 300 or 400 people from the last census,” Petrie said.

But the communities that surround Brooks and across southern Alberta saw drops in population or a stagnation. In Medicine Hat, a city of 65,000 only an hour away, the community only grew by 11 people over the past four years.

“I was quite happy when Premier Kenney announced those programs and I think he’s aware of the struggles that rural communities have in attracting people,” Petrie said.

“And if there is a way to get more people in our community, the better it is.”

Source: Manitoba town influences Alberta immigration strategy | The Star

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

The immigration numbers bidding war is pointless – there are limits to how many migrants Australia can accept

2022/03/09 Leave a comment

Similar questions can be asked regarding current Canadian immigration levels:

Since late last year, various business lobby groups, the NSW government, management consultant KPMG, the Business Council and now a number of economists have been throwing numbers around, talking up the need for higher levels of immigration.

I have written previously on the facile nature of the immigration debate in Australia, on the part of both the groups calling for “immigration to be cut wherever possible” and the groups calling for a bigger Australia.

The problem is the debate focuses on targets and numbers for permanent migration, often confusing this permanent migration program with what matters for population which is net migration. At the same time, too little attention is paid to how migration targets would be delivered, the risks involved, and how the risks would be managed.

So let’s start with basics.

What matters is net migration

The official migration program reflects the number of permanent resident visas issued in any one year, irrespective of whether the person is already in Australia (perhaps for a long time on a different sort of visa) or has been living overseas.

Over the past 15 years, more than half of these permanent resident visas have been issued to people who have already been living long-term in Australia.

Net migration as calculated by the Australian Bureau of Statistics is a measure of long-term and permanent arrivals, including new people issued these visas, less departures of people who have been living long-term in Australia and intend to remain overseas for 12 out of the next 16 months.

It is blind to visa status or citizenship.

Net migration can fall sharply even when the migration program is large, as happened in 2014-15 when we had one of the largest permanent migration programs in Australia’s history, yet net migration fell to 180,000.

A sharp fall in net migration is usually associated with a weak labour market leading to large outflows of Australians, or Australians deciding not to return, as happened in 1975-76, 1982-83, 1991-92 and 2008-09.

On the other hand, even when the migration program is being cut, net migration can be forecast to rise. This is what happened in the 2019 budget, when Treasury forecast the highest sustained level of net migration in our history, after a year in which the migration program was cut from 190,000 to 160,000 per year.

How many migrants, and which ones?

Before discussing the various immigration targets that have recently been proposed, it’s useful to understand the government’s current forecasts and how it intends to deliver them – something surprisingly few do.

The 2021-22 program has been set at 160,000 per year. But Treasury’s 2021 Population Statement assumed to increase to 190,000 per year from 2023-24.

There is no official government commitment to this increase to 190,000 – and there probably won’t be ahead of the election. There has also been no indication of the composition of this larger program, or what might be needed to deliver it.

Planning documents say the 2021-22 migration program will be split evenly between the family stream and the skill stream. This is because the government is at last clearing the very large backlog of partner applications it (unlawfully in my view) allowed to build up.

If the planned 72,000 partner visas in 2021-22 are delivered, the government might only need to allocate around 50,000 places for partners in future years because it will have cleared much of the backlog it has allowed to build up, which will result in a future overall family stream of around 60,000.

This means that to deliver its total program of 160,000 from 2022-23, the government will need an extra 22,000 skilled migrants, and from 2023-24 when the total program increases to 190,000, an extra 52,000 skilled migrants.

The current skill stream planning level of 79,600 has four main components.

There is scope to boost the number of these visas by processing them faster. However, even with a very strong labour market, it is highly unlikely that demand would rise much above 35,000 per year, especially if a more robust minimum salary requirement and strong monitoring of compliance with employer obligations are re-introduced to minimise the risk of wage theft.

The passive investment subset of these visas, which provides visas to people who make a financial investment for a set period of time, is essentially a “buy a visa” scheme. It should be either abolished or modified to ensure active investment.

