Canadian Immigrants in the United States: Migration Policy Institute study

2018/06/15 Leave a comment

Good overview of Canadians abroad, with detailed numbers:

Canadian migration has generally been a small share of immigration to the United States, historically fluctuating according to economic factors in the two countries. In 1960, Canadian immigrants made up about 10 percent of the total U.S. foreign-born population. Though the number of Canadians in the United States has decreased and levelled off since then, this population has grown more diverse, and today includes students, family migrants, skilled professionals, and retirees. As of 2016, about 783,000 Canadians lived in the United States, accounting for less than 2 percent of the roughly 44 million U.S. immigrants.

The motives of Canadian migrants have changed over time. Beginning in 1867, migrants from Eastern Canada came to the United States to work in the burgeoning manufacturing sector. In 1900, the U.S. Census recorded 747,000 English-speaking and 440,000 French-speaking Canadian immigrants. The two groups settled in different regions: Most Anglophone Canadians took up residence near the border, in states such as Michigan, New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Rhode Island, allowing them to easily move between the two countries, while Francophone Canadians largely moved to New England and California. French Canadian migration increased between 1900 and 1930, driven by discrimination as well as poor economic conditions in Quebec. After 1930, increased political autonomy for Quebec and the growth of the Canadian economy following World War II led to a steady decline in Canadian arrivals.

In the second half of the 20th century, Canadian migration shifted and diversified significantly, especially after enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994. Canadian immigrants now include highly educated professionals, students, those seeking family reunification, and “snowbirds,” people in or near retirement attracted by warmer southern climates. Canadian students are the fifth-largest group of foreign students enrolled in U.S. higher education, and high-skilled Canadians receive the third-largest number of employer-sponsored H-1B temporary visas. Many Canadians also come to the United States on NAFTA Professional (TN) visas to work in a variety of professional occupations, although the exact number is unknown.

Click here to view an interactive chart showing trends in the size of U.S. immigrant populations by country of birth, from 1960 to the present.

The United States is by far the top destination for most Canadian emigrants, with others settling primarily in the United Kingdom (92,000), Australia (57,000), France (26,000), and Italy (26,000), according to mid-2017 estimates by the United Nations Population Division. Click here to view an interactive map showing where migrants from Canada and other countries have settled worldwide.

Most Canadians in the United States who obtain lawful permanent residence—also known as receiving a green card—do so either as immediate relatives of U.S. citizens or as employer-sponsored immigrants. Compared to the overall foreign-born population, Canadians have a higher median income, are less likely to live in poverty, and are more likely to have health insurance and to be college educated. They are significantly older, on average, than the overall immigrant and U.S.-born populations.

Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau (the most recent 2016 American Community Survey [ACS] as well as pooled 2012–16 ACS data) and the Department of Homeland Security’s Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, this Spotlight provides information on the Canadian population in the United States, focusing on its size, geographic distribution, and socioeconomic characteristics.

Note: Data from ACS and DHS represent persons born in Canada; they do not include immigrants born outside of Canada who then gained Canadian citizenship via naturalization and later moved to the United States.

via Canadian Immigrants in the United States | migrationpolicy.org

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Senate spares impaired immigrant drivers from ‘sledgehammer’ penalty

2018/06/15 Leave a comment

Will be interesting to see whether the Commons accepts this amendment and whether or not the opposition makes this a high profile issue:

The Senate has passed a critical amendment to the Impaired Driving Act that would spare permanent residents sentenced to less than six months from being deported.

Bill C-46 intends to raise the maximum penalty for impaired driving in Canada from five to 10 years. As originally proposed, it would have automatically classified all DUI offences as “serious criminality.” That designation, under immigration law, would have resulted in the loss of permanent residence status even for a first-time offender who caused no bodily harm.

The Senate decided that the “serious criminality” designation for impaired driving should not apply to permanent residents and foreign nationals sentenced to less than six months in jail.

Critics, including the Canadian Bar Association, had argued that the proposed legislation would have had a “disproportionate” impact on immigrant offenders who, unlike their Canadian peers, would be penalized by both the criminal and immigration systems. This would have affected foreign students, workers, visitors and permanent residents.

Under the current immigration law, a permanent resident found guilty of any crime resulting in a sentence of more than six months faces deportation. The bill, as originally proposed, would have made an immigrant offender deportable regardless of the length of sentence.

“If any of these permanent residents break the law in terms of drunk driving, then they should pay the price, like any other Canadian, because we cannot afford to jeopardize the lives of innocent people on the streets,” said Senator Ratna Omidvar, one of 47 senators who voted in majority for the amendment Tuesday evening.

“But I don’t believe that permanent residents should bear an added punishment — not just another punishment, not just another fine — but a sledgehammer of a punishment of inadmissibility and deportation. This is exactly what Bill C-46 will do if we allow it to leave this chamber without this amendment.”

Immigrants who commit a serious crime should be deported, said Senator Mobina Jaffer, who introduced the amendment. Bill C-46 would have created a system that would make all impaired driving offences not equal, she said.

“We are a country that gives people who make a mistake another chance, as long as it’s not a serious offence,” she added.

The amended bill will be sent back to Parliament for a final vote before it becomes law.

Source: Senate spares impaired immigrant drivers from ‘sledgehammer’ penalty

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Impact of Trump’s immigration vision comes into focus in Washington

2018/06/15 Leave a comment

Good overview. Most interesting point is possible role evangelicals may play in opposing some of the Trump administration measures (after having been silent on so many other issues) as well as how this will play in the mid-terms:

America is heading for a moment of reckoning as the results of more than a year’s worth of hardline Trump administration immigration measures pile up, raising questions fundamental to the character of the nation itself.

