Anderson: U.S. Immigration Critics Ignore Canada’s Welcome Mat For Immigrants

2022/11/18 Leave a comment

How USA immigration advocates use or abuse Canada as an immigration example. Good analysis of why point systems unlikely to fly in the USA given the inherent politicization and legislative rigidity:

When Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) proposed reducing U.S. legal immigration levels by half, he highlighted Canada, a country that admits four times as many immigrants as a percentage of its population as the United States. Canada has announced it will boost its annual immigration level to 500,000 by 2025, illustrating that a high level of immigration compared to other nations is a central feature of Canada’s immigration system.

“Last year Canada welcomed over 405,000 newcomers—the most we’ve ever welcomed in a single year,” said Sean Fraser, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, in a press statement. “The Government is continuing that ambition by setting targets in the new levels plan of 465,000 permanent residents in 2023, 485,000 in 2024 and 500,000 in 2025. . . . This plan helps cement Canada’s place among the world’s top destinations for talent, creating a strong foundation for continued economic growth, while also reuniting family members with their loved ones and fulfilling Canada’s humanitarian commitments.

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The most significant statistic in Canada’s latest report highlights how critical immigration is to the country’s labor force growth: “Immigration accounts for almost 100% of Canada’s labor force growth, and, by 2032, it’s projected to account for 100% of Canada’s population growth,” according to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship.

In the United States, opponents of immigration have promoted the “lump of labor fallacy,” the notion discredited by economists that there is a fixed quantity of labor needed in an economy. As a result, the focus of immigration restrictionists has been to reduce labor force growth under the mistaken belief that it would help the U.S. economy. Economists note that labor force growth is an essential element of economic growth, which is needed to elevate the standard of living in a country.

As in Canada, immigration is crucial to labor force growth in the United States. Economists note that by reducing immigration—such as when the Trump administration enacted restrictive administrative changes—government officials harm the U.S. economy.

By 2025, Canada will admit 12.5 immigrants per 1,000 residents, compared to the United States welcoming 3.0 immigrants per 1,000 residents in 2025, based on a National Foundation for American Policy projection. In other words, Canada will admit approximately four times as many immigrants as the United States on a per capita basis. If the United States adopted all elements of the Canadian system, the U.S. would admit more than 4 million immigrants a year instead of the approximately 1 million permanent residents admitted in FY 2019, the last year before the Covid-19 pandemic.

By 2025, Canada will admit twice as many family immigrants as the United States as a percentage of population and several times more refugees and humanitarian admissions per capita.

The RAISE Act

In August 2017, Sen. Tom Cotton and Sen. David Purdue (R-GA) cited the Canadian immigration system in arguing for their new bill the RAISE Act. “The RAISE Act would replace the current permanent employment-visa system with a skills-based points system, akin to the systems used by Canada and Australia,” according to a Cotton-Perdue press release.

Analysis shows Sen. Cotton and others have proposed a point system not to help employers or make the United States more competitive, but to eliminate family immigration categories and reduce immigration. In addition to admitting many fewer immigrants, the RAISE Act would have eliminated approximately 4 million people from family and employment-based immigration backlogs who had waited in line for years.

Cotton and Purdue made what economists would consider a contradictory argument for their bill. The senators argued their legislation would “spur economic growth” while “reducing overall immigration by half.” However, reducing immigration would lead to lower economic growth, not “spur” it. Joel Prakken, senior managing director and co-founder of Macroeconomic Advisers, estimated a 50% reduction in legal immigration would lead U.S. economic growth to decline by 12.5% from its projected levels.

Analysts note that the RAISE Act or similar proposals, by instituting a points-based system and eliminating nearly all family immigration categories, would deprive Americans and business owners of the freedom to sponsor close family members or coveted workers. During a Fox News candidate forum in Ohio, J.D. Vance endorsed the RAISE Act, which would worsen labor shortages by reducing immigration, in response to an Ohio business owner who said he could not find enough workers due to widespread labor shortages.

On February 15, 2018, the U.S. Senate rejected a measure to eliminate most family immigration categories, voting it down on a “cloture motion” 60-39. A Trump presidential proclamationcontained a similar “suspension” of immigrants entering the United States in those categories.

Canadian and Australian Point Systems Unlikely To Work In America

A report from the National Foundation for American Policy and National Immigration Forum explains why a Canadian or Australian-style point system would likely be a poor fit for the United States. (I wrote the report.)

First, after examining the Canadian and Australian immigration systems, the primary conclusion from the report was that a point system wouldn’t work in the United States, except perhaps as a separate add-on that retains the current family and employer-sponsored immigration system. “Evidence indicates that America’s separation of executive and legislative powers makes it unlikely that a point system could operate effectively or in a manner similar to those in Canada or Australia, which have parliamentary systems of government and agencies with the authority to make rapid and unilateral changes to a point system when problems arise,” according to the report.

“That would not be possible under our laws and structure. Moreover, under a point system, as envisioned, U.S. employers would no longer decide which employees are most valued. Instead, admissions would be subject to government-designed criteria.” The report noted awarding points based on highest level of education would ignore the need for workers across the skill spectrum, such as in construction and hospitality or caregivers for seniors.

While Canada’s structure allows for relatively quick adjustments in point criteria, that is unlikely to happen in the United States. Instead, Congress would pass a law and set qualifications that might not change for decades. Ceding greater authority to an immigration bureaucracy would be unlikely to work, since it can take many years for a federal agency to enact a regulation and enact changes.

There is another risk to further empowering an immigration agency, the report and other analyses noted. White House adviser Stephen Miller showed how it was possible for the executive branch to use administrative means to prevent the admission of legal immigrants. After that experience, many would ask if it was wise to hand over even more authority to the executive branch to administer the U.S. immigration system.

Second, in Australia, the point system is largely irrelevant to employers, which has an employment-based immigration system similar to current U.S. law. “The point system is not at all important for corporate immigration in Australia,” said Tim Denney, formerly an attorney with Berry Appleman & Leiden in Sydney, Australia. “The points system comes into play when an individual seeks to migrate to Australia and does not have a business operating in Australia willing to sponsor him or her upfront for either a temporary work visa or permanent residence.”

