2022 Annual Report on Immigration, 2023-25 Levels Plan: “The More the Merrier”

2022/11/14 Leave a comment

The annual report, looking back, and the levels plan, looking forward, are narrowly focused on immigration and largely silent on the impacts of increased immigration, beyond generalities on demographics and filling labour market needs. No real surprises as the government’s intentions had either been announced or signalled in advance for both permanent and temporary migration.

There is no discussion of the impacts on housing, healthcare, infrastructure, the environment among others.

Some of the more interesting articles on the report and plan are below.

There is no discussion of the impacts on housing, healthcare, infrastructure, the environment among others.

In general, the government gets a pass on these omissions from the opposition, provincial governments (save Quebec), the Century Initiative, business and other stakeholders, settlement organization and media coverage. The report and plan came out the same day as the latest Focus Canada survey, showing ongoing and increasing support for immigration.

Media commentaries that exemplify this include John Ibbitson: Immigrants are the great insulators against the worst economic and political threats we face and Andrew Phillips’ Record immigration is a yawn in Canada, and that’s a good thing.

An odd analysis argued that How Canada’s new immigration targets will help housing recover — and push prices higher long-term. Is the objective to help housing recover or to make housing more affordable? High immigration hampers affordability.

Others were positive but former Liberal Minister from the Chrétien years, Canada bucks global trend on increasing immigration targets,  flagged the government’s poor record in delivery with high backlogs.

The Globe did a good deep dive into temporary workers, How Canada became a hotbed for low-wage foreign labour, highlighted the misplaced changes that made it easier for businesses to hire low-wage labour, including by expanding the amount of time international students could work rather than study, a mockery of the education objectives.

More negative commentaries included Annan Khan’s Increasing our population intake will not address the cynicism guiding Canada’s immigration policy. True, but self-interested immigration policy that priorizes economic immigration has greater public support than more altruistic alternatives favouring refugees.alternative of rebalancing in favour of refugees.

Rupa Subramanya’s Come One, Come All cites a number of statistics that highlight relatively poor outcomes for recent immigrants and posits that high levels are at least in part driven by political motives given that Liberals have traditionally done well with immigrant origin voters. IMO, largely obsolete as the Conservatives under Harper did the hard work of engaging new Canadians, only to blow it with citizenship revocation and the “barbaric cultural practices” tip line.

Colby Cosh’s High on Immigration similarly picks up on Subramanya’s points on economic outcomes and argues that the net effect on housing prices employers who are over-represented by “old-stock” Canadians.

Andrew MacDougall’s focus on the politics, Liberals’ immigration policy could set a trap for Pierre Poilievre, highlights the risks that the Liberals are making immigration a wedge issue, a likely reason that successive Conservative immigration critics have focused their critiques on administrative issues (backlogs etc) and Roxham Road irregular arrivals.

My sense is that the Conservatives are well aware of the need to engage immigrant-origin and visible minority voters, given the large number of ridings with large numbers of these voters, plus his personal biography (e.g., marriage to a Venezuelan immigrant) mean that it will be hard to paint him as anti-immigration unless he or high profile candidates misstep.

Even the generally “Trudeau derangement syndrome” outlet “True” North’s reporting on the immigration levels plan has been neutral and factual. The Toronto Sun was favourable to the plan, EDITORIAL: Rolling out a careful welcome mat, but flagged infrastructure needs to ensure successful integration.

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Hong Kongers returning to Vancouver after years of population decline, census shows

2022/11/01 Leave a comment

Not surprising given Chinese government takeover:

Ken Tung says he recently helped a new arrival from Hong Kong find a basement unit in Metro Vancouver for only $500 rent per month, thanks to a discount by a sympathetic landlord.

“It’s a good price,” said Tung, who said he has helped at least 100 young people from Hong Kong settle in Canada over the past three years.

But Tung said he’s playing a relatively limited role resettling Hong Kongers compared to Vancouver-based groups, including churches, that have helped thousands.

“I know many churches and their people are helping Hong Kong newcomers .… People are donating furniture and lowering the rent to help them out,” said Tung.

Tung and others like him are facilitating a shift that shows up in new Canadian census figures.

The data released this week shows the Hong Kong-born population of Canada is on the rise, with a large majority settling in the Vancouver region, reversing a return-migration trend that had previously seen thousands of Hong Kongers leaving Canada.

Experts say the shift is being propelled by a political crackdown in Hong Kong, which came under a sweeping national security law in 2020 after anti-government protests.

The 2021 census shows a 6.1 per cent increase of Hong Kong-born people in Vancouver’s census metropolitan area in the past five years, bringing the total population to more than 76,000. It had previously been falling for decades.

The increase of 4,395 accounts for 90 per cent of the Canada-wide increase of Hong Kongers since 2016, when the previous census was conducted.

Many more are on the way, using new migration pathways that Canada opened up to Hong Kongers last year.

Tung said he wasn’t surprised by the census numbers.

He said Hong Kongers arriving in Metro Vancouver recently mainly fell into four categories — returnees who already hold Canadian citizenship, people arriving on new work permits, students and some asylum seekers.

He said their motivations were largely the same. “The answer is simple — they can’t see a future in Hong Kong,” Tung said

The national security law has been used to target protesters and political opponents of the Hong Kong government and the Chinese Communist Party.

Tung said those leaving Hong Kong did so after watching Hong Kong go from being “open, modernized” to “hardcore communism.”

Hong Kong was Canada’s biggest source of immigrants in the lead-up to the 1997 handover to China, but Hong Kongers’ presence in Canada had been shrinking steadily for years as thousands moved back to the former British colony.

The crackdown in Hong Kong was followed by the establishment of new Canadian migration pathways in response.

But while the census shows 2,385 recent Hong Kong immigrants to the Vancouver census metropolitan area in the preceding five years, that number is outstripped by the actual increase in the Hong Kong-born population, suggesting more than 45 per cent of newcomers already held Canadian citizenship or some other status.

One such newcomer, a financial analyst who declined to be named for safety reasons, said he was born in Hong Kong but immigrated to Canada with his parents and finished his studies here.

