Sajid Javid’s immigration proposal exposes the insanity of Brexit

2018/09/26 Leave a comment

Ongoing disaster, more apparent as the deadline looms:

Reality is at last dawning. The home secretary, Sajid Javid, is reportedly to propose that EU passport holders will be waved through immigration “for 30 months”, in the event of a no-deal Brexit next March. They will only need to apply for visas later, if they wish to stay permanently.

This is reportedly a concession to business, employers and the chancellor, Philip Hammond. They have been frantically pointing out that farms, hospitals, care homes, construction sites, hotels and restaurants will simply close if their regular input of EU labour, skilled and unskilled, dries up from March. It is already declining at the prospect of Brexit. Stopping it or smothering it with bureaucracy would be the most savage act of self-harm by a British government in living memory.

The truth is that Javid has other problems. It is an open secret that Home Office officials have told him they cannot possibly construct a hard border for all EU visitors at ports of entry by next March. They cannot even contemplate one in Northern Ireland, where the argument is still over lorries, let alone people. Free movement of EU citizens will remain of necessity, until some hard-Brexit thinktank can devise an alternative to the free market in continental labour, so ardently championed by their hero Margaret Thatcher in 1986. They have 30 months to do so, or it will be 30 years.

Reporters returning last week from Salzburg expressed dismay that few heads of government seemed to care about Brexit. It was a minor local trouble on the fringe of Europe. Overwhelmingly they cared about migration. All face an anti-immigrant electoral backlash and many are now installing border controls. While the issue is mostly non-EU migrants, open borders are likely to be the first of the single market’s four freedoms to crumble.

This makes Brexit bitterly paradoxical. Leave voters were never worried over trade or tariffs, and no survey suggests otherwise. Brexit was driven by a concern with immigration. Yet at the very moment when the EU agrees, and starts to tackle it, Britain jumps the gun and leaves in a huff. Now, to pile irony upon irony, Britain’s home secretary moves in the opposite direction. Britain’s EU border must remain open for the simple reason that he cannot close it. Closure is economically harmful and practically impossible.

Perhaps Javid should talk to those of his colleagues now talking of a Brexit “Canada option”, defying Theresa May’s frictionless border pledge. This would impose border checks on all exports – merely admitting roughly half tariff-free. It would also require Britain’s tradable products, including food, to meet EU regulations, over which Britain will have surrendered all control.

If Javid can “wave through” people on grounds of economic expediency, he can surely wave through trade. That is called membership of a single market. With each passing day, we learn that leaving it is massively against Britain’s interest. It is perhaps no surprise that Brexit fanatics tend also to be climate change deniers.

Source: Sajid Javid’s immigration proposal exposes the insanity of Brexit

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Italy to narrow asylum rights in clampdown on immigration

2018/09/26 Leave a comment

Will have to see how far the final bill goes and the degree to which it may be found to be unconstitutional:

Italy’s populist government on Monday escalated its clampdown on irregular immigration with a decree aimed at slashing the number of people awarded asylum and doubling the time irregular migrants can be detained.

The legislation promoted by Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, who leads the far-right League party, comes as boat arrivals plummet and the minister refuses to allow charity ships carrying rescued migrants to dock in Italy’s ports.

“This is a step toward making Italy safer,” Salvini tweeted.

The League, which took power in June in coalition with the 5-Star Movement, has promised to deport hundreds of thousands of irregular migrants. Already, the move to refuse to let rescue boats dock has proven popular, doubling opinion poll support for the League since the election in March to more than 30 percent.

The Salvini Decree aims to limit the use of a form of international protection that has been widely used in recent years but is not strictly tied to political persecution or war.

“Humanitarian” asylum was given to more than 20,000 people last year, or 25 percent of those who sought asylum, against the 16 percent of asylum seekers awarded one of the other two forms of international protection.

It is given to migrants who are deemed to have “serious reasons” to flee their home country – a category that has often included homosexuals fleeing harsh anti-gay laws in Africa.

The decree limits humanitarian protection to victims of domestic violence, trafficking, work exploitation and natural disasters, to those needing urgent medical care, and to people who carry out “particularly valuable civic acts”, Salvini said.

“Humanitarian protection was supposed to be used sparingly,” Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte told reporters. “In Italy, there has been an indiscriminate reception (of migrants) and the rules helped support this.”

MIGRATION PACKAGED WITH SECURITY

Other immigration measures include extending to 180 days from 90 the time an irregular migrant can be detained before being freed, to give the state more time to complete the deportation procedure.

