Immigration: Québec lance un nouveau système d’accompagnement

2019/08/10 Leave a comment

Interesting. Will see if they can pull such individual attention off in a consistent manner:

Québec déploie un autre volet de sa réforme du système d’immigration, en lançant son « parcours d’accompagnement personnalisé », auquel il consacrera 20 millions par année.

Cette annonce, faite jeudi par le ministre de l’Immigration, de la Diversité et de l’Inclusion, Simon Jolin-Barrette, suit ses annonces des derniers mois touchant le système Arrima, qui permet de mieux arrimer l’immigration aux besoins du marché du travail, et la bonification des programmes de francisation.

Le parcours d’accompagnement personnalisé permettra de guider les candidats à l’immigration dès le tout début de la démarche, alors même qu’ils sont encore à l’étranger.

« Dès l’étranger, maintenant, il y a un agent d’aide à l’intégration qui va être attribué à chaque personne immigrante pour la suivre dans son parcours. On va les accompagner au niveau des démarches d’installation. On va faire en sorte qu’ils soient inscrits aux cours de francisation, qu’ils soient orientés, qu’ils soient évalués au niveau de leur français pour qu’ils soient bien classés dans les classes », a expliqué le ministre, en entrevue.

« Par la suite on va les diriger vers les emplois disponibles et on va surtout assurer un suivi en termes de francisation, d’intégration, d’employabilité, durant tout le parcours de la personne », a-t-il résumé. Et le tout sera personnalisé.

Rencontre en 5 jours

Ambitieux, le ministre Jolin-Barrette s’est même donné l’objectif d’accorder un premier rendez-vous en personne avec un agent d’aide à l’intégration « dans les cinq premiers jours ouvrables » suivant l’arrivée au Québec.

À l’heure actuelle, les personnes immigrantes qui arrivent à l’aéroport reçoivent seulement une pochette d’information. Et seulement un immigrant sur deux est rencontré au bureau du ministère de l’Immigration à l’aéroport, rapporte le ministre.

Finalement, les personnes immigrantes seront invitées à suivre la session Objectif intégration. Celle-ci doit permettre de se familiariser avec la réalité socioculturelle du Québec et les caractéristiques du marché du travail. La personne qui complète la session touchera une allocation de 185 $.

« C’est vraiment une approche qui permet de donner les clefs du succès pour l’intégration pour la connaissance de la société québécoise, pour que la personne ait tous les outils en main, qu’elle ne soit pas perdue », a illustré le ministre Jolin-Barrette.

Pour déployer le système, Québec embauchera 78 agents d’aide à l’intégration – un poste nouvellement créé. Ils seront chargés d’évaluer les besoins de la personne immigrante, d’élaborer un plan individualisé, d’orienter la personne vers les ressources appropriées et d’assurer le suivi. À terme, il y aura 84 intervenants.

Employeurs contents

Cette partie de la réforme du système d’immigration a été applaudie par les associations d’employeurs, comme cela avait été le cas pour le système Arrima et pour la bonification des programmes de francisation.

Le groupe Manufacturiers et exportateurs du Québec a salué le Parcours d’accompagnement personnalisé, souhaitant qu’il « favorise l’intégration des travailleurs immigrants et que ces derniers soient bien informés des opportunités qui existent dans le secteur manufacturier, particulièrement en région, et du processus de reconnaissance des acquis. S’ils sont bien préparés pour le marché du travail, ils pourront s’intégrer et progresser plus rapidement. Cette une approche gagnante pour les travailleurs et pour les employeurs », a commenté la présidente-directrice générale, Véronique Proulx.

La Fédération des chambres de commerce du Québec a abondé dans le même sens. « L’accompagnement personnalisé permettra d’assurer un suivi rigoureux de l’évolution de la personne immigrante et ajustera, au besoin, le plan d’action, afin d’offrir un service adapté aux besoins de chaque candidat, ce qui est une mesure bénéfique qui viendra assurer leur entrée rapide sur le marché québécois », s’est réjoui son président, Stéphane Forget.

Source: Immigration: Québec lance un nouveau système d’accompagnement

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Canada’s Safe 3rd Country Agreement With The U.S. Draws Criticism

2019/08/08 Leave a comment

NPR coverage:

Sitting relaxed at the kitchen table of her new home in a comfortable Toronto suburb, Kinda Bazerbashi recalls how differently she felt when her family lived in Houston.

Originally from Syria, she had lived in the United Arab Emirates, then arrived in the United States with her family on temporary visas and applied for asylum in 2012. Through a series of rejections and appeals, she says, they lived their lives in a legal limbo that made it hard to work, plan or travel to see scattered relatives.

“You are just like in jail, in a nice life,” she says. “There are cars. There is supermarket, but you feel, inside, you are in jail.”

By the time President Trump was elected, only a temporary protected status at the discretion of the White House kept her family from being deported back to Syria. Concerned about the president’s positions on immigration, she and her husband, Anas Almoustafa, looked to an alternative.

“From the TV,” says Almoustafa, “they [were] saying a lot of immigrants, they go to Canada.”

In March 2017, the family did what they had seen on TV and what more than 46,000 people have done since the 2016 election. They walked across the border from the U.S. to Canada, away from official entry points, and applied for asylum.

“People are crossing that way because of the safe third country agreement,” says Maureen Silcoff, president of the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers.

Signed in 2002, the agreement operates from the assumption that both the U.S. and Canada offer protections, so people fleeing their homes should apply for asylum in either country they arrive in first.

That kind of deal has gained renewed attention as the Trump administration presses Mexico and Guatemala to take in asylum-seekers traveling through those countries to the U.S. As America’s policies push more migrants to head across its northern border, Canadians and rights groups have challenged the agreement with the U.S.

