Australia: The Section 44 soap opera: why more MPs could be in danger of being forced out

2019/06/08 Leave a comment

Good overview on the issues and likely one of the factors in relatively poor representation of visible minorities and immigrants in Australia:

One thing we learned from the recent election campaign is that the political crisis over Section 44 of the Constitution has not gone away.

Many candidates in the election had their eligibility to stand for parliament questioned and some were even forced to withdraw from their races.

Despite all the attention given to this matter over the last couple of years, and the various procedures introduced to address it, Section 44 will only continue to be a problem until the parliament steps in to address it.

To do that, we first need to address seven myths about Section 44.

1. Everyone knows their citizenship, they just need to do their paperwork

Section 44 is about more than just citizenship – it covers a variety of restrictions on who can serve in parliament.

For instance, a GP who bulk-bills a patient could be considered to have a “pecuniary interest in an agreement with the Commonwealth.” And a postman or a nurse in a public hospital could be deemed to hold “an office of profit under the Crown.”

On citizenship, the section doesn’t just disqualify dual citizens, it also bars those “entitled” to citizenship elsewhere (even if they haven’t applied for it) and those “entitled to the rights and privileges” of citizenship (basically, the “right of abode”, or being entitled to enter a country and live there).

Such entitlements are not easy to discover and almost impossible to remove, because they’re embedded in foreign legislation.

2. It doesn’t affect many people

On the contrary, the parliamentary committee investigating the matterestimated half the adult Australian population, or more, could be disqualified by law or impeded in practice from standing for parliament.

In the recent election, we saw one potential candidate withdraw because she was an Australia Post employee and another because she was entitled under Indian law to some privileges of Indian citizenship.

As a result, the Australian parliament becomes even less representative of the Australian people.

3. The constitution framers knew what they were doing

The original text agreed to at the constitutional convention in 1898 simply said anyone who had acquired foreign citizenship by their own actwas disqualified from standing for parliament.

The text that eventually became Section 44 was inserted surreptitiously by one of the key architects of the constitution (and Australia’s first prime minister), Edmund Barton, as a drafting amendment. He introduced 400 amendments on the second-to-last day of the convention, but made no mention of this change, and expressly denied there had been any changes to Section 44 apart from a minor one to another subsection.

4. The High Court has sorted it out

Far from it. Very few cases challenging Section 44 have made it that far, partly because the court has done everything possible to fend them off, including trashing the constitutional provision giving citizens the right to challenge the eligibility of parliamentarians. Politicians have also refused to refer cases to the court unless it’s advantageous to their party.

And when the court has heard a case, it has construed its task so narrowlyas to give little guidance to future action on the section. In particular, it has said nothing about the disqualification of those MPs “entitled to the rights and privileges of citizenship” in other countries.

In fact, when Senator Matthew Canavan’s eligibility was challenged because Italian laws had changed to permit citizenship to descendents of native Italians, the High Court noted that the law was fairly generous, but one had to apply. Canavan hadn’t applied, therefore couldn’t be an Italian citizen.

But if he had applied and then received Italian citizenship because he was eligible (as his brother had done), he would have been disqualified by Section 44.

This was all too much for the court to sort out. As a result, it offered no clarity on the large number of MPs whose eligibility hangs on what sorts of “entitlement” would disqualify them.

5. But there are administrative checks now, too

Well, yes, but nobody does anything about them. In 2017, all MPs were asked to fill out a form documenting their ancestry and citizenship, and the responses were then logged in a citizenship register. This showed some 15-20 MPs were entitled to foreign citizenship and a total of 59 had the “right of abode” in the UK, which the High Court has decided is the key to the “right and privilege” of citizenship.

But no action was taken on any of these cases. The register appears as a matter of record only.

Similarly, although the Australian Electoral Commission is now requiring candidates to complete a similar form, it does not take action against those who refuse to submit it, or leave sections blank. One candidate was referred to the police, but this was clearly a pointless face-saving exercise.

6. We want our MPs to be unequivocally Australian

Having foreign ancestry does not make you un-Australian. Section 44 does nothing to establish the strength of identity or loyalty – it simply prevents an undefined, but potentially very large, slice of the population from standing for parliament.

One case illustrates the ludicrous reach of the present wording.

