Chris Selley: A dumb citizenship law, easily fixed, is finally headed to court [not so easily, not so simple]

2022/01/08 Leave a comment

Whenever someone says “simple problem” or “easily fixed,” they don’t fully understand the policy and operational issues involved. Surprising from someone as seasoned as Selley, who normally does his homework before condemning an “idiot law.”

Over reliance on anecdotes, bereft of any understanding of the issues and practicalities involved. No discussion of the problems encountered in the previous retention provisions, which were difficult to administer fairly and transparently. And no discussion of the parliamentary discussions and report that discussed the provision.

Not in the Minister’s mandate letter but issue has been percolating for some time.

Will be interesting to see how courts respond to the lawyer’s argumentation (hopefully stronger than his overblown rhetoric as quoted in the article:

Gregory Burgess certainly presents as a full-blooded 46-year-old Canadian. He has long, deep roots in this country, and none anywhere else: His great-grandparents emigrated from Ukraine in 1894 and settled the Edna-Star colony in Alberta. He was born a Canadian citizen. He attended elementary, secondary and post-secondary institutions in Edmonton. He holds only a Canadian passport, he says, and has never had permanent legal status anywhere else.

But he was born abroad — in Connecticut, where his American father was working at the time. And much to his horror, he recently discovered what that means: His son, Philip, who was born three months ago in Hong Kong — where Burgess works in building information management — has no claim to Canadian citizenship. Indeed, because foreigners’ children have no official status in Hong Kong, Philip is currently stateless.

That’s been the law in Canada for 13 years: No matter how purely and unequivocally Canadian you might be, if you happen to have been born abroad to a Canadian parent, then you cannot pass your citizenship on automatically to your children unless they are born on Canadian soil.

Burgess can apply to sponsor Philip as a dependant-child immigrant to Canada, but there are no guarantees. (There are medical tests to be passed, for example.) And Burgess says the government has mooted timelines of up to two years to arrive at a solution. His Hong Kong work visa expires in six months.

“If my son doesn’t have citizenship, and I have to leave in six months, and my son technically does too — because he will be connected to me; that’s the only reason he would be allowed to stay here — (then) I don’t know exactly what the (Canadian) government expects,” says Burgess, exasperated. “Like, where he’s supposed to go and where I’m supposed to go.”

Philip may have a claim to Russian citizenship through his mother: Burgess met Viktoriya Kharzhanovich in 2017 in Shanghai, where she was a student, later becoming a translator and a quality-assurance manager in the textiles industry; they married in September. But Gregory isn’t sure about his own claim. He and Viktoriya are only just now wrapping their minds around this dilemma, on top of caring for an infant.

In any event, they don’t want to move to Russia — and there is no earthly reason they ought to have to. But Ottawa has already denied their application for a temporary passport for Philip. And in the meantime, even if some country is willing to provide Philip with travel documents, it’s entirely possible they will have to be separated.

In theory, Citizenship Minister Sean Fraser could intervene in a case like this on humanitarian grounds. In practice, citizenship ministers rarely do that.

Now-retired airline pilot Don Chapman has been advocating on behalf of “Lost Canadians” in this situation — and many other equally bizarre situations — for many years. Seemingly no one in Ottawa is willing to go on record in support of the status quo. But despite various tweaks to Canada’s utterly byzantine citizenship laws over the years, this simple problem never gets solved. And now it has finally landed in the courts.

The Burgess family will soon be joining seven others as applicants to a constitutional challenge filed in December in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. Lawyer Sujit Choudhry, who represents the families, argues the law discriminates unjustifiably not just on grounds of national origin, but of gender as well. “It’s quite frankly insulting to my women clients to be told to basically stop working, to arrive in Canada without health insurance, to not have an obstetrician or gynecologist (and have a baby)” just to avoid this ridiculously overbroad and arbitrary law, Choudhry convincingly argues.

The “second generation born abroad” problem dates back to the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. After the then-Conservative government helped evacuate Canadian citizens from Lebanon, a few of the evacuees turned up in the news kvetching about the quality of the service. Some had tenuous connections to Canada. People got angry about “citizens of convenience,” and the government hatched this very blunt solution: Henceforth, no Canadian citizen who wasn’t born in Canada could pass on citizenship to any foreign-born children of their own.

The absurd results are particularly visible within families. Burgess has a younger sister who was born in Edmonton; if Philip was her Hong Kong-born baby, he would automatically be eligible for a passport. And it doesn’t even solve the issue that the Lebanon situation flagged. If Gregory and Viktoriya had made a three-week trip to Canada to give birth and returned immediately to Hong Kong, precisely nothing useful would have been accomplished vis-à-vis Canadian citizenship.

Luckily, there is an obvious solution other than simply letting Canadians pass down citizenship in perpetuity, no questions asked: Part of the process of naturalizing as a Canadian citizen is proving your substantial ongoing connection to the country. Why not simply ask the same of Gregory Burgess and other Canadians who have done nothing wrong except take a job overseas, fall in love and make what they assumed would be a brand-new Canadian?

The lawsuit is one last opportunity for the government finally to pull its thumb out and fix the problem. Arguing for the status quo in court would be especially humiliating for a Liberal government, wedded as it is to the internationalist vision of Canada in the world. But having followed this file for some years now, I’m sorry to say that’s the most likely outcome. If so, I intend to write more about this idiot law and its victims in the new year.

Source: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/chris-selley-a-dumb-citizenship-law-easily-fixed-is-finally-headed-to-court

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Germany’s new leader has a plan for the migrant crisis

2022/01/07 Leave a comment

Of note:

When Olaf Scholz made his first major speech as German chancellor in mid-December, it was closely watched for signs of how he would continue Angela Merkel’s successes – and how he would fix her mistakes.

Scholz focused mainly on his priorities for the pandemic and climate change, as might be expected given the continued discovery of new Covid-19 variants and his center-left coalition.

But almost unremarked was a small but far-reaching change, designed to solve one of the most taxing of German problems – what to do about the large number of refugees inside the country. The issue is still a source of controversy among Germans over whether it counts as a success or a failure of the Merkel years. In outlining his new approach, Scholz said Germany would for the first time allow dual citizenship.

