40% decline in permanent residents becoming Canadian citizens since 2001, data shows

2023/02/17 Leave a comment

Of concern, accelerating trend that I started identifying a number of years ago:

StatCan numbers reveal the percentage of permanent residents who become Canadians has plummeted over the past 20 years.

The Institute for Canadian Citizenship says Statistics Canada data points to a 40 per cent decline in citizenship uptake since 2001.

The group’s CEO, Daniel Bernhard, calls the drop alarming and says it should serve as a “wake up call” to improving the experience newcomers have in Canada.

In 2021, nearly 45.7 per cent of permanent residents who’d been in Canada for less than 10 years became citizens.

That’s down from 60 per cent in 2016, and 75.1 per cent in 2001.

The StatCan data did not identify reasons for the drop, but Bernhard suggests Canada’s cost of living and job prospects are likely factors.

He says the institute is investigating root causes.

“There are a myriad of issues,” said Bernhard.

“But ultimately, what’s changing is that people have decided that they’re less interested in being `Team Canada.”’

Bernhard said the decline affects Canada’s long-term economic and social outlook.

“This is a problem for all of us who care about Canada’s future prosperity and dynamism,” he said. “We need to solve this for the future of our country.”

The federal government has said it wants to boost immigration by adding 1.45 million permanent residents over the next three years, starting with 465,000 in 2023 and increasing to 500,000 in 2025.

Source: 40% decline in permanent residents becoming Canadian citizens since 2001, data shows

The National Post take:

As Canada ratchets up immigration to the highest levels in its history, surprising new figures from Statistics Canada are showing that nearly half of all recent immigrants are no longer bothering to seek Canadian citizenship.

The numbers were publicized this week by the Institute for Canadian Citizenship. And according to the group’s CEO Daniel Bernhard, they may be a sign that the Canadian dream is no longer working out for newcomers.

“What’s changing is that people have decided that they’re less interested in being ‘Team Canada,’” Bernhard said in a statement, adding that the figures are a “wake up” call to the Canadian immigrant experience is treating new arrivals.

In 2021, of the permanent residents who had come to Canada within the last 10 years, just 45.7 per cent had become citizens. In 2001, that figure was 75.1 per cent.

It’s not the first time that evidence has emerged to show that new immigrants are not as enthralled with Canada as in prior decades.

A March Leger survey — also commissioned by the Institute for Canadian Citizenship — found that more than one fifth of recent immigrants were already making plans to leave. Among under-34 immigrants, in particular, 30 per cent said they were “likely” to leave Canada within the next two years.

As to why, newcomers are citing the same concerns with the country as native-born Canadians: Skyrocketing housing costs and diminishing access to government services such as health care.

In the Leger poll, even among immigrants who wanted to stay, their number one reservation was “high cost of living.”

In a bid to boost GDP, the Trudeau government has already raised Canada’s immigration intake to the highest levels in Canadian history, and is on track to bring in 500,000 newcomers annually by 2025. Absent any dramatic policy changes, this influx will likely worsen many of the issues that are already beginning to scare away new Canadians.

On Tuesday, CIBC CEO Victor Dodig warned that if Canada continued packing in immigrants without a viable plan to absorb them, it could spur an unprecedented “social crisis.”

“New Canadians want to establish a life here, they need a roof over their heads. We need to get that policy right and not wave the flag saying isn’t it great that everyone wants to come to Canada,” Dodig said at an event hosted by Canadian Club Toronto.

One other factor potentially driving down rates of immigrants seeking citizenship is that Canada’s immigrant stream is increasingly coming from countries that do not tolerate dual citizenship, thus prompting many newcomers to remain permanent residents in perpetuity.

The chief examples are India and China. Indian nationals are required to surrender their Indian passport the moment they become Canadian citizens. Chinese prohibitions on dual citizenship were illustrated most glaringly in 2021, when the Beijing government tightened its control on Hong Kong by forcing 300,000 residents with joint Canadian citizenship to either leave or tear up their Canadian passport.

Both countries now represent a significant share of Canada’s current immigrant influx. As per 2021 figures, 18.6 per cent of recent Canadian immigrants reported India as their birthplace, while 8.9 per cent reported being born in China.

For context, just three per cent of recent immigrants were born in the United States.

In 2022, Canada officially welcomed 431,645 immigrants. Notably, the last time in Canadian history that immigration levels were this high — during the settling of the prairies in the years preceding the First World War – it was also paired with surging levels of outmigration as many newcomers swiftly abandoned their new Canadian homesteads.

“A lot of people left; outmigration was as high as in-migration for a very, very long time,” Adele Perry, a researcher of Western Canadian history, told the National Post in 2012.

Source: Canada is scaring away its new immigrants

Filed under Citizenship, Immigration Tagged with , , ,

Federal government paying to move migrants from Quebec to Ontario

2023/02/16 Leave a comment

Burden sharing!

The federal government transported almost all of the migrants entering the country through Roxham Road to other provinces over the weekend, said Quebec Minister of Immigration Christine Fréchette on Tuesday, calling the wave of relocations a “new approach” from Ottawa.

Three hundred seventy-two of the 380 migrants who arrived in Quebec by that route on Saturday and Sunday were relocated, largely to Ontario, the minister said in a scrum in Quebec City on Tuesday.

She saluted Ottawa for fulfilling the province’s demand for help with the recent influx of asylum seekers through the irregular border crossing south of Montreal and called on Justin Trudeau’s government to continue.

“We are starting to see results,” said Ms. Fréchette. “We’re very happy with that.”

