Community groups gear up to counter far-right propaganda in federal election

2019/09/04 Leave a comment

Of note. And encouraging, as reported, more dialogue and conversation-based than haranguing or labelling:

It worries Janice Folk-Dawson when the veteran union leader sees hate posters popping up on university campuses and far-right supremacist groups showing up in her community.

“It’s frightening to see small towns becoming the targets of hate groups,” said the president of the Guelph and District Labour Council. “Fascism started in small towns and the education system. We need to address the rise of the right and bust the myths they spread.”

Earlier this year, the 62-year-old, who is of Russian and Irish descent, enrolled in a workshop held by the Migrant Rights Network, a national anti-racism alliance that aims to help communities stand up against racism and the far right in the run-up to the federal election, when immigration and refugees are expected to be a wedge issue.

Formed last December to put migrant issues on the agenda for the Oct. 21 election, the alliance began canvassing migrant groups about the issues they were most concerned about. Almost everyone cited their fear of rising racism and xenophobia in Canada and asked for assistance in pushing back against the spread of far-right ideologies.

The alliance spent months developing training materials including a video and a tool kit, and since April has delivered more than 50 workshops training hundreds of volunteers — affiliated with unions, charities and community groups — from Squamish, B.C. to St. John’s, Nfld. The aim is to have them reach out to their local communities and have conversations with family, friends and colleagues about immigration and refugee issues, armed with the facts on policies to counter myths fuelled by propaganda.

The network has organized rallies across the country, including a number on Labour Day, and begun monitoring candidates’ campaign rhetoric and calling out those they feel are misinforming the public with racist and anti-immigrant comments.

A newsletter will be distributed to people who sign up to support the alliance’s work to keep them informed on issues and concerns raised during the campaign.

Karen Cocq, the alliance’s education co-ordinator, said political parties and politicians, to consolidate their support base, often draw attention away from their own policy failures and point fingers at “the others,” such as migrants.

Instead of blaming migrants for straining government services and pushing down wages, said Cocq, people should be asking politicians why they cut budgets and fail to properly protect workers with decent wages.

“We understand people are anxious about their future, about the economy and try to make sense of the problems they face. We want to focus on this climate of anxiety that allows scapegoating in our society,” said Cocq. “We try to provide everyday folks the tools they need to understand what’s going on and not get fooled by those who use racism to divide us.”

Ottawa climate activist Katie Rae Perfitt of Our Time, a campaign that engages young people to push for a New Green Deal in the upcoming election, said her volunteers often hear Canadians raising issues about migration when they are canvassing about climate change.

Born and raised in a farming community in the Ottawa Valley, Perfitt said far-right groups exploit the fears of people who worry for the future of their children, about jobs being taken away and migrants being a drain on existing government services and the health-care system. When she heard about the workshop put on by the Migrant Rights Network earlier this summer, she jumped at the opportunity.

Recently, she was canvassing on Sparks St., a pedestrian mall in downtown Ottawa, when she struck up a conversation with an older man about climate change and the chat quickly turned to the influx of asylum seekers in Canada via the United States land border over the last two years.

“We really clicked talking about climate change and the political action needed. It caught me off guard when he started talking about what he thought of the people who crossed the border,” recalled the 32-year-old. “I realized I had to pull out my migrant tool box.”

Perfitt started asking the man about his source of information and presenting him with the facts that refugees have the legal right to seek asylum here, and trying to calm his fear that Canada has lost control of its border.

“We did not agree 100 per cent, but we were able to centre our values, have a conversation and push back some of that fear,” she said.

Folk-Dawson said these conversations can be hard because it’s much easier for people to point at someone else for causing their miseries. Over the summer, she has used her own labour movement network to raise awareness of migrant issues and far-right rhetoric.

“A debate of facts is not a debate of opinions. We try to help people work through their feelings and experience to alleviate their fear. It can be uncomfortable and confrontational,” said Folk-Dawson, adding that even union supporters are susceptible to the myths that migrants are stealing jobs and pushing down wages.

In June, she was handing out flyers at the University of Guelph when a businessman in his 60s started complaining to her that border-crossing asylum seekers were queue-jumpers and immigrants were straining the health-care system. She explained to him that those refugees really have no queue to jump because they are ineligible for any immigration program and that migrants do contribute to Canada’s tax base but often have limited access to government services.

