OCASI Questions for political parties General Election 2015 | OCASI

2015/08/14 Leave a comment

Imagine we will see more of these as the election draws closer. Will be interesting to compare these with political party platforms when released and degree to which citizenship and immigration-related issues make it into the platforms:

1. Settlement Services

Settlement service is an important resource that helps refugees and immigrants to make a strong start in their new life in Canada. This year, the Government of Canada cut $14 million from immigrant settlement services in Ontario. Ontario has already faced cuts to settlement funding almost every year since 2010, affecting the capacity of community-based organizations that deliver these programs to maintain organizational stability and excellence in quality of service. The federal government no longer has immigration agreements with the provinces and territories, except in Quebec.

Question: How will you support the immigrant and refugee serving-sector to deliver appropriate settlement services to immigrants and refugees, and support them to reach their full social, political and economic potential?

2. Employment

There is extensive research documenting the chronic underemployment of skilled immigrants in Canada, as well as research to show the strong correlation between racialization and the growing wage gap in the labour market i. Recent (past ten years) immigrants at all skill levels (internationally and locally trained professionals, tradespeople, lower-skilled dependents) are facing higher levels of un/under-employment compared to earlier cohorts, and compared to those born in Canada. For many, re-training, re-qualifying and licensing in Canada have not resulted in a significant change in job or wage prospects, and discrimination continues to be a significant barrier – particularly for racialized immigrants and refugees. This represents a significant missed opportunity for our economy and tremendous personal cost to the affected individuals and their communities.

Question: What will you do to improve the employment prospects, and pay parity for immigrants at all skill levels?

3. Citizenship

Only 26 per cent of permanent residents who settled in Canada in 2008 acquired Canadian citizenship, compared with 44 per cent for immigrant who arrived in 2007 and 79 percent for those who arrived in 2000.[Note: The updated numbers – full 2014 data – are somewhat better but reflect the same trend. 49 percent of those who settled in 2008, 57 percent who landed in 2007.]  These are the findings of research on citizenship acquisition released earlier this year ii. Access to citizenship has become more restricted, and naturalized citizens and those with dual citizenship are treated differently under the law.

Question: How will you ensure access to citizenship and exercise of citizenship is equitable?

4. Refugee sponsorship

59.5 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced as a result of war and persecution by the end of 2014 according to the UNHCR iii – the highest level ever recorded. A year earlier the number was 51.2 million. Canada’s Government Assisted Refugees program numbers have fallen by almost 22% in the ten years since 2004, and by 24% for all refugee programs iv.

Question: What will you do to increase the number of Government Assisted Refugees (GARs) over and above the current numbers, and to welcome more refugees to Canada through all the programs?

5. Migrant Workers

Canada has relied for decades on migrant workers to support and sustain our economy. In previous years, migrant workers in all occupations and sectors were allowed to stay and build a new life in Canada for themselves and their families. In recent years while migrant workers are recruited to work in almost all sectors and occupations only some are allowed to stay. The most recent change has further restricted the pathway to permanent residency for Caregivers and Domestic workers who arrived through what was known as the Live-in Caregiver Program until December 2014.

Question: What will you do to provide a pathway to permanent residency to all migrant workers, including those recruited through the Temporary Foreign Worker, International Mobility and Seasonal Agricultural Worker programs?

6. Family reunification

Family reunification is a pillar of Canada’s immigration program. Changes to legislation and policy in recent years combined with existing barriers are contributing to an increase in prolonged and sometimes indefinite delays in reunification. They include a narrow definition of family (example: non-biological children are not included), a category of “excluded family members, lower maximum age of a “dependent child” who can be sponsored, limitations on reunifying with parents and grandparents and more. Refugees and immigrants, particularly those from the Global South are subject to greater scrutiny and are among those most affected. Between 2010 and 2013, family reunification reduced by 15% v.

Question: What will you do to remove barriers to family reunification and allow all categories of family members to reunite in Canada?

7. Residents without Immigration Status

Canada has a large and growing number of residents without full immigration status. The growth in this population has resulted in part from gaps in immigration and refugee policies and practice and a massive growth in migrant workers, who also happen to be vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. Residents without immigrant status are a part of our economy and our communities. Most do not qualify for any form of government assistance, and support themselves and their families through their own efforts. They pay taxes without receiving the full benefit of legal resident status.

