After Australia Banned Its Citizens in India From Coming Home, Many Ask: Who Is Really Australian?

2021/05/20 3 Comments

Valid questioning:

When Ara Sharma Marar’s father had a stroke in India in early April, she got on the first flight she could from her home in Melbourne, Australia to New Delhi.

She had planned to return to Australia, where she works in risk management at a bank, on May 14. But then her government banned her from coming home. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced on April 27 that travelers from India—including citizens—were barred from the country. The government emphasized that anyone who tried to come home would face up to five years in jail and a $50,000 fine.

“It’s immoral, unjustifiable and completely un-Australian because, you know, Australia prides itself saying that we are multicultural, we embrace all cultures, we welcome everyone,” she says.

Morrison faced a furious backlash from many corners from the country—especially from Australians of South Asian ethnicity, many of whom said the ban was racist—and quickly backed down. On May 15 the first repatriation flight from India landed in Darwin. But around 9,000 Australians remain stranded in India and the saga has revived the debate about what it means to be Australian—a longstanding, at times acrimonious, national conversation driven by the country’s ever-changing demographics.

Today, there are more foreign-born Australians than at any time since 1893, when Australia was still a British colony. Migrants make up 30% of all Australians, and Indian-born Australians are the second-largest group. (British immigrants remain the largest foreign-born population, with people from China in third place). Immigration is now the main driver of population growth in several states and migrants are a significant driver of economic growth. But some immigrants say they aren’t always accepted in a country that once closed its doors to non-Europeans.

“Many Anglo-Celtic Australians still believe that we are but guests in this country and that to acknowledge us as equals they will somehow lose their Australianism,” says Molina Asthana, co-founder of advocacy group Asian Australian Alliance. “Does being Australian mean you have to be light skinned, blond, love your barbies, brekkies and beers?” she asks.

‘Fortress Australia’ strands citizens overseas

Several countries, including the U.S., restricted flights from India or tightened quarantine rules on travelers coming from the country as a devastating second wave hit it. But Australia’s total ban on arrivals from India follows a pandemic policy of imposing of some of the strictest COVID-19 border controls in the world.

Australia bans nearly all non-residents from traveling to the country, and those who are able to enter must quarantine for 14 days in a hotel. Caps on international arrivals have prevented tens of thousands of Australians from returning from overseas during the pandemic. The hashtag #strandedaussies has been used hundreds of times on social media, and some have started referring to the country as “Fortress Australia.” One group of Australians is taking a complaint against the Australian government to the United Nations Human Rights Committee for not allowing its citizens to return home.

Nevertheless, the controls are very popular. A poll in conservative newspaper The Australian found that 73% of voters supported international borders remaining closed until at least mid-2022. That’s likely because the policies—along with swift, strict lockdowns when cases pop up—mean that the country has had remarkable success against COVID-19. With a population of 26 million, it has recorded fewer than than 30,000 coronavirus cases and just 910 deaths. Life appears normal. Employees have returned to their offices. Thousands of mostly maskless fans packed into a Melbourne stadium to watch the Australian Open in February and the following month saw tens of thousands of not-so-socially-distanced revelers attend the LGBT+ celebration Sydney Mardi Gras.

Authorities justified the blanket ban on arrivals from India as necessary to protect public health; India is facing a devastating second wave of COVID-19 and a variant first identified there—which scientists say is likely more infectious and better at evading human immune systems—is being detected across the Asia-Pacific. Australia’s chief medical officer Paul Kelly said on May 7 that the ban was explicitly linked to Australia’s limited quarantine capacity.

But many Australians of Indian descent feel singled out because the Australian government has not barred citizens returning home from other countries with large outbreaks. “Why weren’t these steps taken when it was America or U.K.?” asks Sharma Marar, who believes that the government has failed all of its nationals stuck overseas. She says that she is suffering from panic attacks and having trouble sleeping as the result of the stress of not being able to return home.

Kim Soans-Sharma, who remains stuck in Mumbai, India after she traveled there in January following her father’s death, says the ban has made her feel “unwanted.” That’s something she has never felt in Perth, Australia, which she’s called home since 2013. She adds that vitriolic comments from some Australians on social media showing no sympathy for other citizens like her stuck in India have been hard to bear.

“At this stage, I’m not proud to call myself an Australian,” she says.

How Australia became an ‘immigration nation’

Australia’s rising diversity in recent decades follows the expressly racist White Australia Policy that prevented migration by non-Europeans for much of the 20th century. When it became clear that immigration from Britain couldn’t provide the necessary population growth, more migrants from continental Europe were allowed, and the policy was slowly eased after World War II. The first step towards dismantling it was made in 1966, when the government allowed migration based on what skills people could offer Australia, instead of race or nationality. The White Australia Policy was then formally renounced in the early 1970s, and the government officially embraced multiculturalism.

However, the topic of immigration has been used as a political football for decades, with some successive governments unsupportive of migration. Many who arrive in Australia are skilled migrants, and some economists say that the country’s 27-year recession-free streak would not have been possible without immigration. A report by the research institute the McKell Institute calls the country “the world’s most successful” multicultural society. “Australia has truly embraced multiculturalism following an approach of integration between the different ethnicities and cultural groups where the dominant and minority groups are expected to respect each other’s cultures,” it says.

