Why US Population Growth Is in the Danger Zone

2022/03/31 Leave a comment

Always struck by the lack of thinking and analysis regarding options and approaches on living with a declining population. A larger population is not good for the planet from any number of perspectives, and even advantages at the country level are mixed at best.

Just as we have to do with climate change, we need to consider what a mix of curbing growth and mitigating the impacts would look like, how to manage transitions and address externalities:

The U.S. population grew at the slowest pace in history in 2021, according to census data released last week. That news sounds extreme, but it’s on trend. First came 2020, which saw one of the lowest U.S. population-growth rates ever. And now we have 2021 officially setting the all-time record.

U.S. growth didn’t slowly fade away: It slipped, and slipped, and then fell off a cliff. The 2010s were already demographically stagnant; every year from 2011 to 2017, the U.S. grew by only 2 million people. In 2020, the U.S. grew by just 1.1 million. Last year, we added only 393,000 people.

What’s going on?

A country grows or shrinks in three ways: immigration, deaths, and births. America’s declining fertility rate often gets the headline treatment. Journalists are obsessed with the question of why Americans aren’t having more babies. And because I’m a journalist, be assured that we’ll do the baby thing in a moment. But it’s the other two factors—death and immigration—that are overwhelmingly responsible for the collapse in U.S. population growth.

First, we have to talk about COVID. The pandemic has killed nearly 1 million Americans in the past two years, according to the CDC. Tragically and remarkably, a majority of those deaths happened after we announced the authorization of COVID vaccines, which means that they were particularly concentrated in 2021. Last year, deaths exceeded births in a record-high number of U.S. counties. Never before in American history have so many different parts of the country shrunk because of “natural decrease,” which is the difference between deaths and births.

Excess deaths accounted for 50 percent of the difference in population growth from 2019 to 2021. That’s a clear sign of the devastating effect of the pandemic. But this statistic also tells us that even if we could had brought excess COVID deaths down to zero, U.S. population growth would still have crashed to something near an all-time low. To understand why, we have to talk about the second variable in the population equation: immigration.

As recently as 2016, net immigration to the United States exceeded 1 million people. But immigration has since collapsed by about 75 percent, falling below 250,000 last year. Immigration fell by more than half in almost all of the hot spots for foreign-born migrants, including New York, Miami, Los Angeles, and San Francisco

Some of this reduction is a result of economic factors; immigration from Latin America has slowed as those economies have grown. Some of it is epidemiological; immigration declined around the world because of COVID lockdowns. But much of this is an American policy choice. The Trump administration worked to constrain not only illegal immigration but also legal immigration. And the Biden administration has not prioritized the revitalization of pro-immigration policy, perhaps due to fears of a xenophobic backlash from the center and right.

America’s bias against immigration is self-defeating in almost every dimension. “Immigration is a geopolitical cheat code for the U.S.,” says Caleb Watney, a co-founder of the Institute for Progress, a new think tank in Washington, D.C. “Want to supercharge science? Immigrants bring breakthroughs, patents, and Nobel Prizes in droves. Want to stay ahead of China? Immigrants drive progress in semiconductors, AI, and quantum computing. Want to make America more dynamic? Immigrants launch nearly 50 percent of U.S. billion-dollar start-ups. The rest of the world is begging international talent to come to their shores while we are slamming the door in their face.”

Finally, yes, Americans are having fewer babies—like basically every other rich country in the world. Since 2011, annual births have declined by 400,000. Two years ago, I wrote that “the future of the city is childless,” and the pandemic seems to have accelerated that future. Just look at Los Angeles: L.A. County recorded 153,000 live births in 2001 but fewer than 100,000 in 2021. At this rate, sometime around 2030, L.A. births will have declined by 50 percent in the 21st century.

Declining births get a lot of media coverage, with mandatory references to Children of Men, followed by mandatory references to Matrix-style birthing pods, followed by inevitable fights over whether it’s creepy for dudes like me to talk academically about raising a nation’s collective fertility. My personal opinion is that wanting and having children is a personal matter for families, even as the spillover effects of declining fertility make it a very public issue for the overall economy.

The fact that declining fertility is a global trend suggests that it’s not something we can easily reversed by mimicking another country’s politics or culture. Around the world, rising women’s education and employment seem to correlate with swiftly declining birth rates. In just about every possible way you could imagine, this is a good thing: It strongly suggests that economic and social progress give women more power over their bodies and their lives.

But I should stress that declining fertility isn’t always a sign of female empowerment, as indicated by the large and growing gap between the number of children Americans say they want and the number of children they have. There are many potential explanations for this gap, but one is that the U.S. has made caring for multiple children too expensive and cumbersome for even wealthy parents, due to a shortage of housing, the rising cost of child care, and the paucity of long-term federal support for children.

The implications of permanently slumped population growth are wide-ranging. Shrinking populations produce stagnant economies. Stagnant economies create wonky cultural knock-on effects, like a zero-sum mentality that ironically makes it harder to pursue pro-growth policies. (For example, people in slow-growth regions might be fearful of immigrants because they seem to represent a threat to scarce business opportunities, even though immigration represents these places’ best chance to grow their population and economy.) The sector-by-sector implications of declining population would also get very wonky very fast. Higher education is already fighting for its life in the age of remote school and rising tuition costs. Imagine what happens if, following the historically large Millennial cohort, every subsequent U.S. generation gets smaller and smaller until the end of time, slowly starving many colleges of the revenue they’ve come to expect.

