Cap on international students’ working hours should be lifted permanently: advocates

2022/10/13 Leave a comment

Of course they would. And of course they shouldn’t given the impact on eduction outcomes, the ostensible reason for granting the study permit. Ripe for abuse as we are already seeing:

Advocates who want the federal government to lift the cap on working hours for international students say a new pilot project that allows them to work more should be made permanent.

Last week Immigration Minister Sean Fraser announced the government would temporarily remove the 20-hour cap on the number of hours international students can work off-campus to address labour shortages.

The cap will be lifted from Nov. 15 until the end of next year.

The International Sikh Students Association has been calling for this change for years to improve the quality of life of students, and founder Jaspreet Singh says he was surprised to hear the change would not be permanent.

Singh says the cap doesn’t make sense, and puts stress on students who face increasingly high costs while they are in Canada.

At a press conference Friday, Fraser said the next year or so will help the government determine whether it could continue the approach over the long term.

Source: Cap on international students’ working hours should be lifted permanently: advocates

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Quebec wants more immigration powers from Ottawa, but does it really need them?

2022/10/13 Leave a comment

Valid question.

IMO, not, as transferring family reunification, temporary workers and students would likely not change the overall demographic picture unless a Quebec government would decide to discriminate in favour of those from francophone countries, which would be particularly hard to justify in the case of family reunification.

And mischievous but legitimate raising the question of Quebec’s sweetheart funding agreement with Ottawa where it is guaranteed a fixed percentage of settlement funding irrespective of the number of Permanent Residents admitted:

Even though Canada’s prime minister has repeatedly shut the door, Francois Legault keeps on knocking, intent on winning more control over immigration from the federal government.

As with many past leaders in Quebec, it’s been a regular refrain of his, dating back well before the provincial election on Oct. 3.

But is there substance to the claim that Quebec needs more autonomy on immigration?

Or, does Quebec already have all the control it requires to ensure as many immigrants as possible speak French, which the premier has said is his main preoccupation?

“The fact that political parties in Quebec all want more power in immigration is not surprising,” said Martin Papillon, a political science professor at Université de Montréal.

“It’s an area of politics and policy, where, historically, Quebec governments have been very proactive […] seeking to assert their identity.”

However, Quebec already has a fair bit of independence on immigration issues compared to other provinces, he said, the result of “an asymmetrical arrangement” negotiated in 1991.

“And I have to say, and this is not something that the Quebec government or the CAQ or Francois Legault likes to talk about — it’s a pretty good deal that they got.”

A ‘VERY GOOD’ FUNDING DEAL WITH OTTAWA

Papillon describes the funding arrangement between the two levels of government as a win for Quebec, singling out the section that calls on Ottawa to pay for integration services in the province.

The funding formula “is based on a fixed percentage of the total amount that the federal government is budgeting for immigration for its own integration program, no matter the percentage of immigrants that are actually going to Quebec,” he said.

Since Quebec has been selecting fewer immigrants than its share of the population, “about 13 per cent,” according to Papillon, “Quebec has a very good deal in terms of funding its program.”

Just two days after the provincial election, federal Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez told reporters in the foyer of the House of Commons that the province has the power to select up to 28 per cent of its immigrants.

“Which means there is another [percentage] that Quebec could choose that would be entirely francophone,” he said.

CTV News asked the Quebec government to confirm the figures.

According to Ministry of Immigration, Francisation and Integration spokesperson Arianne Méthot, Quebec selected and admitted only 70 per cent of the proportion of immigrants permitted in 2018 and 2019.

“In 2020 and 2021, this proportion dropped to around 60 per cent due to the effects of the health crisis,” Méthot wrote in an email.

From January to August 2022, the proportion subject to Quebec selection rose to 73 per cent.

With Rodriguez pointing out publicly that Quebec is not taking full advantage of the selection powers it already has, Papillon suggested that the province’s push to reopen the deal with Ottawa could backfire, perhaps on the financial front.

“The federal government can very easily say okay…but either you increase your immigration targets to sort of balance it out, or, we change the funding. That’s an interesting side question that is not often debated,” Papillon said.

ECONOMIC IMMIGRATION, REFUGEES, AND FAMILY REUNIFICATION

There’s not much leeway for Quebec when it comes to the general area of permanent economic immigration, which is now largely controlled by the province, said Papillon.

“Its priorities and its targets and the requirements for French, for example, this is all in Quebec’s hands. So that wouldn’t change,” he said.

The next category, refugee claimants, wouldn’t provide Quebec with any greater powers either, he said, since it’s heavily regulated by federal law and international covenants.

Francois Legault has also argued for more autonomy over those who come to Quebec through the family reunification channel.

At the end of May 2022, in a pre-election speech at a CAQ party convention, he said it’s estimated that half of them don’t speak French, and called that a threat to Quebec.

But Quebec already plays a role here as well, because it’s the province that establishes the conditions for sponsoring a family member, which includes the need for the family established in Quebec to demonstrate a financial capacity to help support the new arrivals, according to Papillon.

Daniel Beland, the director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, agrees that emphasizing the family reunification program is “misguided.”

“I’m not sure that Quebec should spend that much energy fighting over this,” Beland said. “It’s not the smartest way to use your political capital.”

First, it wouldn’t be a useful area of immigration to control because family reunification brings in a relatively small number of people every year, he said, and therefore wouldn’t help protect the French language in a meaningful way.

