UK urged to end unfair fees for child citizenship applicants

2019/04/08 Leave a comment

High fees are bad enough but good to see the Home Office called out over profiteering. At least in Canada, the fees were only increased for adults (quintupled), not for children:

The Home Office should consider scrapping controversial immigration fees charged to children from families who can’t afford it and refund profits made from failed citizenship applications, according to an official watchdog.

The call came as it emerged on Thursday that the Home Office is making a profit of £2m a month from charging children for citizenship, with about 40,000 estimated to be affected in the past year.

A report by the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration said the government should publish information on the negative social and equality impact of the Home Office’s fees policy, which is blamed for driving thousands of parents into overwork, debt and even skipping meals to save for the costs.

While welcoming David Bolt’s call for a full review of the process governing the waivers applied to some applications and for greater transparency around the decision-making process, charities pressed for an end to Home Office profiteering off immigration and citizenship applications.

The child citizenship charges were described as the Home Office’s new Windrush scandal in a letter to the Guardian signed by a range of charities including Coram, the Runnymede Trust, a number of headteachers and the community organising group Citizens UK.

The Home Office made £22m in 10 months by charging children who meet the strict eligibility citizenship criteria for processing documents, it was revealed by freedom of information requests from Citizens UK.

The cost of a citizenship application for a child is £1,012, while the cost of processing is just £372, meaning the Home Office makes an estimated £640 profit from each child application it receives.

Most of Bolt’s recommendations concerned the need to explain the calculations behind dramatic increases in Home Office fees, while other proposals focused on the effects on vulnerable individuals, including children.

The Home Office rejected two of Bolt’s recommendations. In response Bolt said he couldn’t understand why it was unable to launch a public consultation on charging for borders, immigration and citizenship system services in time to inform this year’s government spending review.

But Bolt said he was more concerned about the Home Office’s rejection of his call for a breakdown of how it calculated the part of the fee relating to how a successful applicant would benefit economically from British citizenship.

He added: “I am disappointed that the Home Office does not recognise this is a question of basic fairness, which should not have to wait on discussions with the Treasury about the department’s future funding.”

Fees for immigration and nationality applications have steadily risen since 2010 under the “hostile environment” policy, including in a round of changes last April. Cases have included a family who had to choose between paying for accommodation or saving money for Home Office fees. Another family, who have a disabled daughter, were last year still paying back the £7,000 they borrowed to pay the charges and said they feared losing their home.

Bolt’s call for a full review of how the process applies fee waivers for some poorer children, was “partially accepted” by the Home Office, which said it was in discussions about the issue.

A spokesperson said: “To reduce the burden on UK taxpayers, fee levels take into account the wider costs involved in running our border, immigration and citizenship system, so that those who directly benefit from it contribute to its funding. The home secretary has committed to keeping fees under review.

“However, we recognise that we have a duty to support the vulnerable. That is why we have fee waivers in place for those who need it most, including children and young people who have spent a significant amount of their life in the UK.”

The Home Office said it expected the 2019 spending review to influence its approach on fees, but added that it would “prioritise a system which is fair and reduces the burden on UK taxpayers”.

Minnie Rahman, public affairs and campaigns manager at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, said urgent action was needed to ensure people were not denied basic rights just because they can’t afford exorbitant fees.

“We see clients every day who are pushed into destitution while the Home Office makes up to 2000% profits on some applications,” she added.

“The impact on children who are unable to apply for citizenship because of the fees is particularly disturbing. The Home Office should not be profiteering off immigration and citizenship applications.”

Source: UK urged to end unfair fees for child citizenship applicants

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DHS Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen to Tucker Carlson: Getting Rid of Birthright Citizenship Is ‘on the Table’

2019/04/05 Leave a comment

Reality will eventually catch up with virtue signalling given the 14th amendment:

Hours after President Trump declared he would “100 percent” close America’s southern border if he can’t make a deal with Congress on border security and immigration, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told Fox News host Tucker Carlson that eliminating birthright citizenship is “on the table” as a way to stop the flow of undocumented immigrants and asylum-seeking migrants.

Nielsen, who recently requested additional resources from Congress as border officials aim to quadruple the number of deportations of asylum seekers, appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight Tuesday evening to discuss the influx of Central American migrants at the southern border, and Carlson immediately began grilling her about what the administration was doing to “fix this.”

At times, it even seemed as if the Fox News host might be gunning for Nielsen’s job as he bombarded her with his own proposed solutions to the border crisis.

What about punishing employers “who are setting the bait in this trap, who are encouraging illegal aliens to come into this country?” he asked. (Interestingly, the president’s own businesses allegedly employed numerous undocumented workers—until they were caught by the press.)

“That is part of the problem,” Nielsen said, adding that steps are already being taken to address just that issue. “We’re looking to do everything we can throughout the system to apply penalties where we can,” she said.

Carlson was not satisfied with that answer. “Well how bout this, why wouldn’t your agency write an executive order, present it to the president, have him sign it and do it tomorrow?”

Nielsen went on to argue that “there’s a debate in Congress” regarding the executive branch on implementing an order like that, prompting Carlson to blast Congress while advocating for more direct executive actions.

“It looks like Congress is not going to act because one party has a vested interest in changing the population and the other party is, in effect, controlled by people who want illegal immigration,” Carlson asserted. “So would there be a downside for the president to act unilaterally on that question or, for example, birthright citizenship? Would you be willing to draft an executive order eliminating birthright citizenship?”

The Homeland Security chief responded that Trump has been clear that it is “all on the table” and he’s serious about shutting down the border.

