U.S. border app has host of issues, including recognizing Black skin tones, migrants say

2023/03/14 Leave a comment

USA also having problems with apps and automation:

When the U.S. government rolled out the CBP One app in January, it was touted as a way to stem the flow of migrants at the country’s southern border while still giving them the opportunity to make refugee claims.

Instead of showing up at a border crossing – or crossing illegally and waiting to be arrested – asylum seekers file their information through the app and receive an appointment with Customs and Border Protection.

But Haitian migrants at the border and their advocates are reporting a host of problems with the app. Many say it is full of glitches and frequently crashes, denying them the ability to submit their information. Others say it has tried to split up families, offering appointments to cross the border to parents but not their children or vice-versa.

It also frequently rejects the photographs it requires asylum seekers to submit: CBP One appears to have particular trouble recognizing Black skin tones, they say, making it harder for Haitians to use.

“It’s a long wait to get an appointment, and that’s if you’re lucky,” said Ricot Picot, 42, as he stood in the courtyard of a migrant shelter in Reynosa, Mexico, watching his seven-year-old daughter and one-year-old son play nearby.

Mr. Picot said he was assigned a time slot last month to make his claim. When he got to the appointment, he learned that only he would be allowed across, while his wife and children would have to wait. So he turned back, opting to wait until all four of them could get an appointment together.

Felicia Rangel-Samponaro, who runs the Sidewalk School, a group that provides classes for migrant children waiting at the Mexican border, recounted many similar situations. In some cases, children and their parents had opted to take the separate appointments, she said. Once in the U.S., it could be a lengthy process for parents to find their children in the system and reunite with them.

She said it was common for CBP One to fail to recognize photos of Black asylum seekers, meaning many could not even complete the application. In addition, the app was originally available only in English and Spanish before a recent update translated it into Haitian Creole.

“If you’re a Black asylum seeker, CBP One was not meant for you. There are constantly errors,” said Ms. Rangel-Samponaro. “If you’re Haitian, you’ve probably been out here since October. If you’re Latino, you’ve been here since December. If you’re white, you’ve been waiting two weeks.”

A lack of reliable internet and low-quality phones in the encampments where many migrants live are also problems. Some U.S. lawyers, meanwhile, are trying to charge up to US$7,000 for help using the app, she said. It has all meant that asylum seekers with more resources have a leg up in filing claims.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not reply to The Globe and Mail’s questions about the problems with its app.

“You have to choose whether to eat today or spend the day doing the application,” said Alexis Wilson, 38, laying out the stark calculus facing migrants relying on pay-as-you-go data plans to access CBP One. He was standing amid several dozen tents pitched on a concrete pad at the edge of the city centre.

Marileidi Bazil, 16, said her family was turned back by U.S. border guards on the bridge from Reynosa to Hidalgo, Tex. Born in the Dominican Republic to Haitian parents, her family went first to Brazil when she was 11 before leaving there last year after work opportunities dried up.

“I’ll just keep trying with that stupid app. It’s worse every time I use it,” Ms. Bazil said as she sat in 34-degree sunshine, the Weeknd’s Blinding Lights playing on her phone. “But I’ll be patient.”

David Xavier, 53, has the added problem of suffering from cataracts. All of his possessions were stolen in Colombia and he’s had run-ins with organized crime in Mexico. “The app doesn’t work. I can’t upload photos and I have problems writing because of my eyesight,” he said. “I just want to get out of here.”

Pastor Hector Silva, who runs two migrant shelters, said that when the app started in January, it took about three weeks for migrants to get appointments. Now, waiting times are stretching to three months. The app also assigns appointments at any border crossing, so some migrants who file in Reynosa are told to travel 2,400 kilometres to Tijuana to make their claim.

“They want everyone registered on CBP One, but it’s been very hard for people. It’s not letting them in,” he said.

For Mr. Picot, there isn’t much choice but to keep pressing forward.

By the time he left Haiti, he said, it was impossible to go downtown in Port-au-Prince without risking getting robbed or shot. Children couldn’t attend school. Kidnappings for ransom were becoming so pervasive that parishioners were getting snatched out of church pews during Sunday services.

Mr. Picot, a teacher by profession, initially tried to settle in Brazil, where he took a job in a slaughterhouse. His income wasn’t steady enough to support his family, so they left last September.

The hardest part of the journey came while trying to ford a raging river in the Darien jungle between Columbia and Panama, he recounted. The water was so swift that other migrants were swept to their deaths. First, Mr. Picot swam across alone to gauge the difficulty. Then he came back and, one by one, guided across his wife and two children.

Wherever they go from here, he insists, no one is getting left behind.

“I follow the rules,” he said. “I pray for the chance that I can cross and bring my family.”

Source: U.S. border app has host of issues, including recognizing Black skin tones, migrants say

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On important economic metrics, Canada is getting Ds and Fs – we can do better

2023/03/13 Leave a comment

The Coalition is interesting to watch as it focusses more on productivity and GDP per capita while the Century Initiative, while noting these issues, is less focused on this long standing challenge.

But the scorecards of present economic indicators with an overall negative view:

Open a news site these days and you’ll feel adrift in a sea of worries: cost of living, health care, climate change. Add geopolitical risk to that list and you might not sleep at night. I’m worried, too.

What is reassuring, though, is that there’s a growing community of Canadians who are pulling together. I sit on the advisory council of the Coalition for a Better Future, which is building a community from many walks of life across Canada. It includes youth, business leaders, Indigenous groups, social policy advocates, environmental groups and some plain-old concerned citizens.

