Eastern Europe’s Emigration Crisis

2019/07/02 Leave a comment

Not sure how this differs from previous emigration waves from Italy and Spain or indeed Eastern Europe, except that it is facilitated by the EU’s freedom of movement. The same critique has been made with respect to emigration from developing countries to the West and the effective brain drain. Canadians have also worried about those who left Canada for the USA.

While the effect is real on emigration countries, hard to see if there are any effective or acceptable policies to counteract emigration. Does one really want to restrict freedom of movement in the EU and if so, how?

In recent years, most of the debate around the global migration of people has focused on the movement into developed countries and the political battles that ensue. Most famously, Trump has overturned the wisdom of the American political establishment by saying the unsayable on immigration. Politicians from Riga to Rome have won votes (and office) by exploiting similar anxieties. But we seldom talk about the places which, year after year, see more people leave than arrive, and the consequences of countries saying goodbye to some of their best and brightest—often for good.

Nowhere is this concern more pressing than in Eastern Europe. According to the UN, of all the countries that are expected to shrink the most in the coming decades, the top 10 are all in the eastern half of the continent, and seven of those are in the European Union. One cause for concern among many of these countries is the EU’s freedom of movement, one of the four “fundamental freedoms” of goods, capital, services, and people that bind the 28. Although most press coverage of the bloc’s easternmost nations has focused on the rise of anti-immigration populism, there is mounting concern about the brain drain of its most highly qualified citizens to better jobs abroad. In at least six of the EU, the people leaving have become as controversial as those arriving, with some countries now favouring emigration controls.

In essence, the EU’s freedom of movement guarantees an absence of barriers for anyone looking for a job within the 28 countries and makes discrimination based on nationality in work or employment illegal. For many of the EU’s new entrants in the East—including Poland, Hungary and Romania—a future where capital and people could move more freely between themselves and France, the UK, or Germany looked like a fast-track to the top-tier of developed nations. But somewhat ironically, it has only accelerated the departure of those who are crucial to getting there.

In the last century, Eastern Europe has suffered the most dramatic population decline in recent history. According to one study, between 2013 and 2016, approximately 230,000 people left Croatia—a country with a population of only four million—for the 11 “core EU countries” of Western Europe. In the United States, this would be the equivalent of a city the size of Chicago leaving every year. This mass exodus of people is not lost on the country’s politicians; last year the Croatian President called the freedom of movement the “biggest drawback” of the EU. “Mobility is good, as long as people come back. But Croatia is now recording strong negative demographic trends,” she said during a visit to Brussels.

Since Latvia joined the EU, it has lost one-fifth of its population. Romania, a country that according to one organisation is due to see the most drastic population decline, has seen over three million leave the country since it joined the EU in 2007. It lost half of its doctors between 2009 and 2015, the vast majority to better-paid employ in the richer hospitals and surgeries of Western Europe, leaving its health service poorly staffed and on the brink of collapse. High mortality (including infant mortality) and low birthrates are only accelerating the decline.

Large-scale migration of healthcare workers from East to West has been an uncomfortable reality for over a decade, and the young needn’t travel long distances to drastically increase their standard of living. One Estonian doctor who graduated from medical school in 2001 was able to quadruple his salary by moving only 200 kilometres to Finland. In 2018, Denmark enjoyed the EU’s highest average gross annual pay at nine times that of the continent’s lowest in Bulgaria. Who can blame those who head for the greener pastures on the other side?

One solution, that may seem obvious to many, is to increase inward migration from overseas. There is one big problem, however. Eastern European attitudes are  less favourable to immigration than they are in countries in the north and west. Cultural preferences, like sharing a religion, are also more important. According to 2017’s Gallup’s Migration Acceptance Index, all but two of the top 10 countries least accepting of immigration were from Eastern Europe (the others being Israel and the Czech Republic, which is considered Central Europe). Even Japan, a country that has also suffered from population decline—although for different reasons—and is reluctant to accept any large-scale immigration, has now begun to implementmeasures that will open itself up to labour from foreign countries.

The reasons people leave countries in the former Eastern bloc are numerous. Many are concerned about corruption and the limits it places on their country’s future. Others already have family living elsewhere on the continent. Most simply are looking for better prospects for themselves, their children, and their children’s children. Those taking part in the immigration debate in the West should be careful not to forget this fact. The drive to achieve a better life is the most human of instincts and we should not cast blame on those who act on it, lest we throw away our own humanity.

Equally, liberals and progressives in the West should stop viewing the immigration debate solely as an opportunity to flaunt their tolerance and “openness.” A welcoming nature and a desire to help those less fortunate than ourselves are admirable traits, but we mustn’t forget that by welcoming the world’s premier doctors, entrepreneurs, academics, and engineers—with few restrictions—we are depriving the places they come from of their potential; robbing them of the chance to make emigration an option, rather than a necessity—as many feel it is today.

On the liberal Left, acceptance of large-scale immigration is increasingly framed as a moral issue: are you a racist, or a xenophobe? If the answer is “neither,” what’s the problem? This forced dichotomy of good/bad or closed/open is unhelpful and obscures rather than illuminates. Ironically, while liberal immigration policies in general, and freedom of movement in particular, undoubtedly help those who leave, for the vast majority left behind, the result is a country that, in the long term, is measurably worse off. More often than not, those who frame the immigration debate in the starkest terms have little to say about this poaching of skills and talent from elsewhere.

In Europe, a conundrum we will increasingly have to confront is how to embrace openness whilst avoiding the erosion of another country’s social fabric. This may mean fundamentally reevaluating the freedom of movement, or at least restricting it to economies with comparable pay and conditions. Another solution may come in the form of increased cash transfers, and investment in smaller economies by bigger ones to try and level out standards of living. Something must be done soon, or populations in eastern Europe will continue to disappear.