There are some tensions, however. Concerns over immigration have sparked a nativist movement, including a right-wing populist political party with an anti-immigration platform that has had minor success at the polls. A 2020 report on social cohesion released by the Scanlon Foundation, a foundation focused on fostering social cohesion in Australia, found that a large majority of Australians think that having a multicultural society makes Australia better, but 60% of people agreed with the statement that “too many immigrants are not adopting Australian values.” The report also noted substantial negative sentiment towards immigrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

In one 2019 survey, more than two-thirds said that Australia did not need more people. The same year, Morrison announced a cap on permanent migration at 160,000, a cut of 30,000 a year, to address crowding in cities that has increased real estate prices and caused congestion. “This plan is about protecting the quality of life of Australians right across our country,” he said.

Like in many places in the world, immigrants in Australia have faced racism as the result of the pandemic. The Asian Australian Alliance has received 530 reports of COVID-19-related racism since April 2020. When a COVID-19 surge hit Melbourne in mid-2020, representatives from a Muslim migrant community spoke out about being unfairly blamed. In March, Australia’s race discrimination commissioner Chin Tan called for a new national anti-racism framework to address prejudice against Asian-Australians related to the coronavirus pandemic and the legacy of “hatred” towards Muslims.

Asthana, of the Asian Australian Alliance, says the India travel ban is emblematic of the racism that migrants can face in Australia. “Whether it is overt racism or unconscious bias, most migrants have been at the receiving end of discriminatory treatment,” she says. “Only the communities change over time, from Greek and Italian to Chinese, then the Vietnamese, Indian and African and now back to the wider Asian Community during COVID.”

Tim Soutphommasane, Australia’s former race discrimination commissioner, says that Australia’s multicultural diversity is not represented yet in its major institutions. “It’s not yet there among our leaders of politics, government, and business. Nor is it there among the faces you see in the national media,” he says. “So that can feed into a sense within our elite political, business and media circles that being Australian is still essentially being Anglo-Celtic or European.”

Other experts say that what it means to be Australian is shifting along with its demographics. “Australia is a settler country,” says Catherine Gomes, an ethnographer at RMIT University in Australia, with a “social and cultural identity, that keeps on changing. Those identities start to adapt, according to how demographics are also changing.”

But for some Australians, those changes aren’t coming quickly enough. Despite the lifting of the ban, Sharma Marar says she won’t forget being barred from coming home.

“I think the scars of these policies and what has been done in last few weeks,” she says, “will live with us forever.”

Source: After Australia Banned Its Citizens in India From Coming Home, Many Ask: Who Is Really Australian?

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Minister Mendicino marks Citizenship Week

2021/05/18 Leave a comment

Of note is what was not said or announced: the elimination of citizenship fees that was part of the 2019 election platform, the long delayed release of a revised citizenship study guide (Discover Canada) and the limited recovery in citizenship numbers following the program’s complete shutdown in April 2020.

Citizenship Week would have been an appropriate time for the release of the revised guide:

The Honourable Marco E. L. Mendicino, P.C., M.P., Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, today issued the following statement to mark Citizenship Week:

“Today, Canadians celebrate the start of Citizenship Week, a time to express pride in our shared history, our diverse heritage, and our collective achievements. It is also an opportunity to highlight the tremendous contributions of immigrants to their communities and the Canadian economy.

“Canadian citizenship is both highly valued and sought after around the world. Without a doubt, one of our greatest achievements is the shared recognition that Canada is stronger and more prosperous because of its diversity.

“While we are by no means perfect, Canadians share a profound commitment to equality, inclusion, and respect for our differences – this includes our ethnicities, our gender identities and expressions, and our beliefs.

“As Canadian citizens, we all have a responsibility to help others in our communities, and that has never been more important than during the global COVID-19 pandemic we’ve faced together this past year. We will forever be grateful to the front line workers, entrepreneurs, community leaders, and all Canadians who have worked tirelessly to help Canada throughout the pandemic.’’

“The hopes, the commitment, and the energy that newcomers and new citizens bring to Canada are expressed in countless positive contributions, and that has never been truer than over the past year.”

“As Canadians, we share a profound commitment to be there for one another. It is one of our defining attributes, and time and time again, newcomers and new citizens have embraced this spirit. I encourage all Canadians to take the time to find ways to be active in your communities, to do some volunteer work, and to help welcome new Canadians in your community.

“Throughout Citizenship Week, I encourage all Canadians to reflect on what it means to be Canadian, and the many rights, freedoms, and responsibilities we all share as citizens.”

Source: https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/news/2021/05/minister-mendicino-marks-citizenship-week.html

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Years after savage attack on newborns, birth tourism schemes thrive in NYC

2021/05/17 Leave a comment

While from the populist press, some interesting coverage of the birth tourism industry in NYC:

Three years after a deranged nanny savagely stabbed three babies in a Queens “birthing center,” the assailant will not face trial – and the unregulated, makeshift maternity wards for foreign women have only multiplied in New York City.

Some immigration experts call the “birth tourism” industry that supports these baby businesses a national security threat, as they aggressively promote themselves overseas as places for mothers to give birth to instant American citizens.

Yu Fen Wang was working as a nanny at the Meibao Birthing Care Center in Flushing on Sept. 21, 2018 when she attacked three newborns, along with two adults, while screaming she was trying to kill wolves.

