Disputed Immigration Policy On Foreign Students Uses Flawed Report

2020/09/29 Leave a comment

Deliberately or accidentally flawed? And as noted in the article, shift of Indian students from USA to Canada:

A controversial proposed regulation that critics say will discourage international students from coming to America relies on a flawed Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report on visa overstays, according to a new analysis. The new rule would require U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to adjudicate more than 300,000 new extension applications each year when it is unable to process filings in its current workload on time. The new regulation is the Trump administration’s latest assault on high-skilled foreign nationals and could produce long-term negative consequences for America’s role as a center for science and innovation.

On September 25, 2020, the Trump administration published a proposed regulation that would mandate F-1 students be admitted only for fixed terms, generally two- or four-year periods, rather than the long-standing “duration of status” that allows students to remain in the United States and continue their studies until completion. The rule has a 30-day comment period and includes a fixed period of admission for J (exchange visitors) and I (foreign media) visa holders. Given the controversy and likely number of comments, it may be difficult for administration officials to complete and publish a final rule in time if Donald Trump does not win reelection.

A Flawed DHS “Overstay” Report: “The DHS ‘overstay’ reports upon which the regulation relies are highly flawed for policymaking purposes and should not be the basis for rulemaking on international students,” concluded a new analysis from the National Foundation for American Policy. “Problems with DHS systems properly identifying individuals who changed status inside the U.S. or left the country is an issue the DHS regulation fails to acknowledge. An examination of Department of Homeland Security reports finds the overstay rate for F-1 international students is not an actual overstay rate but only an upper-bound estimate of individuals who DHS could not positively identify as leaving the United States.”

The analysis concludes there are significant flaws in using the DHS overstay reports for a new regulation: “Under the proposed rule, students born in countries that a recent DHS report finds have an overstay rate of 10% or higher would be limited (along with certain other students) to a fixed term of only two years. Other students would be limited to four years. An approved extension would be required to remain in the country. But the overstay rates contained in the DHS reports are inflated and do not actually measure overstay rates. ‘The DHS figures represent actual overstays plus arrivals whose departure could not be verified,’ according to demographer Robert Warren. ‘That is, they include both actual overstays and unrecorded departures.’” (Emphasis added.)

“The Department of Homeland Security is knowingly relying on flawed reports as a pretext for the overall policy in the rule and to limit the admission periods for students from specific countries,” according to the National Foundation for American Policy report. “With circular logic, the 10% overstay rate threshold contained in the proposed rule comes not from an immigration law but from a presidential memorandum on overstays issued on April 22, 2019, that uses the same flawed DHS overstay reports. Students from approximately 60 countries, including Vietnam and the Philippines, would be limited to two-year terms (with the possibility of extensions).

“Extensions might be difficult to obtain as the focus in the proposed rule has moved away from allowing students to make normal academic progress to an enforcement-default, note attorneys, with the only reasons cited to approve an extension for additional time are for a ‘compelling academic reason, documented medical illness or medical condition, or circumstance that was beyond the student’s control.’

“In its FY 2019 report, DHS emphasizes the ‘suspected in-country overstay’ rate, a lower rate for countries than the overall overstay rate. DHS understands the ‘suspected in-country overstay’ rate is also overstated and largely an issue of an ability (or inability) to match records, since the report shows the FY 2018 overstay rate dropped by half when examined 12 months later after allowing more time to verify records for departures and change of status.”

One of the best arguments against the rule is that an individual committed to disappearing into the country after failing to attend classes would already be flagged by the current SEVIS system or would not be worried about submitting an extension application. The rule would only affect students with a genuine interest in continuing to study in the United States.

Expensive and Time-Consuming Process for International Students: Economists know when you tax or increase the price of something, you get less of it. DHS estimates the cost of filing an extension application for many F-1 students will exceed $1,000. That includes the cost of students filling out applications and submitting biometrics at USCIS offices. (See this article for more details on the impact of the rule on students and universities.)

The proposed rule will act as a tax increase on international students, both in dollars and in potential opportunity costs should extensions not be approved. The proposed rules make it clear extension approvals will not be a foregone conclusion.

Relying on USCIS To Process More Than 300,000 New Applications a Year: DHS estimates the new policy would require USCIS, an agency seeking a bailout from Congress, to adjudicate 364,060 new extension requests annually by 2024 and 300,954 in 2025 and later years.

At the California Service Center, an application to extend/change status (form I-539) takes 7.5 to 10 months for F students and up to 19 months for J exchange visitors. USCIS has threatened to furlough two-thirds of its workforce and cannot adjudicate extensions and other benefit requests in a reasonable time.

While DHS states in the proposed rule a student would remain in lawful status while waiting for a USCIS decision if an extension was timely filed, this ignores a critical problem: It will be too late for a student to make alternate academic plans if USCIS denies an extension. That would set the student back a year or more and generate the type of uncertainty that may dissuade people from studying in America.

Forcing Universities to Use E-Verify: There is little evidence U.S. universities are hotbeds of illegal immigration. Despite this, the Trump administration has used the proposed rule to compel all U.S. universities to use E-Verify. Any universities that do not sign up for E-Verify would be allowed to admit students for only two-year periods (with extensions available) under the pretext that DHS would be more likely to trust information from universities that sign up for the electronic employment verification system. Congress has never mandated all employers must use E-Verify.

DHS Admits the Rule Will Likely Reduce Enrollment and Make U.S. Universities Less Competitive: “The proposed rule may adversely affect U.S. competitiveness in the international market for nonimmigrant student enrollment and exchange visitor participation,” according to DHS. “Specifically, the proposed changes could decrease nonimmigrant student enrollments in the United States with corresponding increased enrollments in other English-speaking countries, notably in Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom.” DHS notes that in other countries admission is “typically valid for the duration of the student’s course enrollment” and students are “not generally required to file” an extension application.