Under the accord, people leaving the U.S. cannot apply for asylum in Canada at an official crossing point, or vice versa. Except for a few limited cases, such as if they have close family in Canada, they will be turned back to the U.S.

However, what some call a “loophole” in the agreement allows people to apply for asylum in Canada if they can arrive in the country.

“People feel hopeless about their chances of receiving protection in the United States,” Silcoff says. “That essentially drives them to cross between ports of entry.”

Most have traversed one country road on the border of upstate New York and the province of Quebec. Royal Canadian Mounted Police wait on the other side of this unofficial path to apprehend them.

The total number of migrant interceptions since 2016 still pales in comparison to 100,000 on the U.S.-Mexico border this March alone. Numbers have also trended downward this year over last. But Canadian pollster Shachi Kurl of the Angus Reid Institute says the border situation took on an outsize political importance because Canadians were unaccustomed to these types of arrivals.

“Just literally walking across an undefended border was starting to create a deep sense of unease and concern not just in right-wing voters, but it was really an issue that crossed the political spectrum,” she says.

Canada’s opposition Conservative Party has picked up this theme in its campaign to unseat Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government in federal elections this fall. In a speech in May, Conservative leader Andrew Scheer called the numbers of irregular crossings “almost hard to believe,” protesting that some migrants are able to “exploit loopholes and skip the line.”

Trudeau’s government has made a number of changes in the last two years to try to reduce the number of arrivals. The Canadian government sent representatives abroad to discourage people considering traveling to the border and to temper perceptions of the welcome they would receive.

Trudeau also created a new Cabinet-level border security minister, a position filled by former Toronto police chief Bill Blair. Earlier this year, Blair met with then-U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen about expanding the safe third country agreement so Canada could turn border-crossers back to the U.S. His office declined an interview with NPR but said the two countries have not begun official negotiations.

However, even as the U.S. pushes for similar agreements with Mexico and Guatemala to give migrants heading for the U.S. border asylum in their countries, groups like Amnesty International Canada are urging Canada to withdraw from its asylum deal.

Arguing that the U.S. does not offer equal protections for immigrants, Amnesty Canada director Alex Neve says Canada should allow people to make asylum claims at all official border crossings.

“At a time when refugees and migrants, a very vulnerable group, face this full-out attack on their rights from the U.S. government, Canada shouldn’t be turning its back on them,” Neve tells NPR.

Amnesty has joined with other organizations in a lawsuit to overturn the agreement. Hearings will begin in September.

Silcoff, the attorney, pointed out that U.S. policy changes that have, for example, closed eligibility for asylum to victims of domestic violence, whereas she noted, “They have a good chance because of our laws of receiving protection in Canada.”

Despite their rejection in the U.S., Baserbashi’s family was approved for asylum in Canada last year.

“This is the final step we hope and final move — absolutely it’s [the] final move — because we get approved, thanks God!” she says.

Her family would receive a different reception if they arrived today. The Canadian government passed one more measure this summer, tucked into a large budget bill. The provision bars people from applying for asylum in Canada if they applied previously in the United States or a handful of other countries with which Canada shares biometric data.

Those who have applied elsewhere will now enter an alternative administrative process that Silcoff says offers fewer protections.

A spokesperson for Minister Blair’s office said in an email to NPR that the change was meant to “deter people from making multiple asylum claims in different countries,” but added, “Nobody will be removed without a chance to be heard.”

Source: Canada’s Safe 3rd Country Agreement With The U.S. Draws Criticism

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Canada’s Populist Party Introduces Trumpian Immigration Plan

2019/08/07 Leave a comment

Strong endorsement by the American right. Not sure how this will help the Bernier in Canada:

Donald Trump’s influence has crossed the border into Canada. Last week, the populist People’s Party of Canada unveiled its immigration plan. The plan echoes the America First agenda and would provide a solid immigration model for American patriots to imitate.

The PPC’s plan would reduce immigration, combat multiculturalism, focus on high-skilled immigrants, and emphasize assimilation.

Maxime Bernier, a member of Parliament from Quebec and PPC’s leader, delivered the plan along with “Muslim dissident” and long-time critic of multiculturalism, Salim Mansur. Bernier is a former state minister who nearly became the leader of Canada’s more establishment right-wing party, the Conservative Party of Canada, two years ago. He left the Conservatives last year over their cowardice in addressing vital policies, such as immigration. Word is, he was pushed out by way of a rigged vote. He labelled the Conservatives “intellectually and morally corrupt” before leaving.

“For decades now, there has only been one acceptable position among our political and intellectual elites: more, and more, and more immigration,” Bernier said in a speech last week. “There is a taboo around this topic. As soon as you raise a concern about the level of immigration, someone will accuse you of harboring anti-immigrant views and being racist or xenophobic.”

Bernier singled out Conservatives for their weakness on immigration: “[Conservative Party leader] Andrew Scheer gave a speech on immigration a few weeks ago. He did not say anything relevant or significant. He did not mention any number. Instead, he spent half an hour pleading that he is not racist.”

Bernier said he needed only 30 seconds to dispel media smears his party is racist. He pointed to minority candidates in PPC and the party’s emphasis on “shared values, culture and identity,” not skin color. He told any journalist who may call them racists to “take a hike!”

The PPC’s plan to reduce immigration puts them on the side of most Canadians. Nearly 50 percent of Canadians want immigration reduced, while only 6 percent want it increased. “The Liberals are the extremists! We are the mainstream!” Bernier declared.

At the heart of the PPC’s plan is the extraordinary idea that “Canada’s immigration policy should be to economically benefit Canadians and Canada as a whole.”