His parents brought the family to Canada in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown in Beijing, which triggered an exodus from Hong Kong and Taiwan.

But in the mid-2000s, he went back to Hong Kong for work. It wasn’t until last year he decided to reverse direction again, returning to Vancouver with his wife and son.

“I used to have the freedom to speak my mind, have choices in reading different news media and discuss in public without any repercussion. This is really valuable to me .… And therefore when it’s gone, Hong Kong is no longer Hong Kong,” he said.

He said he was making a good living in Hong Kong and enjoying the low-tax environment there, but decided there is “something more important than the money.”

“I have a kid and it’s not only for myself but also for his future. I can’t stand living in that environment,” he said.

“It’s a very tough journey to go through. Seeing young people getting oppressed and intellectuals being jailed and detained. It’s definitely a saddening journey.”

Kennedy Chi-Pan Wong is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Southern California who has studied Hong Kong migration patterns.

Wong said his research showed many recent migrants were Hong Kong political prisoners’ relatives, friends or colleagues.

The U.S.-based Hong Kong Democracy Council says there are 1,163 political prisoners in Hong Kong as of September 2022.

“That actually creates a large pushing force, (as we call it) in migration studies, that really push people out of the country,” said Wong.

In addition to the political unrest, other factors have also come into play, such as Hong Kong and mainland China’s strict pandemic rules, said Wong.

He said the COVID rules that had inhibited mobility had created concern about doing business in Hong Kong, and the city’s future prosperity.

The influx looks set to accelerate, with more than 20,000 permits for study, permanent residency and work granted to Hong Kongers last year after Canada launched a new open work permit pathway last year for Hong Kong residents who are recent graduates of post-secondary institutions.

Some of those pathways only came into effect after the May 2021 census.

Wong agreed that the peak of newcomers from Hong Kong hasn’t arrived in Canada yet.

Meanwhile, the financial analyst who returned to Vancouver said he hoped the new arrivals would help capture some of Hong Kong’s previous spirit.

“(We) will connect with them and make sure the culture and values are preserved,” he said.

Source: Hong Kongers returning to Vancouver after years of population decline, census shows

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Immigration Canada discrimine les étudiants d’Afrique francophone. Voici ce que Québec devrait faire pour y mettre fin

2022/11/01 Leave a comment

More concerns expressed, somewhat scattered rather than focussed:

La campagne électorale québécoise s’est terminée sur un verdict sans appel. La Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) a été reportée au pouvoir face à une opposition divisée et en retrait.

L’heure est au bilan et à l’élaboration des nouvelles orientations du gouvernement. Notamment en matière d’immigration.

Une campagne pénible sur le thème de l’immigration

Il a beaucoup été question d’immigration durant cette campagne. Rarement en des termes qui élevaient le débat, malheureusement. Le premier ministre François Legault a amalgamé l’immigration à des mœurs violentes pouvant heurter les « valeurs » des Québécois. L’ancien ministre de l’Immigration, Jean Boulet a démontré sa méconnaissance des chiffres de son propre ministère lors d’une sortie gênante. En voulant rectifier le tir, le premier ministre en a rajouté en qualifiant une hausse des seuils d’immigration au-delà de 50 000 immigrants par année de « suicidaire ».

Il est tout à fait légitime pour un État de mesurer les impacts de différents seuils d’immigration. Mais si le nouveau gouvernement veut se faire rassembleur, il devrait éviter d’avoir recours à des sifflets à chiens pour les amateurs de théories du déclin.

En tant que professeur dans le domaine de la sociologie politique, je m’intéresse aux dynamiques et transformations sociopolitiques au Québec et au Canada.

Discrimination systémique à Immigration Canada

Lors de son deuxième mandat, le gouvernement caquiste doit aborder les enjeux liés à l’immigration d’une façon moins frileuse et plus ambitieuse.

Paradoxalement, dans un contexte où plusieurs partis à l’Assemblée nationale adhèrent à une forme ou à une autre de nationalisme, aucune formation ne semble s’inquiéter de la diminution du poids démographique du Québec et de la francophonie au sein de la fédération canadienne, confirmée par les dernières données publiées par Statistique Canada.

Or, le développement de la francophonie canadienne et des institutions francophones au Québec devra passer, entre autres choses, par une immigration en provenance des pays d’Afrique francophone et par une plus grande ouverture à l’égard de celle-ci.

En lien avec ce premier enjeu, un deuxième doit être abordé et dénoncé de façon beaucoup plus frontale par l’Assemblée nationale à Québec, soit celui des obstacles posés par le gouvernement fédéral, par Immigration Canada pour être précis, aux étudiants·e·s de la francophonie noire africaine qui cherchent à étudier dans une institution francophone au Québec.

Ces étudiants·e·s subissent un taux de refus nettement supérieur aux étudiants·e·s appliquant dans les institutions anglophones : ce taux se situe autour de 60 % au Québec, 45 % en Ontario et 37 % en Colombie-Britannique. Les étudiants·e·s d’Afrique francophone sont surreprésentés parmi ces refus. En 2021, le gouvernement canadien a rejeté 72 % des candidatures provenant de pays africains ayant une forte population francophone, contre 35 % pour l’ensemble des autres régions du monde.

Cette situation est documentée et connue à Immigration Canada. Mais combattre cette forme de discrimination ne semble pas la priorité du ministère.

Ça ne semble pas être une priorité du Parti libéral du Canada non plus, en dépit de sa profession de foi antiraciste dans bien d’autres dossiers. Cette situation cause un préjudice d’abord aux étudiants·e·s en question, puis aux établissements d’enseignement supérieur au Québec. C’est pour cette raison que l’Assemblée nationale doit s’en saisir vigoureusement.

Racisme et francophobie

Durant les premiers mois où cette situation a été révélée, deux arguments ont été mis de l’avant par le fédéral pour la justifier : un problème algorithmique (ceux-ci ont le dos large) ; puis, la crainte que ces étudiants·e·s ne retournent pas dans leur pays.