I resisted establishment of the passive investment component until I left the department of immigration in 2007. Long-term, removing it would cut the number of business innovation and investment visas to around 5,000 per year.

This visa is highly susceptible to cronyism and corruption and attracts few migrants who wouldn’t otherwise qualify for other more robust visa categories. It should either be abolished or pared back to a few hundred per year for highly exceptional candidates.

While the labour market is strong, there would be merit in increasing the allocation of places for these visas, as state governments are well placed to understand the needs of their jurisdictions. But it is unlikely they would be able to fill more than an additional 10,000 places per year, given the occupational targeting and employment criteria they have in place.

Once again, while the labour market is strong, there is scope to increase the size of this category, but there are also risks that would need to be managed.

As these migrants have no confirmed job and face a four year wait for access to social security, diluting criteria for this visa to increase the numbers would mean a rising portion would struggle to secure a skilled job.

Those with options may leave to another country where job prospects are stronger. Others would be forced to take whatever job they can, including at exploitative wages.

In my experience, increasing the size of this visa category to more than around 25,000 would involve substantial risks, especially if the labour market weakens once current stimulus measures are removed.

190,000 won’t be easy to deliver

In total, what I foresee gives us a skill stream of around 100,000. Together with a family stream of 60,000, that provides only enough to fill the existing program of 160,000 per year – not enough to increase it to the 190,000 proposed by Treasury or the 220,000 proposed by the Business Council of Australia.

Those proposing much higher levels of immigration need to demonstrate how they would be delivered and how the risks of what might be a weaker labour market would be managed.

And they need to acknowledge that the size of the migration program doesn’t determine net migration. That’s in large measure determined by the economy and how many Australians and migrants decide to leave, decide to stay overseas, or decide to return.

Source: The immigration numbers bidding war is pointless – there are limits to how many migrants Australia can accept

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Ottawa and unions agree to simplify pay rules for public servants

2022/03/09 Leave a comment

Ottawa and unions agree to simplify pay rules for public servants

Government has far too long expected technology as a solution for the harder work of simplification and streamlining of payrolls, processes, and definitions. Harder work to do (remember the Universal Classification Standard fiasco of the 90s and how much time was spent to no avail).

And as to the union demand that the most beneficial provision be the basis, using the median would likely be more reasonable .

But needs to be done, otherwise IT solutions will never work well:

For the first time, the federal government and its 17 public service unions have agreed to discuss simplifying the thousands of pay rules and processes that derailed the troubled Phoenix pay system from the start.

This simplifying, which could take years to unfold, is a key piece of the government’s pilot project to build a new system – the Next Generation Human Resources and Pay (NextGen) – to replace Phoenix.

A joint union and management committee for NextGen has been examining issues around the new pay system for several years. The upcoming round of collective bargaining will be the first to take a stab at simplifying the rules and processes that have gummed up Phoenix since its launch in 2015.

However, there are many potential problems.

“They (the government) can’t let technology drive their business processes. They have to fix business processes before implementing new technology. In the case of Phoenix, the opposite occurred. Not having fixed those processes and collective agreements dooms NextGen,” said a source familiar with the project who is not authorized to speak publicly.

Some say this willingness to simplify a myriad of contracts could be a watershed moment in federal labour history, which has been rocky since the Lester B. Pearson Liberal government introduced collective bargaining in the 1960s. Public service reformers have pressed for decades to modernize compensation and a human resources regime built for another era.

They are also heading into these talks at a time when COVID-19 has upended work. As provinces lift pandemic restrictions, departments are gearing up for a partial return to the office with a hybrid workforce, part of which will continue to work from home. The federal government is also studying the future of work in a world where technology, automation and AI are changing jobs and the skills needed in the public service.

Despite the pressure to modernize, it remains to be seen how far the two sides are willing to go. Unions say no proposals have been put on the table.

Phoenix was built on PeopleSoft 9.1, an off-the-shelf software. IBM built the system, which was heavily customized to handle the complicated public service regime with 80,000 pay rules and 105 collective agreements for 300,000 employees.