The number of international students enrolled at U.S. universities declined by 4.3% between the 2016-17 and 2018-19 academic years. International students from India enrolled in graduate-level computer science and engineering at U.S. universities fell by more than 25% between 2016-17 and 2018-19. During the same period, international students from India at Canadian universities rose from 76,075 in 2016 to 172,625 in 2018, an increase of 127%.

“The administration is knowingly relying on flawed reports as a pretext for its overall policy and to limit the admission periods for students from specific countries in the proposed rule,” concludes the National Foundation for American Policy report.

The new policy threatens America’s ability to attract international students due to the added costs and increased uncertainty foreign students would face under the proposed regulation. If foreign countries that compete with the United States for international students were to create a new way to discourage students from coming to America, this is the policy they would design.

Source: Disputed Immigration Policy On Foreign Students Uses Flawed Report

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‘Shocking’: How phoney Sikh temples are taking advantage of religious immigrants

2020/09/28 Leave a comment

Sigh. The ingenuity of fraudsters…:

Judging from its online presence, the Sikh temple that purportedly sits on the edge of this Niagara-region border town is a lovely spot.

“They serve food all time with good flavoured chutney and the taste is superb,” says an August 2019 review on the Fort Erie Khalsa Darbar’s Facebook page . “The place of god to relax and calm your mind. “

The social media page and the temple’s website reinforce the pleasant image with photos of devotees and succulent-looking food.

What actually exists at its address in Fort Erie is something else: A long-abandoned motel surrounded by scrub land overgrown with weeds, and fronted by a no-trespassing sign.

The land is zoned rural. “A place of worship,” says Janine Tessmer, a spokeswoman for the town, “would be considered a zoning infraction.”

There is no temple, in other words. Yet Fort Erie Khalsa Darbar, incorporated as a federal non-profit in April, 2019, and granted religious charity status this February, has sponsored at least three priests to come here from India on special visas issued by Ottawa.

Directors of the Fort Erie temple — called a gurdwara in Punjabi — say they fully intend to open it one day and thought it would be running by the time their priests arrived.

Representatives of the country’s many functioning gurdwaras say they know little about the new facility, and couldn’t comment on its operation. But they warn that temples by name only, operating “under false pretenses” are a major problem, charging priests, real or not, tens of thousands of dollars each for sponsorships that can lead to visas and a cherished foothold in Canada.

They also say federal governments have long ignored their warnings about the unique, religiously inflected form of immigration fraud.

“The sharp rise in cases coming forward in the public regarding potential immigrants paying tens of thousands of dollars to these societies in order to secure work permits is shocking and undermining the immigration process and laws,” the heads of the Ontario Gurdwaras Committee and B.C. Gurdwaras Council said in a letter this July to Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino.

“Potential immigrants to Canada are often fleeing poverty, state sponsored violence, genocide and oppression and to be further marginalized by this type of illegal and fraudulent behavior … is unacceptable,” they said.

In lower mainland British Columbia, a priest from India says he had to pay $29,000 to have gurdwara leaders sponsor him for a work permit to preach in what turned out to be a phoney temple. He says he and his young family are now destitute.

Directors of the Fort Erie gurdwara deny that money changed hands with the priests they sponsored, and that incomplete renovations on that vacant building in Fort Erie meant the men could not work there.

Bachittar Saini, the temple president, said he is covering all the project’s expenses from his own pocket as a gift to the area’s small Sikh population — non-existent in 2011, according to the most recent federal household survey that canvassed religious beliefs.

“When you are serving the community, you don’t have to be only serving the Sikh community,” Saini said. “It could be anyone, black, brown, white, whatever. We don’t ask ‘Are you Sikh, are you Christian, are you Muslim?’”

Meanwhile, there’s evidence that at least one of the three priests may now be working as a truck driver, and allegations he tried to obtain a visa fraudulently four years ago. Saini says the preachers have all disappeared, and that he reported them missing to immigration authorities.

Matieu Genest, a spokesman for Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino, said Friday the government would not comment on any ongoing investigations, but takes allegations of fraud seriously and “constantly monitors” to ensure the safety of people using the system and safeguard the system itself.

“We encourage anyone who suspects immigration fraud to contact the Canada Border Services Agency’s Border Watch,” he said.

Genest said the program for bringing religious workers to gurdwaras is important to the Sikh community, and is regularly reviewed to ensure its integrity. Officials work closely with the community “to identify and eliminate opportunities for abuse.”

Two of the Fort Erie gurdwara directors have links to Navdeep Bains, a Liberal MP and minister of innovation, science and industry. President Bachittar Saini and the minister’s father, Balwinder, were advisors to the same slate of candidates in a board election last year at a large gurdwara in Mississauga. Fort Erie director Bahadur Bains is uncle to Balkar Bains, Liberal riding association president in Bains’ Mississauga-Malton constituency.

But John Power, a spokesman for the minister, said he had nothing to do with the Fort Erie project and no one on his staff helped in any way to obtain visas for the priests.

Gurdwaras are the places of worship for Canada’s 700,000 Sikhs, but also serve as community hubs, offering food to people in need and hosting weddings and funerals at halls that are often part of the temple complex.

To meet the demand for such services, many temples sponsor jathas — groups of three priests — to come from India for stays of about six months in Canada.

They are admitted under various types of work permits, a Canadian consulate in India co-ordinating with gurdwaras to ensure no one over-stays their visa, said Béatrice Fénelon, an Immigration Refugees and Citizenship spokeswoman.

In total, 519 work permits or permit extensions were issued to religious workers from India between 2018 and July this year, while 70 were granted permanent resident status, she said.

The gurdwara associations say in their letter that a system developed in 2012 to deter abuse had some early success. But now, they say, there are “hundreds if not thousands” of non-profit Sikh religious societies that are using their paper credentials to make money off of would-be immigrants.

