2021 Might Be A Decisive Year For H-1B Visas

2021/06/04 Leave a comment

Significant, given possible effects on relative attractiveness of Canada to potential immigrants:

The Trump administration was hostile to high-skilled immigration, but the Biden administration may enact the most enduring policy changes to H-1B visas. And the changes might not be positive for employers. A series of decisions loom on regulations that would affect who can receive H-1B petitions, how much employers must pay H-1B professionals and much more.

The Big Picture: “H-1B visas are important because they generally represent the only practical way for high-skilled foreign nationals, including international students, to work long-term in the United Statesand have the chance to become employment-based immigrants and U.S. citizens,” as discussed in a recent Forbes article. “In short, without H-1B visas, nearly everyone from the founders of billion-dollar companies to the people responsible for the vaccines and medical care saving American lives would never have been in the United States.”

The number of H-1B visas is small for a country the size of the United States. The 85,000 annual H-1B limit—the 65,000 regular cap and the 20,000-exemption for H-1B visa holders with a master’s degree or higher from a U.S. university—comes to 0.05% of the U.S. labor force. Companies are allowed to file for only 85,000 new H-1B petitions in a year, and about two-thirds, or 56,000 a year, are in computer occupations. 

The U.S. job market is strong for individuals who work in computer occupations. The unemployment rate in math and computer occupationswas 2.5% in April 2021, below the 3%, lower than in January 2020 before the pandemic began. 

Today, there are well over 1 million active job vacancy postings in computer occupations, according to a National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) analysis of Emsi Job Posting Analytics. “There is not a fixed number of jobs, and people with high skills often create more jobs for people with complementary skills,” notes the NFAP analysis. “Still, even if one adopts a zero-sum approach, there are nearly 20 times more job vacancy postings in computer occupations than new H-1B petitions typically used by companies in computer occupations each year. There are also likely many more openings than publicly posted positions.”MORE FOR YOUFederal Judge Hears Arguments Against Trump’s H-1B Visa BanH-1B Visa Denials Continue To Mount For CompaniesCourt Hearing Shows Businesses Could Prevail Against H-1B Visa Rules

With regional Covid-19 bans still in place and many U.S. consulates either not operating or working in a limited capacity, visa backlogs, including for H-1B and L-1 visa, will continue to mount until the State Department commits to new policies. Jeffrey Gorsky, former Chief of the Legal Advisory Opinion section of the Visa Office in the U.S. Department of State, believes the State Department could become more creative with biometric intake, give visa processing a higher priority and conduct more interviews via video. He believes interviews via Zoom would meet the statutory definition of in-person interviews.

Due to Trump administration policies that U.S. courts found unlawful, H-1B denial rates reached 24% for initial employment and 12% for continuing employment in FY 2018 (compared to 6% and 3% in FY 2015). After USCIS agreed to a settlement with the ITServe Alliance that overturned years of restrictive policies, H-1B denial rates returned to pre-Trump levels (after costing companies millions of dollars). The Biden administration may remove some restrictions on H-1B visa holders that prevent them from starting businesses, according to the New York Times.

Still, the H-1B annual limit is low. Employers filed 308,000 H-1B registrations for cap selection for FY 2022, according to USCIS. That means over 72% of H-1B registrations for high-skilled foreign nationals were rejected even before an adjudicator evaluated the application.

The economic literature shows loosening restrictions on H-1B visas would benefit the U.S economy and American workers. A study by economists Giovanni Peri, Kevin Shih, Chad Sparber and Angie Marek Zeitlin found, “The number of jobs for U.S.-born workers in computer-related industries would have grown at least 55% faster between 2005-2006 and 2009-2010, if not for the denial of so many applications in the recent H-1B visa lotteries.”

Britta Glennon, an assistant professor at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, found in her research that H-1B restrictions push technology-related jobs out of the United States: “[A]ny policies that are motivated by concerns about the loss of native jobs should consider that policies aimed at reducing immigration have the unintended consequence of encouraging firms to offshore jobs abroad.”

Some policymakers argue America needs even more restrictive laws and rules to block the hiring of foreign-born scientists and engineers. As discussed below, the Biden administration will soon decide on a series of restrictions that could produce significant changes in H-1B visa policy.

Rule Would Make it Less Likely International Students Will Get H-1B Petitions: Before Donald Trump left office, his administration finalized a regulation that would end the H-1B lottery and replace it with a system that awards H-1B petitions by highest to lowest salary level. Many attorneys consider the regulation to be unlawful, and there are pending lawsuits against the rule. Instead of taking steps to rescind the rule, the Biden administration only delayed the regulation until next year’s H-1B cap selection.

In addition to questions of legality, the rule finalized by the Trump administration would fulfill a long-standing goal of Trump White House adviser Stephen Miller and his allies to make it more difficult for international students to obtain an H-1B petition, which would discourage many students from coming to America in the first place.

International students are disadvantaged under the rule because choosing H-1B petitions by salary level favors individuals with the most experience in the labor market over those with the least experience. “The National Foundation for American Policy found that an international student may be 54% more likely to get an H-1B petition under the current H-1B lottery system than under the Trump administration’s regulation that would end the H-1B lottery,” according to an NFAP analysis of actual cases of recent international students and filings for H-1B petitions. “The data demonstrate the new regulation would have a significant negative effect on the ability of international students to gain an H-1B petition.”

