L’Institut du Québec remet les pendules à l’heure en immigration

2018/09/19 Leave a comment

Good initiative in presenting the data:

Parce que plusieurs données sur l’immigrationsont semées à tort et à travers en cette campagne électorale, l’Institut du Québec (IdQ) a cru bon de remettre les pendules à l’heure en publiant une « mise à jour » pour clarifier certaines informations. Car si certains politiciens confondent encore des statistiques, d’autres ne prennent pas le soin de les mettre en contexte.

L’IdQ travaille sur les thèmes de l’intégration des immigrants au marché du travail depuis un certain temps, mais a senti une certaine urgence à préciser certaines données. « En voyant à quel point c’est devenu important dans les élections, surtout la question des seuils migratoires et la rétention, […] on a senti que notre mission était de sortir rapidement », a dit Mia Homsy, directrice de l’IdQ, auquel s’associent le Conference Board du Canada et HEC Montréal. « Je ne suis pas certaine des chiffres que [les chefs de partis] utilisent. Je vois aussi qu’ils essaient d’en éviter certains… ce n’est pas toujours clair. »

Le taux de rétention

Mme Homsy invite à ne pas confondre « solde migratoire net », qui est la somme de la migration internationale (entrées et sorties) et de la migration interprovinciale (entrées et sorties) qu’on soit immigrant ou natif, et taux de rétention, qui mesure le nombre d’immigrants encore au Québec plusieurs années après leur arrivée. Ce que pourrait avoir fait le chef de la Coalition avenir Québec, François Legault, qui se plaît à répéter que, des 50 000 immigrants qu’il accueille, le Québec en perd 13 000. Parle-t-il du solde migratoire net, qui est de 12 600 ?

M. Legault pourrait avoir plutôt fait allusion aux 26 % d’immigrants qui ont quitté le Québec, mais, dans ce cas, il omet de préciser que c’est entre 2006 et 2015 (soit sur 9 ans). Ce qu’il ne dit pas non plus, c’est que ces chiffres sont du ministère de l’Immigration et se basent sur les renouvellements de la carte d’assurance maladie, qui ne tiennent pas compte des décès et des non-renouvellements volontaires.

Les chiffres publiés par l’Institut du Québec, qui se basent sur les déclarations de revenus, ont une connotation beaucoup plus positive : seulement 18 % des immigrants arrivés entre 2005 et 2015 auraient quitté la province. Et le Québec se classe 4e au Canada pour son taux de rétention. « J’avais en tête que c’était catastrophique, mais on n’est quand même pas si loin de l’Ontario », a déclaré Mme Homsy. Selon le rapport, le taux de rétention sur cinq ans est encore plus encourageant, soit 84,3 %, et il constituerait une nette amélioration par rapport à il y a 15 ans.

Peu de francophones

Le chef de la CAQ et celui du Parti québécois, Jean-François Lisée, ont aussi répété que trop peu d’immigrants (42 %) parlent français à leur arrivée au Québec. Or, ils omettent souvent de préciser que cette donnée est pour 2017 seulement, année où le Québec a reçu beaucoup de réfugiés. En 2016, 48 % des personnes qui arrivaient ici parlaient le français, et en 2015, 56 %.

Brahim Boudarbat, professeur à l’École des relations industrielles de l’Université de Montréal, fait remarquer que, pour avoir l’heure juste, il faudrait uniquement s’intéresser à la catégorie des immigrants économiques, car ce sont eux qui sont sélectionnés avec, notamment, le critère de la langue française. Et là, toutefois, les politiciens n’auraient pas tort de s’alarmer sur la proportion d’immigrants francophones, qui sont en diminution constante depuis ces dernières années, passant de 67 % en 2012 à 53 % en 2016. « Ça, c’est un problème, puisqu’on voit que ça baisse », dit-il. Le ministère de l’Immigration a reconnu qu’elle avait admis un plus grand nombre de personnes déclarant uniquement connaître l’anglais, notamment parce que l’adéquation entre les besoins du Québec dans certains secteurs d’emploi et les compétences des travailleurs migrants était devenue plus importante que le seul critère de la langue.

Seuils et chômage

M. Boudarbat fait remarquer que les partis parlent peu de régionalisation, mais débattent beaucoup des seuils d’immigration. « On s’attendrait à ce que les libéraux, qui ont un discours de pénurie de main-d’oeuvre, parlent d’augmenter les seuils, mais ils ne le font pas. Moi, j’interprète ça comme une réduction », indique le professeur. « Dans sa tête, [le chef Philippe Couillard] pense sans doute à 60 000-65 000, mais il ne le dit pas, parce qu’il serait obligé de le justifier, comme le font les autres partis. »

Pour sa part, le chef de la CAQ justifie son intention d’accueillir moins d’immigrants en répétant que le taux de chômage parmi cette population est de 15 % dans les cinq premières années. Or, s’il est effectivement de 14,1 %, comparativement à 9,1 % en Ontario, ce taux a tendance à diminuer, étant donné la conjoncture économique favorable. Après avoir oscillé entre 10 % et 13 % depuis 2007, le taux de chômage des immigrants âgés de 25 à 54 ans atteignait 8,7 % l’an dernier. « Les employeurs vont désormais considérer un CV d’immigrant qu’ils auraient peut-être mis sous la pile il y a 15 ans, voyant que leur production est compromise », avance Mia Homsy.