“At the end, the man said he would go back and have the same conversation with others. That’s one person we changed,” said Folk-Dawson gleefully. “We have to get to them before some other folks get to them first.”

Source: Community groups gear up to counter far-right propaganda in federal election

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

The “Debt” Immigrants Can Never Repay

2019/08/31 Leave a comment

Interesting read:

In July, Donald Trump told a story about how he coerced a wealthy businessman he didn’t like and who didn’t like him into praising him. The story focused on the pleasure Trump took in watching that man grovel and tell him he was “doing good.” In Trump’s hands, it was a parable about debt and gratitude. “You know,” Trump says he told this nameless enemy, “you don’t like me and I don’t like you. I never have liked you and you never have liked me—but you’re gonna support me because you’re a rich guy. And if you don’t support me, you’re going to be so goddamn poor you’re not going to believe it.” Trump describes the man as acquiescing and praising him, closing the story with: “And maybe we didn’t get along, but it’s not like he has a choice. He has no choice.”

To Trump, this is the story of an excellent “deal.” The best deal is one where the other party, who has something you want (like “a wealthy businessman’s grudging approval”), has no choice but to give it to you. It doesn’t matter if the praise is genuine as long as it costs the businessman something to give it. This calculus may seem pragmatic, but it ends up having a long-term price of its own: “You lose all your friends when you’re president,” Trump laments later in his monologue, one of his part-joke, part-confession asides. When the “deal” is your only framework, your universe shrinks and shuts out bonds over things like (for example) shared principles. It also makes nontransactional feedback—or any truly independent judgment untainted by bribes or threats—implausible. Some consequences of this approach are as old as they are obvious: Choosing to exert control through coercion, insincere praise, or veiled threats frays relations into the kind of exploitation on the one side and lying obsequiousness on the other that Shakespeare’s fools spent every play mocking. More worrying, for a democracy, is that there is no aspiration to anything resembling the ideal of equality here: Trump’s “deal” is about supremacy. He applies it to everything, and his most ardent support (and much of his administration) draws power by championing this worldview.

Trump’s story may have been apocryphal, but it’s also clarifying. Though no friend to the poor and marginalized, his priorities remain clear even with his ostensible equals; these priorities consist largely of making his deal partners lose. The story also offers one of the better examples of the gratitude tax he tries to exact from those with whom he interacts. This is a particular kind of American paternalism at its finest, a framework where the weaker party is not only forced into social or financial debt—they are humiliated and made to feel it. The paternalist values getting the better end of a deal over pretty much everything else. And that’s what a particular subset of Trump supporters—striving to “win” this way themselves—like about him.

Absent an arrangement where he profits financially, the paternalist deal-maker makes sure to profit socially. That’s crucial to understanding some of the less-obvious gears powering Trump’s worldview. Yes, he’s racist; yes, he’s classist. But he’ll make exceptions for poor people (or people from marginalized communities) if they’ll grovel and praise. Sen. Lindsey Graham argued that Trump’s dislike of Somali immigrants like Rep. Ilhan Omar is not based on race. The reason he’s demonizing her to his followers, Graham argued—as if this weren’t racist and above all slimy—was that she didn’t likehim. “I really do believe that if you’re a Somali refugee who likes Trump, he’s not going to say, ‘Go back to Somalia.’ ” You’ll recognize the currency Graham’s identifying here: The only nonwhite migrants worth tolerating, to this way of thinking, are those willing to pay—and they’d better give more than they got, whether in dollars or in gratitude.

This bleak standard is symptomatic of a larger pattern of American paternalism that has always existed but is now flourishing under Trump as other national ideals wither. The American paternalist in the Trumpian mold thinks he’s generous and even-keeled. In practice, he tends to be paranoid, erratic, and consumed by the pursuit of “deals” that put him ahead of the other party in an imaginary ledger he curates with obsessive care. People with less material wealth than him are suspect; as he cannot imagine other motives for them, they must be out to take advantage. He is therefore on guard with them and keen to maintain his advantage by any means. This has obvious consequences for immigration policy: Such a person sees nothing meritorious in courageous dreamers filled with human potential traveling to a foreign country to make a better life. In his ledger, their arrival (and indeed, their existence) appears as a debit.