After Lithuania regained its independence in 1990, it passed a citizenship law that gave people born outside the country to Lithuanian parents the right to citizenship. In 2016, this provision was expanded to cover those with Lithuanian grandparents. As a result, Senator Doug Cameron, whose Scottish burr we are used to hearing on news broadcasts, became eligible for Lithuanian citizenship.

While Cameron could (and did) renounce his British citizenship to qualify for election to the Australian parliament, he cannot renounce his entitlement to Lithuanian citizenship. And while some people have very strong views about Cameron, I have never heard it suggested he was working to a Lithuanian agenda rather than an Australian one.

7. It’s too hard to change the Constitution

The same thing was said about amending the Marriage Act to permit same-sex couples to marry. The public recognises there’s a problem with Section 44 and it expects the politicians to fix it.

The best shot came with the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, which recommended adding the words “until the parliament otherwise provides” to Section 44. This would not change the law, just where the law is made.

Instead of disqualifications being defined by the laws in foreign countries, as the High Court has interpreted Section 44, they could be determined by the Australian parliament. This is how qualifications of senators and members are currently decided. It’s also how women got the vote in 1902.

If this proposal was strongly supported by all the parties and clearly explained to the electorate, it would likely pass in the next election.

So where does this leave us?

It all comes down to leadership. Up to now, both the Coalition and Labor have been primarily motivated by partisan advantage: how can we use Section 44 to score a political point?

The Joint Standing Committee showed that with a willingness to collaborate, there is a path forward to solving the problem. The best we can hope for is that after the trauma of the last few years, and the evidence of the continuing decline in support for the main parties, political leaders will see that acting constructively on Section 44 might actually be in the best interests of both parties.

Source: The Section 44 soap opera: why more MPs could be in danger of being forced out

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Our Canadian war dead deserve the honour of their citizenship

2019/06/06 1 Comment

Largely a repeat of previous columns, with Chapman remaining in denial about Canadian soldiers being British subjects at the time. The distinct Canadian citizenship, versus British subjects resident in Canada, only became a legal reality upon the implementation of the first Canadian citizenship act in 1947:

Over the course of both world wars, 111,000 servicemen wearing Canadian uniforms gave their lives, their last full measure of devotion. Our government calls them Canadian heroes but not Canadian citizens. They’re embraced as British Subjects only.

That means the Brits fought all our infamous “Canadian” battles — from the Somme, Arras, and Vimy Ridge during the First World War, to Dieppe and D-Day in the Second.

This is an egregious rewrite of history, perpetrated by former prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King — the force behind deliberate deceptions as to the origin of Canadian citizenship.

That means the Brits fought all our infamous ‘Canadian’ battles

In 1867 our first governor general announced, with pride, that Canada had just created a new nationality. Over time, often controversial legislation evolved further the definition of Canadian citizenship. In 1943 as a rallying cry to the soldiers heading into war, Ottawa published a booklet saying they were fighting as “citizens of Canada,” a widely accepted belief, both then and now. Numerous Supreme Court decisions upheld this as truth.

Nonetheless, like a magical sleight of hand, in January 1947, King had himself sworn in as Canada’s first-ever citizen. While historic nonsense, today’s government buys into it, thus refusing to accept our war dead.

This June 6, on the 75th anniversary of D-Day, will we be honouring Canadian or British soldiers?

Canadians don’t seem to care — a stark contrast to our southern neighbours. If the U.S. rejected their war dead, Americans would be screaming — and rightly so. In Canada, the Lost Canadians organization is almost alone in embracing our heroes as also having been citizens.

During the Harper years we filed a petition asking the government to recognize them. The Conservatives refused. Next came the Trudeau government, responding similarly. Interesting how both sides publicly and eagerly embrace “our” soldiers, like on Remembrance Day or the 75th anniversary of D-Day, but behind the scenes with double-standard clarity, they snub with equal enthusiasm.

Don’t our Canadian heroes deserve better?

Mackenzie King’s racist and anti-Semitic ways are well documented. Catering to his base, he wanted to rid Canada of what they considered to be “undesirables.” Targeted were Asians, starting with Japanese-Canadians. In the mid-1940s Mackenzie King’s cabinet issued an Order in Council cancelling their citizenship. The Supreme Court upheld that Order in 1946, leading to 4,000 people first being stripped of their Canadian citizenship and their legal rights, then deported. Seven hundred were children born in Canada.

How can you cancel citizenship in 1946 if it didn’t exist till 1947? You can’t in law, but you can through grandstanding and creating false narratives.