They call for a crackdown to ensure perpetrators do not “continue to financially gain from this illegal activity.”

“There are so many gurdwaras registered but they are not existing any place. They are fraud,” said Amarjit Singh Mann of the Ontario Gurdwaras Committee. “They rent a place in the plaza or somewhere else, and they say this is a gurdwara … but there is nothing.”

Saini, the Fort Erie temple president, is a realtor and also director of a numbered company — 2323266 Ontario Inc. — that bought the property in 2019 for $310,000, according to land registry records. All the gurdwara’s board members are based in Brampton, 150 kilometres away.

Fort Erie is a curious location for a Sikh religious facility. The 2016 census found just 10 residents whose mother tongue is Punjabi — which could also include Hindus and Muslims — while Statistics Canada’s 2011 national household survey revealed zero adherents of the Sikh religion. The town’s population has increased little since then.

Director Bahadur Bains suggested otherwise, estimating that there are “300 or 400” Sikhs in the town of 30,000. The gurdwara would also be of benefit, he added, to Sikhs in Belleville, though that city is 340 kilometres away in eastern Ontario.

The temple’s online presence gives no hint that it exists in the record books only. The administrator of its Facebook page began posting messages there in April 2019, and continued until as recently as the middle of September.

Then there are the reviews. That one posted in August 2019, in praise of the temple’s food and meditative ambience, was posted by Buy Sell on Time, a company run by president Saini.

At the property itself, site of the former Tatler Motel , someone was working inside the building without a permit in 2019, prompting the town to issue an order to comply in September, then a stop-work order in November, said Tessmer.

The structure looks thoroughly abandoned now. But the sponsored priests still received their visas last year.

Saini said the stop-work order prevented the building being ready to accommodate them and a potential congregation. He said he now plans to tear down the motel and build anew, but said work was halted because of the pandemic. In fact, Ontario allowed construction to proceed throughout the COVID-19 lockdown.

Meanwhile, no one has applied to change the zoning to make opening a temple there legitimate, said Tessmer.

Where the sponsored priests are now is also murky.

Unable to take up work in Fort Erie, they found jobs at a gurdwara in Brampton called Jot Parkash, then vanished, said Saini. But Jot Parkash spokesman Satbir Singh said he’s never heard of them, or the Fort Erie facility.

Meanwhile, a Windsor, Ont., businessman, Amarjit Grewal, initially confirmed to the National Post that one of the preachers was working for him as a truck driver. Then, in a subsequent interview, he denied that was true, saying the man, whom the National Post could not reach and is not naming, was at a temple in Mississauga.

In 2016, a priest of the same name and two jatha members forged letters from Canada’s largest gurdwara — Ontario Khalsa Darbar (OKD) — in a bid to win visas, the temple alleged in a letter to immigration officials at the time. Their warning seems to have been for naught, as the same preachers managed to get visas later after convincing a different temple to sponsor them, said a follow-up letter to Immigration.

“It would be greatly appreciated if you can address this matter promptly and help us eradicate fraudulent behavior,” the OKD gurdwara wrote in April 2017.

It’s “mind-boggling” that despite the warnings the same priests are now back in Canada, granted visas after being sponsored by a temple that does not physically exist, said Jaspal Bal, an advisor to Ontario Khalsa Darbar.

When he found out they had returned, Bal said, “I thought ‘man oh man, what is going on’”?

Source: ‘Shocking’: How phoney Sikh temples are taking advantage of religious immigrants

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Saunders: Climate migration isn’t a thing – but maybe we should make it one

2020/09/26 Leave a comment

Good commentary by Saunders on the reality:

The world is likely to suffer a lot of destruction, disruption, economic and political instability and death as a result of rising global temperatures and ocean levels, even if we’re able to keep atmospheric warming to 2 degrees.

One thing we’re not going to encounter, however, is mass immigration across international borders. “Climate migration,” scholars of the subject tend to agree, is not something that will happen internationally on any significant scale, even under the worst imaginable projections. “Climate refugees” are not a plausible future problem for any developed country.

You may have been led to believe otherwise. A startling range of international organizations and publications have issued reports and alarmist stories based on the assumption that the millions of people whose lands will be hurt by climate change are going to respond by fleeing to another country.

United Nations agencies have embarrassed themselves by predicting climate migrations that never materialize. One charity predicts that a billion people will be displaced by 2050; a news report last year amplified that assumption to 1.5 billion. In July, The New York Times Magazine ran a cover story that observed (correctly) that “billions of people” will have their livelihoods hurt by global warming, and then inferred that most of them will become migrants.

The renowned Dutch migration scholar Hein de Haas warned recently that these studies and forecasts lack any credibility because they “are not based on fact and scientific knowledge. They either have no scientific basis at all, or reflect extremely simplistic quasi-scientific reasoning.”

In fact, the scholarly community has come together to warn, with increasing urgency, that the notion of “climate migration” is false and dangerous.

Last November, 31 of the world’s most respected climate scholars published a paper in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change warning against “misleading claims about mass migration induced by climate change” which, they said, continue to circulate in both academia and policy circles without any scientific foundation. Although climate change will indeed threaten lives, they agreed, the notion that a warming climate and rising ocean levels will produce “climate refugees” is a “false narrative” driven by political motives.

Dr. de Haas outlined those motives: “For left-wing groups, it serves to raise attention to the issue of climate change… For right-wing groups, it serves to raise the spectre of future mass migration, and the need to step up border controls.”

Earlier this year, the world’s leading migration scholars published the sixth edition of the standard textbook on the subject, The Age of Migration. Though their work is otherwise deeply concerned about both refugees and climate change, they included a new chapter on “climate migration,” which warns that the concept contradicts everything that actually is known about human responses to climate shocks and disasters.

In the world of actual knowledge, the last 10 years have seen an unprecedented amount of serious, well-funded study into the question of what families and communities in climate-devastated places are going to do when their livelihoods turn into ocean or desert. While the answers are varied and often disturbing, one thing people almost never do under such circumstances is move far away.