Wang “was found to be not responsible due to mental disease or defect and was committed to a mental health facility” on Nov. 20, a Queens DA spokeswoman told the The Post.

All five victims in the bloody rampage survived. But baby Chloe Cao, then only days old and a New York City resident, has scars and nerve damage from the attack, according to family attorney Kenny Jiang. The two other babies and their families reportedly went back to China.

The Cao family has since filed a $10 million lawsuit against the Meibao Center’s operators, Xuexin Lin and Meiying Gao. The lawsuit remains active, and is pending the return of civil court judges on May 24. Their babycare center, now closed, was shoehorned into a three-family home in a residential neighborhood.

The attack opened a window into New York City’s thriving underground baby tourism industry, where moms-to-be visit the United States, often with immigration and paperwork assistance from one of these services, give birth in an American hospital, often on the taxpayer dime, and then spend weeks in recovery at one of these types of maternity centers. Often the facility is no more than a bedroom or partitioned space in a private home. The moms soon return home with their baby, a legitimate American citizen.

Shockingly, the 2018 bloodbath apparently did little to dissuade foreign nationals from continuing to flood these NYC centers, or to prompt local pols and agencies to begin cracking down on, or regulating, them.

The Post recently found ads for more than 80 local centers, most clustered in Flushing, advertised in Chinese-language media. A visit to several of the advertised addresses revealed each one to be in a private home.

A search of the phrase “going to the USA to give birth to a baby” last week on Chinese search engine Baidu yielded 6.3 million results.

The birthing businesses appear to be unlicensed and unregulated, and they falsely advertise overseas and on foreign websites by trumpeting deeply ingrained traditions of postnatal care. In Chinese and other cultures, relatives, friends or hired women often care for a baby in its first month of life while the mother recuperates.

“The New York Angel Baby Birthing Center … has been officially registered and certified by the U.S. government and operated in a personalized, scientific and professional manner,” reads one ad on a Chinese-language website. “As long as you have a U.S. visa, let us do the rest in realizing your dreams.”

Another reads: “Cross East U.S. Maternity Service Center provides a full range of U.S. childbirth services, allowing you to easily have an American baby with a higher starting point in life and more choices in the future … everything is governed by relevant U.S. laws. As long as you have a U.S. visa, you can leave everything else to us.”

Families, according to some online ads, are promised help with everything from the immigration processing to health care for their baby from a government-regulated medical facility.

“Our team will provide you with a full service from visa preparation to safe return to China, covering life, medical treatment and legal aspects,” reads one ad for the Ankang facility listed at 48-33 192nd St. in Queens.

Famiies often pay six figures for month-long stays at the centers.

The Post confronted nearly a dozen of the centers, and visited six of them, but inquiries were met with silence or denials. It is not clear if these facilities provide any other legitimate services.

The private maternity centers in Flushing are largely clustered around New York Presbyterian Hospital on Main Street in Queens and the ads often promote the proximity of health care facilities. The hospital did not respond to requests for comment.

Birth tourism is “immigration fraud, a burden on the American taxpayer and a national security risk,” Marguerite Telford, director of communications for the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington D.C., told The Post.

“I see this as a grave national security concern and vulnerability,” Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Mark Zito told reporters following the 2019 indictment of a Southern California birth tourism ring, saying he fears hostile governments will use the access of American citizens within their midst to “take advantage” of the U.S.

“Birth tourism can create U.S. citizens who … don’t necessarily share our values and may have allegiances to countries of concern, [who] can nonetheless return to the United States as adults with their U.S. passports in hand,” said Jon Feere, former chief of staff for ICE.

One immigration expert said that many “birth tourists” who have their babies in the United States are wealthy and connected with the Communist party.

No state or local agency contacted by The Post accepted responsibility for the fly-by-night babycare business.

The city Administration for Children’s Services said it does not license or regulate childcare facilities and directed The Post to the NYPD. The NYPD referred immigration issues to the “appropriate agency.” The Department of Consumer and Worker Protection said it had no jurisdiction. The city Health Department pointed to Albany. The state Health Department said it “has regulatory oversight of licensed health care facilities, such as hospitals … not places involved in ‘birth tourism.’”

Local elected officials who publicly demanded an investigation and reforms in the immediate aftermath of the attack, have also failed to act.

“Once we have the facts, my colleagues and I will work very closely to close any loopholes in the system to make sure that we will never see this kind of ugliness in our community again,” Queens Assemblyman Ron Kim said at the time.

Kim did not respond to more than a half dozen messages seeking comment. City Councilman Peter Koo also did not respond to repeated messages.

Kim told one local outlet at the time that a crackdown on similar “unsafe” facilities in Los Angeles “spurred a new market in places like Queens and Long Island.”

The feds in 2015 dismantled a group of maternity centers in California and then in 2019 charged 19 individuals with running a birth tourism ring that catered to wealthy Chinese women seeking U.S. citizenship for their babies.

One of the defendants in that case, Dongyuan Li, paid cash for a $2.1 million home in Irvine, Calif. and for a $118,000 Mercedes, according to the indictment. She has since pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit immigration fraud and one count of visa fraud, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Central District of California.

State Sen. Toby Ann Stavisky, who represents Flushing, said days after the attack that she would pursue legislation, if needed, to prevent similar incidents.

But she recently told The Post that there will likely be no state action, that it’s an issue for city agencies and federal immigration officials.

