‘1984’ Hasn’t Changed, but America Has

2025/07/29 Leave a comment

All too true, even if there have been previous chilling periods:

…Banning books doesn’t stop at the local level.This year, after Mr. Trump signed three executive orders aimed at combating “wokeness,” the Department of Defense’s education agency removed and reviewed more than 500 titles from its school system, including, according to one report, Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” which the C.I.A. had sent to the Eastern Bloc. Federal funding agencies have compiled a list of more than 350 banned words and phrases, including “women,” “diversity” and “ethnicity.”

In the Cold War, the United States chose “freedom” — democratic freedom, freedom of speech, intellectual freedom and freedom of choice — as its key point of difference with the Soviet enemy. Since the end of World War II, U.S. presidents from both parties have wrapped themselves in the rhetoric of the “free world” that they led. When Ronald Reagan — who spearheaded the Cold War “freedom” agenda and oversaw an upswing in C.I.A. literary programs — spoke to the British Parliament in 1982, he invoked “the march of freedom and democracy,” which would “leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash-heap of history.” It was no coincidence that George Minden, the leader of the C.I.A. book program, once described his operation as “an offensive of free, honest thinking.”

Mr. Trump, JD Vance, Ron DeSantis and their fellow travelers expound the virtues of the First Amendment while dismantling guardrails against disinformation and working to suppress political ideas they oppose. Book bans aren’t their only tool. They also block access for independent journalists, intimidate news organizations and defund outlets they perceive as hostile to the MAGA agenda, including NPR, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and Voice of America.

There are two lessons from the history of the C.I.A. book program that the book banners would do well to heed. One is that censorship — whether by Communists, fascists or democratic governments — tends to create demand for the works it targets. (That, and Mr. Trump’s Orwellian tactics, may explain why “1984” has been surging up the book charts in recent years.)

The other is that the totalitarians lost the Cold War, and freedom of thought won the day. The former Polish dissident Adam Michnik, whose own works were promoted by the C.I.A., presumably without his knowledge, said: “It was books that were victorious in the fight. We should build a monument to books.”

Charlie English is the author of, among other books, “The CIA Book Club: The Secret Mission to Win the Cold War with Forbidden Literature.”

Source: ‘1984’ Hasn’t Changed, but America Has

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Key takeaways from trial over Trump administration’s ‘ideological deportation’ policy

2025/07/29 Leave a comment

Chilling:

A trial over the extraordinary measures taken by the Trump administrationto detain foreign scholars over their pro-Palestinian speech revealed previously unknown details about the extent to which immigration officials broke with precedent in their campaign against university activists.

The case, which was brought by the national American Association of University Professors (AAUP); its Harvard, Rutgers and New York University chapters; and the Middle East Studies Association (Mesa) after the arrest of several noncitizen students and scholars who had been outspoken about Palestinian rights, marked the first time the administration was asked to defend its position that it has the authority to deport noncitizens over constitutionally protected speech.

The plaintiffs argued the government’s actions amounted to an illegal “ideological deportation” policy.

“The Trump administration is imprisoning and expelling people because of their political viewpoints,” said Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute, which represented the plaintiffs along with the law firm Sher Tremonte. “It would be difficult to conceive of a policy more offensive to the first amendment, or to the values the first amendment was meant to serve.”

While the four arrested scholars – including the Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil and Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk – have all been released from detention while their legal cases proceed, others have left the country to avoid arrest and one is in hiding.

The trial ended in Boston on Monday. The judge in the case, Reagan appointee William G Young, is not expected to rule on the case for at least a few weeks. Any decision he makes will almost certainly be appealed, possibly up to the US supreme court.

These are some of the revelations that came out of the trial.

