Immigration has taken a back seat in this election, and business is pleased

2019/10/10 Leave a comment

More on the biggest (non) surprise in the election campaign:

In the waning days of the last Parliament, Canada’s CEOs publicly called on the country’s political parties to keep immigration off the table in this fall’s election campaign.

Their wish came true, more or less, until this week.

With Alberta Premier Jason Kenney bursting into the suburbs around Toronto on the weekend, and the presence of People’s Party Leader Maxime Bernier at the English-language leaders’ debate on Monday, what had mostly been a discussion at the riding level finally emerged nationally.

But the worst fears of the business community have not materialized.

Rather than degenerating into an anti-immigrant brawl with racist overtones, the discussion has been rational and measured for the most part, with Bernier’s opponents labelling his call for lower immigration levels as irrational and intolerant.

Canadian business leaders had looked at the anti-immigration sentiment developing in the United States. They looked at some of the backlash in Canadian politics as thousands of asylum-seekers walked across the border from the U.S. And they looked at the state of their workforces, their need for labour and the projections for growth going out a few years into the future.

They didn’t like what they saw.

“We are 10 years away from a true demographic pressure point,” Business Council of Canada president and CEO Goldy Hyder told reporters in April. “What I’ve said to the leaders of the political parties on this issue is, ‘Please, please do all you can to resist making this election about immigration.’ That’s as bluntly as I can say it to them.”

Business leaders and many economists argue that Canadian immigration levels need to rise if the economy is to grow fast enough to support a burgeoning number of seniors into retirement. Without increased immigration, the workforce won’t expand, and the number of people depending on that workforce for benefits and supports will be insufficient.

The Liberal government admitted 310,000 immigrants in 2018, with a goal of 350,000 by 2021. About 58 per cent of those are meant to be economic migrants, selected to meet federal and provincial labour needs.

Bernier proposes to cut that number to 150,000, and polling over the past few months suggested he might have the ear of a growing minority of voters.

But instead of taking the bait, as business leaders feared, the other parties were steadfast. Bernier’s federalist opponents found a rare moment of agreement on Monday night, with all of them expressing support for increasing immigration levels.

It actually started last week, when Conservative Leader Andrew Scheerblurted out in a television interview that yes, he would support the Liberals’ general immigration plan.

“That’s a legacy that I’ll continue to build on,” Scheer told the CBC, explaining that an open and inclusive immigration policy is crucial for a growing population and a healthy workforce. Canada’s role as a safe haven for migrants is something to be valued, he added.

Scheer also said a Conservative government would find better ways to allow temporary foreign workers to stay at length in Canada and become permanent residents — a boon to employers looking to bolster their staffing over the long term.

While the business community may have its wish of no bitter immigration debate, it comes with a side effect: there is also very little discussion around how to improve the integration of immigrant workers so their skills are put to best use.

Meanwhile, there are signs the immigration discussion is not always so genteel at the riding level, and some Conservative promotional material has been more aggressive in attacking the way the Liberals have handled refugees. Kenney played into that sentiment last weekend in a tour through an array of diaspora gatherings around the GTA.

When the Conservatives were in government, he said in Richmond Hill, “we sent a message that if you wanted to come to Canada, you should come legally through the front door, waiting your turn in line, not sneaking around it by cutting the queue.”

And the Scheer campaign has issued bumper-sticker style social media slogans urging a fairer immigration system.

While that’s a far cry from the anti-immigrant backlash that the business community feared, corporate Canada has not exactly seen all of its campaign dreams come true.

Global growth is slowing, free trade patterns have been deeply disrupted by U.S.-China tensions, and Canada’s prospects are anemic. In a new forecast from the Conference Board of Canada on Monday, economists pegged Canada’s gross domestic product to expand by just 1.6 per cent this year, despite a pace of nearly four per cent in the second quarter. The culprits? Global trade, hesitant business investment in Canada, and exports.

The longer term challenges for Canadian growth are equally troubling, with the prospects of widespread automation, a world turning away from fossil fuels, and an aggressive knowledge-based economy on the horizon.

But if the discussion around immigration at the national level is practical and pro-business, the discussion around Canada in a rapidly changing economy is nearly absent.

Source: Immigration has taken a back seat in this election, and business is pleased

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

France debates immigration as rebels in Macron’s party break ranks

2019/10/10 Leave a comment

Of note and to follow the debate:

When French President Emmanuel Macron last month announced a tougher stance on immigration, he immediately faced a backlash from within his own party. Since then, Macron has tried to present a united front ahead of Monday’s parliamentary debate.

In the past few weeks, Macron’s centrist government has pulled out all the stops to try to smooth over the divisions that appeared within the president’s La République en Marche (LREM) party after the French leader in September announced a tougher stance on immigration, saying France “cannot host everyone”.

