Francisation «obligatoire» des immigrants: Legault souffle le chaud et le froid

2019/07/10 Leave a comment

More ambiguity than in the case of Malala not being able to teach in Quebec:

Les immigrants qui débarquent au Québec seront-ils bientôt forcés d’apprendre le français ? Les paris sont ouverts.

Posée au premier ministre François Legault lundi, cette question demeure sans réponse claire.

En mêlée de presse, M. Legault a soufflé le chaud et le froid, paraissant dire une chose et son contraire.

Chose certaine, forcés ou non, les nouveaux arrivants auront intérêt à maîtriser le français s’ils veulent obtenir leurs papiers pour demeurer au Québec.

Le premier ministre réagissait lundi à une entrevue de La Presse canadienne, diffusée la veille, avec la députée caquiste Claire Samson, qui rappelait que le programme de la CAQ prévoyait la francisation « obligatoire » des immigrants ne maîtrisant pas le français à leur arrivée au Québec.

Elle disait que le gouvernement devrait aller en ce sens, pour s’assurer que le Québec de demain demeure un État où la langue française domine.

Or, le ministre de l’Immigration, Simon Jolin-Barrette, a annoncé vendredi des mesures visant à étendre l’accès aux cours de francisation, mais sur une base volontaire.

Lundi, le premier ministre a convenu que le caractère obligatoire des cours de francisation pour les immigrants figurait parmi les engagements de son parti, mais qu’il voulait procéder « graduellement ». Il semble donc vouloir procéder par étapes.

« Cela fait partie de nos propositions », a reconnu M. Legault, rappelant qu’il avait un mandat de quatre ans et qu’il comptait « y aller graduellement ».

Une « priorité nationale »

En 2016, dans un rapport visant à définir la position de son parti sur cette question, la députée Claire Samson avait préconisé la francisation obligatoire des immigrants.

Lundi, le premier ministre a réitéré qu’il était « d’accord avec ce rapport-là ».

Il a ajouté que, de toute façon, les immigrants seront forcés de passer un test de français et un test de valeurs pour obtenir le certificat de résident permanent au pays.

Et il a ajouté que la réussite de ces tests sera elle aussi « obligatoire » pour rester au Québec.

Pour l’instant, « ce qu’on s’engage à faire, c’est de rendre les cours de français obligatoires… pas obligatoires, à rendre les cours de français disponibles », a dit le premier ministre.

« Les cours vont être disponibles, les tests de français vont être obligatoires. Je vois pas pourquoi les nouveaux arrivants ne suivraient pas les cours de français », a-t-il ajouté.

Avant d’aller de l’avant, le Québec devra cependant négocier avec le gouvernement fédéral les conditions qu’il souhaite imposer aux nouveaux arrivants pour obtenir le statut de résident permanent, une compétence fédérale.

M. Legault s’est engagé lundi à « convaincre le gouvernement fédéral » de lui accorder les pouvoirs réclamés, qui figurent dans la nouvelle loi 9 adoptée en juin.

Dans son rapport de 2016, assorti de nombreuses recommandations, Mme Samson proposait notamment qu’un gouvernement de la CAQ fasse de la francisation des immigrants une « véritable priorité nationale ».

D’où l’importance d’obliger les immigrants à suivre des cours de français, grâce à une formation d’une durée variant de 30 à 72 semaines, à temps complet.

Cette formation, rémunérée, serait nécessaire pour obtenir un certificat de sélection du Québec.

Tous les nouveaux arrivants ne maîtrisant pas le français devraient s’y soumettre, qu’ils soient immigrants économiques, réfugiés ou faisant partie d’un regroupement familial.

Ce programme devrait également être suivi le plus tôt possible suivant l’arrivée au Québec.

On prévoyait inclure un volet d’initiation aux réalités du Québec, sa culture, ses institutions sociales et politiques, ses valeurs, etc.

Un soutien financier devait être prévu pour les parents de jeunes enfants, en vue d’assumer les frais de garde.

Mme Samson proposait également dans son rapport de créer un guichet unique pour la francisation des immigrants adultes.

Tous les programmes de francisation — actuellement éparpillés entre le ministère de l’Éducation et celui de l’Immigration — seraient rapatriés à l’intérieur d’un nouveau ministère : le ministère de l’Immigration et de la Francisation.

Source: Francisation «obligatoire» des immigrants: Legault souffle le chaud et le froid

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CBSA has increased deportations, though removals of irregular asylum seekers remain low

2019/07/09 Leave a comment

Some useful numbers in this update:

The Canada Border Services Agency has ramped up deportations of failed refugee claimants and other foreign nationals and permanent residents who have lost the right to stay in Canada, amid concerns about the ability of Canada’s asylum system to respond quickly to spikes in refugee claims.

Removals from Canada have dropped significantly in the last several years, from more than 19,000 people in 2012-13 to around 8,000 in recent years. But that number climbed to roughly 9,500 people in 2018-19, following an internal effort to speed up the pace of deportations.

Despite the overall increase, the numbers remain low for removals of failed irregular asylum seekers — those who enter Canada from the U.S. between official border crossings, but who are unsuccessful in claiming refugee status — even though Ottawa has said it is prioritizing their removal.

A spokesperson for Border Security Minister Bill Blair told the National Post that anyone to be deported from Canada is given due process. “But once legal avenues have been exhausted, individuals are expected to respect our laws and leave Canada, or as per our commitments, be removed,” said Marie-Emmanuelle Cadieux in an email. “We are re-investing in the agency to ensure that processing continues to happen in a manner that is fair, fast and final.”

