Should Citizenship Be For Sale?

2019/06/04 Leave a comment

While this article has a good discussion of citizenship approaches, I am not convinced by his closing arguments that “citizenship for sale” doesn’t matter, as Canada’s experience with various immigrant-investor program attests:

As the Investment Migration Council prepares to gather in Geneva for its annual Forum, it is worth inquiring into the legitimacy of the burgeoning industry of investment migration. Given that the idea relates primarily to some of the world’s wealthiest people, some have been skeptical. But is it wrong to sell citizenship to high bidders? An answer requires an exploration of what citizenship is.

We tend to think of citizenship in either mundane or exalted terms. In everyday parlance, citizenship simply refers to the country whose passport one carries. The more exalted notion goes back to the ancient Greeks, who regarded citizenship as forming the basis of civilized life. Citizens took turns ruling and being ruled.

More recently, citizenship has been understood as a gateway to various kinds of rights—civil rights (equality before the law), political rights (the vote), and social rights (education, social insurance, and social services). The political philosopher Hannah Arendt famously called citizenship “the right to have rights.”

But how does one acquire citizenship? Aristotle noted more than 2000 years ago that there were two principal methods: by descent from citizen parents and by birth on the soil of a given country. But it is important to note that the acquisition of citizenship is generally a mere accident of birth. In that sense, it is out of step with our modern notion that one’s status should be “achieved,” not “ascribed.” Citizenship is thus a deeply illiberal institution; it rewards some and punishes others on the arbitrary basis of where or to whom they were born.

Of course, there is a third route to citizenship: naturalization. Most of the debate about citizenship revolves around this path, because it is the only one that involves choice–on the part of both the individuals and the countries in question.

Countries must first determine who among non-citizens they are prepared to allow in. Most developed countries have shifted from privileging ethnic, racial, or family connections in their immigration policies to schemes that give preference to those with desired skills who can be expected to contribute to the economy. For example, Canada has a “points system” that determines whether a large share of would-be immigrants will be admitted into the country. The United States is an outlier in that it still gives about two-thirds of its immigration visas to family members of people already in the country.

Once the matter of who is allowed in is resolved, there is the question of who is allowed to naturalize and become a citizen. Typically, a minimum period of residency is required. Some countries also require knowledge of a dominant language, of the country’s political system, or of its culture. A country may offer a “fast track” to citizenship for those who perform military service. Finally, some countries offer the opportunity to naturalize to those who agree to invest in the target country. They would normally commit to investing a certain amount of money and/or to creating a certain number of jobs over a specified period of time. This is the so-called “investment migration” on which the meeting in Geneva focuses.

Such a scheme gives those with lots of money an unearned advantage over other would-be immigrants. And immigrants-by-investment may not feel much obligation to the country whose citizenship they buy. But then natives of a country may not do much to fulfill what we may think of as the obligations of citizenship, either.

Native-born citizens may not vote, for example. The United States does not require people to vote, and only 55% of eligible voters cast ballots in the historic 2016 presidential contest. Voting is thus more of a privilege than a duty of citizenship. As a result, some countries (such as Australia) may require citizens to vote on pain of a fine, but not all countries with compulsory voting laws actually enforce those laws.

Then there’s military service. The notion of the “citizen-soldier” has long been seen as close to the heart of what it means to be a citizen. But in the post-World War II period, many of the world’s wealthiest countries have abandoned conscription in favor of professional militaries. The citizen-soldier model has also declined in favor of techniques of warfare involving few warriors—the rise of special operations, the use of remotely-piloted drones, autonomous weapons, and the like.

Finally, citizens must pay taxes. But all workers, insofar as their economic activities are captured by the government, must pay taxes as well. In economic terms, presence on the territory is more significant than citizenship when it comes to tax obligations. In the United States, illegal immigrants pay substantial amounts of taxes every year; they even pay some $15 billion per year into Social Security, despite being ineligible for Social Security themselves. So immigrants often subsidize the native-born citizen population, even if they are in the country illegally.

Against this balance sheet, it’s not easy to see why investment migration should be regarded as a major problem. It has, to be sure, been used in small, poorer countries as a way to boost their economies without truly developing them. And there have been cases of fraud. But there’s plenty of that among native-born populations as well. Immigration and citizenship policies are part and parcel of a country’s broader array of concerns and tools regarding the well-being of its population.

What’s missing is the traditional concern with common citizenship—the institutionalized commitment to promoting a shared community of fate. With military service declining as an avenue for demonstrating such solidarity, it may be time to pay more attention to ideas regarding national service. Those have in the past done much to help sustain a sense of common membership, and they could do more in the future.

Source: Should Citizenship Be For Sale?

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They Know That America Isn’t Great

2019/06/03 Leave a comment

Sharp commentary on the ongoing and deepening citizenship census question scandal:

The president may be a fool, but that doesn’t make him an ineffective racist. That would presuppose that it takes great talent to be good at hating people and furthering that hatred through policy. Donald Trump is quite adept at finding America’s weaknesses, a trait he shares with the Russians who helped him win the election. Both his White House and the Kremlin know just where to look first: America’s persistent racism. It is always easier to find holes in the boat and to punch new ones, than to devise methods for plugging them and keeping everything afloat.

One such weakness is the Census, which this administration has sought to weaponize as an undocumented immigrant address book for ICE and, as a consequence, a way to erode Hispanic and Latinx influence at the ballot box. We knew that the Trump administration’s proposed citizenship question for the 2020 Census was racist. But the ACLU revealed Thursday new proof that the question, which the group is now challenging before the Supreme Court, was explicitly crafted with the purpose of helping white people become more politically powerful.