Source: Germany’s new leader has a plan for the migrant crisis

Filed under Citizenship, Dual Citizenship, Immigration Tagged with ,

How you can buy a British passport—the dangerous commodification of citizenship

2022/01/07 2 Comments

Of note:

Last week, the UK Nationality and Borders Bill passed in the Commons. The Bill gave the home secretary Priti Patel the power to strip British people with dual nationality or born abroad of their citizenship without needing to warn them first. Three thousand miles away, in a conference centre in Dubai, a collection of lawyers, wealth managers, immigration experts and High Net Worth Individuals (HNWIs) were selling and shopping for visas and passports. The event hosted “the right advisers and government contacts” to help applicants “get ahead in life in countries such as Canada, USA, UK, Spain, Greece, Germany, Bulgaria,” including promising to hand-hold applicants through the UK’s investor visa process, where a £2m investment can be exchanged for long-term residency. Both events are representative of shifting currents in global citizenship. But who gets citizenship—and why? Who gets to keep it—and who doesn’t?

The commodification of citizenship began in the 1980s. When the Caribbean islands of St Kitts & Nevis attained independence from Britain, the economy was hindered by a colonial-era reliance on sugar exports. Selling citizenship represented a perfect economic opportunity. An existing resource with apparently unlimited supply, low overheads and limited human capital requirements, selling passports could deliver a direct injection of cash for the government. At $150,000 for a family of four, with no obligation to live or even visit the islands, the passports include access to tax-free income and visa-free travel to over 130 countries. For St Kitts and its customers alike—a diverse group of wealthy investors largely from developing countries from which travel is restricted—there seemed to be few downsides, besides potential displeasure from other countries.

At first, uptake was slow. But after a dramatic slashing of the EU import price for sugar in 2006, the Kittitian government enlisted the help of Henley & Partners, a London law firm, to give the programme a boost. Their influence was profound. In the following eight years, the percentage of St Kitts GDP derived from the citizenship-by-investment (or “CBI”) programme jumped from 1 to 25 per cent. Today, CBI is a booming international industry worth an estimated $3bn.

In short, St Kitts commodified citizenship, and Henley commercialised it. Now operated by around 100 countries around the world, CBI programmes offer a passport or residency permit in exchange for a one-time payment or a hefty real estate investment. Prices range from $130,000 for a single applicant (Vanuatu) to several millions (the UK) to schemes about which little public information is available (Switzerland, Austria). The innovation of CBI is in bypassing the linguistic, cultural or employment-related migration requirements usually tightly enforced by governments when the person involved isn’t incredibly rich. It has also spawned an entire industry. Search “citizenship by investment” on Google and a slew of adverts for agents, lawyers, due diligence firms and advisers appear, all hungry for their share of the application fee. There are even CBI influencers: Nomad Capitalist, a YouTube channel, garners millions of views each year for videos with titles like “12 Second Residence Permits with a Simple Bank Deposit.”

Source: How you can buy a British passport—the dangerous commodification of citizenship

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

Soon-to-be Canadians waiting in vain to hear about their citizenship applications

2022/01/07 Leave a comment

A backlog of close to 500,000, and a citizenship program has only recently started to get back to more traditional numbers of new citizens (close to 20,000 October 2021, compared to a pre-pandemic monthly average of 21,000). Will need to ramp up quickly to clear the backlog:

A large number of immigrants say they’ve been waiting months to hear back from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) about whether or not they will soon become Canadian citizens.

Parandis Haghnesarfard and her husband, who passed their citizenship tests in January 2021, say they feel like they’ve been left out in the cold by the Canadian government.

It’s been one year and the couple says they still don’t know if they will be called to take their oaths.

“My sister lives in the U.K. She had heart surgery and she needed my help to take care of her and his son,” Haghnesarfard said. “I haven’t seen my father in three years, my aunt passed away this summer and I couldn’t be there.”

It seems Haghnesarfard isn’t the only one sitting idly; dozens of families have written to CTV News asking for help with their citizenship applications.

“The only answer was, ‘sorry, please be patient,'” Haghnesarfard said. “I am tired of this answer.”

For its part, IRCC acknowledges that “some applicants have experienced considerable wait times.”

“Scheduling an oath ceremony usually takes four to six months after all criteria are positively assessed,” explained Isabelle Dubois, a spokesperson for the department.

Immigration lawyer Tamara Mosher-Kuczer argues the actual average wait time sits closer to 12 to 18 months.

“Pre-COVID-19, that would be a long delay,” she points out. “In COVID-19 [times], three to six months is not unusual. I have heard of some people still waiting to take the oath from pre or early pandemic.”

HELP FROM CTV NEWS

Mehrnoosh Djavid, a software quality engineer from Iran, was waiting for more than nine months to hear back about whether or not she would be called to take her citizenship oath when she wrote to CTV News.

She explains she lost her father two years ago, but hasn’t yet been able to go home to comfort her mother because of COVID-19.

“I cannot go and visit my family in Iran because the citizenship ceremony can happen anytime and I need to be present in Canada during this ceremony,” she said. “Also, I can not go to company conferences in the U.S. because I don’t have my Canadian passport. Basically, I can’t travel anywhere.”

She argues the selection process seems random, with some of her friends who applied for citizenship after her already receiving their new, navy blue passports.

After CTV News inquired in mid-December about her file, Djavid says she immediately received an e-mail notifying her that her citizenship ceremony would take place on Dec. 20.

“I still can’t believe it and don’t know how to thank you for your help and support,” she said. “It really means a lot to me and I’ll never forget your kindness.”

Similarly, Aida Rangy and Mostafa Darabi, who came to Canada in 2014 as international students and applied for citizenship in March 2020, did not hear back from IRCC until CTV News intervened.

“Having delays with the pandemic situation was understandable during 2020,” Rangy said. “We have many friends in Ontario, B.C. and even Quebec who applied for citizenship months after us and they have their passports now.”

The couple says they completed their citizenship application in May 2021.

“It’s not right. We are working in this community, paying taxes and doing our responsibility as citizens, but IRCC is not treating us as valuable members of Canada,” said Rangy.

After an inquiry by CTV News, Rangy and Darabi were called to take their oaths on Dec. 21.

“With your help now we are Canadian citizens,” Rangy said. “The best Christmas gift we could have. We booked tickets to visit our families in March. I can’t believe I can see them after almost two-and-a-half years.”

Malek Mohammad Karami Nejad, who works at Gameloft Montreal, and Vajiheh Roshan Nia, a substitute teacher and daycare educator with the Centre de services scolaire de Laval, have been in a similar position since their permanent residency cards expired.

“My wife has a lot of worry about her parents and I’m scared she will get ill with these stress pressures,” said Nejad. “From my company’s side, I need to travel outside Canada to other countries.”

The couple’s citizenship applications were approved in July 2021.

After a query by CTV News, IRCC confirmed the couple would be scheduled to attend their oath of citizenship ceremony on Jan. 17.