The federal government has been relocating Roxham Road migrants regularly because of capacity constraints in Quebec since last summer, and would not confirm whether the spike in relocations was a new policy or a blip. Since June, more than 5,300 migrants have been relocated from the province, including some 500 to Windsor, Ont., and roughly 2,700 to Niagara Falls, Ont.

A federal source said this is part of a long-standing initiative, paid for by Ottawa, but did not clarify whether the number of people being relocated outside Quebec have been expanded. The source added that people who do not want to relocate can stay in Quebec.

The Globe and Mail is not naming the source because they were not authorized to speak about the matter.

Ms. Fréchette called on the federal government to maintain the recent heightened rate of removals, repeating her government’s position that Quebec’s “welcoming capacity” has been surpassed. Roughly 60,000 asylum seekers arrived in Quebec last year, double the annual number from before the pandemic, the minister has said.

That has sparked a fierce political debate in the province about how to manage the situation, with the opposition Parti Québécois tabling a motion in the National Assembly recently calling on the government to “close” the border crossing.

Federal opposition parties have also repeatedly called for a review of the Safe Third Country Agreement with the United States, a long-standing pact that requires border agents from each country to turn away asylum seekers from the other if they present themselves at official land border crossings.

Roxham Road, along the border between New York State and Quebec’s Eastern Townships, has become the primary route for irregular entries into Canada in recent years. The RCMP intercepted 34,478 asylum seekers who did not use official ports of entry to enter Quebec between January and November of 2022, according to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada data, compared with just 316 in the rest of the country.

On Tuesday, Ms. Fréchette called the weekend’s mass relocations a “first step” that could potentially come to involve other provinces receiving asylum seekers from Roxham Road. She said the federal government recently booked 500 hotel rooms to house migrants in Ontario as a sign of seriousness.

“I don’t have information about what happened on Monday, but we are expecting that this new approach persists,” she said.

In the future, she added, her government is asking that the share of asylum seekers who stay in Quebec be kept around 22 or 23 per cent, in keeping with the province’s demographic weight within Canada.

Roxham Road has become one of the stickiest issues in Quebec politics as Premier François Legault’s nationalist Coalition Avenir Québec government has sought to manage public unease with the increase in irregular migration.

On Tuesday, Mr. Legault met with U.S. ambassador to Canada David Cohen to ask for a speedy renegotiation of the agreement governing asylum seekers between the countries.

“I said to him, ‘I don’t understand why it’s taking this long to settle with the United States.’ What we’re asking is that the Safe Third Country Agreement be applied to all ports of entry, including Roxham.”

Source: Federal government paying to move migrants from Quebec to Ontario

And the article in Le Devoir:

La ministre de l’Immigration, de la Francisation et de l’Intégration, Christine Fréchette, s’est réjouie mardi du fait que presque la totalité des demandeurs d’asile ayant traversé la frontière par le chemin Roxham la fin de semaine dernière ont été envoyés en Ontario.

Parmi les personnes qui ont emprunté cette voie de passage irrégulier samedi et dimanche, seules 8 sur 380 sont restées au Québec, a affirmé Mme Fréchette en mêlée de presse. « On est très contents de ça et on espère que ça va se maintenir dans le temps », a-t-elle dit.

Récemment, « 500 chambres additionnelles » ont été réservées par Ottawa en Ontario afin d’accueillir des demandeurs d’asile, a-t-elle affirmé.

La ministre Fréchette soutient que « la capacité d’accueil du Québec a été dépassée ». « On demande à ce que la proportion des demandeurs d’asile qui restent au Québec équiva[ille] au poids politique du Québec à l’intérieur du Canada, a-t-elle ajouté. Donc on parle de 22 à 23 %. Là, on serait dans des eaux acceptables. »

Christine Fréchette admet toutefois que le dossier sera « réellement réglé » par une renégociation de l’entente entre le Canada et les États-Unis sur les tiers pays sûrs. Le chemin Roxham, situé au sud de Montréal, n’est pas soumis à l’accord, car il s’agit d’une voie de passage irrégulier. Un total de 39 171 demandeurs d’asile y ont été interceptés l’an dernier.

En juillet dernier, Jean Boulet, qui était alors le ministre québécois de l’Immigration, avait salué la décision du gouvernement fédéral de rediriger en Ontario une centaine de demandeurs d’asile entrés de façon irrégulière au Québec.

Le bureau du ministre fédéral de l’Immigration, des Réfugiés et de la Citoyenneté, Sean Fraser, dit s’adapter depuis l’été dernier en fonction de la capacité du Québec et de ses besoins. « On reconnaît qu’au Québec, c’est un gros fardeau », a dit au Devoir Émilie Simard, porte-parole du ministre.

Legault et l’ambassadeur américain

Plus tôt mardi, le premier ministre québécois, François Legault, a dit qu’il continuerait à faire pression sur son homologue canadien, Justin Trudeau, afin qu’il « accélère » les négociations avec les États-Unis concernant l’accord sur les tiers pays sûrs.

Il a d’ailleurs profité de sa rencontre le jour même avec l’ambassadeur américain au Canada, David L. Cohen, pour déplorer le fait que le chemin Roxham n’est pas inclus dans l’entente.

Sur Twitter, M. Cohen s’est réjoui d’avoir pu discuter des « objectifs des États-Unis et du Canada en matière d’énergie propre, de commerce et de nos frontières communes ».

Source: La ministre Fréchette se réjouit du transfert de demandeurs d’asile en Ontario

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,

Khan: Expanding immigration will not erase racism in Canadian society

2023/02/16 Leave a comment

This is a somewhat silly header. After all, would cutting immigration erase racism?