Source: The “Debt” Immigrants Can Never Repay

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

After euphoria and anxiety, Germans turn pragmatic on immigration – study

2019/08/31 Leave a comment

Interesting:

Germans are broadly positive towards immigration and think it benefits the country, a survey showed, suggesting the often extreme reactions triggered by the arrival of a million-plus refugees there in 2015 have given way to a calmer view.

A long-standing split between attitudes in the more welcoming western Germany and more sceptical former Communist east has also become less marked, Thursday’s Bertelsmann Foundation study revealed – though judged purely on economic factors the differences between the two parts remain acute.

Overall, almost two thirds of Germans believe immigration is good for the economy and 67% that it makes life more interesting, with young people the most positive.

“Germany has passed the stress test of the 2015 immigration wave and has stabilised itself as a pragmatic immigrant country,” foundation board member Joerg Draeger said.

“The population sees the challenges, but also the opportunities it brings for an ageing society.”

Four years ago, Chancellor Angela Merkel chose to leave Germany’s borders open as an unprecedented wave of migrants, many of them fleeing war in Syria, headed for Europe.

While many greeted Merkel’s decision with initial euphoria, a backlash followed, with a jump in support for anti-immigration parties across Europe, one of which, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), entered parliament in 2017 for the first time.

While a sense of unease remains, the intensity of feeling has diminished. Some 49% still think Germany is overburdened with refugees, but that has declined from 54% since 2017.

Some of the divisions between east and west have also narrowed.

A total of 59% of western Germans said refugees were welcome, down from 65% in 2017, while the comparable figure in the poorer east rose to 42% from 33%, the survey showed.

However, as many as 83% in the east – where the AfD is expected to do well in two regional elections on Sunday – still feel immigration is a burden on the welfare state and just a slender majority think it good for the economy.

Source: After euphoria and anxiety, Germans turn pragmatic on immigration – study

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Ontario urged to encourage immigrants to look beyond the GTA

2019/08/31 Leave a comment

Ongoing challenge that most provincial governments are grappling with – how to encourage immigrants to go beyond the largest centres.

Ontario actually does better than most other provinces in this regard, given the number of immigrants and visible minorities in cities such as Ottawa, Hamilton, Kitchener Waterloo, London and Windsor.

The real challenge lies more in rural and northern Ontario.

Ontario must start encouraging immigrants to settle in communities outside the GTA in order to reduce pressure on housing, transit and other infrastructure in the 905 and stimulate growth in the rest of the province, a new report says.

According to the Conference Board of Canada report, 45 per cent of Ontario’s 13.5 million people live in the GTA, but each year almost 80 per cent of new immigrants settling in the province make the region their home, meaning that most of Ontario doesn’t get enough newcomers to sustain their communities, and that even more pressure is being put on an already strained housing pool and other services in the 905.

Last year, 106,000 immigrants settled in the GTA, while just 31,000 made their homes in the rest of Ontario.

“The GTA has the difficult task of integrating large numbers of newcomers into its labour market each year. Nearly half of its newcomers arrive under the family and refugee classes, which means they require more labour market supports than economic class newcomers,” said the 47-page report, “Immigration Beyond the GTA,” being released Thursday.

“On the other hand, some communities across the province — particularly those in Northern Ontario — are in desperate need of immigrants to support their economic health, but less than one-quarter of the province’s newcomers choose to settle outside of the GTA.”

Spreading more immigrants across Ontario is more urgent than ever, the report warns, since demographic pressures, if not addressed, will significantly impact the province’s economic performance over the next two decades, with the average age of residents rising to 44.1 in 2040 from 40.5 in 2017. By 2040, almost a quarter of Ontario’s population will be 65 and over, compared with just 17 per cent in 2017.

While communities outside the GTA do not have the same number of job opportunities, settlement services, cultural amenities, and ethnic diversity, they still offer a range of immigration advantages compared with the GTA, said the report, written by researcher Kareem El-Assal.

With the exception of Barrie, it said, other census metropolitan areas currently all have lower unemployment rates than the GTA. Hamilton, Kingston, Guelph and Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo all have unemployment rates below 5 per cent, compared to 6.4 per cent in the 905 area.

Although all levels of government have recognized the need to “regionalize” the distribution of immigration, including the most recent federal pilot program to encourage newcomers to settle in rural and remote communities, the report calls for the creation of a regional strategy led by the province with active participation from municipalities.