The announcement didn’t go down well with some of the party’s more left-leaning members and resulted in a rebellion, of sorts. In a bid to muster up a united LREM front ahead of an October 7 debate in the National Assembly (lower house), Macron and his ministers have hosted numerous working seminars, parliamentary group meetings and even a working breakfast at the prime minister’s offices.

The first cracks in the LREM party armour appeared a day after Macron made his announcement on September 16. An open letter signed by the party’s left-wing members began to spread on social media, underscoring the advantages and benefits of the successful integration of immigrants.

F24’s Clovis Casali reports on France’s contentious debate over immigration

“The question is not about how many people we can host but how we can better integrate them,” they wrote, noting that “every study, from the OECD to INSEE (the French statistics office), shows that immigration has a positive impact on a country’s economy”.

The signatories insisted that the parliamentary debate on immigration should not be hijacked by those trying to profit off “fantasy immigration-Islam-crime links” and by fuelling “hatred against all Muslim citizens”.

A day later, a second open letter, signed by 35 left-leaning LREM members, was published. But this time the lawmakers wanted to shoot down any suggestion that the country’s cherished healthcare system was the reason why France has experienced such a steep rise in the number of asylum demands. France received 122,743 asylum requests in 2018, up 22 percent from the year before.

“To let people think that the benefits of our healthcare system are the reason for why we are seeing such an influx in immigration is a mistake,” they wrote.

“It’s important to uphold our values, because co-opting the talking points of the [far-right] National Rally will not cause them to lose any support among voters,” Jean-François Cesarini, an LREM lawmaker who signed both of the open letters, told FRANCE 24.

Reining in the rebels

In light of the strong reactions within his own party, Macron and his government have gone all out to try to rein in the most rebellious of the LREM lawmakers. While the interior ministry hosted a working seminar, Prime Minister Édouard Philippe has assisted in a number of parliamentary group meetings and hosted a working breakfast in his Matignon offices.

Meanwhile, the LREM has created a parliamentary discussion group on immigration and asylum. According to a source close to the matter, the group was set up to take advantage of the current divide within LREM, where “those on the left will work on integration issues and those on the right on tougher rules for the right to asylum”.

Addressing the National Assembly on Monday evening, Philippe told lawmakers that the government does not seek to crack down on immigration “as a whole” but rather to simplify some processes and improve the situations of those who’ve moved to France legally. He did, however, say that France wants to crack down on human traffickers and illegal migration.

“I’m not afraid of considering quotas,” he said, adding that authorities must remain in control of the process.

“We must fight abuses and fraud, and make the criteria more strict where necessary,” said Philippe.

The French senate will debate the issue of immigration on Wednesday.

Source: France debates immigration as rebels in Macron’s party break ranks

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Ahmed Hussen, Purveyor of Untruths, Must Resign

2019/10/09 Leave a comment

An incredibly strong critique of Minister Hussen in this case by former Liberal immigration minister Joe Volpe. Not the first one that I am seeing in Corriere Canadese that reflects the relative decline in importance of Italian Canadian voters.

However, what I find hard to understand is why there is no mention of the new pilot program (New immigration program opens door to undocumented construction workers in the GTA) announced this June which would appear to address the same group:

It backfired. That is one message that emerged from the 18-page summary and findings of the Law Society Tribunal, Hearing Division, chaired by Barbara J. Murchie, Dated October 4, 2019. The stated purpose of the Hearing was an examination of the modus operandi of one immigration lawyer, Richard Boraks, by the Law Society, with respect to client services associated with a Pilot Project for Undocumented Workers.

Someone – another lawyer, the Minister of Immigration or members of a Press Corps – had gone through a lot of trouble to use the Law Society to harass into submission the legal counsel to the Undocumented Workers Committee (UWC). Since 2014, the UWC, in its current form Chaired by Manuel Alexandre, had been representing the interests of “out-ofstatus” migrants, and their families, in the construction industry.

Given the market sector, much of the “clientele” for which the UWC advocates is Brazilian, Italian, Portuguese, Polish or Hispanic. For whatever reason, they cannot meet the level of English required to secure Permanent Residency (PR). They are not indolent. Quite the contrary, they are an “in-demand asset” for their employers in a labour-starved marketplace. The language skills required for the job site are different from those in academia.

Boraks and the UWC lobbied successfully for “substituted evaluation”, permitted under s. 12(2) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) and s. 87.2(4) of its Regulations until a Ministerial directive in the former Conservative government demanded results under formal testing.

It was a heartless, insensitive and counter-productive move. Families were deported. The labour shortage increased. More workers went underground. Boraks and the UWC appealed to the Courts as part of a response to keep workers here legally until a solution – change in government policy – could be effected. The alternative for the workers would be to find a more expedient method: cheat on the examination by paying a stand-in and then be subjected to the on-going potential of having the PR revoked.

