Court grants Ottawa extension to fix ‘lost Canadians’ citizenship rules

2024/08/05 Leave a comment

Original deadline was completely unrealistic given legislative process and flawed draft legislation having no time limit to meet residency requirements, unlike for Permanent Residents (1,095 days within 5 years):

Immigration officials will have until Dec. 19 to enact Bill C-71, which would automatically confer Canadian citizenship on people born abroad to a Canadian parent who is also born abroad before the changes take effect. Until then, lost Canadians can only try to reclaim their citizenship on an emergency basis.

At the same time, officials must also roll out a system for anyone born outside Canada subsequently to prove their foreign-born Canadian parent had a “substantial connection” with the country by meeting a residency requirement, which is 1,095 cumulative days of physical presence in Canada before the birth or adoption of their foreign-born child.

Friday’s decision by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice is likely going to end a three-year legal saga that started in 2021 by a group of 23 people from seven families who have been harmed by the loss of citizenship as a result of the so-called second generation cut-off rule introduced by Stephen Harper’s Conservative government in 2009.

They claimed the second generation cut-off rule — denying the first generation born abroad the right to pass on citizenship by descent outside Canada to the second generation born abroad — violated their Charter rights based on country of origin and sex.

In December, Judge Jasmine Akbarali ruled the second-generation citizenship cut-off rule was unconstitutional and ordered the federal government to repeal it and amend the Citizenship Act in six months.

In June, officials asked the court for a six-month extension of the deadline, saying they needed more time to pass a new bill to fix the problems. However, the court was not satisfied that the government recognized the urgency of a new law and asked officials to return Aug. 1 with an effective plan to address the hardship that any further delay might “cause people whose constitutional rights are being violated day after day.”

The court held a hearing this week and was presented submissions by the government of the updated procedure and communications to address “special cases of hardship,” as well as the new instructions created for affected citizenship applicants who have an urgent need for family reunification in Canada.

While the revised website and communication may not be perfect, the judge said they “adequately” allow potential applicants to navigate how they can seek a grant of citizenship in urgent cases that may involve a child’s statelessness or hardship in family reunification during the delay.

“The question for me is not whether the respondent could have designed a better process, or whether it is executing the process it has designed in a way that I would, in my discretion,” Akbarali wrote in a decision released Friday.

“The question is whether the process it has designed is good enough to sufficiently address the concerns about the hardship caused by the ongoing rights violations.”

The court heard that the government has made every effort to ensure the passage of Bill C-71 to amend the Citizenship Act, including technical briefings to MPs and to opposition immigration critics about the proposed changes. Immigration officials are also undertaking work to support the implementation of the new law as soon as it is passed.

But at the hearing, Sujit Choudhry, lawyer for the affected families, raised doubts over the government’s commitment to push through the legislative changes, arguing that Ottawa could have prioritized the passage of the bill, first introduced on May 23, before Parliament recessed for the summer on June 20.

Akbarali said she was satisfied with the plan outlined by the government and trusted that it will continue to take steps to advance the legislation.

“It has a tool box at its disposal that it can use to accelerate the passage of Bill C-71,” she wrote. “There is reason to conclude that the Bill will likely be adopted before Dec. 19, 2024.”

Akbarali also awarded $15,000 in indemnity costs to the litigants and credited them for holding the government to account.

Source: Court grants Ottawa extension to fix ‘lost Canadians’ citizenship rules

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Column: The California roots of Trump’s anti-immigrant pitch to Black voters

2024/08/05 Leave a comment

Of note, 1994 Proposition 187:

Donald Trump is nothing if not consistent, and his Dumpster fire of an interview with reporters at the National Assn. of Black Journalists convention in Chicago this week showed the Republican presidential nominee in full, foul mode.

He lied. He insulted. He whined. He was racist and misogynistic. He evaded questions and elided answers, and showed all the grace and gratitude of a kindergartner who pees in a sandbox and expects others to clean up the mess.

Above all, the Republican presidential candidate kept stabbing at the same illegal immigration scapegoat that’s the centerpiece of his 2024 presidential campaign. This time, though, he tried to further his contention that Donald J. Trump is the greatest president for Black people since Abraham Lincoln.

He unveiled the strategy during his June 28 debate with President Biden, when Trump stated that immigrants were a “big kill on the Black people” and were “taking Black jobs.” In Georgia, which he narrowly lost in 2020, his campaign has aired radio and television commercials insisting Biden cares more about illegal immigrants than the Black community.