Even if you’re of the dubious opinion that the U.S. would be better off with a smaller population, American demographic policy is bad for Americans who are alive right now. We are a nation where families have fewer kids than they want; where Americans die of violence, drugs, accidents, and illness at higher rates than similarly rich countries; and where geniuses who want to found new job-creating companies are forced to do so in other countries, which get all the benefits of higher productivity, higher tax revenue, and better jobs.

Simply put, the U.S. has too few births, too many deaths, and not enough immigrants. Whether by accident, design, or a total misunderstanding of basic economics, America has steered itself into the demographic danger zone

Derek Thompson is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of the Work in Progress newsletter. He is also the author of Hit Makers and the host of the podcast Plain English.

Source: Why US Population Growth Is in the Danger Zone

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

#COVID-19: Comparing provinces with other countries 30 March Update

2022/03/31 Leave a comment

Numbers from China continue to climb. New omicron variant showing up in increased infections in G7 countries and in some provinces (uneven testing hides some of the change).

Vaccinations: Some minor shifts but convergence among provinces and countries but minimal increases to overall vaccination rates. Canadians fully vaccinated 82.9 percent, compared to Japan 79.7 percent, UK 73.9 percent and USA 66.3 percent.

Immigration source countries: China fully vaccinated 88.8 percent, India 60.6 percent, Nigeria 4.8 percent, Pakistan 47 percent, Philippines 609 percent.

Trendline Charts:

Infections: Increased number of infections due to omicron variant in G7 countries with most Canadian provinces having lower rates of increase save for Atlantic Canada.

Deaths: No relative changes.

Vaccinations: China ahead (again) of Atlantic Canada, Japan ahead of Prairies.

Weekly

Infections: Germany ahead of California.

Deaths: No relative change.

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , , ,

Canadian Real Estate Fuelled or Cooled by Immigration Policy? 

2022/03/30 Leave a comment

From the recent report by Re/Max Canada, the Conference Board and CIBC, largely cheerleading the government’s increased immigration levels but emphasizing the need for more trades in the mix of immigrants to help address labour shortages in construction:

…

SCENARIO: Canada fulfils its commitment to welcome more than 400,000 immigrants per year to the country with a continued emphasis on integrating Economic Immigrants who generally have higher education, English and French skills, and prior Canadian work or study experience.

“Immigration produces significant benefits for the Canadian economy as a whole and helps meet the labour market needs of particular communities and sectors. Canada’s system excels at selecting immigrants who have a high likelihood of long-term economic success. However, the system could improve by selecting more immigrants to fit specific, chronic labour market needs. In particular, a focus on immigrants with skills in the trades and construction could help address severe labour shortages that limit housing supply,” says Iain Reeve, Associate Director, Immigration Research, Conference Board of Canada.

Canadian real estate and immigration_Immigrants welcomed to CanadaResearch by the Conference Board of Canada has shown that higher immigration levels can benefit the Canadian economy with greater GDP and public revenues [Note: Overall GDP not per capita GDP]. CIBC Capital Markets and The Conference Board of Canada agree that the Canadian economy needs a minimum of 400,000-plus new immigrants annually to sustain our economic vibrancy.

In fact, despite the pandemic, Canada accepted approximately 405,000 new Canadians in 2021. According to Benjamin Tal, Deputy Chief Economist at CIBC Capital Markets, what is not often reported is that 70 per cent of the 2021 cohort were already established in Canada and approximately 50 per cent of the 2022 immigrants will be in-country. The key insight here is that we are not looking at 400,000-plus net new individuals settling anew in Canada with housing needs, but approximately half that number. They have been students and non-permanent residents with employment, promising prospects for employment and all with housing. 

New immigrants are not the only factor to consider in determining housing demand. The formula is complicated and often does not look at things such as immigrants already living in Canada and Canadian students in temporary housing. To get an accurate measure of housing demand, further refinement is needed to housing data collection methods, according to both CIBC Capital Markets and The Conference Board of Canada.  

As Tal explains, the profile of new Canadians is quite distinct from historical immigrant cohorts. Many have higher educational credentials and Canadian work experience. For example, just 10,000 new immigrants in 2015 held a post-graduate work permit, versus more than 88,000 in 2021, according to data compiled by the Conference Board.

Canadian real estate and immigration_Immigrants who are homeownersIt takes 10 years for immigrants to have earnings that are commensurate with their skills, education, and experience when compared to similar Canadian-born workers. According to Tal, that time has decreased by approximately half. In part, this is a result of Ottawa’s emphasis on economic immigrants and better immigrant support systems. This means that new immigrants can land on their feet faster and participate in the Canadian economy in various ways, such as entering into Canadian real estate ownership. In 2021, 38 per cent of homeowners in Canada were immigrants.

However, as both CIBC Capital Markets and The Conference Board of Canada state, Canada’s immigration levels alone are not an issue. There is a missed opportunity by not selecting more immigrants who are trained in the trades, where all regions across Canada are experiencing a deep labour shortage. 

In reference to the construction sector alone, BuildForce Canada reported that 90,000 workers will be leaving the workforce in the next five to 10 years due to retirement. Yet, Canada has not accepted enough skilled trade immigrants in 2021 to fill these labour market gaps, according to the Conference Board of Canada. This will impact Canada’s ability to fulfill the new housing and affordable housing starts as predicted by the federal government.