Bernier says that “mass immigration, open borders, unvetted immigration, [and] extreme multiculturalism” fails to fulfill this obligation. “On the contrary, it’s a very dangerous type of social engineering. It amounts to large-scale government intervention in society and culture,” he said of Canada’s current policies. “It will bring increasing cultural balkanisation, distrust, social conflict, and potentially violence, as we are seeing in other countries where division has reached a critical level.”

Bernier also noted the economic costs of unrestricted mass immigration. He claims that nearly 74 percent of immigrants are subsidized by the government, which costs Canadian taxpayers between $16 billion and $24 billion every year. He also argues that immigrants, given their congestion in Canada’s major urban areas, cause housing prices and rents to skyrocket; a huge problem, especially in cities such as Vancouver and Toronto.

With these facts in mind, Bernier argues Canada should “stop being politically correct. We must recognize that not all values, not all social customs, not all cultures are equally valuable. Our distinct values are those of contemporary Western civilization.”

He accuses Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of being the “biggest peddler” of the lie “that all cultures are equal.” “[Trudeau] simply doesn’t care about Canada’s culture and identity, heritage and traditions. He sees himself as a citizen of the world.”

Trudeau drew outrage in 2017 when he told one interview he believed Canada had “no core identity” and was, he thought, the first “postnational state.”

Bernier says this “globalist” vision denies Canada’s identity and threatens to destroy it. The PPC plan aims to counter that threat.

The plan would address five key problems. The first is immigration levels: “A People’s Party government will substantially lower the total number of immigrants and refugees we accept every year, from 350,000 to between 100,000 and 150,000, depending on economic and other circumstances.”

The second is multiculturalism: “A People’s Party government will repeal the Multiculturalism Act and eliminate all funding to promote multiculturalism. We will instead emphasize the integration of immigrants into Canadian society.”

The third is economic immigration. The PPC wants to reform the country’s point system to favor skilled immigrants, limit the number of migrants accepted under family reunification, and eliminate birth tourism

The fourth area is assimilation. Bernier’s plan calls for a tougher screening process to ensure migrants “share mainstream Canadian values.” Those who are found to not have Western values will be rejected.

The final area is refugees. The PPC will put more barriers on the border, accept fewer refugees from the United States and abroad, reduce the government subsidization, and end Canada’s reliance on the United Nations for refugee selection.

Bernier promised that his party “will unite Canadians with an immigration policy designed to benefit all of us.”

The plan is similar to immigration proposals President Trump has touted. Both the RAISE Act and the immigration plan Trump announced in May would make America’s immigration system more merit-based and cut down chain migration. Both plans would make it tougher to gain asylum and strengthen border security. Both American plans favor English-speaking immigrants who can easily integrate and contribute.

However, the PPC’s plan goes much further than the two plans Trump proposes. It calls for a reduction in immigration from close to 400,000 under Trudeau to between 100,000 and 150,000, depending on the economy. Trump’s new plan does not reduce immigration in contrast to the RAISE Act.

And neither American plan addresses multiculturalism or the cultural effects of immigration. Then again, America does not have a Multiculturalism Act. Thanks to the efforts of Justin Trudeau’s father, Pierre, Canada made multiculturalism official federal policy, thus supplanting English and French bicultural nationalism.

Most American immigration hawks typically avoid the cultural effects of mass immigration in favor of focusing on its economic effects. There are notable exceptions, such as Tucker Carlson and U.S. Representative Steve King (R-Iowa). Bernier demonstrates a bolder path that attacks mass immigration on both cultural and economic grounds.

The PPC’s immigration plan is a brilliant set of policy proposals and would make Canada great again. Republicans should take notes.

Source: Canada’s Populist Party Introduces Trumpian Immigration Plan

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Visitors from India face high rejection rates on visa applications

2019/08/06 Leave a comment

Good analysis of the data and indication that the government is addressing fraud and applying risk management to different applications:

Refusals on visitor applications from India due to fraud and misrepresentation are soaring, which Ottawa and immigration experts say is in part due to unscrupulous “ghost consultants.”

While the number of Indian visitor visa applications has increased significantly, refusals are growing at an even faster clip. Data provided by the federal government show that the percentage of refusals due to an applicant misrepresenting themselves – through fraudulent submissions, for instance – has nearly tripled. In 2017, 0.9 per cent of all Indian visitor visa rejections were for misrepresentation; from January to May this year, the number jumped to 2.5 per cent.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) refused 1,477 applications due to misrepresentation in 2017. Between January and May of this year, that number had already reached 3,709. The department could see close to a 500-per-cent increase in fraud refusals by year’s end compared with 2017 if current trends hold.

In response to the increasing number of refusals for Indian applications, in June the federal government rolled out an information campaign targeting Indians applying for visas. The effort includes resources on identifying and reporting fraud throughout the process, including by ghost consultants – unscrupulous, unlicensed immigration consultants.

“We anticipate that this campaign will help address some of the spinoff effects of circulating misinformation, such as high refusal rates and abuse of the asylum system,” Mathieu Genest, a spokesperson for Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen, said in an e-mailed statement. Mr. Genest said the problem of ghost consultants is “particularly acute” in India.

Bank statements, income taxes, medical files, education histories, funeral home letters and even letters of support from members of Parliament are some of the types of fraudulent documents received by IRCC in recent years. Aside from fraud, Mr. Genest said the government is also seeing an increase in repeat applications from Indians previously denied and an overreliance on paper applications, which take longer to process, but noted that the increase in refusals should not affect legitimate applicants.

Partly owing to the increase in misrepresentation refusals, approval rates on Indian visitor visa applications have plummeted.

