C-3 Citizenship: My Submission Arguing for the need for a time limit
2025/09/29 Leave a comment
‘Allah will burn them’: What pro-Palestinian students and allies say when they think no one is watching
2025/09/12 Leave a comment
Deplorable posts and comments. But discussion of university response interesting and the administrators try to navigate an extremely divisive issue and student behaviour:
…Before bringing their trove of information to the Post, the Jewish students tried to go through university channels to address the concerning rhetoric shared in the group chats.
On Aug. 9, 2024, one of their lawyers, Jonathan Rosenthal, filed on their behalf a 17-page complaint to the university, distilling the nature of the comments on the group chat.
Yet there was never a formal investigation because the Jewish students were unwilling to identify themselves as complainants.
Western’s associate vice president of human resources, Jane O’Brien, confirmed receipt of the complaint. In a response several days days later she requested Rosenthal “identify the students involved” and outline any incident alleged to be “a breach of the Code of Student Conduct,” according to an email thread shared with the Post.
O’Brien also informed Rosenthal that concerns about the Palestinian student club’s campus status should be directed to the student union, the University Students’ Council.
“I will NOT be disclosing the names of the complainants,” Rosenthal replied Sept. 3, citing “safety concerns.” The lawyer said providing their names “is simply irrelevant” and requested the university investigate the matter promptly. Rosenthal emailed O’Brien the following week, but didn’t hear back until Sept. 13.
“Though your email indicates that the complaint provides student names and phone numbers, no such information appears to be included. Furthermore, the supporting documentation is comprised solely of what appears to be copied text, the origins of which are not demonstrated,” Foster continued.
Foster underscored that the university prioritizes the safety of complainants and “until such time as you provide the requested information, Western will not be able to proceed with your complaint.”
Rosenthal tried to meet Foster in the middle.
He shared a dossier with a trove of time-stamped data — WhatsApp messages, pictures, videos, phone numbers, screenshots and names — from the group chat but reaffirmed his clients would not publicly identify themselves.
“The chats speak for themselves,” Rosenthal answered Foster on Sept. 17.
Despite trading emails with the university for more than a month, Western wouldn’t budge.
The university defended its handling of the situation in a written statement to the Post. Western spokesman Stephen Ledgley said the complaint, “lacked sufficient information to proceed with an investigation, such as identifying any student connected to the alleged conduct.”
He added that the “complaint and supporting documentation submitted were reviewed in detail to determine if an investigation could be pursued based on the information provided alone,” however, “there was insufficient information to proceed.”
Rosenthal’s dealings with the University Students’ Council, the student union, followed a similar pattern. His unwillingness to name the complainants remained the key sticking point. In his email exchanges with both groups, each pointed him to the other, rather than deal with the substance of the complaint.
He eventually shared the same dossier of information with Shari Bumpus, the union manager overseeing the student community, outlining several specific alleged violations of union policy dealing with fostering “an inclusive and welcoming environment” and anti-discrimination, but did not hear back.
It’s a response the union defends.
“The USC and Western University are two distinct entities with distinct jurisdictions,” spokeswoman Rebecca Rebeiro wrote the Post in a statement. “The USC was made aware of the anonymous complaint and conducted an investigation to determine if it fell within its jurisdiction. When it was determined this complaint was outside its scope, the USC referred the complaint over to Western University’s Student Code of Conduct Office.”
It’s an approach one Jewish advocacy group says is unconscionable.
“The content of the chats was shown to us. Based on what we’ve seen, we believe that the content is dangerous,” Richard Marceau, general counsel for the Centre for Israel and Jewish Advocacy (CIJA), wrote to the Post.
“The individuals involved shared violent threats, antisemitic slurs, and grotesque conspiracy theories, all while joking about how to evade university accountability using disappearing messages,” he added, imploring Western to investigate the matter.
Carney says temporary foreign worker program needs a ‘focused approach’
2025/09/12 2 Comments
Not much new in terms of messaging:
Prime Minister Mark Carney said Wednesday the temporary foreign worker program needs a “focused approach” that targets the needs of specific sectors and regions.
Carney’s comments came as he outlined the government’s plans for the fall during an address to the Liberal caucus at their annual retreat in Edmonton.