On top of that, “increasing French requirements for family members coming here, that would kind of run counter to the very basic principle of family reunification, which is, it’s not about your capacity to contribute immediately, it’s a humanitarian type of immigration,” Papillon added.

And issues that are tied to “human rights” and “foreign policy” are not things the federal government wants to give away, said Beland.

“I do think that is highly political because Francois Legault’s brand of nationalism is really about gaining more autonomy for Quebec,” he said, adding that the premier is under pressure from the Parti Quebecois, for example, to actively confront the issue.

TEMPORARY FOREIGN WORKERS

The only areas where Legault could make headway practically speaking, said Beland, is on the subject of “temporary foreign workers and helping immigrants to learn French — those who are already here.”

He thinks it could be possible to work out a new deal with the federal government or improve the current agreement. And unlike Papillon, he surmised that more funding could be on the table.

“Maybe they want more money from Ottawa to help the Francization of immigrants. Sometimes you ask a lot and in the end, as long as you come back home with something — it might not be what you asked for in the beginning, but you can still frame that as a victory,” he said.

There probably is some “wiggle room” when it comes to temporary immigration, “if the federal government is going to budge, it’s probably there,” Papillon concurred.

But again, he wonders what Legault would ask for. “What kind of criteria would you add to the temporary aspect of immigration is not clear to me,” since it would be difficult to ask a worker coming here on a temporary visa to have a basic knowledge of French, he said.

Language requirements exist for foreign students, and Papillon said Quebec already has the authority to act when temporary foreign workers or students want to stay in Quebec and become permanent residents after their temporary visa expires.

The requirements are laid out by the Quebec Experience Program and include a certain level of proficiency in French.

“I mean, this is the big untold story of this whole thing is that really, more than 60 per cent of people that are coming in Quebec […] are coming with a temporary immigration visa, as temporary workers, as students, so it’s more than half,” said Papillon.

“But the truth is, I think Quebec already has enough authority to act on this. So it’s not clear to me why they would want more power other than [for] symbolic politics” and the general idea of seeking more autonomy, he said.

That doesn’t mean we won’t see Ottawa open the door to discussions with Quebec at some point, said Papillon, particularly as the federal election approaches, given the issue’s sensitivity in the province.

“The [federal] Liberals cannot take for granted their votes in Quebec anymore in the current landscape, so it’ll be interesting,” said Papillon. “The politics of it may shift in the next year.”

Source: Quebec wants more immigration powers from Ottawa, but does it really need them?

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Australian immigration rockets back

2022/10/13 Leave a comment

Of note:

Recall that Australia’s net overseas migration (NOM) hit its highest ever level in the March quarter, with a record 96,200 net migrants arriving:

Net overseas migration

Highest ever NOM in March quarter.

Now the ABS has released permanent and long-term arrivals data for August, which revealed that annual arrivals have surged to 121,270.

The below chart tracks this series against the official quarterly NOM and suggests that immigration has continued to surge:

Australian net immigration

Australian immigration surging.

The Albanese Government used last month’s Jobs & Skills Summit as a trojan horse to turbo-charge immigration via:

  • Lifting Australia’s permanent non-humanitarian migrant intake by 35,000 to a record high 195,000;
  • Lifting temporary migration to record levels by:
    • Expanding work rights for international students via:
      • Uncapping the number of hours international students can work while studying for another year; and
      • Extending the length of post-study work visas by two years.
    • Committing to clear the ‘backlog’ of “nearly one million” visas awaiting approval.

In turn, Australia is staring down the barrel of record immigration flows next year, which will make Australia’s rental crisis worse and make it impossible to meet Australia’s 43% emissions reduction target.

The major concern is that the planned record immigration will arrive as the economy hits the brakes on the back of the Reserve Bank’s aggressive monetary tightening.

This time next year, concerns around “skills shortages” will likely have vanished, replaced with concerns around low growth and rising unemployment.

Source: Australian immigration rockets back

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Dutrisac: Souveraineté provinciale

2022/10/13 Leave a comment

Dutrisac on Alberta and Saskatchewan’s focus on provincial sovereignty, along with picking up on Ibbitson’s arguments that aggressive federalism is fanning the flames (true but exaggerated IMO). Of particular note the last para:

Quant à François Legault, après les gaffes répétitives commises sur le dos des immigrants, il n’aura qu’à attendre ce que lui réserve le fédéralisme agressif d’un gouvernement Trudeau qui insiste pour que Québec se plie à la politique d’immigration pléthorique de ce pays postnational.

Full article:

La nouvelle cheffe du Parti conservateur uni (PCU) et, depuis mardi, première ministre, Danielle Smith, a remporté la course à la direction de son parti en promettant de présenter un projet de loi sur la souveraineté de l’Alberta.

L’utilisation du terme souveraineté, un concept au coeur du projet du Parti québécois depuis la fin des années 1960, peut prêter à confusion. On ne saurait voir dans Danielle Smith une émule de René Lévesque. Il ne s’agit pas pour la première ministre de promouvoir une quelconque sécession, ce qui ne correspond d’ailleurs pas aux inclinations de la plupart des Albertains. Cette souveraineté est bien celle d’une province, dans ses champs de compétence, une forme de néo-autonomisme, selon le politologue de l’Université de l’Alberta Frédéric Boily. C’est le modèle mis en oeuvre par le gouvernement Legault, en définitive.