In April, 2015, 88 per cent of visa applications from India were approved – Ottawa received 27,600 applications that month. But by December of 2018, Canadian immigration authorities were receiving more than 58,000 applications each month and approval rates had dropped to 40.8 per cent.

The drop in India’s approval rates comes as the federal government has worked to streamline the visa process. According to documents obtained by The Globe and Mail through access-to-information requests, IRCC is using artificial-intelligence tools to review temporary resident visa applications from China and India as they come in.

Online applications predicted by AI models to be low-risk are sent to an immigration officer for review, simplifying the process. According to IRCC, 30 per cent to 40 per cent of China’s visitor visa applications are are now handled through this streamlined process; however, only 3 per cent to 5 per cent of Indian applications meet that low-risk threshold.

As of April, India was the top source of visitor visa applications to Canada. The country recently surpassed China, where applications have declined in recent months, which some attribute to the continuing diplomatic dispute between Ottawa and Beijing.

According to data from IRCC, Indians submitted 73,457 temporary resident visa applications that month, accounting for nearly a third of the worldwide total. China came in second place, with 46,646 applications.

Visitor visas are required for anyone from a non-visa-exempt country and looking to visit, work or study in Canada. As such, they’re often the first step in the immigration process.

Prashant Ajmera, an immigration lawyer in India who has an office in Montreal, was surprised to hear that the approval rate for visas from India had decreased so dramatically. He said the Canadian government has been touting the growing number of visitors from India, drawing attention to the fact that Canada welcomed nearly 300,000 visitors from that country last year. (There is no cap on how many visitor visas Canada issues each year.)

However, Mr. Ajmera said the Canadian government’s information campaign in India will not solve the problem, as applicants already know about visa fraud and immigration scams.

“They are aware of it but they’re taking calculated risks, most of them,” Mr. Ajmera said. “It’s a very common story.”

He said it would be a better use of Canada’s time to work with other like-minded governments, such as the United States, Britain and Australia, to encourage the Indian government to better regulate its immigration consultants in an effort to stem visa fraud.

One Canadian immigration lawyer thinks that the immigration consultant industry itself may be to blame. Ravi Jain, a Toronto-based immigration lawyer at Green and Spiegel LLP, said that lawyers are taking on clients who first worked with an Indian immigration consultant, only to find that the client’s visitor visa application was riddled with mistakes.

In some cases, unlicensed immigration consultants impersonate applicants throughout the process. “Often times, those people will even make up e-mail addresses. I’m not kidding, they do this,” he said.

Unscrupulous immigration consultants are not the only possible explanation for the decline in India’s approval rates.

Vancouver-based immigration lawyer Richard Kurland said he believes visa fraud, particularly relating to study permits, is the main reason for the decline in the approval rate of temporary resident visas from India. He said study permits are the “number one threat to Canada’s immigration system today” because there is no cap on the number of permits the government can issue, allowing foreign immigration consultants to take advantage of the program.

A recent Globe and Mail investigation revealed that private colleges in Canada are being accused of paying overseas agents to persuade international students that paying tens of thousands of dollars in tuition to study in Canada is the easiest way to get into the country and work toward becoming a permanent resident.

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Canada’s Immigration Minister on Tackling Rise of ‘Anti-immigrant’ Rhetoric

2019/08/03 Leave a comment

Newsweek profile:

As the U.S. government continues a hardline crackdown on immigration across the country and along the southern border, its northern neighbors have been keeping a watchful eye, wary of how a rise in anti-immigrant rhetoric south of the border might affect the daily discourse in Canada.

In an interview with Newsweek, Ahmed Hussen, Canada’s Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, said that while Canada is lucky to have a population that “generally supports immigration,” it is not immune to the “anti-immigrant narratives” being espoused in the U.S. and around the world.

“I think we’re very lucky in Canada, by and large, to have a population that generally supports immigration, understands the positive role that immigration has had on our country and understands the positive contributions of immigrants,” Hussen said on Wednesday, following a roundtable discussion organized by the Concordia Forum at Canada House in London.

“However,” he said, “we cannot take that for granted and we are being bombarded with a lot of anti-immigrant narratives right now.”

With Canada’s looming federal election set to take in October, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has sought to resolidify its commitment to welcoming migrants, asylum seekers and refugees into the country. Earlier this year, the Trudeau administration announced plans to attract one million immigrants to Canada over three years.

Hussen, who came to Canada as a refugee himself at the age of 16 after he and his family were forced to flee Mogadishu in Somalia, said he was well-aware of the way anti-immigration rhetoric in a country like the U.S. can shape the discourse around the world.

To counter that, the immigration minister said, the Canadian government has made a conscious effort to “shore up” support for pro-immigration initiatives “by sharing success stories.”

“Not just success stories of the newcomers themselves,” Hussen said, “but also of Canadians who have been transformed by the experience.”

Pointing to Canada’s Private Sponsorship of Refugees Program, now in its 40th year, as one key example, Hussen noted that “over the last 40 years, over two million Canadians have personally sponsored a refugee.”

“Now, that really does something,” he said. “It transforms people… Because we find that not only are those two million Canadians who are signed on to sponsor transformed by that experience, but their networks also get involved with embracing that refugee family.”

“So, for a big substantial percentage of the Canadian population, refugees and immigrants are not an abstract issue. It’s a member of their new family and so, there’s a resilience there,” he said.

Further, he said, that “resilience” is something that more countries have been working towards building, despite the rhetoric coming out of the U.S. Britain, for example, has not only joined Canada in promoting the private sponsorship model, but also in offering a “community sponsorship program.”

“Now, the UK and Canada are jointly promoting this to other countries, so there’s now about 12 countries that have either adopted…or are about to launch…a program in places like Germany, or places you wouldn’t expect, like Belgium,” Hussen said.