The prime minister said the government’s plan to return immigration rates to “sustainable levels” includes reducing the number of non-permanent residents to “less than five per cent” of the total population.
Temporary workers and international students made up 7.1 per cent of Canada’s population as of April 1, according to Statistics Canada.
“Now, it’s clear that we have to work to continue to improve our overall immigration policies, and the temporary foreign worker program must have a focused approach that targets specific strategic sectors and needs in specific regions,” Carney said in his speech to caucus.
“So we’re working on that. Setting those goals, adjusting and working to ease the strain on housing, public infrastructure and our social services while we build that strong economy.”
At a press conference in Brampton, Ont., on Tuesday, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre once again called on the government to scrap the temporary foreign worker program due to high youth unemployment, which hit 14.6 per cent in July.
Poilievre said immigrants are not responsible for housing and employment challenges and instead blamed the government.
“They’ve allowed massive abuses of the international student, temporary foreign worker and asylum claims system, with rampant fraud that happened right under their nose. And as a result, our youth can’t find jobs or homes,” Poilievre said.
”(Carney’s) allowing corporations to bring in a record number of temporary foreign workers this year at a time when youth employment numbers are their worst in three decades.”
Government data show the number of temporary foreign workers coming to Canada decreased significantly in the first six months of the year. About 119,000 temporary workers arrived in the first half of 2025, down from more than 245,000 in the first half of 2024.
The government’s current target for temporary workers is to admit about 368,000 this year and 210,000 next year.
Before Carney’s speech, former immigration minister Marc Miller said “you can’t just scrap” the temporary foreign worker program and accused Poilievre of trying to whip up “anti-immigrant sentiments.”
“We need immigration whether we like it or not in this country,” Miller said….
Source: Carney says temporary foreign worker program needs a ‘focused approach’
Employers And Immigrants May Fear Immigration Service’s New Powers
2025/09/12 Leave a comment
Valid concerns:
Employers and immigrants may soon fear the expanded law enforcement authorities claimed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The new rule and the announcement that USCIS officers can carry firearms are the most recent steps to transform the agency into a different entity, away from one founded to adjudicate benefit applications and provide services to the public. In a statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee at his confirmation hearing, new USCIS Director Joseph Edlow said, “USCIS must be an immigration enforcement agency.”
Rule Grants Immigration Service New Law Enforcement Authorities
On September 5, 2025, the Department of Homeland Security amended its regulations to “codify certain law enforcement authorities delegated” by the DHS secretary to the USCIS director and “subsequently redelegated to particular officers or employees of USCIS.” According to the rule, “These authorities allow particular USCIS personnel to investigate and enforce civil and criminal violations of the immigration laws within the jurisdiction of USCIS. These authorities include, but are not limited to, the issuance and execution of warrants, the arrest of individuals, and carrying of firearms.”
Immigration attorneys are alarmed at USCIS giving itself these new authorities under the DHS rule. “The recent changes at USCIS make the immigration process more intimidating,” said Dan Berger of Green & Spiegel in an interview. “Employers offer green card sponsorship as a recruitment and retention tool for key talent. That sponsorship increasingly involves an in-person interview, with the possibility of interacting with armed USCIS agents. This comes after months of images of masked ICE agents on television.”
Chris Thomas of Holland & Hart said USCIS officers will now have the authority to execute warrants, make arrests and investigate civil and criminal violations of immigration law. He said in an interview that by operating more like Homeland Security Investigations and Immigration and Customs Enforcement it opens “a new universe of potential exposure for employers and their lawyers.”
A Department of Justice memo issued to all employees on February 5, 2025, directed federal prosecutors to prioritize and accept all immigration-related referrals or explain in “Urgent Reports” to headquarters why the cases were not pursued. Companies could face criminal charges in cases that the DOJ may not have pursued in the past.
“Will the goal be to bring wild cases against companies and employers to chill benefits-related immigration, or will only the obvious and egregious cases be pursued? Only time will tell,” said Thomas.
Thomas expects an increase in employee arrests, an expansion of onsite visits by USCIS Fraud Detection & National Security officers, including at the home office of employees working remotely, and an expansion of criminal liability and reputational exposure for employers. He recommends that employers review their policies, inform staff and prepare for site visits. He said one area USCIS could focus on is work performed at customer sites by individuals in H-1B status. In Donald Trump’s first term, USCIS officials issued memos and took unsuccessful regulatory action against such work.