At the NABJ convention, Trump blamed open borders for endangering the job security of Black workers — never mind that unemployment rates for them have reached historic lows under both the Trump and Biden administrations, a time when illegal immigration has grown to numbers not seen in a generation. When a moderator asked what was his message to all the Black reporters gathered before him and people watching online, Trump responded it was “to stop people from invading our country … who happen to be taking Black jobs.” When asked what he would do on Day 1 of a new term, he blurted out, “Close the border.”

Trump’s gambit is yet another legacy of Proposition 187, the 1994 California ballot initiative that sought to make life miserable for undocumented immigrants. Then and now, GOP politicians figure that the best way to court Black voters — a longtime bedrock of the Democratic Party — is to argue that immigrants in the country illegally are a burden that hits their community harder than others by taking away social services and bleeding jobs away.

Here’s the thing: There is a historical basis for these concerns, even if Trump has pushed the Illegal Immigrant Bogeyman dial to 11.

When South L.A. began to turn from the heart of the city’s Black community to a Latino-majority enclave during the 1980s and 1990s, the subsequent tensions were real. In the wake of the L.A. riots, groups protested outside work sites and blasted contractors for giving jobs to Latinos instead of Black workers because the former group would work for cheaper than the latter. The assumption by Latino political leaders during the fight against Prop. 187 that Black people would join them without question offended leaders and community activists.

Incidents like that led to 47% of Black voters favoring Prop. 187, a margin that helped the resolution pass comfortably.

Some of the most prominent Black voices in the anti-immigrant movement over the past 25 years — homeless activist Ted Hayes, the late radio show host Terry Anderson, the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, former gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder — came from that era. One of the loudest anti-immigrant voices in Southern California today is Fontana Mayor Acquanetta Warren, a Compton native who has scolded immigrants from the dais for not speaking English and has waged an aggressive campaign against street vendors. Throw in deep-rooted anti-Black sentiments among Latinos that got a prominent showcase during the 2022 L.A. City Hall racist tape leak scandal, and no wonder Trump thinks banking on getting Black voters angry enough against a supposed south-of-the-border invasion is a winner.

The reality is that Black people aren’t as receptive to an anti-immigrant message as Trump and the GOP would like to think.

A 2006 Pew Research Center study showed that 47% of Black people thought immigrants in the U.S. without legal documents should be allowed to stay, compared with 33% of whites. But by 2013, a similar Pew report showed 82% of Black peoplefelt there should be a path toward legalization for those immigrants, compared with 67% of whites. The figure dropped in a Pew survey released this year to 73%, but it’s still far higher than the 53% of whites who feel the same, and just two percentage points behind Latinos, who have increasingly turned to the right against illegal immigration since the Prop. 187 days.

This general acceptance doesn’t surprise L.A. Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson. He campaigned against Prop. 187 in 1994, going door-to-door in his native South L.A. to argue that the initiative was a wedge issue being used by Republicans to divide Black and Latino neighbors against each other and make them forget their shared working-class status.

“One line I would tell people is, ‘Do you hear them [Prop. 187 supporters] talk about people from Canada? From Germany?” Harris-Dawson said. “Black and Latino people I talked to understood it clearly.”

Harris-Dawson didn’t have to make the same argument recently in Atlanta, where the subject of illegal immigration came up in conversation.

“They said, ‘We support immigration reform, because we don’t want working-class people who can’t play defense,’” he said. In other words, it was better for the Black community for immigrants to have full rights instead of keeping them without papers and thus easier to use to undercut Black workers. “The sophistication of that! They get that workers don’t take jobs; employers give jobs.”

He can see Trump peeling off Black voters from the Democrats by continuing to hammer on the illegal immigration issue — but “he’ll also lose them” because of Trump’s long history of racist dog whistles. Besides, the councilmember argued, “people have seen it play out. … You see new neighbors come in and think, ‘Oh, there’s a good family.’ And they are. And then 10 years later, the parents still don’t have papers and the kids can’t go to college.

“Black folks can sympathize,” Harris-Dawson concluded, with “people who deal with systems that are ostensibly there to help you, but in fact do the opposite.”

Source: Column: The California roots of Trump’s anti-immigrant pitch to Black voters

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GOLDSTEIN: High immigration policy undermining housing, healthcare and climate goals

2024/08/05 Leave a comment

Nothing new here but another Postmedia commentary:

It’s hard to know what the Trudeau government was thinking two years ago when it dramatically increased its immigration targets given the added pressure this has put on three issues it says are priorities — housing affordability, improving healthcare and reducing industrial greenhouse gas emissions.