A shock-and-awe sequence of policy moves and legal gambits, many by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, may elevate immigration past the Russia investigation and the accelerating economy into an issue with the capacity to shape the midterm elections. It also is spurring congressional leaders from the President’s party — who did not want another immigration fight this year — to vote and go on the record on what is often a politically perilous subject.
The moves in many cases are the logical culmination of a presidential campaign rooted in Donald Trump’s willingness to demagogue immigration controversies in order to inflame his conservative voting base. They are the product of 17 months of work by Sessions, and White House immigration czar Stephen Miller, that is starting to fundamentally change the immigration system and America’s treatment of many people who come from abroad, with or without authorization.
House DACA deal in final stages as GOP leaders link compromise bill to Trump
To many Trump voters, the rapid pace of change will be seen as a validation of the vote they cast for the President back in 2016. Trump made a case that previous Republican and Democratic leaders had failed to enforce immigration laws and made an implicit argument that the nature of American culture and society were under threat from an influx of newcomers.
But news coverage of children being taken from parents who had crossed the border illegally and the increasing human and economic implications of the administration’s assault on legal immigration are beginning to merge into political arguments about tough Trump stances.
“I just go back to week one of the Trump administration — those first two-three executive orders that the President signed — they were the foundation on which everything that we are seeing being executed right now is built,” said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, a nonprofit advocacy organization for immigrants and immigration. “All those things are coming to a head right now.”
Increasingly there is debate not just about the policy implications of the administration’s actions, but also whether they square with the humanitarian and moral standards that America has historically set for itself — even among some evangelicals who strongly back the President.

Crackdown

In recent days, the administration has acted aggressively to enact its tough immigration agenda and the human consequences of Trump’s earlier executive orders become increasingly clear.
Sessions has cracked down on rules on asylum, potentially reducing claims by the thousands by deciding that victims of domestic and gang violence are not eligible for protection.
The Justice Department said late last Friday that it would not defend the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in a Texas lawsuit, potentially opening an eventual path to a Supreme Court ruling on the fate of young undocumented immigrants brought to the US as kids.
Sessions has also pressured judges to increase their workloads to accelerate the pace of deportations.
The Department of Health and Human Services has said that some military bases in Texas are being assessed as possible holding centers for unaccompanied migrant children.
At the southern border, an undocumented immigrant from Honduras sobbed as she said federal officials had taken her infant daughter as she breastfed her, highlighting the administration’s policy mandating the separation of families who cross the border illegally.
The Department of Homeland Security is vigorously cutting the numbers of people from 10 nations, including El Salvador and Haiti, who live and work in the United States under the Temporary Protected Status covering nations hit by famine, war or national disasters. In May, nearly 90,000 Hondurans lost their status, meaning they could be forced to go back home.
Then there are multiple, but less visible, ways that the Trump administration is trying to curb legal immigration: lowering refugee admissions, targeting H1-B visas for skilled foreign workers and introducing more restrictions and red tape for other classes of entry permits.
All in all, the flurry of activity adds up to another set of promises kept for Trump that he can lay before his most loyal voters as he pleads with them to go to the polls in November to stave off a Democratic wave that could crimp his room to maneuver as President.

Capitol Hill imbroglio

But there are growing signs that the emotive immigration debate and the questions it raises about American values do not automatically add up to a big win for the President.
An imbroglio in the House of Representatives over an attempt by moderate Republicans to force a vote on securing protections for DACA recipients shows how some GOP lawmakers fear the hardline administration positions could damage them as they fight for re-election.
A Republican leadership compromise could allow conservatives to vote on a tough immigration bill but also proposes a compromise measure that Trump could support if it honors his four policy pillars: a solution for DACA recipients, border security financing and changes to border protocol, and ending parts of family based migration and the visa lottery.
The President’s demands probably mean the bill still will not be able to pass the Senate and is most likely to end up underlining Congress’s failure to act meaningfully on immigration.
But the fact that the Republican leadership is willing to hold votes on such a toxic issue months before Election Day is a testament to how immigration is barging its way up the political agenda.
The one thing that could break the logjam is a concentrated intervention by the President. And Miller was on Capitol Hill Wednesday and told Republicans the White House is open to the compromise package. Still, the President has vowed to fix the DACA issue and to throw his weight behind legislation before only to fail to live up to his promise.
Democrats, meanwhile, are emboldened, viewing the increasingly visible humanitarian consequences of the Trump administration’s policies as an opening to broaden an assault on the President and enliven their own base voters.
“
Our moral compass has gone astray and I will continue to speak out against this injustice until the administration realizes this is not who we should be as Americans,” said Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas, referring to the asylum rules and treatment of children crossing the border.
At a weekly Democratic leadership meeting, House Democratic Caucus Chairman Joe Crowley of New York painted a picture of children being ripped from their mothers’ arms at the border.
“If that is not psychological torture, I don’t know what is,” Crowley said, branding the policy an “abomination” and an “indelible mark on the soul of our nation.”

Dissent from evangelicals

There was also rising criticism for the implications of the administration’s immigration push from unusual quarters.
Evangelist Franklin Graham, who is close to Trump, slammed the separation of parents and children who had crossed the border illegally.
“It’s disgraceful, it’s terrible to see families ripped apart, and I don’t support that one bit,” said Graham on CBN News on Wednesday, blaming politicians over 30 years for failing to act.
Hours earlier another key evangelical voice, the Southern Baptist Convention, passed a resolution calling on the government to implement a “just and compassionate path” to legal status for undocumented immigrants once borders had been secured.
It also declared that any form of “nativism, mistreatment, or exploitation is inconsistent with the gospel of Jesus Christ” in a statement that could be seen as criticism of some of the sentiments that have helped Trump’s immigration policies prosper.
All this is a long way from a backlash against the administration’s approach, and it is not clear if it will open a seam of opposition in the evangelical bloc, which was a vital component of Trump’s winning coalition in 2016.
But Noorani argued that in the end, shifting sentiments of more moderate Trump voters and independents could be as important in molding the politics surrounding the administration’s immigration policies as the strong mobilization they whip up on the left.
“We surmised and we predicted that over time it would be the Trump voters at the end of the day who were going to start asking the most important questions,” he said.

Source: Impact of Trump’s immigration vision comes into focus in Washington

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It’s Time For Canada To Truly Open Its Borders

2018/06/14 Leave a comment

Provocative though piece by Harald Bauder of Ryerson.

Important part of the conversation as the distinctions between the various classes are less clear cut than they might appear (e.g., about half the economic class are family members). However, unclear how this approach would a) be managed and b) would enjoy any broader public support (IMO, not):

Between Jan. 1 and April 30, 7,600 asylum seekers crossed irregularly from the U.S. into Canada and were apprehended by the RCMP.

Theseborder crossings are often blamed on a tweet by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau from January 2017 in reaction to U.S. President Donald Trump’s travel ban: “To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you.”