Cette deuxième affirmation avait le mérite d’être claire. Pire, lorsqu’il s’agit de la francophonie noire africaine, le traitement discriminatoire des demandes va au-delà des seuls étudiants. C’est l’ensemble des dossiers qui semble faire l’objet de délais déraisonnables. De nombreux chercheurs africains devant participer à des congrès, comme celui sur sur le sida, qui se tenait cet été à Montréal, ont vu leur demande de visas refusée ou ne l’ont pas reçu à temps, une situation dénoncée par les organisateurs.

Encore là, le gouvernement libéral a l’indignation à géométrie variable.

Dernièrement, Immigration Canada a confessé du bout des lèvres qu’il y avait du racisme, jumelé à de la francophobie, à son ministère. Cela survient près d’un an après que ces pratiques aient été dénoncées par les institutions d’enseignement supérieur francophones.

L’Assemblée nationale du Québec doit dénoncer à l’unanimité cette discrimination.

Québec doit également rectifier le tir

Dans ce dossier, le gouvernement québécois doit lui aussi faire un examen de conscience.

Les signaux envoyés par Québec ces dernières années n’ont pas été attrayants pour les étudiants internationaux. Dans le cadre d’une mesure incompréhensible, le gouvernement a alourdi et allongé le temps de résidence nécessaire au Québec pour les étudiants internationaux souhaitant y demander la résidence permanente ou la citoyenneté.

Or, à la fin de leurs études ces étudiants·e·s bénéficient d’un réseau favorable à leur insertion professionnelle, sociale et culturelle. Pour reprendre une formule du premier ministre Legault, créer des embûches à ces étudiants·e·s est « suicidaire » pour l’attrait des universités québécoises face à leurs rivales des autres provinces.

Jouer les régions contre Montréal nuit aux institutions francophones à Montréal

Un troisième enjeu gagnerait à être réévalué par la nouvelle ministre de l’Éducation supérieure, Pascale Déry.

À la fin de son premier mandat, la CAQ a pris la décision de favoriser la régionalisation des étudiants internationaux dans certains domaines d’études au moyen d’incitatifs financiers s’ils étudient en région.

C’est, en soi, une excellente nouvelle. Les étudiants·e·s internationaux en région dynamisent le tissu social et culturel et ils revitalisent des institutions d’enseignement indispensables à la vitalité des régions. Cependant, on peut se demander s’il est pertinent de jouer les régions contre Montréal sur cet enjeu. Afin de freiner le déclin des institutions d’enseignement francophones à Montréal (toutes connaissent une baisse d’inscriptions cet automne), le gouvernement provincial peut aussi agir en les aidant à attirer des étudiants internationaux francophones à Montréal.

Jouer les régions contre Montréal est de bonne guerre en campagne électorale, mais si le gouvernement est sérieux à l’égard de la situation du français à Montréal, il doit se doter d’un plan pour contribuer au rayonnement de l’enseignement supérieur en français également dans la métropole.

Francophonie métropolitaine : le temps est à l’ambition

En 1967 et 1968, la création du réseau des Cégeps et de l’Université du Québec a favorisé la démocratisation de l’accès à l’éducation en français au Québec.

En 2022, l’objectif de la nouvelle ministre de l’Éducation supérieure pourrait être de faire de ce réseau d’éducation publique un pôle de référence pour la francophonie au Canada et dans le monde. Une première étape de ce programme devrait consister dans un appui systématique aux universités francophones dans leurs tentatives d’attirer des étudiants de la francophonie canadienne.

Dans un contexte où les campus francophones hors Québec subissent des compressions alarmantes et où règnent un climat de francophobie à l’Université d’Ottawa, qui a pourtant, sur papier, le mandat de célébrer la francophonie, le gouvernement québécois doit se montrer plus attrayant, plus agressif et plus ambitieux.

En somme, la CAQ doit se doter d’une stratégie cohérente, ambitieuse et moins frileuse en matière d’éducation publique supérieure et d’immigration durant ce deuxième mandat.

L’élaboration d’une telle stratégie pourrait faire l’objet d’une concertation impliquant la ministre Pascale Déry, la nouvelle ministre de l’Immigration, Christine Fréchette, ainsi que Pierre Fitzgibbon, ministre de l’Économie ainsi que de l’Innovation et du Développement économique de la région de Montréal. Il faut leur souhaiter de l’ambition dans l’appui au rayonnement des institutions d’éducation publique supérieures, que ce soit à Montréal ou en région.

Ces institutions devront être reconnues et appuyées comme des vecteurs au cœur de l’intégration sociale et culturelle au Québec. Cette stratégie devrait se montrer ambitieuse également en ce qui a trait au développement de collaborations avec les universités de la francophonie africaine, et elle devra envoyer un signal clair en condamnant de façon unanime les pratiques discriminatoires à Immigration Canada.

Source: Immigration Canada discrimine les étudiants d’Afrique francophone. Voici ce que Québec devrait faire pour y mettre fin

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Yakabuski: Le Canada, champion mondial d’immigration

2022/10/31 Leave a comment

Good observations on the contrast between Quebec and the rest of Canada:

Le ministre fédéral de l’Immigration, des Réfugiés et de la Citoyenneté, Sean Fraser, s’apprête à dévoiler de nouvelles cibles en matière d’immigration pour 2023, 2024 et 2025. Et tout indique que l’annonce que M. Fraser fera mardi prochain prévoira une nouvelle hausse du nombre de résidents permanents par rapport aux dernières cibles, celles-là annoncées il y a un an à peine. Alors que le Québec promet de plafonner ses seuils d’immigration autour de 50 000 nouveaux résidents permanents par année, le reste du Canada, lui, s’apprêterait à bientôt accueillir plus de huit fois ce nombre. Nul besoin d’être économiste ou démographe pour anticiper les conséquences à court et à long termes de ces positions discordantes.

Déjà, le Québec voit sa part d’immigrants fondre comme peau de chagrin d’année en année. Destination de 19,2 % des immigrants arrivés au Canada entre 2006 et 2011, le Québec n’accueillait plus que 15,3 % des immigrants entrés au pays entre 2016 et 2021. Les données provenant du dernier recensement publiées cette semaine par Statistique Canada témoignent de l’énorme transformation démographique que connaît le Canada anglais, et ce, même en dehors de ses plus grandes métropoles.

À Hamilton et à Winnipeg, deux villes ayant une population semblable à celle de Québec, la proportion d’immigrants s’élève maintenant à plus de 25 % ; dans la Vieille Capitale, à peine 6,7 % des résidents sont nés en dehors du Canada. Dans la ville de Saguenay, une proportion famélique de la population est issue de l’immigration, soit 1,3 %, alors qu’à Red Deer et à Lethbridge, des villes albertaines de tailles semblables, les proportions sont de 16,9 % et de 14,4 %, respectivement.

Les chiffres frappent encore davantage l’imagination lorsque l’on tient compte des enfants des immigrants. Dans la grande région de Toronto, par exemple, presque 80 % des résidents sont immigrants de première ou de deuxième générations, selon une analyse des données du recensement effectuée par le démographe Doug Norris, de la firme torontoise Environics. À Montréal, environ 46 % des résidents sont immigrants ou enfants d’immigrants. Bien qu’il s’agisse d’une proportion passablement élevée, c’est moins qu’à Vancouver (73 %), qu’à Calgary (55 %) ou qu’à Edmonton (50 %).

Selon les résultats d’un sondage publié cette semaine par Environics, et effectué pour le compte de L’Initiative du siècle, les Canadiens sont plus favorables que jamais à l’immigration. Ceci n’est pas surprenant ; plus de 40 % des Canadiens sont immigrants ou enfants d’immigrants. On peut s’attendre à ce que ces gens aient un parti pris en faveur de l’immigration.

Mais le consensus canadien en matière d’immigration s’étend bien au-delà des communautés culturelles du pays. « Alors même que le pays accueille plus de 400 000 nouveaux arrivants par année, sept Canadiens sur dix soutiennent les seuils actuels d’immigration — la plus forte majorité en 45 ans de sondages Environics, a fait remarquer Lisa Lalande, présidente de L’Initiative du siècle, un organisme qui prône une politique d’immigration ayant pour but d’augmenter la population canadienne à 100 millions de personnes en l’an 2100. Malgré la rhétorique chargée sur l’immigration durant la campagne électorale provinciale, les Québécois appuient tout autant l’accueil des immigrants et des réfugiés que les Canadiens ailleurs au pays. »

Or, le sondage d’Environics fut mené en septembre, alors que la Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) promettait de maintenir les seuils d’immigration à 50 000 dans la province. Donc, l’expression « les seuils actuels d’immigration » n’a pas le même sens ici qu’ailleurs au Canada. Au Québec, ces seuils sont plutôt modestes ; dans le reste du Canada, ils sont très élevés.

Les 50 000 résidents permanents que le Québec s’engage à accueillir chaque année équivalent à environ 0,6 % de la population, et cette proportion est appelée à diminuer au fur et à mesure que la population augmentera. Les seuils d’immigration ailleurs au Canada s’élèvent à environ 1,2 % de la population par année, alors que cette population augmente à un rythme beaucoup plus rapide qu’au Québec. Au lieu de 400 000 nouveaux arrivants par an, c’est près de 500 000 immigrants que le reste du Canada pourrait bientôt en accueillir. Et des voix s’élèvent pour qu’Ottawa fasse preuve d’encore plus d’ambition en matière d’immigration.

« Bien que les chiffres absolus semblent élevés, ils doivent en fait être plus élevés encore en raison des défis démographiques du Canada, ont insisté pour dire l’ex-ministre libéral de l’Innovation, Navdeep Bains, et son ancien chef de cabinet, Elder Marques, dans un article publié la semaine dernière dans le National Post. Au début du XXe siècle, un Canada beaucoup plus petit accueillait autant d’immigrants que le Canada le fait aujourd’hui… Un Canada plus grand, plus riche et plus outillé nous attend si nous sommes prêts à faire le saut. »

Source: Le Canada, champion mondial d’immigration

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Japan has taken in hundreds of Ukrainians. The welcome for others has been less warm

2022/10/31 Leave a comment

Of note:

A dozen Ukrainian students sit in a classroom, studying basic Japanese to help them navigate life in a new country. Among them is Sergei Litvinov, a 29-year-old trained chef, who arrived in June. He says he’s been listening to Japanese rock music since his teen years.

Coming to Japan is “a dream come true,” he says with a laugh. “But I’m not happy, because it’s a terrible story in Ukraine.”

Litvinov is one of nearly 2,000 Ukrainians admitted to Japan on a temporary basis since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, according to Japan’s justice ministry.

The Ukrainians have been met with an outpouring of sympathy and hospitality in the country. “It was the first time I’ve gotten so many phone calls and emails from society, wanting to assist the refugees from Ukraine,” says Kazuko Fushimi, who handles public relations at the Tokyo-based Japan Association for Refugees.

But the warm welcome Japan has given the Ukrainians contrasts with how it has treated other foreigners fleeing conflict and persecution over the years, say human rights groups. Of 169 Afghans who fled to Japan after the Taliban took over in August 2021, 58 went back to Afghanistan “due to what they say was pressure and a lack of support from the Japanese Foreign Ministry,” Japan’s Kyodo news service reported last month.

For now, the Japanese government has given the Ukrainians residency and work permits lasting up to a year. But for those from other countries, it’s often a years-long struggle to attain similar benefits and privileges.

The central government has provided visas and work permits. Local governments have provided food, housing and living allowances.

Litvinov is one of a group of 70 Ukrainians sent to the port city of Yokohama – 17 miles from the Japanese capital Tokyo — where local authorities are providing for temporary accommodation, food and living expenses.

Significantly, Japan is not calling the Ukrainians refugees, but “evacuees.” That is because Tokyo expects them all to go home eventually.

Historically, Japan accepts very few refugees. Last year, it granted just 74 applicants refugee status — the highest number ever, but less than 1% of the total who applied, according to the Japan Association for Refugees.

Some in Japan see their country as mono-ethnic — not a nation of immigrants. But the idea is a matter of debate.

Human rights groups and refugee advocates say the system is deliberately designed to set a high bar for successful refugee applications. Refugees applying for asylum in Japan must demonstrate they face life-threatening persecution at home.