In Canada, (permanent) immigrants for employers often first work for Canadian employers on temporary visas, similar to the U.S. transition from H-1B status to an employment-based green card. The difference is that Canada awards points for age, language, schooling and work experience in Canada and grants permanent residence each year to those who achieve sufficient points. The system has evolved and been adjusted so that employers can retain highly skilled employees. Another key feature: Canada allows provinces to select immigrants based on unique regional needs, something U.S. point system advocates generally have not favored.

Finally, if members of Congress wanted to admit more immigrants with advanced degrees, they could have supported several proposals in 2021 and 2022 to boost the number of employment-based green cards and eliminate the per-country limit on such green cards to prevent decades-long delays for Indian immigrants.

Neither Tom Cotton nor any other Republican senator intervened before the CHIPS Act passed in 2022 to stop Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) from blocking measures to create an exemption to annual green card limits for foreign nationals with a Ph.D. in STEM [science, technology, engineering and math] fields and those with a master’s degree “in a critical industry.”

“The U.S. already has ‘merit-based’ immigration, in the form of a preference system for employment-based visas,” said Lynn Shotwell, an immigration expert and president/CEO of Worldwide ERC. “While current H-1B and green card numbers aren’t sufficient, employers don’t want a system that removes or limits their ability to hire or sponsor a specific individual, across the skill spectrum, or have the federal government set up a point criteria that may not be relevant to employer needs or keep up with changes in the economy.”

Sen. Cotton has argued that eliminating most family categories via the RAISE Act would raise worker wages. Economists would find this implausible. Giovanni Peri, economics chair at the University of California, Davis, concluded, “Decades of research have provided little support for the claim that immigrants depress wages by competing with native workers.”

Only about 25,000 or fewer people of working age with less than a high school degree immigrate annually in the categories critics have sought to eliminate (i.e., the siblings and unmarried and married adult children of U.S. citizens). Even if the consensus of economists was incorrect about immigrants’ lack of impact on native wages, it is not plausible that stopping 0.01% (25,000) of the 165 million U.S. labor force from entering the country—and living in different parts of the country—would have any impact on U.S. workers’ wages.

A higher annual level of immigration—four times higher than the United States as a percentage of its population—is a central feature of Canada’s immigration system. Analysts would find it unlikely that Sen. Cotton and other U.S. advocates of a Canadian-style point system will support admitting four times as many immigrants each year to the United States.

Source: U.S. Immigration Critics Ignore Canada’s Welcome Mat For Immigrants

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Canada spent millions to upgrade its systems. Why are immigration backlogs still so bad?

2022/11/18 Leave a comment

More on the backlogs although it appears the peak has passed according to November stats:

When Ian Bromley invited his girlfriend to come from Costa Rica and visit him after Canada’s border had reopened, the Toronto man thought it would be a few weeks before she could get her visa.

After trying unsuccessfully to navigate the tedious online application process, Bromley paid a lawyer $3,000 to submit an application on Jeannett Anton Mendoza’s behalf in April.

Six months later, in October, the immigration department’s website still showed officials had yet to open Anton Mendoza’s file, which included her fingerprints and a stack of translated documents to prove she had a job, a mortgage and money in her bank accounts to go back to in San Jose.

Despite repeated calls and emails to the department himself and through an MP, Bromley did not once receive an update from immigration officials.

“Rather than fixing the failure, they’ve put a lot of layers on top of it to keep people away from it,” says Bromley, who teaches at University of Toronto Mississauga after years of working in economic development at provincial and municipal governments here and abroad.

Almost three years after the COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on Canada’s immigration system, halting processing, visa offices have reopened, more staff have been hired, and millions of dollars have been invested in upgrading government computer systems to streamline case management and keep applicants updated.

However, officials are still struggling with an unprecedented immigration application backlog.

As of Sept. 30, the number of temporary and permanent residence applications in its inventory had soared from 1.8 million at the end of last year to 2.6 million. Fifty-seven per cent of the files have been in the queue beyond the processing timelines set by the government.

This week, Immigration Minister Sean Fraser unveiled Canada’s latest immigration targets, which will see this country look to bring in 465,000 new permanent residents next year, 485,000 in 2024, and 500,000 in 2025.

Yet with the nagging backlog, and significant delays for applicants to get a visa, critics are asking whether Canada can, in fact, handle more immigration applications despite the injection of an additional $50 million in this week’s fall federal economic statement that is meant to eliminate backlogs.

“There’s no one silver bullet,” Fraser confessed to reporters when asked at the plan’s release about the immigration department’s capacity to handle the workload.

“It takes every tool in the tool box to solve this challenge. It takes resources. It takes policy. It takes technology.”

‘Nothing short of a dumpster fire’

Immigration backlogs and processing times have been the focus of a study by the parliamentary immigration committee. Since May, 44 witnesses — from advocates to legal professionals and policy wonks, as well as community and industry groups — have laid out what they think is wrong with the system.

At a recent committee hearing, immigration lawyer Chantal Desloges summed up the two main causes of the backlogs and delays: the department’s “outdated and ineffective” IT systems and its “culture of secrecy.”

“It seems that every new online system is full of glitches, to the point where lawyers are now actively resisting the move to mandatory online processing, because it is nothing short of a dumpster fire. It is characterized by disappearing data and almost daily system-wide crashes,” said Desloges, who has practised immigration law for more than a quarter of a century.

The lack of transparency breeds delay, she said, and people are left in the dark despite bombarding the immigration call centre and submitting inquiries through web forms.

“Then we have to bother you, the members of Parliament, which again sometimes helps and sometimes doesn’t. So then we’re forced to bother the Access to Information Office, and that takes months. As a last resort, we’re then forced to go to the Federal Court and bother the Federal Court and the Department of Justice through litigation,” Desloges noted.

“It’s a waste of valuable resources at every level, and if we could just get a clear reply the first time, we wouldn’t have to do any of this.”

That’s the situation Bromley and his girlfriend found themselves in.

Two months after they applied for the visa and with no sign that application had been touched, they emailed the immigration department and contacted the call centre; meanwhile, the visa processing time for Costa Rica had ballooned from 26 days in April to 197 days in October.

In July, they contacted MP Carolyn Bennett’s office and say they kept bugging her sympathetic assistant for updates. But even the MP’s office was stonewalled and told officials couldn’t give processing time estimates due to “ongoing effects” of the pandemic on visa offices.