“The law firm Curran, Berger & Kludt provided NFAP with 170 cases of F-1 students with applications for H-1B cap selection for FY 2018, FY 2019, FY 2020 and FY 2021,” according to NFAP. “Under the current system that randomly selects H-1B petitions, 60% of the F-1 students were chosen through the H-1B lottery. However, the law firm provided information on the pay levels (Level 1 through 4) for the students’ H-1B applications, and NFAP found if the new regulation had been in effect, only 39% of the students’ H-1B petitions would have been selected.” Education organizations had warned the Trump administration’s rule would harm international students and make studying in America less attractive.

Rule to Force Employers to Pay H-1B Visa Holders and Employment-Based Green Card Applicants Well Above Market Wages: Under a Department of Labor (DOL) rule, published in the final days of the Trump administration, “employers must pay 23% to 41% higher salaries than under the current system across a range of occupations if they want to employ high-skilled foreign nationals in America,” according to a National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) analysis. https://embedly.forbes.com/widgets/media.html?src=https%3A%2F%2Fdatawrapper.dwcdn.net%2FUsMsI%2F1%2F&display_name=Datawrapper&url=https%3A%2F%2Fdatawrapper.dwcdn.net%2FUsMsI%2F1%2F&key=3ce26dc7e3454db5820ba084d28b4935&type=text%2Fhtml&schema=dwcdn

The rule would apply to H-1B visa holders and employment-based immigrants and could have a devastating impact on both. H-1B visa holders waiting in the green cards backlog might be forced to leave the country if an employer could not extend their H-1B status at the new, much higher required salary level.

There is no evidence H-1B visa holders and employment-based immigrants as a group are underpaid relative to native-born professionals. Numerous economic studies have found high-skilled foreign nationals, on balance, earn more than their native-born counterparts. For example, Andrew Chamberlain, the chief economist at Glassdoor, found, “Across the 10 cities and roughly 100 jobs we examined, salaries for foreign H-1B workers are about 2.8% higher than comparable U.S. salaries on Glassdoor.” A recent study by Utah State University economist Omid Bagheri finds a larger wage premium for high-skilled foreign nationals.

The Biden administration published a notice of an agency action to delay the DOL rule until November 14, 2022. At the same time, the administration requested information from the public on data sources for calculating the prevailing wage.

Three courts blocked the rule when it was published as “interim final” in October 2020. On January 14, 2021, the Trump administration published a final rule that was only slightly modified from the original and carried the same aim—to price H-1B visa holders and employment-based immigrants out of the U.S. labor market. “The revisions to the rule don’t change the fact that it still fails to do what the law requires—to reflect the actual, prevailing wage for workers in that geographical area doing similar work,” said Kevin Miner, a partner at Fragomen. 

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and allied business groups and education organizations filed an amended complaint that argues the regulation to end the H-1B lottery is unlawful and continued its lawsuit to end the Department of Labor wage regulation.

New Regulation on Work at Third-Party Sites: “USCIS is still aiming to have a regulation in place by FY23 cap season to restrict use of the H-1B category by outsourcing companies by changing the ‘employer-employee relationship’ definition,” according to Berry Appleman & Leiden. Peter Bendor-Samuel, founder and CEO of Everest Group, argues access to talent is key for competitiveness as information technology services companies attempt to build digital platforms for U.S. companies. “Almost every major U.S. firm is building some form of digital platform so it can enhance its competitive position both domestically and internationally,” he said. “This is probably the most important thing these firms are doing and success will define both company and global success as we move into the future.”

The mistaken premise of nearly all restrictions on high-skilled immigration is that foreign-born scientists and engineers offer no value to America or U.S. companies except for a willingness to work for less money. Some policymakers believe that people born in other countries possess inferior abilities to people born in the United States—hence the belief companies must pay them lower salaries—and incorrectly assume that only a fixed number of jobs exist in the U.S. economy. The Biden administration has an opportunity to adopt a more forward-looking policy.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2021/06/02/2021-might-be-a-decisive-year-for-h-1b-visas/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=follow&cdlcid=5e4bc7f55b099ce02faa6b40&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=follow&cdlcid=5e4bc7f55b099ce02faa6b40&sh=7932dc0018df

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Drastic drop in COVID infected international flights in May

2021/06/03 Leave a comment

Of note:

Transport Canada’s decision to ban passenger flights from India appears to have had an impact.

While numbers are always updated as new cases are diagnosed, data posted online by Health Canada as of Tuesday shows only 113 flights landing at Canadian airports last month carried passengers infected with COVID-19.

That’s compared to 288 flights counted in April — 66 of which were direct flights from India’s capital of Delhi.

Federal Transport Minister Omar Alghabra halted passenger flights from India and Pakistan for 30 days as of April 22, as well as adding additional restrictions on travellers arriving from India via connecting flights — including requiring a negative PCR COVID-19 test taken at the last port of entry before entering Canada.

This all but halted passenger traffic from both countries, as laboratory tests that typically require 24 hours can’t be accommodated during airport stopovers usually only lasting a few hours.

As many travellers from India had been connecting through Middle Eastern airports like Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha, infected passengers on those flights likewise saw big drops — just four from the United Arab Emirates last month compared to 35 in April.

Initially meant to last 30 days, the flight ban was extended last month to June 22.

During the first part of the pandemic, India typically only saw a handful of infected flights landing at Canadian airports each month.

All that changed in mid-February with a spike of infected flights coinciding with that country’s devastating variant-fuelled second wave.

Pakistan, meanwhile, has never been a significant factor, with Health Canada only reporting five such flights in April.

The United States was Canada’s largest source of infected flights last month, seeing 23 planes land with at least one passenger testing COVID positive — that’s compared to 49 in April.

