Birth tourism showing post-pandemic rebound in B.C.

2024/01/20 Leave a comment

Expands on my analysis of the data on non-resident births from CIHI, with comments by others in excerpt below:

….Since there was more significant media coverage on the matter prior to the pandemic, Griffith notes the federal government has not done anything to curb the issue, despite public debate, while B.C. Minister of Health Adrian Dix has dismissed concerns about problems such as Canadian mothers being diverted from hospitals such as Richmond.

Griffith says, “given the current and planned increases in immigration, it is highly unlikely that the government will act as the numbers are a rounding error compared to overall immigration of 500,000 by 2025.”

But to Griffith, stopping the practice is more a matter of principle.

“I still think it’s important on principle and for the value of citizenship; it’s one of those things that can irritate, with people going around the system, taking advantage of the system,” said Griffith, who believes amendments to the Citizenship Act — requiring one parent to be a citizen or permanent resident to grant the baby citizenship — are warranted.

Several polls on the topic show significant support for amendments. In 2019, Angus Reid Institute, for example, reported “two-thirds (64%) say a child born to parents who are in this country on tourist visas should not be granted Canadian citizenship, and six in ten (60%) say changes to Canada’s citizenship laws are necessary to discourage birth tourism.”

Some critics of proposed changes contend people are unfairly targeting disadvantaged foreign women.

University of Carleton associate law professor Megan Gaucher was provided $223,328 from the federal government in June 2021 to research “how constructions of foreignness undermine the longstanding assumption that formal legal citizenship is an uncontested condition for membership to the Canadian state and explore how political and public discourse around birth tourism ultimately reproduces settler-colonial imaginaries of ‘good’ familial citizens.”

Gaucher says proposed measures “risk being driven by polarizing narratives about borders and citizenship rather than by evidence.”

Griffith has contested such views, noting birth tourists are “not disadvantaged women; they are people who have money to travel here and pay all the related expenses.”

In B.C., refugees and temporary foreign workers would not be categorized as self-paying births. And figures in B.C. also do not count international students, who are covered by the province’s Medical Services Plan. Hence, the “non-resident self-pay” numbers are a more accurate depiction of the practice, Griffith notes.

Conversely, others such as Michael Juneau-Katsuya, CSIS’s former chief of the Asia-Pacific, have shared contrasting opinions on the emerging phenomenon.

Juneau-Katsuya told Glacier Media he sees birth tourism as a national security threat. He suggests the People’s Republic of China may document and monitor returning children and utilize them as agents of the communist state should they return to Canada as adults.

Still, others have expressed concerns that there may be a cumulative impact on returning citizens who may utilize Canada’s social safety nets and reap benefits of citizenship without investing time in the country. Those concerns are in addition to the added stress birth tourism places on the health-care system.

Source: Birth tourism showing post-pandemic rebound in B.C.

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Douglas Todd: Ottawa insider warns about immigrant-investor schemes – Vancouver Sun

2024/01/20 Leave a comment

Wise warning (disclosure: I am friends of some of those quoted):

An adviser within Canada’s immigration department is warning about the dangers of entry programs that favour entrepreneurs, given the failure of earlier initiatives.

The internal cautions come at the same time the immigration department, which has been under fire from top bank economists for damaging the economy by bringing in a record 1.25 million permanent and temporary residents in a year, is expanding another program that gives preference to would-be entrepreneurs.

The internal government memo, obtained by Vancouver lawyer Richard Kurland under an access-to-information request, reveals how an adviser to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) warned that a variety of earlier immigrant-business programs suffered widespread abuse — resulting in a trivial number of new businesses being opened in Canada, and other problems.

The defunct schemes that targeted wealthy foreign nationals, which the correspondents generally refer to as “business-class programs,” opened the gates to a flood of foreign capital moving into Canadian housing, says the adviser. That raised prices, especially in cities such as Vancouver and Toronto. In addition, the internal email thread alerts decision makers to the way many entrepreneur immigrants ended up paying low amounts of income tax.