When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau came to power in 2015, 271,845 immigrants became permanent residents of Canada.

In 2022, his government set a target of 465,000 for 2023, 485,000 this year and 500,000 in 2025, followed by another target of 500,000 in 2026, announced last year.

Simultaneously, there has been a huge increase in non-permanent residents during the Trudeau era (international students, temporary foreign workers and asylum seekers).

Trudeau himself said in April that in 2017, they constituted 2% of Canada’s population, while today it’s 7.5% or almost three million people, a number the PM described as “far beyond what Canada has been able to absorb” and “something that we need to get back under control.”

All of this has directly contributed to rapid population growth — Canada’s population hit 41 million people on April 1, an increase of one million people in less than a year, almost all of it due to increases in permanent and temporary immigration.

While the Trudeau government is sticking with its previously announced permanent immigration targets, it has now set a goal of reducing the number of temporary residents to 5% of Canada’s population by 2027.

Immigration Minister Marc Miller has announced plans to cap and reduce the number of international students and foreign workers, and in an interview with Reuters last week said more measures are coming to end “the era of uncapped programs.”

Asked if the government made a mistake by allowing rapid growth in temporary residents, Miller said, “Every government makes mistakes. I think we are all human.” But “coming out of COVID, in particular, we were facing massive labour shortages.”

Asked about a recent Leger poll that found 60% of Canadians surveyed believe too many immigrants are coming to Canada, Miller responded: “I’m not naive enough to think Canada is immune to the waves of anti-immigrant sentiment,” although he acknowledged Canadians want a system that is not out of control.

The Trudeau government often blames anti-immigration sentiment when questioned about its immigration policies, despite the fact years of polling have shown Canadians are generally supportive of immigration.

The reason there is concern now comes from statements by Trudeau that temporary immigration needs to be brought under control and by Miller that the skyrocketing number of international students was a source of concern about the integrity of the immigration system itself.

The federal government has long argued Canada needs high immigration because of its low domestic birth rate, which is not providing enough future workers to grow the economy.

But that policy has also undermined the goals of the Trudeau government on three major issues it says are priorities — housing affordability, healthcare and climate change.

Internal government documents obtained by The Canadian Press earlier this year revealed that in announcing its significant boost to immigration targets in 2022, the Trudeau government ignored warnings from its own public servants that doing so would increase the cost of housing and negatively impact Canada’s already beleaguered healthcare system.

“In Canada, population growth has exceeded the growth in available housing units,” the documents said.

“As the federal authority charged with managing immigration, IRCC (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada) policy-makers must understand the misalignment between population growth and housing supply, and how permanent and temporary immigration shapes population growth … Rapid increases put pressure on healthcare and affordable housing.”

Last month, a peer-reviewed study by Lauren Eastman, Sukhy K. Mahl and Shoo K. Lee published by the Canadian Health Policy Journal — A Growing Problem: Is Canada’s Health Care System Keeping Up With Newcomers — found that, “newcomer demand for health human resources including family physicians, specialists and registered nurses, far out-strips new supply in recent years, leading to a shortage of 1,122 family physicians, 690 specialists and 8,538 registered nurses in 2022. Immigration and healthcare resource policies should work in tandem to ensure the healthcare shortage facing Canadians is not exacerbated.”

Herbert Grubel, a former federal MP and emeritus professor of economics at Simon Fraser University, and Patrick Grady, a former senior official in the federal finance department, estimated in a 2021 article in the Financial Post that based on higher immigration levels, “greenhouse gas emissions will be 7.5% above what they would have been otherwise” in 2030, and “this gap will be much larger by 2050, the year the government has promised to reduce emissions to net-zero as required by the Paris accord.”

Source: GOLDSTEIN: High immigration policy undermining housing, healthcare and climate goals

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Explained: How UK’s long-running Islamophobia problem led to far-right riots

2024/08/05 Leave a comment

One of the better explainers:

More ugly scenes have unfolded on the UK’s streets on Saturday, as police continue to grapple with a wave of far-right disorder across the country.

Cities in England and Northern Ireland saw violent clashes involving anti-immigration demonstrators and counter-protesters, with police officers injured as objects such as bricks, chairs and bottles were thrown at them.

