A Harvard study shows that just thinking of “immigrants” makes people less generous

2018/07/05 Leave a comment

Interesting study and correlation (Canada not included, unfortunately):

Immigration has become a defining topic of elections and politics globally, from the US to the UK. Germany was the latest to capitulate to xenophobic tendencies, with chancellor Angela Merkel dialing back her policy of welcoming refugees and immigrants to appease immigration hawks within her own government.

A group of Harvard University researchers looked at the common threads between the backlash against immigrants in those and other developed countries. Their findings, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research last month, point to misinformation and prejudice.

The study, written by Alberto Alesina, Armando Miano, and Stefanie Stantcheva, asked two sets of questions to a statistically representative sample of 22,500 people from France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, the UK, and the US. One set was related to immigrants, defined as people living in their adopted country legally. The other was about wealth redistribution and welfare benefits. The order in which respondents answered the two sets of questions was randomized.

The study’s results: Making people think about immigration is an effective way to turn them off social programs to reduce poverty.

The people who answered the immigration questions first were “more averse to redistribution, believe inequality is less of a serious problem, and donate less to charity,” write the researchers. This was true even in European countries where support for welfare benefits is typically high.

Why does thinking about immigration make people less generous?

It likely has to do with their inaccurate perceptions about immigrants. Respondents to the Harvard poll in all countries saw immigrants as being poorer, more reliant on welfare, and less educated than they really were.

With the exception of the French, all respondents overestimated the share of Muslim immigrants and underestimated the share of Christians. They also estimated that immigrants were more numerous than they really are. In US, the country where disparity between perceptions and actual numbers was the most striking, respondents put immigrants’ share of the country’s population at 36%. It’s only 10%.

The inaccurate perceptions, the study notes, are systematic across income and education levels in all countries. This kind of prejudice makes for a politically powerful tool for those trying to cut back social benefits.

“Anti-redistribution parties, even those not averse to immigration per se, can play the immigration card to generate backlash against redistribution,” the researchers wrote.

Source: A Harvard study shows that just thinking of “immigrants” makes people less generous

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De plus en plus d’immigrants en emploi au Québec

2018/07/05 Leave a comment

The above chart compares unemployment levels in the larger Canadian provinces with non-visible minorities (the vast bulk of recent immigrants). The report below focuses on numbers, and the relative share of employment in Montreal compared to the regions, and thus is less meaningful:

Même si leur taux d’emploi général demeure inférieur à celui des travailleurs nés au Canada, les immigrants sont de plus en plus présents sur le marché du travail, et cela suit d’ailleurs la courbe démographique.

Au cours des dix dernières années (2006-2017), les immigrants ont occupé un peu plus de la moitié des quelque 480 000 emplois nets créés, selon un nouveau bulletin de l’Institut de la statistique du Québec à l’aide des données de l’Enquête sur la population active (EPA) de Statistique Canada.

Voici trois faits saillants commentés.

Le taux de surqualification est en hausse chez les immigrants

Ce taux est passé de 37 % en 2006 à 44 % en 2017. Les immigrants récemment arrivés ont le taux de surqualification le plus élevé, qui peut s’expliquer par les délais dans la reconnaissance des diplômes, le temps qu’il leur faut pour trouver un emploi dans leur domaine, etc. Mais ce qui surprend est de voir qu’il s’est aggravé pour les immigrants qui sont ici depuis plus de 5 ans, passant de 33 % en 2006 à 42 % dix ans plus tard.


« Normalement, étant donné qu’il y a des interventions politiques pour aider les immigrants à s’intégrer, qu’on est plus conscient, on aurait dû solutionner le problème entre 2006 et 2017. Mais ces chiffres nous disent que ce n’est pas réglé, au contraire, ça s’est aggravé », soutient Marie-Thérèse Chicha, professeure à l’École des relations industrielles de l’Université de Montréal.

Chez les travailleurs nés au Canada, le taux de surqualification (27 %) est demeuré pratiquement inchangé en dix ans.