The decree would also widen the range of criminal offences that trigger the stripping of asylum privileges applied for or already granted.

Such a move could fall foul of the 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention, which is intended to protect all refugees, whether formally recognized or not, from being forcibly returned, except where they are a danger to public safety or national security.

Before the government approved the draft decree, a source in President Sergio Mattarella’s office had said parts of it might be unconstitutional – which could open the way for Mattarella to block it

The new immigration guidelines were packaged together with new security rules in an emergency decree, which has 60 days to secure parliamentary approval. Salvini said parliament was likely to make changes.

The security measures include heightened controls on those who rent trucks, in response to a series of attacks in Europe aimed at causing mass casualties. It also foresees stripping naturalized foreigners who are convicted on terrorism charges of their Italian citizenship.

The head of the Italian Catholic bishops’ conference, Nunzio Galantino, on Sunday criticized the decision to link immigration and security in the same piece of legislation, saying:

“We cannot consider the immigrant’s condition to be automatically that of a criminal.”

Source: Italy to narrow asylum rights in clampdown on immigration

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High-Skilled Immigrants Call Out The Trump Administration’s ‘Hypocrisy’

2018/09/26 Leave a comment

Great advantage for Canadian immigration and Canadian efforts to encourage US tech investment in Canada:

The Trump administration says it wants to move to a “merit-based” immigration system — one that gives priority to immigrants who speak English and are highly educated.

But critics say that rhetoric is at odds with the administration’s actions.

“Show me any policy that’s come out so far that has actually made it easier for highly skilled immigrants,” says Doug Rand, who worked in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy under President Barack Obama.

“I haven’t seen any,” Rand said.

In practice, critics say the administration is making high-skilled immigrants’ lives harder, in all sorts of ways. It has gotten tougher to get or renew an H-1B visa, a program that brings in tech workers, doctors and other professionals. And the administration is getting rid of other visa programs altogether.

That includes a special program for the spouses of H-1B guest workers that has been widely embraced by immigrants like Neha Mahajan. She hosts and produces a TV talk show in Edison, N.J., that’s targeted mainly at Indian expats like her.

“This is the kind of work I always wanted to do,” said Mahajan. “I am picking up topics that typically don’t get talked about in the South Asian community. So I’m trying to be a change-maker in my community.”

Mahajan has a master’s degree in English literature and worked as a journalist in India. It never occurred to her that she would have trouble finding opportunities in the U.S. But Mahajan was not allowed to work when she first got here.

“So here I am in the U.S., the most advanced nation on this Earth,” Mahajan said. “But I’m in a cage. A metaphoric golden cage.”

Mahajan moved here with her husband and daughter in 2008 when he secured an H-1B visa to work as a software developer. But she wasn’t able to work legally until 2015, when the Obama administration launched the H-4 EAD program. It allows the spouses of H-1B guest workers to get work permits once they’ve been approved for a green card. About 100,000 people have signed up — mostly women, and mostly from India, which has a years-long waiting list for green cards.

Now the Trump administration is poised to end the program, which it considers an overreach.

“For me, one of the main reasons for proposing to rescind that is because I don’t think it’s appropriate,” said Lee Cissna, the head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency in charge of legal immigration. “I don’t think that Congress intended for the spouses of H-1Bs to work.”

Cissna did not respond to requests for an interview. But he did speak last month to the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors lower levels of immigration.

“Everything we do is guided by the law,” Cissna said. “That’s all we’re doing.”

The administration is also trying to kill another Obama-era program known as the International Entrepreneur Rule, which Doug Rand helped create.

“This was designed for entrepreneurs from other countries to more easily come to the U.S., or stay in the U.S., build companies here, create jobs for U.S. workers,” said Rand, who now runs a firm called Boundless Immigration.

All of this has infuriated corporate America. The CEOs of Apple, Pepsi and other U.S. companies say the administration is scaring away high-skilled workers, which could hurt the economy.

“What the administration is saying is, we want to make it difficult for companies to employ anyone who is not an American citizen,” said Dean Garfield, president of the Information Technology Industry Council.

But the head of Citizenship and Immigration Services dismisses that.

“The idea that we are intentionally, mischievously, impishly, malevolently trying to build an invisible wall on purpose because we don’t want foreign workers to come is false,” said Cissna.

Nonetheless, immigrants like Neha Mahajan wonder whether the administration is serious about “merit-based” immigration.

“I don’t know what to think,” Mahajan said. “Hypocrisy, maybe? They want us to stay. They don’t want us to stay. Why put people’s lives into a limbo?”

Mahajan and other spouses of guest workers are pushing to save the H-4 EAD program that allows them to work. The Trump administration is expected to announce the official end of that program any day.

Source: High-Skilled Immigrants Call Out The Trump Administration’s ‘Hypocrisy’

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How Trump Can Use Welfare To Stymie Immigration — And Vice Versa

2018/09/26 Leave a comment

Yet another restrictive measure:

The Trump administration is following through on a long-rumored plan to make it harder for immigrants to get green cards if they’re poor or might become poor.

The proposal is a double whammy that could scare people away from safety net programs and keep immigrants out of the country ― with the added benefit of simultaneously demonizing both immigrants and welfare.

″It’s an opportunity to fuel the nativist fire and scapegoat immigrants as a drain on our economy,” said Wendy Cervantes, senior policy analyst for the Center for Law and Social Policy, a nonpartisan organization that works to improve the lives of low-income people.

The U.S. government has almost always had a rule against legal permanent resident status for anyone who might become a “public charge,” meaning someone who is likely to wind up on welfare. The proposed rule, which will not take effect for at least 60 days and is subject to change, would broaden the criteria the government can use to deny applicants.

The proposal will likely scare immigrants out of applying even for benefits that wouldn’t hurt their green card chances, Cervantes said, such as food stamps for their children. Already, officials in several states have reported sharp declines in child nutrition program enrollment that they attribute to earlier news reports about the possibility of a new “public charge” rule. (The final proposed rule considers only an individual’s use of public benefits, not any use by their dependents.)

Experts said it’s impossible to estimate how many people will be affected by the rule, but some said it could be in the millions ― some directly because they would be denied a green card, others indirectly because they declined to use a benefit out of fear or because a family member was kept away.

The Department of Homeland Security said in its proposal that it estimated more than 324,000 people would disenroll from safety net benefits “due to concern about the consequences to that person receiving public benefits and being found to be likely to become a public charge,” saving the federal government more than $2 billion annually. (That’s less than 1 percent of what the government spends on food and health benefits for the poor each year.) The proposed rule wouldn’t make those individuals ineligible for public benefits ― the administration is predicting it would cause people to not use help even if they were qualified for it.

Cervantes said the proposal as written would affect several million people if you count a program beneficiary’s family members. More than 40 percent of the nearly 40 million food stamp recipients in the U.S., for instance, are children whose parents receive the benefits on their behalf.

Immigrants could be fearful of enrolling their families in certain benefits even if they wouldn’t have an adverse effect on a future immigration decision, either because of confusion about what is included or fear that it could be expanded in the future, said Melissa Boteach, senior vice president at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, who works on poverty issues.

“People are confused, and the stakes are too high for them to make an educated guess,” Boteach said. “I think there’s a sense that even if you are technically exempt, who knows what they’ll do next?”

Undocumented immigrants and people on work visas are ineligible for most federal benefits in the first place, and green card holders are only eligible after five years. The proposal would not affect people applying to become U.S. citizens. It primarily targets people abroad hoping to be reunited with family members living in the U.S. and those already living here and seeking green cards.

In fiscal 2017, the State Department initially denied more than 280,000 immigrant visa applications. Of those, only 3,200 were refused on public charge grounds, according to the Congressional Research Service (most of those refusals were overcome on appeal). Cervantes said the number of public charge refusals would likely skyrocket under the new proposal.

The current public charge guidance considers a person’s age, education, assets and employment status, as well as his or her current enrollment in a small number of state and federal programs. Republicans have long complained that the biggest programs, such as food stamps and Medicaid, were excluded. The Trump administration’s rule would broaden the criteria to include most federal safety net benefits.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in a statement announcing the proposal that it would “implement a law passed by Congress intended to promote immigrant self-sufficiency and protect finite resources by ensuring that they are not likely to become burdens on American taxpayers.”

The current guidance says an immigrant would only count as a public charge if he or she is likely to depend “primarily” on government assistance, meaning for more than 50 percent of his or her income. The new rule would lower the threshold to receipt of government benefits totaling 15 percent of the poverty line in a given year.

The meaning of “likely” is entirely up to immigration officials, said David Bier, an expert at the libertarian Cato Institute who wrote in an analysis of the proposal.

“They just are very vague about how this whole thing is going to go down,” Bier said in an interview. “So inevitably what we’re going to see when this rule is enforced is just wildly varying outcomes depending on who’s adjudicating applications.”