Danielle Smith a repris l’expression du premier ministre de la Saskatchewan, Scott Moe, en affirmant que sa province, avec cette loi sur la souveraineté, pourra se comporter comme « une nation au sein d’une nation ». Mais il s’agit plutôt d’un régionalisme axé sur la défense d’intérêts économiques, notamment la poursuite de l’exploitation des hydrocarbures, et non pas d’un nationalisme de nature identitaire comme au Québec.

Certains ont vu dans ce projet de loi une bombe constitutionnelle… et surtout anticonstitutionnelle. Le premier ministre sortant, Jason Kenney, a qualifié l’idée de « cinglée ». De fait, il est encore difficile de savoir comment une telle loi s’appliquerait. Elle permettrait à la province de refuser de se soumettre à une loi fédérale ou à un jugement de la Cour s’ils sont contraires aux intérêts de l’Alberta ou s’il s’agit d’une intrusion illégale dans ses champs de compétence. Il reviendrait aux élus de l’Assemblée législative albertaine d’adopter une motion spéciale en ce sens. Selon la description somme toute sommaire de l’éventuel projet de loi, le gouvernement fédéral devrait alors s’adresser aux tribunaux pour trancher le litige.

À terme, c’est la Cour suprême qui aurait le dernier mot, faut-il comprendre. Le principal conseiller de Danielle Smith a indiqué lundi qu’une fois le projet de loi en vigueur, l’Alberta continuerait de respecter les jugements de la Cour suprême. La bombe est en train de se transformer en pétard mouillé.

Comme cela s’est vu quand Trudeau père était aux commandes, un fort ressentiment envers le gouvernement fédéral s’est développé dans les provinces de l’Ouest, ressentiment relié à l’exploitation des ressources pétrolières et gazières. Le fils semble suivre la trace du père. À l’époque, il s’agissait de la propriété de ces ressources naturelles et des revenus qu’elles généraient. Aujourd’hui, c’est le contrôle qu’entend exercer Ottawa sur ces ressources en raison de la lutte contre les changements climatiques.

Si jamais ce projet de loi sur cette souveraineté provinciale voit le jour, il viendra tard. Déjà, la Cour suprême, dans son jugement l’an dernier sur la taxe carbone du gouvernement Trudeau, a dépossédé les provinces de leur compétence exclusive en la matière au nom de « l’intérêt national » et du pouvoir d’Ottawa de faire des lois pour « la paix, l’ordre et le bon gouvernement ». Nous sommes à l’ère du fédéralisme évolutif, coopératif, qui se déploie au détriment des pouvoirs réservés aux provinces. Un fédéralisme de supervision, selon l’expression d’un juge dissident dans cette cause, Russell Brown.

Selon le chroniqueur du Globe and Mail John Ibbitson, le « fédéralisme agressif » que pratique le gouvernement Trudeau a mis en rogne l’Alberta, alors que le « fédéralisme passif » de Stephen Harper avait calmé le jeu, y compris avec le Québec.

La Saskatchewan et le Manitoba, deux provinces dotées de gouvernements conservateurs, partagent les doléances de l’Alberta. Il lui manque un appui de taille : celui de l’Ontario et du premier ministre conservateur Doug Ford. Lui aussi s’opposait à la taxe carbone du gouvernement Trudeau, mais, depuis le jugement de la Cour suprême, il semble s’être désintéressé de l’affaire. Il faut dire que le premier ministre ontarien a beau jeu. Justin Trudeau a tout intérêt à soigner ses relations avec lui. Doug Ford préférera sans doute profiter des avantages que lui offrira Ottawa au lieu de se joindre aux provinces de l’Ouest dans une fronde perdue d’avance contre le pouvoir fédéral.

Quant à François Legault, après les gaffes répétitives commises sur le dos des immigrants, il n’aura qu’à attendre ce que lui réserve le fédéralisme agressif d’un gouvernement Trudeau qui insiste pour que Québec se plie à la politique d’immigration pléthorique de ce pays postnational.

Source: Souveraineté provinciale

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How many houses does Canada actually need?

2022/10/12 Leave a comment

Depressing yet accurate need. Striking disconnect between immigration levels and housing availability and needs. Given housing constraints, becomes even harder to justify current and growing immigration levels and surprising that there is so little thinking and questioning regarding the linkage:

Everyone agrees Canada has a major housing shortage. To make homes more affordable for young people, to house incoming waves of immigrants and to restore sanity to markets like Toronto and Vancouver, the country needs more homes.

But exactly how many homes? That proves to be a trickier question than you may think.

Estimates vary hugely because the size of the country’s housing shortfall can be defined in a multitude of ways.

The simplest method is to look at what level of home construction would be required simply to meet new demand and stabilize the market at today’s lofty levels. Even by that conservative standard, Canada is falling short.

In recent years, it has typically completed about 200,000 new homes a year – standalone homes, condos and other types of dwellings. However, immigration and other factors will create about 240,000 new households a year between now and 2024, according to RBC Economics. This suggests that construction needs to quickly rise to levels roughly 20 per cent higher than in recent years simply to give all those new households a place to live.

Yet it only begins to address Canada’s structural shortfall of housing. “Even if we had 240,000 completions a year for the next few years, we would simply be meeting new demand, not reducing the gap that has already built up,” Robert Hogue, assistant chief economist at Royal Bank of Canada, said in an interview.