I suggest that Trudeau’s well-intended tweet did not go far enough. He should have presented an open-borders vision to counter xenophobic rhetoric, anti-immigrant panic and suspicion emanating from south of the border and discourage similar sentiments from gaining momentum in Canada.

An open-borders policy entails that all people regardless of citizenship, origin, wealth or skills are permitted to enter Canada, and no one would need to cross the border irregularly. Criminals, however, could still be stopped for smuggling or trafficking.

This open-borders scenario may be dismissed as absurd. But so was gender equality 100 years ago. Even though we still have a long way to go to achieve equality between women, men and LGTBQ+ people, today many Canadians are proud that the bold vision of equality has guided their political path.

By embracing an open-border vision, Canada could reassert itself as a world leader of forward-looking migration policies.

Unfortunately, Canada is losing this opportunity.

Rather than embracing the 7,600 asylum seekers who arrived in Canada in the first four months of this year, Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen respondedthat “we do not appreciate or welcome irregular migration” and that there is “no free ticket to Canada.” The Liberal government wants to spend an additional $173 million to prevent unauthorized border crossing — a figure that conservatives say is not enough.

What if Hussen had instead announced that we appreciate and welcome all migration, and are working on dismantling immigration barriers?

As a political aspiration, the open-borders vision does not mean that border controls must immediately be abolished. Our welfare, health care, education and other public service systems are not set up to cope with free migration. As borders are gradually opened, we would need to find ways to ensure that health care and other social services are paid for, that everyone is making equitable contributions, and that our labour and educational standards are protected. By the same token, open borders would mean that foreign seasonal agricultural workers could stay and actually redeem the employment insurance and other contributions they are making.

The case can be made from across the political spectrum.

What speaks especially for open borders as a political aspiration is that the case can be made from across the political spectrum.

Political liberals argue that denying people entry into a country based on the citizenship they acquired at birth is akin to feudal privilege. Modern democracies reject such birth privilege. If borders were open, then a person born in a country with unfavourable conditions could move to a country where conditions are more favourable. Free cross-border mobility should be a fundamental liberty. Liberal thinkers like Phillip Cole pursue such arguments.

Free-market supporters would agree. Distorting the free mobility of labour across national borders causes economic inefficiencies. By eliminating this source of market distortion, open borders would reduce international wage differentials and improve the economic efficiency of national and global economies. None other than Ronald Reagan suggested during the 1980 U.S. presidential primary debate to “open the border both ways” between the U.S. and Mexico so that workers can enter the U.S. and pay taxes there.

Critics of market capitalism, such as British author and activist Teresa Hayter, also support open borders. They argue that borders are an instrument of oppression. Border restrictions apply predominantly to poor and low-skill workers, creating what Karl Marx once called a “labour reserve army” that can be exploited in low-wage countries, such as Mexico or Bangladesh, where wages and labour standards are low. Open borders would eliminate this source of exploitation.

The list of positions supporting open borders goes on: open border would be a way to end a form of global apartheid; cross-border mobility would disproportionately benefit women; remittances would help distribute the benefits of open borders to the global south; and even conservative Christianvoices advocate for open borders.

From a practical viewpoint, open borders would prevent thousands of deaths every year globally. At last count, the International Organization for Migrationrecorded more than 1,400 migrant fatalities worldwide in 2018 alone — almost 800 lives were lost in the Mediterranean Sea and 113 along the U.S.-Mexico border. And these numbers keep rising. Borders have become deadly because states are keeping migrants from crossing them. Opening them would stop the deaths.

Borders are already largely open to information and the environment. Over the last 40 years, we have also relinquished much control over the cross-border movement of money, goods and services through international trade agreements. Open borders for people are the logical next step. Regressing to mid-20th Century nationalism — as Donald Trump apparently seeks to achieve — is a path many Canadians reject.

Because the case for open borders can be made from various ideological and practical positions, it serves as a powerful political vision to counter the closed-border rhetoric steeped in fear and intolerance. With so much xenophobic rhetoric, anti-migrant panic and suspicion on the rise in many parts of the world, we need this bold vision more than ever.

Source: It’s Time For Canada To Truly Open Its Borders

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Tougher impaired driving penalty ‘a double whammy’ for immigrants

2018/06/13 Leave a comment

The complexity of balancing a legitimate policy objective and one of the possibly unforeseen impact on Permanent Residents:

A proposed law to raise the maximum penalty for impaired driving offences in Canada could have a “disproportionate” impact on first-time immigrant offenders who would see their permanent residence status revoked and be deported, critics say.

But advocating equal rights for impaired drivers is a delicate issue, one that some senators and immigrant lawyers are trying to tackle as the Red Chamber sits this week to seek amendments to Bill C-46, the Impaired Driving Act, before sending it back to the House of Commons for a vote.

Currently, someone convicted of impaired driving could receive a maximum penalty of not more than five years in jail, but the offence would still be considered “ordinary criminality” under immigration law. An immigrant’s permanent residence status is not affected unless a sentence of six months or more is imposed.

However, under the proposed legislation, the increased maximum penalty to 10 years would automatically classify impaired driving as “serious criminality.” As a result, even if a first offender, who is not a Canadian citizen, is convicted and is only ordered to pay a fine, they would still lose their immigration status and be banned from Canada. This would affect foreign students, workers, visitors and permanent residents.

“We take impaired driving very seriously and we don’t want impaired drivers behind the wheel,” said Senator Ratna Omidvar in an interview. She noted that if a Canadian citizen is convicted of impaired driving for the first time, they could be sentenced to as little as a fine and walk free afterwards.

“A permanent resident in the same situation would pay the fine and face deportation,” Omidvar added. “It is a double whammy not on all people but just on a class of people. That’s an unintended consequence. The impact on permanent residents would be huge and disproportionate to what a Canadian would get.

In its submission to the Senate, the Canadian Bar Association also urged “careful consideration” of the bill, warning that the changes could put “a significant strain” on the immigration system and border officials in handling increases in inadmissibility and deportations.

The bar association wants the Senate to make the maximum jail penalty for impaired driving offences “10 years less a day” so they would still be classified as “ordinary criminality” and not trigger the automatic loss of a person’s permanent residency. At the very least, it says, there should be an exception to the 10-year penalty threshold for such offences that do not involve serious bodily injury or death.