The in-house memo comes to light in the same month the Canadian Press reported the IRCC was internally warned two years ago that increasing immigration levels would harm housing affordability and services. A Nanos poll also finds support for migration has in less than a year plunged 20 percentage points, with 53 per cent now wanting fewer immigrants.

The group email shared by top immigration department officials, titled “The strange story of Vancouver,” reveals just how badly things went with the earlier schemes, specifically the longstanding immigrant-investor and entrepreneur programs, which were poorly monitored.

The email thread shows that senior officials in March of last year were working “under the radar” to expand similar business-class schemes, particularly the so-called Start-Up Visa (SUV) program, to welcome more would-be entrepreneurs into the country who have the “potential” to start a new business.

However, when the directors sought advice from Daniel Hiebert, a former UBC geography professor who is now working in the department’s strategic planning section, he said the earlier programs led to only 15 per cent of business-class immigrants actually starting a business.

“Ouch,” Hiebert says in the email, explaining how most of the business-class newcomers failed to start a new company even though their status as permanent residents was supposedly contingent on it.

The Conservatives disbanded the immigrant investor and entrepreneur programs in 2014, openly saying the people who came in through them were generally not having a long-term positive impact on the country, not bringing in significant investment capital for business, had low ability in Canada’s official languages, were tending not to stay in the country, and were paying far lower taxes than the average skilled worker.

Even many of those entrepreneurs who did begin a business through the old program dropped it after two years, said Hiebert. “They started businesses to meet requirements and then later let them go.”

Hiebert said, as far as he knows, not one of those entrepreneur-class immigrants ever had their permanent resident status revoked.

Furthermore, Hiebert explained how many of those business-class immigrants who bought expensive houses in the city tended to pay low mortgages and low income taxes.

“This is still the case,” Hiebert wrote. “The story is that many of the residents of these areas came through business-class programs with the intent to retire and live a comfortable lifestyle.”

After initially transferring their money out of their country of origin, typically somewhere in East Asia, Hiebert wrote, most purchased a house “along with a Mercedes, Audi or whatever. And then life is lived quite simply, on a small budget and with little owing in terms of income tax. The kids get to go to UBC or SFU while paying domestic fees, which is a big bonus.”

Hiebert concludes his March, 2023, memo by saying, “I think it’s time to review the economic outcomes of the Start-Up Visa program and I suspect they will show more of the same.”

At one point in the email thread, Umit Kiziltan, director general of the IRCC, said the “burning questions” that Hiebert raised required the “outmost (sic) attention” while the department evaluates whether to expand the Start-Up Visa program and others aimed at wealthy immigrants.

Also included in the thread are Maggie Pastorek, director of policy, and James McNamee, senior director in the economic immigration branch.

The group email includes a discussion of a study covered in a Postmedia article from 2022, which shows how UBC business professor Thomas Davidoff and others discovered the owners of Greater Vancouver homes with a median value of $3.7 million pay income taxes of just $15,800 — which is exceedingly low for North American cities.

“Most luxury homes in Greater Vancouver appear to be purchased with wealth derived from sources other than earnings taxed in Canada,” said Davidoff’s study, which confirmed earlier research by Statistics Canada and Hiebert himself.

Several years ago, StatCan and Hiebert found the average value of a detached house bought by more than 4,400 millionaire immigrants who came to Metro Vancouver under the investor program was $3.2 million. That compared to an average of $1.5 million for a Canadian-born owner.

While working at UBC, Hiebert’s studies also found a correlation between neighbourhoods with large foreign-born populations and neighbourhoods that appear to have unusually low taxable incomes, despite their inflated housing prices, such as Richmond and Vancouver’s west side.

Based on the documents provided in response to an access-to-information request by Vancouver immigration lawyer Richard Kurland, it is not clear how the internal discussion affected later decisions the Liberal government made about its Start-Up Visa program

Last year, however, Ottawa scaled up the annual intake of the Start-Up Visa program from 2022, when it offered 1,000 spots. The program’s intake rose to 3,500 last year and is set to bring in 5,000 this year and 6,000 in 2025.