The definitive work on climate migration remains the Foresight Report, commissioned in 2011 by Britain’s Government Office for Science, which commissioned more than 80 studies in multiple disciplines. It found that climate will sometimes have an impact on local migration. But that impact is quite likely to be negative – that is, climate change will often prevent people from migrating. Not only that, but it found that when regions suffer climate devastation, people are equally likely to migrate into those regions.

In 2018, the Migration Policy Institute conducted a comprehensive review of all the research evidence on climate and migration. It found that climate shocks are highly likely to reduce a community’s likelihood of moving (by hurting their ability to afford to migrate); when they do use migration as a survival strategy, it’s almost always within the local region.

None of that should have been a surprise. The one thing we’ve long known about immigrants and refugees is that they’re products not of ruin and absolute poverty but of comparative prosperity – and thus ability to move – within their communities.

There will be a lot of human migration during the coming decades – most of it regional or internal – and the small number moving to faraway cities because of climate devastation will be greatly outnumbered by those making exactly the same journey simply in order to have a better life.

The fact is that people who live in highly climate-vulnerable regions, where incomes tend to be low anyway, really ought to be migrating – and countries such as Canada could use them. Rather than spreading false alarm about desperate hordes headed for our borders, we ought to be thinking of ways to encourage and make possible climate migration. The world would be better off if it really was a thing.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-climate-migration-isnt-a-thing-but-maybe-we-should-make-it-one/

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Big Data has allowed ICE to dramatically expand its deportation efforts.

2020/09/25 Leave a comment

Of note (Palantir hired former Canadian Ambassador to Washington to lead its Canadian operations):

A New Mexico man gets a call from federal child welfare officials. His teenage brother has arrived alone at the border after traveling 2,000 miles to escape a violent uncle in Guatemala. The officials ask him to take custody of the boy. He hesitates; he is himself undocumented. The officials say not to worry. He agrees and gives the officials his information. Seven months later, ICE agents arrest him at his house and start deportation proceedings.

A family in suburban Maryland gets a knock at their door. A child opens it. ICE agents enter and take away a man as his children watch. In the decades that he lived in this country as an unauthorized immigrant, the man never had a run-in with law enforcement. No, the agents explain as they walk him to their car: They found him because of the information he gave the Maryland DMV when he got a driver’s license.

For the past decade, ICE often found its targets in the interior of the U.S. by analyzing booking fingerprints from state and local jails. But the New Mexico and Maryland stories demonstrate a new trend: Increasingly, ICE is tapping much deeper wells of data to identify people for deportation. That’s possible in large part due to Palantir Technologies, a Silicon Valley start-up poised to go public Sept. 29 in the biggest tech stock listing since Uber. Palantir’s case management software, data analysis and visualization software, and mobile app are the final layer of ICE’s vast surveillance and data sharing network.

I have worked in technology policy for more than a decade. In most meetings, I am the only Latino in the room. I’m almost always the only Latinx immigrant. Much of my work focuses on how surveillance affects immigrants and people of color. Yet, even for me, it is hard to see the technology behind ICE’s brutality. Palantir’s public offering forces us to reckon with that dinfrastructure. As authorities separated thousands of children from their parents, used reunification interviews to track down and deport children’s relatives, and warehoused immigrants in fetid facilities where six children died in less than a year, they also consolidated a powerful and dangerous domestic surveillance dragnet.

For a long time, mass deportations were a small-data affair, driven by tips, one-off investigations, or animus-driven hunches. But beginning under George W. Bush, and expanding under Barack Obama, ICE leadership started to reap the benefits of Big Data. The centerpiece of that shift was the “Secure Communities” program, which gathered the fingerprints of arrestees at local and state jails across the nation and compared them with immigration records. That program quickly became a major driver for interior deportations. But ICE wanted more data. The agency had long tapped into driver address records through law enforcement networks. Eyeing the breadth of DMV databases, agents began to ask state officials to run face recognition searches on driver photos against the photos of undocumented people. In Utah, for example, ICE officers requested hundreds of face searches starting in late 2015. Many immigrants avoid contact with any government agency, even the DMV, but they can’t go without heat, electricity, or water; ICE aimed to find them, too. So, that same year, ICE paid for access to a private database that includes the addresses of customers from 80 national and regional electric, cable, gas, and telephone companies.

Amid this bonanza, at least, the Obama administration still acknowledged red lines. Some data were too invasive, some uses too immoral. Under Donald Trump, these limits fell away.

In 2017, breaking with prior practice, ICE started to use data from interviews with scared, detained kids and their relatives to find and arrest more than 500 sponsors who stepped forward to take in the children. At the same time, ICE announced a plan for a social media monitoring program that would use artificial intelligence to automatically flag 10,000 people per month for deportation investigations. (It was scuttled only when computer scientists helpfully indicated that the proposed system was impossible.) The next year, ICE secured access to 5 billion license plate scans from public parking lots and roadways, a hoard that tracks the drives of 60 percent of Americans—an initiative blocked by Department of Homeland Security leadership four years earlier. In August, the agency cut a deal with Clearview AI, whose technology identifies people by comparing their faces not to millions of driver photos, but to 3 billion images from social media and other sites. This is a new era of immigrant surveillance: ICE has transformed from an agency that tracks some people sometimes to an agency that can track anyone at any time.

This is where Palantir’s work for ICE comes into focus. A panoply of companies collect the data.
Palantir connects the dots. The firm helps agents access different databases, build profiles from disparate sources, from commercial data brokers to driver’s license records, and see how targets interrelate to each other. The company’s software appears to be part of the agency’s largest and most aggressive enforcement actions.