“When we set out to apply for the visa, we thought it would be a slam dunk. Jeannette ticks all the boxes. I had no idea it’s going to be anything like this,” said Bromley, whose girlfriend was only approved the visa late last month, after a Star inquiry into their case.

Back up and running?

An operational update in May from the immigration department said 98 per cent of the Canadian overseas missions and 97 per cent of its visa application centres were open for business. As of March, all immigration offices and service providers in Canada were operating, though 94 per cent of the staff continued to telework.

Fraser said most of the permanent residence processing is back on track — skilled immigrants selected under the Express Entry talent pool face six-month waits; family reunifications are taking 12 months.

“There are still applications that are in the system today that have been in longer than that, and we’re not going to bump them from the line to process new applications first,” he assured reporters.

Fraser’s comment gave no comfort to Tejas Ghutukade of Burlington, who waited almost four months just to get an acknowledgment of receipt this May after applying in January to sponsor his wife, Seema Kore, to come from India as a permanent resident.

Shortly after filing the application, he was asked to provide his proof of permanent residence. He did it immediately through a web form and by mail to the immigration office in Sydney, N.S. He even followed up with the call centre to confirm it had received the documents.

In June, he was shocked to get an email from Immigration telling him his sponsorship was rejected because he had failed to respond to a request. But when he checked his account in the department’s portal, it said the application was still in process.

Ghutukade reached out to the call centre again and the agent was also confused and said he would ask an officer in the processing centre to get back to him. When no one followed up with him, Ghutukade made an access-to-information request for officials’ notes on his file — and asked his MP for help.

“It’s all very confusing,” said the 32-year-old software engineer, whose attempt to bring his spouse here on a visitor visa was refused in January. “We don’t know who’s processing our application. There’s a lot of disconnection within the system. It’s surprising that we still have this backlog almost three years after the pandemic started.

“It’s very frustrating. I’m already having this thought of moving back to India. I’ve been married but separated from my wife. It just doesn’t make sense,” added Ghutukade, who received an update Nov. 4 from immigration to refer his wife to a medical exam.

Solutions?

Although many of the system’s issues can’t be addressed overnight, Desloges said officials in the interim should take all the borderline cases in the backlog and push them through if they have no criminal and security concerns.

“At this point, it is the cost of doing business, because the damage that’s being imposed by the backlog far outweighs any potential damage that could be caused by the odd person who gets erroneously approved,” Desloges said.

Immigration lawyer Mario Bellissimo said the lack of transparency and accessibility is one of the biggest challenges facing the immigration department, which needs a cultural change, he said, from an enforcement-focused mindset to one that strives to serve prospective migrants.

“We’re trying to facilitate immigration. We’re not trying to prevent it.”

He urged Ottawa to follow Australia in establishing an immigration college to provide accredited and consistent training for staff to ensure high quality decision-making. Improved competency, he said, could speed up processing.

And then there’s the other step.

Given the demand to come to Canada always outstrips the country’s visa-processing capacity, Bellissimo said, the only way to keep backlogs in check is to cap intakes and return unprocessed applications to applicants.

“That’s what other countries — the U.K, New Zealand and Australia — have done,” he said. “It’s the only way to solve the backlog. It’s the only way to keep the system nimble and to be able to take on new batches of inventory. Otherwise, you’re just always working in the past.”

Canada’s approach is half-baked, critics say. Although it has annual quotas for most permanent-residence categories, it lets unprocessed applications accumulate — and there’s no cap at all for temporary resident applications. That explains why study and work permits and visitor visas now account for 63 per cent of the 2.6 million immigration inventory in the system.

Bellissimo said officials could complement the caps with new targeted streams to address urgent travel or humanitarian needs, such as the crisis in Ukraine, through what he calls an “applicant-centric” approach.

Fraser agrees there’s a lot more work to do but said the numbers of applications processed this year until July — 275,000 new permanent residents admitted; 349,000 new work permits issued; 360,000 study permits finalized — are trending in the right direction.

“Immigration is about people. It’s about starting a new job, reuniting a family and creating a new life in this beautiful country we call home,” the immigration minister told reporters recently.

“By adding resources where they are needed, and leveraging technology to make processing faster and applying easier for our clients, we can give newcomers and new citizens the welcoming experience they deserve.”

‘My interest and desire to go there has faded’

But time is money for businessman Dilhan De Silva, who bought two franchised home-care services agencies in Greater Toronto last summer and has been waiting for a work permit under the intracompany transfer program since August 2021.

“I didn’t expect this kind of backlog or unresponsiveness from a modern country like Canada,” said De Silva, a chartered accountant, who runs a conglomerate of companies in import and export trades in Colombo, Sri Lanka. “I saw this business opportunity in Canada but now my interest and desire to go there has faded.”

His lawyer has made numerous unreturned inquiries about the delays and is now preparing to sue the immigration department for undue processing delays.

Source: Canada spent millions to upgrade its systems. Why are immigration backlogs still so bad?

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How to reduce citizen harm from automated decision systems

2022/11/18 1 Comment

While more at a local level, some good basic guidelines:

For agencies that use automated systems to inform decisions about schools, social services and medical treatment, it’s imperative that they’re using technology that protects data.

new report finds that there’s little transparency about the automated decision-making (ADM) systems that state and local agencies use for many tasks, leading to unintended, detrimental consequences for the people they’re meant to help. But agencies can take steps to ensure that their organization buys responsible products.

The findings are shared in “Screened and Scored in the District of Columbia,” a new report from the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). Researchers spent 14 months investigating 29 ADM systems at about 20 Washington, D.C., government agencies. They chose that location because it’s where EPIC is located, said Thomas McBrien, law fellow at EPIC and one of four report authors.

The agencies use such systems to inform decisions about many activities, including assigning children to schools, understanding drivers’ travel patterns and informing medical decisions about patients, so it’s imperative that they’re using technology that protects data.

“Overburdened agencies turn to tech in the hope that it can make difficult political and administrative decisions for them,” according to the report. But “agencies and tech companies block audits of their ADM tools because companies claim that allowing the public to scrutinize the tools would hurt their competitive position or lead to harmful consequences. As a result, few people know how, when, or even whether they have been subjected to automated decision-making.”