“Yes, everything is on the table,” she reiterated.

Carlson, after noting that “things seem less under control now” at the border than before Trump was elected, asked later in the interview if the administration would send the military to the border since “it’s really a crisis of that magnitude.”

Nielsen said they “are looking into that” and have sent a request to the Department of Defense, causing Carlson to ask who is in charge and if it would be possible for the commander-in-chief to move “troops to the border tomorrow.”

Source: DHS Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen to Tucker Carlson: Getting Rid of Birthright Citizenship Is ‘on the Table’

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‘Birth tourism’ case presents quandary for parents after break-up: to settle their custody dispute in Canada or China?

2019/04/04 Leave a comment

Another wrinkle when families fall apart:

In 2015, a Chinese couple expecting a child wanted their son to have Canadian citizenship. They arranged to give birth in Richmond, B.C.

What they didn’t anticipate was the legal and jurisdictional quagmire this “birth tourism” arrangement would create when they broke up. At issue: where to settle their custody dispute? In a Canadian courtroom or a Chinese one?

Their years-long court battle — at a time when some critics are pushing the federal government to do away with birthright citizenship altogether — was only settled recently when B.C.’s highest court upheld a ruling that the parent’s custody battle should be dealt with in China even though the boy, now 3, was born in Canada.

Alina Chekh, a Vancouver family lawyer who has been monitoring the case, said while she sees a lot of jurisdictional questions arise in family disputes, it’s the first one she’s seen in the context of a birth tourism case. Parents, she said, should not interpret the outcome of this case as indicative of a trend of judges punting cases to other jurisdictions.

“If you look at the facts of the case, this case is very unique. This won’t apply to every baby in Canada,” she said.

According to court records, the father, who has permanent resident status in Canada, was said to split his time between China and Canada. In September 2015, records show, the mother flew to Canada on a visitor’s visa a couple months before her due date. She and her partner acknowledged this was a “birth-tourism arrangement.”

(The National Post is withholding the names of the parents as the B.C. Provincial Court Act prohibits the identification of a child or party to a family matter before the court.)

Their son was born that November in Richmond, B.C., often dubbed the “epicentre” of Canada’s birth tourism industry. According to Vancouver Coastal Health, during the 2017-18 fiscal year 474 babies were born to non-residents in the Vancouver suburb, representing 22 per cent of all babies born there in that period.

After spending six months in Canada, the trio returned to China in May 2016. At some point, the relationship between the unmarried couple fell apart.

They agreed on a living arrangement: the boy would reside primarily in Beijing with his mother, a television host, and her parents, and spend the rest of the time in nearby Tianjin with his father, a bottled-water business owner, and his family.

Tensions flared in December 2017 when the father flew with his son to Vancouver son on one-way tickets, apparently without the mother’s consent. The mother flew to B.C. a few days later and spent a couple of weeks with her son before flying back to Beijing for work. She agreed to let her son stay in Canada until February 2018.

However, when February rolled around the father refused to hand over their son’s passport, prompting the mother to apply in B.C. Supreme Court for a declaration that the boy was a “habitual resident” of China who had been wrongfully removed from China, and that all matters concerning guardianship and parenting arrangements should be handled in China.

The father argued that matters involving the child should be decided in B.C. because his son was a Canadian citizen and had spent a good part of his life in B.C. He said it was always their intent for their son to return to B.C. for at least part of his education.

After reviewing the evidence, Justice Andrew Mayer said in an August 2018 ruling that it was clear the boy’s habitual residence was China, citing the fact that the mother never quit her job and never made an application for permanent resident status in Canada. Even though the boy was born in B.C., “place of citizenship and place of habitual residence are not the same thing,” Mayer said.

As for whether the parents had a “settled intention” of having their son stay for an extended period in B.C., the judge concluded they had not. He cited several text messages between the pair.

During one exchange on Sept. 24, 2017, the mother wrote: “In the future if you ever go over there alone and bring the child with you … I would not object to that so long as the child likes it and can adapt to it.”

The father replied: “I am just hoping that our son can stay a little longer. Our son should not be living like this.”

“But for our child the bulk of his education should still be received here in China. … The opportunities of the world exist in China,” she wrote back. “Therefore he must be familiar with China and understand everything about China. It is okay for him to live in Canada for a while when he is young in order to establish the framework for English thinking.”

Mayer ruled that the father did not have authorization from the mother to remove their son from China and concluded that B.C. was not the proper jurisdiction to settle questions about the boy’s guardianship and parenting arrangements given his “tenuous” connection to the province.

The father appealed the decision arguing that Mayer had committed a number of errors of law or fact.

But writing on behalf of a three-person panel, Justice Daphne Smith of the B.C. Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal on March 8.

The Post reached out to lawyers for both parents but they either did not return messages or were unavailable.

Canada is one of about 30 nations that confers automatic citizenship to those born on Canadian soil. A recent online survey by Research Co. of 800 B.C. residents found that 66 per cent of respondents said birth tourism degrades the value of Canadian citizenship and 73 per cent supported establishing new guidelines for birthright citizenship.

Critics have also complained that there is a flourishing underground industry of hotels and food providers catering to expectant birth tourists.

But some legal observers have said the issue is overblown and that any attempts to restrict birthright citizenship could lead to unnecessary bureaucracy and cause some newborns to become stateless.

Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen has said his department is studying the extent of the phenomenon. In a statement, a department spokeswoman said there is “no set date for reporting on any findings.” She noted, however, that available data show “only a small proportion of more than 380,000 annual births in Canada are by women who do not reside in Canada” and includes “Canadians living abroad who may have chosen to return to Canada to give birth.”