Indeed, the plan for the 2017 operation that first targeted the sponsors of unaccompanied immigrant kids, obtained by the immigrant rights group Mijente, reveals a complex web of interlocking agencies, including Health and Human Services, Customs and Border Protection, and two branches of ICE. To track the moving pieces, the paper repeatedly tells officials to enter data into “ICM,” ICE’s custom-built Investigative Case Management software. Who wrote that code? Palantir.

In its recent 310-page securities filing, Palantir makes no express mention of ICE, immigrants, deportations, or the controversy that its work for ICE has generated. Instead, in his letter to investors, CEO Alex Karp repeatedly touts Palantir’s commitment to the military and the intelligence community: “Our software is used to target terrorists and to keep soldiers safe,” he writes. When criticized, Karp has described Palantir’s work for ICE as “limited,” “a de minimis part of our work”—strange things for American contractor to say about its second–largest U.S. government client.

There is another way to read Palantir’s silence: Its leadership has decided that the cost of its work for ICE is de minimis, that in the eyes of its clients and the investing public it simply does not matter. As a Latino and an immigrant, I worry that on this point they will be right.

Source: Big Data has allowed ICE to dramatically expand its deportation efforts.

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SFT: Anti-racism and immigration language

2020/09/24 Leave a comment

While the “addressing systemic racism” is reasonably specific and focussed, the section on immigration appears deliberately vague given the uncertainty due to COVID:

Addressing systemic racism

For too many Canadians, systemic racism is a lived reality. We know that racism did not take a pause during the pandemic. On the contrary, COVID-19 has hit racialized Canadians especially hard.

Many people – especially Indigenous people, and Black and racialized Canadians – have raised their voices and stood up to demand change.

They are telling us we must do more. The Government agrees.

The Government pledged to address systemic racism, and committed to do so in a way informed by the lived experiences of racialized communities and Indigenous Peoples.

The Government has invested in economic empowerment through the Black Entrepreneurship Program, while working to close the gaps in services for Indigenous communities. Important steps were taken with the release of Canada’s Anti-Racism Strategy for 2019-2022, the creation of an anti-racism secretariat, and the appointment of the first-ever Minister focused specifically on diversity and inclusion. This is all good, but much more needs to be done for permanent, transformative change to take shape.

The Government will redouble its efforts by:

  • Taking action on online hate;
  • Going further on economic empowerment for specific communities, and increasing diversity on procurement;
  • Building a whole-of-federal-government approach around better collection of disaggregated data;
  • Implementing an action plan to increase representation in hiring and appointments, and leadership development within the Public Service;
  • And taking new steps to support the artistic and economic contributions of Black Canadian culture and heritage.

Progress must also be made throughout the policing and justice systems. All Canadians must have the confidence that the justice system is there to protect them, not to harm them. Black Canadians and Indigenous Peoples are overrepresented in the criminal justice system. That has to change.

The Government will take steps to ensure that the strong hand of criminal justice is used where it is needed to keep people safe, but not where it would be discriminatory or counterproductive.

The Government will:

  • Introduce legislation and make investments that take action to address the systemic inequities in all phases of the criminal justice system, from diversion to sentencing, from rehabilitation to records;
  • Move forward on enhanced civilian oversight of our law enforcement agencies, including the RCMP;
  • Modernize training for police and law enforcement, including addressing standards around the use of force;
  • Move forward on RCMP reforms, with a shift toward community-led policing;
  • And accelerate work to co-develop a legislative framework for First Nations policing as an essential service.

A welcoming Canada

Immigration remains a driver of Canada’s economic growth.

With other countries rejecting global talent that could help their economy, Canada has an opportunity as we recover to become the world’s top destination for talent, capital, and jobs. When people choose Canada, help build Canada, and make sacrifices in support of Canada, we should make it easier for them to formally become Canadian.

Earlier this year, the Government announced measures to grant permanent residency to people who, although not Canadian citizens, had cared for the most vulnerable in long-term care homes and other medical facilities.

The Government will continue to bring in newcomers and support family reunification. We know that there is an economic and human advantage to having families together.

As part of both the short-term economic recovery and a long-term plan for growth, the Government will leverage the advantage we have on immigration to keep Canada competitive on the world stage.

Source: https://www.canada.ca/en/privy-council/campaigns/speech-throne/2020/stronger-resilient-canada.html

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Canada No. 1 for Migrants, U.S. in Sixth Place

2020/09/24 Leave a comment

Given the contrast in media coverage and political discourse in both countries, would have expected a larger gap:

Canada and the U.S. remained among the most-accepting countries in the world for migrants in 2019. In fact, with a score of 8.46 (out of a possible 9.0) on Gallup’s second administration of its Migrant Acceptance Index, Canada, for the first time, led the rest of the world. The U.S. ranked sixth, with a score of 7.95.

Most-Accepting Countries for Migrants
Migrant Acceptance Index
Canada 8.46
Iceland 8.41
New Zealand 8.32
Australia 8.28
Sierra Leone 8.14
United States 7.95
Burkina Faso* 7.93
Sweden 7.92
Chad* 7.91
Ireland* 7.88
Rwanda 7.88
*Country not on the list in 2016-2017
GALLUP WORLD POLL, 2019

The index is based on three questions that Gallup asked in 140 countries in 2016 and 2017 and updated again in 145 countries in 2019. The questions ask whether people think migrants living in their country, becoming their neighbors and marrying into their families are good things or bad things.

The index is a sum of the points across the three questions, with a maximum possible score of 9.0 (all three are good things) and a minimum possible score of zero (all three are bad things). The higher the score, the more accepting the population is of migrants.

Both Canada and the U.S., which have long histories as receiving countries for migrants, made the most-accepting list in 2017 as well. Migration policies in each country have taken different paths since then, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau opening Canada’s doors even wider, as President Donald Trump has tried to shut doors in the U.S. However, the acceptance of migrants among residents in each country has remained resolute and relatively unchanged from where they stood three years ago.

In Canada, residents almost universally saw migrants living in their country (94%) and being in their neighborhoods (95%) as good things, while more than nine in 10 (91%) said a migrant marrying into their family would be a good thing. Most Americans said the same, although not nearly to the same degree as Canadians. Nine in 10 (90%) said a migrant living in their neighborhood would be a good thing, and similar percentages said migrants living in their country (87%) and marrying into their families (85%) would be good things.

Migrant Acceptance Continues to Follow Political Fault Lines

As in 2017, migrant acceptance in both countries continues to be polarized. In the U.S., those who approved of Trump’s job performance scored a 7.10 out of a possible 9.0 on the Migrant Acceptance Index, while those who disapproved scored an 8.59 on the index. In Canada, those who approved of Trudeau’s job performance scored an 8.73, while the score was 8.21 among those who disapproved.

The same relationships persist, although not to the same degree, looking at approval of the country’s leadership in general.

Political Divides on Migration in Canada, U.S.
Migrant Acceptance Index
Americans
Approve of Trump 7.10
Disapprove of Trump 8.59
Approve of country’s leadership 7.10
Disapprove of country’s leadership 8.49
Canadians
Approve of Trudeau 8.73
Disapprove of Trudeau 8.21
Approve of country’s leadership 8.59
Disapprove of country’s leadership 8.31
GALLUP WORLD POLL, 2019

In the U.S., interestingly, there are differences in migrant acceptance among those who personally identified most with their city and country where they live (8.16) compared with those who identified most with their race or religion (7.69). In Canada, there were no differences in migrant acceptance based on how people identified themselves.

Most Educated in Each Country Are Most Accepting

For the most part, as it did in 2017, people’s acceptance of migrants follow the same patterns in both Canada and the U.S.: Acceptance is higher among those with the most education and among those living in urban areas.

Interestingly, the patterns by age in the two countries are different. In the U.S., acceptance was highest among the youngest Americans and then declined with age. Among Americans between the ages of 15 and 29, the index score was 8.34; it measured nearly a full point lower among those aged 65 and older (7.37). In Canada, there were no real statistical differences by age group.

Migrant Acceptance by Age in the U.S., Canada
Migrant Acceptance Index
Americans
15-29 8.34
30-44 8.11
45-54 8.04
55-64 7.79
65+ 7.37
Canadians
15-29* 8.32
30-44 8.54
45-54 8.53
55-64 8.41
65+ 8.51
*Difference not significant because of smaller sample sizes
GALLUP WORLD POLL, 2019

Bottom Line

Both Canada and the U.S. have long histories as receiving countries, but over the past several years, policies in each country have moved in opposite directions. Until the pandemic forced Canada to slow immigration to a trickle, the country was poised to admit more than 1 million permanent residents between 2019 and 2021, with targets increasing every year. In the U.S., the Trump administration is estimated to have cut legal immigration by almost half since taking office.

However, it appears that these changes in policies haven’t drastically changed most people’s acceptance of migrants. Residents in each country, and particularly in Canada, are accepting of the migrants who will continue to play a huge role in shaping their country’s future.

Source: https://news.gallup.com/poll/320669/canada-migrants-sixth-place.aspx

And for a broader take:

Global tolerance of migrants declined between 2016 and 2019, Gallup’s Migrant Acceptance Indexrevealed on Wednesday.

The survey showed that several of the least tolerant countries were from the EU. Member states met Wednesday to discuss a new joint migration policy.

The report gave countries scores based on the attitudes of respondents to the idea of migrants living in their country, moving into their neighborhood and marrying into their family. The average score globally fell from 5.34 in 2016 to 5.21 in 2019. Nne was the highest possible result.

The largest drop in tolerant attitudes towards migrants was seen in South America, where several countries have experienced a large influx of refugees from Venezuela. In Colombia, which bore the brunt of the exodus, the percentage of respondents with a positive view of migrants living in the country plummeted from 61% to 29%.

Belgium and Switzerland had some of the largest decreases in tolerant attitudes. Belgium, home to the European Parliament, saw its score fall by 1.33.

EU member states Hungary, Croatia, Latvia and Slovakia were among the top ten least accepting countries according to the poll, with a further four Balkan countries making it onto the list.

Another country which has played a significant role in the EU’s immigration policy was also revealed to have largely negative attitudes towards immigration. Turkey, which became home to some 4 million refugees as part of a deal with the European bloc, was the 10th least accepting country for migrants according to the data collected by Gallup.

However, one eastern European country with a traditionally low tolerance of immigration saw an increase in positive and tolerant attitudes. A share of 42% of Polish respondents said that they considered migrants living in the country as something good, up from 29% three years prior.

Which countries are most tolerant of immigration?

Canada topped the list for the countries most accepting of immigration — 94% of respondents had positive views of immigrants living in their country, followed by Iceland and New Zealand. Within the EU, only Sweden and Ireland made it into the top 10.

Despite a series of anti-immigration policies by President Donald Trump’s administration in the US, the country came in sixth place for its generally pro-immigration attitudes. When asked about immigrants moving into their neighborhood, 90% of US respondents said this was a good thing.

Among those who supported Trump, the average score was 7.1 out of nine. The biggest difference was between the younger and older generations with 16- to 29-year-olds scoring 8.34 and those older than 65 scoring around one point less, at 7.37.

Source: https://www.dw.com/en/anti-immigrant-attitudes-rise-worldwide-poll/a-55024481

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Immigration services to reopen gradually after pandemic shut down many programs

2020/09/23 Leave a comment

Useful overview:

Immigration officials are beginning gradually to resume in-person services after the pandemic forced many programs to shut down, frustrating immigrants whose lives were put on hold.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) shut down immigration tests and citizenship ceremonies in March to protect the health and safety of staff and clients. The department started offering some virtual services over the last few months. Starting this week, it is opening in-person services by appointment only.

“This testing phase will allow us to assess our protocols and procedures and ensure the safety of our staff and our clients. The lessons learned will help us plan for reopening services more widely in the future,” says the IRCC’s website.

Limited services being offered at specific locations include citizenship, services related to permanent residence, asylum claims and biometrics.

Clients must wait for government officials to schedule appointments before visiting an IRCC site and should not call IRCC to try to arrange a date themselves, the department says.

William Ojeda and his family have waited an agonizing three years to renew their permanent residency, a time frame he said is unreasonable. They are now unable to re-enter Canada from Mexico.

“Being unable to be in Canada, and the uncertainty and anxiety of almost three years checking the IRCC website pretty much daily after the initial reasonable delay, and worrying for the well-being of my kids has been really, really hard,” he wrote in an email from Guadalajara.

Odeja, his wife and their eldest daughter were born in Mexico, while his two younger daughters were born in Canada and are citizens.

‘Three years lost’

“We have never broken a law … we live, by choice, by Canadian written and social laws and yet we feel treated as second class immigrants,” he said.

“If the decision is favourable, of course, it would be a happy ending and all the uncertainty, anxiety and fear will blur over time. If negative, it would be all for nothing, with three years lost on our life plan, which is in Canada.”Ojeda said the delay in processing his file predated the pandemic. COVID-19 has created a bigger backlog in many cases, however.

Conservative immigration critic Raquel Dancho said she’s heard from countless families affected by what she calls the “administrative ineptness” of IRCC.

“The lack of a plan throughout the pandemic has failed refugees and immigrants who wish to come to Canada,” she said.

“The Liberals have failed to ensure a fair and compassionate immigration process for the world’s most vulnerable. Frankly, it’s unacceptable and those that depend on the immigration system deserve better.”

NDP MP Jenny Kwan said MP offices have been “inundated” with immigration applicants’ desperate pleas for help. She said several of her MP colleagues have reported that immigration cases consume up to 90 per cent of their constituency casework.

“It’s apparent that there has been little to no movement on IRCC offices resuming their work up to now. The limited capacity of the restart will still mean that too many people are still just going to be stuck in the system with ongoing delays,” she said.”People are still being asked to continue to put their lives on hold. Is it a wonder that families desperate to reunite with their loved ones feel that their cries for help are just falling on deaf ears? The problems with the backlog are so deep that this limited restart will do little to reassure those stuck in the system.”

Efforts to speed up processing

Mathieu Genest, spokesperson for Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino, said the department has been adapting its systems to speed up the processing of applications while protecting the health and safety of staff, clients and Canadians. IRCC has prioritized applications from Canadians and permanent residents returning to Canada, as well as people performing essential services.

Staff now have more resources and streamlined processes for working remotely, he said.

“The expansion of the resumption of in-person services will depend on the results of and lessons learned during this pilot, as well as regional health guidelines, available capacity and virtual alternatives, among other considerations,” he said.

IRCC has introduced safety measures at its locations — including a self-assessment questionnaire that must be completed before an appointment and again before entering the premises.

All employees and clients are required to wear masks, maintain physical distance and follow signs directing the flow of foot traffic. People who appear ill will have to reschedule their appointments.

Source: Immigration services to reopen gradually after pandemic shut down many programs

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Immigration Slump to Weigh Heavily on Australian House Prices

2020/09/22 Leave a comment

So far, Canadian housing prices continue to defy gravity despite the decline in immigration arrivals:

Fitch Ratings-Hong Kong/Sydney-21 September 2020: Australia’s house prices are set to decline by 5%-10% over the next 12 to 18 months, as net immigration weakens sharply, says Fitch Ratings. Price declines on this scale would be unlikely to have a ratings impact on Fitch-rated residential mortgage-backed security (RMBS) transactions, but the evolution of the coronavirus pandemic may create risks that will require close monitoring.

Immigration had already been slowing prior to the outbreak of the pandemic, but has plunged since the health crisis led to strict controls on international travel. The Australian government in May predicted that immigration would fall by 15% in the year to June 2020 (FY20) and by a further 85% in FY21. This would represent a fall of almost 200,000 permanent arrivals in FY21 relative to FY19, and mark the lowest level of net immigration since June 1993.

The decline will lead to a significant drop in household formation. The most recent Australian Census, held in August 2016, showed that the average Australian household had 2.6 people. If this ratio holds for immigrants, the reduction in immigration between FY19 and FY21 would imply demand for around 76,000 fewer dwellings than would have otherwise been the case. Assuming the natural population increase remains similar to previous years, Fitch estimates the population growth for Australia will reach just 0.7% in 2020, a level not seen in the past 40 years, and down from 1.4% in 2019.

Previous recessions in Australia that were coupled with significant unemployment resulted in a reduction in household formation as fewer adult children moved to their own dwellings. The exceptional uncertainty related to the current recession, and its disproportionate impact on young people, is likely to reduce household formation and property demand even more.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has indicated that 171,000 housing approvals were granted in FY20. This is significantly down on the peak for approvals of 243,000 in the 12 months to August 2016, which may help to mitigate the demand shock. Monetary policy has also loosened, which could provide some support for house prices, as could government policies targeting support for the housing sector.

Nevertheless, we believe house prices will face downward pressure nationwide, as supportive factors will be outweighed by the impact of the change in net immigration, along with high unemployment and general economic uncertainty. Indeed, risks to our forecast for house prices are skewed to the downside, and price falls could exceed 10% if our assumptions about the path of the pandemic prove to be overly optimistic.

Fitch modelling for RMBS transactions addresses risks to house prices associated with the impact of the pandemic. Our stress analysis at ‘Bsf’ includes market value declines of at least 25%, so the 5%-10% drop in prices we expect should not have significant effects on ratings. Nevertheless, price declines will vary between regions, and transactions that have collateral concentrated on inner city units in Sydney and Melbourne may be more affected. Moreover, we remain alert to the potential for downside risks associated with the pandemic’s evolution, and will continue to monitor trends in the housing market closely.