Agencies can take four steps to mitigate the problem, McBrien said. First, agencies can require data minimization through contract language. “That’s basically the principle that when a company is rendering a service for an agency using its software, the agency should really ensure that the company isn’t taking more data than it needs to render that service,” he said.

That connects to his second recommendation, which is monitoring the downstream use of this data. Some ADM system vendors might take the data, run their services with it and that’s it, but others may share the data with their parent company or a subsidiary—or sell it to third parties.

“That’s where we see a lot of leakage of people’s personal data that can be really harmful, and definitely not what people are expecting their government to do for them,” McBrien said.

A third step is to audit for accuracy and bias. Sometimes, a tool used on one population or in one area can be very accurate, but applied to a different context, that accuracy may drop off and biased results could emerge. The only way to know whether that’s happening is by auditing and validating the system using the group of people you’re serving.

“The gold standard here would be to have an external auditor do this before you implement the system,” he said. But it’s a good idea to also do audits periodically to ensure that the algorithms the system uses are still accurate “because as the real world changes, the model of the real world it uses to make predictions should also be changing.”

Fourth, agencies should inform the public about their use of these systems, McBrien said, adding that it’s a good way to build trust. Meaningful public participation is the No. 1 recommendation to come out of a report by the Pittsburgh Task Force on Public Algorithms.

“Agencies should publish baseline information about the proposed system: what the system is, its purposes, the data on which it relies, its intended outcomes, and how it supplants or replaces existing processes, as well as likely or potential social, racial, and economic harms and privacy effects to be mitigated,” according to the report’s second recommendation.

It’s also important to share the outcome of any decision being made based on ADM systems, McBrien added. “People who are directly impacted by these systems are often the first ones to realize when there’s a problem,” he said. “I think it’s really important that when that outcome has been driven or informed by an algorithmic system, that that’s communicated to the person so they have the full picture of what happened.”

He added that privacy laws such as the California Privacy Rights Act of 2020 support transparency, as does an effort in that state to redefine state technology procurement as well as a bill in Washington state that would establish “guidelines for government procurement and use of automated decision systems in order to protect consumers, improve transparency, and create more market predictability.”

Although he couldn’t say how prevalent such systems are among state and local agencies—in fact, EPIC’s report states that researchers couldn’t access all of the systems in D.C. because many agencies were unwilling to share information because of companies’ claims of trade secrets or other commercial protections—there are examples of their use elsewhere.

For instance, in 2019, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio signed an executive order establishing an algorithms management and policy officer to be a central resource on algorithm policy and to develop guidelines and best practices on the city’s use of them. That move follows a 2017 law that made the city the first in the country to create a task force to study agencies’ use of algorithms. But that group’s work led to a shadow report highlighting the task force’s shortcomings.

“We definitely urge people to think of other solutions to these problems,” McBrien said. “Sometimes agencies implement that system and are locked into them for a long time and spend enormous amounts of money trying to fix them, manage the problem, ameliorate the harms of the system that could have been used to hire more caseworkers.”

Source: How to reduce citizen harm from automated decision systems

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Public opinion on migration could sour amid food insecurity and climate change

2022/11/18 Leave a comment

My latest:

The inter-related pressures of food insecurity and climate change will increase migration pressures within and between countries, as Parag Khanna argues in his book, Move. While this is mainly with respect to the Global South, even more temperate zones are being affected as recent extreme weather events, such as storms and flooding in developed and developingcountries alike, have demonstrated. Managing these pressures could be very difficult.

From an immigration perspective, there are some realities that need to be considered. First, increased political and social polarization – driven by social media and political tactics at both national and international levels – is resulting in greater misinformation and disinformation.

A potential tie-in is the increased economic and social inequality within countries and the ongoing reality that in many countries, immigration is divisive politically. While Canada may be a rare exception to that divisiveness, irregular arrivals rather than more managed immigration tend to provoke more negative public reactions.

Migration policies and programs of the Global North are largely designed for the benefit of receiving countries, with little to no attention paid to the needs of sending countries and potential migrants. Developed countries largely focus on their skilled labour-force needs, thus contributing to a “brain drain” for sending countries while the developed countries also benefit from getting lower-skilled migrants for less attractive work. Health care is but one example where developed countries encourage migration of skilled doctors and nurses, and less-skilled personal support workers.

Public opinion generally but not exclusively favours more “familiar” migrants with perceived shared values. This has recently been seen in the case of Ukrainian refugees in contrast to other groups from places such as Syria. While consistency of treatment for refugees – wherever they come from – is the ideal, the political reality is more complex as governments respond to pressures from specific constituencies and interest groups.

There is also generally greater public support for economic immigrants, who contribute directly to the economy, than for refugees and asylum-seekers, because the benefits of the former are more clearly perceived.

Canada’s immunity to anti-immigration rhetoric reflects our relative geographic isolation, selective immigration policies and our political system. All of these make it impossible to win elections without the support of immigrant-origin citizens.

As we have seen in earlier incidents of migrant ships arriving off our coasts and the ongoing debates over irregular arrivals at the Roxham Road crossing in Quebec, Canadians react negatively when immigration is perceived as unmanaged and migrants appear to exploit loopholes, with exceptions for perceived hardship cases.

The government’s ambitious immigration targets (increasing from 341,000 pre-pandemic to 500,000 by 2025) enjoy broad support among stakeholders and have so far attracted little to no criticism by mainstream political parties. (Quebec, which selects its economic immigrants, is far more restrictive.)

The government’s ability (arguably inability) to deliver on its targets has become an issue with large backlogs across all immigration programs. These pressures will increase in the event of large-scale migration due to food insecurity and climate change. More important, Canadian public opinion is likely to sour, as we have seen in other countries.

There are ways that both operational and public opinion pressures could be managed. These include providing greater support to countries with food insecurity and climate change issues to reduce pressures on receiving countries. While it is not possible to reduce long-term pressures, the impact can be made more gradual, allowing more time to prepare and increase capacity.

Given that the key to public support is the perception that migration flows are being properly managed, migration and refugee flows need to have orderly processes and procedures. This is clearly easier for less politically polarized countries such as Canada. But even Canada can expect its border control and immigration regimes to be tested more and more as migration pressures increase and geography becomes a less effective barrier.