“Currently, Canada’s federal immigration policy does not link with the country’s labour market needs and that will be a mounting problem in our capacity to build enough homes to meet the high demand over the next five years,” says Tal. “It’s all fine to table policy to improve our national housing affordability crisis by promising to build more homes and affordable housing — it’s critical — but it’s superfluous when you don’t have the skilled workers
to build it.”

“For several years now, RE/MAX Canada has been advocating for a coherent and achievable national housing strategy to calm red-hot price increases and more importantly, to improve affordability for a greater diversity of buyers and renters,” says Elton Ash, Executive Vice President, RE/MAX Canada. “Yet, as the experts at CIBC and The Conference Board show, our current immigration policy is lacking sufficient linkages with labour demands and as such is not set-up as successfully as it could be. Immigration policy should help support our labour demands.” 

Source: Canadian Real Estate Fuelled or Cooled by Immigration Policy?

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,

Canada to offer language training, employment assistance to Ukrainians fleeing war

2022/03/30 Leave a comment

Significant change, one that continues to blur the previous lines between temporary residents, previously not able to access settlement services, and Permanent Residents who were, as well as highlighting the preferential treatment of Ukrainian nationals compared to others fleeing from their country.

Reality, both policy (the distinction between temporary and permanent has become increasingly arbitrary given that most new Permanent Residents are not former temporary residents) and political (the size and influence of Ukrainian Canadians), results in a major change.

The government will help Ukrainians arriving in Canada find a job and learn to speak English or French, Immigration Minister Sean Fraser said Monday.

Applications opened March 17 for a program to allow an unlimited number of Ukrainians fleeing war in their home country to come to Canada for up to three years while they decide whether they want to apply for permanent residency.

Those who are approved can work or study in Canada during their stay.

The Immigration Department says nearly 60,000 Ukrainians and their family members have applied for the program so far.

“We’re expanding the federal settlement program to offer key services such as language training, orientation, employment assistance and other supports for Ukrainians as they settle into their new communities,” Fraser said as part of a series of Tweets Monday.

More details are expected Tuesday.

The department estimated it would take about two weeks to process each application, so Ukrainians could begin to arrive under the new program as early as this weekend.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sparked a mass exodus of mainly women and children who fled the violence that erupted one month ago.

The UN refugee agency estimates 3.8 million people have fled Ukraine since Feb. 24.

The temporary program for people who have left Ukraine is unlike the regular process for refugees, which includes help to find housing and community orientation.

Fraser’s department is working on more ways to help settle the potentially thousands of Ukrainians who could come to Canada over the next several weeks.

“We’ll continue to support Ukrainians, before and after they arrive in Canada,” the minister tweeted.

Beginning Friday, help will be available at certain airports to welcome Ukrainians, with assistance and arrival information in their language.

The Ukrainian Congress has called on the government to provide the new arrivals with financial support for food and shelter during a three-month transitional period.

On Monday the government announced a special grant program for graduate students and post-doctoral researchers affected by the invasion.

“We are establishing this measure as another way of demonstrating our support for Ukraine, to help Ukrainian researchers and students working in Canada to continue their important work,” Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said in a statement.

“It will also help protect the future growth of the Ukrainian scientific community.”

The program will provide grants of up to $45,000 for Ukrainians who wish to continue their studies and research in Canada, as well as Ukrainians in Canada who can’t return home because of the war.

Source: Canada to offer language training, employment assistance to Ukrainians fleeing war

Filed under Immigration, Integration Tagged with ,

‘Racism plays a role in immigration decisions,’ House Immigration Committee hears

2022/03/29 Leave a comment

While always important to recognize that bias and discrimination can influence decisions, different acceptance rates can also reflect other factors, and that misrepresentation may be more prevalent in some regions than others.

Training guides and materials need to provide illustrations and examples. Meurrens is one of the few lawyers who regularly looks at the data but his challenge of the training guide “Kids in India are not back-packers as they are in Canada.” is odd given that the data likely confirms that statement.

Moreover, the call for more transparency, welcome and needed, may provide opportunities for the more unscrupulous to “game the system.”

“Kids in India are not back-packers as they are in Canada” reads a note appended to a slide in a presentation used to train Canadian immigration officials in mid-2019.

In a recent access to information request, Immigration lawyer Steven Meurrens said he received a copy of the presentation which was used in a training session by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) officials, dated April 2019 and titled “India [Temporary Resident Visa]s: A quick introduction.” He shared the full results of the request with The Hill Times.

The slides, which detail the reasons why Indians may apply for a Temporary Resident Visa (TRV) and what officials should look for in applications—have notes appended to them, as if they were speaking notes for the person giving the presentation. On one slide detailing potential reasons for travel to Canada, the notes read: “Kids in India are not back-packers as they are in Canada.”

In an interview, Meurrens spoke to an apparent double standard for Indian people looking to travel to Canada.

“It drives me nuts, because I’ve often thought that, as a Canadian, a broke university student, I could hop on a plane, go anywhere, apply for visas, and no one would be like, ‘That’s not what Canadians do,’” Meurrens said, adding that he’s representing people from India who did in fact intend to come to Canada to backpack through the country.

