How the Australian Constitution, and its custodians, ended up so wrong on dual citizenship

2018/02/07 Leave a comment

For those interested, a good analysis of how Australia ended up in this mess regarding dual citizenship and political qualifications by Hal Colebatch of University of New South Wales:

The final session of the constitutional convention was held in Melbourne early in 1898. There was no further discussion of what became the now-infamous section 44, and a drafting committee took over to prepare a final draft.

Edmund Barton – soon to become Australia’s first prime minister – was the chair and dominant figure. He insisted on working till 4 or 5am, even though the other two members of the committee had gone to bed and only Robert Garran, the secretary, was left to maintain the illusion of a committee.

After four days of drafting, Barton presented the convention, on its second-last day, with 400 amendments. He proposed a three-hour break for the delegates to study them, after which they could be put to the vote en bloc.

Barton assured the convention that there was only one amendment of substance – to section 44(ii). What he did not say was that section 44(i) had been completely rewritten, changing it from an active voice (“done any act whereby”) to a passive voice (“is a subject or citizen … or is entitled to”).

No attention was drawn to this change, there was no explanation of it, and there was no time for debate on any clause unless someone objected to it. The constitutional text that proved so significant more than a century later was a last-minute change, drafted in private and accepted out of weariness.

In his history of the convention, J.A. La Nauze points out that, by this stage, the delegates “had had enough”, but muses:

it may one day interest a curious lawyer to inquire whether judicial review has lingered with significant consequences on new words approved on trust and intended … merely ‘to put the wishes of the convention in more complete and concise form’.

As it turned out, it interested more than the curious lawyer, and created a problem which has yet to be adequately managed.

Appealing to the umpire?

The constitution was rather unclear about how these provisions would be enforced. It said both that questions about qualification could be settled by each house, but also that “any person” who believed that an elected representative was disqualified by section 44 could sue them in “any court of competent jurisdiction”.

In any case, there was little call for either until the High Court decided in 1999 that the UK was a foreign power.

Even then it refused to hear a case calling for Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard to produce evidence they had renounced their UK citizenship, on the basis that they had declared that they were qualified, and so the court should presume that they were. To do otherwise would be a vexation and an abuse of the court’s time.

But when the court did deign to interest itself in the matter, it took the traditional High Court view that it was not interested in the problem, or what the writers of the constitution were trying to do, but only with the possible meaning that a black-letter lawyer could squeeze from these words, irrespective of its impact on the governing of Australia.

Where does this leave us?

The situation now is that the qualifications for candidature for the Australian parliament are set by the parliament, but the disqualifications are largely set by foreign governments via the High Court. This diminishes the ability of electorates to choose the representative they want (though, when given the chance, electorates show what they think of the High Court’s action by returning the ousted members in the ensuing byelection).

And the High Court’s escapade in the china shop is not yet over, for it has yet to rule on the disqualification of those who are “entitled to” foreign citizenship, even if they have not applied for it. If the court applied the same logic that it has used in the cases already decided, this would disqualify not only any Jew, but also anyone with a Jewish parent, grandparent or spouse, all of whom are entitled to Israeli citizenship under the Israeli Law of Return.

The best course would be to start with recognising the problem, rather than searching for a preferred solution. In contemporary Australia, identities are often complex, and citizenship entitlements may be multiple and overlapping. How these are to be recognised in the qualifications for candidature demands a period of public discussion culminating in political action.

The only way we could get this is to take the matter out of the hands of the High Court and foreign governments and return the task of defining qualifications and disqualifications for candidature to parliament. This could be done by adding to section 44 the phrase “until the parliament otherwise provides”, which is used in section 30 on qualifications, and at a number of other points in the constitution.

This would be a logical and constitutional response to the political problem that has landed on us. If the five main parties in the parliament (all of which have had their parliamentary representation threatened by the High Court’s actions) supported a referendum to achieve this change, it would probably be carried.

The voters, too, as they showed in New England and Bennelong, have had enough. They want the political leaders to lead.

via How the Australian Constitution, and its custodians, ended up so wrong on dual citizenship

Filed under Citizenship, Dual Citizenship, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Son of Russian spies can travel home to Canada, judge rules

2018/02/07 Leave a comment

I agree with the government on this one. And the brothers have lived abroad most of their lives with the main connection to Canada being their passport:

A judge has ordered the Trudeau government to issue citizenship documents—and a passport—to the Toronto-born son of elite Russian spies, ruling that the 23-year-old should be allowed to return to Canada even though the Supreme Court is still pondering whether to hear one last appeal in his controversial case.

Alexander Vavilov was stripped of his Canadian citizenship “through no fault of his own,” the judge ruled, and after winning it back last summer at the Federal Court of Appeal, he should not be forced to wait in limbo while Ottawa tries to convince the country’s top court to overturn that decision. Instead, the Liberals should reinstate Vavilov’s revoked citizenship—and allow him to come home—pending any potential ruling from the Supreme Court.

“It is difficult to accept that issuing these documents to this one person will cause significant and irreparable harm to the public interest,” wrote Justice Wyman Webb of the Federal Court of Appeal, in his Jan. 19 decision. “There is no allegation that Mr. Vavilov did anything wrong.”