History shows us that mass emigration can change a country forever. In an upstairs window of the Irish president’s official residence, one lamp flickers constantly. Lit by President Mary Johnson in 1990, it is a beacon to light the way home for the millions of descendants of the Irish who left their homeland over the centuries. (Ireland’s population peaked at more than eight million people in around 1840 and hasn’t yet recovered almost two centuries later.) One wonders whether the less prosperous countries of the European Union hit hardest by emigration may light their own lamps soon enough.

Source: Eastern Europe’s Emigration Crisis

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On Canada Day, let’s reconsider the high cost of citizenship

2019/07/02 Leave a comment

While I have long advocated for a decrease in citizenship fees, given the mix of personal and public benefits of citizenship, her points on permanent residency fees miss the fact that these only cover processing costs, not the more than $1 billion the government spends on settlement services such as language training.

Both Conservative and Liberal governments in their substantial funding for settlement services demonstrate their recognition of the public, not just personal, benefits of immigration.

Similarly, while citizenship data (administrative and Census) show some groups adversely affected by the 2014-15 fee increases and other changes, visible minorities form close to 80 percent of all immigrants, so hard to make the case that this is a major barrier:

At any international airport, the passport of those making their way through customs could be a source of envy or a source of pity, quietly communicating the perceived quality of life lived by its holder. Voluminous emigration and immigration have turned citizenship into the “most significant class lottery remaining in the modern world,” in the words of one journalist. Perhaps recognizing this, many countries including Canada have successfully capitalized on immigration.

The path to Canadian citizenship has gone through a series of changes. In the past, in addition to being able to marry into citizenship, one could literally buy citizenship – a program Quebec continues to this day. Currently, the journey to citizenship begins with permanent residency. Apart from transitioning from a student or worker to a permanent resident, other options include using foreign entry programs such as Family Sponsorship, Economic, and Business Immigration.

Regardless of the option, in addition to the application cost comes a payment of $490 for the right of permanent residence fee, without which permanent residence status is not granted. Protected persons are exempt from this expense.

Introduced in 1995 and levied on individuals seeking permanent residency,first at a hefty price of $975, the fee is seen as “a partial compensation for benefits which accrue to the person who acquires permanent resident status and helps to defray various costs incurred in delivering the immigration program.” But this may not have been the only reason for its introduction.

The right of permanent residence fee (then called right of landing fee) came at a time when there was an increase in immigrants from Asia and the Middle East and a plummet in the numbers originating from the U.S. and Europe.

In a world where economic parity is heavily influenced by gender and colour, this fee continues to be a major impediment for many and is especially intensified if one is a woman of colour. Exceptions made for protected persons aside, and though levied regardless of the country of origin, it favours those with economic stature, which in today’s world continues to be withheld from women and people of colour, thereby contributing to inequities in education and employment opportunities.

After proving one’s worth as an upstanding permanent resident, if financial means allow, then the next step toward active civic engagement is in the form of an application for citizenship (bumped to $530 from $100 in 2015) which, once again, could be loaded with added costs.

In total, the price paid to acquire Canadian citizenship quickly escalates, approximately amounting to between $3,000 and $4,000 (or more) and may include translation fees; lawyer’s fees that could be as steep as $400 for a consultation; medical exams and diagnostic testing, which aren’t covered by provincial health care plans; official language testing by a third party; miscellaneous costs such as citizenship certificates; permanent resident card renewal; photographs, conveyance and mailing. And this is without factoring the expenses associated with holding the status as an international student or worker (before applying for permanent residency) within Canada.

In 2017, Canada should have received more than $78-million from 159,262 economic immigrants, solely based on the right of permanent residence fee, many of whom pay this amount even before arriving to Canada. Once here, if these individuals choose to pursue citizenship, then once again it translates into millions of dollars wending their way to government coffers.

There is privilege attached to becoming a Canadian citizen. But it isn’t something that is easily afforded for many. Of the total cost of the arduous, emotional and financially stressful path to citizenship, approximately 15 per cent to 20 per cent is directed toward buying the permanent residence and citizenship rights – to be able to belong, to be able to vote, and most importantly, to be able to call oneself Canadian. The fact remains that, today, the current immigration system, consciously or unconsciously, promotes gender and economic disparity globally. In a world where immigration is more than just a means to move from one country to another, it is time to recognize what this has evolved into – a booming business that only profits certain countries.

Source: On Canada Day, let’s reconsider the high cost of citizenship

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ICYMI: As immigration policy changes, so does work of Catholic organizations

2019/06/25 Leave a comment

Of note:

Welcoming the stranger,” said Bill Canny, executive director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Migration and Refugee Services (MRS), who participated in a webinar June 18 addressing the findings of the survey.

One of the changes for institutions such as MRS, Canny said, came about with the Trump administration’s drastic reduction of refugees allowed into the country. Since Congress passed the Refugee Act in 1980, the U.S. had admitted on average 95,000 refugees annually, and faith-based agencies, including many Catholic organizations, had since then stepped in to help with resettlement.

The number of refugees allowed into the country was capped at 45,000 after Donald Trump became president in 2017 and was scaled back to 30,000 refugees for fiscal year 2019. However, the cap does not reflect the actual number of those allowed to enter, it’s simply a limit.

“This had a relatively dramatic effect on the infrastructure that had developed over the last 30 years,” which was a well-oiled network dedicated to helping refugees and their families integrate into the country, Canny said. “There were some 320 affiliates across the U.S. in all states who were receiving refugees, and the Catholic Church, primarily Catholic Charities, represented about 90 of those.”

These days, 45 of those Catholic affiliates remain, Canny said, adding that at the same time that the refugee cap was shrinking, the number of asylum seekers was rising at the southern border.

“Nine resettlement agencies including our own, interestingly, began to turn their attention and resources toward those asylum seekers,” he said.

More funds started being raised for asylum seekers, more staff dedicated to helping them.

