Citizenship law makes Canadian dad’s kids non-citizens

2018/07/04 1 Comment

A known consequence of C-37 and the replacement of complicated to communicate and administer retention provisions by the straightforward first generation limit (prompted in part by the Lebanese evacuation of Lebanese Canadian citizens with minimal connection to Canada).

Like many policy choices, the focus was on addressing the vast majority of cases (“Canadians of convenience” as the Conservatives called them) with the knowledge that those caught in the situation of the Chandlers having the option to sponsor their children as immigrants and become naturalized after meeting the residency requirements.

But I would hope that cases such as these would be processed as quickly as possible.

And the solution is never as simple as Don Chapman states, given documentation and administrative challenges:

A citizenship rule designed to stop people with no connections to Canada from taking advantage of Canadian citizenship has kept a Vancouver dad from his kids for months.

Patrick Chandler was stunned to learn that he – a Canadian citizen – wasn’t able to pass on his citizenship to his four-year-old and nine-year-old kids, who were born in China while he was working there.

That’s kept the family from following him to his new job in B.C. for seven months as Chandler follows the Canadian government’s advice: sponsor your own children as immigrants.

“I couldn’t be there. I would have loved to be there,” Chandler said, while showing videos of his kids, Rachel and Ryan, in dancing and swimming lessons sent to him by his wife Fiona. “I’ve been missing a lot in these last few months.”

It’s a problem that could ensnare professional, jet-setting parents whose jobs send them around the globe.

Chandler was born in Libya while his parents were teaching there. His parents returned to the Lower Mainland when he was two years old. He left for China when he was in his late teens.

“In my opinion, Canada has always been my home,” he said.

But his birth in Libya came to haunt him with a change to citizenship rules in 2009. According to the new rule, the first children born abroad to a Canadian would keep their citizenship. But a second generation born abroad won’t be.

The goal of the Conservative government was to cut down on the spectre of people with little connection to Canada passing on their citizenship indefinitely.

Rachel was born three months after that law passed. Unaware, Chandler attempted to get her documents filed at the Canadian embassy in Beijing.

“(The worker) starts stamping the documents and says at the very last second, ‘Wait. You weren’t born in Canada. She’s not born in Canada. She’s not allowed to get Canadian citizenship.’ I said, ‘What’s going on?’” he remembered.

Rachel could not be Chinese because of that country’s rules about registering births. She could have been stateless, but her father, whose father is Irish, found the government of Ireland willing to grant citizenship.

Their second child, Ryan, was registered and is a Chinese national. But not having Canadian children was a major impediment to returning home, Chandler said.

It’s a problem that should have all Canadian expatriates paying attention, said Don Chapman, an advocate of people who Canadian citizenship law leaves in the lurch.

“How many Canadians are in this situation? How many Canadians are working overseas? They’ve had nine years to produce babies. There are a lot of people in this boat and they don’t even know it,” Chapman said.

The solution is simple, Chapman said: amend the law so that a Canadian born abroad automatically regains the right to have Canadian children after spending three years in the country. That’s the same length of time that it takes for permanent residents to become citizens.

Those new citizens can go on to have Canadian citizen children when in foreign countries, Chapman said, while Canadians who have been citizens since their birth in a foreign country do not have that right or any way to get it.

Last year a job opened up in the B.C. government, and Chandler and his family decided to make the move. The federal government suggested that the way he could get his children to Canada was to sponsor them as immigrants.

Chandler completed the paperwork, but hasn’t been approved yet, though he has some indications that approval could be near.

Source: Citizenship law makes Canadian dad’s kids non-citizens

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Citizenship application backlog ‘skyrocketed’ under Trump, report finds

2018/07/04 Leave a comment

Not surprising, whether deliberate or due to incompetence:

The backlog of pending applications for immigrants legally in the country trying to become U.S. citizens has “skyrocketed” under President Donald Trump, according to a new report from an immigrant rights organization.

There were nearly 730,000 pending naturalization applications as of the end of last year, a more than 87 percent increase since 2015 under President Barack Obama, according to the report from the National Partnership for New Americans, an alliance of immigrants’ rights groups.

“The Trump admin has built a second wall that prevents legal immigrants in the U.S. from becoming voting U.S. citizens,” Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the partnership, told NBC News.

He said the backlog at the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services means processing rates have reached as high as 20 months, raising concerns in a critical mid-term election year that some people will be unable to vote. Last year, over 925,000 people applied for U.S. citizenship, according to the report.

“They may be waiting for as much of 20 months after submitting a 21-page application, paid the $730 fee, submitted their fingerprints for a security a check and then sat and waited to take an exam,” he said.

As of Dec. 31, 2015, under Obama, the backlog was 388,832, according to the report.

“This is either absolute gross incompetence affecting close to a million legal immigrants who want to become U.S. citizens, or it is an intentional second wall that is designed to slow the pace at which lawfully present immigrants can become voters,” he said.

The report also found that certain states saw “enormous spikes” in denials of citizenship applications in the last quarter, noting changes in Alabama, Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Utah.

From Oct. 1, 2017, to the end of last December, the backlog increased in Washington, D.C., the U.S. Virgin Islands and several 19 states, including Alabama, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Rhode Island, Utah, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin, according to the report.

The states with the largest increase in pending applications over the last fiscal year included Utah with an increase of more than 53 percent, Texas with an increase of over 50 percent and Washington with over 46 percent, according to the report.

A United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) spokesman strongly contested the reports findings Monday afternoon.

“The truth is that the total number of people the U.S. naturalizes each year has remained virtually unchanged. What we’re looking at is a dishonest and desperate attempt by open borders advocates to undermine the work of Homeland Security officials, law enforcement and the administration to protect the integrity of our immigration system and uphold the rule of law,” said spokesman Michael Bars in a statement. “The current pending workload does not equate to a backlog — it’s a statistic used in the USCIS report to include every application for naturalization filed including those filed in recent days and weeks — and is being inaccurately portrayed as evidence of delays”

“Many of these cases, which can remain pending from one quarter to the next, are well within the processing time goal established by the agency with variances being a direct result of geography and capacity. USCIS will continue to process all applications and petitions in a judicious and comprehensive manner and will do so as efficiently and expeditiously as possible in accordance with the law,” he added. “We reject the inaccurate claims of those fundamentally opposed to this effort.”

The agency naturalizes approximately 700,00 to 750,000 as citizens a year, according to USCIS, and naturalized 716,000 people in fiscal year 2017.

The partnership announced the report’s findings later Monday at a news teleconference with Reps. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., and Luis Gutiérrez, D-Ill., and other immigrant rights groups.

The members of Congress also sent a congressional sign-on letter asking the director of USCIS to explain the backlogs and would call for congressional hearings and legal action to address the backlog,

The backlog was denying potential citizens the right to vote, and also left some at risk for potential deportation under Trump’s policies while their applications are pending, said Gutiérrez.