The change seemingly came when a Liberal government, at the behest of Minister McCallum, under “ministerial discretion” pursuant to s. 25.2 of IRPA, proposed a limited Pilot Project, on December 22, 2016 to address the plight of both employers and employees.

Pilot Projects do not need Governor in Council (Cabinet) approval. Nor do they have to be Gazetted – a process that formalizes government Legislative/Regulatory initiatives or changes. The Law Society agreed. Ministers can announce them virtually at will and the Department is duty-bound to execute them.

McCallum went further. He established a Caucus Committee to help in the process. Several Toronto area MPS, Julie Dzerowicz and Peter Fonseca among them (although the Tribunal did not name them in its findings), were active in promoting the Pilot Project. MP Fonseca even took delivery of completed application forms for processing through the Department.

The UWC was encouraged. Many workers, trusting in the new “breath of fresh air” came forward and submitted applications though Boraks and co. A new Minister, Ahmed Hussen – a former Refugee who arrived in Canada without papers – made all the right confirmational statements for the next several months until late 2017.

By early 2018, his focus shifted. In a complete reversal, Hussen began to deny the program ever existed. MPs, following suit, said there was no Departmental evidence the Pilot existed. It was complete misrepresentation of the facts. Immigration Canada, through CBSA, began to initiate removal proceedings against Applicants.

To make matters worse, someone motivated Sean O’Shea, a Global News reporter who advances himself as a consumer watchdog, to research and air a “gotcha” (he disagrees with the characterization) piece declaring the non-existence of the Pilot, and, by extension, questioning the ethics of the UWC’s legal counsel. Rogers’ Omni and an even more obscure Portuguese language periodical piled on.

An objective observer might easily conclude this was a full-on character assassination attempt to silence the UWC’s legal counsel. Boraks countered with a lawsuit against Hussen and O’Shea; but clearly his practice suffered as the reputational damage took its toll. He is tenant in the same building our offices occupy.

On May 28, 2019, the Law Society filed a Notice of Motion to suspend Boraks’ license. Who prompted the action is not yet clear. Had it been successful, Boraks’ career would have come at an abrupt end. So would whatever faint chance at “regularization of status” through a Pilot Project or an Amnesty any undocumented worker might have had. There are hundreds of thousands of them in the GTHA.

It was a sleazy, malicious tactic. The Tribunal took two and a half months to assess the evidence and documentation it had received and heard over a five-day period, in June and July. Manuel Alexandre of the UWC, Constitutional lawyer Rocco Galati and I appeared as witnesses. Whoever the Plainti. was called none.

The Tribunal, in its assessment of the facts and analysis of the claim, essentially rejected every claim by the Plaintiff, vindicating Boraks and the UWC on every issue related to the Pilot Project.

The second message to derive from the Tribunal decision is that the Minister and his colleagues contrived and promoted statements and actions unsupported by the facts. This is unacceptable and unjustifiable in our democratic process.

If they were honourable individuals, they would resign their public o¦ce and forgo the e.ort to seek re-election. They won’t. it will be up the voters to mete out justice for the incalculable psychological and economic harm they have caused the deported families and their friends and families.

If Portuguese and Italian voters in York South Weston, Mississauga- Cooksville and Davenport don’t let their anger show on this issue, they are beyond help.

Source: https://www.corriere.ca/english-articles/ahmed-hussen-purveyor-of-untruths-must-resign/ 

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Experts surprised immigration didn’t play more prominent role in federal leaders’ debate

2019/10/09 Leave a comment

I was less surprised than those listed, as the parties have (correctly) calculated that making immigration a major issue has electoral risks in ridings with large numbers of immigrants and visible minorities (905, BC’s lower mainland, and elsewhere), as Kurland and Smith note.

The same could be said for the campaign in general, although immigration issues get more play in ethnic media as my weekly analyses for diversityvotes.ca shows.

Apart of course from the PPC:

Excluding an early question that provoked a barrage of attacks against People’s Party Leader Maxime Bernier, Monday night’s leaders debate featured few questions about immigration — and none about refugees, specifically.

This left some migration experts feeling surprised and disappointed that immigration issues — which have been the source of heated political exchanges in Canada over the past two years — didn’t play more prominently in the debate.

“There was no substance on immigration policy, on Canada’s refugee policy, on Canada’s role in the world on these issues,” said Queen’s University law professor Sharry Aiken.

“I was disappointed that there wasn’t much there.”

Aiken says that the section of the debate dedicated to “polarization, human rights and immigration” focused almost entirely on Quebec’s contentious Bill 21, the religious symbols ban that bars religious head coverings in some sections of the public service, and that immigration issues were overshadowed by the discussion about discrimination.

The rising rhetoric around refugees is fuelling many falsehoods about whether these new arrivals pose a threat

The rising rhetoric around refugees is fuelling many falsehoods about whether these new arrivals pose a threat

Aiken believes discussing Bill 21 is very important, but she thinks debate moderators could have been better at focusing their questions on specific issues, such as the recent challenges faced by Canada’s asylum system.