  1. The Trump administration relied on lists from shadowy pro-Israel groups Among the trial’s most explosive revelations was the fact that the government relied on dossiers compiled by the rightwing Canary Mission, a secretive, pro-Israel group dedicated to doxing thousands of pro-Palestinian students, scholars and activists, as well as information by the far-right Zionist group Betar USA, which even the pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League lists as an extremist organisation. Both Canary Mission and Betar had been involved in compiling “deportation lists”, sending “thousands of names” to government officials. While that had been previously reported, the testimony of senior US immigration officials revealed for the first time the extent to which the government relied on such lists. Peter Hatch, a senior official within Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) division, testified that the agency assembled a group of officials – known internally as the “Tiger Team” – dedicated to investigating student protesters. The team rapidly compiled more than 100 reports based on a list of 5,000 individuals identified on the Canary Mission website. The dossiers the agency compiled on Öztürk, Khalil and others highlighted their pro-Palestinian speech, Hatch testified, included their Canary Mission pages, as well as, in Öztürk’s case, an op-ed she wrote in a student paper. “The direction was to look at the website,” Hatch said in court. “That we should look at the individuals named in the Canary Mission website.”
  2. Immigration officials admitted to the unprecedented nature of the arrests Four of the officers involved in Öztürk and Khalil’s arrests, as well as in the arrests of Columbia graduate Mohsen Mahdawi and Georgetown postdoctoral fellow Badar Khan Suri, said that orders to prioritize the scholars had come from high up within the Trump administration.  They also admitted they had never taken part in such arrests before.  A New England Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agent involved in Mahdawi’s arrest, William Crogan, said that he had never seen a noncitizen removed from the US based on similar factual allegations and that his superiors had ordered him to prioritize the case. Patrick Cunningham, an Ice agent in Boston, said the same of Öztürk’s case, while Darren McCormack, an agent in New York, said that the request to arrest Khalil was unusual and that he was told the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and the White House were specifically interested in Khalil’s case.  Andre Watson, a senior HSI official, testified that early in the Trump administration, Ice and the state department coordinated on a new process to implement the president’s executive orders targeting student protesters. 
  3. The government tried to block the release of documentsDuring the trial, the government’s attorneys sought to block the release of documents detailing its processes and reasons for revoking student visas and issuing determinations of removability for green card holders such as Khalil and Mahdawi.  The records for only five of the targeted students were released in the end; many others were not. The government also succeeded in blocking the release of a state department report detailing the administration’s policies on the matter. The government has claimed the authority to deport noncitizens who have committed no crimes but whose presence it deems poses a threat to US foreign policy and national security, and it has said that the students’ presence in the US interfered with its stated efforts to combat antisemitism. The US Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment but in court filings it called claims of an ideological deportation policy the product of plaintiffs’ “imagination”. But John Armstrong, the most senior official at the state department’s bureau of consular affairs, admitted under questioning that statements critical of Israel or US foreign policy could qualify noncitizens for deportation. He also admitted that officials who were instructed to compile allegations about the individuals targeted received no guidance about what constitutes antisemitism even as they sometimes invoked “antisemitic conduct” in their memos. The administration’s lawyers have also equivocated on whether noncitizens have the same constitutional rights as US citizens, at one point saying they do, but later adding that there are “nuances” related to national security, immigration and foreign policy matters. 
  4. A huge chilling effect Both citizen and noncitizen scholars testified about the climate of fear created by the arrests. Megan Hyska, a Canadian philosophy professor at Northwestern University in Chicago, said in court that she decided not to publish an op-ed she had written about organising resistance to the Trump administration’s policies out of fear of being targeted for arrest. Nadje Al-Ali, a German anthropologist and former director of the Center for Middle East Studies at Brown University, said she canceled plans to travel abroad and stopped pursuing research related to Palestine because of similar concerns. Veena Dubal, the AAUP’s general counsel, testified that the government’s fearmongering campaign has fundamentally altered the group’s activities. She said that members who had previously been very active within the group stopped attending meetings.Aslı Bâli, Mesa’s president, warned in a statement to the Guardian that the impact of the government’s policies risked only growing worse. “The government is abducting individuals, and thereby separating families and squandering public resources, purely on the basis of protected political speech that they disagree with,” she said. “They need to be held to account, and our rights need to be defended, because otherwise we will find these protections gone – and the chilling effect will be pervasive.”