A screenshot of the page wherein an IRCC presentation notes that ‘Kids in India are not back-packers as they are in Canada.’ Image courtesy of IRCC

“To learn that people are trained specifically that Indian people don’t backpack” was “over the top,” he said. It reminded him of another instance of generalizations made within IRCC about different nationalities of people, when in 2015, an ATIP he received showed that training materials within the department stated that when a Chinese person marrying a non-Chinese person was a likely indicator of marriage fraud.

At the time, the department said that document was more than five years old, and no longer in use.

“[I’d like us] to get to a state where someone’s country of origin doesn’t dictate the level of procedural fairness that they’ll get and how they’re assessed,” he said.

The fact of systemic racism within Canada’s Department of Citizenship, Immigration, and Refugees Canada (IRCC) is not new; evidence of such racism was uncovered through what is colloquially known as the Pollara report. This report, conducted by Pollara Strategic Insights and released in 2021, was the result of focus groups conducted with IRCC employees to better understand “current experiences of racism within the department.”

The report found that within the department, the use of the phrase “the dirty 30” was widely used to refer to certain African nations and that Nigerians in particular were stereotyped as “particularly corrupt or untrustworthy.”

As the House Immigration Committee heard last week, there remains much work to be done to combat systemic racism within IRCC.

On March 22, the House Committee on Immigration and Citizenship began its study on differential outcomes in immigration decisions at IRCC, and Immigration Minister Sean Fraser (Central Nova, N.S.) appeared at the committee on March 24. Other issues brought up by witnesses included a lack of transparency from the department as well as concerns of systemic racism and bias being embedded in any automated intelligence (AI) the department uses to assess applications.

From students in Nigeria being subjected to English-language proficiency tests when they hail from an English-speaking country, to the differential treatment of some groups of refugees versus others, to which groups are eligible for resettlement support and which are not, the committee heard several examples of differential treatment of potential immigrants to Canada due to systemic racism and bias within IRCC.

“I know it’s very uncomfortable raising the issue of racism,” said Dr. Gideon Christian, president of the African Scholars Initiative and an assistant professor of AI and law at the University of Calgary.

“But the fact is that we need to call racism for what it is—as uncomfortable as it might be. … Yes, this is a clear case of racism. And we should call it that. We should actually be having conversations around this problem with a clear framework as to how to address it,” he said.

According to Christian, Nigerian students looking to come to Canada to study through the Nigerian Study Express program are subjected to an English-language proficiency test, despite the fact that the official language in Nigeria is English, that English is the language used in all official academic institutions there, and that academic institutions in Canada do not require a language test from Nigerian students for their admission.

A spokesperson for IRCC said the department does not single out Nigeria in its requirement for a language test.

“IRCC is committed to a fair and non-discriminatory application process,” reads the written statement.

“While language testing is not a requirement to be eligible for a study permit, individual visa offices may require them as part of their review of whether the applicant is a bona fide student. This includes many applicants from English-speaking countries, including a large number from India and Pakistan, two nations where English is widely taught and top countries for international students in Canada.”

“Nigeria is not singled out by the requirement of language tests for the Nigeria Student Express initiative,” the spokesperson said.

Systemic racism embedded in AI

Christian, who is also an assistant professor of AI and law at the University of Calgary and has spent the last three years researching algorithmic racism, expressed concern that the “advanced analytics” IRCC uses to triage its immigration applications—including the Microsoft Excel-based software system called Chinook—has systemic racism and bias embedded within it.

“IRCC has in its possession a great deal of historical data that can enable it to train AI and automate its visa application processes,” Christian told the committee. As revealed by the Pollara report, systemic bias, racism and discrimination does account for differential treatment of immigration applications, particularly when it comes to study visa refusals for those applying from Sub-Saharan Africa, he said.

“External story of IRCC—especially the Pollara report—have revealed systemic bias, racism and discrimination in IRCC processing of immigration applications. Inevitably, this historical data imposition of IRCC is tainted by the same systemic bias, racism and discrimination. Now the problem is that the use of these tainted data to train any AI algorithm will inevitably result in algorithmic racism. Racist AI, making immigration decisions,” he said.

The Pollara report echoed these concerns in a section that laid out a few ways processes and procedures adopted for expediency’s sake “have taken on discriminatory undertones.” This included “concern that increased automation of processing will embed racially discriminatory practices in a way that will be harder to see over time.”

Meurrens, who also appeared at committee on March 22, said a lack of transparency from the government impedes the public’s ability to assess whether it is indeed making progress on the issue of addressing systemic racism or not.

He said he’d like to see the department publish Access to Information results pertaining to internal manuals, visa office specific training guides, and other similar documents as downloadable PDFs on its website, pointing out this is how the provincial government of B.C. releases its ATIP responses. He also said he thinks IRCC should publish “detailed explanations and reports of how its artificial intelligence triaging and new processing tools work in practice.”

“Almost everything public today [about the AI programs] has been obtained through access to information results that are heavily redacted and which I don’t believe present the whole picture,” he said.

Whether the concerns were actually reflected in the AI itself, Meurrens said, could not be known without more transparency from the department.

“In the absence of increased transparency, concerns like this are only growing,” he said.

Fraser: racism is a ‘sickness’

On Thursday, Fraser told the committee that he agrees that racism is a problem within the department, calling it a “sickness in our society.”

