Immigration | Multicultural Meanderings

Barutciski: The Roxham Road legal confusion is back

2022/06/03 Leave a comment

A somewhat tortured series of arguments, coloured by a bit of Trudeau and Liberal derangement syndrome, that undermines the case to address Roxham Road irregular arrivals.

It also ignores that USA agreement would be required to amend the STCA and that unilateral actions would be subject to court challenges (as is the STCA itself).

However, fundamental he is right in that Roxham Road undermines Canadian confidence that immigration is being managed and reasonably controlled. Like other perceived “queue jumping” and loopholes such as birth tourism, the Roxham Road exemption from return to the USA raises questions about fairness between those who arrive at official border crossings and those who do not.

Roxham Road accounts for over 99 percent of all irregular arrivals (January-April 2022) given its ease and thus either making Roxham Road an official point of entry, pending fixing the SFCA loophole, would result is a large reduction in the number of irregular arrivals.

And of course, all political parties virtue signal to their supporters and potential supporters, as it is easier that addressing the substantive issues at stake (sigh…):

After a relatively quiet period, Roxham Road is back in the news. Refugee claimants have been entering Canada through this unofficial border crossing between rural Quebec and upstate New York at record rates since the Trudeau government lifted the pandemic-related entry ban. From his public statements, it appears Prime Minister Trudeau believes these migrants have rights in Canada if they try to enter irregularly at Roxham Road, but not if they follow the rules and present themselves at an official Port of Entry. He also has an imprecise understanding of the exact nature of Canada’s legal obligations.
It is no wonder part of the population is perplexed and losing confidence in the system. No protection principle could justify treating refugee claimants differently based on which part of the land border they use to enter. While it is unfortunate that an uncritical media and various attention-seeking politicians are unable to properly explain the Roxham problem, it is much more worrisome that the prime minister seemingly does not know the laws applicable in the country he governs.
Laws apply immediately at the border
Given the apparent confusion, it is worth pointing out that a person who arrives at a land Port of Entry is already considered to be in Canada and the authorities are bound by both international and domestic legal obligations. The Canadian government does not apply a type of legal fiction that pretends there is a special “international zone” at the border in which people are not considered to be in Canada until they are officially authorized to enter.
As soon as migrants come into contact with the authorities, both the Geneva Refugee Convention and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms can protect them. If entry is not authorized, then they are returned to the US. As the Canadian system is based on the rule of law, refugee claimants can contest the decision to return. Indeed, several claimants have partnered with advocacy groups to argue that the US is unsafe for them. Their case will soon be heard by the Supreme Court of Canada.
The above legal situation is the same whether it occurs at an official Port of Entry or at an unofficial crossing staffed by the RCMP, such as the one at Roxham Road. The Canada-US Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA), which entered into force in 2004, simply declares both countries to be safe for refugee claimants and introduces formal cooperation on responsibility-sharing between them. It does not change the application of either the Refugee Convention or the Charter, although the substantive rights are affected by the designation of the US as a “safe third country.”
Likewise, the fact that the signatories decided the STCA would apply only at official Ports of Entry (i.e., not at Roxham Road) does not change the legal regime. It does, however, provide migrants with a huge incentive to enter irregularly through Roxham Road rather than the nearby Port of Entry at St-Bernard-de-Lacolle. Indeed, it indicates Canada and the US do not have formalized return arrangements for refugee claimants trying to cross the border in between Ports of Entry.
This loophole is what distinguishes the STCA from a similar agreement between European Union (EU) member states, known as the Dublin Regulation, which also tries to tackle the “asylum shopping” problem. The Dublin Regulation does not contain a loophole based on a migrant’s mode of entry, so EU members are supposed to send refugee claimants who entered their territory irregularly back to the first EU country that they entered. These so-called “Dublin transfers” can be complicated if someone enters irregularly via the Mediterranean only to be processed by the authorities in a northern European member state.
The above summary contextualizes the Roxham controversy. Given that the situation involves sensitive issues related to territorial sovereignty and border control, any serious leader should be able to explain this context to the public. The prime minister’s statements, unfortunately, suggest he has a superficial understanding of the situation. Speaking about Roxham Road to a group at the University of Manitoba, Prime Minister Trudeau said “Canada has obligations under international treaties to give asylum seekers a hearing.” Yet he somehow also believes these supposed obligations do not apply at the nearby Port of Entry.
The only rational explanation for this position could be that he is under the mistaken impression that a person arriving at the Port of Entry is not actually in Canada and therefore not covered by international and domestic legal obligations. From an analytical perspective, the striking aspect of the Roxham controversy is that the prime minister does not seem to grasp the legal dimensions but he insists they are guiding his government’s policy, as he recently explained to the House of Commons.
In other words, Prime Minister Trudeau does not seem to understand that while the Refugee Convention and the Charter apply to everyone who arrives at Canada’s border, the legal protection they provide depends on each person’s circumstances. He does not grasp the basic consequences of Canada having declared the US to be safe for refugee claimants and how this creates specific circumstances influencing the extent of the protection granted by international and domestic law. However, the prime minister does have a keen sense of political symbolism and a desire to project a humanitarian image.
Is there a right to a hearing?
Does the Refugee Convention oblige Canada to provide a refugee hearing to anyone who arrives at Roxham Road, as claimed by the Trudeau government? Nowhere in this 1951 treaty is anything mentioned about refugee status procedures. The word “asylum” is not even mentioned in any of its 46 articles. The most relevant obligation is found in article 33, which stipulates that refugees cannot be returned to a country where their “life or freedom would be threatened.”
This basic guarantee is not the same as a right of asylum in that it allows some flexibility as long as refugee claimants’ lives are not endangered. Unless the Supreme Court of Canada determines the US is not safe, there is no violation if refugee claimants arriving at the Quebec border are returned to upstate New York.
The harsh reality is that the Refugee Convention’s limited protection does not oblige Canada to provide a hearing to every refugee claimant who shows up at the border. It also allows claimants to be returned to safe countries, which is why the adoption of the STCA was possible in the first place.
Does the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms oblige the government to provide a hearing to anyone who arrives at Roxham Road? The landmark 1985 Singh case established that the Charter applies to anyone on Canadian soil, but that does not mean its protection necessarily guarantees refugee claimants an automatic right to a hearing. Nowhere in the judgment is it mentioned that there is a general right to a hearing. Rather, the specific circumstances of the case are underlined in order to establish a potential Charter violation because the Sikh claimants risked being returned directly to India where they feared persecution. The Charter’s protection of “life, liberty and security” (section 7) was at stake, so the old refugee status determination procedure was considered insufficient and the Supreme Court ruled they were entitled to a hearing.
Refugee claimants at Roxham Road are arriving from the US. Stopping and returning them at the border will not result in a potential Charter violation because the US is deemed safe, so the reasoning behind Singh does not apply. Journalists who accept uncritically the prime minister’s position misunderstand why the Court in Singh granted a hearing. There cannot be a Charter violation if someone is sent to a safe place.
The federal Immigration and Refugee Protection Act also provides that, when a refugee claimant arrives at the land border, there is an initial determination to establish whether the person can make a claim (section 100). The various grounds for ineligibility are outlined in the following section 101 of the Act. Unsurprisingly, these include diverse security-related reasons. They also include a conspicuous clause rendering claimants ineligible when they come “directly or indirectly to Canada from a country designated by the regulations, other than a country of their nationality or their former habitual residence.” This is the legislative provision that allows return to the US and enables the adoption of a responsibility-sharing agreement with the US. As outlined above, laws apply immediately at the border given that there is no fictitious “international zone” or no-man’s-land where the authorities can act in a legal vacuum.
Even a quick reading of Canada’s main legislation dealing specifically with refugee claims makes clear that an automatic right to a refugee hearing was never intended or established by Parliament.
The predominance of image politics
The inclusion of a major loophole in the STCA so that it does not apply at unofficial crossings such as Roxham Road is the result of an administrative choice that is not required by the legal regime. Rather than explain to Canadians the reasons why such a loophole incentivizing irregular entry was included in the treaty with the US, the Trudeau government has focused on signalling a supposedly virtuous policy and promoting a humanitarian brand. Observers who sympathize with this apparent openness at Roxham Road are missing the underlying political cynicism.
While its legal reasoning is neither rigorous nor nuanced, the Trudeau government seems careful in relation to public messaging and branding. The immigration minister’s mandate letter includes a commitment “to modernize” the STCA and the prime minister recently repeated this goal in the House of Commons, yet nobody has ever explained what this actually means.
The policy options are essentially limited to either one of two approaches: a stricter border control approach that involves tightening entry at Roxham Road, or a soft open borders approach allowing refugee claimants to enter openly through the front door at St-Bernard-de-Lacolle. The latter option does not involve any negotiations with the US because the STCA can be unilaterally suspended or terminated. Therefore, “modernizing” the STCA must logically mean removing the loophole and clarifying that all refugee claimants will be returned to the US regardless of which part of the land border they use to enter Canada. However, clearly saying so goes against the Trudeau brand because it can be interpreted as anti-refugee.
Similarly, despite the prime minister’s confusion about legal rules, a closer look reveals that government lawyers have always argued before the courts that migrants can be returned to the US because it is a “safe third country” where rights are respected (under both the Trump and Biden administrations). So far, the government has not said this too loudly outside the courtroom because it clashes with its branding efforts and preferred pro-refugee image.
The problem is that political marketing has contributed to the polarization of views regarding Roxham Road. Moreover, the resulting ideological battle is misleading. It has become a false symbol dividing Canadians into supposedly pro-refugee or anti-refugee camps. It obscures that Canadian policy regarding uninvited refugee claimants (to be distinguished from resettled refugees) has always been anchored to the basic concept of interdiction with strict visa issuance policies and airline sanctions for undocumented travellers. Despite the rhetoric, governments of all stripes have done everything possible to prevent potential refugee claimants from reaching Canadian shores. It is not by chance that many migrants from poor countries obtained US visas to fly to New York City before taking a bus/taxi to Roxham Road. They would never have received Canadian visas.
Academics and advocates have opposed any idea of responsibility-sharing with the US since the late 1980s because they do not believe US standards are good enough. Prime Minister Trudeau sees these influential groups as part of his political constituency and is trying to be sensitive to their particular concerns. This is apparent in the careful use of progressive language and terminology that reflects the latest trends in refugee studies. The risk is that superficial image-based approaches to refugee policy take precedence over substantive or nuanced hard discussions about the dilemmas inherent in managing borders while respecting human rights.
Conclusion
To sum up, Prime Minister Trudeau’s explanation of his incoherent border policy concerning refugee claimants misunderstands how international and domestic law applies. It also promotes an unprincipled double standard that favours refugee claimants who enter irregularly over those who present themselves at a Port of Entry.
Prime Minister Trudeau also provides a practical argument to defend his incoherent border policy: he claims it is not actually possible to prevent entry in between land Ports of Entry. If Roxham Road is closed, the prime minister insists refugee claimants will simply enter elsewhere. This is the same disingenuous argument the prime minister used during the first three years of the Trump administration. If closing borders is ineffective, why did his government adopt in 2020 a special Order in Council that prevented entry at Roxham Road during the pandemic? Roxham is making headlines again because refugee claims immediately shot up as soon as the Order was lifted a few months ago.
This general futility-based argument on border control has widespread support in academia, even though it is based on an unproven hypothesis. It is presently being used by activists to denounce the British government’s new controversial approach to dissuade irregular migrants from crossing the English Channel, as well as to criticize the Biden administration’s intention of lifting its own pandemic-related entry ban at the Mexico border.
Just as no government claims that tax evasion can be completely stopped through tough law enforcement, no government is claiming that irregular migration will stop with the adoption of greater border control measures. The issue is rather about risk mitigation and not making illegal entry so easy that it becomes almost an invitation for potential migrants to travel to Canada’s borders in order to access the country’s lengthy and generous refugee status determination procedure.
However, an ideological dimension has dominated both sides of the debate. For the Trudeau government, it has become symbolically important to avoid the appearance of militarizing the border. The various US responses to the plight of desperate migrants on the Mexican border over recent years have understandably antagonized anyone with liberal views regarding migration. It is nevertheless dangerous to suggest to Canadians that their country’s land borders cannot be controlled: while the entry of desperate irregular migrants involves a morally complicated problem, public anxiety about gun and drug smuggling is clear.
Despite Prime Minister Trudeau’s unhelpful attempts at explaining government policy and available options at Roxham Road, Canadians have an interest in rejecting superficial image-based approaches to refugee policy in a post-pandemic context that will see increased international mobility. The government could improve public trust by eliminating the incoherence in the way refugee claims are handled at Roxham Road, while also being more precise and upfront about its actual position. It is time our leaders’ role in elevating the public discourse overrides the fondness for political marketing.