Most everything Republicans do is to protect their power these days, and virtually all of them are white, so this isn’t a difficult calculus. Intent isn’t required for a racist act, but there still was plenty here. Thomas Hofeller — the late Republican strategist with a special talent for shaping racially discriminatory districts in places like North Carolina — “played a significant role in orchestrating the addition of the citizenship question to the 2020 Decennial Census” before his death last summer and intended to shape the citizenship question “in order to create a structural electoral advantage for, in his own words, ‘Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites.’” Hofeller also added that it “would clearly be a disadvantage for the Democrats” and successfully predicted that implementing the question would “provoke a high degree of resistance from Democrats and the major minority groups in the nation.”

The administration also had the nerve to offer false justification for the citizenship question. In testimony before Congress in the spring of 2018, Ross insisted that the question’s intent was to enforce the 1965 Voting Rights Act — which, of course, prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It says a lot that the Trump administration sees these ramparts of our civil-rights infrastructure as devices to exploit.

The mechanism for diluting that power is simple: intimidation. A citizenship question introduces chaos into the Census, which counts everyone in the nation regardless of naturalization or immigration status. Since its possibility first arose in late 2017, experts have speculated that such a question would discourage participation in Hispanic and Latinx communities, so much so that people may not even open the door for Census takers. Why not? Why would they when they have every right to suspect that the Trump administration has weaponized the survey to use as an address book for ICE, allowing them to review the Census as a collection list for any and all undocumented people with the gumption to respond?

So, the administration appears to think it can erase people unlikely to vote Republican either by deporting them or by discouraging their responses. That includes the folks who may be citizens or are otherwise here legally, but may have mixed-status families and don’t feel that in this political climate, they can even open the door for a U.S. Census taker. They’re erased, too

Thirteen Democratic Senators, including five of their current presidential contenders, sent a letter Friday requesting the inspectors general of the Justice and Commerce Departments to investigate the ACLU’s findings. They want to know why the administration hid Hofeller’s participation from the public, thereby obscuring the rather obvious “impermissible racial and partisan motivations” for adding the question in the first place.

As if to put an exclamation point upon this, Trump imposed a 5-percent tariff effective June 10 upon all goods imported from Mexico that he plans to escalate until authorities in that country stop migrants from crossing our southern border (even, presumably, if they are not Mexican and are doing so to engage in the legal process of seeking asylum). To boil down the stupidity of this: the president, by fiat and without the approval of Congress, said he will impose a tax on the American people so as to discourage them from from buying products imported from Mexico. He will double this tax to 10 percent on July 1 unless the migration flow “is alleviated through effective actions taken by Mexico.”

This speaks to a more inherent American flaw that the ACLU is trying to correct with their challenge before the highest court. “I think this is bigger than voting rights or the Census,” Ho tells me. “It goes to whether, in the Trump era, we will have a federal government that is accountable to the courts, and ultimately, to the public. The administration is saying it’s doing something for one reason, while we all know that it’s doing it for the exact opposite reason — and if we are powerless to stop it, then we really have reached an Orwellian moment.”

Americans would do well to understand that, especially right now. Democrats, in particular. They have a primary frontrunner in Joe Biden who is campaigning (to the extent that he is at all) as if he has a flux capacitor in his DeLorean, promising to take voters back to a time before Trump, when apparently Republicans confirmed Merrick Garland and weren’t birthers and all was well. I hope he takes a cue from some of his competitors—folks like Kamala Harris, who proposed an abortion-rights law based upon that same Voting Rights Act, including federal preclearance for states who restrict reproductive access; or Elizabeth Warren, who called for Congress to pass a measure allowing for a president to be indictable.

Whoever is planning to replace this president has to not just plan for the considerable triage ahead. They have to fully understand that the America they want to lead into the future has a lot of structural weaknesses that are due purely to the consistent refusal of its powerbrokers to rid it of the identity-based inequities that have provided white men unearned advantages since day one of the republic.

Democrats, no matter how much they wish to sell the halcyon days of the Obama years or wish away the trauma of the present, cannot ignore the horror of that reality. Trump is showing it to them unvarnished. He is exposing every hole in the boat and punching out new ones every day. Any true patriot would understand that the kind of racism like what we see at work in the Census citizenship question is not what makes America great. It is sabotage.

Source: They Know That America Isn’t Great

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Republican operative was behind U.S. census citizenship question: filing

2019/06/01 Leave a comment

Why I am not surprised:

The Trump administration concealed evidence that its proposal to add a question about citizenship to the 2020 U.S. census was intended to help Republicans draw favorable electoral maps, according to immigrant advocacy groups that sued the administration over the question last year.

In a filing in Manhattan federal court on Thursday, the groups said that the administration hid the fact during the course of the lawsuit that went to trial last year that Thomas Hofeller, a longtime Republican specialist on drawing electoral districts, played a “significant role” in planning the citizenship question.

The conservative-majority Supreme Court is due to issue a final ruling by the end of June on whether the question can be added in time for next year’s census.

The challengers notified the high court about the new documents in a letter filed at the court on Thursday afternoon. They did not ask the Supreme Court to take any specific action.

The plaintiffs, which include the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee and Make The Road New York, learned of Hofeller’s role after his files came to light in separate litigation in North Carolina in which Republican-drawn electoral districts are being challenged.

A Justice Department representative said the allegations were a “last-ditch effort to derail the Supreme Court’s consideration of this case.”

“The Department looks forward to responding in greater detail to these baseless accusations in its filing on Monday,” the person said.

Manhattan-based U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman blocked the question’s inclusion following the trial, but the Supreme Court appeared poised to overturn that ruling at April’s oral argument.