Technology experts long argued the complexities of the pay rules were a root cause of Phoenix’s problem. They say rules and processes should have been reduced before the government started work on Phoenix, and they argue that these remain a significant challenge for any new system. On top of that, the government has a mishmash of 37 human resource systems that feed into Phoenix, each with its own processes.

Canada’s auditor general has issued the same warning over the years and said in this year’s audit of Phoenix’s continuing pay errors that it would be closely monitoring the NextGen project.

“We continue to be concerned that the new HR to pay system could repeat weaknesses we found in the HR to pay process and could pay some employees inaccurately,” said the report.

This time, however, the government wants a new combined pay and human resource system that can be configured to handle the pay regime without rewriting code to customize the software. That makes paring down the myriad of rules all the more critical.

Shared Services Canada (SSC), a federal agency responsible for technology across all federal departments, is leading the NextGen project. In an email, SSC said Toronto-based Ceridian, which bills itself as a global “human capital management” company, is configuring Dayforce, its flagship software, for a test run with the Department of Canadian Heritage to see if it can “support the government’s human resources and pay activities.”

However, concerns remain.

“What we don’t want here is for the employer to think: ‘Well, the reason why NextGen is having issues implementing is because the collective agreements are too complicated.’ Fine, let’s simplify them. We’re not against that,” said Dany Richard, president of the Association of Canadian Financial Officers, who co-chairs the joint management-union committee for NextGen.

As much as both sides are on board for the sake of getting a pay system that works, the pinch point will be cost. Unions don’t want their members to take a hit on their pay or benefits

The Public Service Alliance of Canada, the largest union, is having preliminary discussions with Treasury Board about the pay system and harmonizing the language of its contracts.

“We’re going in curious and with an open mind to see what’s being proposed, and what they want to talk about, and seeing what we can come to agreements on,” said Greg Phillips, president of the Canadian Association of Professional Employees, the third-largest public service union.

“But at the end of the day, it’s the employer’s responsibility to pay employees and they need to have the system in order to do that. And for modernizing HR, that’s their decision. It shouldn’t be done on the backs of employees.”

Unions have previously argued that if the government wants to reduce rules, the fastest way is to pick the most beneficial provision and make it the standard for everyone. Take, for example, the nearly 40 different rules for overtime. The unions want the government to pick the most generous of the overtime rules and apply it to everyone.

Unions argue that bringing employees up to the most generous provision may cost more in the short term, but it would be considerably cheaper than continuing to sink millions of dollars into fixing and maintaining Phoenix, which has already cost $1.4 billion in fixes.

“Let’s just put it to the common denominator, whatever it is, and write it off. It may sound like public servants gain and will get more benefits. But having clear collective agreements that are consistent will help simplify the pay system,” said Richard.

The government already spends about $53 billion a year on salaries and benefits for employees, which is 60 per cent of its total operating costs. After the spending spree to combat COVID-19, there is little appetite to pay public servants more.

Another complicating factor is that the unions have negotiated rules for pay and benefits over 60 years that are specific to each of more than 80 occupational groups in the public service.

On top of basic salary — and any raises or promotions — public servants are entitled to various allowances, such as for education, living in remote areas, acting in a higher job classification, bilingual bonuses and shift premiums. The pay for part-time or hourly employees is even more complex. Layered on top of that are rules within rules — with arcane language that often has conflicting interpretations.

One solution is harmonizing language so that all definitions are the same, such as for “family” which is key to various types of leave. Or acting pay, which kicks in for some employees after one day of filling in for someone in a higher job classification but which in another contract requires three days of doing that.

For vacation pay, some employees are entitled to four weeks after eight years of service and others get it after five years. With overtime, some employees get double time on Sunday whether they work Saturday or not, while others get double time on Sunday only after working Saturday at time and a half. In short, the rules are many and are all over the map.

The government has a pile of allowances, which employees receive on top of salaries that could, for example, be rolled into base salaries. They include retention allowances, extra pay for employees whose skills are in short supply, and allowances for meals, vehicles, travel, and clothing, such as uniforms, safety boots, and glasses.