One of the projects the coalition has done is develop a scorecard to track how Canada stacks up on a set of long-term objectives that are ultimately tied to our quality of life. The scorecard reflects what coalition members care about: growing sustainably, living better and winning globally.

So how did we do? Well, I’d say we’ve earned some Ds and even an F or two on some important fronts. GDP per person is still below where we were prepandemic, and its growth rate over the past decade was less than half of what the U.S. achieved. Canada ranked only 15th (among 167 countries) on a reputable prosperity index, down four places in the past decade. Wages, particularly of lower-income workers, have not been keeping up with inflation or productivity growth.

Don’t get me wrong, Canada has a lot going for it. We have a well-educated and talented work force, abundant resources, world-class institutions and some amazing businesses, big and small. And we have a history of pulling together, especially when the going gets tough.

So it’s not surprising that we’ve earned some As and Bs in other areas. The share of Canadians living in poverty has fallen to the lowest level in decades thanks to the support from the federal government during the pandemic. Indigenous people are playing a growing role in the labour market, with their participation rate last year surpassing the non-Indigenous rate. Carbon dioxide emissions are down as a share of GDP.

We’ll need to raise our GPA by building on our country’s strengths given the challenges that Canada, and all other countries, will face.

One core reason for some of the Ds and Fs is slow productivity growth. To see why, you just need to look at our lacklustre business investment in research and development, intellectual property and even machinery and equipment, which has been disappointing for years.

Yes, other countries are struggling with the same problem. Yet Canada is at the back of the class, particularly next to our largest trading partner. If we can’t compete in the United States and in other markets, we’ll be poorer – it’s that simple.

Policies that boost demand did help us in the darkest hours of the pandemic, but they won’t fix this problem. In the current context, they’ll only add to inflation.

The sooner we recognize that we have entered an era of supply-constrained economics, the better. It’s being driven by the aging of the population, climate change, digitalization and the structural trend away from globalization driven by troubling geopolitics. These challenges are only heightened by a sense that our country is ill-prepared to face them.

What we need now are policies that will increase Canada’s capacity to grow sustainably so we have the wherewithal to face these challenges. That means renewed emphasis on capital formation, in all its forms – physical, intellectual property and human. Needed are policies to induce companies to spend on capital, promote the adoption of technology and the commercialization of research, build infrastructure and help train workers. It’s not always about spending more money or reducing taxes. Sometimes governments just need to remove barriers when they’re getting in the way of responsible investment. Sometimes it’s as simple as recognizing professional qualifications when someone arrives from another country or moves to another province.

The discussions about Canada’s challenges can get pretty animated, yet our group, the Coalition for a Better Future, is united in the belief that economic growth that is also sustainable and shared is a necessary first step to a better quality of life.

Canada may not be making the grade today, but it can do better with the right public policies and private sector engagement. The good news for the federal government as it prepares to release its 2023 budget in the coming weeks is that Canadians are paying attention.

Carolyn Wilkins is a senior research scholar at Princeton University’s Griswold Centre for Economic Policy. She was senior deputy governor of the Bank of Canada from May, 2014, to December, 2020.

Source: On important economic metrics, Canada is getting Ds and Fs – we can do better

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US Visa Hurdles Push More Companies to Relocate Foreign Talent

2023/03/13 Leave a comment

Note Canadian angle:

US employers are increasingly relocating employees abroad to hold onto key talent in the face of restrictive quotas on high-skilled foreign workers. 

Ninety-three percent of companies that responded to a survey of workplace immigration trends say they expect this year to turn to offshoring or nearshoring talent—transferring employees overseas or to a nearby country—because of a combination of immigration restrictions and labor demands. 

Canada is the top destination to relocate foreign workers, with 62% of responding companies sending workers there, according to the survey produced by immigration services firm Envoy Global Inc. It was followed by Mexico and the United Kingdom (48%) and Germany (31%). 

In most cases, the move is the result of challenges securing a work visa. More than eight out of 10 employers lost a foreign employee in the past year because they were unable to secure an H-1B or other employment-based visa. 

“There’s a continued frustration with the finite viability and challenge of securing a visa,” said Envoy Global President and CEO Dick Burke. “They’re pursuing the next best alternative, which is overseas.” 

The online registration period for H-1B specialty occupation visas opened last week, a preliminary step before US Citizenship and Immigration Services holds a lottery for the 85,000 visas available for fiscal year 2024. 

Demand for foreign workers with skills in science, technology, mathematics, and engineering has continued to grow across the economy, far outstripping that annual cap. 

At the same time, many companies are becoming more comfortable with hybrid and remote work to keep top talent. 

“The confluence of those factors”—immigration difficulties and the rise of telework—drove the increase in offshoring plans, Burke said.

O Canada

Recent international graduates with STEM degrees from US colleges and universities can work for up to three years on F-1 student visas under a program called Optional Practical Training. The program allows those graduates to remain and work in the US while trying their hands at getting an H-1B.

When an early-career worker has run out of immigration options after multiple attempts at the H-1B visa lottery, relocating them to Canada has become a top fallback option for employers, said Jennifer Behm, an attorney at Berardi Immigration Law.

Such nearshoring was already a “no brainer” for large, multinational corporations, but it’s drawing increasing interest from smaller and midsize firms as well. 