• Email: dquan@postmedia.com | Twitter:

Source: ‘Birth tourism’ case presents quandary for parents after break-up: to settle their custody dispute in Canada or China?

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A New Law Finally Passed on Foreign Women’s Lebanese Citizenship

2019/04/04 Leave a comment

Partial progress:

It is no secret that women in Lebanon have to deal still with archaic gender-bias laws that require urgent changes, adjustments, or even the total eradication of some. Reconciling their reality with the Lebanese progressive mentality and our women’s high level of education and career success has been a painful hardship for our society.

Among these laws, the rights of Lebanese women to nationalize their children when born to foreign fathers, and the rights of foreign spouses to the nationality.

The struggles have been more relevant these past two decades, naturally, considering the ongoing evolution of our women and their awakening to what’s right and fair and what isn’t in our laws. Hence, in recent years, their efforts and endeavors have been many, even countless, to bring balance and harmony to our human society with judicial fairness and rights.

So, no wonder we get to heartily welcome now the memorandum of the Director-General for Personal Status, Mr. Elias Khoury. He demands from the Head of Departments and Registry Officers the application of Article 5 of the Lebanese Nationality Law.

The Article 5 declares, “The foreign woman married to a Lebanese shall, upon her request, become Lebanese after one year from the date of registration of the marriage in the Civil Status Office.”

Therefore, as of this month, foreign women spouses of Lebanese citizens are entitled to apply for the Lebanese citizenship at the registry offices without the signature of their husbands.

The memorandum stressed that “A new form must be adapted to fill the application for citizenship, which preserves the law of nationality from one side and is less complicated than the previous model, in both practical and administrative terms, while adhering to the same mechanism in order to ensure all information contained in the application and the right of women to obtain Nationality.”

In force as of April 1st, both the memorandum and the new form state: “Memorandum No. 35 concerning the mechanism and conditions of reception and completion of transactions of acquisition of nationality by marriage.”

These Mechanisms and conditions can be reviewed on the website of the Directorate General for Civil Status www.dgcs.gov.lb

It remains that foreign women working or residing in Lebanon cannot, by law, apply for citizenship if they are not married to a Lebanese man. That privilege is granted only by ‘male priority placed on women’ and not by their own rights.

Nonetheless, we maintain hope that this is only the beginning for more and more improvements and changes towards a more consciously evolved human society. After all, the reason of existence of any and all laws is, by principle and ethics, to serve the well-being of all citizens equally. Failure to do so, their reason to exist is no longer.

Source: A New Law Finally Passed on Foreign Women’s Lebanese Citizenship

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Canada must bring home its own from the ruins of Islamic State

2019/04/03 Leave a comment

Almost completely silent on the challenges of successful prosecution. And there is a different in terms of letting them return to Canada and actively facilitating their return:

I despise Daesh (the Islamic State group) and its ilk. In fact, I have spent a better part of my life challenging their religious  interpretations and practices.

Yet, I believe that Ottawa must repatriate Canadians who answered the Daesh call, because this is the right thing to do if we truly believe in human rights and constitutional principles.

For children’s sake

We must learn from the recent death of Jarrar, the newborn son of British-born Shamima Begum, who left the UK as a 15-year-old. The baby died after London revoked Shamima’s citizenship and left them both to ostensibly stew in her hate.

Under British law, Shamima Begum was a child when she left. Now, a British baby is dead for his parents’ sins. As British MP Anna Soubry wrote, the UK breached its duty to Jarrar.

There are at least 32 Canadians being held by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces

The former Conservative MP rightfully argued that Shamima should have been brought to the UK, questioned, and had the law books thrown at her while her son should have been given the “protection and the support that a civilised country provides for all its children.”

Kurdish authorities say that 5,000 former alleged IS fighters and their families are being held in makeshift prisons in Iraq.

This includes 1,300 children. Russia repatriated 27 children in February. France has agreed to repatriate around 130 fighters and their families.

Belgians, who composed the largest number of Caliphate fighters per capita, are not feeling particularly welcome. Late last year, going against public opinion, a Belgian court ruled that the government must repatriate its citizens.

In a principled and courageous decision, the Solomonic judge ruled that bringing the children without their mothers – who were convicted in absentia – would violate their human rights. The judge also imposed a daily penalty of 5,000 euros per child against the government until they were returned.

Belgium’s migration secretary said: “We won’t punish young children for their parents’ misdeeds. They have not chosen the Islamic State.”

Unfortunately, an appellate court overturned the decision a few weeks ago and now 160 Belgian children are in limbo.

A mature debate

Canadian Public Security Minister Ralph Goodale says the government has not decided what to do.

Canada needs to act before we read about Canadian children dying in Syrian camps.

Rather than having a mature  debate about bringing IS members to justice, our politicians appear to be gauging the public mood rather than stepping up

According to CBC, there are at least 32 Canadians being held by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces. Dr Alexandra Bain of the Canadian group Families Against Violent Extremism (FAVE) claims that more than half of those held in Syria are under the age of five.

Rather than having a mature and constitutionally rooted debate about bringing Daesh members to justice and dealing with non-combatants as well as women and children, our politicians appear to be guaging the public mood rather than stepping up.

Leadership may require that you sometimes stand up to mobocracy (the whims of the majority) and it always means standing up for constitutionally entrenched rights – even for the detested.

Why bring them back?