C’est surtout à Montréal que les immigrants travaillent

Bien qu’il y ait une pénurie de main-d’oeuvre dans les régions du Québec et que la régionalisation de l’immigration soit dans les plans des partis politiques, il semblerait que les immigrants travaillent surtout à Montréal. Sur les 250 000 emplois nets qu’ils ont occupés, 4 nouveaux emplois sur 5 seraient dans la métropole.


Durant les dix dernières années, c’est une proportion qui a augmenté, passant de 20 % à 26 %. C’est normal, selon Mme Chicha.

« Ils arrivent d’abord à Montréal et c’est là qu’il y a le plus de possibilités », fait-elle remarquer. « Si on les oblige à aller en région, il faudra trouver un emploi au conjoint ou à la conjointe et ça prend des services d’accueil. Mais déjà, on voit que les régions n’arrivent pas à attirer des natifs, alors pourquoi les immigrants y iraient ? »

Par ailleurs, les immigrants demeurent sous-représentés à Québec et à Sherbrooke.

La santé et les services sociaux sont les secteurs les plus prisés

C’est dans ces domaines qu’on enregistre la plus forte croissance de l’emploi chez les immigrants (50 000 emplois sur 250 000).

C’est toutefois dans l’industrie du transport et de l’entreposage que la croissance a été la plus forte au cours des dix dernières années (en hausse de 13 points de pourcentage), suivie de la finance (8 points de pourcentage).

Les immigrants sont cependant sous-représentés dans les secteurs de la fabrication et de la culture et des loisirs.

Source: De plus en plus d’immigrants en emploi au Québec

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The hottest new space to disrupt is immigration

2018/07/05 Leave a comment

Ayah Bdeir of littleBits (invention kits) on the role of tech in immigration debates:

Tech CEOs and founders are disrupting everything from travel to food, to space, to sleep. Now it’s time to disrupt a process that so many of us have relied on to get where we are today: immigration. According to a study by the National Foundation for American Policy, immigrants have founded more than half of U.S. startup companies that are valued at more than one billion dollars.

With all that is happening around us, now is the time for entrepreneurs to use their playbook for disrupting markets and apply it to immigration as a space — not for a financial upside, but for a more social, human upside.

Turning a problem into an opportunity

One of the most important lessons you learn as an entrepreneur is outlining the problem you are trying to solve and turning it into an opportunity.

Economists generally agree that immigration has net positive effects on both the sending and receiving countries. Contrary to popular belief, immigration doesn’t increase crime rates or take jobs awayfrom native workers. In fact, according to The Silicon Valley Competitiveness and Innovation Project Report, almost every major tech hub has more foreign-born workers than domestic ones.

Before solving a problem, we have to agree on the facts. Research shows that people in many western countries greatly overestimate the number of immigrants — in this case, Muslim immigrants — coming into their country. Misinformation makes it difficult to pursue effective solutions.

Source: The Guardian

There’s an opportunity to educate ourselves and instead highlight the economic and innovation opportunity that immigration offers. Immigrants provide access to more talent, more diverse thinking and more creativity.

Dr. Adrian Furnham, a professor of psychology at University College London who studies immigrants and entrepreneurship said, “What I’ve found is that immigrants not only have the qualities that help any entrepreneurs succeed—including aggressiveness and creative thinking—but they get a big boost because many of the skills they picked up coping with a new world are transferable to the entrepreneurial world.”

Rebranding the word “immigrant”

Another important step in an entrepreneur’s playbook relates to changing perceptions. Airbnb, for example, had to challenge people’s assumption that opening their home to strangers was a dangerous and risky endeavor. Now, facilitating these types of interactions is an act of hospitality and the beginning of a friendship.

More and more recently, the word “immigrant” has become a bad word. We have the responsibility to rebrand it to mean “maker” not “taker.” Look at Hamdi Ulukaya, the Turkish immigrant who created the Chobani yogurt empire. He employs 3,000+ people and has given them 10 percent of the shares in the company.

When people research the word “immigrant” online, they need to find Ulukaya’s story. They need to find images of successful, eloquent and positive entrepreneurs and leaders. That’s why it’s so important to speak as immigrants. To tell the story of how we came here and the challenges we’ve had to overcome. It’s tempting to try to blend in, but we have to infuse the word “immigration” with more positive visuals.