Pour un portrait plus juste de la situation, les politiciens devraient toutefois s’intéresser de plus près à certaines données qui ne ressortent pas souvent, soit le taux de surqualification et la provenance des immigrants. « Les gens des pays musulmans ont un taux de chômage plus élevé », rappelle M. Boudarbat.

Source: L’Institut du Québec remet les pendules à l’heure en immigration

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Douglas Todd: Popular Canadian student visas leading to exploitation

2018/09/19 Leave a comment

More from Douglas Todd on Indian student visa holders:

Senior Indian politicians are warning tens of thousands of young Punjabis about the dangers of trying to take advantage of student visas to try to become Canadian citizens.

Indian nationals — some of whom are using student visas primarily to work rather than study in Canada — are being exploited in both countries for their money and cheap labour, say South Asian media outlets and officials in both India and Canada.

The Punjab’s education minister, Charanjit Singh Channi, says he recently travelled to Canada and “saw the plight of students there,” with many working 16 hours a day to make ends meet and attending fly-by-night colleges with just five students enrolled.

Channi, who is concerned about a growing brain drain of young Punjabis to Canada, told the Indian media he is cautioning students against “falling into the emigration trap.” He is one of many officials raising alarms about fraudulent immigration agents who are financially bleeding low-income families in India with false promises their offspring will easily obtain immigrant status in Canada.

Many Indo-Canadians in Metro Vancouver and Toronto are in an uproar over the surge in students from India, with their presence feeding community tensions, allegations of financial exploitation by colleges and universities, employer abuse and fears some young newcomers are “buying jobs” in Canada while working for less than minimum wage, undercutting local South Asians.

The number of Indian students in Canada, mostly from the Punjab, has increased about five-fold in the past few years, since the federal government began to favour international students as future permanent residents.

Canada has 130,000 students from India now, compared to 20,000 in Britain, 70,000 in Australia and 186,000 in the U.S., which has almost 10 times Canada’s population.

“Most international students, especially from China and India, see being an international student as an opportunity to migrate to Canada for greener pastures, to pave way for their families to eventually join them,” says Barj Dhahan, a major B.C. employer and philanthropist.

“They end up paying large sums of money to ‘immigration consultants’ … to help them obtain admissions to Canadian institutions and get visas to Canada. Many of these students are enrolled in short-term degree programs” And, he said, many end up working more than the 20 hours a week are allowed under student study permits.”

Dhahan, owner of the Sandhurst Group of companies that specializes in B.C. restaurants, gas stations and commercial real estate, said some of the 500,000 international students in Canada “work illegally under the table to make ends meet, and are usually paid in cash.” In the process, he said, many are exploited by dubious employers and so-called consultants.

The Tribune is one of several Indian media outlets reporting that young Punjabis and their often-rural families are being gouged by educational institutions, landlords and employers in Canada, as well as by so-called “immigration consultants” in India.

The Punjab newspaper says it typically costs Indian students more than $15,000 Cdn for their first year in Canada, but that consultants don’t tell families that educational fees and housing costs will mushroom to $100,000 to $150,000 for a multi-year program. Last month, Indian headlines trumpeted a police raid on the office of a prominent Punjab immigration consultancy headed by Vinay Hari, who had sponsored large ads celebrating the visit of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Immigration lawyers in Metro Vancouver, such as George Lee and Richard Kurland, say international students from India and China, the two biggest source countries for Canada, are among those who end up trying to extend their chances of gaining immigrant status in Canada by “buying jobs,” some of which don’t exist.

Burnaby immigration lawyer George Lee says some international students from India and China are among those who try to extend their chances of gaining immigrant status in Canada by “buying jobs.”

Shinder Purewal, a Kwantlen Polytechnic University political scientist and a former citizenship court judge, said “Immigration is the main motive of most international students coming to Canada,” particularly those who sign up with low-tier public and private educational institutions with little intention of obtaining a serious diploma and a much stronger inclination to find work.

One of the most lucrative money-making schemes for fraudulent immigration agents in India and Canada, Purewal said, is arranging often-fake Canadian labour-market impact assessments for international students who seek a long-term work permit to cement their chance of being approved for permanent resident status, the precursor to becoming a Canadian citizen.

Some Indo-Canadian business owners, Purewal said, collude with the agents to charge Indian students $20,000 to $50,000 for a false labour-market assessment, which claims a foreign national is needed for a job because Canadians cannot be found.