Last fall, the CBSA confirmed it had set a target of 10,000 removals for the 2018-19 fiscal year, a notable increase over the previous three years, when removals ranged from 7,900 to 8,600. At the time, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said the agency needed to “pick up the pace” of removals, and pointed to $7.5 million in funding allocated to the CBSA in Budget 2018. “We’ve provided some extra resources for CBSA to do the work that’s necessary,” Goodale said. The agency has now confirmed it removed a total of 9,584 people last year.

Backlogs in Canada’s immigration system have been the subject of increased scrutiny since an influx of asylum seekers began crossing the Canada-U.S. border between official ports of entry after the 2016 election of U.S. President Donald Trump. Since January 2017, about 45,000 people have entered Canada in this way, using a loophole in the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement that generally requires asylum seekers to make a refugee claim in whichever country they get to first.

In May, the auditor general found that Canada’s asylum system is unable to cope with such surges, with refugee claimants waiting two years for decisions on their claims. The backlog of asylum seekers numbered about 75,000 at the time and will likely continue to grow. However, the number of people entering Canada illegally has dropped considerably, and is currently only half what it was at this time last year.

The government is taking steps to speed up the entire system, from claim hearings to removals. Budget 2019 earmarked $1.18 billion over five years for border security and processing of asylum claims.

The CBSA also says it is now prioritizing the removal of irregular asylum seekers whose claims have been denied, as it does people who are deemed threats to national security or who are involved in organized crime, crimes against humanity or other types of criminal activity. However, Canada has still deported only a small minority of the tens of thousands of irregular asylum seekers who’ve entered the country in the last two years. According to figures the CBSA provided to the Post, the agency removed just 723 irregular migrants with failed refugee claims between April 1, 2017 and June 21, 2019.

This is largely because asylum seekers must exhaust all legal avenues of appeal before they can be removed, which takes time. The agency also pointed to a number of other factors that can delay removals, including the fact that Canada temporarily halts removals to countries in armed conflict or experiencing environmental disasters — such measures are currently in place for Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Iraq. A lack of valid travel documents and medical issues can also delay removals.

“The CBSA is firmly committed to meeting its mandate under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to conduct removals as soon as possible,” a spokesperson told the Post in an email, adding that the agency has increased staffing levels and improved co-ordination with other branches of the immigration system to speed up removals. The agency said there are currently just under 3,000 people with an “actionable removal order” in Canada, meaning with no barrier to deportation.

Still, Janet Dench, executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees, said setting quotas for deportations like the CBSA’s target of 10,000 removals can be problematic. “One of the concerns is who ends up being a priority for removal,” she said. When border officers are given targets they need to meet, there’s an incentive to prioritize families over criminals because officials can remove a number of people at once, often with less effort, she said.

Dench said the removal process can often feel arbitrary, with some people getting calls from the CBSA almost immediately, while others wait years before being asked to leave.

Source: CBSA has increased deportations, though removals of irregular asylum seekers remain low

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How H-1B visa quotas are denying educated immigrants the American dream

2019/07/09 Leave a comment

A good individual example, along with some relevant data and analysis:

Marie Francois grew up in Haiti reading books her mother picked up from a local thrift shop, often tomes that had smart-looking people on the cover. She read mostly during the day when it didn’t matter that their small home didn’t have electricity. At night, she read by candlelight.

Her single mother, who worked as a cleaning lady while studying to be a nurse, told her oldest daughter not to get used to living in poverty.

“We’re going to get out of here,” she would say.

College graduate Marie Francois, pictured in Salt Lake City on Thursday, May 23, 2019, has received more than 10 job offers as a project engineer, but because of the current immigration system, none of the companies want to go through H-1B visa process to to hire her.

Francois’ mother valued education. Though she didn’t have much money, she paid for her children to attend private Catholic school. Sometimes a school kicked Francois out when her mother couldn’t pay the tuition.

Her mother eventually became a nurse at the company where she had worked as a cleaner. She later went into the wheat and flour business, a popular commodity in the Caribbean. She became active in politics.

It took 15 years, but Francois’ mother was true to her word.

“My mom never takes no for an answer,” Francois said. “She’s not afraid to start from the bottom and work her way up. That’s why the American dream attracted me, I believe.”

But the American dream isn’t coming easy for the 30-year-old married mother of a 15-month old son who has lived legally in the United States on a student visa for the past decade. (Her husband also is Haitian and in the country on a student visa.)

Francois has a bachelor’s degree in construction management from Brigham Young University-Idaho. She studied business management at the State University of New York, one of three Haitian students selected among thousands for a special program. She has put in hundreds of hours of community service. She was a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Paraguay. She has volunteered on political campaigns. She speaks four languages. She wants to go to Harvard Law School.

“I feel like I’m the ultimate immigrant,” she said.

What Francois doesn’t have is U.S. citizenship or a green card, and that is making it difficult for her to land a job.

“We’re not your enemy,” she said. “We’re here because we love this country and we want to be part of this great nation.”

Companies, she said, aren’t willing to work through the immigration system to help her get a highly sought-after H1-B visa for college graduates with special skills. Businesses don’t want to take a chance on someone who might not be in the country very long, nor do they want to wade through the immigration system to help her get a special visa.

One Utah company gave her a start date and even sent her pictures of her cubicle before abruptly rescinding the offer.

“It’s disappointing and sometimes discouraging, but I’m still pursuing the American dream because I’m a hard worker and we are tough enough and we will move forward,” she while sipping a hot chocolate on a chilly spring evening at the City Creek food court.

Immigrants like Francois see the H1-B visa as a path to furthering their career and making a life in America. Many applicants are international students trying to transition from student visas to H1-B visas and eventually green cards.

Visa crunch

There are 65,000 H-1B visas available, and another 20,000 for people who hold advanced degrees from U.S. colleges and universities. All of the visas have been issued within the first week for the past 16 years. To deal with the glut of applications, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has moved to lottery system.