The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) established the Center for New North Carolinians (CNNC), with the aim of supporting refugees and immigrants living in the local community. CNNC piloted a STEM club program for female refugees and immigrants using littleBits’ electronic building blocks. Photos from the CNNC STEM Club, courtesy of littleBits

Taking [commercial] risks

In January 2017 when the Trump administration’s travel ban was first implemented, littleBits posted a billboard in Times Square that said in English and Arabic: “We Invent the World We Want to Live In.” We wanted people to associate Arabic script with a positive, inclusive message. It was the first time I decided to speak to my background as an Arab and Muslim immigrant. The public response, the impact on our team culture and the feeling of having stood up for what’s right made me bolder about using my platform to speak out.

That’s why, when the debate around immigration rose up again in response to family separation at the border, I knew I had to say something.

At littleBits, being from “another” place is a reality; we are a company built on diversity. We have close to 20 languages in the office, a multitude of religions and about 20 percent of us have visas or green cards or were born in other countries. I myself know firsthand the struggle that immigrants face — I’ve had to flee my country of Lebanon three times for my own safety.

So, last week I joined leaders from Facebook, Twitter, Airbnb and Microsoft and made my voice heard. I announced a donation program and wrote a blog post that opened with: “We at littleBits strive to separate politics from our work. But when something touches human rights, it is no longer about politics. It becomes about justice.”

And you know what? Like most things in America today, the reaction we received was polarizing. Some people said that speaking out was an “admirable move” and that it was clear we were focused on “making a big difference.” On the other hand, 27 percent of respondents explicitly told us they would be less likely to purchase littleBits products as a result of us speaking out. One loyal customer told us they would now “actively discourage” their children from buying or using our products. Another said they would “throw [their] Bits in the trash.”

And yet, I stand by our statement.

The business risks involved with speaking out are real. But to me, putting a flag in the ground is always worth it. One email, one blog post, one donation at a time, I protect the diversity of my team, my company, and the country in which I reside. History will judge us if we quietly allow our government to strip us of the diversity and innovation that make America so amazing.

As entrepreneurs, we have a platform. Despite the potential costs, we must use this platform to put ourselves out there, to speak out on the issues that matter to our country, our businesses and ourselves. There may be financial downside and yes, it will be more difficult to quantify the human upside, but I for one am willing to take a gamble that net, it will be a positive.

Source: The hottest new space to disrupt is immigration

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Council that regulates immigration consultants accused of fraud, forgery and human rights violations

2018/07/04 Leave a comment

Not the first time the Council has faced scrutiny about its behaviour (Agency that oversees immigration consultants appears to be in turmoil):

The council that oversees the work of thousands of immigration consultants in Canada is facing serious allegations from one of its own members.

Muhammad Watto, 54, alleges in court documents that the Immigration Consultants of Canada Regulatory Council (ICCRC) has engaged in fraud, forgery and human rights violations.

Watto, who has been a long-time critic of the council, has filed a notice of application under the Not-for-profit Corporation Act asking the Ontario Superior Court to order a formal investigation into the ICCRC, a non-profit organization that has been mandated by the federal government to regulate immigration, citizenship and international student advising services.

“I have observed myself some major discrepancies and some major alleged fraudulent activities concerning, not only the way they were handling public complaints, but also the way they were handling the funds,” said Watto, who has been a consultant for 12 years.

Among the allegations in the court filing are:

  • The directors and officers of the council are working against the charter, mandate and articles of the corporation and for their own self-interest.
  • Altering and forgery of financial statements.
  • Multiple counts of accounting fraud.
  • Failure to secure, or destruction of, financial records.
  • Open violations of human rights,

The notice of application also says the RCMP is reviewing information about the council’s activities.

Regulatory council set up in 2011

The allegations have yet to be proven in court and the council denies it has done anything wrong.

Details about the allegations have yet to be released.

The regulatory council, which was set up in 2011, sets the rules for how immigration consultants conduct themselves, providing education, licensing and discipline. It’s needed to help and protect those who want to come to Canada, overseeing more than 4,000 consultants. It is run by a 14-member board of directors.

If the council isn’t running smoothing, those who will suffer most are the immigrants and refugees who use consultants in their efforts to live in Canada.