Source: The Roxham Road legal confusion is back

Filed under Immigration Tagged with irregular arrivals, Michael Barutciski, Roxham Road

Canada’s exploitation of Punjabi international students is history repeating itself

2022/06/03 Leave a comment

Governments should crack down on private college student international student recruitment given a number of articles and investigations highlighting the exploitation and abuse, and the minimum benefit to the economy and society:

Canada has a decades-old tradition of exploiting Punjab’s working class. The latest example of this comes by way of international students.

Canadian schools, partnering with a shady recruitment industry, allure youth from working-class farming families. Demand has been cultivated by urban centres and television littered with advertisements to go abroad via a study visa.

As a community volunteer, I have seen the result of such perverse marketing where many come to Canada with no understanding of what awaits and hope it will work out. Sadly, many face grave hardships and encounter shameless people aiming to exploit their vulnerability.

The problems include an unscrupulous and untrustworthy private college industry swindling foreign students across Canada. Rampant labour exploitation of international students. Sex traffickers preying on female international students aware they are financially vulnerable. A concerning number of international student suicides with deaths occurring monthly. Finally, a Statistics Canada studyfound international student graduates have relatively worse economic outcomes.

While volunteers try to help as much as possible, we cannot match the volume of students being churned through the system.

We receive messages from students stating they don’t want to live anymore, and while we feel compelled to take action, it is discouraging that politicians feel no such obligation.

In fact, politicians like MP Sukh Dhaliwal and minister Marco Mendicino do not seem to think anything is wrong with the international student program.

Politicians do not feel compelled to fix this mess because international education is very lucrative. International students are charged nearly five times higher tuition, bring in over $20 billion, and have allowed provincial governments to decreasetheir proportion of higher education funding.

In one honest conversation, an elected official acknowledged to me the unwillingness to fix this problem is because the economy and many jobs are dependent on the status quo.

What does this say about those in power? I interpret inaction to mean that in order to generate wealth for Canada, politicians tacitly accept migrant suicides and Punjabi migrant women being trafficked.

Adding to my frustration is this exploitation follows a similar pattern from over a century ago.

After British colonization of Punjab in 1858, Punjab’s fertile lands were used to produce cash crops for export. In the succeeding decades, British management of agriculture to increase production also led to land values, prices of basic goods, and taxes all increasing. It also resulted in repeated famines and many modest Punjabi farmers accumulating debt.

For many struggling farmers emigration was the best option to improve economic fortunes.

At the same time, newspapers were filled with job ads from Canadian companies and labour contractors who were recruiting in Punjab.

In the 1900s Punjabi migrant workers started arriving in Canada and would experience significant hardships. They were paid less for equal work and often victims of abuse and discrimination. This easy to exploit labour was lucrative for the lumber industry.

Fast forward to the 1960s green revolution, which was initiated to boost global agricultural production. Decades later, many found the green revolution benefitted multinational corporations pushing chemical pesticides more than farmers in places like Punjab.

In Punjab, long-term pesticide use has led to environmental degradation resulting in stagnating agricultural production. This disproportionately affects modest farmers who are accumulating debt to stay afloat. For these struggling families emigration is the best option to improve economic fortunes, and a student visa is the best path to emigrate.

Sadly, like their predecessors, this generation of Punjabi migrants also face serious hardships and exploitation in Canada.

Throughout the last century Punjabi Canadians have mobilized and began a tradition of activism. Prominent fights include advocating for equal pay in the 1940s and farm workers advocating for better work conditions in the 1980s. And today, community advocates and students are fighting against the economic exploitation of international students.

Ironically, Canadian politicians will celebrate Punjabi migrants who struggled for equality and dignity in the past, but neglect the indignity Punjabi migrants experience today.

Municipal, provincial, and federal politicians showed concern for farmers during India’s farmer protest, but they have no concern for the children of these farmers suffering in Canada.

It seems that in politics the profits made off the vulnerable count, while the pain experienced by them does not.

Balraj S. Kahlon is a member of One Voice Canada and the author of The Realities of International Students: Evidenced Challenges.

Source: Canada’s exploitation of Punjabi international students is history repeating itself

Filed under Immigration Tagged with Balraj S. Kahlon, colleges, exploitation, international students, Punjab

Newly released federal records reveal ‘darkest days’ of Chinese exclusion era

2022/06/03 Leave a comment

Part of our history:

Standing over a table at the Chinese Canadian Museum in Chinatown, Brandt Louie slowly and methodically sifts through the documents before him — occasionally bristling at what he sees.

The scanned, century-old documents were forms filled by bureaucrats as they interrogated and kept track of all existing Chinese in Canada after Ottawa imposed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1923, which banned immigration from China for almost a quarter of a century.

The nine documents Louie showed to a reporter Wednesday record the registration of Louie’s grandparents, his father and six uncles.

They are the first to be seen in a set that includes 56,000 similar documents for other Chinese in Canada at the time.

“We were quite excited because when we started to look through them, we realized that all the things we had heard about are now true,” said Louie, the 79-year-old B.C. businessman who is president and CEO of the H.Y. Louie Co. Ltd., which distributes to IGA stores, and the chairman of London Drugs.