Linking immigration to a country’s interests (for example: labour shortages) will be more powerful than general humanitarian messaging. Policies and programs that triage food and climate refugees based upon their ability to contribute to the receiving country’s economy and society may be better received than those without such selection criteria.

Stories that focus on individual situations have greater influence than more overall analysis for the public. For example, the death of the young Syrian refugee Alan Kurdi galvanized support for accepting more refugees during the 2015 Canadian election. More recently, the death of Iranian Mahsa Aminiin the custody of that country’s “morality police” galvanized protests in and outside Iran.

Given that the response to individual stories is short-term, broader evidence and analysis are needed for longer-term public opinion support.

Globally, longer-term migration pressures are similar to climate change in terms of the political challenges at national and international levels. However, the Global Compact for Migration provides only a framework in contrast to the legally binding Paris Agreement on Climate Change. The longer history of global and national environmental debates and negotiations has resulted in greater political consensus about the need for international co-operation to address climate change.

Issues related to climate change are largely economic in terms of the changes required while international migration is as much about more complex social change as it is about simple economic change. We see this in various debates over immigration and national values.

Current narratives have focused on economic benefits of immigration. Shifting the focus toward a greater balance between sending and receiving countries will be extremely difficult because of polarized public opinion and politics.

Source: Public opinion on migration could sour amid food insecurity and climate change

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COVID Immigration Effects: September 2022 Update

2022/11/18 Leave a comment

The government has made progress on stabilizing backlogs, with small reductions in citizenship and temporary residence, stability in permanent residence inventories (November 3).

PRs: Increase compared to August. YTD 352,000,  2021 same period 267,000.

TRs/IMP: Increase compared to August. YTD 337,000, 2021 same period, 258,000.

TRs/TFWP: Slight increase compared to August. YTD 112,000, 2021 same period 95,000.

Students: Large seasonal decrease compared to August. YTD 431,000, 2021 same period 367,000.

Asylum claimants: Small increase compared to August. YTD 61,000, 2021 same period 12,000.

Settlement Services (July): Decrease compared to June. YTD 1,031,000, 2021 same period 918,000.

Citizenship: Decrease compared to August. YTD 279,000, 2021 same period 68,000.

Visitor Visas. Seasonal decrease compared to August. YTD 836,000, 2021 same period 111,000.

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Adam Owen: Accepting more immigrants than we can handle is not actually compassion

2022/11/17 Leave a comment

The second article, more critical of the government’s plans, in The Hub:

Immigration Minister Sean Fraser recently announced a plan to welcome half a million new permanent residents annually to Canada by 2025. 

A laudable goal, and one that plays to Canadians’ positive attitudes towards newcomers and the diversity that has become a core part of our identity over the last sixty years.

A recent Environics survey of 2000 Canadians showed 69 percent support for current immigration records; cynically you might argue this is aided by humanitarian tales of Afghan and Ukrainian refugees and the positive press generally around immigration, but it’s likely more reflective of national pride in something Canada has historically done better than our peers. 

Beyond tolerance, we take delight in the cultural variety and economic benefits that accompany every new Canadian. It is a part of every elementary school student’s curriculum and an article of faith for many Canadians.

But while the minister’s plans are worthy of praise, that faith could be jeopardized by the troubling reality of capacity gaps in our ability to properly welcome new immigration. 

In too many areas, Canadian institutions and economies fall short of being able to effectively empower new Canadians, ultimately disadvantaging them and those who are already here. 

Consider the backlog of immigration files our government already has on its hands. 

Of the 2.6 million total applications for temporary or permanent residence or for citizenship in backlog, nearly 1.5 million fall outside the government’s own service standards.

Of the 40,000 refugees Ottawa committed to resettling in August of 2021, fewer than 23,000 had arrived by this past October. Procedural and bureaucratic barriers have left key allies hiding in fear—victims of an all too Canadian prioritization of process over results.

And then there is the deficit of our intergovernmental relations, the most glaring example being Quebec’s insistence on limiting its own immigration and being as unwelcoming as possible to specific communities. Beyond Quebec, a rise in provincial sovereignty movements across the prairies weakens the federal government’s ability to direct national immigration with a centralized strategy. In a sluggish economy with little growth, the new Canadian who could have been a tool could become a crutch if dropped arbitrarily, absent of a bigger picture. 

The list goes on. Our inability to recognize foreign credentials and work experience. A lack of accessible family doctors. And let’s hope the children of these new Canadians don’t get a sore throat or runny nose.

But the most pressing hurdle is our country’s housing gap. According to a Scotiabank report released in January, Canada’s population-adjusted housing stock is the lowest in the G7.

Provincial and federal governments seem to appreciate the severity of the issue; each making semi-regular announcements on policies to get more housing built. But whether we have the labour and materials needed to build sufficient housing to service our current needs is an open question—even before accounting for an additional million Canadians every two years.

Taken together, a picture emerges that’s difficult to stomach: eager newcomers being dropped into communities that can’t support them, by bureaucrats so behind schedule and without the time or apparatus to consult with provincial partners, that foresight and planning is an afterthought.

Imagine the disappointment they will feel, navigating that process. And imagine, too, the potential for our sunny disposition to newcomers to grow into something less welcoming. 

As more Canadians see their housing options dry up, it will be tempting for elements of both political fringes to position immigration as a scapegoat. With gaps in our ability to set immigrants up for success, the government would make it even easier for that message to resonate with disaffected Canadians.

Of course, one silver lining of rapid immigration increases in the near term is it will give us the opportunity to identify and fix these problems before the challenges that face us in the decades ahead. Even the most conservative accepted forecasts for climate change point to mass waves of migration from extreme weather and resulting conflicts. 

Large parts of Canada, blessed as we are with a geography that will be insulated from climate change’s worst effects, will almost certainly see much of that migration. Our ability and willingness to accept the world won’t determine whether they will come (they will), but it will determine what kind of a country we will be; whether we are the beacon our teachers taught us we were, or something worse.

This government’s intent to increase immigration is a fulfillment of one of the best myths we have about ourselves, but to stay true to that ideal, this government must uncharacteristically go beyond the announcement and fix the creaking institutions and economies that immigrants deserve to be welcomed with. 

Failure to do so isn’t fair to tomorrow’s Canadians or today’s.