Last year, employers filed 190,098 petitions, including 95,855 on behalf of foreign-born professionals who had earned a graduate degree from a U.S. university, well above the 85,000 cap.

Thousands of talented professionals get turned away, including people who already know English, understand American culture and who have conducted research in the U.S. as graduate students.

“This is not an unfamiliar scenario to me,” Salt Lake immigration attorney Tim Wheelwright said of Francois’ situation. He does not represent her.

Francois is in the country on an F-1 student visa, which allows her optional practical training, or OPT, for one year in her major area of study. After that, she doesn’t know where she will be. Her construction management degree doesn’t qualify for the two-year science, technology, engineering and math extension.

” Employers are getting tired of applying and not being selected. “
Tim Wheelwright, Salt Lake immigration attorney

Optional practical training is intended to give U.S. companies that employ foreign workers multiple opportunities to apply for an H-1B visa, which would be a logical next step for Francois.

“But as she’s encountered, there are a number of employers that are leery of the H-1B process because of the expense and the uncertainty,” Wheelwright said, noting businesses filed more than 200,000 petitions for the 85,000 visas made available in April. “Employers are getting tired of applying and not being selected.”

Choke points

President Donald Trump’s “Buy America, Hire American” executive order has had an impact on employers.

According to data obtained by the National Foundation for American Policy, immigration services has begun to increase H-1B visa denials as well as the number of requests for evidence issued for applicants, Forbes reported.

“Employers report the time lost due to the increase in denials and requests for evidence has cost millions of dollars in project delays and contract penalties, while aiding competitors that operate exclusively outside the United States,” Forbes reported, citing a National Foundation for American Policy source.

An Orrin G. Hatch Foundation report in April showed that the H-1B is “vastly overextended.”

“This overreliance on the H-1B visa program creates choke points in our talent pipeline where skilled individuals either cannot move forward or simply choose to leave,” according the report.

The foundation suggests raising the H-1B cap and tying it to market demand to meet the needs of a modern economy. It also calls for immigration reform, including a fast track to citizenship for international student graduates and entrepreneurs.

Sen. Mike Lee has attempted to break up the work visa backlog since being elected nearly nine years ago. Per-country quotas cause much longer wait times for immigrants from countries with large populations than for those from smaller countries.

The Utah Republican has introduced bills to remove per-country caps for H-1B visas and employment-based green cards, but despite bipartisan support, none have passed, including one a conservative senator blocked from advancing at the end of June.

Lee has said educating, training and employing the best and brightest, whether from the U.S. or abroad, is essential to the vibrancy of the economy and continued innovation.

Brain drain

An Arizona congressman, though, wants to cut off one path that foreign graduates take to get an H-1B visa.

Republican Rep. Paul Gosar plans to introduce legislation to end the optional practical training program, which according to Pew Research grew 400% in the decade after the government in 2008 boosted the amount of time STEM students and graduates could stay in the U.S. and work, Bloomberg reported in June.

Pew found that between 2004 and 2016, almost 1.5 million foreign graduates of U.S. colleges and universities have been allowed to work through the program, with 53% specializing in STEM fields.

Gosar also wrote a letter to Trump asking him to kill the optional practical training program by executive order, arguing millions of American citizens are willing and able to take those jobs, they just need a chance at employment.

But a recent study by the Society for Human Resources Management found that 83% of employers were having difficulty filling open positions, with 75% of those employers saying candidates did not have the necessary skills, like data science and STEM training.

Filling unfilled jobs like those is precisely the role immigration should play, but it is proving increasingly more difficult as employers use a 20th century immigration system to meet the needs of a 21st century economy, according to the Hatch report.

Francois said she feels like a pawn in a political game.

“I feel like that’s a big brain drain for the U.S. because all of us were getting our education here. We love this country. We love our friends, families and we want to build a life here. We want to see this country be more competitive, still be a big country. But when you treat us like we’re an enemy, it’s not a good thing. It’s not contributing to what this country was founded upon,” Francois said.

Seeking asylum

In 2014, Francois’ politically active mother in Haiti started receiving threatening phone calls. Antagonists burned down one of her stores. She fled to the United States seeking asylum through U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services but eventually returned to Haiti.

Francois sought political asylum at the time as well, but being in the country legally worked against her.

The email she received from the Houston Asylum Office reads: “On the matter of your asylum case, you received a final denial of your claim. Because you were/are still in status, you were not placed in removal proceedings, and you may refile your asylum case if you wish.”

Francois took the decision hard.

“I was really disappointed and shocked. I feel like I was treated as an object. I feel that as an immigrant I was dehumanized,” she said.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokeswoman Debbie Cannon said the agency doesn’t comment on individual cases.

Francois has tried navigating the labyrinth that is the U.S. immigration system. The Citizenship and Immigration Services website, she said, is maddening.

“You go through forms and forms and forms, links and links and links, and then you end nowhere. You get confused and you don’t understand what they are requiring, and that can be the downfall for any immigrant because what you don’t know can hurt you so much more. You can find yourself waking up the next day and you are to be deported just because you ignored one thing in a new law or in a revised law,” she said.

Francois’ reapplied for asylum but for more than two months had no idea how immigration services treated her application because she never heard back. She resubmitted it a few weeks ago. The delays could effect her eligibility.

“It’s really draining mentally, emotionally, everything. It’s hard. At the end, you feel like you’re just an object, you’re just a piece of something people can mold as they wish during political battles,” she said.

In mid-June, Citizenship and Immigration Services announced expansion of its information services modernization program to Utah, Idaho, Colorado, Montana and Wyoming.