Rather than following the examples set by Macedonia, Russia, France, etc, Canada caved into British “arm-twisting” and breached a deal with Kurdish authorities to repatriate Canadian citizens, according to a report by the Guardian.

These individuals went there for reasons ranging from ideological affinity, out of a sense of religious obligation, due to being brainwashed, the promise of adventure, the opportunity to create an Islamic utopia, out of empathy to relieve the suffering of others, while others were duped, forced or taken against their will.

Why should we bring them back?

First, as citizens, they have a right to come back to Canada. Though this does not impose an obligation on Ottawa to take proactive steps to bring back adults, a strong argument can be made that there is a mandatory duty owed to Canadian children.

Indeed, under the common law, our government through the courts have the parens patraie jurisdiction to look out for the best interest and welfare of our children. This is reason alone.

Setting a precedent

Second, contrary to what many people want, under international law we can’t just watch as these people are executed without due process, or held to rot even as evil as they are. Otherwise, as President Trump said correctly, if they are left alone they may continue to create havoc elsewhere.

We must set a precedent and send out a message to any of our citizens who may contemplate such actions in the future that there are consequences for such actions. This is best done by putting those who are culpable on trial.

Leaving Canada to participate in a terror group is an offence under the criminal code punishable to a term of up to 10 years. Indeed, as General Lord Richard Dannatt, a former head of the British army, told the Guardian about British fighters:

“They have to be put through due process and imprisoned if that is the right thing to do,” he said. “But I think it is also important that we treat them fairly with justice and tempered with a bit of mercy as well because I think the way we treat them may well have important significance for the way other people view our society.

“We don’t want to see others radicalised and going off overseas in the future. How we treat these people coming back – fairly but firmly – we’ve got to get it right.”

We have failed

Third, most of these individuals were born “here” and more importantly were radicalised “here” not “there”. We bear part of the responsibility because we – as a society – and our institutions failed in not preventing them from being radicalised and in the case of many women from being groomed as brides.

It is tempting to dehumanise them and easy to “other” them, but let us not forget that we extend full due process rights even to paedophiles, mass murderers and serial killers.

Fourth, some of these individuals may serve as resources to fight radicalisation after they have been de-radicalised, after serving time, if deserved.

As argued in a New York Times op-ed by Bryant Neal Vinas, America’s first Al-Qaeda fighter, these returning fighters “can be a strategic asset” to fight radicalisation if we play it right.

Fifth, western nations, including Canada, pursue criminals to the far corners of the world using extradition treaties and other means. Indeed, we have even engaged in extraordinary rendition and participated in torture of our own citizens when we thought it was necessary. Yet, now it’s too difficult to pursue these people?

Of course, it would be disingenuous to argue that traitors who engage in terrorism should be treated the same as other criminals, because the state interests are especially compelling. At the same time, the values engaged in this context – equality, freedom of speech, religion, and association – make it important that we tread in a firm but cautious manner.

It is high time that we engage in reasoned, nuanced and considered debate in a manner consistent with our well-established values, including justice, fairness and compassion.

We cannot base our decisions on emotion, populist fear, hatred or our whims, because then we are no better than them.

Source: Canada must bring home its own from the ruins of Islamic State

Filed under Citizenship, Radicalization Tagged with , , ,

ICYMI: This English same-sex couple fathered twins who are half-siblings — and a Canadian surrogate helped them

2019/04/03 Leave a comment

A different wrinkle to birthright citizenship (see earlier How Canada became an international surrogacy destination [another form of birth tourism]) as well as U.S. example below:

With two kids under two, the Berney-Edwards household in southeast England is a busy one. There are toddlers running all over the place. One pokes his dad in the eye and laughs before accidentally hitting his sister with a toy vacuum cleaner, causing her to wail. It can be a bit chaotic.

But Graeme and Simon Berney-Edwards wouldn’t have it any other way. As gay men, there was a time when they thought they could never have any of that.

Now, however, they have their twins, the result of an arrangement involving a Canadian surrogate and Canadian surrogacy laws they feel are more progressive than those on the books in the United Kingdom.

“You see them tearing around and they’re having fun, and just for a moment, you just sort of step back and go ‘Wow, this is it. They’re here,’ ” Simon Berney-Edwards said in an interview at their home in Redhill, south of London.

“It can be very surreal,” his husband Graeme Berney-Edwards chimed in.

When they decided surrogacy was the way they would have a family, they reached out to a surrogacy organization that helped them understand their options.

That organization connected them with a clinic in Las Vegas where in vitro fertilization took place. That’s also where they learned they could have twins and each be a biological father to one child by fertilizing half of their American donor’s eggs with Simon’s sperm, the other half with Graeme’s sperm, and then implanting the embryos in the same surrogate.

It means Alexandra and Calder, now 21 months old, are twins but only half-siblings. Born just minutes apart, they have the same biological mother, but different fathers.

They quickly chose to have the birth take place in Canada rather the U.K. That was because, they say, the surrogacy laws in their country are dated, primarily as a result of the U.K. considering the surrogate, and her partner, if she has one, to be the legal parents for the first six weeks of the child’s life.

“And in that time, if the surrogate decides to change their mind, you have no recourse,” said Simon Berney-Edwards. “Basically, that’s it. Your child is gone.”

Andrew Spearman, a British fertility and surrogacy lawyer, said the U.K. laws are “archaic” and that many of his clients turn to Canada for surrogacy.

“I think it gives an element of certainty. It gives the transparency, which we can’t offer always, and it gives a very clear structure,” he said in his London office.

Spearman said while U.K. surrogates and intended parents do draw up contracts outlining their agreement, the contracts aren’t legally binding as they are in Canada.