Ottawa has fought for years to keep Vavilov from re-entering his country of birth, and despite this latest ruling the government is still doing all it can to keep him out. Instead of conceding defeat, Justice Department lawyers filed yet another motion last week, asking the Federal Court of Appeal to reconsider. The feds remain adamant that nothing should happen on the contentious file until the Supreme Court decides, once and for all, whether Vavilov is indeed a Canadian.

The high court has yet to announce whether it will weigh in on the matter, and is under no deadline to do so.

Vavilov was born in Toronto in 1994 as Alexander Philip Anthony Foley, the second son of a husband-and-wife team of deep-cover KGB agents who slipped into Canada during the Cold War and stole the identities of two dead babies from Montreal: Donald Howard Heathfield and Tracey Lee Ann Foley. Alex and his older brother, Timothy, spent their childhood oblivious to the fact that their parents’ real names were Andrey Bezrukov and Elena Vavilova, or that their mom and dad were prized assets of Russia’s foreign intelligence service. The boys were still young when the family moved to France, then Massachusetts—where, in 2010, the couple was arrested in a high-profile FBI raid that later inspired the hit TV series The Americans. Tim was 20 when his parents were exposed; Alex was 16.

After the bust made headlines around the world, immigration officials in Ottawa concluded that both brothers were never Canadian to begin with, despite being born here, because their parents were “employees in Canada of a foreign government,” a rare exception to the birthright rule under the Citizenship Act. Now Russian citizens who changed their last name to Vavilov, Alex and Tim have been battling in court to regain their Canadian status, arguing, among many other things, that they should not be punished for their parents’ espionage.

Though they lived abroad most of their lives, the brothers always travelled with Canadian passports and identified themselves as Canadians. “It is an integral part of my identity, the way others recognize me and is a recognition of certain values,” Alex told Maclean’slast year. “It is unacceptable that that the government may strip me of my rights just because it wants to.”

The feds appear especially eager to keep Tim, the eldest brother, from coming back. According to a report prepared by a senior immigration official, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) has told the government that Tim not only knew the truth about his parents’ double lives, but had pledged to join them—having been “sworn in” by the SVR, the KGB’s post-Soviet successor, before his mother and father were arrested.

Specific evidence to support that claim has never been revealed, and Tim, now 27, denies the accusation. “I am aware that there have been some media reports that my parents were ‘grooming’ me for espionage,” he wrote in one sworn affidavit. “These allegations are not true. It has been stated by the FBI that for over 10 years my home was bugged, however no evidence of my involvement has ever been presented.”…

via Son of Russian spies can travel home to Canada, judge rules – Macleans.ca

Filed under Birthright Citizenship, Citizenship Tagged with , ,

Mixed marriage kids face citizenship woes | Malaysia.

2018/02/06 Leave a comment

Not unique to Malaysia:

Thousands of families of mixed marriages in Sabah are faced with complexity in obtaining citizenship status for their children, according to Sabah People’s Basic Rights Association President Lee Pun Yee.

He said in most cases, the problem arises when local residents marry foreigners without the status of a legal marriage.

The future of their children will then be affected due to their (parents) shortcomings and negligence.

“Over the past two years since 2015, we personally received 50 such cases from local residents who marry foreigners from Indonesia, China and the Philippines,” he said here, Tuesday.

“Most of them legalise their marriage only after their children are born, but so far none have been able to get citizenship status for their children despite numerous applications to the relevant agency,” he said.

Lee, who was accompanied by his Secretary Tan Cheng Hwee and committee member, Chen Hing Hiong, said the association had tried to assist by sending letters three times to the Home Affairs Ministry over the past two years to consider the plight of these families.

“We sent the letters to the ministry’s secretary-general, we don’t know if the minister has received the letters or just too busy to be bothered.

“The children are innocent but aren’t able to enjoy the privilege of being Malaysians due to their non-citizenship status.

“We therefore hope the ministry will consider granting them citizenship as stipulated under Section 15A of the Federal Constitution which states that the Federal Government may, in such special circumstances as it thinks fit, cause any person under the age of 21 years to be registered as a citizen,” he said.

He said they will be sending another letter to the ministry, this time directly to Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamid, who is also Home Minister, soon.

“I plan to go there by end of February and hope to receive a response from the ministry,” he said.

He also said citizenship status should be granted to the children, citing 92 similar cases in Sarawak where citizenship under Section 15A of the Federal Constitution was granted.

“Why they can do it for Sarawak, but not for Sabahans?,” he questioned.

He also apologised to the 50 families for not being able to help them soonest when they approached the association for help two years ago.

“Most of them are businessman, some working in companies, some are farmers, while their wives are housewives.

“This problem will not only affect their children, but the future of their children’s kids and the generations to come if not addressed,” he said.

The issue have also been raised in May last year, with National Registration Department Sabah Director Dato Ismail Ahmad quoting as advising and reminding locals that marriage without valid registration can bring complexity to their children in terms of citizenship status, education and employment opportunity. – Sherell Jeffrey

via Mixed marriage kids face citizenship woes | Daily Express Newspaper Online, Sabah, Malaysia.

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with

Trump tax reform leads U.S. entrepreneurs in Canada to consider giving up American citizenship

2018/01/31 Leave a comment

Interesting and complex. No hard handle on numbers potentially affected:

A growing number of American business owners in Canada are considering renouncing their U.S. citizenship following the recent overhaul of the U.S. tax system. The changes could mean a huge financial hit for some American business owners living abroad.

