Of note, an egregious example of DEI training run amok and a cautionary tale regarding engaging American DEI consultants:
In late April, 2021, a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) trainer named Kike Ojo-Thompson presented a lecture to senior Toronto public-school administrators, instructing them on the virulent racism that (Ojo-Thompson believes) afflicts Canadian society. Canada, she said, is a bastion of “white supremacy and colonialism,” in which the horrors unleashed by capitalism and sexism regularly lay waste to the lives of non-white and female Canadians.
Anyone who lives in Canada knows this to be a preposterous claim. But in the wake of the George Floyd protests, which opportunistic DEI entrepreneurs in Canada treated as a gold rush, such lies have been treated as unfalsifiable. The same is true of the (equally preposterous) claim that Canada’s experience with anti-black racism directly mirrors that of the United States. And so it was expected that Ojo-Thompson’s audience would simply nod politely and keep their mouths shut until her jeremiad had concluded.
But one audience member refused to submit: Richard Bilkszto, a long-time principal at the Toronto District School Board who’d also once taught at an inner-city school in upstate New York. Having worked on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border, he told Ojo-Thompson that her generalizations about the two countries seemed misguided; and that denouncing Canada in such a vicious manner would do “an incredible disservice to our learners.”
Bilkszto’s descriptions of Ojo-Thompson’s presentation (a recording of which was verified by at least one Canadian journalist) suggest that she is indeed quite ignorant of both American and Canadian history. Her claim that Canada’s monarchist tradition marks it as more racist than the United States is particularly absurd, given that the British outlawed slavery decades before both Canada’s creation and the U.S. Civil War.
National Post columnist Jamie Sarkonak describes what happened after Bilkszto began speaking up:
“Ojo-Thompson is described to have reacted with vitriol: ‘We are here to talk about anti-Black racism, but you in your whiteness think that you can tell me what’s really going on for Black people?’ Bilkszto replied that racism is very real, and that there’s plenty of room for improvement—but that the facts still show Canada is a fairer place. Another KOJO training facilitator [KOJO Institute is the name of Ojo-Thompson’s company] jumped in, telling Bilkszto that ‘if you want to be an apologist for the U.S. or Canada, this is really not the forum for that.’ Ojo-Thompson concluded the exchange by telling the class that ‘your job in this work as white people is to believe’—not to question—claims of racism.”
This is not a unique story. I have reported for Quillette on other instances in which audience members have been smacked down for raising their voices when confronted with this kind of diatribe. It is part of the pattern of hypocrisy that surrounds the DEI industry more generally: While these consciousness-raising sessions are typically conducted on the conceit of teaching participants to be “brave” and ”disruptive,” the well-paid corporate trainers who lead them often demand a climate of craven subservience.
Ojo-Thompson didn’t confine herself to rebuking Bilkszto in that moment. She also allegedly attacked Bilkszto in a subsequent lecture as exemplifying the forces of white supremacist “resistance.” In Ojo-Thompson’s view, her original treatment of Bilkszto had presented everyone with a valuable template for how they should respond when “accosted by white supremacy.”
For his part, Bilkszto responded by suing the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) for harassment. He also sought a TDSB investigation of Ojo-Thompson’s actions, which the school board refused to conduct. But Ontario’s Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) took the incident more seriously, determining that Bilkszto was owed seven weeks of lost pay due to the mental stress he’d endured.
The WSIB judgment, later obtained by the National Post, concluded that Ojo-Thompson’s behaviour “was abusive, egregious and vexatious, and rises to the level of workplace harassment and bullying,” and that she’d intended to “cause reputational damage and to ‘make an example’” of Bilkszto.
I spoke with Bilkszto several times over the last two years, and he would often email me stories about other Canadians who’d been targeted as heretics. He took a leading role in a group of Toronto educators looking to address the problem of ideological extremism, and brought me in once as a guest speaker in late 2021.
Although Bilkszto and I never met (this was still the COVID era, when almost every meet-up was done over Zoom), we quickly bonded over our shared principles, both of us being traditional urban liberals who’d become concerned by the social-justice fanaticism that now suffused the TDSB.
Yet nothing in my own experience allowed me to fully comprehend the pain that Bilkszto was experiencing. A political progressive who’d devoted more than two decades of his life to the TDSB, Bilkszto never fully recovered from being falsely smeared as a supporter of white supremacy in front of his peers.
This month, Bilkszto, aged 60, committed suicide. I don’t know if he left a note. But according to his family, his suicide related to the false accusations of racism he’d endured in April 2021.
Bilkszto was particularly devastated by the fact that some of his TDSB bosses, whom he’d naively expected to defend him (or at least have the courtesy to say nothing at all), eagerly piled on with the public shaming meted out by their external DEI consultant.
On Twitter, Sheryl Robinson Petrazzini, then the TDSB’s Executive Superintendent, thanked Ojo-Thompson and her KOJO colleague for “modelling the discomfort [that] administrators”—i.e., Bilkszto—“may need to experience in order to disrupt ABR [anti-Black racism].”
For good measure, Robinson Petrazzini also suggested that Bilkszto (whom she did not name, but was the obvious subject of her Tweet) was allied with the forces of “resistance” to anti-racism, and so was abetting “harm to Black students and families.”
Bilkszto personally asked Robinson Petrazzini to delete the Tweet. She did so only eight months later, and only after receiving a letter from Bilkszto’s lawyer warning her that she’d be sued unless she did so.
According to Bilkszto, his other bosses also refused to support him, instead attacking him for his “male white privilege.” And yet, once Bilkszto filed a lawsuit against the TDSB, seeking $785,000 damages for the emotional and reputational harm he’d endured, those same administrators now began claiming that it was Ojo-Thompson who’d gone rogue.
While they’d been perfectly happy to throw Bilkszto under the bus when the stakes were confined to emotional “discomfort,” the TDSB suddenly decided to sue Ojo-Thompson for negligence and breach of contract, demanding that she effectively indemnify the school board for any payout that might become due to Bilkszto. (The TDSB later claimed that it planned to discontinue this suit. But Sakornak reported that it was still a going concern as of June 6.)
I live in Toronto, where my own children have all passed through TDSB schools. Their experience has been a positive one, and I’m happy with the education they’ve received, notwithstanding the sometimes excessive pedagogical focus on race and genderwang. In fact, I have come to sympathize with the teachers—most of them smart hard-working people who find themselves being pressured by their own unions and administrators to adopt militant social-justice postures in their classrooms.
In some school boards, moreover, professional advancement is limited to those who explicitly embrace “anti-racist, high anti-oppressive” leadership principles. So while social-justice puritans comprise a small minority at most schools, they are able to exert disproportionate power in their bid to censure, humiliate, or even oust colleagues, such as Bilkszto, who speak up for the silent majority. In some cases, these ideological enforcers work closely with local race activists and their media allies, so as to harass or censor educators and parents accused of wrongthink.