Source: Key takeaways from trial over Trump administration’s ‘ideological deportation’ policy

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Saunders: No, politics haven’t become polarized. Only one side has moved to the extremes 

2025/07/29 Leave a comment

Indeed:

…What has especially caused Ms. Harris – and other moderate leaders after her – to be falsely associated with the far left is the constellation of issues and hysterias known on the right as “gender,” as well as the memory of mass protests and riots against police violence during the pandemic years. Although there definitely are far-left activists on both subjects, Mr. Harris had absolutely nothing to do with them; instead, she said little about either, and quietly took mainstream positions on both issues.

But the mainstream has become measurably more tolerant. Same-sex marriage, for example, has become so acceptable to the majority of voters that even Mr. Trump doesn’t publicly attack it. It’s moderate, centrist views, not far-out radical ones, that have come under attack.

This week a study by Vancouver-based polling firm Research Co. asked Americans and Canadians what they thought about “political correctness.” They weren’t asking about Mr. Trump’s ultra-PC desire to, for example, consider removing mentions of slavery from national parks; rather, they asked about “language and/or behaviour that seeks to minimize possible offences to racial, cultural and gender identity groups.”

The results were very pro-PC: Six out of 10 Canadians, and a majority of Americans, said they support political correctness – and in both countries, the pro-PC proportion of the population has increased since 2022.

That doesn’t mean that middle-of-the-road voters are drifting to the far left. It means that moderate, mainstream political views have become more open and tolerant – and therefore hated by Trump-like figures on the rightward extreme. For all the noise they throw at these normal views, it’s worth remembering that they’re the only ones who are polarized.

Source: No, politics haven’t become polarized. Only one side has moved to the extremes

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ICYMI: ICE’s Shocking Midday Kidnappings Remind Me of Something I’ve Seen Before

2025/07/29 Leave a comment

Frightening times:

Since Donald Trump’s second inauguration in January, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has kicked into high gear, employing a set of extreme methods in an attempt to reach Stephen Miller’s unrealistic deportation quotas. Many Americans have watched in horror as masked ICE agents, sometimes accompanied by other federal agents and even local police, have appeared on their television screens, looking for and detaining immigrants in their homes, in their workplaces, and on the street. Sometimes, small gangs of law enforcement appear in military gear and masks, resembling military police. Sometimes, a mix of federal agents and local police deploy in large groups to conduct workplace raids, in a strange hodgepodge of uniforms. In other instances, officers have confronted immigrants as they leave court or show up to renew their work permits, then take them away.

But the law enforcement strategy that may have garnered the most shock among members of the public is the jump-out squad: small tactical teams of armed officers not in uniform who jump out of unmarked cars and grab immigrants off the street with no warning, or pull immigrants over and surround their cars, suddenly, before taking them away. Described by advocates for detainees as “brazen, midday kidnappings,” jump-out squads use a combination of surprise, terror, and overwhelming force. When they stop individuals with no reasonable suspicion, they act in violation of federal law, and a court in California has enjoined this practice.

But if this particular technique—jumping out on potential suspects, searching them, and taking them away—seems entirely foreign, it should not. Nor should the overt racial profiling that always accompanies these sorts of methods. Many urban police departments—including those in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Memphis, Atlanta, New York, Chicago, Baltimore, Louisville, and Washington—have used jump-out tactics as a means of crime prevention. And those are just the ones we know about.

Police jump-out squads drive around in unmarked cars, looking for people who they believe are breaking the law. Although they rarely mask, they are still difficult to identify because they don’t wear uniforms or show their badges. Like the ICE squads, they deploy overwhelming force and the element of surprise to intercept criminal activity and find people carrying illegal guns. Jump-out squads have become more taboo in the past several years because the confrontations they instigate have proved so dangerous for the people they stop: These tactical teams can spiral out of control, leading to deadly consequences. They have been responsible for countless acts of excessive force, some of which have resulted in tragedy. The SCORPION squadthat killed Tyre Nichols in Memphis was a jump-out squad, as was the task force that killed 12-year-old TJ Siderio in Philadelphia.

These squads often cultivate a kind of vigilante ethos among their officers. Their members frequently work outside the typical chain of police command, reporting directly to the brass. Often, the units intentionally recruit aggressive officers and fail to properly train them on the Fourth Amendment. A group of police officers in L.A., calling themselves the Jump Out Boys, described their work this way: “Jump out boys are alpha dogs, who think and act like the wolf. … They understand when the line needs to be crossed and crossed back. They need to work hard, they need to get guns, they need to take people to jail, and sometimes they need to do things they don’t want to do.”

Over the past 30 years, jump-out squads were used first as a tool to break up the drug trade (in Seasons 1 and 3 of The Wire, Baltimore police deploy a ragtag such squad), then, more recently, during a spike in violence caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, when urban police departments attempted to bring down the rate of gun violence by seizing illegal firearms. In the summer of 2020, 18 years after the tragic death of Amadou Diallo, New York City finally disbanded its infamous anti-crime unit, which frequently used aggressive jump-out tactics, but Mayor Eric Adams brought back a “modified plainclothes anti-gun unit” just a few weeks after taking office in 2022….

Source: ICE’s Shocking Midday Kidnappings Remind Me of Something I’ve Seen Before

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McWhorter: A Term So Outdated, Even President Trump Wouldn’t Use It

2025/07/28 Leave a comment

Good take:

On Sunday, President Trump, still on the ropes because of the controversy over the government’s Jeffrey Epstein files, ventured a distraction. With all the usual exclamation points and eccentric capitalization, he sounded the alarm on an issue a reader might have mistaken for a national crisis: the names of professional sports franchises. In particular those franchises that had cast off names that no longer felt culturally appropriate: the Washington Commanders, formerly the Redskins, and the Cleveland Guardians, formerly the Indians.

“The Washington ‘Whatever’s’ should IMMEDIATELY change their name back to the Washington Redskins Football Team. There is a big clamoring for this. Likewise, the Cleveland Indians, one of the six original baseball teams,” — by the way, it wasn’t — “with a storied past. Our great Indian people, in massive numbers, want this to happen. Their heritage and prestige is systematically being taken away from them.”

With typical subtlety, Trump concluded, “OWNERS, GET IT DONE!!!”

The controversy dates back more than a half-century. It was formalized in 1968, when the National Congress of American Indians embarked on a campaign to fight negative stereotypes of native people in American culture.

For a while, however, the evidence on the word “redskin” seemed equivocal. Polls by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, in 2004, and again by The Washington Post, in 2016, reported that a vast majority of actual Native Americans had no problem with the term. Was the whole thing just a politically correct tempest in a teapot, an effort to fix something that wasn’t actually a problem?

In 2020, a new poll was conducted. This one asked respondents for more finely grained responses and gave them more opportunity to consider their answers. The outcome was very different: Almost half of 1,000 Native Americans surveyed indeed found the term “redskin” to be offensive. Organized college athletics had long since forsworn team mascots that were based on caricatures of Indians. Amid the national climate of racial reckoning that George Floyd’s death and the Black Lives Matter movement brought on, the Washington football franchise announced it would change its name.

When Trump claims that “our great Indian people, in massive numbers, want this to happen,” there is no reason to wonder if he commissioned his own secret polling. But you don’t need a poll to understand why he’s wrong.

I doubt even Trump himself would be comfortable using that contested term to address a human being. Imagine him inviting a tribal leader to join him at some White House ceremony and introducing him as “my honored guest, a respected redskin.” At best, the term sounds like an artifact from some century-old stage play. To most ears, it simply sounds like a slur.

My grandmother was a laundress for a very wealthy white family, who would grant their staff a lovely week at their Maine island getaway every summer. Grandmom took us there with her for two summers in the mid-1970s. The white staff members there, while at least outwardly kind to my Black family, were acridly unfond of the local Native Americans. I had occasion to hear them late at night hissing about “those redskins.” That’s what we want as the name of a football team?

But even those who agree with me on that point might still quite reasonably ask what was wrong with “Cleveland Indians.” The term “Native American” may sound more respectful, but a vast majority of people who trace their ancestry to America’s tribal nations prefer being called Indians.

That might seem odd, given that “Indian” was a term imposed on them by Christopher Columbus when he mistakenly thought he had reached India. But it’s not that unusual.

As I wrote recently, quite a few Black Americans prefer “Black” over “African American,” despite the fact that “Black” was a term imposed on people with dark skin by people with light skin, and it sure wasn’t meant as a compliment. At the turn of the previous century, even educated Black people such as Sylvester Russell, an editorialist at the Indianapolis newspaper The Freeman, reportedly approved of the usage of “darkey.” In 1908 the doughty Black opera diva Sissieretta Jones asked, “Is there a soul so insensible that it cannot be stirred to the very depths by the heartbroken cry of the poor old homesick darkey?”

The problem with the Cleveland Indians isn’t “Indian.” The Cleveland Native Americans would be just as wrong. The problem isn’t the word choice; it’s the choice to use a human group as a mascot at all. Even if the members of that group are celebrated as brave warriors. No one today would be debating the merits of a team called the Boston Blacks or the New Jersey Negroes. How about the New York Jews or the Pittsburgh Polacks? Shifting to a more seemly Pittsburgh Poles would do nothing to solve the glaringly obvious problem. People are not pets.

Trump is right that the heritage and prestige of American Indians have been “systematically taken away from them,” but that is the work of the United States government, which pursued an explicit policy of dehumanization and dispossession and achieved it with horrifying success. Going back to antique stereotypes only continues the process.

Source: A Term So Outdated, Even President Trump Wouldn’t Use It

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Doug Ford and other premiers want provincial work permits for refugee claimants. It may not solve anything

2025/07/28 Leave a comment

Nothing burger given quick processing of 45 days?

With refugee claimants now getting work permits fairly quickly and housing being less of a pain point, why do Canada’s premiers want to seize power from Ottawa to issue work permits?

This week, the provincial leaders emerged from the premiers’ meeting united in seeking the powers under the Constitution to issue work authorization to asylum seekers, which is currently under the federal government’s jurisdiction.

The reason behind the move, Premier Doug Ford said Wednesday, is that a lot of asylum seekers living in hotels would like to work and be self-sufficient, but can’t because it’s taking too long for Ottawa to process their work permits.

While any initiative that would help claimants to get on their feet and start working as quickly as possible is positive, Toronto refugee lawyer Adam Sadinsky isn’t sure if that push is based on “outdated information.” (The Immigration Department’s website shows work permit application processing for non-refugees currently takes 181 days.)

“It was an issue a couple of years ago,” said Sadinsky, whose clients in Canada generally now receive their work permits in about six weeks. “In my practice, I haven’t seen that it is really a significant issue anymore.”

Section 95 of the Constitution Act outlines the concurrent jurisdiction of the Canadian Parliament and provincial legislatures including immigration, education and health care. It states that both levels of government can make laws in these areas, but in a conflict, federal laws prevail. 

In fact, the two levels of governments have already shared jurisdiction in some areas of immigration. The provincial nominee immigration programs, for example, allow provinces to select prospective permanent residents for Ottawa’s stamp of approval.

Currently, the only provincial-based work permits are those related to the provincial nominee program, where the province can approve the work authorization of a selected candidate, who will ultimately get the permit from the federal government.

“The provinces and the feds have worked together,” said Toronto immigration lawyer Rick Lamanna on behalf of the Canadian Immigration Lawyers Association. 

But could it be just a bluff from the premiers?

“We’ll know more if or when you start to see things coming out, whether it’s from Ontario or Alberta or other provinces, putting more meat on those bones,” Lamanna said. 

“When you start to see logistical plans, if they start opening up stakeholder consultations, if they make announcements like expansion of Service Ontario to facilitate the issuance of these permits, I think that’s when we’ll know.” 

In a statement to the Star, the Immigration Department said claimants must submit a completed application, including a medical exam, and are determined to be eligible to seek protection before they are issued a work permit. On average, it now takes 45 days to process.

Officials have also found more sustainable and cost-effective solutions such as the new refugee reception centre in Peel to house and support asylum seekers….

Source: Doug Ford and other premiers want provincial work permits for refugee claimants. It may not solve anything

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Michael Geist: When it comes to antisemitism, the sound of silence is loud in Canada 

2025/07/28 Leave a comment

Valid comments on lack of consistency in approaches:

…In response, there have been some notable efforts to address the antisemitism scourge. Both the federal government and some local municipalities have enacted or proposed bubble zone legislation designed to create a safe perimeter around places of worship, schools, hospitals, and other vulnerable institutions. Some universities and governments have adopted much-needed guidelines to combat antisemitism and promised to enforce them more aggressively.

More is required, but those responses appear to have shifted the discourse from disbelief to efforts to silence and thwart initiatives to protect the community. It often starts by insisting that the Jewish community is not only unable to judge what constitutes antisemitism, but that it actively engages in its weaponization. It is hard to think of any other group that is not only denied its own ability to identify harms but is painted as acting nefariously when it does so.

When the issue does break through, the efforts to protect the Jewish community are then silenced by framing them as undermining the rights of others. For example, bubble zone initiatives are frequently criticized as an affront to freedom of expression, despite being carefully drafted and modelled on similar laws that have been upheld by Canadian courts as constitutional.

Similarly, antisemitism guidelines on campus have been derided as chilling freedom of expression. These institutions have long histories of adopting extensive regulations to protect women, visible minorities and Indigenous groups, even going so far as to identify and guard against micro-aggressions. But the same approach seemingly does not apply to the Jewish community, who instead face charges that protecting their rights would come at the expense of the rights of others.

In fact, even political views on the founding of the State of Israel or expressions of support for Zionism, which as former prime minister Justin Trudeau noted “is the belief, at its simplest, that Jewish people, like all peoples, have the right to determine their own future” runs the risk of being labelled as “racist” in today’s educational environment, thereby silencing the perspectives.

As the rise in antisemitism has become too pronounced to ignore, there have been some important efforts to chronicle it and call for action. But what has been missing is an examination of its day-to-day effects, which has placed the safety and well-being of an entire community, from grade school to seniors’ homes, at risk. Those effects will become less visible if all that is left is the sound of silence.

Source: Michael Geist: When it comes to antisemitism, the sound of silence is loud in Canada

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US citizenship test too easy? Trump bringing back 2020 naturalisation format

2025/07/28 Leave a comment

Stay tuned. Arguably, many Trump administration figures could start with a better understanding of the US constitution and history:

The new director of the US Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) stirred a debate after he said that the present US citizenship test is easy and can be memorised. The US citizenship test, officially known as the Naturalisation test, is an examination that an applicant has to take to become an American citizen.

The test is not for green card holders unless they are applying for citizenship. Joseph Edlow, the new director of USCIS, said that since the tests are too easy, the Trump administration is planning to bring back the 2020 version of the test.

For the test, applicants have to submit a former N-400 seeking naturalisation. They would be required to pass a background check and meet residency tenure, along with other requirements. After this, they will have to attend an interview where they take two tests: One is an English test, and the other is a civic test.

Source: US citizenship test too easy? Trump bringing back 2020 naturalisation format

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Le Québec fait le plein de cerveaux grâce à l’immigration

2025/07/28 Leave a comment

Similar to other provinces. We select immigrants largely based on human capital, including education:

Le Québec peut compter sur des immigrants très scolarisés : ceux-ci détiennent un diplôme universitaire dans une proportion de loin supérieure à celle des non-immigrants. C’est l’un des constats qui se dégage d’un rapport de l’Institut de la statistique du Québec (ISQ) publié jeudi.

Les chiffres sont sans équivoque. Selon les données du dernier recensement canadien, tenu en 2021, 44 % des immigrants présents au Québec détenaient un diplôme universitaire, contre 25 % des non-immigrants. Chez les résidents non permanents, cette proportion grimpait à 58,6 %.