“The rules have changed — legal permanent residency does not protect you from deportation under Donald Trump,” he said. “People want to participate in the democratic process, they also want to protect themselves.”

Angelica Salas, executive director of the immigrant advocacy group the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), said, “More and more every day you have a situation in which legal permanent residents, even for minor violations decades old, are being visited by ICE.”

Salas said during the teleconference that their naturalization campaign for 2018 was looking towards the 2020 elections to support legal residents seeking the right to vote, despite the “insurmountable hurdles they face.”

“If you want to vote in November of 2020, you’ve basically got to apply in the next 60 to 90 days. That is something unconscionable,” he said during the teleconference.

Hoyt said the advocates were also working with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a Democrat, for a mayoral sign-on letter. Sign-on letters are used by lawmakers to come together and express a view on a policy or political matter. He added that the group was planning to file a Freedom of Information Act request looking for internal communications and numbers regarding the backlog.

USCIS did face a higher backlog after Obama was first elected, Hoyt said, but officials worked to curb that backlog to about 8 or 9 months.

Hoyt said his advocacy group has been tracking the backlog of citizenship applications for years and had never seen numbers like this.

He noted that while the backlog is ongoing, USCIS has launched an office focusing on identifying Americans suspected to have used fraudulent means to get their citizenship — and then strip them of it.

USCIS Director L. Francis Cissna told The Associated Press the agency is hiring dozens of lawyers and immigration officers to review cases and look for immigrants who were ordered deported and then used fake identities to later obtain green cards and eventually citizenship.

“We finally have a process in place to get to the bottom of all these bad cases and start denaturalizing people who should not have been naturalized in the first place,” Cissna said. “What we’re looking at, when you boil it all down, is potentially a few thousand cases.”

Hoyt said the move was a poor use of resources considering the current backlog.

“They’re not paying attention to their core responsibility of processing people in a timely manner,” Hoyt said. “Instead they’re on a witch hunt to try to denaturalize citizens who have been here for over 20 years.”

Salas said denaturalizations were very uncommon in the past.

Authorities would have to “demonstrate high, high levels of violation of any type in order for a person to be denaturalized,” she said. “It was something that was very, very rare.”

Source: Citizenship application backlog ‘skyrocketed’ under Trump, report finds

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Indigenous woman fights to stay in Canada, saying traditional territory is B.C.

2018/07/03 Leave a comment

Interesting case, one that requires joint agreement by the USA and Canada to address, and for that reason, unlikely in the post 9/11 security environment and the overall Trump administration to immigration and citizenship:

A First Nations woman working to revive a threatened language in her traditional territory of northern British Columbia says she’s being forced to leave the country on Canada Day.

Mique’l Dangeli belongs to the Tsimshian First Nation, whose territory straddles the border between Alaska and British Columbia. She says Canada won’t recognize her right to live and work in B.C. because she was born on the American side of the Annette Island Indian Reserve.

She said her visa expires July 1.

“For me, what I consider home is my home community and my people’s traditional territory, which is northern B.C.,” she said. “We’re not immigrants to our people’s traditional territory.”

Dangeli gave up a tenure-track position with the University of Alaska Southeast to teach 65 students how to speak Sm’algyax in the community of Kitsumkalum, just outside of Terrace, because there are so few fluent speakers remaining.

‘I’ve shed a lot of tears’

She says she hasn’t said goodbye to her students yet because it’s too difficult.

“I’ve shed a lot of tears with my elders and family but I don’t want to do that with my students. They’re so young and their love for the language is my inspiration and solace. I wouldn’t have the strength to fight this battle if I didn’t see where the hope truly lies, which is within my students,” she said.

After having two express entry applications for permanent residency fail, Dangeli has started a petition calling on the Canadian government to reciprocate the Jay Treaty, which was signed between the United States and Britain in 1794. The treaty allows status Indians born in Canada, who also have 50 per cent blood quantum, to live and work in the U.S.

Canada does not recognize the agreement as binding because it never codified it.

“The colonial border between the U.S. and Canada dissects Indigenous territories in ways that sever the lifelines between First Nation families, communities, languages and ceremonies,” Dangeli’s petition says.

Dangeli says she considered applying for Indian status in Canada, but learned the two-year process hinged on the baptismal record of her great-great-great grandmother in Prince Rupert, B.C., in the 1860s.

“So if she decided not to convert to Christianity I would not be considered an Indian under the Indian Act. The whole process is about one colonial institution affirming the power of another. It has nothing to do with our inherent Indigenous rights that predate colonial law,” Dangeli said.

Border issues unresolved

The federal government has been working to resolve border issues for First Nations but has not reached a solution. In December 2016, it appointed Fred Caron to examine the issue as a special representative of the minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs.

Caron met with representatives from more than 100 First Nations between January and August 2017, submitting a report to a committee of senior federal officials that is charged with developing a plan for addressing the border-crossing issues.

“Among the issues highlighted in Mr. Caron’s report, and that are being examined by the committee of senior officials, are questions relating to the important cultural and family connections between First Nations in Canada and native American communities in the United States,” Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada said in a statement.

The government will discuss next steps on the file with First Nations in the coming months, after the committee submits its recommendations, it said.

“The government is committed to working in partnership with First Nations to address their Canada-United States border crossing concerns,” the department said.

Although the Jay Treaty is historic, Canadian institutions are increasingly choosing to honour it, said Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, a law professor with the Peter A. Allard School of Law at the University of British Columbia and inaugural director of the school’s Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre.

She gave the example of Vancouver Island University, which offers domestic tuition for American Indigenous students who would fall under the treaty.

Border issues have most commonly arisen in Eastern Canada, she said, where communities like the Akwesasne First Nation cross three borders between Ontario, Quebec and New York.

Some are looking for solutions, like Mohawk leaders who called for a special identification card that would ease the border crossing, which hasn’t been granted, she said.

Practical solution wanted

“Indigneous people have been coming forward and saying let’s work this out in a practical way,” she said.

“It’s a case where Canada is actually behind.”

Toronto lawyer Sara Mainville says border issues have been common in Eastern Canada and some First Nations leaders have taken it upon themselves to set up meetings with customs and immigration officials so their community members don’t run into any problems, since Canada isn’t honouring the Jay Treaty.

In 2006, her own community of the Couchiching First Nation sanctioned the adoption of the husband of one of its members who was born on the American side of the Anishnaabe territory, because he needed medical care and Canada wouldn’t recognize his rights to the territory.

Mainville pointed to Canada’s commitment to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as something that gives Dangeli’s argument more weight, because it specifically says Indigenous Peoples divided by international borders have a right to maintain contact with their own members.