While the work of anti-racism careerists such as Ojo-Thompson and TDSB Director of Education Colleen Russell-Rawlins is often justified as a righteous crusade against the forces of privilege, it would be difficult to find a more privileged clique of professionals in the field of Canadian public education.
Prior to getting her $300K-per-year TDSB gig, for instance, Russell-Rawlins served as the anti-racism czar at the (even more dysfunctional) neighboring Peel District School Board. Since coming to the TDSB, she’s presided over a series of embarrassing scandals, including an aborted student census that was discovered to be full of overt social-justice propaganda, a revamping of specialty schooling that was found to have been based on a plagiarized research report, and the cancellation of a speaking event by a Nobel-winning ISIS survivor on the grounds that it might be seen as Islamophobic. She’s blithely sailed through all of this without suffering any career repercussions.
The same is true of Robinson Petrazzini, the former $200K/year TDSB superintendent who went on Twitter to spike the football when Bilkszto was humiliated by Ojo-Thompson. Shortly after Bilkszto lawyered up, Robinson Petrazzini became Director of Education at the neighbouring Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board.
As for Ojo-Thompson, she continues to be feted by numerous Canadian organizations and media outlets. In 2022, she served on the board of directors of Parents of Black Children, a Toronto-area lobby group that’s made a name for itself largely by urging school boards to implement the same anti-racism instructional modules that constitute Ojo-Thompson’s own stock-in-trade. (Her partner Rohan served until recently as Workplace Equity Manager with the Peel District School Board, and the two would appear together on stage to talk about “the Impact of Systemic Racism on K-12 Workplace Well-Being.”) The market for the sort of militant anti-racist diatribes that Ojo-Thompson peddles seems inexhaustible within Canada’s corner offices, and I seriously doubt whether even the negative attention resulting from Bilkszto’s death will dent her income.
And in any case, she’s been through this before—for this was not the first time that Ojo-Thompson has encountered “resistance”: A 2021 diversity training session that she delivered to councilors of Sarnia, a small Ontario city on the shores of Lake Huron, reportedly sparked a revolt among some audience members, causing Ojo-Thompson to quit that gig in a huff.
“The undisputed, uncorrected, and unabated hostility demonstrated by some members of Council toward our Principal Consultant Kike Ojo-Thompson was wholly inappropriate,” declaimed the KOJO Institute’s director of client services, Craig Peters. “There were things that were said in that meeting—that we won’t divulge—that led us to believe that it wasn’t in the organization’s best interest to continue.”
When contacted by The Sarnia Journal, Ojo-Thompson added that the comments she’d heard had made her feel unsafe.
“Safety isn’t always physical,” said Ojo-Thompson. “There is emotional and mental harm that can be done.”
No doubt, Richard Bilkszto (1963-2023) would agree.
Good column in Le Devoir (only commentary to date in French media that I have seen):
La fête du Canada ne se déroule pas de la même façon partout au pays. À l’extérieur du Québec, dans la plupart des communautés, les cérémonies de prestation du serment de citoyenneté sont organisées dans le cadre des célébrations locales planifiées pour accueillir des immigrants récents dans la grande famille canadienne. Ces cérémonies, remplies d’émotion et de patriotisme, servent à rappeler aux natifs du Canada la chance qu’ils ont d’être nés ici. Certes, des cérémonies de prestation ont aussi lieu au Québec. Mais elles sont rarement aussi médiatisées que dans le reste du Canada, où les journaux et les bulletins de nouvelles télévisés en parlent abondamment.
Beaucoup d’experts en immigration considèrent que la cérémonie de prestation du serment constitue une étape indispensable dans la formation de tout bon citoyen et dans la création, chez ces nouveaux venus, d’un sentiment d’appartenance au Canada. En 2021, le serment a été modifié afin d’inclure une obligation de la part des nouveaux citoyens de reconnaître et de respecter les droits ancestraux issus des traités signés avec les peuples autochtones, en conformité avec l’une des recommandations de la Commission de vérité et réconciliation. « Le serment de citoyenneté du Canada est un engagement envers ce pays — et cela comprend le projet national de réconciliation », avait expliqué le ministre de l’Immigration de l’époque, Marco Mendicino.
Les nouveaux Canadiens doivent aussi jurer d’être fidèles au roi Charles III. Contrairement à l’Australie, qui a modifié son serment de citoyenneté en 1994 pour enlever toute référence à la Couronne britannique, le Canada continue d’exiger que les nouveaux venus promettent d’être loyaux au locataire du palais de Buckingham. En 2015, la Cour suprême du Canada a refusé d’entendre l’appel de trois résidents permanents qui avaient prétendu que l’obligation de prêter serment au monarque violait leurs droits à la liberté d’expression et de religion. Ils avaient été déboutés devant la Cour d’appel de l’Ontario, qui avait déclaré que la référence au monarque était purement « symbolique », celle-ci évoquant notre « forme de gouvernement et le principe non écrit de démocratie » qu’il sous-tend.
Or, voilà qu’Ottawa s’apprête à permettre aux résidents permanents de prêter leur serment de citoyenneté en cliquant simplement sur une case en ligne sur le site Web d’Immigration, Réfugiés et Citoyenneté Canada (IRCC). Plus besoin de prononcer le serment à voix haute devant un juge. Cliquez ici, et vous deviendrez Canadien.
La proposition, dont on n’a presque pas parlé au Québec, a créé un tollé ailleurs au Canada. « L’idée selon laquelle le Canada, qui est peut-être le pays au monde ayant eu le plus de succès en matière d’immigration, pourrait recourir à un moyen automatisé pour dire “vous êtes maintenant citoyen” est odieuse », a déclaré plus tôt cette année l’ancienne gouverneure générale du Canada Adrienne Clarkson, elle-même arrivée au pays comme réfugiée en 1942. L’ancien maire de Calgary Naheed Nenshi, fils d’immigrants musulmans d’origine tanzanienne, tout comme l’ancien ministre libéral de l’Immigration Sergio Marchi, né en Argentine, ont dénoncé publiquement la démarche d’Ottawa.
Andrew Griffith, un ancien haut fonctionnaire à IRCC, a même lancé une pétition — parrainée par le député conservateur Tom Kmiec, lui-même immigrant polonais — qui somme le gouvernement de Justin Trudeau de « renoncer à permettre l’auto-administration du serment de citoyenneté » ainsi que de « rétablir la primauté des cérémonies en personne et de réduire à 10 % la proportion de cérémonies virtuelles ». Ces dernières ont pris leur envol durant la pandémie. Mais certains experts, comme M. Griffith, croient qu’elles ne devraient se substituer aux cérémonies en personne qu’en cas d’exception.