More substantially, Khan’s commentary lacks historical perspectives, as there has been progress since the elimination of racial preferences in the 1960s. International comparisons with other OECD members provide a more balanced assessment, where Canada is one of the stronger countries in its integration outcomes. Public opinion research, particularly that of immigrant and minority populations, tends to portray that most are reasonably satisfied with their life in Canada, with relative few differences with the non-minority groups.

Of course, Canada far from perfect but to only focus on the shortcomings without acknowledging progress or comparing Canada with other countries reads more like a rant than measured analysis. To use an Australian term, this narrative is that of a “black armband” where everything is negative.

Of for a Canadian term, this is a woke version of Polievre’s “everything is broken.”

That being said, immigration should not just be a numbers game “the more the merrier” as I have and continue to argue:

In its latest immigration plan, the federal government says it hopes to welcome almost 1.5 million new permanent residents between 2023 and 2025, up from approximately one million in the immigration targets for 2020-22. The economic benefits of increased immigration aside, there remains a major elephant in the room that Canada is still not ready to address – racism and discrimination against “visible minorities” – code for non-white immigrants.

While recent surveys claim that public opinion in Canada is more in favour of immigration than ever, recent practices suggest otherwise. Examples include heightened surveillance of select immigrant populations, intense scrutiny of some of their financial resources and discrimination against migrant workers. There have also been incidences of hate crimes against members of immigrant groups. The government must address the issue of racism in immigration policy with a series of broad measures. Otherwise, if left unaddressed, these incidences have the potential to work against Canada’s intentions to continually increase immigration levels and grow its economy.

This is the key failing of the government’s plans on immigration, past and present. Although the latest plan does discuss anti-racism measures much more than previous versions, it is strictly in the context of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada’s own organizational strategy. Unfortunately, it does not address the real issue – that racism is not just organizational, it is endemic in Canadian society.

A national immigration plan cannot succeed in the long term if it does not acknowledge or address racism and discrimination in society. This is important because eight out of the top 10 source countries for immigrants to Canada, accounting for almost 70 per cent of annual intake, are non-white countries from the Global South.

This disconnect is becoming blatantly obvious in many ways. For instance, it is impossible to view the increase in immigration numbers without looking at the impact of regressive laws and policies such as Bill 96 in Quebec on new immigrants.

Racism affects not only our social connections with immigrants, but also our economic dependence on them. Canada’s approach to immigration has been to view migrants as a source of labour. That approach is bound to create tensions in the long term.

Immigrants may help with Canada’s labour shortages and aging demographics. But if the environment toward them is socially hostile, the chances of them gaining economic ground decrease substantially. In that case, Canada will no longer be a desired destination for people wanting to migrate. Or they will leave because the living conditions are toxic.

This hostility is on display in how Canada refers to immigrants in an official capacity. Immigrants are numerical “targets” to achieve in a given timeframe. International students are deemed the “ideal immigrants,” a common racist stereotype. Canada should not attract students based on how much labour or revenue they can provide in the long term – or because many students themselves use this as an opportunity to gain Canadian permanent residency – but rather how education can enrich their futures. Immigration levels are about “breaking records,” as numbers are increased based on labour shortages rather than the capacity to absorb new people from different parts of the world.

Phrases used by the government to justify rising numbers, such as “filling labour shortages, creating jobs, and driving economic growth,” perpetuate stereotypes of immigrants. The term “visible minority,” or the politically correct “racialized newcomers,” indicates a continued “othering” of immigrants. Semantics hide the racist notion that immigrants are only as useful as their revenue-generating skills. Everything else is their own problem.

This approach to reducing immigrants to labels and economic tools completely ignores the existence and reality of racism as a social and economic hurdle for immigrants. Canada sees new immigrants as a way to fill labour shortages, but the statistics tell a different story. New immigrants are far behind their Canadian-born counterparts in finding employment. Yet, the push to increase immigration levels to record highs continues without anyone talking to employers about immigrants’ inability to find work. This may only increase unemployment rates amongst racialized groups.

Racism also applies to our policies toward refugees and asylum seekers. Recent cases have shown how authorities continue to treat refugees from Afghanistan differently compared with those from Ukraine. If Canada is choosing to discriminate among seriously at-risk populations such as refugees fleeing war and death based on – it can be assumed – their race or religion, this itself proves the point that racism is more than just an organizational issue. It is endemic in our society.

For instance, Canada’s recent appointment of a representative to combat the rise in Islamophobia in this country reflects the federal government’s concern that violence and racism toward racialized communities is becoming normalized. But it ignores longstanding racism against the original inhabitants of this country.

Indigenous communities continue to be oppressed, and the arrival of immigrants, many of them unaware of Canada’s dark colonial past, only adds to Indigenous communities’ distrust of settlers.

Among racialized communities in Canada, Black and Asian Canadians also continue to experience some of the highest levels of discrimination.

If Canada truly wants its millions of new immigrants to be able to contribute to the country, it must address racism and discrimination as broad societal issues. We need a holistic policy approach, not one that is piecemeal.

To do this, the thinking around immigration needs to evolve and specifically address the following in policy and practice:

First, there is a need to change the language around immigration to Canada. This starts with changing how Ottawa frames immigration and immigrants as a labour supply issue. Immigration is a human right and not a numbers game. It must work for both the migrant and the host country.

Second, immigration is never purely economic. Regular immigrants also attempt to escape conflict, discrimination and political instability in their home countries. This is important to remember when assessing admissibility and the potential of each immigrant beyond just their economic capabilities.