For Dangeli’s part, she says she hopes her situation is resolved as soon as possible, especially given the critical state of the language.

“This is my heart and soul and the work is very much needed within our nation.”

Source: Indigenous woman fights to stay in Canada, saying traditional territory is B.C.

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Citizenship is the new caste system

2018/06/27 Leave a comment

While large written in the US and European contexts, her questions at the end are worth pondering:

Lord Salisbury, one of England’s great conservative leaders, was an unapologetic snob. Looking out over the European landscape in 1862, he saw that the aristocracy was collapsing, and this seemed to him like a catastrophe for all of civilization. How, he wondered, could common morals and high culture be maintained without the support of patricians? Who would govern when no one had been groomed for leadership? What chaos might ensue in a world where people had no clear sense of their proper roles and obligations? “Political equality is not merely a folly — it is a chimera,” he concluded. “It is idle to discuss whether it ought to exist; for, as a matter of fact, it never does.”

Americans read these complaints and scoff. We like to think we’ve transcended this kind elitism. Here in America, we prioritize content of character, not circumstances of birth. In this country, your fortunes depend on what you can do, not on some inherited pedigree.

That, at any rate, is our national myth. Unfortunately, it’s not really true, in this nation or any other. Democratic ideals may have swept the globe so totally that even totalitarians now pay lip-service to them, yet our world is in some respects more ruthlessly class-divided than ever. I’m not talking here about the 1 percent, or the 9.9 percent, or whatever percentage we see as inheriting systemic advantages from their well-heeled parents. I’m talking about citizenship.

Citizenship represents the most significant class lottery remaining in the modern world. The cover of your passport speaks volumes about your prospects for enjoying peace, prosperity, and happiness over the course of your life. If you are the offspring of Danes, you can likely look forward to eight peaceful and happy decades, with a good education and quality medical care. Were you born in Haiti? In that case, you may get 65 years, but you’ll probably spend them coping with grinding poverty (at about 1/30th the income of an average American). If you were born in North Korea, accept my compliments for even managing to read these words.

Citizenship, in short, is massively consequential, and there’s almost nothing meritorious about it. If you’ve spent your life as an American citizen, your fortunes have depended to a very great extent on an inherited pedigree. Even if you’re brilliant and full of entrepreneurial energy, those qualities probably wouldn’t have helped you as a citizen of Burundi or Niger. It’s hard to pull yourself up by the bootstraps when there’s virtually nowhere to go.

Western nations are developing a bad conscience about this system. Thanks to advances in technology, we now know what’s happening in Syria and Sudan, and our planet has become so interconnected that it now seems irresponsible to wash our hands of failed states (and their suffering citizens). Even as the globe contracts though, we’re losing confidence in our ability to improve terrible places. A quarter-century ago, there was still considerable optimism in the West about the potential for democracy and free enterprise to “lift all the boats,” inspiring impoverished nations to transform themselves into prosperous, free societies. In fact, free enterprise has done much to alleviate material need around the world, and even very poor countries have in some cases seen significant improvements in their standards of living. Corrupt government, though, has proved a harder nut to crack. Stability, prosperity, and political freedom seem to arise out of a complex mix of factors that, where absent, are difficult to replicate. The upshot is that truly miserable places may not improve anytime soon.

Where governments fail to secure order and protect human rights, who can blame their citizens for wanting to leave? Unfortunately, that may not really be an option for some people, thanks to the dominating role of citizenship in today’s world order. If you’re poor and lacking rarified skills, other countries probably don’t want you. The truly desperate or determined may try to migrate anyway, at which point Western nations are faced with a choice: How far are we willing to go to maintain these class lines?

This isn’t the first time we’ve stood at such a juncture. In the late 19th century, as class lines were being obliterated all across Europe, a number of aristocrats rose up to make spirited defenses of traditional class division. Lord Salisbury’s Disintegration and Tennyson’s Locksley Hall Sixty Years After stand as two of the more eloquent reflections on this topic. These men saw the collapse of aristocracy as a disaster, and Americans might be surprised to find that they actually make some rather strong points. Salisbury in particular was admirably free of any romantic notions about the intrinsic superiority of the nobly-born. He simply regarded class distinction as a necessary component of a civilized social order. Without defined social roles and a cultivated leisure class, society would fragment and culture would coarsen. Responsible leadership would be buried under the ruthless logic of the political machine. The future would be written by demagogues, skilled only in the art of stoking fears and channeling popular resentment.

Looking at modern society, can we really say that these fears were ill-founded? Do we not have problems today with social fragmentation, a debased civic culture, and hysterical populist politics? Among the European powers, Great Britain was perhaps the most successful in transitioning smoothly from an aristocratic order to a modern, democratic one. There were no major coups, uprisings, or experiments with totalitarianism. Despite that, it seems unlikely that men like Tennyson or Salisbury would withdraw their complaints, given a glimpse of 21st century England. They were right to see that the dissolution of the old social order would precipitate a host of new problems. They were also right to see that the transition was inevitable. A rigid class system simply can’t be maintained once common consensus has deemed it morally unacceptable.

Is the Western world reaching that point, with respect to immigration and citizenship? It’s not clear, but there are interesting signs that we may be moving in that direction. Opposition to migration has been the single most defining feature of right-wing populist movements, both in America and across Europe. At best though, these movements have commanded a very slight majority of public opinion, and their more stringent efforts to crack down on immigration have provoked serious backlash. Italian populists were excoriated this month for their refusal to accept a rescue vessel bearing hundreds of migrants. President Trump’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policies drew criticism even from evangelical leaders who have been his staunchest supporters. Permissive immigration policies and porous borders carry obvious social costs, but nevertheless, it appears that Westerners are becoming morally uncomfortable with rigid efforts to maintain a citizenship regime that looks increasingly like a global caste system.

What are the alternatives? In the coming years, that question will need to be explored in more detail. Would a lengthier and more involved naturalization process help us to balance the various conflicting goods? Might we end up with a situation reminiscent of Ancient Rome, wherein different “tiers” of citizens live together in common cities? Perhaps Western nations will explore new methods of cooperation, enabling them to present migrants with a range of livable options. (Even if you can’t live here, perhaps we can help you to move somewhere so that your family can have a clean start.)

Only one thing is certain: Immigration will be a source of heated controversy for many years to come. It forces us to confront old problems in a new guise. What benefits should parents be permitted to bequeath to their children? How can we preserve communities without being unjust to the people who stand outside of them? At what point does communal solidarity bleed into xenophobia, racism, and tribal hatred?

We’ve grappled with these questions before. It’s time to craft new answers.

