In Egypt, some are forced to trade citizenship for freedom

2022/01/12 Leave a comment

Of note:

On January 8, Egyptian-Palestinian activist Ramy Shaath arrived in Paris after Egyptian authorities released him from prison and deported him after over 900 days in remand detention. He walkedout of Charles de Gaulle Airport with his wife Celine Lebrun-Shaath to a cheering crowd of supporters. Yet the conditions of his release were no cause for celebration — Shaath was forced to renounce his Egyptian citizenship in exchange for his freedom.

In a statement announcing his release, Shaath’s family said: “No one should have to choose between their freedom and their citizenship. Ramy was born Egyptian, raised as an Egyptian, and Egypt has always been and will always be his homeland; no coerced renunciation of citizenship under duress will ever change that.”

Throughout the two and a half years of Shaath’s imprisonment, his wife Celine Lebrun-Shaath, a French national who was deported from Egypt upon his arrest, led a longstanding public campaign for his release. French President Emmanuel Macron also made a direct demand for Shaath to be released during a December 2020 press conference alongside President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, held after bilateral talks at the Elysee Palace in Paris.

Over the last six months, the National Security Agency had been communicating with Shaath’s family to begin the process of his citizenship renunciation, and to arrange for his deportation, according to a source informed of discussions around his release, who spoke to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity. Those procedures came to a head on January 1, when Shaath’s lawyer submitted an official document to the Supreme Administrative Court saying that he would drop his Egyptian citizenship, the source added.

Shaath was released on January 6, according to the family, and handed over to a representative of the Palestinian Authority at Cairo International Airport, where he boarded a flight to the Jordanian capital, Amman. He then traveled on to Paris.

The controversial practice is based on a decree — known as Law 140 — issued by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in November 2014 that allows the repatriation of foreign prisoners to their home countries, at the president’s discretion, to serve their time or be retried there.

The decree was issued five months after three Al-Jazeera journalists — Australian Peter Greste, Egyptian-Canadian Mohamed Fahmy and Egyptian Baher Mohamed — were sentenced to between seven and 10 years in prison on terrorism charges in a high profile case that sparked international condemnation and was criticized by human rights groups, Western governments and the United Nations. According to lawyer Negad al-Borai, who represented Fahmy in the case, Law 140 was issued to allow for the release and deportation of Greste to his native Australia. Less than three months after the decree was issued, Greste was indeeddeported.

Around that time, Fahmy renounced his Egyptian citizenship in the hope of being deported to Canada. Fahmy told Mada Masr at the time that senior officials had visited him in detention and told him that renouncing Egyptian citizenship was his “only way out.” Fahmy refused at first, but said he felt pressured and wanted to get out of prison. The move did not work and he was only released, along with Baher Mohamed, after they received presidential pardons in September 2015 following a retrial. Fahmy has since regained his Egyptian citizenship.

Months earlier, in May 2015, Mohamed Soltan, an Egyptian-American activist imprisoned for over 640 days, was forced to relinquish his citizenship in order to be released from prison and deported to the United States after direct appeals from the Obama administration.

Soltan’s case included an additional twist. During a visit to Capitol Hill in July 2021, Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel insisted to US officials that Washington had promised in 2015 that if Egypt released Soltan he would serve out the rest of his life sentence in a US prison, according to Politico. Kamel even handed congressional staffers what appeared to be a signed agreement between Egyptian and American officials laying out such an arrangement. Sources told Politico that a State Department employee signed the document when it was pushed on them at the airport at the last minute, as U.S. officials were trying to get Soltan out of the country, and that the document was not legally enforceable.

In any case, forcing Egyptians to renounce their citizenship in order to be deported remains a highly controversial, and arguably illegal, practice.

Lawyer Gamal Eid of the Arab Network for Human Rights Information says that Law 140 is unconstitutional, as it creates a privilege for non-Egyptians. “The idea was to cower to foreign governments and polish the regime’s image, but the decree breaches the principle that all are equal before the law, which is a supra-constitutional principle.” Eid says he is not condoning the continued imprisonment of dissidents, rather, he says they should all be released, not just the foreign nationals.

While the decree doesn’t force anyone to drop their nationality, the choice between citizenship and freedom is not really a choice. Hussein Baoumi, an Egypt researcher at Amnesty International told Mada Masr it is more accurate to say that Shaath and Soltan were forced to cede their Egyptian citizenship, which he says is unconstitutional.

“This practice we are now seeing in Egypt of trading citizenship for freedom is against the constitution and the citizenship law, and is also a blatant breach of the stipulations of international law about rescinding one’s citizenship. It circumvents the provisions of the law regulating such a measure,” Baoumi says.

The 1975 citizenship law stipulates that a number of conditions be met before the state can rescind citizenship from an Egyptian national. Yet, this law does not apply in Shaath or Soltan’s case because they technically relinquished their citizenship themselves. However, both Soltan and Shaath contend they had no choice in the matter.