Third, anti-racism efforts must be incorporated into the philosophy of services provided to immigrants including settlement services, employment, housing, education and health. This will require different federal, provincial and territorial departments to work in tandem with each other, not in silos.

Last, any immigration plan must also come with a strategy that socially protects the rising number of immigrants rather than just economically compensates them. Addressing racism and race relations must be important elements when designing immigration policy in a country that calls itself multicultural.

Immigration cannot just be about achieving targets and numbers. It is not an assembly line opportunity. Ultimately, we are dealing with individuals and families who also have hopes and expectations of Canada. Undermining these expectations through racial discrimination is the last thing anyone seeking to start a new life in a new country needs.

Source: Expanding immigration will not erase racism in Canadian society

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with

Canada needs to boost home building by 50 per cent to keep up with immigration, report says

2023/02/15 Leave a comment

Yet another study highlighting some of the implications and impacts of Canada’s high level of immigration:

Canada needs to ramp up home building by 50 per cent just to keep pace with immigration, according to a new report.

The country is on track to break ground on about 210,000 housing units this year, according to Desjardins Securities. But the Desjardins report says about 100,000 additional housing starts are needed this year and next, as Canada gets ready to admit a record number of immigrants.

Many economists and real estate industry experts believe there is a severe shortage of housing in the country – and it will only get worse. Canada has increased immigration levels to make up for the shortfall during the first year of the pandemic and to help fill jobs in construction, health care and other areas.

With the federal government planning to admit 1.45 million new permanent residents over the next three years, the report says, housing starts must become a priority, in part because of the time it takes to complete a housing unit.

“We have to dig out of a hole and move higher ultimately,” said Randall Bartlett, Desjardins’ senior director of Canadian economics.

A large share of new immigrants end up in Ontario and B.C., two provinces where home prices have historically risen faster than in the rest of the country.

Although the typical home price across Canada dropped 13 per cent from the peak last February by December, the average price in the most popular destinations – Toronto and Vancouver – still tops $1-million.

“If these newcomers to Canada continue the recent trend of moving to Ontario and British Columbia, affordability there and nationally will erode further,” says the report, authored by Mr. Bartlett and Marc Desormeaux, the bank’s principal economist.

At the same time, rental rates have been quickly increasing as many would-be homebuyers have had to continue renting owing to higher mortgage rates.

Desjardins’s call for more home construction echoes statements from the national housing agency, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., which has repeatedly said the country needs to increase its supply of homes.

Source: Canada needs to boost home building by 50 per cent to keep up with immigration, report says

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Stanford: Humans aren’t widgets, and Canadian workers are not in ‘short supply’

2023/02/14 Leave a comment

Needed reminder and useful counterpart to the self-serving nature of many of those complaining about labour shortages:

Busy people often lament, “I wish there were more hours in the day!” They struggle to get all their tasks completed. An extra hour or two each day would surely ease the pressure.

While this frustration is understandable, no-one seriously believes our days are too short — nor that time pressures would be solved by stretching the day to 25 hours. Almost certainly, our to-do lists would just get longer, and we’d quickly face the same time crunch again.

This same flawed logic infects the chorus of complaints these days about a so-called ‘labour shortage.’ Employers moan they can’t find enough workers. They preferred it when unemployed workers abounded, and simple job ads could elicit dozens of applications.

Tiff Macklem, Governor of the Bank of Canada, also cites employers’ complaints as justification for painful interest rate hikes. He aims to ‘solve’ the labour shortage by deliberately raising unemployment.

The federal government, too, is catering to employers by increasing immigration targets to all-time highs. Properly planned and supported immigration is good for the economy and for society. But importing masses of workers just to make life easier for employers is the wrong way to do it (especially using exploitative temporary migrant programs).

At any rate, just increasing the number of people in the country doesn’t magically fix the labour market. Yes, there are more people to work, but now there is more work to do (since the population requiring housing and subsistence also grows). It’s like lengthening the day to 25 hours, while adding more tasks to your list.

Labour shortage narratives are also heard loudly in the social policy arena. For example, employers want Employment Insurance benefits cut, to compel unemployed workers to accept lower-paying jobs.https://d-14355908711088163416.ampproject.net/2301261900000/frame.html

Others want to postpone the retirement age, to pressure Canadians to work longer. This, too, is a false solution. Yes, Canada’s population is aging. But it’s wrong to assume this will translate into a crisis in labour supply. Strong labour force participation (including many over 65 who voluntarily keep working) is offsetting demographic trends, and keeping the labour force growing.https://amp.thestar.com/amp-ymbii.html?pos=1&path=/business/opinion/2023/02/11/humans-arent-widgets-and-canadian-workers-are-not-in-short-supply.html&sitename=thestar#amp=1

All these policies would make it harder for Canadians to find and keep good work — which should be our central economic goal. Pushing more workers into the labour market, while reducing job opportunities, will certainly make like easier for HR managers. But it will undermine life chances for most Canadians.

Statistics prove that Canada is not anywhere near ‘running out’ of workers. There are more than a million officially unemployed. Another million or more are underemployed, working short hours or in menial jobs that don’t fully utilize their abilities. And at least a million more potential workers (including hundreds of thousands of female parents, and hundreds of thousands of nonemployed who aren’t counted as officially ‘unemployed’) sit on the sidelines of the labour force.