Municipalities have had few options in immigrant recruitment because immigration is a shared federal-provincial jurisdiction. However, the report said all three levels of government can draw inspiration from Canada’s latest international post-secondary education strategy, which has successfully brought all players to the table to promote the “regionalization” of foreign students across the country.

The study said a regionalization strategy must set targets to ensure half of newcomers to the province settle outside of the 905. The province should juggle the point grids of the provincial immigrant nomination programs by rewarding applicants with community and family ties outside of the GTA because those are among the most important considerations for newcomer settlement.

A 2016 evaluation of Nova Scotia’s various provincial immigration streams found that 82 per cent of those who arrived under the community identified class with strong ties to an established cultural community had continued to stay in Nova Scotia instead of moving to other provinces.

Given immigrants always go where the job opportunities are, the report suggested business groups such as chambers of commerce take the lead in sharing information with local employers on hiring newcomers, creating a welcoming and inclusive environment and tapping existing newcomer communities to reach out to immigrant talent.

“Ontario municipalities must showcase their leadership. One way they can do this is by ensuring they have immigration strategies of their own in place,” said the Conference Board. “This is crucial to signalling their intention that they want to welcome more immigrants and will take all necessary steps to succeed.”

Source: Ontario urged to encourage immigrants to look beyond the GTA

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Migrants irréguliers: Ottawa verse 250 millions à Québec

2019/08/31 Leave a comment

Hard to disagree with the principle.

However, important not to forget that Quebec has a sweetheart deal with respect to the amount transferred annually for economic immigrant selection and settlement services (all categories) that is based on the percentage of of Quebec’s population, not the percentage of immigrants.

Given the current cuts in Quebec levels, and the increase in Canadian ones, the imbalance continues to increase:

À l’approche des élections fédérales, le gouvernement Trudeau sort le chéquier pour régler un différend avec Québec: il versera à la province 250 millions de dollars en guise de compensation pour les coûts liés au soutien des milliers de migrants qui ont franchi la frontière de manière irrégulière en 2017 et en 2018.

Le ministre des Finances, Bill Morneau, a confirmé cette décision par voie de communiqué jeudi après-midi, permettant ainsi au gouvernement Trudeau de tourner la page sur un dossier qui avait provoqué des frictions entre les deux capitales.

Depuis 2017, quelque 43 000 personnes sont entrées au pays de manière irrégulière. Plus de 90% d’entre elles ont franchi la frontière canado-américaine en passant par le chemin Roxham, près du poste frontalier de Lacolle.

«L’augmentation au cours des deux dernières années du nombre de migrants irréguliers qui entrent au Canada par le Québec a imposé au gouvernement du Québec des pressions particulières et sans précédent. Nous apprécions sa collaboration pour la gestion de cet enjeu», a affirmé le ministre Morneau.

Selon lui, le financement accordé au gouvernement du Québec devrait permettre de défrayer l’ensemble des couts extraordinaires liés à l’afflux de demandeurs d’asile en 2017 et 2018.

À Québec, le gouvernement Legault a fait savoir que l’entente conclue avec Ottawa ouvre la porte à d’autres compensations pour les dépenses liées au passage de demandeurs d’asile pour l’année en cours, une fois que leur nombre total sera connu.

En outre, les fonctionnaires de Québec et d’Ottawa poursuivent les négociations afin d’établir un mécanisme de répartition qui doit permettre de rediriger plus rapidement les demandeurs d’asile vers leur province de destination après leur arrivée à la frontière canadienne.

«Pour le Québec, il était primordial de compenser toutes les dépenses extraordinaires encourues pour les demandeurs d’asile au cours des années 2017 et 2018. Après plusieurs mois de négociations, nous avons obtenu le remboursement complet de nos dépenses pour les années 2017 et 2018 ainsi que l’engagement du Canada de rembourser les sommes encourues pour 2019. Il s’agit d’une avancée majeure et cela confirme le rôle du Québec en matière d’immigration», a affirmé le ministre de l’Immigration, de la Diversité et de l’Inclusion, Simon Jolin-Barrette,

Dans le passé, les partis de l’opposition ont accusé à plusieurs reprises le gouvernement Trudeau d’avoir perdu le contrôle de la gestion de la frontière avec les Etats-Unis.