The council also recently fired its president, Stephen Ashworth, who had been hired only a year ago.  Ashworth was the fifth president of the ICCRC, which was created in 2011 by the previous Conservative government to replace a prior body which was entangled in a number of problems.

Cindy Beverly, ICCRC director of communications, said Ashworth was relieved of his duties because “the board has a different alignment.”

Ashworth would not comment on his dismissal.

Recommendation that council be disbanded

This is not the first time the council has faced controversy. Last June, a parliamentary committee recommended that the government get rid of the council and step in to regulate consultants directly after hearing of problems facing the regulator from within.

Watto would support that recommendation.

“We want government to look into this and take over,” he said.

The ICCRC sent a written response to the CBC’s request for an interview about Watto’s allegations.

“The ICCRC is committed to good governance and financial probity. The ICCRC rejects Mr. Watto’s unsubstantiated allegations of misconduct,”  it reads in part.

It also noted that Watto is facing potential disciplinary action and revocation of his licence.

“I have not done anything wrong,” said Watto, who characterized the filing of a complaint against him as an attempt to intimidate him. He said the same thing has happened to other members who asked questions about the council’s transparency and accountability. Watto said the accusations against him are without merit.

Federal department says council operates at ‘arm’s length’

The department for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship said it is aware of the court action and the recent dismissal of Ashworth.

In a written statement it said “the ICCRC is the regulator of immigration consultants and is a self-governing organization that has an arm’s-length relationship with the department.”

As for the year-old recommendation that government scrap the council, the department said it “continues to closely analyze the report.”

Source: Council that regulates immigration consultants accused of fraud, forgery and human rights violations

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Federal budget watchdog to take deep dive into costs of asylum seekers

2018/07/03 Leave a comment

Notwithstanding the politics behind the request, useful to have the PBO do an independent analysis:

Canada’s budget watchdog will crunch the numbers to shed light on the total costs of a surge in asylum seekers.

In response to a request from Conservative MP Larry Maguire, the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) will take on a global accounting exercise to determine what costs have been incurred to date and how much the stepped-up pace of irregular migration might cost in the future.

“We just need to know, as Canadians, what the costs are and how the government intends to handle it in the future, given that many of our communities are becoming very loaded with the numbers of refugees, coming in to Toronto, Montreal and other areas,” Maguire said.

“We need to know from these various departments just what the total costs are going to be.”

More than 23,000 people have crossed into Canada outside official border points in the last year, most of them in Quebec and Manitoba. Major cities such as Toronto and Montreal are buckling under the pressure to house and support the new arrivals.

In a letter to the PBO, Maguire said the asylum seeker spike has created “serious financial strains and workloads” on several federal government departments, yet there has been little public reporting on costs.

Canadians ‘deserve to know’

“While this crisis has been ongoing for some time, the government has given no indication of what it has cost to facilitate the increasing numbers of irregular arrivals, nor has it shown any projections for what it may cost in the future,” he wrote. “I believe that Parliamentarians, and indeed all Canadians, deserve to know exactly what the influx of irregular arrivals at the border is costing their government.”

Maguire’s request calls for:

  • Total costs to date, including added costs to the Canada Border Services Agency, the RCMP, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, the Canadian Armed Forces and the Immigration Review Board, as well as any transfers to provinces or municipalities.
  • A projection of total costs to deal with similar numbers of irregular arrivals for the next several years, outlining the costs from the time a person irregularly enters Canada to when a final decision is made by the Immigration Refugee Board or Federal Court.

The PBO is charged with providing independent, non-partisan analysis on federal finances, government estimates and trends in the economy.

PBO spokesperson Sloane Mask could not say how long the accounting will take, but said the office has begun requesting information from various government departments.

“Once we have received the responses, we will be in a better position to gauge the timelines required to complete the analysis,” she wrote in an email.

Source: Federal budget watchdog to take deep dive into costs of asylum seekers

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ICYMI: Canada slammed for ‘culture of secrecy’ over immigration detention

2018/07/03 Leave a comment

Useful guarding against Canadian smugness:

Canada has come under fire for a lack of transparency in its immigration detention system and its practice of detaining vulnerable groups, including children and those with mental health conditions.