Fully employing these Canadians would expand national output by 15 per cent. It would reduce poverty and exclusion. And it would allow us to undertake vital priorities: like strengthening health care, expanding green energy, and building affordable housing. Instead, the economy is being deliberately held back to maintain an ample buffer of idle workers, ready anytime employers need them.

To be sure, employing every available worker (and achieving genuine full employment) would require careful planning and supports. We’d need stronger vocational training pipelines to train and retrain workers, and connect them with relevant jobs. We’d need better child care, flexible hours, and public transit to support healthier work-life balance. And we’d need different ways of setting wages: through industry-wide negotiations that lift real wages steadily and sustainably (alongside productivity), rather than using unemployment as a weapon to keep wages in line.

Ultimately, the terminology of ‘labour shortage’ propagates an employer-centric vision. It portrays the economy as a machine — and human beings as just another input to that machine (like energy, raw materials, or widgets).

In fact, the economy is there to serve us, not the other way around. The economy is the place where we use our energy and skills to produce the goods and services we need for a good life. If workers are fully occupied, that means we’re doing a good job supporting ourselves.

We shouldn’t complain about that, or try to prevent it. We should celebrate it.

Source: Humans aren’t widgets, and Canadian workers are not in ‘short supply’

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

Asylum seekers using well-organized system for crossing irregularly into Canada

2023/02/14 Leave a comment

Have to admire the entrepreneurial spirit of those helping irregular arrivals:

Moments after a Greyhound bus from New York City pulls into a gas station bus stop in Plattsburgh, N.Y., Friday at 5:25 a.m., several minivan taxis swarm the vehicle.

About a dozen passengers descend from the bus — mostly single men, but also several couples and a family with three young daughters. They are greeted by four pushy taxi drivers.

The drivers begin to shout: “Frontera!” — the Spanish word for border — “Roxham Road! 60 dollars! Come! Come!”

As the passengers unload luggage from under the bus, the taxi drivers are relentless, beckoning them into their cars for the 30-minute drive to Roxham Road, the wooded route into Canada that has become an unofficial border crossing for tens of thousands of asylum seekers over the past several years.

Most of the bus passengers approached by The Canadian Press refused to talk; some shielded their faces. Many weren’t dressed for winter: they wore T-shirts, thin jackets, sneakers. One couple, however, were prepared, wearing warm winter jackets, tuques, gloves and boots.

One single man hopped into a cab. Asked where he was from, he said, “Haiti.”

Anxiously waiting for the taxi to depart, the man said his bus ticket was “purchased by a friend.”

Last week, reports said officials from New York City were providing free bus tickets to migrants heading north to claim asylum in Canada. New York City Mayor Eric Adams told Fox 5 his administration helps in the “re-ticketing process” for people who arrive in the city but want to go elsewhere.

In December, a total of 4,689 migrants entered the country through Quebec’s Roxham Road — more than all would-be refugees who arrived in Canada in 2021. Crossing the irregular border allows them to take advantage of a loophole in a deal between the United States and Canada.

The Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement requires that asylum seekers make a refugee claim in the first “safe” country they reach. In practice, it means that border officials in Canada turn back would-be asylum seekers who show up at official checkpoints from the U.S. But they are not required to turn back asylum seekers who cross irregularly at places such as Roxham Road.

On average, about 100 migrants arrive daily at the Greyhound bus stop on their way to Roxham Road, according to Chad Provost, who runs his own shuttle service for migrants. On his business card is written “Roxham Road Border,” his WhatsApp number, and “24 hour service to and from the Canadian border. Asylum seekers and refugee safe transportation.”

Provost, standing at the bus station outside his minivan with three passengers inside, said he sometimes provides asylum seekers with free rides.

“A lot of them come from mess-up places. A lot of them just want a better life,” Provost said.

“There are some people I have driven for free. A lot of them don’t have any money. Some of these other drivers will just leave them here to freeze …. The gas station is closed at night.”

He says he doesn’t need to wrestle with the other taxi drivers to fill up his van — he gets his customers through word of mouth.

“My customers call me in advance to set up pickups from the bus stop to Roxham Road.”

For months, Quebec has been calling for the federal government — which controls Canada’s borders — to stop the flow or migrants, or at least ensure they are more equally distributed across the country after they arrive. The vast majority of people who enter irregularly into Canada cross into Quebec, putting a strain on the province’s social services.

The opposition Parti Québécois, meanwhile, has called for the provincial police to shut down Roxham Road entirely — but the party hasn’t said what it thinks should be done if asylum seekers choose another of the many forested routes into the country.

The province recently announced $3.5 million in aid for community organizations that have been struggling to provide food, clothing and housing for rising numbers of asylum seekers.

On Thursday evening, along the muddy trail leading up the border, a sign says “road closed.” A second sign a few metres away says, “Stop” in French. To the left, blue barrels act as pillars at the front of a makeshift entryway where asylum seekers line up and are met by RCMP agents.

One of those migrants is David Jesus Binto, 17, who arrived to Roxham Road in a taxi with another young man. Jesus Binto, wearing sneakers, jeans and an old-looking windbreaker over a T-shirt, says he and his friend are from Venezuela.

“We heard about (Roxham Road) through word of mouth. We left Venezuela for economic reasons,” he said in Spanish.

When asked if he had acquired the bus tickets for free, he replied that they had purchased the tickets themselves.

RCMP agents tell the migrants that if they cross the blue bins into Canada, they will be placed under arrest.

Jesus Binto, his friend and several others walk in single file toward the agents and into Canada.