The standout moment for Aiken on immigration was Bernier’s claim that Canada takes in more immigrants than any other western nation.

Aikeen says this claim is untrue. Citing a recent report from the World Economic Forum, she says Australia has a higher ratio of immigrants — 28 per cent of its population compared to Canada at 21 per cent.

She also questions Bernier’s math about letting in more economic immigrants. Bernier has claimed Canada should reduce immigration levels to 150,000 a year, while at the same time taking in more economic immigrants.

But in 2017, Canada accepted roughly 159,000 economic immigrants, she said. If Bernier’s immigration policy was implemented, Canada would actually see an overall reduction in economic immigration.

Meanwhile, Sean Rehaag, director of York University’s Centre for Refugee Studies, was also surprised by the fact that “a debate where immigration was expected to play a major role” had so few questions about immigration.

He noted that neither the influx of irregular border crossings that began in April 2017 nor the Safe Third Country Agreement between Canada and the United States figured prominently in the debate.

This is also one of the issues where the parties have distinct policy options when it comes to how Canada should handle its asylum system.

No ‘political capital’ to be gained on immigration

Others were less surprised that immigration wasn’t a bigger topic for party leaders.

Richard Kurland, a Vancouver-based immigration lawyer, thinks the lack of attention on immigration means political parties have decided that no “political capital” can be gained from this issue.

“It was a good move on the part of all the parties not to go there,” Kurland said.

Craig Damian Smith, director of the Global Migration Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy in Toronto, agrees that it was wise for the leaders not to focus on immigration, particularly the divisive issues around refugee resettlement and how to handle irregular migration at unofficial ports of entry.

Scheer claims asylum seekers are ‘skipping the line’

Like Kurland, Smith thinks the party leaders have realized that immigration isn’t an issue where voters can be won or lost.

This doesn’t mean immigration isn’t important, Smith said. It just means that when it comes time to vote on Oct. 21, he believes most Canadians will be focused on issues like health care, education and the economy.

Smith also pointed out what he saw as a significant moment in the debate — that is, when Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer lashed out at Bernier for his past comments about immigrants, saying Bernier had changed from someone who used to believe in an immigration system that was fair, orderly and compassionate to someone who bases his policies on the number of likes and retweets he gets on social media from the “darkest parts of Twitter.”

According to Smith, this “well-rehearsed” line shows that the Conservatives now realize Canadians, on average, support the country’s current approach to immigration.

Smith still thinks that who wins the election could have big consequences on the future of immigration in Canada — especially for refugees — but in Monday’s debate, at least, it looked like everyone other than Bernier agreed immigration is important to Canada’s future.

“Even when they had the section on polarization, human rights and immigration, they all took that opportunity to steer it towards other issues, either to attack one another or to bolster their own position on other issues,” he said.

“It’s a good thing, or it’s at least a good sign, that they decided to steer the debate away from [immigration] because it means that that’s not going to be an issue that Canadians are going to vote on.”

Source: Experts surprised immigration didn’t play more prominent role in federal leaders’ debate

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Douglas Todd: Greens push to welcome ‘environmental refugees’ to Canada

2019/10/04 Leave a comment

Has been discussed for some time but with climate change accelerating, will likely see more pressures:

Amita Kettner’s mother was killed when a mudslide wiped out the family home in North Vancouver.

The Green party candidate for Burnaby North was 14 when the sudden burst of extreme weather struck in 2005, sweeping Eliza Wing Mun Kettner and her house down an embankment.

The tragic family history adds to why Kettner, along with the Green party of Canada, is impassioned about the party’s out-of-the-ordinary election promise to advocate for making “environmental refugee” a new immigration category in Canada.

“We, as a country, have a certain amount of prosperity and comfort, and we can prepare to have climate refugees. That is not something that everywhere else can do,” says Kettner, who recently obtained a PhD in astrophysics from the University of California, Santa Clara.

Soon many regions of the globe are “likely to be on fire, or underwater or having crop failures,” said Kettner.

“We might not have to take refugees that come overland (entering Canada from the U.S.), but it’s possible we might see mass migration from the equatorial band. I think we should be ready to accept people from everywhere and anywhere.”

The Green party knows it faces an uphill battle on the issue, since the United Nations refugee agency, which currently defines refugees as people escaping war and persecution, has failed to come up with a definition of environmental refugee, citing legal and political complications.

Nevertheless, the party’s 2019 platform declares it intends to “lead a national discussion to define the term ‘environmental refugee,’ advocate for its inclusion as a refugee category in Canada, and accept an appropriate share of the world’s environmental refugees into Canada.”

With tens of thousands of Canadians joining climate-change protests on Friday and the environment ranking as leading election issue, projections about the potential scale of the climate crisis still vary. One widely cited study, from the United Nations University, suggests there will be 200 million environmental migrants by 2050.