“This medical tourism, maternity tourism, is very common in the Asian community, even for locals,” said Stavisky. “The certificate of occupancy, this is where the city can step in and perhaps check in on some of these things. Locally, the zoning laws are very lax.”

The city Buildings Department lists nearly a dozen services not allowed as home businesses, but child care is not among them. The City Planning Department, which oversees zoning issues such as commercial enterprises operating in residential areas, did not return messages.

Babies born in the United States are American citizens according to the 14th Amendment, a status coveted by many foreigners for the access it provides to education, health care, employment and other opportunities, sometimes funded by taxpayers.

The children enjoy U.S. citizenship even if they quickly return to their mother’s homeland and grow up overseas. These American-born children can then fast-track family members to become U.S. citizens once they reach adulthood, said Telford from the Center for Immigration Studies.

“American citizenship is still the most desirable thing in the world,” said Jiang, the attorney representing Baby Chloe and her family. “The scale of the problem is just amazing.”

The Center for Immigration Studies estimates 33,000 babies are born to women on tourist visas each year, while hundreds of thousands more babies are born to illegal aliens or mothers holding temporary visas.

Telford said the mothers commit fraud by visiting the U.S. on a tourist visa for the unstated purpose of having a baby.

“Tourists who come to the United States to give birth and receive taxpayer-funded public assistance to cover the associated costs of their births or have the expenses waived by a hospital do not have to pay back any of the funds in order to get a future tourist visa,” reports the CIS.

A 2015 study of birth tourism by Dr. Michel Mikhael of Children’s Hospital of Orange County, Calif., found that its babies had longer hospital stays, required more surgical intervention and cost more than twice as much as U.S. resident births.

The Trump administration in early 2020, in the wake of crackdown on these facilities in California, directed immigration officials to deny women visas if they determined the expectant mothers were coming to the United States solely to give birth.

And Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) in January introduced a bill that would make it illegal to visit the United States for the purposes of having a baby. She said, “American citizenship should not be for sale.”

Source: Years after savage attack on newborns, birth tourism schemes thrive in NYC

And ICYMI, an earlier article by Graeme Wood on the impact of COVID-19 travel restrictions on birth tourism in Richmond (will do a national update this summer once I have the CIHI data):

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted many sectors, and this includes birth tourism in Richmond.

Richmond Hospital saw non-resident births drop from about 40 per month to an average of 10 per month in the first five months of the pandemic, a drop of about 75 per cent.

There were 57 babies born to non-resident mothers between April 1 and mid-September, according to Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH), who released the number in response to a Freedom of Information request.

In the previous 12 months (April 2019 to March 2020), there were 507 babies born to non-resident mothers at Richmond Hospital, which is about one-quarter of all births at the hospital.

During the first part of the pandemic, the number of babies born to non-residents was about eight per cent of all births.

Birth tourism falls under federal jurisdiction – Canada allows anyone born in the country to receive Canadian citizenship under a principle called “jus soli.”

Birth tourism is when women intentionally come to Canada to give birth in order to secure a Canadian passport for their child.

https://www.richmond-news.com/local-news/birth-tourism-drops-by-75-per-cent-early-in-covid-19-pandemic-3517019

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Are golden visas a golden opportunity? Assessing the economic origins and outcomes of residence by investment programmes in the EU

2021/05/15 Leave a comment

Good detailed study. Money quote: “our analysis suggests that wealthy investor migrants may be better conceptualised as mobile, profit-oriented populations akin to tourists and businesspeople, rather than as long term-oriented immigrants.” Conclusion below:

The twentieth century saw a remarkable shift from screening new immigrants based on racial origins to screening based on human capital contributions (Joppke 2005; FitzGerald and Cook-Martín 2014). The spread of RBI programmes in the twenty-first century adds a new dimension: screening new residents by economic capital contributions only. The results of this investigation suggest an upper limit on Ellerman’s (2019) finding that western countries now devalue the economic offerings of foreigners when selecting new members. In contrast to the policies aimed at workers that she examines, here we see that countries are indeed supplying pathways to long-term residence and citizenship for those making economic contributions – as long as they are very sizeable. Notably, the injections are one-off and the new residents are not expected to continue to contribute to economic growth in the same way that migrant workers might; they must simply maintain the original investment. The trend suggests a short-term calculation on the part of states, seeking to plug economic gaps, as our analysis finds, rather than a longer-term orientation of crafting a middle-class national identity (cf. Elrick and Winter 2018; Ellerman 2019). If social capital (Portes 1998), human capital (Stark, Helmenstein, and Fürnkranz-Prskawetz 1998; Ellerman 2019), and ethnic capital (Mateos and Durand 2012; Kim2018) have captured the attention of social scientists analysing migration, the developments tracked here suggest that a renewed focus on economic capital may be warranted. We find that states continue to harness mobility policies in service of economic objectives, now in a more starkly transactional manner, and – as we show – no matter what the political orientation of the government may be.

If RBI programmes are becoming an increasingly popular policy option, not all countries see the same uptake. Demand in Europe is concentrated in a handful of pro- grammes: just four countries represent 75 percent of all investor residents. The programmes now bring nearly €3.5 billion to the Union annually, yet the economic benefits are uneven. Indeed, only in two countries, Latvia and Portugal, are the economic injections large enough to represent a significant proportion of FDI. However in no country do they represent a substantial proportion of GDP, suggesting that concerns about macroeconomic destabilisation are unwarranted.