Source: How Trump Can Use Welfare To Stymie Immigration — And Vice Versa

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Globe editorial: Ottawa is missing the point when it comes to the border issue

2018/09/25 Leave a comment

Kind of revealing that after two full-page editorials, all the Globe can come up with is the need for more funding for the refugee determination process and no legal analysis of its legitimate question regarding possible streamlining of the refugee determination process for irregular arrivals and limiting appeals for those refused.

Thin gruel, highlighting the difficulties in finding solutions that address legitimate public concerns regarding numbers and perceive abuse in a manner that will withstand legal challenge.:

….That won’t be easy, since every person who makes a refugee claim in Canada is legally entitled to an oral hearing. As well, courts in Canada have repeatedly protected the rights of refugee claimants, including those coming from countries deemed to be safe.

But there must be a way to find a compromise between respecting those rights while giving the government the ability to limit abuses of the refugee system and to show determination in controlling our borders. For instance, could Ottawa pass legislation that gives it the discretion to deny appeals to people whose refugee claims are refused, and who didn’t come into the country at a legal port of entry?

At the very least, the government needs to signal that it is looking at long-term solutions. What Mr. Trudeau fails to understand, and politicians in Germany have come to rue, is that dismissing concerns about border security is unwise. The Prime Minister needs to demonstrate that he is willing to act decisively and take away the incentives that have led to this moment.

Source: Globe editorial: Ottawa is missing the point when it comes to the border issue

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Taiwan may expand citizenship to Southeast Asia to staunch brain drain to the mainland

2018/09/25 Leave a comment

Interesting to learn about Taiwan’s demographics and the factors underlying its need for a more open approach to immigration and citizenship for skilled workers:

Taiwan’s lawmakers are expected to decide next month on whether to offer citizenship to students and skilled workers from Southeast Asia to help cope with a severe brain drain to the mainland.

The legislators will vote on the island’s economic immigration bill, Taipei’s response to Beijing’s efforts to lure talent away from Taiwan, which Beijing sees as a wayward province to be brought back into the fold – if necessary, by force.

If passed, the bill would open the door to professionals from Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Myanmar and other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean).

Besides tackling the brain drain, the bill was a way for Taiwan to address its shrinking labour force, officials and analysts said.

“By 2026, 20 per cent of the population will be over 65 years old, and in the following year, there will be an insufficient working-age population,” National Development Council Minister Chen Mei-ling said.

“If the current trend continues, by 2065, the population of Taiwan will fall to between 16 million and 18.8 million from 23.57 million in 2018.”

And that was why the council was looking to the economic immigration bill to recruit foreign professionals and make Taiwan more friendly to immigrants, Chen said.

Under the legislation, people with special skills would be able to apply for permanent residency after working in Taiwan for three years; foreign professionals would be able to do the same after working on the island for five years, and mid-level technicians or skilled workers after seven years.

Foreign students who graduated and worked in Taiwan for five to seven years would be eligible to apply too, the council said. The new law also would apply to skilled foreign workers who had worked in Taiwan for seven years.

Although Asean nations are a priority recruiting target, the laws also are open to professionals and students from countries outside the bloc.

The proposed bill has generally been well received by industry leaders but critics point out that prospective new Taiwanese citizens would no longer be required to invest either in government bonds or a for-profit enterprise to spur local job creation. The council originally included an investment immigration clause that allowed foreigners investing at least NT$15 million in a profit-oriented enterprise or at least NT$30 million in government bonds, and who creates work opportunities for five Taiwanese, to get permanent residency after staying in Taiwan for three years.

The requirement was removed because it was seen as too onerous.

“There is a drawback [in] that the government has taken out the investment immigrant part, which could have helped increase foreign investment in Taiwan,” said Tsai Lien-sheng, secretary general of the National Federation of Industries.

“The biggest problem in Taiwan is not just [its shrinking] talent pool, but also stagnant investment.”

Tsai said Taiwan’s leaders needed to learn from Singapore and the United States, which allowed investors to acquire citizenship if they met their investment immigration requirements.

In the US, for instance, the EB-5 investor visa programme offers green cards to potential new citizens who put at least US$500,000 into US businesses in high-unemployment or rural areas that have been found to generate at least 10 jobs per investor.

The bill comes amid rising cross-strait tensions. Beijing has put the squeeze on the island since President Tsai Ing-wen of the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party took office in 2016 and refused to accept the one-China principle, which Beijing regards as the foundation for dialogue.

Beijing has suspended official talks and exchanges with Taiwan to force Tsai to accept the principle.

Lee Ming-chang, deputy principal of the Lashio Holy Light Chinese Language School in Myanmar, told the Central News Agency that Beijing’s sweeteners to Taiwanese professionals and companies were hampering Taiwan’s ability to recruit talent.

Analysts said Taiwan struggled to retain talent because of low salaries and struggled to attract professionals from places such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan because of the incentives already in those places.

“The bill is well-intended, but employers might not want to raise the salaries to keep those workers,” said Cheng Chih-yu, a professor with the Labour Research Institute at National Chengchi University.

Cheng said the average salary for foreign workers amounted to just over more than NT$30,000 (US$979) per month. Under the government plan, the payment for skilled workers would be between NT$32,000 and NT$41,393.

Chayaphon Mulasar, a Thai worker for a Taiwanese electronics company based in Taoyuan, said he was willing to do what was necessary to get permanent residency in Taiwan.

“But according to the regulations, if I want to apply, I need to start it all over again, meaning I have to deduct the six years I have worked in Taiwan since 2012, which is unfair,” he said.

The council said the proposed legislation was new and revisions would be made accordingly over time.

Source: Taiwan may expand citizenship to Southeast Asia to staunch brain drain to the mainland

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Getting refugee decisions appealed in court ‘the luck of the draw,’ study shows

2018/09/24 Leave a comment

Sean Rehaag continues his important work in revealing inconsistencies in decision-making depending on the federal court judge hearing the application. Virtually all reviews of decision-making processes highlight how perspectives and biases (and Kahneman’s ‘automatic thinking’) can lead to such results:

It is a crapshoot whether refugee claimants can get a second chance from the Federal Court to review and appeal a decision that potentially determines their life and death, according to a new study.

“Outcomes in Federal Court applications for judicial review of refugee determinations depended all too often on the luck of the draw — on which judge decided the case,” said York University law professor Sean Rehaag, author of the report released by the Social Sciences Research Network this month.

“Refugee claimants whose applications for judicial review are denied continue to have good reason to wonder whether this was because of the facts of their case and the law, or whether they simply lost the luck of the draw.”

Both failed refugees and the federal government can appeal a refugee board decision to the court but must first get a nod — or leave — from a judge before the case can proceed to a full hearing. If the first judge denies leave, the appeal will not be heard. Sometimes, the court is the last resort before a failed refugee claimant is deported from Canada to face potential risks back home.

Federal Court Chief Justice Paul Crampton acknowledged Rehaag’s study raises some important questions.

“There is a very real fairness dimension to the wide variation in the rates at which individual judges grant leave,” Crampton told the Star in a statement. “This is so despite the element of subjectivity in making judicial determinations, especially on judicial review, where the standard that the court is called upon to apply in most cases is whether the decision under review was ‘unreasonable.’”

Based on 33,920 Federal Court leave applications involving refugees, the study found only 16.8 per cent of the requests were granted to proceed to an appeal hearing and just 7.8 per cent of them were ultimately successful in getting an asylum decision stayed and having the cases reopened.

The study is the sequel to one conducted by Rehaag in 2012 when he found individual judges varied tremendously in their grant rates for leave and judicial reviews.

Since the release of the first study, Crampton has raised awareness of the issue among judges and even considered amending rules to include a list of factors for judges to weigh in applying the existing leave test, but decided it would be better to include this in legislation.

“Given the important principle that individual judges must decide cases before them on the merits, completely independently of any influence by other persons, the court has continued to wrestle with how to reduce the variation in leave grant rates,” Crampton said.

According to the study, from 2008 to 2011, some judges only allowed 1.5 per cent of the appeal requests they handled to proceed to a full hearing while others approved more than 30 per cent of those requests. One judge, Justice Douglas Campbell, actually granted leave to 95.9 per cent of his cases.

Wide gaps were also identified in the outcomes of the appeals, with some rejecting almost every appeal before them and others reopening 33.8 per cent of the cases and sending them back for a new assessment.

However, despite the court’s effort to address the issue, the gaps among judges’ approval rates persisted after 2012.

From 2013 to 2016, the leave grant rates varied from 5.3 per cent by Justice Judith Snider on the low end to 49.2 per cent by Justice Elizabeth Heneghan on the high end. Appellants, who got leave to proceed to a full hearing, had a 1.8 per cent success rate if they appeared before Justice Richard Boivin but a 22.8 per cent chance to succeed in reopening their cases if they were before Justice Leonard Mandamin.

The report recommends the court allow all appeals a full hearing or at least have two judges to decide on leave to counterbalance any potential bias.

Source: Getting refugee decisions appealed in court ‘the luck of the draw,’ study shows

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People Leave Footprints: Millions More Unauthorized Immigrants Cannot Be ‘Hidden’ in Data Estimates

2018/09/24 Leave a comment

For data and methodology geeks, this analysis of different estimates of the number of illegal immigrants of the US is worth reading. But whether the more sound approach will be listened to in the current political climate is uncertain at best:

Amid the current roiling political debate in the United States around immigration, and particularly illegal immigration, there is little doubt that an academic article out today in PLOS Onecontending the unauthorized immigrant population is millions larger than has long been estimated will attract widespread attention.

It is deeply unfortunate, therefore, that this thought experiment from a team of academics who specialize in management studies is based on seriously flawed assumptions leading them to the conclusion that there were at least 16.2 million, and as many as 29.5 million, unauthorized immigrants in the United States in 2016.

This accounting exercise departs dramatically from the estimates generated independently by several organizations in and out of government, using variations of a method whose accuracy has been proven successful in a real-world setting. These estimates, tested against other datasets to ensure their accuracy, range from a low of about 10.8 million to a high of 12.1 million, the latter the most recent estimate from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Even researchers in immigration restrictionist groups have concurred there cannot be millions upon millions of extra unauthorized immigrants hidden in the United States, because, in short, people leave footprints that are seen in statistical records—namely in birth, death, school enrollment, housing, and other records.

We believe these new numbers represent at most an interesting academic exercise, but are ultimately greatly off-base and thus counterproductive to the public’s very real need to understand the true scope of illegal immigration and how best to address it.

Where This Thought Experiment Goes Wrong

While we welcome fresh thinking and creative new methods to estimate a population that is by definition difficult to count, the theory articulated in the article has serious flaws, as we explain here and in greater detail in a formal response, also published today in PLOS One. The journal’s editors invited us to write this response, after we served as peer reviewers for the article.

In brief, we believe that the method:

Fails to sufficiently account for circular migration patterns prevalent in the 1990s. Because the government did not estimate the rate of successful illegal border crossings in the 1990s, the authors apply 2005-10 DHS estimates of detection rates to the 1990s. These rates estimate how many people successfully snuck across the border for each person apprehended.

However, crossing patterns were very different in the 1990s than in the mid- to late 2000s. In the 1990s, many migrants crossed multiple times in the same year, or they came for just a year or two before permanently leaving. Back then, illegal crossers faced few consequences, so little deterred them from coming, leaving, and returning again. As border enforcement increased strongly over the 2000s, resulting in higher smuggling costs and growing consequences for illegal entry (and in particular illegal re-entry), people who crossed illegally tended to remain in the United States. Therefore, in the 1990s, far more individuals were apprehended repeatedly than was the case in the 2000s. Applying 2005-10 apprehension rates to the 1990s leads the researchers to overestimate how many people crossed the border illegally in the 1990s.

Separately, they also overestimate how many of those who came actually stayed, by applying departure rates from studies of immigrants overall—not just unauthorized immigrants—to border crossers. The result of both of these flawed assumptions: the authors vastly overcount how many unauthorized immigrants came and stayed during the 1990s. They conclude the unauthorized population numbered at least 13.3 million in 2000, while DHS put the total at 8.5 million. By overestimating the number who arrived in the 1990s, the researchers’ estimates into later years thus build on a shaky foundation.

Is misaligned with Census data. Demographers have long agreed that the decennial Census undercounts unauthorized immigrants. But the 13.3 million number is highly implausible. It would imply that the 2000 Census missed almost 5 million more unauthorized immigrants than demographers thought, for an undercount rate of 42 percent. That is well in excess of even the highest assessment of the Census undercount. When demographers compared the U.S. Census data to U.S. birth and death records and data from the Mexican Census on changes in the Mexican population, they concluded that the 2000 Census could have undercounted unauthorized Mexican immigrants by at most 26 percent—a far cry from 42 percent. Other assessments were far more modest, including one survey of unauthorized immigrants in Los Angeles, which found that just 10 percent said they had not taken the 2000 Census.

