Israel blocks law that keeps out Palestinian spouses

2021/07/07 Leave a comment

Of note, both the discriminatory substance as well as the identity politics:

Israel’s parliament early on Tuesday failed to renew a law that bars Arab citizens from extending citizenship or residency rights to spouses from the occupied West Bank and Gaza, in a tight vote that raised doubts about the viability of the country’s new coalition government.

The 59-59 vote, which came after an all-night session of the Knesset, marked a major setback for Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.

The new Israeli leader, who had hoped to find a compromise between his hard-line Yamina party and the dovish factions in his disparate coalition, instead suffered a stinging defeat in a vote he reportedly described as a referendum on the new government. The vote means the law is now set to expire at midnight Tuesday.

The Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law was enacted as a temporary measure in 2003, at the height of the second intifada, or uprising, when Palestinians launched scores of deadly attacks inside Israel. Proponents said Palestinians from the occupied West Bank and Gaza were susceptible to recruitment by armed groups and that security vetting alone was insufficient.

Under it, Arab citizens, who comprise a fifth of Israel’s population, have had few if any avenues for bringing spouses from the West Bank and Gaza into Israel. Critics, including many left-wing and Arab lawmakers, say it’s a racist measure aimed at restricting the growth of Israel’s Arab minority, while supporters say it’s needed for security purposes and to preserve Israel’s Jewish character.

The law has been renewed annually and appeared to have the support of a large majority in parliament, which is dominated by hard-line nationalist parties. But former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party and his allies decided to oppose it to embarrass Bennett and harm his coalition, which includes a collection of eight parties across the political spectrum, including a small Islamist Arab party.

Interior Minister Minister Ayelet Shaked, a member of Bennett’s Yamina party, said the opposition move to block the law’s renewal would lead to thousands more applications for citizenship. She accused Netanyahu and his allies of choosing “petty and ugly politics, and let the country burn.”

Amichai Chikli, a renegade member of Yamina who voted with the opposition, said the outcome was a sign of deeper issues.

“Israel needs a functioning Zionist government, and not a mismatched patchwork that is reliant on” the votes of Arab lawmakers, said Chikli. He was the only member of his party to oppose the new coalition-led government last month.

Netanyahu, ousted by the new coalition after 12 years as prime minister, made clear his political goals.

“With all due respect for this law, the importance of toppling the government is greater,” Netanyahu said Monday.

Bennett reportedly proposed a compromise with liberal members of the coalition that would have extended the law by six months while offering residency rights to some 1,600 Arab families, a fraction of those affected. But the measure was defeated, in part because two Arab members of the coalition abstained. The vote exposed the deep divisions and the fragility of the new government.

The decision, however, gave some hope to Arab families that have been affected by the law. The law has created an array of difficulties for thousands of Palestinian families that span the war-drawn and largely invisible frontiers separating Israel from east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, territories it seized in the 1967 war that the Palestinians want for a future state.

“You want your security, it’s no problem, you can check each case by itself,” said Taiseer Khatib, an Arab citizen of Israel whose wife of more than 15 years, from the West Bank city of Jenin, must regularly apply for permits to live with him and their three children in Israel.

“There’s no need for this collective punishment just because you are Palestinian,” he said during a protest outside the Knesset on Monday ahead of the vote.

The law has been continually renewed even after the uprising wound down in 2005 and the number of attacks plummeted. Today, Israel allows more than 100,000 Palestinian workers from the West Bank to enter on a regular basis.

Male spouses over the age of 35 and female spouses over the age of 25, as well as some humanitarian cases, can apply for the equivalent of a tourist permit, which must be regularly renewed. The holders of such permits are ineligible for driver’s licenses, public health insurance and most forms of employment. Palestinian spouses from Gaza have been completely banned since the militant Hamas group seized power there in 2007.

The law does not apply to the nearly 500,000 Jewish settlers who live in the West Bank, who have full Israeli citizenship. Under Israel’s Law of Return, Jews who come to Israel from anywhere in the world are eligible for citizenship.

Israel’s Arab minority has close familial ties to Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and largely identifies with their cause. Arab citizens view the law as one of several forms of discrimination they face in a country that legally defines itself as a Jewish nation-state.

Palestinians who are unable to get permits but try to live with their spouses inside Israel are at risk of deportation. Couples that move to the West Bank live under Israeli military occupation.

The citizenship law also applies to Jewish Israelis who marry Palestinians from the territories, but such unions are extremely rare.

Source: Israel blocks law that keeps out Palestinian spouses

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Nearly 200,000 Asian Americans scramble for citizenship under aging-out visa policy

2021/07/06 Leave a comment

Hard to understand why she never applied for citizenship but no reason why these cases should not have a straightforward process:

Pareen Mhatre was 4 months old when she came to the U.S. from India under her mom’s student visa. Since before she could crawl, Iowa City has been her home.

But as her 21st birthday approached, anxiety began to set in. She was about to “age out.” Under the rules of her H4 visa — which she got after her parents graduated and started working — she was only a dependent until 21. After that, she’d have to find another way to stay in the only country she’s ever known. Failing to do so would mean that what should be a happy milestone could lead to deportation.

“My immigration status has been a conductor of my life,” Mhatre told NBC Asian America. “I lived in India for four months when I was a baby. And the thought of going back is very scary for me. This is our home.”

Mhatre is among about 190,000 kids and young adults in the U.S. today for whom aging out of their families’ visas is a real concern, according to the Migration Policy Institute. There’s no clear path to citizenship and no easy route to staying, other than jumping from temporary visa to visa as their peers with permanent residency or citizenship carry on with school, work and life. Over the last few years, a coalition of 300 of these young people, 70 percent South Asian, are appealing to lawmakers to create a clear path to citizenship.

Last week, representatives from the advocacy organization Improve the Dream met with senior Biden administration officials and several members of Congress to push for executive action, new legislation and an amendment to the DREAM Act to include them. (The DREAM Act only applies to children who are undocumented.) Last week, Reps. Deborah Ross of North Carolina and Ami Bera of California, both Democrats, wrote a letter urging Biden to protect children of visa holders seeking to stay in the country.

“It’s a very simple vision that every child who grows up in the United States should have a path to citizenship,” said Dip Patel, 25, founder of Improve the Dream. “Children of long-term visa holders who grew up here and complete their education here don’t have a path to stay after aging out and face self deportation.”