Experts are also concerned that only the wealthy will have a chance to emigrate from the world’s increasingly hot spots, which could be devastated by water shortages, crop failure and extreme weather. This year, for instance, severe drought hit East Africa, unusual typhoons battered the Philippines, and crops withered in Honduras.

Sanjay Jeram. GERRY KAHRMANN / PNG

Simon Fraser University political scientist Sanjay Jeram says the Canadian Greens’  enthusiasm for broadening the refugee category “comes at an interesting time when, across the Western world, we have seen parties — on the left and right — express hesitation about their state’s capacity to take in refugees.”

Even people sympathetic to the plight of refugees are timid about reopening the definition used by the United Nations convention, Jeram said. They fear some nation-states will use it as an opportunity to withdraw from current commitments to take in people escaping war and persecution, of which there are more than 22 million.

Nevertheless, Sanjay pointed to New Zealand as a potential example for Canada to follow, since some of its politicians have been exploring how to make climate change a legitimate ground for an asylum claim.

Last year New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern planned to create a special visa for Pacific Islanders forced to relocate because of rising sea levels. She hoped her nation, as a precedent, could offer 100 visas each year. Ardern’s plan, however, has run into legal barriers.

Like many environmental specialists, Kuttner, who wouldn’t speculate about how many environmental refugees Canada might accept, is concerned that rich and educated people will be most likely to escape climate-change calamity in their regions, including through migration to countries like Canada, which are somewhat less vulnerable.

“There’s a definite sense that some people, if they have enough capital, will be able to hide themselves from climate disaster,” Kuttner said.

“It’s definitely true that the more money people have the easier it is to handle large climate changes. But even for the well-off it’s still a gamble.”

Andy Yan. NICK PROCAYLO/ PNG

Andy Yan, director of the city program at Simon Fraser University, says it’s possible some people around the world who can afford it are trying to find a haven from climate change by migrating to Metro Vancouver and other parts of North America.

“That would probably be a factor. It goes into the idea of Metro Vancouver as a ‘hedge city.’ It’s not only about looking to create financial and political stability, it’s increasingly about searching for climate stability.”

That said, Yan is among those warning Metro Vancouver and Canada will not be immune from climate-change problems. He cites a recent study by University of Victoria scientists projecting that Vancouver could be warmer than San Diego by 2050, causing nearby forest fires and water shortages.

While it’s important to have discussions about our humanitarian responsibilities to the world’s migrants, however defined, Yan said the value of facing up to the potential for a mass movement of environmental refugees is that it reminds us to first take decisive action against climate change itself.

“How about having government policies that prevent the situation to begin with?”

Source: Douglas Todd: Greens push to welcome ‘environmental refugees’ to Canada

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with ,

Hongkongers tap Irish immigration investment scheme amid unrest

2019/10/03 Leave a comment

Targeted investor immigration program. Will be interesting to see the results and evaluations. Does seem better approach than some of the more passive citizenship-by-investment or immigration investment programs:

Ireland’s underserved property segments of nursing homes and social housing have opened up avenues for foreigners to qualify for the country’s fast-track residency scheme, and wealthy Hongkongers are eyeing the investment scheme as the city reels from its worst political crisis.

Dublin offers four options under the Immigrant Investor Programme (IIP) for those seeking to live and work in Ireland. The first two options are investing in companies that build social housing or nursing homes, which require a minimum €1 million each for at least three years. The other two options are donations of €500,000 to a public project and a €2 million investment in any real estate investment trust listed on the Irish Stock Exchange.

The interest has been substantial enough for Irish developer Bartra Capital to set up shop in Hong Kong following record-high inquiries it received from Hongkongers about the immigration scheme when social unrest in the city started to escalate in July.

“In the last seven to eight weeks, I’d say I’ve met between 80 and 100 clients in Hong Kong,” said James Hartshorn, director of Asia at Bartra. “Prior to that we had signed two to three Hong Kong clients.”

Henry Chin, head of research for Asia-Pacific, Europe and the Middle East at CBRE, said that there is an opportunity for investors to specialise in the development of social and affordable housing considering that affordability is challenging in the Irish market.

Source: Hongkongers tap Irish immigration investment scheme amid unrest

Filed under citizenship-by-investment, Immigration Tagged with , ,

Macron’s national debate on immigration plays into the hands of the French far right

2019/10/01 Leave a comment

To note. Not a unique risk, limited to France and Macron

Nearly halfway into his rocky first term as French president, Emmanuel Macron has concocted a new plan to bolster his flagging approval ratings: a sweeping national debate on immigration. Starting on Monday, the French parliament is slated to begin a wide-ranging discussion of French and European migration policy. It comes just weeks after Macron told legislators from his party, La République En Marche, that he believes immigration to be a major concern of working-class people – something they apparently “endure”, along with poverty and unemployment. “The question,” he told the parliamentarians, “is whether we want to be a bourgeois party or not.”