Source: Citizenship is the new caste system

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Australia’s citizenship program should focus on Indigenous introduction, Darwin linguistics teacher says

2018/06/25 Leave a comment

As IRCC prepares the revised citizenship study guide, with what I understand extensive consultations with Indigenous peoples (to be released later this year?), some interesting reflections from Australia on improving the understanding of Indigenous peoples and new citizens, and language:

As Ganesh Koramannil passed through Sydney Central train station in 2004, a man approached and asked him for $2.

It was an interaction he would have long forgotten, except the man was the first Indigenous Australian Mr Koramannil had ever met.

It could have remained among his only insights to a culture with more than 60,000 years of history, had his wife not turned down a job in Canberra to take up one in Maningrida, 500 kilometres east of Darwin.

After moving to the Arnhem land community four years after arriving in Australia to study English, Mr Koramannil was finally introduced to “the most welcoming culture” he had ever come across, which he said had unprecedented similarities with his own.

“You give an Aboriginal language speaker any Indian name, they will pronounce it very clearly without any accent. Give it to the Europeans, they will give you six varieties,” he said.

“There’s linguistic similarities between Aboriginal languages and Indian languages. My mother tongue for example is Malayalam. There are sounds that are very much part of Yolngu language.

At the time of publishing, Mr Koramannil was the only Territorian to write a submission to the Australian Citizenship Legislation Amendment Bill 2018, which aims to toughen the eligibility requirement for new migrants to become citizens.

But Mr Koramannil said that for many migrants, their knowledge of Indigenous Australia would never extend far beyond his experience at the Sydney train station.

He said Australia’s immigration program offered no systemic way of introducing newcomers to Indigenous culture.

Instead of introducing stricter tests and eligibility requirements, Mr Koramannil has called for an “experiential” citizenship pathway, where migrants were taught about culture, history and values in dedicated sessions.

“The link to our Indigenous past and its present and future relevance [should] be included as a mandatory requirement for citizenship,” he said.

Tougher citizenship test proposed

The original bill to toughen up citizenship requirements was struck down 2017, when the Government missed the deadline for the Senate which saw it struck off by default.

The Greens, Labor and the Nick Xenophon Team had all opposed the changes.

But One Nation senator Pauline Hanson introduced it again 2018 and it was referred to a committee for inquiry.

Among the proposed changes will be a separate English language test, which will check for a ‘competent level’ of listening, speaking, reading and writing skills.

It would also increase the general residence requirement, meaning newcomers will need to live in Australia for eight years before applying for citizenship.

The citizenship test would also include questions about Australian values and the privileges, and responsibilities of Australian citizenship.

In April 2017, when the first bill was launched, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the Federal Government was “putting Australian values at the heart of citizenship processes and requirements”.

The Multicultural Council of the Northern Territory wrote a submission to last year’s bill, stating that while it was important for migrants to learn English, proficiency should not be an indicator for a person’s ability to make a positive contribution.

It said the idea may have adverse impacts for those from non-English speaking backgrounds and humanitarian entrants.

“It is our experience that fluency in English to the level proposed for migrants from non-English speaking backgrounds in a stand-alone English language test is not usually gained within the period of settlement, but can be viewed as a lifelong skill,” it said.

It said many of the proposals were “at best, unnecessary and, at worst, divisive and counterproductive”.

‘Language cannot be devoid of racial identity’

During Mr Koramannil’s time in Maningrida, he said Indigenous children, who had seldom met an Indian person before, would come up to and say “You are from India”.

It fascinated him.

“I said ‘How did they know?’ You know Maningrida — 600 or 700km away from here, one of the largest standalone Aboriginal communities — and kids of six years old [recognised me],” he said.

Looking back on it, he said he believed the children had sensed a familiarity between the two ancient cultures, just as people who spoke more than one language could recognise features of languages they didn’t speak.

In his opinion, if citizenship tests focussed so closely on English proficiency, it would come at a cultural and linguistic cost.

Mr Koramannil now works in Darwin teaching linguistics at a tertiary level.

The way he sees it, language is so deeply ingrained in a person’s racial identity that selecting citizens based on their language skills is tantamount to profiling.

“[Selecting people based on] language is profiling. And these days we speak multiple languages. And especially people trying to come to Australia, very few people won’t be bilingual.”

As a linguistics professional, and former IELTS examiner, he said he’d seen many “monolingual anglophone Australian professionals” fail to get their band score in writing.

The only reason he could see for such a test was to keep people of certain backgrounds away.

“The question is why are you trying to keep people away? Do keep people away on character for example, criminal background and that. But language is racially profiling,” he said.

Mr Koramannil said forming connections with Australia’s culture, values and history should instead form the basis of citizenship.

He believes newcomers should spend some of their time in Australia prior to becoming citizens learning about the country’s past, culture and values.

He has suggested ‘cultural welcome centres’, where Indigenous people could meet new migrants and explain their perspective of Australia to them, acting as “cultural translators” and helping forge connections.

Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs is due to file a report by December.

The ABC has contacted the committee for comment.

Source: Australia’s citizenship program should focus on Indigenous introduction, Darwin linguistics teacher says

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Pressure builds to close ‘birth tourism’ loophole for getting citizenship

2018/06/23 Leave a comment

Interesting coming from a Liberal MP:

Liberal MP Joe Peschisolido is optimistic that he can persuade federal ministers to curb so-called birth tourism, as pressure for action mounts in B.C.

“We are reaching a tipping point,” he said. “Nurses have told me that this is displacing folks from giving birth in Richmond.”

The number of babies born to foreign nationals at Richmond Hospital rose to 384 last year from just 18 in 2010 and now accounts for about 20 per cent of all deliveries, according to Vancouver Coastal Health. Under Canadian law, babies born here get Canadian citizenship regardless of their parents’ citizenship.

An entire industry of citizenship brokers and maternity tourism businesses are profiting from this “illegitimate business model,” said Peschisolido, who represents Steveston-Richmond East. “A whole slew of folks are complicit in this.”

Peschisolido plans to present a parliamentary e-petition — which calls for an end to this “abusive and exploitative practice” and “concrete measures” to eliminate the birth tourism —  to federal Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen and Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale.

In response to birth tourism, Australia and New Zealand changed their laws, granting citizenship to babies only when at least one parent is a citizen or a legal resident.

“Birth tourism is wrong and it undermines our immigration system and our health care system,” said Peschisolido. “The reason there are more than 8,000 signatures is that it violates people’s sense of fairness.”

Non-resident births account for two per cent of the 44,000 babies born in B.C. each year.

Non-residents are required to pay the costs associated with their care and the vast majority of these patients pay these fees without issue, said Laura Heinze, who speaks for the B.C. Health Ministry.

“The ministry in no way endorses or supports the marketing of maternity tourism,” she said. “Matters relating to immigration are the responsibility of the federal government.”

Pregnant women who come to Canada specifically to have a child with Canadian citizenship are not breaking the law, but they could be misleading immigration officials about their reasons for visiting Canada.