SSC officials were unavailable to expand upon the project or its possible scale and scope beyond a brief message.

SSC said in an email that NexGen has now moved into the design and experimentation stage “which will continue to inform and define the way forward.”

“NextGen HR and Pay initiative will produce options and recommendations for a human resources and pay system that meets the complex needs of the (government),” it added.

Source: Ottawa and unions agree to simplify pay rules for public servants

Filed under Government Tagged with , ,

ICYMI: Nawaz-The freedom convoy, and now Putin, are making Muslims look good

2022/03/08 Leave a comment

Of note:

Over the past few weeks, I watched the siege of Ottawa along with millions of Canadians. Trucks choked the downtown, crowds waved giant Canadian flags, firecrackers went off at night, men lounged in hot tubs and hot dogs were grilled on the BBQ, all against a backdrop of incessant, deafening honking. It was like witnessing a block party, crashed by middle-aged white men with a penchant for military fatigues and giving the occasional sieg heil.

I never thought I’d live to see the day when words generally ascribed to Muslims would be used to describe white people. I could hear the incredulousness in reporters’ voices, because for them, it was the first time the narrative of who is dangerous was changing.

I was incredulous, too: Listening to flabbergasted news pundits using phrases such as “radicalized,” “domestic terrorists” and “threat to democracy,” while expressing fear that they were going to influence others to destabilize countries around the world, shocked and surprised me.

Why? Because diversity and inclusion are finally being extended to the world of terrorism.

Newspapers used to be filled with stories about radicalized young Muslims streaming into Syria to join ISIS. People want to believe that Muslims naturally gravitate toward violent groups, turn to anarchy and try to destroy democratic institutions. As Azadeh Moaveni writes in Guest House for Young Widows, her seminal book about political machinations in the Middle East: “Slowly ISIS became, in the Western imagination, a satanic force unlike anything civilization had encountered since it began recording histories of combat with the Trojan Wars.” 

And then Donald Trump was elected president. Overnight news stories involving Muslim terrorists were replaced with stories about QAnon and the Proud Boys. It was as if our brown fairy godmother waved her magic wand and said, “Muslims will no longer dominate the headlines.” We had done our time. Media were breathlessly covering white men in buzz cuts roasting marshmallows over a burning cross. For the first time, I could point to white extremists, such as those who helped hold Ottawa hostage for weeks, not to mention the rioters who, a year ago, ransacked Capitol Hill, leaving five people dead.

White supremacists are changing the global mythology that has always pitted people of colour against the forces of civility and order. When the media used words such as “insurrection” and “occupation,” for the self-described “freedom convoy,” I was astonished. I’ve never lived in an era when white people were watching other white people behaving badly on a such an epic scale. They were making Muslims look good.

It’s a relief because study after study has shown that terror attacks by Muslims receive far more attention than those by non-Muslims, which in turn fuels Islamophobic hate crimes. Canadian Muslims are all too familiar with what happens with such oversaturated coverage.

In 2017 Alexandre Bissonnette, a young, radicalized Quebecker, went on a shooting rampage in Quebec City’s largest mosque, killing six men. He said in court that he wanted to save Canadians from Muslim immigration and was visibly taken aback when the interrogating officer mentioned that he might be charged with terrorism. Just last year, another white man, 20-year-old Nathaniel Veltman, hit with his truck a Muslim family taking a walk in London, Ont., killing four of its members.

I am often asked if I thought that creating Little Mosque on the Prairie would help humanize Muslims. This question has always rankled me. Muslims are already human, so why do we need to prove it?

But it turns out we do. Sohad Murrar, an assistant professor of psychology at Governors State University, organized a study where one group of people watched six episodes of Little Mosque while another group watched episodes of Friends. Dr. Murrar said that those who watched my show “were a lot more positive towards Muslims both on explicit and implicit measures of prejudice” – results that remained true weeks afterward. Unsurprisingly, the control group that watched Friends showed no change in bias against Muslims.