The agency encourages applicants to look at its website or call its contact center to get questions answered rather than visit local immigration offices. The agency says it saves people time and allows immigration officers to work on completing cases quicker.

The problem with that, Francois said, is that often no one answers the phone.

Where to turn

Francois and her husband have also sought out top lawyers for help.

“Crazily,” she admits, they traveled to New York to meet with a lawyer who charged $500 an hour. One hour was all they could afford. They went to Florida only to learn the attorney there didn’t take out-of-state cases. They have even resorted to attending events where they might meet a famous person who has the president’s ear.

“Right now, I’m thinking maybe I should go to (Democratic U.S. House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi because she’s pretty fierce. I like her. … And maybe she would do something about it. I don’t know,” Francois said.

Francois said she’ll leave it to politicians figure out how fix the nation’s immigration system. But she does have some advice:

“Just see other people as human beings. Humanize them, and then you will find the solution. Humanize every single person who is contributing to this country and you will resolve any other issue,” she said.

The struggle for citizenship is draining on her family’s energy and bank account. And even if she were to get a work visa, Francois would have another battle to fight.

Women aren’t exactly welcome in the construction business. She started out as not just the only woman but the only black woman in construction management at BYU-Idaho. When she was failing her statics class, a professor told her she wasn’t going to make it and that she should quit.

“I went to the bathroom and cried for four hours,” she said. “I cried my soul out.”

That same semester she won an award at a competition with 120 other schools.

“I call it a tender mercy,” Francois said. “I call it a sign from God that I was supposed to stay in construction.”

Francois has a passion for commercial construction, big buildings and challenging projects. Like her mother, she won’t take no for an answer. She intends to stick with it whether she gets a job or not. She knows she will find a way.

In addition to her mom, Oprah Winfrey had an influence on Francois from the time she started reading Winfrey’s magazine O as a teenager in Haiti.

24comments on this story“I was like, ‘One day I’m going to meet that woman. I’m going to tell her I want to talk to her.’ It hasn’t happened or maybe it won’t happen, I don’t know,” she said.

Meantime, Francois is doing everything she can to get more women excited about STEM careers. She’s working in a peer program to encourage young women to enter those fields.

America, she said, is full of opportunities, seen and unseen.

“Ii doesn’t matter if I get a job that pays or I don’t,” Francois said. “What’s important for me is if I die tomorrow, I would feel like I’ve been here, I left a little mark.”

Source: How H-1B visa quotas are denying educated immigrants the American dream

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Quebec MNA wants French classes to be mandatory for immigrants

2019/07/09 Leave a comment

An illustration of the range of views in the CAQ caucus, this one on the more hardline side:

The more MNA Claire Samson is calling on the Quebec government to make French language courses mandatory for immigrants.

Samson, a member of the governing Coalition Avenir Québec who represents Iberville riding, was her party’s culture critic when in the opposition.

In 2016, she produced a report on language and immigration calling for compulsory French classes for immigrants and to make their immigration status conditional on passing a language test.

In an interview with Presse canadienne, Samson said her party campaigned on the report and now it needs to follow up.

Immigration Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette announced Friday that the government would spend an additional $70 million on French classes for immigrants.

But Samson said the government has not gone far enough, and she intends to lobby for more aggressive measures to force newcomers to learn French when the National Assembly resumes in the fall.

French in Quebec is threatened in the very short term and the situation could become irreversible within 15 years, she said.

“It would be difficult to turn it around if there is too much laxity and there is no follow-up,” she said.

Quebec needs to impose the French language on immigrants to counterbalance to the powerful attraction of English, she said.

“It must be done now, because eventually it may be too late,” she warned.

Samson said she has recovered from the health problems that had prevented her from attending the National Assembly regularly since November.

Samson considered quitting politics last fall after she was bypassed for a cabinet post. At the time, she attributed her health problems partly to being left out of cabinet. In March, she attended a meeting in a daycare centre, where constituents complained that she was rude and arrogant. She later apologized.

Source: MNA wants French classes to be mandatory for immigrants

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Québec élargit l’accès à la francisation pour les immigrants

2019/07/08 Leave a comment

Noteworthy in the background of Bill 21 discrimination and the reduction in immigration levels:

Davantage d’immigrants auront accès à la francisation et ils seront mieux compensés pour se présenter en classe, a annoncé cet avant-midi le ministre de l’Immigration.

Cet élargissement du programme est permis par un investissement supplémentaire de 70 millions décidé par le gouvernement.

« Au Québec, les personnes immigrantes doivent évoluer en français, a dit le ministre Simon Jolin-Barrette en conférence de presse au centre-ville de Montréal. C’est pourquoi nous devons mettre en place le meilleur système possible pour favoriser la francisation. »

Parmi les mesures annoncées :

• L’allocation pour les étudiants en francisation à temps plein passera à 185 $ par semaine (contre 141 $ actuellement)

• Les étudiants en francisation à temps partiel recevront une allocation de 15 $ par jour (contre 0 $ actuellement)

• Les frais de garde de ces derniers seront remboursés à hauteur de 9 $ par jour (contre 7 $ actuellement).

• Les étudiants étrangers et les travailleurs temporaires auront aussi accès à la francisation.

Par ailleurs, tous les Québécois d’adoption auront accès à la francisation, peu importe depuis combien de temps ils sont installés dans la province. Jusqu’à maintenant, seuls les immigrants arrivés depuis moins de cinq ans y avaient droit.

« En donnant la possibilité à toutes les personnes immigrantes de se franciser, nous améliorons leurs chances de se trouver un emploi correspondant à leurs compétences et à répondre aux besoins du marché du travail », a dit le ministre Jolin-Barrette. « L’immigration est l’une des solutions à la pénurie de main-d’oeuvre. »

Accueil positif

Des organismes actifs dans le domaine de la francisation se sont dits satisfaits des annonces du ministre, cet avant-midi.