“When we’ve seen new interest, it has been the medium size firms, not the enormous conglomerates or multinationals,” Behm said. “We’ve successfully made it work for companies who only have US operations.” 

Canada is attractive because of its close proximity and similar time zones. It also offers a more worker-friendly immigration system, including immediate work permits for spouses and a quicker pathway to permanent residency, she said.

Relocation Services Industry

There hasn’t been a massive shift toward relocating workers abroad, but companies that do so are finding it easier, said Davis Bae, co-chair of the immigration practice group at Fisher & Phillips LLP. 

“Are people more interested in it now? Only because there are more resources,” he said. 

Smaller companies without operations abroad have been turning to professional employer organizations (PEOs) for human resource and compliance services when they face losing a skilled foreign worker. The PEO serves as the employer of record in a country like Canada so companies don’t have to establish their own offices outside of the US. 

Under this arrangement, paying to relocate a worker to Toronto or Vancouver costs a fraction of what it would cost to replace them with a new employee, said Marc Pavlopoulos, the founder and CEO of PEO Syndesus Canada Inc.

The company employs about 200 workers for US companies in Canada, roughly 90% of whom relocated after losing out on the H-1B lottery. Pavlopoulos works with smaller US-based tech companies that are seeking to grow, while also working toward a Canadian goal of adding 500,000 immigrants per year by 2025. 

“The Canadian Dream is a good one,” he said. “You get to keep your cool job and you’re on your way to getting a Canadian passport.”

Source: US Visa Hurdles Push More Companies to Relocate Foreign Talent

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Un projet pilote pour aider des bureaux de député à régler des dossiers d’Immigration

2023/03/13 Leave a comment

Believe a majority or significant minority of constituent requests for MP help involve immigration and related issues in most ridings:

Des députés du Bloc québécois lancent un projet pilote inédit pour délester leurs bureaux de circonscription, qui croulent sous les dossiers d’immigration. Portée par le député de Lac-Saint-Jean, Alexis Duceppe-Brunelle, la proposition permettra l’embauche à temps plein d’une personne qui s’occupera des cas plus complexes afin de porter secours à sept bureaux bloquistes qui font face à un afflux accru de demandes d’aide.

« Dans un comté comme le mien, 35 à 45 % des dossiers sont des cas d’immigration, mais ils accaparent 60 à 65 % du temps travaillé », explique M. Duceppe-Brunelle. Autant de temps consacré à des cas d’immigration de plus en plus complexes qui n’est pas utilisé pour aider d’autres citoyens aux prises avec des problèmes moins graves ou qui ne relèvent pas de l’immigration, comme l’assurance-emploi.

Le député, qui travaille sur sa proposition depuis l’automne avec la collaboration du ministre Sean Fraser, se félicite d’avoir réussi à faire accepter un assouplissement de certaines règles de la Chambre des communes, assouplissement qui permet de revoir la structure des budgets de circonscription afin de financer un tel poste.

« Cette personne-là va s’occuper sur les cas les plus complexes d’immigration dans [certains] bureaux de député et va finir par prendre énormément d’expérience, soutient-il. Ça va désengorger le travail de nos bureaux. »

Les adjoints de circonscription n’ont pas tous l’habitude de traiter un tel volume de dossiers d’immigration et n’ont pas toujours l’expertise nécessaire. « Les gens sont compétents, mais si quelqu’un qui va normalement s’occuper d’un cas de pension de vieillesse doit mettre le double du temps sur un dossier d’immigration… Ça rend son travail plus difficile à faire. »

Hausse du nombre de dossiers

Dans un sondage interne auquel ont répondu une vingtaine de députés bloquistes sur 32, 85 % ont dit avoir vu le volume de dossiers d’immigration augmenter au cours des trois dernières années, souligne M. Duceppe-Brunelle.

Une récente étude de l’Université Laval s’est intéressée au rôle joué par les adjoints de circonscription dans les dossiers d’immigration : la pile, en effet, n’a pas cessé de grossir, surtout pendant la pandémie. Réalisée par l’équipe de Danièle Bélanger, titulaire de la Chaire de recherche du Canada sur les dynamiques migratoires mondiales, l’enquête a révélé que la COVID-19 a entraîné une réorganisation des services. L’augmentation du volume des demandes (64 %) était d’ailleurs la conséquence la plus fréquemment rapportée.

Et, parallèlement, les outils dont disposent les adjoints de circonscription et les députés, soit une ligne téléphonique privilégiée leur permettant de parler directement à des agents d’immigration, ont été réduits ou passablement transformés dans les deux dernières années.

L’équipe du Centre ministériel pour les députés et sénateurs est d’ailleurs devenue squelettique en raison des crises en Afghanistan et en Ukraine. Depuis l’automne, à la suite d’une réorganisation des services, les bureaux de député doivent désormais prendre rendez-vous avec un agent par le biais d’une plateforme en ligne pour tenter d’avoir de l’information et régler des dossiers.

Autrefois, pour certains cas très urgents, le député pouvait lui-même faire l’appel. « Quand il faut sortir quelqu’un de l’avion, il faut agir vite des fois, soutient Alexis Duceppe-Brunelle. Je l’utilisais avec parcimonie, mais quand même, j’étais un de ceux qui l’utilisaient le plus. Et là, on n’a plus accès à cette ligne. »

Le « bateau » IRCC

Disant ne pas vouloir « faire de politique » sur ce dossier, le député bloquiste constate néanmoins un problème structurel à Immigration, Réfugiés et Citoyenneté Canada (IRCC), notamment en ce qui concerne les délais de traitement, qui ne cessent de s’allonger.

« Le ministre a mis de l’argent, a engagé plus de monde, et je vais donner la chance au coureur. Si ça fonctionne, je vais être le premier à applaudir, mais pour l’instant, il y a de sérieux écueils, a-t-il dit. Je dirais que ce n’est pas le capitaine, le problème, c’est plus le bateau. »

Par ailleurs, en dehors des outils dont dispose le bureau du député, le centre d’appels d’IRCC demeure le seul point de contact pour le grand public depuis la fermeture de tous les bureaux de services en personne. Au printemps 2019, un rapport du Bureau du vérificateur général du Canada avait noté les graves lacunes de ce centre d’appels, qui, lors des années 2017-2018, n’avait répondu qu’à 22 % des 1,7 million d’appels reçus.

Le Bloc québécois réclame depuis 2020 la création d’un poste d’ombudsman au ministère de l’Immigration, une recommandation qui figure aussi dans un rapport du Comité permanent de la citoyenneté et de l’immigration.

Source: Un projet pilote pour aider des bureaux de député à régler des dossiers d’Immigration

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‘Stop the boats’: Sunak’s anti-asylum slogan echoes Australia’s harsh policy

2023/03/10 Leave a comment

Of note and a cautionary tale of simplistic slogans vs complex realities:

“Stop the boats.” The white-on-red slogan on Rishi Sunak’s podium on Tuesday was – word for word – the slogan used by Tony Abbott to win the Australian prime ministership a decade ago.

To Australian audiences, so much of the rhetoric emerging from the UK over its small boats policy is reminiscent of two decades of a toxic domestic debate.

A succession of Australian prime ministers have led the rhetorical charge against asylum seekers, insisting that their arrival is an issue of “national security” and “border protection”. They are “illegals”, “queue jumpers” and “terrorists”, Australians have been told, while people-smugglers are the “scum of the earth”.

That hostile and militarised language has held a potent place in the Australian political debate for 20 years. And the language is the fundamental basis of the policies that flow from it: of deterrence and forcible turnbacks, of “offshoring” and indefinite detention.

The rhetoric not only allows governments to create for asylum seekers a “hostile environment”, it compels it from them. This too has been copied in the UK straight from the Australian playbook.

Even many of the characters are the same. Alexander Downer, Australia’s former high commissioner to the UK, argued in the Daily Mail on Tuesday in support of immediate deportation and a lifetime ban from Britain for “anyone caught trying to enter Britain by a dangerous ‘irregular route’, such as a Channel crossing in a small boat”.

Downer was a foreign minister in the conservative government of John Howard that first implemented the “Pacific solution” of warehousing refugees on foreign islands.

The Tory strategist Sir Lynton Crosby was the federal director of Howard’s conservative Liberal party, overseeing his four successful election campaigns.

And Crosby’s protege Isaac Levido, later an adviser to Boris Johnson, was deputy campaign director for the Liberal party’s 2019 election campaign, bolstering the premiership of Scott Morrison, who came to prominence as the architect of the adamantine Operation Sovereign Borders, and who famously adorned his prime ministerial office with a trophy of a boat engraved “I stopped these”.

Source: ‘Stop the boats’: Sunak’s anti-asylum slogan echoes Australia’s harsh policy

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Why these academics say Canada needs to stop hosting global conferences

2023/03/10 Leave a comment

Of note. What I find difficult to understand is that visa processing is an area where IRCC has invested in AI to manage the large numbers through distinguishing between straightforward and more complex applications and yet high backlogs remain. Differential processing times are a reality given different circumstances and countries of origin:

Canadian academia should stop hosting major international conferences until the federal government can sort out visa problems that are preventing some of the world’s best and brightest from showing up and taking part.

That’s the contention by a group of six dozen scholars who say they’ve been ashamed and frustrated by this country’s inability to process visitor visas for presenters and participants in a timely manner, as was evident at a recent conference on computer systems and architecture in Montreal.

Canada has been struggling with a visa processing delay since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and has seen its backlog of applications get worse.

Two years ago, Jose Nelson Amaral, a University of Alberta professor, helped Canada make a successful bid to host the 29th IEEE International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture.

But the event in Montreal from Feb. 25 to March 1 turned out to be an embarrassment as 20 of his 80 presenters were unable to get a visa, with three workshops cancelled as a result. The majority had received no answer to their visa requests, while others were refused because officials didn’t believe they would leave Canada afterwards.

“Until now, I was a strong advocate for Canada,” said Amaral, a computing science professor who chaired the Montreal event sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. “Unless this (visa) situation is solved, I cannot be if I still care about my academic discipline.”

The call for a moratorium on Canada hosting events came after similar complaints about visa delays by the organizers of the upcoming annual convention of the International Studies Association and last summer’s world AIDS conference in Montreal that struggled with turnout.

As of Jan. 31, there were more than 1.9 million applications in the system, including 1,024,000 applicants trying to visit, study or work in Canada; 617,500 seeking permanent residence; and 303,000 people awaiting citizenship.

Currently, average processing times for visitor visa applications from the Global South are among the worst: 70 days for India, 66 days for Iran, 183 days for Pakistan, 113 days for Turkey.

Amaral said many of the conference registrants from China, India and South America — some of them visiting scholars in the United States — were unable to obtain a visa to Canada, with a handful refused despite their academic credentials and conference organizers’ formal invitation.

“In order to advocate for the best interests of our academic communities, we can only recommend a moratorium in selecting Canada as a destination for such events,” said a joint letter signed by 76 computer scientists here and abroad, including Amaral.

“If such a perception is shared with organizers of major events in other areas, such as sports competitions, and arts events, the consequences to the Canadian tourism industry could be significant,” they said in their letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Immigration Minister Sean Fraser and Tourism Minister Randy Boissonnault last week.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) said visa processing time can vary based on a variety of factors: if an application is complete; how quickly applicants respond to requests from an officer; the complexity of a case; and the capacity at visa posts.

In fact, department spokesperson Nancy Caron said officials processed more than 219,000 visitor visas in January, compared to a 2019 monthly average of 180,000 applications.

“We understand the disappointment and concern of applicants over delays or refusals of visa applications. IRCC continues to reduce backlogs and process visitor visas more quickly to respond to the growing number of people who want to visit Canada,” she said.

Caron said immigration officials routinely collaborate with event organizers to support processing of visa applications for delegates or participants under the Special Events Program.

Organizers registered with the program are issued a special event code for conference attendees to include with their visa application. The IEEE and Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) conferences in Montreal were not registered, Caron noted, adding that any participant from a visa-required country should apply at least 12 weeks before the start of an event.

Amaral said it took countless volunteers to plan and prepare for the joint event that brought four conferences in the field together in Montreal under one roof, all sponsored by the IEEE and ACM, both international professional associations with worldwide memberships.

Researchers submitted manuscripts last June and went through a rigorous review process by experts before being selected for the program. Less than 25 per cent of the submissions ended up being chosen, he added.

As soon as the program was finalized in October, organizers urged presenters and participants to apply for visas to Canada as soon as possible if one was required.

In the end, for his part of the four conferences, one-fifth of the 500 attendees didn’t make it, including the 20 presenters.

University of Toronto computer science professor Maryam Mehri Dehnavi said academic conferences help establish professional networks and contribute greatly to the exchange of ideas and knowledge.

The chair of the ACM conference on principles and practice of parallel programming said two of her workshops in Montreal in February were cancelled and a third of the technical presentations ended up being pre-recorded due to presenters’ visa problems.

“It was really frustrating. It put a huge stress on us as organizers, not knowing what our schedule would look like or being able to tell registrants what they would get,” said Dehnavi, Canada Research Chair in Parallel and Distributed Computing.

Source: Why these academics say Canada needs to stop hosting global conferences

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Surge in immigrant crossings at U.S.-Canada border since mid-2022

2023/03/09 Leave a comment

Some data on crossings to the USA from Canada. Less than 10 percent of northern flows but suggests some shared interest in addressing these irregular flows albeit asymmetrical but Minister Fraser has been careful not to raise expectations before Canada-USA summit:

Court documents from recent federal prosecutions offer a glimpse at what border patrol agents have termed “an unprecedented influx of human trafficking” along sections of New York’s northern border.That trend is prompting responses, including from law enforcement, advocates for immigrants and a conservative member of Congress who visited Rochester on Friday to express concerns.

Between October and January, apprehensions of and encounters with persons crossing the border in the vicinity of Swanton, Vermont, jumped nearly 850% compared to the same four months a year ago, according to the U.S. Border Patrol. Many of the immigrants were families with children, according to a recent report in the Burlington Free Press.

U.S. Rep. Claudia Tenney, a Republican representing a Central and Western New York congressional district, visited with U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents in Buffalo and Rochester to discuss the issue.

“The worsening crisis at our Northern border is real,” Tenney said. “Our CBP agents face unprecedented challenges because of Joe Biden’s failure to address his disastrous open border policies.”

On Tuesday, Tenney joined the Northern Border Security Caucus, a coalition of 28 members of Congress concerned about “the increased human and drug trafficking along the U.S.-Canada border.”

New York Senate Republican Minority Leader Rob Ortt met with Tenney at the Buffalo Border Patrol office. He complained that “Albany Democrats’ soft-on-crime policies have already endangered public safety in our communities.”

Advocates for migrants disagree.

Such rhetoric in the U.S., said Meghan Maloney de Zaldivar of Buffalo and the director of organizing and strategy for the New York Immigration Coalition, will hurt sectors such as dairy farming, which is heavily worked by immigrants, that officials such as Tenney purport to represent. Harder-line approaches will also sow more fear and distrust of law enforcement in local communities, she said.

“What we really need is humane and dignified immigration policies,” she said. “That is what Washington should be focusing on.”

Rise in northern border crossings began in mid-2022

U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents began seeing an uptick in illegal crossings along the northern border in June 2022. And the pace has stepped up this winter despite sub-zero temperatures.

Over the four months that ended in January, agents tallied more than 1,500 encounters with people suspected of crossing into the country illegally through the CBP’s Swanton Sector, which stretches from Vermont to New York.

The 367 encounters and apprehensions recorded in January surpassed the 344 logged for the 12 previous Januaries combined, officials say.

Nearly 1,000 of the encounters and apprehensions were with people from Mexico, followed by Haiti and Guatemala. Among the immigrants are parents with young children and infants who must navigate challenging terrain along the border to make it to the U.S. side.

“There are always dangers when attempting to illegally cross the U.S./Canadian border,”  a spokesman for the CBP said. “In Swanton Sector, the terrain can be mountainous, heavily wooded and boast multiple rivers, streams and swampland. When you add sub-zero temperatures to that equation, the real risk to human life multiplies dramatically. Hypothermia and loss of life are very real dangers.”