“We remain concerned that Bill C-46 will introduce uncertainty into the law and result in significantly increased litigation and delays,” said bar association. “Our recommendations are intended to continue to protect Canadians from impaired driving, without triggering the serious criminality consequences.”

It’s not known how many immigrants would be affected by the proposed legislation, but immigration lawyer Robin Seligman said impaired driving is among the most common criminal offences and immigrants are not any more or less likely to commit the crime.

Statistics Canada said police reported a total of 72,039 impaired driving incidents in 2015 and given almost 300,000 newcomers and hundreds of thousands of visitors are coming to the country every year, the impact of the increased maximum penalty could be huge, said Seligman.

“Under the immigration law, serious criminality refers to terrorism, (threats to) national security and membership to organized crime. Lumping first-time impaired driving offenders with them is disproportionate and unfair. It’s an overkill and oversight,” Seligman said.

While repeat offenders of impaired driving deserve to be deported, immigration lawyer Lorne Waldman said first-timers should be allowed an opportunity for rehabilitation, especially where there’s no one hurt in the incident.

“There are definitely a lot of concerns over this bill, but it is always difficult for MPs to advocate for those convicted of any criminal offence,” said Waldman, who fears Ottawa would rush to pass the bill without amendments to fulfil its promise to legalize marijuana this summer.

Source: Tougher impaired driving penalty ‘a double whammy’ for immigrants

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USA: Border protection commissioner talks ‘zero tolerance,’ family separations and how to discourage immigration

2018/06/13 Leave a comment

Good insights into the operationalizing of the various policies at play by U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan:

…How are you handling the family separations?

We still have children in the same place where we had unaccompanied children.

It’s really important for your readers to understand the difference between the concept of family separation and prosecuting adults who cross the border illegally, even if they are bringing in children with them.

We do not have a policy of administrative separation. We are not doing that. Families or people that come across as a group, as a family-unit group, are being separated only if the adults are being prosecuted or if there’s a determination made by the agent that there’s not actually a family relationship, which has happened several hundred times just in the sector this year.

We do see the attempt by smugglers and those crossing to try to exploit the loopholes created by court decisions which don’t allow for ICE to detain family units through the completion of their immigration process. So they have to release them within 20 days. That means it’s incentivizing people to pretend to be families even if they’re not. That’s [happened] 600 times just in Rio Grande Valley sector this fiscal year.

We’re prosecuting the parents; they’re temporarily separated for prosecutors. So they go to the U.S. marshals; they will be prosecuted by the U.S. attorney’s office. Then they’re detained by ICE while the child is sent to Health and Human Services, in the custody of HHS.

So that’s incentivizing people to come fraudulently with kids?

That’s the catch-and-release loophole due to the interpretation of the Flores [2015 class-action lawsuit] settlement by the 9th Circuit District Court that says that ICE cannot detain families more than 20 days. So instead of being allowed to keep that family together through their immigration process, ICE is forced to release the family. So that’s the loophole that incentivizes people to present as a family even if they’re not.

Is there anything you can say about the U.S. potentially classifying Mexico as a “safe third country” for asylum seekers, which would force them to seek asylum there?

I’ve traveled to a refugee camp in Turkey, the Norway border with Russia, the southern border of Mexico with Guatemala — all to understand migration phenomena. And from those experiences, it’s very clear that the best way to manage migration flows and to assist populations that are struggling in their home country is for destination countries and transit countries to be aligned, and for efforts to aid the populations in their country of origin.

U.S. policy very clearly, for this administration, is to support Central American security and prosperity. We need to invest in their governance efforts and their economic development and in their security against gangs, smugglers, drug cartels and so forth to help prevent the push factors from existing in those countries and to help support their economic development.

But migration flows respond to incentives and success. If they believe that they will be allowed to stay in the destination country, they will try to make it. If they believe that they will be slowed down or turned around by a transit country, that will change the process.

All you have to do is look at the Arctic route in Norway. In 2015, in three months,. 5,500 people from 38 countries arrived from Russia. The Norwegians worked with Russia to recognize the Russian asylum system and that shut down overnight — those 5,500 stopped coming.

With [German] Chancellor Angela Merkel and [Turkish] President [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan, they reached an agreement in 2015 on the flow of Syrian nationals through Turkey to Greece and said that they would support refugee camps in Turkey. Those flows stopped overnight from Turkey to Greece.

You need to collaborate on regional migration. Mexico has been a leader in the region. They’ve gathered Canada, Brazil, Colombia, Panama and the U.S. together to talk about ways we can all get better at managing our policies in this area. Continued dialogue would be outstanding — to partner with all countries in the region on migration flows….

Source: Border protection commissioner talks ‘zero tolerance,’ family separations and how to discourage immigration

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US launches campaign to strip immigration cheaters of citizenship, once a rare process

2018/06/13 Leave a comment

No issue with cracking down on fraud and misrepresentation, unlike some of the other Trump administration policies, although legitimate concern over how it may be done:

The US government agency that oversees immigration applications is launching an office that will focus on identifying Americans who are suspected of cheating to get their citizenship and seek to strip them of it.

US Citizenship and Immigration Services Director L. Francis Cissna said his agency is hiring several dozen lawyers and immigration officers to review cases of immigrants who were ordered deported and are suspected of using fake identities to later get green cards and citizenship through naturalisation.

Cissna said the cases would be referred to the Department of Justice, whose attorneys could then seek to remove the immigrants’ citizenship in civil court proceedings. In some cases, government attorneys could bring criminal charges related to fraud.

Until now, the agency has pursued cases as they arose but not through a coordinated effort, Cissna said. He said he hopes the agency’s new office in Los Angeles will be running by next year but added that investigating and referring cases for prosecution will likely take longer.

“We finally have a process in place to get to the bottom of all these bad cases and start denaturalising people who should not have been naturalised in the first place,” Cissna said. “What we’re looking at, when you boil it all down, is potentially a few thousand cases.”

He declined to say how much the effort would cost but said it would be covered by the agency’s existing budget, which is funded by immigration application fees.

The push comes as the Trump administration has been cracking down on illegal immigration and taking steps to reduce legal immigration to the US.

Denaturalisation – the process of removing citizenship – is very rare.