The far-right has drawn condemnation from MPs across the political spectrum after disorder in London, Manchester, Southport, Hartlepool and Sunderland over the past week, many of which have seen mosques and other Muslim religious buildings targeted.

With more marches planned in the coming days, experts have warned such demonstrations are being driven by deep rooted Islamophobic sentiment among some sections of the population.

The catalyst for the wave of unrest was the killings of three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, Merseyside, on Monday.

Axel Muganwa Rudakubana, 17, who was born in Cardiff and lived near Southport, is accused of the attack, but false claims spread online the suspect was named “Ali al-Shakati” and was asylum seeker of Muslim faith who had arrived in the UK by boat in 2023.

Racial equality and civil rights think tank the Runnymede Trust warned that this “violent racism has long been simmering under the surface” of society.

“What is happening is the direct result of years of normalised racism and Islamophobia, enabled by politicians and the British media,” a spokesperson said.

There has been an upsurge in Islamophobic incidents and rhetoric in recent years. According to Home Office data, religious hate crime is at an all-time high and Muslims are the most targeted religious group.

There was a nine per cent increase in religious hate crime offences in the year ending March 2023 – where the victim’s religion was recorded, 2 in 5 of these offences were targeted against Muslims.

Yet, authorities stand accused of doing nothing to address this spike; it recently emerged that the previous Conservative government’s anti-Muslim hatred working group (AMHWG) was “on pause” for more than four years, from 2020 until the party’s general election loss, despite repeated promises from officials and an increase in hate crime.

The new Labour government’s strategy for tackling Islamophobia remains unclear and Sir Keir Starmer has been criticised for failing to engage enough with Muslim communities in the wake of disorder.

Writing on X/Twitter, the Muslim Association of Britain said: “@Keir_Starmer had no problem meeting @MuslimCouncil when he was in opposition.

“Now that he is in government, and Muslims are being attacked and Mosques have become targets, his government have no plans to meet the largest body representing Muslims in the UK. What changed?”

Recently, The Independent revealed that a Muslim political group was “inundated” with racist abuse and violent threats during the general election, resulting in a report being made to the police.

In March, Muslims in Britain reported that they are too scared to leave their homes after dark, as new figures from a London charity, Islamophobia Response Unit (IRU), showed the number of Islamophobic incidents skyrocketed by 365 per cent since the 7 October attack on Israel by Hamas.

Political discourse and dynamics have also fuelled anti-Muslim sentiment, campaigners have said.

In response to the unrest, Qari Asim, chairman of Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board, said Muslims around the country are “deeply worried and anxious about the planned riots by the far-right groups across the country”.

He said: “This intimidation and violence is the inevitable, devastating, outcome of rising Islamophobia that has been enabled to fester on social media, in parts of the mainstream media and by some populist leaders.”

Earlier this year, former Tory MP Lee Anderson’s remarks about the Muslim Mayor of London Sadiq Khan being “controlled” by “Islamists” led to his suspension from the party.

Despite this, Mr Anderson remained unapologetic about his comments, defected to Reform UK, and doubled down by saying “most of the public agree with him”.

A independent review led by Professor Swaran Singh in 20121 found that “anti-Muslim sentiment remains a problem” within the Conservatives and although an updated report in 2023 found the party had made progress, it also warned it had been slow to implement some of his recommendations.

A report by the Labour Muslim Network (2020) highlighted consistent experiences of Islamophobia among Muslim members and supporters and a number of MPs, including Zarah Sultana, have called for the party to launch an inquiry into the issue.

Sections of the media have also been accused of peddling Islamophobia and risking the safety of Muslims around the country in the process.

Examining over 10,000 articles and clips referring to Muslims and Islam in the winter period of 2018, a 2021 report from the Muslim Council of Britain’s Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) found that the majority (59 per cent) of all articles associated Muslim people with negative behaviour, over a third of all articles misrepresented or generalised about Muslim people and terrorism was the most common theme.

Source: Explained: How UK’s long-running Islamophobia problem led to far-right riots

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Todd: Quixotic Trudeau finally getting pushback over asylum-seeker chaos

2024/08/03 Leave a comment

Inevitable although most asylum seeker and refugee stakeholders remain largely in denial:

Reality is teaching some important lessons to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about flirting with the ideal of virtually open borders. So are Canada’s premiers and the public.

Particularly in regard to asylum seekers.

