Immigration In Germany: Separating Signal From Noise After Chemnitz

2018/09/27 Leave a comment

Informative regarding the divide between former East and West Germany and those with an immigrant background or not.

There is a theory in migration and integration studies that the more foreigners one is exposed to the less hostile one becomes to them. It is known as the Contact Hypothesis. The inverse is that the less interaction between groups the more hostility one could expect.

The recent anti-immigrant rioting in Chemnitz and Köthen, two of the cities with the lowest immigration in Germany, appears to bear this idea out in a vivid way. It was a display that shocked many Germans and has caused a somewhat separate political scandal. Above all, the hand-wringing is about how, in politically liberal Germany, such displays of outright xenophobia could be possible. This is where the Contact Hypothesis comes into it and can help us to understand what’s going on.

“I think it makes perfect sense to think (in terms of the hypothesis) because there are so few people coming from abroad or from foreign countries into Eastern Germany,” said Dr. Hans Vorländer, German political scientist and member of the Expert Council of German Foundations on Integration and Migration (SVR). “There is a kind of xenophobia, they just don’t know what these people are all about so they are not used to contact with them.”

As of the end of 2017 both Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt, the East German states that contain Chemnitz and Köthen respectively, had around 48 foreigners per thousand inhabitants. That is less than half the national figure of 128.4 and significantly lower than national leaders Berlin (246.7) and Bremen (185.1). In fact, the combined average for all the states of former East Germany (excluding Berlin as the statistics don’t discriminate between former East and West) is 47.1 while the average for the former states of West Germany is nearly three times that at just under 137.

Eastern states, however, show markedly more anti-foreigner attacks than in the west. According to the annual Status of German Unity report for 2016, which looks at the continuing divides between East and West, there were significantly more violent attacks motivated by right-wing extremism in the former East German states, with an average of 45.7 attacks per million inhabitants, compared to the 10.5 attacks per million inhabitants in former West German states.

At the same time, support for the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is strongest in East Germany, and Dresden, Saxony’s second largest city, is the home turf of the far-right anti-Islamist movement PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West).

But despite all the hand-wringing about the rise of xenophobia in Germany, things long-term might not be quite as extreme as the headline numbers would lead one to think. The SVR just released their 2018 Integration Barometerwhich measures public sentiment on the integration of first- and second-generation migrants into German life. The barometer shows that despite a slight drop in their key metric on integration, from 65.4 in 2015 to 63.8 in 2017/18, people still had a positive attitude overall toward integration in the country.

Drawing conclusions from the barometer is a little tricky, as certain ethnic and cultural groups tend to push the overall number in one or another direction on certain issues. For instance, according to the barometer, 60% of those without a migration background believe Germany should continue to receive refugees, “even if it were the only EU member state to do so.” This overall number is pushed up by the overwhelmingly positive response from people of Turkish descent, while the majority of ethnic Germans were against receiving more refugees.

Despite those caveats, one thing is clear, and it brings us back to the Contact Hypothesis. From the report: “It is above all people without a migration background who have hardly any or no contact with cultural diversity who regard integration more pessimistically, especially those living in Germanyʼs eastern federal states.”

For a long time, Dr. Vorländer has been researching the far-right in Germany, and he says it’s clear there is an anti-immigrant sentiment in East Germany but it is not at the level of an existential problem for the country: “There is hostility, there is xenophobia and there is Islamophobia, to a greater extent than in West Germany. But it’s not that high, it’s a small percentage that makes the difference.”

Nonetheless, and even though studies such as the SVR integration barometer point towards the relative health of the system, it’s understandable some people want to see something done to lessen the hostility in East Germany and improve relations between migrants and “native” Germans.

Though the solution will never be simple, for researchers such as Dr. Vorländer the Contact Hypothesis provides something of a road-map: “The authorities have to support any kind of network within civil society that increases interaction between refugees, migrants and the people.” He said he’s optimistic in the long run but, as with so many problems, integration in East Germany is not one to be fixed overnight: “It takes time, you know, it takes time and it takes an awful lot of constant work, maybe it takes 20 to 30 years to find some forms of successful integration.”