Heydar Safari Diman has been trying to do just that for more than 30 years, since fleeing from Iran to Japan, which he became interested in through watching TV dramas and movies, including the films of director Akira Kurosawa. He does not want to say exactly what persecution he faced in Iran, because he fears it could jeopardize family members still in the country.

But authorities have repeatedly rejected his bids for refugee status. They detained him for a total of more than four years without any explanation, he says, in what he calls hellish conditions.

“I like Japan and Japanese people, but I hate the ones in the detention center,” he says, speaking fluent Japanese. “How could they bully us like that? What did we do? We are refugees. I have no criminal record.”

In 2019, Safari Diman was one of about 100 detainees who went on hunger strikes to protest their detention. Safari Diman says he sank into deep depression and thought about ending his own life.

“You need a lot of courage to commit suicide. It’s very difficult to kill yourself in there. And I did not have that courage,” he says.

Tokyo-based attorney Chie Komai, who represents Safari Diman and others seeking to stay in Japan, took his case to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in 2019. She argued that her client’s detention was arbitrary because Japanese immigration authorities can detain foreigners indefinitely, without any judicial review.

The U.N. working group agreed with her. “They made it clear that the Japanese immigration detention system is in violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

The Japanese government objected to the U.N. working group’s findings, saying they were “based on factual errors” and disputing that its detentions were arbitrary. But it did not dispute the details of Safari Diman’s case. He is now out on what is called “provisional release,” and has not been detained since the ruling.

Safari Diman, who’s subsisted in Japan on donations from friends and supporters, says he does not expect the sort of benefits the Ukrainians are getting.

“I’m not asking for Japanese taxpayers to support me,” he says. “If authorities recognize me as a refugee, I will work and pay taxes.”

Other cases have also fueled debate over Japan’s treatment of refugees. They include the death in an immigration detention center last year of 33-year-old Sri Lankan Ratnayake Liyanage Wishma Sandamali, detained for overstaying her visa.

Prosecutors dropped charges against immigration officials accused of responsibility for her death.

In another case, last month a Japanese court ordered the government to compensate the family of a 43-year-old Cameroonian man who died in an immigration detention center in 2014.

The public outcry over deaths in immigration detention centers appears to have prompted the government to drop controversial amendments to immigration laws. The amendments would have made it easier for the government to deportforeigners whose bids for refugee status had failed.

Japan’s government says it will extend financial assistance to the Ukrainians for an additional six months. The double standard is not lost on officials like Kazuhiro Suzuki, a Yokohama city official who is involved in running the program for Ukrainians.

“We’ve only been supporting the Ukrainian evacuees,” he says, observing the students from a corner of the classroom. “While the situation of refugees from other countries hasn’t changed.”

He adds: “Every day we keep working, but this discrepancy bothers us.”

Source: Japan has taken in hundreds of Ukrainians. The welcome for others has been less warm

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One in Five Canadians Is Now an Immigrant, and the Nation Approves

2022/10/31 Leave a comment

NYT on Canada being an exception:


Immigrants now make up a record portion of Canada’s population.

It’s bigger than the one that resulted from the aggressive promotion of European settlement on Indigenous land on the prairies during the early 20th century and bigger than the one that took place after World War II when a wave of immigrants reshaped urban Canada.

And according to polling data, most Canadians like it that way, though more tension over immigration could be on the horizon. At a time when immigration has become an increasingly divisive political issue in many Western countries, particularly the United States, indications are that most Canadians are welcoming newcomers even as their numbers rise.

“There is growing recognition that immigration is important in terms of the economy and that immigrants, the country kind of needs them,” Keith Neuman, a senior associate at the Environics Institute for Survey Research, a nonprofit polling firm, told me.

Census data released this week, revealed by Statistics Canada, said that immigrants made up 23 percent of Canada’s population this year, the highest proportion since Confederation in 1867.

If current patterns in immigration remain and Canada’s birthrate continues to be lower than what is necessary to maintain current population, the census agency estimates that immigrants may form 29 to 34 percent of the population 19 years from now.

To accompany the Statistics Canada announcement, the Environics Institute released a survey of Canadians’ attitude toward immigration. The survey, which dates back in various forms to the 1970s, found a record level of support: 69 percent of people it contacted disagreed when asked if Canada was taking in too many immigrants. Fifty-eight percent said they wanted more immigration to increase Canada’s population.

That positive view of immigration, the survey found, even extended to Quebec despite its adoption of a law banning the wearing of religious symbols by public employees and officials at work, a move that many have seen as targeting Muslim immigrants.

Mr. Neuman and Amyn B. Sajoo, a lecturer at Simon Fraser University School for International Studies who writes extensively about immigration and citizenship, shared some thoughts about the source of the country’s good will toward immigration.

Perhaps at the top of their lists is that geographic isolation from places experiencing high levels of emigration means that the country can be selective about who comes here. There has never been a period when most refugee claimants walked into the country, despite all of the attention once paid to asylum seekers coming into Quebec from New York State. On the whole, Canada chooses who can come.

Then 60 percent of the 431,645 immigrants who became permanent residents of Canada last year fell into the “economic” category. They qualify for that status by being either highly educated, willing and financially able to start a business, possessing a needed job skill or committing to make a substantial investment in an existing business in Canada.

“We filter who can come in as refugees and immigrants,” Dr. Sajoo said. “Therefore, the public has more confidence in the system.”

On top of that, Dr. Sajoo noted the strong approval for Canada’s official multiculturalism policy. In the Environics Institute survey, an overwhelming 90 percent of the respondents said that it was an important part of the Canadian identity.

“More than ever, Canadians are accepting the idea that we’re better off in a pluralist, democratic space,” he said. “That we’re not just an Anglo-French demographic.” The growing awareness of Indigenous issues since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Dr. Sajoo added, has also increased this sentiment.

While the Environics Institute survey found that Conservative voters make up the largest number of people who think there is too much immigration, Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the Conservative Party, has focused on wooing immigrants and regularly reminds voters that his wife, Anaida, emigrated to Canada from Venezuela with her family at the age of 8.