Some lawyers who specialize in helping Americans give up their U.S. citizenship are reporting a spike in interest from potential clients since the Trump administration’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was passed in late December.

“We have definitely seen an uptick” in outreach, said Alexander Marino, a U.S. tax lawyer at Calgary-based Moodys Gartner Tax Law, who heads the firm’s expatriation-practice group and specializes in U.S. citizenship renunciation.

While the U.S. tax changes – which include a cut in the corporate-tax rate to 21 per cent from 35 per cent – are considered good news for companies operating and doing business south of the border, U.S. citizens living and running privately held companies in other countries could face a one-time “transition tax” of up to 15.5 per cent. The retroactive tax is on corporate assets not taxed in the United States since 1986, which was the last time the country’s tax code was overhauled.

While it’s too late for Americans to give up their U.S. citizenship to avoid the transition tax, there is concern about a new annual tax, going forward, on assets of certain American-owned companies operating outside of the United States. The tax is on global, intangible low-taxed income and is known as the GILTI tax. It can be imposed on a U.S. citizen shareholder if, under the new law, more than 10-per-cent of the non-U.S. corporation’s earnings are deemed to come from intangible assets. The rules are very complicated and vary greatly in how they apply, “but have the potential to affect many Canadian-resident, U.S. citizens,” Mr. Marino said.

More than 230 people signed up for an information seminar on renunciation Mr. Marino’s firm held over the weekend in Toronto, which is more than double the attendance of their past events, even as the number of Americans revoking their citizenship has risen in recent years.

Citing data from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service’s Federal Register, Mr. Marino said 5,411 Americans worldwide renounced their citizenship in 2016, the highest annual number in the country’s history. That’s up 26 per cent from 4,279 in 2015 and nearly triple the 1,781 renouncers recorded in 2011. More Americans are giving up their U.S. citizenship amid stepped up enforcement of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FACTA), passed in 2010, which requires foreign financial institutions to report assets held by Americans living outside of the United States. It took effect in Canada in mid-2014.

For the first three months of 2017, the most recent data available the Federal Register list, 4,448 Americans surrendered their U.S. citizenship. When fourth-quarter results are released in the coming weeks, Mr. Marino expects it to be another record year for the number of Americans revoking their U.S. citizenship.

Max Reed, a cross-border tax lawyer with Vancouver-based SKL Tax, says his office has had nearly a dozen inquiries about renunciation since the tax changes passed about a month ago.

“Absolutely, we’ve had people who have started the process either because of the mandatory repatriation tax or the GILTI [tax],” Mr. Reed said. “Those new tax rules … will make life much more complicated and expensive for Americans in Canada.”

The downside of renunciation for some is no longer being able to easily move to or work in the United States, vote in U.S. elections or hold a U.S. passport. Some of the benefits include no longer having to file tax returns in more than one country, which saves time and money. Mr. Reed said there could also be other changes down the road that could make being an American citizen living outside of the United States more expensive. “Renouncing now insures against this risk,” he said.

There are U.S. rules governing renunciation. For instance, Americans looking to give up their U.S. citizenship must pay a fee of $2,350 (U.S.) and go through an in-person interview at a U.S. consul or embassy explaining why they wish to give up their passport.

They might also have to pay an “exit tax,” based on certain criteria. The exit tax can be triggered if an American citizen has a net worth of more than $2-million on the day they renounce, has an average net tax liability for the five preceding years of $165,000 (2018 amount adjusted for inflation) or if they haven’t met their U.S. tax obligations for the past five years.

With renunciation, there is also the risk of being banned from travelling to the United States under what’s known as the Reed Amendment (named after Rhode Island Democratic Senator Jack Reed). This can happen if the person renouncing is considered by the U.S. attorney-general to be “motivated by tax avoidance purposes,” according to the government.

While cases of renouncers being banned from the United States are rare, Mr. Marino said it’s a risk. “Professional advice, if you decide to renounce, is always recommended to avoid the exit tax, to get ready for the interview, or to not be barred,” from the United States, he said.

via Trump tax reform leads U.S. entrepreneurs in Canada to consider giving up American citizenship – The Globe and Mail

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with ,

Australia: Road to citizenship gets longer for ‘demonised’ applicants

2018/01/30 Leave a comment

Australia generally has had a better track record than Canada in processing times with short processing times and limited backlogs:

An 18-month investigation by the Commonwealth Ombudsman, released in December, found the number of people subject to heightened identity checks and waiting more than two years on the outcome of a “citizenship by conferral” application – such as former refugees – had skyrocketed 450 per cent.

This increase – a jump from 338 cases requiring enhanced screening in November 2016 to almost 2000 by the middle of last year – was despite an overall drop in the number of complex applications awaiting a decision, the ombudsman found.

As of early January, there were 167,820 outstanding conferral applications, 5680 of which were more than two years old.

The ombudsman’s investigation focused on those subject to “enhanced screening and integrity checks” due to background factors such as country of origin, an “irregular” arrival or due to any changes made to personal information.

The oldest of these case had been “on hand” for more than four years, according to the report. This compared to the department’s “service standard” for processing most cases of just 80 days.

“In early 2016, the Commonwealth Ombudsman started to experience an increase in complaints from people awaiting decisions on their citizenship applications for more than a year, and sometimes over two years,” the December report said.