Source: Employers And Immigrants May Fear Immigration Service’s New Powers
Keller: Yes, Canada should (mostly) end our temporary foreign worker programs
2025/09/11 Leave a comment
Nice reminder of previous comments (Trudeau did the same in 2014):
…Prime Minister Mark Carney used to get this. Back in 2013, when he was governor of the Bank of Canada, he told a parliamentary committee that “one doesn’t want an overreliance on temporary foreign workers for lower-skill jobs, which prevent the wage adjustment mechanism from making sure that Canadians are paid higher wages but also that firms improve their productivity.”
He added that temporary foreign workers should be for “those higher-skilled gaps that do exist.”
In plain English, he said that bringing in highly skilled people to fill high-wage jobs was good for Canada, but allowing business easy access to lots of temporary foreign workers for entry-level jobs was a recipe for suppressing the wages of low-wage Canadians, and discouraging companies from raising productivity through labour-saving technologies.
That was the right answer. It was also a good foundation for future immigration policy.
But last week, Mr. Carney said the opposite. Pushing back against Conservative criticism, he said that “when I talk to businesses around the country … their number one issue is tariffs, and their number two issue is access to temporary foreign workers.”
Mr. Carney, please rediscover your 2013 answer. Aside from being economically sound, it is immeasurably more politically saleable. Just ask British Columbia Premier David Eby.…
Source: Yes, Canada should (mostly) end our temporary foreign worker programs
Most Canadians favour scaling back immigration and temporary resident numbers, poll shows
2025/09/11 Leave a comment
Not surprising given coverage over some of the issues:
…Almost three-quarters of Canadians favour reducing the number of new immigrants coming here, while two-thirds support the government’s plan to cut the number of temporary residents, a new poll shows.
The Nanos poll for The Globe and Mail found that Canadians are more than twice as likely to support reducing the number of new immigrants coming to Canada, compared with those who oppose a cut.
More than three in five Canadians support or somewhat support the government reducing its targets for temporary residents until 2027, as set out in its levels plan last year, the poll also found.
The new survey demonstrates a steady hardening of views on immigration in the past few years. In 2023, 53 per cent of Canadians surveyed in a Nanos poll for The Globe said they wanted the federal government to accept fewer immigrants than it was planning that year.
The 2023 poll found a rise of almost 20 percentage points over six months earlier in the number of Canadians who thought this country should accept fewer immigrants than Ottawa’s 2023 target of 465,000 permanent residents.
The most recent survey of 1,028 Canadians, conducted between Aug. 30 and Sept. 3, showed support for cuts in numbers of newcomers across all age groups and regions of Canada.
“What is clear from the research is that a comfortable majority of Canadians are good with reducing the number of new immigrants and new temporary residents,” said Nik Nanos, chief data scientist and founder of Nanos Research….
Source: Most Canadians favour scaling back immigration and temporary resident numbers, poll shows
Top US immigration official defends rule targeting ‘anti-American’ views in green card, visa process
2025/09/11 Leave a comment
Somehow, “trust us” not that credible given various initiatives by the Trump administration:
A new rule allowing a U.S. immigration agency to scrutinize a person’s “anti-American” viewswhen applying for a green card or other benefits isn’t designed to target political beliefs, but to identify support for terrorist activity, the organization’s director told The Associated Press.
In a wide-ranging interview on Monday, the director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Joseph Edlow, delved into the agency’s contentious policy — announced last month — which allows officers to decide whether a foreigner applying for a certain benefit has endorsed what they believe are anti-American views.
Edlow also detailed problems he sees with a training program that’s popular with international students, but hated by some Trump supporters. He described how and why he’s thinking of changing the process by which hundreds of thousands of people become American citizens every year.
Edlow is overseeing the pivotal immigration agency at a time when President Donald Trump is upending traditional immigration policyand charging ahead with an aggressive agenda that restricts who gets to come into the U.S. through legal pathways.
Questions over what constitutes anti-Americanism
The new policy by USCIS stipulates that its officers could now consider whether an applicant “endorsed, promoted, supported, or otherwise espoused” anti-American, terrorist or antisemitic views when making their decision about whether to grant the benefit.