If you look at what would be needed not just to keep pace with new demand but to address the accumulated shortfall that has accumulated over many years, the numbers swell to truly frightening proportions.

Restoring Canada’s housing affordability by 2030 to the levels that prevailed around 2003 would require an immediate doubling or more of home construction rates, according to a recent study by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. In an ideal world, Canada would be completing an unprecedented 400,000 or more new homes a year, according to CMHC’s numbers.

A bit of historical context about Canadian housing trends may help to put this flurry of estimates into perspective.

Last year, construction soared and 272,000 new homes were started across Canada. Economists and housing analysts applauded this achievement since it was the country’s highest annual number of starts since the heyday of the 1970s.

Unfortunately, the figure was not quite as impressive as it appeared at first glance. Canada’s population is now much larger than it was a half-century ago – more than 38 million people compared with only about 23 million in 1975.

If you adjust last year’s housing starts for the vastly increased size of the Canadian population, the big jump in housing construction last year took Canada to only about 60 per cent of the rate of housing starts per capita that it was achieving in the mid 1970s.

And even that comparison doesn’t capture the extent of the shortfall because the average size of households has been steadily shrinking – the result of people marrying later, having fewer children and living longer.

In the early 1940s, the average Canadian household had 4.3 people, according to RBC Economics. By 1981 that had fallen to just under three people. Today it stands at 2.4 people.

This has resulted in a tremendous upward push in the need for housing. To house the three-person households that were common in the 1970s, you would have required roughly 33 homes for 100 people. In contrast, to accommodate the same 100 people today, in households that average only 2.4 people each, you would need more than 41 homes – a major increase even if Canada’s population hadn’t budged at all.

Most analysts agree the combination of shrinking households and years of sluggish construction has resulted in a serious housing deficit – but putting a hard number on the size of that deficit is difficult.

Last year, Jean-François Perrault, chief economist at Bank of Nova Scotia, wrote a noteexploring a couple of methods for estimating the size of Canada’s housing shortfall. Just to be clear: This is the size of the shortfall that would still exist even if Canada were to suddenly speed up construction to the point it was meeting demand from newly formed households.

His first approach was to look at what it would take to keep the ratio of housing units to population stable since 2016, when home prices began a notable upward surge. This method suggests Canada was about 100,000 dwellings short at the time Mr. Perrault wrote his report in early 2021.

However, it ignores the shortfall that had accumulated before 2016. A more wide-ranging approach is to compare Canada with other advanced economies in the Group of Seven and ask what it would take for Canada to achieve the same number of housing units per 1,000 residents as other G7 countries.

To catch up to the United States – a country experiencing housing shortages of its own – Canada would require another 99,000 units, Mr. Perrault estimated in his note. To catch up to the United Kingdom, 250,000 homes. To catch up to the G7 average, a staggering 1.8 million homes.

People can argue which number is most appropriate, Mr. Perrault said in an interview, but “we know there is currently a huge gap and that gap will rise given population growth and recent construction trends.”

One disturbing aspect of those recent construction trends is the discrepancy between housing starts and housing completions. While housing starts have been lacklustre, housing completions have been even worse.

Between the start of 2016 and the end of 2021, Canada started an average of 221,000 homes a year but completed only about 200,000 homes annually. The discrepancy appears to reflect a variety of factors – labour shortages, rising raw material costs and the long lag time between starting a multiunit project and completing it – but whatever the exact cause of the gap, it does drive a wedge between widely reported numbers on housing starts and the actual amount of housing that is being delivered.

Meanwhile, Ottawa has supersized national immigration targets, raising them from around 260,000 people in 2015 to more than 400,000 today. Thanks largely to immigration, Canada’s population is now growing at more than twice the pace of most developed economies, according to Mr. Hogue at RBC.

Given immigration pressures, demographic trends toward smaller home sizes and Canada’s long history of sluggish construction, how many new homes would it take to make housing affordable again? CMHC economists took a crack at answering that question in an ambitious study over the summer.

They defined housing affordability in two ways. The first was as the level of affordability that prevailed in each province in 2003-04. The second was as the level that would require households to devote no more than 40 per cent of their after-tax income to housing.

If nothing else, these definitions help to put a number on the extent of Canada’s affordability challenge.

In Ontario, achieving affordability would mean the average price of a home would have to fall from $871,000 in 2021 to between $499,000 and $551,000 in 2030, depending on which affordability benchmark you use. In British Columbia, restoring affordability would require average prices to fall from $929,000 in 2021 to between $607,000 and $679,000 in 2030.

In contrast, home prices in other provinces already seem to be affordable or at least close to affordable, especially when judged against the common 40-per-cent-of-disposable-income benchmark.

But even taking those more affordable regions into account, bringing the country as a whole back to affordability is a mammoth challenge because of the huge shortfalls in Ontario and British Columbia.

The CMHC study estimates that Canada must build an additional 2.3 million homes between now and 2030, on top of what it is already building, to meet the 40-per-cent-of-income target. Achieving the more ambitious target of restoring the affordability levels of 2003-04 would demand 3.5 million more homes than the business-as-usual scenario.

The bottom line? Canada needs to at least double its current pace of home building to have a serious impact on affordability, according to Aled ab Iorwerth, deputy chief economist at CMHC.

“We need a lot more supply, we need a sea change,” he said.

Source: How many houses does Canada actually need?