Paris and Doha, Qatar, tied for second place with 11, followed by 10 from Guatemala, eight each from Frankfurt and Panama, seven from Istanbul, six from Amsterdam and five from Mexico City.

Toronto saw the most arrivals last month with 49 compared to 167 in April; followed by Montreal with 43 versus 57 in April; 14 in Vancouver compared to 42 in April; and six landing in Calgary compared to 19 the month previous.

Top sources of international flights with COVID-19 infected passengers in May (April’s total in parentheses)

1. USA: 23 (49)
2. Doha: 11 (21)
3. Paris: 11 (16)
4. Guatemala: 10 (4)
5. Amsterdam: 6 (12)
6. Frankfurt: 8 (13)
7. Panama: 8 (4)
8. Istanbul: 7 (18)
9. Mexico City: 5 (5)
10. Kingston, Jamaica: 3 (8)

Source: Drastic drop in COVID infected international flights in May

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#COVID-19: Comparing provinces with other countries 2 June Update

2021/06/03 Leave a comment

The latest charts, compiled 2 June as overall rates in Canada continue in all provinces save Manitoba to come down along with increased vaccinations.

Vaccinations: Minor relative changes, Canadian provinces all ahead of EU countries save Germany.

Trendline charts

Infections per million: No major relative changes and recent surges appear to be levelling off save for the Prairies (mainly Manitoba).

Deaths per million: No significant change, Prairies slightly ahead of Ontario.

Vaccinations per million: Canadian vaccination rates have caught up to G7 less Canada with Quebec ahead as US vaccination rates are stalling.

Weekly

Infections per million: No relative change.

Deaths per million: Prairies ahead of Ontario, driven by Manitoba.

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Immigration New Zealand hires 100 as Beijing office shuts

2021/06/02 Leave a comment

Part of other office closures (Mumbai, Manila and Pretoria) given reduced volumes, with more “anchoring” of visa processing and “strengthening our risk and verification”.

INZ shed more than 300 jobs overseas as it shut branches in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, but recruitment had been on hold due to financial constraints.

It today announced its Beijing visa processing office would shut by the end of July, joining closures in Mumbai, Manila and Pretoria earlier this year.

Before Covid-19 struck, the Beijing office decided half of all New Zealand’s temporary visas.

One overseas visa processing office will remain – in Samoa – when the branch in China closes, although risk and verification staff will continue to work in other offshore locations.

“This is a continuation of INZ’s adaptation to the impact of Covid-19,” a spokesperson said.

“INZ is taking this opportunity to reduce costs, introduce advanced technology to improve efficiency, manage offshore risk more effectively and move visa processing activities onshore.”

Some of the newly recruited staff in New Zealand are understood to have been taken on to process residence applications.

The government asked for 50,000 to 60,000 new residents to be approved in the last 18 months under the residence programme (NZRP).

The NZRP is the framework for granting residence to skilled, family and humanitarian migrants. With one month left before the NZRP expires, it is 3500 away from the lowest end of that range.

In a statement, INZ said that from January 2020 to last month it had approved 46,562 people for residence.

“INZ continues to ensure that resourcing for the processing of skilled residence applications remains in line with the levels agreed to under the previous NZRP, as agreed with the previous Minister of Immigration,” INZ border and visa operations general manager Nicola Hogg said.

“Skilled residence applications are processed in INZ’s Manukau office. As at 21 May 2021, 85 immigration officers are responsible for processing skilled residence applications. Residence applications take time to process given how much there is at stake and the level of scrutiny required for each application.

“Recruitment throughout Immigration New Zealand’s onshore visa processing network is under way, with 100 vacancies recently being filled. This recruitment will allow INZ to increase its onshore visa processing capacity.”

The government is reviewing how it will draw up residence targets in future, alongside policy work on the skilled migrant category.

Among skilled migrant residence visas, the number of residents decided last month fell to 658, down from a high of 1925 in November. Rejection rates increased from 7 percent to 21 percent over the same period.

A quarter of applicants have been waiting two years for a decision.

For the past two months since March 2021, INZ has been working on applications made in August 2019.

Source: Immigration New Zealand hires 100 as Beijing office shuts

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Biden Aims to Rebuild and Expand Legal Immigration

2021/06/01 Leave a comment

Good overview:

If President Biden gets his way, it will soon be far easier to immigrate to the United States. There will be shorter, simpler forms and applicants will have to jump through fewer security hoops. Foreigners will have better opportunities to join their families and more chances to secure work visas.

A 46-page draft blueprint obtained by The New York Times maps out the Biden administration’s plans to significantly expand the legal immigration system, including methodically reversing the efforts to dismantle it by former President Donald J. Trump, who reduced the flow of foreign workers, families and refugees, erecting procedural barriers tougher to cross than his “big, beautiful wall.”

Because of Mr. Trump’s immigration policies, the average time it takes to approve employer-sponsored green cards has doubled. The backlog for citizenship applications is up 80 percent since 2014, to more than 900,000 cases. Approval for the U-visa program, which grants legal status for immigrants willing to help the police, has gone from five months to roughly five years.

In almost every case over the last four years, immigrating to the United States has become harder, more expensive and takes longer.

And while Mr. Biden made clear during his presidential campaign that he intended to undo much of his predecessor’s immigration legacy, the blueprint offers new details about how far-reaching the effort will be — not only rolling back Mr. Trump’s policies, but addressing backlogs and delays that plagued prior presidents.