“You had a bit of an awakening,” Canny said.

Last year, MRS, which had focused on resettlement, instead mobilized to reunite families separated by a government policy that took children away from parents or guardians if they had entered at the U.S. southern border without documents. After great backlash and public outcry, the government sought the help of Catholic organizations as well as Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service to help after U.S. courts stepped in to stop the separations and demanded that families who had been separated be reunited by a particular date.

Donald Kerwin, executive director of the Center for Migration Studies, and one of the authors of the survey, said Catholic organizations have been making “extraordinary efforts to adapt and to serve immigrants despite all these various issues.”

The Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC), for example, has dispatched staff to provide legal help along the U.S.-Mexico border and support for those helping immigrants forced to wait in Mexico until their asylum cases are heard, a new requirement of a policy announced by the Trump administration in late 2018. The “Remain in Mexico” policy requires those seeking asylum to petition at ports of entry and then wait for legal proceedings in Mexico until U.S. courts can hear their case.

Even as Catholic organizations have stepped up efforts to help, the fear some immigrant communities are experiencing is getting in the way of that help. Many are afraid of attending legal consultations that might help with their immigration status, accessing food, and even applying for a public service they’re eligible for, because of fear of deportation or that it might affect chances at citizenship in the future, Kerwin said.

The Trump administration has discussed instituting a “public charge” policy that would hurt immigrants’ chances at permanent residency, citizenship and even threatened deportation for those who sign up for public benefits. Some immigrants can’t tell what kind of help could harm them.

“These are obviously kind of very serious problems, most of all for immigrants, but also for Catholic agencies who are doing extraordinary work in trying to work around these problems,” Kerwin said.

Brian Corwin, executive vice president for Member Services of Catholic Charities USA, who also participated in the webinar, said clients are afraid to ask for help at food pantries and soup kitchens and don’t want to sign up for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for their U.S.-born children, who are eligible, because they are afraid it will affect another family member’s immigration situation.

“People are afraid to come forward, to get help,” Corwin said, recalling that a session to get families to sign up for the SNAP program, also known as food stamps, resulted in people not wanting to take the application and even the few who did, said they likely weren’t going to fill it out “because of fear that it might affect their immigration case and fear that their greencard (a residency card) might be revoked.”

Rampant misinformation, mistrust and “fear of the current rhetoric” are reasons people aren’t seeking help, said staff at one California Catholic Charities, he said.

“We haven’t even begun to do research on (housing) and the issue of mixed family status,” Corwin said.

But there are “bright lights” as agencies push to keep helping by working with dioceses and parishes, saying “we’re going to do something regardless of the climate,” Corwin said.

In places such as Minnesota, when attendance at Mass and other parish events waned after immigrants were apprehended and deported, church workers vowed to think differently. Sensing the fear parishioners had of leaving the house, one priest decided to take Mass to them – to an apartment complex.

“It was a great success,” said Estela Villagran Manancero, director of Latino ministry for the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, who participated in the webinar.

During major events, some parishes rented large buses to pick up parishioners who were afraid to drive lest they be detained, she said.

“It’s a little more expensive, but then we all can have security that they will not be detained,” said Villagran.

Parishioners in Minnesota also have organized so they can tag along, or drive those who are afraid, to doctor’s appointments, court dates, to take their children to school, Villagran said.

“I think people that are serving are very much committed,” she said.

The survey mirrors what a lot of the organizations and parishes such as the ones in Minnesota are experiencing, Kerwin said, that “here’s more accompaniment … more services designed and geared to the moment that we’re living in. I think charities and parishes are very much focused on this issue.”

Source: As immigration policy changes, so does work of Catholic organizations

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Higher Asylum Grant Rates Predict Higher Family Appearance Rates in Top Immigration Courts

2019/06/21 Leave a comment

Interesting study. Similar findings to those of Sean Rehaag, with high variance among judges (thestar.com/…/getting-refugee-decisions-appealed-in-court-the-luck-of-the-draw-study-shows):

TRAC Immigration, a project of Syracuse University, published a report this week, showing that 81 percent of recently released families apprehended at the border showed up for all of their hearings. Some immigration court locations did much better than others in obtaining compliance from immigrant families. San Francisco’s court had almost zero no-shows, while two and five skipped out in Atlanta.

TRAC’s report hypothesized that it was possible that “the lowered appearance rates in some courts arose from particular deficiencies in the recording, scheduling or notification systems there.” While this could be, there is no way to test for such variation. Another strong hypothesis, suggested by Aaron Reichlin-Melnik of American Immigration Council, is that immigrants are much more likely to fail to appear in courts where they have a lower probability of receiving asylum.

Fortunately, TRAC also reports asylum grant rates by immigration court, allowing us to test this.

Figure 1 shows the relationship between asylum grant rates in FY 2019 and family appearance rates in the ten immigration courts that received the most family docket cases (in order of the courts with most cases). These ten court were initially designated to track “family unit” cases in November 2018, and while this practice has expanded to several other courts, 87 percent of the family cases tracked by the government are still in these ten courts.

The five courts with the highest appearance rates had asylum grant rates on average 55 percent higher than the five courts with the lowest appearance rates (37 percent to 23 percent). The five most successful courts had 89 percent of their immigrant families appear at all hearings compared to 75 percent at the other five courts.

The asylum grant rate in 2019 predicted a very significant portion of the variance in appearance rates between courts—42 percent to be precise—that year, and a 10 percentage point increase in the asylum grant rate in a court is associated with almost a 3 percentage point increase in the appearance rate for that court. There are other ways to measure the asylum grant rate. The immigration courts include asylum cases that were closed without a decision being made on the merits. But using that metric doesn’t change the association.

Higher failure to appear rates do not explain the higher denial rates, as just 1.4 percent of asylum denials are a result of a failure of the immigrant to appear. People who skip almost always do so before they officially file for asylum. It could be that immigrants who go to certain courts like Atlanta have worse asylum claims to begin with, but as TRAC notes, “there seems little reason for families with different strengths of asylum claims to migrate to some parts of the country and avoid others.”

Ultimately, the identity of the judge seems like the most important factor in winning asylum. The Government Accountability Office in 2016 found that even controlling for other relevant factors, “the defensive asylum grant would vary by 57 percentage points if different immigration judges heard the case of a representative applicant with the same average characteristics we measured.” It would be very useful if TRAC published data on the appearance rates by judge to determine if it’s the location or the judge that matters the most.

Obviously, because we only have data for a few courts in 1 year, it is impossible to nail down this relationship with certainty, but it appears that if every court had the same asylum grant rate as San Francisco (68 percent), the appearance rate for families would have increased to 90 percent. It may seem obvious that the likelihood of success in court makes people more likely to follow the legal process. But many people’s impression is that every asylum applicant has no case, so they have no reason to show up. That’s false, but unfortunately, some courts are turning this theory into a self-fulling prophecy.

Source: Higher Asylum Grant Rates Predict Higher Family Appearance Rates in Top Immigration Courts

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Chris Selley: Evidence of a nationwide immigrant backlash is flimsy at best

2019/06/20 Leave a comment

Good piece by Selley on the narrative.

I tend to place more weight on the Focus Canada long-term polling on attitudes towards immigration (key findings above), given their methodological soundness (not just because I am a fellow of the Environics Institute):

When Canadian media get hold of a bone, it can be awfully difficult to pry our jaws loose. The ongoing narrative that Canada is in the midst of a historic turn of public opinion against immigration, driven by malign political forces both at home and abroad, is a perfect example.

Readers likely caught wind of an Ekos poll released in April, which featured one genuinely remarkable finding: that 69 per cent of Conservative-supporting respondents felt too many visible minorities were immigrating to Canada. That was up from 47 per cent in 2013, whereas among Liberal supporters the number had fallen from 34 to 15 per cent.

Most reports included at least some of the important caveats: The total sample size of this poll was 507; the 2013 sample was six times larger. The number of Conservative supporters polled was just 180, with an attached margin of error of 7.3 per cent. But it certainly suggested public opinion may be polarizing on a specific immigration-related question.

Many reports went further, though. Huffington Post noted that as many respondents felt there were too many visible minority immigrants as felt there were too many immigrants overall. “That is something new,” it reported — “a pretty clear measure of racial discrimination,” Ekos pollster Frank Graves suggested, and perhaps evidence of “some contagion effect from the Trump show.”

Except it’s not new at all. The gap between “too many immigrants” and “too many visible-minority immigrants” in 2013 was all of three per cent, with a margin of error of 1.8 per cent; six years later it was one percent, with a margin of error of 4.2 per cent.

The Canadian Press, meanwhile, reported that “the share of people who think there are too many visible minorities in Canada is up ‘significantly.’” The poll showed nothing of the kind. The percentage expressing that opinion was actually down a point from a 2015 survey, long before Donald Trump threw American politics into chaos. Moreover, according to the Ekos data, the number of people who think there are too many immigrants, and the number who think there are too many visible-minority immigrants specifically, have plummeted in tandem since the pollster began reporting in the mid-90s.

In short, to the extent there’s anything historically new and negative here when it comes to tolerance for visible minorities, it seems to be confined within Conservative supporters and based on a single poll with a small sample size. And it’s certainly not unprecedented in recent times: An Angus Reid analysis released last year notes that the current public opinion environment looks much like it did in 1995, “the year that Jean Chrétien announced a ‘landing fee’ for new immigrants and a plan from the federal government to reduce in immigration overall.” No federal party leader save Maxime Bernier is promising anything of the sort.

There was nothing wrong with Graves’ poll; people were just overenthusiastic in interpreting it. Over the weekend, though, Léger Marketing and Canadian Press teamed up for a master class in how not to report public opinion. The headline finding, per CP: “63 per cent of respondents … said the government should prioritize limiting immigration levels because the country might be reaching a limit in its ability to integrate them. Just 37 per cent said the priority should be on growing immigration to meet the demands of Canada’s expanding economy.”

Bernier and other anti-immigration types turned cartwheels on social media. Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen blamed Conservative leader Andrew Scheer for “taking a stance that is rooted in misinformation and conspiracy theories” — one that risked “a corrosive effect on our social fabric.”

A few problems, though: Léger’s respondents weren’t offered a chance to say they think immigration levels are just about right, which is always the most or second-most popular option. Nor were they allowed to support hiking immigration for reasons other than economic, or to support lowering it for reasons other than integration concerns. And anyway, it’s hardly controversial to “limit immigration” lest it exceed Canadian communities’ capacities. There’s a housing crisis on, in case you hadn’t noticed. Indeed, presumably that’s one of the reasons Hussen himself is “limiting immigration,” just like every other immigration minister does.

None of this is meant to rubbish the idea that an immigrant backlash could take hold in Canada. It certainly could. In recent years the Conservatives have pushed some new rhetorical boundaries, notably on “barbaric cultural practices” and the UN Global Migration Compact — and Bernier is miles further out there than that. Canadians have stayed remarkably calm while watching tens of thousands of people stream unchallenged across the U.S. border, and being called racist for expressing misgivings, but that mightn’t last forever. Anti-immigrant sentiment often correlates with economic downturns, and Alberta is in the midst of a whopper. Quebec has been on a nativist bender for more than a decade.

As yet, though, there simply isn’t the data to back up the claim of a backlash. And the last thing Canada needs, as Hussen and his fellow Liberal Cabinet ministers will ever-so-earnestly tell you, is a fact-free discussion about immigration.

Source: Chris Selley: Evidence of a nationwide immigrant backlash is flimsy at best

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Canada could see Hong Kong immigration bump after crackdown on protesters, experts say

2019/06/15 Leave a comment

Interesting. The first wave included many who were termed “astronauts,” given breadwinners who maintained their lucrative business activities in Hong Kong while their families settled in Vancouver.

Will be interesting to see if possible future waves repeat that pattern:

Vancouver resident Ivy Li knows what it’s like to flee political uncertainty. She left Hong Kong in 1982 as a university student.

“I knew Hong Kong would eventually be handed over to the (Chinese) regime,” she said. “My friends and I, we feared Hong Kong would be totally under the dictatorial rule.”

On June 4, 1989, Li was in Toronto when she saw the infamous tank scene unfold on TV, where a man stood in front of a line of tanks in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square after Chinese soldiers massacred hundreds, if not thousands, of protesters.

Li, now 63, watched in despair from her Vancouver home as police in Hong Kong shot rubber bullets and used tear gas against protesters who had amassed Wednesday to block a meeting on a proposed extradition bill that has become a lightning rod for concerns over greater Chinese control and erosion of civil liberties in the former British colony.

Hong Kong Police Commissioner Stephen Lo Wai-chung later said the “serious clashes” outside the government building forced police to use pepper spray, bean bag rounds, rubber bullets and tear gas.

At least 72 protesters were hospitalized and two are in serious condition, according to the Hong Kong Hospital Authority.

Some Hong Kong residents are now making arrangements to leave, saying the extradition law, if passed, would be the last straw in years of increasingly aggressive authoritarian moves from China. Members of the Hong Kong diaspora around the world and in Vancouver are watching as immigration lawyers prepare to help clients make the arrangements.

“The younger generation … and the people who decided to stay and are now fighting, they have my utmost admiration,” said Li.

Li and her family are among tens of thousands of immigrants from Hong Kong who left the city in the years surrounding what is known as the “handover” — when the United Kingdom gave control of Hong Kong back to China in 1997.

Under the “One Country, Two Systems” arrangement, Hong Kong was supposed to retain a high degree of autonomy, including an independent judiciary for 50 years until the year 2047.

The flow of migrants out of Hong Kong transformed Vancouver. Vancouverite and urban planner Andy Yan joked that Vancouver is like the 18th district of Hong Kong.

“Vancouver has a special relationship with Hong Kong,” he said.

There are 74,120 people in Metro Vancouver who were born in Hong Kong, according to 2016 census data.

Historically, most of the Chinese immigration to Vancouver came from the southern part of China, specifically from Hong Kong, said Yan. Cantonese, the dialect spoken by Hong Kongers, was the most commonly spoken Chinese language in Metro Vancouver homes until 2016 according to census data, said Yan. In 2016, Mandarin overtook Cantonese.

But at least one Vancouver immigration lawyer is expecting to see a bump in the number of people travelling from Hong Kong to Vancouver — in the way of international students.

There are more barriers to immigration in Canada now compared to the ’80s and ’90s, said Will Tao, which means many Hong Kong families may compromise and send their children to Canada to go to school, with plans to follow them afterwards if possible.

“I would assume more parents would want their children educated abroad, particularly pursuing North American education, possibly as a path of immigration.”

Immigration from Hong Kong has dropped off in the past two decades, but with growing uncertainty between the territory and China, Hong Kong residents may start looking at their options, he said.

Tao is already seeing an increasing number of inquiries from clients who once lived in Canada, either as children or as parents of children, then moved back to Hong Kong some time in the last two decades, and now want to return to Canada. This movement may not necessarily be captured by immigration numbers because many are already Canadian citizens.

“The political environment, the abundance of home-owning opportunities, or the well-being of their children and reuniting the family here, are all factors in that process,” he said.

Two weeks ago, Dominic Yeung, 30, sat at the dinner table with his family. They were discussing which country they could move to. The family has lived in Hong Kong all their lives.

“We were actively seeking, researching where we could go — where we could possibly afford to go,” said Yeung, a lawyer, in a phone interview from Hong Kong.

It was the first time the family had been serious about leaving their home.

Yeung recalls the Umbrella Movement in 2014, where protesters occupied the central business district in Hong Kong for months in a bid to bring universal suffrage to Hong Kong.

But even after the Chinese government refused to give in to those demands, Yeung and his family did not think to leave.

“It was nothing we had not dealt with before,” Yeung told Star Vancouver, referring to the lack of voting rights in Hong Kong under British rule.

“Liberty is still here. The rule of law is still here.”

But Yeung, like many others, now believes the extradition law amendment would allow China to implement a new rule of law, one that has little regard for human rights or fair trials.

“That is a different beast that we are dealing with,” he said.

“Make no mistake, if this passes, Hong Kong will be forever different. This is what this is about.”

Source: Canada could see Hong Kong immigration bump after crackdown on protesters, experts say

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Fake online stories claim Trudeau begged foreign leaders ‘to send him a million immigrants’

2019/06/15 Leave a comment

Sigh….

Canada’s Prime Minister begs Nigeria President for one million immigrants,” reads the headline on an article published in April on the website CBTV.

The article claims that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had announced the creation of a new employment and migration program for immigrants.

But the program doesn’t exist. Trudeau never had any such discussions with the president of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari.

The fabricated story has been shared about 2,600 times and drew negative reactions from the Yellow Vests Canada Facebook group, which is attached to the Canadian arm of the Yellow Vests, a mass movement of protests in France against taxation and high gas prices.

The article also circulated on social media, including WhatsApp groups in Nigeria. It’s impossible to determine how many times it was shared on WhatsApp because the messaging app is encrypted and the conversations aren’t public. But AFP Fact Check — a service of the international news wire service that debunks online hoaxes — and the High Commission of Canada to Nigeria both felt compelled to deny the story.