Question: What is your position on the regularization of residents without full immigration status?

OCASI Questions for political parties General Election 2015 | OCASI.

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Multiculturalism in Canada: Evidence and Anecdote – Now Available in Print

2015/08/11 Leave a comment

For those interesting, my book is now available in print at a price of $39.00 directly from Lulu (direct link here) in addition to the pdf version at $3.99 (direct link here). The print version should become available through the usual on-line distributors in 6-8 weeks.

My personal preference is for the pdf version, given the charts are best in colour although I did optimize the print black-and-white charts as much as I could.

But doing the final review of the proof copy today, there is something oddly satisfying of holding it in one’s hand at last.

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What’s the Right Way to Teach Civics? – The New Yorker

2015/08/11 Leave a comment

Interesting article sent my way by one of my readers, and the US debate over what kind of civics education is likely to be more effective, and some of the politics behind it:

A more common criticism of the civics tests, especially from the left, is that it gives over-tested students yet one more exam to take, meaning that time-crunched educators have less flexibility to develop their own lesson plans. Even some who agree with Riggs that students are undereducated in civics are skeptical that a hundred test questions will solve the problem. It’s also unclear whether the test is the best way to inspire civic-mindedness. Joseph Kahne, an education professor who has studied civic learning, said that, by some measures, young people are woefully disengaged in civic life; for example, they tend to vote at lower rates than older citizens. (To be fair, by other measures—like involvement in their local communities—kids do better than older people.) But research, Kahne said, suggests there are better ways to educate students in civics. He and colleagues have found that when students discuss current events and form their own opinions on hot-button issues, they become more interested and knowledgeable in these topics; also, when students have the chance to volunteer, they become likelier to volunteer in the future. As for the citizenship exam, “What it measures actually isn’t what we care most about,” he said. “It’s a set of disconnected facts. Certainly the questions like, ‘What’s the name of the ocean on the West Coast of the United States?’ aren’t even related to civic and political life.”

Over the next year, Riggs told me, the institute aims to pursue its civic-education initiative in more blue and purple states—places like Iowa, Minnesota, and perhaps Colorado. He has noticed that he and his colleagues have had to work harder, in those kinds of states, to defend their campaign against critics, including those who feel that a new test of factual civics knowledge would give teachers less time to focus on more nuanced aspects of civic education. Riggs argued that the test would complement, rather than replace, higher-level approaches. “It doesn’t impede, and shouldn’t be substituted for, the teaching of more advanced civics,” he told me. “It’s intended to ensure that high-school graduates have at least the basic knowledge of American civics that we require of naturalized citizens.”

In Canada, the extension of the citizenship test to 14-17 year-olds is one manifestation even though the experience of my kids (anecdote warning!) in Ontario was that the half-year civics course in Grade 10 was a reasonable way to engage students (and they had plenty of Canadian history as well).

What’s the Right Way to Teach Civics? – The New Yorker.

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Monthly Citizenship Test Pass Rates 2011-2015

2015/08/10 Leave a comment

Citizenship Monthly Test Pass Rates.001This time series shows the variation in monthly citizenship test pass rates from November 2010 to May 2015, highlighting the dramatic shifts over the past 4 ½ years.

This chart highlights a number of challenges that CIC faced:

  • the difficulty in managing the citizenship test to ensure broadly consistent results;
  • the inability to introduce new questions in a predictable manner, likely reflecting political reluctance to engage in focus testing  (2012 drop);
  • the eventual corrective measures in 2013, both administrative and test question wording changes, that resulted in a reversion to the previous average pass rates in the 80-85 percent range; and,
  • other changes, likely reflecting conscious policy choices as part of the effort to address the backlog of citizenship applications, aimed to increase the average pass rate to the 90 percent range in 2014.

This roller-coaster variation, also seen in citizenship applications processed, once again reflects the lessor priority CIC (and Ministers) attach to sound management of the program, in sharp contrast to the relative consistency and predictability of the immigration program.