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How a Sludge-Filled Policy Stoked Uncertainty and Fear for Immigrant Families – By Kelli Garcia

2022/10/12 Leave a comment

Sludge is a new term for me (variant of nudge, but negative):

As a child growing up in Texas, I sometimes worried about getting caught up in an immigration raid. It was, in many ways, a fantastical fear. I was born in the United States, as were both my parents and all of my grandparents.

And, yet, my fear had some basis in reality. Cheech Marin’s 1987 film, Born in East L.A., about an American citizen being deported to Mexico and trying to get back to the United States, captured both the fear and absurdity of the moment. The United States does, after all, have a long history of deporting American citizens that continues to this day.

The climate of fear created and fanned by anti-immigrant rhetoric was and is real, not just for me but for many others. In 2018, one study estimated that about 50 percent of the United States’ Latino citizens reported fearing that they, a family member, or close friend could be deported.

This fear and anxiety have real consequences on individuals, families, and society. Several years ago, a harsh immigration policy implemented by the Trump Administration led people not to apply for benefits that they were eligible for. Because the consequences of running afoul of the rule could be dire, these changes created a chilling effect on who applied for benefits, reducing applications even for those who weren’t targeted by it.

This is an example of what behavioral scientists call sludge—when a policy’s design or implementation makes wise decisions more difficult through “friction and bad intentions.”

The United States immigration laws and regulations are full of sludge. Complicated and costly immigration processes have compounded disparities in who is able to apply for and obtain U.S. citizenship. The public charge rule I’m focusing on is an over-100-year-old law, rooted in racist and xenophobic beliefsthat people should not be admitted to the United States if they are “paupers or likely to become a public charge.” The law’s inexact language leaves ample room for policymakers to add or reduce sludge. The Trump-era change added sludge. Now, changes made by the Biden Administration aim to reduce it. But fear and uncertainty linger, preventing people from accessing the benefits they need.

From 1999 to 2019, the only things considered when determining whether someone was likely to become a public charge was whether they had received cash assistance from the federal government or had been institutionalized for long-term care at the government’s expense. In 2019, the Trump Administration’s new regulations expanded the types of programs the government would consider. The rule now factored in the use of housing, nutrition, and health programs. It also listed characteristics that would be weighted negatively against a person, such as having an income below 125 percent of the federal poverty line. The rule was long, complicated, and confusing.

In reality, the public charge determination applies to very few people in the United States. Refugees, asylees, and other groups of immigrants admitted to the United States for humanitarian reasons are excluded from the law. In addition, most immigrants in the United States who could be subject to the public charge rule are also excluded from using the types of safety net programs that would have been considered in the public charge determination.

But when the stakes are high and information is unclear, people err on the side of caution. The mere announcement of the now-defunct rule reduced the number of eligible immigrants enrolled in health, nutrition, and housing assistance programs, including in programs that were not affected by the rule.

For example, at ideas42 we found that Minnesota counties with higher proportions of noncitizens experienced larger declines in enrollment in food assistance through the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program than did counties with fewer noncitizens. This occurred even though participation in WIC was not considered part of the public charge determination. Applied nationally, our results suggest that the public charge rule announcement reduced overall WIC enrollment by over 28,000 people. Similarly, after the announcement of the Trump public charge rule, enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in Minnesota declined 6.3 percentage points more for noncitizens than citizens, even though nearly all of Minnesota’s noncitizen SNAP enrollees were exempt from the rule.

The rule also required certain immigrants who apply to become permanent residents to provide extensive and complicated documentation about any public benefits programs they used. Under these circumstances, it’s not surprising that many immigrants chose not to apply.

As a kid in Texas, my friends and I were careful not to be too loud in the movie theater or linger too long in a store for fear of drawing the attention of authorities. Similarly, many immigrants and citizens in mixed-status households stayed away from benefits programs for fear of running afoul of the confusing rule.

This fear persisted even after the Biden administration halted enforcement of the rule in March 2021. A September 2021 survey of 1,000 families with at least one immigrant family member found that 46 percent did not apply for assistance when they needed it because they feared it could harm their immigration status. Some immigrants expressed fear that merely seeking medical care could affect their immigration status. This fear contributed to vaccine hesitancy among Latino communities.

In September, the Biden Administration issued a new rule that provides clear guidance on when receipt of public benefits will be considered in the public charge determination. Unlike the 2019 rule, the new public charge regulations strive to be “clear, fair, and comprehensible.” Under the new rule, the Department of Homeland Security will only consider public cash assistance, including Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and state, local, and tribal cash benefit programs and government funded long term institutional care. The rule specifically states that nutrition programs, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, Medicaid, housing benefits, and any benefits related to immunizations or testing for communicable diseases will not be considered in the public charge determination.

In developing these new regulations, the Department of Homeland Security considered the importance of reducing the chilling effect, not just for the benefit of individual people but also for society at large. Government benefit programs are supposed to help people when they need it. Making sure people can access medical care, have enough to eat, and have a roof over their heads helps society as a whole. By reducing immigrants’ participation in these programs, the 2019 public charge rule contributed to the very harms these programs were meant to address. The clarity of the new rule is intended to restore eligible immigrants’ participation in government benefits programs so that these programs can once again achieve their goals.

No parent should be afraid that accessing public benefits to feed their children or get medical care could lead to losing their right to remain in this country. No child should fear that a parent could be deported if they get reduced-priced lunches at school. As our and others’ research has shown, policies that create fear and uncertainty can undermine our social safety net and public health systems. I know from my own experience how easy it is for fear to change behavior in ways that can seem irrational. People respond to confusion with fear. By providing clarity, the new public charge rule should reduce fear and help ensure benefits programs serve those who are eligible.

Disclosure: Kelli García is an employee of ideas42, which provides financial support to Behavioral Scientist as a Founding Partner. Founding Partners do not play a role in the editorial decisions of the magazine.

Source: How a Sludge-Filled Policy Stoked Uncertainty and Fear for Immigrant Families – By Kelli Garcia

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Axworthy and Rock: The Safe Third Country Agreement is unsafe – and unconstitutional

2022/10/12 Leave a comment

Reflections of former ministers (easier when no longer in government) but will see what the Supreme Court rules:

Former ministers As Canadians, we take pride in our well-deserved reputation as a caring society that offers a humane and generous response to those seeking asylum. Yet last week, the Supreme Court of Canada heard arguments that since 2004, Canadians have been complicit in the mistreatment of refugees arriving at our border from the United States.

At the heart of this issue is the 2004 Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA), which requires that refugee claimants seek protection in the first country in which they arrive, be it Canada or the United States. On a practical level, this means that a person seeking asylum from a country other than Canada or the U.S. cannot seek protection in Canada if they have already landed in the U.S., and vice-versa. For the past 18 years, the STCA has operated on the premise that both countries are “safe” for refugees.

In July, 2020, a federal court judge determined that the STCA is unconstitutional and that Canada’s treatment of STCA returnees violates those provisions of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms that guarantee liberty and security of the person. The Federal Court of Appeal took a different view and upheld the STCA. Hence, the matter is now before our highest court for a final decision.

The problem here is not the agreement itself. In fact, similar arrangements have succeeded when all participating countries truly offer safety to asylum seekers. Instead, the problem is that the fundamental premise of the STCA no longer holds true. Put simply, the United States is not safe for many refugees. As a result, there are two distinct reasons why, in our respectful view, the Supreme Court should strike down the STCA.

First, while it is not the Court’s role to judge another country’s legal system, this case asks the Court to ensure that people who seek protection in Canada are not sent back to unjustifiable risk and real harm. Yet in returning people to foreseeable consequences in the U.S. – namely, detention in deplorable conditions and a serious risk of return to persecution – that is exactly what is occurring.

In the evidence before the Court, there are numerous examples of asylum seekers who were jailed in the U.S. after being turned away from Canada. They include a family with toddlers who were forbidden from sleeping with their parents; people kept for long periods in solitary confinement; and a 50-year-old woman forced to bathe naked in full view of security personnel.

Those who we send back to be detained in the U.S. face enormous barriers in claiming protection, leading some to be deported and persecuted in their home country. For example, the evidence in the case before the Court includes testimony from a Sri Lankan man who was turned away from Canada and then detained for a year and a half in the U.S. He was then deported and faced the exact persecution he feared – detention, interrogation and beatings by Sri Lankan authorities.

Second, our government has not been respecting the limits created by our own domestic laws. Canadian law implementing the STCA requires that our government monitor circumstances in the U.S. and only continue its designation as “safe” when it truly is. Here, the Court will hear the argument that Canada has neither adequately monitored what’s happening in the U.S. nor responded effectively to what it has seen. Given these circumstances, the Court will be asked to intervene.

Although Donald Trump is no longer in power, the reality for too many refugee claimants in the U.S. remains terrifying. We are by now all too familiar with last year’s images of U.S. border patrol agents on horseback chasing down Haitian migrants. And four years after the implementation of a disastrous policy at the U.S.-Mexico border that separated children from their parents, many are yet to be reunited. Immigration detention conditions in the U.S. remain deplorable, with staggeringly high rates of sexual assault and racially motivated attacks. Is Canada not properly monitoring these developments, or have we grown complacent in turning a blind eye to them? In either case, the STCA can no longer be allowed to stand.

It is important to note that even if the STCA is declared invalid, asylum seekers will still have to establish that they qualify for refugee status under international law. But they will no longer be automatically deemed ineligible for that status merely because they crossed into Canada from the United States.

It is said that the measure of a society is how it treats those on its margins. When vulnerable asylum seekers arrive at our border, they deserve to be treated lawfully and with dignity. We can no longer assume that if we send them back to the U.S., they will be safe. Indeed, the evidence establishes the contrary. It is time for us to abandon the STCA, an agreement no longer worthy of its name.

Lloyd Axworthy is chair of the World Refugee and Migration Council and a former Canadian foreign minister. Allan Rock is president emeritus of the University of Ottawa, and former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations.

Source: The Safe Third Country Agreement is unsafe – and unconstitutional

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,

Clark: How your right to know is getting stymied by the Denial Machine

2022/10/11 Leave a comment

Good commentary on the broke ATIP system and how this impacts service to the public, particularly with respect to immigration (IRCC does a good job in publishing most of its operational data on the government-wide open data site):

Thirty-nine years ago, after a wave of post-Watergate epiphanies about government secrecy, the Canadian government passed the first federal Access to Information Act. Ever since then it is has been building a denial machine.

It would be easy to pin the blame on secretive politicians trying to obstruct the public’s ability to know what is going on inside government, because they have done that. Prime ministers including Justin Trudeau and his predecessor, Stephen Harper, have broken promises to open government.

But it’s not just that. There is bureaucratic aversion to openness, and a default assumption that making the public’s business public would be tricky. Complicated. Impractical.