But before Canadians become too self-satisfied about their openness to immigration, Dr. Sajoo said that one finding in the survey suggests the country is not fully immune to some of the political sentiment growing in other nations.

Respondents were almost evenly divided when asked if there are too many immigrants “not adopting Canadian values.” Forty-nine percent rejected that statement, 46 percent agreed with it.

“There is a flattering, fairy tale narrative that we’re wonderful and all is good,” Dr. Sajoo said. “But there is not at all enough attention to that 50/50 split on Canadian values,” he added, saying it “suggests that populism and populist rhetoric, supremacist rhetoric is coming across the border and also developing locally.” 

Source: One in Five Canadians Is Now an Immigrant, and the Nation Approves

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Yakabuski: We cannot take Canadians’ positive views on immigration for granted 

2022/10/29 Leave a comment

Rare mainstream media commentary questioning the current orthodoxy regarding increased immigration and public support. Have wondered for some time whether housing, healthcare and other pressures will lead to a tipping point but as the latest Environics survey, no sign yet:

Canadians are global outliers in holding almost unfailingly positive attitudes about immigration.

Across the world, particularly in countries that have seen large and sudden waves of migrants in recent years, public opinion has turned harshly negative toward newcomers. The opposite has happened here, even in Quebec. Despite big increases in the number of immigrants this country accepts annually, fewer and fewer Canadians think our immigration levels are too high.

That is the finding made by the Environics Institute for Survey Research, which has been polling Canadians on this issue since 1977. Back then, more than 60 per cent of respondents thought the country was accepting too many immigrants. Now, only 27 per cent feel that way.

This should not come as a surprise to anyone. Canada has had the luxury of selecting immigrants in an orderly fashion. We even “choose” most of our refugees based on applications made outside Canada. And the Canada-U.S. border is an oasis of calm compared to the U.S.-Mexico border, notwithstanding the steady stream of asylum seekers arriving via Roxham Road in Quebec in recent years.

There is another, perhaps even more salient, explanation for why Canadians are so bullish on immigration. Fully 44 per cent of us are first- or second-generation immigrants, according to 2021 census data compiled by Environics chief demographer Doug Norris.

In the Greater Toronto Area, the proportion of first- and second-generation newcomers is 79.6 per cent. In Vancouver, it is 72.5 per cent. Even in most of the country’s smaller urban centres, outside of Quebec, about half of residents are now immigrants or the children of immigrants.

You are much more likely to view immigration positively if you are an immigrant yourself or the child of one. Immigrants account for more – much more – of the population here than in any other developed country except for Australia. And the proportion is set to rise sharply – to as much as 34 per cent of Canada’s population in 2041, from 2021′s record level of 23 per cent, according to Statscan’s projections.

What’s not to like? Well, for a country that is already experiencing a severe housing-affordability crisis and a major infrastructure deficit, welcoming around 450,000 new permanent residents on an annual basis, on top of tens of thousands of temporary foreign workers and international students, involves significant challenges.

Unfortunately, there are few signs that policymakers in Ottawa have thought through how the country can accommodate this influx without further straining our already strained health-care and education systems. While immigration can offer a partial solution to severe shortages of nurses and teachers – if provinces move more rapidly to recognize their credentials – overall it creates more consumers than providers of health-care and education services.

In a study prepared last year for Quebec’s immigration ministry, economist Pierre Fortin threw cold water on the idea – advanced in 2016 by Ottawa’s Advisory Committee on Economic Growth – that higher immigration levels could help resolve intractable labour shortages that have only grown worse since then.

“Resorting to immigration can relieve worker shortages at the individual firm level, though the great administrative complexity and the long wait times often render this process ineffective; but, unfortunately, at the macroeconomic level, the [council’s] idea that immigration can reduce labour shortages because it increases the working-age population is nothing more than a big fallacy of composition,” Prof. Fortin wrote. “This idea is based on incomplete logic that ‘forgets’ that immigration ends up increasing the demand for labour and not only the supply of labour.”

Next week, Immigration Minister Sean Fraser is expected to announce Ottawa’s revised immigration targets for 2023, 2024 and 2025. That announcement needs to be followed by a more elaborate strategy than Canada has seen to date to enhance the country’s capacity to integrate ever-increasing numbers of newcomers. Otherwise, we are only asking for trouble down the road.

Canada has been spared the backlash against immigration experienced in other countries, in part because few politicians see any mileage in stoking resentment toward newcomers. That is likely to remain true as long as our multicultural suburbs continue to determine electoral outcomes. But no one should take it for granted.

With the country’s emergency rooms running beyond capacity, its housing shortage leaving too many people on the sidelines and its public infrastructure in a steady state of disrepair, it would be a mistake to assume that attitudes here toward immigration will always remain so positive.

Source: We cannot take Canadians’ positive views on immigration for granted

Filed under Immigration, Polling Tagged with ,

Canadians widely support immigration levels, new poll finds, but services for newcomers tell a different story

2022/10/27 Leave a comment

Along with the Census release, comes the latest Focus Canada survey of Canadian attitudes to immigration that show remarkable strong and increasing support for immigration virtually across the board.

Governments, with the exception Quebec, business and other stakeholders have clearly been successful in their demographic and economic arguments and I have seen no other major surveys that contradict the overall picture.

As always, partisan differences, particularly between the CPC and the Liberals and NDP are are significant but a majority of Conservatives also disagree that immigration levels are too high (53 to 43 percent).

With respect to whether “Canada accepts too many immigrants from racial minority groups,” again the Conservatives agree more but with a majority disagreeing (56 to 36 percent). Interestingly, while Conservatives are supportive of accepting refugees from conflict zones (64 to 34 percent), particularly so when Ukraine and Afghanistan are mentioned (67 to 27 percent, while Liberals and NDP have 90 percent support). There is also increased overall disagreement with refugees not being “real” refugees but the partisan divide is stark with 53 percent of the Liberals and 30 percent of the Conservatives disagreeing with that statement.

Security and health risks are not perceived as problems but housing and over crowding are unprompted concerns.