The US government began looking at potentially fraudulent naturalisation cases a decade ago when a border officer detected about 200 people had used different identities to get green cards and citizenship after they were previously issued deportation orders.

In September 2016, an internal watchdog reported that 315,000 old fingerprint records for immigrants who had been deported or had criminal convictions had not been uploaded to a Department of Homeland Security database that is used to check immigrants’ identities. The same report found more than 800 immigrants had been ordered deported under one identity but became US citizens under another.

Since then, the government has been uploading these older fingerprint records dating back to the 1990s and investigators have been evaluating cases for denaturalisation.

Earlier this year, a judge revoked the citizenship of an Indian-born New Jersey man named Baljinder Singh after federal authorities accused him of using an alias to avoid deportation.

Authorities said Singh used a different name when he arrived in the United States in 1991. He was ordered deported the next year and a month later applied for asylum using the name Baljinder Singh before marrying an American, getting a green card and naturalising.

Authorities said Singh did not mention his earlier deportation order when he applied for citizenship.

For many years, most US efforts to strip immigrants of their citizenship focused largely on suspected war criminals who lied on their immigration paperwork, most notably former Nazis.

Toward the end of the Obama administration, officials began reviewing cases stemming from the fingerprints probe but prioritised those of naturalised citizens who had obtained security clearances, for example, to work at the Transportation Security Administration, said Muzaffar Chishti, director of the Migration Policy Institute’s office at New York University law school.

The Trump administration has made these investigations a bigger priority, he said. He said he expects cases will focus on deliberate fraud but some naturalised Americans may feel uneasy with the change.

“It is clearly true that we have entered a new chapter when a much larger number of people could feel vulnerable that their naturalisation could be reopened,” Chishti said.

Since 1990, the Department of Justice has filed 305 civil denaturalisation cases, according to statistics obtained by an immigration attorney in Kansas who has defended immigrants in these cases.

The attorney, Matthew Hoppock, agrees that deportees who lied to get citizenship should face consequences but worries other immigrants who might have made mistakes on their paperwork could get targeted and might not have the money to fight back in court.

Cissna said there are valid reasons why immigrants might be listed under multiple names, noting many Latin American immigrants have more than one surname. He said the US government is not interested in that kind of minor discrepancy but wants to target people who deliberately changed their identities to dupe officials into granting immigration benefits.

“The people who are going to be targeted by this – they know full well who they are because they were ordered removed under a different identity and they intentionally lied about it when they applied for citizenship later on,” Cissna said. “It may be some time before we get to their case, but we’ll get to them.”

Source: US launches campaign to strip immigration cheaters of citizenship, once a rare process

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‘Anything would be better:’ Critics warn Ottawa’s family-reunification lottery is flawed, open to manipulation – The Globe and Mail

2018/06/12 Leave a comment

Almost comical if it were not for the impact on people. And it should not be surprising, given our immigration system’s emphasis on high skilled economic immigrants, that some of them should have the mathematical and technical smarts to point out the lack of randomness:

Canada’s family-reunification program is using a common spreadsheet application to select candidates as part of a process critics say is flawed and open to manipulation.

As the first step in the program, the federal government uses Microsoft Excel to randomly pick applications in its lottery, The Globe and Mail has learned. Experts have warned that using Excel to conduct such a sensitive lottery could be problematic, and that the lottery process itself may make the system less fair over all.

The Parents and Grandparents Program allows Canadians to sponsor family members for permanent-resident status. The Liberals introduced a lottery in 2017 in an effort to make the system fairer – previously, applications were accepted on a first-come, first-served basis. The program receives roughly 100,000 applications each year and selects 10,000.

Details on the lottery, obtained through an Access to Information request shared with The Globe, show a procedure carried out in just a few steps: Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) uses Excel to assign each application a random number, then takes the first 10,000 numbers.

Excel’s method for generating random numbers is “very bad,” according to Université de Montréal computer-science professor Pierre L’Ecuyer, an expert in random-number generation. “It’s a very old generator, and it’s really not state-of-the-art.” Prof. L’Ecuyer’s research has shown that Excel’s random-number generator doesn’t pass certain statistical tests, meaning it’s less random than it appears. Under the current system, “it may be that not everybody has exactly the same chance,” Prof. L’Ecuyer said.

Excel uses pseudo-random number generators, a class of algorithms that rely on formulas to generate numbers. These generators have a key flaw – they rely on a “seed” number to kick off the mathematical process. In the case of Excel, this seed is generated automatically by the application. “If you know one number at one step,” Prof. L’Ecuyer explained, “you can compute all the numbers that will follow.”

This means the process could be exploited by someone with the right skills. It’s happened before: In 1994, IT consultant Daniel Corriveau discovered a pattern in a keno game – which uses a random numbering system – at the Casino de Montréal and won $620,000 in a single evening. An investigation later determined the game was using the same seed number at the start of each day.

Using more robust generators, such as the ones used for cryptography, may not cost the government much, either. “Cryptographic generators are free. They are on the internet,” Prof. L’Ecuyer said. “Just pick one, you need to know about it and that’s all. It’s not complicated.

“Anything would be better.”

For its part, IRCC is satisfied with its use of Excel, spokeswoman Shannon Ker said in an e-mailed statement. “We stand by this randomized selection process as a sufficient means of equal opportunity for all who look to express an interest in sponsoring their parents and grandparents.”

Others would rather see the lottery scrapped altogether. For the past two years, Igor Wolford, a data-analytics manager at Loblaws, has applied to sponsor his parents in Russia. He hasn’t made it past the lottery stage, and recently started a website to petition the federal government to abandon the system.

Mr. Wolford has corresponded with members of Parliament about his concerns. “I actually prepared an Excel sheet showing how random processes work,” Mr. Wolford said. “After 10 years of selection, only half of people who were eligible 10 years ago would be selected.”

Number of people from an original pool of 95,000 applicants who haven‘t made it past the lottery stage
Assuming 20,000 new applicants each year and 10,000 applicants selected each year

https://s3.amazonaws.com/chartprod/cZByyEpAhKuPixSBk/thumbnail.png 

Although the lottery selects roughly one in 10 applications, the number of people who pass additional vetting and ultimately make it into the program is far lower.

“Last year, they selected the original 10,000 people [during the lottery], but only 6,000 people actually [made it into the program],” Mr. Wolford said. This is partly be cause the lottery is the first step in the process, meaning anyone can fill out the form.