This bias plays out in the way white Ukrainian refugees are being treated. “These are not the refugees we are used to,” said Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov earlier this week. “These people are intelligent, they are educated people. This is not the refugee wave we have been used to: people whose identity we are not sure of, people with unclear pasts, people who could have been terrorists.” 

We have seen media reports on how Black and brown refugees are being pushed back at border crossings to leave Ukraine, denied food and water, and sleeping outside in the cold, while white Ukrainians are given priority on trains and buses. This give credence to how non-white migrants are seen as a threat. The hashtag #AfricansinUkraine and social-media handles such as @blackpeopleinukraine have sprung up to highlight these double standards.

As pundits talk about the dangerous rise of white nationalism in Canada, and how Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion has destabilized the world in a way that no other conflict has threatened to do in recent memory, I hope this is an opportunity for people to reflect on how Muslim people have been treated. My greatest hope is that despite the differences in colour and faith, we begin to see each other as people deserving full and complete humanity, willing to give everyone the refuge and support they need.

Zarqa Nawaz is a writer and filmmaker who created Little Mosque on the Prairie. She is the author of the new novel Jameela Green Ruins Everything.

Source: The freedom convoy, and now Putin, are making Muslims look good

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Pew: The Changing Political Geography of COVID-19 Over the Last Two Years

2022/03/08 Leave a comment

Interesting trends regarding how COVID has progressed in different counties with the general correlation between higher COVID rates and support for Trump:

Over the past two years, the official count of coronavirus deaths in the United States has risen and is now approaching 1 million lives. Large majorities of Americans say they personally know someone who has been hospitalized or died of the coronavirus, and it has impacted – in varying degrees – nearly every aspect of life.

Chart shows two years of coronavirus deaths in the United States

A new Pew Research Center analysis of official reports of COVID-19-related deaths across the country, based on mortality data collected by The New York Times, shows how the dynamics of the pandemic have shifted over the past two years.

A timeline of the shifting geography of the pandemic

The pandemic has rolled across the U.S. unevenly and in waves. Today, the death toll of the pandemic looks very different from how it looked in the early part of 2020. The first wave (roughly the first 125,000 deaths from March 2020 through June 2020) was largely geographically concentrated in the Northeast and in particular the New York City region. During the summer of 2020, the largest share of the roughly 80,000 deaths that occurred during the pandemic’s second wave were in the southern parts of the country.

The fall and winter months of 2020 and early 2021 were the deadliest of the pandemic to date. More than 370,000 Americans died of COVID-19 between October 2020 and April 2021; the geographic distinctions that characterized the earlier waves became much less pronounced.

Chart shows COVID-19 initially ravaged the most densely populated parts of the U.S., but that pattern has changed substantially over the past two years

By the spring and summer of 2021, the nationwide death rate had slowed significantly, and vaccines were widely available to all adults who wanted them. But starting at the end of the summer, the fourth and fifth waves (marked by new variants of the virus, delta and then omicron) came in quick succession and claimed more than 300,000 lives.

In many cases, the characteristics of communities that were associated with higher death rates at the beginning of the pandemic are now associated with lower death rates (and vice versa). Early in the pandemic, urban areas were disproportionately impacted. During the first wave, the coronavirus death rate in the 10% of the country that lives in the most densely populated counties was more than nine times that of the death rate among the 10% of the population living in the least densely populated counties. In each subsequent wave, however, the nation’s least dense counties have registered higher death rates than the most densely populated places.

Despite the staggering death toll in densely populated urban areas during the first months of the pandemic (an average 36 monthly deaths per 100,000 residents), the overall death rate over the course of the pandemic is slightly higher in the least populated parts of the country (an average monthly 15 deaths per 100,000 among the 10% living in the least densely populated counties vs. 13 per 100,000 among the 10% in the most densely populated counties).

Chart shows initially, deaths from COVID-19 were concentrated in Democratic-leaning areas; the highest overall death toll is now in the 20% of the country that is most GOP-leaning

As the relationship between population density and coronavirus death rates has changed over the course of the pandemic, so too has the relationship between counties’ voting patterns and their death rates from COVID-19.