And indeed such integration could be vital to the country’s future overall, and to reviving East Germany’s flagging economy. The same Status of German Unity report quoted above also suggested skilled immigration from the EU and beyond would be beneficial to East Germany, as Dr. Vorländer emphasizes: “We need migration for reasons of the job market, it’s very essential. We need labor migration, we need people coming in and it’s the only solution for the future in East Germany.”

Source: Immigration In Germany: Separating Signal From Noise After Chemnitz

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Here’s how to beat the populists: stop talking about immigration

2018/09/27 Leave a comment

Not sure whether this approach will be anymore effective but it does have the advantage of addressing the more fundamental and broader threat of populism to the rule of law:

While the British Brexit debate rages on, it continues to ignore entirely a more important European political battle: the search for the best way to defeat populists on the continent within the next eight months – the time left before the EU parliamentary elections. That little of this seems to get factored into internal British discourse is not surprising: for all the headlines about Theresa May’s “Salzburg humiliation” or “EU dirty rats”, Brexit is essentially the British talking to themselves.

Across the Channel, a new line of attack against Europe’s populists is taking shape: it focuses on breaches to democratic rule of law, rather than the issue of immigration. That’s why the most important piece of EU news this month was not the Salzburg situation (entirely predictable) but the 12 September vote in the EU parliament on the rule of law in Hungary (much less so). For the first time, an EU institution which is hard to describe as “anti-democratic” (it is elected directly by its citizens) called for the activation of article 7 procedure against a member state’s government because of the way it has been disemboweling essential democratic institutions and rights.

For a long time now, Europe’s liberal democrats have been struggling to curtail political forces that threaten core principles. But since the 2015 refugee crisis they have let themselves get dragged into precisely the debate that populists can thrive on: migration. Not only was the EU at a loss over how to deal with the arrival of a million people in 2015, but its liberals have mostly failed to convince large swaths of the population that immigration is needed, that it needn’t upend social services, and that it does not spell the end of a certain sense of European or national identity.

Migration conjures up fears that rational argument struggles to cope with. Hungary’s avowedly “illiberal” Viktor Orbán and Italy’s far-right Matteo Salvini have secured major electoral breakthroughs by relentlessly pounding away at migration, depicted as a “Muslim invasion” (Orbán) or as something that requires “mass cleansing, street by street” (Salvini). With that rhetoric, they are now preparing to launch their bid to take control of the EU parliament, along with like-minded European politicians.

With that rhetoric also, the Swedish far right has won a position that allows it to foster political instability, as shown by this week’s no-confidence vote in Stockholm. Pushing back at these forces with talk of multiculturalism and inclusiveness will go only so far. A better strategy is to nail them on the democratic rule of law. That’s where the populist achilles heel is found; and it’s where the EU has tools to act, such as article 7, which can suspend EU voting rights, or European court rulings.

By this, I certainly don’t mean that the moral and legal argument for saving people fleeing war and persecution should not be made. But it may be too late now, before the May 2019 vote, to shift those parts of public opinion in Europe that have come to believe asylum is shorthand for demographic upheaval or “replacement”. Studies show European citizens overestimate the percentage of migrants in their countries (Italians believe it is three times higher than the real figure). The bare fact that migration flows have dropped steeply since 2015 does not register in perceptions. It is no coincidence that anti-immigration narratives have now spread from Europe’s hard right to its hard left – with Germany’s Sahra Wagenknecht and France’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon arguing that the arrival of migrants is a capitalist European plot to suppress workers’ wages.

At this point, to shift the argument against Europe’s extremes away from migration makes much better sense.

Saying that the democratic rule of law is under siege holds more political potential. This is what happened on 12 September, when two-thirds of European lawmakers drew a line marking what is acceptable and what isn’t. Think of it as a case of European checks and balances at last kicking in. The resolution voted through that day is a clear indictment of everything Orbán has done to violate democratic standards, from restricting freedom of the press to undermining the electoral system. It ought to serve as a template for a wider grassroots European campaign to protect the democratic rule of law.