Some of the records have small but important details such as the exact year his grandfather arrived, or that his grandmother was exempt from the head tax because she arrived in Canada as a “merchant’s wife.”

He said confirming oral history and buttressing stories didn’t carry much relevance for him before, but anti-Asian racism during the pandemic made him reconsider the value of doing this so they can be of value to the current and next generation.

He has been writing opinion pieces, promoting the Chinatown Storytelling Centre and a new exhibit, “Seeds to Success,” at the Chinese Canadian Museum in Chinatown that traces his family’s experience.

“When we heard these stories before, we used to merely assume they were stories of previous generations, that they didn’t apply to us,” said Louie.

For decades, the 56,000 forms have been stored at Library and Archives Canada, which was reluctant to make them accessible until Randall Wong, the first Chinese-Canadian lawyer to be appointed to a federal court, joined others in calling for them to be released.

Historian Catherine Clement is currently cataloguing the forms. She estimates the process will take a year and then they will be publicly available.

“What’s fascinating is that this is a snapshot of our community just before it enters its darkest days. And I always remind people, at the time this happened no one knew if this (Exclusion Act) law would come off the books, if things would change or get better. You couldn’t foresee it would last (until 1947).”

She notes that newspapers at the time give a sense of how the mass registration drive provoked fear and anxiety as much as the closing of immigration.

“There are headlines where we the community is afraid of the registration, afraid of how they’re going to be interrogated, of what’s going to happen to people if they don’t remember exactly what boat they came in,” said Clement.

Louie’s grandfather, Hok Yat Louie, who started the family’s legacy in Canada as a wholesale grocer, would have taken his family in for the process, submitting three photographs for each person. His form states he arrived in Victoria in 1898 while his grandmother, Young Shee, arrived in Vancouver in 1911. The forms for his father and six uncles list them as being born in Vancouver with two recorded as being 10- and 11-year-old schoolboys and the youngest a three-year-old child.

Each has “facial marks and physical peculiarities” listed, including the location and size of scars and moles, whether they are raised or small, by the left jaw or over the right eyebrow.

“It was really quite a classification,” said Louie, reading through the forms. “It’s almost as if (they) had to undergo a physical examination because how would you know where all these moles are?”

Louie remembers that even after the Exclusion Act was in place, his grandfather did go to China a few times as he was still in the business of importing sesame seeds, ginger and walnuts.

“If he wasn’t in the registry, he would have been denied entry. It was used to track people,” he said.

Clement, who is gathering the beige paper identity cards known as C.I. certificates issued by the government to people after they were registered in 1923, said that while families are finding and bringing some of these in, many have also been lost or damaged.

“Even though tens of thousands were issued, there are so few left. In some families, they didn’t recognize the value and so they threw them out. It was just grandma’s stuff. Or as soon as they got their citizenship (in later years), the first thing they did was to rip them up because of the symbolism.”

And Clement was able to manually go through and find the nine documents for the Louie family members because they had one beige paper card for Quan Louie, the uncle who was three-years-old when he was registered.

Source: Newly released federal records reveal ‘darkest days’ of Chinese exclusion era

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with Chinese Canadian Museum, Chinese Canadians, Chinese Exclusion Act

Why the Children of Immigrants Are the Ones Getting Ahead in America

2022/06/02 Leave a comment

Good read, similar pattern in Canada for some visible minority groups. Likely explains in part the rise of populism:

In April 2020, the New York Times ran a special feature called “I Am the Portrait of Downward Mobility.” “It used to be a given that each American generation would do better than the last,” the piece began, “but social mobility has been slowing over time.”

In paging through the profiles, we couldn’t help noticing one group of Americans who defies this trend: the children of immigrants. Sonya Poe was born in a suburb of Dallas, Texas to parents who immigrated from Mexico. “My dad worked for a hotel,” Sonya recalled. “Their goal for us was always: Go to school, go to college, so that you can get a job that doesn’t require you to work late at night, so that you can choose what you get to do and take care of your family. We’re fortunate to be able to do that.”
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

The dream that propels many immigrants to America’s shores is the possibility of offering a better future for their children. Using millions of records of immigrant families from 1880 to 1940 and then again from 1980 to today, we find that the in past and still today children of immigrants surpass their parents and move up the economic ladder. If this is the American Dream, then immigrants achieve it—big time.

One pattern that is particularly striking in the data is that the children of immigrants raised in households earning below the median income make substantial progress by the time they reach adulthood, both for the Ellis Island generation a century ago and for immigrants today. The children of first-generation immigrants growing up close to the bottom of the income distribution (say, at the 25^th percentile) are more likely to reach the middle of the income distribution than are children of similarly poor U.S.-born parents.

What’s more, no matter which country their parents came from, children of immigrants are more likely than the children of the U.S.-born to surpass their parents’ incomes when they are adults. This pattern holds both in the past and today, despite major changes in U.S. immigration policy over the past century, from a regime of nearly open borders for European immigrants in 1900 to one of substantial restrictions in recent decades. Children of immigrants from Mexico and the Dominican Republic today are just as likely to move up from their parents’ circumstances as were children of poor Swedes and Finns a hundred years ago.

Not only does upward mobility define the horizons of people’s lives, but it also has implications for the economy as a whole. Even immigrants who come to the U.S. with few resources or skills bring an asset that is hugely beneficial to the U.S. economy: their children. The rapid success of immigrants’ children more than pays for the debts of their parents.

To conduct our analysis, we needed data that links children to parents. For the historical data, we used historical census records to link sons living in their childhood homes to census data collected 30 years later when these young men had jobs of their own.

Think of us like curious grandchildren searching branches of their family tree online, but a million times over. We started by digging through websites like Ancestry.com that allow the public to search for their relatives. From here, we developed methods to automate these searches so we could follow millions of immigrants and their children in the records.

Our modern data is based on federal income tax records instead. The tax records allow researchers to link children to their parents as tax dependents, and then observe these children in the tax data as adults.

When we compiled this data, what do we see?

The first striking takeaway is that, as a group, children of immigrants achieve more upward mobility than the children of U.S.-born fathers. We focus on the children of white U.S.-born fathers because the children of Black fathers tend to have lower rates of upward mobility. So, the mobility advantage that we observe for the children of immigrants would be even larger if we compared this group to the full population.

The second notable takeaway is that even children of parents from very poor countries like Nigeria and Laos outperform the children of the U.S.-born raised in similar households. The children of immigrants from Central American countries—countries like Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua that are often demonized for contributing to the “crisis” at the southern border—move up faster than the children of the U.S.-born, landing in the middle of the pack (right next to children of immigrants from Canada).

Our third finding is that the mobility advantage of the children of immigrants is just as strong today as it was in the past. What’s more, some of the immigrant groups that politicians accused long ago of having little to contribute to the economy—the Irish, Italians, and Portuguese—actually achieved the highest rates of upward mobility. For the past, we are only able to study sons because we cannot link daughters who change their name at marriage. But in the modern data we can see that this pattern applies to daughters as well.

Today, we might not be that surprised to learn that the children of past European immigrants succeeded. We are used to seeing the descendants of poor European immigrants rise to become members of the business and cultural elite. Many prominent leaders, including politicians like President Biden, regularly emphasize pride in their Irish or Italian heritage. But, at the time, these groups were considered the poorest of the poor. In their flight from famine, Irish immigrants are not too dissimilar from immigrants who flee hurricanes, earthquakes, and violent uprisings today.

We often hear concerns about how poor immigrants will fare and whether their children will get trapped in low-paying jobs or dependent on government support. But our data sleuthing should lay these fears to rest. The children of immigrants do typically make it in America. And it most often takes them only one generation to rise up from poverty.

One question that arises with our work is: what about children who arrive without papers? Undocumented children face more barriers to mobility than other children of immigrants. Fortunately, this group is relatively small even in recent years: only 1.5 million (or five percent) of the 32 million children of immigrant parents are undocumented today. Indeed, this number is small because many children of undocumented immigrants are born in the U.S. and thus are granted citizenship at birth.

The children in our data from countries like Mexico and El Salvador are those whose parents benefited from an earlier legalization effort in the mid-1980s. They are doing remarkably well now, and we believe that their counterparts today have this potential, as well. Children who arrive in the U.S. without papers face barriers to mobility—and not because they put in any less effort, but because they encounter obstacles all along their path. With a stroke of a pen, politicians can make that happen but, so far, this legislation has remained out of reach.

What enables the children of immigrants to escape poor circumstances and move up the economic ladder? The answer we hear most often is that immigrants have a better work ethic than the US-born and that immigrant parents put more emphasis on education.

We agree that the special features of immigrant families could be part of the story (although it’s hard to tell in our data). Yet when we crunched the numbers we found something surprising: immigrants tend to move to those locations in the U.S. that offer the best opportunities for upward mobility for their kids, whereas the U.S.-born are more rooted in place.