Critics questioned whether it gives officers too much leeway in rejecting foreigners based on a subjective judgment.
Edlow said the agency needs to be aware of what people applying for benefits are saying online and when that speech becomes hateful. He said the agency won’t automatically deny someone a benefit because of what they said, but it’s a factor they take into consideration.
He said they’re not looking for people who’ve posted anti-Trump speech. He said criticism of any administration was “one of the most American activities you can engage in.”
“This goes beyond that. This is actual espousing (of) the beliefs and the ideology of terrorist, of terrorist organizations and those who wish to destroy the American way of life.”
In examples of speech that might raise a red flag, Edlow noted students who post pro-Hamas beliefs or are taking part in campus protests where Jewish students are blocked from entering buildings.
The Trump administration has made cracking down on student protests a high priority. The government has said noncitizens who participate in such demonstrations should be expelled from the U.S. for expressing views the administration considers to be antisemitic and “pro-Hamas,” referring to the Palestinian militant group that attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
In one of the most high-profile examples, federal immigration authorities in March arrested Palestinian activist and green card holder, Mahmoud Khalil, who as a student played a prominent role in Columbia University’s pro-Palestinian protests.
USCIS agents now carry weapons and could make arrests
USCIS recently announced that it could now hire law enforcement agents who could make arrests, execute search warrants and carry weapons. That’s a change for the agency that historically investigates immigration fraud but hands cases over to other agencies to prosecute.
Edlow said their focus would be on “large scale criminal activity” such as large-scale asylum fraud or marriage fraud.
“They’re not a police force. This is going to be a highly trained and very small section of this agency dealing specifically with rooting out immigration fraud,” said Edlow. He said previously the agency was stymied by how far it could take cases because they eventually had to turn them over to another agency for prosecution.
Edlow said there would be a “couple hundred” of the officers to start, but put it in the context of the “thousands upon thousands” of other staff that the agency has to adjudicate benefits.
The agency’s role in verifying voter rolls
The Systemic Alien Verification for Entitlements program was created in 1987 as a way for various government agencies to check whether someone is eligible for public benefits.
Edlow said his agency has been working with the Social Security Administration to make it easier for states and local governments to access. They can now access the system using a Social Security number or the last four digits of one, instead of needing a specific Homeland Security identifying number that most of them didn’t have. And they can submit a number of requests at the same time as opposed to one at a time.
Edlow also said USCIS is also entering into agreements with secretaries of state so they can use the system to verify their voter rolls in what he said was a bid to counter voter fraud.
Critics have questioned the reliability of the data and whether people will be erroneously dropped from voter rolls as well as whether their privacy is being protected.
Edlow says the agency has a “huge team” to verify the information is accurate….
Source: Top US immigration official defends rule targeting ‘anti-American’ views in green card, visa process
New report outlines the biggest reasons immigrants stay in Canada, and it’s not just financial
2025/09/10 Leave a comment
From my friends at ICC. Courage and optimism are characteristic of immigrants:
As Canada risks losing more immigrants amid a rising cost of living, a new report finds the biggest factors in whether newcomers stay aren’t just financial.
While housing and affordability remain top concerns, a new survey of nearly 5,000 immigrants finds newcomers are far more likely to stay in Canada if they feel hopeful about their future and connected to the country, according to a report from the Institute for Canadian Citizenship on Tuesday.
Optimism about the future – measured by immigrants’ confidence in their personal and family prospects, plans for long-term life in Canada and belief that friends and family can succeed here – is the strongest driver of immigrant retention, with just a one per cent increase in optimism boosting the likelihood of staying by 28 per cent.
A one per cent increase in a sense of belonging – measured by identifying as Canadian, feeling accepted in Canada, trusting other Canadians and believing that the country provides good opportunities for one’s family – increases the likelihood to stay by 25 per cent.
The same increase in safety and stability raises the likelihood of a newcomer staying permanently by 16 per cent, and an uptick in economic optimism adds 15 per cent.
As Ottawa plans to slash the number of immigrants over the next three years, resulting in a 1.7 per cent drop in the country’s gross domestic product by 2027, it is crucial to retain talented immigrants who are already here, said Daniel Bernhard, CEO of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship.
New immigration targets are expected to cut Canada’s population growth by 1.4 million over the next three years, with permanent resident admissions dropping from 464,265 in 2024 to 365,000 in 2027, leading to 1.3 billion fewer hours worked, according to Canada’s parliamentary budget officer.
“Immigrants are hand-selected to address Canada’s most pressing needs and so each one that leaves is a great loss,” Bernhard said. “The needs they were brought here to fill do not leave with them.”
One in five immigrants who come to Canada ultimately leave the country within 25 years, with about one-third of those people moving on within the first five years, according to a November report from the ICC.
The report found that economic immigrants and francophones are the most likely to leave – the two categories of immigrants Canada prioritizes most.
The ICC is calling on policymakers to increase immigrant retention through targeted investments in domains that help build connection and optimism, including “initiatives that support newcomer skills development and labour market integration” and “activities that connect immigrant families and friends to each other and to other Canadians, building community, inclusion and belonging.”
“We know immigrants are leaving Canada, but until today, policymakers had very little evidence to guide investments in retention,” Bernhard said.
The survey shows that “making people feel at home, feel welcome, feel Canadian, feel attached to this place and to these people is more than just a nice thing we do for our newest neighbours,” he added.
“It’s a key growth and success strategy for the community.”
Source: New report outlines the biggest reasons immigrants stay in Canada, and it’s not just financial
Multiculturalism has lost its meaning: Michael Bonner for Inside Policy
2025/09/10 2 Comments
Sort of a repeat of the criticisms of the 1990s. I think he underplays the importance of groups like Ukrainian Canadians who didn’t see recognition of their role in settling the West in the English/French narratives and that the original thinking in the Bi&Bi report, reflected in the policy and the 1988 Act, reflected a largely white, Christian Canada.
Most of the accommodation issues pertain to religion which were largely undiscussed at that time. Since then, of course, immigration has resulted in much greater religious diversity.
I think Bonner understates the integrative role of multiculturalism. Objectives like “full and equitable participation,” “equal treatment and equal protection,” “interaction between individuals and communities,” and “strengthening the status and use of the official languages” are fundamentally about integration.
So yes, back to its roots would be helpful as would correction of the excesses of the Trudeau government (which the expected cutbacks will likely impact).
But citing first millennial Britain as an example, where mobility, communications and transportation were limited, not to mention no internet or social media, is odd to say the least:
…We might conclude that multicultural policy has been pushed to an illogical extreme, or that an originally good and well-intentioned policy has been perverted. There is, however, a sense in which any official policy of multiculturalism is inherently superfluous and bound to fail. It is superfluous because all societies everywhere are multicultural in one sense or another. There is no country without local and regional diversity in culture, food, language, accent, dialect, and so on; and these differences tend to be robust over time. It is bound to fail because, in the long run, the general culture of a place will tend to become more and more homogenous.
Those two observations are not contradictory. A demonstrative example is Great Britain: a place repeatedly invaded and settled by various peoples over the first millennium AD, which nevertheless developed a common British identity as well as multiple, subsidiary national and regional cultures long before 20th century mass immigration. Given enough time, a place like Canada would surely turn out much the same: rich in cultural and linguistic diversity, with a blended population of many Indigenous peoples and others distantly descended from immigrants, all united by a common Canadian identity centuries in the making: John Ralston Saul’s “Métis nation” at last. Many would applaud this outcome, but it would hardly resemble the contemporary ideal of multiculturalism.
So it seems that, if we no longer understand the original meaning and purpose of multiculturalism – and if most Canadians object to the outcome of diversity for its own sake – then the concept itself is no longer useful. At the very least, the meaning and purpose of it should be redefined. If multiculturalism is to be of any further use it must be able to tell us both where we came from and where we are now; both who we are in particular and who we are in general. And if multiculturalism cannot do that, then it will not survive.
Dr. Michael Bonner is a former Government of Ontario policy director, a historian of ancient Iran, and author of In Defense of Civilization: How Our Past Can Renew Our Present. He is a contributor for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
Source: Multiculturalism has lost its meaning: Michael Bonner for Inside Policy
Multiculturalism in Canada: Evidence and Anecdote
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Multicultural Meanderings 