Our analysis reveals that economic decline leads to a greater likelihood that countries will start programmes, and that if the economic decline occurred during the Eurocrisis, the likelihood is yet greater – an argument proposed but not demonstrated by the literature (e.g. Parker 2017; Holleran 2019; Dzankic 2018; Veteto 2014). The choice of investment options, too, is largely responsive to economic need when governments implement real estate and business investment options, though not government bond options. Furthermore, the spread of programmes itself does not lead to more programmes: there is no contagion effect. As such, driving the onset of RBI programmes is more than mere client politics or neo-liberal ideology (cf. Mavelli 2018); economic need is a significant factor behind them. However, investors may stymie government intentions to use programmes to boost several areas of the economy, for they overwhelmingly invest in real estate if given the option.

Furthermore, our analysis suggests that wealthy investor migrants may be better conceptualised as mobile, profit-oriented populations akin to tourists and businesspeople, rather than as long term-oriented immigrants. The results lend support to qualitative work that identifies such mobile populations as ‘flexible citizens’ (Ong 1999), who use investment to multiply their options and secure additional bases, rather than to pack up and immigrate or invest in a growing economy (see also Ley 2010; Surak 2020a). We also find that countries with strong tourism sectors can charge more for their programmes as well. Yet they are not merely profit maximisers, choosing a price that will attract the most applicants; they respond to internal issues too, changing price in accordance with economic growth and employment rates.

A number of analysts have raised warning flags that investor migrants may price locals out of real estate (Scherrer and Thirion 2018; Holleran 2019). Our analysis shows the concern is unwarranted: the proportion of RBI real estate transactions in the national market is miniscule in nearly all cases. Notably, these programmes attract more distant and often ‘browner’ others than the fellow Europeans who constitute the greatest proportion of foreign real estate buyers and raise less media hype, suggesting that xenophobia may lie behind the concern. Greece is the sole, but significant, exception where the scale of the programme could indeed destabilise the property market. As real estate investment tends to be concentrated in specific locales (Friedland and Calderon 2017; Viesturs, Pukite, and Nikuradze 2017), regional and city-level data are necessary to further identify whether more limited destabilisation is occurring in particular areas.

What has been the impact of Covid-19 on these programmes? The sudden hardening of borders across the world has sent many wealthy people looking for ways to hedge their risks by securing mobility options and a Plan B (Surak 2020b, 2020c). To date, as we show, national-level healthcare statistics have been insignificant, but Covid-19 may encourage wealthy investors to select countries that have handled the pandemic well or that offer state-of-the-art healthcare. Covid-19 may also bring a shift away from a short-term ‘tourist-like’ calculation to a medium-term calculation preferring a place for longer-stint stays.

Regarding supply, Covid-19 is likely to increase the attractiveness of RBI programmes as a way to draw in foreign investment. Our study found that countries are more prone to start programmes after a period of slowed economic growth, particularly after a systemic recession. If the economic downturn spurred by the pandemic continues, it is likely that new countries will start their own programmes, replicating the pattern we found, and that countries with RBI offerings already in place will attempt to develop them further to address deepening economic need. Even if the schemes to date have been small, they still offer a means to attract additional resources at little cost. With real estate the most popular qualifying option, the investment boost is likely to be concentrated in the property and construction sector, which itself is transforming as the pandemic reconfigures work patterns and the desirability of urban living. Even if the European Commission continues to call for ending the programmes, countries are more likely to adapt their RBI offerings – perhaps by shifting them closer to, or even transforming them into, entrepreneurial options – rather than do away with them entirely.

Source: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369183X.2021.1915755

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Citizenship and the Economic Assimilation of Canadian Immigrants

2021/05/04 Leave a comment

One of the people I know at StatsCan flagged this recent IADB analysis of the impact of citizenship on earnings to me (the benchmark study, Dan DeVoretz’s The Economic Causes and Consequences of Canadian Citizenship, dates from 2005).

The paper assesses the impact of the increased citizenship residency requirements under the previous Conservative government (from three to four years) on earnings and concludes that a positive causal relationship between citizenship and earnings exists.

Presumably, the return to the previous requirements would show an improvement in earnings given one less year needed to become a citizen.

One can further extrapolate by considering the impact of the 2020 shutdown of the citizenship program and its only partial restoration (54,000 new citizens April 2020 to February 2021 compared to 238,000 for the same period 2019-20).

In other words, the government’s fixation on immigration targets at the expense of citizenship may harm the earnings of those whose citizenship has been delayed:

At the beginning of this paper, we asked whether citizenship acquisition improves migrants’ economic assimilation in Canada. Our empirical analysis shows evidence suggesting that other factors being equal, naturalized citizens earn higher wages than their non-naturalized counterparts (approximately 11 percent more). 

That under the Act, some migrants had to wait one additional year to claim citizenship, while others did not, was a “naturally” occurring sorting process. The enactment of the Act put exogenous variation into the likelihood of becoming a citizen that allowed us to simulate random assignment conditions as it would have happened in a randomized controlled experiment. We provide evidence of citizenship’s causal effects on economic assimilation with a clean identification strategy that ties an immigration policy to the behavioral responses of immigrants affected by it. 

Within that causal inference framework, we found that those immigrants able to acquire citizenship after living for three years in Canada were better positioned in the labor market than those who had to delay their citizenship applications an additional year because of the policy change. In the short term, both earning capacities and the likelihood of landing a job with deserved “job quality’’ were negatively affected by the Act. Our results also suggest that, because of those baseline differences in hourly wages induced by changes in the migration policy, the longer-term wage growth trajectory differs across the two groups, favoring naturalized migrants. 

Our results indicate that, on efficiency grounds, delaying citizenship acquisition can be costly for society: An initial 11 percent difference in earnings can result in a substantial portion of the migrant population being permanently below the threshold where tax contributions are above welfare transfers. On equity grounds, naturalization policy should provide a predictable and stable plan with clear and stable rules for all migrants. We have shown that society pays the price when policymakers manipulate elements of migration policy to favor their political clientele. Providing stable perceptions of fairness around migration policy may benefit members of society, beyond migrants. Suppose the objective is to compete efficiently with developed countries to attract the world’s most talented human capital. In that case, establishing an evidence-based time for naturalization eligibility, and committing to its stability through time, is a priority. 

Our analysis suggests that firms value the clear signal of migrants’ commitment that citizenship reveals. This signaling might be particularly important for those firms that heavily invest in their employees’ human capital because their associated risk of losing those investments is inversely proportional to that commitment. Lack of citizenship might have impacted hiring decisions and the timing and likelihood of promotions, with longer-term implications for wage growth. When migrants lack citizenship beyond a specific time threshold, they appear to become systematically disconnected from opportunities in the labor market for gaining access to well- paid, stable jobs and those characterized by steep growth in wages.

Source: https://publications.iadb.org/publications/english/document/Citizenship-and-the-Economic-Assimilation-of-Canadian-Immigrants.pdf

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Make becoming a German citizen easier, integration ministers urge

2021/05/03 Leave a comment

Of note:

Children born to foreigners living in Germany should be granted faster access by law to German citizenship, integration ministers from Germany’s 16 states have urged in a majority appeal

Meeting in the harbor city-state of Bremen Friday, ministers called on the federal government to reform Germany’s Nationality Act (StAG) by reducing a resident child’s waiting time for citizenship from the current eight years to six years.

A reduction to four years should apply to foreign families who show special integrative aptitude, urged ministers, who form Germany’s Integration Ministers’ Conference (IntMK). The group, whose rotating chair is currently held by Bremen’s Social and Integration Senator Anja Stahmann of Germany’s opposition Greens, was initiated under Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2007 to coordinate regional and federal policies, but often exposes major differences among state approaches.

Stahmann said ministers meeting Friday also urged for relaxing Germany’s legislated aversion to multiple nationalities and that German language acquisition at the mid-range B1 level be sufficient to test successfully for citizenship.

The IntMK also received a study showing trust migrants hold toward German authorities and urged the federal government to fully use EU-negotiated quotas to bring “subsidiary” family members and reunite them with refugees already in Germany. Of the 12,000 such entries possible last year only 5,300 visas were issued, it said.

Last week, a flight carrying 103 refugees landed in Hanover, raising to 2,765 the number of arrivals in Germany since April 2020, meeting the target of 2,750 that Germany had declared itself willing to accept.

Source: Make becoming a German citizen easier, integration ministers urge

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Did Trump’s botched census citizenship push cost red states?

2021/04/29 Leave a comment

Ironic:

Among the many haphazard and politically transparent moves by the Trump administration, few rank quite as high on both measures as its botched push for a census citizenship question. The move was widely criticized as a thinly veiled attempt to dissuade undocumented immigrants from responding and to give the GOP a tool to draw more favorable political maps. The Supreme Court wound up rejecting the whole thing, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. effectively accusing the administration of hiding its true motives.

But even when the administration succumbed, some warned that damage might already have been done — that certain immigrants might still shy away from responding because of fears engendered by the lengthy battle. And there was data to back that up.

So did it happen? It’s not quite clear that it did in significant measure, but there are some indications it might have — though perhaps to the detriment of Trump’s red-state allies rather than Democrats.

Source: Did Trump’s botched census citizenship push cost red states?

Filed under Citizenship, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Korean citizenship may soon be more attainable for foreign children

2021/04/28 Leave a comment

Marginal change, given requirement for “deep ties”, with priority given to those whose families have been in Korea for two generations:

The underage children of foreigners with permanent residency in Korea may soon be able to acquire Korean citizenship under a revision to the nationality law proposed by the Ministry of Justice on Monday.

Generally, the acquisition of Korean nationality follows the principle of jus sanguinis, and ethnic Koreans are able to more easily attain Korean citizenship.

However, the Ministry of Justice’s proposed revision to the Nationality Act will introduce a “simple nationality acquisition policy for young children born in Korea to permanent residents.” Under the revised law, if a permanent resident with “deep ties” to Korea gives birth to a child in Korea, the child will become a citizen by simply reporting his or her intent to acquire Korean nationality to the Minister of Justice.

Previously, children born in Korea to permanent residents had to apply for naturalization, even if they completed their primary and secondary education in the country.

Although the revision does not signal a complete abandonment of the jus sanguinis principle, it would make it significantly easier for minors to become Korean citizens earlier in their youth.

If the revision passes, children 6 years old or younger would be able to report an intent to naturalize without any additional requirements. Children who are 7 or older can do the same, provided they have resided in the country five or more years.

However, not all children born on Korean soil to permanent residents can naturalize with ease under the policy. Priority will be given to those children whose families have been in Korea for two or more generations and permanent residents who have “deep blood or cultural ties” to the country.

One of the main beneficiaries of the law will be ethnic Chinese who have resided in Korea for several decades but were barred from citizenship under the strict application of the jus sanguinis principle.

According to government estimates, about 3,900 individuals are currently eligible to acquire Korean nationality under the revised scheme. The Ministry of Justice believes that 600 to 700 additional people will be eligible every year.

“By giving children of permanent residents with deep ties to Korean society an opportunity to acquire nationality early, [the policy] will help foster their cultural identity and establish stability,” the Justice Ministry said. “It will also contribute to secure growth in the labor pool in the era of low birth rates and an aging population.”

Source: Korean citizenship may soon be more attainable for foreign children

Filed under Birthright Citizenship, Citizenship Tagged with ,

Amid languishing numbers, Canada’s #citizenship process needs to be modernized

2021/04/26 Leave a comment

My latest:

COVID-19 upended all aspects of immigration policy and programs, requiring government flexibility with respect to documentation, time limits and other requirements. In many ways, this has been beneficial as it required rethinking processes and procedures and adapting to a more online world.

Citizenship was no exception, exposing the underlying weaknesses of citizenship program management: extensive paper-based processes and a dated IT infrastructure.

While Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) consistently meets its immigration targets (with the exception of during the first pandemic year), the number of new citizens has fluctuated widely over time, reflecting resource and administrative weaknesses. This is in contrast to the steady increase in the number of new permanent residents (figure 1).

https://e.infogram.com/5ea930a5-6598-488b-9ef1-c758b1e90094?parent_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpolicyoptions.irpp.org%2Fmagazines%2Fapril-2021%2Famid-languishing-numbers-canadas-citizenship-process-needs-to-be-modernized%2F&src=embed#async_embed

For 2020, the number of citizenship applications declined 26.5 per cent (from 268,608 in 2019 to 197,472 in 2020). The number of new citizens dropped over twice that number – 55.9 per cent (from 250,083 to 110,214). Finally, new permanent resident applications declined by almost half at 45.9 per cent (from 341,175 to 184,615). Overall, as immigration numbers continued to grow, the naturalization rate of immigrants has declined.

Citizenship is simpler than the myriad immigration programs, and, unlike immigration, falls under exclusively federal jurisdiction. While changes to citizenship are more straightforward, it is a lower priority at both the political and bureaucratic levels than other IRCC programs.

While IRCC was quick to recognize the advantage of encouraging immigration from temporary residents already present in Canada during the pandemic, it initially shut down the citizenship program despite applicants already being in Canada and known to the department.

Modernization

The 2021-22 IRCC departmental plan notes how the department later responded through virtual citizenship ceremonies, piloting on-line knowledge testing and e-applications. Working with the citizenship program in 2008, during an orientation visit to the Sydney, N.S. processing centre, I was shown a large room of paper files that still had to be entered into the tracking system.

Budget 2021 includes $428.9 million over five years “to develop and deliver an enterprise-wide digital platform that would gradually replace the legacy Global Case Management System” to “enable improved application processing and support for applicants, beginning in 2023.” This would be a welcome change if my own experience is any example.

Modernization should result in more informative and timely citizenship information (currently, the government reports on the monthly number of new citizens by country of citizenship). However, there is no public reporting of monthly citizenship applications, province of residence or demographic data such as age, gender or immigration category, in contrast to most immigration datasets.

Modernization also needs to be accompanied by a meaningful citizenship performance standard, based upon the percentage of permanent residents who become Canadian citizens within five to nine years of arrival. This compares to the current and rather meaningless standard which uses the number of all immigrants, whether they arrived five or 50 years ago.

A more ambitious approach, albeit riskier, would help citizenship applicants by pre-populating their forms with permanent residence data and documentation (for example social insurance numbers and tax returns). With exit information now being collected from air carriers, determining whether an applicant has met residency requirements is more straightforward. Overall, applying for citizenship should become a largely automatic process. One could even go further and ensure invitations to apply are sent automatically to eligible applicants to encourage citizenship take-up.

Citizenship education

The IRCC also needs to deliver on existing commitments, including publishing the update to the citizenship guide, first promised  in 2016. A change to the citizenship oath to reflect Indigenous treaty rights is currently before Parliament. The government appears to have walked back from its 2019 election commitment to eliminate citizenship fees as this was not included in the 2021 budget.

The delay in releasing the revised citizenship study guide, Discover Canada, provides an opportunity to reflect on whether more efforts should be made with respect to citizenship education beyond the revising guide and holding high-profile citizenship ceremonies (e.g., at public locations such as a hockey arenas).

Given government plans to increase immigration and provide more pathways for less-educated and lower-skilled persons to become permanent residents, there is a greater need for citizenship education.

The 2018 evaluation of the IRCC’s settlement program indicated that while “Settlement clients reported having knowledge of Canadian laws, rights and responsibilities, …only employment-related services had a positive impact on the level of knowledge.” The 2020 evaluation of the citizenship program revealed that test “Pass rates are lower among applicants with less education and lower language proficiency.”

These evaluations, and census data on naturalization, confirm the need for greater citizenship preparation and training to help new Canadians better understand the rights and responsibilities of citizenship, particularly in the context of an increase in immigration numbers. Current training offered by settlement agencies and public institutions narrowly focuses on citizenship test preparation rather than a more fundamental understanding of Canada.

Consideration needs to be given to expand the current focus on early arrival integration to include citizenship preparation, either on a stand-alone basis or integrated into language training at intermediate levels, with the curriculum based on, but not limited to, the new citizenship study guide. This would facilitate civic integration, particularly those with less education and language proficiency, and should help address the decline in naturalization among recent arrivals.

COVID-19 continues to provide opportunities to rethink government programs and services, with immigration and citizenship being no exception. While existing government policies and processes make change complex and difficult, IRCC and other departments have been able to make some practical changes to improve existing processes and requirements to attenuate some of the impacts of COVID-19 and pave the way for further changes.

For citizenship, modernization of the IT infrastructure and related processes is key to addressing long-standing inefficiencies and deficiencies in the program. Broadening settlement programming to support more vulnerable groups becoming Canadian citizens should be viewed as part and parcel of increased immigration objectives.

Source: https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/april-2021/amid-languishing-numbers-canadas-citizenship-process-needs-to-be-modernized/

Filed under Citizenship, Discover Canada Tagged with , ,

Covid accelerates India’s millionaire exodus

2021/04/14 Leave a comment

Of note:

India’s wealthy have topped a list of people seeking to relocate abroad through visa programmes that offer citizenship or right of residence in other countries in return for investments.

There was very little Rahul (name changed) didn’t have going for him, when he made the tough call to leave India six years ago. He is the second generation scion of a well-heeled Delhi-based family. They have a flourishing exports business with a monopoly in what’s typically called a ‘sunrise sector’- an industry that has great future prospects.

But he left it all behind and moved to Dubai in 2015, to look after the company’s overseas expansion. He also got a citizenship by investment in one of the Caribbean nations. Harassment by tax authorities in India’s Enforcement Directorate was a key reason, he says.

“I could see it becoming a problem for someone who had businesses spread across the world,” he told the BBC. “With a foreign passport, the red-tape has reduced substantially. I am less worried about being slapped with a random tax demand.”

‘Tax terror’ has been a routine gripe among Indian corporate tycoons. When the founder and owner of India’s largest coffee chain, Cafe Coffee Day died in 2019, he accused a former director general of the income tax department of harassing him. But the government has continued to tighten its noose around business owners in recent years.

According to one report, tax searches by India’s income tax department have more than trebled in the last few years.

The government has argued this is being done to eradicate “black money – illegal cash, hidden from the tax authorities – and improve tax compliance. But critics say the overreach is also often on account of pressure on bureaucrats to meet revenue targets.

But hounding by the taxman was just one reason for his move, says Rahul. His decision was also prompted by a growing trend of “divide and rule politics” in India, he told us. He didn’t want his kids to grow up in India’s increasingly polarised environment.

Many others in his circle of wealthy friends were also renouncing their citizenship or resident status, he added.

These claims are borne out by figures from the wall-street investment bank Morgan Stanley. A 2018 bank report found that 23,000 Indian millionaires had left the country since 2014.

More recently, a Global Wealth Migration Review report revealed that nearly 5,000 millionaires, or 2% of the total number of high net-worth individuals in India left the country in 2020 alone. And Indians topped a list compiled by the London-headquartered global citizenship and residence advisory Henley & Partners (H&P), of those seeking citizenship or residency in other countries in return for monetary investments.

Covid-19 has been a big driver of what was an ongoing trend of wealthy Indians seeking to “globalise their lives and assets” according to H&P. So much so that the firm set up its office in India in the middle of the lockdown last year to cater to growing demand.

“I think they [clients] are realising they don’t want to wait for the second or third wave of the pandemic. They want to have their papers now that they are sitting at home. We refer to this as the insurance policy or Plan B,” Dominic Volek, Group Head of Private at Henley & Partners told the BBC on a video call from Dubai.

According to Mr Volek, the pandemic could be a game changer, because it is making the wealthy think about migration in a more holistic fashion. It is no longer just about visa-free travel, or ease of access to global markets, but about wealth diversification, better healthcare and education, to protect against the uncertainties brought about by the pandemic.

Countries like Portugal, which runs a ‘golden visa’ programme as well as countries like Malta and Cyprus are preferred destinations for India’s well heeled, according to H&P.

This exodus of big money is not necessarily permanent in nature – people merely invest money in another country as a fall-back option rather than take out all their money from their home country and cut business ties. But it doesn’t bode well for a developing nation like India, say experts.

“When this happens, they remove themselves, their entrepreneurial ability and their income and wealth from the tax base. This is likely to be detrimental in the long run. Their exit sends a poor signal about the ‘doing business climate’ in India,” says Rupa Subramanya, Distinguished Fellow at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada.

Andrew Amoils, Head of Research at New World Wealth, a Johannesburg-based wealth intelligence group, told the Business Standard newspaper: “It can be a sign of bad things to come as high-net-worth individuals are often the first people to leave – they have the means to leave unlike middle-class citizens.”

Source: Covid accelerates India’s millionaire exodus

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

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