When it comes to countering anti-immigration sentiments, the immigration minister said: “I think that’s the way you do it, because that helps to increase the places [for refugees], but it also helps to change perceptions.”

Another way that the Canadian government is seeking to “change perceptions” around refugees, Hussen said, is through a new pilot scheme that allows refugees to enter the country through economic immigration programs.

Run by Talent Beyond Boundaries, a non-government organization that has partnered with the UN Refugee Agency to help match refugees with employers in Canada and Australia, Hussen said the program is aimed at giving refugees more agency.

There are several competitive economic immigration programs in Canada, he said, and “for those spots, people are selected based on their human capital, skills, education, work experience and so on.”

“It doesn’t matter who you are, where you’re from, your religion, or your background, but refugees, right now, are not eligible for those programs because they’re displaced,” the immigration minister said.

“What I’m saying is that’s not fair to many refugees who have skills, so why don’t we allow them to compete here?” he said. “You know, not just giving them a spot the way we do with the refugee program, because that is not based on skills, it’s based on vulnerability… We’re saying for those who can contribute, and a lot of them can, why not allow them to compete with everyone else here?”

Already, Hussen said, a number of refugees have started working in the country under the program, including a Syrian refugee who was living in Lebanon before being recruited to work for a technology firm in Kitchener-Waterloo earlier this year.

“He used this program to come through the economic skilled immigration competition and he came through the highest federal skilled worker program,” the immigration minister said. “He has the human capital… He just happens to be a refugee.”

Despite the positive influence that Hussen is confident initiatives like the one run by Talent Beyond Boundaries will have on both the economy and perceptions on immigration in Canada, recent public opinion polls have suggested a hardening of Canadian views towards immigrants and refugees.

A recent poll commissioned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and conducted by Public Square Research and Maru/Blue found that of the 4,500 adults participating in the online survey, 57 percent felt that Canada should not be accepting more refugees.

Of those surveyed, 64 percent also said they believed illegal immigration is becoming a serious problem in Canada, while 56 percent said they felt that accepting too many immigrants into the country will change the nation. Meanwhile, 24 percent said they felt too many immigrants are visible minorities.

Despite signs of anti-immigration sentiments growing in Canada, Hussen said his government was determined to stay the course in keeping its commitments to migrants, asylum seekers and refugees.

Source: Canada’s Immigration Minister on Tackling Rise of ‘Anti-immigrant’ Rhetoric

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PPC defined by anti-immigrant stance

2019/08/03 Leave a comment

Editorial in the Winnipeg Free Press, highlighting an ongoing challenge:

For a party allegedly trying to distance itself from accusations of xenophobia, if not outright racism, the People’s Party of Canada isn’t exactly covering itself with glory.

PPC Leader Maxime Bernier and numerous candidates have made no secret they want Canada to decrease immigration. And while discussions of immigration limits and border protection are legitimate political conversations, the PPC leader has also said he is against a policy of multiculturalism — a defining element of the Canadian identity.

The immigration question, however, seems to be the thin edge of the PPC’s rhetorical wedge.

PPC candidate Jane MacDiarmid (Winnipeg South Centre) has said she dislikes the Liberal government’s handling of immigration and that it “has to be done the right way, and we have to bring the right people in that are going to support our country.” Ms. MacDiarmid has previously run as a candidate for the Christian Heritage Party, whose platform in 2017 included a “moratorium on immigration from any Sharia-based countries.”

Elsewhere, attitudes about the “right kind” of Canadians were shown in tweets from PPC candidates Jeff Benoit (Chateauguay-Lacolle) and Cody Payant (Carlton Trail-Eagle Creek).

In a since-deleted tweet, Benoit wrote, “We have to ensure that our children have a right to exist and to their identity. We have to ensure that our children have the right to access good jobs and not be limited to quotas and missed opportunities. This fundamental applies to all Canadians from coast to coast!”

The wording strongly echoes the infamous white supremacist slogan known as the “14 words”: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”

Mr. Payant, meanwhile, tweeted out a photo collage of a Caucasian baby with bizarrely blue eyes, the Canadian flag and a mountain range, adding “PPC stands for the future of your kids.”

Meanwhile, Winnipeg South PPC candidate Mirwais Nasiri — himself an immigrant from Afghanistan — says he agrees with the party’s promise to reduce Canada’s annual immigration targets by more than 50 per cent. Mr. Nasiri, who works as a settlement facilitator for immigrants, says having fewer immigrants means we can better take care of them. One can’t help wonder if such a philosophy, had it been in place as official government policy, might have affected his arrival in Canada.

It’s safe to assume all the PPC’s candidates — since none appear to be Indigenous — are descended from immigrants. Throughout Canada’s history, many immigrant groups have experienced xenophobia, including the Chinese head tax levied in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, resistance to allowing Mennonites fleeing Stalinist purges in the 1930s to settle on the Prairies, the Japanese internment camps of the Second World War and perhaps most infamously, the turning away of Jews fleeing the Holocaust.

Canada’s policies on immigration and refugee acceptance have evolved over the decades. Under recent Conservative and Liberal governments, initiatives such as the provincial nominee program and the federal government’s response to the Syrian refugee crisis have added to Canada’s cultural mosaic — just as previous waves of immigrants and refugees have.

A strong indictment of the PPC’s platform came from within the party in July, when prospective Elmwood-Transcona candidate Willows Christopher and his riding board all quit, citing what they saw as bigotry against immigrants and the LGBTTQ+ community within the party’s ranks.

This much is clear: the unsettling statements are not mere gaffes. For the PPC, it seems xenophobia is not a problem; it’s part of the brand. And that’s not something Canadians should embrace.