Immigration department officials did not respond by deadline.

Source: Douglas Todd: Ottawa insider warns about immigrant-investor schemes

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Tasha Kheiriddin: Trudeau frittered away a good immigration policy for the sake of Liberal votes – National Post

2024/01/18 Leave a comment

Discounts the flawed policy rationale of the Barton commission recommendations but of course, political considerations also played a role. And, as we saw during the Kenney years, the liberals cannot take these voters for granted:

Immigrants are also grateful to the party that bring them in. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau learned this from his father. Pierre Elliott Trudeau took credit for the citizenship of millions of Canadians, even though many had come to Canada under previous governments. Why? Because they took their oath under his watch. And when it came to elections, the immigrant communities of the day — Italians, Greeks, Haitians, Vietnamese — tended to vote Liberal.

The implications of Trudeau Jr.’s replication of this policy are dire. Studies show that they are turning Canadians against immigration: even 62 per cent of current immigrants think we’re letting in too many people. They are impoverishing Canadians, both current and newcomer, according to the bank study. And they are also helping fuel Quebec separatism, as francophones look with alarm at rising immigrant populations in the Rest-Of-Canada. By the end of the century, Quebec risks becoming a bit player in Confederation, with only 15 per cent of its population.

This cannot continue. Instead of flooding the country with newcomers, the government needs to boost domestic productivity. That’s a harder fix — and one that won’t give them more votes. But then again, if Canadians can’t afford a decent life, the Liberals may not get their votes either.

Source: Tasha Kheiriddin: Trudeau frittered away a good immigration policy for the sake of Liberal votes – National Post

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Immigration rules that jeopardized Russian activist’s citizenship bid need fixing, experts say – CBC.ca

2024/01/15 Leave a comment

Would be nice to know if this is an isolated case or part of a broader pattern. Could likely be addressed through an operational bulletin:

….While her supporters applauded the eventual outcome, experts and advocates — including a Russian opposition politician convicted under the same law — say Canada must clarify its immigration rules to avoid making the same mistake again.

“This is a shocking case. It’s a clear miscarriage of justice,” said Matthew Light, and associate professor of criminology and European studies at the University of Toronto, in an interview before Miller’s intervention.

“I can only assume it arose through a very basic misunderstanding of the nature of the Russian political system and the law in question, which is … a blatant attempt to silence opposition to the war in Ukraine.”

Light said the law has had a “dramatic” effect in Russia, where thousands have been arrested for allegedly discrediting the “special military operation” in Ukraine.

Now, Light said, the Kremlin appears to be taking aim at Russians who have fled.

“I think the fact that the sentence that was handed down in this [case] was so extreme indicates that the Russian government sees it as important to them to send a message to Russian citizens abroad that they can be found and that they can be in trouble with their [adopted country’s] government if they speak out against the war.”

Light believes the intent of the Russian law is “perfectly clear” and said it’s astounding that Canadian immigration officials failed to recognize it for what it is.

“The part about this case that’s so unbelievable is that anybody in the Canadian government would believe that this is a proper law,” he said, likening it to a Canadian citizen being imprisoned for criticizing the war in Afghanistan.

“It’s really that simple. This is somebody who’s criticizing a policy of their government, in this case the invasion of Ukraine, and being punished for that.”

Wesley Wark, senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and an expert on national security and intelligence issues, called Kartasheva’s case extraordinary for its “sheer absurdity.”

He was also interviewed before the minister’s intervention.

“It’s really a kind of Kafkaesque situation that this person has been thrust in,” said Wark, who attempted to intervene with senior government officials on Kartasheva’s behalf and said her predicament reminded him of another case in which he was involved.

He said Russia might even seize upon the gaffe for its own propaganda purposes.

