UK: Sajid Javid apologises to immigration applicants forced to give DNA samples

2018/10/26 Leave a comment

He almost appears to be the “Minister of Apologies” for the measures instituted under former Home Secretary and current PM May:

The home secretary has apologised to immigrants – including to Afghan nationals who worked for the British armed forces and Gurkha soldiers – who were forced to provide DNA samples under the government’s hostile environment agenda.

People seeking to live and work in the UK on the basis of a family relationship can choose to provide DNA to prove a relationship to support an application.

But Sajid Javid told the House of Commons that in June it became apparent that the provision of DNA evidence had been made a requirement and was “not simply a request” in a number of family visa applications.

A review into the scandal published by the Home Office on Thursday found that at least 449 demands for DNA were issued, including 51 to Gurkha soldiers.

Ministers have previously revealed that 1,150 Afghan nationals, including 700 family members and parents of those employed by UK government, have been relocated to UK under a scheme targeted by the mandatory DNA testing, although the exact number subject to the tests is unknown.

Yvette Cooper, Labour chair of the home affairs select committee, said: “The revelation that the Home Office has been unlawfully requiring DNA tests in hundreds of immigration applications is deeply troubling and, coming after the Windrush crisis, suggests that something has gone very wrong in the Home Office again.”

“Today I want to take this opportunity to apologise to those who have been affected by this process,” Javid said.

Javid said he had set up a new taskforce for anyone who felt they had been wrongly required to provide DNA evidence for an immigration application. But he added he would order a broader review into Home Office processes to ensure the department was “fit for the modern world”.

“I know that the immigration system is operated by many highly committed people but we must make sure that the structures and processes they use are fit for the modern world and fit for a new immigration system which we will be bringing in after we leave the European Union.

“I will be reviewing the structures and processes more broadly, the structures and processes that we have to ensure they [are] fair and humane. I will now consider what form that review will take.”

Javid said he had issued instructions that officials must not mandatorily seek DNA evidence and would be looking to reimburse any individual who experienced financial loss as a result of the problem. He said they would also be examining whether DNA had been illegally demanded in any other area of the immigration system.

The home secretary said the issue came to light over the summer and an internal review was immediately ordered. The review had finished but there was further work to to be done to establish the scale of the problem, Javid said.

“But regardless of the numbers of the people that have been affected, one case is one too many,” he said. “I’m determined to get to the bottom of how and why in some cases people can be compelled to supply DNA evidence in the first place.”

The majority of cases identified were part of a Home Office operation called Operation Fugal, which started in April 2016, to clamp down on alleged fraud in some family and human rights immigration applications.

Almost 400 letters sent as part of the operation incorrectly stated that the applicant had to provide DNA evidence and that not providing such information without a reasonable excuse would lead to their application being refused on suitability grounds.

Javid said 83 applications were refused, including seven solely for the failure to provide DNA evidence. A further six appear to have been refused for failure to provide DNA evidence where this was not the sole reason.

In addition, the home secretary said the illegal requirement to provide DNA had been applied to Gurkha soldiers and Afghan nationals who had worked for the UK government.

In January 2015, a scheme was expanded to allow adult dependant children of Gurkhas discharged before 1997 to settle in the UK, Javid said.

Guidance was published that stated DNA evidence might be required and that applications could be refused if that evidence was not provided without reasonable excuse within four weeks.

“This published guidance was wrong and has now been updated,” Javid said, adding that there were 51 cases identified where DNA evidence was requested from applicants at their own cost.

There were four cases from the same family who had their application refused solely because they did not provide DNA evidence.

In 2013, applications from Afghan nationals formerly employed by the UK government to resettle in the UK were welcomed. But the terms of the scheme included mandatory DNA testing for family groups paid for by the UK government, Javid said.

Investigations suggest that no one making an application under this scheme has been refused because they did not take a DNA test, he said. “Nonetheless mandatory testing should not have been part of this scheme and this requirement has now been removed,” the home secretary continued.

“In particular I would like to extend my apology to the Gurkhas and Afghans that have been affected. The two schemes I’ve described were put in place to help the families of those who have served to keep our country safe. I’m sorry that demands were made of them that should never have been.”

Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary, said: “Abuses like this don’t fall from the sky. Officials at the Home Office have been carrying out the government’s hostile environment policy, which is also what led to the Windrush scandal. People are being treated as guilty or illegal unless they can prove their innocence.

“We need a fair and robust immigration system, but the hostile environment isn’t it and the government should end it.”

Steve Valdez-Symonds, Amnesty UK’s refugee and migrant rights programme director, said: “The Home Office has once again been exposed as being a law unto itself. The home secretary needs to face up to the fact that problems in his department are systemic, chronic and deep-rooted.”

Source: Sajid Javid apologises to immigration applicants forced to give DNA samples

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President Trump Isn’t Breaking Immigration Arrest Records

2018/10/26 Leave a comment

Cato Institute does some of the better analysis of US immigration policies and practices:

President Trump has made no secret about his intentions to deport illegal immigrants. His statements as well as administrative actions to remove certain guidelines that focused enforcement efforts on criminals has understandably caused a lot of concern among illegal immigrants, their American families, and those concerned with their plight. They should take comfort that the Trump administration’s efforts to boost arrests, the necessary precursor to a deportation, are stymied by limited local and state law enforcement cooperation with the federal government when it comes to identifying illegal immigrants.

Recently released data on the number of arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shows that they are arresting many fewer illegal immigrants under Trump’s administration than under President Obama’s, at least through June of 2018.  During the first full 17 months of the Obama administration, from February 2009 through June 2010, ICE arrested 437,671 illegal immigrants.  For the same first full 17 months of the Trump administration, ICE arrested 226,138 illegal immigrants, about half the number arrested during the same period in Obama’s administration.