“If a person, including an expectant mother travelling to Canada, provides false information or documents, IRCC will refuse their application and that person could also be inadmissible to Canada for five years,” according to the federal Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship department.

This is the second time that the petition’s author, Kerry Starchuk, has tried to get the attention of the federal authorities. Her first petition launched in 2016 also gathered more than 8,000 signatures.

A report by Canadian immigration officials recommended changes to citizenship law to then-immigration minister Jason Kenney in 2014.

No action was taken by that Conservative government, but the number of foreign citizens coming to B.C. to give birth in order to secure Canadian citizenship for their child has risen dramatically since then.

People have until July 17 to sign the current petition.

Starchuk became concerned about growth of birth tourism after trying to greet new neighbours with cookies and came to realize the house was being used as accommodation for women from abroad who were about to give birth.

“I’ve done my part being a good neighbour, but this is exploiting the system,” she said. “They are not here to be my neighbours and I’m not OK with that.”

A Vancouver Sun investigation in 2016 found more than two dozen so-called baby houses were providing services and accommodation to birth tourists in B.C.

“These people are jumping the queue when people are waiting to immigrate,” she said. “I don’t see how being born here like this justifies citizenship.”

Petition supporter Gary Liu said the practice of birth tourism is generally “despised” in the immigrant community.

“People who have worked hard to learn the language and raise their families — and everyone has their own struggles and stories — they feel like this is a quick pass for some people,” said Liu, who has lived in Canada for more than 20 years.

Liu believes more rigorous application of existing rules by Canada Border Services Agency and enforcement of zoning bylaws against baby houses would minimize the practice.

Canada and the United States are the only G-7 nations that grant automatic citizenship for babies born in-country to foreign nationals. Critics complain that so-called “anchor babies” become a legal foothold in Canada to gain immigration access for the rest of their families.

Source: Pressure builds to close ‘birth tourism’ loophole for getting citizenship

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As birth tourism climbs in B.C., health authority files $312,595 lawsuit over one unpaid childbirth bill

2018/06/22 Leave a comment

Although the overall number of birth tourists is low compared to the total number of births in Canada (see What happened to Kenney’s cracking down on birth tourism? Feds couldn’t do it alone | hilltimes.com), appropriate to ensure that any unpaid bills are collected. “Birth houses” at a minimum need to be regulated if not banned given this is clearly an abuse, even if relatively small, of our immigration and health systems:

Record numbers of  so-called birth tourists, mainly from China, are expected at Richmond Hospital this year. Yet the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority has no plans to deter women from having their babies at the hospital to give them Canadian citizenship, despite suing a woman for nonpayment of $313,000 for her delivery.

The lawsuit filed in April relates to a birth in 2012 that involved complications and kept the lawsuit defendant, Yan Xia, and her infant, in the hospital for an extended time. Xia has not yet filed a statement of defence.

Although the hospital reserves the right to add interest charges of two per cent a month to unpaid bills, a spokeswoman said that is not the plan at this point. If such interest were to be added, the bill would exceed $1 million.

There has been a steady increase in the number of babies born to non-resident mothers at Richmond Hospital, to 384 in 2016-17 from 18 in 2010. Halfway through the 2017-18 fiscal year, there were 189 non-resident births, according to VCH spokeswoman Carrie Stefanson.

While all pregnant women are asked to register well in advance of giving birth so that hospital resources can be planned, there have been no measures taken by the hospital to deter birth tourism, which now accounts for 20 per cent of its deliveries. That is believed to be the highest proportion in the province, if not Canada. B.C. Women’s Hospital discourages birth tourism through various policies and practices. At times, Richmond Hospital has to send local women in labour to other hospitals when it is too busy.

The birth tourism phenomenon is tied to several factors, including Richmond’s demographics, a preponderance of “birth houses” for pregnant Chinese women in the city, the large number of doctors and nurses who speak Cantonese or Mandarin, and an industry fuelled by brokers who charge high fees to make the arrangements for women wanting to have so-called “anchor” babies in Canada.

Stefanson said she believes the Xia case is the only maternity lawsuit over $100,000 so far. Typically, the health authority uses other means to collect unpaid bills.

“VCH has invoiced non-residents for approximately $43 million in (all kinds of medical) services in the past year, and has collected about 80 per cent of that amount,” she said.

In the Xia case, such efforts have been unsuccessful, and with a six-year deadline for legal action approaching, the health authority decided it was time to take that action. Xia’s whereabouts are unknown.

Stefanson said the hospital exists to provide health care and will never deny urgent hospital care to anyone based on their ability to pay or where they are from.

She said the health authority expects foreigners will have travel insurance or some other means of paying. Non-resident pregnant women who go to any hospital in B.C. are expected to pay a deposit of $8,200 for a vaginal birth and $13,300 for a caesarean delivery. If they stay in the hospital for at least a night, there may be additional charges. In the past year, VCH has invoiced non-resident maternity clients $6.2 million, and 82 per cent of that amount has been recovered.

An article posted on the “Hongcouver” blog in the South China Morning Post says Richmond is at the centre of the birth tourism phenomenon. It highlighted one “birth house” called the Baoma Inn and its Instagram account showing photos of smiling expectant or post-delivery Chinese mothers enjoying touristy outings around Vancouver. Also pictured are newborns asleep, next to their new Canadian passports. In addition to pre- and post-partum accommodation, the inn is said to be able to arrange birth certificate and passport services plus getting newborns enrolled in the B.C. Medical Services Plan so they can receive publicly funded health care after they’ve resided in the province for three months.

The Baoma Inn is one of the dozens of so-called birth houses in Richmond. It is not known what birth house the defendant in the VCH case used, or even if she stayed in one.

The South China Morning Post article pointed out that Canada is one of a few countries (including the U.S.) that offers citizenship to babies born in the country, regardless of the nationality of parents. By contrast, in China, nationality is acquired upon birth only if one parent is a Chinese national, similar to policies in Australia and Britain.

David Georgetti, the Mandarin-speaking lawyer retained by VCH to litigate the case, could not be reached for comment.

Source: As birth tourism climbs in B.C., health authority files $312,595 lawsuit over one unpaid childbirth bill

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82% of Dreamers Won’t Benefit from House Bill’s Citizenship Path

2018/06/21 Leave a comment

Solid analysis:

House Republicans will vote on their “compromise” immigration bill this week. Moderate Republican supporters of the bill may argue that its many restrictionist features—including draconian asylum provisions, cancelling the applications of 3 million people waiting to immigrate legally, and permanent reductions in legal immigration—are a small price to pay to help the entire Dreamer population gain a “pathway to citizenship.” However, an analysis of the Border Security and Immigration Reform Act (BSIF) shows that even under the most generous assumptions, the bill would likely initially legalize only 821,906 people, provide permanent residence (i.e. a pathway to citizenship) to 628,758, and result in citizenship for 421,268.