« C’étaient des revendications qu’on faisait depuis de nombreuses années, a fait valoir Pablo Altamirano, directeur de l’Alliance pour l’accueil et l’intégration des immigrations. L’allocation pour les étudiants à temps partiel va aider énormément pour l’assiduité des étudiants : les gens ne pouvaient pas toujours se déplacer à cause du coût des transports. »

Anait Aleksanin, du Centre d’appui aux communautés immigrantes, s’est aussi réjouie de l’annonce. « C’est une très bonne nouvelle. Il y a beaucoup de mesures qu’on attendait depuis longtemps », a-t-elle dit.

La Fédération des chambres de commerce du Québec a accueilli positivement l’annonce, particulièrement en ce qui a trait aux cours de francisation à temps partiel. « Les nouveaux arrivants pourront mettre leurs compétences à contribution plus rapidement, en plus de mettre en pratique leur apprentissage du français au quotidien, avec leurs collègues de travail », a déclaré le grand patron de l’organisation, Stéphane Forget, via communiqué.

La Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec (FTQ) s’est montrée plus ambivalente : elle a salué les améliorations annoncées, mais aimerait voir davantage de francisation dans les milieux de travail.

« Il faut que les travailleurs et travailleuses puissent être libérés de leurs tâches pendant les heures de travail afin de pouvoir assister à des cours de francisation tout en étant rémunérés », a indiqué la centrale syndicale dans un communiqué. « C’est un gros pari que de penser qu’après leur journée de travail, ces travailleurs […] vont être prédisposés à se déplacer pour aller suivre une formation en français. »

Source: Québec élargit l’accès à la francisation pour les immigrants

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Trump Is Right That “Much Can Be Learned” From Australia’s Immigration Policies.

2019/07/05 Leave a comment

Some valid points about the risks of normalizing xenophobic discourse, rather than having more neutral wording to describe issues:

Australia’s asylum policies—which see asylum-seekers languishing for years under inhumane conditions in offshore detention centers in Papua New Guinea and Nauru—are already a source of great shame for many Australians. Widely condemned by human rights groups and the United Nations, the policies contravene various human rights charters, including the 1951 Refugee Convention and even the Convention Against Torture. A U.N. report called on Australia to close the offshore centers, finding “inadequate mental health services, serious safety concerns and instances of assault, sexual abuse, self-harm and suspicious deaths; and about reports that harsh conditions compelled some asylum seekers to return to their country of origin despite the risks that they face there.” Just last week, a former detainee who spent six years on Manus Island begged the U.N. Human Rights Council to hold Australia to account, calling the centers—not just the circumstances they were fleeing—a humanitarian crisis.

But when Donald Trump—the U.S. president whose administration separates children from their families to deter asylum-seekers—says there is much to be learned from Australia’s immigration policies, it’s a fresh reminder of just how bad things have become.

On his way to a working dinner with newly reelected Prime Minister Scott Morrison at the G-20 summit in Japan last week, Trump tweeted out four Australian government flyers, noting that “much can be learned” from them:

It’s not the first time Trump has praised Australia’s hard-line policies: In 2017, then–Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was attempting to convince Trump to uphold a deal negotiated under the Obama administration for the U.S. to resettle detained asylum-seekers who had been attempting to reach Australia. When Turnbull explained Australia’s policy of not accepting those who seek asylum via boat, Trump reportedly told him, “We should do that too. You are worse than I am.”

Trump is reportedly a fan of Turnbull’s successor, Morrison, repeatedly comparing his recent surprise upset to his own (and, of course, declaring that he saw it coming). It’s not clear where Trump saw the Morrison posters, but they seem to represent a friendly little tip from one tough-on-borders leader to another, just as the image of a drowned Salvadoran migrant father and daughter made headlines around the globe.

The lesson Trump presumably wants to draw from these posters is how better to deter people from seeking asylum—something those people have every right to do under international law. As Trump said when he saw the viral image from the U.S. border, “A very very dangerous journey. And by the way many other things happened. Women being raped; women being raped in numbers nobody believed.” The Australian government often justifies its cruelty as a deterrent: to discourage refugees from making the “very very dangerous journey” by sea by making it clear that they will never be settled in Australia, and will suffer greatly if they try to be. It’s for their own good, the government says while simultaneously stoking fears of a flood of boats making their way to Australia if they weaken their system even slightly—punishment in the name of protection.

As Kon Karapanagiotidis—founder and CEO of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre and one of the most outspoken refugee advocates in Australia—laid out in a reply to Trump’s tweet, there is a swath of horrors to learn from Australia, if abject cruelty and maximum suffering are what you’re aiming for.

The most obvious thing for the U.S. to learn from Australia is not to go down this path. This should be obvious enough, from the list Karapanagiotidis shared, from the conditions these human beings live under with no end in sight.

But there is an especially acute lesson to take away from this about not allowing cruelty to become normalized. Just like in the United States, this has been an incremental slide for Australia. Many of the asylum-seekers who try to reach Australia attempt to come by boat via Southeast Asia. Mandatory detention of these migrants for the assessment of “unlawful arrivals,” implemented in the early ’90s by a Labor government with a 273-day limit, soon became offshore detention. The 2000s conservative coalition government implemented the “Pacific Solution,” interning asylum-seekers on nearby island nations instead. Temporary detention soon became seemingly permanent, with a later coalition government declaring that no asylum-seeker who arrives by boat will ever be allowed to live in Australia, regardless of the legitimacy of her claim. (The only options for detainees are to return to their home countries, something they are often pressured to do, or wait for a resettlement deal to be negotiated.) The system has become increasingly secretive, with the media unable to access the camps, and those working within them facing jail time if they leak information.