“I don’t know how to say thank you. Really appreciated and God bless you,” Nejad said. “You saved my time and my life.”

CTV News is still waiting for responses on at least 10 other dossiers.

BLAMING COVID-19

Mosher-Kuczer points out COVID-19 has exposed many cracks in the foundation at IRCC.

“Since Afghanistan became an issue in August, they [IRCC] changed their messaging, and it’s such offensive messaging, in my opinion, because when you submit a web form, the response back is ‘we’re only dealing with priority requests and we won’t respond to other requests,'” she said. “Well, that’s offensive because everybody who’s contacting them, it’s a priority for them.”

The immigration lawyer points out it’s almost like a chicken-or-the-egg situation, where people are not getting any answers and are writing again and again to the department.

“Now you’ve got a system backlog — and you’re adding additional applications into this system backlog,” Mosher-Kuczer said. “With the pandemic, they’re understaffed, but I think they were always understaffed.”

She calls it a “failure of communication” on the part of IRCC.

“If they had some better messaging; if they came out and they said, ‘we understand that this is an issue,’ but they’re not doing that,” she stated. “They’re saying, ‘everything’s OK here, nothing to see. Don’t worry.'”

Mosher-Kuczer is calling on IRCC to, if they cannot speed up processing times, at least be honest with people.

“People are so angry. They’re angry, and they’re depressed,” she noted. “This is their dream and their hope for their future. They’ve made plans about buying houses, jobs, education based on processing times and based on where they thought they would be.”

Due to the pandemic, IRCC says ceremonies are taking place virtually.

“Some of the larger volume offices may be experiencing longer-than-normal delays given limitations of the virtual format,” Dubois noted, adding approximately 3,500 to 5,000 applicants are invited each week to take their oaths as Canadian citizens.

In a move towards better efficiency, IRCC has created an online tool for applicants to check their application status.

“Applicants do not generally receive any communication from IRCC until receiving their notice to appear for their video oath ceremony,” added Jelena Jenko, a department spokesperson.

Source: Soon-to-be Canadians waiting in vain to hear about their citizenship applications

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ICYMI: Its critics call it ‘birth tourism.’ But is the practice real? COVID-19 is providing clues

2022/01/06 Leave a comment

The COVID-19 pandemic and the border closures and travel restrictions that came with it seem to have put a dent in the number of non-Canadians coming to this country to deliver their babies.

The latest government data offers what may be an unprecedented look at the practice that has been controversially dubbed “birth tourism.”

It shows the number of “non-resident self-pay” new births in the country dropped by 57 per cent during the first full year of the global crisis, between April 2020 and March 2021 — from 5,698 the year earlier down to 2,433. 

Observers have stressed that the practice of coming to Canada to deliver a baby is legal and cautioned that its frequency has been overblown by critics, drawing focus at times more for reasons of racism than for pragmatic concerns.

All babies born in Canada receive automatic Canadian citizenship. 

The Liberal government has said it’s committed to investigating the issue of foreign nationals taking a shortcut to obtain citizenship for their children by giving birth in Canada, but no policy recommendations or changes have been made to date.

Under normal times, it’s hard for researchers to pinpoint the number of visitors who came here with the main purpose of giving birth, because the data would also capture non-residents who delivered babies while working or studying in this country. 

But the pandemic’s unique circumstances brought with them novel data.

As Canada has imposed restrictive measures against the entry of non-essential travellers but not international students and temporary foreign workers, the data for the first time gives a more precise picture of the extent of those coming to Canada to deliver babies.

“This really provides you with what Nobel Prize-winning economist David Card called a natural experiment, where there was one variable that changed and it affected one group disproportionately,” says researcher Andrew Griffith, whose findings will be published by the Institute for Research on Public Policy on Thursday.

“This basically confirms that when you don’t have visitors’ visas, you have a major drop in birth tourists because that’s how they come in.”

Based on hospital delivery data from the Canadian Institute of Health Information, a Crown corporation, Griffith looked at the number of times the cost of delivering babies in hospitals over the past decade was paid out of the patients’ own pocket.

The number surged yearly from 1,863 in 2010 to a peak of 5,698 in 2019, before it nosedived last year, which coincided with a 95 per cent drop in the number of visitors’ visas issued by Canada.

In comparison, the number of international students fell by only 25 per cent, while the number of temporary foreign workers actually increased by 5.5 per cent.

Griffith estimates that the percentage of “tourism births” has now reached one per cent of all births in Canada in an average year.

“This is really a question of the integrity of the citizenship program. If you come here as a permanent resident, you have to meet the residency requirements, you have to meet the knowledge requirements, you have to meet the language requirements. There’s a whole process that you have to go through to be Canadian citizens,” said Griffith, a fellow with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute and Environics Institute.

“This is legal but it’s still a loophole that allows basically fairly affluent women and families to shortcut the process, find a backdoor entry and without going through the standard process of becoming a Canadian citizen.”

The citizenship afforded to these Canadian-born children allow them to automatically access health care, local education and tuition fees, as well as other government benefits.

While any visa restriction against pregnant women visiting Canada would be difficult to administer and enforce, Griffith said Ottawa could change the citizenship act to require at least one parent to be a citizen or permanent resident of Canada for citizenship to be conferred to a Canadian-born child, as Australia does.

The former Conservative government explored similar legislative changes in 2012, but the idea was abandoned due to opposition from provincial governments, which are responsible for the administration of birth certificates, a key document for citizenship. The number of people coming to Canada for the express purpose of delivering a baby was estimated at just 500 at the time and such changes were considered not worthy of the hefty administrative costs.

“We have more accurate data now,” said Griffith. 

In a 2019 survey by the Angus Reid Institute, 64 per cent of Canadians said a child born to parents who are in this country on tourist visas should not be granted Canadian citizenship, and 60 per cent said changes to the citizenship laws are necessary to discourage birth tourism.

Critics have argued that any requirement of one parent being a Canadian citizen or permanent resident could lead to children, such as those born here to refugee claimants, to be stateless.

“Anything to deal with immigration and citizenship basically has some form of discrimination. Who do you let in? Who do you not let in? What are the criteria to allow somebody to become citizen,” said Griffith.

“Is it too rigid? Is it too open? You are always going to have the debate over how you cut the line in the right place.”

Source: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2021/12/16/its-critics-call-it-birth-tourism-but-is-the-practice-real-covid-19-is-providing-clues.html

My Policy Options article which formed the basis for the reporting: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/december-2021/birth-tourism-in-canada-dropped-sharply-once-the-pandemic-began/__;!!AlmGDlt8!iF8vkNntsOxOaoiOptdZnIP6_nTznLbhJ0nHgByjTRO0V5pBnecrGb7ZGeXR858$

Filed under Birthright Citizenship, Citizenship, Immigration Tagged with ,

My articles and issues in 2021, focus for 2022

2022/01/05 Leave a comment

While a bit self-indulgent, thought it might be interesting to do a recap of my articles and commentary over the past year. 

A major focus has been the ongoing work with Dan Hiebert and Howard Ramos regarding the impact of COVID-19 on immigration and related programs (weekly comparison of Canadian provincial infections, deaths and vaccinations compared to other G7 and top immigration source countries: India, China, Philippines, Pakistan and Nigeria) and compilation of monthly IRCC operational statistics across immigration, citizenship and visitor visas, with partial results for settlement given no recent public datasets.

Citizenship 

Birth tourism in Canada dropped sharply once the pandemic began (Policy Options, 2021)

Likely my most significant article, my analysis shows the impact of the “natural experiment” of the drastic fall in visitor visas issues and related travel restrictions on the number of non-resident self-pay hospital deliveries, confirming that birth tourists form more than 50 percent of non-resident births. My position has evolved from minimizing the issue some 10 years ago, to noting the need for ongoing monitoring and consideration of various approaches to reduce the practice to now advocating for a change in the Citizenship Act as the “cleanest” solution. 

Amid languishing numbers, Canada’s citizenship process needs to be modernized (Policy Options, 2021)

Given the ongoing weaknesses in citizenship program management, ranging from wide fluctuations in annual numbers of new citizens to limited and delayed data sets, this article makes the case for extensive modernization of citizenship operations (some of which has started or accelerated due to COVID).

Immigration 

Increasing immigration to boost population? Not so fast. (Policy Options, 2021)

Increasingly frustrated by some of the simplistic arguments advanced in favour of increased immigration by the Business Council of Canada, Century Initiative and others, I raised some needed questions that governments and policy makers need to consider and advocated a Royal Commission or equivalent to undertake a fundamental review of immigration policies that would take a broader perspective than a larger overall GDP. Some of my thinking was developed in my earlier Why the Canadian government must review its immigration policy (Open Democracy, 2021) and some was reiterated in The Need for a Longer Term Perspective on Immigration, Citizenship and Multiculturalism (Canadian Global Affairs Institute, 2021).

Will the pandemic make Canada less attractive to newcomers? (With Howard Ramos, Policy Options, 2021)

At the beginning of the work Dan Hiebert, Howard Ramos and I set out some of the questions we were asking regarding the impact of COVID on immigration, tracking both  COVID numbers in G7 and immigration source countries along with monthly tracking of the impact on immigration and related programs. While the end of the pandemic is not yet completely clear, we do have a good sense of how the government has reacted in terms of policy changes (e.g., massive shift to “two-step immigration”), modernization (more online applications, virtual citizenship ceremonies etc) and operations (backlog increases).

Multiculturalism 

Racism and the need for a national integration commission (Policy Options, Philippine Canadian Inquirer, 2021)

Similar to my frustrations regarding immigration policies, much of the commentary and analysis over racism tended to overly simple framing of the issues, whether visible minority/not visible minority, Black and White differences, with limited discussion of the diversity within and among groups, the discrimination and biases that exist within and between groups, and the need for a better understanding of the neuropsychological basis for racism and discrimination. Again, I advocated a Royal Commission or equivalent, given the importance to social inclusion and cohesion, with a strong focus on lessons learned on what works.

Diversity and Employment Equity

Will the removal of the Canadian citizenship preference in the public service make a difference (Policy Options, 2021) andDiversity and inclusion: public service hirings, promotions and separations (The Hill Times, 2021).

The collection and publishing of disaggregated public service data for employment equity groups (official and likely to become official) provides the granularity needed to assess the different groups in terms of representation by occupational group, including hiring, promotions and separations. With four years of disaggregated data, visible minority representation has increased at three times the rate of not visible minorities, one that may increase further given the removal of Canadian citizenship preference. The other notable finding, in the context of the understandable focus on anti-Black racism, is that representation of Blacks in the public service is reasonably strong compared to a number of other visible minority groups and at the EX level, greater than South Asian, Chinese and Filipinos.

Contrasting pre- and post-pandemic public service survey results (The Hill Times, 2021)

Although we only have two-years disaggregated data for the Public Service Employee Survey (PSES), this provides a comparison pre- and post-pandemic. As one would expect, visible minority groups report more instances of harassment and discrimination than not visible minorities, with Blacks reporting more than other visible minority groups. Most striking for me in analyzing the data was the degree of scepticism if not cynicism regarding the government’s anti-racism initiatives, particularly for Blacks.

The Year Ahead

The big news of course is the release of the 2021 census data, providing a wealth of information to assess and analyze in terms of immigration, citizenship and multiculturalism. 2021 data also includes religious affiliation, providing another aspect to understanding diversity in Canada. So I expect to be busy!

While the government remains committed to its immigration levels plan, how it handles the backlog in all areas remains to be seen. In one sense, in order to deliver on its 401,000 number, privileging two-step immigration meant large backlogs on other immigrants, an issue that opposition parties will correctly focus on.

With respect to citizenship, while I would like to see some action on birth tourism (or at least some serious work!), the government needs to release the revised citizenship study guide (announced in 2016!) and eliminate citizenship fees (2019 and 2021 platforms). Whether the government will feel compelled to respond to some pressure regarding the first generation transmission of citizenship remains to be seen.

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Filed under Citizenship, employment equity, Immigration, Multiculturalism

Former Mayor Bloomberg: The Pro-Immigrant Case Against New York City’s Noncitizen Voting

2021/12/16 2 Comments

Good arguments. I agree, the goal should be full citizenship and voting rights, not partial:

I have always strongly supported immigrant rights and worked to protect immigrants, expand visa opportunities, and provide a pathway to citizenship for those who are here. A decade ago, I co-founded a bipartisan coalition of leaders to push for immigration reform, a group that recently merged with the American Immigration Council. And during my time as mayor, we created a program to help more New Yorkers apply for citizenship, which became a national model.

To me, being pro-immigrant has always meant incentivizing and rewarding citizenship — but some cities, unfortunately, are in danger of making it a less attractive proposition.

Generations of immigrants have sought U.S. citizenship to gain full access to the American dream, including all the rights and responsibilities that go along with it — chief of them, the right (and responsibility) to vote. But this month, the New York City Council voted 33-14 to authorize noncitizen voting. The bill would grant some 800,000 immigrants with green cards or work permits, and who have been living in the city for 30 days, the right to participate in elections for mayor, city council and other offices, as well as in local ballot questions.

The bill is likely to be challenged in court, because it conflicts with the plain language of the state constitution, which repeatedly uses the word “citizen” in its suffrage clause: “Every citizen shall be entitled to vote at every election for all officers elected by the people and upon all questions submitted to the vote of the people provided that such citizen is eighteen years of age or over and shall have been a resident of this state, and of the county, city, or village for thirty days next preceding an election.”

For good measure, the bill also appears to violate state election statutes, which list mandatory qualifications for voters: “No person shall be qualified to register for and vote at any election unless he is a citizen of the United States and is or will be, on the day of such election, eighteen years of age or over and a resident of this state.” This is hardly ambiguous language.

Should the plan somehow survive a legal challenge, there’s also the small matter of putting it in place. Ballots in local elections often include state offices (judgeships, for instance) and statewide referendums that noncitizens wouldn’t be eligible to vote for. Preventing noncitizens from voting on those matters would be extremely difficult under any circumstances. Leaving it to the city’s board of elections, a notoriously incompetent patronage mill, is a recipe for disaster.

Other jurisdictions may not face exactly these legal and logistical obstacles, but the biggest problem with noncitizen voting isn’t a legal or technical obstacle: It’s the way it devalues citizenship.

Proponents of the concept argue that voting gives the noncitizen more civic connections and a bigger “stake” in the community. This gets things precisely backward: Voting is a major reason many immigrants seek to obtain citizenship. They recognize that citizenship brings greater rights and responsibilities. If cities want more immigrants to become citizens — as they absolutely should — stripping away that incentive won’t help.

There’s no question that the route immigrants must travel to obtain citizenship is too slow and too restrictive. Fixing this process requires the White House and Congress to work with Republicans on a bipartisan deal, which noncitizen voting will make even more difficult and unlikely.

In fact, it will lend credence to the Republican argument that Democrats support immigration reform purely to pad their own voter rolls. This view is false, but pushing for noncitizen voting will only make it harder to refute, while also making the national conversation on the topic more toxic than it already is.

Immigrants deserve to be heard and protected. But that will not happen with local attempts to supersede the broken federal system. Instead, we must do the hard work of fixing it through federal legislation — without making that even more difficult than it already is.

Historically, incentivizing citizenship by combining it with the right to vote has benefited both immigrant communities and America as a whole — not only by integrating diverse cultures, but by cultivating a shared sense of purpose and national identity.

Local leaders should not attempt to break that compact. They should instead unite their efforts on Washington, so more immigrants have the opportunity to become full-fledged citizens — and voters.

Source: The Pro-Immigrant Case Against New York City’s Noncitizen Voting

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‘If we are not Canadian, what are we?’ How a 2009 law is leaving some children stateless

2021/12/14 Leave a comment

Not unexpected but the Act does have a provision to address statelessness. Would be interesting to have the data on the extent of its its application rather than just highlighting individual cases (which highlight issues).

The previous retention provisions were hard to administer consistently and fairly (“substantial connection” not as simple as it sounds), and there are advantages to clarity provided by the first generation limit.

From a policy perspective, the focus was on providing equal treatment for those born in Canada and immigrants who became naturalized Canadians.

And ironic that some expatriate Canadians complain about having to pay for healthcare should they return to Canada to give birth to “restart the clock” when more than a few thousand foreign women do so as “birth tourists.”

But a useful reminder that expatriates need to consider citizenship implications more closely when planning to have children.

After numerous failed attempts to conceive a child, including a lost pregnancy through in vitro fertilization, Emma Kenyon and her husband were grateful and thrilled for the arrival of their first baby.

On Dec. 5, healthy six-pound, two-ounce Darcy was born at a public hospital in Hong Kong. However, a bureaucratic nightmare for his Canadian expatriate parents has just begun.

As new parents, the nursing mother and her husband, Daniel Warelis — both foreign-born Canadian citizens who grew up in Greater Toronto — must fight to find a way to bring their stateless child home.

“I don’t think any country, especially a country like Canada, should allow little babies to be born stateless to Canadian citizens. It’s a travesty,” said Kenyon, 35, who was born in Tokyo while her father was working there for the Bank of Nova Scotia.

“The most important thing for us is that Darcy is not stateless as soon as possible.”

This week, the couple joined five other Canadian families to launch a Charter challenge against a rule in Canada’s citizenship act that denies the transmission of citizenship by descent to these foreign-born kids if both their Canadian parents also happened to be born overseas.

The previous Conservative government changed the law in 2009 and imposed the so-called “second generation” cut-off against Canadians born abroad after Ottawa’s massive effort to evacuate 15,000 Lebanese Canadians stranded in Beirut during a month-long war between Israel and Lebanon in 2006.

The $85 million price tag of the evacuation effort sparked a debate over “Canadians of convenience” about individuals with Canadian citizenship who live permanently outside of Canada without “substantive ties” to Canada but were part of the government liability.

“Citizenship is about more, far more than a right to carry a passport or to vote. It defines who we are as Canadians, including our mutual responsibilities to one another and a shared commitment to the values that are rooted in our history like freedom, unity and loyalty,” former federal immigration minister Jason Kenney said then.

“That’s why we must protect the values of Canadian citizenship and must take steps against those who would cheapen it.”

Although the law included limited exemptions for children born overseas if their parents are abroad serving in the Canadian military and for the government, critics had warned it would create two tiers of citizenships — those born by birth in Canada and those by descent — and that children of some Canadians might end up stateless.

Now, a generation later, according to the lawsuit filed on Thursday, the impacts of the law passed 12 years ago are felt by Canadians such as Kenyon and Warelis.

“We never imagined, even if there were different rules for second generation Canadians, that two people who are Canadians and grew up in Canada, and there’s no direct pathway for their children to become citizens,” said Warelis, who was born in New York while his father was working there for a global public relations company.

“As time goes on, there will be more and more Canadians who potentially can’t pass on their citizenship,” added the 36-year-old, who worked for the federal government before travelling to Hong Kong for an international career in 2016 with his wife.

“Citizenship is about more, far more than a right to carry a passport or to vote. It defines who we are as Canadians, including our mutual responsibilities to one another and a shared commitment to the values that are rooted in our history like freedom, unity and loyalty,” former federal immigration minister Jason Kenney said then.

“That’s why we must protect the values of Canadian citizenship and must take steps against those who would cheapen it.”

Although the law included limited exemptions for children born overseas if their parents are abroad serving in the Canadian military and for the government, critics had warned it would create two tiers of citizenships — those born by birth in Canada and those by descent — and that children of some Canadians might end up stateless.

Now, a generation later, according to the lawsuit filed on Thursday, the impacts of the law passed 12 years ago are felt by Canadians such as Kenyon and Warelis.

“We never imagined, even if there were different rules for second generation Canadians, that two people who are Canadians and grew up in Canada, and there’s no direct pathway for their children to become citizens,” said Warelis, who was born in New York while his father was working there for a global public relations company.

“As time goes on, there will be more and more Canadians who potentially can’t pass on their citizenship,” added the 36-year-old, who worked for the federal government before travelling to Hong Kong for an international career in 2016 with his wife.

Under the citizenship law in Hong Kong, now part of China, Warelis said his son is ineligible for citizenship by birth on the island because neither he nor his wife are citizens there.

Prior to 2009, the second generation born abroad automatically obtained Canadian citizenship by descent, but ceased to be Canadian citizens at age 28, unless they applied to retain their citizenship and register as a citizen, and either had lived in Canada for at least a year before or established “a substantial connection with Canada.”

However, Ottawa abolished the “substantial connection” regime and replaced it with the second generation cut-off as a blanket rule that denies the first generation born abroad the right to pass on citizenship by descent outside Canada to the second generation born abroad.

“This case is about modern Canadian families, who are deeply Canadian and have travelled to pursue opportunities to work and study or have fallen in love and had children. And they just want to come home and bring their children with them,” said Sujit Choudhry, lawyer for the litigants.

“And this very blunt law, which is completely unnecessary, is standing in their way.”

The lawsuit — including applicants who currently live in Canada, Dubai, Hong Kong, Japan, and the U.S. — claims the law created two classes of Canadian citizenship: one for Canadians born here and one for Canadians born abroad.

While Canadians born in Canada could pass their citizenship to their children born abroad, Canadians born abroad could not similarly do so.

As a consequence, it argues, the first generation born abroad have a second-class citizenship because of the circumstances of their birth, which “were entirely beyond their control” and which they are powerless to change.

The litigants are asking the Ontario Superior Court of Justice for an order to rule the second generation citizenship cut-off unconstitutional and that the same citizenship rights be afforded to them and their foreign born kids.

According to the 2016 census, 32 million of Canada’s 34.5 million population were Canadian citizens, including 8.2 million who weren’t born in Canada. Of those, said Choudhry, 183,000 were born abroad and obtained citizenship by descent.

Unlike Canada, he said, in the U.S., the U.K. and Australia, the first generation born abroad can themselves pass on citizenship to their kids born abroad if they meet a “substantial connection” requirement, usually satisfied by some period of residence in their home country. The idea is to restrict the indefinite transmission of citizenship abroad by non-resident citizens.

“None of them would have had this blanket ban,” said Choudhry.

Litigant Roy Brooke, who was working for the United Nations in Geneva when he and his wife had their first child in 2010, was unaware of the second generation citizenship cut-off until a year later when he got a letter from immigration officials that his child would have no right to pass on citizenship to offspring born outside Canada.

He said there wasn’t a choice for the family to return to Canada at the time and for the baby to be delivered in the country because, as non-resident Canadians, they had no provincial health insurance here and didn’t have an obstetrician or gynecologist.

Fortunately, Brooke, 51, and his wife, 48, were both born in Ontario — him in Toronto and her in Goderich — and their child was granted Canadian citizenship by descent. The family returned and settled in Victoria, B.C., in 2011 to raise the child in Canada, as the couple had always planned.

Brooke said the second generation cut-off will make it more difficult for his child to follow his and his wife’s footsteps and “must trade off career against family.”

The concern over second class citizenship status for his family and others prompted Brooke to lobby the federal government, reaching out to the offices of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the immigration minister for legislative changes to amend the citizenship cut-off rules.

Both former cabinet ministers Lloyd Axworthy and Allan Rock were on board for the amendment, said Brooke in his affidavit filed in the Charter challenge.

“Everybody that I have spoken to knows that this is a flawed piece of legislation. Everybody knows that this is a legislative overreach. Everyone knows that this is a series of perverse and unintended consequences. Yet here we are,” said Brooke, an executive director of a not-for-profit organization that works on environmental issues.

“It’s going to affect millions of people. And once people start finding out, it’s also going to put a chill on people’s ability and interest in living, travelling and working overseas and all to no purpose.”

While Kenyon and Warelis are still unsure of what future may hold for their newborn, Victoria Maruyama, another litigant, has already had an uphill battle trying to acquire Canadian citizenship for her two children, both born in Japan, where she met her Japanese husband, an Air Force pilot, while she was teaching English there in 2002. The couple married in 2007 and have two kids, both Japanese citizens.

Born in Hong Kong to Vietnamese and Hong Kong parents, Maruyama moved to Canada with her family in 1980 when she was a year old. She got her Canadian citizenship by descent through her father and grew up in Edmonton.

In 2017, she brought her children to Canada on visitors’ visas with the intent to raise them in her homeland. She made a plea to the immigration minister for Canadian citizenship for her kids’ while fighting to get them into public school and access to health care.

When the kids’ visas expired in 2018, they left. A few months later, they returned from Japan just to show the family’s commitment to settle in Canada. After the immigration minister refused her citizenship plea, she applied to sponsor her children to Canada as permanent residents at the advice of immigration officials. They went back to Japan to wait for the decision.

A refusal letter came in early 2020 from an immigration officer, who wrote: I am not satisfied that your sponsor will reside in Canada if a permanent resident visa were to be issued and as a result, it would be contrary to the regulations to issue you a permanent resident visa or allow you to become a permanent resident.

“There is no doubt that I have a substantial connection to Canada. I lived in Canada for 21 years, including my formative years,” sighed Maruyama, who is still teaching English in Tokyo.

“My two younger sisters do not face the same legal restrictions that I do in passing on citizenship abroad because they were born in Canada … Our substantial connection to Canada is the same. I am as Canadian as they are. Yet, they have more rights than I do, simply because of their place of birth.”

Warelis agrees, “If we are not Canadian, what are we? We don’t have another home.”

Source: ‘If we are not Canadian, what are we?’ How a 2009 law is leaving some children stateless

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‘This is a screwed up system’: frustrated Liberal MPs want to slash immigration processing times

2021/12/14 Leave a comment

Of note:

Backbench Liberal MPs say they’re frustrated over extended delays in the processing of immigration and citizenship applications and they want new Immigration Minister Sean Fraser to take urgent action to fix the system.