As provided in Table 1, only a third of the Dreamer population would likely receive status under the House plan (H.R. 6136), and just 18 percent would likely make it onto the pathway to citizenship. Only 12 percent would likely apply for and receive citizenship. Moreover, even the pathway to citizenship is tenuous, since—for all Dreamers in DACA or without legal status today—it is contingent on a future Congress appropriating money for a quite expensive (at least $25 billion) wall and security system along the Southwest border of the United States.

Table 1: Dreamer Populations and Eligibility Under Border Security and Immigration Reform Act

Sources: Authors’ calculations (see below) based on population estimates from Migration Policy Institute (DACA eligible and total Dreamer Population based on American Hope Act); Border Security and Immigration Reform Act (H.R. 6136)
*As of December 31, 2016

If Congress wants to help a larger number of Dreamers, then it would need to establish clear legalization criteria with lower costs and fewer risks, while providing greater legal certainty for the parents of Dreamers to mitigate fears of coming forward. Members of Congress should not exaggerate the extent of the legalization of Dreamers as a way to justify politically questionable policy choices, including reducing the annual level of legal immigration and eliminating several current immigration categories.

Restrictive Criteria in the House Bill

Back in January, President Trump promised a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers—up to 1.8 million of them. That’s still just half of the 3.6 million Dreamers—unauthorized immigrants who entered the country as minors—estimated by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) to be in the United States as of January 1, 2017, but it’s still far more than the estimated number of Dreamers who will likely receive permanent residence under the House compromise legislation that will receive a vote this week.

The BSIF Act creates a four-part framework for potentially receiving permanent residence—a “path to citizenship”—and later citizenship (see Table 2 at the end). First, Dreamers would need to meet a set of basic criteria to receive conditional nonimmigrant status, a temporary renewable legal status. Second, after six years, most would need to apply for a renewal of this status. Third, they could apply for permanent residence over a 15-year period if they met a final set of requirements. Fourth, they could apply for citizenship five years after receiving permanent residence. Each stage will reduce the population that ultimately will become U.S. citizens.

The House immigration bill would use the same restrictive basic criteria as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Its authors argue that if the requirements were good enough for President Obama who created DACA in 2012, they should be good enough for Democrats today. But as an act of prosecutorial discretion, DACA was never meant to be permanent immigration law, and in any case, President Obama tried to update its eligibility requirements in 2015, only to be stopped by the courts. The bill wouldn’t stop there. The House plan imposes additional eligibility requirements that would exclude even more Dreamers from receiving permanent protection.

The House bill will exclude Dreamers who entered after June 15, 2007, who entered at any age over 15, or who were over the age of 31 on June 15, 2017 (or 37 today). By the time the bill is implemented, people who had been residing in the United States for 10 or 11 years would be excluded from receiving status under the bill. The bill also requires a high school degree or equivalent or high school enrollment if the applicant is younger than 18. These restrictions were also in DACA, but the new bill would go even further to restrict eligibility. An applicant would be disqualified for having more than a single non-traffic-related misdemeanor, including immigration-related offenses; ever having missed an immigration court appearance; or having ignored an order to leave the country.

The biggest new restriction would be the requirement that Dreamers who are not students, disabled, or primary caregivers demonstrate that they can maintain an income of at least 125 percent of the poverty line. Not only do many Dreamers have incomes beneath this threshold, but also, if they have already lost DACA or never applied, it will be impossible for them to receive a legal job offer or demonstrate legal employment for the purposes of their application. This creates a catch-22 for applicants: prove you can support yourself in order to get work authorization in order to support yourself. (This provision should also concern employers which could see their records become the focus of government attention.)

In addition, receiving status under this bill will be far more expensive than receiving status under DACA. The bill would impose a fine—what the bill refers to as a border security fee—of $1,000. In addition, applicants would need to pay a fee to cover the cost of their application. DACA also had an application fee of $495, but the fee under this new bill would likely be more than double that because it requires an in-person interview and a medical examination. This will make the legalization more like applying for permanent residence, which costs $1,225. All told, applicants would need to pay about $2,225—4.5 times as much as DACA. This comes on top of any attorney fees. Many DACA applicants cite the cost as a primary challenge. MPI’s analysis also points to income as “strongly affecting” Dreamers’ ability to apply.

Finally, the bill would impose a 1-year filing deadline. This means that applicants would have just one year to gather their information, find an attorney, and save $2,225 to apply. For comparison, only 64 percent of DACA applicants submitted applications in the first 13 months of the program. This time limit will needlessly suppress applications.

Why Relatively Few Dreamers Would Even Receive Temporary Relief

In January 2018, the Migration Policy Institute used the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey to estimate that there were 1.3 million Dreamers eligible for DACA. Another 120,000 were too young to apply for DACA, but would be eligible under this legislation so long as they were enrolled in school. However, this eligible population must be reduced based on the new requirements. We estimate conservatively that the income threshold would exclude about 15 percent of the DACA eligible population. This figure is based on the share of Central American immigrants who entered between 1982 and 2007 who are below 125 percent of the poverty line, are not in school, and are not unable to work due to disability or being the primary caregiver, as recorded in the 2017 Current Population Survey.

The misdemeanor requirement is more difficult to place a precise number to, but the government says that 17,079 DACA recipients have at least two arrests, assuming that 75 percent of those arrests ended in conviction. That would reduce 12,809, or 2 percent of the DACA recipient population. Assuming that this rate would apply to the DACA eligible population as a whole (even though it is more likely that that population has more convictions that the DACA population itself), this would reduce the eligible population by another 26,000. Thus, the maximum number of Dreamers initially eligible for status under the House bill is 1.17 million. Even this is likely an overestimate because we cannot estimate how much the noncriminal restrictions (e.g. prior removal orders, false claims of U.S. citizenship, etc.) could further reduce the eligible population.

Even fewer will actually apply. Even after six years of DACA, only 61.4 percent of the eligible population applied for and received DACA. While the promise of a pathway to citizenship could result in a higher participation rate, other elements in this bill will suppress application rates, neutralizing the greater incentives to apply. Furthermore, the initial status is temporary, and the pathway to citizenship is not guaranteed. In fact, unless Congress funds the border wall repeatedly in future years, the path to citizenship would never materialize at all. Moreover, the fact that the cost will be about 450 percent higher will prevent many Dreamers from applying (as noted above).

Many Dreamers failed to apply for DACA because they didn’t realize that they were eligible, believing that they had to have finished high school or that those who had been ordered to leave the country could not sign up. This bill’s new and more complex eligibility requirements will only introduce more confusion. The risk of a denial may keep some from taking the risk to apply. Nearly 8 percent of applicants for DACA were rejected.