Neither country allows surrogates to be paid, other than to cover their expenses, which Spearman said helps British parents explain the process to English courts when they return home. They still need to get a “parental order” in the U.K. that makes them legal parents and gives their children U.K. citizenship.

The Berney-Edwards say they were also drawn to the altruistic nature of Canadian surrogacy because they wanted more than a “transactional” experience.

“We wanted someone that was prepared to be part of a family throughout the children growing up,” said Graeme Berney-Edwards.

After consulting a website that has profiles of women wanting to be surrogates, they found that in Meg Stone of Hamilton, Ont. Stone said that’s also what drew her to them.

“They mentioned that they wanted twins and I’m always up for a challenge,” she said. “And they also said they wanted lifelong friendship, which was also something I wanted.”

After a couple of false alarms that saw the dads dashing off to Canada early, Alexandra and Calder were born on June 25, 2017, in Hamilton, where they stayed for the first seven weeks of their lives.

Stone, who has two of her own children, has continued to watch the twins grow from afar, swapping messages and photos and even making the trip to England for the twins’ first birthday.

Her 12-year-old son, Jeffrey Seroski-Stone, said he’s proud of his mom for helping to create a family.

“I think it’s exciting how my mom ended up helping them out by giving them children, and I think we usually have a really good time, so I consider them to be like family to me,” he said.

Stone is pregnant with twins again, helping another same-sex family have children.

“I love being a mom and why wouldn’t I want to help somebody else do that, too?” she said.

She maintains she wouldn’t want to be paid for helping others have children, but there is a debate in Canada about whether paying surrogates should be decriminalized.

The current Canadian law came into force in 2004 and prohibits paying surrogates other than to reimburse them for certain medical and maternity costs.

The federal government is reviewing the legislation, including identifying categories for reimbursement and making them more clear. A Liberal MP tabled a private member’s bill that would decriminalize payments to surrogates but opponents say it amounts to commercializing a woman’s body.

Stone disagrees with the idea that a surrogate be given the chance to change her mind, as is set out in the current U.K. law.

“I never felt like they were mine to give away,” she said. “They were [with] me to watch and nurture until Simon and Graeme were able to.”

The Berney-Edwards say when it comes to surrogacy law, Canada has it right, but that doesn’t mean it was easy or cheap.

They won’t put a figure on it, but experts say they would have spent tens of thousands of dollars on Stone’s expenses, agency and legal fees, not to mention three trips back and forth to Canada.

“But it was worth it,” said Simon.

“Every single penny, cent, was worth it,” said Graeme.

Although none of their biological parents is Canadian, Alexandra and Calder are Canadian citizens because they were born in the country, and their fathers say it’s an important part of their heritage.

They look forward to the day they can explain to their children how they came into the world, how badly they were wanted and how much love was around them.

In fact, they’ve already started to do just that.

As the children begin to get ready for bed, the entire family sits on the living room floor sharing a story.

Simon reads aloud, “Before I settle down to sleep, I’ll blow a kiss goodnight, to make sure all of Canada will have sweet dreams tonight.”

Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/u-k-canada-same-sex-surrogacy-twins-half-siblings-1.5069654

In 2016, a married gay couple in Canada became parents of twins using a surrogate mother. One father is a U.S. citizen, the other an Israeli citizen. The two fathers made a decision to contribute one embryo each to the surrogate mother so the twins would be biologically related to each of them. However, that turned out to be a determinative factor when the parents went to the U.S. Consulate in Toronto to register the twins for U.S. citizenship. Only one of the twins, Aidan, who was biologically related to his U.S. citizen father, was granted a U.S. passport. The family was devastated by this decision. When the Dvash-Banks family decided to move to California, the other twin, Ethan, had to enter as a visitor on a B visa. His B visa eventually expired, leaving him “undocumented.” [both are Canadian given  birthright citizenship]

With regard to children born in wedlock, section 301 of the Immigration and Nationality Act states that a “child born outside of the United States . . . acquires citizenship at birth if at the time of birth one parent is a foreign national and the other parent is a U.S. citizen; and the U.S. citizen parent was physically present in the United States for at least 5 years, including at least 2 years after 14 years of age.” Section 309, which applies to children born out of wedlock, requires, among other things, that “blood relationship between the child and the father is established by clear and convincing evidence.” The State Department, in its published policy, apparently reads the “blood relationship” clause into section 301 and would not budge on that policy for the Dvash-Bankses.

The Dvash-Bankses challenged the Department of State’s (DOS) decision with regard to Ethan in the U.S. District Court, Central District of California. In response to a motion for summary judgement, Judge John F. Walter declared that Ethan was a U.S. citizen and ordered DOS to issue him a U.S. passport as soon as possible. The order applied only to Ethan and did not prevent DOS from applying its “blood relationship” policy to other families. In post-summary judgement proceedings, the Dvash-Bankses argued, “The State Department’s refusal to approve [Ethan’s] applications . . . and its persistence in litigating this action full-bore to summary judgement, was manifestly unreasonable and not substantially justified.” The Judge awarded $1.3 in attorney’s fees and costs to the couple.

Ethan’s fathers believe that a straight couple who had used assistive reproductive technology would never have been asked to submit to a DNA test, as they were required to do by DOS. In a similar case, a lesbian couple of one U.S. citizen and one Italian citizen whose children were born in London brought a claim in the federal district court in D.C. – using the same lawyers who represented the Dvash-Banks family.