Source: Adam Owen: Accepting more immigrants than we can handle is not actually compassion

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

Amal Attar-Guzman: If my parents came to Canada today, would they still be set up to succeed?

2022/11/17 Leave a comment

Interesting that The Hub has two articles questioning the government’s ongoing immigration increases given housing, infrastructure and social issues:

My first reaction to the federal government’s recently announced immigration plan aiming to boost the economy?

“Wow, that’s a really great initiative!” 

I was not alone. It received praise on the global stage, and, despite some decreases in refugee and humanitarian class targets, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees applauded “Canada’s leadership on refugee resettlement” and further welcomed its commitment to accept refugees “as part of its overall immigration growth plan.” 

The in-take targets are substantial: 465,000 permanent residents in 2023, 485,000 in 2024, and 500,000 in 2025. Further, as highlighted in the Fall Economic Statement, Canada will also welcome at least 40,000 Afghan refugees and create a new permanent residence stream for Ukrainians who wish to stay in the country. 

Canada is well-known as an immigrant-welcoming nation, and the numbers are backing that up. As of 2021, almost one-quarter (23 percent) of the population was, or had ever been, a landed immigrant or permanent resident in Canada.1

The federal immigration plan makes sense from an economic and labour perspective. Canada has been going through labour shortages in almost every sector, especially in health care, manufacturing, STEM, and the trades. And though the looming recession might ease labour shortages, this is hardly a long-term solution.

Additionally, our rapidly ageing population combined with our rapidly declining birth rates mean that labour shortages are sure to be common occurrences in the short- and long-term. Current immigration admission seems to be responding to these challenges since two-thirds of new immigrants are of working age. 

Not only does immigration maximize economic potential but it also maximizes innovation and growth potential, something sorely needed in Canada. So long as it continues on its path, Canada is set to be a demographic superpower where innovation and dynamism should benefit as a result. 

This is a story that hits close to home for me. Like so many others, both my parents arrived in Canada as refugees in the late ‘80s and were already citizens by the time I was born in the late ‘90s. 

Despite great challenges, fear, and the uncertainty of arriving in a country that is so different from their own, they were both able to have a new start, safe from war and conflict. 

However, just as quickly as that first sentimental thought came to mind, trepidation set in:

“Are we ready to accommodate these folks?” 

Keep in mind, the Canada that my parents settled in is a much different Canada than the one we see today. By the time my parents arrived, the early ‘80s recession was over. While inflation was high and unpredictable, unemployment was low and GDP was steadily growing. Renting or buying a home back then was a common reality rather than a lofty dream. Things were relatively affordable. And while they lived through a recession in the early ‘90s, by then they had accumulated some economic capital to weather that storm. 

This is not the environment current immigrants are finding today. Canada is facing a high inflation rate, housing and renting issues, rising cost of living, and current infrastructure challenges. And these trends are especially present in cities that are major hubs for newcomers: Montreal, Toronto,and Vancouver. 

Now, while immigration itself does not spike housing costs, current trends from wage stagnation to lack of supply are exacerbating the housing crisis. Rising rental costs are another constant challenge that many Canadians have been feeling for quite some time—pressures that can be exacerbatedby immigration due to broad rental legislation.

If the supply is not proportionate to the higher numbers of immigrants coming into Canada, and if the issue of affordability is not managed, new immigrants will be placed at a greater disadvantage and in a much more tenuous position, especially since they are on average more economically vulnerable than the average Canadian. This state of affairs has been amplified by the pandemic. 

The lack of sustainable infrastructure in Canada is another challenge. Prior to the pandemic, Canada’s infrastructure deficit range was estimated from$110 billion to $270 billion, and our infrastructure is lagging behind other peer countries. Ontario’s population is set to increase by 30 percent—an amount of over 19 million residents—in just over 20 years. The province is simply not ready to accommodate that growth.

All in all, across Canada our infrastructure is not sustainable with the current population growth. We are not building enough to manage.

Now, to alleviate the burden on immigration hubs, the federal government does plan to increase focus on attracting newcomers to different regions of the country, including small towns and rural communities. This, however, comes with its own deeply entrenched challenges. 

These range from inadequate housing, public transportation, and infrastructure, limited employment opportunities, underemployment, and barriers to entry into established networks. 

More complications arise in the case of intergovernmental immigration agreements between the federal and provincial governments. While the federal government does have the jurisdiction to issue its immigration policy and set these national targets, it will be up to the provincial governments to accept specific amounts of new immigrants to their province. Quebec specifically has already pushed back on the matter.

Goals are one thing. Failure to provide adequate support once real people are really here has consequences. Consider the case of Aziza Abusirdana, a Palestinian refugee who stabbed herself in the stomach while meeting with an Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada official. She claimed it was in response to a lack of affordable housing, rising costs of living, and a lack of mental health services. She’s not the only refugee driven to self-harm or thoughts of suicide. Other underlying societal issues, such as racism, xenophobia, and/or intolerance, as well as our failure to recognize foreign credentials, are further impediments to those seeking a better life.

While these challenges are complex and multi-layered, that is not to say they are insurmountable. Integrating new immigrants is a difficult whole-of-society task, but it is both laudable and doable—if proper care and consideration are given to the effort. Indeed, it may be necessary to combat labour shortages. Unfortunately, the federal government’s habit of announcing grand goals and leaving the provinces and the rest of the country to sort out the logistics is not doing anybody any favours.

The new immigration plan can give Canada the economic boost it needs while expanding our multicultural fabric, but we must proactively fix the broader societal issues plaguing us now or we risk exhausting the goodwill of fellow Canadians and hindering immigrants themselves. And the sooner the better. 2023 is right around the corner.

Source: Amal Attar-Guzman: If my parents came to Canada today, would they still be set up to succeed?

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

Caddell: Is immigration the next Ottawa-Quebec battle?

2022/11/17 Leave a comment

Captures the demographic dilemma facing Quebec in relation to the rest of Canada, even if I question the “more is merrier” approach of the Canadian and provincial governments:

In 1960, Kamouraska was home to 2,000 people. The baby boom was at its peak, there were dozens of dairy farms, and tourism created summer jobs. Today, there are fewer than 600 permanent residents, and while a tourist mecca in summer, it is quiet in the winter. There are many elderly, few young families, and fewer farms. This summer, as everywhere in Canada, employers were desperate to find employees.  