Source: PPC defined by anti-immigrant stance

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The Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act is anything but fair | TheHill

2019/08/02 Leave a comment

How the removal of country caps may impact on other groups:

Much of our community, the Iranian-American community, owes its citizenship to the green card process. However, a bill moving through Congress would slam shut that pathway for countless Iranians and communities like ours, shifting outrageous backlogs onto nationals from Iran and other smaller countries.

Unfortunately, the House of Representatives recently passed a bill, known as the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2019 (H.R. 1044/S. 386) which would eliminate caps that prevent any one country from receiving more than 7 percent of green cards for highly-skilled workers. These caps were put in place, according to the State Department, to guard against the monopolization of the green card process by a few larger countries. While eliminating the caps would reduce the backlog for nationals from large countries, like India and China, it would shift that backlog onto nationals from smaller countries—adding years of delays. For Iranian nationals, who are already separated from loved ones due to the president’s cruel travel ban, this would extend their separation by up to a decade.

Why is this legislation moving so fast? At a time when Congress has been unable to pass any meaningful reforms to address the multitude of crises in our immigration system, how are lawmakers on the verge of passing such a fundamental overhaul of the immigration system with almost zero debate on the unanticipated consequences? Because nationals who would benefit from the bill are vocal and backed by corporate interests who would also benefit, while the many who would be affected negatively by the change have been quiet by comparison. That needs to change if we want to safeguard the green card process for all nationalities.

In working with our community, NIAC has heard from many Iranian high-skilled workers in the U.S. who would be affected by this legislation. Their very future, and the American dream, is at stake. Worse yet, the vast majority of these individuals are also impacted by Donald Trump’s Muslim travel ban—unable to have their family secure a visa to visit, and unable to return home to visit family without jeopardizing their future in the United States.

Despite its name, the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act is not a fair way to deal with backlogs. Congress must consider a solution that actually addresses the problem instead of shifting the backlog from one group to another. One option would be to increase the number of green cards issued, which recent legislation introduced by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) would accomplish. Paul’s BELIEVE Act would quadruple the number of employment-based visas to address the backlog problem that particularly affects nationals from large countries. Additional measures proposed by this bill would exempt dependents and certain categories of specialists from the cap altogether.

As an Iranian-American organization, NIAC is tasked with the responsibility to not just advocate for our community and protect their civil rights, but also to protect the American dream that allowed our community to be built here in the first place. That means we must fight to keep the path to green cards open to all and ensure Congress passes a solution to the green card backlog that actually is fair.

Jamal Abdi is the president of the National Iranian American Council.

Source: The Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act is anything but fair | TheHill

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FATAH: It is time to stamp out immigrant-bashing

2019/08/02 Leave a comment

The consumer argument for large-scale immigration (based on larger GDP than increasing per capita GDP):

The word “immigrant” is slowly emerging as a slur among the fringes of Canada’s right-wing. This creeping phenomenon reminds me of the term “Paki-bashing” that was still in vogue in 1976 when I first visited Canada as a young TV reporter covering the Montreal Olympics.

Those dark days are well-documented by Tanya Sabena Khan in her 2012 PhD thesis at McGill University. She documents an article in the Globe and Mail on Oct. 7, 1976, headlined: “Unprovoked Racial Attack.”

It was a story by Stan Oziewicz who reported: “Two youths shoved a Pakistani fellow over the lip of the Islington subway platform.”

The victim, Shamshudin Kanji, was actually a 49-year-old Tanzanian immigrant.

Kanji was beaten and kicked on the platform by Steven Ingram, 22, and Thomas Allan Grimsdale, 19, while a third young man shouted “push the Paki.” Ingram responded by pushing Kanji off the platform onto the wood cover on the electrified third rail.

The attack left Kanji hospitalized for months and according to doctors “crippled for life.”

Fortunately, Canada stamped out such racism, thanks to outrage by decent mainstream white Canadians — from left-wing New Democrats to right-wing Conservatives as well as the domineering Liberals.

Xenophobia (fear of foreigners) is alas common among people around the globe whether it is faced by Kurds in Turkey or Darfuris in Sudan and Poles in Britain. It’s a sign of our collective insecurity compounded by self-righteousness that gives us comfort in our inner suspicion of fellow humans.

But once political parties of the left descend into playing politics with ethno-religious communities, using them as vote banks, it is only natural that there will be an opposite reaction from those who feel, they are “real” Canadians and the “immigrants” are free-loaders.

To those who are convinced Canada should shut its doors to immigrants, imagine for a moment the scenario in just two sectors of the Canadian economy if immigrants went on a strike and refused to come to Canada in 2020.

  1. 200,000 fewer mattresses will be sold along with countless unsold pillows and bedsheets.
  2. The housing industry will slip into a freeze with a downward spiral in rents and a dip in tax revenues at every level of government.

Across our economy, revenues in business income taxes and the GST will plunge, not just in a quarterly recession, but a possible long-term economic slowdown that will do serious damage. A lack of consumers can stifle economic progress.

Henry Hazlitt, the best-selling author of Economics in One Lesson, wrote: “U.S. consumers account for approximately 70% of the national economy. Spending is an important role of consumers. Free market economies rely on consumer demand to gauge the allocation and distribution of economic resources.”

Canada imported US$458.9 billion worth of goods from foreign suppliers in 2018 to keep its economy running. This included steel products, automobiles and a host of other goods and services. Missing from this economics equation are the 300,000 immigrants that Canada got for free, without whom the economy would have stuttered.

According to the financial management magazine Money Sense, it costs over $250,000 to raise a single Canadian 18-year-old adult “consumer” who drives our economy. Shouldn’t Canada pay for this immigrant? Or at the least say thank you?