The uncertainty and distrust associated with the Trump administration’s enforcement actions would only add to the concern about handing over information. As we’ve noted before, many Dreamers expressed concern that their application could be used to target their families. The House bill attempts to address this fear by limiting how their application information can be used, but it amplifies the fear in other areas by providing enforcement resources and new legal authorities to the administration to speed up deportations. A future Congress could change this privacy protection at any time, and at this point, few immigrants may trust the administration to follow this type of technical “firewall.”

According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the last major legalization—the 1986 amnesty—had only a two-thirds participation rate, despite the less strict criteria than the ones contained in BSIF. Ultimately, we conservatively chose to use the CBO’s higher rate of 67 percent, rounding it up to 70 percent—10 percentage points higher than DACA’s initial enrollment rate. Based on this analysis, we can conclude that at most 820,000 Dreamers would receive initial legal status under the House GOP proposal.

Why Relatively Few Dreamers Would Receive Permanent Residence & Citizenship

Under DACA, which had no additional requirements at all to extend status other than maintaining residence in the United States for another two years, just 85 percent of initial enrollees maintained status through the end of the program. Some of this drop-off can be explained by people failing to graduate high school for a variety of reasons, but the additional cost is important as well. Under the House bill, applicants for extension of their temporary status would be required to pay a fee of another $1,225 fee (2.5 times more than DACA) and have stayed in the United States for another 6 years. Assuming this rate remains roughly the same, only 698,620 would likely end up receiving an extension under the House bill.

After receiving the extension, Dreamers—as well as some legal immigrant Dreamers*—would be able to apply for a pathway to permanent residence. The bill creates a complex points system that will prioritize applications from those with more education, longer work histories, or better language skills. But the minimum threshold for points is low enough that anyone who qualified for the initial status would be eligible to apply. Of course, there is not a strong incentive even to apply for this status, and the cost of applying for permanent residence is another $1,225. They would have to apply over the course of a 15-year period, starting five years after the initially received status. We assume that about 90 percent would apply for permanent residence. Thus, only 628,758 Dreamers would likely receive permanent residence—a path to citizenship—under the House proposal.

Finally, only about two thirds of those who receive permanent residence are likely to apply for citizenship. While Dreamers are probably more likely to apply for citizenship than other immigrants, immigrants from Mexico and Central America are much less likely to apply for citizenship than immigrants from other countries—all have naturalization rates below 50 percent—and 89 percent of DACA recipients are from Central America or Mexico. These two facts work in opposite directions, leading us to assume that Dreamers will naturalize at the average rate for all immigrants—67 percent. Based on this assumption, just 421,268 immigrants are likely to become U.S. citizens under the House compromise bill.

Conclusion

In the best case scenario, the House GOP plan would likely provide a pathway to citizenship to fewer than 630,000 Dreamers—barely a third of the president’s promise in January and just 18 percent of the entire Dreamer population. Moreover, only an estimated 421,000 immigrants are likely to become citizens.

If Congress wants to fulfill the president’s promise of a pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million Dreamers, it would need to institute a broader legalization program for Dreamers with as few risks and costs, and as little confusion, as possible. Congress would also need to provide legal certainty in some form for their parents to mitigate fear of coming forward. Members of Congress should also not exaggerate the extent of the legalization of Dreamers as part of a strategy to justify questionable policy choices, including reducing legal immigration and eliminating several immigration categories.

Table 2 compares the eligibility criteria and requirements under the BSIF Act to those under DACA and the Securing America’s Future (SAF) Act, which is the other bill under consideration this week.

Table 2: Comparison of Pathways to Status & Citizenship Under House Bills and DACA

*The legal immigrant Dreamers would slightly increase the eligible population, but there are so few who would meet the requirements (10 years of continuous residency before the bill passes plus 5 or 6 more after it is implemented) that it would not substantially alter these numbers. In any case, the estimates of the Dreamer population from MPI could include people in temporary statuses that have characteristics similar to those without status (inability to access welfare or receive certifications for legal employment).

Source: 82% of Dreamers Won’t Benefit from House Bill’s Citizenship Path

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Australian citizenship approvals record dramatic slowdown

2018/06/20 Leave a comment

In its last report, the department only met its service standard 45 percent of the time:

The processing of citizenship applications has been painfully slow this year with the Department of Home Affairs approving 54,419 applications during the first eight months of 2017-18, compared to 139,285 last year, according to information released to the Federal Parliament on Monday.

During this financial year, a total of 141,236 citizenship applications were received as of February 28, the Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs revealed.

The Department of Home Affairs last month told the Federal Parliament that over 200,000 people were awaiting the outcome of their citizenship applicants as of April 30 this year with the average waiting period for processing applications ballooning up to 16 months.

The relatively low number of citizenship grants is attributed to the period of April- October 2017 when the Department held on to new applications after announcing the citizenship reforms that sought to increase the general residence requirement and introduce a standalone English language test. The Government is planning to bring back a reworked version of the Bill after its proposed law was defeated in the Senate.

Home Affairs officer Luke Mansfield told a Senate Estimates hearing last month that an increased number of applications coupled with tightened national security requirements had led to an increase in the processing time of citizenship applications.

Citizenship applicants facing uncertainty

Atul Vidhata who runs an online forum – Fair Go for Australian Citizenship, says many migrants have been waiting much longer than sixteen months.

“When these people contact the department, they are told it’s not a service standard to process the applications within this timeframe,” he tells SBS Punjabi.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty due to a lack of clear communication. In our experience, some applications that were made in 2018 are being processed faster whereas applications made in 2017 are still held up.”

MP Julian Hill had questioned the Citizenship Minister Alan Tudge about the criteria applied for applications requiring ‘thorough analysis’ or ‘further assessment’.

“All applications for Australian citizenship are assessed on a case-by-case basis against the legislative criteria,” Mr Tudge responded.

data

India overtakes the UK as top source of Australian citizenship

Responding to questions by Victorian Labor MP Julian Hill, Mr Tudge revealed the country-wise break up of citizenship statistics.

Data

India has been the top source of citizenship in Australia for the last five years overtaking the United Kingdom.

Since 2012-13, over 118,000 people born in India have pledged their allegiance to Australia by becoming Australian citizens. Indian migrants also top the list of country-wise visa recipients in Australia’s annual immigration program.

As of February 28 this year, 10,168 Indian-born migrants were granted Australian citizenship with 25,408 Indian-born people applying during the same time. The 2016-17 figure stood at 22,006 citizenship grants to Indian migrants with 29,955 Indians applying for it.