Source: Asylum seekers using well-organized system for crossing irregularly into Canada

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

Trudeau pushing softer approach to temporary visas, less focus on risk of overstaying

2023/02/13 Leave a comment

Would be nice if we actually had published data on the number of visa overstays to inform policy and monitor extent of issue (USA reports on overstays). Some progress in recognizing impact of immigration on housing…:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he’s pushing Canada’s immigration system to soften its approach to processing visa applications and put less focus on the risk of visitors overstaying their short-term visas.

“We’re also trying to do a better job around temporary visas,” Trudeau said Friday.

“The system — I’ll be honest — is still based around, ‘Prove to me that you won’t stay if you come,’ right?” he said, arguing that it is easier for applicants to “convince” immigration officials to grant them visas if they have “a good job and a home and a house and a good status back home.”

On the other hand, people who are strongly motivated to be in Canada for family reasons could be seen by officials as more likely to overstay, he suggested: “If your mom talks about how much she loves you and just wants to be there (in Canada), and you’re there all alone, that’s scary.”

Trudeau made the remarks Friday during an hour-long meeting with about 25 Algonquin College nursing students in Ottawa. Many of them told him they are international students, and a handful mentioned visa issues.

During a question-and-answer session, one international student recounted being hospitalized for seven months and feeling isolated. She told the prime minister her mother had tried twice to get a visa to come visit her, but both applications were rejected.

Trudeau responded that it is vital for Canadians to have faith in the integrity of their immigration system. But he also suggested that he had asked Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to take a less defensive posture when issuing visas.

“We have to stop saying ‘Well, it would be a bad people, a bad thing, if these people were to choose to stay,'” Trudeau said. “Our immigration minister, Sean Fraser, is working very, very hard on trying to shift the way we look at immigration and make sure that we’re bringing people in.”

The prime minister told the student that the Immigration Department made the wrong call in deciding not to admit her mother.

“It would seem unfair to Canadians and to all sorts of people if there was a back door. These are all the things we’re trying to balance,” Trudeau said. “But I absolutely hear you. Your mom should have been able to come and see you.”

Trudeau added that the federal immigration system is challenged by Canada’s need to fill labour gaps and by numerous crises abroad that are causing people to flee their homes.

Trudeau also said Ottawa has to do a better job helping immigrants thrive. Otherwise, he said, Canadians’ warm feelings toward immigration could chill.

“An anti-immigration party would have a hard time succeeding in Canada, because so many Canadians understand how important that is,” Trudeau said. “We need to protect the fact that Canadians are pro-immigration.”

For example, he said there must be enough housing stock for newcomer families to establish themselves without breeding resentment among the Canadian-born population. But he suggested immigration could also help solve that problem.

“There’s a labour shortage in the construction industry and building houses. So as we bring in more people who can build houses, we will solve some of the housing shortage,” said Trudeau.

“There are solutions in this. Part of it is shifting the attitudes. Part of it is also just improving our ability to process (applications) using proper digital means and computer means.”

Fraser’s office confirmed that work is underway to look at how Ottawa issues visas for relatives of people already in Canada.

“Reuniting families is a pillar of Canada’s immigration system,” the minister’s spokeswoman, Bahoz Dara Aziz, said in a statement. “We continue to be guided by principles of fairness and compassion, and work to explore all avenues possible in bringing people together with their loved ones.”

Canada’s visa denials and processing delays have made global headlines in the past year, with citizens of developing countries finding themselves unable to attend global conferences hosted in Canadian cities.

This week, the International Studies Association went public with its struggles to get visas for hundreds of people set to attend a Montreal conference next month.

Despite presenting plane tickets, income data and evidence of funding they received to attend the conference, many attendees, including panelists, have been denied on the grounds that they can’t demonstrate a likelihood of returning home when the event is over.

The issues follow an uproar last year over the denial of visas for multiple African delegates to the International AIDS Conference, also held in Montreal, which had some accusing Canada of racism.

Data updated Tuesday show that visa applications take an average of 217 days to process for people based in Britain. It’s 212 days for people in France.

While citizens of those countries don’t need visitor visas to come to Canada, academics from many developing countries who are based in Paris or London do need a visa to attend a conference Canada.

The Immigration Department did not respond to the concerns until after The Canadian Press published an article Wednesday.

“IRCC works collaboratively with organizers of international events taking place in Canada to help co-ordinate processing of temporary resident visa applications for delegates or participants to Canada,” spokesman Jeffrey MacDonald said in an email.

“We are committed to the fair and non-discriminatory application of immigration procedures. We take this responsibility seriously, and officers are trained to assess applications equally against the same criteria.”

The department said the complexity and accuracy of information in a visa application can influence how quickly IRCC processes it, in addition to the staffing and resources of offices that handle the requests.

But the department also noted that the processing times it posts online are often not “reflective of reality.”

That’s because the estimate is based on how long it took officials to process 80 per cent of applications in the previous six to eight weeks. Those include long-backlogged cases.

“Processing times can be skewed by outliers, in particular applications from our older inventory that were previously on hold for a long period of time and are now being processed,” MacDonald wrote.

“Once this backlog of applications is cleared, we will start to see processing times more reflective of reality.”

Source: Trudeau pushing softer approach to temporary visas, less focus on risk of overstaying

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U.S. border agents give rides to Quebec-bound migrants as side hustle, sources tell Radio-Canada

2023/02/13 Leave a comment

Hard not to see how this story, and the higher numbers, will not encourage the government to act (not just pretend to act?):

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is investigating reports that some of its border patrol agents are driving Quebec-bound asylum seekers to the irregular border crossing on Roxham Road in exchange for money, picking up groups of people in nearby Plattsburgh, N.Y., while off duty.