Source: Birthright Citizenship for Child of Same Sex Couple

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Europe’s south and east worry more about emigration than immigration – poll

2019/04/02 Leave a comment

Interesting results but understandable given the demographics:

Southern and eastern European countries are more concerned about emigration than immigration, according to a wide-ranging survey of attitudes in 14 EU countries.

In Spain, Italy, Greece, Poland, Hungary and Romania, six countries where population levels are either flatlining or falling sharply, more citizens said emigration was a worry than immigration, according to the poll by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).

The steepest falls are in Romania, where the population has decreased by almost 10% over the past decade as an exodus of mostly young people move to work in western Europe.

https://interactive.guim.co.uk/uploader/embed/2019/03/popuation-change-zip/giv-3902leY08K5RYnIs/

However, in northern and western nations, concerns over immigration far outstripped those over emigration.

The survey was conducted to establish the principal issues of concern ahead of the European parliamentary elections in May. The 14 nations polled will occupy 80% of the seats in the new parliament.

The poll discovered that Europeans are concerned about far more than migration, even though it has dominated EU politics and discourse over the five year term of the outgoing parliament. Corruption, nationalism, terrorism and climate change are also uppermost in minds.

In the survey as a whole, 20% were worried about emigration and 32% about immigration. The poll was conducted by YouGov and questioned almost 50,000 people.

https://interactive.guim.co.uk/charts/embed/mar/2019-03-25T13:41:59/embed.html

In some countries, the fear of emigration was so great that large numbers of people believed compatriots should not be allowed to leave their country for long periods of time.

https://interactive.guim.co.uk/charts/embed/mar/2019-03-25T15:48:16/embed.html

“The EU elections have been sold as a battleground over the heart of Europe,” said Mark Leonard, the director of the ECFR, adding that nationalists were trying to turn the vote into a referendum on migration.

“The findings from this poll should give heart to pro-Europeans, and show that there are still votes to be won on major issues such as climate change, healthcare, housing, and living standards,” Leonard said. “They will be making a strategic blunder if they accept the framing of the anti-European parties that this election will be won or lost on migration alone.”

Populist leaders like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Italy’s Matteo Salvini are seeking to put migration front and centre of the 23-26 May polls, in which 374 million people are eligible to vote in a new parliament for a five-year term. The Orbán government recently deployed a scare poster warning about migration policy in Brussels.

Hungary has refused to take refugees under an EU quota system and continues to block an EU law that proposes a permanent redistribution system for asylum seekers. The poster referred to this theme, stating: “They want to introduce compulsory relocation quotas.”

Orbán, who is under pressure to quit the main centre-right European parliament group, has called for migration policy to be “withdrawn from the commission and returned to the member states”. EU member states already play the decisive role in migration policy.

While Orbán has scaled back his media attacks, following pressure from allies in the European People’s party, he has indicated that he could resume his anti-EU campaign. “Our job now is to continually inform the people about what Brussels is up to.”

But immigration numbers have fallen sharply over the past two years: in 2018, the number who crossed the Mediterranean was put at just over 116,000 by UNHCR, down almost 90% from those who made the journey in 2015.

The survey found that Islamic radicalism was the top area of concern, worrying about one in five Europeans, though fears were much higher in countries like Belgium, France and the Netherlands than in eastern Europe.

In almost all countries, a majority of people agreed that the environment should be made a priority even if it damaged economic growth.

https://interactive.guim.co.uk/charts/embed/mar/2019-03-25T15:47:08/embed.html

But the data also showed a wide range of concerns cropping up in different countries, meaning that the election will be fought on different issues across the continent.

The economy was the single biggest concern in Italy, Romania and Greece. In seven countries – Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, Spain, Greece and Slovakia – more than 50% of people surveyed said corruption was a major issue.

Some experts have warned centrist and traditional parties against accepting a pro-EU versus anti-EU narrative, fearing it will only bolster populists by setting up straw-man arguments.

The European elections are the second-largest electoral contest in the world, behind the Indian elections. Voters in 27 countries are due to elect 705 MEPs, who will take office on 2 July. The UK is not scheduled to take part in the vote and will have to inform the EU by 12 April if it wishes to elect MEPs, meaning a long Brexit delay.

Source: Europe’s south and east worry more about emigration than immigration – poll

Filed under Immigration, Polling Tagged with , ,

Elections Canada braces for a surge in international voters

2019/04/01 Leave a comment

Have written extensively against this extension and will be interesting to see what the take up will actually be and whether it is really an important issue for Canadian expatriates or not. The numbers below mentioned suggest it was not:

It was a short letter from Elections Canada — but for Gillian Frank, getting it felt like “an old wound had finally started to heal.”

“I was overjoyed,” said Frank, a Canadian living in the United States who received the letter earlier this month confirming his right to cast a ballot in the upcoming federal election.

For seven years, Frank and other Canadians living abroad fought for the right to vote in general elections and national referendums.

In December 2018, the Trudeau government passed Bill 76 — just a month before the Supreme Court of Canada shot down the 1993 law that prohibited Canadians who had lived outside Canada for more than five years from voting in Canadian elections, calling it a violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Frank and fellow ex-pat Jamie Duong filed that charter challenge after being denied ballots in 2011. Bill 76 restored voting rights to all Canadians living abroad; the Supreme Court ruling prevents future governments from restoring the ban.

Number of international voters could triple

Since January, Elections Canada has been mailing out letters to Canadians abroad reminding them that they’re back on the international electors list.

“It felt like a moment of closure, a moment of real victory,” Frank said.