Generations of social science research has confirmed that where children grow up influences their opportunities in life. We find that immigrant parents are more likely than U.S.-born parents to settle in these high-opportunity areas, which are flush with good jobs and offer better prospects for mobility in the next generation. As striking proof that geography matters, we see that children of immigrants out-earn other children in a broad national comparison, but they do not earn more than other children who grew up in the same area. In terms of economic fortunes, the grown children of immigrants look similar to the children of U.S.-born parents who were raised down the block, or in the same town. This pattern implies that the primary difference between immigrant families and the families of the U.S.-born is in where they choose to live.

One implication of our findings is that it is very likely that U.S.-born families would have achieved the same success had they moved to such high-opportunity places themselves. In fact, we find that the children of U.S.-born parents who moved from one state to another have higher upward mobility than those who stayed put: their level of upward mobility is closer to (but not quite as high as) that of the children of immigrants who moved from abroad. So, you might ask: why don’t US-born families move out of a region when job opportunities dwindle?

Ironically, J.D. Vance (who is now running for Senate in Ohio on an anti-immigration platform) poses this question in his bestseller Hillbilly Elegy,aboutgrowing up in Middletown, Ohio, only 45 minutes from the border with Kentucky, the state where his family had lived for generations. For Vance, moving up the ladder meant moving out of his childhood community, a step that many Americans are unwilling to take. He went on to enlist in the Marines, and then to Ohio State and Yale Law School—“Though we sing the praises of social mobility,” he writes, “it has its downsides. The term necessarily implies a sort of movement—to a theoretically better life, yes, but also away from something.”

Vance is hitting on the cost of attaining upward mobility for children of U.S.-born parents. Many of the children of U.S.-born parents grow up in areas where their families settled long before, so economic mobility for them is often coupled with the costs of leaving home. By contrast, immigrants already took the step of leaving home to move to America, so they may be more willing to go wherever it takes within the country to find opportunity. In other words, U.S.-born families are more rooted in place, while immigrant families are more footloose—and this willingness to move toward opportunity seems to make all the difference.

Adapted from Abramitzky and Boustan’s new book Streets of Gold: America’s Untold Story of Immigrant Success

Source: Why the Children of Immigrants Are the Ones Getting Ahead in America

Filed under Immigration Tagged with Leah Boustan, outcomes, Ran Abramitzky, Streets of Gold: America's Untold Story of Immigrant Success, USA

Les immigrants au Québec sont plus nombreux et mieux intégrés qu’il n’y paraît

2022/06/02 Leave a comment

Most commentary in English media focuses on Quebec’s demand for full jurisdiction over immigration, which this report also advocates. <a href="http://<section class="article-content__content-group"> <p>Prime Minister Justin Trudeau repeated on Tuesday that he has no intention of transferring additional powers over immigration to Quebec, even as Premier François Legault has made it clear <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/caq-government-will-seek-more-power-over-immigration-legault-tells-convention" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">he will make the dispute an issue</a> in the provincial election campaign.</p> </section> <div class="ad__section-border article-content__ad-group"> <section class="article-content__content-group">“It’s clear that a country must have a say in its immigration,” Trudeau told reporters while on his way to a cabinet meeting.<p></p> <p>Responsibility for immigration is shared between the two governments “because the protection of French and francophone immigration are very important to us,” Trudeau said.</p> <p>Last weekend, Legault said Ottawa’s handing over responsibility for family reunification to the province was a question of survival for the Québécois nation. The premier went so far as to brandish the prospect of Quebec’s sharing the <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/new-political-parties-would-turn-quebec-into-a-new-louisiana-legault" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">fate of Louisiana</a> and the latter’s gradual disappearance of French if the status quo is maintained.</p> <p>With an election four months away, Legault said he intends to ask the population for a “strong mandate” to provide his government with a “position of strength” in relations with Ottawa.</p> </section> <div class="ad__section-border article-content__ad-group"> <p>Federal Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez, Trudeau’s Quebec lieutenant, noted Tuesday that the province “already has the tools to welcome the vast majority of immigrants.”</p> <p>The province takes in about <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/business/boosting-immigration-not-desirable-and-it-wont-happen-fitzgibbon" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">50,000 immigrants a year.</a></p> <p>About 10,000 immigrants come in as part of the family unification program, Rodrigues said, adding that nothing prevents Quebec from increasing the number <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/raise-immigration-levels-to-battle-labour-shortage-quebec-employers-group" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">economic immigrants</a> it accepts</p> <p>Federal Revenue Minister Diane Lebouthillier did not mince words, saying she “doesn’t believe” Legault’s claims. “It is important to respect jurisdictions and we can’t just do that only when it suits us.”</p> <p>Federal Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne said that “the powers when it comes to immigration are very clear.” Champagne said the No. 1 issue at the moment is the labour shortage and immigration is a key to solving it.</p> <section class="more-topic" aria-labelledby="moreTopicLabel2193823414915864500965387018879603"></section> </div> </div> <p>Source: <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/trudeau-pushes-back-on-legaults-immigration-demands">Trudeau pushes back on Legault's immigration demands</a>

Prime Minister Trudeau has pushed back on this demand.

But the real story and area of interest is just how much the economic outcomes of immigrants to Quebec have improved, both in absolute terms as well as relative to other provinces:

Le Québec accueille beaucoup plus de nouveaux arrivants qu’il n’y paraît et les intègre économiquement beaucoup mieux qu’auparavant, constate une étude. Aux prises avec une pénurie de main-d’œuvre, il devrait maintenant augmenter ses seuils officiels d’immigration, en ayant particulièrement en tête les régions.

À propos des immigrants, le gouvernement Legault a dit vouloir « en prendre moins, mais en prendre soin », rappelle l’Institut du Québec (IdQ) dans le communiqué de presse accompagnant le Portrait de l’immigration au Québec dévoilé mercredi. Or, même s’il a réduit de 51 000 à 40 000 le seuil de nouveaux immigrants permanents à sa première année au pouvoir, le nombre total de nouveaux résidents étrangers au Québec a augmenté pour une quatrième année consécutive, le solde migratoire externe global — le total des arrivées moins les départs au Québec — indiquant un gain record de presque 93 500 nouveaux arrivants en 2019.

Cette hausse vient de l’augmentation constante du nombre de travailleurs immigrants et d’étudiants étrangers admis en vertu de permis temporaires. Leur total est passé, en dix ans, de 79 000 en 2012 à 177 000 en 2021. La pandémie de COVID-19 et le resserrement des règles sanitaires aux frontières sont venus diminuer fortement le solde migratoire total à 14 000 en 2020 et à 44 000 en 2021. Passé d’un peu moins de 125 000 en 2019 à 97 000 en 2020, le nombre de permis de résidence temporaire délivrés par le gouvernement du Québec a toutefois rapidement rebondi l’année dernière, à presque 136 000.
Meilleure intégration économique
Il n’y a pas que le nombre d’immigrants temporaires qui a fortement changé depuis quelques années, poursuit l’IdQ dans son rapport de 69 pages. Le degré d’intégration économique des nouveaux arrivants s’est aussi nettement amélioré.

Le taux de chômage des immigrants reçus de 25 à 54 ans a, par exemple, fondu de plus de moitié en dix ans, passant de 12,7 % en 2012 (contre 6,5 % pour les populations nées au Canada) à 5,3 % en avril dernier (contre 2,9 %). Encore loin derrière celui de l’Ontario (75,1 %) ou bien celui de la Colombie-Britannique (76,7 %), le taux d’emploi de l’ensemble des immigrants reçus au Québec a, par ailleurs, bondi de 69,9 % à 81,9 % et rattrapé tout son retard sur les autres provinces.
Des progrès sont aussi observés du côté des revenus. Au Québec, la rémunération hebdomadaire moyenne de l’ensemble des immigrants reçus accusait en 2012 un retard de 8,5 % par rapport aux populations nées au Canada. Cet écart avait diminué à 2,8 % en 2020, avant que la pandémie ne frappe plus durement les travailleurs immigrants et ne recreuse l’écart à 6,4 % en 2021. Le rattrapage est encore plus spectaculaire lorsqu’on concentre son regard sur les seuls immigrants économiques, dont le retard salarial, un an après leur admission à la résidence permanente, s’élevait à 40 % par rapport à la médiane québécoise en 2010 et qui n’était plus que de 1,3 % en 2019.

Le recours grandissant à l’immigration temporaire n’est pas étranger à cette meilleure intégration économique des immigrants au Québec, ont indiqué en entrevue au Devoir deux des auteurs de l’étude. En effet, le fait d’avoir de l’expérience professionnelle au Canada aide grandement à cette intégration, observe l’économiste Daye Diallo. Et si la proportion des nouveaux immigrants reçus qui disposent d’une telle expérience est passée, en dix ans, de 37 % à 57 %, c’est que plusieurs d’entre eux travaillaient déjà au Québec à titre d’étudiants internationaux ou de travailleurs temporaires.