«Le gouvernement du Canada vise d’abord et avant tout à assurer la bonne gestion du système canadien d’immigration et d’asile et à faire en sorte que les flux de migration soient gérés de façon sécuritaire et ordonnée. Le gouvernement du Québec a été et continue d’être un partenaire extraordinaire. Nous sommes impatients de poursuivre notre étroite collaboration avec lui», a pour sa part déclaré le ministre de la Sécurité frontalière et de la Réduction du crime organisé, Bill Blair.

Dans le passé, les partis de l’opposition ont accusé à plusieurs reprises le gouvernement Trudeau d’avoir perdu le contrôle de la gestion de la frontière avec les États-Unis.

Dans un rapport publié en novembre dernier, le directeur parlementaire du budget Yves Giroux estimait que cet afflux de migrants qui traversent la frontière de façon irrégulière a coûté pas moins de 340 millions de dollars au gouvernement fédéral seulement en 2017-2018.

Source: Migrants irréguliers: Ottawa verse 250 millions à Québec

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Hong Kong Good Citizenship Applications Jump as People Eye Exit

2019/08/29 Leave a comment

Will likely only increase along with the re-retournees (Unrest in Hong Kong fuels speculation of spike in ‘re-return migration’ to Canada):

Rupert Gather, an adviser who helps people secure investor visas to move to the U.K. from Hong Kong, says interest has surged since street protests broke out in the former British colony.

His firm InvestUK’s seminars, held every four to six weeks, usually attract about 40 people but in July almost 200 showed up, he said. It’s part of a wider trend as applications for Hong Kong good citizenship cards jumped almost 50% in the first two weeks of August from a year earlier, in a sign residents may be more seriously contemplating leaving the city.

The good citizenship documents certify a person doesn’t have a criminal record and are needed to apply for foreign visas, or residency in another country.

Tensions have flared in the former British colony as pro-democracy protests that started in June show no sign of letting up: last weekend began with the formation of a peaceful human chain across the city and ended two days later with police firing a weapon and using water cannons.

“This is evidence that many Hong Kongers are seeking to move overseas, or at least obtain residency overseas so that they have the option to go,” said Georg Chmiel, executive chairman of real estate site Juwai.com. “While the data doesn’t show for sure that people are applying for these police checks for their foreign visa applications, it is relatively rare to seek these documents for any other purpose.”

U.K. Interest

The number of U.K. visas granted to Hong Kong nationals qualifying as investors and entrepreneurs more than doubled in the second quarter from a year earlier, government data show. That outpaced an overall 55% rise in these so-called Tier 1 visas, according to the figures from the U.K.’s interior ministry.

In the second quarter, 13 Hong Kong nationals obtained Tier 1 investor visas, which offer permanent residency in return for investing 2 million pounds ($2.44 million) in the U.K., compared with just four during the same period in 2018. The less exclusive Tier 1 entrepreneur visas were granted to 41 residents of the city.

“The more high net worth you are the more options you have to move to other countries,” Naomi Hanrahan-Soar, a managing associate at London-based immigration law firm Lewis Silkin, said by phone. “The U.K.’s very popular with people from around the world in part because we have such a reliable legal system.”

Source: Hong Kong Good Citizenship Applications Jump as People Eye Exit

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New Brunswick population growth strategy seeks big boost in immigration

2019/08/29 Leave a comment

Common to most Atlantic provinces along with the Atlantic Immigration Pilot:

New Brunswick is aiming to more than triple the number of immigrants to the province, hoping to reach 7,500 a year by 2024.

The goal of bringing the annual immigration intake to about one per cent of the province’s population is included in a new five-year provincial government population growth strategy and action plan released today.

In addition to attracting new immigrants, the strategy seeks to ensure newcomers remain in the province, targeting a one-year retention rate of 85 per cent by 2024.

The province will also seek a greater proportion of French-speaking immigrants.

The Progressive Conservative government says its goal is to attract skilled workers and entrepreneurs to align with New Brunswick’s labour market needs, while creating an environment in which newcomers can settle and succeed

Labour Minister Trevor Holder says population growth is crucial to the future success of the province.

“The attraction and retention of new Canadians is critical to helping us increase our province’s population and meet the needs of our employers,” Holder said in a news release.