Elections Canada expects to see a surge in the number of mail-in or ‘special’ ballots. It estimates the number of Canadians voting from abroad could almost triple — from 11,000 voters in 2015 to 30,000 in 2019.

To cope with the demand, Elections Canada issued a tender in March for a new system to automate the way ballots are distributed.

“We are reducing the number of processes carried out by hand related to special ballots,” Elections Canada spokesperson Natasha Gauthier said in an email. “In automating these processes, we will reduce the number of staff required to handle the volume of ballots we receive.

“These optimizations will not include automated counting of ballots — all ballots will still be marked and counted by hand.”

‘We’re all Canadian citizens’

Duong said Canadians should not fret about the prospect of votes by Canadians living in the U.S. or Hong Kong swinging individual ridings. If it happens, it happens, he said.

“You can say that about any group. What if votes of people 65 and over change the outcome? What if votes [from voters aged] 18 to 25 change the outcome?” Duoug said.

“We’re all Canadian citizens. We all have a right to vote. So, yes our votes should matter. And they should possibly change the outcome of the elections.”

Former chief electoral officer Jean-Pierre Kingsley argues we’ll never know for sure whether the re-appearance of ex-pat voting in 2019 had any real effect on the outcome, since voting is secret. And while “it just takes one vote to swing a riding,” he said, the ex-pat vote likely isn’t going to have that kind of influence because Canadians abroad have to jump through a lot of hoops before casting ballots.

International voters, he said, have to register themselves on the international voter list, find which ridings they belong to, figure out who’s running, fill out their ballots correctly and then mail them in on time. They also have to pay the international postage themselves.

“These are all difficulties we do not have to overcome when we’re voting from Canada,” Kingsley said.

Source: Elections Canada braces for a surge in international voters

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with ,

Why the ‘Life in the UK’ test alienates new citizens

2019/03/28 Leave a comment

The perils of citizenship tests based on “values” with some counterintuitive results.

I think overall the Canadian questions are reasonable with fewer marginal questions (and telling that the Liberal government, despite having worked on a revision to Discover Canada, and presumably associated questions, has yet to release it and, IMO, is unlikely to do so 6 months before the election):

The UK’s citizenship process subjects immigrants to requirements intended to enhance their identification with ‘British values’. Does the current process do that, or does it exacerbate immigrants’ marginalisation? David Bartram finds evidence in support of the latter: citizenship policy does more to alienate new citizens than it does to facilitate their political integration.

Have you taken the ‘Life in the UK’ test? If you’re already a UK citizen, then of course you don’t need to – but if you did it out of curiosity you’d likely find it very difficult to pass. Some of the questions involve obscure historical dates (in what year did Richard III die?). Even for more meaningful events it is not clear why one should know the year (e.g. re when women gained the vote – an important issue, but why is knowing the date a basis for citizenship?).

Immigrants wishing to gain citizenship (or even permanent residence) have to pass it. The only way to succeed is to study. Now, some of the questions pertain to more useful matters, so perhaps there’s some benefit from the learning one does. And, once you’ve passed, perhaps you’ll feel (on the basis of the knowledge gained) that you’ve earned an entitlement to participate more fully in British public life and core institutions. Academics tend to be critical of the test requirement, but the idea that some good could come of it – possibly even a set of outcomes that looks something like enhanced integration – is not completely implausible.

Propositions of this sort can be tested, with the right data. With colleagues at the University of Leicester(and funding from the ESRC), I have investigated whether becoming a UK citizen (thus, passing the test and participating in a citizenship ceremony) helps foster integration specifically in terms of political engagement. My answer: the core citizenship requirements do more to impair integration in the political sphere than to enhance it. Immigrants who become UK citizens end up less interested in politics, relative to those immigrants who remain non-citizens. That’s a very counterintuitive result; only slightly less shocking is that new citizens do not participate more in civic/public organizations than those who remain non-citizens.

That finding comes from analysis of data from ‘Understanding Society’ (the UK household panel survey). The longitudinal nature of the data helps minimize the prospect of reverse causation (the possibility that it’s a matter of naturalization by already less-engaged people). The analytical sample comprised almost 1000 people who in Wave 1 (2009/10) were not UK citizens. By the time of Wave 6 (2014/15), roughly half of these respondents had gained citizenship – and the core of the analysis involved comparing them to those who remained non-citizens while taking into account their initial conditions including their extent of political engagement.

Now, perhaps it’s somehow misguided to connect the empirical pattern to the specific requirements for UK naturalization. Maybe naturalization led to decreased political engagement even before the introduction of the test and ceremonies. Not a terribly plausible idea, surely. We can’t test it directly: the ‘Understanding Society’ project began several years after the policy was implemented in 2005 (and the predecessor dataset, the British Household Panel Survey, doesn’t enable tracking changes in citizenship status). We do however have earlier research on the question more generally in Europe including the UK – and in analysis of data from 2002-2003 they find that naturalization is generally associated with increased political engagement (in other words, the outcome one would expect). So, perhaps something did in fact change in the UK after the requirements were put in place.

We can then ask: why would the UK citizenship process lead to lower political engagement? The process involves jumping through some meaningless hoops, so it might be a simple matter of annoyance, possibly to the point of fostering alienation. We can however go a bit further, via further consideration of the types of questions the test poses about political matters.