It’s not too late for the U.S. to avoid this path. As Jason Wilson wrote in the Guardian just a few days before Trump drew the comparison, “Australia’s camps are now baked into its national politics. … The longer that they are in place in the US, Italy and elsewhere, the more likely it is that in those countries, too, they will become permanent features of the political landscape.”

At first, the U.S. left seemed to be doing a good job at this—something Australia could learn from. The left rallied fiercely against the Trump administration family separation policy when it first came out that children were being kept in detention facilities, forcing Trump to sign a June 2018 executive order putting an end to the practice. At the time, the hearteningly effective use of protest made me sad about Australia’s own failure to mobilize effectively or early enough against its now-ingrained inhumane policies.

However, after Trump signed the executive order, returning many traumatized children to their families, that outrage seemed to simmer out—despite hundreds of children remaining in detention. Recent weeks have seen the issue reenter the public consciousness, with the discovery that many more children were separated than first thought, and an inspection of a Clint, Texas, detainment center revealing appalling conditions. There has been a renewed push, led by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to again label these kinds of camps “concentration camps,” which, accurate or not, has reenergized opposition to them and turned the facilities into a central issue for 2020 Democratic candidates. But outrage fatigue is real, and the second rarely matches the first. Australia may be beyond the capacity to feel outrage at this point, with reports of a mental health crisis—dozens of detainee suicide attempts and acts of self-harm since the unexpected reelection of Australia’s conservative government in May—barely moving the needle.

There are also lessons for the U.S. media to be taken from Australia. It is essential that journalists keep reporting on and scrutinizing the horrific conditions in these detention facilities and keep finding ways to get the message across. But perhaps most importantly, they need to fight any efforts to impose laws or policies banning access to the centers for journalists and advocates, as the Australian government did in 2015, passing the draconian Australian Border Force Act, which made it a criminal offense for whistleblowers to reveal anything that happens in the detention centers to the media. Journalists have little access themselves, with the Pacific nations that house Australia’s detention centers refusing almost all journalist visa requests—something that Australia is believed to have had a hand in. For the most part, all the Australian public now gets from inside these camps are rare leaked recordings and the Twitter feeds of prominent detainees. Australian journalists and advocates fought this law, and I don’t mean to demean or question their efforts here. But it’s important for the U.S. media to take heed. Images and reports have proved incredibly potent in swaying public opinion, and so, from Trump’s perspective, a lesson here might be to implement something similar.

There are lessons, too, for Democrats to learn from Australia’s major left party, the Labor Party, not to bow to public pressure to be “strong” and “tough” on border control. Despite recent efforts to provide some relief, in the form of a bill allowing for the temporary transfer of detainees to Australia for medical or psychiatric treatment passed in Parliament with the support of Labor and a number of independents, Labor has proved spineless on the issue, with mandatory offshore detention now more or less a bipartisan policy.

Many in the party may oppose the practice, but overall, Labor is afraid to differentiate itself from the right, lest it be labeled weak on national security—something the coalition has attempted to do in the wake of Labor showing the smallest ounce of compassion in helping pass the medical transfer bill. Democrats need to decide how they intend to fight this system, rather than just try to alleviate some of the suffering it creates. Some argue that billions in emergency funding for the southern border only props up the system, advancing a fundamentally inhumane set of policies.

Trump’s desire to “learn” from a horrific policy that has been repeatedly slammed by the U.N. Human Rights Council is hardly surprising. But for once, he’s right—in a sense. There are many lessons to be learned from Australia. The most important? Take note of them before a system becomes seemingly too ingrained to do much about it.

Source: Trump Is Right That “Much Can Be Learned” From Australia’s Immigration Policies.

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USA: Military Families May Soon Lose Key Immigration Protections

2019/07/04 Leave a comment

Really hard to understand the ongoing cruelty of some of the Administration’s policies:

The Trump administration is considering changes to immigration policies that had previously protected the spouse and dependents of military service members from deportation, a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services official confirmed Monday.

“Parole in Place” is an immigration policy implemented at the height of the Iraq War to help deployed soldiers not worry that their undocumented family members would be deported while they were overseas.

It is one of several immigration options made available to the military in recognition of “the important sacrifices made by U.S. armed forces members, veterans, enlistees and their families. To support these individuals, we provide discretionary options such as parole in place or deferred action on a case-by-case basis,” the agency says on a web page for service members.

Parole in Place grants undocumented dependents and spouses a reprieve to be able to legally adjust their immigration status without having to leave the United States or be deported first. The program was rarely used until senior military leaders and then-members of Congress — including Vice President Mike Pence — urged in 2010 that the Department of Homeland Security increase access to the program.

A USCIS official confirmed exclusively to McClatchy, on condition of anonymity, that the agency is now reviewing the program. Any changes would be limited to dependents of service members, the official said.

Retired Army Reserve Lt. Col. Margaret Stock, an attorney who specializes in military immigration issues, said the administration is expected to issue a decision on whether or not to end Parole in Place at the end of July. She first became aware of the proposed changes when attorneys for some of the service members who could lose their dependents to deportation began expediting requests to get the reprieves for their family members.

The policy review comes at a time when it has become more difficult overall for service members to pursue U.S. citizenship. The number of military naturalizations has plummeted since President Donald Trump took office, and service members are now rejected for citizenship at a higher rate than civilian applicants, according to the most recent USCIS data available.

In the last several years, Parole in Place has been used sparingly, and has not protected all of the dependents of service members from deportation. The federal agency responsible for all adjudication of immigration cases does not track the number of waivers or deportations of service members or their dependents that it has processed.