La continuation postpandémie des cérémonies virtuelles tout comme la proposition de permettre l’auto-administration du serment sont des réponses aux arriérés à IRCC. Le ministère n’arrive plus à traiter les demandes d’immigration et de citoyenneté dans des délais raisonnables. Des résidents permanents approuvés pour devenir citoyens doivent attendre environ 19 mois avant d’être convoqués à une cérémonie de citoyenneté.
Le ministre de l’Immigration, Sean Fraser, vise à réduire l’attente en autorisant l’option de l’auto-administration. Mais M. Griffith se demande si une partie du problème ne découle pas du fait que les seuils d’immigration sont déjà trop élevés pour l’appareil gouvernemental. Plus de 1,2 million de nouveaux résidents permanents sont arrivés depuis trois ans, alors qu’Ottawa cherche à hausser le seuil annuel à 500 000 ou plus dès 2025. Si la plupart de ces nouveaux résidents permanents ont pour objectif de devenir des citoyens canadiens, l’auto-administration du serment deviendra incontournable. IRCC peine déjà à répondre à la demande. Imaginez ce que sera la situation dans cinq ans.
Ce n’est là qu’une des raisons pour lesquelles la politique d’immigration du gouvernement semble déconnectée de la réalité. Dans une étude publiée cette semaine, l’économiste chez Desjardins Randall Bartlett avance qu’il faudra encore plus d’immigrants pour contrer les effets du vieillissement de la population canadienne dans les années à venir. Mais il ajoute un gros bémol. « Comme la croissance démographique continue de faire grimper les prix des maisons et de miner l’abordabilité à court terme, le gouvernement fédéral doit tenir compte de cette situation dans sa politique d’immigration, en particulier en ce qui concerne les résidents non permanents. Sa politique d’immigration doit s’accompagner d’actions immédiates pour augmenter l’offre de logements. » Or, rien n’indique qu’Ottawa s’apprête à agir en ce sens.
Après tout, on ne peut pas construire des maisons en un clic.
An activist, linking citizenship to her “white saviour complex” perspective or ideology, largely disconnected from how the vast majority of immigrants feel about the ceremony who consider it a celebration, not just a “mandatory administrative task.”
Her reasoning essentially extends the government’s proposals to its logical conclusive, purely an administrative procedure to provide security and facilitate travel, with no impact on inclusion and sense of belonging. While anecdotes and the imperfect evidence we have suggests the opposite.
On the oath, of course, she has a point.
One of the better reader views in the comment section:
Can a feeling of national belonging be delivered with just a click of a mouse? That’s the question at the heart of the controversy around Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada’s plan to allow new citizens to tick a box online rather than take a verbal or in-person oath. The aim, the government says, is to reduce the backlog and simplify processing.
But a former senior immigration official has presented a petition to the minister, calling for Ottawa to revert to in-person citizenship ceremonies as the default, arguing that they “provide a unique celebratory moment for new and existing Canadians.” The more than 1,000 signatories worry that one-click citizenship will undermine new Canadians’ sense of belonging, as in-person ceremonies are meant “to enhance the meaning of citizenship as a unifying bond for Canadians.”
I too was excited for my own citizenship ceremony, having seen many colourful and happy pictures of Mounties, members of Parliament and a burst of Canadian flags before my day arrived. The reality, though, was underwhelming: an assembly-line process and a boring speech in a staid government building, followed by an oath to a monarch, before we were rushed out so the next batch of new Canadians could be shepherded in. There were no Mounties or MPs, as is the case with the majority of such ceremonies, making it less celebratory and more administrative.
I felt greater elation when I finally held my passport in my hands. The Ethiopian guard at the passport office gave me a knowing smile as he saw me holding back my tears. I’ll always remember that smile. The ceremony, not so much.
But both approaches – the “one-click” and the in-person – are problematic in the context of today’s immigration regimes. One reason is that these “ceremonies” often feel like expressions of a white-saviour complex, by which all systems in former colonial countries – even ones that have become more diverse, like Canada – are influenced by their white colonizer origins: it is the white-saviour host that decides who gets in, when and how. In a postcolonial world, the assumption within the host society is still that anyone seeking a new life here will be “saved”, but only if it deems it appropriate. This attitude is more about making the host country feel good, than it is about the significant sacrifices that immigrants must make in creating a new life for themselves.
We should celebrate the culmination of what is often a hard journey from permanent residency to citizenship. But when the celebration denies the daily reality of the lives of racialized Canadians and the discrimination they face, an hour-long state-sponsored festivity is hardly a solace in the long run.
The oath is also controversial. Much has been said about how it reaffirms a monarchy that engaged in destructive colonial practices in Canada and around the world. Many Canadian immigrants come from such former colonies. Why should they have to profess loyalty to Britain’s hereditary leaders?
And the notion of belonging that is at the core of citizenship means different things to different people. What those objecting to the one-click approach may not realize is that immigrants have to take the oath to receive our passports. As such, it doesn’t feel like a celebration – it feels like a mandatory administrative task. That the government is suggesting digitizing the oath also confirms this; that approach may help simplify IRCCs bureaucratic complexities, but why even include it, if its value is largely superficial?
Canada’s immigration policies, procedures and practices are hardly perfect; they have faced flack for their modern-day inefficiencies, historical discrimination and the department’s self-admitted racial bias. While Ukrainian refugees have been able to enter Canada quickly, with a fast-track for citizenship, the same cannot be said for Afghans, Syrians or Haitians also fleeing conflict, but made to wait in life-threatening circumstances, or left without any shelter or support on the streets of Canada. In this context, it feels almost impossible to celebrate.
There is actually no need for a ceremony, or even a symbolic oath of citizenship, verbally or through a click; we become citizens once we have cleared the highly cumbersome administrative process. By that point, new Canadians have paid their dues, with interest, to prove we belong in this country, and most of us do it with genuine respect because we see Canada as our home. Celebrating that sacrifice and achievement doesn’t happen in a citizenship ceremony or with an oath. Instead, it would be more worthwhile to focus on a more pragmatic, inclusive and equitable approach to immigration in Canada.
Themrise Khan is an independent policy researcher in global development and migration, and the co-editor of White Saviorism in International Development. Theories, Practices and Lived Experiences.
The federal government has shifted its immigration policy by recruiting thousands of foreign nationals to settle permanently in Canada in hopes they will fill specific jobs, a strategy that has drawn criticism from labour experts.
Since late June, the immigration department has invited almost 9,000 people to apply for permanent residency because of their recent work experience in certain occupations or because of their French-language skills. These individuals are being selected through the Express Entry system, which accounts for a large portion of economic immigration to Canada.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) said last year that it would target immigrants who could fill roles in high demand. On May 31, the department announced it would focus on French speakers and people with experience in five fields: health care, skilled trades, agriculture, transportation and STEM (science, technology, engineering and math).
Within health care, for example, the government is seeking immigrants with experience in 35 occupations, including dentists, massage therapists and registered nurses.