“In a broader perspective, it does bring … the conduct of the Canadian government into disrepute,” Wark said. “On every level — in terms of international relations, in terms of application of the law, in terms of what I call bureaucratic turpitude, reputation impact on the individual in question — it’s just so wrong.”

Wark suspects Kartasheva’s application became bogged down on the desk of a junior official who was operating strictly by the book, but said that doesn’t make the government’s handling of it any less egregious.

“The very idea that we would even for a moment contemplate looking for an equivalent to a Russian criminal sanction that is politically motivated and designed to stamp out dissent … just strikes me as absurd,” he said.

Source: Immigration rules that jeopardized Russian activist’s citizenship bid need fixing, experts say – CBC.ca

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Teenage surfing star granted Canadian citizenship, now sets her sights on Olympics – The Globe and Mail

2024/01/15 Leave a comment

Unclear whether this is a one-off decision or signals repeal of first generation cut-off. From the reporting, weak connection to Canada, one that appears to be more elite athlete driven and that she was reportedly searching for different citizenship options to allow her to compete in the olympics. Unclear why she didn’t compete with the American team:

…Canada’s citizenship laws are complex, with amendments changing the rules in 2009 and 2015. But essentially Bill C-37 in 2009 ended the extension of citizenship to second-generations born abroad.

In an October letter explaining its decision not to grant a “discretionary grant of citizenship,” Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada says Brooks did not meet the requirements.

“The application is refused on the basis that the applicant is not stateless, has not experienced special or unusual hardship or provided services of an exceptional value to Canada which warrants a discretionary grant of Canadian citizenship,” the letter stated.

Source: Teenage surfing star granted Canadian citizenship, now sets her sights on Olympics – The Globe and Mail

Source: Chris Selley: An elite surfer finally gets rightful Canadian citizenship. Other ‘lost Canadians’ keep waiting

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Canadian Immigration Tracker – November 2023 update

2024/01/13 Leave a comment

No major changes from October.

The one element to flag is the sharp increase in the number of asylum claimants, from a monthly average of about 10,000 January to June 2023 to about 15,000 July to November, largely driven by the easing of visa restrictions, with close to two-thirds of claims being “inland.” Given the large number of Mexican claimants, averaging more than 2,000 per month in 2023, there will continue to be calls to reimpose the visa requirement on Mexicans, as well as more general calls to restore the previous visa restrictions.

Highlights on slide 3.

https://www.slideshare.net/slideshows/canadian-immigration-tracker-key-slides-november-2023/265358086

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Canada backtracks on citizenship review for Russian antiwar activist

2024/01/11 Leave a comment

Expected and good quick correction (following media coverage). Hopefully others aren’t in similar situations:

A Russian antiwar activist living in Ottawa has been granted Canadian citizenship after all, despite a conviction in Russia that threatened to disqualify her.

Maria Kartasheva, 30, has lived in Ottawa since 2019.

She was convicted under a Russian law passed shortly after the full-scale invasion in of Ukraine in February 2022. The law prohibits “public dissemination of deliberately false information about the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.”

….

On Tuesday afternoon, Canadian Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Marc Miller said in a social media post that Kartasheva “will not face deportation and has been invited to become a Canadian citizen.”

“Canada’s citizenship eligibility rules are designed to catch criminals, not to suppress or punish legitimate political dissent,” wrote a post from his account on X.

Source: Canada backtracks on citizenship review for Russian antiwar activist

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What a recent court ruling on Canada’s Citizenship Act means for ‘lost Canadians’

2024/01/11 Leave a comment

Useful and reasonable analysis and we will see if the government chooses to appeal or not on the basis of the reasoning used:

In December 2023, Ontario’s Superior Court determined that what’s known as the “second-generation cut-off rule” in the federal Citizenship Act violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms by discriminating on the basis of national origin and sex. 

The second-generation rule was adopted in 2009 under Stephen Harper’s Conservative government. 

It limited Canadian citizenship to the first generation born abroad in an effort to create a clear and simple rule, and, according to Diane Finley, the minister of citizenship and immigration at the time, to “protect the value of Canadian citizenship by ensuring that our citizens have a real connection to this country.”