Allows mistakes to snowball over time. Beyond flawed assumptions, the authors also use a flawed process. While they begin with the widely accepted estimate of the size of the unauthorized population in 1990—3.5 million—their method for extrapolating its future size quickly falls apart. From the 1990 number, they estimate the size of the unauthorized population for the following years by adding in their estimates of each year’s illegal border crossers and visa overstayers and subtracting those who die, leave the country, or transition to legal status in that year. But in this accounting method, any error in estimating border crossers or those who leave the country—as explained above—gets compounded over time, leading their mistakes to snowball. By the time they build their estimate of the unauthorized population in 2000, their number is far higher than could be validated by any other means. And building from that highly questionable estimate for later years only leads to even higher, and more flawed, numbers for 2016.

What the Traditional Method Gets Right

The demographers who use the traditional method for estimating the unauthorized population—known as the residual method—start fresh each year, looking at Census data and government data on visas granted to legal immigrants. And then these demographers, who work independently at DHS, the Pew Research Center, and the Center for Migration Studies of New York, to mention the most notable users of this method that MPI also employs, double check their estimates against other sources: Data from Mexico, birth and death records, school enrollment records, and other datasets. In this way, traditional estimates have guardrails: They stay aligned with the best Census and administrative data available on immigrant populations in the United States.

The residual method was put to the real-world test successfully in the 1980s, with estimates generated with this methodology largely similar to the actual number of unauthorized immigrants who came forward to get legalized under a broad legalization offered in the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.

It is also worth noting that while several organizations use the residual method, each has its own proprietary methodology for developing datasets on the unauthorized, and that while these have some variations, their results fall within the same relatively narrow range. That is a far cry from the 13 million swing that the Yale researchers generate in their exercise, depending on which of their assumptions they use.

Over several years, MPI carefully developed its methodology with demographers at The Pennsylvania State University’s Population Research Institute and Temple University. Together, we have been transparent about the assumptions undergirding our methodology, sharing them in leading demographic journals, through presentations at academic conferences, and inviting critiques from others in the field.

It is imperative for the public and decisionmakers alike to know how many unauthorized immigrants are in the country, so that we can determine the effectiveness of our immigration and border-control policies and make any necessary adjustments. Inaccurate, inflated estimates only serve to inflame and confuse the debate, and could lead to poorly designed and wasteful enforcement and policy overreactions.

Source: People Leave Footprints: Millions More Unauthorized Immigrants Cannot Be ‘Hidden’ in Data Estimates

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Refugee board releases guide to deal with bad lawyers, consultants

2018/09/22 Leave a comment

The twitter traffic I have seen from immigration lawyers applaud this (overdue) move:

The Immigration and Refugee Board has issued new guidelines to help its decision-makers and the public deal with complaints involving allegations of substandard legal representation.

“In the past, there were no formal procedures established at the board for dealing with allegations against former counsel, and each situation was dealt with on a case-by-case basis,” said spokesperson Anna Pape.

“Now, after internal and external consultation, the IRB has developed its own protocol to guide the decision-makers and the parties, based on the procedures in the Federal Court and in other courts.”

While some complaints about counsel raise legitimate concerns, others can be controversial because people may make them to try to delay proceedings or to demand that their case be reopened in the event of a negative decision.

Among the most high-profile complaints in recent years were from Roma refugees against three Toronto lawyers — Viktor Hohots, Joseph Farkas and Erzsebet Jaszi — who were later disciplined by the Law Society of Upper Canada, only after most of the complainants had their claims rejected and were deported with no redress.

The refugees’ complaints alleged the lawyers accepted legal aid retainers but abdicated their professional responsibilities, engaged in professional misconduct and negligently represented their clients, and ultimately led to their claims being rejected. Most only raised their concerns to Toronto’s Roma Community Centre when the majority of their claims were refused.

While critics welcome the guidelines and believe they can help ensure decision-makers take such complaints seriously, some said they are long overdue, coming four years after the Federal Court published similar protocol.

“It’s interesting that it took the board this long to develop a formal policy,” said York University law professor Sean Rehaag, co-author of a 2015 study that examined the odds faced by Roma in Canada’s refugee system, including inadequate legal representation.

“The biggest problem is these people are vulnerable. They may not know their rights or speak the language and are scared of retribution. There will never be full assurance against problematic counsel.”

The new guidelines apply to the board’s four tribunals that deal with asylum claims and appeals as well as immigration detention and appeals. They detail the steps individuals must take to complain against their counsel and the documentation they need when the issue arises in the middle of a proceeding or after a decision is made.

Complainants must provide the board with documentation showing they have informed their former counsel about the allegations and provided them 10 days to respond to the claims. They must also release their solicitor-client privilege to the extent necessary to allow former counsel to respond to the allegations.