To explain King’s about-face, it had everything to do with getting rid of the Japanese-Canadians. At the time, in 1946, the United Nations considered the deportation of one’s own citizens to be a “crime against humanity,” especially after what had just happened in Germany. To avoid running afoul of international opinion, King cancelled the citizenship of Japanese-Canadians. Almost 4,000, most of them born or naturalized Canadians, were sent to Japan. Almost immediately afterwards King had himself sworn in as “Canada’s first Canadian citizen.”

It was a lie then, and it’s a lie now. The problem is that for 72 years, Canada has denied citizenship to people born before 1947, saying it didn’t exist until then.

Lost Canadians has advocated for legislation to correct the pre-1947 citizenship anomalies. To date there have been seven bills correcting most of the citizenship problems. But not, as of yet, for those who gave their lives for Canada in the world wars.

This D-Day, who will you be honouring? Every Canadian prime minister should be proud to call Canada’s fallen heroes “citizens.” Whomever is buried in the Tomb of Canada’s Unknown Soldier should not be a foreigner.

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Australian citizenship: Waiting time drops by ten per cent

2019/06/04 Leave a comment

I always had looked up to Australia when working on citizenship given their service standard, if I remember correctly, that 80 percent of applications would be assessed within six months. Since then, the various policy changes and likely funding constraints have resulted in a significant backlog, even if the situation appears to be improving:

The number of migrants granted Australian citizenship has doubled compared to last year and the waiting time has dropped according to the Department of Home Affairs.

The latest figures released by the department reveal the waiting time for Australian citizenship has dropped by ten per cent.

The time period from lodgement to citizenship ceremony (by conferral) has dropped for 75 per cent of applications from 20 months to 18 months.

For 90 per cent of applications, though, it remains unchanged at 23 months.

Australian Citizenship May 2019

The Department attributed the reduction in waiting time to a range of reforms implemented to streamline the process.

“There is no greater privilege than Australian Citizenship and the Department takes its responsibility to efficiently and effectively process applications within the law very seriously.

“The number of people approved as Australian Citizens between 1 July 2018 and 30 April 2019 is around double the number approved in the same period last year.

“This follows from the implementation of a range of reforms that seek to streamline Departmental processes as much as possible without compromising on national security or program integrity,” a spokesperson of the Department told SBS Hindi.

“Long queue will continue to reduce”

Despite the drop in the waiting time and an increase in the number of approvals, the long queue of people awaiting the outcome of their citizenship application is still well above 200,000.

According to the Department of Home Affairs, there were 221,859 applications in the queue as of May 26th 2019.

The department, however, states the number of applications in the queue has significantly reduced compared to over 250,000 last year.

Indian population in Australia increases 30 per cent in less than two years; now the third largest migrant group in Australia
After England and China, India ranks third on the list of residents born overseas according to the latest figures by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

A spokesperson for the Department said with a high level of focus on the Australian Citizenship program, the number of applications waiting for an outcome is expected to continue to reduce.

“The Department is placing a high level of focus on the Australian Citizenship program.

“As a consequence of these measures, the number of Citizenship by conferral applications on-hand with the Department is reducing and is expected to continue to reduce.

“The improvement has occurred against a backdrop of a record number of applications and an increase in complex cases in recent years,” it said.

Source: Australian citizenship: Waiting time drops by ten per cent

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Brexit ‘causing’ more British nationals to become Irish

2019/06/04 Leave a comment

Common trend across most EU countries:

The number of British nationals applying for Irish citizenship has risen significantly since the Brexit referendum almost three years ago.

Irish citizenship ceremonies were first introduced in 2011, and for the first four years applications from Britons averaged about 60 a year.

In 2016, the year of the Brexit vote, there were 568 British applicants.

The number grew to 860 in 2017 and last year more than 1,200 Britons applied to become Irish citizens.

Irish citizenship applications from British nationals

Year Number of applications
2012 55
2013 62
2014 46
2015 73
2016 568
2017 860
2018 1,213
(1 Jan – 30 May) 2019 607
Source: Irish Department of Justice

The upward trend appears to be continuing this year.

More than 600 applications had been received by the end of May. That figure is expected to rise during the latter half of 2019.

The figures mirror the flood of applications for Irish passports.

In the year before the Brexit vote, there were more than 46,000 applications from Great Britain, but last year that more than doubled to over 98,500.