“The lack of independent national and international oversight bodies significantly contributes to the culture of secrecy surrounding the Canadian immigration detention system,” said a report by the Geneva-based Global Detention Project, an international research group that promotes the human rights of migrants in detention.

“There remain critical gaps in public information, including concerning which prisons are in use at any given time for immigration-related reasons.”

Immigration detention in Canada has been in the spotlight over the last two years with a series of deaths of migrants held in facilities for immigration violations. As of last November, the report said at least 16 people have died in immigration detention while in the custody of the Canada Border Services Agency since 2000.

On Wednesday, more than 2,000 Canadian health-care organizations and health-care providers, including doctors, nurses, social workers, psychologists and midwives, signed an open letter calling on Ottawa to stop detaining children and end the Canada-United States bilateral agreement that restricts refugees to seeking asylum in the first country of their arrival.

Although public pressure has prompted Ottawa to implement a new immigration detention framework to decrease the number of long-term detainees, reduce the use of maximum-security jails and expand the use of alternatives to detention, the report said there is no mention of limiting the length of time people are detained, or to establish formal and independent monitoring of detention conditions.

Citing statistics from the border agency, the report said 371 children were detained in the last two years, accompanying their detained parents or guardians, mostly for reasons of identity or because they are considered a flight risk. In other cases, they are separated from detained parents and placed in foster care.

Even when there are no grounds for detention, children may be “housed” in detention at federal immigration holding centres instead of jails. Nevertheless, they would still be housed separately from their fathers because family rooms are restricted to mothers and children, the report noted.

“These de facto child detainees are subject to the same detention conditions as those under formal detention orders. However, often resembling medium security prisons, detention facilities have been described by numerous rights groups as ‘woefully inadequate and unsuited for children,’” said the 39-page report.

“Children in detention with their parents have been ‘invisible’ to the law as they are not officially considered detained and thus cannot benefit from detention review hearings. The only path for considering the best interests of the child in these situations is through review hearings of their parents.”

The Canada Border Services Agency works to ensure that it is exercising its responsibility for detentions to the highest possible standards with regard to physical, mental health and overall well-being of detainees as well as the safety and security of Canadians as the primary consideration, a spokesperson said.

In November, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale issued a ministerial direction to CBSA to, as much as humanly possible, keep children out of detention and keep families together. The ministerial direction makes it clear that the best interests of the child must be given primary consideration.

The border services agency’s new guidelines say every effort should be made to reduce the number of vulnerable persons placed in detention, but the report criticizes the framework, saying it “is not a concrete plan as much as it is a general set of intentions (and) stops short of specifying precisely how the government plans on achieving this goal.”

Source: Canada slammed for ‘culture of secrecy’ over immigration detention

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Shifting Public Views on Legal Immigration Into the US

2018/06/30 Leave a comment

Lots of good data here, suggesting more limited support for Trump administration policies:

Many unaware that most immigrants in the U.S. are here legally.

Since 2001, decline in the share saying legal immigration should be decreasedWhile there has been considerable attention on illegal immigration into the U.S. recently, opinions about legal immigration have undergone a long-term change. Support for increasing the level of legal immigration has risen, while the share saying legal immigration should decrease has fallen.

The survey by Pew Research Center, conducted June 5-12 among 2,002 adults, finds that 38% say legal immigration into the United States should be kept at its present level, while 32% say it should be increased and 24% say it should be decreased.

Since 2001, the share of Americans who favor increased legal immigration into the U.S. has risen 22 percentage points (from 10% to 32%), while the share who support a decrease has declined 29 points (from 53% to 24%).

The shift is mostly driven by changing views among Democrats. The share of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents who say legal immigration into the U.S. should be increased has doubled since 2006, from 20% to 40%.

Growing share of Democrats support increased legal immigration into the U.S.Republicans’ views also have changed, though more modestly. The share of Republicans and Republican leaners who say legal immigration should be decreased has fallen 10 percentage points since 2006, from 43% to 33%.

Still, about twice as many Republicans (33%) as Democrats (16%) support cutting legal immigration into the U.S.