“There are examples of racism not just in one department but across different levels of government. It’s a sickness in our society that limits the productivity of human beings who want to fully participate in our communities. IRCC is not immune from that social phenomenon that hampers our success as a nation, and we have to do everything we can to eradicate racism, not just from our department,” he said.

Fraser said there is “zero tolerance for racism, discrimination, or harassment of any kind,” but acknowledged those problems do exist within the department.

The minister pointed towards the anti-racism task force which was created in 2020 and “guides the department’s strategy to eliminate racism and applies an anti-racism lens” to the department’s work. He also said IRCC has been “actively reviewing its human resource systems so that Indigenous, Black, racialized peoples and persons with disabilities are better represented across IRCC at every level.”

Fraser also referenced a three-year anti-racism strategy for the department, which includes plans to implement mandatory bias training, anti-racist work and training objectives, and trauma coaching sessions for Black employees and managers to recognize the impacts of racism on mental health, among other things.

“It’s not lost on me that there have been certain very serious issues that have pertained to IRCC,” he said.

These measures are different from the ones witnesses and opposition MPs are calling for, however.

NDP MP Jenny Kwan (Vancouver East, B.C.) her top priority on this topic is to convince the government to put an independent ombudsperson in place whose job it would be to assess IRCC policies and the application of said policies as they relate to differential treatment, systemic racism, and gender biases.

“Let’s dig deep. Have an officer of the House do this work completely independent from the government,” she said in an interview with The Hill Times.

At the March 22 meeting, Kwan asked all six witnesses to state for the record if they agreed that the government should put such an ombudsperson in place. All six witnesses agreed.

Kwan questioned the ability of the department to conduct its own internal reviews.

“As the minister said [at committee], he’s undertaking a variety of measures to address these issues and to see how they can rectify it. … But how deeply is it embedded? And if it’s done internally, then how independent is it?” she wondered.

Fraser said the implementation of an ombudsperson was something he would consider after reading the committee’s report.

Conservative MP Jasraj Singh Hallan (Calgary Forest Lawn, Alta.), his party’s immigration critic and the vice-chair of the committee, agreed with Meurrens’ calls for increased transparency. “We need more evidence that the government is serious about this,” he said in an interview.

Hallan also said he wants to see consequences for those within the department who participated in the racism documented by the Pollara report.

“[Fraser] should start by approaching those employees of IRCC that made these complaints from that Pollara report and find out who is making these remarks. Reprimand them, fire them if they need to be,” he said.

Source: ‘Racism plays a role in immigration decisions,’ House Immigration Committee hears

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , , , ,

From adaptability to vulnerability: Changes in admission criteria and refugee participation in social assistance

2022/03/28 Leave a comment

The Toronto Sun headline, as typical, spins the study with the header Canada’s immigration laws deter economic independence among some refugees whereas the article is more nuanced in how it characterizes the change, a valid change to address humanitarian objectives. And as the study notes, the gap decreases over time:

The 2002 Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) replaced the Immigration Act, 1976 as the primary legislation guiding immigration in Canada. It marked a major policy shift—from an emphasis on adaptability to vulnerability—in the admission of resettled refugees. Prior to the IRPA, those awarded refugee status had to demonstrate their capacity for economic independence in Canada. This would normally be within a year after arrival and would consider age, educational attainment, skills, presence of family members and other factors. The IRPA significantly altered Canada’s refugee priorities by committing to admission on humanitarian grounds and prioritizing those in need of protection (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, 2016; Lu et al., 2020).

Changes in selection policy had a particular impact on the characteristics of government-assisted refugees (GARs). For example, prior to the IRPA (1997 to 2001), 53% of newly admitted GARs had less than a high school education. However, this percentage increased to 74% among GARs who arrived after the IRPA (2005 to 2009). The share of lone-parent GARs also increased from 6% in the pre-IRPA cohort to 12% in the post-IRPA cohort. Because of these changes, refugees admitted after the IRPA may be more prone to relying on social assistance than those who arrived before the IRPA. This is less likely for privately sponsored refugees (PSRs) who are more likely to have family or friends in Canada and are better positioned to find employment through their sponsors or familial networks.

A recent article published in International Migration compared the long-term use of social assistance among resettled refugees arriving under pre-IRPA guidelines (1997 to 2001), during the transition period (2002 to 2004), and after the IRPA (2005 to 2009). Authors Lisa Kaida (McMaster University), Max Stick (McMaster University and Statistics Canada) and Feng Hou (Statistics Canada) used the Longitudinal Immigration Database to determine whether resettled refugees arriving after the introduction of the IRPA were more likely to rely on social assistance than earlier cohorts. The analysis examined GARs aged 20 to 54 at landing. The social assistance rates among PSRs were also calculated for comparative purposes.

Chart 1 displays the social assistance rates of resettled refugees (GARs and PSRs) admitted during the three periods. The social assistance rate is defined as the percentage of refugees whose family received social assistance income in a specific tax year. The results show that two years after landing, transition-period (71%) and post-IRPA (72%) GARs received social assistance at higher rates than pre-IRPA (66%) GARs. In contrast to GARs, pre-IRPA PSRs had higher social assistance rates (33%) than transition-period (30%) and post-IRPA (28%) PSRs in year 2.

While the social assistance rates of GARs dropped each year after landing, the rates for transition-period and post-IRPA GARs declined more slowly than those for the pre-IRPA cohort. The gap in social assistance rates between pre-IRPA and transition-period GARs continued to widen until year 8 (14 percentage points). The gap between the pre- and post-IRPA cohorts peaked in year 5 (16 percentage points).