Source: Military Families May Soon Lose Key Immigration Protections

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Francis: Canada’s immigration ministry should start behaving like an HR department — not an open-invitation dinner party

2019/07/04 Leave a comment

An incredibly weak “analysis,” one that does not appear to understand how the system works, cites less reliable polling data, wants to go back to annual planning when multiculturalism-year planning makes it easier for provinces and service providers, bereft of evidence, misleading characterization of the numbers, I could go on.

The sad thing is that a serious case could be made against the current and planned higher levels of immigration, given the expected impact of technology on labour market needs and some uneven results in terms of economic integration.

Stating that “But nearly half of those admitted won’t be working, perhaps ever, and wouldn’t qualify to be admitted as economic immigrants with skills.” is simply wrong and fear mongering.

Sad:

The United States and Canada have built their economies by accepting millions of immigrants for centuries. Interestingly, polls in the U.S. show support is holding while those in Canada reveal that 63 per cent of Canadians want to limit immigration levels.

The difference is perplexing, especially since Canada doesn’t have more than 12 million undocumented migrants sneaking in, or applying for asylum, as does the U.S. But the facts are that — proportionate to our population — we have very high levels and a government that in 2017 set an arbitrary goal of bringing in 1 million over three years by 2020, or around 330,000 annually, instead of around 230,000 a year.

For starters, the setting of a static immigration goal for one or three years is foolish in and of itself. Migration should vary and be based, for the most part, on the need for unskilled or specialty labour as well as economic conditions.

Frankly, this one million — half of whom are family immigrants and not economically free-standing immigrants — is unsustainable. Equivalent to the population of both Ottawa and Edmonton, that’s a lot of health care, educational costs, infrastructure pressure, and housing shortages.

But the Liberals are undaunted. Trudeau’s Immigration Minister rebutted to polling results that immigration is not a “zero sum” situation and that more money (read tax dollars) will be invested in these areas for these newcomers. This is the argument of a trust-fund kid.

The Liberals claim that the huge increase in immigration is required to fill skills shortages. But nearly half of those admitted won’t be working, perhaps ever, and wouldn’t qualify to be admitted as economic immigrants with skills. Besides, this old chestnut of an excuse has been trotted out repeatedly forever and yet shortages persist.

The Liberals also add that more immigration is needed to boost the size of the country’s population overall. But the vast majority of new entrants will end up crowding into a handful of already-crowded cities.

Canada’s immigration department should return to behaving like the Human Resources Department of the country. People should be given entry if they fill a job that a Canadian cannot perform. Instead, the Liberals are like an HR Department that recruits people then hopes they find jobs or match those already posted.

A small percentage of humanitarian immigration is also required of rich countries, but should only recruit people living in refugee camps with bona fide need. Not those who merely say so.

The issue of refugee, or asylum seeker, immigration is what began the public backlash. In 2017, the naïve Prime Minister tweeted out an open-ended welcome and sparked a flood of 43,000 alleged “asylum seekers” at the U.S.-Quebec border. Most will be deported eventually — because they are not refugees or were already admitted into the U.S. as asylum seekers. Most are queue-jumpers or jurisdiction shoppers who have cost taxpayers more than $300 million and counting.

They were escorted by smugglers through a forest path in Quebec to avoid official border checkpoints where they’d have been turned back to the U.S. asylum system, pointed out Tory leader Andrew Scheer.

“There is absolutely nothing fair or compassionate about … forcing the oppressed to wait longer for Canada’s help while others jump the queue, exploit loopholes and cross the border illegally from places like upstate New York,” he said.

Fortunately, talks with the U.S. have cleaned up the situation and the number of crossers into Canada has dropped and deportations are happening.

Immigration is not a right but a privilege. It’s about finding people for jobs that are begging. It’s also about a manageable amount of bona fide humanitarian migration.

Canada, or the U.S. and Europe, are not open-invitation dinner parties that anyone is entitled to attend and that taxpayers must pay for.

Source: Canada’s immigration ministry should start behaving like an HR department — not an open-invitation dinner party

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International Metropolis 2019 Ottawa and 2020 Beijing

2019/07/02 1 Comment

As my last International Metropolis was some 10 years ago, was curious to see how the conference has evolved since then. The overall format remains the same, plenaries in the morning, workshops in the afternoon.

My impression was that of a more interesting and thought provoking conference than those that I remember, a tribute to the IRCC team and advisory committee that developed the program.

The sessions that I found particularly of interest were:

The Indigenous acknowledgement and presence that opened Metropolis was substantive, with a strong statement by Gilbert Whiteduck, with Metropolis also having an Indigenous closing ceremony.

The plenaries that I found most interesting were: Quest for global governance: Compacts and sustainable development goals (Global Compact), Non-state actors and the migration industry, The effects of technology on migration and integration, Cities and migration, and Public confidence in migration.

These daily briefs by Munk school students are good summaries of the presentations and discussions:

June_27_Munk_School_Daily_Brief.original.1561728696 June_26_Munk_School_Daily_Brief.original.1561640630 June_25_Munk_School_Daily_Brief.original.1561555064

For the last half day, not covered by Munk, the more interesting presentations at the Cities and Migration plenary were the effects of South American migrants (e.g., Venezuela) in Ecuador, services for families remaining in the Philippines when breadwinners worked abroad, A puff presentation on the Mayors Migration Council, and to liven things up, OCASI’s Debbie Douglas on some of the uncomfortable truths on racism.

The plenaries ended strongly with the Public Confidence in Immigration session, withPew Research international comparisons, Compas on UK attitudes and that media need to recognize that they are not neutral players but play a role in public and policy debates, Canada’s Environics on Canadian distinctiveness, South African attitudes towards immigrants and the limitations of surveys based on self-reporting with respect to attitudes.