Relative to the last full month of the previous administrations, the number of ICE arrests under Trump is up by a whopping 37 percent (Figure 1).  Over the same time, President Obama’s ICE was arresting 25 percent more people than under the last full month of the Bush administration, quite a significant increase on its own.  The increase under Trump is larger as a percentage because it started from a low base, but the increase in the number of arrests under Obama was larger.  For instance, the number of arrests under Obama was 5,803 greater in June 2010 than in December of 2008.  At the same point in the Trump administration in June of 2018, the number of arrests was up 8,965 over December 2016.

There are two broad categories of arrests by the ICE.  The first is called custodial arrests, which is when ICE picks up an illegal immigrant arrested by another law enforcement agency such as state or local police departments.  The second is called ICE arrests, which is when ICE itself arrests illegal immigrants on the streets.  Figure 2 shows that the number of custodial arrests have fallen dramatically since October 2008 while the number of ICE arrests has stayed relatively constant.  This means that local and state non-cooperation with ICE works to reduce the number of ICE arrests as between 70 percent and 90 percent of those arrests are custodial over the entire time.

Some states, like Texas, are fully cooperating with ICE when it comes to immigration enforcement while others like California are resisting mightily.  In Texas, there were 3,963 ICE arrests in May 2018 compared to 2,584 in December 2016, a 53 percent increase.  In California, there were 1,587 ICE arrests in May 2018 compared to 1,356 in December 2016, a 17 percent increase.  ICE is more active everywhere in the country, in sanctuary states and non-sanctuary states, but the difference is stark across such jurisdictions.

The federal government under Presidents Bush and Obama convinced virtually every locality in the United States to sign up for the Secure Communities program that essentially turned over the vast majority of the arrested illegal immigrants to ICE for deportation.  Since President Obama was a Democrat, there was little initial political opposition to the massive increase in states and localities cooperating with the feds via Secure Communities – especially in Democratically controlled states with large numbers of illegal immigrants.  However, political reluctance to cooperate via Secure Communities built rapidly.  In 2011 Massachusetts, Illinois and New York requested to opt out of the program.  States like California then limited statewide cooperation with ICE and then President Obama replaced Secure Communities with a less punitive version called the Priority Enforcement Program that targeted criminals, which was in effect from 2015 to 2017.  Today, most states and localities with large numbers of illegal immigrants are not cooperating with President Trump’s ICE nearly as much as they cooperated with President Obama’s ICE – which is preventing Trump from arresting and, eventually, deporting large numbers of illegal immigrants.

There are other, lesser reasons why the Trump administration is unlikely to reach President Obama’s deportation record.  One is bureaucratic incompetence in the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and other executive branch chaos that has so far prevented an orderly and organized deployment of law enforcement resources.  As a partial result of those administrative problems, they are incapable of convincing states and localities to enforce federal immigration laws.  Another reason is that illegal immigrants in 2018 are savvier than they were in the past, are better able to avoid law enforcement, and the few who were criminals were deported over the years, fewer new illegal immigrants have taken their place, and those remaining are less likely to come into contact with law enforcement.

State and local government reluctance to enforce federal immigration laws and cooperate with the Trump administration has limited its ability to arrest and, eventually, deport large numbers of illegal immigrants.  At the current rate, ICE under the Trump administration will be able to arrest about half a million fewer illegal immigrants relative to the Obama administration even if President Trump serves two full terms.  Those who are dispirited by the Trump administration’s efforts to deport large numbers of otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants should take some solace that their efforts to block full local and state cooperation with ICE is bearing fruit.

Source: President Trump Isn’t Breaking Immigration Arrest Records

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Australian senator who called for ‘final solution’ to immigration expelled from party

2018/10/25 Leave a comment

Too extreme even for Pauline Hanson, the leader of the right-wing nativist One Nation party, found his comments too extreme:

Katter’s Australian party has ejected its only senator, Fraser Anning, from the party over his statements about “non-European” migration two months after he made a speech calling for a “final solution” to immigration.

Despite the party leader, Bob Katter, backing Anning’s comments in August, the party drew the line on Thursday, ejecting Anning for ignoring directives not to distinguish between “European” and “non-European” migration because to do so was clearly racist.

The party was under increasing pressure to ditch Anning due to a withdrawal of union support and then a threat by the Labor party to direct preferences away from the Katter party in response to the racial furore.

In his first Senate speech in August, Anning praised the White Australia policy, called for an end to Muslim migration and invoked the term “final solution”. Katter, the federal leader of Katter’s Australian party, declared the speech had his “1,000% support”.

In a statement on Thursday, the president of Katter’s Australian party, Shane Paulger, said that “99% of what Senator Anning has been saying is solid gold” but “1% … is totally unacceptable”.

Paulger revealed that both he and Katter had told Anning “there was to be no more use of words like ‘Europeans’ and ‘non-Europeans’”.

“Clearly that is racist; clearly our policies are anti-racist,” he said.

Paulger said that in the title of his plebiscite (restricting non-European migration) bill and a proposed press release, Anning “used the same racial language” despite warnings of “extreme hostility” if he persisted.

“Clearly his divide of ‘European’ and ‘non-European’ would prevent, for example, Sikhs and Filipinos coming to this country,” he said. “His bill said the people should have the last say and that Australia’s policies should favour European migration. Both these things are true.”

Paulger defended the party’s decision to back Anning after his inaugural speech, noting that its policy supported favouring “people who can integrate into our community” and because they felt they knew “what he was getting at” with his warnings against Muslim migration.

He said that 640,000 people that came to Australia every year “overwhelmingly” come from countries without democracy, the rule of law, industrial awards, egalitarian traditions and “Judeo-Christian spiritual belief systems”.

Paulger said Katter’s Australian party supported bringing “persecuted minorities” from the Middle East and North Africa including Christians, Jews and Sikhs, and there should be “no restrictions” on Pacific Islanders coming to Australia.

“In spite of the most severe and clear warnings, Senator Anning has continued down this pathway and consequently we announce the termination of his endorsement by the KAP,” he said. “Clearly Fraser wants the freedom to pursue his crusade. And we think it is best for he and the party to give him this freedom.”