For months B.C. Premier David Eby and Quebec Premier François Legault have been almost frantically trying to send a message to Trudeau and his childhood friend, Immigration Minister Marc Miller, that they should no longer indulge in their romantic rhetoric of the past.

“To those fleeing persecution, terror and war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength. #WelcomeToCanada,” Trudeau told the world on Twitter/X on Jan. 28, 2017.

It was the day after newly inaugurated U.S. President Donald Trump issued an executive order banning refugees from Muslim-majority countries. Trump had also proposed the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants. Trudeau promised to be their saviour.

Even though Eby and Legault are among the most bold in their pushback, they haven’t been alone in trying to educate Trudeau about the costs, in public dollars, of such grandstanding on asylum seekers.

As with the categories of guest workers, international students and immigrants under Trudeau, the number of refugee claimants has soared during his nine-year-old Liberal regime.

There are now 363,000 asylum claimants in the country, according to Statistics Canada — double two years ago.

A couple of years ago most claimants were walking across the U.S. border into Eastern Canada, which U.S. President Joe Biden last year helped to tighten up.

So now most arrive at airports in Toronto and Montreal, and to some extent Calgary and Vancouver, particularly from Asia. They come in  legally with study or travel visas and then make their claims after leaving the airport, saying they’re escaping various forms of persecution.

It normally takes about two years, and often longer if there is an appeal, for the refugee board to research backgrounds and make a ruling on a case, says Anne Michèle Meggs, a former Quebec immigration official who now writes independently on the subject.

This year the average number of asylum claims made per month in B.C. has jumped to 640 — up 37 per cent compared with last year, says Meggs.

B.C. has the third largest intake of asylum claimants in the country. Most still go to Ontario, where she says average monthly claims have leapt by 53 per cent, or Quebec, where they’re up 20 per cent.

Canada’s premiers have been telling Trudeau for the past few months that, regardless of the validity of their assertions, asylum seekers cost taxpayers a great deal of money.

Most arrive with no financial means. And while they wait for their cases to be evaluated to see if they get coveted permanent resident status, federal and provincial agencies often provide social services, housing, food, clothing, health care, children’s education and (in Quebec) daycare.

Stories of an out-of-control refugee system are likely contributing to fast-changing opinion poll results. Last week Leger discovered 60 per cent of Canadians now think there are “too many” newcomers. That’s a huge shift from just 35 per cent in 2019.

It’s the highest rate of dissatisfaction in decades — based in part on demand pressure on housing and infrastructure costs. The negative polling result is consistent across both white and non-white Canadians.

In response to complaints out of Quebec, Trudeau has this year coughed up $750 million more for that province to support refugee claimants who arrived in recent years, mostly at the land border. Last year Quebec dealt with a total of 65,000 claims and Ontario with 63,000, with the largest cohorts from Mexico and India.

But B.C., as Eby is telling anyone who will listen, has received no dollars from Ottawa. The premier described how “frustrating” it is for B.C. to “scrabble around” for funds in the province, where housing is among the most expensive in the world, while Quebec gets extra.

“Our most recent total for last year was 180,000 new British Columbians,” Eby said last month, including asylum seekers among all international migrants to the province. “And that’s great and that’s exciting and it’s necessary, and it’s completely overwhelming.”

Eby didn’t even publicly mention the increasingly bizarre anomaly, based on the three-decades-old Quebec Accord, which each year leads to Quebec getting 10 times more funding than B.C. and Ontario to settle newcomers.

Postmedia News has found Metro Vancouver’s shelters are being overwhelmed by the near-doubling of asylum seekers in B.C. in the past year.

The Salvation Army, which operates 100 beds in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, said that since last summer, the proportion of refugee claimants seeking shelter has climbed to about 80 per cent. Meanwhile, about 60 per cent of beds at the Catholic Charities Men’s Shelter in Vancouver were occupied by refugee claimants. Shelters are predominantly funded by taxpayers.

Government statistics show B.C. is now home to 16,837 asylum claimants, says Meggs. That doesn’t include the 5,300 who last year arrived in the province on a more orderly track as government-assisted refugees.

In an article in Inroads magazine, a social policy journal, Meggs says her ”jaw dropped” when Trudeau said in April the number of temporary immigrants, including asylum seekers, was “out of control” and “growing at a rate far beyond what Canada has been able to absorb.”

The cognitive dissonance, she explained, is because Trudeau’s government is entirely responsible for the system spinning out-of control since 2015 — and not only in numbers, but in selection criteria, or lack thereof.