Multiculturalism continues to be viewed as part of Canadian identity by two-thirds of those surveyed (95 percent of Liberals, 82 percent of Conservatives and 92 percent of NDP).:

Days ahead of the federal government’s release of its multiyear immigration targets, the latest results in an annual poll suggest Canadians support current immigration levels more than they have in nearly half a century.

The poll, conducted by the Environics Institute for Survey Research, found 69 per cent of those surveyed were in support of current levels of immigration, compared with just 35 per cent in 1977.

Since the Justin Trudeau government came to power in 2015, annual immigration numbers have soared from less than 300,000 a year to a target of almost 450,000 in 2023. This week, Ottawa will announce immigration targets for the years ahead, including a breakdown of numbers between different immigration streams: economic, family sponsorship and humanitarian, which includes refugees.

“Canada needs more immigrants to increase its population.”

But even with broad public support, the country’s ambitious immigration targets only tell half the story. Immigrants still face many difficulties once they arrive in Canada, including a housing crisis, rising food costs owing to inflation and an underfunded settlement sector to help them find work and access services such as health care and education.

“We’ve pretty much reached a consensus,” said Keith Neuman, a senior associate at the Environics Institute: Not only is immigration good for the economy, it is a vital part of it. “The outstanding issues are about integration,” he said.

An overwhelming majority of those surveyed – 85 per cent – agreed that immigration has a positive impact on the country’s economy, a statement that proved controversial just three decades ago (when only 56 per cent said they agreed).

Environics partnered on this poll with the Century Initiative, a charitable organization that has campaigned for strong immigration levels in Canada. The poll was conducted by phone with 2,000 Canadians between Sept. 6 and Sept. 30. A sample of this size drawn from the population produces results accurate to within plus or minus 2.2 percentage points in 19 out of 20 samples.

When asked whether they agree or disagree with the statement “There are too many immigrants coming into this country who are not adopting Canadian values,” 46 per cent agreed, compared to 72 per cent in 1993.

(In the case of this question and others in the poll with a negative bias, pollsters sometimes phrase statements in a provocative way because that can generate stronger responses, Mr. Neuman said. They also want to preserve the wording of the statements over the decades so they can more accurately track how attitudes may have shifted over time.)

But an external evaluation of how successfully an immigrant has integrated – which may be largely based on how fluently they speak one of Canada’s official languages – might lack a nuanced understanding of the myriad challenges immigrants face after they arrive, said Neda Maghbouleh, Canada Research Chair in Migration, Race and Identity, who runs a refugee research project at the University of Toronto-Mississauga.

Prof. Maghbouleh said the greatest challenge to successful integration among the population she’s studied is housing and how there simply isn’t enough to accommodate all who are arriving in Canada, no matter what stream they’re coming in on.

“Without proper integration, any economic gains are flimsy or short-lived,” she said.

“For the families that are in our study, their urgent situations are pretty much always about housing, about getting evicted. It’s about a family member or someone in their network losing their housing and then having to join into an already overcrowded environment,” she said.

The settlement sector – meant to help immigrants with housing, but also with everything from language training to résumé writing to registering their children for school – has also faced significant strains.

A 2021 report from the Association for Canadian Studies that surveyed workers at settlement agencies found that the field is in turmoil. While record numbers of immigrants are arriving in Canada, the programs designed to help them adjust to their new homes and thrive are not consistently funded, and there is high turnover of workers because their wages aren’t competitive.

In Nova Scotia, the rate of retention for immigrants has been increasing, and currently sits at 71 per cent, meaning those who arrive in the province are finding work and settling into the region, rather than decamping for other parts of the country, as has long been the trend. But having that many more immigrants stay in Nova Scotia means front-line staff are feeling the strain.

Jennifer Watts, chief executive officer of Immigrant Services Association of Nova Scotia, says the biggest challenge her organization faces is development and support for staff.

Another issue Ms. Watts and the ACS report noted is that as the federal government’s targets for different streams of immigrants shifts, so does the funding for different programs, which can make long-term planning difficult.

From 2018 to 2021, the number of permanent residents arriving in Nova Scotia increased 51 per cent, but the funding from the federal government to ISANS in that same period only increased 7 per cent.

“When the country as a whole is committing to higher immigration levels, leaders at that level who are making that decision need to say, ‘This is going to take a significant amount of money to help people settle and move quickly into the labour market and succeed,’ ” Ms. Watts said.

Source: Canadians widely support immigration levels, new poll finds, but services for newcomers tell a different story

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Immigrants make up the largest share of the population in over 150 years and continue to shape who we are as Canadians

2022/10/27 Leave a comment

Highlights from StatsCan on the 2021 Census (starting to work though the data tables for further analysis):

Almost one in four people (23.0%) counted during the 2021 Census are or have been a landed immigrant or permanent resident in Canada. This was the highest proportion since Confederation, topping the previous record of 22.3% in 1921, and the largest proportion among G7 countries.

Just over 1.3 million new immigrants settled permanently in Canada from 2016 to 2021, the highest number of recent immigrants recorded in a Canadian census.

The share of recent immigrants settling in Atlantic Canada almost tripled in 15 years, rising from 1.2% in 2006 to 3.5% in 2021.

Over half of recent immigrants living in Canada were admitted under the economic category. Of these 748,120 economic immigrants, just over one-third (34.5%) were selected through skilled worker programs and another one-third (33.6%) through the Provincial Nominee Program.

The proportion of immigrants who first came to Canada temporarily on work or study permits or as asylum claimants before being admitted as permanent residents was especially high among recent immigrants who settled since 2016 (36.6%).

Asia, including the Middle East, remained the continent of birth for most recent immigrants (62.0%).

Almost one in five recent immigrants (18.6%) were born in India, making it the leading country of birth for recent immigration to Canada.

In contrast, the share of recent immigrants from Europe continued to decline, falling from 61.6% in 1971 to 10.1% in 2021.

The vast majority (92.7%) of recent immigrants are able to conduct a conversation in either English or French.

The share of second-generation Canadians (children of immigrants) younger than 15 years with at least one foreign-born parent rose from 26.7% in 2011 to 31.5% in 2021.