How many of you realize that under one category of “skilled immigrants,” a family of four needs to bring with them a bank draft of $23,542 on landing in Canada. Imagine if this family has to put up with slogans of “welfare cheats” (as was heard in one Mississauga political rally recently).

Someone better teach the new breed of anti-immigrant hatemongers this lesson. Or else another Shamshudin Kanji may have to pay the price.

Source: FATAH: It is time to stamp out immigrant-bashing

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Countries Must “Future-Proof” Their Immigrant Selection Systems to Stay Competitive in a Changing World of Work

2019/08/02 Leave a comment

Another good report from the Transatlantic Council on Migration. Excerpt below:

The economic trends discussed in the previous section have important implications for immigrant selection systems:

  • ƒAdvanced skills, which will experience unprecedented demand, remain difficult forselection systems to assess. Labor-market analyses suggest there is likely to be a premium placed on identifying people with more advanced technical skills in areas such as data science and software development, and with the soft skills valued by the knowledge economy. The latter skillset ranges from strong social and interpersonal skills (including the ability to work collaboratively), to creativity and communication skills, to higher-level cognitive capabilities (including abstract and systems thinking). Because such traits can be applied across occupations, they can help equip workers to navigate fast-paced labor-market changes. However, evaluating advanced expertise and even more so, intangible qualities, poses a conundrum for selection systems that are used to assessing formal education and work experience (and which can even struggle with that task). Moreover, systems that rely on points to select economic immigrants may be able to prioritize these more intangible qualities, but they can ultimately only pick from the available pool of applicants—which limits the search for the “best” to the “best available.”
  • As jobs increasingly become decoupled from physical locations, demand for some skills-based mobility may change. Remote work and digital collaboration are reducing the importance of physical location to work, especially in sectors such as technology, giving firms more flexibility to decide where to create jobs. But location will remain important in many sectors, especially when it comes to business clusters and cities, and their “soft” infrastructure (such as universities and cultural activities), which provides the intellectual backbone ofinnovation.  At a lower-wage level, robotics may facilitate outsourcing, as cheaper workers abroad will be able to operate robots performing routine tasks in the high-income world, such as using drones to clean hotel rooms. While these trends could ultimately reduce some skills- based mobility, a more immediate result will be greater interdependence between immigration policies and firm location decisions; barriers to bringing people into the country could encourage companies to outsource jobs or open offices in other countries.
  • ƒIncreased freelancing and “gig” work at all skill levels may make the traditional employer sponsorship model less suitable for some forms of economic migration. The growth ofmore flexible and informal types of work points to a world where fewer people hold full-time, permanent contracts and instead work on a more short-term basis, potentially for more than one employer at a time (and even for employers in multiple countries). Immigration, employment, tax, and social security systems are not well-adapted to such non-traditionalworkers. Some countries are experimenting with ways to admit people on a more flexible basis, for example for short-term employment assignments or for freelance work. But moving away from systems built around the traditional employer-employee relationship would require a rethinking of how to enforce compliance with immigration rules, tax obligations, and employment standards, and how to evaluate the skills and experience of applicants in the absence of an employer sponsor.
  • As global competition for skilled workers heats up, countries will need to think strategically about how to attract and retain talent. Traditional destination countries arelikely to face growing competition for skilled workers from emerging economies and other new destinations, some of which have introduced their own points-based admission systems inspired by those of traditional immigrant destinations. For example, China introduced a new selection system for economic migrants in 2017 that uses a points system to evaluate candidates with a job offer, drawing on the experiences of Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, andothers, while South Korea introduced a similar “hybrid” program in 2017 to select skilled workers for the manufacturing, agriculture, and fishing industries. Emerging economies such as Chile, India, Mexico, and Taiwan are actively recruiting foreign entrepreneurs either with start-up visas or supportive infrastructure such as investment incentives, incubators, andaccelerators. And many large companies are establishing outposts in flourishing new tech clusters. In India, for instance, Gurgaon near New Delhi is a hub for Google, Facebook, booking. com, and TripAdvisor; and Pune near Mumbai is becoming an emerging fintech hub, with Western Union and the Technology Engineering Centre. Against this backdrop, governments will need to think carefully about how their selection policies and the rights they afford to immigrants will give their country the “edge” in both selecting and retaining immigrants.
  • Economic migration channels are just one piece of the broader immigration-policy puzzle. Ongoing mixed migration in many regions has reshaped the broader context for reforms to economic migration channels. Policymakers will need to balance efforts to bring in new skilled workers with continued investments in these recent arrivals. For many destination countries, especially in Europe, spontaneous mixed migration has transformed the conversation around immigration policy, fostering increasing skepticism among publics about the merits of immigration writ large and making dialogue over labor migration and selection (especially at the low-skilled level) increasingly complex.

Ultimately, efforts to rethink selection systems will increase the emphasis on the long-term goal of upskilling a country’s workforce. Since this project sits at the nexus of education, employment, social protection, and immigration policy, selection policies must be part of a whole-of-government approach that constantly adapts education and training systems to realize the potential of both existing and new workers (including spouses and immediate family members of selected migrants). It must also provide realistic options for people displaced by automation to retrain. Using these policy tools to build and maintain a workforce that gives an economy a competitive edge is not an exact science, since it depends both on what is economically needed and what is politically feasible. Governments must acknowledge growing unease about immigration and clearly communicating to their publics why some economic migration is still needed, even as they invest in integrating recent arrivals and helping them enter the workforce.