Meanwhile, adjudicators can give direction or issue orders to make the proceeding fairer or more efficient despite the guidelines. They may also disclose a counsel’s breach of professional obligations, such as incompetence, negligence and misconduct to relevant regulatory body.

According to Pape, the board reported complaints against 10 lawyers and nine immigration consultants to their respective professional regulators in 2017. So far this year, they referred three lawyers and two consultants to their licensing bodies.

Source: Refugee board releases guide to deal with bad lawyers, consultants

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Chantal Hébert: Quebec provides a warning that Scheer should be careful about making immigration a campaign theme

2018/09/21 Leave a comment

Good insightful column as usual:

Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives may want to push pause on plans to make immigration a signature federal campaign theme next fall long enough to take stock of the turn in the Quebec election conversation.

Coalition Avenir Québec Leader François Legault thought he was reaching for a low-hanging fruit when he embraced the issue. With less than two weeks to go until the Oct. 1 vot,e it has turned into a poisoned apple.

Since midcampaign, the CAQ has lost a significant amount of support.

The latest Léger sounding — done between last Thursday’s French-language debate and Monday’s English-language debate — found a six-point drop in the party’s lead among the francophone voters who will determine the outcome of the election.

Legault’s hopes for a governing majority are fading fast. It could still get worse. With the last leaders’ face-off set for Thursday, only half of his supporters say their choice is final.

The decline in CAQ fortunes essentially comes down to one issue: immigration and the party’s bid to both reduce Quebec’s overall intake of immigrants and accelerate, by coercive means if necessary, their integration into the province’s French-language mainstream.

Under the party’s plan, Quebec would cut its annual intake of immigrants by one fifth and those who after three years fail to meet the province’s language requirements would be made to leave. (It remains unclear how that would be achieved.)

At the time the policy was conceived last spring, Legault and his brain trust believed they had come up with a winning combination, a way to tap into longstanding francophone concerns over the preservation of Quebec’s French-language identity without alienating the province’s non-francophone voters.

Instead the plan has become a millstone.

Many voters are repulsed by the coercive regimen his party is proposing to impose on future immigrants. Others question the notion that Quebec’s immigration intake should be reduced.

On the latter, Legault has managed to run afoul of the mayors of Montreal and Quebec City and of many smaller towns spread out across the province.

They are all arguing that with Quebec plagued by labour shortages caused by the fast-aging of its population, the time is particularly ill chosen to cut down on immigration.

The Léger poll found Quebecers divided over the issue with 45 per cent in favour of a reduction and 47 per cent against.

But with the bulk of the province’s chattering class along with his election rivals aligned against his proposals, Legault is clearly losing the air war.

He has been in damage-control mode for most of the past week, scrambling to put the issue of his own signature policy to rest. But with every new explanation, there have been more questions as to how much actual thinking has gone into the crafting of the CAQ’s immigration platform and what the many unanswered issues it raises say about the party’s competence to run a government.

As the Léger poll was putting a number on the rising toll Legault’s decision to fight part of the campaign on the immigration minefield is taking on his party’s fortunes, the Conservative opposition in the House of Commons was accusing the Trudeau government of having eroded voters’ confidence in Canada’s immigration policy.

But in the province where the issue has been top of mind for weeks — the very place that is ground zero for the influx of irregular border crossers transiting from the U.S. to Canada — the evidence suggests otherwise.

For the first time in decades, there is an expanding Quebec audience, outside of the already diverse Montreal area, supporting the notion that immigration is part of the solution to the province’s economic challenges.

At the same time, the federal Conservative party’s summer-long effort to highlight the irregular refugee issue has had little or no echo in the provincial campaign. The refugee file started to drop from the Quebec radar around the time the Trump’s administration’s policy of separating the children of illegal immigrants to the U.S. from their parents surfaced in the media. That is probably not a complete coincidence.

And then for all the talk about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau losing the argument over irregular border crossings, it has so far had no significant impact on his party’s fortunes. At the end of a difficult summer for his government, his ruling party continues to enjoy a prohibitive lead in Quebec. At the national level, the gap between the leading Liberals and the Conservatives has widened.

There is a reason why mainstream provincial and federal parties have rarely if ever made immigration a major campaign plank in the past. As Legault’s experience is demonstrating, it is easy to lose control of the narrative.

Source: Chantal Hébert: Quebec provides a warning that Scheer should be careful about making immigration a campaign theme

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

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