The concern with connection makes sense. Members of a political community — citizens — should have a relationship to that community. But what does connection mean, and how do we know when it exists? 

Secure claim to citizenship?

Canada, like many other countries in the world, uses birth as a proxy for connection. If you’re born in Canada or you’re born abroad to a parent who’s a Canadian citizen, you too are a citizen. 

In many cases, birth appears to offer a secure claim to citizenship since the facts of someone’s birth are generally unassailable. But as the second-generation cut-off rule demonstrates, governments can shift the legal meaning of those circumstances with significant repercussions.

The Bjorkquist et al. v. Attorney General of Canada case heard in Ontario in December involves seven families. Their children were born abroad and denied Canadian citizenship because their Canadian parent or parents were also born abroad. 

In each family, the parent has lived in Canada for many years, views Canada as their home and/or intends to return to Canada if they aren’t currently living here. The parents, all Canadian citizens, argued their inability to pass on their citizenship to their children, despite their connection to Canada, imposed second-class citizenship status upon them. The court agreed. 

Back when the law was changed, the House of Commons Committee on Citizenship and Immigration unanimously endorsed the second-generation cut-off. Effectively, the clause was the cost for passing a larger package of reforms to the Citizenship Act.

For several years, people known as the “lost Canadians” — those who have fallen through the cracks of complex citizenship law — had been advocating for changes that would address discriminatory provisions in the act. 

These people considered themselves Canadians, but had been denied citizenship because of their age, and/or the sex and marital status of their Canadian parent at the time of their birth. 

For example, prior to 2009, a child born abroad before Feb. 15, 1977, to a Canadian woman married to a non-Canadian would not be entitled to Canadian citizenship. The reform package removed the sex and wedlock status of the Canadian parent as conditions for citizenship for children born abroad after Jan. 1, 1947, when Canada’s first Citizenship Act came into force. 

Inconsistently enforced

Another challenge leading to those reforms was a requirement that second-generation children born abroad affirm their citizenship by the age of 28. They also had to demonstrate one year of residency in Canada immediately prior to applying or some other substantial connection to the country.

In practice, though, many Canadians born abroad were unaware of this provision, and it was inconsistently enforced.

Limiting citizenship to the first generation born abroad offered a simple, if blunt, solution to this problem. Parliamentarians were also assured that an expedited immigration sponsorship processwould address situations like those faced by the Bjorkquist et al.families. 

Unfortunately, that process has proven unreliable — so much so, in fact, that the judge in the Bjorkquist case described it as “error-riddled, highly discretionary, and inequitable in …application, and as such … unsatisfactory.”

It’s clear that the second-generation cut-off rule excludes children whose parents have a demonstrable connection to Canada, and who have a high likelihood of being connected to Canada as well. So how might that connection be established? 

Parliament is currently considering Bill S-245, that would amend the Citizenship Act. Its original draft proposed reinstating the second-generation affirmation and one-year residency requirement. 

It now includes an amendment requiring a more rigorous connection test, drawing from Canada’s requirements for permanent residency. The Canadian parent of a child born abroad would need to have lived in Canada for 1,095 days (three years) in total prior to the birth of their child. 

Relying on proxies

In this way, the Citizenship Act could address concerns about what Finley referred to as “endless generations living abroad”that spurred the creation of the second-generation cut-off rule in the first place. As well, Canadians would be able to pursue opportunities around the world while maintaining their connection to Canada.

Ultimately, what’s at issue is what’s considered the threshold for citizenship. Canada doesn’t require citizens or those claiming citizenship to pass civics tests or commit to substantive engagement in governing. Instead, it relies on proxies like birth, residency and time since they appear less vulnerable to political manipulation.

These proxies may be imperfect. Yet the Bjorkquist case suggests that when thoughtfully constructed, they can ensure Canadian citizenship is bestowed upon those whose attachment and contributions to Canada are real.

Source: What a recent court ruling on Canada’s Citizenship Act means for ‘lost Canadians’

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Ukraine-Russia war: Putin #citizenship decree violates children’s rights, Ukraine says – BBC

2024/01/08 Leave a comment

Of note and yes it does:

Ukraine has condemned a decree signed by President Putin making it possible to confer Russian citizenship on Ukrainian children moved to Russia.

Last March, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for President Putin over Russia’s policy of forced child deportations.

The Ukrainian foreign ministry called the decree illegal.

However, Russia insists it is moving the children out of harm’s way.

On 4 January Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a citizenship decree expediting Russian citizenship to foreigners and stateless people.

The Ukrainian foreign ministry singled out the passage saying that orphaned Ukrainian children or those deprived of parental guardianship can be fast-tracked to Russian citizenship by way of a presidential decision, or after a request by the institution holding them.

The decree states that a citizenship application for such a child can be submitted by their legal guardian or the head of a Russian organisation responsible for the child.

The Ukrainian foreign ministry sees this as Russia’s attempt to solve its own demographic crisis, describing it as a violation of Ukrainian and international laws and children’s rights.

The decree is yet more evidence of Russia’s policy of forced assimilation of Ukrainian children, and crimes against Ukraine in general, the ministry added.

Ukraine’s Commissioner for Human Rights, Dmytro Lubinets, says Moscow is granting citizenship to the children so that they are not regarded as Ukrainians who have been transferred to Russia.

The Ukrainian authorities have identified over 19,000 Ukrainian children who have been deported to Russia since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Only 387 children have been brought back so far, according to the Ukrainian national database Children of war.

In November 2023, the BBC’s Panorama TV programme revealed that a political ally of Mr Putin adopted a child seized from a Ukrainian children’s home.

Sergey Mironov, the 70-year-old leader of a Russian political party, is named on the adoption record of a two-year-old girl who was taken in 2022 by a woman he is now married to, according to documents seen by Panorama.

In March, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Mr Putin for alleged war crimes in Ukraine. The ICC said he was responsible for for unlawful deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia.

Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, was hit with the same charges. ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan said children could not be “treated as spoils of war” and that it was possible Putin could stand trial.

Source: Ukraine-Russia war: Putin citizenship decree violates children’s rights, Ukraine says – BBC

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Russian antiwar activist could lose Canadian citizenship bid over conviction abroad – CBC.ca

2024/01/06 Leave a comment

Appears to be a case of operational staff ignoring or not considering the context and expect that CBC coverage will provoke a needed rethink. Makes no sense and would be curious to know whether this is an isolated instance or being applied more broadly to similar cases.

From a process point of view, Kartasheva flagged this conviction in writing as part of her application and thus no misrepresentation. Why IRCC missed this, only to notice at the ceremony, reflects sloppiness at best. Should have been addressed before rather than this humiliating treatment of Kartasheva and, more broadly, of IRCC’s processing:

A critic of the Kremlin could be barred from obtaining Canadian citizenship because she has to prove to immigration officials here that it isn’t a crime in Canada to criticize the Russian army.

Maria Kartasheva, who has lived in Ottawa since 2019, has been convicted under a Russian law passed shortly after the invasion of Ukraine which bars “public dissemination of deliberately false information about the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.”

Kartasheva says she was surprised Russian prosecutors pursued her over two blog posts she wrote while living in Ontario.

But what was most jawdropping for the 30-year-old was when a Canadian officiant motioned for her to step aside in the middle of her citizenship ceremony last spring, just moments before she was supposed to swear her allegiance to the Crown.

“I felt betrayed because I was hoping I was safe here in Canada,” said Kartasheva, who’s a tech worker in the national capital.

Under Canadian immigration rules, if an applicant is charged with a crime in another country that could be indictable under Canada’s Criminal Code, their application can be revoked or refused. …

Source: Russian antiwar activist could lose Canadian citizenship bid over conviction abroad – CBC.ca

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