Rather than lambasting Orbán for rejecting the 2015 EU refugee redistribution scheme (compulsory quotas that never translated into reality), cornering him on the dismantling of mechanisms that give citizens a proper say in democracy, and allow them to make informed decisions, is likely to be more rewarding. A better way to counter Orbán and Salvini is to focus on how they threaten what protects citizens. Populists aim to destroy the safety that comes from being able to count on an independent judge if you have been the victim of abuse; the safety that comes with getting pluralistic information, not state propaganda; the safety that comes from being confident your shop or your business won’t be choked by kleptocratic, corrupt power networks.

It helps to picture populists as a bulldozer over which a large banner reading Migrants Out has been slapped to hide the grinding wheels and huge metal shovel that are busy dismantling the democratic rule of law. It’s happened in Hungary and Poland, and it’s threatening to happen in Italy if Salvini gets his way. Ask a European citizen if they want more migrants and they may answer uneasily. Ask them if they want their government to deprive them of the tools that give people a say and the protections that come with democratic rule, and the response will be more forthright.

Rule of law – as a shield against abuse of power and corruption – should be the signature theme of next year’s election.

Choice of vocabulary matters too. Framing the debate as a battle of “progressives versus nationalists” has limits because populists will push back by equating “progressivism” with enforcing “open-border” or “anti-Christian” policies. A shrewder approach would be to cast this existential battle for Europe’s soul as “democrats versus authoritarians”. At the end of the day, our common enemy is autocracy. Arbitrary rule leaves citizens unprotected; Europe’s body of law protects them. Populists want that to come undone, so they can redraw the continent as they like. That’s where the real, immediate danger lies – not in all the fantasising that, from Brexit to Orbán, has surrounded migration.

Source: Here’s how to beat the populists: stop talking about immigration

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Des demandeurs d’asile revendiquent l’accès aux services de garde subventionnés

2018/09/26 Leave a comment

I understand the logic as labour market permits, school attendance and healthcare already available to claimants. However, given shortage of childcare spaces, expect some political pushback.

Will be interesting to see how Commission responds:

Dans une démarche inusitée, des demandeurs d’asile portent plainte pour discrimination devant la Commission québécoise des droits de la personne et de la jeunesse, parce qu’ils n’ont pas accès aux services de garde subventionnés, a appris La Presse.

Cette exclusion oblige plusieurs d’entre eux à refuser un emploi et les contraint à vivre de l’aide sociale, ce qui retarde leur processus d’intégration.

Parallèlement, dans une lettre ouverte, un comité qui regroupe une quarantaine de demandeurs d’asile appelle le gouvernement à ouvrir les garderies subventionnées aux personnes en attente de statut.

Une réglementation laissant place à interprétation a longtemps permis aux demandeurs d’asile d’inscrire leurs enfants dans un CPE. Dans une directive envoyée en avril dernier, le ministère de la Famille a clairement fermé cette brèche.

Les demandeurs d’asile n’ont pas non plus accès aux remboursements anticipés du crédit d’impôt qui aident les familles à faible revenu à assumer les frais des garderies privées. Concrètement, cela exclut des centaines d’enfants nouvellement arrivés au Québec du réseau des garderies.

Cette politique «nous empêche d’accéder à la francisation et à l’emploi, nous isole avec nos enfants de la société qu’on voudrait activement intégrer et affecte surtout les femmes demandeuses d’asile», déplore le comité des demandeurs d’asile dans sa lettre ouverte, qui réclame l’accès aux CPE et aux versements anticipés du crédit d’impôt pour frais de garde.

Effets dévastateurs

La politique d’exclusion a un effet «dévastateur» sur les familles, dénoncent les demandeurs d’asile.

C’est ainsi qu’une des plaignantes, Blessing, Nigériane de 30 ans arrivée au Québec en avril dernier, a dû refuser deux offres d’emploi, l’une dans une usine de matériel électrique, l’autre dans un centre d’appels, parce qu’elle n’avait pas les moyens de payer une garderie privée pour son enfant de 4 ans.