Sources have told Radio-Canada the practice “has been known for a few months,” adding that several agents are involved, but the exact number is unknown.

The CBP’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) said Friday it “is in receipt of these allegations and is conducting an investigation” but “the commencement of an OPR investigation is not indicative of wrongdoing or the substantiation of alleged misconduct.”

This situation has been reported to Canadian authorities, according to Radio-Canada sources.

Many people looking to cross into Canada use a regular bus line to get to Plattsburgh,which is about 30 minutes away from Roxham Road.

From there, they walk through a wooded passage, enter Canada and seek asylum.

CBSA says it’s ‘aware of situation

When first contacted by Radio-Canada, the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) confirmed twice in writing that it was aware of the transportation situation involving U.S. border patrol agents and migrants.

“We are aware of the information you are reporting,” said spokesperson Jacqueline Roby. She added that the CBSA “is in contact with the United States regarding irregular migration issues.”

In another written exchange, the CBSA repeated the same message while instructing Radio-Canada to contact its American counterparts, the CBP.

Source: U.S. border agents give rides to Quebec-bound migrants as side hustle, sources tell Radio-Canada

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Dutrisac: Visas et immigration: y a-t-il un ministre responsable?

2023/02/11 Leave a comment

Bonne question? Malheureusement, trop d’exemples:

À la fin août de 2022, le ministre fédéral de l’Immigration, Sean Fraser, donnait l’assurance que les inacceptables délais pour la délivrance d’un visa de visiteur au Canada seraient considérablement réduits à compter d’octobre de la même année.

Le ministre faisait valoir que son ministère, Immigration, Réfugiés et Citoyenneté Canada (IRCC), embaucherait 1250 nouveaux fonctionnaires afin de régler « d’ici la fin de l’année » les importants arriérés dans la production de visas et de documents relatifs à des demandes d’immigration.

Or, comme l’a rapporté Le Devoir la semaine dernière, les délais pour obtenir un visa n’ont pas diminué ; bien au contraire, ils ont explosé. Entre l’engagement du ministre Fraser et janvier 2023, les délais, tels qu’ils ont été rendus publics par IRCC, se sont allongés pour 179 des 195 pays dont les citoyens doivent se munir d’un visa pour entrer au Canada. Et l’attente est franchement surréaliste. Quelques exemples : un an et demi pour la Tanzanie, au lieu de 64 jours l’été dernier, quelque 500 jours pour le Honduras ou le Nicaragua, alors que l’attente oscillait autour de 80 jours. Rappelons que le délai normal pour la délivrance d’un visa de visiteur par IRCC est de 14 jours.

Les explications du ministère ne sont pas des plus limpides : les fonctionnaires traitent des arriérés qui existent depuis longtemps. Une part de ces phénoménaux arriérés a été constituée pendant la pandémie. Le délai par pays, tel qu’il est affiché sur le site du ministère, dépend du temps qu’il a fallu pour traiter 80 % des demandes dans un intervalle de deux à quatre mois. IRCC a prévenu Le Devoir que ses chiffres « peuvent être faussés par des valeurs aberrantes ». Pas étonnant que des avocats qui assistent des étrangers dans leur démarche se plaignent du manque de fiabilité du tableau colligé par le ministère. Quelles que soient les justifications d’Ottawa, ces délais, tout en reposant sur des données douteuses, sont inadmissibles.

Selon le cabinet du ministre, bien que les chiffres se détériorent, les choses s’améliorent ; la capacité de traitement d’IRCC est passée de 180 000 demandes de visas par mois avant la pandémie à 260 000 en novembre dernier.

Sean Fraser est à la tête d’un ministère dysfonctionnel. À l’heure actuelle, il y a plus de 2 millions de demandes de tout ordre en attente au ministère, que ce soit pour des permis de travail, l’octroi de la résidence permanente, des décisions relatives aux demandeurs d’asile et à leur statut de réfugié, les demandes de visas, etc.

Selon une note de service interne d’IRCC, datée du début de décembre, dont le Globe and Mail a obtenu copie, le ministère est prêt à prendre des mesures draconiennes pour se sortir de ce magma kafkaïen où croupissent plus de 700 000 demandes de visas. Selon une des options envisagées, des exigences d’admissibilité tomberaient : le demandeur n’aurait plus à convaincre un agent d’immigration qu’il retournera dans son pays après son séjour (occuper un emploi, posséder une propriété ou des actifs financiers et avoir de la famille dans son pays d’origine) ni à en fournir des preuves. Seule la vérification relative à la sécurité et à l’absence de casier judiciaire demeurerait. Pour se sortir la tête de l’eau, le ministère est prêt à renoncer à assumer ses responsabilités. C’est tout un aveu d’incurie.

Cette négligence n’est pas sans conséquences. On peut penser aux pertes économiques que subit l’industrie touristique. Mais là n’est pas le plus important. Des milliers d’immigrants ne peuvent pas recevoir la visite de leurs proches restés dans leur pays d’origine. Ou s’ils y arrivent, c’est après des mois et des mois de retard et d’incertitude. Pour un pays qui se veut un modèle d’accueil pour ses immigrants, ce laxisme administratif envoie un mauvais message et nuit à sa réputation sur la scène internationale.