After year 8 (for the transition-period cohort) and after year 5 (for the post-IRPA cohort), the gap in social assistance rates narrowed between these cohorts and the pre-IRPA cohort. By year 10, the difference in social assistance rates between the pre-IRPA cohort and the other two cohorts fell below 10 percentage points. Labour market characteristics of transition-period and post-IRPA GARs, especially their lower employment rates compared with pre-IRPA GARs, largely explained the differences in social assistance rates.

Social assistance rates of PSR cohorts slowly declined up to years 5 and 6, and then hovered at around 20% to 25% until year 10. The difference in social assistance rates between pre-IRPA, and transition-period and post-IRPA PSRs remained small from years 3 to 10.

The findings suggest that GARs arriving after the introduction of the IRPA took longer to integrate into the Canadian labour market and become economically independent than those arriving prior to the IRPA. However, transition-period and post-IRPA GARs started to close the gap with their pre-IRPA counterparts five to eight years after arrival. By the 10th year, their rates of social assistance decreased to 35%.

Source: From adaptability to vulnerability: Changes in admission criteria and refugee participation in social assistance

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with , ,

Streamlined immigration program for Ukrainians creates a ‘two-tiered,’ ‘racialized’ system, opposition says

2022/03/26 Leave a comment

Interesting that a Conservative MP, Brad Redekopp, raised the issue, given the party’s close connection to Ukrainian Canadians and that 14 percent of his riding, Saskatoon West, is of Ukrainian ancestry:

Opposition parties says the Liberal government’s streamlined immigration program for Ukrainians creates a two-tiered, racialized system that prioritizes Ukrainian immigrants over refugees from other conflict zones, including Afghanistan.

Immigration Minister Sean Fraser appeared before the House of Commons immigration committee Thursday, where he faced questions about the differences between the government’s new special program and its dedicated refugee resettlement initiatives. During the meeting, Conservative committee member Brad Redekopp accused the government of prioritizing Ukrainian immigrants over Afghan refugees.

“Under your watch, it seems like you’ve set up a racialized system, a two-tiered system, where white Europeans come in faster than people from Afghanistan. How do you explain that?” Mr. Redekopp asked the minister.

Mr. Fraser rejected Mr. Redekopp’s claim, saying the situation in Ukraine demands a different response. He noted that Ukrainians can find their way to other Western countries for Canadian processing and biometrics screening more easily than Afghans.

“It has more to do with their ability to leave Ukraine, compared to … those who don’t have that ability to leave Afghanistan, than it does a decision by the federal government to be more kind to one group of people than another,” Mr. Fraser said.

He added that the government opted to offer streamlined immigration measures to Ukrainians, rather than a dedicated refugee program, because European counterparts and the Ukrainian Canadian community have indicated that most Ukrainians who come to Canada will want to eventually return home. This is not the case with people coming from Afghanistan, he said, hence the need for a refugee program.

“With respect to Afghanistan, I wish the circumstances were the same. I don’t have the same hope that it will be safe for the people that we are welcoming permanently as refugees to return home one day, despite their potential desire to do so, and that’s allowed us to create difference responses for the unique circumstances.”

Jenny Kwan, NDP immigration critic, also said the government has made it easier for Ukrainians compared with refugees from other countries. She noted what witnesses have told the committee regarding the discrepancy.

“They all said that they support the special measures for Ukraine, but what they’re concerned about is that it’s not being applied elsewhere. All the witnesses agree that government should extend those special immigration measures to other regions also experiencing conflict, such as Afghanistan, Yemen, Hong Kong, et cetera,” Ms. Kwan said during the committee meeting.

Mr. Fraser said he wants to see the impact of the special measures for Ukrainians first before considering any similar streamlined programs.

Last year, the government committed to resettling 40,000 refugees from Afghanistan, and so far more than 9,500 have arrived in Canada since August. Much like the Liberal government’s Syrian refugee resettlement program, Afghan refugees have access to federal services and the Resettlement Assistance Program.

More than 10,000 Ukrainians have arrived in Canada since Jan. 1. Most travelled to Canada under their own devices before the government announced the special immigration measures last week, Mr. Fraser said.

The Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel eliminates most of the normal visa requirements and allows Ukrainians to stay in Canada for up to three years if they pass a background check and security screening. The measures are offered through the immigration stream; as a result, Ukrainians are not considered refugees and will not have access to the same support.

The Ukrainian Canadian Congress recently called on the federal government to implement departure and arrival plans to assist Ukrainians with travel to Canada, provide financial support for a transitional period and encourage provincial governments to recruit and sponsor displaced people. The UCC is also urging the government to provide funding for settlement agencies, which could help Ukrainians co-ordinate transport, housing and health care and assist with work permit applications.

The government is in the process of setting up a family reunification program that would allow relatives in Canada to sponsor family members from Ukraine to move here permanently. Details are expected in the coming weeks.

Source: Streamlined immigration program for Ukrainians creates a ‘two-tiered,’ ‘racialized’ system, opposition says

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with , , , ,

Biden administration announces asylum system overhaul: What you need to know

2022/03/26 Leave a comment

Useful overview:

The Biden administration announced the final version of its long-awaited U.S. asylum overhaul Thursday, aiming to speed up processing at the border and alleviate backlogs throughout the country’s immigration courts.