It’s unclear what exactly will come of the debate. Just in case legislators are looking for inspiration, though, the president has floated a handful of his own ideas – and they give a sense of where this is headed. He has suggested that state medical aid for undocumented immigrants is too generous, that some are abusing the right of asylum, and that deportations sometimes take too long to process because of legal challenges. “France cannot host everyone if it wants to host people well,” Macron said on Wednesday.

The debate taking shape is a dangerous one. But it’s also based on a phoney premise: France is not “hosting everyone” seeking refuge and asylum. It’s not even coming close. Since taking office more than two years ago, Macron has criticised the brutal migration policies of countries such as Italy and Hungary, while France has maintained a hardline stance of its own. Over the past four years, since the peak of the refugee crisis, France has approved far fewer asylum requests than neighbouring Germany. According to government figures, it granted asylum to just 33,000 people in 2018. That’s a slight increase on previous years, but still represents only a quarter of all requests.

What’s more, the share of France’s population that was born overseas has hardly increased over the past four decades. Immigrants currently make up just under 10% of the French population – only two percentage points more than in 1975.

By framing immigration as a problem for the working class – a scourge on the same level as unemployment and poverty – Macron is echoing the classic narrative of the far right. The Front National – which rebranded as Rassemblement National (the National Rally) last year – has long charged France’s ruling class with abandoning the country by allowing in too many foreigners. According to its warped logic, immigrants and elites share responsibility for France’s social decay and ongoing ills. With the complicity of top politicians and civil servants, the story goes, immigrants have driven up unemployment and racked up a costly welfare tab, depriving the native-born working and middle classes of much-needed work and state aid. This is the very essence of the National Rally’s brand of xenophobic populism – its ideological bread and butter.

But the notion that low-income French people are simply crying out for the government to deport more immigrants or deny them benefits is spurious. It is true that a wide-ranging annual opinion study found that nearly two-thirds of French people said there were “too many” foreigners in the country. However, when asked to identify their top political priorities, people ranked environmental protection first, followed by the future of the welfare state and questions linked to purchasing power, such as wages and taxes.

These are all issues at the heart of the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) protest movement. A near-perfect incarnation of France’s working-class anger and sense of abandonment, the yellow vests have called for the reintroduction of the wealth tax on assets above €1.3m, which was repealed by Macron’s government; a hike in the minimum wage; and more investment in public services such as schools and hospitals. Yet rather than address any of these pressing issues, Macron has instead opted to tackle something that nobody, except National Rally sympathisers, is asking for.

It’s also a dangerous gambit politically. By steering the national debate toward issues such as the cost of healthcare for undocumented immigrants, Macron is aiming to beat the National Rally at its own game. If the past is any guide, though, such an approach risks only further legitimising the ideas of Marine Le Pen and the rest of the far right. In 2009 the then-president, Nicolas Sarkozy, launched a widely panned national debate on French immigration and identity. It was based on many of the same faulty premises as next week’s debate – designed, in part, to neutralise the growing threat of the Front National. Instead, the ensuing media circus gave credibility to the myth that ordinary people’s suffering is tied to the presence of foreigners or insufficiently integrated citizens. Three years later, in the presidential election, the Front National had its best ever result in terms of vote share (although it would do even better in 2017).

Source: Macron’s national debate on immigration plays into the hands of the French far right

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Why do so many Irish Americans vote against Irish immigrants?

2019/10/01 Leave a comment

Demographic and social change impacts. Not unique to those of Irish origin as we see, in some of the commentary in Italian language media in Canada, concerns over their declining influence in Canadian political parties:

This week a story was posted in The Boston Globe that explored a very pressing issue, how rapidly spiking rents – familiar to all city businesses now – has led to the closing of many signature Irish pubs in Boston.

Later in the piece, the writer mentions that the problem isn’t simply one of economics. The Irish pub “faces the added challenge of a decline in Irish-born patrons and publicans,” the author writes.

Then she sets out the sobering statistics. “The population of Irish-Americans has fallen in the past 25 years. In 1990, 38.7 million Americans claimed Irish ancestry. By 2015, that number had dropped to 32.7 million, setting course for the number of Irish-Americans to dip below 30 million by 2020, according to data from the Pew Research Center.”

We need to discuss this more. The last big wave of Irish immigrants came here in the 1980s, giving a big boost to the rapidly aging generation that had arrived in the 1950s. But that was over 30 years ago now and there has been no big Irish immigrant wave since.

The truth is young Irish people started looking elsewhere to begin their careers in the early 2000s. Our biting immigration laws led to serious restrictions in their movements as did the growing perception of America as an increasingly reactionary and counter-progressive place.

Source: Why do so many Irish Americans vote against Irish immigrants?