L’augmentation du nombre d’immigrants et leur meilleure intégration économique des dernières années découlent également du vieillissement de la population québécoise et des besoins de plus en plus pressants de main-d’œuvre des entreprises, poursuit la présidente-directrice générale de l’IdQ, Mia Homsy. « C’est clairement l’effet du resserrement du marché du travail, qui profite à tous les travailleurs, mais davantage aux immigrants. »
Pourrait faire mieux
Tout ne va cependant pas pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes, précise l’IdQ. Si l’augmentation du nombre de travailleurs temporaires aide les entreprises à faire face à la pénurie de main-d’œuvre, elle se fait souvent au prix d’une plus grande précarité pour ces travailleurs étrangers, parfois aux prises avec des permis de travail reliés à un employeur abusif ou inéquitable et avec des conditions de travail moins favorables, ne pouvant pas faire venir leurs familles ou montrant une méconnaissance de leurs droits. La situation n’est pas idéale non plus pour les employeurs, qui voudraient pouvoir compter sur une main-d’œuvre plus stable à long terme.

Pour compliquer les choses, les délais d’obtention de la résidence permanente pour ces travailleurs temporaires « sont, de loin, beaucoup plus longs au Québec qu’ailleurs au Canada ». Principalement attribuables au gouvernement fédéral, ces « délais administratifs démesurés » qui peuvent s’échelonner sur 37 mois en amènent certains, malheureusement, à se tourner vers d’autres provinces, comme l’Ontario.

L’IdQ constate également que, malgré les efforts, la régionalisation de l’immigration est « au point mort », la grande région de Montréal accueillant encore et toujours près de 85 % des immigrants au Québec. Or, les besoins de main-d’œuvre sont souvent bien plus grands ailleurs. De plus, l’intégration économique, sociale et linguistique des immigrants à la majorité francophone se ferait probablement encore mieux à l’extérieur de la métropole.

L’IdQ recommande notamment de rehausser les seuils annuels d’immigration en priorisant les régions. Aux 50 000 nouveaux immigrants reçus prévus, Québec pourrait ainsi accepter un maximum de 10 000 demandes supplémentaires qui seraient soumises par des immigrants temporaires déjà installés en dehors des grands centres.

À défaut de grands ambassadeurs comme Montréal international et Québec international, les régions devraient pouvoir compter davantage sur Investissement Québec international ainsi que sur leurs cégeps et universités pour attirer plus d’étudiants internationaux et de travailleurs temporaires qualifiés.

Comme les délais de traitement des demandes sont très longs et qu’ils sont généralement imposés à des immigrants temporaires qui travaillent déjà au Québec, l’IdQ estime qu’on pourrait aussi abolir l’obligation d’expérience professionnelle avant le dépôt d’une demande de résidence permanente. Pour réduire les délais, Ottawa devrait aussi céder plus de pouvoirs à Québec dans le traitement des demandes des immigrants économiques.

Source: Les immigrants au Québec sont plus nombreux et mieux intégrés qu’il n’y paraît

English version:

Quebec should boost immigration thresholds while demanding more powers from the federal government in a bid to cut “unacceptable” delays and start easing the province’s long-standing labour shortage, a new study suggests.
Economic immigrants who apply for permanent residence in Quebec face the longest wait times in Canada, according to a report released Wednesday by the Montreal-based Institut du Québec think tank. Candidates looking to settle in Quebec can face administrative delays of as many as 37 months, compared with waits of six to 28 months in the rest of Canada, the study says. Health, security and standards checks by the federal government are the main reason for the delays, it says.
Although Quebec has the right to select its economic immigrants, Canada remains responsible for setting national immigration standards and objectives. Allowing Quebec to verify by itself the health, security and criminal records of economic immigrants would considerably speed up the bureaucratic process and improve Quebec’s attractiveness in an increasingly competitive labour market, according to Institut du Québec chief executive Mia Homsy.
“The big issue is the length of time it takes to process immigration requests for economic immigrants,” Homsy, who co-authored the study, said in an interview. “There’s a huge attractiveness issue for Quebec when the gap with the rest of Canada gets too big. If things take too long, immigrants are just going to cross the border and settle in Ontario.”
Quebec’s programs should also be reviewed. To speed things up, Homsy and her colleagues say the province would benefit from allowing temporary workers admitted under the so-called “Quebec Experience Program” to apply for permanent residence before having accumulated up to 24 months of work experience.
As Quebec’s population ages and employers struggle to fill vacant positions, the province has been relying more and more on temporary immigration to keep businesses humming. Non-permanent residents represented 64 per cent of the net number of international immigrants in 2019 — a huge jump from the 9 per cent average recorded between 2012 and 2016.
Long considered a weak point for Quebec, the economic integration of immigrants has made remarkable strides in recent years. Employment among Quebec immigrants aged 25 to 54 has increased by 224,000 since 2012, the study shows — a 61-per-cent surge.
Immigrants now make up 19.2 per cent of Quebec’s working population. Ten years ago, the proportion was only 12.6 per cent.
As a result, the unemployment rate for immigrants aged 25 to 54 fell to 5.3 per cent in April. A decade ago, joblessness was 12.7 per cent.
Entry wages for economic immigrants have also improved. As of 2019, they represented 98.7 per cent of the Quebec median wage, up from about 60 per cent in 2010, the study says.
Quebec’s labour market is growing increasingly tight — and many economists expect the trend to persist this decade as baby boomers retire en masse. The province’s unemployment rate, long among the highest in Canada, is now the lowest in the country. It hit a historic low of 3.9 per cent in April, 1.3 percentage points below the national average.
At the end of 2021, there was less than one unemployed person in Quebec for each job vacancy. That compares with a ratio of five to one in 2015.
“It’s a spectacular turnaround,” Homsy said. “Economic growth has accelerated just as the population of Quebec was aging. There is huge demand for workers at the same time that more people are retiring. Employers haven’t had time to adjust.”
Despite a crying need for workers, Quebec’s regions have been unable to attract enough immigrants. Nearly 85 per cent of the immigrants who arrive each year in Quebec settle in the Greater Montreal area, the study shows. Montreal — home to about half of Quebec’s population — took in an average of 37,000 permanent immigrants annually between 2015 and 2019, while 11 of the province’s 17 administrative regions received less than 1,000.
“In fairness, this is a phenomenon that we see everywhere,” Homsy said. “Immigrants gravitate toward big cities because these tend to offer more career opportunities. Quite often, they already have friends in big cities. All of this is difficult to replicate in the regions.”
To help solve acute labour shortages in the outlying regions, Quebec should set up a new “fast-track” program that could lead to as many as 10,000 additional temporary immigrants settling here every year, the IDQ study says. Immigrants targeted by the new program would be added to the 50,000 already admitted for permanent residence under existing programs.
Among other measures suggested by the authors, Quebec should increase the scope of international recruitment campaigns to attract more foreign students and qualified temporary workers. Another recommendation calls for the province to boost tax credits for international students who decide to settle permanently in Quebec’s regions after their studies.

Source: Quebec must boost immigration levels to solve labour woes: think tank

Filed under Immigration Tagged with Daye Diallo, jurisdiction, l’Institut du Québec (IdQ), Mia Homsy, Quebec

Dutrisac: Survivance et résignation [on the CAQ electoral strategy and immigration]

2022/06/01 Leave a comment

Of interest, particularly the contrast between the earlier inclusive vision of the first PQ government and how it has evolved to the defensive approach of the CAQ:

Il a été beaucoup question de fierté lors du congrès national de la Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ). François Legault a parlé des deux pôles de son gouvernement, la prospérité et la fierté. Le ministre André Lamontagne a aussi beaucoup parlé de fierté dans l’allocution finement rédigée qu’il a livrée samedi après-midi.

Ce type d’événements partisans baigne dans un enthousiasme parfois factice — il ne l’était aucunement cette fin de semaine —, qui se manifeste par les autocongratulations et le cheerleading, le simplisme des lignes de communication et un comportement moutonnier particulièrement exacerbé dans un parti composé de militants disciplinés, ou dociles, plutôt que chicaniers. À cet égard, la CAQ surpasse le Parti libéral du Québec.

Cet enthousiasme se percevait sur le plancher du centre des congrès de Drummondville : jamais depuis les libéraux de Robert Bourassa en 1985 un parti politique québécois n’a été en si bonne posture à l’orée d’élections générales, ce que la faiblesse de ses adversaires ne fait que souligner.

En campagne électorale il y a quatre ans, François Legault avait aussi parlé de fierté, en contraste avec un Philippe Couillard distant, qui semblait parfois douter du peuple québécois.

Après un premier mandat, les Québécois sont-ils plus fiers qu’en 2018, sont-ils plus prospères ? a lancé le chef caquiste, tout en donnant évidemment une réponse affirmative aux deux questions.

Sur le plan de la prospérité, son bilan est positif, surtout si on le compare à celui du gouvernement précédent, de l’austérité duquel nous nous souvenons amèrement. Malgré la pandémie, les finances publiques sont en ordre, la forte croissance économique a dépassé celle de nos voisins, le taux de chômage est au plus bas, la productivité est en hausse, l’écart de richesse avec l’Ontario s’est réduit, les salaires ont augmenté, bien que la poussée d’inflation, qu’on espère de courte durée, soit venue brouiller les cartes, et avec ça, le gouvernement caquiste a remis « de l’argent dans les poches des Québécois ».

Plus prospères et plus fiers, les Québécois devraient afficher une assurance à toute épreuve. Pas si vite : c’est compter sans le spectre de la « louisianisation » du Québec, brandi par François Legault, en lien avec une immigration qui s’intégrerait mal à notre société de langue française. Il y va de la « survie » de la nation québécoise, a fait valoir le chef caquiste.

Dès le début du prochain mandat, le gouvernement caquiste entend organiser un vaste sommet sur les perspectives démographiques du Québec et l’apport de l’immigration. L’événement permettrait d’informer la population sur cet enjeu crucial dans le but de bâtir un rapport de force face à Ottawa. Dimanche, François Legault a réitéré une demande à laquelle Justin Trudeau avait déjà répondu par un non catégorique, celle de rapatrier la responsabilité de la réunification familiale, qui compte pour près du quart des immigrants reçus, et il a ajouté la gestion des programmes visant les travailleurs temporaires et les étudiants étrangers.

Comme l’éventualité que le premier ministre du Canada acquiesce à cette revendication semble lointaine, voire utopique, un prochain gouvernement Legault devra s’atteler à reprendre concrètement la maîtrise de la situation avec les leviers dont il dispose, mais qu’il n’a pas pleinement utilisés.

Ce retour de la survivance, une posture qui fut l’apanage des Canadiens français après 1840, laisse perplexe. C’est une stratégie empreinte de résignation, un aveu d’impuissance politique. Et puis le mouvement nationaliste d’émancipation des années 1960 et suivantes, celui de René Lévesque, progressiste et tourné vers l’avenir, avait mis la hache dans cette survivance passéiste.

Il faudrait que François Legault nous dise si son nationalisme est essentiellement conservateur, essentialiste et défensif, ou s’il s’agit d’un nationalisme progressiste — existentialiste, pourrait-on dire —, qui parle d’avenir et s’appuie sur le pluralisme et le métissage qui caractérisent déjà la nation québécoise. Quand François Legault répète « c’est comme ça qu’on vit au Québec », une formule pour le moins maladroite, et qu’il en rajoute avec « c’est comme ça qu’on parle au Québec », on peut se demander où il s’en va avec ses skis. Le français est la langue commune certes, mais il se parle des centaines de langues au Québec, y compris des langues autochtones.

Le gouvernement Legault a déjà amélioré les choses en matière d’immigration, que ce soit en francisation et en soutien à l’intégration, et le chantier n’est pas terminé. Mais il devrait revenir à l’esprit de Gérald Godin : les immigrants pour la plupart veulent s’intégrer à la nation québécoise et contribuer à sa culture vivante et originale, dont nous pouvons nous enorgueillir. C’est ça aussi, être fier.

Source: Survivance et résignation

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with CAQ, Premier Legault, Quebec, Robert Dutrisac

Abbott – The truth is out: Britain’s immigration system is racist, and always has been. Now let’s fix it

2022/06/01 Leave a comment

By Labour MP Diane Abbott. Many of the historic examples cited are common to other immigration destination countries:

The unspoken rationale underlying British immigration policy since the second world war has always been about race. A new leaked Home Office document, which was never intended to be seen by the public, spells this out. The report, which was commissioned by the Home Office in the wake of the Windrush scandal, was leaked to the Guardian after repeated attempts by the government to suppress its publication. It has a stark conclusion: that the origins of the “deep-rooted racism of the Windrush scandal” lie in the fact that “during the period 1950-1981, every single piece of immigration or citizenship legislation was designed at least in part to reduce the number of people with black or brown skin who were permitted to live and work in the UK”.

This was true whichever political party was in power. Who can forget the red mug marketed by the Labour party in 2015 emblazoned with the words “Controls on immigration”? The problem was not the mug, but the fact that cracking down on immigration was one of our election promises at all.

It was the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act that for the first time brought restrictions on the entry of Commonwealth citizens into the UK. Before this, there had been freedom of movement for all citizens of the United Kingdom and its colonies. Postwar Britain was suffering a labour shortage and so by the late 1940s, employers were recruiting directly from the Commonwealth. For instance the London Transport executive had recruitment drives in Barbados, Trinidad and Jamaica.

But there were already murmurings of disapproval even then. The day the Windrush docked in Tilbury, Essex in 1948, 11 Labour MPs sent a letter to the prime minister, Clement Attlee, asking for controls on immigration, stating that the British people “are blest with the absence of a colour racial problem. An influx of coloured people domiciled here is likely to impair the harmony, strength and cohesion of our public and social life and to cause discord and unhappiness among all concerned.”

In 1949, the Royal Commission on Population reported that “immigrants of good stock would be welcomed without reserve”. “Good stock” in this context might be assumed to mean white. In 1956, a ministerial committee was set up to investigate colonial migration – and whether it should be curbed. It argued that: “The principle that the United Kingdom should maintain an open door for British subjects grew up tacitly at a time when the coloured races of the Commonwealth were at a more primitive stage of development than now. There was no danger then of a coloured invasion of this country … In the meantime circumstances have changed …” The report continues: “We clearly cannot undertake to absorb … all the coloured immigrants who may wish to come here.”

With their fear of a “coloured invasion”, these MPs were foreshadowing what Margaret Thatcher would say more than 20 years later, when she referred to Britain being “swamped” by migrants. Pertinently, that 1956 report also said: “There is no doubt that even though a bill would in form be non-discriminatory, it would nevertheless be clear against whom the bill was really directed.”

In the decades to come, those of us campaigning against racist immigration legislation were never in any doubt against whom it was really directed. When that first Commonwealth immigrants bill made it to the House of Commons, in response to the increasing anti-immigrant clamour, the home secretary of the day, Rab Butler, nearly gave the game away in the debate on the legislation, saying in the Commons that the legislation would not be based “on colour prejudice alone”. In theory at least, it was not supposed to be based on colour prejudice at all. But that 1962 act put an end to freedom of movement, limited the immigration of Commonwealth passport holders and for the first time made the distinction between skilled and unskilled labour.

The Labour party opposed the legislation and promised to repeal it. But the small number of Labour MPs who actually voted against the bill in parliament suggested that that they were not as enthusiastically against it as they might have been. And the next Labour government did nothing to repeal it. Instead, it brought in another Commonwealth Immigration Act in 1968, rushed through parliament in just three days by the home secretary, Jim Callaghan, in response to media hysteria about the possibility of 200,000 Kenyan Asians with British passports coming to the UK as they fled Kenya’s Africanisation policy.

There must have been some concern in government that they did not want the legislation to look as crudely racist as it was. So they invented the concept of “patrials” – someone who had a parent or grandparent who was born in, or was a citizen of the UK. Nobody, however, was in any doubt that “patrial” was a euphemism for white.

By 1971, the Tories were in power and another immigration act brought in that year elaborated on the (completely bogus) legal concept of “patrials”, clamped down further on Commonwealth immigration and extended powers of deportation. It did allow Commonwealth migrants who had come to Britain before 1973 to remain in the UK indefinitely. But, crucially, it put the onus on those who had come to Britain to prove their right to stay. It was that requirement that had such catastrophic consequences for the Windrush generation whose cases were eventually brought to light in 2018.

Secret cabinet minutes of the time reveal that ministers knew that the decision to exempt “old” Commonwealth countries such as New Zealand and Australia from immigration controls would be criticised as being discriminatory in favour of the white Commonwealth. But the home secretary, Reginald Maudling, argued that it was “necessary and defensible” to curb Asian migration. The 1981 Nationality Act, the most fateful of the decade, would reverse an age-old convention that anyone born on British soil was British. Birth in Britain was no longer an automatic entitlement to citizenship.

From the 1970s onwards, Britain’s immigrant communities began to organise and campaign. One of the earliest cases was Rochdale housewife Anwar Ditta. Britain’s convoluted and increasingly draconian immigration laws meant she could not bring her three children over from Pakistan. She was not the first immigrant to suffer because of the rules, but she was the first to build a rainbow coalition of support. With no experience, she campaigned from 1976 to 1981 and won the right to bring her children to Britain.

This was one of a series of campaigns opposing Britain’s degrading practices meted out to immigrants such as “virginity tests”. Some of us would spend the coming decades writing about and marching against these rules, even when it meant campaigning against our own Labour government.

Source: The truth is out: Britain’s immigration system is racist, and always has been. Now let’s fix it

Filed under Immigration, Racism Tagged with Diane Abbott, UK

Immigration report shows skills don’t always match job market [Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot (RNIP)]

2022/06/01 Leave a comment

Of interest and not too surprising given some similar issues in other parts of Canada:

A northern research report has found that while the main immigration stream used by permanent residents in Northern Ontario’s five largest cities is economic, the jobs the newcomers have applied to fill don’t quite align with labour market vacancy rates.