Source: Equipping Immigrant Selection Systems for a Changing World of Work

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Douglas Todd: Dramatic jump in guest workers hurts Canadians on low wages

2019/07/30 Leave a comment

Not sure where Todd is getting the numbers to state his case. The largest part of the increase actually happened under the Conservatives, 2007-15: from 92,000 to 234,000 (IMP), with only Temporary Foreign Workers showing a decline following the reversal of their facilitating their entry in response to business pressures (from 78,000 in 2007, rising to a peak of 104,000 in 2013 before declining to 60,000 in 2015).

The bulk of the Temporary Foreign Workers increase under the Liberal government has been with respect to agriculture workers (a doubling to 52,000, 2016-18), not fast food workers.

And while there are linkages with international students, better to focus on IMP and Temporary Foreign Workers in this kind of analysis:

A big jump in the number of guest workers is hurting low-wage employees and others across Canada, according to economists.

The number of non-permanent foreign workers arriving in Canada each year has doubled in the past decade, escalating particularly after the federal Liberal government was elected in 2015.

Partly as a result of the increasing flow of guest workers, UBC economist David Green and Carleton University’s Christopher Worswick say in a paper that new immigrants are doing “worse and worse” in regards to earned incomes. And it’s Canada’s low-wage workers who are suffering the most.

Even though businesses frequently lobby politicians to allow more guest employees, Green says the latest hikes are putting downward pressure on wages and threatening respect for workers. They’re exacerbating the kind of scenario, he said, that lead to the rise of Donald Trump and Britain’s Brexit movement.

Saying it’s “truly dumb” for the federal government to continue boosting low-skilled guest workers in the country, Green emphasized the vast majority of Canadians don’t appear to be aware of the labour-market shift. “It’s totally under the radar.”

While temporary workers were initially billed as a way to rescue businesses that needed to make up short-term skill shortages in certain sectors, low-skill guest workers from overseas are now increasingly being brought in to staff fast-food restaurants, fill shelves at supermarkets and perform basic kitchen duties.

In the face of a 2013 backlash against the increased volume of foreign workers in Canada, former Conservative immigration minister Jason Kenney drastically cut their numbers. But Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has jacked up the totals much higher.

The new river of guest workers in Canada “releases the pressure on firms to provide better jobs, jobs where you have control over your time, where the pay is decent. It lets the steam off. And that pushes us toward a society that doesn’t respect workers so much,” said Green, a professor in the Vancouver school of economics and a fellow at the Institute for Fiscal Studies in London.

It’s difficult for the public to recognize that guest worker numbers have grown at a much faster pace than more-often discussed immigration levels, which have expanded by 30 per cent since 2015, with about 320,000 now being approved annually.

The official temporary foreign worker program, which attracted such controversy in the Conservatives’ era, has not greatly expanded. But other guest-worker efforts have.

One jump has come through the doubling of international students. In 2015 about 200,000 foreign students were arriving each year. By last year the number arriving annually on study visas had ballooned to more than 400,000. Most foreign students are allowed to work 20 hours a week, plus full-time during their summer or other breaks.

The least-known migration policy change, however, has arguably been the biggest one for the labour market. That is the fourfold expansion of the so-called “international mobility” program, about which few Canadians have heard.

In 2005 about 70,000 guest workers arrived under the “international mobility” category. But by 2018 Canada was accepting more than 250,000 in this category, which is typically made up of people on two-year visas, many of whom find jobs in the service sector.

Informally known as travellers on “holiday worker” visas, such employees are often associated with young Australians working at ski resorts like Whistler, or with British globe trotters serving beer in pubs in Vancouver or Toronto.

A UBC-backed website called Superdiversity, which has created interactive graphics based on immigration department data, shows the largest group of the more than 250,000 “international mobility” workers who arrived in Canada last year were from India, followed by those from the U.S., China, France and South Korea. Toronto took in about 70,000 international mobility workers in 2018, while Vancouver absorbed 30,000.

In line with the research of American economist Giovanni Peri and the University of Ottawa’s Pierre Brochu, Green described how owners of a Tim Horton’s franchise, a café or a supermarket often try to justify bringing in more guest workers by saying they can’t find anyone to fill the low-skill slot.

“So they go to their local MP and say, ‘I’m in trouble here. I can’t get enough workers for my front counter.’ The real response to them should be, ‘Well, pay them more.’ But it’s not the answer they want to hear, because they want to make more profit,” Green said.

Economists don’t really think it’s a problem that a fast-food restaurant owner or other service sector employer can’t hire workers at low wages, said Green. “When something is scarce, the price for it goes up and people and companies adjust. That’s the whole wonder of the capitalist system.”

The low-wage problem is exacerbated in places like Metro Vancouver, where the cost of renting or owning homes is extreme. Instead of offering decent living wages to the people who live here, Green said many bosses are inclined to hire “people who live in housing with five other foreign workers.”

A second trouble with Canadian companies increasingly relying on low-wage guest workers, Green said, is it leads to a more fearful workforce, incapable of demanding adherence to local labour standards or of forming a union.

“Everyone knows these guest workers have no rights. If they lose their jobs they’re gone. They’re not about to complain. Canadian firms are now not only getting just lower-wage workers these days, they’re getting very compliant workers,” said Green.

Even though a lot of commentators write off the supporters of Trump and Brexit as just “stupid people,” Green said, many have been workers who have felt that the promise of globalization, the transnational movement of capital and labour, has not benefited them.

“These are people who feel there was a deal promised to them, where everyone would share in the benefits of deregulation and a more flexible labour market,” said Green.

“But then governments did things like bring in more temporary foreign workers and those people are feeling like, ‘What the hell just happened?’ If you want people to feel like they have a share, don’t bring in somebody to replace them every time their wages start looking like they’re going to go up.”

Source: Douglas Todd: Dramatic jump in guest workers hurts Canadians on low wages

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