The new survey, which was largely conducted before the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border involving immigrant children being separated from their parents, finds deep and persistent partisan divisions in a number of attitudes toward immigrants, as well as widespread misperceptions among the public overall about the share of the immigrant population in the U.S. that is in this country illegally:

Fewer than half of Americans know that most immigrants in the U.S. are here legally. Just 45% of Americans say that most immigrants living in the U.S. are here legally; 35% say most immigrants are in the country illegally, while 6% volunteer that about half are here legally and half illegally and 13% say they don’t know. In 2015, the most recent year for which data are available, lawful immigrants accounted for about three-quarters of the foreign-born population in the United States.

Republicans are split in their views of undocumented immigrantsMost feel sympathy toward unauthorized immigrants in the U.S.Nearly seven-in-ten (69%) are very or somewhat sympathetic toward immigrants who are in the United States illegally. That view has changed little since 2014, when a surge of unaccompanied children from Central America attempted to enter the U.S. at the border. An overwhelming share of Democrats (86%) say they are sympathetic toward immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally, compared with about half of Republicans (48%) .

Fewer say granting legal status to unauthorized immigrants is a “reward.”Just 27% of Americans say that giving people who are in the U.S. illegally a way to gain legal status is like rewarding them for doing something wrong. More than twice as many (67%) say they don’t think of it this way. Since 2015, the share saying that providing legal status for those in the U.S. illegally is akin to a “reward” for doing something wrong has declined 9 percentage points. (Americans also broadly support granting legal status to immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children.)

Most Americans do not think undocumented immigrants are more likely to commit serious crimes. Large majorities of Americans say that undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. are not more likely than U.S. citizens to commit serious crimes (65% say this) and that undocumented immigrants mostly fill jobs citizens don’t want (71% say this). These opinions, which also are divided along partisan lines, are virtually unchanged since 2016.

Most people who encounter immigrants who do not speak English well aren’t bothered by this. Most Americans say they often (47%) or sometimes (27%) come into contact with immigrants who speak little or no English. Among those who say this, just 26% say it bothers them, while 73% say it does not. The share saying they are bothered by immigrants speaking little or no English has declined by 12 percentage points since 2006 (from 38% to 26%) and 19 points since 1993 (from 45%).

…

Source: Shifting Public Views on Legal Immigration Into the US

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The Guardian view on attitudes to immigration: focus on people, not numbers

2018/06/30 Leave a comment

Sensible suggestion:

Given what is already known about the Home Office’s “hostile environment” policy, the discovery that hundreds of people, legally in the UK, were wrongly detained between 2010 and 2017 is not surprising. That makes it no less shocking.

Figures released to parliament’s home affairs select committee show that the government has paid tens of millions of pounds in compensation to victims of these egregious errors. But perhaps most illuminating is the revelation of staff bonuses for meeting “personal objectives” linked to enforced removals.

Confusion and obfuscation over deportation targets led ultimately to Amber Rudd’s resignation as home secretary. The use of financial incentives to meet targets adds another layer of perversion to a bureaucracy that plainly lost sight of the fact that it was dealing not with numbers but with human beings.

A lesson of the Windrush scandal is that public opinion towards real-life immigrants is more nuanced than public debate over the abstract thing called immigration. Harrowing individual stories elicited compassion and outrage. It was not a turning of the political tide, but it felt like a significant current.

Government policy is still skewed by the presumption that voters demand strict immigration regimes. That imperative is paramount in Theresa May’s conspicuously unsuccessful Brexit strategy. It comes as little consolation that the rest of the EU is struggling with the same issue. The difficulty in finding a common position on border control, and the potentially destabilising consequences of failing to do so, dominate the agenda at the European summit that began today.

There is no diplomatic bandwidth for discussing Brexit, and the UK is judged to have removed itself from any other top-table conversation among continental leaders. Yet even Brexit will not neutralise anti-immigration feeling in the UK, which pre-dates the leave campaign and was co-opted by it to foment hostility to the EU. Brexit was mis-sold as the antidote to deeper economic and cultural anxieties. Now it is a distraction from the task of addressing those concerns.