Anning responded to his expulsion from the party in a statement on Thursday night, saying Katter’s press came as a surprise to him.

“I never asked to join KAP,” Anning said. “Bob and other senior party members repeatedly asked me to do so and I only agreed on the grounds that I was free to speak out on immigration, the United Nations undue influence on Australia, stopping foreign aid and the persecuted white South Africans.

“At the time I made my maiden speech, Bob said he supported it 1,000% and Shane Paulger and KAP backed me. I haven’t changed my position but it seems that they have.”

Anning denied being told not to talk about “European” and “non-European” immigration by his party. “How can calling for a plebiscite on a predominantly European immigration program be ‘pure gold’ when I gave my maiden speech on 14 August and somehow ‘racist’ two months later?”

With the exception of Katter’s Australian party, Anning’s first speech was universally panned. Even Pauline Hanson, the leader of the rightwing nativist One Nation party that helped elect Anning to the Senate, decried it as “straight from Goebbels’ handbook from Nazi Germany”.

The speech was criticised by the then prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, the current deputy Liberal leader, Josh Frydenberg, Labor and the Greens.

Source: Australian senator who called for ‘final solution’ to immigration expelled from party

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Editorial: Trump’s cruel rule to strip H-1B spouses of the right to work

2018/10/24 Leave a comment

Yet another advantage for Canada:

The Trump administration is moving forward with its much-criticized plan to strip working rights from about 100,000 foreign citizens in the U.S., many of whom live in the Bay Area.The Department of Homeland Security has announced that its new rule to ban the spouses of H-1B visa holders from working will be issued next month.

“Some U.S. workers would benefit from this proposed rule by having a better chance at obtaining jobs that some of the population of the H-4 workers currently hold,” the department said in the notice, as way of explanation for its actions.

In other words, this move is part of President Trump’s “Buy American, Hire American” executive order, which was signed in 2017.

The Trump administration has already slowed the flow of H-1B visas,which are a linchpin of the Bay Area’s technology industry.

Trump himself has made it clear that he wants to make major changes to the controversial visa program. But it’s particularly cruel for his administration to launch a broadside against H-1B visa holders by banning their spouses from working.

Researchers at the University of Tennessee have estimated that 93 percent of H-4 visa holders are women from India.

Many of these women are highly educated; most are in their prime working years. By stripping H-4 visa holders of their right to work, the Trump administration is effectively denying a discrete group of women the opportunity to have economic independence and to provide for their families.

The rule change will also have an outsize impact on the Bay Area.

Many Bay Area residents who hold H-4 visas have told news organizations that, should the Trump administration go forward with this rule change, they and their families will probably have to leave the area or even the U.S.

That’s a brain drain this dynamic region can ill afford.

The Trump administration must leave the H-4 visa program alone.

Source: Editorial: Trump’s cruel rule to strip H-1B spouses of the…

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Canada deemed U.S. a safe country for asylum-seekers

2018/10/24 Leave a comment

My assumption is that the review, conducted over a year ago, is likely under continuous review given the ongoing changes in US immigration policies under the Trump administration, as suggested in the article:

Canadian immigration officials have determined that the United States remains a safe country for asylum-seekers, despite the Trump administration’s crackdown on what it terms illegal aliens.

Documents obtained by the Canadian Press under access-to-information law show Canada was concerned about the changes in U.S. immigration policy and conducted a review of its Safe Third Country Agreement with the U.S. from January to March of 2017.

The review came after U.S. President Donald Trump issued a number of executive orders on immigration, including one aimed at beefing up border security to “end the abuse of parole and asylum provisions” that delay and complicate the removal of undocumented migrants to the U.S.

Canada’s analyses of these U.S. policies were redacted from the documents. However, the overall conclusion reached by Canadian officials was that the United States “continues to meet the requirements for designation as a safe third country.”

The Safe Third Country Agreement between Canada and the U.S. is based on the core principle that someone seeking refugee protection must file his claim in the first safe country he arrives in, unless he qualifies for one of a few exceptions.

The other core tenet is that Canada considers the United States a safe country for refugees. So, if an asylum-seeker comes to Canada at an official border crossing from the U.S. and tries to claim refugee protection, she will be refused entry and encouraged to make her claim in the U.S. — the “safe country” from which she just came.

For a country to be designated safe, it must comply with the United Nations Convention against Torture and the UN’s Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, and it must maintain a good human rights record.

Internal government documents show that in 2015, Canada decided to continue monitoring its designation of the United States as a safe country. Any developments in the U.S. that could prevent it from meeting this designation — notably, any changes to policy or practices that could “significantly weaken asylum protections provided by the United States and its human rights record” — are regularly monitored, according to a briefing note prepared for Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen in March 2017.

Just one month after completing one of those regular reviews in December 2016, immigration officials undertook another in the wake of Trump’s 2017 executive orders and new guidelines that were issued to U.S. border officials on how to handle asylum-seekers.

As part of this review, detailed policy-directive memos from then-U.S. secretary of homeland security John Kelly were examined.

The memos, which were sent to the heads of all U.S. agencies that deal with immigration and border security, detail strict and heavy-handed enforcement measures that were to be unleashed against asylum-seekers in the U.S., including automatic detention of migrants — whom Kelly refers to as “aliens” and “illegal aliens” — pending a final determination of whether they would be ordered for removal.

Other measures outlined in Kelly’s directive included: a surge in deployment of immigration judges and asylum officers to hasten adjudication of claims; expedited removal processes; and greater scrutiny of those who claim fear of persecution if they are returned to their home countries.

U.S. Homeland Security also suspended privacy rights for non-U.S. citizens and unlawful residents, and ordered that more data on migrants be released to the public, including a requirement to publish the number of “apprehended aliens” who are convicted criminals or gang members, and the nature of their offences.

Canada reviewed these memos and Immigration deputy minister Marta Morgan provided an analysis to Hussen. Details were redacted from the documents released to the Canadian Press.

Ultimately, Canada’s 2017 review concluded that the U.S. continued to meet the necessary requirements to be designated a safe third country.

The Canadian government has faced mounting pressure to suspend the agreement in recent months — calls that escalated over the summer amid concerns about child migrants in the U.S. being separated from their parents and held in detention facilities.

Trump ultimately reversed that policy, but it remains unclear whether ongoing developments in the U.S. have prompted any further internal reviews of the Safe Third Country Agreement.

In response to requests for comment, the immigration department says it has “carefully analyzed recent developments in the United States, including the executive orders related to immigration and refugee matters, and continues to consider the United States a safe country for asylum claimants to seek protection there.”

“Details of assessments are not shared in consideration of our bilateral relationship and the ongoing nature of our analysis,” department spokesperson Beatrice Fenelon added.

Meanwhile, internal emails also obtained through the Access to Information Act show immigration officials have continued to raise concerns about the agreement, and are closely measuring public perceptions about Canada’s irregular migrant influx.

In April of this year, following a 466 per cent increase in irregular migrants crossing irregularly into Canada over the Easter weekend compared to the same period in 2017, immigration officials began deep-diving into statistics to determine why this was happening and to decide how they should publicly respond.

One internal memo pointed to the Safe Third Country Agreement as a key culprit, noting the agreement only applies at official border entry points, which is “creating an incentive for migrants to cross our border illegally between ports of entry.”

“In 2017, Canada intercepted 21,000 migrants who crossed illegally into Canada at the Canada-U.S. land border. This trend continues in 2018 and is a significant concern for the integrity of our shared border,” the internal memo states.

Sections of this document were redacted, but it does say the agreement is “antiquated” and that “there is additional and important work that needs to be done to ensure there continues to be orderly migration within the North American perimeter.”

Source: Canada deemed U.S. a safe country for asylum-seekers

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Why no one really knows how many jobs automation will replace

2018/10/23 Leave a comment

Even though I have argued that immigration planning needs to factor in the possible impact of AI and automation, this note of caution should also be part of that analysis:

Tech CEOs and politicians alike have issued grave warnings about the capability of automation, including AI, to replace large swaths of our current workforce. But the people who actually study this for a living — economists — have very different ideas about just how large the scale of that automation will be.

For example, researchers at Citibank and the University of Oxford estimated that 57 percent of jobs in OECD countries — an international group of 36 nations including the U.S. — were at high risk of automation within the next few decades. In another well-cited study, researchers at the OECD calculated only 14 percent of jobs to be at high risk of automation within the same timeline. That’s a big range when you consider this means a difference of hundreds of millions of potential lost jobs in the next few decades.

Of course, technology also has the capability to create new jobs — or just change the nature of the work people are doing — rather than eliminate jobs altogether. But sizing the scope of sheer job loss is an important metric, because for every job lost, a member of the workforce will have to find a new one, oftentimes in an entirely different profession.

Even within the scope of the U.S., the estimates for how many jobs could be lost in a single year vary widely. Earlier this year, MIT Technology Review analyzed and plotted dozens of across-the-board predictions from researchers at places like McKinsey Global Institute, Gartner and the International Federation of Robotics. Here, we’ve charted some of the data they compiled, with some of our own analysis from additional reports:

So why do these predictions cover so much range? Recode asked leading academics and economists in the field and found some of the challenges in sizing how automation and similar technology will change the workforce:

Just because a technology exists doesn’t mean it’s going to be used

Even as new groundbreaking tech becomes available, there’s no guarantee that it will be implemented right away. For example, while autonomous-vehicle technology could one day eliminate or change the jobs of the estimated five million workers in the U.S. who drive professionally, there’s a long road ahead to getting legal clearance to do that.

“The fact that a job can be automated doesn’t mean it will be,” Glenda Quintini, a senior economist at the OECD, told Recode. “There’s a question of implementing, the cost of labor versus technology, and social desirability.”

Jobs involve a mix of tasks

Take the job of a waiter. A robot may be able to take over some aspects of that job, like taking orders, serving the food or handling payments. But other parts, like dealing with an angry customer, maybe less so. Some studies, such as the OECD report, assess the likelihood of each task within an occupation, while the Oxford studies make an overall assessment of each job.

There’s a debate among academics about which methodology makes more sense. The authors of the OECD report say that the granularity in their approach is more accurate, while the Oxford report authors argue that for most occupations, the detailed tasks don’t matter: As long as technology like AI can do the critical portion of the work, it ultimately has a binary “yes” or “no” capability to be automated.

The data isn’t good enough because it only measures what we know

To model the future, researchers have to start with data from the present — which is not always perfect. Economists do their best to take inventory of all the jobs out there and what tasks they involve, but this list admittedly isn’t exhaustive.

“There’s no assurance in the end that that we’ve captured every aspect of those jobs, so inevitably we might be overlooking some things,” said Carl Benedikt Frey, an economist at the University of Oxford.

It helps to know just how these experts make the predictions to fully understand the room for human error. In the case of the Oxford study, researchers gathered a list of hundreds of occupations and asked a panel of machine learning experts to make their best judgment as to whether or not some of those jobs were likely to be computerized. The researchers weighed in on only 70 out of the about 702 total jobs that they were most confident they could assess.

For the rest of the occupations, the researchers used an algorithm that attributed a numerical value to how much each job included tasks that are technology bottlenecks — things like “the ability to come up with unusual or clever ideas” or “persuading others to change their minds or behavior.” But ultimately, even that algorithmic modeling isn’t perfect, because not everybody agrees on just how socially complex any given job is. So while quantitative models can help reduce bias, they don’t eliminate it completely, and that can trickle down into differences in the final results.

For all these reasons, some academics prefer not to forecast an exact number of jobs lost in a specific timeframe, but instead focus on the relative percentage of jobs in an economy at risk.

“All of these studies that have tried to put a number on how many jobs are going to be lost in a decade or two decades or five years — they’re trying to do something that is just impossible,” Frey said.

Economist John Maynard Keynes famously said that by 2030, due to rapid advancements in technology, we’d see widespread “technological unemployment” and be working an average of only 15 hours a week. It was a positive vision for a world where mankind would finally have “freedom from pressing economic cares” and live a life of leisure. Those estimates seem widely overblown now. While Keynes was right that technology has helped increase productivity in entirely new industries, the average workweek in the U.S. hasn’t declined since the 1970s.

Thanks in large part to persistent wage stagnation and rising income inequality in the last few decades, most people still have to work just as many hours as they did before in order to make ends meet.

Keynes’s comments remind us that there’s a bad track record of punditry in this field, and that even the greats can be wrong when it comes to predicting just how much, or how fast, technology will impact the workforce.

Source: Why no one really knows how many jobs automation will replace

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Douglas Todd: How radical environmentalists view immigration

2018/10/23 Leave a comment

Interesting debate. There is also another school that warns that environmental pressures such as climate change will increase substantially migrant flows:

One of the first signs that North American environmentalists were uneasy about high immigration rates came from one of its best-known eco-warriors, David Suzuki.

The Vancouver-based founder of the influential Suzuki Foundation was quoted in a French magazine in 2013  saying Canada’s immigration policy was disgusting because “we plunder southern countries by depriving them of future leaders, and we want to increase our population to support economic growth. … It’s crazy!”

Like some European environmentalists, Suzuki maintained “Canada is full” because most population growth occurs in congested cities. While praising Canadian multiculturalism and supporting welcoming more refugees, Suzuki’s main arguments zeroed in on how Canada is contributing to the brain drain from developing countries and that population growth is an environmentally destructive way to prop up Western economies.

The public reaction in Canada to Suzuki’s reflections was vociferous, focussing on shaming him. The Conservative government and corporate leaders seized on the remarks  to try to humiliate the troublesome environmentalist. Then-immigration minister Jason Kenney was among those labelling him “xenophobic” and worse.

Suzuki was upbraided again after he spoke off the cuff to a Vancouver Sun reporter, saying North American “politicians make the quick assumption they have to keep the economy growing by keeping the population growing.” Suzuki called it disgraceful that Canada was “selectively going after very highly trained people from Pakistan, India and South Africa, like doctors. Now why would one of the richest countries be ripping off the developing world for the people they desperately need?”

Since 2013, as far as I am aware, Suzuki has given up trying to raise the ethical issues inherent in immigration. He didn’t return my calls for an interview and, when he gave a speech on multiculturalism and migration at the Chan Centre in 2014, he pulled his punches, pleasing the crowd with his customary denunciation of economic globalization.

Another noted Canadian environmentalist, however, is picking up where Suzuki left off. John Erik Meyer has been filling in the details of a conservationists’ view of how high immigration rates complicate the fight against population growth, climate change, resource depletion, over-consumption and what it takes to truly assist people in developing countries.

Meyer’s extensive analysis was this year published in The Humanist Perspective. It’s a noted Canadian publication devoted to atheism, “rationalism,” “the cultivation of ethical and creative living” and to fostering “well-reasoned discussions of important human issues.”

As with Suzuki’s critique of Canada’s immigration policy, Meyer’s green reasoning is sure to offend many. But some of his radical analysis of class and power may appeal to those open to unconventional, big-concept responses to looming environmental disaster.

In the month in which the UN’s climate-change panel warned humanity has only 12 years to cut the risk of extreme heat, drought, floods and poverty, Meyer said in an interview he believes his perspective could soon gain more momentum. At the least his eight-page essay offers a provocative thought-experiment, which there is no good reason to ban from the marketplace of ideas.

Throughout history, desperate people have often emigrated for a better life, Meyer argues — just as Europeans fled to North America in the 18th and 19th centuries when their continent was rife with war, persecution, inequality and poverty. Their arrival in North America, however, crushed Indigenous cultures.

Europeans stopped coming en masse to Canada and the U.S. after their home countries became stable.

The lesson Meyer draws is that the most responsible thing for the West is to improve the lot of people in struggling countries instead of offering a lifeline to the relative few who win the immigration lottery.

“Although migration does indeed represent salvation for many migrants, it exacerbates existing problems in the receiving nations and, on a planetary basis, is the literal equivalent of throwing gasoline on the fire of environmental decline,” says Meyer, president of Canadians for a Sustainable Society.

One of Meyer’s central warnings is that when people move from developed countries to high-consumption ones, they create a larger ecological footprint.  A typical immigrant to Canada, he says, ends up emitting 4.2 times the carbon emissions that they did in their country of origin.

Even though migration is now occurring on an “unprecedented scale,” Meyer also says the mass movement of people will make no dent on the disastrous population explosions occurring in Africa and the Middle East.

Meyer cites a long list of problems that high migration also causes Western host nations (most Eastern countries generally don’t accept immigrants). They include greater energy use, increased pollution, suppression of wages, urban congestion, higher social-service costs and elevated housing prices.

Meyer wryly observes much of the support for Canadian immigration, which is triple that of the U.S. on a per capita basis, comes from those who directly or indirectly gain from it. The boosters, he says, invariably stake out “the moral high ground” by claiming immigration lifts up the disadvantaged.

Meyer argues there are more effective ways to help people in struggling countries.

“In terms of genuinely saving the world, Canada’s rate of foreign aid to GDP is about one-fifth that of Sweden. It’s actually dropped by four per cent under the Liberal government. Why this very weak performance, despite the rhetoric? The most powerful interests in Canada do not profit from foreign aid. They profit from growth in the domestic commercial economy and asset inflation.”

The main policy goals of advanced countries, he says, should be to help poorer countries reduce population growth and, generally, to eliminate the problems that cause people to want to migrate. “In order to save themselves from the chaos of growing and endless migration, developed countries are going to have to make it their business to establish better living conditions and sustainability in the poorest areas of the world.”

As if these arguments weren’t irritating enough, Meyer knows many in the West will not like to hear another environmental message about the need for self-restraint. “It is necessary to address the root causes of migration by drastically reducing consumption levels in more developed countries via very strong conservation measures,” he says. “This can well be seen as painful and extremely politically difficult, but the alternatives are vastly more destructive.”

Source: Douglas Todd: How radical environmentalists view immigration

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Seuils d’immigration: le Québec aura moins de poids, prévient Ottawa

2018/10/22 Leave a comment

While I don’t advocate for more immigration for immigration’s sake, the overall demographic and eventual political impact of the Legault government’s reduced immigration levels is clear:

Le gouvernement Legault risque d’accélérer la chute du poids démographique du Québec au sein de la fédération canadienne – et, par ricochet, son poids politique – en voulant réduire le nombre d’immigrants qui s’installent au Québec.

Telle est la mise en garde qu’a poliment lancée le gouvernement Trudeau à de proches collaborateurs du nouveau premier ministre du Québec, François Legault, au cours des derniers jours, alors que le gouvernement de la Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) a officiellement pris les commandes de l’État jeudi.

Selon des informations obtenues par La Presse, le gouvernement Trudeau a entrepris de sensibiliser le gouvernement caquiste aux répercussions possibles de son intention de réduire le nombre d’immigrants qui élisent domicile au Québec sur le poids démographique de la province au sein de la fédération. Au lendemain des élections québécoises, qui ont vu la CAQ remporter 74 des 125 sièges à l’Assemblée nationale, François Legault a réitéré la promesse électorale de son parti de faire passer le nombre d’immigrants de quelque 50 000 à 40 000 dès 2019.

Le nouveau ministre de l’Immigration du gouvernement caquiste, Simon Jolin-Barrette, a obtenu le mandat de réaliser cette promesse qui a suscité de vifs débats durant la campagne électorale, d’autant plus que le gouvernement fédéral a son mot à dire en matière d’immigration et que les entreprises doivent composer avec une pénurie de main-d’oeuvre au Québec.

Rappelons que le gouvernement fédéral, quant à lui, s’est donné pour objectif d’accueillir 310 000 immigrants en 2018, 330 000 en 2019 et 340 000 en 2020.

Durant les trois premiers mois de 2018, l’Ontario a accueilli presque autant d’immigrants que la cible annuelle que propose François Legault dès l’an prochain, soit 35 222 personnes, selon des données du ministère des Finances de l’Ontario obtenues par La Presse. L’Ontario comptait 14 374 084 habitants au 1er avril 2018 (contre 8,4 millions au Québec) et avait aussi accueilli 44,1 % de tous les nouveaux arrivants au Canada durant le premier trimestre de l’année. En 2017, pas moins de 121 915 immigrants ont installé leurs pénates dans la province la plus populeuse.

Les nouveaux sièges en fonction du poids

Dans les coulisses, on a tenu à rappeler que c’est à partir du poids démographique d’une province que l’on distribue de nouveaux sièges à la Chambre des communes – de plus en plus dominée par l’Ontario, qui détient 121 des 338 sièges. À titre de comparaison, le Québec détient 78 sièges, alors que la Colombie-Britannique (42) et l’Alberta (34), mis ensemble, en ont presque autant (76) depuis la réforme de la carte électorale de 2011.

« Quand on décide de réduire le nombre d’immigrants qui s’installent au Québec, cela va avoir un impact sur le poids démographique du Québec par rapport au reste du pays. Et cela pourrait aussi avoir un impact sur son poids politique à long terme », a-t-on fait valoir dans les rangs libéraux à Ottawa.

Au cours du dernier siècle et plus, le poids démographique du Québec est passé de 30,7 % de la population canadienne en 1901 à 22,6 % en 2018.

Le poids démographique de l’Ontario, lui, s’établit à 38,7 % aujourd’hui. Le gouvernement ontarien prévoit qu’il atteindra 39,8 % en 2026 et qu’il franchira le cap des 40,3 % en 2031 si la tendance actuelle se maintient.

Au cours des dernières années, la population de l’Ontario a donc crû fortement, ce qui lui a permis d’obtenir davantage de sièges à la Chambre des communes et d’augmenter du même coup son influence sur les décisions qui sont prises dans la capitale fédérale.

Des inquiétudes

Dans les coulisses, des députés libéraux fédéraux du Québec ont aussi exprimé leurs inquiétudes quant aux répercussions de la politique du gouvernement caquiste en matière d’immigration. « Je suis un député du Québec et je ne veux pas que le Québec en vienne à perdre de son influence politique à Ottawa au profit de l’Ontario », a résumé un député libéral, qui a requis l’anonymat pour s’exprimer plus candidement sur cette question qui pourrait devenir une pomme de discorde entre les deux capitales.

En 2011, l’ancien gouvernement conservateur de Stephen Harper avait annoncé l’attribution de nouveaux sièges à l’Ontario, à l’Alberta et à la Colombie-Britannique afin de tenir compte de la forte croissance démographique dans ces trois provinces. La Chambre des communes est passée, aux élections de 2015, de 308 à 338 sièges. L’Ontario a obtenu 15 de ces 30 nouveaux sièges, tandis que l’Alberta et la Colombie-Britannique se sont vu donner six nouveaux sièges chacun. Le gouvernement du Québec et le Bloc québécois sont montés au créneau pour décrier la baisse du poids politique du Québec à la Chambre des communes. De proches collaborateurs québécois de Stephen Harper l’ont alors convaincu d’accorder trois nouveaux sièges au Québec, même si la croissance de sa population ne justifiait pas une telle mesure.

Le Québec détient aujourd’hui l’équivalent de 23 % des sièges à la Chambre des communes, soit une proportion plus élevée que son poids démographique (22,6 %).

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Applying Behavioral Insights to Support Immigrant Integration and Social Cohesion

2018/10/20 Leave a comment

An interesting report on using behavioural insights and nudges in immigration and integration policies.

Although written largely from the perspective of Europe, the recommendations below can be more broadly applied with the two fundamental points IMO being the need to consider nudges as part of the policy toolkit and the importance of including the “host” society in these initiatives:

As policymakers contemplate these fundamental questions, it is important that they acknowledge the potential limitations of a behavioural insights approach. One such challenge is that it generally focuses on fine-tuning an existing system rather than wholesale change. This may set a natural ceiling on what behavioural interventions can do within the field of integration, where many commentators emphasise the need for structural and organisational changes in the face of deep-seated inequalities. Behavioural approaches also tend to put the onus on individuals, and applying this to integration may prove particularly challenging when working with vulnerable groups of newcomers such as refugees.

Nonetheless, behavioural approaches offer potentially significant benefits as countries work to tackle press-ing challenges that affect immigrants, disadvantaged native-born groups, and wider communities—from the reduction of segregation, prejudice, and conflict to increased positive educational and employment outcomes for traditionally underperforming groups. In short, behavioural interventions may not create major structural change in and of themselves, but they can be powerful tools to make existing systems work better and to buttress change efforts.

Policymakers interested in investing in behavioural approaches to integration should consider the following lessons:

  • ƒRigorously pilot and test. The behavioural approach provides a roadmap for improving the culture of evaluation across government. It suggests that governments should resist the urge to introduce wholesale, top-down change without first testing and evaluating what works on a smaller scale. This is particularly salient given the pressure on integration policymakers in European countries to act, and act fast. Equally important, governments should be prepared to stop investing in programmes that evaluations show to be ineffective, and to share those findings so other policymakers can learn from them.
  • ƒBe realistic about potential impacts and prepared to scale up effective interventions. Most successful behavioural approaches might be expected to increase uptake or interactions by 5 to 7 per cent; indeed, this would be considered highly successful for many.130 This may seem insubstantial, but it is important to understand the impact that even small effects can have if made at scale and across populations, especially if the cost is reasonably low. Furthermore, if multiple interventions are introduced to build social capital and increase cohesion, they are likely to result in complementary effects.
  • ƒTake steps to understand the user experience. An effective behavioural approach requires a deep qualitative understanding of the context in which decisions and actions take place. Taking steps to understand how individuals experience policies and systems can facilitate understanding of why, for example, disadvantaged groups may be less inclined to take up services to which they are entitled (e.g., health check-ups), even after receiving information about the problems this could lead to further down the line. By understanding user experience, policymakers can begin to explore more innovative nudging approaches to improve take-up of services. While reducing the cognitive load involved in accessing services is good practice across the board, minimising the time and mental costs of engaging with public services is especially important for newcomers adjusting to life in a new society and for those who have experienced considerable trauma, as in the case of refugees.

While the segment of the behavioural-science field focused on integration remains nascent, its early findings have substantial promise. Among the lessons they recommend are:

  • Focus on developing the skills that everyone needs to live in diverse societies. Skills such as empathy are often described as innate, but studies show they can be developed, particularly in classrooms. With many European countries updating citizenship curricula to foster common values or even guard against extremism, there are opportunities to revisit the role that schools play in nurturing the citizens of tomorrow. Teaching a growth mindset or encouraging perspective-taking can help young people develop less rigid views about others and ultimately reduce prejudice. A host of simple initiatives could also be trialled to blur the lines between in- and outgroups, with the aim of promoting a sense of cohesion and belonging.
  • Explore ways to engineer social connections. Segregation is not an intractable problem, though it persists in many societies and aspects of life. There are numerous (and relatively low-cost) tools and techniques to encourage young people to build social connections with peers of different backgrounds. Again, educational settings represent promising venues, whether through in-class activities or cooperative learning programmes across schools. Beyond schools, there is promise in inclusive neighbourhood events and citizenship processes that encourage more active engagement between immigrants and other members of local communities. Behavioural approaches could also be implemented in workplaces and other areas of public life, such as residential planning, with positive impacts.
  • Indirect contact can be effective and scalable. Research has shown that indirect contact (via broad-cast media, social media, or virtual reality) can have important effects on reducing prejudice. There is also promise in programmes designed to build empathy or showcase altruism (moral elevation) as tools for encouraging behaviours that support integration. Government and civil society both have important roles to play in encouraging direct and indirect contact between groups that may not otherwise interact.
  • Increase aspirations and motivations in order to reduce barriers. Traditional government integration efforts tend to focus on tangible barriers, such as language. But beyond this, newcomers encounter other complex barriers, such as low bridging social capital, limited aspirations, or a heavy cognitive load, that can hold people back in areas such as employment and education. Traditional policy approaches to reshaping motivations and aspirations that rely on financial incentives and sanctions may not have the desired effect; immigrants and other underserved groups may benefit from more sophisticated tools that take into consideration group-specific behavioural insights. Governments have a relatively high-impact (and low-cost) lever at their disposal: public-sector hiring. Testing how different messages can help or hinder job seekers overcome barriers such as stereotype threat could help individuals find high-quality employment while helping governments improve the diversity of the public-sector workforce.

Addressing the integration challenges of today and tomorrow will require a radical expansion of the policy toolbox. To enable this integration-policy reboot, policymakers would do well to attend to the potential of behavioural insights. At low cost, and with a strong evidence base, these type of policy interventions are likely to increase cohesion and narrow socioeconomic gaps, while also increasing civic integration.

Source: Applying Behavioral Insights to Support Immigrant Integration and Social Cohesion

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Deep In The Desert, A Case Pits Immigration Crackdown Against Religious Freedom

2018/10/20 Leave a comment

Interesting test case regarding a positive exercise in religious freedom unlike Hobby Lobby, which was more about restricting rights:

In January, Border Patrol agents walked up to a ramshackle old building on the outskirts of a small town in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert. They found three men.

Two were Central Americans who had crossed the border illegally. The third was an American — a university lecturer and humanitarian activist named Scott Warren.

Warren was arrested and ultimately charged with two federal criminal counts of harboring illegal migrants and one count of conspiracy to harbor and transport them. Warren has pleaded not guilty.

Warren’s arrest briefly flickered across the national news amid the partisan tug-of-war over the administration’s immigration policy before fading into the background.

But his legal team’s decision to stake out part of his defense on religious liberty grounds has made the case a clash between two of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ top priorities: cracking down on illegal immigration and defending religious liberty.

A law written to shield faith

One aspect of Warren’s defense is based on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, also known as RFRA. At root, Warren is saying that his faith compels him to offer assistance to people in dire need, including immigrants.

Congress passed RFRA in 1993 with an eye toward protecting the exercise of religious beliefs, particularly of religious minorities, by providing narrow exceptions to neutral laws that apply to everyone.

The law would allow, for example, a religious group to use an otherwise illegal drug, such as peyote, in religious observances. In recent years, Christian evangelical groups have used the law to advance their causes.

In one prominent case, Hobby Lobby Inc., a for-profit chain of arts and crafts stores, opposed — on religious grounds — providing its employees with health insurance that includes contraceptive services, as required under the Affordable Care Act. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled in Hobby Lobby’s favor.

Warren’s lawyer declined to make him available to talk with NPR for this report. But Warren’s parents and others familiar with his work spoke about the case.

Sessions and religious freedom

As attorney general, Jeff Sessions has taken up the banner of religious liberty for the Trump administration.

Last year, Sessions issued a memo with guidance on protections for religious liberty in federal law.

And in a July speech, he called religious liberty America’s “first freedom” and vowed to aggressively protect it. He also announced the creation of a task force to help the Justice Department accomplish that goal.

One of its jobs, he said, would be to ensure that the cases that DOJ attorneys bring and defend — and the arguments they make in court — are in line with federal protections for religious freedom.

“That includes making sure that our employees know their duties to accommodate people of faith,” Sessions told the crowd. “As the people in this room know, you have to practice what you preach.”

But some critics say the Justice Department is failing to do just that. Instead, they say the DOJ is selectively supporting religious liberty.

“There’s a public face of this government, which is very protective of religious liberty, and then the real work they’re doing is only protecting the religious liberty rights of those who are religious conservatives, not of religious progressives,” said Columbia Law School’s Katherine Franke, director of the Public Rights/Private Conscience Project at Columbia Law School.

Franke was one of several law professors who filed a friend of the court brief in Warren’s case to help explain the statute.

The American Civil Liberties Union also has accused the Trump administration of uneven support for religious freedom.

“The Trump administration’s view of religious liberty is both selective and distorted,” said Daniel Mach, director of the ACLU’s program on freedom of religion and belief.

“It supports an unfounded, unprecedented religious license to discriminate; and at the same, the administration is indifferent or outright hostile to faiths and religious individuals with which it disagrees.”

The Justice Department declined to respond on the record to those allegations.

Many conservative groups and faith leaders have lauded the Trump administration for its efforts to protect religious freedom and people of faith.

One of the most prominent examples of that support was the Justice Department’s decision to file a brief in support of a Colorado baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.

United States v. Warren

Warren, who worked as an instructor at Arizona State University, volunteered with a humanitarian organization called No More Deaths. The group aims to save lives in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, where people frequently die as they try to cross the desert on the journey north.

To that end, volunteers for the group hike into the scrubland and leave food, water and other supplies. They also provide emergency first aid to people they find in distress.

No More Deaths and other humanitarian groups use a private residence they call “the barn” on the outskirts of the small town of Ajo, Arizona, as a base of operations.

That’s where Warren discovered Kristian Perez-Villanueva and Jose Arnaldo Sacaria-Goday in January, according to court papers.

Warren found the two men hiding in the barn’s bathroom, the government says. He gave them food, water and clothes, and allowed them to stay for three days.

On Jan. 17, Border Patrol agents and local law enforcement officers conducting surveillance on the barn saw Warren talking with “two subjects that matched a description given of two lost illegal aliens,” court papers say.

The agents approached the barn on foot and spoke with Warren, who told them to leave, prosecutors said.

The agents then conducted a “knock and talk,” during which they identified Perez-Villanueva and Sacaria-Goday and determined they were in the country illegally. Warren was arrested, while the two undocumented men were detained as material witnesses, deposed and then deported.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona declined to comment on Warren’s case.

It’s unclear whether national political dynamics played any role. But the group No More Deaths believes it is connected to the Trump administration’s broader crackdown on illegal immigration.

“What we see under DOJ now is that they’re going after the activists,” said No More Deaths volunteer Catherine Gaffney. “But unfortunately when you go after activists, they’re going to raise their voices and fight back and not be deterred.”

Gaffney also raised questions about the timing of Warren’s arrest.

She said it came hours after No More Deaths released a report that accused Border Patrol agents of slashing water jugs that the group had left out in the desert. The report included videos of Border Patrol agents destroying plastic water containers.

“So we see a clear pattern of political attack here and of weaponizing these immigration statues to go after the activists,” Gaffney said.

Warren and RFRA

Warren, whom neighbors called an active citizen within the town of Ajo, filed a motion earlier this year to have two of the charges dismissed on RFRA grounds.

Under the law, he has to show three things to make his case: that his beliefs are religious in nature; that they are sincerely held; and that they are substantially burdened by a law that applies to everyone.

If he can do that, the burden of proof then shifts to the government.

Prosecutors have to show that the government has a powerful reason to apply the law in Warren’s specific case. They also have to show that the government is using the least restrictive way possible to accomplish that.

At a court hearing in May, Warren testified about his beliefs. He described a life force that permeates all things — animate and inanimate. And his faith, he said, compels him to act when someone is in need.

“For me, we most definitely do unto others as we would want to have done unto us,” he told the court.

The government opposed the motion, saying the prosecution does not substantially burden Warren’s beliefs. DOJ lawyers said Warren “is not required by his beliefs to aid in the evasion of law enforcement. Nor were the people associated with these charges ‘in distress.’ ”

The district judge presiding over the case denied Warren’s motion to dismiss it. But the judge left the door open to Warren to try again when he’s scheduled to go to trial in November.

Source: Deep In The Desert, A Case Pits Immigration Crackdown Against Religious Freedom

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