One reason for the increased pressure on this issue right now is the coming of age of the children who arrived with their parents from India in the 1980s and ’90s. This swell of immigration came as non-European migrants began to take jobs in the U.S. and move with their families under the 1965 Immigration Act, said Michelle Mittelstadt, director of communications at the Migration Policy Institute. From 1980 to 2019, the population of Indians in the United States grew 13-fold.

In school at the University of Iowa on the pre-med track, Mhatre applied for a student visa in June 2020. She submitted the application well in advance, and expected it to arrive by her 21st birthday in April. It didn’t. In limbo, a now-21-year-old Mhatre was forced to get a B2 visitor’s visa to avoid deportation. Her F1 student visa finally arrived only a couple of weeks ago.

The realities of her status also forced her to abandon her dream of being a pediatrician (only a few U.S. medical schools accept a small number of international students). It was a hopeless time in her life, she said.

“I felt like I had no purpose,” she said. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. I was diagnosed with clinical depression, generalized anxiety disorder and panic disorder.”

As a kid, she wasn’t fully conscious of how her status differed from her peers, but all at once, it was hitting her. She had to follow the path of least resistance and find a field where she was more likely to get a job and a visa. Even though she’s found a new path for her degree, her immigration status means she’s never had an internship or work experience.

She knows she’ll have a college degree in under a year, but the concept of failing to get a job and having to return to India is still a worry. And in order to stay for now, visa kids like Patel and Mhatre have to prove they don’t intend to stay forever. To qualify for several types of temporary visas, applicants have to show proof of ties to their “home” country and say they don’t plan to pursue permanent residency in the U.S.

“We’ve lived here all of our lives,” Patel said. “It’s really hard to prove nonimmigrant intent, which is something that’s required for student visas and a lot of other temporary statuses as well.”

After years of phone calls and visits to lawmakers, they say a new bill provides a bit of hope. It will be introduced by Ross on Thursday and would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act “to authorize lawful permanent resident status for certain college graduates who entered the United States as children, and for other purposes.”

“For me personally, it’s really exciting,” Patel said. “I’ve had something that’s never made sense growing up. It’s an idea that I’ve always had: Why don’t they just create this? It’s great to see.”

Source: Nearly 200,000 Asian Americans scramble for citizenship under aging-out visa policy

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Pandemic Wave of Automation May Be Bad News for Workers

2021/07/05 Leave a comment

Interesting trend affecting lower skilled workers, one that will likely affect Canada and that needs to be taken into account by the immigration program in terms of levels and mix, particularly those in retail, hospitality, warehousing and manufacturing. This may also increase the productivity gap between Canada and the USA:

When Kroger customers in Cincinnati shop online these days, their groceries may be picked out not by a worker in their local supermarket but by a robot in a nearby warehouse.

Gamers at Dave & Buster’s in Dallas who want pretzel dogs can order and pay from their phones — no need to flag down a waiter.

And in the drive-through lane at Checkers near Atlanta, requests for Big Buford burgers and Mother Cruncher chicken sandwiches may be fielded not by a cashier in a headset, but by a voice-recognition algorithm.

An increase in automation, especially in service industries, may prove to be an economic legacy of the pandemic. Businesses from factories to fast-food outlets to hotels turned to technology last year to keep operations running amid social distancing requirements and contagion fears. Now the outbreak is ebbing in the United States, but the difficulty in hiring workers — at least at the wages that employers are used to paying — is providing new momentum for automation.

Technological investments that were made in response to the crisis may contribute to a post-pandemic productivity boom, allowing for higher wages and faster growth. But some economists say the latest wave of automation could eliminate jobs and erode bargaining power, particularly for the lowest-paid workers, in a lasting way.

“Once a job is automated, it’s pretty hard to turn back,” said Casey Warman, an economist at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia who has studied automation in the pandemic.

The trend toward automation predates the pandemic, but it has accelerated at what is proving to be a critical moment. The rapid reopening of the economy has led to a surge in demand for waiters, hotel maids, retail sales clerks and other workers in service industries that had cut their staffs. At the same time, government benefits have allowed many people to be selective in the jobs they take. Together, those forces have given low-wage workers a rare moment of leverage, leading to higher pay, more generous benefits and other perks.

Automation threatens to tip the advantage back toward employers, potentially eroding those gains. A working paper published by the International Monetary Fund this year predicted that pandemic-induced automation would increase inequality in coming years, not just in the United States but around the world.

“Six months ago, all these workers were essential,” said Marc Perrone, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers, a union representing grocery workers. “Everyone was calling them heroes. Now, they’re trying to figure out how to get rid of them.”

Checkers, like many fast-food restaurants, experienced a jump in sales when the pandemic shut down most in-person dining. But finding workers to meet that demand proved difficult — so much so that Shana Gonzales, a Checkers franchisee in the Atlanta area, found herself back behind the cash register three decades after she started working part time at Taco Bell while in high school.

“We really felt like there has to be another solution,” she said.

So Ms. Gonzales contacted Valyant AI, a Colorado-based start-up that makes voice recognition systems for restaurants. In December, after weeks of setup and testing, Valyant’s technology began taking orders at one of Ms. Gonzales’s drive-through lanes. Now customers are greeted by an automated voice designed to understand their orders — including modifications and special requests — suggest add-ons like fries or a shake, and feed the information directly to the kitchen and the cashier.

The rollout has been successful enough that Ms. Gonzales is getting ready to expand the system to her three other restaurants.

“We’ll look back and say why didn’t we do this sooner,” she said.

The push toward automation goes far beyond the restaurant sector. Hotels, retailers, manufacturers and other businesses have all accelerated technological investments. In a survey of nearly 300 global companies by the World Economic Forum last year, 43 percent of businesses said they expected to reduce their work forces through new uses of technology.

Some economists see the increased investment as encouraging. For much of the past two decades, the U.S. economy has struggled with weak productivity growth, leaving workers and stockholders to compete over their share of the income — a game that workers tended to lose. Automation may harm specific workers, but if it makes the economy more productive, that could be good for workers as a whole, said Katy George, a senior partner at McKinsey, the consulting firm.

She cited the example of a client in manufacturing who had been pushing his company for years to embrace augmented-reality technology in its factories. The pandemic finally helped him win the battle: With air travel off limits, the technology was the only way to bring in an expert to help troubleshoot issues at a remote plant.

“For the first time, we’re seeing that these technologies are both increasing productivity, lowering cost, but they’re also increasing flexibility,” she said. “We’re starting to see real momentum building, which is great news for the world, frankly.”

Other economists are less sanguine. Daron Acemoglu of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said that many of the technological investments had just replaced human labor without adding much to overall productivity.

In a recent working paper, Professor Acemoglu and a colleague concluded that “a significant portion of the rise in U.S. wage inequality over the last four decades has been driven by automation” — and he said that trend had almost certainly accelerated in the pandemic.

“If we automated less, we would not actually have generated that much less output but we would have had a very different trajectory for inequality,” Professor Acemoglu said.

Ms. Gonzales, the Checkers franchisee, isn’t looking to cut jobs. She said she would hire 30 people if she could find them. And she has raised hourly pay to about $10 for entry-level workers, from about $9 before the pandemic. Technology, she said, is easing pressure on workers and speeding up service when restaurants are chronically understaffed.

“Our approach is, this is an assistant for you,” she said. “This allows our employee to really focus” on customers.

Ms. Gonzales acknowledged she could fully staff her restaurants if she offered $14 to $15 an hour to attract workers. But doing so, she said, would force her to raise prices so much that she would lose sales — and automation allows her to take another course.

Rob Carpenter, Valyant’s chief executive, noted that at most restaurants, taking drive-through orders is only part of an employee’s responsibilities. Automating that task doesn’t eliminate a job; it makes the job more manageable.

“We’re not talking about automating an entire position,” he said. “It’s just one task within the restaurant, and it’s gnarly, one of the least desirable tasks.”

But technology doesn’t have to take over all aspects of a job to leave workers worse off. If automation allows a restaurant that used to require 10 employees a shift to operate with eight or nine, that will mean fewer jobs in the long run. And even in the short term, the technology could erode workers’ bargaining power.

“Often you displace enough of the tasks in an occupation and suddenly that occupation is no more,” Professor Acemoglu said. “It might kick me out of a job, or if I keep my job I’ll get lower wages.”

At some businesses, automation is already affecting the number and type of jobs available. Meltwich, a restaurant chain that started in Canada and is expanding into the United States, has embraced a range of technologies to cut back on labor costs. Its grills no longer require someone to flip burgers — they grill both sides at once, and need little more than the press of a button.

“You can pull a less-skilled worker in and have them adapt to our system much easier,” said Ryan Hillis, a Meltwich vice president. “It certainly widens the scope of who you can have behind that grill.”

With more advanced kitchen equipment, software that allows online orders to flow directly to the restaurant and other technological advances, Meltwich needs only two to three workers on a shift, rather than three or four, Mr. Hillis said.

Such changes, multiplied across thousands of businesses in dozens of industries, could significantly change workers’ prospects. Professor Warman, the Canadian economist, said technologies developed for one purpose tend to spread to similar tasks, which could make it hard for workers harmed by automation to shift to another occupation or industry.

“If a whole sector of labor is hit, then where do those workers go?” Professor Warman said. Women, and to a lesser degree people of color, are likely to be disproportionately affected, he added.

The grocery business has long been a source of steady, often unionized jobs for people without a college degree. But technology is changing the sector. Self-checkout lanes have reduced the number of cashiers; many stores have simple robots to patrol aisles for spills and check inventory; and warehouses have become increasingly automated. Kroger in April opened a 375,000-square-foot warehouse with more than 1,000 robots that bag groceries for delivery customers. The company is even experimenting with delivering groceries by drone.

Other companies in the industry are doing the same. Jennifer Brogan, a spokeswoman for Stop & Shop, a grocery chain based in New England, said that technology allowed the company to better serve customers — and that it was a competitive necessity.

“Competitors and other players in the retail space are developing technologies and partnerships to reduce their costs and offer improved service and value for customers,” she said. “Stop & Shop needs to do the same.”

In 2011, Patrice Thomas took a part-time job in the deli at a Stop & Shop in Norwich, Conn. A decade later, he manages the store’s prepared foods department, earning around $40,000 a year.

Mr. Thomas, 32, said that he wasn’t concerned about being replaced by a robot anytime soon, and that he welcomed technologies making him more productive — like more powerful ovens for rotisserie chickens and blast chillers that quickly cool items that must be stored cold.

But he worries about other technologies — like automated meat slicers — that seem to enable grocers to rely on less experienced, lower-paid workers and make it harder to build a career in the industry.

“The business model we seem to be following is we’re pushing toward automation and we’re not investing equally in the worker,” he said. “Today it’s, ‘We want to get these robots in here to replace you because we feel like you’re overpaid and we can get this kid in there and all he has to do is push this button.’”

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/03/business/economy/automation-workers-robots-pandemic.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

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A digitally modernized immigration ecosystem in Canada: Reflecting on the roundtable, Strengthening Canada’s Immigration Ecosystem

2021/07/02 Leave a comment

Summary of roundtable discussions based upon a Deloitte study on immigration modernization (I was one of the external experts consulted in their study, not yet posted on their website):

On June 18th, 2021, the Public Policy Forum brought together over 30 experts and practitioners in the immigration space in Canada. The roundtable, Strengthening Canada’s Immigration Ecosystem, focused on a digitally enabled modernized immigration system. The consensus was clear: A modernized immigration system is necessary, and any such modernizations must be inclusive, immigrant centred, and must not perpetuate biases within the system. Katie Davey, Policy Lead at Public Policy Forum and Fatemah Ebrahim, Policy Associate at Public Policy Forum reflect on the roundtable conversation: 

For a system to work, it must work for everyone using it. Technology is not a one size fits all approach to solutions; however, modernization efforts have the potential to leverage technology and digital solutions for the benefit of all. Implemented with the right considerations, a digitally modernized immigration system has the potential to significantly reduce pain points and become more responsive, and immigrant centred while also freeing up human resources to support the most challenging case work. While a digitally enabled system is part of the solution, it is not a panacea. Digital for the sake of digital risks leaving people out in the cold, and perpetuating issues and biases that exist.  

The Government of Canada recognized the importance of immigration in post-pandemic recovery and GDP growth in Budget 2021. The budget included reforms to the Express Entry Program, enhancements to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, and extensions to the Racialized Newcomer Women Pilot initiative. It committed to accelerating pathways for permanent residency as well as enabling Statistics Canada to address the lack of data needed to support evidence-based decision making on social and racial inequities. Budget 2021 also included $430 million to modernize information technology infrastructure to allow for improved application processing, better security, and higher levels of future foreign national arrivals. These commitments create the opportunity for much needed transformation.  

COVID-19 has accelerated the case for transformation and has propelled many governments to expedite their digital and technology capabilities to respond effectively during this crisis. As it stands, Canada’s immigration system operates on outdated technology and remains largely paper based; although the pandemic resulted in some short-term technology enabled solutions creating a good foundation to build on. At the same time, these COVID capabilities also demonstrated that flexibility within the system will be needed to avoid an unintentional rigidness that leaves people out. The competition for global talent is only increasing as mature economies grapple with stalling birth rates and labour force demands.  

Although Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) continues to set ambitious immigration targets, most metrics are highly unpredictable, including number of newcomers who become citizens each year. Focus has been placed on the supply side of immigration while labour force demands continue to be unmet. Conversations like foreign credential recognition have been on the agenda for years — especially in the healthcare sector; however little movement has been made. Digital modernization may provide new opportunities to address these persisting policy challenges by providing information and transparency. These brief examples are only two of many that provide a foundation for the case of modernization within the immigration sector. 

The focus of a modernized system should be a process that moves towards settlement supports and pathways to citizenship. At a fundamental level, digital modernization is a mindset shift and should offer an accessible, safe, and informative tool to enhance how a newcomer moves through the system.  

Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) sets out three classes of migrants: those entering for economic immigration, for family reunification, and as refugees. There is a prioritization of the economic class over the family or refugee class which is one example of the underlying and at times, explicit bias built into Canada’s immigration system. Bias also exists within the technology and tools often used to enhance modernization. Further, data protection remains a concern in most areas of technology, and some may have serious and founded concerns about the potential surveillance that could be empowered by a tool holding all their immigration data in one place. These realities are risks of digital modernization. 

Another risk present in the digital government literature is the 80-20 principle often inherent in technology and policy development. It would suggest that a technology build out may serve just one part of the immigration ecosystem and leave those with more complex paths outside of the modernization journey. Consideration should be given to inclusive and equitable modernization that builds for the margins. The most common use case should be replaced with the most complex use case – if the system builds for that, it will naturally also serve the most common case. At the same time, digital modernization presents the opportunity to reorient resources to supporting those with a higher level of need. 

Attracting, welcoming, and retaining immigrants are vital if Canada is to remain competitive on the world stage. Digital modernization is a key element of a broader policy modernization landscape. Canada’s immigration system focuses heavily on the economic class, and any steps toward digital modernization has a risk of building for that class alone. A modernized system must address biases present and reinforced through technology. More needs to be done to build an anti-racist immigration ecosystem; one that supports all categories of migrants and provides equitable access and support through the application and naturalization processes. There is a tremendous opportunity for Canada’s immigration system to continue being the envy of the world. Although the Canadian immigration conversation often centres economic growth and competitiveness, newcomers to Canada are people and deserve to be treated with dignity and respect – technology is a tool to help move us toward a system that prioritizes newcomers.  

Source: https://ppforum.ca/policy-speaking/a-digitally-modernized-immigration-ecosystem-in-canada/

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#COVID-19: Comparing provinces with other countries 30 June Update, Canadian excess deaths

2021/07/01 Leave a comment

The latest charts, compiled 30 June as overall rates in Canada continue to decline along with increased vaccinations (still largely first dose, fully vaccinated 30 percent, comparable to most EU countries).

Vaccinations: Ontario ahead of USA, all provinces ahead of EU countries, China ahead of Italy in total vaccinations but lower than EU countries in terms of fully vaccinated (16 percent).

Trendline charts

Infections per million: Surge in delta variant has resulted in UK moving ahead of Italy.

Deaths per million: Canadian North now ahead of Atlantic Canada.

Vaccinations per million: Gap between Canada and other G7 countries continues to grow. Gap between China and India narrows (14.4% compared to 13.0%).

Weekly

Infections per million: UK ahead of Italy

Deaths per million: Canadian North ahead of Atlantic Canada, reflecting additional death in Yukon.

And the excess deaths report, indicating that Canadian COVID mortality has been understated (not unique to Canada):

A new study suggests Canada has vastly underestimated how many people have died from COVID-19 and says the number could be two times higher than reported.

Dr. Tara Moriarty, working group lead for the study commissioned by the Royal Society of Canada, said in an interview while most accounts have put the majority of deaths in long-term care, the new data analysis suggests the toll of COVID-19 was also heavily felt outside the homes in the community.

Many of those deaths likely occurred in lower income, racialized communities and affected essential workers, new immigrants and people living in multigenerational homes, as well as clinically frail seniors living at home, the study says.

“If we’d had some sense early on of who was dying where, if we had had a sense of just how many deaths were actually occurring … maybe people would have started looking sooner or listening sooner to people in communities who were saying, ‘It’s really really bad here, people are dying,'” Moriarty said.

“It might have provided support for those claims that might have caused some kind of action that would have saved lives.”

Moriarty said seeing Canada out of step with similar high-income countries on the proportion of long-term care deaths was a red flag that inspired the analysis by the society.

The new peer-reviewed analysis casts doubt on the widely accepted assumption that 80 per cent of Canada’s deaths due to COVID-19 occurred among older adult residents of long-term care homes.

Instead, it says at least two-thirds of deaths caused by COVID-19 in communities outside of long-term care may have been missed. That would put the proportion of deaths in long-term care at around 45 per cent, much closer to the average of 40 per cent reported by peer countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

The conclusion is based on a review of reports of excess deaths across Canada, the pattern of COVID-19 fatalities during the pandemic and cremation data showing a significant spike in deaths at homes versus hospitals in 2020. It also relies on antibody surveillance testing that collectively unmasked the likely broad scope of undetected COVID-19 infections.

The researchers adjusted the data to account for things like increased deaths due to the drug toxicity crisis and the expected drop in deaths linked to the pandemic because of things like reduced traffic accident rates.

The extent of “likely missed” fatalities varies by province and there are major data gaps in what was available, Moriarty said.

The knowledge gap is particularly acute in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba where cause-of-death data is only complete into February 2020, the report says. It was less of a problem in Quebec, where the virus accounted for all excess deaths, and Ontario.

Between Feb. 1 and Nov. 28, 2020, the study found COVID-19 deaths of about 6,000 people aged 45 and older appeared to have gone undetected, unreported or unattributed to the virus.

“This suggests that if Canada has continued to miss these fatalities at the same rate since last November, the pandemic mortality burden may be two times higher than reported,” the report says.

Eemaan Kaur Thind, a public health practitioner who looked at both detected and undetected COVID-19 deaths in racialized communities, said the results weren’t a shock given previous reports linking the communities and deaths or hospitalization rates.

The study suggests it’s likely many cases in those communities were never identified, and the resulting deaths were never counted.

“We know that a high-proportion of essential workers happen to be visible minorities,” she said.

“None of that surprised me, although it never really becomes any less hard to see the official numbers when you see something like this.”

Thind said she hopes the findings push policy-makers to listen to those most affected, many of whom raised alarms about things like the role language barriers played in access to COVID-19 testing and care.

“Data is very important but I think it’s more important to also listen to people and believe them.”

About 25 per cent of likely deaths occurred in people between 45 and 64, the study said.

The researchers make several recommendations, including mandating weekly preliminary reporting of deaths due to all causes to Statistics Canada, performing COVID-19 testing on all people who die in any setting, and immediately adopting methods used by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control for estimating excess mortality during the pandemic.

The group also calls for the creation of a national COVID-19 mortality task force with the provinces and territories, and independent advisers to investigate why so many Canadian COVID-19 cases and deaths have been missed or unreported, including examining demographic and employment data for those who died.

Source: COVID-19 deaths in Canada may be two times higher than reported: Study

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Five Ways to Have Better Conversations About Immigration

2021/06/30 Leave a comment

Good suggestions, applicable more broadly than immigration and the USA:

If having a conversation about immigration with people in your life feels hard, frustrating, or scary, you’re not alone.

In recent years, the topic has become increasingly contentious and difficult. You may find that the conversation quickly transforms into a pitched debate, with each side digging in and feelings getting hurt.

After going through this experience once or twice, it’s easy to imagine why people avoid the topic altogether. Yet, as a society, we lose when a charged topic like immigration becomes off-limits or taboo and people stop exploring—and bridging—their divergent opinions. The debate drags on without a solution, with grave consequences for immigrants, their families, and the many Americans whose lives are intermingled with theirs through work and community life. As a result, it’s critically important for us to find new ways to connect and engage on the issue.

Is that possible? We can’t promise that each individual conversation will be productive, but here are five suggestions for making that outcome more likely.

1. Counter the zero-sum mindset

We often hear about the vulnerability of people who fled their home countries, which we might call the “struggle” narrative. We might also learn about the value of educated individuals to our high-tech and medical industries, which is a narrative of exceptionalism.

The trouble with both the struggle and exceptionalism narratives is that they can trigger competitiveness in the minds of many. This is because people often carry the false belief that if immigrants get more of something (safety, jobs, rights, education, etc.), then the American-born would get less of that same thing. If you believe that resources are finite and that any piece of the pie that goes to an immigrant means less for you, then you might feel threatened by immigrants.

To correct zero-sum thinking, we need an abundance mindset that allows us to explore how good immigration policies can benefit everyone living in America. What would an immigration system look like that created a win-win rather than a win-lose scenario in people’s minds? Can we tell stories and have discussions that explore shared struggles, dreams, and aspirations of everyone who calls America home, and avoid some of the pitfalls of immigrant struggle/exceptionalism narratives?

2. Tread lightly around the sacred

“Research shows that when perceived threat and social identity become involved, our policy stances can become sacralized, transforming into absolutist, moralized, non-negotiable values,” write Nichole Argo and Kate Jassin in a recent report from the American Immigration Council. “These sacred values do not operate like regular values, which can be reevaluated if one is willing to make trade-offs.”

As a result, significant numbers of Americans hold their immigration positions so tightly that they wouldn’t abandon them for any amount of money. The issue is so dear to them, in fact, that trying to negotiate around it could backfire. For some, ending the practice of family separation is sacred, while for others it’s the idea of securing a border wall. Both groups are unlikely to be persuaded otherwise.

What’s the solution to such an impasse? Knowing how sacred immigration issues have become for different groups of people helps us understand why conversations on the topic are so hard and sometimes explosive. Thus, when discussing immigration with someone, it’s important to listen carefully and try to understand what they deem sacred—and why.

For example, we can learn what is behind positions like the need for a border wall. Is it safety or security? How do we satisfy those needs? Is that a bridge to helping them understand the desire of so many to migrate to the U.S. seeking a safe place to live?  Perhaps we can connect people across these fundamental feelings and concerns. After all, who doesn’t want to feel safe?

Through this process, you might find where you have the most agreement and common ground—and from there, you can build the trust necessary for deeper and more specific policy discussions.

3. Tell binding, values-based, and emotional stories rather than cite facts

The Nobel prize–winning behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman says that people are not persuaded by numbers but by stories. Yet we often start with data to make the case for immigration. We cite economic data, crime data, and demographic data. We bring facts to what is a highly emotional issue for many.

This approach usually fails because the lived experiences, prior knowledge, and in-group norms (peer pressure) informing an individual’s views on immigration won’t be undone by a data set.

Rather, sharing stories of your own lived experience with the issue can produce more powerful shifts. Stories that highlight the common identities that foreign- and U.S.-born people share as parents, sports fans, foodies, and coworkers help bind people as they learn about what they have in common with each other rather than what they don’t.

Once these commonalities have surfaced, people are better able to process the facts. That’s why facts should follow, not lead, in an immigration conversation.

4. Consider who the best messengers are

There is a growing body of evidence that shows that Americans are increasingly less trusting of national leaders and more trusting of people closest to them at the community level. In fact, people are most likely to believe what their peers and family members believe. For this reason, “in-group” messengers are often the best to reach people on any topic, but particularly the hard ones.

For example, when a fellow parent, parishioner, or soccer mom shares an opinion or story, we process it differently than when we hear the opinion of a stranger or out-group member. If an in-group member tells us a personal story about an immigrant family they were close to, that might shape our thinking about interactions with immigrants. Members of our own in-groups hold more credibility and they shape our behavior, which is why in-group members can be powerful influencers of thoughts and behaviors.

In the event that a particular group is leaning anti-immigrant in their thinking and behavior, in-group moderates (people with more moderate thinking within the group) can help shift the conversation by showing that opinion is not uniform within an in-group. It’s helpful to lift up those people who share your audience’s values or identities to address immigration issues—and it’s important that we resist attempting to enlist people who don’t have the right level of credibility with our intended audience.

5. Help shift the norms in your local community

Social norms are what we perceive to be a typical or desirable behavior. While national norms exert influence, of course, there is evidence that localities can carve out their own distinct norms.

By telling stories, engaging in discussions, and acting in ways that exemplify your values and hopes for how your community should treat your foreign-born neighbors (as well as your U.S.-born neighbors), you shape the social norms in your community, which in turn may shift the views of some of its members—or influence their public-facing behavior at the very least.

Beyond the level of one-on-one conversation, it’s important to connect neighbors, both immigrant and American-born, and bring them into community with one another. Find the safe and welcoming spaces where those interactions would be the most organic and most likely to recur. They could be houses of worship, worksites, playgrounds, sports leagues, volunteer projects, food programs, job training, schools, and universities where people can come together for themselves and for the good of their community. We can build bridges and relationships through activities that leave politics behind and help us to find common ground.

While these tips for how to have productive conversations seem pretty simple, we know it’s hard to navigate contentious topics in a polarized environment. The point is to try new approaches that are more likely to get us there than what we’re doing now.

We know it’s possible. In 2018, the Kettering Foundation hosted 86 conversations about immigration in local communities across the country. The forums brought people together who agreed, disagreed, changed their minds, and challenged one another’s thinking on immigration. They were able to have respectful, nuanced conversations on a complex and emotional area of public policy.

If we can reimagine our conversations on immigration, we’ll create a new way forward on the immigration question, but we’ll also strengthen our civic bonds, increase social trust, and take one more step toward building the pluralistic democracy that we want to live in.

Source: Five Ways to Have Better Conversations About Immigration

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Angus Reid: As Ottawa prepares to ramp up immigration post pandemic, Canadians are divided over target levels

2021/06/29 Leave a comment

Of course, Canadians are divided on this and other issues.

But still striking to me, despite the large increases planned by the government, overall acceptance and support for levels of 400,000 and over (34 % about right, and 13 % number should be higher, for a total of 47% compared to 39 % believing the numbers too high). Equally interesting is the drop since 2018 of those thinking immigration levels too high, from 49 to 39 %:

As travel restrictions in Canada brought by COVID-19 begin to lift, the impacts will not only be felt by people living in this country, but those waiting to settle here.

An unprecedented, pandemic-related slowdown in immigration over the last year and a half is poised to ramp up against news last Monday that some 23,000 approved immigrants to Canada could immediately begin their journey to their new home country.

Public health, economic and perhaps even electoral outcomes pending, the Canadian government has signalled it plans to land more than 400,000 newcomers next year.

New data from the non-profit Angus Reid Institute in partnership with the University of British Columbia finds Canadians divided along age, gender, and political lines about whether that number represents an appropriate target.

Overall, one-in-three (34%) say that this is the right level. A plurality of past NDP (43%) and Liberal (47%) voters believe the current target of 411,000 new permanent residents is the right amount. One-quarter of past CPC voters agree (23%).

On the other hand, a plurality of 39 per cent feel that the target is too high. This proportion rises to a majority in Alberta (50%) and Saskatchewan (54%) and is the opinion of nearly two-thirds (64%) of past Conservative voters.

One-in-eight (13%) Canadians say the 411,000 target is not ambitious enough, rising to one-in-five among past Liberal and New Democrat voters.

As to which regions of the globe Canada should prioritize for new permanent residents, three-in-five Canadians say that it does not matter to them, and that no region should have priority over another. One-quarter (26%) prefer Europe, while one-in-five (20%) say the United States and Mexico. Immigration from South Asia is chosen by just four per cent, a finding starkly contrasted against the fact that Canada’s largest source of immigration is currently India.

Source: https://angusreid.org/as-ottawa-prepares-to-ramp-up-immigration-post-pandemic-canadians-are-divided-over-target-levels/

Full report: https://angusreid.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/2021.06.28_Immigration_2021.pdf

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#COVID-19: Comparing provinces with other countries 23 June Update, China’s vaccine diplomacy

2021/06/24 2 Comments

The latest charts, compiled 23 June as overall rates in Canada continue to decline along with increased vaccinations (still largely first dose, fully vaccinated 20.8 percent, most EU countries are between 25 to 35%).

Vaccinations: Minor relative changes with Ontario ahead of Quebec and British Columbia. China’s vaccination rate continues to grow dramatically (about 16% fully vaccinated. Article below charts describes lower efficacy of Chinese-made vaccines.

Trendline charts

Infections per million: No relative changes.

Deaths per million: No relative change.

Vaccinations per million: Canadian vaccination rates continue to exceed G7 less Canada. Vaccination rate increase in immigration source countries driven by China (up 16% from last week) with Indian vaccination rates up 12.5% compared to last week.

Weekly

Infections per million: No relative change.

Deaths per million: No relative changes.

They Relied on Chinese Vaccines. Now They’re Battling Outbreaks

Interesting data on the relative weakness of Chinese vaccines, likely to undermine the Chinese government’s vaccine diplomacy:

Mongolia promised its people a “Covid-free summer.” Bahrain said there would be a “return to normal life.” The tiny island nation of the Seychelles aimed to jump-start its economy.

All three put their faith, at least in part, in easily accessibleChinese-made vaccines, which would allow them to roll out ambitious inoculation programs when much of the world was going without.

But instead of freedom from the coronavirus, all three countries are now battling a surge in infections.

China kicked off its vaccine diplomacy campaign last year by pledging to provide a shot that would be safe and effective at preventing severe cases of Covid-19. Less certain at the time was how successful it and other vaccines would be at curbing transmission.

Now, examples from several countries suggest that the Chinese vaccines may not be very effective at preventing the spread of the virus, particularly the new variants. The experiences of those countries lay bare a harsh reality facing a postpandemic world: The degree of recovery may depend on which vaccines governments give to their people.

In the Seychelles, Chile, Bahrain and Mongolia, 50 to 68 percent of the populations have been fully inoculated, outpacing the United States, according to Our World in Data, a data tracking project. All four ranked among the top 10 countries with the worst Covid outbreaks as recently as last week, according to data from The New York Times. And all four are mostly using shots made by two Chinese vaccine makers, Sinopharm and Sinovac Biotech.

“If the vaccines are sufficiently good, we should not see this pattern,” said Jin Dongyan, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong. “The Chinese have a responsibility to remedy this.”

Scientists don’t know for certain why some countries with relatively high inoculation rates are suffering new outbreaks. Variants, social controls that are eased too quickly and careless behavior after only the first of a two-shot regimen are possibilities. But the breakthrough infections could have lasting consequences.

In the United States, about 45 percent of the population is fully vaccinated, mostly with doses made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. Cases have dropped 94 percent over six months.

Israel provided shots from Pfizer and has the second-highest vaccination rate in the world, after the Seychelles. The number of new daily confirmed Covid-19 cases per million in Israel is now around 4.95.

In the Seychelles, which relied mostly on Sinopharm, that number is more than 716 cases per million.