Source: Australian citizenship approvals record dramatic slowdown

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Bishops to supplement rather than revise Faithful Citizenship voter guide

2018/06/18 Leave a comment

Good debate and discussion. But if seems a bit ingenuous not to undertake a more fundamental revision given the times:

After nearly 90 minutes of fraternal debate about the future of their voter guide, Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, the U.S. bishops opted to supplement rather than revise or issue a new document, resisting a push from a group of bishops who believed the current version is outdated in light of “a radically different moment” brought by the presidency of Donald Trump.

The bishops voted 144 to 41, with one abstention, to complement the current version of Faithful Citizenship with a short letter and videos aimed at inspiring prayer and action in public life; an amendment added to the proposal also holds the efforts to apply the teaching of Pope Francis to present times.

The U.S. bishops have been issuing Faithful Citizenship documents, reflecting on election issues, every four years since 1976. The current document was crafted in 2007; a new introduction for it was written in 2011 and some revisions made in 2015.

The proposed supplemental elements were put forth by a working group of chairs of a dozen bishop committees, led by Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez, vice president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

In introducing their proposal, Gomez said their goal was to increase the document’s influence and reach more Catholics through it. He said the working group viewed the document as having “lasting value” as a resource for state Catholic conferences, priests and fellow bishops, but that it was “too long and not particularly accessible or practical in helping the ordinary faithful individuals.”

“In the process of learn, pray, act, Faithful Citizenship does a good job of helping our people to learn,” he said. “So the task for us is to motivate the faithful to pray and to act.”

Once the proposal opened to debate, disagreement broke out about whether the document, as it stood, still held relevance absent revisions in light of the teachings of Francis and the country’s political climate.

While his name was never said, the agenda of Trump was acutely in the mind of bishops pushing for a new or heavily modified Faithful Citizenship document.

One by one, they took to the microphone to make their case why simply reissuing Faithful Citizenship would miss the mark.

“I think it would be a missed opportunity and a big mistake not to move forward with an entirely new document,” said Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich, who led off the floor discussion saying he would vote against the proposal.

A new document is necessary, he said, in order to integrate the body of teachings from Francis — highlighting the issues of climate change, poverty and immigration — into the bishops’ own teachings and guidance. Cupich also said a new document would allow an opportunity for bishops to model how public discourse over issues of disagreement should play out during this time of political polarization.

“Even if it means that we have to stand up, and discuss, and yes, disagree with each other, we can do our people and our nation a great favor to model how that should take place,” Cupich said.

Bishop John Stowe of Lexington, Kentucky, argued there is a “different context that we find ourselves in after the last national election.”

“Even though our teachings don’t change, the context changes and the priority of issues change,” he said.

Stowe referenced the U.S. withdrawals from the Paris Agreement on climate change and Iran nuclear deal, and the increased focus on issues of gun control and immigration. The latter two issues he noted are important to young people.

“Even if it means that we have to stand up, and discuss, and yes, disagree with each other, we can do our people and our nation a great favor to model how that should take place.”

— Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich

“I think if the church doesn’t have something to say about those issues, we’re missing a very important opportunity, especially if we want to reach out to youth and incorporate them more fully in the life of the church,” Stowe said.

“There’s not much in the document about Pope Francis,” said Bishop Michael Warful, adding that in his Diocese of Great Falls-Billings, Montana, Faithful Citizenship is viewed as stale.

San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy pressed his fellow bishops that the “radically different moment” the country finds itself in requires from them a comprehensive statement “from the whole of the body, reflecting upon the signs of the times that we’re in.”

“We are living in a moment in which we witness the greatest assault upon the rights of immigrant people of the past 50 years. We live in a nation with racial and geographic and regional divides in which people of color feel victimized by institutional prejudice and violence and many white, working-class men and women feel dispossessed. We live in a time in which children are afraid to go to school because they may be killed. We live in a time in which we have the great challenge of bringing to the millennial generation an understanding that the instrumentalization of human life, at the beginning of life and at the end, is unacceptable and why laws should touch upon that,” he said.

“And yet, we see our institutions, legal and political, being distorted and atrophy. We need to speak to these questions and we need to speak as a collective body of bishops.”

McElroy said that Faithful Citizenship in its current form does not reflect Francis’ recent apostolic exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate (“Rejoice and Be Glad”) and that stated issues such as poverty, migration and the environment are not secondary but among “primary issues of claim upon the conscience of believers in public policy.”

More fundamentally, he said, the document has nothing to say about present moments “that traumatize us as a country.”

“Regarding the recision of DACA, it is silent. Regarding Charlottesville, silent. Parkland, silent. Faithful Citizenship of 2015 cannot be our response to the moment we are living in. It cannot engage with the signs of the times, it can only engage with the signs of the past and we should not move it forward,” McElroy said.

In response to calls for updating the document, Gomez and other members of the working group argued the document would only become longer and take more time to produce. Issuing videos from the current text, they said, could reach a new segment of Catholics who haven’t read Faithful Citizenship.

“We very much want to reflect this great Franciscan shift in emphasis,” said Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Robert Barron. “Our fear is that we have to retain a lot of the things in Faithful Citizenship, which are very well presented, well argued, we’d just be making a much longer document.”

Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, suggested that perhaps a new process was necessary, since the current one delays the conference’s ability to make “prompt and thorough and reflective responses” to what’s happening in the public square.

“Here, we’re a year and a half out from the elections, and we’re saying we don’t have enough time. I think that the process at least has to be questioned. And if this is the best process, we’ll stick with it. But maybe there’s a better way of doing things,” Tobin said.

A number of bishops took to the floor to voice support for packaging the same Faithful Citizenship in new, more accessible forms. Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, noted on his flight to the conference he saw few fellow passengers, if any, reading; rather, most were staring at some type of screen.

Still, other bishops pushed back, saying that reissuing the same message, regardless of medium, would fall short of its stated goals of articulating to Catholics that faith comes prior to political leanings, they’re called to be faithful citizens at all times and not just during elections, and the need for respectful, civil discourse.

“Faithful Citizenship of 2015 cannot be our response to the moment we are living in. It cannot engage with the signs of the times, it can only engage with the signs of the past and we should not move it forward.”

— San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy

Bishop John Michael Botean, head of the Romanian Catholic Eparchy of St. George in Canton, Ohio, said the bishops have developed a reputation of taking too long to address issues facing the country.

“I think we are running the risk of it appearing that we don’t care or aren’t paying attention,” he said.

At one point, amendments were proposed to allow for revisions, to scrap Faithful Citizenship entirely from the vote they were considering and to table the motion until their November meeting.

The latter two failed. The motion to table was defeated in a vote, but the text was edited from stating “rather than revise or replace” to simply “rather than to replace,” apparently leaving an opening for revisions at some point. A clause was also added stating the new elements for Faithful Citizenship would “apply the teachings of Pope Francis to our day.”

Source: Bishops to supplement rather than revise Faithful Citizenship voter guide

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