IRCC responded to these complaints in 2018 by including a self-assessment screening for applicants. However, the questions are still optional, as one Twitter user noted.

When told the lottery was conducted in Excel, Mr. Wolford wasn’t surprised. “That’s a very sad process. It’s easily manipulatable,” he warned. According to IRCC, the process is double-blind, and to date there is no indication the system has been manipulated.

“The process has become unpredictable,” Mr. Wolford said. “Before, you knew that it would take seven years from start to finish, and you could plan your life. Right now, you don’t know if it will happen this year, in five years, in 15 years.”

“Because it’s a lottery, you might never be selected.”

via ‘Anything would be better:’ Critics warn Ottawa’s family-reunification lottery is flawed, open to manipulation – The Globe and Mail

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The Trump Administration Is Driving Away Immigrant Entrepreneurs: The Atlantic

2018/06/11 Leave a comment

Good long read on the impact of short-sighted US immigration policy changes:
In late May, the Department of Homeland Security announced its plans to rescind the International Entrepreneur Rule, an Obama-era provision that allowed foreign-born entrepreneurs to stay in the United States for up to five years to expand their businesses, granted they could prove their companies’ potential for rapid business growth and job creation. The announcement came as no surprise, given the Trump administration’s rollback of other executive orders issued during Obama’s presidency, and earlier hints the administration would cancel the rule. But it dealt a particular punch to those who saw the rule as a gateway toward a long-held goal: a start-up visa, which would create a pathway to legal immigration for foreign-born entrepreneurs, thus drawing the best founders to the United States and improving its competitiveness at a time when other countries are launching more and more lucrative start-ups.Immigrants are nearly twice as likely as American-born citizens to start businesses in the United States, according to the Kauffman Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes entrepreneurship. Fifty-one percent of all U.S. start-up companies valued at $1 billion—the so-called unicorns—have at least one immigrant founder, according to the National Foundation for American Policy, a nonpartisan public-policy research organization. But historically, there hasn’t been an immigrant-visa category tailored for entrepreneurs. Mike Krieger, the Brazilian-born co-founder of Instagram, came to Stanford University on a student visa before transitioning to a skilled-worker visa. The Google co-founder, Sergey Brin, was a child when his family immigrated to the United States from the Soviet Union as refugees. Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX and co-founder of Tesla, first immigrated from South Africa to Canada in order to eventually immigrate to the United States.

During the Obama administration, lawmakers began pushing for a start-up visa and seemed to be gaining some traction. In August 2016, the Obama White House announced the Department of Homeland Security would propose the International Entrepreneur Rule. Hillary Clinton advocated for a start-up visa as part of her platform. Now, the death of the International Entrepreneur Rule—and, relatedly, the stalling of the start-up visa—have foreign-born entrepreneurs in the United States grappling with whether to stick it out or just leave. Silicon Valley, too, is coming to terms with losing the competitive advantage it took for granted for so long. For some, it’s the latest evidence that Donald Trump, who became president on a promise to revive the American dream, is, in fact, chipping away at it.

In the early 2000s, a person I’ll call Gyan (who requested that his real name not be used in order to protect his immigration status in the United States) considered his options. He could stay in his home country, in Asia, and pay to attend a top university, as most people do. Or he could go to the United States, where, he thought, he could create a path toward a better future. The decision was clear, and he came to the United States. Gyan applied to Stanford University, which offered him an excellent financial-aid package. He accepted immediately.

During Gyan’s senior year, an entrepreneurship class motivated him and two other students to start a company. Their product, a productivity tool, never took off, but the experience gave him the entrepreneurship bug. Gyan’s student visa allowed him to stay for a year after graduating to pursue practical training. So, he started working for various start-ups, practiced writing code in his downtime, and met fellow ambitious techies at cafes around Silicon Valley: Red Rock Coffee in Mountain View, Starbucks on Stanford Avenue.

Not being a U.S. citizen, Gyan stayed in the country by securing an employee-sponsored H-1B visa through a job as a software engineer. “Ultimately I think I was just really aching to make things happen, to build things,” he told me. He started to tinker with new product ideas after work.

Around that time, Silicon Valley investors and entrepreneurs started lobbyingfor a start-up visa. In 2010, Senators John Kerry and Richard Lugar introduced the bipartisan Startup Visa Act, the first legislation of its kind to propose a visa category for international entrepreneurs. Recognizing the catch-22 of company founders being unable to sponsor themselves for visas, the act would allow a foreign-born entrepreneur to receive a two-year visa, and then be eligible for a green card, after proving job creation and acquiring $1 million in investment capital or revenue. The proposal was beloved within the tech community. But the bill, and subsequent iterations of it—including the popular Startup Act, which includes a start-up visa as part of other provisions aimed at helping the start-up industry—didn’t gain enough traction in Washington, D.C. “Nobody was committed to championing it,” said Craig Montuori, a partner at Venture Politics, a public-affairs consulting firm based in Silicon Valley, who lobbied for the start-up visa. Most people didn’t consider it a crisis; other foreign-born start-up founders had made it work, hadn’t they?

Back in the Bay Area, that’s what Gyan kept telling himself. In 2015, he built a prototype for another start-up, this time related to hospitality management. Gyan and his co-founder soon landed a meeting with a well-known incubator. The investors didn’t ask about his immigration status, but, to Gyan, it was the elephant in the room. When they ultimately didn’t invest, Gyan couldn’t stop thinking about how his immigration status might impact his success as an entrepreneur. He can’t remember the exact questions asked during the meeting, but they were along the lines of: Why haven’t you quit your job to work on this? Are you willing to quit your job? “They want to invest in someone who can work on this full-time,” Gyan said. But if Gyan quit his job, he’d lose his H-1B visa—his gateway to staying in the United States. He couldn’t.

Around October 2016, Gyan was reading the news when he came across an article about the International Entrepreneur Rule. The rule, inspired by the Startup Act, created a special immigration status for foreign-born start-up founders. When the rule was finalized, in January 2017, Gyan inspected the requirements: Have a young company, and own a substantial interest in it. Have either $250,000 or more from qualified U.S. investors with a history of successful investments, or $100,000 or more from government entities, or other compelling evidence of the start-up’s potential for growth and job creation.*The IER would go into effect in July 2017. The DHS estimated about 2,940 entrepreneurs would be eligible for it each year, although one immigration attorney in Silicon Valley, Sophie Alcorn, told me she believes that’s a vast understatement, and that applications could have reached 10,000 or more given the excitement around it. The prospect of one day applying for the IER energized Gyan, and he was out the door again, networking with people and trying out new ideas. Every foreign kid with an entrepreneurial streak was eyeing the IER, he said.

But in July 2017, less than a week before the rule was set to start, the Trump administration delayed it and announced its intention to eventually rescind the rule. In December 2017, after some legal wrangling over the delay, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced in a press release it would begin accepting applications under the IER, and gave directions for how to apply—but added that it still planned to remove the rule. Finally, late last month, the DHS proposed to formally eliminate the IER, arguing it was too broad and didn’t protect U.S. workers and investors enough, and that other visa categories were available to foreign-born entrepreneurs.

Doug Rand, a former White House official who helped implement the IER during the Obama Administration and has since co-founded Boundless Immigration, which helps families navigate the U.S. immigration system, argues these other visa categories would be extraordinarily difficult to obtain for people from certain countries, or would require proof of current accomplishments rather than future promise. “For an administration that can’t stop talking about those that come in based on merit,” he said, “why would you torpedo a program that can benefit the super qualified?”

The rule had yet to make much of an impact. A spokesperson for USCIS said it has received about 12 applications for IER but hasn’t issued any final decisions. Brad Feld, an investor and an entrepreneur who advocates for a start-up visa, blamed the low numbers of applicants on the administration’s chilling actions. “Not surprisingly, the Trump White House stated relatively early on that they wanted to kill it. The second they did this, they made it unattractive to anyone, as the risk of it vanishing one day unexpectedly made it an extremely high-risk option,” he said. “It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy—if the current administration won’t support it, it’s not an attractive option.”

Meanwhile, since lawmakers in the U.S. first introduced the start-up visa eight years ago, other countries have followed their lead: Australia, Canada, Chile, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, and the United Kingdom now all have versions of a start-up visa or other initiatives to bring in foreign workers.*

Silicon Valley may have written the script for how to build a start-up, but those practices are now global, said Natalie Novick, a sociologist and an ethnographer at the University of California at San Diego who studies start-up ecosystems around the world. Ten years ago, nearly 75 percent of the world’s venture-backed funding flowed into the United States; in 2017, the United States received 45 percent. Meanwhile, investment has grown enormously in Asia—especially in China, which now rivals the United States in VC funding and has three of the world’s five most valuable unicorns. India trails other countries in venture-capital flow, but when the United States denied Kunal Bahl, an Indian-born co-founder of the online retailer Snapdeal, an H-1B visa after he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, he returned to his home country and helped create more than 5,000 jobs with his new company.

As immigration reform remains at a standstill, and the Trump administration eyes even more restrictionist immigration policies, many in Silicon Valley are worried the United States is losing its competitive advantage—just what they were hoping to guard against with a start-up visa. In May, the Stanford Graduate School of Business’s career center hosted a “Working in Canada” event—organized largely because of student panic about jobs and visas, said Maria Pasos-Nuñez, the business school’s associate director for international-student career development. In addition to canceling the IER, the Trump administration has unveiled a new draft policy that may make it easier to force international students to leave if they’ve violated the terms of their visa. It also recently declared it wants to reform the popular practical-training programthat gives foreign students a year or more to stay in the United States and work after college. Participation in the program grew by 400 percent among graduates with STEM degrees from 2008 to 2016, according to the Pew Research Center; it’s widely considered a pipeline that helps international students to eventually become U.S.-based entrepreneurs. While some people speculate the administration may eliminate the program altogether, Carissa Cutrell, a public-affairs officer for ICE, said the exact reforms to the program are still under discussion.

Veronica Zhou, a 35-year-old Chinese native who immigrated to Canada and became a citizen there before enrolling at Stanford, helped organize the Working in Canada event. Zhou has it a little easier than some of her peers if she wants to stay in the United States, thanks to a visa available to Canadian citizens through a provision of the North American Free Trade Agreement. But she’s already networked in China, France, Israel, and Peru; while she once idealized life in Silicon Valley, she’s now not sure she wants to stay. Zhou has found that hiring people for new ventures in the United States is becoming more difficult—especially when it comes to international talent, she said, because many foreign-born workers in the United States prefer the stability of securing a visa through an established corporation to joining a start-up. And fewer international students are coming to study in the United States in the first place. “Everyone on campus will have to face the decision of whether we stay here or leave,” Zhou told me. “That’s what we think about and worry about every day.”

When Gyan heard the news that the IER collapsed, he felt disappointed—though not entirely surprised. He tried to put things in perspective. Families are being separated and sent back across the border. I have nothing to complain about, he told himself. He repeats the upbeat mantras the industry is famous for: As an aspiring entrepreneur, if you get let down and upset, maybe you shouldn’t be in the field. You have to be resilient.

Now 31, Gyan has studied and worked in the United States for 13 years. He is still committed to starting a business, though he’s currently too preoccupied with interviewing for a new job to try to execute any of his ideas. He doesn’t want to waste away as a forever employee in the United States. But his H-1B visa is expiring soon, and he’s reached the maximum number of years he can be on the visa. So along with finding a new job that, he hopes, will sponsor a green card that will allow him to stay in the country as a legal permanent resident, he’s consulting his friends in the business community about the next best visa option.

Private U.S. initiatives focused on international entrepreneurs have emerged, including residency programs at universities and a venture-capital firm aimed at immigrant-founded start-ups. Gyan could also move to another country to be an entrepreneur if need be. He lists the other options off the top of his head: Canada, Germany, Chile. “There are so many people in this country who invested in my future,” Gyan said. “Universities teach these kids from abroad, they inspire them, they invest in them. But then, at this point, there is another group of people who want to shut them down.”

Source: The Trump Administration Is Driving Away Immigrant Entrepreneurs

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Douglas Todd: Canadian sovereignty faces challenge over foreign-buyers tax

2018/06/09 Leave a comment

Todd on the British Columbia foreign buyer tax:

Canadian sovereignty is on trial in a lawsuit against B.C.’s 20-per cent tax on foreign buyers of residential homes.

Jing Li — a Chinese citizen and international student who launched her case after using her family’s money to buy a townhouse in Langley in 2016 — is in effect challenging what some believe is Canada’s sovereign right to impose a targeted tax on foreign nationals, a B.C. surtax that is similar to many in other provinces and countries.

Arguing the tax illegally discriminates against people on the basis of their national origin, Li maintains in her claim it makes her feel “I am not wanted in Canada. … I feel that this anger has been directed toward people like me and other Asian nationals, due to unfair biases and stereotypes which the tax has further reinforced.”

In this era of globalization and free trade, in which trans-national corporations and libertarians often call for “open borders,” it is not fashionable to stand up for national sovereignty. Cultural liberals and even business leaders often characterize the concept as thinly disguised racism.

But some Canadians maintain it is ethical to discriminate against people who are not citizens or permanent residents (that is people who Canada have formally allowed to begin the immigration process). UBC law professor Joel Bakan, creator of the documentary The Corporation, says “in the past 30 years of economic globalization there has been an attack on the idea of the nation state.” But the sovereign nation, he says, remains the key structure through which a people can create a democratic community.

A B.C. Supreme Court judge will hear Li’s lawsuit in open court beginning June 25. In the meantime UBC professors Nathanael Lauster and Henry Yu are among those providing affidavits on behalf of Li, whose lawyer is Luciana Brasil, a specialist in class-action suits.

The B.C. government, in response to being sued, has obtained affidavits from, among others, UBC geography professor David Ley and SFU’s Andy Yan.

Should foreign nationals have the same rights and privileges as Canadian citizens and permanent residents, especially in regards to property?

In support of Li’s lawsuit against the B.C. government, Lauster claims the foreign-buyers tax reflects the kind of anti-Chinese sentiment that has become a “moral panic,” leading to “blaming the foreigner.”

British Columbians have scapegoated Chinese buyers, Lauster says. “There are clear indications that the inception and implementation of the foreign-buyer tax has reflected and invoked xenophobic, racist and specifically Sinophobic tendencies and sentiments.”

Lauster, an American who writes about his process of immigrating to Canada, maintains foreign students, temporary workers and other non-permanent residents are unfairly impeded by the foreign-buyers tax, particularly because many eventually apply to become immigrants.

The foreign-buyers tax has evoked a “Yellow Peril” discourse, Lauster says, with modern-day “folk devils.” The “social epidemic” manifests itself in anonymous comments about media articles and on Twitter. “Chinese immigrants and home buyers have been the primary targets of rhetoric. A variety of historically rooted stereotypes and biases have been perpetuated targeting Chinese home buyers and immigrants.”

For some reason the affidavit of Henry Yu, a UBC historian who specializes in documenting discrimination against ethnic Chinese, is not available to the public. Li’s lawyer did not reply to questions about it. Judging from the responses to Yu’s affidavit, however, it is similar to Lauster’s in arguing the tax demonstrates Canadians’ racism.

Andy Yan, who heads SFU’s City Program, counters in his affidavit that Yu and Lauster ignore “the globalization and hyper-commodification of housing,” which has hammered cities such as London, New York and Sydney and led to, for instance, 23 per cent of Coquitlam’s new condos being bought by foreign nationals.

Yan maintains Yu and Lauster are also blind to the “agency” of minority groups in B.C., where Chinese-Canadians have been leading activists supporting the tax on foreign buyers. There are now 470,000 ethnic Chinese in Metro Vancouver. Asians make up two of three immigrants to Canada.

An Angus Reid poll found 89 per cent of the city’s ethnic Chinese support the foreign-buyers tax. Even the then-Chinese consul general in Vancouver, Liu Fei, said, “The Chinese government would have no hesitation in stepping in and regulating (house) price increases like this, unlike governments here.”

Indeed, China has a range of restrictions on foreign buyers. And Yan’s affidavit makes it clear that jurisdictions throughout the world limit the purchasing power of foreign nationals. Yan says Yu and Lauster should not have ignored curbs on foreign buyers in Prince Edward Island, Ontario, Manitoba, Singapore, Hong Kong, Britain, Australia and the U.S. He could have added Denmark, Mexico, France, Switzerland and others.

In his affidavit, David Ley, author of Millionaire Migrants, says a key tactic of pro-growth real-estate advocates has been to claim that opponents of rapid expansion are xenophobic.

Developers first began playing the racism card in Vancouver and Los Angeles in the 1990s, Ley says. He notes Bob Rennie, a famed condo marketer and former chief of fundraising for the B.C. Liberal party, has alleged racism is “a huge undercurrent” in the housing debate.

Ley accepts Lauster and Yu’s analyses of B.C.’s discriminatory history up to the repeal of the immigration act in 1947. But he laments neither acknowledge how attitudes have changed. “Unlike in the colonial period, there is no ethno-racial divide that neatly separates, homogenizes and penalizes people of East Asian origin,” Ley says.

“There is significant resistance within Vancouver’s Chinese‐Canadian community to inflationary pressures in the property market primed by foreign capital, dispelling innuendoes that such resistance is inherited from old racist attitudes held by white Canadians.”

We will find out later this month where this case goes. If the judge declares the foreign-buyers tax is illegal, a massive class-action suit is sure to follow. Li’s lawyer did not reply to questions about who has so far been paying for the lawsuit’s substantial costs.

Meanwhile, those of us who continue to value national sovereignty will think of people like Bakan. Even though the liberal-left is often distracted by identity politics related to ethnicity, Bakan says the nation-state remains the key structure to protect the common good of passport holders and permanent residents.

Defenders of sovereignty may also consider Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz, who says globalization will only benefit most members of a nation if it puts strong social-protection measures in place. That includes rules to protect Canadians from out-of-control housing costs.

Source: Douglas Todd: Canadian sovereignty faces challenge over foreign-buyers tax

Gary Mason provides an effective riposte to those house-rich opposing the tax:

…But, hey, let’s not worry about them. They’ll figure it out, I’m sure. Let’s turn our attention to the homeowners in Vancouver whose $3-million-plus abodes face a minor tax hike. Although they can defer it until after they sell, many don’t want to. So, let’s everyone get together and figure out how we can help these poor, poor multimillionaires.

Source: Opinion What about the poor multimillionaire homeowners?

 

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