Trudeau has admitted chaos particularly characterizes the dilemma with international students, whose numbers have tripled under his reign to 1.1 million. Many are now claiming asylum. B.C. has 217,000 foreign students in post-secondary institutions and another 49,000 in kindergarten-to-Grade-12 programs.

Vancouver immigration lawyer Richard Kurland is among those suggesting it would be best if Canada processed about 50,000 refugee claimants a year, since it doesn’t have absorptive capacity for more — like the 144,000 who applied last year.

One big problem is the government knows little or nothing about a lot of asylum seekers, say Kurland and Meggs (who generally shares the centre-left leanings of her brother, Geoff Meggs, former chief of staff to NDP Premier John Horgan.)

The immigration department’s ignorance is in part because many make their claims online. Officials don’t even know where tens of thousands live. Meanwhile, Meggs laments, countless claimants are both aided and exploited by people smugglers, landlords and underground employers.

Meggs doesn’t really know how Ottawa is going to get things under control. And, if Trump is re-elected in November and follows through on his vow to get rid of millions of undocumented migrants, it’s virtually guaranteed many will head north to Canada, trying to find ways to pass through what Meggs describes as an incredibly long and understaffed border.

Even though Meggs isn’t optimistic about the future of asylum-seeker policy in Canada, at least the premiers and public are making noises. The thing is, given the Liberals’ defensiveness, it’s just far too soon to tell if their criticism will inspire not empty words but authentic change.

Source: Quixotic Trudeau finally getting pushback over asylum-seeker chaos

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Phillips: A federal minister wanted Canadian soldiers to serve as props at a pop concert. It’s just the latest way the Trudeau government has treated national security as a joke

2024/08/03 Leave a comment

Really wonder what they are thinking (or not thinking):

You can’t be too careful these days. With all the fake news, misinformation and AI-generated “deep fakes” out there you can’t take anything at face value. You have to be on your guard.

Which is why when I saw a headline this week saying a federal minister had lobbied for 100 Canadian soldiers to act as “backdrops” for a concert by an Indian pop star, my first thought was it must be one of those fakes. Or perhaps someone’s idea of a joke.

But no. It turns out a minister in the Trudeau government, Harjit Sajjan, really did try to convince the military to supply soldiers to be, in effect, props for a performance in Vancouver by one of India’s most popular singers and actors, Diljit Dosanjh.

Sajjan, the minister of emergency preparedness and a former defence minister, sent the request to the current defence minister, Bill Blair. Blair apparently passed it on to whoever’s in charge of these things in the Canadian Armed Forces and fortunately sanity prevailed. The military replied that “this request would not be feasible due to the tight timeline and personnel availability.”

This is a story that might well just slip by, especially in the depths of summer when no one’s paying attention. But it shouldn’t. It underlines this government’s fundamental lack of seriousness on issues of national security and, just as bad, its habit of playing diaspora politics rather than focusing on the national interest.

Sajjan isn’t having any of this. After the Globe & Mail reported his request for soldiers he didn’t apologize or back down. On the contrary. He defended the idea as “a good opportunity for the Canadian Armed Forces to engage with and expand connections to a diverse community of young Canadians.”

But this wasn’t an event with broad public connections like a Canada Day concert, a Grey Cup halftime show or a multicultural festival. It may well be appropriate for the military to have a presence at such events to, quite literally, show the flag.

This was a private, commercial concert by a very popular singer from another country. You might as well ask the air force to do a flyover at a Taylor Swift concert. The military, to state the obvious, isn’t there to serve as props for pop stars – however popular.

Now, it’s impossible to miss the fact that Dosanjh is a mega-star who was born in Punjab and makes much of those origins. He’s hugely popular in India and is reaching out to other countries; his Vancouver event was reportedly the biggest Punjabi music concert ever outside India.

Does any of this escape the Liberals? Of course not. They’re acutely attuned to currents in diaspora communities, including those from India and especially Punjab, the only Sikh-majority state in India. Sajjan himself was born in Punjab and is one of several ministers with origins in India. Nothing wrong with that – but there is something wrong with trying to use the military in a way that may bring political benefits.

Sajjan came under fire recently for telling the armed forces to mount a rescue operation for 225 Afghan Sikhs during the fall of Kabul in August 2021. The suggestion was that Sajjan, defence minister at the time, diverted resources from others desperate to get out before the Taliban took over.

In light of that you’d think he’d be extra cautious about doing anything else that might be interpreted as pandering to Punjabi-Canadian voters. But apparently not.

There’s a bit more spill-over from all this. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau himself dropped in at another concert by Dosanjh in July at the Rogers Centre in Toronto and referred to the singer as “a guy from Punjab.” 

That sounds banal but given the tense state of relations between India and Canada it created a minor storm. The national secretary of the ruling party in India, the BJP, accused Trudeau of “deliberate mischief through wordplay” by emphasizing Dosanjh’s Punjabi identity, rather than his Indian one.

If the government is serious about repairing relations with India, shouldn’t it avoid even small missteps that feed India’s narrative about Canada being a hotbed of Sikh separatism? Unless, of course, it prefers to play for partisan advantage.

Source: A federal minister wanted Canadian soldiers to serve as props at a pop concert. It’s just the latest way the Trudeau government has treated national security as a joke

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Keller: Canada is about to lose more than 100,000 farming jobs. That’s great economic news

2024/08/03 Leave a comment

More on innovation, productivity and immigration:

….Back in 1891, it would have called for a large (and mostly poorly paid) work force. Progress since then has been remarkable, spurred by massive investments in labour-saving farming equipment and technology. The Conference Board study predicts more of the same.

All of which should be a reminder that labour shortages and rising wages have economic benefits. Yes, benefits. They are the mother of business innovation and investment, because they force businesses to chase ever greater labour productivity. Particularly when it comes to low-wage jobs, a tight labour market and upward pressure on pay should be the goal of government policy.

However, Canadian businesses in recent years persuaded Ottawa that, no matter the state of the economy or the level of unemployment, they can’t fill hundreds of thousands of low-wage jobs. But these alleged labour shortages are mostly just businesses facing the pressure to compete for workers by raising wages.

Those pressures have been alleviated by allowing businesses to recruit an effectively unlimited number of temporary foreign workers, at the lowest legal wage, or less. Absent that low-wage release valve, businesses would have to innovate and invest more in new technologies to use less labour, and get more out of each hour of (increasingly expensive) labour.

That’s how we raise productivity. That’s how we grow the economy….

Source: Canada is about to lose more than 100,000 farming jobs. That’s great economic news

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,

US border migrant crossings fall for fifth month in a row

2024/08/03 Leave a comment

Of note. Unlikely to change much of the political discourse, however:

The number of unlawful crossings by migrants at the US southern border has dropped for the fifth consecutive month, according to official data.

US Border Patrol agents apprehended around 57,000 migrants along the border in July – the lowest recorded since September 2020.

The numbers are down significantly from December, when around 250,000 migrants were caught crossing the border.

President Joe Biden’s administration has credited the decrease to recent actions by him to tackle illegal immigration into the US, an election-year political vulnerability for the Democrats.

“This is the product of a number of actions this administration has taken,” said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in an interview with CBS this week.

Mr Mayorkas said those actions include an executive order signed last month by President Joe Biden that allows US immigration officials to deport migrants without processing their asylum claims.

The measure has been called one of the most restrictive border policies by a Democratic president in recent times, and was criticised by left-wing members of the party.

At the time, the president vowed that his executive order would “help us gain control of our border”. He added that “doing nothing is not an option”.

Government data shows that the number of migrants stopped at the US-Mexico border had dropped even before the order.

Border Patrol recorded 141,000 apprehensions in February, 137,000 in March, 129,000 in April, 118,000 in May and 84,000 in June.

The figures do not include official border crossings, where the Biden administration has been processing around 1,500 migrants each day through a smartphone app that schedules appointments between migrants and US border agents.

On the other side of the border, Mexican officials have also been working to curb illegal migration, including stopping people before they attempt to cross on to US soil.

The southern border has been a political headache for the Biden administration heading into November’s election.

Mr Biden has been repeatedly criticised by Republicans and their party’s presidential nominee, Donald Trump, who said last month that the president had “surrendered our southern border.”

The president hit back, accusing the Trump camp of an “extremely cynical political move” by pressing Republican politicians to block a proposed border plan in Congress earlier this year.

Source: US border migrant crossings fall for fifth month in a row

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More measures coming to reduce temporary residents, Canadian minister says

2024/08/03 Leave a comment

Stay tuned, more signs of reality, both substantive and political:

Canada’s government is preparing to unveil a suite of measures to clamp down on temporary immigration and has no plans to follow through right now on a broad program offering status to undocumented residents, the country’s immigration minister told Reuters.