In the spring of 2020, the areas recording the greatest numbers of deaths were much more likely to vote Democratic than Republican. But by the third wave of the pandemic, which began in fall 2020, the pattern had reversed: Counties that voted for Donald Trump over Joe Biden were suffering substantially more deaths from the coronavirus pandemic than those that voted for Biden over Trump. This reversal is likely a result of several factors including differences in mitigation efforts and vaccine uptake, demographic differences, and other differences that are correlated with partisanship at the county level.

Chart shows in early phase of pandemic, far more COVID-19 deaths in counties that Biden would go on to win; since then, there have been many more deaths in pro-Trump counties

During this third wave – which continued into early 2021 – the coronavirus death rate among the 20% of Americans living in counties that supported Trump by the highest margins in 2020 was about 170% of the death rate among the one-in-five Americans living in counties that supported Biden by the largest margins.

As vaccines became more widely available, this discrepancy between “blue” and “red” counties became even larger as the virulent delta strain of the pandemic spread across the country during the summer and fall of 2021, even as the totalnumber of deaths fell somewhat from its third wave peak.

During the fourth wave of the pandemic, death rates in the most pro-Trump counties were about four times what they were in the most pro-Biden counties. When the highly transmissible omicron variant began to spread in the U.S. in late 2021, these differences narrowed substantially. However, death rates in the most pro-Trump counties were still about 180% of what they were in the most pro-Biden counties throughout late 2021 and early 2022.

The cumulative impact of these divergent death rates is a wide difference in total deaths from COVID-19 between the most pro-Trump and most pro-Biden parts of the country. Since the pandemic began, counties representing the 20% of the population where Trump ran up his highest margins in 2020 have experienced nearly 70,000 more deaths from COVID-19 than have the counties representing the 20% of population where Biden performed best. Overall, the COVID-19 death rate in all counties Trump won in 2020 is substantially higher than it is in counties Biden won (as of the end of February 2022, 326 per 100,000 in Trump counties and 258 per 100,000 in Biden counties).

Partisan divide in COVID-19 deaths widened as more vaccines became available

Partisan differences in COVID-19 death rates expanded dramatically after the availability of vaccines increased. Unvaccinated people are at far higher risk of death and hospitalization from COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and vaccination decisions are strongly associated with partisanship. Among the large majority of counties for which reliable vaccination data exists, counties that supported Trump at higher margins have substantially lower vaccination rates than those that supported Biden at higher margins.

Counties with lower rates of vaccination registered substantially greater death rates during each wave in which vaccines were widely available.

Chart shows counties that Biden won in 2020 have higher vaccination rates than counties Trump won

During the fall of 2021 (roughly corresponding to the delta wave), about 10% of Americans lived in counties with adult vaccination rates lower than 40% as of July 2021. Death rates in these low-vaccination counties were about six times as high as death rates in counties where 70% or more of the adult population was vaccinated.

More Americans were vaccinated heading into the winter of 2021 and 2022 (roughly corresponding to the omicron wave), but nearly 10% of the country lived in areas where less than half of the adult population was vaccinated as of November 2021. Death rates in these low-vaccination counties were roughly twice what they were in counties that had 80% or more of their population vaccinated. (Note: The statistics here reflect the death rates in the county as a whole, not rates for vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals, though individual-level data finds that death rates among unvaccinated people are far higher than among vaccinated people.)

Source: The Changing Political Geography of COVID-19 Over the Last Two Years

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

GM takes new approach to worker diversity as Oshawa production returns

2022/03/08 Leave a comment

Of note:

The hulking grey shell of GM’s Oshawa assembly plant looks just like it did when the company shut down production on a frigid December day in 2019, but much of what’s inside is strikingly new. 

There’s a new product — as of the November restart, the plant makes huge (and hugely profitable) Chevy Silverado pickup trucks — fancy new robots to swing them about the plant, and kilometres of new conveyor lines to usher them through to completion. But maybe the biggest change is a workforce that is not only largely new to the plant, but to the manufacturing sector at large after the automaker made a concerted effort to hire women for about half of the 1,200 line positions.