In other provinces, the solution to declining birth rates and labour shortages is immigration. And as the 2021 census indicated, population growth has been due to immigration. Hence the announcement Ottawa would increase the threshold to 500,000 new arrivals annually. 

This number is double what the Harper government sought and is in line with analysts like Doug Saunders, author of Maximum Canada, who believe Canada can sustain a population of 100 million people. 

However, in Quebec, the announcement was greeted with caution. Premier François Legault has warned of the “threat to French” of immigration and refused to raise Quebec’s share from 50,000 to 25 per cent of the national total: 125,000. Last week, Legault said, “We have to find a way, in the 50,000, to have more of them who speak French.”

This is a rejection of the strategy of the Charter of the French Language, Bill 101. In the 1970s, Premier René Lévesque and the father of Bill 101, Camille Laurin, told me the language law’s obligation for immigrants to attend French schools was the solution to declining Francophone birthrates. 

Today, however, non-Francophone immigrants are perceived as a problem. While fluent in French, some speak their mother tongue at home, and many also speak English. This trilingualism, rather than a huge asset, is interpreted by nationalist demographers and pundits as a “decline” in French. Speaking the language is not good enough: immigrants now must be mother-tongue French.  

But much of the Francophonie is found in Muslim Africa. Under the secularism law, Bill 21, practicing Muslims can’t work as teachers, police officers, or in the courts. Two weeks ago, an African driver was handcuffed and detained by Montreal police, for no reason. These are not signs of a welcoming society; one commentator says Legault’s preferred immigrant is “a white millionaire from France.” 

Quebec’s chattering classes are predicting immigration will be the next confrontation between Ottawa and Quebec. Premier Legault wants immigration powers to create his Francophone “nation.” This would mean an expansion of Quebec’s presence abroad, and immigrants applying as if Quebec were a sovereign state.  

As it is, that is how Quebec interprets itself to aspiring immigrants, according to a booklet provided to them. 

The booklet, upon which an online assessment is based, declares “Québec is a French-speaking democratic nation that welcomes immigrants from around the world.” It points out: “Québec society has also made French the language of Government and the Law, as well as the everyday language of work, education … and business.”  

All of which is untrue, as English is constitutionally guaranteed in the courts, there are three English universities, and 1.25 million Anglophone Quebecers. The booklet goes on: “As a state, Québec differs from other provinces in Canada, notably with respect to the impetus of popular will.” Furthermore, the Crown does not exist: “The Lieutenant Governor does not have a seat in the National Assembly, but assents to bills the legislature passes.” The federal government is brushed off as running “military defence, foreign policy and criminal law.” A grade nine student would get an “F” for an essay like this booklet. 

Quebec’s population is 8.6 million people. With a huge influx of immigrants in the rest of the country and reductions in Quebec, it is bound to become a smaller proportion of Canada’s population. 

This offers a “Hobson’s choice” for Quebec nationalists: accept new immigrants as equal to “old stock Québécois,” or shrink to a tiny fraction of the continent. The business community desperately wants the population and the economy to grow, and they see trilingualism is an asset internationally, especially in cosmopolitan Montreal. 

By restricting immigration, Legault’s short-sighted vision is a Quebec “nation” that’s North America’s Finland: a tiny homogenous population in a massive territory. It is yet another example of how nationalism could be suicidal for Quebec and the French fact in Canada. 

Source: Is immigration the next Ottawa-Quebec battle?

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

Urback: Defending our elections from Chinese interference should be a nonpartisan cause

2022/11/16 Leave a comment

Agree:

At the ASEAN Summit in Cambodia this weekend, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was asked by Global News reporter Mackenzie Gray if he plans to bring up allegations of China’s interference in Canadian elections with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the upcoming G20 summit.

Mr. Trudeau demurred.

“We created a special independent commission made up of top officials and security experts to ensure that our elections continue to be free and fair in Canada,” he said. “And in both the 2019 and 2021 elections, they reported that our elections unfolded with integrity.”

The Prime Minister’s response did not acknowledge that a week earlier, a top official at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) told a House of Commons committee that China was a “foremost aggressor” on foreign interference, while acknowledging that Canada lacks the tools to properly assess and respond to the threat posed by Beijing. Years of reports – from Rapid Response Mechanism Canada (a research unit based out of Global Affairs), from the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, from Canadian disinformation monitoring group DisinfoWatch, and from Canada’s own intelligence agency, as recently reported by Global News – have all suggested that Beijing or pro-Beijing actors meddled in recent Canadian elections.

So Mr. Trudeau was asked again: “Are you going to raise this specific issue with [Mr. Xi]?”

“As always I will raise issues of human rights, issues of matters that preoccupy Canadians, with any and all leaders that I engage,” he said.

It was a curious response to a straightforward question, a hedge that echoed the sort of defiance Americans would often hear from former president Donald Trump when he was asked about Russian meddling in American elections. Indeed, even when presented with evidence from his own intelligence agencies, Mr. Trump would often equivocate: “It could have been other people in other countries,” he said in 2017.

Mr. Trudeau’s sidestepping of the question wouldn’t have been unusual from this Prime Minister months or even weeks ago. Ottawa has maintained a sort of timid ambivalence toward Beijing for years, even in the face of human rights atrocitiesallegedly being carried out by the Xi regime, retaliatory trade bans, and of course, the more than 1,000 days during which two Canadian citizens were effectively held hostage in response to the RCMP’s arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou to extradite her to the United States.

But just last week, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly signalled that the days of Ottawa tiptoeing around the sleeping giant are over.

In a speech ahead of the release of the government’s new Indo-Pacific strategy expected later this month, Ms. Joly laid out a new approach to China that represents a significant departure from that of even the recent past. While pragmatic about the need to continue trade with the world’s second-largest economy, Ms. Joly called China an “increasingly disruptive global power” and indicated that Canada will increase investment in stationing diplomats abroad to better understand how China “thinks, operates and plans.” When asked specifically about the Global News report stating that CSIS had briefed Mr. Trudeau on Chinese interference in the 2019 election, Ms. Joly replied: “We won’t let any foreign actor meddle in our democracy, period.”