«Je me sens coincée, impuissante et déprimée», confie la demandeuse d’asile, qui préfère taire son nom de famille et qui veut gagner sa vie en attendant que la Commission de l’immigration et du statut de réfugié (CISR) statue sur son sort – ce qui peut prendre jusqu’à 18 mois.

Au lieu de ça, déplore-t-elle, elle est dépendante de l’aide sociale.

Un autre plaignant, Vladimyr Mathieu, arrivé d’Haïti en juin 2017, vit une situation particulière. Son fils né à Montréal n’a pas accès au service de garde. Pourtant, il est citoyen canadien. Sa fille aînée, née en Haïti, a été admise en garderie avant la directive d’avril dernier, et continue à profiter de son droit acquis – pourtant, elle n’est pas citoyenne. La garderie qu’elle fréquente est disposée à accueillir son petit frère, mais Québec refuse de contribuer aux frais. La demande d’inscription a donc été rejetée.

Pour que Valdimyr et sa femme, qui occupent tous deux un emploi, puissent continuer à travailler, ils se sont résolus à faire garder leur plus jeune enfant, âgé de 1 an, par un voisin, une situation que les deux demandeurs d’asile jugent insatisfaisante.

«Je ne comprends pas, le système nous demande de travailler, nous recevons un permis de travail, mais nous n’avons pas accès aux garderies; c’est comme si on nous disait de rester sur l’aide sociale pour prendre soin de nos enfants», déplore Valdimyr Mathieu.

Au total, six demandeurs d’asile vivant des situations semblables, à un moment où les délais de traitement des dossiers s’allongent, ont demandé à la Commission des droits de la personne d’examiner leur plainte.

L’exclusion des services de garde est discriminatoire, tout particulièrement pour les femmes, qu’il s’agisse de mères seules ou de conjointes étant les plus susceptibles de rester à la maison pour prendre soin des enfants, soutient le comité de demandeurs d’asile dans sa lettre ouverte.

«Les travailleurs temporaires ont bien accès aux garderies, alors que les demandeurs d’asile, qui disposent d’un permis de travail, en sont exclus, je ne comprends pas la logique de cette politique», s’étonne l’une des signataires de la lettre ouverte, l’avocate Claude-Catherine Lemoine, selon qui ce traitement à géométrie variable n’a pas de raison d’être et entraîne à moyen terme des coûts sociaux importants.

«C’est complètement contre-productif, ça pénalise non seulement les familles, mais aussi la société québécoise, parce que ça retarde l’apprentissage du français et l’intégration au marché du travail», croit Stephan Reichhold, de la Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiées et immigrantes.

«En barrant l’accès aux CPE aux demandeurs d’asile, on se tire simplement dans le pied», résume-t-il.

Écoles, mais pas les garderies

Depuis l’adoption du projet de loi 144, à la fin de 2017, tous les enfants, incluant ceux des demandeurs d’asile, ont accès au système scolaire. «Si on veut être cohérent, on devrait étendre ça aux garderies», plaide Geneviève Binette, du Comité d’aide aux réfugiés.

D’autant plus que ce n’est pas par manque de places que les garderies refoulent les enfants de demandeurs d’asile, mais à cause d’une politique gouvernementale.

La quarantaine de demandeurs d’asile qui ont formé le comité demandant l’accès aux services de garde ont dû surmonter des résistances intérieures, souligne Rachel Shugart, du Collectif Bienvenue, qui vient en aide aux nouveaux arrivants.

Membre, à titre personnel, du comité formé par les demandeurs d’asile, Rachel Shugart souligne que plusieurs d’entre eux viennent de pays qui ne respectent pas les droits. La démarche était «effrayante pour eux, ils se sentent inquiets, nerveux», selon Rachel Shugart.

Mais ces nouveaux venus en attente de statut sont aussi déterminés à accéder aussi vite que possible à l’autonomie financière et à ne plus dépendre de l’aide de l’État.

Source: Des demandeurs d’asile revendiquent l’accès aux services de garde subventionnés

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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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