While I was away: Immigration

Some immigration articles I found interesting:

Regg Cohn | The history of humanity is the story of human migration

Reminder of the complexities of human migration and family histories:

Nakba Day has come and gone, but the controversy lives on in New York City of all places.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani posted to social media a story about the Nakba, which is how Arabs describe the “catastrophe” of Israel’s creation (under the UN) and the fallout for displaced Palestinians. His office produced a four-minute profile of Inea Bushnaq, a Palestinian American “Nakba survivor” living in New York.

Controversy erupted over the mayor platforming Bushnaq as the embodiment of the Palestinian diaspora, because it turns out her family roots were first Bosnian (of which Bushnaq is a transliteration). Invoking the vernacular of today, critics described her family as “European settler-colonizers” in the Holy Land….

Canada’s top-skilled workers are leaving for the U.S. in droves for lower taxes and higher pay: TD study

More evidence of Canada being a “farm team:

A new report from TD Economics warns that Canada is losing its highest-skilled workers, entrepreneurs, and STEM graduates to the United States through a slow, largely invisible syphoning—calling the phenomenon a “silent brain drain.” The crisis, it argues, is less about who Canada can attract than who it fails to keep.

Much of the outflow never registers in Statistics Canada’s emigration data because it occurs through U.S. employer-sponsored work visas—temporary and semi-permanent pathways that conventional brain drain metrics simply don’t capture. Of the partial data Statistics Canada was able to retrieve, the agency determined that, in 2023, 18,590 Canadian residents emigrated to the U.S. permanently, with 30 percent of those people not being born in Canada.

Despite net migration to the U.S. lowering in recent years, the trend of top talent—which helps drive GDP growth—leaving Canada has not.

“Canada is not hollowing out; it is spilling out at the top,” the TD report states. “Absent progress on this front, Canada will continue to be a feeder system for the U.S. innovation economy.”…

Immigration lawyers say automation is partly driving a massive Federal Court backlog

Wonder how many immigration lawyers themselves are using AI. Given the large numbers of permanent and temporary residents, even reduced, AI has to be part of any immigration program management, and as Kahneman and others have noted, automated systems generate more consistent results than humans and arguably, if well designed, better and fairer decisions:

The number of immigration cases being brought to Federal Court has more than quadrupled since 2020 — and some immigration lawyers are linking the surge in part to the federal government’s use of artificial intelligence and automation to clear visa application backlogs.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada insists that technology is not to blame and that multiple factors are driving the boom in legal challenges of the department’s decisions.

About 6,400 immigration cases were brought to Federal Court in 2020, a figure in line with the trend over the previous decade. The caseload spiked sharply in 2021, when 9,700 cases were sent to the court.

More than 28,000 cases were filed with the court last year and more than 6,600 were filed in the first quarter of 2026. The vast majority of these cases are not refugee matters….

Douglas Todd: The Century Initiative changes its headline-grabbing tune on hiking Canadian migration

As someone who has following CI over the years, as well as one of the early critics, I was pleased to participate in this study given that it reflects their having now adopted a more realistic and nuanced position:

…No longer, Meggs said, is the organization emphasizing its headline-grabbing “100-million-by-2100” target. Nor, she said, is it declaring that “Canada is shrinking in population and in the world,” or that “our workforce is shrinking.” It’s also dropped “economic growth is tied to population growth” and “population growth is tied to our quality of life.”

Meggs said the Century Initiative is shifting to more nuanced expressions about the pros of migration. They include that it is necessary to “strengthen our workforce and build talent pipelines” and, finally, that there is a place for “smart, responsible population growth.”

As Canadians become more educated about migration issues, it’s a welcome sign that this influential organization is realizing it needs to tone down its lopsided, simplistic rhetoric.

Éditorial | Un oui inclusif, et ça devient possible

Yes, as in the PQ of the 1970s:

,…Un projet de pays qui s’appuie sur d’aussi piètres bases n’a aucune chance de succès. Le Québec de 2026 n’a plus rien à voir avec la nation colonisée dont M. St-Pierre Plamondon évoque occasionnellement le souvenir. En table éditoriale avec Le Devoir, l’an dernier, il nous avait même confié à quel point il craignait la peur dans le prochain cycle politique. La peur que nous avons intériorisée comme nation et qui remonte à la pendaison des patriotes, disait-il. C’est comme si le miracle de la Révolution tranquille n’avait pas eu lieu. C’est comme si les chaînes de l’oppression n’avaient pas été brisées par la formidable machine à intégrer et à franciser que fut la Loi 101. C’est comme s’il fallait encore des porteurs d’eau, dans l’imaginaire péquiste, pour conjurer le destin et se dire « Oui ! » par un Grand soir.

Il y a encore mille et une raisons de militer pour la souveraineté, serait-ce seulement parce que langue, culture, institutions distinctes et occupation du territoire sur le long temps de l’histoire ont produit une nation unique, singulière, capable d’assumer son destin et d’accéder au statut de pays si une majorité de ses concitoyens le désirent ardemment. Cette nation forte reste aussi fragile en sa qualité de principale héritière du fait français en Amérique du Nord, minoritaire sur un continent de locuteurs anglophones. Elle ne se sentira jamais protégée par un gouvernemental fédéral centralisateur, verrouillé dans le multiculturalisme à la Trudeau père, qui renvoie la nation québécoise au rang du folklore.

Par contre, un Québec qui aspire à la souveraineté devrait additionner les voix au lieu de les soustraire. Il devrait tendre la main, investir avec conviction dans la francisation et la culture, se vouer corps et âme à l’interculturalisme dont il se prétend le champion. Au contraire, le discours ambiant, aussi bien sous l’ex-gouvernement de François Legault que dans l’imaginaire de Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, entretient un malheureux clivage.

Selon Statistique Canada, les Québécois issus de l’immigration représentent désormais près de 15 % de la population (1,21 million de personnes). Dans la région de Montréal, une personne sur quatre est issue de l’immigration. Le Québec tout entier est en profonde mutation sociodémographique, passant d’une société homogène à une société diversifiée. C’est un changement structurel irréversible qui pose des enjeux d’intégration, de cohésion et d’adaptation des institutions démocratiques. C’est aussi une formidable occasion d’élargir la passion et le sentiment d’appartenance pour le Québec, sa langue, sa culture, dans le respect des droits des minorités et des peuples autochtones.

« Nous avons remplacé la fierté par la fermeture », souligne le rapport du OUI Québec. Les formations politiques qui ne l’ont pas encore compris vivent sur du temps emprunté, et elles fragilisent le projet de pays qu’elles aspirent à bâtir avec noblesse.”

IRCC

IRCC gave up office space in January. Now, it can’t accommodate RTO-4

Sigh…

A few months before delaying its four-day return-to-office due to lack of space, the federal immigration department gave up 12 floors of real estate across two downtown Ottawa office buildings.

According to an August 2025 slideshow obtained by the Ottawa Citizen through the Access to Information Act, the department was required to return the floors to the government’s central property manager to meet its obligations under a federal plan to cut back on office space.

In support of the plan, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) chose to release 10.5 floors at 300 Slater Street and 1.5 floors at 180 Kent Street back to Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC).

IRCC confirmed it completed the full release by the end of January.

But a few months later, the department had to delay the start of the government-wide four-day return-to-office mandate for most public servants because it didn’t have enough space to fit them.

The documents provide a glimpse into the internal gymnastics happening behind the scenes as federal departments attempt to bring workers back into the office more often, after trying for years to cut back on space.