The Conservative Party has long insisted that Canada needs to get tougher on China, and it maintains that Beijing was behind the spread of misinformation on platforms like WeChat about Conservative candidates during the last election. One particular target was former B.C. MP Kenny Chiu, who put forward a private member’s bill in 2021 to create a foreign-agent registry in Canada, modelled after legislation enacted in Australia in 2018, which would have required individuals acting on behalf of a foreign power to be publicly registered. But the effort was misrepresented in diaspora communities as an effort to “suppress” all Chinese-Canadians, and Mr. Chiu’s bill died when the last election was called; similar legislation brought forward by Senator Leo Housakos has been hung up in the Senate for months.

That needs to change, now. Indeed, if Ottawa is really serious about taking a new, tougher approach to Beijing, it offers the Liberals and Conservatives an opportunity to work together on an issue that is of nonpartisan importance. The integrity of Canadian elections affects everyone – what good is democracy if citizens don’t believe we come by it honestly, after all? – and it should be a matter for which there is no equivocation. Mr. Trudeau should pledge to bring up election interference with Mr. Xi at the G20 not because it will deter Beijing’s clandestine operations to any means, but as a signal to all Canadians – not to mention to our allies – that on the matter of election interference, we are determined and united.

Source: Defending our elections from Chinese interference should be a nonpartisan cause

Filed under disinformation, foreign policy Tagged with ,

Dutrisac: Régulariser les sans-papiers

2022/11/16 Leave a comment

Of note:

En décembre 2021, le premier ministre Justin Trudeau demandait au ministre de l’Immigration, des Réfugiés et de la Citoyenneté, Sean Fraser, de « poursuivre l’exploration de moyens » afin de régulariser le statut des travailleurs migrants sans papiers. Dix mois plus tard, le ministre n’a toujours pas annoncé quoi que ce soit.

Il y a un peu plus d’une semaine, une centaine de personnes ont manifesté à Montréal pour réclamer un programme massif de régularisation de ces travailleurs.

Selon le Comité permanent de la citoyenneté et de l’immigration de la Chambre des communes, le Canada compte entre 20 000 et 500 000 migrants non documentés. Quand on voit de tels chiffres, et un tel écart dans les évaluations, c’est qu’on ne sait pas vraiment combien on dénombre de ces personnes qui subsistent dans cette clandestinité pitoyable mais tolérée.

Parmi ces travailleurs qui ont préféré prendre la clé des champs au lieu de retourner dans leurs pays d’origine, on trouve plusieurs cas d’espèce. Il y a des détenteurs de visa de touristes qui sont restés illégalement au pays, des travailleurs dont le permis de travail n’a pas été renouvelé, parfois à cause d’employeurs négligents ou de la complexité administrative des programmes d’Immigration, Réfugiés et Citoyenneté Canada (IRCC), des étudiants étrangers au terme de leurs études et des demandeurs d’asile qui se sont vu refuser le statut de réfugié et font l’objet d’un avis d’expulsion.

S’il est vrai que des centaines de milliers de travailleurs, voire un demi-million, comme certains l’estiment, travaillent au noir au Canada, on ne peut continuer à ignorer le problème. Ces travailleurs ne jouissent d’aucune protection sociale ; ils n’ont pas accès aux services de santé gratuits, ni à la protection contre les accidents du travail, à l’assurance-emploi évidemment et à l’aide de dernier recours. Leur quotidien est fait de petits boulots mal payés. Ils sont dépendants d’employeurs qui peuvent les exploiter. Parfois, ils ne parlent que leur langue natale et sont ainsi souvent confinés dans leur communauté ethnique, ce qui est cependant conforme au dogme multiculturaliste.

Dans la commande qu’il a passée à son ministre, Justin Trudeau lui demande de s’appuyer sur les programmes pilotes existants. Depuis deux ans à Toronto, il existe un tel projet pilote dans l’industrie de la construction. Il est très limité : le programme vise la régularisation de 500 travailleurs seulement, et il semble que ce modeste objectif n’ait même pas été atteint. L’an dernier, IRCC a aboli une des conditions qui faisait obstacle : avoir une connaissance des plus minimales d’une des langues officielles, en l’occurrence l’anglais évidemment. Ottawa octroie la résidence permanente à des immigrants qui ne parlent aucune des langues officielles. Ce n’est pas un empêchement.

Le phénomène des travailleurs sans papiers est une conséquence du régime d’immigration qui s’est imposé ces dernières années. La grande majorité des candidats à l’immigration ne font plus leur demande de l’étranger : ils sont déjà au pays à titre de travailleurs temporaires, d’étudiants et de demandeurs d’asile.

Ces étrangers sont confrontés au double langage des autorités fédérales : d’une part, on leur dit que la voie privilégiée pour être admis comme immigrant, c’est d’être déjà au Canada grâce à un statut temporaire, d’autre part, on exige d’eux qu’ils s’engagent à quitter le pays une fois leurs contrats ou leurs études terminés.

Dans le cas des demandeurs d’asile qui passent par le chemin Roxham, il peut s’écouler des années avant que leur sort ne soit tranché par les autorités. Entre-temps, nombre d’entre eux ont pu se trouver un emploi stable, apprendre la langue commune, voire fonder un foyer. Bref, ils se sont intégrés.

L’inconvénient de la régularisation, c’est qu’elle concède un avantage à des personnes qui enfreignent les règles au détriment de ceux qui s’y conforment. Mieux vaut mieux entrer par le chemin Roxham que d’emprunter la voie régulière et passer les postes-frontières.

L’autre enjeu, c’est l’état de dysfonctionnement d’IRCC qui n’arrive pas, à l’heure actuelle, à assumer correctement ses responsabilités. À titre d’exemple, les demandeurs d’asile qui arrivent au Québec attendent maintenant dix mois avant qu’Ottawa officialise leur requête pour leur statut de réfugié, une étape qui leur permet d’obtenir un permis de travail. Forcés à ne rien faire, ils en sont réduits à recevoir de l’aide de dernier recours.

Devant l’incurie fédérale, le gouvernement Legault a le devoir d’exercer tous les pouvoirs dont il dispose, notamment en matière de permis de travail et d’études, afin de remédier aux aberrations d’un système défaillant. Mais à terme, c’est l’ensemble de l’oeuvre qu’il lui faudra revoir.

Source: Régulariser les sans-papiers

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

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