Liberal opinion has for years been divided on how to acknowledge concern about rapid demographic change without indulging prejudice. Not everyone who is worried about immigration is racist, but every racist resents immigration. Political rhetoric does not always permit nuanced distinction between the two positions. Trumpeting the economic benefits of immigration doesn’t persuade those who suspect such benefits are enjoyed by elites, elsewhere. But colluding in the narrative that immigration is a drain on prosperity does nothing to shift opinion towards greater tolerance.

There is no guaranteed method for spreading positive attitudes, but endorsing negative views in the hope of mollifying hostility hasn’t served the liberal cause well. A more effective device, as the Windrush scandal proved, is the telling of individual stories, tracing the contours of the real migrant experience as distinct from faceless abstraction.

Politicians who trade on fear of migrants achieve their goal by dehumanisation – conjuring sinister floods and hordes. The antidote is re-humanisation – bringing the conversation back to real people with real hopes and real contributions to make to society. The xenophobes are winning an argument framed around abstract numbers and targets. They can be disoriented, and ultimately defeated, when those numbers are shown to be human beings.

Source: The Guardian view on attitudes to immigration: focus on people, not numbers

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UK: Wrongful detention cost £21m as immigration staff chased bonuses

2018/06/30 Leave a comment

Yet more evidence of the rot within the Home Office’s approach to immigration:

The Home Office mistakenly detained more than 850 people between 2012 and 2017, some of whom were living in the UK legally, and the government was forced to pay out more than £21m in compensation as a result, officials have revealed.

Figures released to the home affairs select committee this week show there were 171 cases of wrongful immigration detention in 2015-16, triggering compensation payments totalling £4.1m, and 143 cases in 2016–17, triggering a further £3.3m in compensation.

Between 2012 and 2015 a total of £13.8m was paid out to more than 550 people after a period of unlawful immigration detention.

The document also reveals that bonuses were paid to both senior and junior Home Office staff according to whether targets for enforced removals from the country had been met. Some staff were set “personal objectives” on which bonus payments were made “linked to targets to achieve enforced removals”.

The detention figures give no detail about who was mistakenly held, although it is likely that these numbers contain some Windrush individuals who were wrongly sent to immigration removal centres or prisons ahead of deportation.

Cases are known of Windrush individuals who were nearly deported, such as Anthony Bryan, who was sent to an immigration detention centre last December and booked by Home Office staff on a flight back to Jamaica, a country he had not visited since he was eight. A last-minute intervention by an immigration lawyer meant his seat on the flight was cancelled and he was released from detention.

The home secretary, Sajid Javid, has promised to provide figures next month for how many Windrush people were wrongly put in immigration detention; he has already acknowledged that 63 Windrush people were deported in error.

At least 10 people were paid about £120,000 each in compensation in the past two years although the majority of payouts were £20,000 or less, the permanent secretary to the home office, Philip Rutnam, explained in a letter to the home affairs select committee chair, Labour’s Yvette Cooper.

A small number of individuals who were wrongly detained received just a nominal payment of £1. Compensation is determined in part on an assessment of the “initial shock” experienced by those detained and is based also on whether the individual had any criminal convictions.

Some of those who received compensation payments were living in the UK legally. Other compensation payments were made to people who had no leave to remain in the UK but who had been detained for too long.

Rutnam, the most senior Home Office official, tried to minimise the significance of the numbers detained mistakenly, noting that this represented a small proportion of the total detained under immigration enforcement measures.

“By way of scale comparison, to support enforcement of the UK’s immigration law over 27,000 people are detained each year under immigration powers, with up to 3,000 people detained in either the detention estate or prisons at any one time,” he wrote. “Ninety-five per cent of people who are liable to removal are managed in the community, rather than in detention.”

But Labour’s Stephen Doughty, who sits on the home affairs committee, said: “These figures expose what many of us have warned for months: that the government has been wrongfully locking up individuals as well as wrongfully deporting others.

“The immigration system needs root and branch reform. How are millions of EU nationals to have any confidence in a system that wrongly deports and locks up people?”