The current minimum waiting time for a first-time passport application from Great Britain is 72 working days – nearly three and a half months.

Irish passport applications from Great Britain

Year Number of applications
2008 46,105
2009 46,870
2010 43,464
2011 42,337
2012 45,646
2013 42,441
2014 43,449
2015 46,229
2016 63,453
2017 80,752
2018 98,544
(January – March) 2019 37,258
Source: Irish Department of Foreign Affairs

Applying for Irish citizenship is a separate and distinct process from applying for an Irish passport, but in order to get an Irish passport, you must first be an Irish citizen.

Irish citizenship can be acquired in a number of ways – through place of birth; Irish descent; marriage, adoption or naturalisation (the length of time an applicant has been resident in Ireland).

Citizenship is automatic for many people, such as those born on the island of Ireland before 2005 or those with a parent who is an Irish-born citizen.

Others must apply to the Department of Justice for citizenship.

While attending the most recent citizenship ceremony in April, Irish Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan remarked on the “significant numbers” of applicants originating from the UK.

Just over 300 British nationals were among the 2,400 new Irish citizens congratulated by the minister.

BBC News NI asked the department if it was linking the recent rise in British applications to the UK’s decision to leave the EU.

A department spokesman agreed the figures showed an increasing pattern since the referendum in June 2016.

“It is reasonable to attribute this steady rise in applications from British nationals over the last three years to concerns around the outcome of the Brexit process,” the spokesman added.

Among Ireland’s new citizens are Welsh ex-pat Laurie Kearon and “Lancashire lass” Stephanie McCorkell.

Both women have a similar story to tell.

Both have lived in the Republic of Ireland for decades, retaining their British passports and identity. But fears over Brexit prompted them to seek Irish citizenship.

British nationals are the second biggest group of non-Irish residents in the Republic of Ireland.

The most recent Irish census, carried out in April 2016, found there were just over 103,000 residents who described themselves as British.

In immigration terms, they were outnumbered only by Polish citizens who totalled more than 122,500 in April 2016.

Top 10 non-Irish nationalities living in Ireland
1 Polish 122,515
2 British 103,113
3 Lithuanian 36,552
4 Romanian 29,186
5 Latvian 19,933
6 Brazilian 13,640
7 Spanish 12,112
8 Italian 11,732
9 French 11,661
10 German 11,531
Source: Irish Census 2016

Up until the year after Brexit, British nationals made up just a tiny minority of those seeking a declaration of Irish citizenship.

In 2012 for example, the Dublin government issued more than 25,000 certificates of Irish nationality to people from around the world, but just 85 of those documents (0.3%) were granted to Britons.

In 2013, when more than 24,000 certificates were issued, just 55 (0.2%) were given to British people.

But between 2016 and 2017, the number of successful British applicants rocketed by more than 400%, increasing from 98 certificate recipients to 526.

The number increased again last year, when 687 British people received certificates of nationality from the Irish government.

Certificates of Irish citizenship in numbers

Year No. of certificates issued to British nationals Total certificates issued around the world Certificates issued to British nationals as a % of total
2010 97 6,325 1.5%
2011 70 10,796 0.6%
2012 85 25,110 0.3%
2013 55 24,240 0.2%
2014 51 21,100 0.2%
2015 54 13,561 0.4%
2016 98 10,036 1.0%
2017 526 8,195 6.4%
2018 687 8,226 8.4%
Total 1,723 127,589 1.4%
Source: Irish Department of Justice

So far this year, the Irish Department of Justice has issued 312 certificates of Irish nationality to British applicants, and we’re not yet half way through 2019.

It used to be the case that anyone born on the island of Ireland, including Northern Ireland, was automatically entitled to Irish citizenship and therefore EU citizenship.

The 1998 Good Friday Agreement, an international peace treaty, gave those from Northern Ireland the right to identify as Irish or British or both.

But by 2004, the Irish government said the law was being exploited by “citizenship tourism”, claiming that foreign women were travelling to Ireland in late pregnancy in order to get an EU passport for their babies.

It called a referendum, in which Irish voters overwhelmingly backed the tightening of the rules, with 79% voting to end the automatic citizenship right for all babies born in Ireland.

Source: Brexit ‘causing’ more British nationals to become Irish

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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?

Filed under Citizenship, citizenship-by-investment Tagged with ,

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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