Although newcomers on student visas are limited to working 20 hours a week, Purewal said most end up “working more than full time to cover costs, simply because Canadian employers don’t even pay them minimum wage. The system allows ‘immigration consultants’ and businesses to cheat, commit fraud and brutally exploit young people.”

Vancouver immigration lawyer Sam Hyman says there is a “rampant” underground economy devoted to creating false labour-market assessments for international students in Canada, regardless of their nationality. If the students who buy such fraudulent job offers are caught, Hyman warned, “they are likely to bear the enforcement consequences — including deportation — more readily than the fraudsters who victimize them and reap the profits of such illegal activity.”

Source: Douglas Todd: Popular Canadian student visas leading to exploitation

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Legault s’emmêle à nouveau – On immigration and particularly citizenship

2018/09/18 Leave a comment

While the first part points out his lack of knowledge, it is the latter part where he is effectively promoting a separate Quebec version of citizenship with longer residency requirements (3 years to become a Permanent Residents, then the 3 year citizenship residency requirement) along with yet again, a Quebec Values Charter that is more revealing.

He also needs to consider the demographic and financial implications of reduced immigration that Chantal Hébert recently pointed out (By campaigning to cut immigration, Quebec’s opposition parties are playing politics with their province’s future):

François Legault reconnaît ne pas connaître sur le bout des doigts les étapes à franchir par un immigrant pour obtenir sa citoyenneté canadienne.

« Ce bout-là, je n’aurais pas gagné Génies en herbe », a-t-il laissé tomber lors d’une conférence de presse dimanche.

Le chef de la Coalition avenir Québec faisait allusion aux « bonnes questions » posées la veille par un reporter sur le système d’immigrationcanadien. À l’une d’elles, il avait répondu qu’un résident permanent n’a qu’à passer « quelques mois » au pays avant de devenir citoyen canadien. Or, c’est au moins trois ans.

« J’ai lu pas mal toute la nuit là-dessus », a mentionné le chef caquiste, tout en disant maîtriser les ressorts de l’immigration ― ou à tout le moins « l’essentiel, oui ».

Pourtant, le favori des sondages a encore confondu, dimanche, les conditions d’obtention de la résidence permanente et celles de la citoyenneté. En effet, M. Legault a dit qu’un résident permanent doit faire l’objet d’une enquête de sécurité et d’un examen médical avant de demander la citoyenneté, oubliant de dire qu’il doit aussi réussir l’examen de citoyenneté, qui porte notamment sur la géographie, l’histoire sociale, culturelle et politique du Canada, et démontrer qu’il a une « connaissance suffisante » de la langue française ou anglaise. « On va prendre votre question en délibéré », a lâché M. Legault, au terme d’un échange de quelques minutes sur le sujet.

Le chef de la CAQ a dit ne pas croire que les réponses erronées ou incomplètes qu’il a données sur le sujet aux médias nuisent à sa crédibilité. « Les Québécois, ce qu’ils veulent savoir, c’est : “Est-ce qu’on veut 40 000 ou 50 000 immigrants par année ?” La CAQ, c’est 40 000. Les libéraux, c’est 50 000. Les Québécois, ce qu’ils veulent savoir, c’est : “Est-ce que les immigrants, à l’avenir, vont devoir réussir un test de valeurs et un test de français ?” Ils savent qu’avec la CAQ, la réponse, c’est oui. Avec le Parti libéral, c’est non. C’est ça que les Québécois veulent savoir. C’est ça la crédibilité d’un chef de parti. Puis, quand je suis concret et pragmatique, je pense que les Québécois comprennent très bien ce que je dis », a-t-il affirmé à la presse.

Dans cet esprit, M. Legault a réitéré dimanche sa promesse de soumettre les nouveaux arrivants à un test de connaissance de français et des valeurs québécoises, dont la réussite serait une condition à l’obtention d’un certificat de sélection du Québec (CSQ).

D’ailleurs, selon lui, l’examen de citoyenneté préparé par le gouvernement fédéral ― qui constitue un « bon test », à ses yeux ― « vient comme montrer que ce n’est pas si effrayant que ça ce [que la CAQ] demande ». « Pourquoi ce test, au fédéral, serait acceptable et le nôtre pas acceptable ? » a-t-il demandé.

Citoyen canadien en 6 ans ?
Selon l’engagement de la CAQ, il faudrait environ six ans à un immigrant pour obtenir un passeport canadien au Québec ― trois ans pour obtenir un CSQ et la résidence permanente, plus trois ans pour la citoyenneté canadienne ―, comparativement à trois ans dans le reste du Canada. « Le français sera toujours vulnérable au Québec, en Amérique du Nord. Donc, oui, il y aura des exigences plus grandes au Québec que dans le reste du Canada », a soutenu François Legault.