Ces écarts s’expliquent essentiellement par la méthode de sélection de la population immigrante. « Elle est “sélectionnée” en favorisant la scolarité élevée », explique par courriel l’autrice du rapport, Christine Lessard. « Il n’est donc pas étonnant qu’on y trouve une plus grande proportion de titulaires d’un grade universitaire que dans la population non immigrante. »

Ce rapport est le troisième volet d’une étude dressant le portrait des détenteurs d’un diplôme universitaire au Québec. Après avoir comparé les données québécoises à celles des autres provinces et les avoir décortiquées par région administrative, l’ISQ s’est penché sur le statut migratoire des détenteurs de diplôme. Les données analysées ne concernent que les personnes âgées de 25 à 64 ans.

En 2021, quelque 21,3 % des résidents du Québec étaient des immigrants permanents ou temporaires.

Plus de la moitié des immigrants admis au Canada depuis 2001 détiennent un diplôme universitaire : en d’autres mots, ils sont très scolarisés. « Il est certain que l’immigration contribue au maintien voire à l’accroissement du niveau de scolarité de la population », avance Mme Lessard.

La croissance de la population du Québec repose par ailleurs en grande partie sur l’immigration. Entre 2016 et 2021, la population québécoise non immigrante de 25 à 64 ans a chuté de 2,7 %, tandis que la population immigrante a augmenté de 11 %, et celle des résidents non permanents de 150 %. Au net, la population du Québec a crû de 1,4 % sur cette période….

Source: Le Québec fait le plein de cerveaux grâce à l’immigration

Quebec can count on highly educated immigrants: they hold a university degree in a proportion far greater than non-immigrants. This is one of the findings that emerges from a report by the Institut de la statistique du Québec (ISQ) published on Thursday.
The numbers are unequivocal. According to data from the last Canadian census, held in 2021, 44% of immigrants in Quebec held a university degree, compared to 25% of non-immigrants. Among non-permanent residents, this proportion rose to 58.6%.
These differences are mainly explained by the method of selection of the immigrant population. “It is “selected” by promoting high schooling,” explains the author of the report, Christine Lessard, by email. “It is therefore not surprising that there is a greater proportion of university degree holders than in the non-immigrant population. ”
This report is the third part of a study portraying university degree holders in Quebec. After comparing Quebec data with those of other provinces and dissessing them by administrative region, the ISQ looked at the migration status of diploma holders. The data analyzed only concern people aged 25 to 64.
In 2021, some 21.3% of Quebec residents were permanent or temporary immigrants.
More than half of the immigrants admitted to Canada since 2001 hold a university degree: in other words, they are highly educated. “It is certain that immigration contributes to maintaining or even increasing the level of education of the population,” says Ms. Lessard.
Quebec’s population growth is also largely based on immigration. Between 2016 and 2021, the Quebec non-immigrant population aged 25 to 64 fell by 2.7%, while the immigrant population increased by 11%, and that of non-permanent residents by 150%. Netly, Quebec’s population grew by 1.4% over this period….

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

Kelly and Treblicock: Canada needs a coherent immigration policy – not another piecemeal fix

2025/07/26 Leave a comment

Good op-ed and call for a more serious review and approach. Their recent book, Reshaping the Mosaic, captures the change from previous policy processes to current less comprehensive ones, and is a very useful documenting the changes to immigration-related policies and programs along with the consultative processes:

…Immigration remains a powerful engine of Canadian growth and resilience. Immigrants already make up nearly one-quarter of the population, a share projected to rise to 36 per cent by 2036. But as recent volatility in public opinion underscores, we cannot afford to keep muddling through with fragmented, short-term responses. There has not been a serious, comprehensive review of Canadian immigration policy in more than 30 years. 

It may be too late to influence next year’s immigration levels plan. But the Minister should renew the government’s 2023 commitment to review the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. This review should not be conducted behind closed doors. Like previous major legislative reviews, it must bring together evidence and experience from federal and provincial policymakers, employers, service providers, newcomers, researchers and citizens in a transparent process.

Getting immigration policy right is more than a social or political imperative – it is essential to Canada’s long-term economic resilience in the face of trade instability, demographic aging, and rapidly advancing technology.

Source: Canada needs a coherent immigration policy – not another piecemeal fix

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