The blueprint, dated May 3 and titled “D.H.S. Plan to Restore Trust in Our Legal Immigration System,” lists scores of initiatives intended to reopen the country to more immigrants, making good on the president’s promise to ensure America embraces its “character as a nation of opportunity and of welcome.”

“There are significant changes that need to be made to really open up all avenues of legal immigration,” said Felicia Escobar Carrillo, the chief of staff at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, of the efforts to reverse Mr. Trump’s agenda. “In the same way that they took a broad-stroke approach to closing off avenues, I think we want to take a broad approach toward opening up the legal avenues that have always been available but that they tried to put roadblocks up on.”

Since taking office four months ago, Mr. Biden has struggled with a historic surge in migration by Central American children and teenagers that has prompted some Republicans to accuse the president of flinging open the nation’s borders to people trying to enter the country illegally, a charge the White House rejects.

In fact, Mr. Biden does want to open the country to more immigrants. His ambition, as reflected in the blueprint, is to rebuild and expand the opportunities for foreigners to enter the United States — but to do so legally.

Divided into seven sections, the document offers detailed policy proposals that would help more foreigners move to the United States, including high-skilled workers, trafficking victims, the families of Americans living abroad, American Indians born in Canada, refugees, asylum-seekers and farm workers. Immigrants who apply online could pay less in fees or even secure a waiver in an attempt to “reduce barriers” to immigration. And regulations would be overhauled to “encourage full participation by immigrants in our civic life.”

Even with a more restrictive and slower immigration system, about 1 million people obtained green cards in 2019, the last full year before the pandemic. Most had been waiting for years. In the final year of the Obama administration, 1.2 million people received green cards.

But if Mr. Biden accomplishes everything in the document, he will have gone further than just reversing the downward trend. He will have significantly increased opportunities for foreigners around the globe to come to the United States, embracing robust immigration even as a divisive, decades-long political debate continues to rage over such a policy.

Most of the changes could be put into practice without passage of Mr. Biden’s proposed overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws, which would provide a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented people living in the United States but has stalled in a bitterly divided Congress. While surveys show that most Americans support increased immigration, many Republican voters have eagerly backed Mr. Trump’s more restrictive policies.

White House officials declined to comment directly on the Homeland Security Department’s blueprint, saying that such documents go through many drafts and that decisions about specific steps to address legal immigration remain in flux. But they said the president remained committed to significantly rolling back the restrictions imposed by his predecessor.

That effort will take time and has not yet caught the public’s attention like the surge of crossings at the southwest border. But conservative activists who have for years demanded lower levels of legal immigration are vowing a fight to stop Mr. Biden and extract a political price for his actions.

“They just want to shovel people in here,” said Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, a former Virginia attorney general who served as the acting head of Citizenship and Immigration Services under Mr. Trump. “They are not running an immigration system for the benefit of America, and certainly not for the benefit of ordinary Americans. ”

Most research has shown that legal immigration to the United States has benefits for the country’s economy, especially at a time when the country’s population growth is slowing. But Mr. Cuccinelli and others who favor severe restrictions on immigration say it is obvious to them that letting foreigners compete for jobs — especially when the country is still recovering from an economic downturn like the one created by the pandemic — will hurt the prospects for American citizens.

“The number one job for the immigration services is to make sure that immigration does not hurt Americans,” said Roy Beck, the founder of NumbersUSA, a group dedicated to far lower levels of legal immigration.

Motivated by that belief, Mr. Cuccinelli set in motion a transformation of the government’s legal immigration system during the Trump administration — changing his agency from one that confers benefits on foreigners into a “vetting agency,” in part by issuing numerous restrictions on offering asylum for immigrants and trying to raise fees.

The increased vetting, as well as travel restrictions imposed during the pandemic, helped contribute to the result the Trump administration had sought: The influx of immigrants slowed significantly, as winning legal approval to enter the United States became much harder.

With fewer immigrants coming through the pipeline, there has been less money to finance Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is supported almost entirely by fees paid by immigrants. Restoring the agency to full capacity is at the heart of Mr. Biden’s effort to expand legal immigration, according to the document and interviews with administration officials.

A central element of the blueprint is addressing backlogs in the immigration system.

The administration is planning to fast-track immigration applications by expanding virtual interviews and electronic filing, as well as limiting the requests for evidence from applicants. Mr. Biden has tapped Cass R. Sunstein, a former Obama administration official and legal scholar at Harvard Law School, to remake the immigration system so it is “more effective and less burdensome” than it has been in decades by “reducing paperwork and other administrative requirements.”

Mr. Biden wants to restore opportunities for foreign employees through the existing H-1B visa program, which is intended for workers with special skills. The administration also intends to create new pathways for foreign entrepreneurs who wish to “start-up businesses and create jobs for U.S. workers,” according to the document.

Officials are working on a regulation that could allow migrants to win asylum in the United States if they are victims of domestic violence or their relatives were persecuted. During the Trump era, Attorney General William P. Barr moved to end asylum protection for those who claimed they deserved it for those reasons.

Mr. Biden is also aiming to expand immigration opportunities for L.G.B.T.Q. refugees from countries where they are persecuted or where same-sex marriages are not recognized.

In addition, he wants to revamp a program that provides a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who help law enforcement by cooperating with police or testifying in court.

The waiting list for the U-Visa program has ballooned, leaving crime victims and survivors of domestic abuse vulnerable to abusers who may threaten to report them for deportation if they continue to talk to the police, said Leslye E. Orloff, director of the national immigrant women’s advocacy project at American University.

The Biden administration is considering extending protections to immigrants who cooperate even before they make it on the official waiting list for the visa, according to the document.

“They’re recognizing that there’s danger for these victims,” Ms. Orloff said.

Critics say the Biden administration is ignoring the negative consequences of their efforts. The H-1B program has been attacked as a loophole for tech companies to import cheap foreign workers to compete for jobs. Granting asylum to the victims of domestic abuse could open the door to accepting millions of additional people. And some Republicans say Mr. Biden should not loosen vetting of foreigners, though officials insist they will continue to screen for terrorists and other threats.

As the Biden administration pushes forward with the changes, officials appear willing to use emergency rules and presidential memos to avoid the lengthy regulatory process, in much the same way that Mr. Trump put his own agenda in place. But that could make Mr. Biden’s immigration legacy subject to a similar reversal by a Republican president in the future.

“The question looming over all of this work is how do you do this in a way that isn’t easily so capsized next time around,” said Doug Rand, a founder of Boundless Immigration, a technology company in Seattle that helps immigrants obtain green cards and citizenship.

Change could not come soon enough for Jenn Hawk, 37, who is currently living in with her Argentine husband in Poland, where he works, even though her autistic son is in the Washington area with his father.

Because of delays in processing her husband’s immigration application, she is faced with a choice: stay in Poland with the man she married, or go back to the United States alone to be with her 10-year-old son.

Ms. Hawk filed to sponsor her husband’s immigration to the United States in October of 2020, spending $575 on the application. But they are facing a delay of more than a year and a half before they can even submit their financial and medical information, let alone get an interview with an immigration officer.

“I just want to go home,” Ms. Hawk said. “It seems like they’re doing everything in their power to restrict that from being a possibility.”

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Statistics Canada: Profile of immigrants in nursing and health care support occupations

2021/05/31 Leave a comment

Another useful StatsCan study that provides a more detailed analysis of what we know from media articles and personal experiences in healthcare, along with the over-qualification in many cases due to regulatory and other barriers:

“This study uses data from the Census of Population and the Longitudinal Immigration Database to paint a picture of immigrants in nursing and health care support occupations. It also examines the representation of immigrants in nursing and health care support occupations by intended occupation upon admission to Canada and by admission category. Lastly, it examines the professional integration of immigrants who completed their nursing education both in and outside Canada.

·       Immigrants who arrived in Canada as adults (aged 18 or older) are overrepresented in nursing and health care support occupations. In 2015/2016, they made up 22% of the workforce in these occupations, compared with 16% of the total employed population.

·       This overrepresentation of adult immigrants was particularly high for those working in nurse aides, orderlies and patient service associates occupations (30%).

·       Overall, 5% of employed adult immigrants in 2015/2016 worked in nursing or health care support occupations, compared with 3% of other employed individuals. However, this proportion varied by place of birth. The percentage of adult immigrants in nursing or health care support occupations was particularly high among immigrants born in the Caribbean and Bermuda (13%), Western Africa (12%), Central Africa (12%), Eastern Africa (8%), and Southeast Asia (10%).

·       Among immigrants from Southeast Asia, immigrants from the Philippines stood out with a high proportion (13%) and a large number (44,380) of people employed in nursing or health care support occupations. In 2016, they accounted for nearly one-third (30%) of adult immigrants in these occupations.

·       Despite being overrepresented in these occupations, few principal applicants admitted under the economic immigration categories who were working as licensed practical nurses (2%) or nurse aides, orderlies or patient service associates (11%) had considered working in these occupations at the time they were admitted to Canada.

·       More than 4 in 10 (44%) adult immigrants in nursing and health care support occupations had completed their highest level of postsecondary education in Canada. However, this proportion varied by place of birth. For example, a large proportion of immigrants from the Caribbean and Bermuda (75%) and sub-Saharan Africa (60%) completed their highest level of education in Canada, while a minority of immigrants born in the Philippines (25%) and Southern Asia (32%) had done so.

·       Adult immigrants who graduated outside Canada had significantly higher rates of overqualification than adult immigrants who graduated in Canada. For example, immigrants who completed a bachelor’s degree or higher in a professional nursing program outside Canada were almost four times more likely to be overqualified (58%) than those who completed the same level of education in Canada (15%).”

Read or download the full report: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2021001/article/00004-eng.htm

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‘Fortress Australia’: Why calls to open up borders are meeting resistance

2021/05/28 Leave a comment

Of note and the challenge of reopening:

Australia has been one of the world’s Covid success stories, where infection rates are near zero and life mostly goes on as normal.

That’s in large part thanks to the early move to shut its borders – a policy that has consistently been supported by the public.

But after a year in the cocoon, there is growing unease in the country over the so-called “Fortress Australia” policy.

Recent announcements declaring that Australia won’t open up until mid-2022 – meaning a two year-plus isolation – have amplified concerns.

Critics argue the extension of closed borders will cause long-lasting damage to the economy, young people and separated families. It also tarnishes Australia’s character as open and free, they say.

Calls for a clear plan to pull Australia back into the world are growing, as the country wrestles with an uncomfortable tension – balancing the safety of closed borders against what is lost by living in isolation.

“A Fortress Australia with the drawbridge pulled up indefinitely is not where we want to be,” says former Race Discrimination Commissioner Dr Tim Soutphommasane.

“Australia is at its best when it’s open and confident – not fearful and insular.”

Locking the gate

In March 2020, the government closed the borders. It barred most foreigners from entering the country and put caps on total arrivals to combat Covid. Mandatory 14-day quarantine and snap lockdowns have also been used to control the virus spread.

The measures are extreme, and among the strictest in the world.

But they’ve worked. Australia regularly sees months without a single case in the community, and it has recorded fewer than 1,000 deaths in the pandemic.

Given that, the strict border controls have proven tremendously popular. Public polls regularly report 75-80% approval ratings for keeping the door shut.

Even higher numbers – around 90% – approve overall of the government’s pandemic handling, and trust in government has increased in contrast to views of voters in some Covid-ravaged nations.

Languishing behind

But the government now also faces mounting pressure over how it plans to handle the next phase of the pandemic.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison – who faces an election next year – has announced Australia won’t re-open borders until mid-2022. The exact timing and just how that will happen are unclear.

But the budget announcement was a shock extension to previous forecasts of an opening-up to occur slowly at the end of this year.

The main reason for the delay is vaccination.

Australia’s immunisation programme has been beset with delays, and lags well behind other developed nations such as the UK and US.

Critics say complacency over the low virus circulation delayed its kick-off. And now rising hesitancy – fuelled at least in part by Australia’s isolation – has also slowed the vaccine rollout.

Facing those failures, the government fell back on the border ban as a resort, critics say.

That’s dealing a heavy blow to sectors like tourism and higher education. Australia’s strong migration programme – relied on to address skills shortages and population growth – has also been cut almost completely.

Ernst and Young, an accounting firm, estimates that Australia’s economy is losing A$7.6bn (£4.18; $5.9bn) a month from the closed borders.

So a group of experts from the University of Sydney have called for an exit plan to be put in place. People need to know their options and prepare for the future, they say.

Their “roadmap to re-opening” focuses on prioritising vaccination, expanding quarantine and starting trials to bring in people for affected industries.

They point to successful examples like the New Zealand travel bubble, and the Australian Open tennis tournament.

“The price of staying closed indefinitely is simply too great,” they wrote in a recent report.

“This is the case when measured in hard dollar terms, but also when measured against less tangible factors such as fuelling a negative and inwards-focused national psyche that threatens our global standing, as well as national unity and cohesion.”

‘Us and them’ mentality

Others have also voiced their concerns over how an extended retreat from the world could damage Australia’s character.

When Australia was parochial it had a White Australia policy (1900s-1970s), which restricted immigration from non-European nations. Multiculturalism has replaced that policy in recent decades, but the ideal is still fragile, experts warn.

Dr Liz Allen, a demographer at the Australian National University, contends that Covid has already made the nation more “protectionist and insular”.

Government policies have created an “us and them” division, she argues.

The hostile treatment of migrants is a clear example, she says. Australia’s conservative government of eight years has never advocated for immigration – the coalition won the 2019 election pledging to “slash” the migrant intake.

At the start of the pandemic, Mr Morrison told the nation’s two million migrants on temporary visas to “go home”.

Those visa holders – often doing the low-paid, essential jobs of cleaning and food delivery – were also ineligible for the government’s pandemic welfare support, leaving many facing destitution.

The border ban has also sown community division, seen in its most extreme form last month when Australia took the world-first step of threatening jail for citizens who returned home from Covid-ravaged India. The Indian-Australian community expressed outrage they were being treated like second-class citizens.

Multicultural roots

The issue of stranded Australians reflects Australia’s character as an intensely multicultural nation.

Nearly 30% of the population were born overseas, and another quarter have a parent who was. As a nation of migrants, so many Australians have deep personal ties to other parts of the world.

Prior to Covid, about one million Australians were estimated to be living and working overseas. A section of the population – often highly educated and skilled – was also very mobile.

But the closed-border policy doesn’t appear to recognise these global connections or the disproportionate impact on first and second-generation Australians, critics say.

In addition, the borders created a narrative where blame for a virus outbreak was often laid at the feet of returning individuals.

“We turned on ourselves, on our own people,” says Dr Allen.

Political leaders described the virus as “imported” by returning travellers, rather than escaping through failures in the hotel quarantine system. Such rhetoric egged on social media commentary blaming incoming Australians.

Just happy to be safe

But while there’s division aimed at Australians outside the country, within the borders people feel comfortable with their lot.

First and foremost, people say they feel relieved and grateful to be shielded from the virus.

“There’s a lot of sympathy and real feeling for people caught up outside, and for the people who can’t go to weddings and funerals overseas,” says Melissa Monteiro, head of a migrant resource community centre in western Sydney.

“But you know, everyone ends with ‘that’s just how it is’. People are firstly, just grateful to be in this country and to be safe.”

Race relations researcher Andrew Markus, an emeritus professor at the University of Monash, says most Australians also don’t view the closed borders as a cultural isolation, or a “shutting yourself off from the world”.

Instead it’s just seen as a necessary short-term health measure – an attitude adopted across the political and cultural spectrum, he says.

He notes too that polling throughout the pandemic showed Australians’ support for multiculturalism and globalisation remained strong – about 80% approval – despite concerns about social cohesion and a rise in hate crimes against Asian-Australians.

Dr Allen says that the strong support for the government’s Covid fight is understandable – particularly when it has worked.

But she also says that the Australian public has been presented with no other options. The prolonged border closure and city lockdowns on single infections have all been largely uncontested policies.

She says it’s time now for Australia to move past such policies which she feels are rooted in fear. The country continues to face calls to bring back its own citizens.

“I don’t think it’s bad that people are afraid of Covid – we should be afraid. But we require leadership going forwards that doesn’t leave people behind.”

Source: ‘Fortress Australia’: Why calls to open up borders are meeting resistance

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Immigration applicants forced to file access to information requests to get answers on status: report

2021/05/27 Leave a comment

Hopefully, the GCMS modernization announced in Budget 2021 will enable this through an expanded MyAccount portal with increased functionality to both improve applicant service as well as reduce ATIP requests and costs:

The federal department in charge of immigration applications has been flooded with access to information requests because it provides so little information to applicants proactively, according to a new report by the Information Commissioner.

Have you applied to immigrate in Canada and want to know the status of your application? Or maybe your request was denied and you want to understand why? Well, instead of being able to see that information via your unique login on Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada’s (IRCC) Web portal, you have to file an access to information request (ATIP).

Source: Immigration applicants forced to file access to information requests to get answers on status: report

For the IRCC response, see: IRCC launches efforts to streamline and modernize access to information and privacy system and the related Management Action Plan.

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#COVID-19: Comparing provinces with other countries 26 May Update

2021/05/27 Leave a comment

The latest charts, compiled 26 May as overall rates in Canada continue to come down along with increased vaccinations.

Vaccinations: Minor relative changes, with Alberta moving ahead of British Columbia and Ontario, Atlantic Canada ahead of Italy and France.

Trendline charts

Infections per million: Alberta levelling off and upsurge in Manitoba is resulted in Prairie rate marginally more than Ontario.

Deaths per million: No significant change.

Vaccinations per million: Canadian vaccination rates have largely caught up to G7 less Canada with Quebec ahead.

Weekly

Infections per million: Prairies ahead of Ontario, driven by Manitoba.

Deaths per million: No relative change.

India

While there is undercounting in all countries as analysis of above average deaths indicate (e.g., The Economist’s Tracking covid-19 excess deaths across countries), this article on India is of particular interest.

The official Covid-19 figures in India grossly understate the true scale of the pandemic in the country. Last week, India recorded the largest daily death toll for any country during the pandemic — a figure that is most likely still an undercount.

Even getting a clear picture of the total number of infections in India is hard because of poor record-keeping and a lack of widespread testing. Estimating the true number of deaths requires a second layer of extrapolation, depending on the share of those infected who end up dying.

In consultation with more than a dozen experts, The New York Times has analyzed case and death counts over time in India, along with the results of large-scale antibody tests, to arrive at several possible estimates for the true scale of devastation in the country.

Even in the least dire of these, estimated infections and deaths far exceed official figures. More pessimistic ones show a toll on the order of millions of deaths — the most catastrophic loss anywhere in the world.

India’s official coronavirus statistics report about 27 million cases and over 300,000 deaths as of Tuesday. The country’s response to the pandemic has been further complicated this week by a cyclone that is battering India’s eastern coast, with winds of more than 95 miles per hour.

Even in countries with robust surveillance during the pandemic, the number of infections is probably much higher than the number of confirmed cases, because many people have contracted the virus but have not been tested for it. On Friday, a report by the World Health Organization estimated that the global death toll of Covid-19 may be two or three times higher than reported.

The undercount of cases and deaths in India is most likely even more pronounced, for technical, cultural and logistical reasons. Because hospitals are overwhelmed, many Covid deaths occur at home, especially in rural areas, and are omitted from the official count, said Kayoko Shioda, an epidemiologist at Emory University. Laboratories that could confirm the cause of death are equally swamped, she said.

Additionally, other researchers have found, there are few Covid tests available. Families are often unwilling to say that their loved ones have died of Covid. And the system for keeping vital records in India is shaky at best. Even before Covid-19, about four out of five deaths in India were not medically investigated.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/05/26/world/covid-vaccine-coronavirus-mask

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Guerrero: How to Fight White Supremacy by Inverting Stephen Miller’s Playbook

2021/05/26 Leave a comment

Not a bad list, one that can be applied more broadly than in the USA (as is already happening in Canada to an extent):

Former Trump White House senior adviser Stephen Miller played a significant role in mainstreaming white supremacy over the past five years, promoting virulently racist literature, organizing anti-immigrant round tables, crafting Trump’s most xenophobic speeches, and strangling legal pathways into the United States for nonwhite people.

He is continuing his white nationalist campaign through frequent guest appearances on Fox News, hawking the dangerous delusion of anti-white racism. And through his nonprofit, “America First Legal,” he is attacking the Biden administration’s small steps toward building a humane immigration system and a more equitable society, including efforts to diversify schools. President Joe Biden has been reluctant to scale back many of Trump’s white nationalist immigration policies as Republicans attack him in hysteria-inducing language Miller helped normalize, casting Biden as an “open borders” president responsible for an imagined “Third World invasion.”

What Biden’s team must understand is that the radicalized Republican Party is going to use immigration to attack him regardless of what he does. “Bottom line: the less Biden talks about the border, the more the GOP must,” Miller tweeted on April 29. The only way to neutralize this weaponization of immigration and to illuminate the threat of nativists’ war on brown and Black people is not through inaction on the Southwest border or a more intense crackdown (the Obama administration revealed the futility of that strategy), but rather to radically reframe the national conversation about immigration by inverting Miller’s playbook, which I document in my biography Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump and the White Nationalist Agenda.

Opponents of white supremacy, xenophobia, and racism must wrest control of the immigration debate from hatemongers, or else the immigration reform bill in Congress is doomed to fail, Democrats will lose the midterms elections, and white extremism will continue to spread, further endangering people’s lives and democracy. What follows is a handbook for how Biden’s team, lawmakers, journalists, and other public figures can co-opt Miller’s strategies to fight the spread of hate.