Source: Legault s’emmêle à nouveau

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Parrainage de réfugiés syriens: des citoyens passent la nuit dehors

2018/09/18 Leave a comment

A good news story that Quebec is far from monolithic in its views on immigration and refugees:

Des Québécois ont passé la nuit d’hier à aujourd’hui devant les locaux du ministère de l’Immigration afin de s’assurer que leur demande de parrainage de réfugiés syriens soit parmi les 750 qui seront acceptées pour étude dès la réouverture du programme aujourd’hui.

La file d’attente devant les bureaux du ministère de l’Immigration, de la Diversité et de l’Inclusion du Québec (MIDI) a commencé vers 16h, hier. Le premier sur place est arrivé avec une chaise et de quoi passer la nuit dans la rue. «On n’a pas le choix d’être ici si on veut être sûr que notre demande passe», a-t-il confié, vers 21h.

Derrière lui, à cette heure-là, neuf autres personnes attendaient rue Notre-Dame, certains sur de petites chaises, d’autres munis de leur sac de couchage.

Depuis janvier 2017, le volume important de demandes de parrainage de réfugiés syriens a forcé le MIDI à arrêter momentanément le programme. Dès aujourd’hui, les demandeurs pourront de nouveau soumettre leur dossier.

Les portes ouvrent ce matin à 8h30. En tout, 750 dossiers de parrainage seront étudiés par le Ministère. Seulement 100 pourront être déposés par des particuliers qui souhaitent parrainer un groupe de deux à cinq personnes. C’est surtout les parrains pour cette catégorie de dossier qui étaient en file hier. «On imagine qu’il va y avoir bien plus que 100 personnes, donc je m’assure de ma place pour que le messager prenne ma place demain», explique une dame, cinquième en ligne, installée dans une chaise pliante.

Stratégie commune

Tous ont la même stratégie : attendre leur messager, qui prendra la relève pour déposer leur dossier. Car aucun dossier remis en mains propres ne sera accepté, les documents devront obligatoirement être déposés par service de messagerie.

«Moi, il est là avec moi déjà», a lancé une femme, pointant l’homme à ses côtés. Elle a payé le messager pour la nuit, afin d’être certaine que sa demande soit parmi les premières déposées.

«Le fait de devoir venir faire la ligne comme ça démontre qu’il n’y a pas assez de place pour les demandes de parrainage», a observé une jeune femme, assise sur son sac de couchage, à côté d’une amie. «Ceux qui n’auront pas notre chance vont devoir attendre une autre année, a-t-elle ajouté. Mais on parle de réfugiés, et beaucoup d’entre eux ne peuvent pas attendre un an.»

«Chacun pour soi»

«Je ne suis vraiment pas confiante, j’ai peur qu’administrativement, ce soit le chaos demain», a avoué une des personnes en ligne. Autour d’elle, plusieurs ont hoché la tête, en signe d’approbation.

Elle a également indiqué craindre un grand désordre à l’ouverture des portes du ministère. «On ne sait pas ce qui va arriver quand la file va s’étendre et qu’il y aura plus de demandes que ce qu’ils vont accepter.»

«Ce que je trouve dommage, c’est que ça nous oblige à être chacun pour soi, pour s’assurer sa place, alors qu’on veut tous aider des gens», ajoute une autre dame, à ses côtés.

Hier soir, les quelques personnes en file ont inscrit leur nom, en ordre sur une feuille, pour avoir une liste de leur ordre d’arrivée. «C’est très informel, on ne sait même pas si ça va être respecté», s’est-elle inquiétée.

«Je pense que le Ministère fait de son mieux, a quant à lui affirmé le premier citoyen dans la file. Mais ça pourrait être mieux organisé, c’est certain, car la demande est vraiment très haute par rapport au nombre de places. Beaucoup de dossiers se sont accumulés depuis l’arrêt du programme.»

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with ,

Home Office ‘breaking law’ to expel highly skilled migrants

2018/09/18 Leave a comment

One story after another about policy and operational failures:

A judge has accused the Home Office of breaking the law and acting in a “nonsensical” way in trying to force two highly skilled migrants out of the UK by triggering a terrorism-related part of immigration law.

The two substantial judgments will boost those campaigning to halt the use of paragraph 322(5) of the immigration rules against people who have made legal amendments to their tax returns.

The judge quashed the Home Office’s decisions to trigger the power, saying the department had made errors in public law.

At least 1,000 highly skilled migrants seeking indefinite leave to remain (ILR) in the UK are wrongly facing expulsion from the UK under paragraph 322(5) for making legal amendments to their tax records, according to the support group Highly Skilled Migrants.

The judgments of the upper tribunal judge, Melissa Canavan, in the cases of Oluwatosin Bankole Williams and Farooq Shaik will strengthen the hand of the 20 MPs and a member of the House of Lords who are to establish separate pressure groups to persuade the Home Office to stop misusing the power.

In the Commons on Thursday, one of those MPs, Alison Thewliss, demanded a debate on what she said was “the incompetence of the Home Office” concerning 322(5).