Fixing asylum, a process that can drag out for years, was one of President Biden’s campaign promises. The overhaul represents the most significant change to the nation’s immigration system since he took office.

The new policy is scheduled to take effect May 28, two months after it’s published in the Federal Register. The change won’t affect most asylum seekers as long as a pandemic-related rule limiting access at the border remains in force. But the new system will probably be in place once that rule is lifted and the uptick in asylum requests begins.

“The current system for handling asylum claims at our borders has long needed repair,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas said in a news release. “Through this rule, we are building a more functional and sensible asylum system to ensure that individuals who are eligible will receive protection more swiftly, while those who are not eligible will be rapidly removed.”

Asylum seekers will now have their claims heard by an asylum officer with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services within several months, if the plan works as intended, instead of waiting years for a final determination from an immigration judge.

The Homeland Security and Justice departments released a draft proposal in August. After reading through 5,000 public comments about the draft, officials on a call with reporters Wednesday said they made some changes but maintained the overall framework of the proposal. The officials — from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees immigration courts — spoke to reporters on condition that they not be named.

Under the rule, anyone denied protection by an asylum officer could request a reconsideration from Citizenship and Immigration Services within seven days. If turned down, the person could ask that an immigration judge review their application and later bring their case to the Board of Immigration Appeals and federal circuit courts. After all bids are exhausted, or if none are pursued, the person would be subject to deportation. The rule does not apply to unaccompanied children who arrive without a parent

Supporters say the policy improves what has long been considered a scary process for traumatized migrants. Instead of having to initially recount their worst experiences in an adversarial court setting as they defend themselves against deportation, migrants will now be able to make their case in an asylum office.

But many advocates worry the changes weaken constitutional due process rights for asylum seekers by essentially expanding the so-called expedited removal process, a mechanism used to quickly turn back immigrants apprehended at the border.

Richard Caldarone, who manages litigation at the Tahirih Justice Center, a national nonprofit serving immigrants who fled gender-based violence, said the new process serves no significant humanitarian purpose because it doesn’t give trauma survivors enough time to find a lawyer, gather evidence and recover.

“Survivors of trauma will not be able to recite what happened to them 72 hours after arriving in a safe place to a government official,” he said. “Given the emphasis that DHS has placed on speed for asylum seekers, this will be like the former process — designed in a way that will systematically fail to elicit people’s best asylum claims.”

A better system, Caldarone said, would give people a year before their asylum hearing to prepare and then quickly provide a decision as to whether they could stay or be deported. That would allow people to heal from trauma and lead to fewer appeals, he argued.

The backlog of pending immigration court cases has exploded in recent months, reaching nearly 1.6 million by December, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonpartisan data research center at Syracuse University. It has tripled since 2016.

Under the new system, asylum officers will grant decisions within roughly 90 days. Immigration court appeals will generally take another 90 days, officials said.

During his first year in office, Biden took roughly 300 executive actions on immigration, nearly a third of them to reverse course on Trump-era policies, according to an analysis by the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank.

One area he did not change: For the last two years, the border has been closed to the vast majority of asylum seekers under a restrictive pandemic-era policy initiated by former President Trump. The policy, known as Title 42, invokes a 1944 public health statute to quickly expel migrants who attempt to enter the U.S. in order to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

Among more than 1.7 million people detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection at the southwest border during fiscal year 2021, 61% were expelled under Title 42, according to agency data.

Experts say those rapid removals under Title 42 resulted in an increase in unauthorized crossings into the U.S. by people who would have otherwise requested asylum at an official port of entry. The rapid removals back to Mexico also led to repeated border crossing attempts by migrants — inflating the number of Customs and Border Protection apprehensions.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention formally ended that policy for children traveling without a parent, saying their expulsion “is not warranted to protect the public health.” Immigrant advocates and Democratic congressional leaders have argued that the policy is illegal and have ramped up calls in recent weeks to also end its application to adults traveling alone and parents traveling with their children.

But asylum seekers will see no substantial changes, even once the updates are in place, until the CDC decides to end Title 42 entirely. In recent weeks, as the response to the pandemic has changed within the U.S., federal officials have begun planningfor the possible end of the policy.

The asylum overhaul will be implemented in phases, though officials said they have yet to decide where to roll out the initial program and whether to target any specific population, such as single adults or families.

On a call with reporters last week, Mayorkas said the phased implementation of the new asylum system is designed to avoid straining Citizenship and Immigration Services. The agency has teetered on bankruptcy, he added, and was “virtually dismantled” under the Trump administration, whose immigration approach deterred many immigrants from filing applications before the pandemic further reduced the agency’s caseload.

“We have to be mindful of the resource constraints of the asylum division in U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services as we rebuild that agency,” he said, noting that the agency is almost entirely funded by application fees.

Under the proposed rule, the agency estimated it would need to hire 800 new employees and spend $180 million to be able to handle 75,000 cases annually.

Before the pandemic, migrants encountered near the border were screened by agency asylum officers for fear of persecution. Those who passed the initial screening would have their cases moved to the immigration courts, where a judge would decide whether they qualified for asylum or another form of protection and could stay in the U.S.

Meanwhile, they were detained or released pending a final court hearing. Immigrants facing deportation don’t have the same right to a publicly funded attorney as people in criminal proceedings, and most represent themselves.

To qualify for asylum, immigrants must prove a fear of persecution in their home country based on one of five protected categories: political opinion, race, religion, nationality, or membership in a particular social group.

Officials hope the new asylum policy will curb unauthorized migration.

“The ability to stay in the United States for years waiting for an initial decision may motivate unauthorized border crossings by individuals who otherwise would not have sought to enter the United States and who lack a meritorious protection claim,” the rule states.

The goal is also to reduce the stress for those who ultimately receive asylum or other immigration protections, according to the rule, as currently, “they are left in limbo as to whether they might still be removed, are unable to lawfully work until their asylum application has been granted or has remained pending for several months, and are unable to petition for qualified family members, some of whom may still be at risk of harm.”

Source: Biden administration announces asylum system overhaul: What you need to know

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with ,

#COVID-19 Immigration Effects: January 2022 Update

2022/03/26 Leave a comment

This presentation provides the latest operational data on permanent and temporary immigration to Canada, broken down by major programs and countries, along with citizenship and visitor visas.

The government’s focus remains largely on Permanent Residents and “feeder groups” such as international students and other temporary residents.

While minimal progress has been made on reducing backlogs, operational levels have largely recovered to pre-pandemic levels.

Filed under Citizenship, Immigration Tagged with

A ‘troubling narrative’ has been revealed within Canada’s system to help abused migrant workers

2022/03/25 Leave a comment

Unfortunately, small sample size (30) from British Columbia, but one that largely confirms other accounts:

Being charged an illegal recruitment fee wasn’t an abuse, because the temporary foreign worker had made the payment “voluntarily,” wrote an immigration officer.

Neither was it an abuse when another migrant worker was terminated after complaining about a work condition, nor when an alleged victim of workplace abuse failed to first lodge an official complaint against the boss with employment standards enforcement authorities.

These are some of the examples cited in a study released Wednesday examining the barriers faced by vulnerable migrant workers in accessing a federal program meant to protect those who have experienced abuse or who are at risk of abuse at work.

“The written reasons for decisions reveal a troubling narrative with respect to the lack of understanding of the unique vulnerabilities and complex legal issues faced by workers and the difficulty that workers have in accessing justice,” said researcher and study co-author Amanda Aziz, a staff lawyer of British Columbia’s Migrant Workers Centre.

“The written decisions showed a great deal of inconsistency and confusion around what an immigration officer considers and what constitutes abuse.”

Launched in June 2019, the Vulnerable Worker Open Work Permit program lets abused migrant workers apply for an open work permit, so they could leave an abusive, exploitative or dangerous workplace.

According to the study, 2,481 applications were made under the special program up to July 31, 2021. Of those, 2,345 were processed and 57.1 per cent were granted.

Researchers reviewed immigration officers’ written reasons for decisions for 30 separate worker applications submitted in British Columbia under the special program. The workers came from 12 different countries and the majority were employed in agriculture, in-home care work, or restaurant and food service.

Almost all of the 30 applicants reported financial abuse, including unpaid wages, unpaid overtime and excessive work hours, payment of a wage less than the wage listed on their employment contract, and the payment of recruitment fees.

Seventy per cent said they suffered psychological abuse, including verbal insults, threats and discriminatory comments, while 30 per cent experienced physical abuse. Three reported sexual abuse by their employer; two said they were forced to perform sexual acts; and one was coerced to send pictures of a sexual nature by text to the employer.

Although 21 of the 30 applications were approved at first instance — and four more after appeals, the report found immigration officials took a very narrow view of what constituted a financial abuse and that psychological abuse was accepted only in cases where significant evidence was presented.

While cases involving unpaid overtime and excessive work hours or unpaid wages were often recognized as a form of financial abuse by an officer, the collection of recruitment fees in order to secure employment — an outlawed practice in Canada — was not.

Kishorkumar Ahir was hired by a family in Vancouver as an in-home caregiver for an elderly man in 2018 after paying $7,000 to an immigration consultant to secure him a job. He said he was later reassigned to work as a labourer at the employer’s tire shops even though his work permit restricted him to working as caregiver only.

The 46-year-old worker from India said he had no choice and complied with the employer’s request. Although he was found to have paid the recruitment fee, an officer in refusing his open-work-permit application concluded that he had “willingly paid the fee” and there was “no indication that he was coerced into paying the fee.”

“Worst of all, the information I shared in my application about the work my first employer required me to do … was shared with the Canada Border Services Agency,” said Ahir, who was subsequently accused by the federal agency of breaking the rules by working outside his caregiving job.

“I have recently been issued a removal order because of not telling immigration about this work before I applied for my first work permit.”

The report identified other fairness issues with the process: workers interviewed by immigration officials for their application can’t be accompanied by legal counsel and must provide their own interpreters, who cannot be friends or relatives.

Even if an abused worker is successful in obtaining an open-work permit, it is typically issued for 12 months only. During that time, the worker must find a new employer to sponsor an employer-restricted work permit in order to stay here, which exposes them to further abuse due to their reliance on an employer to keep their status.

“This system makes migrant workers uniquely vulnerable to abuse and fearful of speaking out about any abuse they face in their workplace for fear of losing their job,” Aziz said.

Source: A ‘troubling narrative’ has been revealed within Canada’s system to help abused migrant workers

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →