Survey shows support for migrant workers getting more benefits and protections, as senators introduce motion for change

2020/12/12 Leave a comment

Good initiative by Senators Black and Omidvar in commissioning this poll:

Eight in 10 Canadians say temporary foreign workers should be entitled to the same benefits and protection as any other workers in this country, according to a Nanos Research poll.

The survey, commissioned by senators Ratna Omidvar and Rob Black, was released Thursday in the wake of a Star story that highlighted the plight of hundreds of Trinidadian seasonal migrant farm workers, who are stuck in Canada due to COVID-19 travel restrictions and unable to access employment insurance benefits.

The pandemic has shed light on the vulnerability of temporary foreign workers, who pay the same EI premiums as Canadian workers but who have difficulty accessing the benefits due to their precarious immigration status.

Trinidad and Tobago has closed its airports to international flights since March and the estimated 400 stranded workers are on the verge of losing their legal status in Canada as their work permits expire on Dec. 15. Many have been denied EI, with officials saying their “closed” work permit prevents the workers from looking for other employers, resulting in them being declared not “ready or available” for work.

The senators say that in addition to benefits, migrant workers should have “pathways” to obtaining permanent resident status in Canada, something that is currently very limited for these workers.

“The pandemic has highlighted the fact that temporary migrant workers and seasonal agricultural workers are essential to Canada,” said Black. “We are calling on the Government of Canada for pathways to permanency for essential workers, should they so desire.”

The poll of 1,040 Canadians was conducted in late October and independent from the Star story.

It found that 93 per cent of respondents said migrant workers are essential contributors to Canada’s agricultural sector and 81 per cent said they deserved a pathway to permanent residence.

Canada’s agricultural sector depends on the temporary migrant work force, which makes up 17 per cent of the total employment in the sector.

“We need more concrete and equitable improvements to our migrant workers program. Since the workers are essential to our well being and safety, then the safest … and the most human way forward is to provide them with more permanent residency options,” Omidvar said.

Both Black and Omidvar plan to introduce a motion in the Senate on Thursday calling on the Liberal government to create permanent residence pathways for migrant workers.

Source: Survey shows support for migrant workers getting more benefits and protections, as senators introduce motion for change

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A new ranking is giving Canada’s approach to immigrants top marks, with a notable exception

2020/12/10 Leave a comment

Good summary of the report and findings. MIPEX is policy-based and evaluates policies, not how effectively they have been implemented or the actual socioeconomic outcomes.

For that reason, I prefer the OECD’s integration indicators approach as they compare outcomes such as unemployment, educational attainment, low-income etc. Have not yet updated this table with selected OECD indicators yet but unlikely that these have changed significantly.

And I remain to be convinced that access to municipal voting is that important in Canada given that we have a relatively straightforward citizenship path, one that will become even more facilitative should the Liberal government implement its election commitment to eliminate citizenship fees.

Nevertheless, policy comparison indices like MIPEX are useful policy tools given their comprehensive nature to understand differences between countries as long as one also looks at the actual socioeconomic indicators:

Canada has been ranked fourth in the world when it comes to integrating immigrants, after it fell out of the top five nations under the former Conservative government in the previous survey.

The country jumped two spots in the latest Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX) computed by an international network of experts in recognition of policies that emphasize equal rights, opportunities and security for newcomers.

The index, last released in 2015, puts Canada ahead of the world’s major immigration destinations: Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.

“Since the last edition of MIPEX, Canada returned to its traditional path to citizenship and strengthened its commitment to equal rights and opportunities,” said the 2019 MIPEX profile on Canada to be released Wednesday.

“Over the past five years, Canada improved policies on access to basic rights and equal opportunities.”

Some improvements cited in the MIPEX profile of Canada include the 2017 Citizenship Act, by which the Liberal government removed obstacles for immigrants to meet residence and language requirements created by its Conservative predecessor; and the restoration of health care for asylum seekers.

“Five years ago, we were sixth and now we’re fourth. It’s worth saying that when you’re already so high up, it’s difficult to get an improvement,” said Anna Triandafyllidou, the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration at Ryerson University.

“I think the improvement should be valued significantly. Overall, we should congratulate ourselves.”

Basing their ranking on numerous indicators, researchers survey international government policies as to how well they treat migrants in eight areas: labour market mobility, family reunification, education, health, political participation, permanent residence, access to nationality and anti-discrimination efforts.

The index is peer-reviewed and released every five years to identify government policies that support or hinder newcomers in their integration. The number of countries covered has increased to 52 nations from 38 in the previous edition.

Top 10 countries

CountriesImmigration integration score
Sweden86
Finland85
Portugal81
Canada80
New Zealand77
USA73
Belgium69
Australia65
Brazil64
Ireland64

Source: Migrant Integration Policy Index 2020 Get the data

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Scoring 86 points out of 100, Sweden has remained the top ranked country, followed by Finland (86) and Portugal (81), with Canada being awarded 80 points. New Zealand, the U.S., Norway, Belgium, Australia and Brazil round up the top 10.

“Among English-speaking countries, Canada is becoming a more attractive and inclusive global destination,” said Thomas Huddleston, director of research for the Migration Policy Group, lead author of the European Union-funded index.

“Canada, along with New Zealand, is taking the place of previous top-ranking countries such as Australia, the U.K. and the United States, which all go down in the MIPEX rankings this round under pressure from populist political forces.”

The index credits Canada for overall policies that encourage the public to see immigrants as their equals, neighbours and potential citizens.

“These policies matter because the way that governments treat immigrants strongly influences how well immigrants and the public interact and think of each other,” it noted.

“Integration policies emerge as one of the strongest factors shaping not only the public’s willingness to accept and interact with immigrants, but also immigrants’ own attitudes, belonging, participation and even health in their new home country.”

Bottom 10 countries

CountriesImmigration integration score
Bulgaria40
Poland40
Croatia39
Slovakia39
Latvia37
Lithuania37
China32
Russia31
Indonesia26
India24

Source: Migrant Integration Policy Index 2020 Get the data

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As the world sees the rise of nationalism, populism and xenophobia, Triandafyllidou said Canada fortunately has very well established public support for immigration, with all major political parties recognizing the importance of pro-immigration policies.

But it’s not to say Canada doesn’t have room to improve on its ranking.

MIPEX found the political participation of immigrants in Canada “halfway favourable.”

While immigrants can become active in local civil society and become full citizens, it said Canada, unlike other major destinations, does not experiment in local democracy by expanding voting rights or consultative structures.

“Canada’s score is relatively lower in (newcomers’) political participation. The reason is there are no political rights for non-citizens,” said Triandafyllidou.

“It has not been part of the objective of different governments, including the current Liberal government, to open up channels for local political participation (as in) voting rights and to be a candidate.”

Source: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2020/12/09/a-new-ranking-is-giving-canadas-approach-to-immigrants-top-marks-with-a-notable-exception.html

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UK races to deport asylum seekers ahead of Brexit

2020/12/09 Leave a comment

Of note:

Scores of vulnerable asylum seekers, including suspected victims of trafficking, are scheduled to be deported this week as the home secretary Priti Patel ramps up removal operations ahead of Brexit.

Three flights this week, two to Germany and one to France, with possible transfers to Austria, Poland, Spain and Lithuania, are planned amid opposition from campaigners who say they have evidence that cases are being “rushed” through to avoid Patel’s own published policy on identifying trafficking victims.

The development comes days after Patel branded those calling for last week’s deportation flight to Jamaica to be stopped as “do-gooding celebrities”, a label that prompted victims of the Windrush scandal to describe the home secretary as “deeply insulting and patronising”.

Source: UK races to deport asylum seekers ahead of Brexit

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How Canada is fighting the war on talent

2020/12/09 Leave a comment

Good analysis:

Some might look at Noubar Afeyan’s career as a frustrating example of a talented Canadian scientist who got away. The chairman and co-founder of Boston-based Moderna, one of the leading COVID-19 vaccine makers, was born in Lebanon, immigrated to Canada with his family in the 1970s and did his undergraduate studies at McGill University.

Then we lost him. Mr. Afeyan left to get his PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, eventually becoming a star scientist and entrepreneur. He has founded several successful U.S. biotech startups and registered more than 100 patents.

The good news is that Canada’s technology landscape has dramatically changed in the past three-plus decades.

Yes, like Mr. Afeyan, many Canadians are still drawn south by the reputations of U.S. colleges and tech giants. But the evidence suggests Canada has largely reversed its brain drain. This country’s fast-growing technology sector is more than holding its own in the global race for talent, even after the deep economic shock of the pandemic, according to an analysis of employment data contained in a new report for the Innovation Economy Council.

Despite the terrible toll of the pandemic, Canada has become more competitive because there are more opportunities here than ever for people to learn, to build companies and to thrive. And that’s making the market for technology jobs remarkably resilient.

Indeed, there are nearly 100,000 more jobs now in so-called STEM disciplines – science, technology, engineering and math – in this country than there were before the pandemic. There is still a gaping hole in Canada’s job market, but not for these people. For the most part, Canadian startups and technology companies absorbed the shock, moved to remote work and in some cases have expanded aggressively.

The resilience of tech employment in these uncertain times is a testament to the Canadian sector’s core strengths – an immigration system that welcomes talented foreigners, a growing crop of promising homegrown STEM graduates and a thriving ecosystem of companies.

It’s a tale of two economies, of course. While there was a net gain of 98,500 STEM jobs, Canada had 431,000 fewer non-STEM jobs in October than it had in February, in sectors such as retail, tourism and airlines.

And there is a cautionary note about the STEM jobs. The number of job postings for these workers is down roughly 50 per cent since February, according to an analysis of data from the Labour Market Information Council. This suggests that companies are still hiring, but perhaps not as enthusiastically as they were before the pandemic.

Another consequence of COVID-19 is that it has accelerated the shift to distributed work forces in the tech industry – teams of employees scattered across different cities and countries. Companies have learned that it’s no longer essential to bring people to them. They can just as easily go where the talent is.

Tech giants – including Google, Facebook and Amazon – have set up large Canadian research and development operations in recent years. A growing number of foreign startups are doing the same. They are moving here to tap our plentiful and affordable supply of programmers, engineers, artificial-intelligence experts and scientists.

Talent flows both ways. Thousands of Canadians continue to pursue careers and education in the U.S. despite four years of anti-immigration rhetoric by outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump. Mr. Trump threatened to tighten H-1B visas, but it turns out Canadian STEM workers are still successfully applying for them – more Canadians were issued H-1Bs in 2019 than in 2018.

Still, that exodus is significantly smaller than the inflow of foreign students, workers and entrepreneurs. Most of our departing STEM workers go to the United States – IEC research shows that more than 10,000 Canadians went south in 2019 with H-1B visas and green cards. But Canada gained nearly 23,000 global STEM workers through permanent residency and temporary foreign worker visas that year.

These newcomers are more likely than Canadians born here to work and study in STEM disciplines. It’s proof that Canada is a place where talented foreigners want to live, work and start companies.

There is also some evidence that the combination of U.S. political strife and China’s democracy crackdown in Hong Kong may be drawing Canadian expats home. As many as 300,000 of the roughly three million Canadian passport holders living outside the country may have returned home since COVID-19 hit, many for good.

But without opportunity, none of that would happen.

Today, it’s tempting to imagine a different a different life story for Moderna’s Noubar Afeyan. Instead of leaving, he stays in Montreal and goes on to found a biotech company that develops a Canadian-made COVID-19 vaccine that the rest of the world desperately wants. His company is worth more than $60-billion and employs thousands of Canadian scientists.

The resilience of Canada’s STEM work force through the pandemic suggests this kind of homegrown-hero story is not so far-fetched.

Canadians will always leave to find their way in the world. This week’s sale of highly touted Montreal startup Element AI to a California software company marked an unfortunate loss of both intellectual property and talent. Canada isn’t the world’s biggest pond and we’ll never retain all of our companies and people. But we’ve shown that we can win the war for talent.

The Trump presidency peddled its anti-immigration messaging, eroding the false narrative that the best and brightest were always welcome in America. Canada countered with policies and public-relations efforts aimed at attracting talent, such as the highly successful Global Talent Stream program and Communitech’s “We Want You” campaign. It has worked.

But the talent war isn’t over. The key is to continue to create – and promote – opportunities and incentives for the best and brightest here in Canada. If we’ve learned anything from the past few years, it’s that narratives matter. And Canada has a good story to tell.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-how-canada-is-fighting-the-war-on-talent/

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Is anyone on Earth not an immigrant?

2020/12/08 Leave a comment

The very long view but one worth reflecting on:

Human beings tend to be fascinated with their beginnings. Origin stories are found across cultures, religions, ethnicities and nationalities — and they are all deeply important. These stories tell people where they come from, how they fit in and how everyone fits together.

One of these stories, of course, is the story of human genes, and it’s a story anyone with human DNA shares.

As scientists find more ancient human DNA, sample more modern DNA and develop more ways to analyze this genetic material, it’s revealing a lot about how early humans moved — and moved and moved — around the world, coming to inhabit nearly every swath of land.

So after thousands and thousands of years of nearly constant migration, are there any people out there who have never left the spot where it’s thought Homo sapiens evolved? Put another way, is there anybody on Earth who isn’t an immigrant?

“From a scientific point of view, maybe the only people that you could consider not to be immigrants would be some Khoe-San-speaking groups in southern Africa,” said Austin Reynolds, an assistant professor of anthropology at Baylor University in Texas who specializes in human population genetics.

The designation Khoe-San (pronounced coy-sawn) refers to certain African communities in the areas of Botswana, Namibia, Angola and South Africa who speak similar languages with distinctive clicking consonants, Reynolds told Live Science.

Reynolds said there are two main factors indicating that Khoe-San groups may be non-migratory descendants of original humans: They live in the place where it’s likely humans first appeared, and they have a high amount of genetic diversity. A good way to understand why high genetic diversity indicates original ancestry is by comparing genes to a bowl of M&Ms, Reynolds said. Handfuls taken out of the bowl — i.e. people who broke off from the original human population — might have only a couple M&Ms colors in them, but the original bowl will have all the colors.

Yet despite the Khoe-San groups’ proximity to the proverbial “cradle of humankind” and their significant genetic diversity, identifying them as the last genetically aboriginal peoples is not cut and dry.

Firstly, researchers don’t know for sure that southern Africa is the cradle of humankind. Some scientists think humans first evolved in East Africa, said Reynolds, and scientists haven’t amassed enough archaeological evidence in either area to be completely certain just where Homo sapiens first came on the scene.

There’s even a possibility people evolved in western Africa, Mark Stoneking, a molecular geneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, told Live Science. Different environments do a worse or better job at preserving fossil remains, Stoneking said, so just because human remains were or were not found in specific places doesn’t mean humans didn’t live there long ago.

Stoneking doesn’t think there are any folks left on Earth who aren’t — scientifically, at least — immigrants.

“People have always been on the move,” Stoneking said. His recent genetic research on populations across Asia has shown that there’s a touch of just about everyone in everyone else. “All human populations have been in contact with others,” including the Khoe-San, he said, denoted by evidence in their genes, their cultures and their languages.

Early humans moved extensively around Africa for more than 100,000 years before leaving, at which point they probably moved out of eastern Africa into the Middle East, Stoneking said. It’s likely that not long afterward, people headed southeastward along the Indian coast, with many more waves of migrants following these original adventurers over a span of tens of thousands of years. Along the way, there would have been a great exchange of DNA, Stoneking said, and these two components — movement and intermixture — is what he sees as a defining characteristic of the human species.

“Humans — what they like to do is migrate, and they like to have sex,” Stoneking said. And so it seems to have been since time immemorial.

Source: Is anyone on Earth not an immigrant?

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Feds say increased immigration targets key for economic recovery, but critics wary of ambitious plan’s feasibility

2020/12/08 Leave a comment

The more fundamental question is not whether the government can manage these levels of immigration but rather whether they are appropriate given the COVID-induced recession and the impact on immigrant economic integration. Nick Nanos’ comments noteworthy:

The government plans to welcome more than 400,000 newcomers to the country next year, but Conservative MP Raquel Dancho is warning that backlogs in Canada’s immigration system could be a problem.

Ambitious immigration targets are part of the Liberal government’s economic recovery plan. The arrival of new permanent residents has plummeted this year as the COVID-19 pandemic has shut borders and restricted travel across the world.

Leading pollster Nik Nanos said the government doesn’t need to defend bringing in more Canadians, but “I think they have to explain what the urgency is to bring more Canadians in now when we’re in the midst of a pandemic—and I think those are two different issues.”

In late October, Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino (Eglinton-Lawrence, Ont.) announced a new government target of 401,000 new permanent residents in 2021 as part of Canada’s economic recovery following the COVID-19 pandemic, the first step in a plan that would see immigration levels increase by a little over one per cent of the Canadian population every year for the next three years.

As part of Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s fall economic update on Nov. 30, the government highlighted their commitment to “an immigration system that supports economic growth, diversity, and helps build vibrant, dynamic and inclusive communities.”

“Immigrants play an important role in driving Canada’s economic growth, contributing to half of the average real GDP growth over 2016-2019,” according to the statement.

But Ms. Dancho (Kildonan-St. Paul, Man.), her party’s immigration critic, told The Hill Times that the Conservatives “absolutely believe that economic growth is also tied to immigration, and the family reunification that goes with it,” but she said she was skeptical of how the government would reach such an ambitious goal.

“They won’t even achieve half of their goal this year, and now they’re promising what we understand to be the largest influx of permanent residents ever in any single year in Canadian history next year. But I just don’t see how that’s going to happen,” said Ms. Dancho.

Conservative MP Raquel Dancho, her party’s immigration critic, says she has ‘a lot of concerns’ around the feasibility of bringing in more than 400,000 newcomers given backlogs in the system caused by the pandemic.

“If you look at what’s happening with confirmations of permanent residents, there’s well over 10,000 that we’re aware of abroad that were approved, did everything right—were highly skilled, set to come to Canada, sold their homes, took their kids out of school, quit their jobs—and then the government with their [Order In Council] that closed the border, said that they need the travel authorization form, and they haven’t issued those to most of those 10,000 people,” said Ms. Dancho.

“So if they can’t even get these 10,000 people already approved—real people that are suffering—I’m not sure how they’re going to get 401,000 permanent residents approved next year,” said Ms. Dancho. “I have a lot of concerns about that, even beyond the economic growth opportunity of immigration, just the feasibility of bringing in this many people when they’re frankly mistreating the people that they tried to bring in this year.”

Mr. Nanos’ firm Nanos Research took a poll on the issue in November and found that just under two in five Canadians think that Canada should accept the same amount of immigrants in 2021 as we did in 2019.

“What clearly exists is that when Canadians are asked about their support for immigration, accepting refugees and bringing new Canadians into Canada, when anyone tests on that principle, there’s a significantly high level of support,” said Mr. Nanos.

“Canadians understand that most Canadians have come from another place, that new Canadians contribute to the economy, and that we need new Canadians in order to stay prosperous,” said Mr. Nanos. “What we found, in the specific research that we’ve most recently done on immigration, is that there’s not a lot of appetite to bring in more people at this particular time.”

“There’s support—but we tested on the specific numbers,” said Mr. Nanos. “We tested on the 340,000 number—do people want more, do they want to keep it at the same level, or do they want less, and what was clear was that the appetite to bring in more than 340,000 at this particular point in time is actually quite weak.”

Mr. Nanos said he didn’t believe these findings means that Canadians are xenophobic or that they aren’t accepting of refugees.

“But they do see that the economy is in different levels of shutdown right across the country, that Canadians have uncertainty about their own job prospects because many people are being paid to stay home,” said Mr. Nanos.

Part of the personal brand of the prime minister and the Liberal government is being welcoming of refugees, according to Mr. Nanos, pointing out that one of the dividing lines when Mr. Trudeau won his first election in 2015 was the welcoming of Syrian refugees.

“So I see the welcoming of new Canadians as part of the DNA of the prime minister and the Liberal Party at this point in time, and it’s pretty clear [they] believe that it’s not only the right thing to do, but that it’s good for the Canadian economy in the long run, and is part of the growth strategy for Canada,” said Mr. Nanos.

Number of new permanent residents has ‘plummeted’ in 2020

Immigration Lawyer Colin Singer, who is the managing partner at Immigration.ca, told The Hill Times that the number of permanent resident arrivals has plummeted in 2020 compared to the year prior, with only 143,465 new arrivals in the first nine months of the year compared to 263,945 in 2019.

“With immigration levels set to rise above 400,000 newcomers per year [starting] next year, the federal government first plans to invest $72.1-million in a modern, digital platform for receiving and processing immigration applications,” according to Mr. Singer.

“It will then spend a further $15-million on enhancing foreign credential recognition, aiming to cut the time it takes for newcomers to integrate into Canadian society by finding jobs in their field more quickly,” wrote Mr. Singer in an emailed response to The Hill Times.

Claudia Hepburn, CEO of Windmill Microlending, a charity that offers microloans to help skilled immigrants and refugees to continue their careers in Canada, said the COVID-19 pandemic has shone a spotlight on the labour market shortages that Canada faces in many sectors, including health, IT, engineering and STEM, as well as transportation.

“Skilled immigration is crucial to any plan to solve those shortages, but sometimes they need help to become job ready,” wrote Ms. Hepburn in an emailed response to The Hill Times. “The not-for-profit sector plays a crucial role in helping immigrants become job ready. A successful plan for integrating immigrants into the labour force is as important to solving labour shortages as an ambitious immigration target. We need both.”

Along with increasing the numbers of immigrants, Canada also needs to make the pathways to employment as accessible as possible, according to Ms. Hepburn.

“This means investment in the communication of the resources available to assist in their employment journeys,” said Ms. Hepburn. “Support is also required for those resources and organizations with experience in assisting immigrants on their employment journey in order to enable them [to] scale and facilitate the increase in numbers.”

‘We need newcomers to help our economy bounce back’

Alexander Cohen, Mr. Mendicino’s press secretary, said Canada’s short term recovery and long term prosperity rely on immigration.

“We need newcomers to help our economy bounce back after the pandemic, and address the stark demographic challenges we face with an aging population,” wrote Mr. Cohen in an emailed response to The Hill Times. “Put simply: immigrants create jobs.”

“One in three business owners is an immigrant, and our plan sets out a path for responsible increases to immigration to help the economy recover, with about 60 per cent of admissions in the economic class,” according to Mr. Cohen. “Newcomers also represent about a third of those working on the front lines of the pandemic, like family doctors, pharmacists and nurse’s aides.”

“We’ll continue welcoming the best and brightest from around the world, who have contributed so much throughout the pandemic and bring the skills our businesses need to thrive.”

Bloc Québécois MP Christine Normandin, her party’s immigration critic, told The Hill Times that the province of Quebec is not necessarily looking to raise it’s immigration level moving forward—and that the province has in fact decided in past years to lower the rate of selection in order to deal with backlogs in the system.

Bloc Québécois MP Christine Normandin, her party’s immigration critic, says ‘we can be quicker on our feet to select people that will able to join the job market’ once tens of thousands of open case files for skilled workers are closed.

“There’s still something around 35,000 open case files for skilled workers that we want to have processed, so when it’s done, we can be quicker on our feet to select people that will able to join the job market,” said Ms. Normandin.

But in recent conversations with her constituents, Ms. Normandin said that she’s spoken with many industry representatives and business owners and has found that even in a context of high unemployment, it’s also possible to have workforce shortages.

“It’s possible to have both at the same time, and they’re a bit afraid that at some point, immigration will decide to cut on some streams of immigrations, for example the low wage stream, because of the high rate of unemployment,” said Ms. Normandin. “But it’s still hard to find members of the local workforce in some cases. Or when it comes to skilled workers, even though there’s a high rate of unemployment in Quebec, it doesn’t mean that all of a sudden you’ll find welders with 10 years of experience.”

“So we still need immigration even though there’s a high rate of unemployment, and that’s something we hear a lot,” said Ms. Normandin.

Source: Feds say increased immigration targets key for economic recovery, but critics wary of ambitious plan’s feasibility

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Douglas Todd: Hidden foreign ownership helps explain Metro Vancouver’s ‘decoupling’ of house prices, incomes

2020/12/07 Leave a comment

Of note:

The lack of connection between soaring housing prices and tepid local wages in Metro Vancouver is caused in large part by hidden foreign ownership, says a peer-reviewed study from Simon Fraser University that is being welcomed by the B.C. minister responsible for housing.

Based on data Statistics Canada has been collecting only recently, SFU public policy specialist Joshua Gordon’s paper shows the “decoupling” of housing prices from incomes in Metro Vancouver has been caused by “significant sums of foreign capital that have been excluded from official statistics.”

Gordon’s research set out to solve a puzzle in Greater Vancouver and, to a lesser extent, Toronto. How can tens of thousands of owners who tell Revenue Canada they are low income (earning less than $44,000 a year) consistently afford homes valued in the $2- to $10-million range?

Source: Douglas Todd: Hidden foreign ownership helps explain Metro Vancouver’s ‘decoupling’ of house prices, incomes

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The U.S. Has Embraced Immigrant Tech Entrepreneurs. Now It’s Europe’s Turn

2020/12/04 Leave a comment

Interesting that this article is silent on the impact of Trump administration policies with respect to H1-B visas and reducing the attractiveness of the USA for international students. Major oversight of blind spot notwithstanding his points on Europe:

The world is on the cusp of a counterattack on COVID thanks to several vaccines that are currently seeking regulatory approval and a swift rollout.For entrepreneurs and the tech industry, this is a moment when their value to society is demonstrated: business and technology is (along with medicine) leading us out of the pandemic.

But Germany’s Turkish community, and Europe’s minorities in general, are celebrating for a different reason. Turkish-Germans are an often marginalized group, similar to other minorities around the world. Like any community, they are proud of their success stories, such as Ugur Sahin and Özlem Türeci, the husband-and-wife co-founders of BioNTech, the firm behind the first vaccine to report a successful phase three trial, based on cutting edge mRNA technology.

These highly visible success stories are relatively rare. Germany, just like much of Europe, has boardrooms that are almost uniformly white. This even includes the tech sector, which in the United States is one of the most open and meritocratic places in the world.

In my 20 years in tech, including in Silicon Valley, I have worked with founders with roots all over the world.

This shouldn’t be surprising: many of America’s biggest tech success stories are those of immigrant backgrounds. Google co-founder Sergey Brin was born in Moscow. Tesla’s Elon Musk is South African. Steve Jobs’s biological father is from Syria, and Jeff Bezos’s stepfather, Mike Bezos, is Cuban-American.

In the past, things have been very different on the other side of the Atlantic, where the only possible equivalent would have been Paris-born eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, who moved to the United States as a child, along with his Iranian-born parents.

Arguably it is Silicon Valley’s open attitude to investment and entrepreneurship that makes these American successes possible. Despite there still being no European Silicon Valley, I’m amazed at the level of innovation I’m seeing from start-ups across the continent, including places like Spain and France which are not always thought of as tech hubs. Many of those founders are from minorities, which are a natural fit for techpreneurship.

The huge expansion of tech jobs and tech-based entrepreneurship in the U.S. over the last two decades has created exponential demand for technical skills. Those are the types of skills that many immigrant kids are nudged towards, thanks to parents from developing nations who often see the value of science rather than, say, liberal arts.

A similar expansion is underway in Europe, despite a large portion of the continent’s industries still being traditional. To continue with the German example, only one of the country’s fivelargest companies, Siemens, is tech-related; its culture is very different from the “move fast and break things” attitude of Silicon Valley, with the firm being founded in 1847 (32 years before Edison filed a patent for his light bulb).

It is only in new, innovative industries that the immigrant work ethic and appetite for risk can come into their own.

To create more BioNTechs, European firms have to be ready to make way for the new wave of start-ups—whoever their founders are—without being suffocated by legacy businesses that are centuries-old and may be set in their ways.

At a more basic level, the relationship between host communities around the world and those of immigrant background needs to change. Most societies are very good at tolerating immigrants as much-needed Uber drivers and restaurant servers, less so at supporting them to develop their skills—and their children’s—to equip them for the top.

This isn’t sustainable, because each generation has grander designs than the one before. My parents moved to America in 1971, and as a second-generation immigrant my goals in life are even broader and more assertive than theirs. I have started a business, for example, when they didn’t. Just as I was given the opportunity to think bigger than my parents, my children are even more ambitious than I am.

Europe needs to move from a tactical, transactional mindset with migration towards a strategic, vision-based one. It should be more positive and aspirational: “We want to be the best, and we need to attract the world’s dreamers, innovators and disruptors if we are going to achieve that.”

As an American, I sometimes feel that Europe is stuck in the past. As a young country, America is not as set in its ways as many European nations. The U.S. still seems to act like a teenager: excited about the opportunities of the future, and perhaps sometimes being naive and getting itself into tricky situations (like a disputed election result).

Europe, on the other hand, acts more like a retiree. It prizes stability above all else—and many of its businesses are the same. Sometimes the price of stability has meant sacrificing innovation and opportunity.

The European Union is trying to create a similarly strong narrative to the American Dream to drive it forward. The post-Brexit United Kingdom is attempting the same with the image of “Global Britain.”

Whether they succeed will be demonstrated in the names and faces that shape their economies in the 21st century, and how similar they are to those that dominated the 20th.

Source: The U.S. Has Embraced Immigrant Tech Entrepreneurs. Now It’s Europe’s Turn

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Enrollment By International Students In U.S. Colleges Plummets

2020/12/03 Leave a comment

More on the decline of the attractiveness of study in the USA under the Trump administration. Will see over the next few years the degree to which that changes under a Biden administration:

Nikita Chinchwade moved from India to the U.S. last fall to get a master’s degree.

“It had been a dream of mine for a very long time because of the quality of education here,” she says.

The U.S. has historically been a top destination for international students. At last count there were more than a million. They’re attracted by the high-tech facilities and opportunities for research; the easy, nonhierarchical interaction between faculty and students; and the open, social e­nvironment on campuses.

But this year, in a survey of more than 700 colleges and universities, the Institute of International Education found total international enrollment plummeted 16% between fall of 2019 and fall of 2020. Statistics on new international students was even grimmer — a 43% drop. Tens of thousands have deferred enrollment.

“We’ve never had a decrease like that,” said Allan Goodman, who heads the Institute of International Education. But he added that he believes the numbers will go back up once the coronavirus pandemic passes, predicting “surges of students” enrolling. “What we do know is, when pandemics end, there’s tremendous pent-up demand.”

While the pandemic is an obvious reason for the decline, some experts point out that international student enrollment has been declining since 2016.

All this has serious consequences for higher education. To put it simply: These students bring in a lot of money.

Before the pandemic, international students contributed about $44 billion a year to the U.S. economy, says Rachel Banks, senior director for public policy and legislative strategy at NAFSA: Association of International Educators, citing an analysis from the 2018-2019 school year. And those students support about half a million jobs.

“They typically pay higher tuition rates than domestic students do,” Banks says. “And in some instances, they’ll even pay more than out-of-state students would. So schools certainly would feel that directly.”

These students contribute more than money, bringing social and cultural diversity to U.S. campuses.

“Everybody is learning from each other. So you want to cast your net as wide as you can,” says Martin McFarlane, director of international student services at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The campus has among the highest number of international students of any university in the U.S., more than 10,500.

McFarlane says higher education is all about an exchange of ideas: “We are so interconnected globally that if you are cutting yourself off from that, you’re doing yourself a disservice.”

A Duke University study found that domestic students who engaged with international students enhanced their self-confidence, leadership and quantitative skills. U.S. undergrads were also more likely to “appreciate art [and] literature,” “place current problems in historical perspective” and “read or speak a foreign language.”

The United States has long recognized the long-term benefit to hosting these students in terms of influence and magnifying the country’s diplomatic “soft power.” A recent study shows that the U.S. educated 62 of last year’s world leaders. And research has found that international students develop a trust with their host countries, which also leads to future visits and future business interactions.

About half of international students come to the U.S. to study in the STEM fields: science, technology, engineering and math. A 2017 analysis found that foreign nationals, for example, make up 81% of full-time graduate students in electrical engineering, 79% in computer science and 59% in civil engineering.

Alexis Abramson, dean of the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth, worries about having fewer international students in the STEM fields. “We’re all very concerned that the U.S. will lose its competitive edge,” she says. “Engineers and scientists invent things and innovate and solve a lot of the most pressing problems facing our world.”

A recent survey of 500 U.S. university officials found several reasons for fewer international students, including the visa process and high tuition costs as well as the political climate and feeling “unwelcome.” For the first time, a main reason listed was “global competition.” In stark contrast to the U.S. declines over the past few years, the U.K., Canada and Australia have seen enrollment spikes.

Banks of NAFSA isn’t surprised. She says the Trump administration has made it harder to study in the U.S. through its anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies. Competitor countries, she adds, are stepping in to fill the void, “falling over themselves to say, ‘Look, the United States doesn’t want you, but we do!’ ”

Arvind Ganesh always wanted to study in the United States. He’s 22 and originally from Chennai, India. But when the time came to make a decision for graduate school, he chose Canada. “The education expense is one thing; the cost of living is another,” he explained. The U.S. also has “the problem of security to international students. I’m talking about racial bias.”

Students like Ganesh have contributed to double-digit increases in Canada. It has lower tuition costs, generous work-study policies and clear pathways to permanent residency and citizenship.

The U.K., America’s biggest competitor for international students, is also trying hard to recruit more, with an ambitious goal of 600,000 students by 2030. As part of its Study UK effort, officials have relaxed policies so students can stay and get more work experience after they graduate.

Ganesh starts classes in a month and is excited about making friends and learning about Canada. He’s not too worried about culture shock, saying he has heard Canadians are very friendly. “Even though it’s a very cold country, but you still feel warm when you feel people are welcoming and embracing.”

He says that’s what makes a different country feel like a home away from home.

Source: Enrollment By International Students In U.S. Colleges Plummets

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The Importance Of Immigrants For The Future Of Tech

2020/12/02 Leave a comment

As noted frequently and likely that the incoming Biden administration will reverse many of the counter-productive Trump administration policies:

The importance of migrants was underlined during the Covid-19 crisis when it was revealed that the founders of both BioNTech and Moderna, two of the companies at the forefront of the development of a vaccine against the virus, are immigrants to the United States and Germany respectively.

This should perhaps come as no surprise. After all, I wrote recentlyabout the importance of immigrants for jobs, after new researchfrom Kellogg School of Management showed that immigrants actually create a huge number of jobs by virtue of their entrepreneurial abilities.

Wharton research further elaborates on this point by pointing out that immigrant founders not only create jobs, but also bring considerable finance with them. The authors state that cross-border VC investment is now at record levels, with this in large part due to the increasingly international nature of entrepreneurship.

Driving AI

It’s perhaps no surprise, therefore, that recent research from MIT’ CSAIL lab has shown that while American continues to lead the way in the development of artificial intelligence, much of the actual breakthroughs are driven by foreign-born scientists.

The researchers assessed improvements made to the key sections of AI over the past 70 years, and found that around two-thirds of the gains in that time were delivered by researchers at North American universities. What is important, however, is that in the last 30 years, over 75% of these breakthroughs have come from foreign-born scientists.

“If we want the United States to continue to be ground zero for computer science, we need to make sure that our policies make it easy to continue to bring host international researchers to join our institutions,” the researchers say.

A broken pipeline

Research from Cornell suggests, however, that this is a pipeline that is increasingly dysfunctional. The paper highlights how despite many foreign-born Ph.D. graduates applying for jobs at tech startups, and indeed receiving offers to work for them, a large number of them fail to actually take up those jobs due to visa issues.

Instead, those people were much more likely to work at larger tech companies who have the resources and expertise to help them navigate the Kafka like H-1B and permanent residency process.

It’s a situation that has also been chronicled by researchers from Georgetown University, who found that restrictive immigration policies are hampering the ability of American firms to recruit and retain the kind of AI talent they need.

“Historically, immigrants have helped America lead the world in technological innovation,” the authors say. “Artificial intelligence is no exception. Foreign-born talent fuels the U.S. AI sector at every level, from student researchers in academic labs to foreign and naturalized workers in leading companies.”

The study reveals that foreign-born talent plugs a crucial hole in the AI talent marketplace, with the hole likely to persist and even grow in the coming years. A laborious and out-of-date immigration policy is thus hindering the competitiveness of American AI firms because they cannot recruit or retain the talent they need to thrive.

Fragile ground

This could have profound implications for the hegemony of Western nations in the development of AI. The MIT researchers highlight that while residents of Europe and North America making up just 15% of the global population, they’ve contributed over 75% of the breakthroughs in AI.

The free movement of people has been crucial to that, as people with considerable natural talent have been able to move to countries where that talent not only has the opportunity to flourish, but the peer group to help support their work.

This was emphasized clearly by research from McKinsey a few years ago, which highlighted that 35% of the 247 million or so people who live outside their country of birth are highly skilled migrants with at least a tertiary education. What’s more, these migrants are typically significantly more qualified than the native population.

What’s more, research from the University of California San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy goes further still and directly measures the impact of migrants on innovation. It shows that bringing in talent from abroad not only helps with the birth of new products and phasing out of older ones, but also has an impact on corporate profits and consumer wellbeing.

“We found companies with higher rates of H-1B workers increased product reallocation–the ability for companies to create new products and replace outdated ones, which in turn, grows revenue,” the authors say. “This discourse could have far reaching implications for U.S. policy, the profitability of firms, the welfare of workers, and the potential for innovation in the economy as a whole.”

Brain drain

The findings come at a time when countries such as the United Kingdom and United States have been gripped by populist politicians who have risen to power in large part due to opposition to immigration. Recent research from Vienna University of Economics and Business highlights how the “hostile environment” created in the U.K. has been driving foreign-born scientists from their shores, with a particular exodus occurring since the Brexit referendum in 2016.

A similar picture was painted of the U.S. by research from Ohio State University, which revealed that a growing number of Chinese researchers are leaving the country and taking their ideas and intellect with them.

The study found that around 16,000 researchers have returned to China from overseas in the last few years, with 4,500 leaving the United States alone. That’s roughly twice the number who were leaving per year in 2010. It’s a trend that is helping to turn China into a true scientific powerhouse.

The West has undoubtedly been a driving force in the development of AI over the past 70 years, but if restrictive immigration policies continue to dominate, it is highly likely that other regions will drive the next generation of AI.

Source: The Importance Of Immigrants For The Future Of Tech

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