“I didn’t even know how to use a hammer until I came here,” said Adriana Wilkinson, who is now a production team leader in the body shop.

Like many of the new hires, Wilkinson’s previous job — she ran an escape room — was disrupted by the pandemic, so she said she jumped at the “life-changing opportunity” for her and her family when GM started hiring last year, and now says she’s here for life. 

“I never thought I’d be working with vehicles, never knew how to use a tool, and totally out of my comfort zone, but I jumped right in and I love it.”

Others on the line include people like Heather MacLeod, who is starting a new career after retiring from the RCMP; Honey Panchal, a controls system engineer who moved to Canada from India last year; and Crystal Cooper, who moved from customer care at GM to working as a group leader on the final assembly line because she wanted to get out of her element. 

“Coming into the manufacturing world was completely different, but it was challenging, and I really wanted to be a part of something bigger,“ said Cooper. 

The gender parity on the production line is a big shift for an industry where in Canada, women make up only about 23 per cent of auto assembly jobs, according to the Future of Canadian Automotive Labourforce Initiative. 

GM Canada president Scott Bell said diversity has been a priority for some time at the company, which is led by Mary Barra and has a gender-balanced board, but he said it was the restart of the plant that led to the push for gender balance.

“We just recognized the fact that we’ve got a unique opportunity, and let’s put the effort in.” 

To encourage more women to apply to the job, GM highlighted stories of women who had already worked there as part of its campaign, as well as made sure to do targeted social media advertising, They hardly had to worry though, with some 13,000 people in total applying from across Canada as well as internationally for about 1,800 positions including skilled workers. 

The opportunity to hire a whole new workforce, however, came at the expense of the many early retirements, layoffs and disruptions to those who thought production would never return.

“I am not thrilled that GM closed our plant,“ said Rebecca Keetch, who is back working at the plant after choosing to stay on standby when production was suspended.

She said she’s excited that production is back, but that the rapid closure and reopening was disrespectful to workers and the community, and led to the loss of higher-paying senior positions. Workers at third-party suppliers were also hit without getting the same supports as GM workers. 

Keetch is active in a group pushing for electric vehicle production in Oshawa, and was disappointed that the plant didn’t get new commitments from GM on that front.

“I just don’t see a sense of long-term security unless they decide to make Oshawa part of their autonomous, electric, connected vision of the future.”

GM Canada’s Bell said the 2019 plantclosure was unfortunate, but that it was part of a wider restructuring. With better-than-expected demand for pickup trucks, GM has spent $1.3 billion on Oshawa as part of its commitment to the plant, he said, that will help fund the company’s transition to electric. 

“It’s a substantial investment. Trucks are going to be around for a long time, so we feel good about that. From an EV perspective, you know, we’ve got to fund that business.”

Demand for pickups has increased during the pandemic, with plants working overtime to produce them, said Sam Fiorani, head of global vehicle forecasting at AutoForecast Solutions LLC.

He said that with GM already twice announcing the closure of Oshawa, first in 2008 and then in 2018, it’s risky to bet on the plant’s future, but he also doesn’t see pickup truck demand waning, and Oshawa is the only GM plant that can produce both light and heavy-duty models.

“This is the most hopeful outlook for any plant in Canada, any Detroit Three plants in Canada, for a longer-term future.”

Many in the plant are hoping that’s the case.

“I plan to be here for the next 30 years,” said Stephanie Waudby, 38, a production team leader on the trim line.

Waudby had her own cleaning business before the pandemic slowed things down and she jumped into manufacturing for the first time. She wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with the auto manufacturing though, asshe isa now third-generation GM worker at the plant.

She said she’s proud to carry on the family legacy, and that everyone’s excited about building trucks again in Oshawa.

“It was really heartbreaking for a lot of people when the plant had to shut down, so just being able to bring that back to this area is amazing.”

Source: GM takes new approach to worker diversity as Oshawa production returns

Filed under gender, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →