Canada threw open its doors to visitors after the pandemic. Now, many don’t want to leave

2024/04/24 Leave a comment

Yet another example of an immigration policy failure, likely politically-driven by then Minister Fraser, leaving yet another mess for Minister Miller. Money quote: “They made a decision with a full understanding that there would be an impact on in-Canada asylum processing,” said Sharma. “There’s significant cost and it’s not just the refugee (determination) system. There are other downstream effects.”:

A special program Canada brought in last year to make it easier for tourists, business travellers and those with relatives in this country to visit has led to some unexpected consequences.

Newly obtained documents show that a striking percentage of people who took advantage of the expedited visitor visas that the program offered have now applied to stay here — as asylum seekers.

It’s a situation, some say, that reflects among other things the pent-up demand for asylum created during the pandemic, when the border was closed.

The Immigration Department said as of Feb. 29, 2024, about 152,400 visas were issued under the time-limited program, including 7,300 applicants for the so-called “Super Visas” for parents and grandparents, who come frequently to visit Canadian children and grandchildren.

A government internal memorandum obtained by Star under an access-to-information request said 19,400 asylum claims were made by visitors granted visas under the special program, though few were Super Visa applicants.

That means almost 13 per cent of these visa holders have already sought protection in Canada.

It’s a rate that appears to be abnormally high.

For instance, in 2019, before the pandemic, there were 5.7 million temporary resident visas issued and 58,378 people asked for asylum, but that number also included those who arrived as international students, foreign workers and irregular migrants walking through the United States land border.

The asylum seekers emerging from the program account for 14 per cent of the 137,947 new refugee claimants received by Canada in 2023.

The number is further expected to grow as many visa holders have yet to come before their admission document expires.

“A lot of these individuals would probably have been refused for visas but for the relaxation of the rules,” said Calgary-based immigration lawyer Raj Sharma.

“The program is done by December. That means that they’ve got a six-month entry. This surge or uptake will be with us for some time.”

Effective between Feb. 28 and Dec. 7, 2023, the temporary policy waived the requirements for applicants to prove they had enough financial resources for the travels and would leave Canada after their visits. But they must have submitted a visa application before Jan. 16 last year and not been previously denied. All must still pass security, criminal and medical clearances.

“With the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic now behind us, international travel is resuming and the Government is focused upon Canada’s economic recovery,” said a notice of the public policy signed by then immigration minister Sean Fraser.

“To position Canada to maximize the benefit of the movement of tourists, business persons and family visitors, the Government is committed to reducing processing times for visitor visas.”

Toronto immigration lawyer Adam Sadinsky attributed the high rate partly to the pent-up demand for asylum from people fleeing persecution during the pandemic between March 2020 and September 2021, when the border was closed. The relaxation of the rules also allowed some who would otherwise have been refused to get here, he noted.

“The reality is that during the time that people weren’t able to travel to Canada, the types of persecution that people face that lead them to flee their countries and seek protection abroad didn’t cease,” said Sadinsky, a spokesperson for the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers.

“It’s natural that among the group of people who applied for temporary residence, there was a cohort of individuals, whose plan, it seems, was to claim refugee protection in Canada because there were nearly two years in which they weren’t able to do that.”

He pointed out that the easing of the rules also took effect around the time that Ottawa and Washington expanded their bilateral border agreements in March to ban asylum seekers from crossing between the two countries, which has essentially made it impossible for irregular migrants to cross the land border for asylum.

The land border restrictions, he said, mean only the most privileged who are able to secure a visa to fly to Canada can have access to asylum.

“It has always been possible for individuals to make refugee claims after they come to Canada with a visitor visa, a student visa or a work permit,” said Sadinsky.

“The reality is that people flee their countries and they do that in ways that it is possible. Canada has international obligations to grant protection to those who are within our border.”

Sharma said the federal government had the options to either return applications and refund applicants caught in the backlog, or simply inform people about the backlog and ask them to wait if they could.

He said the special public policy was unprecedented because the visa relaxation applied system-wide regardless of country of origin, but said the measure was harmful.

“They made a decision with a full understanding that there would be an impact on in-Canada asylum processing,” said Sharma. “There’s significant cost and it’s not just the refugee (determination) system. There are other downstream effects.”

An Immigration Department spokesperson said the special public policy has been successful in clearing most of the older temporary resident visa applications in the system. According to its website, there are currently 1.14 million such applications in the queue, almost half exceeding service standards, down from 64 per cent in February 2023.

Source: Canada threw open its doors to visitors after the pandemic. Now, many don’t want to leave

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Why Did Modi Call India’s Muslims ‘Infiltrators’? Because He Could.

2024/04/24 Leave a comment

Sigh….

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his power at home secured and his Hindu-first vision deeply entrenched, has set his sights in recent years on a role as a global statesman, riding India’s economic and diplomatic rise. In doing so, he has distanced himself from his party’s staple work of polarizing India’s diverse population along religious lines for its own electoral gain.

His silence provided tacit backing as vigilante groups continued to target non-Hindu minority groups and as members of his party routinely used hateful and racist language, even in Parliament, against the largest of those groups, India’s 200 million Muslims. With the pot kept boiling, Mr. Modi’s subtle dog whistles — with references to Muslim dress or burial places — could go a long way domestically while providing enough deniability to ensure that red carpets remained rolled out abroad for the man leading the world’s largest democracy.

Just what drove the prime minister to break with this calculated pattern in a fiery campaign speech on Sunday — when he referred to Muslims by name as “infiltrators” with “more children” who would get India’s wealth if his opponents took power — has been hotly debated. It could be a sign of anxiety that his standing with voters is not as firm as believed, analysts said. Or it could be just a reflexive expression of the kind of divisive religious ideology that has fueled his politics from the start.

But the brazenness made clear that Mr. Modi sees few checks on his enormous power. At home, watchdog institutions have been largely bent to the will of his Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P. Abroad, partners increasingly turn a blind eye to what Mr. Modi is doing in India as they embrace the country as a democratic counterweight to China.

“Modi is one of the world’s most skilled and experienced politicians,” said Daniel Markey, a senior adviser in the South Asia program at the United States Institute of Peace. “He would not have made these comments unless he believed he could get away with it.”

Mr. Modi may have been trying to demonstrate this impunity, Mr. Markey said, “to intimidate the B.J.P.’s political opponents and to show them — and their supporters — just how little they can do in response.”…

Source: Why Did Modi Call India’s Muslims ‘Infiltrators’? Because He Could.

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Chicago’s response to migrant influx stirs long-standing frustrations among its Blacks – Voice of America

2024/04/24 Leave a comment

Of note:

The closure of Wadsworth Elementary School in 2013 was a blow to residents of the majority-Black neighborhood it served, symbolizing a city indifferent to their interests.

So when the city reopened Wadsworth last year to shelter hundreds of migrants without seeking community input, it added insult to injury. Across Chicago, Black residents are frustrated that long-standing needs are not being met while the city’s newly arrived are cared for with a sense of urgency, and with their tax dollars.

“Our voices are not valued nor heard,” said Genesis Young, a lifelong Chicagoan who lives near Wadsworth.

Chicago is one of several big American cities grappling with a surge of migrants. The Republican governor of Texas has been sending them by the busload to highlight his grievances with the Biden administration’s immigration policy.

To manage the influx, Chicago has already spent more than $300 million of city, state and federal funds to provide housing, health care, education and more to over 38,000 mostly South American migrants who have arrived in the city since 2022, desperate for help. The speed with which these funds were marshaled has stirred widespread resentment among Black Chicagoans.

But community leaders are trying to ease racial tensions and channel the public’s frustrations into agitating for the greater good.

Political reactions

The outcry over migrants in Chicago and other large Democrat-led cities is having wider implications in an election year: The Biden administration is now advocating a more restrictive approach to immigration in its negotiations with Republicans in Congress.

Since the Wadsworth building reopened as a shelter, Young has felt “extreme anxiety” because of the noise, loitering and around-the-clock police presence that came with it. More than anything, she and other neighbors say it is a reminder of problems that have been left unsolved for years, including high rates of crime, unemployment and homelessness.

“I definitely don’t want to seem insensitive to them and them wanting a better life. However, if you can all of a sudden come up with all these millions of dollars to address their housing, why didn’t you address the homeless issue here?” said Charlotte Jackson, the owner of a bakery and restaurant in the South Loop neighborhood.

“For so long we accepted that this is how things had to be in our communities,” said Chris Jackson, who co-founded the bakery with his wife. “This migrant crisis has made many people go: ‘Wait a minute, no it doesn’t.’ ”

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson declined to comment for this story.

The city received more than $200 million from the state and federal governments to help care for migrants after Johnson appealed to Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker and President Joe Biden. The president will be in Chicago in August to make his reelection pitch at the 2024 Democratic National Convention.

Some see opportunity

Some Black Chicagoans are protesting the placement of shelters in their neighborhoods, but others aim to turn the adversity into an opportunity.

“Chicago is a microcosm to the rest of the nation,” said the Reverend Janette C. Wilson, national executive director of the civil rights group PUSH for Excellence. Black communities have faced discrimination and underinvestment for decades and are justifiably frustrated, Wilson said. The attention the migrants are receiving is deserved, she added, but it’s also a chance for cities to reflect on their responsibility to all underserved communities.

“There is a moral imperative to take care of everybody,” Wilson said.

After nearly two years of acrimony, the city has begun to curb some accommodations for migrants – which has caused its own backlash. The city last month started evicting migrants who overstayed a 60-day limit at shelters, prompting condemnation from immigrant rights groups and from residents worried about public safety.

Marlita Ingram, a school guidance counselor who lives in the South Shore neighborhood, said she was concerned about the resources being shared “equitably” between migrants and longtime residents. But she said she also believed that “it doesn’t have to be a competition” and sympathized with the nearly 6,000 migrant children now enrolled in Chicago’s public schools.

As the potential for racial strife rises, some activists are pointing to history as a cautionary tale.

Hundreds of thousands of Black Southerners moved to Chicago in the early 20th century in search of greater freedoms and economic opportunities. White Chicagoans at the time accused them of receiving disproportionate resources from the city, and in 1919 tensions boiled over.

In a surge of racist attacks in cities across the U.S. that came to be known as “Red Summer,” white residents burned large swaths of Chicago’s Black neighborhoods and killed 38 Black people, including by lynching.

“Those white folks were, like, ‘Hell, no, they’re coming here, they’re taking our jobs,’ ” said Richard Wallace, founder of Equity and Transformation, a majority-Black community group that co-hosted a forum in March to improve dialogue between Black and Latino residents.

Echoes of past

He hears echoes of that past bigotry — intentional or not — when Black Chicagoans complain about the help being given to migrants. “How did we become like the white folks who were resisting our people coming to the city of the Chicago?” he said.

Labor and immigrant rights organizers have worked for years to tamp down divisions among working class communities. But the migrant crisis has created tensions between the city’s large Mexican American community and recently arrived migrants, many of whom hail from Venezuela.

“If left unchecked, we all panic, we’re all scared, we’re going to retreat to our corners,” said Leone Jose Bicchieri, executive director of Working Family Solidarity, a majority-Hispanic labor rights group. “The truth is that this city wouldn’t work without Black and Latino people.”

Black Americans’ views on immigration and diversity are expansive. The Civil Rights Movement was instrumental in pushing the U.S. to adopt a more inclusive immigration policy.

About half of Black Americans say the United States’ diverse population makes the country strong, including 30% who say it makes the U.S. “much stronger,” according to a March poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Many leaders in Black neighborhoods in and around Chicago are trying to acknowledge the tensions without exacerbating them.

“Our church is divided on the migrant crisis,” said the Reverend Chauncey Brown, pastor of Second Baptist Church in Maywood, Illinois, a majority-Black suburb of Chicago where some migrants are living in shelters.

There has been a noticeable uptick of non-English speakers in the pews, many of whom have said they are migrants in need of food and other services, Brown said. Some church members cautioned him against speaking out in support of migrants or allotting more church resources to them. But he said the Bible’s teachings are clear on this issue.

“When a stranger enters your land, you are to care for them as if they are one of your own,” he said.

Source: Chicago’s response to migrant influx stirs long-standing frustrations among its Blacks – Voice of America

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David | Le multiculturalisme financier, Clark: The Bloc’s fake freakout over halal mortgages is ridiculous

2024/04/24 Leave a comment

Starting with on cue, commentary in Le Devoir and Bloc “outrage” in Parliament:

Paul St-Pierre Plamondon a sans doute péché par anachronisme quand il a dénoncé « une action concertée pour nous effacer ». En revanche, il faut reconnaître au gouvernement Trudeau un remarquable talent pour la provocation.

Après son offensive prébudgétaire dans les champs de compétence des provinces, le budget lui-même contenait une autre trouvaille : la possibilité d’introduire les « hypothèques islamiques » dans le système bancaire canadien.

Il ne suffisait pas qu’Ottawa se prépare à appuyer la contestation de la Loi sur la laïcité de l’État devant la Cour suprême ; il lui fallait aussi agiter ce chiffon rouge devant le taureau. Après tout, si la religion peut avoir sa place dans les institutions publiques, pourquoi pas dans les banques, n’est-ce pas ?

Comme il fallait s’y attendre, le gouvernement Legault n’a pas tardé à réagir. « Nous sommes clairement mal à l’aise avec cette idée », a déclaré le ministre responsable de la Laïcité, Jean-François Roberge. « Traiter différemment, d’un point de vue bancaire, les personnes selon leurs croyances religieuses est en contradiction des choix qu’a faits le Québec. » La laïcité est un des rares sujets sur lesquels la Coalition avenir Québec peut encore espérer rallier une majorité de Québécois.

Sans surprise, le Parti québécois a aussi signifié son opposition, mais le Parti libéral et Québec solidaire (QS), tous deux opposés à la loi 21, sont manifestement embarrassés. « Nous allons prendre le temps d’étudier l’enjeu avant de nous prononcer », a déclaré le député libéral de Marguerite-Bourgeoys, Frédéric Beauchemin, tandis que QS préfère attendre de voir si le gouvernement Trudeau décidera d’aller de l’avant lors de la mise à jour économique de l’automne prochain. Et prier pour qu’il se ravise.

*****

Le chef du Bloc québécois, Yves-François Blanchet, a dénoncé ce qui constituerait à ses yeux « un dangereux précédent », qui serait créé pour des raisons purement « clientélistes » par un gouvernement cherchant à « racoler le vote de la minorité musulmane canadienne et québécoise ».

Les hypothèques islamiques ou « halal », qui remplacent le paiement d’intérêts par d’autres formes de frais, ne font pas l’unanimité au sein même de la communauté musulmane, qui en débat depuis des années. En 2009, le groupe saoudien AlBassam House avait demandé au gouvernement Harper l’autorisation d’ouvrir une première banque offrant ce service au Canada, ce que ne permet pas la loi.

Après avoir longuement examiné la question, la Société canadienne d’hypothèques et de logement (SCHL) avait écarté cette possibilité qui n’intéresse encore aucune des grandes banques. Ceux qui souhaitent contracter une hypothèque de type halal conforme à la charia peuvent s’adresser à des coopératives musulmanes.

Un des opposants les plus acharnés à ce sujet, que le Bloc québécois a pris à témoin, est Tarek Fatah, fondateur du Congrès musulman du Canada, à ne pas confondre avec le Conseil national des musulmans canadiens, vivement opposé à la loi 21.

Ce journaliste d’origine pakistanaise, qui a eu une carrière passablement mouvementée, a notamment milité pour le Nouveau Parti démocratique, dont il a claqué la porte parce qu’il le jugeait trop accueillant pour les islamistes.

Déjà, il y a quinze ans, il s’était réjoui du rejet des hypothèques islamistes par la SCHL. « Cela cible des musulmans vulnérables et marginalisés, à qui l’on dit que, s’ils font affaire à des non-musulmans, ils iront en enfer. C’est comme l’Église catholique du XIIIe siècle », disait-il.

*****

Au reste, comme dans le cas du port du voile, l’interdiction de l’intérêt résulterait d’une interprétation discutable du Coran par le mouvement islamiste. C’est plutôt « l’usure » que proscrirait le livre saint, c’est-à-dire un taux d’intérêt excessif.

Tous n’ont pas les mêmes réserves. Aux critiques de M. Fatah, le magazine Maclean’s avait opposé celles d’un professeur de l’Université de Toronto, Walid Hejazi, selon lequel le Canada avait tout intérêt à s’ouvrir à la « finance islamique ».

La demande va aller en augmentant et le Canada risque d’être écarté d’un marché mondial qui va atteindre des centaines de milliards, plaidait-il. Selon lui, l’hypothèque islamique est un produit financier comme les autres qui peut être utilisé aussi bien par un musulman ou un non-musulman.

Outre l’aspect économique, permettre à des gens d’avoir accès à un financement compatible avec leurs convictions religieuses « serait cohérent avec les valeurs fondamentales du Canada et notre fière histoire », ajoutait M. Hejazi. La question est de savoir si cela est cohérent avec celles du Québec.

La possibilité d’introduire des considérations religieuses dans le système financier n’avait pas été discutée lors du débat sur la laïcité, mais elle aurait probablement soulevé un tollé. Justin Trudeau ne cherche sans doute pas à provoquer volontairement le Québec. C’est simplement que ce dernier ne fait pas partie de sa vision du Canada. N’empêche qu’il joue avec le feu.

Source: Chronique | Le multiculturalisme financier

Clark provides a suitable riposte:

….Yet Bloc Leader Yves-François Blanchet and some of his MPs issued dark warnings that three paragraphs in last week’s budget will set Canada – and therefore Quebec – on a slippery slope into sharia law.

This is dumb. Or disingenuous. Probably both.

The budget passage in question indicated that the mandarins of Finance Canada will explore possible ways to expand access to halal mortgages and other “alternative financing products.”…

Source: The Bloc’s fake freakout over halal mortgages is ridiculous

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , , ,

Asylum claims by international students have skyrocketed since 2018, figures show

2024/04/23 Leave a comment

Good collection and analysis of the data, showing the extent of the abuse of study permits, with good comments by Earl Blaney and Richard Kurland, among others. Another unfortunate signal that the Canadian immigration system has lost its way and the need for corrective action, which the Liberal government has initiated:

Asylum claims by international students have risen more than 1,500 per cent in the past five years, figures obtained by The Globe and Mail show, as experts warn that the study-permit system is being exploited as a way to enter and remain in Canada.

The sharp increase is particularly acute at colleges, where claims at some schools have climbed in excess of 4,000 per cent since 2018. Students at major universities, however, tend to lodge fewer claims than at colleges, the figures show.

The increase in asylum claims coincides with a steep rise in the number of international students arriving here over the past five years, which the government has now taken steps to reduce, partly to ease pressure on housing.

In January, Immigration Minister Marc Miller imposed a two-year cap on international study-permit applications to curb the rapid growth in foreign students entering Canada.

Figures from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, obtained by The Globe, show that in 2018 there were 1,515 claims for asylum among international students, with the number rising to 25,465 in 2023.

The IRCC data on asylum claims at each college and university have not been published.

Earl Blaney, a licensed immigration consultant from London, Ont., said it was easier for people from some countries to enter Canada by obtaining a study permit than a visitor’s visa, as they have a better chance of being allowed into the country if they possess the right credentials to study here.

“To effectuate a front-of-the-line claim for refugee status, you need to be in Canada. The issue is that there is exploitation happening using a legitimate study-permit framework to legitimize entry,” he said. “Some immigration consultants are encouraging students to claim asylum to stay.”

At many colleges, the increases in asylum claims are significant. At Seneca College in Ontario, which offers courses ranging from accounting to civil engineering and fashion, there were 45 asylum claims in 2018, and 1,135 in 2023 – an increase of 2,400 per cent.

At Niagara College, the number of asylum claims jumped to 930 in 2023, from 20 in 2018, a rise of 4,550 per cent. At Conestoga College, there were 25 asylum claims among 6,000 study-permit holders in 2018. Five years later, there were 665 asylum claims among the 81,335 permit holders.

At Cape Breton university in Nova Scotia, there were 15 asylum claims in 2018. That increased to 665 asylum claims last year. And at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, there were only 20 asylum claims by students in 2018, and 700 in 2023.

The numbers are less pronounced at universities. For example, only 35 international students at McGill University, compared with five in 2018, lodged claims for asylum last year, according to the IRCC figures. Fifty-five students at the University of Toronto applied to stay in Canada as a refugee, up from 10 five years ago.

Toronto lawyer Vaibhav Roy said it was “common knowledge amongst the legal community” that students who would not have the scores required for permanent residence – with steep competition for express entry – have been claiming asylum to try to stay in Canada.

“A lot of immigration lawyers are telling them to file refugee claims to stay in the country,” he said. “It’s a last strategy to keep staying here.”

Immigration lawyer Richard Kurland said a lot of international students had been promised by consultants working abroad that a study permit was a route to permanent residence, which is not always the case.

“Where does that leave them? Return home poor and in embarrassment, or claim refugee status, which gets them another three to four years,” he said, adding that they could then qualify for a work permit.

Syed Hussan, executive director of Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, said many international students claimed asylum while here because the situation in their home countries changed.

He said some from Haiti studying in Quebec have claimed asylum as civil order has broken down in the Caribbean country, which has been ravaged by gang violence, and that many asylum claims have been lodged by Indians who have seen fundamentalists target particular ethnic groups.

In the two-year cap imposed in January, IRCC allotted a limited number of study permits to provinces, which they could then allocate to postsecondary institutions.

Figures from the Ontario government show that public colleges are being allocated far more study permits than public universities, this year, while private colleges have been squeezed out.

Ontario is awarding 35,788 study permits to public universities, including Toronto and Carleton in Ottawa, and 186,167 to public colleges.

Seneca College has been allocated 20,388 study permits, compared with 3,362 for the University of Ottawa this year. The University of Waterloo has been allotted 1,212 study permits while Conestoga College has been allocated 19,885.

Queen’s University only has 749 permits, while Fanshawe College of Applied Arts and Technology has 16,752. The University of Toronto has been allowed 6,256 study permits and Niagara College 9,516.

Conservative Immigration critic Tom Kmiec criticized the government for not acting earlier to deal with rising asylum claims among international students.

“Instead of acting immediately when they saw worrying trends in asylum claims by international students, they tried to ignore the problem for years until it was too late,” he said.

This month’s federal budget detailed $1.1-billion over three years for municipalities and provinces to help meet the rising cost of housing asylum seekers, including those fleeing war-torn countries. It followed complaints, particularly from Quebec, that they lack funds to accommodate the steep rise in asylum claimants.

Some asylum seekers have been living in shelters for homeless people or on the streets, with many housed in hotel rooms while their claims are processed.

The budget also earmarked $141-million for Ottawa to pay for temporary lodging for asylum claimants, who cannot be accommodated because provincial places are full.

Michael Wales, director of communications at Niagara College, said he did not want to speculate on whether the reduced number of study permits this year would translate into fewer asylum claims.

“Providing advice or support to students contemplating an asylum claim is beyond the scope of our licensed international student advisers,” he said. “If asked, our advisers would refer the student to a community agency that is qualified to offer that type of advice or support.”

Source: Asylum claims by international students have skyrocketed since 2018, figures show

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Hayden Taylor: I may have to stop writing plays with Native characters

2024/04/23 Leave a comment

Sensible approach:

…I personally have no problem with classes studying my work, regardless of the students’ heritage. I have it on good authority that schools were designed to be places of education, of learning. And what better way to learn about a people, or a culture, than to put on a pair of moccasins or spend time in a First Nations community, even a fictional one, for a few hours? Wherever a play may take you – whether it’s a 16th-century Elizabethan court, or some small American town – embrace it and learn from it.

So, to return to the high school teacher, my words to him were: run with it. Let students understand the triumphs and tragedies of our communities – once he gets the title of my play right.

(Of course, that condition might backfire on me. Will this teacher believe I don’t think “Indians” can tell the truth, unlike drunks and children? See? It all gets so complicated.)

And as for those UBC students, they should have embraced the opportunity. It was probably their only chance to play Indigenous characters. Now, and probably for the rest of their careers, they will play nothing but settler characters. I would find that kind of limiting.

This all changes when it comes to professional productions.

On a professional stage, I think it adds to the production if the Indigenous characters are played by Indigenous people. Acting is all about authenticity….

Source: I may have to stop writing plays with Native characters

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Chinese Communist Party-affiliated institute compiled profiles of Canadian MPs of Chinese descent

2024/04/23 Leave a comment

Not unexpected but different than normal engagement of diaspora communties that Canada also practices with respect to its expatriates:

A research institute in China that is affiliated with the ruling Communist Party’s foreign-influence operations compiled extensive profiles of members of Parliament with Chinese ethnicity, two sources say.

The sources say this Chinese institute used large-scale data analytics and artificial intelligence to create detailed profiles in 2022. There are fewer than 10 MPs of Chinese descent in Canada’s House of Commons.

The profiles were drawn up by a research institute that supports the work of China’s United Front Work Department, a body that answers to the party’s central committee. UFWD oversees Beijing’s influence, propaganda and intelligence operations inside and outside China. The Globe and Mail has been unable to confirm the name of the institute.

The sources say China’s cyber and digital operation to gather information on these MPs was first detected by the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), Canada’s secret signals intelligence agency, and shared with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). The Globe is not revealing the identity of the two sources, who risk prosecution under the Security of Information Act for discussing these matters….

Source: Chinese Communist Party-affiliated institute compiled profiles of Canadian MPs of Chinese descent

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Golden Visa Programs, Once a Boon, Lose Their Luster

2024/04/23 Leave a comment

Long overdue:

Faced with growing pressure to address its housing crunch, Spain said this month that it would scrap its golden visas, the latest in a wider withdrawal from the program by governments around Europe.

Half a dozen eurozone countries offered the visas at the height of Europe’s debt crisis in 2012 to help plug gaping budget deficits. Countries that needed international bailouts — Spain, Ireland, Portugal and Greece among them — were especially desperate for cash to repay creditors, and saw a path to bring in investors while reviving their moribund real estate markets.

The golden visa program brought Spain billions of euros in investments. But property prices paid by rich foreigners are well beyond the earning power of locals.

Countries reaped a windfall: Spain alone has issued 14,576 visas linked to wealthy buyers making real estate investments of more than €500,000. But the prices that they can afford are squeezing people like Dr. Barba out of a market that had already been highly inflated by the rise of Airbnb and the draw of Wall Street investors.

“Access to housing needs to be a right instead of a speculative business,” Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s prime minister, said in a speech this month as he announced the end of the country’s golden visa program. “Major cities are facing highly stressed markets, and it’s almost impossible to find decent housing for those who already live, work and pay their taxes.”

The visas make it easy for people outside the European Union to buy the right to temporary residency, sometimes without having to live in the country. Investors from China, Russia and the Middle East flocked to buy real estate through them.

In recent years, British nationals have followed suit in the wake of Brexit, snapping up homes in Greece, Portugal and Spain, joined by an increasing number of Americans looking to enjoy a lifestyle they can’t afford in major U.S. cities.

But golden visa programs are now being phased out or shut down around Europe as governments seek to undo the damage to the housing market. And after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, E.U. officials urged governments to end them, warning they could be used for money laundering, tax evasion and even organized crime….

Source: Golden Visa Programs, Once a Boon, Lose Their Luster

Filed under Citizenship, citizenship-by-investment, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Erfan: Middle East student dialogue: As an expert in deep conflict, what I’ve learned about making conversation possible

2024/04/23 Leave a comment

Timely (the Wosk Centre for Dialogue specializes in difficult conversations):

…Secret ingredient: ‘Containers’

One secret ingredient to successfully working with groups concerned with contentious topics is creating physical and psychological conditions that make it easier to speak and listen with the goal of understanding. These are known as dialogic containers. Facilitators and participants intentionally build these, and they can include things like: how the room is set up; the level of hospitality in the space; explicit agreements participants in the group assent to about how to be together.

On the night of the BDS dialogue, I thought a lot about the container, including preparing myself intellectually and emotionally to facilitate. But in the group, we also spent nearly an hour building the container through negotiating group agreements. 

Negotiating group agreements

There are many examples of standard group agreements, but I believe in making them from scratch every time, for each unique situation and group. Often groups make agreements about confidentiality and avoiding personal attacks. 

The night of the 2015 BDS referendum, students negotiated some unique agreements, including: 

  • That we would acknowledge the right to existence for both Palestinian and Israeli people and the right to existence of the States of Palestine and Israel, according to the 1967 borders. (This item, which is in the heart of much of the contention in the region, took the majority of the hour to negotiate. It wasn’t that everyone — or anyone — in the room was happy with it — but it was enough recognition, enough of a bridge, to make the conversation possible).
  • That if the conversation stretched past 8 p.m., we would order pizza and the options must include vegetarian, gluten-free, vegan, Halal and Kosher. (I have always felt that the pizza agreement was a breakthrough because by the time you are talking about sharing food, much humanizing has happened.)

‘Flagging’ in real time

In other spaces, my students have negotiated:

  • an intention to avoid using supercharged labels thrown around on the internet (words like “race-baiter,” “snowflake” or “fascist”);
  • to replace an impulse to shout with a declaration of “I am not feeling heard”;
  • to have an observer raise a literal flag when a person was on the edge of stereotyping. 

Not all situations are ripe for dialogue. Charged civil conversations on a university campus do not solve the big conflicts of our times, nor does a whole semester in dialogue. 

Some critics even say that these initiatives divert attention, and take away the energy from pursuing justice, or that they “normalize” oppressive arrangements by sugarcoating them in dialogue. 

Capacity to be together

But these initiatives do provide a space for students who have never been in conversation with each other to talk, to ask questions that they cannot ask anywhere else and to gain more nuanced perspectives.

The capacity to be together is important to pick up while we are students, lest we think that online screaming matches or acts of despair and total disengagement are our only options.

As difficult as it is to remain in conversation on something as divisive as the Hamas-Israel war, as an educator I hope we remain on the lookout for the right time to get back into talking with each other about this on our university campuses.

Source: Middle East student dialogue: As an expert in deep conflict, what I’ve learned about making conversation possible

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Bruni: The Most Important Thing I Teach My Students Isn’t on the Syllabus

2024/04/22 Leave a comment

Thoughtful approach, recognizing the complexity of issues and viewpoints and the need for humility:

I warn my students. At the start of every semester, on the first day of every course, I confess to certain passions and quirks and tell them to be ready: I’m a stickler for correct grammar, spelling and the like, so if they don’t have it in them to care about and patrol for such errors, they probably won’t end up with the grade they’re after. I want to hear everyone’s voice — I tell them that, too — but I don’t want to hear anybody’s voice so often and so loudly that the other voices don’t have a chance.

And I’m going to repeat one phrase more often than any other: “It’s complicated.” They’ll become familiar with that. They may even become bored with it. I’ll sometimes say it when we’re discussing the roots and branches of a social ill, the motivations of public (and private) actors and a whole lot else, and that’s because I’m standing before them not as an ambassador of certainty or a font of unassailable verities but as an emissary of doubt. I want to give them intelligent questions, not final answers. I want to teach them how much they have to learn — and how much they will always have to learn.

I’d been on the faculty of Duke University and delivering that spiel for more than two years before I realized that each component of it was about the same quality: humility. The grammar-and-spelling bit was about surrendering to an established and easily understood way of doing things that eschewed wild individualism in favor of a common mode of communication. It showed respect for tradition, which is a force that binds us, a folding of the self into a greater whole. The voices bit — well, that’s obvious. It’s a reminder that we share the stages of our communities, our countries, our worlds, with many other actors and should  conduct ourselves in a manner that recognizes this fact. And “it’s complicated” is a bulwark against arrogance, absolutism, purity, zeal.

I’d also been delivering that spiel for more than two years before I realized that humility is the antidote to grievance.

We live in an era defined and overwhelmed by grievance — by too many Americans’ obsession with how they’ve been wronged and their insistence on wallowing in ire. This anger reflects a pessimism that previous generations didn’t feel. The ascent of identity politics and the influence of social media, it turned out, were better at inflaming us than uniting us. They promote a self-obsession at odds with community, civility, comity and compromise. It’s a problem of humility.

The Jan. 6 insurrectionists were delusional, frenzied, savage. But above all, they were unhumble. They decided that they held the truth, no matter all the evidence to the contrary. They couldn’t accept that their preference for one presidential candidate over another could possibly put them in the minority — or perhaps a few of them just reasoned that if it did, then everybody else was too misguided to matter. They elevated how they viewed the world and what they wanted over tradition, institutional stability, law, order.

It’s no accident that they were acting in the service of Donald Trump, whose pitch to Americans from the very start was a strikingly — even shockingly — unhumble one. “I alone can fix it,” he proclaimed in his 2016 speech accepting the Republican Party’s nomination for president; and at his inauguration in January of the following year, the word “humbled,” which had been present in the first inaugural remarks of both Barack Obama and George W. Bush, was nowhere to be found. Nor were any of its variants. That whole sentiment and politesse were missing, as they had been during a campaign centered on his supposed omniscience.

There are now mini-Trumps aplenty in American politics, but anti-Trumps will be our salvation, and I say that not along partisan or ideological lines. I’m talking about character and how a society holds itself together. It does that with concern for the common good, with respect for the institutions and procedures that protect that and with political leaders who ideally embody those traits or at least promote them.

Those leaders exist. When Charlie Baker, a former Massachusetts governor, was enjoying enormous favor and lofty approval ratings as a Republican in a predominantly Democratic state, he was also stressing the importance of humility. He was fond of quoting Philippians 2:3, which he invoked as a lodestar for his administration. “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit,” it says. “Rather, in humility value others above yourself.”

That’s great practical advice for anyone in government, where most meaningful success hinges on teamwork and significant progress requires consensus. Governing, as opposed to demagoguery, is about earning others’ trust and cooperation. Exhibiting a willingness to listen to and to hear them goes a long way toward that.

“Insight and knowledge come from curiosity and humility,” Mr. Baker wrote in a 2022 book, “Results,” coauthored with his chief of staff, Steve Kadish, a Democrat. “Snap judgments — about people or ideas — are fueled by arrogance and conceit. They create blind spots and missed opportunities. Good ideas and interesting ways to accomplish goals in public life exist all over the place if you have the will, the curiosity, and the humility to find them.”

Humble politicians don’t insist on one-size-fits-all answers when those aren’t necessary as a matter of basic rights and fundamental justice. Humble activists don’t either. The campaign for same-sex marriage — one of the most successful social movements of recent decades — showed that progress can be made not by shaming people, not by telling them how awful they are, but by suggesting how much better they could be. Marriage-equality advocates emphasized a brighter future that they wanted to create, not an ugly past that they wanted to litigate. They also wisely assured Americans that gay and lesbian people weren’t trying to explode a cherished institution and upend a system of values, but instead wanted in.

“I don’t want to disparage shouting and demands — everything has its place,” Evan Wolfson, the founder of the pivotal advocacy group Freedom to Marry, told me when we revisited the movement’s philosophy and tactics. At times, he acknowledged, champions of a cause “need to break the silence, we need to push, we need to force.”

“But I used to say, ‘Yes, there’s demanding, but there’s also asking,’” he recalled. “And one is not the enemy of the other. People don’t like being accused, people don’t like being condemned, people don’t like being alienated. It’s a matter of conversation and persuasion.”

That’s consistent with the message delivered by Loretta Ross, a longtime racial justice and human rights advocate, through her teaching, public speaking and writing. Troubled by the frequent targeting and pillorying of people on social media, she urged the practice of calling in rather than calling out those who’ve upset you. “Call-outs make people fearful of being targeted,” she wrote in a guest essay for Times Opinion. “People avoid meaningful conversations when hypervigilant perfectionists point out apparent mistakes, feeding the cannibalistic maw of the cancel culture.” Instead, she advised, engage them. If you believe they need enlightenment, try that route, “without the self-indulgence of drama,” she wrote.

She was preaching humility.

She was also recognizing other people’s right to disagree — to live differently, to talk differently. Pluralism is as much about that as it is about a multiracial, multifaith, multigender splendor. That doesn’t mean a surrender or even a compromise of principles; a person can hold on to those while practicing tolerance, which has been supplanted by grievance. Tolerance shares DNA with respect. It recognizes that other people have rights and inherent value even when we disagree vehemently with them.

We all carry wounds, and some of us carry wounds much graver than others. We confront obstacles, including unjust and senseless ones. We must tend to those wounds. We must push hard at those obstacles. But we mustn’t treat every wound, every obstacle, as some cosmic outrage or mortal danger. We mustn’t lose sight of the struggle, imperfection and randomness of life. We mustn’t overstate our vulnerability and exaggerate our due.

While grievance blows our concerns out of proportion, humility puts them in perspective. While grievance reduces the people with whom we disagree to caricature, humility acknowledges that they’re every bit as complex as we are — with as much of a stake in creating a more perfect union.

Source: The Most Important Thing I Teach My Students Isn’t on the Syllabus

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

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