“In the past year and a half, we have received approximately 300 complaints about delays by the department.”

‘Enhanced’ identity checks

Applicants from Afghanistan topped the list of those facing delays, the ombudsman found, noting those hailing from the war-torn nation had been singled out by the department as a particular caseload with “integrity issues”.

A finding from the ‘Delays in processing of applications for Australian Citizenship by conferral’ 2017 report.
Commonwealth Ombudsman

“Although the department has made progress in reducing the overall backlog of applications, its assessment of more complex cases is still an area for improvement,” the report said.

But critics say the delay is part of a deliberate policy shift that “demonised” those from refugee backgrounds and exacerbated problems caused by inadequate staffing.

“It doesn’t make sense that the department is satisfied with someone’s identity to grant them a permanent visa so they can stay in Australia for their whole life, yet when it comes to citizenship they have no idea about their identity,” the Refugee Council of Australia’s Asher Hirsch said.

Refugee community ‘demonised’

Mr Hirsch said beyond denying many refugees a sense of belonging and security, the citizenship delay effectively halted bids by some to see their loved ones. According to a 2014 ministerial directive, boat arrivals are given the lowest processing priority for family reunification visas.

The ombudsman recommended the department work on improvements to its processes to help it meet the “various challenges” of its caseload.

A 2016 Federal Court case brought by two Afghan men that found it should have reasonably taken between six and seven months to process their cases was “important guidance” for the department, the report said.

The department denied there was a backlog or delay in processing citizenship applications, and noted that Australia has “non-discriminatory migration and citizenship programs”.

“Applicants for Australian Citizenship must meet the legislative criteria, regardless of how and when they arrive in Australia,” the department said in a statement.

“The department has a duty to thoroughly assess the genuine nature of all citizenship applications.”

The report acknowledged the department’s concerns:

“In recent years, the increased awareness of identity fraud and the increased focus on ensuring the applicant is who they say they are before they are granted citizenship, has most likely caused decision-makers to take more time with high-risk applications,” it said.

“The department is acutely conscious of the fact that after a person has been approved for citizenship, it is difficult to cancel it later if it is determined the person has lied about their identity.”

via Road to citizenship gets longer for ‘demonised’ applicants

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with , ,

How to fix Canada’s ‘Ghost Immigrant’ fraud problem: David Lesperance

2018/01/26 Leave a comment

Worth considering and more analysis: replacing the physical presence residency requirement with a tax residence requirement.

In a more globalized world, where people are more mobile and where Canada tries to attract highly skilled and thus mobile immigrants, this may be appropriate test.

Look forward to reader reactions.:

As has been widely reported, Canada is experiencing an influx of wealthy “Ghost Immigrants” who are securing permanent residence, purchasing properties in Canada, and then returning to their home countries. Unfortunately, a large number of them are not paying anywhere near their legal worldwide tax obligation to Canada, yet are fraudulently claiming to meet the physical presence requirement of maintaining permanent residence and qualifying for citizenship as well as reaping the many other benefits of Canadian life.

There are a number of lessons that Canadians and their government can learn from the Fu v. Zhu case:

1. The problem is widespread

Dodging taxes is not an uncommon thing for people to try to do. What’s unusual in this case is that these individuals chose to expose themselves rather than having been uncovered by an investigation. This is the dumb end of the spectrum of fraudulent behaviour. This same dumb end is occupied by dozens of applicants who used the same address or hundreds of immigrants who hired the same notorious firm to engage in assembly line, cookie cutter fraud.

2. It’s not a new problem

Fraudulently claiming to be physically present in Canada is a scam dating back decades. In 1991 I presented a “Scoundrel’s Guide to Circumventing the Canadian Immigration and Citizenship Act,” to the Federal Parliamentary Immigration Subcommittee. This guide described many of these very same methods to circumvent the physical presence requirements of maintaining permanent residence and qualifying for citizenship. In our current social media world, these same techniques would work just as effectively. At the same time I presented my guide, the newspapers were focused on a high profile case regarding Toronto lawyer Martin Pilzmaker who promoted these same schemes during the 1980’s.

3. Tighter border controls aren’t the answer

Canada Border Service investigations require enormous resources. Investigations to date uncovered only the most unsophisticated and lazy offenders, with the consequences usually being only a minor fine and a suspended sentence. In reality it would take massive investigative resources to even attempt to catch the smarter physical presence frauds. If there were an increased investigative push, rest assured that all would migrate to the more sophisticated hard-to-detect techniques. Therefore, throwing ever greater sums of money at CBS investigations of the current physical presence law is a waste of time and not in Canadian taxpayers’ best interest.

4. Audits would work better

Successful audits by CRA are revenue generators. The reality is that the CRA has not been enforcing worldwide taxation and this news has spread throughout the immigrant community. In a 1996 report, the CRA claimed that it was simply too difficult to audit these cases in the first place and to collect the taxes owed.