Part of the new series by the Northern Policy Institute (NPI) called All Roads Lead Home: Immigration flows into Ontario’s north and what this means for RNIP impacts, Mercedes Labelle, author and Lead Analyst at Northern Policy Institute, lays out current immigration levels and characteristics for each of Northern Ontario’s five Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot program cities: Thunder Bay, Sault Ste. Marie, North Bay, Timmins, and Sudbury.

The Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot (RNIP) was created in 2020 as a three-year program to encourage newcomers to Canada to settle in rural areas and Northern Ontario, rather than in big cities like Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. It is based on the applicant securing a job offer before they apply.

The newcomer candidates need to demonstrate their intention to reside long-term in the city, to become a part of the fabric of Northern Ontario. They must also complete extensive paperwork, as well as numerous interviews, in-depth evaluations of the job offer and review by the selection committee. If the applicant is successful, they will be recommended to Immigration Refugee and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) for permanent residency.

The RNIP program has been implemented across the five largest communities in Northern Ontario as they are experiencing job vacancy rates between five and 55 per cent in some occupations.

But as it turns out, Labelle said at the moment, there is a disconnect between targeted occupations under the RNIP and what is really needed.

“RNIP is a community-driven economic development immigration stream, where the community identifies the occupations that have the most need,” Labelle told Sudbury.com. “What we found in this paper is that there’s little alignment between occupations of recent immigrants and occupations that have the highest vacancy rate.”

The ‘highest vacancy rate’ is calculated by comparing job postings to the total labour market and “identifying data-driven labour market statistics,” said Labelle.

She said while the RNIP program has shifted the focus to more demand-based targeting, there is still considerable variance between jobs in highest demand and the occupations targeted by RNIP.

The research report put forward five recommendations to be considered, which include annual and ongoing monitoring of the program, community-specific assessments and expanded analysis, undertaking Welcoming Francophone Community initiatives – referring to the specific program focused on attracting Francophone newcomers to Northern Ontario – as well as

“Strengthening the alignment between labour market shortages, targeted occupations, postsecondary institutional fields of study, and immigrant-intended occupations to maximize economic outcomes,” states the report.

Of course, Labelle notes there have been some unexpected challenges in the early years of the pilot program.

“No one really expected this to be going on during a global pandemic,” said Labelle. “The first two years of the RNIP pilot program were in the midst of COVID, so it’s really hard to plan for things like that.”

And now that most people are easing into recovery, Labelle said another unexpected challenge appeared. “We’re seeing a ton of labour market shortages emerge and signing bonuses popping up for occupations,” she said. “With a labour market that’s changing so rapidly, we need to continuously update this data and also the projected future.”

There is a desperate need for newcomers to Northern Ontario, said Labelle, and also, the need to keep them here. A 2021 report stated that the North must attract 1,700 new residents a year minimum for 20 years just to keep pace.

“Our (Northern) demographics are older on average than Ontario and we have high levels of youth out migration, so there’s not going to be enough people to backfill all these retirees in the coming years, which will make our communities economically unsustainable,” said Labelle. “We absolutely need to not only attract immigrants, but retain people already in the communities and make sure that they’re participating in the labor force to the fullest extent.”

The research report notes that retention of immigrants in the first year following admission averages 70 per cent, meaning approximately 30 per cent of immigrants are leaving Greater Sudbury within their first year of gaining permanent residence.

But consistent analysis of labour market data will help, said Labelle.

“Immigrants are less likely to leave if they have a meaningful employment opportunity, meaning they’re working in an occupation that truly is in need, and they have stable employment with a welcoming employer.”

Housing is also an indicator of a welcoming community, said Labelle, meaning that suitable, affordable and adequate housing is necessary.

“We can see through this paper that recent immigrants are less likely to be home owners than more established immigrants,” said Labelle, “and taking that step from renter to an owner really helped solidify retention in the communities.”

Labelle said more answers will be available when there is new data available.

“As I’m sure everyone knows, the housing market has skyrocketed, prices of housing and affordability is really out of touch for a lot of Canadians and a lot of immigrants,” said Labelle. “We’ll be interested to see the impact that has on retention, attraction, and the ability to settle in a community.”

Labelle said one finding that surprised her was that, based on 2020 data, Sudbury had the lowest vacancy rate. “Meaning Sudbury wasn’t facing as severe labor shortages as the other big five, which really surprised me, especially because this data does reflect COVID.”

As 2022 is the final year of the three-year pilot program, Labelle said she hopes the program will continue and has faith that it will, based on the success of RNIP, as well as the community-driven Atlantic Immigration Pilot Program, which Labelle said was made permanent.

She said the biggest key to success in the program is the collaboration within the community, what she refers to as a “community hug.”

“What makes the RNIP so unique is the understanding of collaboration needed within a community to fully welcome an immigrant,” said Labelle. “It’s not only making sure services are available to the immigrant, but it’s also making sure that services are available to the employer.”

Labelle said that in addition to monitoring, data collection and analysis, the community will be the real indicator of success. “I’m glad immigration is at the forefront, and I’m glad it’s being led by the community,” she said.

You can read the full report from the Northern Policy Institute here.

Source: Immigration report shows skills don’t always match job market

Filed under Immigration Tagged with Northern Policy Institute, Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot (RNIP)

Canada’s backlog of Nexus applications balloons to nearly 300,000 despite downturn during pandemic

2022/05/31 Leave a comment

Yet another unfortunate fail. While not personally affected given our cards are valid until 2024, can understand the frustration of those affected:

Canada’s backlog of Nexus applications has ballooned into the hundreds of thousands, despite a sharp downturn in applicants during the pandemic, prompting blowback from frustrated travellers as clogged airports continue to overflow.
The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) says 295,133Nexus applications have yet to be processed due to ongoing office closures prompted by COVID-19.
Would-be cardholders in the program, which allows pre-approved Canadians to pass through separate, speedy lines when travelling to and from the United States, must be risk-assessed by both the CBSA and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The American agency reopened its Nexus enrolment centres for applicant interviews on April 19, but centres in Canada remain closed after shuttering in March 2020.
The resulting backlog means some Nexus members are struggling to book sit-downs before their cards expire, as Canadian residents hoping to renew their status can only schedule interviews in fewer than a dozen border community offices where slots are few.
Travelling retirees are among those exasperated by the standstill.
“A lot of snowbirds go to the U.S. frequently. They often go back and forth, and a fair number of them would be Nexus card holders, including myself,” said Jill Wykes, editor of Snowbird Advisor, an online resource for snowbirds.
Wykes questioned why enrolment centres remain closed when many other government offices have been open for months.
“The airports are chaotic, and if you have Nexus you can get through so much more quickly coming and going, whether it’s at the border or the airport,” she said.
“The whole situation is very frustrating, that the government did not anticipate this pent-up demand, which as been anticipated for two years.”
The CBSA said in an e-mail that Canada and the U.S. are in discussions about when to reopen Canadian enrolment centres.
“Although the extent of the backlog in 2019 is not known, I can tell you that the backlog has significantly increased over pre-pandemic levels due to the closing of the enrolment centres in March 2020 for public health reasons,” spokeswoman Rebecca Purdy said.
Meanwhile the Fast program for cross-border commercial truck drivers now sports a backlog of 11,018, the CBSA said.
Jacques Roy, a professor of transport management at HEC Montreal business school, says the backlog is affecting business and leisure travellers. It also adds pressure to airports already struggling with security staff shortages and endless queues.
“I really am having a hard time understanding why nothing was done or processed during that period,” Roy said of the ongoing office closures.
The CBSA said it continues to carry out risk assessments remotely within its standard 30-day timeline for new applicants or those seeking to renew a soon-to-expire card.
However, once both countries have pre-approved the application, “the onus is then on the applicant to schedule an interview at a Nexus/Fast EC (enrolment centre) using the online portal,” the agency said.
It has not set a date for when Canadian enrolment centres will unlock their doors.
Nexus memberships are typically valid for five years, after which they must be renewed. The process involves a risk assessment and a screening interview – for both first-time applicants and long-time card holders – the CBSA said.
Nexus membership declined by 170,814, or nine per cent, to 1.73 million enrollees between 2020 and 2021, according to agency figures.
Between 2018 and 2019, the number of new applications had risen by nearly a third to 262,125. They then plunged to 172,125 in 2020 and 29,705 in 2021. Nonetheless, with enrolment centres shuttered, the pile of partially processed applications continued to mount.

Source: Canada’s backlog of Nexus applications balloons to nearly 300,000 despite downturn during pandemic

Filed under Immigration Tagged with backlogs, CBSA, Nexus

La maîtrise de l’immigration, «une question de survie», dit Legault

2022/05/31 Leave a comment

Quebec/federal relations continue to be challenged. Will see how this plays out after the Quebec election and the degree to which federal parties accommodate or set limits:

À quatre mois des élections générales, François Legault fait de l’obtention de nouveaux pouvoirs en matière d’immigration une condition sine qua non à la survie de la nation québécoise.