The High Commission of Canada in Nigeria had to debunk false news about immigration circulating there. This tweet uses a Nigerian expression, “Shine your eyes,” which means ‘be careful’ or ‘be vigilant’. (Twitter)

Nigeria isn’t the only country that’s been targeted by the fake story. Identical articles were published on the CBTV site mentioning the Philippines, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Liberia, Pakistan, Ghana and Uganda. In each instance the story text is identical — only the name of the country and the head of state who supposedly spoke to Trudeau were changed.

This image shows how the same false immigration story was re-purposed to target multiple countries, including the Philippines, Liberia, Zimbabwe and Kenya. (Screengrabs from CBTV/Array by Radio-Canada)

Another site called City News — which imitates a local Canadian news site — also published several of these articles. The site seems to be managed by the same person or people who run CBTV; a Radio-Canada analysis determined both sites share the same Google Analytics ID.

Tactics to confuse readers

These sites use the same visual codes as news media and sometimes even publish real news on their sties. According to Herman Wasserman, a media studies professor at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, this serves to confuse the reader.

It’s a popular tactic with the people who run fake news sites. In 2017, Radio Canada discovered imposter websites that looked like Quebec media sites but were actually based in Ukraine, and those sites used the same tactic.

A spokesperson for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) confirmed that the ministry is aware of the story.

“IRCC regularly surveys online disinformation. When false information is distributed, like in this case, we try to act quickly to provide the facts,” said Rémi Larivière. He said that the ministry published a tweet and posted on Facebook to counteract the story.

Where the one million figure originated

Even though the story is false, the one million immigrants figure does has some basis in reality. The federal government announced in 2017 that it wanted to welcome more immigrants over the next three years. The government planned to admit 310,000 immigrants in 2018, 330,000 in 2019 and 340,000 in 2020, for a total of 980,000 immigrants over three years.

That number includes the total number of immigrants Canada wanted to receive from all countries — not one country in particular.

Another false article on the CBTV website claimed that Trudeau “ordered “Parliament to approve visa-free entry” for visitors from certain foreign countries.

Another false story claimed that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had ordered “Parliament” to approve visa-free entry for visitors from Fiji. The rest of the text of the article is similar to other false stories about Trudeau begging foreign leaders for immigrants. (Screengrab from CBTV)

Again, the site published the same article repeatedly, changing only the name of the country and the head of state. Fiji, Sri Lanka, South Africa and Gambia were all targeted by the false story. In Sri Lanka, the article was even translated into Tamil.

If you write stories about immigration, it’s something that lots of Africans think about: immigration, becoming more mobile, having a better life. So this type of story is immediately attractive.– Herman Wasserman, media studies professor, University of Cape Town

Herman Wasserman, a media studies professor at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, said it’s not surprising that Canada is the focus of articles that cater to an African audience, because many Africans aspire to immigrate here.

“If you write stories about immigration, it’s something that lots of Africans think about — immigration, becoming more mobile, having a better life. So this type of story is immediately attractive,” he said.

Wasserman said Canada also has a reputation of being more welcoming to immigrants than the United States, which makes these false stories more credible.

“Trudeau has a more positive and friendly image in the media than (U.S. President Donald) Trump. It’s well known that Trump is anti-immigration, that he wants to build a wall and that the United States is a hostile environment to foreigners,” he said.

…

Wasserman said he believes that false news stories about Canada are easier for a foreign audience to believe.

“Canada is less well-known,” he said. “In Africa there’s less news about Canada than about the United States.

“If you say that someone has died in Montreal or Toronto, it’s not easy (for a reader abroad) to verify. But if you say someone has died in New York, people will say, ‘If it’s true, it would be all over CNN and we would’ve heard about it, so it’s not true.'”

Who is behind the site?

It’s not possible to determine the identity of the person who runs CBTV and City News because both sites were registered anonymously. They were created several days apart in April this year, and almost immediately started publishing fake stories.

IRCC also doesn’t know the identity of the people who are spreading the fake stories, according to Larivière.

The purpose of the sites could be financial, because they contain ads. The platform that places the ads that appear on CBTV, MGID, didn’t respond to questions from Radio-Canada about whether the company was aware its ads fund sites that spread disinformation.

In 2017, Google announced it would ban fake news sites from its ad platform, Google AdSense. Since then, many false news sites have turned to other sources of revenue.

The strategy of creating repetitive fake articles targeting specific communities to attract clicks and and shares on social media isn’t new. In March of 2016, a site created hundreds of articles about celebrities moving to small towns across North America.

One of the stories, shared numerous times on Facebook in Quebec, said that actor Leonardo DiCaprio had bought a house in Baie-Saint-Paul, in the Charlevoix.

Source: Fake online stories claim Trudeau begged foreign leaders ‘to send him a million immigrants’

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Atlantic Immigrant Career Loan Fund aims to help newcomers get Canadian credentials

2019/06/12 Leave a comment

Worthwhile initiative:

When Dr. Michael Fatokun moved to Atlantic Canada from Nigeria in 2018, he wished to give his family a better life and continue practising medicine. A new program is set to make that process a little easier.

The Atlantic Immigrant Career Loan Fund (AICLF) is supposed to help up to 200 newcomers like Fatokun pay for the credential recognition process.

“Even if you have come with some funds, you still need (a) substantial amount of funds to take exams,” said Fatokun.

Through the fund, newcomers are able to borrow up to $15,000 over four years in professions not eligible for student loan funding. Loans are also available for permanent residents or Canadian citizens to cover the costs of training, testing, licensing and living costs.

AICLF is delivered in partnership with the Multicultural Association of Fredericton, MAGMA in Moncton and the Saint John YMCA. The New Brunswick Multicultural Council will cover all rural areas.

The New Brunswick Multicultural Council is also commencing a provincial survey to determine how many newcomers in the province have training and experience as nurses or personal support workers. This data will be used to improve training and employment programs.

“We recently launched a survey to identify how many immigrants in the province were interested in that field, and over 150 respondents have come forward in the last week,” said Alex LeBlanc, executive director of the New Brunswick Multicultural Council.