Many of these questions strike me as having something significant in common. There is a clear tendency to ask about the ‘rules of the game’. For example: what is the role of the Whips in Parliament? Or, what is the current minimum voting age? Or, what time of year are local government elections held? Questions like this imply acquiescence to ‘the way things are’: we tell you what the rules are, and you can then play by those rules. There’s nothing about fundamental rights of citizenship – say, the right to demonstrate and to participate in other forms of collective action. The subtext here is a politics of obedience, perhaps even docility. If this is what we tell immigrants about the nature of our politics, who can blame them if they then say: who needs it?  Why bother? Democratic politics is supposed to engage big questions, about justice, fairness, freedom, equality – but through the ‘Life in the UK’ test Britain teaches new immigrants that it’s all just a matter of fitting in and doing what is expected of you.

There is another significant angle to consider. Anne-Marie Fortier argues (very persuasively) that the real motivation behind the requirements of the UK citizenship policy is not to achieve integration for immigrants but rather to alleviate the anxieties of ‘natives’. The policy sends a signal to people worried about immigration: we hear you, and we’re doing something about it. Whether it has any impact on the immigrants themselves is decidedly secondary. One might be sanguine about that idea as long as the impact is merely nil (rather than positive). But if instead the tests and ceremonies have a genuinely negative impact on immigrants in the UK it becomes less feasible to justify an attempt to mollify voters this way.

The original goal of the requirements (as articulated by the then-Home Secretary, David Blunkett) was to foster participation, in hopes of reinforcing ‘social cohesion’. The requirements are plainly not helping to achieve that goal and might be actively undermining it – even for those who succeed in demonstrating knowledge about ‘Life in the UK’ that most ‘natives’ don’t have.

Source: Why the ‘Life in the UK’ test alienates new citizens

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British no more: Why some UK citizens face Brexit dilemma (Austria does not allow dual citizenship)

2019/03/26 Leave a comment

Yet another consequence of Brexit:

The number of UK citizens acquiring the nationality of another EU country has shot up since the 2016 Brexit referendum.

For many Britons living in Germany, France or Italy, dual nationality solves questions about freedom of movement to work in the EU, pensions and healthcare.

But a handful of EU countries, including Austria, do not generally allow dual citizenship.

That makes things complicated for people like British opera singer Stephen Chaundy, who has lived in Vienna with his family for many years, but often works in theatres and opera houses in Germany.

“Freedom of movement matters to me,” he says.

“I know from colleagues and friends how difficult third-country [non-EU] nationals can have it, in terms of complications of sorting out visas and work permits… and I have already had the situation where a theatre in one European country has said they’re unwilling to hear me,” he adds.

Because of this, Stephen may not be British much longer.

Surrendering Britishness

“Depending on what happens, I am seriously considering having to give up being British and asking to become Austrian,” he says.

Britons who live and work in Austria will be able to continue to do so after Brexit. But there are no guarantees for people like Stephen who rely on freedom of movement.

Jan Hillerman, the secretary of support group UK Citizens in Austria, says feelings about giving up British nationality in order to obtain an Austrian passport are very mixed.

“Some people have done that. Other people are very hesitant,” she says.

“Some people think that this might be an easy way out of the whole Brexit dilemma – but in fact it isn’t: it’ll be costly and take a lot of time.”

Jan says there have been attempts to lobby the Austrian government on the issue of dual nationality for British people after Brexit.

“But I gather that that came to naught and the Austrians have made pretty clear that that’s not on the table,” she says.

Austria does allow dual citizenship in a few exceptional cases, such as those who survived the Holocaust.

In the event of a disorderly Brexit, the Austrian government has said it will allow dual citizenship for around 25,000 Austrians living in Britain – but not for the 11,000 Britons living in Austria.

Why Austria has a problem with dual nationality

In general, the idea of dual nationality is frowned upon here – not least because of tensions with the Turkish minority in Austria.

The far-right Freedom Party – now the junior partner in Austria’s coalition government – has been behind an investigation into whether some Turks in Austria have illegally maintained both Turkish and Austrian nationalities.

Political analyst Thomas Hofer says this colours the whole issue of dual nationality.

“There was a heated debate… saying that there are a lot of Turkish people (who are) Austrian citizens living here and voting in Turkey, especially for President [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan,” he says.

Since then, dual citizenship has become “a touchy issue”.

“The government in the last couple of weeks and months did everything to be very harsh and very strict… the government said that it wanted to avoid this kind of double citizenship.”

A spokesman for the Austrian government, Peter Launsky, acknowledged that Austria had “a more restrictive approach to dual citizenship”.

But he said British citizens were welcome in Austria.

“It is very important to keep stressing that Austria does and will continue to receive British citizens with open arms, irrespective of the outcome of the Brexit process,” he said.

“Any of the British citizens in Austria are extremely well qualified and make a very active and positive contribution to the Austrian labour market.

“And we are very appreciative of that fact… everything will be done to ensure as much continuity as possible, irrespective of the question of citizenship.”

On stage Stephen Chaundy moves smoothly back and forth between the Viennese and English-speaking repertoire.

His latest role was as a Habsburg aristocrat, Count Tassilo – the lead in the classic Viennese operetta Graefin Mariza, at the Theatre Magdeburg in Germany. He is about to go to the Cologne Opera to play Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady.

But in life it is not so simple.

“Although I’ve spent over a third of my life in Austria, I am a Londoner, an Englishman, a Brit – but I’m also European and a big, big part of me is, of course, deeply attached to Austria,” he said.

“If Austria would permit dual nationality I would have taken it in a heartbeat. They are both parts of who I am. They’re both parts of my adult life.

“They’re both parts of my identity and it feels terribly unjust and unfair to have to be asked to choose.”

Source: British no more: Why some UK citizens face Brexit dilemma

Filed under Citizenship, Dual Citizenship Tagged with ,

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