Following Shaath’s release, Soltan tweeted: “To be given a choice between your freedom and your citizenship is easy, for freedom always and forever comes first, and this doesn’t take away from your belonging to your country because that is in the heart. As for a regime that conditions enjoying your most basic citizenship rights of freedom and life upon your dropping your nationality, it is a regime that is reinforcing its repressive philosophy: to be a citizen necessarily means not to be free.”

Source: In Egypt, some are forced to trade citizenship for freedom

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Portugal: Is a ‘just law’ turned into a ‘golden visa’?

2022/01/10 Leave a comment

Valid question, highlighting potential abuse of such programs:

Russian-Israeli billionaire Roman Abramovich’s acquisition of Portuguese citizenship under a 2015 law that repatriates descendants of Sephardic Jews expelled during the Inquisition has reignited debate about the piece of legislation.

Data from last year shows that at least 76,000 people have applied for a Portuguese passport through the law and 23,000 of them have been approved. Spain also has passed similar legislation.
Abramovich, a businessman and the prominent owner of the popular Chelsea soccer club in London, applied for citizenship by claiming an affiliation with the Jewish Community of Porto, the Israeli news site Ynet reported last month.

Unconfirmed reports have claimed that some of Abramovich’s family have Sephardic roots.

Eastern Europe had formerly been the home of many thousands of Jews with Sephardic ancestry.
Sephardic immigrants in 1588 founded the Jewish community of Zamosc in eastern Poland, among other places.

But Abramovich’s use of the law prompted unusual scrutiny and criticism in Portugal, which is a member of the European Union and whose citizens may reside anywhere they choose within the bloc.

Portuguese radio station TSF aired and published a statement on Dec. 28 by investigative journalist Daniel Oliveira, in which he accused the Jewish Community of Porto of turning “a just law into a ‘golden visa’ by hitching a ride on our crimes from the past.”

Oliveira suggested that the ties between the Jewish Community of Porto and Abramovich are “not clear,” and said he believes that the Porto communal organization is less reliable in vetting applications than the Jewish Community of Lisbon group.

AbrilAbril published an editorial last week calling for the citizenship law to be revised, and suggesting that Abramovich and other recipients of Portuguese nationality under the law are using their influence to keep it unchanged.

The Jewish Community of Porto confirmed that it handled Abramovich’s citizenship application, for a fee of 250 euros, or about $283. The Lisbon Jewish community has had data on Abramovich’s ancestors for years, the Porto group added.

It also dismissed claims that Abramovich’s naturalization was divergent in any way from the 2015 law and its procedures.

The Porto organization told JTA that it is now witnessing “an anti-Semitic wave” on social media following the debate about Abramovich.

In 2020, Portugal’s ruling Socialist party withdrew plans to limit the law amid criticism by local Jewish groups that claimed that the proposed changes were partly motivated by anti-Semitism.

The European Jewish Congress also vocally opposed the changes.

The government has entrusted the two communal organizations in Lisbon and Porto with vetting the authenticity of citizenship applications, for which they charge hundreds of dollars in processing fees. A third community in Belmonte is attempting to also gain vetting status.

Portugal’s foreign minister, Augusto Santos Silva, said last week that Abramovich’s naturalization “was done according to the law” and called criticism of it “unjustified.”

Source: Portugal: Is a ‘just law’ turned into a ‘golden visa’?

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Palestinians seek Israeli citizenship in Jerusalem

2022/01/10 Leave a comment

Of interest, particularly given the various issues at play:

A number of Palestinians in Jerusalem are seeking to obtain Israeli citizenship, in the hope of living in stability amid the prevalent difficult economic and living situation in Jerusalem. Obtaining Israeli citizenship has its advantages, such as health insurance, social security and freedom of movement.

Israel, for its part, could have covert reasons for naturalizing Jerusalemites, most notably breaking their bond with the West Bank.

According to a report by the Israeli Maariv channel on Sept. 16, 2017, the Israeli government decided, back in June 1967, to amend the process of granting citizenship to residents of Jerusalem, by granting them the legal status of permanent residents, within the scope of continuous efforts to reduce their numbers as much as possible.

The Israeli residency confers to its holder the right to live and work in Israel, as well as other economic and social rights. Thus, Jerusalemites get social security allowances dubbed “national insurance benefits,” and in return they pay taxes to the Israeli authorities. Jerusalemites also have the right to vote in Israeli municipal elections and to run as candidates for membership in the Municipal Council.

According to Article 5 of the Israeli Nationality Law, Palestinian residents of Jerusalem can apply for citizenship if several conditions are met, including having some knowledge of the Hebrew language, having resided in Israel for the last three years, swearing an oath of loyalty to the State of Israel and giving up the temporary Jordanian passport. Moreover, these residents should not have harbored any animosity toward Israel.