The relevant memos to the Minister were heavily (excessively in my view) redacted as the following example from a 2013 memo indicates:

Citizenship_Monthly_Test_Results_A201510634_2015-08-06_08-29-32_pdf__page_8_of_13_Lastly, the CIC analysis of the number of those affected by the extension of knowledge testing and language assessment is relatively small: 5.5 percent for 14 to 17 year olds, 5.9 percent for 55 to 64 year olds (both figures for the period 2009-13 (see Citizenship Impact of Extending Testing to 14-17 and 55-64 year olds, while accompanying memo less redacted than above example, still some serious redactions on cost implications and the like).

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Ian Mulgrew: Outraged Chapman a tireless crusader for disenfranchised Canadians

2015/08/06 Leave a comment

Profile on citizenship activist Don Chapman and his focus on “Lost Canadians”:

Don Chapman pulled from his backpack books, photocopies of historic documents and legal briefs.

Depending on the moment, he picked them up and brandished them like a club he would use on Ottawa, or as an indictment: “Look at this!”

The airline pilot turned longtime citizenship crusader can’t believe the new Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act is so bad.

While the B.C. Civil Liberties Association and refugee lawyers are preparing a constitutional challenge, Chapman is involved in other court cases and pounding the table to rouse Canadians.

“Nobody paid attention in spite of me screaming and yelling — I was considered a nutcase,” he said about his opposition to the law, substantial portions of which recently came into effect.

It fixed some of the past citizenship anomalies, but it created others and has sparked a lot of concern.

Ian Mulgrew: Outraged Chapman a tireless crusader for disenfranchised Canadians.

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Breaking taboo, Jerusalem Palestinians seek Israeli citizenship | Reuters

2015/08/05 Leave a comment

Interesting choices that Palestinians are faced with:

In East Jerusalem, which Israel captured from Jordan during the 1967 Middle East war and later annexed, a move not recognized internationally, issues of Palestinian identity are layered with complexity.

While Israel regards the east of the city as part of Israel, the estimated 300,000 Palestinians that live there do not. They are not Israeli citizens, instead holding Israeli-issued blue IDs that grant them permanent resident status.

While they can seek citizenship if they wish, the vast majority reject it, not wanting to renounce their own history or be seen to buy into Israel’s 48-year occupation.

And yet over the past decade, an increasing number of East Jerusalem Palestinians have gone through the lengthy process of becoming Israeli citizens, researchers and lawyers say.

In part it reflects a loss of hope that an independent Palestinian state will ever emerge. But it also reflects a hard-headed pragmatism – an acknowledgement that having Israeli citizenship will make it easier to get or change jobs, buy or move house, travel abroad and receive access to services.

Israeli officials are reluctant to confirm figures, but data obtained by the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies indicates a jump over the past decade, rising from 114 applications in 2003 to between 800 and 1,000 a year now, around half of which are successful. On top of that, hundreds have made inquiries before the formal application process begins.

Interior Ministry figures obtained by Reuters show there were 1,434 applications in 2012-13, of which 189 were approved, 1,061 are still being processed and 169 were rejected. The remainder are in limbo.

Palestinians who have applied do not like to talk about it. The loyalty oath is not an easy thing for them to sign up to and becoming a naturalized Israeli – joining the enemy – is taboo.

“It felt bad, really bad,” said a 46-year-old Palestinian teacher who took the oath a year ago. Despite her reservations, she knew it was right for stability and career prospects.

Breaking taboo, Jerusalem Palestinians seek Israeli citizenship | Reuters.

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Multiculturalism in Canada: Evidence and Anecdote – Now Available

2015/08/04 Leave a comment

For those interested, the pdf version of my book is now available here at Canadian $3.99. I have also posted some Excerpts.

Book information sheet can be found here.

The print-on-demand version will be available in the next few weeks.

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Kelly McParland: Donald Sutherland is from Canada the same way Mike Duffy is from PEI

2015/07/31 1 Comment

Good piece by McParland:

The Appeal Court’s reasoning is sound.

“Permitting all non-resident citizens to vote would allow them to participate in making laws that affect Canadian residents on a daily basis but have little to no practical consequence for their own daily lives,” wrote Justice George Strathy.

The decision notes that allowing long-term expats to vote would violate a “social contract” that binds Canadians to laws that they have played a hand in creating.

This makes absolute sense. For every fervent patriot like Sutherland, who presumably lives in the U.S. due to the demands of his acting career, there are tens of thousands, of passport-holders who barely give Canada a thought. At the time the five-year rule was introduced, Canada was in the process of handing out thousands of passports to “investors” who wanted it mainly as a hedge against turmoil in their home country. If you recall, one of Stephen Harper’s earliest international acts as prime minister was a dramatic evacuation of Canadian passport-holders from Lebanon during a confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah forces. It was great theatre, except Canadians learned that thousands of those affected proved to be Lebanese citizens who had met the minimum standards for a Canadian passport before returning home, hanging on to the Canadian document in case of just such an emergency. They knew little about Canada, but without the five-year rule, 50,000 of them would have had the right to vote.

Lebanon is far from the only country where that’s the case. The Vancouver Sun reported in 2013 there were 350,000 residents of Hong Kong holding Canadian passports, and that Asians continue to leave the country in large numbers after completing the minimum requirements. Immigration experts acknowledged many never intended to stay and were merely taking advantage of Canada’s traditional generosity with its citizenship.

The five-year rule may be an inconvenience for Sutherland, who comes across as far less arrogant and self-important than fellow Canadian Neil Young, who prefers jetting into the country just long enough to demand Alberta cripple its economy by getting out of the oil business, before jetting back to California. But both are Canadian the same way Mike Duffy is from Prince Edward Island: it might be where they came from, but it’s not where they live. Even Canada’s Senate now understands that difference.

Kelly McParland: Donald Sutherland is from Canada the same way Mike Duffy is from PEI

And Professor Orwin making a similar point about the link between residency and voting:

Yes, the Charter of Rights proclaims voting a basic right of citizenship. But how far does that right extend? As we’ve already seen, only to the boundaries of one’s riding of primary residence. This is an essential feature of our system. It’s the sacred democratic right of Fort McMurrayites (and conversely of downtown Torontonians) that outsiders not be permitted to vote in their riding. Our representative must be ours, and no one else’s. So while Canadian citizenship may be a necessary condition of voting in a given election, it’s obviously not a sufficient one. This is why it’s mistaken to claim that by denying an expatriate the vote, we are stripping her of anything enjoyed by other Canadians. Rather it’s that by permitting her to vote the current law grants her a right denied to other Canadians. Yes, for five years and no more, but she should be grateful for those years, recognizing (having read this column) just what an anomaly she enjoys.

It’s not just in granting five years of electoral amnesty that the present law is quite generous. It is also so in offering expatriates a varied menu of possible electoral residences. They may choose their last previous Canadian address; but they also enjoy other options equally ungrounded in reality. Let’s face it, once Ms. Choi has decided to live abroad, it is the merest fiction to deem her still resident in my riding. As the years pass this fiction grows ever more glaring, and my neighbours and I increasingly testy. Who is this annoying phantom who pretends to live in our riding and insists on voting there? What does she know or care of our local concerns?

 If I can’t vote in your riding, why should expats vote in mine? 

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I’m Canadian – and I should have a right to vote – Donald Sutherland

2015/07/30 2 Comments

He forgets that US citizens also have to file US tax returns:

Did you know that? If you don’t live here all the time you can’t vote. Americans who live abroad can vote. They can vote because they’re citizens! Citizens! But I can’t. Because why? Because I’m not a citizen? Because what happens to Canada doesn’t matter to me? Ask any journalist that’s ever interviewed me what nationality I proudly proclaim to have. Ask them. They’ll tell you. I am a Canadian. But I’m an expatriate and the Harper government won’t let expatriates participate in Canadian elections.

But the broader question, for every Donald Sutherland and those like him, there are many more that have a lessor connection to Canada. And there is no way that I can think of that could consistently apply a “connection to Canada” in an administratively fair and efficient manner.

I’m Canadian – and I should have a right to vote – The Globe and Mail.

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Cohen: Canada’s ambition deficit

2015/07/30 Leave a comment

Andrew Cohen captures it (building on his earlier book, The Unfinished Canadian):

This costs money, and we are cheap. Our new ethic is low taxes, in which a cloying federal government returns money to Canadians, as it did last week in child benefits, rather than make hard decisions for the public good. Or, governments ask Canadians to approve tax increases in referendums, as in British Columbia, evading responsibility for governing.

Today’s deficit is no longer about money. It’s about ambition.

Cohen: Canada’s ambition deficit | Ottawa Citizen.

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