Moncef Lakouas, president of the New Brunswick Multicultural Council, said the strategy delivers ambitious goals that will lead to economic growth and prosperity.

“When newcomers are fully included in all aspects of society, they become partners in growing our economy and enriching the social and cultural life of our province,” Lakouas said.

Through a strategy released by the previous Liberal government, the number of immigrants who came to New Brunswick each year was increased from 625 to 2,291 between 2014 and 2017. The province’s target this year is 2,100.

With roughly 770,000 people, New Brunswick has the third smallest population in Canada. The new strategy points out that between 2013 and 2018, it was second last among the provinces and territories in population growth at 1.6 per cent.

It says significant interprovincial migration loss, particularly among youth, and low birth rates are restricting the province’s ability to grow.

“International migration is a key strategy to lessen the impact of this decline,” the strategy document says.

From 2018 to 2027, New Brunswick is forecast to have about 120,000 job openings, and approximately 13,000 of those will require workers from outside the province, because not all of the jobs can be filled by local labour.

Source: New Brunswick population growth strategy seeks big boost in immigration

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Colby Cosh: How a ‘leftist mob’ handed Mad Max a pre-election gift

2019/08/28 Leave a comment

Always a debate whether better to ignore (silence can imply consent) or contest and offer free publicity. Will see whether the PPC low polling number get a bump or not and the effect, if any, on the Conservative numbers.

Really hard, however, to understand how the billboard was paid for with no one stating they approved of the copy.

Billboards, like tweets, are not the best format to capture nuance and subtleties:

I offer sarcastic congratulations to everyone who gave Maxime Bernier the stupid controversy he wanted over the “Say NO to mass immigration” billboard, bearing his image, that briefly appeared in a few Canadian cities and was taken down in a hurry Monday morning. The billboards were purchased from Pattison Outdoor Advertising by a third-party supporter of Bernier’s People’s Party. The company’s initial response to the resulting outcry was to observe that the message of the billboard complied with advertising standards; it did not contain any hateful, disparaging, or discriminatory language.

“We take a neutral position on ads that comply with the ASC (Advertising Standards Canada) Code as we believe Canadians do not want us to be the judge or arbiter of what the public can or cannot see,” was Pattison’s original statement in the face of controversy. (Most everybody, including the company, seems to have missed the point that election advertising is explicitly “excluded from the application” of the Code on the grounds that political expression deserves the highest degree of deference; the Code does say, for what it’s worth, that “Canadians are entitled to expect” that such advertising respects the underlying principles.)

Pattison’s in-house advertising code does allow the company to engage in “post-publication review,” which must necessarily involve just dismantling ads if enough people raise hell about them, and this is what has now happened. This has not stopped people from threatening boycotts against the Pattison corporate empire for accepting the ad in the first place, or for bowing to pressure from the people who were angry about the ad. Take your pick if that’s your idea of a good time.

Let’s accept the view for the sake of argument, or just for the sake of sanity, that there is no general freedom-of-expression issue involved here. A vendor of advertising space cannot completely disavow responsibility for the ads it accepts, and any ad will be condemned if the social force aligned against it is commercially unbearable. My question is whether it was sensible for individuals (ah, remember them?) to oppose the display of this particular ad, as opposed to walking past it, perhaps frowning, and going about one’s business. Bernier has said he has no connection with the billboard, but that he agrees with its message; and now he accuses a “leftist mob” of trying “to censor any discussion of immigration”.

How can this now be answered by opponents of the billboard? They can say that they’re not a mob, I suppose; not a mob, just a large, angry group of citizens acting impulsively in concert to destroy something that offends them. But the billboard didn’t say that immigrants are horrid. It didn’t say anything for or against ethnic diversity, which Bernier has praised in the past while objecting to its elevation to cult status. It didn’t propose throwing anybody out of Canada. It is a plea against a long-standing policy of mass immigration.

My question is whether it was sensible for individuals to oppose the display of this particular ad, as opposed to walking past it, perhaps frowning, and going about one’s business

Some would have us believe that this is the point: that the million immigrants Canada is welcoming every three years, thereby outdistancing the industrialized world, do not constitute a “mass.” Crusading Edmonton lawyer Avnish Nanda took this line in an interviewwith the Calgary Herald’s Sammy Hudes: “First and foremost, (the billboard) contains a lie. There’s no mass immigration to Canada. There’s no threat of mass immigration.”