And there is another problem: The government’s failure to provide information about simple things is gumming up the system.

Take a look at the recent The Globe and Mail story in which Information Commissioner Caroline Maynard is quoted telling a House of Commons committee that every department in government is failing to keep up with Access to Information requests. Should there be reforms? Ms. Maynard told the committee, in a phrase that should leave us all gobsmacked, that “respecting the law as it currently exists would represent an important first step.”

The government’s Access to Information system, which cost $90-milion in 2021, is garnering 10,000 complaints a year, the story noted. And it included a statistic that offers a clue to one big chunk of the problem: Access to Information requests to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada have increased so much they now outnumber requests to all other departments.

Why? Because IRCC is so bad at providing basic routine info that people are resorting to freedom-of-information requests.

The Access to Information law is supposed to allow people to pay a small fee to request federal government records or, at least, records that aren’t covered by the extensive legal exceptions.

The system for implementing the Act – the $90-million machine – is based on finding the requested documents, but heavily focused on applying exceptions and blacking stuff out. Ask for a copy of a government contract and often the prices of items will be redacted, even though the Federal Court of Canada has ruled such information should be released. One huge problem is delays, sometimes of years. With information, access delayed is often access denied.

That’s why the volume of requests to the Immigration department is instructive. Many come from people asking for info on their applications, said Vancouver immigration lawyer Richard Kurland. He publishes an immigration-policy newsletter, Lexbase, which is based heavily on access-to-information releases.

IRCC has for decades been unable or unwilling to provide updates to applicants, so Members of Parliament are often deluged with requests for help. Increasingly, their offices file access requests.

If you’re a regular internet shopper, you might recognize those requests as the immigration version of a common customer-service question: “Where’s my stuff?” Companies such as Amazon have online tracking systems that give customers simple answers: whether the order has been received, or shipped, and so on. If they didn’t, they’d be deluged with inquiries. But IRCC doesn’t do that.

Now the government’s failure to provide basic information is gumming up the system that is supposed to allow Canadians to pierce the veil of secrecy.

More broadly, Ottawa’s failure to make openness routine – even though doing so is easy in the digital age – makes getting access to out-of-the-ordinary information slower, and harder.

Requesters sometimes ask for copies of agreements for “grants and contributions” that set out government funding for organizations and groups. These should be automatically published on a website. So should all contracts except in rare exceptions. And so on.

But politicians don’t much care for that sort of transparency. Why let more people see things that might raise embarrassing questions? When the system is clogged up, as it is now, they don’t have to care. There’s no real penalty for failing to respect the Access to Information law.

If the government spent twice the money on a functioning Access to Information system, it would be well worth it. Instead, over decades, Ottawa has built – by design and by accident – a system that is effectively a machine to deny and delay.

Source: How your right to know is getting stymied by the Denial Machine

Filed under Government, Immigration Tagged with ,

After feds lift 20-hour work rule for international students, immigration consultant calls move ‘short-sighted’

2022/10/11 Leave a comment

Worse than short-sighted, makes a mockery of issuing permits for study purposes and essentially is encouraging low wage and low skilled immigration as others have noted. More critical commentary needed and media should not only focus on the activist perspectives:

While the federal government’s move to lift restrictions on how long international students can work in a week is being applauded by many, an immigration consultant in Windsor, Ont., is concerned it could do more harm than good.

In an effort to address Canada’s labour shortage, Immigration Minister Sean Fraser announced Friday it would be expanding employment limits for international students with off-campus work authorization.

Currently, international students are permitted to work 20 hours per week. The only time of year when that restriction does not apply is during scheduled breaks, such as reading week or summer and winter holidays.

Starting Nov. 15 until the end of 2023, there will no longer be an “upper limit” on how many hours they can work. The new directive applies to those who have submitted a study permit application as of Oct. 7, 2022.

“This means that more than 500,000 international students who are already here in Canada are going to be eligible to work more if they choose to do so,” said Fraser.

University of Windsor master student Kenil Maniya said, on any given day, he finds himself with free time that could be better spent making money at his job. But when he’s already worked 20 hours that week, it’s not possible.

“I’m really happy that we can tell our manager we are ready to work more. We are always ready to give our best,” said Maniya.

He added there’s no reason why the federal government should not be using international students who are itching to work to fill the country’s labour shortage.

“When students come, some of them take a loan back in their home country so they have to manage their finances over here,” he said.

“Utilizing the current student resources will make the students happy in Canada.”

According to immigration consultant Amanjit Verma, however, the federal government’s new policy is “short-sighted.”

“The fact that there was a limit of 20 hours was a bit of a blessing in disguise,” said Verma, adding the time restriction helps international students achieve a work-school balance.

She also has concerns about the information international students receive in their home country before coming to Canada and how the new policy may reinforce that.

“I’ve been amazed and saddened by when these students come and tell me the kind of immigration advice they got from their international student advisor who has no idea how IPA (Immigration and Refugee Protection Act) and everything else works,” she said.

In Verma’s experience, she said, one of the most common “refusal grounds” for postgraduate work permit applications is a student not able to maintain full-time academic status — and many students do not realize that.

“So if someone who’s now working more than 20 hours, because they’re authorized to do that off-campus, goes part-time or reduces his course load, it will negatively affect his ability to get that work permit that will get him his PR (permanent residency) later on,” said Verma.

“I’m just concerned about repercussions for the students with this new policy,” said Verma.

As for Maniya, the India-born student said he is trying his best to achieve a healthy work-school balance and added he’s just happy he no longer has to circle scheduled breaks from school on his calendar until the end of next year.

“We always ask our boss during those times to please provide us with a full-time schedule,” said Maniya, adding he will often “multitask” and work on school tasks while on the job.

“It’s stressful a bit but lifting the hours will be good for us. It’s nice we don’t have to wait for reading week anymore.”

In a statement, Migrant Workers Alliance For Change applauded the lifting of working hours, saying the group has been campaigning the government to do so in the name of “labour rights and mobility.”

“Removing the limit on hours of work while studying gives student migrant workers the power to leave bad jobs, speak up against exploitation and mistreatment, and freedom and flexibility to make decisions about their work,” the group said in a statement.

Source: After feds lift 20-hour work rule for international students, immigration consultant calls move ‘short-sighted’

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , , ,

Trichur: Why Danby’s CEO is worried about refugee sponsorship as Canada teeters toward a recession

2022/10/08 Leave a comment

Of note, including the warning regarding the impact of a possible economic slump:

At a time when business leaders are bracing for a recession, Jim Estill is concerned about more than just his company’s bottom line.

The chief executive officer of Danby Appliances, a Guelph, Ont.-based manufacturer and distributor of household appliances, is also worried that an economic slump will further complicate efforts to sponsor and settle refugees.

Not only is the Canadian economy slowing, it has shed jobs for three consecutive months. Companies are still hiring, but the unemployment rate has climbed to 5.4 per cent.

That’s why Mr. Estill – who in conjunction with Danby, has sponsored hundreds of refugees since 2015 – is watching the cooling labour market with trepidation. After helping people from all over the world – including Syria, Congo, Myanmar, Venezuela, Afghanistan and Ukraine – he knows a recession will make it harder for refugees to find work and start new lives in Canada.

“If we end up with an unemployment rate that was higher, I could see people in the general population resenting refugees‚” he said during an interview at The Globe and Mail’s Growth Camp event for Canada’s top-growing companies.

As Mr. Estill points out, he and others faced little societal resistance to bringing in refugees when this country appeared to be swimming in unfilled jobs.

“Nobody was coming and taking your job. Because, okay, did you want the job at McDonald’s? No, there’s no lineup to take the job,” Mr. Estill said.

But social sentiments can shift during tougher economic times.

Sure, some of it is rooted in racism – but those people would have a problem with refugees even if GDP growth was going gangbusters.

Other folks, though, worry about the availability of jobs and affordable housing for their relatives and friends in a sputtering economy. That means a widely expected recession is shaping up to be a critical moment for refugee sponsorship and settlement in Canada.

History teaches us that newcomers often struggle to find and keep jobs during economic contractions. The COVID-19 downturn, for instance, disproportionately affected immigrant women in low-wage jobs.

“Immigrants often have more negative labour market outcomes during recessions than those born domestically,” a 2022 study by Statistics Canada states. It also notes that entering the labour market during a recession can result in a “scarring effect” that hurts immigrants’ earnings for years.

There’s not much research that focuses on refugees. But a 2019 Statistics Canada studydid track outcomes for 830,000 refugees from 13 countries.

Although it found “substantial” employment rates five years after their arrival, it also concluded their earnings varied based on their countries of origin.

“Ten years after entering Canada, the refugee groups with the highest earnings (i.e., from the former Yugoslavia, Poland and Colombia) earned roughly double what those with the lowest earnings did (i.e., from Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and China),” the study said.

A separate Statscan paper, published in 2020, found that privately sponsored refugees – such as those helped by Mr. Estill – tend to have higher employment rates and earnings than government-assisted refugees – even if they have lower levels of education.

Although Mr. Estill does not permanently employ every adult he sponsors, Danby’s 90-day program provides them with short-term work, English lessons, assistance with résumé writing and finding job coaches.

”It’s not government money that is that is paying for these people, it’s private money. It’s my money that’s paying to settle them, so it doesn’t cost taxpayers,” Mr. Estill said.

That underscores the importance of private refugee sponsorships, including those undertaken by individual entrepreneurs and corporations.

Danby is not alone in its efforts to help displaced people.

Companies including Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc., National Bank of Canada, Bombardier Inc., KPMG Canada and Stingray Group Inc. have committed to sponsoring Ukrainian refugees displaced by the Russian invasion – but so many others also need help.

Mr. Estill, for one, is calling on the federal government to allow more refugees to enter the country.

Canada was the first country to introduce a private sponsorship program more than 40 years ago. But even so, getting privately sponsored refugees into the country can take years, which is why Mr. Estill advises other executives the program will not address their company’s short-term hiring needs.

He’s right to encourage others to think about the long-term benefits to Canada.

After all, some former refugees, such as Rola Dagher, a Lebanese-Canadian who is currently global channel chief at Dell Technologies, have gone on to make great strides in the business world. She came to Canada via Cyprus.

That brings us back to Corporate Canada. Which companies will be next to offer refugees a lifeline during these uncertain times?

“My problems are very first-world problems,” Mr. Estill explains. “It’s that we might be going into a recession. Oh no, my sales might not be as high as I’d like them to be. But they’re first-world problems.”

Thank you, sir. Well said.

Source: Why Danby’s CEO is worried about refugee sponsorship as Canada teeters toward a recession

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with ,

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