Disparities such as these could create a world in which three types of countries emerge from the pandemic — the wealthy nations that used their resources to secure Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna shots, the poorer countries that are far away from immunizing a majority of citizens, and then those that are fully inoculated but only partly protected.

China, as well as the more than 90 nations that have received the Chinese shots, may end up in the third group, contending with rolling lockdowns, testing and limits on day-to-day life for months or years to come. Economies could remain held back. And as more citizens question the efficacy of Chinese doses, persuading unvaccinated people to line up for shots may also become more difficult.

One month after receiving his second dose of Sinopharm, Otgonjargal Baatar fell ill and tested positive for Covid-19. Mr. Otgonjargal, a 31-year-old miner, spent nine days in a hospital in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia. He said he was now questioning the usefulness of the shot.

“People were convinced that if we were vaccinated, the summer will be free of Covid,” he said. “Now it turns out that it’s not true.”

Beijing saw its vaccine diplomacy as an opportunity to emerge from the pandemic as a more influential global power. China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, pledged to deliver a Chinese shot that could be easily stored and transported to millions of people around the world. He called it a “global public good.”

Mongolia was a beneficiary, jumping at the chance to score millions of Sinopharm shots. The small country quickly rolled out an inoculation program and eased restrictions. It has now vaccinated 52 percent of its population. But on Sunday, it recorded 2,400 new infections, a quadrupling from a month before.

In a statement, China’s Foreign Ministry said it did not see a link between the recent outbreaks and its vaccines. It cited the World Health Organization as saying that vaccination rates in certain countries had not reached sufficient levels to prevent outbreaks, and that countries needed to continue to maintain controls.

“Relevant reports and data also show that many countries that use Chinese-made vaccines have expressed that they are safe and reliable, and have played a good role in their epidemic prevention efforts,” the ministry said. China has also emphasized that its vaccines target severe disease rather than transmission.

No vaccine fully prevents transmission, and people can still fall ill after being inoculated, but the relatively low efficacy rates of Chinese shots have been identified as a possible cause of the recent outbreaks.

The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines have efficacy rates of more than 90 percent. A variety of other vaccines — including AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson — have efficacy rates of around 70 percent. The Sinopharm vaccine developed with the Beijing Institute of Biological Products has an efficacy rate of 78.1 percent; the Sinovac vaccine has an efficacy rate of 51 percent.

The Chinese companies have not released much clinical data to show how their vaccines work at preventing transmission. On Monday, Shao Yiming, an epidemiologist with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said China needed to fully vaccinate 80 to 85 percent of its population to achieve herd immunity, revising a previous official estimate of 70 percent.

Data on breakthrough infections has not been made available, either, though a Sinovac study out of Chile showed that the vaccine was less effective than those from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna at preventing infection among vaccinated individuals.

A representative from Sinopharm hung up the phone when reached for comment. Sinovac did not respond to a request for comment.

William Schaffner, medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University, said the efficacy rates of Chinese shots could be low enough “to sustain some transmission, as well as create illness of a substantial amount in the highly vaccinated population, even though it keeps people largely out of the hospital.”

Despite the spike in cases, officials in both the Seychelles and Mongolia have defended Sinopharm, saying it is effective in preventing severe cases of the disease.

Batbayar Ochirbat, head researcher of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies at Mongolia’s Ministry of Health, said Mongolia had made the right decision to go with the Chinese-made shot, in part because it had helped keep the mortality rate low in the country. Data from Mongolia showed that the Sinopharm vaccine was actually more protective than the doses developed by AstraZeneca and Sputnik, a Russian vaccine, according to the Health Ministry.

The reason for the surge in Mongolia, Mr. Batbayar said, is that the country reopened too quickly, and many people believed they were protected after only one dose.

“I think you could say Mongolians celebrated too early,” he said. “My advice is the celebrations should start after the full vaccinations, so this is the lesson learned. There was too much confidence.”

Some health officials and scientists are less confident.

Nikolai Petrovsky, a professor at the College of Medicine and Public Health at Flinders University in Australia, said that with all of the evidence, it would be reasonable to assume the Sinopharm vaccine had minimal effect on curbing transmission. A major risk with the Chinese inoculation is that vaccinated people may have few or no symptoms and still spread the virus to others, he said.

“I think that this complexity has been lost on most decision makers around the world.”

In Indonesia, where a new variant is spreading, more than 350 doctors and health care workers recently came down with Covid-19 despite being fully vaccinated with Sinovac, according to the risk mitigation team of the Indonesian Medical Association. Across the country, 61 doctors died between February and June 7. Ten of them had taken the Chinese-made vaccine, the association said.

The numbers were enough to make Kenneth Mak, Singapore’s director of medical services, question the use of Sinovac. “It’s not a problem associated with Pfizer,” Mr. Mak said at a news conferenceon Friday. “This is actually a problem associated with the Sinovac vaccine.”

Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates were the first two countries to approve the Sinopharm shot, even before late-stage clinical trial data was released. Since then, there have been extensive reports of vaccinated people falling ill in both countries. In a statement, the Bahraini government’s media office said the kingdom’s vaccine rollout had been “efficient and successful to date.”

Still, last month officials from Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates announced that they would offer a third booster shot. The choices: Pfizer or more Sinopharm.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/22/business/economy/china-vaccines-covid-outbreak.html?searchResultPosition=1

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The dip in the US birthrate isn’t a crisis, but the fall in immigration may be

2021/06/23 Leave a comment

Similar argumentation to Canadian increased immigration advocates:

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced in May 2021 that the nation’s total fertility rate had reached 1.64 children per woman in 2020, dropping 4% from 2019, a record low for the nation.

The news led to many stories about a “baby bust” harming the country. The fear is that if the trend continues, the nation’s population may age and that will lead to difficulties in funding entitlements like Social Security and Medicaid for seniors in the future.

But as a statistician and sociologist who collaborates with the United Nations Population Division to develop new statistical population forecasting methods, I’m not yet calling this a crisis. In fact, America’s 2020 birth rate is in line with trends going back over 40 years. Similar trends have been observed in most of the U.S.‘s peer countries.

The other reason this is not a crisis, at least not yet, is that America’s historically high immigration rates have put the country in a demographic sweet spot relative to other developed countries like Germany and Japan.

But that could change. A recent dramatic decline in immigration is now putting the country’s demographic advantage at risk.

Falling immigration may be America’s real demographic crisis, not the dip in birth rates.

A predictable change

Most countries have experienced part or all of a fertility transition.

Fertility transitions occur when fertility falls from a high level – typical of agricultural societies – to a low level, more common in industrialized countries. This transition is due to falling mortality, more education for women, the increasing cost of raising children and other reasons.