I suppose “mass immigration” really is a context-sensitive kind of thing to say. In a scenario in which Canada was airlifting large numbers of desperate people from a particular situation (he said, stealing a nauseous glance at Hong Kong), a few thousand immigrants might easily be enough to make up a “mass.” By the same token, the influx of self-selected immigrants that Canada accepts from all corners of the world might not be a “mass.”

But … it’s a fine point, and we are certainly taking in an awful lot of people in the most banal sense of “a lot.” Can the alleged inaccuracy of the billboard really have been the “first and foremost” objection to it? Mr. Nanda and those like him suggest they are angry about the billboard because it urges Canadians to say “No” to something that’s not happening and cannot happen. I would suggest that their objection to the billboard is nothing more or less than disagreement with its political premise.

The question I have for objectors and denouncers of the billboard is how they think it could have been rewritten, expressing the same underlying idea, so as to be acceptable. If the unpleasant-sounding word “mass” were replaced with “large-scale,” would there have been less of a ruction? Maybe any objection to prospective levels of immigration to Canada is to be regarded as inherently racist and hateful, even when no racist or hateful language is used.

If that is the case, it is perfectly predictable that the People’s Party will exploit this and cry “mob censorship,” and public polls on immigration suggest they will have some success, in case recent history everywhere didn’t offer enough of a hint. Moreover, we are left with an awkward question how any limit upon or criteria for immigration, any government immigration policy per se, can be justified at all. What, indeed, can be the objection to “mass immigration”? Who will have the courage to put up a “Say YES to mass immigration” billboard?

Source: Colby Cosh: How a ‘leftist mob’ handed Mad Max a pre-election gift

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Immigration likely to emerge as major wedge issue in fall vote

2019/08/28 Leave a comment

Not so convinced (see my Q&A: Policy Expert Analyzes Role of Immigration in Canada’s Upcoming Election):

While few are willing to predict the outcome of the upcoming federal election, it’s a safe prediction that the issue of immigration will feature prominently in the federal election. It’s a complicated and divisive debate that will encompass everything from unemployment and the economy to social diversity and national security.

As the official campaign period grows closer, the rhetoric around immigration has intensified as the political left, centre, right and, now, far right converge on the question of people migrating to Canada. Immigration has often been a tough issue for political parties in the West to navigate the fine line between embracing diversity and cautious nationalism – and Canada isn’t immune.

An April 2019 Ekos Research study suggested that 39 per cent of Canadians believe that there are too many immigrants coming to Canada. The same poll showed that 40 per cent believed there were too many visible minority immigrants entering the country. Self-identified Conservatives were more likely to hold that view, at 69 per cent, as compared to only 15 per cent of self-identified Liberals. Interestingly, in 2015 only 53 per cent of Conservatives felt that way while 36 per cent of Liberals did.

Given this stark difference of opinion, it’s no surprise the Liberals are doubling down on immigration as a key pillar to economic and social prosperity as an election-winning strategy.  Andrew Scheer, leader of the Conservatives, is forced into a delicate balancing act to appease his base who are uncomfortable or unhappy with the number of immigrants in Canada, while trying to appeal to new Canadians and supporters of immigration in key urban ridings which can determine who wins and who loses.

It is in this internal struggle for conservative votes that we see Maxime Bernier and his People’s Party pose a legitimate threat. Absent from the 2015 election, Bernier has adopted a xenophobic immigration policy along with racial undertones in much of his policies. Depending on how Scheer handles the issue, it could cost his party votes in swing ridings they might otherwise win over the governing Liberals.

The global debate around migration has provided fertile ground for demonizing immigrants as threats to jobs, security and people’s way of life rather than characterizing them accurately as contributors to a country’s prosperity.  It’s this global debate that will force immigration to be a key focus for many Canadians as the rhetoric shifts towards the threat of immigrants regardless of the empirical data suggesting the true threat lies in denying migrants to live and work in Canada.

Goldy Hyder (formerly with H+K Strategies), the head of the lobby group representing CEOs of Canada’s largest companies, the Business Council of Canada, believes Canada is 10 years away from a demographic pressure point as the baby boomer population retires in great numbers. Carolyn Wilkins, the Bank of Canada’s senior deputy governor, said without immigration, Canada’s labour force would cease adding workers within five years.