Source: Immigrants make up the largest share of the population in over 150 years and continue to shape who we are as Canadians

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HESA: That Fifth Estate Episode [international students]

2022/10/27 Leave a comment

Good commentary on the abuse of international students by private vocational colleges in the GTA that are in public-private partnership (PPP) arrangements with non-GTA public colleges and the need for greater regulation:

Many of you will have seen the Fifth Estate episode that aired two weeks ago, about international students in Canadian institutions and how many of them think – sometimes not without reason – they have been sold a bill of goods with respect to the quality of the education they receive.  If you haven’t already watched it, it’s here and you may want to give it a gander before continuing with this blog.

Finished?  Good.  Then I’ll begin.

Broadly speaking, the story is one of supply meeting demand.  In Punjab (this story is all about Punjabi students, there might as well not be any other types in Canada so far as this story is concerned), there are a lot of poor families who want their sons and daughters to go abroad to make a new life.  In Canada, there are several post-secondary institutions who a) can provide a pathway to permanent residency if a student graduates from a 2-year program and b) are willing to expand spots almost to infinity to accommodate students wanting to take advantage of this path.   The usual televisual suspects give some facetime to presenter Mark Kelly are students, often despondent from parental pressure and homesickness, immigration consultants eager to play whistleblower, and teachers recounting students falling asleep in class, exhausted from trying to combine work and study.  But there’s also some not-so -usual suspects: where this piece breaks some new ground is showing how the whole recruitment operation works in Punjab. Specifically, the report uses through some hidden camera work finding agents giving out flagrantly incorrect and, in some cases, illegal advice.  (It’s not entirely clear whether these agents are contracted to specific Canadian institutions or not).

So, there is some important reporting in this show.  But there’s also some weird stuff, too.  For instance, near the beginning of the show, a health counsellor in Brampton claims that there are 50-60 suicides a year among Pubjabi students in Brampton alone.  You’d think this would be the actual center of the story, right?  Mass death in a Toronto suburb?  But no, the statement just hangs there, unverified, un-followed up (presumably the local coroner would be able to verify).  Bizarre.

What I found most baffling about the show was the producer’sdecision to insinuate that this was a true depiction of the international student market across Canada, when pretty clearly it is just a depiction of what is happening in Ontario colleges, and more specifically, in the private vocational colleges in the GTA that are in public-private partnership (PPP) arrangements with non-GTA public colleges.  That’s not to say this stuff is absent elsewhere (it’s not), but if you’re a follower of this blog, you’ll be aware of what an outlier Ontario colleges are.  But for some reason The Fifth Estate chose to just glide over this distinction.

In fact, even though the report focused on a handful of egregious cases in the GTA, it seemed incapable of consistent reporting on the details: yes, Alpha and Hanson Colleges are private career colleges, but the programs the international students are attending belong nominally to a pair of public colleges (St. Lawrence and Cambrian Colleges, respectively).  The show seems to be under the impression that it was the private institutions which made the deals to sign up 10x the number of students that the institution could physically hold.  But that’s not true: it is the public colleges that are responsible for this.  And by missing that distinction, it completely let the leadership of these public institutions off the hook. 

Another thing the show misses completely: all these schools are acting in defiance of Ministry Policy with respect to these PPP campuses.  Read the policy and you’ll quickly realize that the number of specific protocols being breached are more numerous than the ones being observed.  But the most egregious violation is that international enrolment at partnership colleges is not supposed to amount to more than twice the number of international students on the “home” campus.  Yet not even one of these public colleges with PPPs in the GTA are obeying this limit.  All of them are massively overenrolled in relation to the policy.  And yet consecutive Minister of Colleges and Universities have simply failed to enforce the policy.  Why?  Your guess is as good as mine, but with hundreds of millions of dollars involved, you’d think it’s something that both opposition parties and media would take more seriously.  Or rather, I understand why Ontario opposition parties are not taking it seriously because they’re currently in shambles, but how could The Fifth Estate miss it?  Indeed, why choose to make the federal immigration minister the focus of its winding-up hard-question interview when it is clear, and I mean CRYSTAL FREAKING PEPSI CLEAR, that the key failure is one of provincial policy?

The answer, I suspect, is that The Fifth Estate is one of those CBC shows with a “national mandate”.  And so, while this story was fundamentally about certain PPP arrangements in Greater Toronto which are not especially representative of the rest of the country, they had to make out like it was a national story. And heck, it isn’t even representative of actual Toronto colleges.  If I were Humber College, I’d be  furious about Mark Kelly using the Lakeshore campus as a backdrop for the intro to a show talking about a set of atrocious events, PRECISELY NONE OF WHICH were associated with Humber.  I mean, really.

(Also, for some reason, the show does a drive-by smearing of Waterloo-based recruitment aggregator ApplyBoard, mainly because it does not differentiate between dodgy agents using ApplyBoard as a platform to submit their students’ documents and agents actually working for ApplyBoard.  But – full disclosure – HESA is working with ApplyBoard on a project at the moment, so take that observation with whatever-sized grain of salt you wish).

To be clear: whatever its failings, the show gets two big things right.  First, there are some really nasty things happening in the PPP colleges around Toronto.  Some of us have been warning about the reputational danger these institutions pose for quite awhile, and it’s long past time both the federal and provincial governments got their act together and regulated international education and international recruitment as if quality mattered (that they do not do so already is a complete disgrace).  Second, there is an ethical element to recruitment that a lot of institutions have missed: what might be acceptable in terms of recruitment tactics when dealing with rich international students whose family wealth makes high international fees easily affordable (as is the case with a lot of East Asian students who have come to Canada) and who are likely to return to their home countries later, are much less acceptable when applied with poor international students (mainly from Punjab) whose families are mortgaging everything in order for a shot at getting their kids Canadian citizenship.  These are important points that need to be front and center in the policy debate, and good on them for doing so.

But at the same time: boy howdy, the show missed a lot and unjustly left the impression that the bad apples were representative of the whole.  Maybe that’s just how media works: but if so, that’s all the more reason the federal and provincial governments should take regulation of the international student sector more seriously than they currently do.

Source: That Fifth Estate Episode

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

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