In 1800, American women on average gave birth to seven children. The fertility rate decreased steadily, falling to just 1.74 children per woman in 1976, marking the end of America’s fertility transition. This is the point after which fertility no longer declined systematically, but instead began to fluctuate.

Birth rates have slightly fluctuated up and down in the 45 years since, rising to 2.11 in 2007. This was unusually high for a country that has made its fertility transition, and put the U.S. birth rate briefly at the top of developed countries.

A decline soon followed. The U.S. birth rate dropped incrementally from 2007 to 2020, at an average rate of about 2% per year. 2020’s decline was in line with this, and indeed was slower than some previous declines, such as the ones in 2009 and 2010. It put the U.S. on par with its peer nations, below the U.K. and France, but above Canada and Germany.

Using the methods I’ve helped develop, in 2019 the U.N. forecast a continuing drop in the global birth rate for the period from 2020 to 2025. This methodology also forecast that the overall world population will continue to rise over the 21st century.

The ideal situation for a country is steady, manageable population growth, which tends to go in tandem with a dynamic labor market and adequate provision for seniors, through entitlement programs or care by younger family members. In contrast, countries with declining populations face labor shortages and squeezes on provisions for seniors. At the other extreme, countries with very fast population growth can face massive youth unemployment and other problems.

Many countries that are peers with the U.S. now face brutally sharp declines in the number of working-age people for every senior within the next 20 years. For example, by 2040, Germany and Japan will have fewer than two working-age adults for every retired adult. In China, the ratio will go down from 5.4 workers per aged adult now to 1.7 in the next 50 years.

By comparison, the worker-to-senior ratio in the U.S. will also decrease, but more slowly, from 3.5 in 2020 to 2.1 by 2070. By 2055, the U.S. will have more workers per retiree than even Brazil and China.

Germany, Japan and other nations face population declines, with Japan’s population projected to go down by a massive 40% by the end of the century. In Nigeria, on the other hand, the population is projected to more than triple, to over 700 million, because of the currently high fertility rate and young population.

In contrast, the U.S. population is projected to increase by 31% over the next 50 years, which is both manageable and good for the economy. This is slower than the growth of recent decades, but much better than the declines faced by peer industrialized nations.

The reason for this is immigration. The U.S. has had the most net immigration in the world for decades, and the projections are based on the assumption that this will continue.

Migrants tend to be young, and to work. They contribute to the economy and bring dynamism to the society, along with supporting existing retirees, reducing the burden on current workers.

However, this source of demographic strength is at risk. Net migration into the U.S. declined by 40% from 2015 to 2019, likely at least in part because of unwelcoming government policies.

If this is not reversed, the country faces a demographic future more like that of Germany or even Japan, with a rapidly aging population and the economic and social problems that come with it. The jury is out on whether family-friendly social policies will have enough positive impact on fertility to compensate.

If U.S. net migration continues on its historical trend as forecast by the U.N., the U.S. population will continue to increase at a healthy pace for the rest of the century. In contrast, if U.S. net migration continues only at the much lower 2019 rate, population growth will grind almost to a halt by 2050, with about 60 million fewer people by 2100. The fall in migration would also accelerate the aging of the U.S. population, with 7% fewer workers per senior by 2060, leading to possible labor shortages and challenges in funding Social Security and Medicare.

While the biggest stream of immigrants is from Latin America, that is likely to decrease in the future given the declining fertility rates and aging populations there. In the longer term, more immigrants are likely to come from sub-Saharan Africa, and it will be important for America’s demographic future to attract, welcome and retain them.

Source: The dip in the US birthrate isn’t a crisis, but the fall in immigration may be

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For many young Hong Kong graduates, Canada’s new routes to immigration have turned into a dead end

2021/06/23 Leave a comment

The impact of the five-year limit, designed to encourage younger immigrants:

When the Canadian government invited Hong Kongers to apply for a work permit that Ottawa designed solely for people from the territory, plumbing engineer Kay Pang applied as soon as he could.

The open work permit allows Pang to travel anywhere in Canada to look for a job, but he recently learned that the document — contrary to what the government had promised in February — won’t expedite permanent residency for everybody from Hong Kong. In truth, people who graduated in 2016 or earlier are not eligible.

His realization comes as authorities in Hong Kong, where freedoms have been increasingly restricted since last year, prepare to enforce a law that, according to the Hong Kong Bar Association, could allow them to block people from entering or leaving the territory as of Aug. 1.

However, the bar association’s interpretation of the new law is disputed by the city’s security bureau which says the change is aimed at stopping asylum seekers from coming to Hong Kong and is allowed under a global aviation agreement.

“It’s really sad for me,” said Pang, who graduated from City University of Hong Kong in 2016, about the new challenges on his road to permanent residency. He had planned to come to Vancouver next January to look for career opportunities in robotics engineering.

New paths to permanent residency

Hong Kongers were allowed to apply for the open work permit from February. The permit allows them to spend up to three years in Canada to gain enough work experience here in order to apply for permanent residency.

At the initial announcements in November and February, no details were given about how recently potential applicants for permanent residency would need to have graduated.

On June 8, Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino unveiled more details. There are two new paths to permanent residency exclusively for Hong Kong residents who recently graduated from a Canadian post-secondary institution (“Stream A”), or recently graduated from a Canadian or foreign institution who are working in Canada (“Stream B”).

Applicants via Stream B must hold a degree, diploma or graduate credential obtained in the past five years, on top of at least one year of full-time work experience or 1,560 hours of part-time work in Canada in the past three years.

Many graduates eyeing immigration to Canada with an open work permit prefer Stream B to Stream A, because they don’t want to spend money going back to school.

But if their degree was awarded in 2016 or before, they face not being able to meet the requirements for permanent residency via that stream.

‘Why would you just shut the door?’

Pang, among more than 28,000 people graduating from Hong Kong post-secondary institutions in 2016, applied for an open work permit in March. But even if he landed in B.C. and got a job now, it wouldn’t leave him enough time to get the necessary one year of full-time work experience before his degree becomes ineligible.

Hong Kong software developer Edward Wong is in a similar situation. He received an open work permit in May and booked a flight ticket to Toronto, with plans to settle there, in September.

But Wong, who graduated from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2016, also faces being ineligible for permanent residency.

He said he doesn’t understand why Immigration Canada has created this additional hurdle.

Source: For many young Hong Kong graduates, Canada’s new routes to immigration have turned into a dead end

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