“The entire system is broken down,” said one frustrated Liberal MP who spoke to The Hill Times on not-for-attribution basis in order to offer their candid opinion. “This is a screwed up system.”

MPs interviewed for this story said that for about two years they’ve been hearing that COVID-19 is the main reason for longer application processing times at Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada. Now, they said, they are being told the delays have been caused by the government’s decision to expedite the applications of 40,000 vulnerable residents of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

The MPs said they think the government will come up with another reason for the delays once the Afghan refugees are settled, and their constituents will still have to suffer. They noted that their government has been in power for more than six years and they’ve had four immigration ministers since 2015, including John McCallum, Ahmed Hussen (York South-Weston, Ont.), Marco Mendicino (Marco-Mendicino, Ont.), and now Fraser (Central Nova, N.S.), but “the mess the Stephen Harper Conservatives left in 2015,” in terms of long wait times, is still not fully cleaned up.

Fraser was appointed to the immigration portfolio on Oct. 26. McCallum served as immigration minister from November 2015 to January 2017; Hussen from January 2017 to November 2019; and Mendicino from November 2019 to October 2021.

“They’ve been telling us COVID, COVID, COVID as the reason for the delay,” said a second MP. “Now they’re saying Afghanistan, Afghanistan, Afghanistan. Who knows, tomorrow there will be something else.”

Some MPs said the “funny thing” is that the department is currently processing student applications or other temporary resident-to-permanent resident applications within a couple of months, compared to other streams of immigration and citizenship that in some cases take years. They said that in the past, one often cited reason for long processing times was the background security checks that alone, in some cases, would take several months or years. It’s hard to understand, they said, how the department now is completing the whole processing process, including background checks, within a couple of months for some applications.

The time to process an application at IRCC depends on whether it’s a family sponsorship, a refugee application, temporary resident permit, economic immigration application or a citizenship application. Also, it depends on whether the sponsored person or the immigration applicant is within Canada or outside of Canada. For example, according to IRCC website, in the case of spousal application, the current  processing time is 12 months. For a parental or grandparent application,  the processing time is 20-24 months. In the case of investor visas, the processing time is 64 months. All applications are not processed within the estimated time offered by the IRCC website.

Based on statistics provided by IRCC, CBC reported recently that as of Oct. 27, the department had a backlog of 1.8 million applications. Of these, the report said, 548,195 were for permanent residency, 775,741 were temporary residence applications, and 468,000 were for citizenship.

Immigration and citizenship issues are top of mind for all MPs representing major urban centres. MPs say that, in some cases, around 90 per cent of the calls they get from their constituents are related to immigration issues. For this reason, almost all MPs in urban centres have one or more staffers in their constituency offices who deal exclusively with these files.

Constituency work plays a critical role in the re-election of every MP. Major urban centres like the GTA and Metro Vancouver play a key role in deciding the outcome of every election. On top of that, MPs say it gives them a morale boost when they are making a difference in their constituents’ lives.

“It [constituency work] is everything, I mean, when I go knock on doors, and hear people give a positive response to recognize my office, especially a certain staff that they got served [by], I get an extra boost in my confidence,” said Liberal MP Han Dong (Don Valley North, Ont.) in an interview with The Hill Times. “I’m there to serve a purpose and the purpose again is to serve [constituents]. So it’s very important.”

MPs said that in every weekly Liberal regional or national caucus meeting, MPs raise the issue of delays in immigration and citizenship applications with the immigration minister and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (Papineau, Que.).

Earlier this month, Liberal sources told The Hill Times that a GTA resident, frustrated with problems trying to sponsor his wife and children from a South Asian country, tried to commit suicide by pouring gasoline on himself in front of Liberal MP Judy Sgro’s (Humber River-Black Creek, Ont.) constituency office, but the police arrived on time and stopped the person from doing so.

In an interview Sgro confirmed that the incident had taken place. She said she believed that the person in question had mental health challenges, and the sponsorship of his family was just one of many other issues he was dealing with.

Still, Sgro said, seeing someone pouring a container of gasoline on himself and trying to light himself on fire was a traumatic experience for her staff. At the time of this incident, Sgro was in Ottawa.

“Gasoline was everywhere, the smell of gasoline for my staff was a lot because they were looking at someone who was about to light themselves on fire,” said Sgro. “So it was a very traumatic thing for my staff to go through. I had to close the office for a couple of days until we could clean up some of the fumes and for them to kind of recover from that shock.”

After the incident, Sgro said that House of Commons security visited her constituency office to assess if any measures could be undertaken to improve the security in her office.

Sgro said that she understands the frustration of people who have to wait longer for their family members’ applications to be processed, but she said that certain issues like COVID or the situation in Afghanistan are beyond anyone’s control. So, people will have to be patient.

Meanwhile, in an email to The Hill Times, Alexander Cohen, press secretary to Minister Fraser, said that the global COVID-19 pandemic significantly affected Immigration Canada’s ability to process applications in an efficient manner. He said that since the start of the pandemic, the department has made significant adjustments. Cohen said that the government is investing $800-million to create a new state of the art digital platform that will further improve the efficiency of the department. He added that the government is expecting to welcome 401,000 new permanent residents this year, “the most in Canadian history.”

“One of the very first things we did was implement priority processing for those who need it most, like vulnerable people, family members seeking to reunite and those in essential services.,” said Cohen. “We’ve also added new staff—including 62 new employees at the IRCC office in Sydney NS—to help reunite families faster. These will help us return to the one-year processing standard for spousal sponsorship. We’ve improved technology and digitized more of our operations, and increased the amount of processing happening virtually.”

As for the faster processing of student applications or other temporary residents, he said, it’s a “single time-limited program this year” under which Canada is granting immigration to 90,000 people, including essential healthcare workers and international students who are already in Canada and have the required skills and experience.

Liberal MP Julie Dzerowicz (Davenport, Ont.), chair of the informal Liberal Immigration caucus, conceded there were challenges in processing the applications, but added that things have improved since her party first came to power in 2015. She agreed that a lot of work needs to be done but said that since coming to power, the government has made a number of improvements and it will improve even more in the coming months.

“There’s a lot of valid reasons why people are very upset,” said Dzerowicz. “But I will say to you that we’ve made a lot of advances. It’s been unfortunate that we’ve all gone through this COVID. But hopefully in the coming months, days and months, we’ll start seeing some of that cleared up.”