“We were promised on 21 June that there would be a review in the next few weeks. This has not emerged,” she said. “Too many highly skilled migrants are waiting for this government to make a decision, living in poverty and racking up huge debts.”

The leader of the house, Andrea Leadsom, agreed to take up the issue directly with Home Office ministers on Thewliss’s behalf.

While at least 50% of immigration appeals against Home Office decisions succeed in the courts – a rate the Law Society said suggested the system was “seriously flawed” – the support group for those fighting paragraph 322(5) say their success rate is far higher, at 75.3%.

The figure is so high that it has caused legal experts to question whether the Home Office is cynically pursuing cases without merit.

In one of the recent rulings, Canavan cited a third upper tribunal judgment in which the Home Office was criticised for maintaining that migrants were responsible for the mistakes of their accountants, even when accountants later wrote to the government to admit culpability.

Canavan agreed that “the mere fact that an applicant is responsible for his own tax affairs does not lead to the inexorable conclusion that an applicant has been dishonest”.

Her judgment is at odds with a letter sent to the Lib Dem peer Dick Taverne last week by Susan Williams, a Home Office minister, defending the government’s use of the 322(5) power. “The courts have agreed that our conclusions were reasonable in such cases,” Lady Williams wrote.

Canavan said: “Where an applicant has presented evidence to show that he was not dishonest but only careless, the secretary of state is presented with a fact-finding task … The evidence must be cogent and strong.”

Source: Home Office ‘breaking law’ to expel highly skilled migrants

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Prime Minister Scott Morrison exposes Australia’s big immigration myth

2018/09/18 Leave a comment

Despite his anti-immigration reputation, many of the points he makes in this interview are sensible:

PRIME Minister Scott Morrison has taken aim at Australia’s obsession with population growth, saying it is a “fairly irrelevant statistic” and immigration policy is far more nuanced than many of us realise.

Population growth surged to the top of the political agenda in August as the number of people living in Australia passed 25 million, with prominent figures such as entrepreneur Dick Smith warning our “way of life” would be under threat unless immigration was drastically reduced.

In an exclusive interview with news.com.au, Mr Morrison struck a very different tone.

He identified a pervasive myth at the heart of the immigration debate — that permanent migrants from overseas are the biggest strain on Australia’s infrastructure.

He said temporary migration and natural population growth, caused by the people who already live here having children, were far more significant factors.

“I’ve never bought this idea that the permanent immigration intake is the thing fuelling population growth. Because it’s not borne out in the actual maths,” Mr Morrison said.

“When it comes to population growth at the moment, there are 10 extra people that have got on the bus. Just over four of them are temporary migrants. Just under four of them were born here, a natural increase. And only two of them are permanent migrants.”

A huge chunk of that — 38 per cent — came from the natural increase category. Among the rest, temporary migrants easily outnumbered permanent migrants.

Importantly, growth varied wildly in different parts of the country — a point Mr Morrison felt had often been lost in the national population debate.

“You have got to understand what the population impacts are, not just in terms of how much the national population is growing by. That’s a fairly irrelevant statistic,” Mr Morrison said.

“What matters is what is it growing at in Melbourne; in the western suburbs; in the eastern suburbs. What is it doing in southeast Queensland? What is it doing in Townsville? What is it doing in Perth?”

In some areas, he said, the combination of natural population growth and interstate migration “eclipses international migration a couple of times over”.

“I mean, what are they going to do — stop the Victorians, or stop the New South Welshmen?”

Meanwhile, smaller cities such as Adelaide were simply “crying out” for more immigration, not less.

“The idea of average population growth is about as helpful as average rainfall. It has the same practical meaning,” he said.

“You can have very low levels of population growth that are actually being quite unhelpful in terms of what’s happening in the economy, or social cohesion.

“You can have high levels of it, which if it’s all pretty much skills based and everybody’s in a job and it’s focused on regional areas, it can be quite suitably absorbed.”

The fundamental problem for the government is that most immigrants want to live in our biggest cities, particularly Sydney and Melbourne, and far fewer are interested in staying in regional areas.

The ABS statistics we cited earlier showed 165,000 migrants, or about two-thirds of last year’s net migration figure, went to those two cities.

There is only so much the government can do about it, beyond placing conditions on some temporary visas, or rewarding temporary migrants who move to regional areas. Mr Morrison signalled he was open to expanding on those initiatives.

But he certainly can’t dictate where permanent migrants get to live.

Source: Prime Minister Scott Morrison exposes Australia’s big immigration myth

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Machines Will Handle More Than Half of Workplace Tasks by 2025, WEF Report Says

2018/09/18 Leave a comment

Question is: what kind of jobs and will it truly be a “positive impact:”

Organizers of the Davos forum say in a new report that machines are increasingly moving in on jobs done by people, projecting that more than half of all workplace tasks will be carried out by machines by 2025.

