LILLEY: Poilievre promises to cap immigration, tie it to housing

2024/09/13 Leave a comment

The devil, as in all areas of policy, and particularly in immigration and citizenship policy, will lie in the details and how a Conservative government deals with pressures from the business community and provincial governments:

Part of Pierre Poilievre’s plan to deal with Canada’s housing crisis will be to cap immigration. The Conservative leader said if he wins the next election, he’ll bring sanity back to Canada’s immigration system.

Poilievre was speaking with reporters ahead of Parliament’s return from the summer break. He said that when MPs return to Ottawa next Monday, he will try and defeat the government and force an election as soon as possible.

If he wins the election, he promises across-the-board changes on immigration.

“We will cap population growth so that the housing stock always grows faster than the population,” Poilievre said.

In the middle of a housing crisis, at a time when we are bringing in more than 1 million people per year, his statement sounds like common sense. While Poilievre said exact numbers would come before the next election, he said this policy idea is really about math, not immigration.

“We’re building like 240,000 homes, that’s like a 1.4% increase in our housing supply. You can’t grow the population faster than that, unless you’re going to have worse housing shortages,” he said.

“Under Trudeau and the NDP, we’ve been growing the population by almost 3%, but we grow the housing stock by 1.4%. No wonder we’re running out of homes.”

He also said he’d scale back the international student program.

“We’re going to bring home the international student system we had before Justin Trudeau. Which was a modest number of young people who were extremely promising could come here and study, and if they excel, they followed the law, they learned English or French, they could join the Canadian family,” Poilievre said.

He noted stories showing more than 20 international students living in the basement of one home in Brampton as an example of how off the rails the program has become the last few years. There were just over 350,00 foreign students in Canada when the Trudeau Liberals took over in 2015, but more than 1 million last year.

It’s not just the housing market that is also being impacted by the massive swell in immigration, both permanent and temporary. The most recent unemployment report from Statistics Canada showed unemployment growing from 6.4% in July to 6.6% in August, and a big part of that was population growth driven by immigration.

We added 96,400 people to the working age population, meaning those 15 and older. That’s a massive number in just one month, but it’s been going on like this for the last couple of years.

While there were some new jobs added, they were mostly part-time and didn’t keep pace with population growth. There were 44,000 full-time jobs lost last month, and we added 60,000 people to the unemployment rolls.

Statistics Canada has been warning about this for more than a year, noting time and again that job growth is not keeping pace with population growth.

“Given this pace of population growth, employment growth of approximately 50,000 per month is required for the employment rate to remain constant,” the agency warned a year ago.

We haven’t been hitting those numbers, and that’s why our unemployment rate has gone from 5% to 6.6%.

“That’s not even a question of whether you support or not immigration, it’s a question of whether you support mathematics,” Poilievre said when speaking about the housing crunch, but it applies to the impact on the job market as well.

Last April, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that we were bringing in people faster than we could absorb them. Since he made those comments, we’ve added more than 500,000 people to Canada.

How does it make sense to keep immigration levels where they are when we are facing a housing shortage, a housing affordability crisis due to a lack of housing and growing unemployment.

It simply doesn’t and to carry on isn’t fair to anyone.

The Trudeau Liberals made this mess; they don’t seem to be in a hurry to fix it. Maybe it’s time to give Poilievre a turn.

Source: LILLEY: Poilievre promises to cap immigration, tie it to housing

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U.S. border patrol reports record number of encounters with migrants at the Canadian border

2024/09/13 Leave a comment

Quite a shift from most coming North to many going South:

U.S. Customs and Border Protection says it recorded a record-high number of encounters with migrants between border posts on the Canada-U.S. border between October 2023 and July of this year.

It’s a pattern experts say could be a problem for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government as the question of illegal immigration heats up in a close-fought U.S. election.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) records an “encounter” in its database when it comes across someone who is inadmissable to the U.S., or when border patrol officers find someone who has illegally crossed the border into the U.S. between border posts.

CBP reported encountering 19,498 migrants between border posts on the northern border between October 2023 and July 2024 — 15,612 of them in the Swanton Sector, which runs along the Quebec’s border with New York and Vermont.

While the numbers still pale in comparison with the U.S southern border, that’s more than twice as many as the 7,630 encountered between border posts during the same time period the previous year.

The year before that, CBP reported encountering only 2,238 migrants between border posts at the northern border.

U.S. news coverage of the surge in migration over its northern border intensified over the summer. In an interview with Fox News on Aug. 22, after complaining about illegal migration over the southern border, former president Donald Trump said the U.S. now had a problem on the northern border with migrants coming in from Canada.

Kelly Sundberg of Mount Royal University said the matter could become a political hot potato for the Trudeau government, regardless of who becomes the next president of the United States.

“I hate to admit it, but I think that Donald Trump is right on this, that there is a need to focus north,” said Sundberg, who worked for many years as an enforcement officer with the Canada Border Services Agency.

“But it’s not just the Trump campaign. The [Kamala Harris] campaign has indicated also that they have acknowledged that there’s concerns on the northern border.”

RCMP Sgt. Charles Poirier said “there isn’t a day or night where there isn’t a crossing.” In Quebec alone, the RCMP intercepts an average of more than 100 people per week on the Canadian side of the border and Poirier said that’s only a portion of those headed for the U.S….

Source: U.S. border patrol reports record number of encounters with migrants at the Canadian border

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Europe’s largest economy just enacted border closures. Will others follow?

2024/09/13 Leave a comment

Of note, undermining Schengen:

The German government says it is cracking down on irregular migration and crime following recent extremist attacks, and plans to extend temporary border controls to all nine of its frontiers next week.

Last month, a deadly knife attack by a Syrian asylum-seeker in Soligen killed three people. The perpetrator claimed to be inspired by the Islamic State group. In June, a knife attack by an Afghan immigrant left a police officer dead and four other people wounded.

The border closures are set to last six months and are threatening to test European unity. Most of Germany’s neighbors are fellow members of the European Union, a 27-country bloc based on the principles of free trade and travel. And Germany – the EU’s economic motor in the heart of Europe – shares more borders with other countries than any other member state.

The Polish prime minister on Tuesday denounced the closures as “unacceptable” and Austria said it won’t accept migrants rejected by Germany….

Source: Europe’s largest economy just enacted border closures. Will others follow?

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The decline and fall of Tariq Ramadan

2024/09/13 Leave a comment

Of interest:

Tariq Ramadan, the grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood and a well-known figure in the Islamic world, has been convicted of the rape and sexual coercion of a woman in a Geneva hotel, after a court overturned an earlier acquittal. Professor Ramadan has been jailed for three years, two suspended, over the 2008 incident.

The verdict marks a remarkable fall from grace for Ramadan, who was raised in exile in Switzerland, and skilfully navigated the Francophone, English and Arabic speaking worlds as an academic, campaigner and theologian. His father, Said Ramadan, was central to the Muslim Brotherhood’s development in Europe.

While Ramadan was convicted in a court in Switzerland, the repercussions of his downfall will be felt here in the UK. Ramadan’s X account currently gives his location as the United Kingdom and contains the description ‘Emeritus Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at the University of Oxford.’ He boasts a following of 721,000, numbers that many politicians or religious leaders could only dream of.

For a period, especially following 7/7, Ramadan was a poster boy for those in authority in this country who sought an Islam that the West could not only do business with, but more importantly feel comfortable about. Bright-eyed, handsome and articulate, Ramadan proved to be a very successful salesman, with audiences as diverse as the Metropolitan Police through to the leftist European Social Forum.

Ramadan’s talk of reform, a European Islam and apparent doubt about Islamic hudood punishments (these include amputation, stoning and flogging) were music to the ears of his audience. In his memoir, the former Head of Scotland Yard’s Muslim Contact Unit, Bob Lambert, thanks Ramadan in the acknowledgments. In 2008, Ramadan addressed the ‘Countering Insurgency and Terrorism’ conference, jointly organised by the Swedish National Defence College and UK Defence Academy.

To his critics, Ramadan was instead guilty of ‘doublespeak’ – saying one thing to western audiences, and another to Islamic audiences. Appointed to the Home Office’s ‘Preventing Extremism together’ taskforce in the wake of the 7/7 bombings in 2005, Ramadan would condemn violence, but not the Salafist ideology from which it has often emerged. That such beliefs are a rival to liberal democracy, and that giving them a leg-up may be a bad idea, seemed to be overlooked by many in power.

In 2014, Professor Ramadan sat on Baroness Warsi’s Foreign Office Advisory Group on freedom of religion or belief. Such commitments did not prevent Ramadan moving in elite circles in areas hardly known for such freedoms, most notably the Gulf. The post he formerly held at Oxford is officially known as the His Highness Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani Professor in Contemporary Islamic Studies, and is made possible by a benefaction by the Qatar Foundation, running into the millions.

Despite the seriousness of the accusations against him, Ramadan’s status ensured lofty support. In 2017, when accusations about Ramadan first emerged in France, concerns that they were motivated by his status as a ‘prominent Muslim’ ensured that the University of Oxford allowed him to continue teaching for three weeks, before granting a leave of absence. Eugene Rogan, Director of Oxford’s Middle East Centre stated:

‘It’s not just about sexual violence. For some students it’s just another way for Europeans to gang up against a prominent Muslim intellectual. We must protect Muslim students who believe and trust in him, and protect that trust.’

Here an element of snobbery also emerges; it is hard to imagine a university porter being given leave of absence, or attracting academic supporters, in such circumstances. In 2018, when Ramadan was remanded in custody in France, Muslim lobbyists MEND referred to a ‘weak accusation’ and demanded his release on health and human rights grounds.

By 2020, Ramadan had been released but remained indicted, prompting dozens of academics, politicians and activists to denounce the French legal system in a round-robin letter. Their number included high-profile broadcasters and the great and the good from the Islamic world.

Their letter asked: ‘Is there one form of justice for Muslims in France and another for everyone else?’ In June 2024, a French court decided charges against Ramadan could proceed. As due process has now been followed in Switzerland, a period of reflection should follow. Activists who promoted Professor Ramadan, and his supporters in the fields of counter-extremism, policing and academia have plenty to think about.

Source: The decline and fall of Tariq Ramadan

Filed under Islamophobia, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Kuwait revokes citizenship of more than 10,000 people with dual nationality

2024/09/13 Leave a comment

Of note (mainly from neighbouring countries):

Kuwait’s Central Agency for Remedying Illegal Residents’ Status (CARIRS) has revoked the citizenship of more than 10,000 people with dual nationality between 2011 and last month, the KUNA news agency has reported.

According to the agency, the step is the result of a full decade of Kuwaiti efforts to address the dual nationality file, and comes as a culmination of a campaign that began last year to confront those who obtain Kuwaiti citizenship illegally. Almost 1,000 such people have been detected to date. Kuwait does not recognise dual nationality and children with dual nationality have two years after reaching the age of 18 to decide whether to retain Kuwaiti nationality or keep their other nationality.

The Director of the Situation Amendment Department in CARIRS, General Muhammad Al-Wahib, told KUNA that 6,054 residents’ status had been changed to Saudi nationality; 1,188 to Iraqi nationality; 868 to Syrian nationality; 131 to Iranian nationality; 53 to Jordanian nationality; and 1,962 to other nationalities.

Al-Wahib pointed out that these statistics include individuals who have parents or relatives who own documents from different nationalities and do not include those who have other relatives with proven nationality.

He called on those wishing to amend their status to visit CARIRS in the Eastern Region, to settle their residencies and regularise their status according to the residency laws in force in Kuwait.

The Gulf state has in recent years intensified efforts to amend the status of those residing illegally in the country.

Source: Kuwait revokes citizenship of more than 10,000 people with dual nationality

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Chris Selley: Canada’s ‘immigration consensus’ endures, despite Ottawa’s worst efforts

2024/09/12 Leave a comment

Correct interpretation IMO. However, the current government’s approach undermines public trust in government competence in immigration and other areas, even as some corrective action is taking place:

….Environics also inquired as to why the shift occurred. And it’s very obviously for one major reason: The housing crisis. In 2022, 15 per cent of respondents agreed that “immigrants drive up housing prices (and lead to) less housing for other Canadians”; in 2023, 38 per cent agreed.

And they’re right. Add demand for a scarce product and prices go up. Canada absolutely should be able to cope with current or higher levels of immigration, and indeed thrive off of it. We’re not exactly short on land or high on population density. But our politicians have never been more motivated to address housing scarcity, and the results have been utterly dismal. For heaven’s sake there were fewer home starts in June 2024 than in June 2022, according to CMHC data.

On the issues more typically associated with anti-immigration sentiment per se, the Environics data show no alarming spikes at all. Only four per cent of respondents cited “security risk” as a factor influencing their desire for less immigration. One-quarter said “immigrants are a drain on public finances (or) cost too much,” or are “bad for (the) economy (and) take jobs from other Canadians” — up from 23 per cent and 21 per cent, respectively, which is hardly any change at all in the polling world.

In 2022 and 2023 alike, just 19 per cent of respondents told Environics there were “already too many people in Canada” — the strongest suggestion, I submit, that what we’re seeing here isn’t a backlash against immigration, let alone against individual immigrants and immigrant populations, but a call for some restraint until we get our crap together. Just nine per cent of respondents told Environics they thought immigrants make their community worse; 42 per cent said they make it better.

For 30 years, Environics has asked Canadians whether they think “there are too many immigrants coming into this country who are not adopting Canadian values” — something you hear often from people who could fairly be called anti-immigration. In 1993, 72 per cent of Canadians agreed with that proposition. Three decades later, amid this so-called “backlash,” the figure was 48 per cent.

Especially at a time when Canadians seem more angst-ridden about the country’s economic future than I can ever remember — potentially fertile soil for xenophobic sentiments, as history shows — these don’t strike me as alarming numbers at all. That’s especially true considering we’ve been admitting more immigrants per capita than at any time since the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, and watching tens of thousands of people traipse illegally across the Canada-U.S. border claiming asylum, and been lectured about racism and intolerance by a government that has basically conceded all of its opponents’ points on the immigration file.

Wanting less immigration isn’t inherently a “backlash” unless the optimal number of immigrants is infinite, which it obviously is not. We have enough problems to deal with without inventing new ones. The immigration consensus lives, despite the federal government’s worst efforts.

Source: Chris Selley: Canada’s ‘immigration consensus’ endures, despite Ottawa’s worst efforts

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Lisée | La liberté d’expression à géographie variable d’Elon Musk

2024/09/12 Leave a comment

Good critique of “Citizen Musk:”

Lorsque Donald Trump a remporté l’élection présidentielle de novembre 2016, Elon Musk a soutenu que c’était bien la preuve que nous vivions tous dans une simulation. Comme dans le film La matrice. Une théorie veut en effet que les ordinateurs de la fin du siècle seront assez puissants pour simuler toute l’existence humaine. On peut penser que nous sommes les produits de la simulation d’un jeu pour ado de 2124. D’un ado un peu sadique, qui, lorsqu’il se lasse de torturer des fourmis à l’aide d’une loupe et d’un rayon de soleil, modifie les paramètres de notre logiciel pour nous voir souffrir.

Plus tôt cette année, le milliardaire Musk a changé d’avis. L’élection de Donald Trump en 2024 lui apparaît désormais essentielle pour préserver la démocratie américaine.

Oui, la préserver. L’homme qui a voulu renverser la dernière élection — et qui nous avertit qu’il n’acceptera les résultats de la prochaine que s’il gagne — est le seul qui peut, selon Musk, éviter le pire. « La stratégie de Biden est très simple : 1. Obtenez autant d’illégaux dans le pays que possible. 2. Légalisez-les pour créer une majorité permanente — un État à parti unique. » Le fait que le gouvernement Biden ait pour l’essentiel fermé la frontière depuis le début de l’année ne le fait pas changer d’avis. Le raisonnement est audacieux de la part d’un immigrant ; Musk est né en Afrique du Sud.

Il avait naguère d’excellentes relations avec les démocrates, d’Obama à Biden. Leurs politiques favorables au développement des voitures électriques et leur intérêt pour SpaceX, l’entreprise de fusées de Musk, ne devaient pas être étrangers à ce flirt. Mais depuis, Joe Biden a indiqué qu’il faudrait bien s’intéresser aux relations internationales d’Elon Musk.

Son activité, disons, « diplomatique », est devenue encore plus intéressante après l’invasion de l’Ukraine. Il a offert gratuitement aux Ukrainiens l’utilisation de son réseau satellitaire Starlink, essentiel pour le guidage des drones. Mais lorsque Kiev a voulu attaquer des bateaux russes qui, d’un port de Crimée, lançaient des missiles sur le territoire, Musk a bloqué l’utilisation de Starlink. Il affirmait craindre une escalade de la guerre. L’un de ses proches a raconté depuis que Musk tenait cette information de bonne source : Vladimir Poutine. Si les drones ukrainiens étaient ainsi utilisés en Crimée, lui aurait-il dit, une bombe atomique serait si vite arrivée. La Crimée a été plusieurs fois attaquée depuis. On attend toujours la première bombe A.

Si vous êtes comme moi abonné à son fil X, vous aurez remarqué que ses propres messages, très fréquents, apparaissent invariablement au sommet de votre page. C’est que Musk a modifié ses algorithmes pour être toujours la première chose que vous voyez. Liberté d’expression bien ordonnée commence par soi-même. On a pu le voir récemment relayer une photo truquée d’une Kamala Harris vêtue de rouge avec une casquette à la mode de Mao, annonçant qu’elle allait être une dictatrice communiste.

C’est savoureux, car Elon Musk est pris d’une totale timidité quand vient le temps de critiquer la Chine, le deuxième marché mondial pour ses voitures Tesla. Il exploite à Shanghai une méga-usine. La Chine avait interdit Twitter sur son territoire en 2009, ce dont Musk ne parle jamais, alors qu’il tempête chaque fois qu’un autre pays veut baliser ses activités. Il s’agit d’une défense de la liberté à, disons, géographie variable.

Une de ses déclarations de septembre dernier a fait fureur à Pékin. Pour Musk, la situation de Taïwan est « analogue à celle d’Hawaï ou quelque chose comme ça, une partie intégrante de la Chine qui ne fait arbitrairement pas partie de la Chine ». Sa position fut moins appréciée à Taipei, où l’idée de retirer leur liberté d’expression à ses 23 millions d’habitants ne fait pas recette.

Grand partisan du leader brésilien Jair Bolsonaro, qui a donné libre accès sur son territoire à Starlink, Musk en a fait la promotion pendant la campagne qui l’opposait à Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, puis a omis de faire bloquer par X les appels à la violence qui ont conduit à une tentative de renversement de Lula. Face à son refus de se conformer aux décisions brésiliennes sur la modération de certains comptes sur X, Musk a vu son entreprise interdite d’activité au Brésil, où elle comptait 40 millions d’usagers. Il est furieux.

Mais il ne l’est pas toujours. Ainsi, à la demande de son ami le président autoritaire de l’Inde, Narendra Modi, X bloque les comptes de centaines d’opposants au régime. Exactement comme X a bloqué, en Turquie, pendant la dernière campagne électorale, les comptes, là aussi, de centaines d’opposants au régime d’Erdoğan. Musk est récompensé : Modi a relaxé les règles d’investissement pour permettre à Tesla et à Starlink de s’installer chez lui. Erdoğan a aussi ouvert les bras à Starlink et a confié à SpaceX le lancement d’un satellite.

Ces épisodes ont mis en rogne le cofondateur de Wikipédia Jimmy Wales, qui a écrit sur X : « Si Elon pense maintenant : “Nous ne nous soucions pas de la liberté d’expression si elle interfère avec le fait de gagner de l’argent”, alors il devrait simplement l’avouer. »

La semaine dernière, Trump a annoncé que, s’il était réélu, Elon Musk aurait le mandat de rendre le gouvernement fédéral plus efficace. Cela promet. Lorsqu’il a acheté Twitter pour la somme colossale de 44 milliards de dollars américains, il a viré illico 75 % des salariés. Alors on attend avec impatience son plan minceur pour l’État américain.

Source: Chronique | La liberté d’expression à géographie variable d’Elon Musk

Computer translation:

When Donald Trump won the November 2016 presidential election, Elon Musk argued that it was proof that we were all living in a simulation. Like in the movie The Matrix. One theory is that computers at the end of the century will be powerful enough to simulate all human existence. We can think that we are the products of the simulation of a 2124 teen game. Of a slightly sadistic teenager, who, when he gets tired of torturing ants with a magnifying glass and a ray of sunshine, changes the settings of our software to see us suffer.

Earlier this year, billionaire Musk changed his mind. Donald Trump’s election in 2024 now seems essential to him to preserve American democracy.

Yes, preserve it. The man who wanted to overturn the last election – and who warns us that he will only accept the results of the next one if he wins – is the only one who can, according to Musk, avoid the worst. “Biden’s strategy is very simple: 1. Get as many illegals in the country as possible. 2. Legalize them to create a permanent majority – a one-party state. The fact that the Biden government has essentially closed the border since the beginning of the year does not make him change his mind. The reasoning is bold on the part of an immigrant; Musk was born in South Africa.

He once had excellent relations with the Democrats, from Obama to Biden. Their policies in favor of the development of electric cars and their interest in SpaceX, Musk’s rocket company, should not be unrelated to this flirtation. But since then, Joe Biden has indicated that we should be interested in Elon Musk’s international relations.

His activity, let’s say, “diplomatic”, became even more interesting after the invasion of Ukraine. He offered Ukrainians free of charge the use of his Starlink satellite network, essential for drone guidance. But when Kiev wanted to attack Russian ships that, from a Crimean port, launched missiles on the territory, Musk blocked the use of Starlink. He claimed to fear an escalation of war. One of his relatives has said since that Musk held this information as a good source: Vladimir Putin. If Ukrainian drones were used in this way in Crimea, he would have told him, an atomic bomb would have arrived so quickly. Crimea has been attacked several times since then. We are still waiting for the first bomb A.

If you are like me subscribed to his X-feed, you will have noticed that his own very frequent messages invariably appear at the top of your page. It’s because Musk has modified his algorithms to always be the first thing you see. Freedom of well-ordered expression begins with oneself. We could see him recently relay a rigged photo of a Kamala Harris dressed in red with a Mao-style cap, announcing that she was going to be a communist dictator.

It’s tasty, because Elon Musk is taken by total shyness when it comes time to criticize China, the world’s second market for his Tesla cars. He operates a mega-factory in Shanghai. China banned Twitter on its territory in 2009, which Musk never talks about, while it storms every time another country wants to mark its activities. It is a defense of freedom with, let’s say, variable geography.

One of his statements last September was all the rage in Beijing. For Musk, Taiwan’s situation is “similar to that of Hawaii or something like that, an integral part of China that is arbitrarily not part of China”. His position was less appreciated in Taipei, where the idea of removing their freedom of expression from its 23 million inhabitants is not a recipe.

A big supporter of Brazilian leader Jair Bolsonaro, who gave free access to Starlink on his territory, Musk promoted it during the campaign that opposed him to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, then failed to block by X the calls for violence that led to an attempt to overthrow Lula. Faced with his refusal to comply with Brazilian decisions on the moderation of certain accounts on X, Musk saw his company banned from activity in Brazil, where it had 40 million users. He is furious.

But he is not always. Thus, at the request of his friend the authoritarian president of India, Narendra Modi, X blocks the accounts of hundreds of opponents of the regime. Exactly as X blocked, in Turkey, during the last election campaign, the accounts, here too, of hundreds of opponents of the Erdoğan regime. Musk is rewarded: Modi has relaxed the investment rules to allow Tesla and Starlink to settle in his home. Erdoğan also opened his arms to Starlink and entrusted SpaceX with the launch of a satellite.

These episodes made Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales angry, who wrote on X: “If Elon now thinks: “We don’t care about freedom of expression if it interferes with making money,” then he should simply admit it. ”

Last week, Trump announced that if re-elected, Elon Musk would have a mandate to make the federal government more effective. It promises. When he bought Twitter for the colossal sum of US$44 billion, he fired 75% of employees. So we look forward to his slimming plan for the American state.

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Are noncitizens really voting in US elections?

2024/09/12 Leave a comment

Spoiler alert. This detailed review indicates they are not:

With illegal immigration one of the top issues on voters’ minds heading into the 2024 election, Republicans are making a nationwide push to require proof of citizenship in order to vote. The GOP-run House of Representatives passed a bill that would do just that, the SAVE Act, in July – with support from five Democrats.

Former President Donald Trump has also repeatedly urged such measures, including in Tuesday night’s debate, alleging that his opponents are irresponsibly encouraging undocumented immigrants to vote. “A lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they’re trying to get them to vote, they can’t even speak English, they don’t even know what country they’re in practically, and these people are trying to get them to vote,” he said.

Now Speaker Mike Johnson is saying that unless the House and Senate agree to the SAVE Act, he’ll shut down the government when the fiscal year ends Sept. 30 – though it appears he lacks the support within his own party to do so.

But Democrats, citing a lack of documented cases of noncitizen voting, say the law is unnecessary since it’s already illegal for noncitizens to vote. Moreover, they argue, it would result in disqualifying eligible voters. They accuse Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, of pushing this issue to lay the groundwork for claiming the election was stolen if they lose in November.

Is proof of citizenship currently required to vote?

The short answer is, citizenship is required in federal elections, but proof of citizenship generally isn’t, although some voters may provide that while establishing their identity and residency.

Sixteen municipalities allow noncitizens to vote in local elections, according to Ballotpedia. But elsewhere there’s pushback to the idea. Amendments to bar noncitizen voting are on the ballot this fall in eight states: Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Wisconsin.

Source: Are noncitizens really voting in US elections?

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Lederman: Canadians must be allowed to see what’s in the Deschênes Report

2024/09/12 Leave a comment

Agree:

…Alti Rodal, the director of historical research at the Deschênes commission, has called for the report’s release, with proper context. “They are allegations only, that were minimally investigated,” Ms. Rodal told The Globe. “They were not well researched, let alone proven in a court.”

Concerns that this will turn into a witch hunt, and that the Ukrainian-Canadian community could be vilified, are understandable. But give the public some credit. You don’t keep information secret because there are racists – and Russians – who will use it for nefarious purposes. Nobody will blame Canadian children and grandchildren of alleged Nazi collaborators. Nobody is going to blame the Ukrainians on the ground right now, getting bombed by Russia.

But in a vacuum, speculation breeds. Release the report as part of that continuing commitment to transparency and let’s get on with it. There are crises that urgently require attention. They include Russia’s catastrophic war in Ukraine.

Source: Canadians must be allowed to see what’s in the Deschênes Report

Related: Top international scholars urge Canada to release war criminals report

Filed under Holocaust, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

How did a Toronto terror suspect enter Canada? Immigration minister offers first details

2024/09/12 Leave a comment

Note of realism in terms of border security but will still raise questions about vetting of international students and where extra vetting may be warranted:

…“I think our American partner would be highly disappointed to see elected officials firing their mouths off about and speculating about this case and its outcome,” Miller said. “We owe it to Canadians to keep them safe, to actually let the process unfold.”

Miller also said that borders cannot be made 100 per cent secure.

“No one can pretend and stand honestly in front of you and say that a well determined actor can’t come to this country, and that’s why we have the security apparatuses that we have in this country,” Miller said.

Source: How did a Toronto terror suspect enter Canada? Immigration minister offers first details

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