  1. Use vivid, visceral anecdotes about immigrants’ contributions to the United States in speeches, press releases, news articles, interviews, and more. One of Miller’s favorite techniques was to insert graphic descriptions of alleged migrant crimes into Trump’s speeches and documents. In Trump’s 2015 immigration plan, he described an “illegal” immigrant “breaking into a 64-year-old woman’s home, crushing her skull and eye sockets with a hammer, raping her, and murdering her.” The incident reappeared in a Trump speech. He repeatedly exploited the tragic death of Kate Steinle, and pressured the Department of Homeland Security to inundate the public with press releases about immigrant crimes, manufacturing the false impression that brown and Black foreigners commit more crimes than the native born. The demonization can be countered by highlighting much more common examples of immigrants contributing to the United States., while being careful not to caricature immigrants as superhumanly heroic or hardworking, which is dehumanizing in a different way. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas should issue press releases about acts of immigrant heroism as reminders of the full humanity and positive impact of immigrants, particularly nonwhite ones without legal status. Julia Ainsley’s 2020 NBC story, “Immigrant workers on Covid frontlines risk deportation to help save lives,” or the 2017 Univision story by Fernando Peinado and Anna Spelman, “The undocumented heroes never mentioned by Donald Trump,” are good examples.
  2. Hold press conferences, roundtables, and other reality-TV-style events that celebrate and inform about the above immigrant contributions to US national security, health, and the economy, while sharing accurate statistics. In the White House, Miller repeatedly helped organize anti-immigrant round tables, press briefings, and other streamed events in collaboration with law enforcement and lawmakers that cast immigrants as welfare-guzzling, diseased, and violent “animals,” including through the use of falsified statistics. It’s an old playbook that has been used time and again in the United States, notably with the vilification of Chinese immigrants in the 19th century: Spread falsehoods about unwanted foreigners bringing crime and illness, simultaneously stealing jobs, and draining public resources. Public figures should organize compelling events that inform about the true value of immigrants to public safety, health, and prosperity in partnership with law enforcement officers, lawmakers, and high-profile medical institutions and more. They should be entertaining, enlightening, and streamed to wide and diverse audiences.
  3. Promote literature, websites, and think tanks that center immigrants and refugees and depict them as they really are. Our storytelling industries, from publishing to media and entertainment, are still disproportionately white and male, resulting in a society with a seemingly bottomless capacity to empathize with white antiheroes, while dehumanizing complex brown and Black people. In 2016, Stephen Miller urged allies at Breitbart to promote the white supremacist dystopian book The Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail. Breitbart blogger Julia Hahn published an ode to the book, which tells of the destruction of the white world by brown refugee “monsters.” Demand for the book has sinceskyrocketed. Miller also recommended that Breitbartsource material from American Renaissance and VDare, white nationalist websites. He pulled policies from anti-immigrant think tanks funded by racist heiress Cordelia Scaife May in collaboration with white supremacist John Tanton, such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which was designated as a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Public figures should counter white supremacist propaganda by promoting literature and other content that conveys the truth about immigrants, such as Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s The Undocumented Americans and Reyna Grande’s The Distance Between Us. Remezcla has a list of the best books by Latin American authors that center the immigrant experience. The Center for American Progress and Migration Policy Institute are nonpartisan, and their websites can serve as resources for facts to counter anti-immigrant propaganda.
  4. Call anti-immigrant rhetoric what it is: a tactic of largely white elites to distract from the real problems they created for working people of all colors. At a 2016 Trump rally, Miller spoke of elites looking “down from their glass window condominiums at all of you,” before returning to his glass-window condominium. Anti-immigrant propagandists like Miller are elitists who politicize immigration to distract from their elitism and from policies and treaties that protect and expand their privileges. Trump bashed NAFTA as a “disaster” for American manufacturing workers, claiming that Mexico had been “spoiled” by the treaty, which had in fact displaced millions of Mexican farmworkers and devastated the southern country’s rural sector. During his administration, Trump used the anger he’d whipped up against the treaty to update it and change its name, not eliminate it, let alone address its biggest problems. Our nation’s storytellers, from Hollywood to Washington, must resist and expose attempts to use immigration to splinter working-class communities while enriching largely white male elites, often from both political parties.
  5. Forge alliances with other people in positions of power to accomplish the above goals and, crucially, to inspire hope. Miller’s mentor David Horowitz advocated stoking fear rather than hope. “Fear is a much stronger and more compelling emotion,” he wrote in a strategy paper that referenced the political utility of hate and other negative feelings, and encouraged Republicans to demonize their opponents. Miller forged strategic alliances with the right-wing site Breitbart and provocateurs such as Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, who recently endorsed a white supremacist conspiracy theory on air, to spread anti-immigrant and anti-liberal hate. From the time Miller was a teenager calling into The Larry Elder Showrailing against multiculturalism, he was cultivating relationships with powerful people to peddle hate. The opponents of hate must believe in hope, and leverage it in collaboration with one another. Part of leveraging that hope is embracing the reality that most extremists aren’t innately evil or cruel. While they pose a very real threat to national security, their reasons for being radicalized often aren’t simple. Some are vulnerable, isolated individuals dealing with trauma and other mental health issues. Sociopaths and swindlers manipulate them, giving them a false sense of purpose and meaning in the form of a scapegoat. Not all are irredeemable, demonstrated by the case of former Breitbart editor Katie McHugh, who was radicalized by Miller before realizing she had joined a dangerous movement. Some can be coaxed out slowly, with empathy, because we are stronger with people who have seen the light on our team.

Source: How to Fight White Supremacy by Inverting Stephen Miller’s Playbook

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