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USA: Federal judge’s ruling upends how ICE targets people for being in the country illegally

2019/09/30 Leave a comment

Hard to follow all the restrictive changes in US immigration and related policies and the various court challenges and their impact, so found this summary helpful:

In a third defeat in less than a day for the Trump administration, a federal judge blocked it from vastly extending the authority of immigration officers to deport people without first allowing them to appear before judges.

The decision late Friday came before the policy, which was announced in July, was even enforced. The move would have applied to anyone in the country less than two years.

For the record:
1:31 PM, Sep. 28, 2019 An earlier version of this article misspelled U.S. District Judge Andre Birotte Jr.’s last name as Birrote.

The decision came just after a federal judge barred Immigration and Customs Enforcement from relying solely on flawed databases to target people for being in the country illegally.

Early Friday, the administration suffered what would be its first defeat on the immigrant front in less than 24 hours when a federal judge blocked its plan to dismantle protections for immigrant youths and indefinitely hold families with children in detention.

Those protections are granted under the so-called Flores agreement, which was the result of a landmark class-action court settlement in 1997 that said the government must generally release children as quickly as possible and cannot detain them longer than 20 days, whether they have traveled to the U.S. alone or with family members.

In a statement Saturday, the White House responded angrily to the decision to halt its plans for expedited removal of immigrants.

“Once again, a single district judge has suspended application of Federal law nationwide — removing whole classes of illegal aliens from legal accountability,” the statement read in part. “For two and a half years, the Trump Administration has been trying to restore enforcement of the immigration laws passed by Congress. And for two and a half years, misguided lower court decisions have been preventing those laws from ever being enforced — at immense cost to the whole country.”

The American Civil Liberties Union, which had sought the injunction granted just before midnight celebrated the result.

“The court rejected the Trump administration’s illegal attempt to remove hundreds of thousands of people from the U.S. without any legal recourse,” said ACLU attorney Anand Balakrishnan, who argued the case. “This ruling recognizes the irreparable harm of this policy.”

In the first setback Friday for the Trump administration, U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee said new rules it planned to impose violated the terms of the Flores settlement. Gee issued a strongly worded order shortly after, slamming the changes as “Kafkaesque” and protecting the original conditions of the agreement.

Gee wrote that the administration cannot ignore the terms of the settlement — which, she pointed out, is a final, binding judgment that was never appealed — just because leaders don’t “agree with its approach as a matter of policy.”

Barring a change in the law through Congressional action, she said, “Defendants cannot simply impose their will by promulgating regulations that abrogate the consent decree’s most basic tenets. That violates the rule of law. And that this court cannot permit.”

The new regulations would have eliminated minors’ entitlement to bond hearings and the requirement that facilities holding children be licensed by states. They also would have removed legally binding language, changing the word “shall” to “may” throughout many of the core passages describing how the government would treat immigrant children.

The government is expected to appeal.

In the second decision Friday, U.S. District Judge Andre Birotte Jr. issued a permanent injunction barring ICE from relying solely on databases when issuing so-called detainers, which are requests made to police agencies to keep people who have been arrested in custody for up two days beyond the time they would otherwise be held.

ICE is also blocked from issuing detainers to state and local law enforcement in states where there isn’t an explicit statute authorizing civil immigration arrests on detainers, according to the judge’s decision.

The decision affects any detainers issued by an ICE officer in the federal court system’s Central District of California.

That designation is significant because the Pacific Enforcement Response Center, a facility in Orange County, is an ICE hub from which agents send out detainer requests to authorities in 43 states, Guam and Washington, D.C. It is covered by the Central District.

“ICE is currently reviewing the ruling and considering our legal options,” Richard Rocha, an agency spokesman, said in a statement. “Cooperation between ICE and local law enforcement agencies is critical to prevent criminal aliens from being released into our communities after being arrested for a crime.”

Tens of thousands of the requests are made each year to allow ICE agents additional time to take people suspected of being in the country illegally into federal custody for possible deportation. Approximately 70% of the arrests ICE makes happen after the agency is notified about someone being released from local jails or state prisons.

In fiscal year 2019, ICE has lodged more than 160,000 detainers with local law enforcement agencies, according to the agency.

Although police in California do not honor these ICE requests because of earlier court rulings that found them unconstitutional, agencies in other parts of the country continue to enforce them.

The civil case, which has wound its way through years of delays and legal wrangling, has broad implications for President Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration as the ACLU and other groups sought to upend how immigration officers target people for being in the country illegally.

“I think the decision is a tremendous blow to ICE’s Secure Communities deportation program and to Trump’s effort to use police throughout the country to further his deportation programs,” said Jessica Bansal, senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Southern California.

The class-action lawsuit, which represents broad categories of people who have been or will be subjected to detainers, alleged the databases that agents consult are so badly flawed by incomplete and inaccurate information that ICE officers should not be allowed to rely on them as the sole basis for keeping someone in custody.