“The era of uncapped programs to come into this country is quickly coming to an end. This is a big shift. You can’t just slam on the brakes and expect it to stop immediately,” Marc Miller said in an interview with Reuters on Thursday.

Canada has long prided itself on welcoming newcomers, and the current Liberal government has overseen a dramatic increase in the influx of new residents, especially temporary ones, as many employers struggled to fill vacancies coming out of the pandemic.

But over the past year the tide has shifted: Immigrants are being blamed for a worsening housing situation along with an affordability crisis in the country. Critics have accused the federal government of bringing in too many people.

A Leger poll conducted in July found 60% of respondents said there are too many immigrants coming to Canada.

“I’m not naive enough to think Canada is immune to the waves of anti-immigrant sentiment. … Canadians want a system that is not out of control,” Miller said in a phone interview.

Canadians “want a system that makes sense. And they want one that still has a lot of welcoming aspects we’ve been proud of, but it’s got to make sense,” Miller said, predicting immigration would be “a top issue, if not the top issue, in the next election,” expected to take place in late 2025.

The Canadian government has already outlined some measures. In January it announced a two-year cap on international students – an area of Canada’s immigration system that got “overheated” and was not meant to be “a backdoor entry into Canada,” Miller said.

In March the immigration minister announced Canada’s first-ever cap on temporary immigration. Canada wants to reduce temporary residents to 5% of the total population over the next three years from 6.2% in 2023. That would be a cut of about 20% from Canada’s 2.5 million temporary residents in 2023.

But in its recent monetary policy report, the Bank of Canada expressed doubts that the government could meet its temporary residents goal, noting that non-permanent residents made up 6.8% of the country’s population as of April and that “the share is expected to continue rising over the near-term.”

The bank is right to say achieving this goal is a challenge, but it is a “reasonable” one given the suite of measures Canada plans to announce over the next several weeks, Miller said.

Miller would not give details but said these measures could include changes to post-graduate work permits and enforcement.

Asked if his government had made a mistake in allowing rapid growth in temporary residents, Miller said, “Every government makes mistakes. I think we are all human.” But “coming out of COVID, in particular, we were facing massive labor shortages.”

REFUGEE INFLUX

Meanwhile, Canada is seeing record levels of refugee claims – more than 18,000 in June, according to the Immigration and Refugee Board. This is despite government efforts to deter people by closing the land border to asylum-seekers through a contested bilateral agreement with the United States and by implementing new visa requirements for Mexicans.

Canada cannot dictate how many people file refugee claims but it can make it difficult for asylum-seekers to reach the country. Miller said the government may impose stricter criteria on temporary resident visas to prevent asylum-seekers from coming.

The government had also previously said it would pursue a regularization program to give status to undocumented residents.

That is not on the table before the election, Miller said, but he noted there is a possibility of sector-specific programs.

Source: More measures coming to reduce temporary residents, Canadian minister says

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Clark: Ottawa has to do something about immigration boom, but it doesn’t have any good options 

2024/08/02 Leave a comment

Good capturing Miller’s dilemma as he tries to address the failures of this government and previous ministers:

…So what can Mr. Miller do instead? He can turn a lot of those temporary residents into permanent residents. He has already suggested that is part of the plan.

The problem is that means turning the goals of Canada’s economic immigration program upside down.

It is supposed to bring in people with the best potential to help Canada’s economy – highly educated or highly skilled applicants. But in recent years, the big growth in international students has come in private and public college students, with less education and fewer skills. Turning large numbers of temporary residents into permanent residents means accepting lower-skilled applicants.

And like it or not, those immigrants will take the place of others. There’s a target of 301,250 economic immigrants for 2025, and if the government creates a special program for lower-skilled temporary residents, that means fewer spots will be available for highly qualified applicants. Whiz kids with bachelor degrees in math or computer science will be left in the queue.

But for the next few years, the government will be digging the immigration system out of a hole. The big mistake has been made.

Ottawa didn’t stop provincial governments, particularly in Ontario and B.C., from letting their foreign-student industries grow to excess. The Canadian population grew at its fastest rate since the peak of the baby boom because of unchecked growth in temporary residents, rather than planned immigration. That fuelled a housing crisis.

Now Ottawa has little choice but to do something. And Mr. Miller doesn’t have any good options to choose from.

Source: Ottawa has to do something about immigration boom, but it doesn’t have any good options

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