However over the last two decades there have been some significant changes which render this viewpoint obsolete:

  1. Data-mining techniques that allow cross-referencing of employment/business and asset information that the immigrant supplied to Canadian immigration officials when applying for status with their later claimed worldwide income;
  2. Canada signing a tax treaty (with an exchange of information clause) with Hong Kong in 2012;
  3. Even though Canada has had a tax treaty with China since 1986, the recent anti-corruption movement within China means that this treaty has gained significant potential usefulness to the CRA in the last few years;
  4. CRA introducing a Whistleblower program in 2013  in response to the dramatically increased international importance of whistleblowers to tax evasion collections starting in the mid 2000’s. This means that there are now a multitude of potential informants (in banks, accounting, real estate firms etc.) who can and will supply financial information on tax evasion;
  5. Social media and on-line information make lifestyle audits easier and more accurate, especially with today’s computing power compared to 1996; and
  6. Canadian assets (namely highly inflated real estate in Canada) have increased significantly, which means that there are now significant seizable assets within the easy reach of the CRA.

Given these changes it is now in the Canadian taxpayers’ best interest to increase tax audits in this area. This would send shock waves through the hearts of those engaging in fraudulent behaviour. This effort does not require any legislative change… simply a refocus by the CRA of its resources.

The second equally important action would be to replace the current unenforceable physical presence requirement in Canadian immigration and citizenship law. In the future, “tax residence” should be the criteria for maintaining permanent residence and fulfilling naturalization requirements for citizenship.  This action can possibly be done at the Ministerial level under the power granted under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, as opposed to requiring a parliamentary vote.

The immediate impact of these combined efforts would mean that current (and future) immigrants will be forced to make a clear choice. If they wish to maintain their permanent residence status or qualify for citizenship, they will need to declare themselves Canadian tax residents and pay full Canadian tax on their worldwide income. If they try to under-report the amount of their worldwide income, then their case will immediately be audited by CRA. If CRA finds they have engaged in tax evasion, they will suffer the double whammy of tax evasion and also being stripped of their immigration status or denied citizenship, because of fraud. All family members who engaged or assisted in this fraud would suffer a similar fate.

As a result of these changes a large number of people who are currently gaming the system will realize that there will be a real chance that they will be exposed to the full brunt of Canadian taxation. They will then decide that permanent residence status or citizenship is not worth that price and voluntarily relinquish immigration status. Furthermore, under Canadian law they will be required to sell their Canadian residential property to an unrelated arms length party, in order to make themselves clearly non-resident in Canada for tax purposes. This will have a significant impact on an over-inflated real estate market when these properties go up for sale.

If this is so logical, why hasn’t Canada done this before? This same proposal is basically the same one I made over a quarter of a century ago in that hearing room on Parliament Hill. The reason that it was not adopted then, and hasn’t been adopted since, is that Canadian politicians and voters have a lovely but unrealistic sentiment that new immigrants and new citizens should be physically present in Canada, rubbing elbows at Canadian Tire and Tim Hortons. According to this mythology, in this way these newcomers magically become “Canadianized.”

In reality, becoming “Canadianized” is a choice people make, not an automatic natural result of being physically present in Canada. There are plenty of immigrants who are long-time Canadian residents who are not much engaged with their neighbours; there are plenty of others who do not live within Canada’s borders but who maintain deep connections to broader Canadian society. (I still vividly remember greeting a client and his family when they landed in Canada for the first time after moving from Dubai. Their 8 year old son immediately started quizzing me about the Toronto Maple Leafs, as he had spent the last two years watching every game and reading about Toronto sports teams. He was quite disappointed to discover that, having grown up in Windsor, I was a Red Wings fan.) Being physically located within Canada’s borders has, in reality, remarkably little to do with genuine citizenship.

Furthermore, it has always been, and will continue to be, extremely expensive and intrusive to enforce physical presence rules, with little actual benefit. At a minimum, increased enforcement would mean massive disruption for all Canadians, since measures such as exit controls would be required. This would further inconvenience the Canadian traveling public, while having no appreciable impact on fraud reduction.

Another benefit of replacing physical presence with a tax residency regime is that Canada will suddenly become attractive to a large number of international entrepreneurs who, as a result of their normal business travel, would never meet the current physical presence requirements and are not willing to engage in fraudulent behaviour. However, they would be willing to trade their current tax situation for the favourable one that Canada offers. Canada’s lack of estate, gift or wealth taxes makes us very attractive to American and European businesspeople who are currently exposed to these taxes in their home country.

Without a doubt, becoming “Canadianized” is a worthwhile requirement to maintain immigrant status and qualify for citizenship. However, I would argue that making sure that a) the individual pays their fair share of taxes; and b) knows the history, culture, social norms and legal obligations of Canadians (through a more rigorous Citizenship test) are more effective and efficient ways of ensuring that they fulfill this requirement than the current, easily-circumvented and ineffective physical presence regime.

Source: How to fix Canada’s ‘Ghost Immigrant’ fraud problem

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with ,

New citizenship guide to warn against ‘abhorrent’ practice of female genital mutilation

2018/01/26 Leave a comment

Good. Now the question remains how this will be presented and what language will be used.

Hopefully, the guide will place this in the context of spousal and child abuse, sexual assault, and a short summary of the evolution of women’s rights in Canada, without the identify politics label of “barbaric cultural practices.”

While one would have hoped that the government would have done this in any case, one has to give credit to Conservative Immigration Critic Michelle Rempel for pressing the issue:

Canada’s updated citizenship guide will include a warning to newcomers about the illegal practice of female genital mutilation.

In a statement provided to CBC News, Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen called it an “abhorrent practice” that is against the law in Canada.

“While the content for the new guide is still being developed, Canadians can be assured that the new document will include information on Canada’s laws against gender-based violence, including FGM,” he said.

“We would normally not comment on a product still under development, but given the interest in this specific issue, I felt it was important to update Canadians on where we stand.”

The issue has become politically charged, with the Conservatives suggesting the revamped guide would drop a reference to the practice.

Immigration critic Michelle Rempel has repeatedly pressed Hussen on the topic, and sponsored an e-petition in the House of Commons that calls on the government to ensure the new guide condemns the practice.
Petition E-1310, which is open until Feb, 3, now has nearly 25,000 signatures.

On Nov. 28, 2017, Rempel urged people to sign the petition in a tweet that said: “Trudeau is removing references to female genital mutilation as being a harmful practice from Canada’s citizenship guide.”

Rempel was citing a report from The Canadian Press, which said a draft copy of the revised citizenship guide removed the reference to FGM. The current guide, brought in by the Conservatives in 2011, stresses that men and women are equal under the law in Canada.

“Canada’s openness and generosity do not extend to barbaric cultural practices that tolerate spousal abuse, “honour killings,” female genital mutilation, forced marriage or other gender-based violence,” it reads. “Those guilty of these crimes are severely punished under Canada’s criminal laws.”

via New citizenship guide to warn against ‘abhorrent’ practice of female genital mutilation | CBC News

Filed under Citizenship, Discover Canada Tagged with ,

Why Asking About Citizenship Could Make the Census Less Accurate – The New York Times

2018/01/20 Leave a comment

Lynn Vavreck, a professor of political science at U.C.L.A. on the US Census citizenship question along with a study that shows how distrust plays out in different states, reflecting the particular political climate:

It’s a question that used to be on the national census every decade:whether you were a citizen of the United States.

But the Justice Department’s request to return it to the 2020 census for all respondents has unsettled demographic experts as well as advocates of voting rights and immigrants, who say it could lead Hispanic people to avoid being counted. Are they overreacting to a simple question?

We can’t say at this point what the electoral consequences would be, but it’s likely to lead to undercounting. The Census Bureau itself estimates that the 2010 census failed to find 1.5 percent of the Hispanic population. Research conducted that year suggests that Hispanic trust in the census may have been undermined. And from the start of his candidacy up through his reported vulgar remarks last week about Haiti and African countries, President Trump has been fanning anti-immigrant sentiment nationwide.

The Justice Department says it wants to add the question to aid its defense of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (which prevents the dilution of minority populations so their power cannot be weakened).

Supporters of adding the question say it shouldn’t be a problem because the citizenship question has since 2000 been asked on a smaller, recurring census-sponsored survey, the American Community Survey, and because the anonymity protections are strong. But the trouble is that today, everything even remotely political has become a battle over what it means to be an American.

Responding to both the census and the A.C.S. is the law of the land — you must do it or you could be fined. The data collected determines how a lot of money is allocated, as well as the allocation of House seats (and therefore Electoral College votes).

The more people who fail to respond, the more concern there is that we are missing some groups of people more than others, and that the failure to return the form among these group members is not random.

The government dedicates tremendous resources to reminding people to return their census form and even sends people to the doors of households from which no form has been filed. Mostly, it gets results. But if the reason for not filling it out is distrust of government, additional efforts at compliance by government might fall flat.

For the 2010 census, the Spanish-language television network Telemundo sought to improve census participation by writing a story line into one of its most popular telenovelas, “Más Sabe el Diablo.” In it, the character Perla meets a Latino census worker at her father’s empanada stand and is encouraged to apply for a job with the census. The plot shows Perla being trained and learning about why the census asks the questions it does and how it safeguards confidentiality. The idea was that a popular character on a TV show could do more to assuage the fears of a community than the government could.

Matthew Trujillo, currently at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Elizabeth Paluck, a Princeton University psychologist and recent MacArthur Award winner, studied the network’s efforts. Mr. Trujillo and Ms. Paluckasked 121 Spanish-speaking Latino adults across three states to watch either a four-minute clip from “Más Sabe” that showed Perla talking about the importance of completing the census or one that included Perla talking only about family. One of the states was Arizona, which had just passed a law requiring police officers, in the course of an unrelated investigation, to investigate a “reasonable suspicion” that a person was in the country illegally.

Subjects in the experiment completed a survey before and after watching one of the clips. (Which one they watched was determined at random.) Upon leaving the lab, they were able to take a flier about the census and choose either a generic “Latino Pride” or census-specific “Be Counted” sticker.

The results of the test showed that people who saw the census story line were more likely to have positive attitudes toward the government generally — unless they lived in Arizona.Latino residents there, under threat from the newly passed law, were not moved by Perla’s story line.

The study also revealed that, on average, seeing Perla’s experience with the census made people, including those in Arizona, more aware of it. They were also more curious: 86 percent took a flier about the census as they left, compared with 69 percent of people who saw the other clip. Finally, the census clip prompted more people to take and wear the “Be Counted” sticker as they left — if they lived in Texas or New Jersey. In Arizona, people in both groups avoided the “Latino Pride” sticker.

The results suggest that if Latinos in the United States feel generally threatened by the Trump administration, it may be hard to persuade them to overcome their negative views of government and return the 2020 census.

California officials are so worried about Latino nonparticipation — and the potential loss of a seat in Congress and billions of federal dollars — that they are discussing aggressive multilingual advertising campaigns.

In the 2010 Telemundo study, it mattered a bit how much people liked Perla as a character. This is both good news and bad news for the Census Bureau as it faces 2020. With TV content booming, there is no shortage of popular characters who could be seen talking about the census.

On the other hand, today’s networks may be reluctant to participate the way Telemundo did in 2010. Given the current climate, even they may be unsure of the government’s intentions, particularly as it relates to those who are undocumented or whose national origin may not be in keeping with the president’s view of being American.

via Why Asking About Citizenship Could Make the Census Less Accurate – The New York Times

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with , , ,

Trump’s revenge on California: The Census – POLITICO

2018/01/18 Leave a comment

The US Census and the fear regarding the possible  impact of the addition of a citizenship question on California and other states:

Fear is rising among Democrats over the prospect that President Donald Trump’s hard line on immigration might ultimately cost California a seat in Congress during the upcoming round of reapportionment.

Top Democrats here are increasingly worried the administration’s restrictive policies — and the potential inclusion of a question about citizenship on the next U.S. census — could scare whole swaths of California’s large immigrant population away from participating in the decennial count, resulting in an undercount that could cost the state billions of dollars in federal funding over the next decade and, perhaps, the loss of one of its 53 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The fears are well-founded: According to the population formula used by Congress to distribute House seats every 10 years, California is currently on the bubble in 2020, on the verge of losing a seat for the first time in its history.

California’s Democratic governor, Jerry Brown, on Wednesday proposed spending more than $40 million on the state’s own census-related outreach efforts to avoid that fate.

“There’s a lot of fear” about the census count, said Paul Mitchell of Political Data Inc., the voter data firm used by both Republicans and Democrats in California. “The state is starting to get together resources, because it does have an actual direct impact … on state revenues if we have a severe undercount.”

California Secretary of State Alex Padilla told POLITICO the Trump administration’s management of the census could have “devastating effects” on his state.

“The citizenship question is just the latest red flag — maybe one of the biggest — but just the latest red flag,” Padilla said.

Angst about the 2020 census took hold nationally long before the Justice Department urged the U.S. Census Bureau last month to ask people about their citizenship, a request first reported by ProPublica. The bureau has been hampered by management questions and funding shortages that voting-rights advocates fear could hinder efforts to reach immigrants and other hard-to-count groups.

Those populations are especially prevalent in California. And even before Trump’s latest broadside at immigrant communities — asking why the United States should admit people from “shithole countries” — Democrats and voting-rights advocates warned that Trump’s rhetoric on immigration could chill participation.

“It’s already a toxic environment coming forward from D.C.,” said Daniel Zingale, of the nonpartisan advocacy group The California Endowment. “When you add up all of these things — the abandonment of competent leadership, the proposed citizenship question, the hostile environment toward a state like ours and our diverse population, it is perceived here as a less than act of good faith coming from Washington, D.C.”

Zingale added, “I think Californians have never felt less represented in the national capital than we’re feeling right now.”

According to a study last month by Virginia-based Election Data Services, California could come “very close” to losing a congressional seat following the 2020 census regardless of immigrant participation in the count, a result of the state’s flattening population growth.

Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina, Oregon and Texas could all gain seats, according to the study, while eight or nine states, including New York, Illinois and West Virginia, could each lose one.

Yet uncertainty about demographic changes and the Trump administration’s handling of the census continues to cloud those projections. Kimball Brace, president of Election Data Services, cautioned in a prepared statement that “the change in administration and the lack of a Census Director could have a profound impact on how well the 2020 Census is conducted, and therefore the counts that are available for apportionment.”

The prospect of losing a congressional seat is a familiar predicament in Rust Belt states. But it’s unheard of in California, which has added 42 House seats since 1920 due to nearly nonstop population growth. In such a solidly blue state, the loss of a seat would have a disproportionate impact on the Democratic Party.

“If millions of non-citizens refuse to participate in the US Census, the Democrats will take [a] massive political beating,” Tony Quinn, a political analyst and former Republican legislative aide, wrote in the Fox & Hounds political blog last week. “That’s because electoral districts must be drawn based on population. The non-citizen population resides in heavily Democratic areas; if they are not counted, those areas will not have sufficient population to support Democratic congressional and legislative districts, especially in the big cities.”

Garry South, a longtime Democratic strategist, accused the White House of “trying to turn [the census] into essentially a gerrymandering process.”

The Trump administration has not yet moved to add a citizenship question to the census. And many Republicans, who have long called for its inclusion, downplayed concerns about a significant undercount in California or any other state.

Harmeet Dhillon, a San Francisco attorney and member of the Republican National Committee, said that “by the time we have to get closer to actually performing [the census] … this is the type of thing where there’s a legion of bureaucrats who are tasked with doing this” and “it gets done somehow.”

In a state where Democrats control every statewide office and overwhelming majorities in the Legislature, Dhillon said Democrats can only blame themselves if California loses a House seat. More people would come to California or stay here, she said, if taxes and other regulatory burdens were not so high.

Taking aim at one liberal firebrand, Dhillon said, “My only request is if we end up losing a seat, if it could be taken from Maxine Waters’ congressional district.”

The results of the 2020 census on California’s congressional representation (which could also mean the loss of a vote in the Electoral College) will not be felt until after the next presidential election — an eternity in politics. But California politicians are acutely aware of the significance of the count, having been stung by the census before.

Following the 1990 census, the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office estimated that a higher undercount in California than in other states — with difficulty counting non-white people, young people and renters, among others — “likely cost California one seat in the U.S. House of Representatives and at least $2 billion in federal funds during the 1990s.”

Ten years later, the state undertook a more aggressive outreach effort of its own. In an effort similar to what California Democrats are contemplating today, the state employed local organizations to promote the census in their communities and financed a multilingual, multimedia advertising campaign.

via Trump’s revenge on California: The Census – POLITICO

 

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with ,

‘No longer a citizen’: Government letter tells mom of 4 she’s not Canadian | CBC News

2018/01/18 2 Comments

IRCC has to do better in these cases, both substantively as well in their communications with those who fell between the cracks. The Mennonite Central Committee, referred to in the article, has been productive and helpful in resolving comparable cases:

Anneliese Demos thought she was a Canadian until she got a letter in the mail last Friday.

The 39-year-old Winnipeg woman has four kids, has been married for 19 years, works two full-time jobs and pays taxes every year.

“My life is here.”

She came to Canada when she was just two years old and still has the government-issued citizenship card she received when her parents moved to Steinbach, Man. from Paraguay in 1980.

“This is my home. It’s Canada. I’ve lived here all my life,” she said.
But the government has informed Anneliese she’s in fact not a Canadian citizen and has cancelled the certificate that had proved she was.

“I have determined that you are not entitled to hold a Canadian citizenship certificate,” reads a letter from Citizenship and Immigration Canada dated Dec. 22, 2017.

The letter from the registrar of citizenship then asks for Demos to return her citizenship certificate to the citizenship and passport division in Ottawa.

“It kind of makes you worry, like what are they going to do to me?” Demos said.

2009 law repeal wasn’t retroactive

Anneliese is a so-called “Lost Canadian” due to a law that required second-generation Canadians who were born outside Canada to re-apply for citizenship before turning 28.
The Harper government repealed the law in 2009 but didn’t make it retroactive, meaning it was too late for anyone who missed the deadline before their 28th birthday. It is an issue that has affected many Mennonites such as Anneliese.

Many people, including Anneliese, weren’t even aware of the law.

Advocate says hardship ‘so unnecessary’

Bill Janzen, ​retired ​director of the Ottawa office of the Mennonite Central Committee, said ​he’s worked on more than 200 Lost Canadian cases since retiring in 2008.

​That’s usually meant doing extensive research into a person’s past, searching for records that prove where they went to school and lived and then taking the case with a plea to Canada’s immigration minister asking citizenship be granted due to unusual or special hardship.

To do that, it’s meant looking for documentation that doesn’t always exist anymore, especially for Mennonites who went to school in one-room country schools. “It just seemed so unnecessary that one had to deal with this on an individual basis in such detail when there could have been and should have been a global solution,” Janzen said.

Anneliese’s problems began in 2012 when she tried to get a passport to travel as a celebration of beating breast cancer. Anneliese said a clerk advised her she might have an issue because of her birth year and home country.

Officials denied her passport application and sent her a proof of citizenship form to fill out. She completed it and received a certificate and letter in the mail telling her she was a Canadian citizen, and allowing her to get a passport. She thought the issue was resolved until last Friday.

“Just when you thought it was fixed then you’re like, ‘oh now you’re like no longer a citizen.'”

Anneliese said two out of her six siblings have also had the same problem. Her sister was able to get it fixed after three years but her brother is still in limbo and she said a cousin was deported for two months because of similar circumstances. “It’s stupid,” she said.

Anneliese worries she may now be deported back to Paraguay even though she hasn’t been there since she was two. “We don’t know that family from a hole in the wall.”

‘I don’t even dare try to leave the country’

Her passport is set to expire in April but she fears she wouldn’t even be able to get back in Canada if she tried to use it.

“I don’t even dare try to leave the country.”

Her husband is worried, too.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do [if Anneliese is deported], like who would drive the kids to school?” said John Demos.

Anneliese is planning on holding on to the proof of citizenship document issued in 2012 the government now wants back. “I’m tempted to keep it.”

​Janzen said he had hope the Liberal government would fix the problem but nothing changed.

“I thought we could go somewhere but we didn’t.”​

Ahmed Hussen, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, holds a news conference to update Canadians on the possible impacts of recent immigration-related decisions made by President Donald Trump, in Ottawa on Sunday, January 29, 2017. (Fred Chartrand/Canadian Press)

Janzen has spent years working on this issue and said government staffers were aware of the problem — and hoped to fix it years ago — but they were too late.

​”The officials then told me that ‘we know it would be a mess and we hope to abolish this provision before anyone turns 28 under it.'”

Government aware of problem

The Liberal government is aware of people who have lost or never been able to get citizenship due to the issue and is considering making legal changes, said Jaswal Hursh, a spokesperson for Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen.

Hursh said “a small number of affected individuals remain” and the government encourages people with similar stories to come forward as they are being dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

The government didn’t respond to questions about how Anneliese was able to obtain a Canadian passport if she wasn’t considered a Canadian citizen.

via ‘No longer a citizen’: Government letter tells mom of 4 she’s not Canadian | CBC News

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →