Reaction to Fifth Estate segment on birth tourism

2020/01/10 Leave a comment

I was given a copy of this letter to CBC complaining of the segment on birth tourism on the Fifth Estate. CanadaLand also had a critical segment but one that was reasonably balanced.

My take is different. The segment focuses on birth tourism, characterized the 5,000 as non-residents and not all birth tourists, and had some good interviews with medical practitioners and politicians.

As to the numbers, I had shared my CIHI numbers with the Fifth Estate and had a number of exchanges regarding what they included and their limitations and do not believe these were mischaracterized as all 5,000 being birth tourists.

In any case, we will have better numbers hopefully late spring/early summer given the work underway by IRCC, CIHI and StatsCan to link immigration status and healthcare data, thus allowing us to isolate those on visitor visas from other temporary residents.

My impression is that some of these critiques reflect an unwillingness to consider that birth tourism is an issue (it certainly is in Richmond) and/or a means to raise other valid healthcare-related issues of asylum seekers and other precarious groups:

Dear Mr Nagler,

I wish to express my concerns about the seriously inaccurate and biased content of the 5th Estate’s documentary “Passport babies: The growing shadow industry of birth tourism”, broadcast on January 5, 2020, and the accompanying web articles.

Since 2003, I have worked as a researcher at the SHERPA Research Centre, affiliated with McGill University, focusing on the impact of public policies on the health and well-being of asylum seekers and precarious status migrants in Canada. Since 2012, one of my main research areas has been access to health care for asylum seekers and other precarious status migrants, and I have co-authored a number of scientific publications on this topic.

The major problem with the “Passport babies” documentary is that it incorrectly and repeatedly suggests that the 5000 ‘non-resident’ births per year in Canada all involve tourists who come to Canada for the sole purpose of conferring Canadian citizenship on the baby.

This phenomenon does exist. However, the documentary fails to explain that the category of ‘non-resident births’ is far broader than tourists. Although precise figures are very difficult to obtain, there is every reason to believe that babies born to tourists represent only a small minority of the 5000 ‘non-resident’ births per year in Canada. If the 5th Estate had done even minimal research on the question, they would have found this out. They clearly failed to conduct a basic, balanced investigation into the topic, and consequently produced a documentary that is very seriously misleading and inaccurate.

The figure of 5000 ‘non-resident’ babies per year is drawn from hospital financial databases. The category involved is actually people who do not have medical insurance and (usually) who do not have permanent status in Canada, rather than being people who do not live in Canada. The content of hospitals’ ‘non-resident’ category varies somewhat from province to province, and even between hospitals, but it typically includes:

  • International students in Canada with a temporary study visa. They generally have private insurance, but this typically does not cover costs related to pregnancy and childbirth, or only a small fraction thereof.
  • Some categories of temporary foreign workers (some temporary work visas allow access to public health care, others do not)
  • Non-status (undocumented) migrants living in Canada. This includes people who are in the process of regularizing their status, e.g., people who have applied for permanent residence based on humanitarian or compassionate reasons.
  • Canadian expatriates, who have lost their entitlement to provincial health coverage because they live outside of the country
  • Tourists who are in Canada for a brief period, with a temporary visitor’s visa

The reason that hospitals place these heterogeneous groups in a single category is because 1) they all have to pay their hospital bills out of their own pockets (no public or private medical insurance) and 2) they are either physically residing outside of Canada (in the case of expatriates and tourists) OR are residing in Canada, but with temporary status. In short, the category is based on billing procedure. Note that asylum seekers (refugee claimants) are in a different category because they are covered by the Interim Federal Health Program (IFHP).

Sadly, there are tens of thousands of people living, working or studying, and paying taxes in Canada who do not have any public health care coverage. And even for those who have private medical insurance, childbirth costs are usually not covered. Most have temporary visas (student or work visas), while others are currently without formal status. In either case, these are not people who have come to Canada for a few months in order to have a ‘passport baby’, but rather people who are here for work or study who happen to get pregnant while they are here. In Québec, for example, hospitals typically charge about 10,000$ to 15,000$ for a birth without complications, and far more if there are complications (e.g., C-section). Unsurprisingly, this population often has difficulty paying these very steep bills.

The situation of tourists who deliberately come to Canada in order to have a ‘passport baby’ is very different. This is the group that is portrayed in the 5th Estate’s documentary. Typically, these are wealthy people who can well afford to pay the hospital and doctor’s bills, as well as the cost of the stay in Canada.

The fees charged to all individuals in the ‘non-resident’ group are unregulated. Typically, hospitals charge at least 3 times as much as they could claim from the public health insurance system. If the ‘non-resident’ is able to pay, this can be very lucrative for the hospitals and doctors. On the other hand, if the person is unable to pay (as is often the case for people living in Canada with a temporary visa or without status), the hospital may be unable to collect on the debt.

It is impossible to know what proportion of the 5000 babies in the hospitals’ ‘non-resident’ category are born to tourists who have come to Canada for the sole reason of having a ‘passport baby’. Logically, however, there is every reason to believe that this is only a minority, simply because the other groups – e.g., international students and non-status migrants living in Canada –   number in the tens of thousands.

To sum up, the 5th Estate documentary contains two major errors:

  • It incorrectly implies that the 5000 ‘non-resident’ babies born in Canada per year are all born to tourists seeking to have a ‘passport baby’. The documentary completely omits any mention of the groups that compose the majority of this category, who are almost all people living in Canada for extended periods in order to study or work.
  • With regard to the implications for the Canadian health system, the documentary confuses two separate issues.
    • Tourists who come to Canada to have ‘passport babies’ typically pay their hospital and medical bills; hospitals and doctors tend to see them as a lucrative source of income. There may be legitimate concerns that some hospitals prefer to prioritize the needs of these high-paying patients over those of people living in Canada.
    • On the other hand, people living in Canada with a temporary visa or without status may have great difficulty paying hospital and doctor’s fees associated with childbirth, especially if there are complications. Understandably, hospitals are concerned that some of these people may be unable to pay. Many experts in the field argue that public health insurance should extend to all people who are actually living in Canada (including those with a temporary visa or without status), at least for certain medical procedures, including childbirth. This is an ongoing debate.

Based on a fundamentally flawed analysis of the situation, the 5th Estate documentary concludes that it might be appropriate to change Canada’s laws in order to deny citizenship to babies born in Canada if the parents are neither citizens nor permanent residents. The documentary implies that this would affect only babies born to the tourists portrayed in the documentary.

In fact, it is very likely that the vast majority of these babies are born to international students, temporary foreign workers or people living in Canada without formal status. Many of the parents (notably international students) will apply for permanent residency in Canada, and eventually become citizens. Depriving their children of citizenship would be an extremely grave decision and a fundamental shift in Canadian values. It is unconscionable for the 5th Estate to present an inaccurate and misleading documentary in support of such a policy change.

I would respectfully urge you to take steps to ensure that appropriate retractions or corrections are issued concerning the 5thEstate’s documentary ‘Passport Babies’.

Janet Cleveland PhD

SHERPA Research Centre

University Institute with regard to Cultural Communities

CIUSSS Centre-Ouest de l’Ile de Montréal and McGill University

 

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Combat birth tourism by changing immigration law, B.C. mayor says

2020/01/09 Leave a comment

From twitter commentary, seems like he is a bit late to the discussion. But nothing is more frustrating to the public when each level of government points to the other rather than working more closely to assess and discuss the options (which of course, include doing nothing given the small provincial and national numbers):

Richmond Mayor Malcolm Brodie is calling on Ottawa to change immigration law to stop pregnant women travelling to Canada and giving birth to babies who are automatically granted citizenship.

The law says anyone born in Canada is automatically a Canadian citizen. According to the latest statistics, nearly 5,000 babies were born to non-residents in 2018-19.

A recent story by The Fifth Estate revealed that non-residents make up nearly a quarter of all births at the Richmond Hospital, which has led to complaints that birth tourists are compromising care for locals and putting strain on staff.

“People are abusing the system and we will pay a price right now with our medical system, but we’ll pay a bigger price in the long term with a number of people coming here who haven’t gone through any qualifications or procedures and they just come to our shores and will live in Canada,” said Brodie on The Early Edition on Tuesday.Brodie suggests changing federal law so that least one parent must be a Canadian citizen in order for a child to also become a citizen.

City ‘helpless’ to stop birth tourism: mayor

According to Brodie, the city has limited power to do anything about the issue because the medical system is the province’s jurisdiction and the federal government is in charge of the immigration system, which he said is the root of the problem.

All the city can do, said Brodie, is enforce short-term rental bylaws at so-called “birth houses,” where many of the women are known to stay, but often the women stay longer than a month and the city can only regulate rentals of 30 days or less.

“We are really helpless to do a lot about it. We can check a business licence if there is a business being run out of a home, but that’s about all,” said the mayor.

No federal action

He said Richmond has seen people abusing the system for years and, despite local members of Parliament raising the issue in Ottawa, there has been no federal response.

‘This is a law and this law can be changed and I don’t have any idea why they haven’t done it,” said Brodie. “The optimist in me says they simply haven’t gotten around to it.”The Early Edition requested an interview with Marco Mendicino, the newly appointed federal minister of immigration, refugees and citizenship, but the minister was unavailable.

Source: Combat birth tourism by changing immigration law, B.C. mayor says

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Homeland Security to share citizenship data with Census Bureau

2020/01/08 Leave a comment

Not surprising and there will certainly be some data issues as flagged, one’s that the administration will of course dismiss given the intent is more to disenfranchise minority voters and reduce the population count of states with higher numbers of immigrants (legal and other):

The Department of Homeland Security is agreeing to share citizenship information with the U.S. Census Bureau as part of President Donald Trump’s order to collect data on who is a citizen following the Supreme Court’s rejection of a citizenship question on the 2020 Census form.

Trump’s order is being challenged in federal court, but meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security two weeks ago announced the agreement in a report. It said the agency would share administrative records to help the Census Bureau determine the number of citizens and non-citizens in the U.S., as well as the number of immigrants in the U.S. illegally.

Information to be shared includes personally identifiable data, the Homeland Security document says. Federal law prohibits the Census Bureau from releasing personally identifiable data, and the bureau says in its fact-sheet on privacy, “Your answers can only be used to produce statistics — they cannot be used against you in any way.”

The Census Bureau has promised the data will be kept for no more than two years, and will then be destroyed, according to the agreement. The data will be used to help the Census Bureau create a model estimating the likelihood that each person in the U.S. is a citizen, non-citizen or an immigrant in the country without legal permission.

Among the information Homeland Security will provide is a person’s alien identification number, country of birth and date of naturalization or naturalization application. The department is awaiting word on whether it will be allowed to release information on asylum and refugee applicants, which typically is prohibited from being disclosed.

Because a person’s citizenship status can change often over time, the citizenship data provided by Homeland Security will likely be inaccurate, said Andrea Senteno, an attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, one of the civil rights groups challenging Trump’s order in federal court in Maryland.

“The information out there over whether someone is a non-citizen or what type of immigrant status they may be is going to have a lot of holes in it,” Senteno said.

The Homeland Security document acknowledges risks that the Census Bureau will assign an inaccurate immigration status to someone, that people won’t be able to correct mistakes about themselves and that Homeland Security information will be linked inaccurately to data from other sources used by the Census Bureau.

“Linking records between datasets is not likely to be 100% accurate,” the Homeland Security document notes.

Trump ordered the Census Bureau to collect citizenship information through administrative records from federal agencies and the 50 states after the Supreme Court ruled against his administration last summer by deciding that a citizenship question wouldn’t be allowed on this spring’s 2020 Census questionnaire.

The administration had said the question was being added to aid in enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, which protects minority voters’ access to the ballot box. But Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court’s four more liberal members in saying the administration’s current justification for the question “seems to have been contrived.”

Opponents of the citizenship question had argued it would scare off immigrants, Hispanics and others from participating in the once-a-decade headcount. The 2020 Census will help determine how many congressional seats each state gets as well as the distribution of $1.5 trillion in federal funds.

The federal lawsuit challenging Trump’s order to collect the citizenship data claims that the data gathering is motivated by “a racially discriminatory scheme” to reduce the political power of Latinos and increase the representation of non-Latino whites.

As part of the order, the U.S. Census Bureau has asked state drivers’ license bureaus for records, but so far only Nebraska has agreed to cooperate.

Gathering the citizenship data would give the states the option to design state and legislative districts using voter-age citizen numbers instead of the total population, Trump said in the order. The U.S. Constitution specifies that congressional districts should be based on how many people — not citizens — live there. But it’s murkier for many state legislative districts. Opponents fear that using just citizen figures would make legislative districts more Republican-leaning and less diverse.

“Whether that approach is permissible will be resolved when a state actually proposes a districting plan based on the voter-eligible population,” Trump’s order said. “But because eligibility to vote depends in part on citizenship, states could more effectively exercise this option with a more accurate and complete count of the citizen population.”

Source: Homeland Security to share citizenship data with Census Bureau

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US Citizenship Is More Important Than Ever

2020/01/07 Leave a comment

From Jamaican media but expect this advice is widespread:

Now more than ever it is important to become a US citizen. US citizenship offers many protections and advantages. The current Trump administration is focused on enforcement of immigration laws.   This means more and more non-citizens are vulnerable to being removed from the United States.   Being removed can well mean that you will never be able to return to the United States as a visitor or an immigrant.

If you are a legal permanent resident (LPR) you should consult with a qualified immigration attorney about becoming a US citizen.   Generally, to qualify for US citizenship you must be an LPR for five years or if you acquired LPR status through marriage to a US citizen, then three years. You must also be a person of good moral character, generally meant to mean you have not been convicted of a crime.  You do not owe Federal income taxes which are delinquent and unpaid.  You do not owe child support or alimony that is delinquent or unpaid.  You have not been outside the US for more than six months in a calendar year in any of the five- or three-years preceding application for citizenship.  You can read write and speak the English language and you can pass a US government history test.   If you are a male, you registered for Selective Service and you are attached to the principles of the US constitution.   Please note this brief summary of the eligibility requirements is not exhaustive but does cover important requirements.

Being a US citizen allows you the protection of being outside the US for an unlimited amount of time, without any consequences.  As a US citizen you can apply for and hold high paying jobs of national importance to the US.  Being a US citizen means you are not subject to removal from the US for any criminal convictions that occur after you obtain US citizenship, unless you committed the crime before you became a US citizen.   Being a US citizen also makes worldwide travel much easier as US citizens may travel to many counties without a visa.

Because the current Trump Administration is enforcement oriented before you decide to apply for US citizenship you must consult with a qualified immigration attorney and discuss your eligibility in confidence with an immigration attorney.  Do not apply for US citizenship without first having a consultation with a qualified immigration attorney.   I have represented many individuals who have become US citizens and would welcome the chance to consult with you and represent you.

Source: https://jamaicans.com/us-citizenship-is-more-important-than-ever/ 

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Articles of interest over the holidays – India’s Citizenship Act

2020/01/06 Leave a comment

Northern India’s Uttar Pradesh has been the worst affected in the ongoing protests against a controversial new citizenship law. At least 19 people have died in the state since protests began on 20 December. The BBC’s Vikas Pandey travels to the region to find out why it has witnessed such large-scale and violent protests.

The extremely narrow lanes of Babupurwa in Kanpur city lead me to Mohammed Shareef’s home.

He is sitting outside the small tin-roof house. It has just one room which doubles as a kitchen during the day and bedroom at night. He gets up, hugs me and breaks down. Several minutes pass in silence.

“I have lost everything. I have no will to live. What was my son’s fault? Why did the police shoot him?” he says trying to hold back tears.

Source: Citizenship Act protests: Why fear has gripped Muslims in this Indian state

Protests against a new citizenship law in India risk making investors wary of doing business in Asia’s third-largest economy.

At least 25 people have been killed in nationwide demonstrations against the new rules enacted into law earlier this month. The law bars undocumented Muslims from three neighboring nations seeking Indian citizenship, while allowing people of other faiths to do so.

Source: Protests Against India’s Citizenship Law Risk Spooking Investors Away

As India’s new citizenship law seeks to create a stratified citizenship based on religion, a large number of Indians opposing it are emerging as a people of one book, the country’s Constitution, which came into force on Jan. 26, 1950.

In the past two weeks, diverse crowds across the country have responded to the discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act, referred to as the C.A.A., passed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government by chanting the preamble to the Constitution of India, with its promises of social, political and economic justice, freedom of thought, expression and belief, equality and fraternity.

Student protesters being herded into police vans, opposition leaders standing outside the Indian Parliament and ebullient crowds of tens of thousands in Hyderabad, Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai have read aloud the preamble and held aloft copies of the Constitution and portraits of B.R. Ambedkar, its chief draftsman.

The C.A.A. offers an accelerated pathway to citizenship for Hindu, Sikh, Zoroastrian, Buddhist and Christian migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan but excludes Muslims. It effectively creates a hierarchical system of citizenship determined by an individual’s religion, reminiscent of Myanmar’s 1982 Citizenship Law, which privileged citizenship for “indigenous races,” excluded the Rohingya and paved the ground for the genocidal violence against them.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/27/opinion/india-constitution-protests.html

The recently enacted Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, carves out a special pathway to citizenship for non-Muslim immigrants from some countries. This sort of discrimination against Muslims is popularly thought of as being a relatively recent phenomenon. However, at the founding of India’s republic, the citizenship provisions of the Constitution also discriminated against Muslim immigrants and ma

The Permit System

After the partition of the country, two waves of immigration occurred from West Pakistan to India. In the first wave, which started from March 1, 1947, large numbers of Hindus and Sikhs arrived here. In the second wave in 1948, many Indian Muslims who had migrated to West Pakistan sought to return to India because of poor conditions there, especially in Karachi. This second wave

In April 1948, Nehru acknowledged that the “influx … of Muslims to Delhi and other parts of India from Pakistan has raised certain difficulties”. The following month, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel wrote to Nehru that there was “considerable discontent” among the public in general and refugees in particular about the Indian government’s “failure to prevent the inflow of Muslims from Pakistan.” The return of “these Muslims”, he explained, “while we are not yet able to rehabilitate Hindus and Sikhs from Pakistan… would again be the breeding ground of communal poison, on which activities of organisation[s] like the RSS thrive.” He believed that returning Indian Muslims were “a great source of danger to the peace and security of Delhi”. Nehru replied and said that this was an “undoubtedly serious” matter.

It was against this backdrop that the Indian government introduced a system on July 19, 1948, under which no person could move from West Pakistan into India without a permit issued by the Indian high commission in Karachi or Lahore.

Read more at: https://www.bloombergquint.com/opinion/citizenship-amendment-act-the-unsecular-origins-of-indian-citizenship-by-abhinav-chandrachud

At 24, Indian transgender Ray has already had to fight many battles for recognition and now faces a new threat – losing her citizenship because of controversial new legislation.

The Delhi-based law student – whose official documents identify her as male – is among tens of thousands of people protesting against the legislation and a mooted nationwide citizens’ register, worried that it will render transgender Indians like herself stateless.

Her fears are not unfounded. In September this year, a petition was filed in India’s Supreme Court after around 2,000 transgenders were left off a citizens’ register in the northeastern state of Assam, throwing their future into doubt.

Despite being legally recognised as a third gender in a historic 2014 Supreme Court ruling, they often live on the extreme fringes of Indian society, with many forced into prostitution, begging or menial jobs.

For a community that already faces severe discrimination in conservative India – much of it from their own families – transgenders feel they are at extra risk from legislation pushed by Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi aimed ostensibly at tackling illegal immigration.

Source: India’s transgenders face losing citizenship with new law

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Articles of interest over the holidays – USA

2020/01/06 Leave a comment

Source: Is America About to Suffer Its Weimar Moment?

Political impact

Of all the concerns about immigration, perhaps none is more important to politicians than how immigration affects political control. In particular, many Republicans believe that immigration has clearly boosted the Democratic Party and that higher immigration will obviously doom the GOP. But historically (and recently), congressional Republicans have performed much better during periods when the immigrant share of the population is high. By contrast, Democrats dominated the low immigration periods.

GOP Almost Always Controls a House of Congress During High Immigration Periods, Rarely Controls Either House During Low Immigration Periods

The Republican Party came into existence in 1854, and while it quickly dominated, the Civil War and Reconstruction make its early history anomalous. Looking solely at the period since Reconstruction, Republicans have controlled at least one House of Congress 85 percent of years when the immigrant share of the population was greater than 10 percent, while not controlling either House 83 percent of all other years (Fig. 1). Moreover, they have controlled both houses 59 percent of the high immigration years, compared to just 7 percent of the low immigration years.

Source: Congressional Republicans Dominate High Immigration Periods | Cato @ Liberty

Citizenship

The citizenship question the Trump administration wanted to add to the 2020 census would have likely been especially sensitive in areas with higher shares of Latinx residents and noncitizens. That’s among the Census Bureau’s final conclusions from its recent experiment testing public reaction to the question.

If courts had not blocked the question from appearing on census forms, it would have also likely lowered self-response rates in parts of the U.S. where Asian residents make up between 5% and 20% of the population, according to the Census Bureau’s final report on the national experiment conducted earlier this year.

The findings released on Monday flesh out preliminary analysis the bureau put out in October when officials announced the question likely would not have had a significant effect on overall self-response rates.

Digging deeper into specific groups, however, the bureau did find statistically significant differences between certain households asked to fill out a test census form with a citizenship question and those presented with forms without one.

“These differences were small,” wrote Victoria Velkoff, the bureau’s associate director for demographic programs, in a blog post about the bureau’s early findings.

Source: Census Bureau Releases Final Report On 2019 Test Of Citizenship Question

Evangelicals

At the time of year when Christians around the world are supposed to unite in celebration of their savior’s birth, this Christmas has been a particularly fractious time for white evangelicals in America. Last week, Christianity Today, a leading evangelical magazine, published an editorial condemning Trump’s “immoral character” and calling for his removal from office. “That he should be removed,” the editorial, written by outgoing editor-in-chief Mark Galli, contended, “we believe, is not a matter of partisan loyalties but loyalty to the Creator of the Ten Commandments.”

It was a stance that nearly broke the internet — the publication’s website temporarily went down as millions tried to read the piece — and revealed the fault lines in a religious movement that is often viewed as a monolithic political force. No sooner had Christianity Today published its words than the piece drew heavy and vitriolic pushback from other conservative Christian voices. Ralph Reed of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, scoffed on Fox News that the publication ought to be renamed “Christianity Yesterday” for being “out of step with the faith community” when it came to Trump. Shortly after, nearly two hundred evangelical leaders signed a letterexpressing their “dissatisfaction” with the editorial for supporting what it called the “entirely-partisan, legally-dubious, and politically-motivated impeachment.”

Secular media pounced on the controversy, seemingly surprised that an evangelical outlet had taken such a stand while also deeming the fracas as part of what The Daily Beast called the “spiraling evangelical Christian civil war.” That’s an overstated assessment of a rather imbalanced divide, but the Christianity Today editorial does point to a committed and principled NeverTrump evangelical movement that has held steadfast since 2015 and which draws a sharp contrast with the spineless Congressional Republicans who, in toto, have folded in complete submission to Trump.

Source: The evangelical resistance?

Ever since the 1970s and the birth of the Religious Right, white evangelicals have been closely associated with the Republican Party. Generally speaking, this has meant white evangelicals tend to lean conservative on most social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage.

But recent political events show that what began as a rightward lean has, on at least one issue, become an area of genuine extremism. Inspired by the Christmastime dustup between Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg and blogger Matt Walsh, Eastern Illinois University political scientist Ryan P. Burge did some data analysis on just how white evangelicals feel about immigration in 2019, and what he found was startling.

Using data from the Cooperate Congressional Election Study, Burge found that on the five immigration questions asked by the survey, white evangelicals had a rightward gap from the mainstream Burge characterized as “humungous” — at least 20 percentage points on four of the five questions.

Source: Study: The Average White Evangelical Is Further Right on Immigration Than Abortion

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Articles of interest over the holidays – China

2020/01/06 Leave a comment

The order from Chinese officials was blunt and urgent. Villagers from Muslim minorities should be pushed into jobs, willing or not. Quotas would be set and families penalized if they refused to go along.

“Make people who are hard to employ renounce their selfish ideas,” the labor bureau of Qapqal, a county in the western region of Xinjiang, said in the directive last year.

Such orders are part of an aggressive campaign to remold Xinjiang’s Muslim minorities — mostly Uighurs and Kazakhs — into an army of workers for factories and other big employers. Under pressure from the authorities, poor farmers, small traders and idle villagers of working age attend training and indoctrination courses for weeks or months, and are then assigned to stitch clothes, make shoes, sweep streets or fill other jobs.

These labor programs represent an expanding front in a major effort by China’s leader, Xi Jinping, to entrench control over this region, where these minorities make up about half the population. They are crucial to the government’s strategy of social re-engineering alongside the indoctrination camps, which have held one million or more Uighurs and Kazakhs.

Source: Inside China’s Push to Turn Muslim Minorities Into an Army of WorkersInside China’s Push to Turn Muslim Minorities Into an Army of WorkersThe Communist Party wants to remold Xinjiang’s minorities into loyal blue-collar workers to supply Chinese factories with cheap labor.

The first grader was a good student and beloved by her classmates, but she was inconsolable, and it was no mystery to her teacher why.

“The most heartbreaking thing is that the girl is often slumped over on the table alone and crying,” he wrote on his blog. “When I asked around, I learned that it was because she missed her mother.”

The mother, he noted, had been sent to a detention camp for Muslim ethnic minorities. The girl’s father had passed away, he added. But instead of letting other relatives raise her, the authorities put her in a state-run boarding school — one of hundreds of such facilities that have opened in China’s far western Xinjiang region.

As many as a million ethnic Uighurs, Kazakhs and others have been sent to internment camps and prisons in Xinjiang over the past three years, an indiscriminate clampdown aimed at weakening the population’s devotion to Islam. Even as these mass detentions have provoked global outrage, though, the Chinese government is pressing ahead with a parallel effort targeting the region’s children.

Source: In China’s Crackdown on Muslims, Children Have Not Been Spared

 

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Articles of interest over the holidays – Citizenship

2020/01/06 1 Comment

Fees

[Only took the Globe a month to notice this in the IRCC mandate letter.]

The federal government has committed to waiving citizenship application fees that immigration advocates say are a major barrier that stops newcomers from becoming Canadian citizens.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has asked Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino in his mandate letter to bring forward a plan to eliminate the fees.

Adult applicants currently pay a $530 for processing, and a $100 right-of-citizenship fee. Families have to pay an extra $100 for every applicant under the age of 18. A citizenship application for a family of four would cost $1,460.

….According to Statistics Canada data, the rate of immigrants who became citizens after living for six years in Canada dropped to 55.4 per cent in 2016 from 70.2 per cent in 2006.

Source: eliminating fees
Vavilov ruling (children of non-diplomats working for a foreign intelligence service)

Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v. Vavilov is a landmark ruling on administrative law as a majority of the Supreme Court revises the approach articulated in Dunsmuir. The ruling represents a departure from the deferential approach to administrative decision-making that the Court has espoused since at least Dunsmuir. While the Court affirms a presumption that judicial review will be done on a standard of reasonableness, the Court invokes the notions of the rule of law to signal that decision-makers will be held to a higher standard of justification when their decisions are reviewed. Absent proper reasons, administrative delegates are at an increased risk of having their decisions quashed.

While the decision is ripe for academic analysis, this post provides a practical guide to how the standard of review analysis operates for litigants and decision makers alike going forward. In doing so, we focus on the Court’s analysis of what the revised standard of review framework entails and leave the discussion about the facts of Vavilov and its companion decision — Bell Canada v. Canada (Attorney General) (2019 SCC 66) — for another time. We also do not explore the concurring reasons of Justices Abella and Karakatsanis, where they raised concerns about the majority’s decision. These, and other academic issues, will be taken up in a supplemental post on Vavilov.

In brief, the majority of the Supreme Court confirms that the standard of reasonableness presumptively applies to administrative decisions. However, the Court articulated two paths through which the presumption of reasonableness can be rebutted.

  • First, where the enabling legislation provides statutory appeal rights to a court, Vavilov establishes that the appellate standards of review will apply.
  • Second, the presumption of reasonableness can be ousted where the rule of law dictates that the standard of correctness be applied. This will be engaged in cases that raise (a) constitutional questions, (b) general questions of law of central importance to the legal system as a whole and (c) questions related to the jurisdictional boundaries between two or more administrative bodies.

Overall, the Court’s decision is a signal to decision makers that their decisions will be subjected to greater scrutiny and that the standard for justification and reasons will be higher.

Source: Canada (Minister Of Citizenship And Immigration) v. Vavilov: A Practical Guide To The Revised Standard Of Review Analysis – Litigation, Mediation & Arbitration – Canada

[Overly sympathetic interview]

A Toronto-born son of Russian spies says Canadian citizenship was “something I really felt I had to fight for,” after a Supreme Court decision last week finally brought his nine-year legal battle to an end.

Alexander Vavilov was 16 years old when the FBI arrested his parents in 2010 for their involvement in a North America-based Russian espionage ring.

They were elite spies for the KGB, the former Soviet secret police. Their real names are Elena Vavilova and Andrey Bezrukov, but they came to Toronto in the 1980s under the names Tracey Ann Foley and Donald Heathfield. Their story inspired the TV show The Americans, but Vavilov says he had no idea they were spies.Vavilov was stripped of his American citizenship after his parents were arrested by the FBI in 2010. In 2014, he discovered his Canadian citizenship had also been revoked, and he has been fighting to get it back ever since.

The Canadian government argued that the Russian spies were equivalent to foreign diplomats, whose children would legally not be granted Canadian citizenship.

Last week the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously rejected that finding, meaning that Vavilov can permanently reside in Canada, where he was born.

Source: Canadian citizenship something ‘I really felt I had to fight for,’ says Toronto-born son of Russian spies

Consular services

So, what should Canadians like Ms. Clamen expect when the worst happens abroad? The Globe and Mail conducted a year-long investigation into Canadian consular services to find out. We spoke to former employees of the service and Canadians who have had difficulties overseas, filed a dozen access-to-information requests and read through thousands of pages of reports and internal documents. The investigation, made possible through the Michener-Deacon Fellowship for Investigative Reporting, reveals some fundamental problems, including unclear standards, failures to meet what few measurable standards there are and unequal treatment of consular cases.

Canadians have no legislated right to consular assistance, so the government has discretion in the services it provides. As a result, critics argue assistance favours those with easy problems or access to power. When the families of travellers who have died or suffered other hardship abroad try to obtain details about individual cases, they are stymied by privacy laws, which ultimately make it nearly impossible to judge how effectively Global Affairs is aiding Canadians.

The Globe spent 10 months requesting an on-the-record interview with a senior representative of Global Affairs. The department declined, instead providing what it called a background briefing for 30 minutes with three senior government officials who could not be quoted. The department followed up with written responses to questions.

Source: investigation Canada’s patchwork of consular services leaves some citizens fighting for life and justice abroad If Canadians are jailed, endangered or go missing abroad, Global Affairs is supposed to be in their corner. But there are unclear and inconsistent standards that favour some travellers over others

Municipal voting rights for Permanent Residents 

[Given relative ease in obtaining citizenship, and planned waiving of fees, hard to understand rationale]

Canadians seem intent on devaluing citizenship and eroding the rights and responsibilities of those who hold it at a time when fewer immigrants are choosing to become citizens.

In the guise of strengthening democracy, municipal politicians backed by the B.C. Civil Liberties Association are lobbying for non-citizens to be granted voting rights in local elections. It’s being trumpeted as “an extraordinary opportunity.”

The question is: An extraordinary opportunity for whom?

In the federal arena, the major parties (including the Bloc Quebecois) have all abandoned the requirement that members be citizens. That’s despite the fact that party members have a greater voice in the democratic process, better access to elected representatives and a hand in both choosing candidates and the party’s leader.

Both the New Democratic Party and the Conservative Party allowed all of their members to vote in their leadership contests, while the governing Liberals’ leaders have always been chosen by delegates — members elected in their riding to vote at the convention.

At its September convention, the Union of B.C. Municipalities delegates passed a resolution urging the extension of voting rights to permanent residents. Coincidentally, that convention also included a reception sponsored by the Chinese consul general.

Source: Daphne Bramham: Voting is a right of citizenship, not residency

Filed under Citizenship

‘All about the money’: How women travelling to Canada to give birth could strain the health-care system

2020/01/04 15 Comments

CBC Fifth Estate story on birth tourism, being broadcast January 5. Not much new from provincial (British Columbia) health authorities, British Columbia government or IRCC. Better data should be available later this spring from the joint study between IRCC, Canadian Institutes of Health Information and Statistics Canada:

Women travelling to Canada to give birth to babies who will automatically become Canadian citizens are prompting concerns about the strain they may be putting on the health-care system, The Fifth Estate has found.

At one British Columbia hospital with a high concentration of such deliveries, complaints have arisen that the influx of these non-resident patients — also known as birth tourists — has led to compromised care for local mothers-to-be and struggles for nursing staff.

Some of these patients fail to pay hospital and doctors bills, leaving taxpayers and individual care providers on the hook.

“Most of them, they get the Canadian passport, and then they leave the country,” said Dr. Mudaffer Al-Mudaffer, a B.C. pediatrician and neonatologist who sees babies of non-residents when they need critical care. “It affects the integrity of the fairness of the health system.”

No statistics are available regarding how many people are travelling to Canada specifically to ensure their child is born here and will have a Canadian passport.

But figures from the Canadian Institute for Health Information and several Quebec hospitals indicate there were about 5,000 non-resident births across the country in 2018, an increase of nearly 15 per cent over the previous year.

In the fall of 2019, Cathy Shi arrived in Richmond, B.C., from Shandong, on China’s east coast, to give birth to her third child. She said through a translator that she wanted her unborn child to have more opportunities.

“My concern is about their education, such as going to university. If the kid wants to live in Canada, it would be convenient for them if they’re born here.”

Handful of hospitals

At this point, the practice of birth tourism appears to be concentrated in a handful of hospitals in Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia.

At the Richmond Hospital, south of Vancouver, non-residents make up nearly a quarter of all births, according to records obtained from Vancouver Coastal Health, the health authority which runs the hospital. In many ways, that hospital can be seen as a test case for how this issue could play out elsewhere as numbers continue to climb.

The health authority declined a request for an interview with The Fifth Estate and issued a warning directing its staff not to speak to the media.

Despite that, four current and two retired nurses shared their concerns, requesting that their identities be protected.

Since 2013/14, the number of non-resident births has tripled at the hospital. The patients — many from China — pay privately for their care, often in cash, may not speak English and are unfamiliar with the Canadian health-care system. The nurses who spoke to The Fifth Estate say the influx has led to increased workloads and has compromised care.

“There are times when … the people living here don’t get the service that they need,” one nurse said.

When the unit was very busy, one nurse said services like prenatal tests to check the baby’s health, labour inductions and other tests to check fetal and maternal risk factors would be delayed or cancelled.

“We would often have to decide whose need was greatest and abandon the rest for the next day where we would face the same situation again,” she said.

“Our normal scheduled or add-on C-sections lie here all day and then they take the IV out, we send them home and say come back tomorrow. A private pay never goes home — she gets her C-section that day,” said another nurse.

“She will be fit in somewhere because nobody wants to lose that $5,000. But our normal people are lying there all day, no food or drink, waiting and nobody’s interested in moving them.”

Some hospitals, like Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, have taken steps to limit the number of non-resident births in order to prioritize residents of their own communities. That hospital says it won’t treat non-residents patients without Ontario Health Insurance Plan coverage.

When asked in an email why the Richmond Hospital doesn’t have a similar policy, Carrie Stefanson, a public affairs representative with Vancouver Coastal Health, said: “VCH cannot speak for other hospitals or health authorities. VCH will never deny urgent and emergent care based on ability to pay or where a patient is from.”

The hospital requests deposits for privately paid births: $10,000 for a vaginal birth and $16,000 for a caesarean. More than $18 million has been invoiced for non-resident births since 2017, according to data released through freedom of information by Vancouver Coastal Health.

Nursing staff say they have not seen this money go into easing their workloads.

“The amount of money that’s coming into Richmond from the private pay, it doesn’t make our staffing better,” said one nurse.

Their union says that is a problem.

“I certainly think adding additional patients into a health-care system that isn’t staffed appropriately, isn’t funded appropriately, is causing strain,” said Christine Sorensen, president of the BC Nurses’ Union.

She said the union has regularly heard complaints from nurses at Richmond Hospital but they have not filed a formal complaint with the hospital.

The health authority declined to answer a question about how it has responded to complaints from nursing staff.

Financial incentives within the medical system

Two doctors at the Richmond Hospital have delivered 1,300 of the 2,206 babies born to non-residents there since 2014, according to documents released through freedom of information.

While the health authority will not disclose their names, insiders and birth tourism company representatives say Dr. Xin-Yong Wang and Dr. Brenda Tan, two Mandarin-speaking family doctors, see the majority of these patients for prenatal care and delivery.

Both appear on multiple websites of companies advertising services such as assistance with immigration, travel and housing to women looking to come to Canada to give birth.

Wang said the companies do not have permission to use his name.

Tan did not respond to interview requests and a list of questions sent to her.

Wang and Tan billed the province $272,198.50 and $428,456.17 respectively in the 2018/2019 fiscal year, according to data publicly available through the province. Those billings do not include earnings from non-resident patients because they pay privately.

There are no limits on what physicians can charge outside the public system in British Columbia, but information from birth tourism company websites suggests that these doctors earn at least $100 per prenatal visit and more than $2,500 for a delivery, several times more than could be billed through the public system for the same services.

In an interview, Wang declined to respond to questions about how much he was earning from birth tourism but said he was not motivated financially to take on these patients.

“It’s like a dessert — occasional patients like this is fine, and it’s pretty financially rewarding … they are a small percentage of our overall income.”

Nurses who spoke to The Fifth Estate said the financial incentives within the health-care system are a problem.

“It is all about the money. If there was no financial income for the hospital or physicians, the private pay would have been out of the door a long time ago,” said one nurse.

Unpaid bills

While these births are bringing in money, bills owed to both health authorities and individual doctors are not always paid.

According to documents released by Vancouver Coastal Health, more than $2 million is outstanding as a result of non-resident births since 2017 at the Richmond Hospital alone. This does not include any debt that has been written off.

Bairths at the Richmond Hospital represent 11 per cent of overall non-resident births outside Quebec, according to 2018 data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information.

No national financial data exists on how much revenue is outstanding as a result of non-resident hospital bills across the country.

But some say the health-care system and Canadian taxpayers are losing out.

Al-Mudaffer said having an uninsured baby in neonatal intensive care can cost $10,000 a day just for the hospital bed, not including doctors’ fees.

Dr. Mudaffer Al-Mudaffer says birth tourism is impacting the Canadian healthcare system. 0:27

He said he’s seen large bills for families with babies requiring multiple nights and even weeks in the NICU.

“You can easily acquire a bill of $100,000 to pay the health authority, and that’s why they can’t pay it, you know? And they leave the country without paying,” said Al-Mudaffer.

He said he has seen hundreds of thousands of dollars in bills go unpaid at the Royal Columbian Hospital where he works, but Fraser Health, which runs that hospital, said it could not confirm this amount.

The Fifth Estate requested provincial numbers on unpaid bills from the British Columbia government but was told these numbers were not tracked provincially.

“Obviously if any bill is unpaid, I’m concerned about that because that’s money that we could and should be spending on something else or saving the health-care system so of course we’re concerned about it,” said B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix.

Even with little formal research to examine the practical implications of a growing number of non-resident births on the Canadian health-care system, Dix said “we are handling that situation.

“It’s two per cent … of total births in British Columbia, so it’s an issue but there are other issues.”

But it’s not only hospital fees going unpaid. Al-Mudaffer said when he sees birth tourists, he only gets paid three out of 10 times.

He is not alone. Dr. Kathleen Ross, president of Doctors of B.C., has personally been affected by unpaid bills and has called for a national conversation on the issue.

“Our federal government needs to find a way to disincentive people coming to the country to have access to citizenship and to our health-care support,” she said.

Federal research planned

Marco Mendicino, the newly appointed minister of immigration, refugees and citizenship, declined an interview with The Fifth Estate.

But the department wrote that while “statistics indicate that birth tourism is not widespread, the Government of Canada recognizes the need to better understand this practice.”

It said it has started work with the Canadian Institute for Health Information and Statistics Canada to integrate health and immigration data that would allow for a better understanding of the practice of birth tourism by looking at visitor visas and births.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada anticipates results from this research will be available in the spring.

Cathy Shi said she hasn’t thought much about criticism of birth tourism and isn’t receiving any government benefits here.

“We may come here often for travelling around, living or even investing. People are not just looking for status by having a baby here. They will have established a connection to Canada and later on some may apply to immigrate.”

Source: ‘All about the money’: How women travelling to Canada to give birth could strain the health-care system

Filed under Birth Tourism, Birthright Citizenship, Citizenship Tagged with , ,

Supreme Court rules both Canada-born sons of Russian spies are Canadian citizens

2019/12/20 4 Comments

Nuts, substantively. While I await more commentary from legal experts, believe it merits an amendment to the Citizenship Act to clarify any future similar situations:

Alexander Vavilov, the Toronto-born son of Russian spies, is a Canadian citizen, the Supreme Court of Canada has decided.

In its judgment Thursday, the high court upheld a Federal Court of Appeal decision that effectively affirmed the citizenship of not only Alexander but also his brother Timothy.

Aside from addressing the citizenship matter, the Supreme Court ruling aimed to bring clarity to the nature and scope of judicial review of decisions by administrative officials.

Alexander, 25, and Timothy, 29, were born in Canada to parents using the aliases Donald Howard Heathfield and Tracey Lee Ann Foley.

The parents were arrested nine years ago in the United States and indicted on charges of conspiring to act as secret agents on behalf of Russia’s SVR, a successor to the notorious Soviet KGB.

Heathfield and Foley admitted to being Andrey Bezrukov and Elena Vavilova. They were sent back to Moscow as part of a swap for prisoners in Russia.

Alexander, who finished high school in Russia, changed his surname to Vavilov on the advice of Canadian officials in a bid to obtain a Canadian passport.

But he ran into a snag at the passport office and in August 2014 the citizenship registrar said the government no longer recognized him as a Canadian citizen.

The registrar said his parents were employees of a foreign government at the time of his birth, making him ineligible for citizenship.

The Federal Court of Canada upheld the decision.

But in June 2017, the appeal court set aside the ruling and quashed the registrar’s decision. It said the provision of the Citizenship Act the registrar cited should not apply because the parents did not have diplomatic privileges or immunities while in Canada.

On the strength of the ruling, Alexander has since been able to renew his Canadian passport and he hopes to live and work in Canada – calling his relationship with the country a cornerstone of his identity.

In its decision, the Supreme Court said the registrar’s decision was unreasonable. Although the registrar knew her interpretation of the provision was novel, she failed to provide a proper rationale, the court said.

Although it involves the same central issue, Timothy’s case proceeded separately through the courts and was therefore not directly before the Supreme Court.

However, in a decision last year, the Federal Court said the ruling on Alexander equally applied to Timothy, making him “a citizen.”

Source: Supreme Court rules both Canada-born sons of Russian spies are Canadian citizens

Filed under Birthright Citizenship, Citizenship Tagged with , ,

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