And yet, the surging numbers do not approach the totals seen at the nation’s southern border with Mexico.

In the 2022 fiscal year, federal agents had encounters with 109,000 individuals at the northern border compared to 2.3 million during the same time period at the southern border.

Smugglers are making thousands of dollars to pick up people who, in some cases, fly into Canada from Mexico before making the trek across the border, court documents show.

Around 8 p.m. Sept. 25, 2022, border patrol agents spotted a Toyota Venza driven by a Queens man traveling through Churubusco, an unincorporated hamlet in Clinton County, New York near the New York-Quebec border. The Toyota traveled along Route 189, a popular route for human smugglers because it leads to and from the border.

Two passengers were riding in the backseat while the passenger seat was empty — an indication the driver didn’t know his passengers, according to the criminal complaint. And the windows were fogged on a rainy night, a sign that the people inside had wet clothing, a criminal complaint adds.

Inside a duffel bag belonging to one of the backseat passengers was a ticket for a plane ride from Cancun, Mexico, to Toronto the day before.

One of the men said he’d agreed to pay the driver $2,000 once he got him to his destination in New York.

A few weeks later on Oct. 8, 2022, about 30 miles east in Champlain, New York, agents using remote surveillance observed several people in a wooded area beside a road that dead ends into the New York-Quebec border, a criminal complaint says.

Someone living nearby spotted several people emerge from the woods and get into a Chevy Camaro and an SUV. The cars were stopped about two hours later along Interstate 87 in the town of Plattsburgh.

The driver of the Camaro acknowledged driving to the border to pick up individuals who’d crossed into the U.S. illegally and said he was promised $500 for each person he picked up.

Eleven people were arrested. All claimed to be from Mexico.

The SUV driver said he was promised $3,000 by a smuggler to drive up to the border and deliver several people to Maryland. He knew what he was doing was wrong but “claims he was looking to make easy money,” according to an account provided by a border agent.

Casualties of ‘inhumane U.S. policy’

In Burlington, Vermont, the nonprofit Migrant Justice said the reported increases of crossings in the Swanton Sector are an outcome of denying human rights to migrate.

“The draconian restrictions that the U.S. employs against people seeking refuge from violence and poverty only push migrants to more dangerous routes,” the nonprofit said in a statement. “Every migrant who dies attempting to enter the U.S. — whether from dehydration in the Sonoran desert, drowning in the Rio Grande, or hypothermia and exposure on the Canadian border — is a casualty of inhumane U.S. policy.”

Organizations that assist immigrants settling in Western New York and the North Country said they haven’t seen increases in people requesting services. Instead, many saw Rep. Tenney’s call as rhetoric for hard-line immigration enforcement.

“Absolutely no one” at the Rochester nonprofit Mary’s Place Refugee Outreach has entered through the northern border, Executive Director P.J. Ryan said. Most people enter through the southern border. They are released on parole as they await their immigration cases, he added.

The southern border should be a cautionary tale for politicians, said Jessica Maxwell, the executive director of the Workers Center of Central New York, based in Syracuse but with members in the North Country, which has workers in sectors such as agriculture, sawmills and renewable energy installation.

“These militarization policies on the border have done nothing to stem flows of migration, and certainly have contributed to human rights abuses,” she said.

“It really seems to be a reflection of, unfortunately, some really deep racism against immigrant communities,” she said. “And not a reflection of good, solid policy.”

In Buffalo, Maloney de Zaldivar from the Immigration Coalition said she’s used to seeing “ebbs and flows” of immigrants at the border with Canada, often as a result of southern border policies.

Many immigrants have also made a reverse journey to leave the U.S., which she said could skew American immigration figures.

In light of labor shortages, the Canadian government has promised to accept nearly 1.5 million immigrants by 2025. Numbers have surged of people entering from the country’s border with the U.S., according to the Canada Border Service Agency. The Quebec and Ontario provinces, which border New York, have the largest numbers of people entering.

Source: Surge in immigrant crossings at U.S.-Canada border since mid-2022

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Express immigration programs overstaffed: budget watchdog

2023/03/09 Leave a comment

Backlogs yet…:

Three programs designed to get skilled immigrants settled in Canada faster have more staff than needed to meet the government’s goals, according to a report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer released Tuesday.

The report looked at three “express entry” programs — the Federal Skilled Worker Program, the Canadian Experience Class and the Federal Skilled Trades Program — and the government’s target of processing 80 per cent of applications to the programs within six months. Quebec does not participate in the three programs.

“Based on our analysis, current staffing levels at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) are expected to be more than sufficient to meet the processing time goal for the next five years,” Yves Giroux, the parliamentary budget officer, said in a news release.

Source: Express immigration programs overstaffed: budget watchdog

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No avoiding it now: Immigration issues threaten Biden’s climate program

2023/03/09 Leave a comment

Interesting linkage and take:

President Joe Biden’s plan for greening the economy relies on a simple pitch: It will create good-paying jobs for Americans.

The problem is there might not be enough Americans to fill them. That reality is pressuring the Biden administration to wrestle with the nation’s immigration system to avoid squandering its biggest legislative achievements.

“There’s no question that addressing our broken immigration system in America would address many workforce shortages,” Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), a vocal proponent of immigration overhaul, told POLITICO. “There’s employment needed right now. Jobs are available.”

Congress has put a record amount of money behind boosting jobs the U.S. workforce presently does not appear equipped to fulfill. That includes $369 billion in climate incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act, $550 billion in new money through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act’s $52 billion to boost semiconductor manufacturing.

Lawmakers, former administration officials, clean energy and labor advocates said immigration fixes are needed if the administration wants to ensure its biggest victories don’t go to waste — and that the nation can fight climate change, add jobs and beat geopolitical rivals like China in the global marketplace. Those changes include raising annual visa caps for highly skilled workers needed to grow the next wave of U.S. industry and securing ironclad work protections for people in the country on a temporary basis, they said. It’s the key to building a workforce needed to design, manufacture and install millions of new appliances, solar panels and electric vehicles.

The high stakes for Biden’s jobs agenda, which will be a pillar of his likely reelection message next year, may force the White House to finally grapple with an issue it’s mostly kept on the back burner.

President Donald Trump cut legal immigration in half over his four years in office through a mix of executive orders that halted immigration from Muslim countries and limited the ability of people seeking to join their spouses and other family members in the U.S. As Republicans have attacked Biden over the migrant crisis at the southern border, his administration has kept some of his predecessor’s immigration policies in place. And the White House is wary about enabling additional GOP attacks that would likely ignore the economic rationale for any easing of legal migration and simply hammer Biden as “soft” on immigration.

In addition, calling for foreign-born workers would appear at odds with Biden’s blue-collar, American-made green revolution.

Last decade saw the U.S. population grow at its slowest rate since the Great Depression, yet the White House remains somewhat hesitant to take further executive action or use its bully pulpit on immigration, according to people familiar with the administration’s thinking. But they said the administration recognizes immigration tweaks could break a labor shortage raising the price of goods through supply chain constraints, slowing clean energy projects and preventing highly skilled people from helping American businesses lead in emerging global industries.

One former administration official warned that policymakers must soon address the reality of global competition for high-skilled talent.

“If in the long term we neglect the human capital equation here, to some extent these efforts to change the face of industrial policy in the United States are not going to be as successful as they should be,” said Amy Nice, distinguished immigration fellow and visiting scholar at Cornell Law, who until January led STEM immigration policy at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “And some measures will be in vain.”

The White House has been hearing from senior officials, including at least one Cabinet secretary, about the need for administrative actions on immigration — raising caps on certain visa categories, filling country quotas — to help alleviate the pressure on the workforce and increase the country’s labor supply, according to a senior administration official not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

Biden, some officials and lawmakers have asserted, could also increase staff and other resources to help speed up visa processing and cut through a massive backlog that has left potential workers in limbo for months, years, and in some cases, decades.

But for now, the administration seems more inclined to allow Congress to work on the issue.

“I don’t think politics is the main concern. It’s just inertia and the hope that something more substantial could be done through legislation,” said one senior administration official who did not want to be named in order to speak freely.

A White House official defended the administration’s record on immigration, noting Biden sent a framework for comprehensive immigration reform to Congress as one of his first presidential actions. The measure has yet to gain traction.

The White House official noted the administration is moving to address immediate clean energy workforce needs in the construction, electrification and manufacturing fields, where a shortage of qualified people threatens to slow deployment of climate-fighting innovations Biden needs to meet his climate goals.

The official said the administration has worked with organizations to pair skilled refugees from Afghanistan and Ukraine with trade union apprenticeship programs. The official said the administration’s focus remains on retraining people through creating training pipelines for electricians, broadband installers and construction workers. The official added that expanding union participation would ensure stronger labor supply by reducing turnover through improved job quality, safety and wages.

“I don’t think we’ve run out of people to do these kinds of jobs,” the official said.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said in an interview that the White House is “certainly aware that the low unemployment rate can be an obstacle” to the economy and the laws it has passed, but that the administration “hasn’t come to the Hill with a real workforce focus” on immigration.

The stakes are clear for sectors pivotal to building and operating the infrastructure, manufacturing and clean energy projects Biden and Democrats have promised. The 57,000 foreign-born workers currently in the electrical and electronics engineering field comprise nearly 27 percent that sector’s workforce, while the 686,000 foreign-born construction laborers account for 38 percent of the nation’s total, according to a New American Economy analysis of Census data. Most foreign-born construction laborers are undocumented immigrants, according to the Center for American Progress, making up nearly one-quarter of the sector’s national workforce.

“My largest worry about the American economy right now is the workforce worry,” Kaine said.

The White House has seemed more comfortable taking executive steps, Kaine said, such as expanding a humanitarian parole program for migrants that also comes with a two-year work authorization. It also has pledged to step up enforcement against employers that exploit undocumented workers, which advocates contend will help keep those people in the workforce.

But conversations are also brewing again on Capitol Hill about more “discreet” immigration bills. Kaine said he and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) have discussed legislation to help support people with Temporary Protected Status, a Department of Homeland Security designation for people who have fled natural disasters, armed conflict or other “extraordinary and temporary conditions” in their home country.

Immigration restrictions are even hindering oil and gas companies right now, Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Texas), said in a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing last month.

“The permits that ranchers use, agriculture, the permits that hospitality use — those same immigration permits are not the ones that are needed for people to have temporary work visas in the oil and gas sector,” he said. “You ain’t unleashing a thing unless you do something about immigration reform.”

Others have suggested that in addition to its inability to reach a deal to update the nation’s outdated immigration system, Congress needs to do a better job at retaining the immigrants who specifically come to the U.S. to earn degrees.

The U.S. for years has struggled to develop advanced STEM degree holders, a key indicator of a country’s future competitiveness in these fields. It has fewer native-born advanced STEM degree recipients than countries like China, raising national security concerns from top officials. The Biden administration has tried to break that logjam, in part by allowing international STEM students to stay on student visas and work for up to three years in the U.S. post-graduation.

“Why educate some of these folks in American schools … and then lose some of our best and brightest talent just because our system is super outdated?” said Kerri Talbot, deputy director of the Immigration Hub.

And the demand for high-skilled workers far outweighs the nation’s immigration caps, said Shev Dalal-Dheini, head of government affairs for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Congress limited employment-based green cards and H-1B visas offering temporary residency to skilled workers to 140,000 and 85,000 per year, respectively.

Foreign nationals dominate the exact fields the U.S. needs to grow its clean energy and manufacturing base. Nearly three-quarters of all full-time graduate students at U.S. universities pursuing electrical engineering, computer and information science, and industrial and manufacturing engineering degrees are foreign-born, according to the National Foundation for American Policy, an innovation, trade and immigration think tank. The same is true for more than half seeking mechanical engineering and agricultural economics, mathematics, chemical engineering, metallurgical and materials engineering and materials sciences degrees.

Subtle changes, like requiring more evidence and interviews, under the Trump administration worsened already-common backlogs. Processing at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is mainly paper based, not electronic, shuttered during the pandemic — it remains plagued by staff and funding shortages.

To the extent that the green energy transition is a race for a global market and influence, the U.S. immigration system is like a boulder in its shoe.

“Canada literally places billboards in Washington state saying, ‘Come here,’” said Theresa Cardinal Brown, senior advisor for immigration and border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “Our ability to succeed in these big goals relies on people being able to do the work to meet those goals.”

Source: No avoiding it now: Immigration issues threaten Biden’s climate program

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Wudrick: Canada needs immigration reform that is fair and constructive

2023/03/08 Leave a comment

Right-leaning outlets cautioning on the risk to the social consensus in favour of immigration, particularly perceptions of queue jumping. But not xenophobic to raise these and other concerns:

Much has been written recently on rising concerns about Canadian immigration levels, and specifically the Trudeau government’s announcement of significantly higher immigration targets. As commentators have noted, Canada has historically had cross-party consensus on immigration that can be legitimately described as a uniquely Canadian phenomenon.

This good news has been a point of Canadian pride (or smugness) in a time of global political turbulence, given that in many of our peer countries, immigration backlash has manifested itself in sometimes ugly and xenophobic ways.

But here’s the bad news: This consensus is at risk, and may already be little more than a mirage. It’s consoling that immigration skepticism has not coalesced around any single political party, where it could become a political wedge issue. But fraying support for immigration across party lines exposes an even greater risk: that the issue will be ignored by all parties until it reaches a dangerous boiling point.

Part of the challenge is that Canadians concerned about immigration are often afraid to say so out loud for fear of being called racist or xenophobic. And to be clear, there are racist and xenophobic Canadians, as in every country. But it would be a colossal mistake for our political class to wave away any misgivings about our immigration policy as mere prejudice.

Politicians must understand some of the factors that stoke concerns with our policies and targets. Start with the Roxham Road border crossing between New York State and Quebec, where unlawful (irregular) refugee crossings have skyrocketed in recent years. Recently, news broke that New York City is paying for bus tickets to help asylum-seekers reach the border.

Roxham Road matters because it is about fairness. It represents a legal loophole that people are exploiting. Refugees are a legitimate humanitarian issue, but allowing a class of people to essentially “skip the line” will undermine support for a rules-based system that the public can believe is fair to all.

Second, for many Canadians the concern is not who is coming, so much as how many: for a population already dealing with serious supply strains, immigrants represent a demand spike that will only worsen the situation. Housing is an obvious example; so is access to health care. Just ask the six million Canadians who cannot find a family doctor.

Some argue, fairly, that new immigrants actually represent part of the solution to these supply challenges, providing much-needed additional labour, from construction workers to nurses and doctors. But such tangible factors are not used to inform government immigration targets, which smack of central planning. Perhaps it’s time we shifted away from immigration by fiat and adopted a more market-based approach.

Consider the relative success of refugees to Canada based on their path of entry. Experience shows that privately sponsored Syrian refugees have a better chance of finding employment than those brought in under government programs. This suggests that when migrants have non-government partners invested in their success, their integration into Canadian society is likely to go more smoothly.

While humanitarian refugees require sponsorship and charity from individual Canadians and communities, for many economic immigrants the relevant invested partner will be employers who, given labour supply challenges, are often among the loudest champions of high immigration levels.

Here, too, a legitimate criticism is often raised, since efforts by employers to create cheap pools of labour can drive down wages for all Canadians. But this blurs the immigration discussion with a separate issue: the difference between employers unwilling to pay higher salaries, and those who simply cannot find job candidates at any economically viable salary level.

Canada’s immigration consensus has served our country well for half a century. If we are to salvage it, we will need to listen to those with legitimate concerns about high immigration rates — and more importantly, adjust our approach away from government targets towards a system that prioritizes matching our supply of and demand for immigrants and refugees as smoothly as possible.

Aaron Wudrick is Director of the domestic policy program at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

Source: Wudrick: Canada needs immigration reform that is fair and constructive

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