Les échanges culturels sont perturbés, tout comme les rencontres internationales qui se déroulent au Québec. Les conférences et colloques universitaires, qui comptent sur la présence de sommités en provenance de l’étranger, en pâtissent. Comme l’a rapporté Le Devoir, une conférence, organisée par l’Université de Montréal et, de surcroît, subventionnée par le gouvernement fédéral, pourrait être reportée parce que des chercheurs invités ne peuvent obtenir leur visa en temps utile. L’organisateur désespère de voir débarquer à Montréal des experts du Sénégal, du Maroc et du Cameroun. Pour un citoyen sénégalais, le temps d’attente est de 462 jours, confirme IRCC. La situation affecte non seulement les activités de recherche, mais aussi le rayonnement international de l’Université de Montréal, qui se veut l’université francophone la plus influente au monde.

Il existe un principe nommé responsabilité ministérielle : un ministre doit répondre de ses actions (ou de son inaction), mais aussi de celles de ses fonctionnaires. C’est un principe qu’on aurait avantage à se rappeler à Ottawa.

Source: Visas et immigration: y a-t-il un ministre responsable?

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Mahboubi, Skuterud – The Unintended Consequences of Category-Based Immigrant Selection

2023/02/10 Leave a comment

Valid critique:

From: Parisa Mahboubi and Mikal Skuterud

To: Sean Fraser, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada

Date:  February 6, 2023

Re: The Unintended Consequences of Category-Based Immigrant Selection

Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) recently held consultations on plans aimed at giving the department more flexibility in how it prioritizes economic-class applicants for permanent residency.

The new rules will, in effect, free the immigration minister to bypass the existing system for selecting candidates, known as the Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS), to target applicants with particular “attributes” such as work experience in a particular occupation.

This may alleviate some labour shortages, but we see significant unintended consequences.

Leveraging immigration to boost average living standards in the population requires selecting immigrants whose Canadian earnings exceed average earnings in the pre-existing population, thereby pulling up average incomes and per capita GDP.

The CRS aims to achieve this by ranking and cream-skimming economic class candidates who have the highest expected Canadian earnings. This is estimated using data on the earnings of previous cohorts of immigrants who arrived with similar human capital characteristics. Of particular importance in the CRS calculation are education, age, language abilities, and Canadian work experience.    

Recent analysis using Statistics Canada survey and census data, as well as our own examination of immigrants’ income tax records (see Figure below,) provides encouraging evidence that the CRS has contributed to rising earnings for newcomers since its launch in January 2015.  

By prioritizing applicants’ occupations, IRCC hopes it can be more responsive to employer needs, as well as address Canada’s chronic labour shortages.

But accurately identifying labour market requirements and being sufficiently responsive is difficult, if not impossible. Tight labour markets can quickly become slack. By the time targeted immigrants arrive, their skills may no longer align with employer needs, thereby exacerbating long-standing mismatch issues between immigrant skills and job openings. For this reason, the CRS does not use specific occupational information in its calculation.

The raison d’être of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, which allows Canadian businesses to employ guest workers on limited-term contracts, is to meet temporary labour-market shortages. The objective of our permanent immigration system, on the other hand, should be to drive new employment growth in high-productivity sectors that are intensive in their use of skills and new technologies.

Unfortunately, we increasingly have a system where our temporary and permanent immigration systems are focused on the same objective – satisfying employers’ current labour needs. The risk is that the overall immigration system fails to do anything well.

An important advantage of the CRS is its transparency. Candidates can determine their own scores using a simple online tool and IRCC reports cutoff scores in their bi-weekly draws allowing unsuccessful candidates to identify what’s needed to be selected. The category-based selection system that IRCC is proposing compromises this transparency by leaving screening criteria to the whims of the minister of the day. This risks increasing applicant confusion and frustration and increases the need for immigration consultants and lawyers to help applicants navigate the system. At worst, it drives applicants with the best outside options to other countries.

Allowing the ministers to determine which candidate attributes are prioritized also risks politicizing the process. Research shows that while temporary worker inflows in Canada are responsive to the intensity of corporate lobbying, the same has not been true for permanent immigration. One explanation is that ‘point systems’ like the CRS remove immigrant selection decision making from the political realm in the same way that the Bank of Canada’s inflation mandate keeps its interest rate decisions from being politicized. Look for that to change.  

In our view, prioritizing candidates’ occupational work experience in immigrant selection makes most sense in sectors where the competitive market mechanism to address labour shortages does not exist, such where wages are set by collective agreements or government regulation.

In these settings, labour shortages are less likely to induce the wage adjustments necessary to encourage job switching and training and education investments within the existing population. Chronic shortages of nurses and other healthcare workers are an important example.

Nonetheless, we question if it makes sense to prioritize applicants for permanent residency whose foreign work experience is in an occupation where credential recognition in Canada is problematic. It doesn’t really matter if credential recognition problems reflect genuine skill and competence issues, or the self-interested behaviour of professional associations. Either way, we are prioritizing applicants who will contribute relatively little to Canadian economic growth, thereby compromising the key objective of our economic immigration system.

In our view, IRCC’s planned reform of how it selects economic-class immigrants is just one step in a series of pandemic-era policies compromising the prioritization of skilled immigrants. The CRS has come to be seen by IRCC as a constraint rather than an effective quality-control mechanism. In prioritizing employers’ short-term labour needs, IRCC is being forced to lower the average CRS score of selected immigrants and, in turn, average expected earnings. The hard reality is that Canada’s newcomers continue to experience labour market challenges that are longstanding and exceptional. The risk is that the last decade’s significant gains will be undone.

Parisa Mahboubi is a senior policy analyst at the C.D. Howe Institute and Mikal Skuterud is professor of economics at the University of Waterloo. 

Source: Mahboubi, Skuterud – The Unintended Consequences of Category-Based Immigrant Selection

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