The World Economic Forum also predicts the loss of some 75 million jobs worldwide by 2022, but also says 133 million new jobs will be created.

The WEF said Monday: “Despite bringing widespread disruption, the advent of machine, robots and algorithm could actually have a positive impact on human employment.”

The “Future of Jobs 2018” report, the second of its kind, is based on a survey of executives representing 15 million employees in 20 economies.

The WEF said challenges for employers include reskilling workers, enabling remote employment and building safety nets for workers.

Source: Machines Will Handle More Than Half of Workplace Tasks by 2025, a Report Says

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Trump administration draws fire for ‘misleading’ report linking terrorism, immigration

2018/09/15 Leave a comment

Yet another case of a misleading and wrong report by the Trump administration:

Eighteen former counterterrorism officials are urging the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security to retract or correct a report that implies a link between terrorism and immigration, calling its findings ‘‘misleading’’ and counterproductive.

Released in January, the report says that 402 of the 549 people — almost 3 of every 4 — convicted of terrorism charges since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were foreign-born. That’s a data point that President Trump has highlighted as justification for his administration’s hard-line immigration policies — namely his desire to shift from a ‘‘random chain migration and lottery system, to one that is merit-based,’’ as he has tweeted.

But critics dubious of the report’s conclusions have said it relies on irrelevant and in some cases flawed data.

Failure to correct the document is likely to undermine counterterrorism efforts by fueling misperceptions about the nature of radicalization and stoking societal divisions around immigration, according to a letter released Thursday by the former government officials, including former National Counterterrorism Center directors Nicholas Rasmussen and Matthew Olsen, former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., and former acting assistant attorney general for national security Mary McCord.

‘‘Overall,’’ their letter says, ‘‘the report appears designed to give the misleading impression that immigrants — and even their citizen family members — are responsible for the vast majority of terrorist attacks that have occurred in the United States.’’

The report was written to comply with an executive order Trump issued in March 2017 banning citizens from six predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States.

The Justice Department declined to comment.

Katie Waldman, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, said the agency is ‘‘focused on anticipating terrorist trends and movements and, more importantly, blocking all terrorist pathways into the United States.’’

She said ‘‘as recently as last month, US authorities arrested an Iraqi refugee in California — wanted for murder in Iraq — who is alleged to have been a member of both [the Islamic State] and Al Qaeda. We cannot let dangerous individuals slip through the cracks and exploit our refugee program.’’

The former counterterrorism officials’ letter was written in support of an appeal to be filed Thursday by several advocacy groups that sued the two agencies in federal court in Oakland and Boston. The organizations are seeking a retraction or correction under a little-known law, the Information Quality Act.

The courts stayed the lawsuits when the agencies answered the plaintiffs, with the Justice Department saying in July that the plaintiffs’ charge that the report perpetuates a biased narrative is ‘‘a subjective conclusion’’ based on their interpretation of the report.

The DHS in August said the plaintiffs did not ‘‘specifically challenge the accuracy of the data’’ but rather requested that it be retracted to ‘‘correct the misimpression’’ that it supposedly created.

Critics say the conviction data should not include roughly 100 foreign-born individuals detained overseas and extradited to the United States to be tried for alleged crimes committed abroad.

Moreover, said Ben Berwick, an attorney for Protect Democracy, according to data provided by the Justice Department under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, at least 189 of the individuals included in the total of 549 convicted were caught up in an international-terrorism investigation but not charged with an offense directly related to terrorism. It is unclear how many of these people were born overseas or in the United States, he said.

‘‘This is a government report claiming to make factual assertions,’’ he said, ‘‘and it’s really clear that the data is questionable and the use of the data is questionable.’’

The key issue with the report, said Joshua Geltzer, a former National Security Council senior director for counterterrorism, is it emphasizes a person’s place of birth as a ‘‘meaningful predictor’’ of terrorist activity rather than understanding the radicalization process.

‘‘There are US citizens born and bred here who unfortunately radicalize, too,’’ said Geltzer, now at Georgetown University’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection.

The report says that 147 individuals convicted of international-terrorism charges were US citizens by birth. But much of it details cases involving people born overseas who entered the United States through the immigration process or as refugees.

The former officials’ letter said the report plays into terrorists’ hands, noting that ‘‘one particularly common way for terrorists to attempt to weaken their stronger adversaries is to sow discord and prod them into turning on themselves.’’ Echoing language used in the debate over how to deter Russian interference in US democracy, the letter said that ‘‘cultivating resilience against terrorism thus relies in part on ensuring that the public accurately understands the real nature of the terrorist threat.’’

The real drivers of terrorism are disaffection, a lack of belonging, ‘‘a grandiose desire to be part of something seen as ‘bigger,’ and a gradual numbing to the humanness of potential victims,’’ the letter said.