According to Thursday’s filing, Hofeller concluded in a 2015 study that asking census respondents whether they are U.S. citizens “would clearly be a disadvantage to the Democrats” and “advantageous to Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites” in redistricting.

Hofeller went on to ghostwrite a draft letter from the U.S. Department of Justice to the Department of Commerce, asking for a citizenship question on the grounds it would help enforce voting rights, according to the plaintiffs.

The plaintiffs, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, said that administration officials gave false testimony about the origin of the question during the lawsuit, and have asked Furman to consider imposing unspecified sanctions against them.

Furman has scheduled a hearing on the request for June 5.

Reuters reported in April that the Trump administration believed its citizenship question could help Republicans in elections by enabling states to draw electoral maps based only on citizen population, rather than total population.

Opponents have said a citizenship question would cause a sizeable undercount by deterring immigrant households and Latinos from filling out the census forms, out of fear the information would be shared with law enforcement. That would, they argue, cost Democratic-leaning areas electoral representation in Congress and federal aid, benefiting President Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans and Republican-leaning parts of the country.

Source: Republican operative was behind U.S. census citizenship question: filing

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Danish Prime Minister’s Son’s Girlfriend Causes Immigration Debate

2019/05/25 Leave a comment

Examples such as this, particularly with respect to Europeans, Americans and others of European ancestry, illustrate that policies targeted to visible minority immigrants and citizens, also impact on those not deemed to be a “problem:”

The son of Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen has been tripped up by the country’s strict immigration laws, which will force his Harvard-educated American girlfriend to leave Denmark by the end of this month.

The development thrusts immigration policy into the spotlight as Danes prepare to vote in national elections on June 5. Rasmussen, 55, leads a center-right minority coalition that rules with the support of the anti-immigration Danish People’s Party. Last week, he stunned the country’s political establishment by announcing he would rather abandon some of his traditional supporters on the far right than let their “extreme opinions” influence his politics.

In a debate broadcast by TV2 on Sunday evening, Rasmussen said that his 29-year-old son, Bergur, is being forced to split temporarily with his girlfriend, because she’s too young to seek residence under Danish immigration laws.

The young woman, whose name and precise age weren’t revealed, is under 24 and therefore not eligible to remain in Denmark following the 2002 passage of a law that was intended to stop residents, particularly from non-Western countries, from bringing in child brides. It’s since become a key plank in the country’s broader efforts to stem immigration. A student at Harvard University, she’s been in Denmark as part of her studies, Rasmussen said.

In response, Mette Frederiksen, head of the opposition Social Democrats, said the rule carries “a price” and rejected efforts to soften it. Most polls show Frederiksen, who has embraced tough immigration policies since taking over her party, will win next month’s election.

Meanwhile, the prime minister said he backs a revision of the Schengen agreement, so that the current arrangement enabling passport-free travel across Europe is tightened. Rasmussen told TV2 that Denmark “needs to look after our borders, and that’s why we need to develop a new Schengen regime that gives us more political autonomy over our own borders.”

After 2015, when the Syrian refugee crisis hit, Denmark introduced a series of temporary border controls. Rasmussen’s Liberal Party now wants Europe to consider allowing member states to make such controls permanent.

Source: Danish Prime Minister’s Son’s Girlfriend Causes Immigration Debate

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Bollywood actor who campaigned for Stephen Harper was granted Canadian citizenship by Conservative government

2019/05/23 Leave a comment

Undermines some of the language used to describe citizenship:

But I can tell you – as someone who attends quite a few more Citizenship Ceremonies than do most people – I have never met a single newcomer to Canada who fails to appreciate how precious and how meaningful it is to be a citizen of this free, democratic and diverse country.

Courageous, dedicated, and hard-working people come from all over the world to Canada. They make enormous personal and family sacrifices to obtain citizenship and to earn the opportunity to contribute to our society and our economy. (Jason Kenney on citizenship residence fraud issues, 9 December 2011)

It would be of interest to do a study of individuals who have been granted this “fast-track” citizenship, without meeting the basic requirements (I am aware it has been awarded to Olympians given their training schedules make it difficult to meet the residency requirements). Unlikely, however, that IRCC could provide the data, given privacy concerns.

Doesn’t pass the smell test:

In the thick of the 2011 federal election, Stephen Harper appeared in the Indo-Canadian heartland of Ontario with a ringer.

At a campaign stop in Brampton, Bollywood mega-star Akshay Kumar praised the then prime minister, danced on stage with his wife, Laureen Harper, and thrilled the audience.

It’s unclear if Kumar’s stumping had any impact on voters, but a few weeks later the Conservatives swept every riding in Brampton and nearby Mississauga that has a large south Asian population.

And at some point, the Harper government invoked a little-known law to grant the actor Canadian citizenship, circumventing the usual, stringent residency requirements for would-be Canadians, says a former Conservative cabinet minister.

That Canadian passport recently caused a commotion in Kumar’s native India, where he has fashioned himself as an Indian patriot – and promoted nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the election that just ended.

But the way he became a Canadian raises questions about his participation in this country’s politics, too.

MP Tony Clement, who as industry minister met with Kumar in Mumbai, says the citizenship grant was just a thank you for the actor’s help in promoting Canadian tourism and trade to a huge emerging economy – not a reward for partisan support.

“Basically, he had offered to put that star power to use to advance Canada-India relations, our trade relations, our commercial relations, in the movie sector, in the tourism sector,” said Clement. “He earned it … He has a great attachment to Canada as well as India, so he was doing all this free work.”