Khalil al-Tafkaji, director of the map department at the Arab Studies Association, told Al-Monitor, “Palestinians in Jerusalem are permanent residents with the right to reside inside the State of Israel. Therefore, Israel granted them a resident document after the occupation of Jerusalem in 1967. Until 1987, they were issued Jordanian documents of identity but not the Jordanian citizenship. During 1988, the Kingdom of Jordan decided to disengage from the West Bank, after the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat declared the State of Palestine.”

After the disengagement, Jordan severed its legal and administrative relations with the West Bank in 1988, and the Jordanian documents granted by the Jordanian government to the residents of the West Bank during that period were withdrawn.

Tafkaji said, “Options have become limited and difficult for the residents of the city of Jerusalem. If anyone manages to obtain the citizenship of a foreign country, he will be expelled after three months of obtaining it. If he manages to obtain Palestinian citizenship, his property will be confiscated by the Israeli authorities. Meanwhile, obtaining Israeli citizenship enables these Jerusalemites to keep their residency and stability and move and travel anywhere around the world, specifically to countries that allow the holders of the Israeli passport to enter without obtaining a prior entry visa.”

He noted, “Around 7,000 Jerusalemites obtained Israeli citizenship in 1993. Then, the granting of Israeli citizenship followed an upward trend with numbers reaching 21,000 naturalized Jerusalemites. However, recently, Israel began imposing restrictions on applications for citizenship. This falls within the scope of the Israeli government’s efforts to expel them from the city.”

Tafkaji said that the current restrictions imposed by Israel on residents of Jerusalem seeking to obtain Israeli citizenship aim to displace 200,000 Palestinians with residency status outside the walls of the city of Jerusalem toward areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority (PA). “Israel is trying to get rid of them, after controlling 87% of the city’s surface area. Israel wants to use the Palestinian residents in Jerusalem as a pressure card in any future negotiations between Israel and the PA,” he added.

In February 2019, the Israeli Supreme Court, according to Haaretz newspaper, obliged the Ministry of Interior to expedite the examination of the applications of Jerusalemites, after a lawsuit filed by Israeli lawyers representing Jerusalemites who applied for naturalization.

Nasser al-Hadmi, head of the Jerusalem Committee for Resisting Displacement, told Al-Monitor that before former US President Donald Trump declared Jerusalem the capital of the State of Israel, there was a great Israeli desire to naturalize a large number of Jerusalem residents in order for the city to have a Jewish majority. Once the United States recognized Israel’s status, Israel reduced the number of naturalizations of Jerusalemites, and it is currently seeking to displace Jerusalemites and expel them rather than naturalize them. This is evidenced, for instance, by the evictions and displacements of a number of residents of the Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan neighborhoods.

He said, “Around 80,000 naturalization applications have been submitted by the Palestinian residents of Jerusalem to the Israeli authorities to obtain Israeli citizenship. But Israel so far approved only a limited number of them. Recently, after Jerusalem was recognized as Israel’s capital by the US administration and some other countries, Israel no longer seems so interested in naturalizing a large number of Jerusalemites, which it sees as a minority that does reflect a civilized image of the city.”

Hadmi noted that the Israeli authorities force Jerusalemites seeking Israeli citizenship to pledge full loyalty to it, and accept to become second- or third-class citizens. “The best example is the discrimination against Palestinians in the occupied territories in 1948, who are not treated on equal footing with Israeli residents. Israel believes that citizens of Jewish origin are better than other naturalized citizens from other countries,” he said.

He added, “The Israeli authorities have, for nearly 10 years now, put expiry dates on the identity cards they give to the residents of Jerusalem in order to be able to reside in the city and move across all Palestinian areas. When Jerusalemites try to renew their identity card, Israeli authorities would blackmail them, and refuse to easily renew the identity cards of those who threaten Israel’s security. This enables Israel to reduce the number of Jerusalemites granted the Israeli nationality.

Yael Ronen, professor of law at the Academic Center for Science and Law and researcher at the Minerva Center for Human Rights at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, noted in one of her articles posted on the Forum of Regional Thinking on Jan. 27, 2021, that developments may occur regarding the situation of tens of thousands of Palestinians living in Jerusalem represented in the possibility of obtaining Israeli citizenship. She noted that there are 330,000 Palestinians in the eastern part of Jerusalem and that the Population and Immigration Authority of the Israeli Ministry of Interior published a procedure to apply for citizenship under Article 4(a) of the Nationality Law.

She explained that since the occupation of Jerusalem in 1967, no Israeli steps have been taken to grant citizenship to residents, in light of the lack of interest in it and the Israeli objection to it. She noted that Palestinians are refraining from submitting requests for citizenship, as this could be interpreted as recognition by them of Israel’s sovereignty over the city.

Source: Palestinians seek Israeli citizenship in Jerusalem

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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

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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

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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

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with , ,

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