The business community applauded this government’s adoption of faster short-term visas for skilled labour to allow for tech workers to move more easily to lessen the strain on Canadian business operations, as well as a strategy to bring 1 million immigrants over three years to help fill labour shortages.

Here, again, Canada is not alone. The global pursuit to filling labour shortages with skilled and unskilled migrants continues to intensify as statistics continue to support the narrative that industries face a daunting labour shortage that could derail growth prospects in champion sectors like tech, finance, agriculture and tourism. Yet there remains a healthy appetite to demonize immigrants as stealing jobs from Canadians or, worse, as a threat to national security or Canadian culture.

Having a debate about immigration as part of the federal election may be unavoidable, but it need not be divisive. An informed debate that is both reasonable and rational can help us bring Canadians together around the importance of immigration to our past, our present, and our future.

Muhammad Ali is a Senior Consultant with Hill+Knowlton Strategies (Canada). The views expressed in this pieces are his alone. 

Source: Immigration likely to emerge as major wedge issue in fall vote

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Trump Administration Expands Power of Political Appointee Over Career Immigration Judges

2019/08/28 Leave a comment

Significant. Keeps on getting harder to justify the Safe Third Country Agreement:

The Trump administration implemented a policy change Monday to enable the head of immigration courts to overrule judges on cases, causing an uproar among career employees who said their independence will now be usurped by a political appointee.

Currently, the attorney general has the authority to override decisions issued by career immigration judges in the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review after they are appealed to a central board. An interim rule, which the department issued on Friday and took effect Monday, will delegate that responsibility to the EOIR director. The director, who is appointed by the president but not confirmed by the Senate, can now issue decisions on cases pending before the appeals board that “have not been timely resolved in order to allow more practical flexibility in efficiently deciding appeals.” The rule also formalized a recently created Office of Policy and placed it under the director’s authority.

Court stakeholders, including the judges themselves, were quick to condemn the change, saying it would undermine the entire court system.

“The impact of this regulation is to substitute the policy directives of a single political appointee over the legal analysis of non-political, independent adjudicators,” said Ashley Tabaddor, a California-based judge and president of the National Association of Immigration Judges. She added that turning the EOIR director into a “mini-attorney general” would tear down the current barriers between the Justice Department’s obligations as a law enforcement entity and its “adjudicatory responsibilities.”

“By collapsing the policymaking role with the adjudication role into a single individual, the director of EOIR, an unconfirmed political appointee, the immigration court system has effectively been dismantled,” Tabaddor said.

Kate Voigt, associate director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the addition to the EOIR director’s portfolio is problematic and “far outside the position’s current duties.”

“Because the director of EOIR reports to the attorney general, the director is likely to feel more beholden to the attorney general’s political whims than to making sound, just legal decisions,” Voigt said. “I am deeply concerned that allowing the director of EOIR to decide appeals cases directly will further undermine the independence of our judges and politicize our courts.”

The Justice Department said the rule was simply resolving discrepancies between existing policies limiting the EOIR director’s power and newer rules that have expanded it. It added the attorney general is generally too busy to weigh in on cases in which EOIR’s appeals board does not meet its deadlines.

“Due to his numerous other responsibilities and obligations, the attorney general is not in a position to adjudicate any [Board of Immigration Appeals] appeal simply because it has exceeded its time limit for adjudication,” the department said in its rule. Because the EOIR director already oversees the appeals board’s chairman, Justice added, the director “is in a better position to address cases that cannot be completed in a timely fashion by the BIA.”

The move follows the department’s action earlier this month to decertify the immigration judge’s union. Justice suggested the judges were management officials and therefore ineligible for collective bargaining, an argument the department unsuccessfully pursued in 2000. The judges and the Trump administration have frequently clashed, and the union has for years pushed for independence from the Justice Department altogether.

Both Attorney General William Barr and his predecessor Jeff Sessions—as well as attorneys general in previous administrations—have issued precedent-setting rulings that amounted to new immigration policies. While the new rule has already taken effect, the department will take public comments through Oct. 25.

Source: Trump Administration Expands Power of Political Appointee Over Career Immigration Judges

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with , ,

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