The letter also gives details of performance targets in place for enforced removals from the UK, noting that these were in operation as early as 2000 (under Labour) and continued after 2010 (referred to in a variety of different ways – sometimes as “objectives”, or “business goals” or sometimes simply as “levels of ambition”).

Rutnam acknowledges that civil servants working within immigration enforcement received performance bonuses for good work, some of which is related to removals. In 2016-17, 23% of people working in immigration enforcement received an end-of-year bonus.

Confusion over whether removals targets were in place led to the previous home secretary Amber Rudd’s resignation in April, when she said “that’s not how we operate” in response to questions from Cooper over removals targets. Rudd said later: “I wasn’t aware of specific removal targets. I accept I should have been and I’m sorry that I wasn’t.”

Rutnam indicates that targets will no longer be in operation for deportation, noting that Javid has said he wants to “take stock on targets overall” and “specifically that he does not believe in quantified targets for removals and this, of course, is the basis on which we will be proceeding in the future”.

Source: Wrongful detention cost £21m as immigration staff chased bonuses

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Biggest immigration fraudster in Canadian history left $900K fine unpaid

2018/06/30 Leave a comment

Not right even if Parole Board was compelled given the law and regulations:

The man imprisoned for committing the biggest immigration scam in Canadian history was released on early parole even though he had not paid more than $900,000 in fines and “minimized his criminal behaviour,” according to a November 2017 Parole Board of Canada decision obtained by CBC News.

The board also noted Xun (Sunny) Wang had transferred all of his assets to his spouse “to avoid the Canada Revenue Agency fines.”

Despite “concerns,” the parole board was compelled to free Wang after he served one-third of his 7-year sentence, because he’s not at risk of committing a violent offence and his behaviour behind bars was “appropriate.”

Wang, 49, was convicted of bringing more than 1,000 people illegally into Canada by falsifying passport entries, faking job offers and supplying them with bogus Canadian home addresses, to thwart immigration requirements.

The tactics made it appear his clients had spent the required two years out of every five in Canada to maintain their permanent residency status.

Instead, many spent most of their time living in China.  ​

At his trial in 2015, the court heard Wang made $10 million through his two immigration-consulting companies, New Can Consulting and Wellong International Investments Ltd.

The Canada Border Services Agency released this picture of passports seized from Xun Wang, as part of an investigation into his immigration fraud scheme. (CBSA)

Wang was sentenced to seven years behind bars minus time served in custody and ordered to pay two fines: $730,837 to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) for tax evasion and $187,901.24 for defrauding the federal government — a total of almost $920,000.

Promise to mortgage home

In reviewing his pending release in November, the parole board admonished Wang, stating “you have indicated you do not believe you owe the CRA any money.”

But it noted that when “confronted” on his defiant attitude, Wang indicated he would pay the fines by having his home mortgaged.

Seven months later, a check of Wang’s Richmond, B.C., residence on the province’s land registry website shows no mortgage listed.

The Canada Revenue Agency declined to say if Wang has paid his fine, citing privacy.

Approached outside his home by a T.V. crew from the Radio-Canada investigative program Enquête, Wang refused comment, instead calling Richmond RCMP to complain about the presence of a news camera on his street. The RCMP declined to attend.

‘It’s unfair and an injustice’

The fact that Wang is now a free man infuriates former client Zheng Li (Jenny) Geng, who lives in Vancouver and is facing deportation because Wang was her immigration consultant.

Geng says she had no idea Wang was breaking the law. And she’s surprised he’s now a free man while she faces a pending removal hearing.

“I feel it’s unfair and an injustice,” Geng said through an interpreter. “I’m a little angry because I think if he had paid the penalty, things might not have happened to me.”

The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) has been conducting an ongoing investigation since Wang’s immigration scam was uncovered, reviewing the cases of his 1,677 former clients.

1,081 ex-clients face removal

To date, the CBSA says:

  • 608 permanent residents have been reported for inadmissibility;
  • 221 who obtained Canadian citizenship could be stripped of their status;
  • 252 others have “lost their status through other process,” including voluntarily giving up their permanent residency or citizenship.

That’s a total of 1,081 of Wang’s ex-clients who face deportation or have already left Canada.

Source: Biggest immigration fraudster in Canadian history left $900K fine unpaid

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