‘‘The Trump administration wants to blame the immigration system for things that happened 15 to 20 years after people flowed through the system,’’ Geltzer said. ‘‘That’s a radicalization problem. Not an immigration problem.’’

Source: Trump administration draws fire for ‘misleading’ report linking terrorism, immigration

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

PEI scraps business immigration program criticized for oversight problems

2018/09/15 Leave a comment

Overdue. Now for Quebec to do the same, given that large numbers end up in British Columbia, using Quebec as a back door:

Prince Edward Island is scrapping a controversial business immigration program which prompted federal investigations alleging hundreds of applicants never settled on the Island.

The provincial government said Wednesday it will no longer accept applications from immigrants looking to set up a business on the Island in the entrepreneur stream of the Provincial Nominee Program.

The immigration program has faced criticism for granting permanent residency status — a coveted step towards full citizenship — before businesses were set up and people actually moved to P.E.I.

Under the program, the applicants provide the Island government with a $200,000 refundable deposit, and commit to invest $150,000 and manage a firm.

A spokesman for the Office of Immigration says in 2016-17 over half of all the 269 applicants who had “completed their agreements” forfeited their deposit and never opened a business, raising $18 million for the small province.

In addition, last year The Canadian Press reported on how three international students were asked by owners of businesses created under the program to return a portion of their wages to the business immigrants. In one case, a student said he was fired when he refused, and in two other cases, the students said they agreed to give back a portion of their income in cash.

Progressive Conservative Leader James Aylward said Wednesday the program bred public distrust and should have been cancelled years ago.

“It never passed the sniff test,” he said in an interview.

“Our retention rate was dismal … The government raked tens of millions of dollars from defaulted deposits.”

The province had said it was conducting a review into the program, shortly after a series of investigations by the Canada Border Services Agency became public.

The Canadian Press also recently reported on a search warrant application by the agency that alleged hundreds of people gained permanent residency in Canada by using local addresses where they didn’t live, using the PNP entrepreneur stream.

An investigator alleged 462 applicants to the provincial nominee program used Charlottetown homes belonging to two Chinese immigrants over the past four years as “addresses of convenience.”

The investigator also said she suspected the immigrants didn’t come to the Island and settle, contrary to the requirements of the provincial program.

Those allegations, which have not been proven in court, came two months after two Charlottetown hoteliers were charged with aiding in immigration fraud, with the CBSA alleging 566 immigrants used the addresses of the siblings’ hotel and home.

The siblings have pleaded not guilty to immigration fraud charges, and their lawyer, Lee Cohen, has said there will be discussion with prosecutors about the sworn statements provided by the two accused.

Cohen says he’s suggested “the possibility that the statements were not voluntarily given” in the case.

Chris Palmer, the province’s minister of Economic Development, said in an interview that he wasn’t forced by the federal government to shut down the program, despite the high-profile investigations.

“The feds didn’t intervene and tell us to do this, no,” he said.

Rather, he said it was due to his department’s disappointment with its results in retaining immigrants on the Island.

“We weren’t satisfied with it as our rates of retention weren’t as high as we wanted them to be,” he said.

However, Richard Kurland, an immigration lawyer based in Vancouver, said he sees a relationship between Ottawa’s probes and the shutdown of the program.

“Trials involving the P.E.I. program start soon, so no surprise to see the P.E.I. government shutting down the program before all is revealed,” he wrote in an email.

Kurland has long argued the Island’s system should mirror British Columbia’s program, which approves a business project first, makes the person spend two years on a work permit to ensure business success, and then requires the applicant to live near the business at least nine months a year.

“Only after that is done and the business is successful will the province hand over a ‘nomination certificate’ that lets the person apply for a permanent resident visa,” he wrote.

“P.E.I. had it backwards, handing over the ‘nomination certificate’ first. That’s not the way to go and the … design flaw gave rise to a lot of problems.”

“Keep the candy until the person lives up to their promises.”

The province is noting that the entrepreneur stream is only a small part of the total number of immigrants it nominates.

It will continue to have a program where it nominates immigrants for work permits, where they will only be granted permanent residency if they fulfil their commitments to set up a business.

It will also continue to nominate immigrants who fill the province’s labour needs.

The number of nominations accepted under the nominee stream currently totals about 150 people, which is about 15 per cent of the roughly 1,070 provincially sponsored immigrants expected to be nominated this year.