Le chef de la Coalition avenir Québec propose de hisser le thème de l’immigration parmi les principaux sujets de discussion de la campagne électorale — qui battra son plein à la fin de l’été — afin que « les Québécois comprennent bien l’urgence de rapatrier les pouvoirs » de sélection de quelque 11 000 immigrants inscrits au programme de regroupement familial, qui lui échappent à l’heure actuelle.

Si la « moitié » des participants du programme de regroupement familial continuent de bouder le français comme ils le font présentement, « ça peut devenir une question de temps avant qu’on devienne une Louisiane », a soutenu M. Legault dimanche, tout en évoquant des études gouvernementales sur le sujet.

« Je demande, aux prochaines élections, un mandat fort pour aller négocier ça avec le gouvernement fédéral », a-t-il fait valoir lors du discours de clôture du congrès national de la CAQ, à Drummondville.

François Legault s’est par la suite abstenu de préciser, devant les journalistes, les contours du « mandat fort » qu’il sollicite auprès de l’électorat québécois le 3 octobre prochain. « À partir du moment où on a l’appui d’une majorité de Québécois, c’est dur pour les partis politiques fédéraux de refuser cette demande-là [et] de gagner au fédéral sans appui au Québec », s’est-il contenté de dire.

« Avec tout ce qui se passe chez les conservateurs », un nouveau parti politique plus sensible aux revendications québécoises pourrait apparaître sur la scène politique fédérale d’ici le prochain scrutin fédéral, a-t-il dit.

Référendum sectoriel

Le chef du gouvernement québécois a rejeté l’idée avancée par des membres de la CAQ au cours du week-end de tenir un « référendum sectoriel » en immigration afin d’établir un rapport de force plus favorable. « Ce n’est pas dans les plans », a-t-il mentionné. « Ça suffit le niaisage ! […] La première initiative de la prochaine législature devra être l’organisation d’un référendum sur l’immigration », avait fait valoir le militant de Terrebonne Kevin Serafini samedi. « Bravo ! » avait spontanément crié une sympathisante caquiste. Les membres se sont toutefois bien gardés de l’ajouter dans le cahier de 23 propositions qu’ils ont remis au gouvernement de François Legault.

En revanche, ils se sont par exemple dits favorables à l’idée d’ajouter un cours obligatoire d’histoire et de culture du Québec au programme collégial, de concevoir un « catalogue de grandes œuvres artistiques québécoises » pour les enseignants et de mettre sur pied un musée de l’Histoire nationale du Québec. Le président régional Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean de la Commission Relève de la CAQ, Samuel Massicotte, y voit notamment une occasion de donner tort à Lord Durham, selon qui les descendants des Français formaient un « peuple sans histoire et sans littérature ». « On survit encore, malgré certaines tentatives d’un autre ordre de gouvernement de nier notre langue, de nier nos droits. On continue de s’accrocher », a souligné l’enseignant en histoire.

Turbulences économiques ?

À l’approche du rendez-vous électoral, François Legault a exhorté les électeurs québécois à rejeter les propositions des oppositions de gauche, convaincue que « l’argent pousse dans les arbres », et de droite, muette face aux changements climatiques. « Quand les temps sont pleins d’incertitudes, de turbulences et de dangers économiques, ce n’est pas le temps de se lancer dans des aventures avec des idéologues de gauche ou de droite. En fait, quand la mer est houleuse, c’est le temps de confier la barre à une équipe compétente, expérimentée, solide ! » a-t-il déclaré sur la scène du Centrexpo Cogeco, entouré de la plupart des personnes qui brigueront les suffrages sous la bannière de la CAQ. La présidente-directrice générale du CIUSSS du Centre-Sud-de-l’Île-de-Montréal, Sonia Bélanger, était dans le lot.

Le premier ministre a plus tard expliqué son changement de ton sur les perspectives économiques québécoises en parlant de projections d’économistes évoquant « 40 % de chances » de récession mondiale. D’ailleurs, la hausse graduelle du taux directeur de la Banque du Canada « n’est rien pour aider l’économie », a-t-il fait remarquer aux médias.

Dans un deuxième mandat, un gouvernement caquiste pratiquera une « gestion rigoureuse des finances publiques », ce qui ne l’empêchera pas de donner un coup de pouce aux Québécois pour « passer au travers » de la hausse du coût de la vie, a indiqué M. Legault devant des centaines de militants gonflés à bloc. Ceux-ci avaient reçu pour consigne de frapper leurs bâtons gonflables, un bleu, un blanc, à l’appel du mot « fierté ». « Sans la prospérité, la fierté manque de moyens. Puis sans la fierté, la prospérité manque de sens. Ça prend les deux », a insisté le chef caquiste en précampagne électorale.

Source: La maîtrise de l’immigration, «une question de survie», dit Legault

And a comparable article in English:

Premier François Legault gave a glimpse into what his provincial election campaign will look like Sunday, with a speech outlining his plan to demand Ottawa hand over more immigration powers to Quebec.
Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), Legault’s party, held its caucus in Drummondville, Que., this weekend, a city in the Eastern Townships southeast of Montreal.
Legault told the crowd of about 1,000 people there he wants to ask Quebecers for a “strong mandate” in the Oct. 3 election to be a powerful negotiator with Ottawa on matters of immigration.
The speech Legault gave, which he dubbed “Pride,” was heavily nationalist, calling for the preservation of the French language, Quebec culture and listing the passing of Bills 21 (on secularism) and 96 (the overhaul of the Charter of the French language) as wins for his government.
“We changed Quebec,” he said.
Bill 21 outlaws civil servants in positions of authority, including teachers, lawyers, police officers and judges, from wearing religious garb or symbols. In practice, the law has for the most part affected female Muslim teachers who wear head scarves.
While Quebec manages economic immigration to the province — a power other provinces and territories in Canada do not have — the federal government is responsible for family reunification and the admission of refugees, representing close to half of newcomers to the province every year.
Legault said he wants Quebec to be able to choose much of that remaining half, except for refugees, so that it can prioritize French-speaking foreigners. He said that family reunification cases represent about 11,000 of the 50,000 people who immigrate to the province every year.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has so far rejected Legault’s calls for Quebec to have complete control over immigration into the province but has pointed to Bill C-13 tabled by the federal Liberals, which in part aims to increase immigration from French-speaking countries.
Legault said it was a question of the survival of the French language in the province, pointing to the state of Louisiana as an example of a place that used to be predominantly French-speaking but no longer is, surrounded by a nearly monolingual English-speaking country.
“It’s important for Quebecers to understand that it’s a question of survival,” for a French-speaking Quebec, he said.
But when asked by a reporter if there were government studies on the impacts of family reunification and the use of French, Legault’s answer wasn’t clear.
“Is it too much to ask them to learn before moving to Quebec? Is it too much? I don’t think so,” he said.
A heavily criticized clause in Bill 96, which was voted into law last week, calls on refugees to learn French within six months of arriving to Quebec, after which they can no longer access most public services in another language.
Critics say six months is not enough to become fluent in French, and that the clause will make it difficult for immigrants to access basic services.
Tuesday, after the law passed, Legault gave reporters a heads up that he wanted to turn to pressuring the federal government to handing over its immigration levers.
“That’s where the focus should be,” in protecting French, he said.

Critics say policies go beyond language

But some critics see Legault’s focus on legislation targeting minorities as a way to appeal to his voter base, largely composed of older portions of the Quebec population and those living outside of major cities.
Some groups helping immigrants, migrant workers and refugees in Montreal believe Quebec is creating a two-tiered immigration system, making it harder for non-French-speaking people to access permanent residency, while relying more heavily on a vulnerable temporary foreign workforce to fill serious labour shortages.
“I doubt it’s solely a question of the French language,” said Mostafa Henaway, an advocate at the Immigrant Workers’ Centre, in an interview last week.
Indigenous leaders across the province have also denounced Legault’s government for failing to listen to their calls to be exempt from Bill 96, saying their sovereignty and language revitalization efforts are at stake.
On Sunday, Legault made no mention of the labour shortage or of problems with access to health care — such as emergency room capacities, surgery wait lists and a shortage of family doctors. He said he would unveil a health care plan at some point in the campaign.
Statistics Canada reported in the fall that there were 279,000 job vacancies in Quebec in 2021.
Four months away from the October election, the CAQ has already recruited candidates in more than 100 electoral districts, and so far half of those candidates are women. The party still has 29 out of 125 candidates to name.

Source: Legault pledges to demand more control from Ottawa over immigration to Quebec

Filed under Immigration Tagged with election, jurisdiction, Premier Legault, Quebec

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Canada’s backlog of Nexus applications balloons to nearly 300,000 despite downturn during pandemic

La maîtrise de l’immigration, «une question de survie», dit Legault

Critics say policies go beyond language

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