The government says its pivot to category-based selection of immigrants, which started on June 28, is meant to ease the hiring challenges that have frustrated many sectors of the economy over the past few years.
But this new approach has raised concerns among economists and policy experts, who warn that today’s labour needs could change quickly and leave the country with a glut of workers in some fields. Moreover, they say high-ranking candidates in Canada’s points-based immigration system could get overlooked as Ottawa prioritizes various groups.
Labour markets “are always evolving and changing,” said Robert Falconer, a doctoral fellow at the London School of Economics who studies migration policy in Canada. “We’re potentially overtargeting certain needs.”
Canada’s labour market is undergoing a transition. While employment has risen by a net 290,000 positions so far this year, job vacancies have tumbled about 20 per cent from their peak levels in 2022. The unemployment rate, now at 5.4 per cent, has risen half a percentage point from a record low set last year.
In some areas, there appears to be persistently high demand for labour. As of April, there were more than 150,000 vacant jobs in health care and social assistance, a record high – almost a fifth of all job vacancies in Canada.
These labour gaps “are just going to get worse as the population ages,” said Rupa Banerjee, a Canada Research Chair in immigration and economics at Toronto Metropolitan University. “Targeting those kinds of occupations has the potential to improve this mismatch” in labour supply and demand.
But in some white-collar industries, there has been a steep drop in vacancies. For example, job postings in software development have plummeted to below prepandemic levels on the hiring site Indeed Canada. (Software developers are among the STEM roles being targeted by the government.)
“We don’t know if the targets that are set today will really be indicative of the needs that we’ll have in five years’ time,” Dr. Banerjee said.
She noted that category-based selection echoes a situation in the late 1990s, when the government admitted thousands of technology workers during a boom period in that industry. Shortly afterward, the dot-com crash led to significant layoffs.
To date, IRCC has invited 8,600 people to apply for permanent residency over five rounds. Two of those rounds targeted French speakers, another two focused on candidates with recent work experience in health care occupations and one focused on STEM experience.
This is a departure from how Express Entry usually works.
Immigration candidates in the Express Entry pool are assigned a score through the Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS), accounting for such factors as age, education and employment history. The score corresponds to their expected Canadian earnings, based on the outcomes of previous cohorts of immigrants.
In the past, Ottawa would select a few thousand people with the highest scores every two weeks to apply for permanent residency. Policy experts likened this to a “cream-skimming” approach that would boost economic outcomes by targeting people with the highest earnings potential.
But in selecting people with certain attributes, the government is reaching deeper into the pool – and those individuals, with lower CRS scores, have lower expected earnings.
Last week, for example, IRCC invited 3,800 people in the French-language category to apply. The cut-off score for an invite was 375 – much lower than usual.
“It’s analogous to a university prioritizing other considerations, such as athletic ability or legacy status, in their student selection,” said Mikal Skuterud, an economics professor at the University of Waterloo, via e-mail. “The inevitable trade-off is lower average academic quality of new admissions.”
IRCC is still selecting people from the broad pool of Express Entry candidates, but it has largely focused on category-based selections since late June. The categories are in effect for 2023 and subject to change thereafter.
Dr. Banerjee said this adds “uncertainty” to a system that, because of the points system, was more predictable for prospective immigrants. “People who perhaps have a higher score may be overlooked, and this could lead to a lot of frustration,” she said.
Recognizing foreign credentials is another issue, Mr. Falconer said. Just because someone is selected for their health care work experience doesn’t mean they’ll easily transition into a similar role in Canada.
He said he senses “mission creep” in how IRCC is trying to fulfill multiple objectives at once, such as boosting the number of French speakers through an economic immigration program.
“If we want to accomplish goals outside of economic goals, I think that’s fine,” he said. However, with the Express Entry system, “we should really see it as the economic productivity stream, where we do aim to boost productivity across Canada.”
From 2016 onward, the relationship between conservative Christianity and MAGA-style populism has generated a wide range of reactions, few of them dispassionate. Center-right evangelicals lament the populist strand of the religious right and distinguish it from the moral strand. Critics on the left argue that the populist and moral strands were always one and the same. They declare MAGA politics to be the culmination of a radicalized religious right, and issue blanket condemnations. Postliberal Christian thinkers see a religious populist backlash as the natural consequence of the excesses of American liberalism. They exult in the prospective crumbling of the liberal system, hope for a robust Christian social order to replace it, and issue calls to arms.
These perspectives contain varying degrees of insight, but none is quite satisfactory as an explanation of how we got here. In his new book The Godless Crusade: Religion, Populism, and Right-Wing Identity Politics in the West(Cambridge University Press 2023), Tobias Cremer offers a different interpretation of the conspicuous religious element in modern populist politics. He argues that across Western democracies, populist parties are increasingly employing religious symbolism and rhetoric in an identitarian rather than a religious way. What appears to be an embrace of Christianity is more a celebration of cultural markers (say, Christian history and architecture) used to define themselves against outsiders than an expression of Christian beliefs or moral commitments—Christendom without Christianity. Mobilizing statistics, political analysis, and the content of interviews with 114 political and religious leaders in Germany, France, and the United States, Cremer makes a strong case that religious-themed populism is not the result of religious revival or even backlash, but rather of secularization. This work marks a key contribution to conversations about religious populism and Christian nationalism.
Secular Uses of the Sacred
Cremer’s argument is fourfold. First, the old economic and moral cleavages that used to shape party politics in Western democracies are being supplanted by a new division between cosmopolitans and communitarians. Cosmopolitans embrace globalization, individualism, and multiculturalism, whereas communitarians place greater value on local attachments, inherited identities, and majority rights. The latter group, finding themselves culturally maligned by internal elites and demographically threatened by external immigrants, seek redress in the form of a combative, “us vs. them” populist style of politics. Second, right-wing populists wield Christian symbolism as a way of marking cultural identity rather than religious belief. For populist leaders seeking to forge a shared national identity in a diverse population, Christianity serves as a symbolically powerful “lowest common denominator” as well as a boundary marker against Muslim immigrants. Third, and crucially, populist use of religious symbolism resonates most strongly with nonreligious voters, while practicing Christians are comparatively immune. Fourth, this “religious immunity” to right-wing populism is dependent on the availability of appealing political alternatives for religious voters, as well as the extent to which religious leaders discourage support for populist parties among their followers.
Cremer illustrates these points with an in-depth examination of the cases of Germany, France, and the United States, each of which receives its own section of the book. All three of these countries saw a rise in the demand for populist politics during the 2010s— Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in Germany, Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) in France, and Trump’s Republican Party in the United States. In each of these cases, populist use of religious symbols has been highly visible. AfD supporters march in Dresden singing hymns and wielding large crosses. French demonstrators by the thousands, organized by RN, deposit flowers at the feet of a statue of the country’s national saint, Joan of Arc, in veneration. In the United States, crowds wielding bibles and waving Christian flags storm the Capitol building in defiance of the outcome of the 2020 election. Observers of these spectacles draw the seemingly reasonable conclusion that they represent a radicalized religious right in the democratic West.
But this conclusion, Cremer argues, is mistaken. In each of these countries, populist use of religious symbolism has coincided with the marginalization of Christian belief and practice within populist parties. In Germany, AfD expresses skepticism toward the nation’s system of state-supported churches and resists the high social and political status of religious leaders, preferring a reduced role for religion in the public square. France’s RN similarly embraces an extreme form of public secularism, or laïcité. Neither AfD nor RN shows any interest in a conservative social agenda on such issues as same-sex marriage or abortion. Indeed, many statements by populist party leaders explicitly identify the kind of Christianity they advocate as cultural or identitarian rather than religious, and reject the prospect of their parties being influenced by Christian doctrine. While the United States differs in some key respects, the Trump administration shared with its European counterparts an elevation of nonreligious or populist figures over religious ones. Most religious leaders had little access to the Trump White House, and while he maintained an evangelical Faith Advisory Board, Cremer’s interviewees suggest this represented a strategic effort to curb religious criticism rather than any serious desire to institute a Christian policy agenda. In Trump’s administration, the Steve Bannon wing loomed larger than the Mike Pence wing (and current tensions between the Trump campaign and the pro-life movement suggest that not much has changed). Similarly, in AfD and RN Christian members are marginalized while secular, atheist, or neo-pagan strands of the parties wield greater influence.
Religious Immunity
Interviews with religious leaders show that the relationship between religion and right-wing populism is chilly on both sides. In Germany, Catholic and Protestant leaders have been consistent and outspoken critics of AfD, instituting strong social taboos against populist support among their members. Until recently, the French Catholic Church similarly denounced RN without equivocation, even denying sacraments to some of the party’s politicians. Cremer credits strong social taboos against participation in populist politics instituted by religious leaders for the fact that churchgoing Catholics and Protestants in these countries have historically exhibited low support for these parties, indicating a “religious immunity” effect.
Early in the 2016 primaries, this effect was in evidence in the United States as well. Several prominent religious leaders declared Trump an unfit candidate for office, and in the primary vote, churchgoing Republicans were substantially less likely to support Trump than their religiously disengaged co-partisans. Yet by the time of the general election, religious voters were some of his most loyal supporters. Cremer identifies several factors that explain this reversal. First, party loyalty—religious support for the GOP was too entrenched to be disrupted by the nomination of a decidedly irreligious candidate. Second, a lack of alternatives—in a two-party system, the only other serious contender was a Democratic Party with a secularist stance and socially liberal policy platform wholly unacceptable to many religious voters. Third, the Trump campaign made inroads with evangelical leaders and made policy commitments that were appealing to the religious right. Fourth, given the diffuse and non-hierarchical nature of America’s churches, there was a lack of religious leaders with sufficient ability and influence to oppose the right-wing populist movement as clergy in France and Germany had done. These factors in combination undermined the “religious immunity” effect in the United States.
Ultimately, Cremer is positing a Europeanization of American politics in which social cleavages have less to do with economics or morality than the value of national and cultural identity. This shift is captured in a quote from sociologist Eric Kaufmann: “During the Bush years European observers saw American politics as profoundly alien. By 2016 it was to become thoroughly familiar.” American analysts have struggled to provide an accurate diagnosis because they are thinking in categories of class struggles and culture wars that are becoming outdated. For insight into our political moment, we should look across the pond.
Post-religious Right
With respect to the question of “how we got here” in the American case, Cremer’s key insight is that Trump—and more broadly, the style of politics he represents—did not rise to power on the shoulders of the religious right, but rather the post-religious right. Indeed, his presidency was made possible by the very process of secularization that the religious right has long sought to combat. Trump’s coalition may instead be viewed as an alliance between the religious and post-religious right, with the former playing the role of junior partner. Counterintuitively, the conspicuous Christian symbolism present in such populist settings as MAGA rallies and the January 6 storming of the Capitol does not reflect a resurgent and radicalized religious right, but rather one that has been eclipsed by more secular right-wing forces. This understanding offers an important corrective to reductionistic accounts of a Christian nationalist monolith that have dominated scholarship in this area.
While Cremer’s theory goes a long way toward helping us make sense of the past decade’s bewildering political developments, however, it pays little heed to evidence of at least partial overlap between the religious and populist right. Religion data scientist Ryan Burge has shown that in the 2016 Republican primaries, 44 percent of weekly-or-more churchgoers voted for Trump over evangelical candidates like Ted Cruz. This is, if not an outright endorsement, hardly a stinging rebuke. Figures with unimpeachable religious right credentials such as Eric Metaxas have come out as full-throated Trump supporters, while center-right evangelicals like David French and Tim Alberta lament the MAGA-fication of their religious communities. Clearly for many Americans, the tension between their religious commitments and populist politics is surmountable.
On the other side of the ledger, the religious right gained undeniable policy victories from their alliance with the populist right. The religious conservative Holy Grail of the overturning of Roe v. Wade would not have happened if religious voters had withheld support for Trump in the 2016 general election. These facts suggest a possibility absent in France or Germany, where weekly worship attendance is in single digits, but perhaps present in the United States: that of a populist religious right. The populist political style is not incompatible with either religious commitment or social conservatism, and social boundaries can be drawn around religion and morality as easily as birthplace or ethnicity. GOP lawmakers in red states like Texas and Montana offer a taste of what a populist politics that emphasizes religion over ethnicity might look like. Cremer rightly draws our focus to the distinctions and tensions between the religious and populist right, but we should also not lose sight of the prospect of their synthesis.
This caveat aside, The Godless Crusade offers an elegant, compelling, and well-researched account of the overlooked role of secularized religious-themed populism on both sides of the Atlantic—one refreshingly free of pontificating. It deserves to be widely read. Cremer both builds on and challenges existing accounts. His book can create more fruitful conversations about conflicts over the role of religion in the public sphere.
Would be much stronger, as is often the case, were the commentary include more of a historical perspective on changes, progress and gaps. And normal, albeit frustrating, the time lag between increased diversity and it being fully represented in the various institutions.
While I haven’t yet looked at the relevant 2021 Census data for the education field of study, in 2016, visible minorities formed less than 20 percent of those in education, Blacks less than two percent, highlighting some of the “supply side” issues and barriers:
As a Canadian, you could be forgiven if the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down affirmative action has furthered your sense of moral superiority over our southern neighbours.
After all, in contrast to America, Canada’s constitution explicitly allows “any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups including those that are disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.” But in the four decades since Canada has had constitutionally sanctioned affirmative action, how much progress have we made in addressing racial disparities?
According to the University of Calgary’s Malinda Smith, the primary beneficiaries of these efforts have been white women. Smith argues that “despite four decades of equity policies — corporate boards, the judiciary, and the police continue to be shaped by racial and ethnic segregation, and remain overwhelmingly white and to a lesser extent male, thus maintaining the historic colour-coded ethnic pecking order even across gender and sexual difference.”
Smith has termed this process “diversifying whiteness,” whereby institutions promote their increased diversity (with respect to gender, sexuality, and disability), while comfortably maintaining a predominantly white workforce.
Nowhere is this phenomenon more evident than in our K-12 education systems. It has long been recognized that having school staff that reflect the students and communities they serve can lead to more equitable outcomes.
However, the reality is that our schools are largely the domain of white women. An audit of the York Region District School Board found that while racialized people comprise about half of York Region’s population, just under one quarter of school board staff is racialized.
According to data from the Halton District School Board, while half of its students are racialized, racialized people make up only 18 per cent of its staff. Similarly, an investigation into the Peel District School Board found that while 83 per cent of its students were from racialized backgrounds, racialized people comprise only 33 per cent of its staff. In all boards, staff are predominantly white and female.
So how is it that despite decades of constitutionally sanctioned affirmative action, we still have school systems that are mostly white? It is part of an educational trajectory — that starts in elementary and high schools and continues to universities and school boards — where some people are encouraged along certain paths, and others are nudged away. Addressing the racial disparities in our school systems requires disrupting current practices at all points in this trajectory.
This is why the TDSB’s attempts to diversify admissions to its specialty schools is so important. It is also why the Waterloo Region District School Board should be commended for its recent job fair specifically for Indigenous, Black, and racialized individuals. It takes a certain amount of moral fortitude to persist despite the inevitable reactionary backlash that occurs when racial disparities are addressed so explicitly.
Critics have panned both initiatives as divisive and akin to establishing a racial hierarchy. It is as if we do not already have a well-established racial hierarchy, which is what these programs are trying to address.
Opponents of affirmative action programs state that we should just accept the best candidates, irrespective of race. As U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts once wrote, “The way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
Yet, decades of studiesthatcontinue to show that organizations respond to resumes with white-sounding names at much higher rates than identical resumes with racialized names expose the myth that we are all judged on some objective metric of “merit.” Organizations need to stop pretending that it is complicated. The way to have greater racial diversity is to have greater racial diversity.
Sachin Maharaj is an assistant professor of educational leadership, policy and program evaluation at the University of Ottawa.
Victim of its success in terms of interest, success and outcomes to be determined but aligned with productivity objectives:
Canada’s new program to entice H-1B visa holders to the country attracted so many applications that the 10,000 limit was reached in less than 48 hours. The response is likely a warning sign to U.S. policymakers that many highly sought foreign-born scientists and engineers in the United States are dissatisfied with the U.S. immigration system and seeking other options. Canada may reopen the program and accept more applications if it finds not all applicants are approved and entered the country to work.
On June 27, 2023, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Sean Fraser announced Canada’s “Tech Talent Strategy,” including a new program to provide open work permits for 10,000 H-1B visa holders. Only the principals would count against the limit, although spouses and children 16 or older would be eligible to work. In the United States, typically, only the spouses of H-1B visa holders with pending green card applications receive employment authorization.
“As of July 16, 2023, H-1B specialty occupation visa holders in the US, and their accompanying immediate family members, will be eligible to apply to come to Canada,” according to a Canadian government Backgrounder. “Approved applicants will receive an open work permit of up to three years in duration, which means they will be able to work for almost any employer anywhere in Canada.”
The online application process for H-1B visa holders started on July 16th, but on July 17th potential applicants received a message stating: “You can no longer apply: We reached the cap of 10,000 applications for this initiative on July 17, 2023.” Analysts consider this an overwhelming response.
Will Canada Reopen The Application Process For H-1B Visa Holders?
Attorneys believe Canada may reopen the application process after it determines the number of individuals who applied and did not follow through in coming to Canada.
“What normally happens is, after you fill out your forms, they say, congratulations,” said Peter Rekai, senior partner of Rekai LLP in Toronto. “If you’re a person who needs a visa, you submit your passport. If they don’t submit their passports, you know those positions have not been used, and they have opted out. If they do submit their passports and they get a visa stamp in it and the work permit authorization, then they have to cross the border with the authorization. If they don’t cross the border with the authorization, it doesn’t become active. The government would then be able to determine how many people actually activated these work permits.”
David Crawford, a partner with Fragomen in Toronto, agrees with Rekai that the Canadian government will evaluate the intake of current applications before committing to further actions. “I am sure that officials will open up to more applications in due course,” said Crawford. “They will have to sift through what they have, and I assume that some applications will be incomplete and/or ineligible. Once they learn the numbers and have a feel for how many will take up the opportunity, they can commit to the next steps.”
Rekai thinks it will likely be months before the Canadian government can determine how many people have followed through and entered Canada to work. He cites a Canadian program for sponsoring parents and grandparents where the government opened up additional spots after a period of evaluating eligibility.
What Will Happen To The Canada Program In 2024?
The fate of the Canadian program for H-1B visa holders likely rests on what happens with the current crop of applicants. “I think the government will evaluate how this went,” said Peter Rekai. “First, see how many people came in and try to determine whether people with open work permits got jobs quickly in Canada and get feedback from the industry. Officials will determine the success of the program and then decide next year.”
David Crawford sees a similar process. “The Government of Canada will probably want to see how many enter using this program to measure success, but I am sure that it has introduced this category in the hope that it will be a new and valuable source of prospective immigrants.”
Unlike in the United States, Canadian Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Sean Fraser has wide latitude in adding or modifying temporary worker programs.
Les passages par voie terrestre irrégulière, dont le chemin Roxham, ont drastiquement chuté au Québec depuis le resserrement de la frontière. Mais le nombre de demandeurs d’asile qui arrivent par avion ne cesse d’augmenter, au point où 2023 pourrait atteindre un sommet similaire à 2022 si la tendance se maintient.
Le gouvernement fédéral a de nouveau loué des chambres pour les accueillir dans au moins un hôtel, confirment des acteurs de terrain. Pour eux, cette nouvelle hausse démontre que la « fermeture » du chemin Roxham « n’a rien réglé » : les deux ordres de gouvernement n’ont toujours pris aucune mesure pérenne, disent-ils, dans un contexte où l’augmentation des demandeurs d’asile est un phénomène mondial.
Au total, en juin dernier, 4620 demandes d’asile ont été comptabilisées par Immigration, Réfugiés et Citoyenneté (IRCC) ainsi que l’Agence des services frontaliers (ASFC), les deux instances fédérales responsables. C’est à peine 20 de moins que pour le mois de juin 2022, où 4640 demandes avaient été enregistrées.
De celles-là, une majorité est arrivée par avion : ils ont demandé l’asile sur-le-champ à l’aéroport ou encore dans un bureau d’IRCC après un certain temps, selon la ventilation des données disponible.
On compte ainsi environ 31 000 demandeurs d’asile pour les 5 premiers mois de 2023 au Québec. Si le rythme d’ajout de plus de 4000 par mois se poursuit, le niveau de 2022 sera atteint, soit un peu plus de 58 000 au total.
Ces arrivées se font par voies régulières, contrairement aux années précédentes, où jusqu’à deux demandeurs sur trois passait par des voies irrégulières, surtout par le chemin Roxham.
Arrivée par voie régulière ou irrégulière, une personne a le droit de demander l’asile au Canada si elle craint la persécution dans son pays d’origine.
Peu importe le point d’entrée, ces demandeurs d’asile ont aussi souvent des besoins d’hébergement, rappelle des organismes, qui déplorent le manque de « solutions pérennes », dit Eva Gracia-Turgeon, directrice générale du Foyer du monde.
Manque de communication
Un moins un hôtel à Brossard a recommencé à loger des demandeurs d’asile arrivés récemment. Au plus fort des arrivées par le chemin Roxham, Ottawa gérait des lits pour plus de 2500 personnes au Québec. IRCC, responsable de ces hébergements, n’a pas été en mesure de confirmer combien de places ont été remises en disponibilité à l’heure actuelle.
Les demandeurs d’asile cognent déjà par eux-mêmes à la porte des organismes, faute d’obtenir des services sur leur lieu de résidence temporaire.
« À notre grande surprise, l’hôtel a été rouvert par le fédéral, mais on n’a pas été avisés », raconte ainsi Mame Moussa Sy, directeur général à la Maison internationale de la Rive-Sud (MIRS). Cette organisation est située à « littéralement quatre minutes à pieds » de l’hôtel à Brossard.
« On n’a pas été mis au courant par le fédéral, mais on les voit, les gens. On a dû improviser pour commencer à les accompagner. On a parlé à d’autres organismes de la région, aussi », expose M. Sy. Il souhaiterait une meilleure coordination, surtout venant des autorités, déplore-t-il.
Les maisons du Foyer du monde sont, quant à elles, aussi pleines. « On a juste déplacé la problématique. C’est normal qu’il y ait plus de gens qui passent par l’avion, car malheureusement, il n’y a pas d’autres moyens de demander l’asile », note Mme Gracia-Turgeon.
Elle croit aussi que la hausse se fera encore plus sentir dans les prochaines semaines et à l’automne, car son organisme est en quelque sorte en deuxième ligne, après l’hébergement d’urgence. « Pour moi, c’est aussi la preuve que “fermer” Roxham n’était pas une solution », dit-elle.
Les conflits armés et les changements climatiques continuent de pousser des millions de personnes à quitter leur pays d’origine, rappelle la directrice communautaire : « Il faut prévoir pour l’avenir, ce n’est que le début. »
« On est dans une mouvance mondiale », observe aussi Stephan Reichhold, directeur de la Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiées et immigrantes (TCRI). Il n’est donc pas surpris de cette « reprise » des arrivées. La TCRI souhaite voir plus de services pour tous les demandeurs d’asile, y compris ceux hébergés par le fédéral.
« On a l’impression que c’est toujours à recommencer » en termes de besoins et de recherche de ressources, affirme M. Reichhold.
Ailleurs au pays
Le phénomène est aussi bien visible à Toronto, où des dizaines de personnes ont été contraintes de dormir dans la rue, faute de place dans les refuges de la ville.
L’Ontario a également dépassé le nombre d’arrivées à pareille date l’an dernier, avec 21 480 demandes d’asile entre janvier et juin 2023, contre 11 350 en 2022.
Il faut dire que le système de refuges d’environ 9000 places de Toronto accueille à la fois les personnes itinérantes et celles qui cherchent à obtenir le statut de réfugié. La province voisine ne dispose pas d’un mécanisme comme le Québec avec son Programme régional d’accueil et d’intégration des demandeurs d’asile (PRAIDA), financé surtout avec de l’argent d’Ottawa.
Le nombre de nouvelles personnes hébergées au PRAIDA a légèrement fléchi depuis les modifications à l’Entente sur les tiers pays sûrs, qui ont davantage scellé la frontière. En juin, ce sont 1112 nouvelles personnes qui se sont présentées au PRAIDA, dont la capacité totale est de 1 150 places.
Causes possibles
Les arrivées par avion étaient déjà un phénomène présent depuis 2022, même si peu mis de l’avant dans le discours politique. Alors que le premier ministre François Legault demandait de « fermer » le chemin Roxham à plusieurs reprises l’hiver dernier, Le Devoiravait révélé en mars que la majorité des demandeurs d’asile dans des hébergements gérés par la province étaient arrivés par avion.
La majorité d’entre eux étaient alors des Mexicains, mais depuis, les origines se sont diversifiées. Depuis 2016, ces ressortissants n’ont plus besoin de détenir un visa pour visiter le Canada. Le Mexique continue à être le premier pays d’origine des personnes hébergées par le PRAIDA, mais on compte aussi le Sénégal, le Cameroun, la Colombie et Haïti dans cette liste.
Certains changements pour obtenir un visa de visiteur ont été mis en place récemment, mais IRCC n’a pas pu confirmer au Devoir s’ils étaient liés à cette hausse. Plusieurs voyageurs en provenance de 13 pays qui nécessitaient un visa auparavant peuvent maintenant demander une simple autorisation de voyage électronique, un processus rapide qui ne coûte que 7 $.
Une politique d’intérêt public a aussi été mise en place pour accélérer le traitement des visas de ce type. Elle permet aux agents de dispenser de certaines exigences pour des demandes de visite faites avant le 16 janvier 2022.
Significant given the political gridlock on immigration:
The Biden administration has welcomed over half a million migrants under programs designed to reduce illegal border entries or offer a safe haven to refugees, using a 1950s law to launch the largest expansion of legal immigration in modern U.S. history, unpublished government data obtained by CBS News show.
In less than two years, the administration has allowed at least 541,000 migrants to enter the U.S. through the immigration parole authority, which gives federal officials the power to authorize the entry of foreigners who lack visas, according to internal government statistics, court records and public reports.
The unprecedented use of the parole authority has allowed officials to divert migration away from the southern border by offering would-be migrants a legal and safe alternative to journeying to the U.S. with the help of smugglers and entering the country unlawfully. It has also given the administration a faster way to resettle refugees as it attempts to rebuild a resettlement system gutted by drastic Trump-era cuts.
Officials have invoked the parole authority to welcome roughly 168,400 Latin American and Caribbean migrants with U.S. sponsors; 141,200 Ukrainian refugees sponsored by Americans; 133,000 asylum-seekers who waited for an appointment in Mexico; 77,000 Afghan evacuees; and 22,000 Ukrainians processed at the U.S. southern border, the data show.
Taken together, the immigration parole programs created by the Biden administration amount to the most significant expansion of legal immigration in three decades. And to the dismay of Republican critics, the administration has done so unilaterally, without explicit consent from Congress, which has not expanded legal immigration levels since 1990 amid decades of partisan gridlock.
“Unprecedented”
To come live and work in the U.S. legally, immigrants generally must have a visa or approved refugee status. But a lawdating back to 1952 allows officials to use the parole authority to admit those who don’t have visas if doing so furthers an “urgent humanitarian” cause or “significant public benefit.” While it does not make migrants eligible for permanent status or citizenship, parole gives them the ability to live and work in the U.S. legally, typically for one- or two-year increments that can be renewed.
Doris Meissner, a top U.S. immigration official during the Reagan and Clinton administrations, said there’s precedent for using parole to resettle refugees. During the Cold War, Republican and Democratic administrations paroled hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing communism in Cuba, Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia. But Meissner said the Biden administration’s use of parole is historic.
“At this scale, in this time period, it is unprecedented,” said Meissner, who led the now-defunct Immigration and Naturalization Service from 1993 to 2000.
León Rodríguez, who served as director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services during President Barack Obama’s second term, said the expansive use of parole has become a “necessity” because the Biden administration has recognized it cannot address migration flows through deterrence alone.
“It’s fair to say that the pressures are much greater now, which is why the numerical scope of these parole programs is probably the largest we’ve seen, certainly in a long time,” Rodríguez said.
How the Biden administration has used parole
The Biden administration’s first large-scale use of parole occurred in the summer of 2021, when it invoked the law to resettle tens of thousands of Afghans after a massive airlift from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
Then, in early 2022, the administration used the parole authority to process thousands of Ukrainians who had flown to the U.S.-Mexico border in the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. To discourage future Ukrainian arrivals along the southern border, officials created a program, known as Uniting for Ukraine, to allow Ukrainians to fly directly to the U.S. to receive parole if they have American sponsors.
In October 2022, the administration created another sponsorship-based parole program, based on the Ukrainian model, for Venezuelan migrants, who were crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in record numbers. That program was expanded in January to include migrants from Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua and deter illegal border crossings by citizens of those crisis-stricken countries.
That same month, the U.S. started allowing migrants in Mexico to use a mobile app, known as CBP One, to request an opportunity to enter the country at a legal port of entry. Those allowed into the U.S. under the process are generally paroled for one or two years and given a hearing in immigration court, where they can request asylum, government officials and lawyers confirmed.
The Biden administration has also used parole on a smaller scale to welcome deported U.S. military veterans, migrant families separated under the Trump administration, at-risk Central American minors with family members in the U.S. and Cubans and Haitians with American relatives.
The number of migrants paroled into the U.S. is expected to increase even further. The program powered by the CBP One app currently allows up to 529,250 migrants to be processed each year, while the sponsorship program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans has an annual ceiling of 360,000 arrivals. The Uniting for Ukraine policy has no numerical cap.
Moreover, the Biden administration is also operationalizing another program that will allow migrants from Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras to enter the U.S. under the parole authority if the government has approved visa petitions filed by their U.S. citizen or resident relatives.
A legal dispute
The Biden administration has said the use of parole has allowed the U.S. to resettle at-risk refugees, reunite families and relieve pressure at the U.S.-Mexico border. Officials, for example, have credited the CBP One app and program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans — as well as stricter asylum rules — for a dramatic drop in illegal crossings along the southern border in recent weeks.
But the widespread use of parole has garnered strong criticism from Republican lawmakers and state officials, who have accused the Biden administration of abusing the authority and circumventing the limits Congress placed on work and immigrant visas.
In an ongoing lawsuit challenging the policy for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans with U.S. sponsors, Republican-led states called the initiative an “illegal program” that imposes a financial burden on American communities due to social and medical services costs.
“The Department of Homeland Security, under the false pretense of preventing aliens from unlawfully crossing the border between the ports of entry, has effectively created a new visa program — without the formalities of legislation from Congress,” the states argued.
Senior DHS officials said the administration’s use of parole is lawful because, despite the large-scale nature of the programs, immigration officials still make individual determinations as to whether migrants should receive parole, and some applicants are denied entry. All parolees under security vetting, officials said.
“There are case-by-case adjudications happening. And that is why we very strongly believe that this is well within our statutory authorities and is a use of parole that’s been consistent with how parole has been used in the past,” an official said under condition of anonymity to discuss these matters.
For the past decades, Democratic and Republican administrations have created parole programs; though they were much smaller in scope, like processes for military families and Cuban doctors set up under President George W. Bush. The Trump administration tried to severely curtail the use of parole, but still kept some programs in place.
The DHS officials stressed that the administration believes its parole processes should not be grouped together, since they arose from distinct circumstances. The officials also noted that over the same period when more than half a million people were paroled, the U.S. deported or expelled migrants over 3 million times, mostly under the now-expired pandemic border measure known as Title 42.
“More individuals have been removed or expelled than paroled in the last two years, and the conflation of very different parole processes that serve very different purposes is misleading and wrong,” DHS spokesperson Naree Ketudat said in a statement.
The programs for Afghans and Ukrainians were created in response to emergency situations overseas, the DHS officials said. The parole process for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, they added, was set up to discourage unlawful migration and as part of a deal in which Mexico agreed to accept migrants from these countries who enter the U.S. illegally. Unlike those programs, migrants processed under the CBP One process are placed in deportation proceedings in addition to being paroled, the officials noted.
While the DHS officials said they view the programs as “very different” forms of parole, one official acknowledged that “technically it’s the same underlying authority that’s allowing these folks to come.”
“An indeterminate situation”
While advocates for migrants have generally applauded the administration’s use of parole, they have expressed concern about hundreds of thousands of migrants becoming stuck in legal limbo, without a path to permanent legal status. A Republican administration could also terminate their parole grants.
“It is an indeterminate situation for hundreds of thousands of people. But at the same time, it is safety and protection for the moment,” said Meissner, the former top immigration official and now a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.
During the Cold War, Congress passed several laws to give those paroled into the country permanent residency. But the odds of the current deeply divided Congress doing so again are slim, even for populations like Afghan evacuees, who have enjoyed bipartisan support.
The senior DHS officials said they expect migrants to leave the U.S. once their parole expires if they have not gained permanent status by applying for programs like asylum or visas for relatives of Americans.
“If they, at the end of the two years, have not found a lawful pathway in the U.S., our expectation is that we will be seeking to remove those individuals,” one official said.
The chart below breaks down the 1,012 signatures as of 18 July by province, highlighting Ontario over representation and Quebec under representation. British Columbia and Alberta in line with their share of the population but Manitoba and Saskatchewan under represented. These numbers may reflect the various networks involved in the initial launch so will be interesting to see how the regional numbers vary over time.
Multicultural Meanderings 