Source: PEI scraps business immigration program criticized for oversight problems

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

In Sweden, Populist Nationalists Won on Policy, but Lost on Politics

2018/09/14 Leave a comment

Geert Wilders had a similar effect on Dutch politics, shifting the consensus to the right and anti-immigration.
If Bernier succeeds in creating a new party, and if that party gains some support, it could have a similar effect but, IMO, much smaller effect given Canadian demographic and political realities:
Never mind the headlines: Sunday’s election in Sweden was a major setback for the far right. The populist-nationalist Sweden Democrats may have seen their percentage of the vote increase from 13 percent in 2014 to just shy of 18 percent this year, but they and many experts anticipated a much higher share; some even predicted that they would become the largest party in the country. Such an outcome would have been in keeping with their history of rapid growth, of more than doubling their previous tally in every election since 1998. Instead, they posted unexpectedly meager gains, which will do little to strengthen their influence in a deadlocked parliament where all other parties, center-right as well as left, refuse to negotiate with them.And yet, this conclusion is the result of what some may consider a troubling bargain. In past contests, the Sweden Democrats’ keystone political cause of reducing immigration had been used to stigmatize the party. This year, multiple parties —including the center-left Social Democrats and center-right Moderates—included calls for reduction in their platform.

The anti-immigration position was normalized even as it was neutralized.

At the center of this drama is an unusually complicated political party. When compared to other nationalist forces in Europe, the Sweden Democrats appear relatively moderate. They expel members who make explicitly racist or anti-Semitic statements, claim to reject ethno-nationalism, endorse a pathway toward full civic and cultural membership for Sweden’s minorities, have shown little love for global strongmen such as Russian President Vladimir Putin or President Donald Trump, and are headed by Jimmie Åkesson—a blushing mother-in-law’s dream with gentle mannerisms. But if style and policy place the Sweden Democrats on the softer side of global anti-immigrant movements, their history does not: They were born in 1988 from the merger of a tax-populist party and a white-nationalist organization.

Despite the Sweden Democrats’ internal reform campaigns aimed at repelling radicalism, most Swedes were horrified when the party first entered parliament in 2010 with 5.7 percent of the vote. In their eyes, homegrown neo-Nazis had marched into government, thrashing a global reputation of exceptional tolerance and progressivism in the process. For existing parties, dialogue with the newcomers was out of the question: It was acquiescence to extremism. Moral consensus and political logic seemed to dictate the repudiation of the Sweden Democrats and all they stood for, first and foremost their agenda to restrict immigration. Commitment to Sweden’s generous refugee policy became dogma.It was a righteous stand, perhaps, but also a short-sighted one. Sizable minorities of Swedes since the late 1990s have wanted reductions in the number of immigrants admitted to the country as well as more emphasis on assimilation rather than multiculturalism. Those sentiments had no outlet in establishment politics, creating an opportunity for the Sweden Democrats. Scandal after scandal—including those revealing that its lower ranks included racist ideologues and anti-Semites—could not stop the party’s growth so long as it held the monopoly on immigration skepticism. Whether motivated by economics, cultural concerns, or racism, voters seeking cuts in immigration had only one option. That remained true even after the Sweden Democrats climbed to a 12.9 percent share of the vote in 2014.

But an unprecedented shift in Swedish politics came the following year. War, poverty, and political strife across North Africa and the Middle East sparked a massive wave of immigration to Europe, and Sweden was one of the prime destinations. By the end of 2015, Sweden had received upwards of 160,000 asylum seekers, more per capita than any other country in Europe.

Prime Minister Stefan Löfven initially said there was theoretically no limit to the number of immigrants Sweden could embrace. But it soon became clear that a limit had in fact been reached. Sweden’s schools, hospitals, and law enforcement could not handle such numbers. In late November 2015, the center-left government, headed by the Social Democrats and the Green Party, initiated restrictions on refugee immigration. And the center-right Moderate Party, whose leader just a year before had called on Swedes to “open their hearts” and allow large-scale immigration to continue, called for closed borders.

It was a U-turn on Swedish politics’ definitive issue. (American readers looking for a comparison might imagine the Democratic Party ending Social Security, or Republicans annulling the Second Amendment.) And its implicit message was bitter for the political establishment. The Sweden Democrats had been right: Refugee migration was destabilizing the country.

Forced by circumstance, with great reluctance and occasional pain—the Green Party leader sobbed as she announced cuts to refugee migration during a press conference—Sweden’s politicians moved toward a new political consensus. The country’s largest parties, the Social Democrats and the Moderates, as well as the center-right Christian Democrats, adopted platforms calling for reduced immigration, and they carried those positions into elections this year.The parties differed on how much of a reduction they sought and how to achieve it. There was enough cross-party agreement, however, to make immigration a somewhat boring topic of debate in this year’s election. Immigration was just one subject among many, sharing space with youth unemployment, health care, and gender equality.

In a sense, then, the Sweden Democrats succeeded beyond their wildest dreams: Parties espousing restrictions to immigration received a combined three-quarters of the vote, and ideas once confined to the far right spread into the establishment. Yet if the Sweden Democrats won on policy, they lost their political cudgel. The far-right party will not have the opportunity to implement its long-desired reductions in immigration, or any other policy for that matter. Future border restrictions will be pursued by centrists, and in the eyes of many Swedes, this will mean more thoughtful and compassionate policy.

Source: In Sweden, Populist Nationalists Won on Policy, but Lost on Politics

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

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