Liberal MP Terry Duguid (Winnipeg South, Man.) agreed: “We have made Minister Fraser aware of some of the challenges we have been facing with immigration cases at the constituency level,” said Duguid in an email. “We know he has listened carefully and have every confidence he will address these issues. COVID is a big factor in the disruption to our systems.”

Dong also echoed the same view, saying that things slowed down at the Immigration Department because of the pandemic, but now it has started to pick up the pace.

“Since the election, things are moving along actually, things are happening,” said Dong. “I get regular reports from the constituency office that some files [that are] outstanding, they’re being resolved. The ministry is getting back to MPs’ offices faster. So I see signs that things are recovering. But the backlog is one of the issues that we share regularly. There are signs things are getting better.”

Rookie Liberal MP Michael Coteau (Don Valley East, Ont.), who in the past served as an Ontario immigration minister, said that like other countries, Canada has to respond to international emergencies, and that put pressure on the immigration system. He said Fraser is committed to fixing the system, and that in the coming months wait times will reduce significantly.

Coteau said that his office gets several calls every day from constituents who need help with immigration cases. He said the callers are always very respectful and understand why the wait times are longer. Since the Sept. 20 election, he said his office has started several hundred immigration files for his constituents, and is trying to help those people.

“It’s the No. 1 issue because that’s 90 per cent of the phone calls we get,” said Coteau.

Source: https://www.hilltimes.com/2021/12/13/this-is-a-screwed-up-system-frustrated-liberal-mps-want-to-slash-immigration-processing-times/333636?utm_source=Subscriber+-++Hill+Times+Publishing&utm_campaign=41b722c1d0-Todays-Headlines-Subscribers&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8edecd9364-41b722c1d0-90755301&mc_cid=41b722c1d0&mc_eid=685e94e554

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The Conversation: Native nations are the experts on citizenship

2021/12/14 Leave a comment

Interesting discussion regarding elements of Indigenous identity and citizenship. Would be interesting to know how these vary by First Nation and how differences are resolved:

There is a growing movement to identify and call-out people who have fraudulently held positions by claiming indigeneity like Cheyanne Turions, Joseph Boyden, Michelle Latimerand Carrie Bourassa. 

The fraudulent claims of indigeneity are so widespread that the term “pretendians” has become part of regular vocabulary. 

On the surface, this seems to align with the interests of Indigenous Peoples, but with the call-outs come underlying components of colonialism. Namely, that Indigenous nations are not being recognized as the authorities when determining indigeneity. 

Genealogy as the only factor

Those quick to call-out are often not clamouring for Indigenous nations’ jurisdiction over citizenship, nor are they demanding “pretendians” be held accountable to Indigenous nations. 

Instead, people like non-Indigenous genealogists are being held out as “experts” on what does or doesn’t make a person Indigenous. 

The result of having genealogy as the only factor is that the dialogue is not centred on Indigenous people as socio-political groups, but racial purity which perpetuates colonial stereotypes of Indigenous identity. 

Understanding what makes a person Indigenous is complex. There are the obvious sources of indigeneity, such as kinship and receiving cultural teachings from Elders and knowledge keepers, that are established at birth and strengthen throughout a person’s life. 

Other customs and traditions include adoption of non-Indigenous people by Indigenous families. Adoption is a long-recognized practice across many nations that has resulted the adoptees learning the language, cultural teachings and values necessary to be a part of that nation. 

Whether an adoption is valid is an issue for the nation into which the person has been adopted in to decide. 

There are also examples of communities who have granted non-Indigenous people full membership, based on criteria that the First Nation has established. Fort Williams First Nation in Ontario made Damien Lee a full member, which means he is entitled to vote in elections, run for office and to benefits provided by the First Nation. 

He grew up on reserve, and while he is non-Indigenous and therefore does not have status according to the Indian Act, the First Nation has exercised its legal jurisdiction over identity and recognized him as a member.

The critical question at the heart of this issue is how to distinguish between fraudulent claims and legitimate ones. The answer lies with the nations. 

Jurisdiction as a human right

As self-governing nations with constitutionally recognized Aboriginal rights, Indigenous people should be the only authority when determining who is part of their nations. It should be based on their own criteria, as it was before the imposition of the Indian Act. And nations should have the jurisdiction to enforce the laws they develop.

With that in mind, Article 33.1 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) recognizes that “Indigenous peoples have the right to determine their own identity or membership in accordance with their own customs and traditions.”

Now that Canada has passed legislation setting out a framework for implementing UNDRIP, Indigenous nations need to be recognized as the authority for determining who is Indigenous. UNDRIP does not automatically remove Canadian authority over identity, so the government will need to take action to ensure existing legislation recognizes Indigenous jurisdiction in this area.

Both the Canadian government and non-Indigenous experts need to relinquish the authority they have assumed. A failure to do so will continue the discrimination and systemic violence faced by Indigenous people.

Assimilative policies

Since Confederation, Canada’s assimilative policies have actively worked to strip Indigenous Peoples of their identity and deny Indigenous jurisdiction.

The federal government has dictated who is an “Indian” through the status definition in the Indian Act and recognizes “the Indian Registrar [as] the only authority under the Indian Act who can determine a person’s eligibility for Indian status.”

These policies are discriminatory and have led to the denial of indigeneity based on blood quantum and other arbitrary criteria such as marriage, university education or joined holy orders to the forceful removal of Indigenous children from their families into non-Indigenous homes and residential and day schools.

The result is thousands of Indigenous Peoples being traumatized by not knowing who their families or communities are, making it extremely difficult to reconnect.

The funding policies of the federal government — whereby resources and service delivery are concentrated to status Indians living on-reserve — serve to create and maintain a scarcity mentality that reinforces colonial approaches to identity and undermines self-governance.

If the current trend continues, whereby individuals’ claims to indigeneity are going to be interrogated by non-Indigenous people, based on criteria established by non-Indigenous perspectives, Indigenous Peoples are going to face even greater barriers in reconnecting with their families and communities, and decolonizing efforts will suffer.

A better solution to the issue of fraudulent claims is to support Indigenous nations and their jurisdiction over identity.

This approach aligns with the UNDRIP and supports the right to self-government. Indigenous nations have been the authority on who they are for thousands of years, it is time their jurisdiction over this be recognized. The Conversation

Cheryl Simon is an Assistant Professor in Aboriginal and Indigenous Law at Dalhousie University. Prior to joining Schulich School of Law, Cheryl worked with a rights-implementation organization in New Brunswick and has taught classes on colonizing Mi’kmaw identity.

Source: The Conversation: Native nations are the experts on citizenship

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