The regional approach to providing credential recognition started with medical professionals, engineers and accountants and will now expand to include project management and trades.

Between 2018 and 2027, the Department of Post-Secondary Education, Training and Labour estimates a total of 8,223 openings in nursing- and personal support worker-related positions. At the same time, the province will welcome hundreds of newcomers with training and experience in these exact fields.

Fatokun is awaiting his exam results and hopes to be practising medicine again by early 2020.

Source: Atlantic Immigrant Career Loan Fund aims to help newcomers get Canadian credentials

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Ken Cuccinelli Wanted to End Birthright Citizenship and Militarize Border

2019/06/12 Leave a comment

Revealing background:

Former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli’s long-rumored role as a top coordinator of the Department of Homeland Security immigration policy finally has an official title. According to an email sent to staff at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on Monday, the longtime border hawk has been named acting director of the agency, whose 19,000 employees orchestrate the country’s immigration and naturalization system.

“We must work hand in hand with our colleagues within DHS, along with our other federal partners, to address challenges to our legal immigration system and enforce existing immigration law,” Cuccinelli wrote in an email to his new colleagues. “Together we will continue to work to stem the crisis at our southwest border.”

The note also previews an escalation of Trump’s crackdown on the asylum system, with Cuccinelli vowing to “work to find long-term solutions to close asylum loopholes that encourage many to make the dangerous journey into the United States so that those who truly need humanitarian protections… receive them.”

As Virginia’s top law enforcement official and in his years serving in the Virginia state senate, Cuccinelli laid a long track of aggressive anti-immigrant policies intended to restrict access to public services, employment, and even citizenship from migrants and their families. That record, combined with his vociferous defense of President Donald Trump on cable news and in conservative media outlets, puts Cuccinelli firmly in line with an administration that has made combating undocumented immigration its top domestic policy goal.

In his new role at Homeland Security, Cuccinelli will be one of the Trump administration’s top bosses on immigration-related matters, a portfolio that has felled other senior administration officials in recent months as the president has grown dissatisfied with stubbornly high rates of illegal entry into the United States.

If his record on immigration issues is any indication, Cuccinelli will embrace that role with relish. While his support for President Donald Trump may be relatively newfound, his championing of hardline Trump-style immigration policies is more than a decade in the making.

Although Cuccinelli first drew national attention during his time as Virginia’s attorney general for his attempts to keep laws against oral sexon the books, he also became a staunch advocate on behalf of aggressive immigration policies in other states. In 2010, Cuccinelli filed an amicus brief in support of S.B. 1070, an Arizona law that allowed police officers to investigate the immigration status of any person arrested or detained by law enforcement based on a “reasonable suspicion” that they were in the country illegally. That same year, he released a legal opinionexpanding a similar policy to include any suspected undocumented immigrant stopped by law enforcement for any reason.

“Virginia law enforcement officers have the authority to make the same inquiries as those contemplated by the new Arizona law,” Cuccinelli wrote in the opinion. “So long as the officers have the requisite level of suspicion to believe that a violation of the law has occurred, the officers may detain and briefly question a person they suspect has committed a federal crime.”

Cuccinelli told reporters at the time that any police officer had the authority to question potential undocumented immigrants “so long as they don’t extend the duration of a stop by any significant degree.”

Those stances on illegal immigration appear tame compared to other proposals that Cuccinelli had backed before becoming attorney general. During his eight years in the Virginia state senate, Cuccinelli was the chief patron—the body’s version of primary sponsor—of a rash of bills targeting undocumented immigrants in the commonwealth.

One proposed law would have allowed employers to fire employees who didn’t speak English in their workplace, and stipulated that any employee so fired would be “disqualified from receiving unemployment compensation benefits.” Another bill would have allowed businesses to sue competitors that they believed to be employing undocumented immigrants for economic damages, plus $500 “for each such illegal alien employed by the defendant.”

In one case, Cuccinelli championed one of Trump’s most aggressive immigration policies before Trump himself did. In a 2008 bill, Cuccinelli urged Congress to call a constitutional convention to amend the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution “to clarify specifically that a person born to a parent who is a U. S. citizen is also a citizen of the United States,” to the exclusion of the children of undocumented immigrants who are born in the United States.

Immigration advocates called Cuccinelli’s appointment as acting head of the nation’s top immigration agency “deeply troubling.”

“Whether Ken Cuccinelli’s appointment is lawful remains to be seen,” said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, noting that the appointment appears to sidestep the Federal Vacancies Reform Act. “Cuccinelli’s track record of anti-immigrant stances and statements is deeply troubling. In the end, we need unifying solutions and smart policy on immigration, not further polarization. Cuccinelli’s installation doesn’t bode well.”

Since losing a race for governor in 2013—during which he tried to obscure his record on immigration—Cuccinelli has become a mainstay in conservative media outlets, particularly after Trump’s election. Cuccinelli has called for militarizing the border, blocking all immigrants from Central America to discourage the formation of so-called “caravans,” and once came under scrutiny at CNN after a heated on-air exchange about immigration policy, in which he told contributor Ana Navarro that he was “sick and tired of listening to your shrill voice in my ears.”

Joining the administration in an official capacity is the final step in a long journey from the 2016 Republican primaries. Despite their like-mindedness on immigration, Cuccinelli backed Trump’s staunchest opponent, steering Sen. Ted Cruz’s longshot bid to unseat Trump as the party’s nominee by winning over delegates at the Republican National Convention. Cuccinelli famously threw his credentials to the convention floor in apparent disgust when the convention’s organizers refused to allow a floor vote to challenge Trump’s nomination.

“This is disgusting,” Cuccinelli said at the time.

Source: Ken Cuccinelli Wanted to End Birthright Citizenship & Militarize

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Douglas Todd: Quebec gets four times as much as B.C. to settle immigrants

2019/06/12 Leave a comment

A perennial but untouchable issue. Makes it difficult to have sympathy for the costs incurred by the irregular asylum seekers:

It’s one of the most lopsided distributions of federal money in memory.

Quebec gets roughly four times as many taxpayer dollars from Ottawa to settle each of its immigrants as B.C., Ontario and several other provinces get.

What’s worse, the one-sided gap is growing bigger each year.

That’s because of a deal called the Canada-Quebec immigration accord, which prime minister Brian Mulroney signed in 1991 to give unique immigration powers to francophone provinces, mainly to appease a surging sovereigntist movement.

As a result, Quebec this year is receiving more than $11,600 for each immigrant and refugee it takes in, with the money meant to provide settlements services such as language and job training.

B.C. receives only about $2,400 for each new immigrant or refugee. Saskatchewan gets about $2,500, Ontario receives about $2,600 and Alberta gets about $3,300.

The disparity between Quebec and the other provinces is soon going to grow even more egregious.

That’s in part because the new premier of Quebec, Francois Legault, elected last year, is carrying through on his promise to cut immigration levels to his province by 10,000 newcomers annually. That means Quebec’s immigrant intake will drop to roughly the same as that of B.C. — about 40,000 a year.

Despite Quebec chopping its immigration levels by 20 per cent, the province will continue to get more money based on the generous financial mechanisms built into the Canada-Quebec accord.

It includes an escalator clause, which dictates that Canada is obliged in most years to give more money to Quebec to settle its new permanent residents, but never less than in a previous year.

What it adds up to is that Quebec will get $559 million for 2019-20, while B.C. will get a paltry $100 million — while needing to provide services to virtually the same number of new immigrants and refugees as Quebec.

Ontario, which accepts about 130,000 immigrants a year (by far the largest of any province), will get $340 million. Alberta, which usually takes about the same number as B.C., will receive $129 million.

It is an amazing sweetheart deal for Quebec. And few Canadians realize it, since the subject is virtually taboo among politicians.

“If Quebec takes in one immigrant or 50,000 immigrants, it still gets the same amount of money under the Canada-Quebec accord,” says Stephan Reichholt, who heads the umbrella organization that oversees 150 different settlement agencies in Quebec.

As one of Quebec’s foremost specialists on immigrants and refugees, Reichholt says the vast majority of Canadians have no idea the unbalanced funding is occurring — mainly because the federal government doesn’t want a fight with Quebec and its voters, and because it’s too embarrassed to draw attention to the huge gaps.

“It drives the feds crazy. But they can’t do anything about it. Most Canadians don’t understand the mechanism (of the accord). They don’t know what’s going on in Quebec,” said Reichhold, director general of the Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiées et immigrantes.

“Meanwhile, the federal government is ashamed. It’s basically a taboo subject.”

To put it mildly, Quebec has little incentive to call attention to its golden financial immigration goose.

“I’m happy Quebec gets all the money. Eighty per cent of it normally goes into general revenue,” said Reichholt, adding an undetermined portion, which may be about to increase, is distributed to settlement agencies.

The imbalanced payments go back more than 25 years, to when Mulroney was trying to get Quebec premier Robert Bourassa to sign the Meech Lake accord, which was intended to persuade Quebec and other provinces to adopt  constitutional changes. Quebec never signed the Meech Lake deal.

Instead, it agreed to the offer made by Mulroney and then-immigration minister Barbara McDougall to give Quebec more control of its own immigration policy, even as Ottawa promised to foot the bill for the costs.

Mulroney’s deal committed Canadian taxpayers to giving Quebec a proportion of all federal spending, which would escalate when spending rises — and would never go down.  That “incredible formula,” as Reichholt called it, continues no matter how many immigrants Quebec chooses to accept.

Vancouver-based Chris Friesen, who is chair of the umbrella body overseeing all settlement services in Canada, said the Canada-Quebec immigration accord is a “lopsided” agreement that basically cannot be renegotiated.

“What we have is the new premier of Quebec being elected by calling for 10,000 fewer immigrants. Meanwhile he gets more money to settle them. Where do you sign me up (for such a deal)?” said Friesen, who chairs the national Canadian Immigrant Sector Alliance and is also settlement director for the Immigrant Services Society of B.C.

The federal government was meant to encourage nation building, Friesen said, by equitably distributing money to the provinces to support their immigrant and refugee settlement programs, which help newcomers learn English or French, obtain jobs and access social services. But that goal has become skewed by the one-sided accord with Quebec.

This is not the only profitable arrangement Quebec has with Ottawa on immigration. There is also the Quebec Immigrant Investor Program, which attracts nine out of 10 of its millionaire applicants from Asia, mostly China. Each must inject a $1.2 million loan into Quebec’s coffers.

But only one in 10 of the well-to-do migrants who take advantage of Quebec’s investor program choose to live there. Instead, most of the roughly 5,000 migrants a year who exploit the buy-a-passport program immediately move to Metro Vancouver and Toronto.

Legault, the new premier of Quebec, was elected in part on his promise to make sure newcomers to the province better integrate. The premier will now have a chance to show that he intends to make that happen, said Reichholt, by funnelling more money from Ottawa into the province’s settlement programs for immigrants and refugees.

Since Reichholt is tasked with overseeing Quebec’s settlement programs, he expects each agency will receive double or triple the funding this year. He also expects the premier to direct some of the settlement money received through the Canada-Quebec immigration accord into public education, health care and to support temporary foreign workers and international students — something the other provinces are not allowed to do.

“Quebec’s immigration program is unique in the world” in the way the province’s politicians can almost entirely call their own shots, while being generously supported by federal tax dollars, said Reichholt.

“But that’s not necessarily fair for you in B.C.”

Source: Douglas Todd: Quebec gets four times as much as B.C. to settle immigrants

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