The judge agreed with that assessment, finding that the databases often contained “incomplete data, significant errors, or were not designed to provide information that would be used to determine a person’s removability.”

These errors, according to the decision, have led to arrests of U.S. citizens and lawfully present noncitizens. From May 2015 to February 2016, of the 12,797 detainers issued in that time frame, 771 were lifted, according to ICE data. Of those 771, 42 were lifted because the person was a U.S. citizen.

The detainer process begins when police arrest and fingerprint a person. The prints are sent electronically to the FBI and checked against the prints of millions of immigrants in Homeland Security databases. If there is a match — such as someone who applied for a visa or was apprehended by Border Patrol — it triggers a review process, which often culminates with an agent at the center deciding whether to issue a detainer.

Last year, the Pacific Enforcement Response Center issued 45,253 detainers and alerted agents at field offices to more than 28,000 additional people released from law enforcement custody before ICE could detain them.

Trump has singled out police in California and elsewhere for their refusal to honor detainers, using them to highlight what he says are problems with the country’s stance on immigration enforcement and the need to take a more hard-line approach.

In the years since the lawsuit was filed, ICE has amended its policies, saying the changes made the process for issuing detainers more rigorous.

Source: Federal judge’s ruling upends how ICE targets people for being in the country illegally

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,

International education in Canada is booming — but the system is flawed. Here’s how to fix it

2019/09/30 Leave a comment

Final part of the Star’s series on international education and their recommendations how to address the abuse and challenges. Some are more realistic than others (hard to see provincial funding increasing to reduce reliance on international students, and not sure what the capacity is for settlement services to handle students) but many are eminently practical:

Make more classroom supports available. Provide better information on employment rights. And begin regulating education recruiters.

Those are just some of the ways to bolster the experience of international students in Canada and improve the burgeoning international education system, according to students, teachers, policy-makers and others.

A months-long joint investigation by the Toronto Star and the St. Catharines Standard found the explosive growth in the number of international students in Canada, particularly in Ontario colleges, has left students feeling overwhelmed and teachers frustrated.

There are now more than 572,000 international students in Canada — the largest cohort ever — and a 73 per cent hike since 2014. That unprecedented growth has proven extremely lucrative, with international students pumping $21.6 billion into campuses, communities and the economy nationwide last year. But it has also brought significant challenges.

Part 1 of the Price of Admission series looks at how international students have increasingly been used as a key source of revenue to prop up an underfunded Canadian education system. Part 2 examines how one Ontario college scrambled to deal with a crisis on campus in the wake of a surge in international enrolment. And Part 3 explores how international students, desperate to stay here permanently, are sometimes exploited by employers.

Reporters spoke with students, teachers, school administrators, policy-makers, academic researchers, recruiters and advocates on how we can make things better.

Some have suggested one way of preventing international students from being taken advantage of in Canada, would be to grant them permanent residence upon arrival. But others say this is unrealistic and it is unlikely any political party in power would want to do that.

Here are some of their other suggestions:

For the provincial government:

  • Invest in post-secondary education to reduce reliance on revenue from international students to fund public education.
  • Regulate education recruiters to crack down on misinformation about Canada’s education and immigration systems, similar to a mechanism in place in Manitoba that monitors designated education providers, recruiters and contracted agents.
  • Reach out to international students to inform them about their job rights and enforce employer compliance.

For the federal government:

  • Make pre-arrival information and checklists available to incoming students on such things as housing, transportation, cost of living, health care, immigration and employment.
  • Grant students access to settlement services, including help with job searches, housing and counselling.
  • Provide clear information to prospective students about the pathways to immigration and the criteria for permanent residence down the road.
  • Raise the threshold of the GIC deposit required of international students to ensure they have the minimum savings to complete their studies in Canada.
  • Enhance and expand the immigration department’s current “letter of acceptance verification project” and “international student compliance project” to ensure students are not using their study permit just for the purpose of entering the country. Make this part of the regular audit of Canada’s international education strategy.
  • Work with provincial partners to survey students about their needs and experience, and track their progress through the education and immigration systems, using the data for policy reviews and decisions.

For schools:

  • Improve vetting system to ensure English language admission test scores accurately reflect a student’s actual language proficiency, including interviews with college staff.
  • Provide improved linguistic supports, including better access to translators, to help students from non-English speaking countries navigate the education system, student and medical supports, and to assist teachers in the classrooms.
  • Provide additional classroom and counselling support to help international students unfamiliar with Canada’s education system, teaching styles and culture throughout their studies and not just limited to the initial orientation.
  • Offer cultural sensitivity and awareness training to teaching and administrative staff about international students and the unique challenges and circumstances they face.
  • Implement an early warning system among school administration to assist failing students.

  • Start a buddy system matching international students with their domestic peers to ease their transition and better integrate them into the school community.

Source: International education in Canada is booming — but the system is flawed. Here’s how to fix it

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

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