But at least one critic of the citizenship system said Tuesday he is appalled by the gesture, especially since countless people with far deeper roots in Canada have struggled for years to gain citizenship.

“This is so unjust,” said Don Chapman, a U.S.-based airline pilot who has made “lost Canadians” a life-long cause, even authoring a book on the topic. “Why was Harper denying us and accepting him? … I think it was, pure and simple, ‘You campaign for me, I’ll get you in’.”

Representatives for Harper and Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, who was federal immigration minister at the time, did not respond to requests for comment.

Kumar first attracted controversy last month when he conducted a lengthy, televised interview with Modi that was criticized as little more than campaign propaganda.

“I think it was, pure and simple, ‘You campaign for me, I’ll get you in’.”

Then under pressure he admitted he had obtained Canadian citizenship several years ago, an act that would require him to relinquish his Indian nationality. Kumar said he hasn’t stepped foot in Canada for seven years and pays all his taxes in India.

Many members of the Indian elite obtain foreign passports, allowing them to travel the world more widely, says Chinnaiah Jangam, a Carleton University history professor.

In Canada, people born in other countries to non-Canadian parents typically have to first be accepted as permanent residents and live here for three of the previous five years before they can apply to be citizens.

But under section 5 of the Citizenship Act(4) , the minister can grant the privilege at his or her discretion in cases of statelessness or unusual hardship, or “to reward services of an exceptional value to Canada.”

Kumar did, in fact, provide such services to Canada, as an official ambassador of the Canadian Tourism Commission – now called Destination Canada – and in other roles that included carrying the Olympic flame through Toronto in 2009, said Clement.

“It became bedlam and mayhem as like 10,000 people showed up to watch him jog the flame into Toronto,” he recalled. “He’s been a great friend to Canada and certainly promoted Canada-India relations when we were in power.”

But Chapman said giving Kumar a passport was simply not fair. He said he’s worked with numerous people who have lived much, or all, of their lives in Canada and been repeatedly denied citizenship, often because of arcane aspects of the federal legislation. They include Second World War veterans classified as British citizens, and crooner Robert Goulet, whose parents were Canadian and who lived in this country from age 13 until his early 20s.

“I feel Canadian,” Goulet said in 2006. “I tried to become a citizen for a long time but the red tape is going to drive me nuts … It’s always the red tape.”

He died a year later aged 73 and, said Chapman, still had not obtained that passport.

Source: Bollywood actor who campaigned for Stephen Harper was granted citizenship by Conservative government

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Companies That Rely On US Census Data Worry Citizenship Question Will Hurt

2019/05/21 Leave a comment

Same issues arose from the Canadian business community with respect to the 2011 National Household Survey, given the adverse impact on demographic and other data, particularly in smaller geographic areas:

Some critics of the citizenship question the Trump administration wants to add to the 2020 census are coming from a group that tends to stay away from politically heated issues — business leaders.

From longtime corporations like Levi Strauss & Co. to upstarts like Warby Parker, some companies say that including the question — “Is this person a citizen of the United States?” — could harm not only next year’s national head count, but also their bottom line.

How governments use census data is a common refrain in the lead-up to a constitutionally mandated head count of every person living in the U.S. The new population counts, gathered once a decade, are used to determine how congressional seats and Electoral College votes are distributed among the states. They also guide how hundreds of billions in federal tax dollars are spread around the country to fund public services.

What is often less visible is how the census data undergird decisions made by large and small businesses across the country. The demographic information the census collects — including the age, sex, race, ethnicity and housing status of all U.S. residents — informs business owners about who their existing and future customers are, which new products and services those markets may want and where to build new locations.

Weeks before the Supreme Court heard oral arguments over the citizenship question last month, more than two dozen companies and business groups filed a friend-of-the-court brief against the question. Its potential impact on the accuracy of census data, especially about immigrants and people of color, is drawing concern from both Lyft and Uber, as well as Levi Strauss, Warby Parker and Univision.

“We don’t view this as a political situation at all,” says Christine Pierce, the senior vice president of data science at Nielsen — a major data analytics company in the business world that filed its own brief with the high court. “We see this as one that is around sound research and good science.”

Next year, the Trump administration wants to use the census to ask about the citizenship status of every person in every household in the country through a question approved by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who oversees the Census Bureau. The collected responses, the administration maintains, would be used to better enforce Voting Rights Act protections against discrimination of racial and language minorities.

Researchers at the Census Bureau, however, recommended against adding a question, which they said would produce citizenship information that’s less accurate and more expensive than existing government data. The question could bump up the cost of the 2020 census by at least $121 million, according to the bureau’s latest estimates.

Three federal judges have issued orders blocking the question, and the issue is now before the U.S. Supreme Court. The justices are expected to issue their ruling by the end of June.

“No substitute for a good census”

In the meantime, Nielsen and other companies are pushing back against the administration’s efforts.

Pierce says asking about a topic as sensitive as a person’s citizenship status is likely to discourage some people from participating in the head count. It’s also important, she adds, to test changes to a survey before implementing them.

The Census Bureau had not conducted a field test of a 2020 census form with a citizenship question before Ross decided to include the question.

Pierce emphasized these points last year in an affidavit for the New York-based lawsuits over the citizenship question. Through the court filing, she testified that Ross mischaracterized comments she made in a phone conversation they had that was later cited in Ross’ memo announcing his decision to add the question.

“If there is an undercount, that could carry through to our audience estimates and could mean that people will make decisions based on data that isn’t as accurate as it should be,” Pierce says, referring to the TV ratings that Nielsen produces using census data.

That data, Nielsen estimates, are tied to $90 billion in TV and video advertising.