Fitch estimates that immigration into Australia has added approximately 1% to GDP annually over the past 10 years. An end to pandemic-related travel restrictions could result in a rapid reversion of immigration to previous trends, and we expect new permanent arrivals to remain a driver of medium-term growth. However, we do not expect restrictions to be eased until well into 2021, and there may be public pressure on the authorities to limit immigration in the near term as long as unemployment remains high.

Source: Immigration Slump to Weigh Heavily on Australian House Prices

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Advocates rally in Toronto to call for permanent immigration status for migrant workers

2020/09/22 Leave a comment

Hard to know where their assertion that more than 1.6 million non-permanent residents comes from when 2016 Census shows 506,625, which largely match IRCC operational data.

And important to understand the differences between the various categories of temporary residents, with some (students and higher skilled) having reasonably pathways to permanent residency. Vulnerability issues moe with respect to agriculture workers and caregivers:

Dozens of people rallied in Toronto’s Yonge-Dundas Square on Sunday to demand permanent status for all migrant workers in Canada.

The rally, organized by the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, comes days before the Sept. 23 throne speech, in which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to outline how the federal government will continue to help people and parts of the economy still affected by COVID-19.

The group said it wants federal COVID-19 recovery efforts to include full and permanent immigration status for all.

Similar rallies were expected to take place in Hamilton, St. Catharines, Sudbury, Montreal and St. John’s on Sunday.

Syed Hussan, executive director of the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, told reporters that the pandemic has made it more difficult for migrant workers in Canada and they do not enjoy essential rights.

“We believe that a fair society is one with equal rights. And equal rights is only possible if all of us have full and permanent immigration status,” Hussan said.

“We don’t want a society in which some people are treated like second class citizens.”

According to the group:

  • At least 1 in 23 people in Canada, or more than 1.6 million people are non-permanent residents.
  • Migrants are in Canada on various study, work or humanitarian permits, or without documentation at all.
  • Many migrants are excluded from universal healthcare, access to emergency income supports and decent work. Many are separated from their families.
  • Hundreds of thousands of migrant workers, refugees, students and undocumented people have lost their lives and livelihoods during the pandemic.
  • Migrants are unable to fully protect themselves during the pandemic because of lack of emergency support, and because speaking out about unsafe work and housing conditions can result in deportation, homelessness, or not being able to return.
  • The federal government announced a “pathway to permanent residency for some asylum claimants working in the health-care sector during the COVID-19 pandemic” on Aug. 14.

“COVID-19 does not differentiate between people, and neither should the government response,” the group says.

Source: Advocates rally in Toronto to call for permanent immigration status for migrant workers

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Immigrant Share Continues Flatlining Under Trump in 2019

2020/09/21 Leave a comment

Good analysis regarding the impact of the Trump administration. Last line captures is “his mere presence has created a social and political environment that is seen as unfriendly toward immigrants”:

For the second year in a row, the proportion of the U.S. population who are immigrants did not increase, according to new numbers from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (its annual “mini‐​census”). This is the first time since the Great Recession that multiple years have passed consecutively with no increase.

The stall also defies Census Bureau 2016 projections which had predicted more than a million more immigrants by 2019, and the change had already placed America on pace to have the lowest growth in its immigrant share of any decade since the 1960s before COVID-19 drastically reduced both legal and illegal entries in 2020.

Figure 1 shows the immigrant share of the U.S. population from 2000 to 2019. The share increased by 1.5 percentage points from 2000 to 2007 before dipping in 2008 through 2009 as the housing bubble burst and employment fell. The share then rose again by 1.2 percentage points through 2017 to 13.7 percent where it has stayed during President Trump’s term in office. The Census Bureau in 2017 projected that by 2019, 13.9 percent of the U.S. population would be immigrants.

Figure 2 shows how the actual immigrant population is already down by over a million people relative to the Census Bureau’s 2016 projections. The Census Bureau guessed that the number of immigrants would increase from July 2017 to July 2019 by 1.4 million when, in fact, it increased by little more than 400,000. The Census Bureau’s estimate for the increase in 2017 was 96 percent accurate, but only about 28 percent accurate for 2018 and 2019.

The falloff in the last couple of years is attributable to strong declines from all regions of the world except Oceania. In particular, the European immigrant population fell by 150,000 from July 2017 to July 2019. Northern American immigrants outside of Latin America also declined in absolute numbers. The Asian population grew by almost 200,000 in 2 years as opposed to nearly 500,000 in a single year from 2016 to 2017. The African population grew by 71,554 in 2019, which was half the increase from 2016 to 2017. Latin American immigrants increased by 70,000—half the rate of increase from 2016 to 2017.

The broader historical perspective is key as well. The increase in the immigrant share of the population was the least since the 1960s when it declined. The growth was 0.8 percentage point from 2010 to 2019—less than half the growth from 2000 to 2010.

The change comes despite a wave of more than a million Mexican and Central American asylum seekers and undocumented border crossers in 2019—most of whom were not returned that year. The fact is that it’s lower legal immigration and more immigrants leaving that is driving the decreases in immigrant population growth in the United States. Figure 4 shows how the number of legal immigrants admitted to legal permanent residence from abroad has declined steadily under President Trump by 158,826. But this decrease is not enough to explain lower immigrant population growth. Many immigrants must also be choosing to abandon the United States, such as those caught in decades‐​long green card backlogs.

In a normal environment, immigration should have increased when unemployment reached historic lows. But the president’s anti‐​immigration policies made that impossible, increasing deportations and imposing many new regulations on legal immigration. But it could also be that his mere presence has created a social and political environment that is seen as unfriendly toward immigrants.

Source: Immigrant Share Continues Flatlining Under Trump in 2019

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