The major tech innovation since my last Metropolis is of course smart phones and apps. While the conference app had login issues for many participants (i.e., for creating individual programs etc), it had a great feature that allowed questions to be submitted, displayed on screens and “voted” upon to allow moderators to choose those questions of greatest interest. An additional advantage was that it virtually eliminated the tendency of some to abuse microphone time and ensure greater focus.

In terms of other conference management notes, some of which may reflect my circumstances, were that some data based presentations (i.e., economic impact) were done without decks making them hard to follow.

2020 International Metropolis in Beijing

The next conference will be held in Beijing under the theme: New Narratives on Global Migration: Open, Fair and Sustainable Development.

Given the ongoing suppression of Uyghur Muslims and other human rights abuses, a curious choice given that the local organizers will certainly make every effort to ensure a controversy-free event.

In terms of historical parallels, and mindful of Godwin’s law, this is comparable to the holding of an international conference on immigration and integration in Germany following the passage of the Nuremberg Race Laws  (the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor).

The dilemma for governments, academics and service provide organizations is whether they wish to participate against this backdrop. Historically, of course, countries and atheletes participated in the Berlin Olympics of 1936 despite the passage of these laws (and only saved by the medals won by Jesse Owens).

For Canadians, an additional issue remains the arbitrary detention of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, who hopefully will be released well before then.I suspect that will be a challenge.

Source: International Metropolis Conference, Presentations

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George Will: Last century’s immigration debate makes today’s seem enlightened

2019/07/02 Leave a comment

Good reminder. But of course, does not excuse the present immigration debate:

If you think we have reached peak stupidity — that America’s per-capita quantity has never been higher — there is solace, of sorts, in Daniel Okrent’s guided tour through the immigration debate that was heading toward a nasty legislative conclusion a century ago. “The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics, and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants Out of America” provides evidence that today’s public arguments are comparatively enlightened.

Late in the 19th century, immigration surged, as did alarm about it, especially in society’s upper crust, particularly its Boston portion, which thought that the wrong sort of people were coming. Darwinian theory and emerging genetic science were bowdlerized by bad scientists, faux scientists and numerous philistine ax-grinders with political agendas bent on arguing for engineering a better stock of American humans through immigration restrictions and eugenics — selective breeding.

Their theory was that nurture (education, socialization, family structure) matters little because nature is determinative. They asserted that even morality and individuals’ characters are biologically determined by race. And they spun an imaginative taxonomy of races, including European “Alpine,” “Teutonic” (aka “Nordic”) and “Mediterranean” races.

Racist thinking about immigration saturated mainstream newspapers (the Boston Herald: “Shall we permit these inferior races to dilute the thrifty, capable Yankee blood … of the earlier immigrants?”) and elite journals (in The Yale Review, recent immigrants were described as “vast masses of filth” from “every foul and stagnant pool of population in Europe”). In The Century monthly, which published Mark Twain, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, W.E.B. Du Bois and H.G. Wells, an author informed readers that “Mediterranean people are morally below the races of northern Europe,” that immigrants from Southern Italy “lack the conveniences for thinking,” that Neapolitans were a “degenerate” class “infected with spiritual hookworm” and displaying “low foreheads, open mouths, weak chins … and backless heads,” and that few of the garment workers in New York’s Union Square “had the type of face one would find at a county fair in the west or south.” The nation’s most important periodical, The Saturday Evening Post, devoted tens of thousands of words to the braided crusades for eugenics and race-based immigration policies. Popular poet Edgar Lee Masters (“Spoon River Anthology” ) wrote “The Great Race Passes”:

On State Street throngs crowd and push,

Wriggle and writhe like maggots.

Their noses are flat,

Their faces are broad …

Eugenics was taught at Boston University’s School of Theology. Theodore Roosevelt, who popularized the phrase “race suicide,” wrote to a eugenicist that “the inescapable duty of the good citizen of the right type is to leave his or her blood behind him in the world, and that we have no business to permit the perpetuation of citizens of the wrong type.” Woodrow Wilson warned against the “corruption of foreign blood” and “ever-deteriorating” genetic material.

Amateur ethnologists conveniently discovered that exemplary southern Europeans (Dante, Raphael, Titian, Leonardo da Vinci) were actually from the north. One wrote, “Columbus, from his portraits and from his busts, whether authentic or not, was clearly Nordic.” (Emphasis added.) Okrent writes: “In an Alabama case, a black man who married an Italian woman was convicted of violating the state’s anti-miscegenation law, then found surprising absolution when the conviction was vacated by an appellate court’s provocative declaration: ‘The mere fact that the testimony showed this woman came from Sicily can in no sense be taken as conclusive evidence that she was therefore a white woman.’”

The canonical text of the immigration-eugenics complex, Madison Grant’s “The Passing of the Great Race,” is available today in at least eight editions and is frequently cited in the internet’s fetid swamps of white supremacy sites. At the 1946 Nuremberg “Doctors’ Trial,” Nazi defendants invoked that book as well as the U.S. Supreme Court’s Buck v. Bell decision upholding states’ sterilization of “defectives” (Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, a eugenics enthusiast: “Three generations of imbeciles are enough”) and America’s severely restrictive Immigration Act of 1924. It based national quotas on 1890 immigration data — before the surge of the “motley throng.” Okrent writes, “These men didn’t say they were ‘following orders,’ in the self-exonerating language of the moment; they said they were following Americans.”

Four years before the 1924 act, 76% of immigrants came from Eastern or Southern Europe. After it, 11% did. Some of those excluded went instead to Auschwitz.

Source: Will column: Last century’s immigration debate makes today’s seem enlightened

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