“There’s just no substitute for a good census and having that count be as thorough as possible,” Pierce says.

Data that affect “our day-to-day lives”

The ride-hailing app Lyft is worried that an inaccurate census could mean that some communities may not get their fair share in federal funding for roads and public transportation over the next 10 years.

“That is a direct impact on our business because it means that those roads will end up being more clogged up and those people will have a harder time getting around,” says Anthony Foxx, a former U.S. secretary of transportation during the Obama administration who now serves as Lyft’s chief policy officer.

“This data that comes out of the census is not just some bureaucratic government data that sits in a vault somewhere that no one sees. It’s actually data that affects our day-to-day lives,” says Jessica Herrera-Flanigan, Univision’s executive vice president of government and corporate affairs.

Census Bureau research suggests including the question would discourage Latinos and Latinas from responding. Herrera-Flanigan is concerned that could lead to an undercount of Latinx residents.

“It’s a big lift”

Still, Univision is planning to talk up next year’s census on its TV programs. The children’s talent show Pequeños Gigantes recently featured a segment with kids attempting to explain what a census is.

“Regardless of what happens in the courts, we are going to be pushing people to know about the importance of the census and actually do it,” Herrera-Flanigan says. “It’s a big lift.”

It’s also tricky ground for businesses to navigate — especially after President Trump has tweeted his support of the citizenship question.

“The American people deserve to know who is in this Country,” Trump tweeted the day after the Supreme Court hearing.

At a public meeting earlier this month, Census Bureau official Burton Reist noted the bureau is running into hurdles trying to recruit businesses to promote the census.

“We had a meeting with McDonald’s, but that was a year ago. And we’ve had a hard time getting anything to come from it,” he explained to members of the bureau’s National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic and Other Populations.

In response, Arturo Vargas — who leads the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund, a member of the committee — said business leaders have told him they’re reluctant to promote a census that has become so “politicized” by the Commerce Department’s efforts to get a citizenship question added.

“This is now something that, even though it’s such a fundamental aspect of our democracy, that they themselves are not willing to be associated with something that is so controversial now,” Vargas said.

Reist said, so far, a promotional partnership is “underway” between the bureau and the J.M. Smucker Company.

NPR has confirmed the bureau is also in discussions with Procter & Gamble, the company behind Pampers, Luvs and other brands.

Since speaking with the bureau early last year, McDonald’s has “not made any decisions on this at this time,” a spokesperson for the company, Lauren Altmin, said in an email.

Source: Companies That Rely On Census Data Worry Citizenship Question Will Hurt

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Revamped citizenship guide still a work in progress as election nears

2019/05/20 Leave a comment

The government clearly dropped the ball on the revised citizenship guide as it is now too close to the election to be released without it being perceived as overtly political. The current guide, Discover Canada, also has a political aspect to some of its messaging.

The delay also means not fulfilling the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s recommendation 93:

“We call upon the federal government, in collaboration with the national Aboriginal organizations, to revise the information kit for newcomers to Canada and its citizenship test to reflect a more inclusive history of the diverse Aboriginal peoples of Canada, including call upon the officials and host countries of information about the Treaties and the history of residential schools.”

The other related TRC recommendation 94, calling for a change in the oath to add “including Treaties with Indigenous Peoples” has also been missed by the government (while including the change in an omnibus budget bill would be highly inappropriate, hard to see how this would be anymore inappropriate to other measures included in the recent budget):

A promised overhaul of Canada’s citizenship guide remains a work in progress with just months left in the Liberal government’s mandate.

That leaves newcomers to the country with the existing guide — which is riddled with historical gaps and outdated information — as their primary document for preparing for the citizenship test.

The government is revamping the 68-page Discover Canada document, last updated in 2012, to better reflect diversity and to include more “meaningful content” about the history and rights of Indigenous people and the residential school experience.

With just five months to go before the federal election, a spokesman for Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen said a launch date still has not been set and offered no specific explanation for the delay.

“We are committed to getting the citizenship guide right, and that includes consulting with as many stakeholders [as possible] on the proposed changes. This work is ongoing,” said Mathieu Genest. “We are listening to experts, stakeholders and community representatives, because what we want to do is take the politics out of the guide.”

Janet Dench, executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees, said it’s “incomprehensible” that the guide is taking this long to roll out.

“Our major concern is that newcomers be presented with a fair and balanced picture of Canada that acknowledges the problems in Canadian and current reality, and how that affects Indigenous people and racialized people. When we fail to provide an accurate picture of our country, it’s a disservice to the country as a whole as well as to the newcomers,” she said.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) had recommended revising information materials for newcomers and the citizenship test to reflect “a more inclusive history of the diverse Aboriginal peoples of Canada, including information about the treaties and the history of residential schools.”

Historical gaps, outdated information

Until the new guide is released, newcomers will have to use the existing guide to study for the citizenship test. It contains limited information on the legacy of residential schools, outdated information on things like population numbers and lyrics to the national anthem that have since been changed by Parliament to make them more gender-neutral.

Calling the delay “astounding,” NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan said it’s unacceptable that there’s still incorrect, outdated information in the guide.

“You want our newcomers to know the wording to our national anthem. It’s embarrassing to have in our citizenship guide this kind of misinformation,” she said.

Kwan said she is puzzled by the delay, given that MPs were consulted on it two years ago and an early draft was leaked last year to The Canadian Press.

“I certainly think that with the citizenship guide, we can take the opportunity to ensure that new Canadians, newcomers understand our history, the good, bad and the ugly, and … fully appreciate the history of Canada, most certainly around the issue of Indigenous people,” she said. “To give full recognition to that, I think, is very important.”

Plan was to release guide in 2017

A draft copy of the revised guide obtained by The Canadian Press showed a reference to the illegal practice of female genital mutilation had been dropped. CP also reported that the Liberals hoped to have the new guide in place for Canada’s 150th anniversary in 2017.

Last fall, CBC News reported that the updated citizenship guide would, in fact, include a warning to newcomers about female genital mutilation.

The issue had become politically charged, with Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel repeatedly pressing Hussen on the topic. She also sponsored an e-petition in the House of Commons on the matter.

Vancouver-based immigration lawyer Zool Suleman said the government likely thought the updating exercise would be easier than it turned out to be. He said the citizenship guide reflects the priorities and values of the government that writes it, and helps to define how people see the country.

Political tilt on focus

The previous Conservative government tilted the guide’s wording toward military history and rights and the responsibilities of citizenship, while the Liberal government appears to be inclined to explain Indigenous reconciliation and multiculturalism, Suleman said.

“Given that we have an election coming up, there’s probably a calculus about whether it’s worth releasing a new guide, which inevitably will make some people happy and other people unhappy,” he said.

Dory Jade, chief executive officer of the Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants, said he believes it’s better to take the time to get it right instead of rushing it for political reasons.

“I personally believe the bureaucratic machine requires more time to do such a job and the government did not foresee that in their promise,” he said, noting that the Conservative government also took a long time to finish its update.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said the revamp is focused on several key areas:

  • Responding to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s call for language that better reflects the perspectives and history of Indigenous peoples of Canada.
  • Showcasing Canada’s cultural diversity and commitment to official languages.
  • Presenting the social evolution of civic rights and freedoms for LGBT, women and people with disabilities.
  • Using language that is more accessible for second-language learners and structuring the document so the newcomer can more easily identify the main points of each chapter.

The government has also pledged to update materials for newcomers and to amend the oath of citizenship to reflect respect for Indigenous rights. That change to the citizenship oath was also recommended by the TRC and included in Hussen’s Feb. 1, 2017 mandate letter.

Those initiatives are also still ongoing, according to Hussen’s office.

Source: Revamped citizenship guide still a work in progress as election nears

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Colby Cosh: Vancouver’s birth-tourism issue could soon become Ottawa’s problem

2019/05/20 Leave a comment

More on birth tourism and good summary of some of the issues involved.

Will remain to see if the Conservatives decide to address the issue or not in their election platform or one of Andrew Scheer’s policy speeches beyond his earlier policy statement (SCHEER STATEMENT ON BIRTH TOURISM | Press & Media, “ending birth tourism will be among the objectives of our policy”):

It would be faintly ludicrous to suggest children born in Canada to mere visitors cannot have their entitlement to auto-magical citizenship compromised or questioned

Is birthright citizenship doomed in Canada? An omen appeared in Friday morning’s Vancouver Sun: B.C. Liberal MLA Jas Johal did some research and presented the paper with a number of examples of online advertising from Chinese websites that tout the benefits of intentionally delivering an anchor baby on Canadian soil.

The ads suggest that brokers are offering “one-stop shopping” for pregnant women: they promise to set up housing, transportation, and perinatal care, all so that the blessed event itself can happen in a comfortable, clean, high-quality Canadian hospital. This gives your child the golden ticket of Canadian citizenship — coming as it does with access to superior Canadian education, Canadian welfare and social insurance, and widespread visa-free international travel.

In turn, your Canadian infant can one day serve as your own access point for Canada’s family-reunification immigration stream. Or you may set your eyes on higher vistas: one ad says enticingly that “Canadian passports mean immigration to the U.S.” (The Sun says that it checked Johal’s translations from the Chinese.)

Last year there was a controversy over birth tourism when the Conservatives voted at their annual convention to eliminate automatic citizenship for the children of non-citizens born in Canada. This policy plank was contentious at the time, and the Conservatives were denounced for even discussing the issue. Nobody, of course, was willing to defend birth tourism as such. You would have to be a pretty extreme advocate of open borders to say, on being presented with Chinese ads for birth-tourism brokers, that these are legitimate businesses serving a noble purpose to the benefit of Canada. (Although it might be true!)

The complaint against the Conservatives was not that automatic “jus soli” citizenship for everybody born here makes sense as an eternal, universal principle, but that birth tourism just doesn’t happen enough to be a problem. The question now being raised — the question that Johal’s folder of ads is likely to emphasize — is whether anybody was really bothering to check.

In November, Andrew Griffith, a former senior bureaucrat in the federal Citizenship and Immigration department, did some research using hospital finance statistics from the Canadian Institution for Health Information (CIHI). Griffith found that the numbers of non-residents giving birth in Canadian hospitals was growing, that they are approaching 10 per cent of all births at a few urban hospitals, and that for one enormous outlier they are twice that. And, surprise! The outlier is the Richmond Hospital in Richmond, B.C.

These numbers are still not enormous (against a national background), and they include some births that obviously are not “tourism,” within families that are in Canada for study or business. Nonetheless, it is hard to imagine a non-tourism explanation for the patterns Griffith found. The situation at the Richmond Hospital had already been noticed locally, and had become a pet issue of local Liberal MP Joe Peschisolido.

Johal challenged B.C.’s health minister, the former provincial NDP leader Adrian Dix, on birth tourism in a legislature committee this week. Dix did not give the natural New Democrat answer that jus soli citizenship is sacred. He said he was concerned about the tourism issue, that he doesn’t support or favour birth tourism, and that only Ottawa can do something about it — “if they want to act.”

This does not sound to me like an issue that is likely to remain confined to B.C. in the long run, or to be easy for the federal Liberals to deflect if it emerges. It is hard to imagine the provinces being able to limit birth tourism at the hospital level: a woman standing in a Canadian emergency room in a pool of amniotic fluid is going to receive care whatever her own citizenship or other bona fides are. Preventing anchor-baby births by means of the visa process, Griffith acknowledges, “would be virtually impossible.” The humane solution to the problem, if it is a problem, must involve putting new restrictions on birthright citizenship.

Canada’s constitution does not specify automatic jus soli citizenship, explicitly or otherwise. The enterprising gadfly lawyer Rocco Galati tried to argue the opposite in a case that reached the Federal Court in 2015, and he got his head handed to him by Justice Donald Rennie, who piled up eons of British and Canadian law and concluded that “Nationality and citizenship are entirely statutory constructs.” Canada has tinkered with the rules concerning the children of its citizens born abroad several times, and now restricts “jus sanguinis” (inherited citizenship) to one generation in most cases.

It would be faintly ludicrous to suggest that we can make such a change affecting persons descended solely from undoubted Canadian citizens, but that children born in Canada to mere visitors cannot have their entitlement to auto-magical citizenship compromised or questioned. I sense, however, that making exactly this argument will be the initial instinct of a Trudeau government, if it comes to that.

Source: Colby Cosh: Vancouver’s birth-tourism issue could soon become Ottawa’s problem 

Filed under Birth Tourism, Birthright Citizenship, Citizenship Tagged with , ,

Ads promote Canada’s benefits to would-be birth tourists

2019/05/18 Leave a comment

More on birth tourism and the related “industry:”

Ads urging women to come to Canada to give birth tout the value of providing their child with Canadian citizenship.

“Go to Canada to vacation and give birth to a child,” says one online ad targeting Mainland Chinese mothers. “U.S. rejected your visa? No problem! In fact, Canada is better!”

Ads tell women that going to Canada for automatic citizenship is a “gift” for their babies since their children will be able to get free education, cheap university tuition and student loans, according to translations provided by Liberal MLA Jas Johal and verified by Postmedia.

Under Canadian law, a child born in this country is entitled to Canadian citizenship.

The ads are being run by brokers offering “one-stop shopping” for women, with offers to put together packages including transportation, housing, meals, contracts, pre- and postnatal medical appointments, shopping and checking in at hospitals. The ads generally do not mention the broker’s fees.

Some of the ads tell women their offspring can sponsor their parents under family reunification plans once they are adults: “You want to retire in Canada, but you don’t meet the requirements?” asks one such online ad. “You can give birth to your child in Canada. When your child turns 18, your child can apply for the parents.”

Ads tout monthly government subsidies, Canadians’ visa-free entry to 200 countries, unemployment benefits, and that “Canadian passports mean immigration to the U.S.,” Johal said.

Others say birth tourism is ideal for people who “care about their children’s education.”

And in a reference to China’s long-standing policy that limits most couples to a single child, some of the ads suggest birth tourism is ideal for “people who would like to have several kids.

Johal, the Richmond-Queensborough MLA, said birth tourism offends a large proportion of his constituents who want the practice banned. And Health Minister Adrian Dix is looking for Ottawa to take a stand on the issue.

Johal said the latest numbers of births by non-residents, reported by Postmedia, are a wake-up call to all levels of government. There was a 24 per cent increase in births by non-resident mothers in B.C., to 837 babies in 2017-18.

“At its core, birth tourism debases the meaning of citizenship,” Johal said. “As a son of immigrants, and an immigrant to this country, let there be no doubt those of us who have come emigrated to Canada by following the rules are the ones who are most offended by this practice.”

Johal finds the content of many of the ads downright offensive: “When you come to this country and strive and sacrifice, you strengthen this country and the value of Canadian citizenship. Allowing affluent foreigners to essentially purchase a passport is not what this country is about.”

In a legislature committee this week, Johal asked Dix about birth tourism. Dix acknowledged his concerns about the growing numbers of foreign women coming to B.C. to have babies.

“I don’t agree with it. I don’t support it,” Dix stated. But it’s an issue, he said, that comes under federal jurisdiction since it’s a citizenship and immigration matter.

“I mean it’s time, if they want to act, that they should act,” he said of the federal Liberals. “Or alternatively, say they don’t want to act.”

Birth tourism is expected to become a federal election issue this fall.

The Conservatives want the law changed so that one parent must either be a landed immigrant or a Canadian citizen before a baby can gain citizenship.

Postmedia asked the federal immigration minister for comment about birth tourism and any possible changes to policies. But a spokeswoman said the federal government can’t “speculate” on that.

Nancy Caron, a spokeswoman for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, said the birth-on-soil policy for citizenship has existed since 1947.

The 2019 federal budget has allocated $51.9 million over five years to improve oversight of immigration advisers, including those who deal with birth tourists. Some of the funds will be used to ensure that they aren’t telling women to misrepresent the purpose of their visitor visas.

Mathieu Genest, press secretary to Ahmed Hussen, minister of immigration, refugees and citizenship, said that the Conservatives had once proposed ending the citizenship-on-soil policy but that was “roundly rejected by Canadians.” Now the Conservatives have “backtracked” on their policy, he said.

Source: Ads promote Canada’s benefits to would-be birth tourists

Filed under Birth Tourism, Birthright Citizenship, Citizenship Tagged with ,

Immigrant service members are now denied US citizenship at a higher rate than civilians

2019/05/17 Leave a comment

Another illustration of the effects of the Trump administration hard-line immigration policies and practices:

Immigrants serving in the U.S. military are being denied citizenship at a higher rate than foreign-born civilians, according to new government data that has revealed the impact of stricter Trump administration immigration policies on service members.

According to the same data, the actual number of service members even applying for U.S. citizenship has also plummeted since President Donald Trump took office, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services reported in its quarterly naturalization statistics.

“The U.S. has had a long-standing tradition of immigrants come to the U.S. and have military service provide a path to citizenship,” said retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, a senior adviser to the liberal veterans advocacy group VoteVets.org. “To have this turnaround, where they are actually taking a back seat to the civilian population, strikes me as a bizarre turn of events.”

According to the most recent USCIS data available, the agency denied 16.6% of military applications for citizenship, compared to an 11.2% civilian denial rate in the first quarter of fiscal year 2019, a period that covers October to December 2018.

The fiscal year 2019 data is the eighth quarterly report of military naturalization rates since Trump took office. In six of the last eight reports, civilians had a higher rate of approval for citizenship than military applicants did, reversing the previous trend.

Attorneys for service members seeking to become citizens said new military immigration policies announced by the administration in 2017 and Trump’s overall anti-immigrant rhetoric are to blame.

“I think people are disheartened right now by the immigration climate,” said Elizabeth Ricci, an attorney who is representing immigrant service members. “We talk about a wall all the time. This is an invisible wall.”

Overall, the number of service members who apply to become naturalized citizens is just a fraction of the civilian applications, but both pools have shrunk over the last two years. In the first quarter of the Trump administration, January to March 2017 — which is the second quarter of fiscal year 2017 — there were 3,069 foreign-born members of the military who applied to become naturalized citizens. That same quarter, 286,892 foreign-born civilians applied.

In the first quarter of fiscal year 2019, USCIS reported it received only 648 military applications for citizenship, a 79% drop. For comparison, the agency received 189,410 civilian applications, a 34% drop.

The Defense Department was repeatedly asked for comment by McClatchy, but did not provide a response.

USCIS officials said the drop in applications is not due to any action by their agency, which processes the applications as it receives them.

“The fall in military naturalization applications is likely attributable in significant part to the Department of Defense’s decision not to renew the Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest (MAVNI) program after its expiration at the end of FY17,” USCIS said in a statement.

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Immigrants who wish to join the U.S. military fall into three categories: legal permanent U.S. residents, commonly known as “green card” holders; foreign-born recruits with key medical or language skills who came to the United States under student, work or asylum visas and enlisted through MAVNI; and special status non-immigrant enlistees, who are residents of the Federated States of Micronesia, Republic of the Marshall Islands, and Palau.

The Trump administration in 2017 announced major changes to the way the Pentagon would vet and clear foreign-born recruits and other overall changes to when a service member would qualify for naturalization.

Immigrant enlistees previously could join basic training once a background investigation had been initiated, and they could become eligible to start seeking citizenship after one day of military service. Under the new policy, enlistees do not go to basic training until their background investigation is complete, and they have to complete basic training and 180 days of service before they can seek citizenship.

In the months that followed, the Defense Department shut down naturalization offices at some of its basic training locations, citing the new policy.

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Other changes appeared procedural but had deep impact, such as the change that only higher-ranking officers, at colonel or above, were authorized to sign key USCIS forms verifying that an enlistee had served honorably. The signatures had to be original, too, which made it much more difficult for troops in outlier areas where the nearest colonel or higher-ranking officer may be hundreds of miles away, Stock said.

The new rules had a chilling effect, military immigration attorneys said. Unit leaders who previously would have shepherded naturalization paperwork through for their service members have stopped doing so, the attorneys said.

“People are telling them ‘wait until you get to your first unit.’ When they get to the unit they are told, ‘we don’t know anything about this anymore,'” Stock said.

The lack of guidance in units for immigrant soldiers “is all intentional,” Ricci said. “It’s part of this overall culture of ‘No.'”

The new rules have left some recruits waiting for years to serve.

Army recruit Ajay Kumar Jaina, 33, came to the United States from India in 2012 on an H-1B visa to work for Veritas Healthcare Solutions. He has a master’s degree in pharmaceutical analysis and wanted to become a military pharmacist. In May 2016 he enlisted under MAVNI for his medical skills.

He’s been in a holding pattern ever since. In the almost three years he’s waited to go to basic training, he’s reported for duty for more than 20 weekends with the 445th Quartermaster Company in Trenton, New Jersey.

He goes to New Jersey knowing that he will be unable to drill with the rest of the unit because he has not yet undergone basic training since the Defense Department has not completed his background check.

So his activities on base are limited to administration and inventory roles.

“When I registered in the Army, at that time I was told my basic training location. I was told within six months my background check would be verified, and then I could go to basic and then (advanced individual training) then I could be come apply for citizenship,” Jaina said.

Jaina said no determination has been made on his background check yet. “Which is actually good!” he said. “I can wait. I can keep my hopes high.”

Jaina’s H-1B visa expires next month and he said he may have to go back to India in order to be able to return to the United States under a new visa as he continues to wait.

Eaton questioned why the Defense Department would make it more difficult to pull from eligible immigrant recruits, particularly in light of the recruiting challenges the military faces overall.

“Only 25% of the U.S. population is eligible to serve, due to academic, health or behavioral issues,” Eaton said.

Last year the Army missed its annual recruiting goal by more than 6,500 personnel. In a statement, the Army would not say whether the immigration policies had impacted its ability to recruit last year.

“Our leaders remain confident that we have laid the foundation to improve recruiting for the Army while maintaining an emphasis on quality over quantity,” the Army said.

Source: Immigrant service members are now denied US citizenship at a higher rate than civilians

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