Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre would be OK with permanent resident status for foreign workers, with conditions

2024/08/10 Leave a comment

Not exactly a bankable commitment. The devil will be in the details:

…Poilievre said he will consider permanent status for migrant workers under some specific conditions.

“I am open to it for people who have come legally, who have worked the entire time that they have been here (and) who have, or are learning one of the two official languages,” he said.

“In principle I have no problem with the idea of temporary foreign workers who have proven themselves to be strong, net contributors to our country staying permanently and becoming members of the Canadian family,” he added.

Source: Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre would be OK with permanent resident status for foreign workers, with conditions

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International Students Numbers Starting to Decline

2024/08/10 Leave a comment

Given some of the simplistic analysis of the number of study permits issued in a number of publications, I thought the following table would be instructive. There is always a time lag in policy implementation and the caps on international students were introduced in January of this year as shown in the table below.

So while there was a slight increase for the first half of this year, the quarterly number highlights the shift: Q1 showed a year-to-year increase of 34.3 percent whereas Q2 showed a decrease of 21.4 percent.

So a plea to journalists writing about international students and other immigration numbers, look at both the totals and trends for a more accurate picture. Always happy to respond to any questions.

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Ottawa signals tougher rules for Temporary Foreign Worker Program

2024/08/09 Leave a comment

Waiting for the details of this needed corrective action:

…The federal government said these moves were aimed at easing labour shortages, although many economists criticized the policies over the potential for wage suppression and exploitation of foreign workers, who have weaker labour rights than permanent residents and Canadians.

Employers have subsequently ramped up their recruitment of foreign labour, particularly in the low-wage stream. Cooks, food counter attendants and construction workers are among the low-wage employees in high demand.

At the end of 2023, nearly 190,000 people held valid work permits through the TFW program, an increase of 157 per cent from 2019. The program accounts for a small portion of temporary foreign labour in the country; for example, international students and people with postgraduate work permits are a large and growing cohort of workers in the Canadian economy.

The country’s soaring population growth – largely fuelled by temporary immigration – is colliding with a weakening labour market. The unemployment rate has risen to 6.4 per cent, and it’s taking longer for recent immigrants and young people to find jobs.

Tuesday’s news release said the government is applying “a stricter and more rigorous oversight” of employer applications to use the TFW program and when conducting inspections of companies using such labour.

Source: Ottawa signals tougher rules for Temporary Foreign Worker Program

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Meggs: Despite moving to limit temporary immigrants, Canada’s policy lacks vision

2024/08/08 Leave a comment

Good critique of the lack of an overall vision and direction. In addition, any such vision and plan needs to include the impacts of immigration, permanent and temporary, on housing, healthcare, infrastructure etc., along with related plans to address these impacts:

…The government’s move is part of its plan to reverse many decisions that have led to the serious negative consequences of the mismanagement of the immigration system over the last 10 years. The main stated objective is to reduce the proportion of non-permanent residents (those with work or study permits and asylum seekers) to 5 per cent of the Canadian population by 2027, a target experts consider unattainable.

However, is the growth of a population with a certain immigration status the only problem the government needs to resolve? Or is it the increasing size of the population in general? Or the number and pace of arrivals, whatever their status? Or the skills and skill-levels of the people who are arriving? Or the age pyramid?

There was no vision in the immigration policy that got us into this conundrum, and there is no obvious vision for bringing immigration policy back under control. For public policy to be effective and reinforce confidence in government, the public must understand and relate to the problems that the policy is attempting to address and feel intuitively that the government has the issue under control. Canadians these days sense that this is no longer the case for immigration policy and this is dangerous for social cohesion….

Source: Despite moving to limit temporary immigrants, Canada’s policy lacks vision

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Moffatt: Ontario experienced a decade’s worth of population growth in just three years. We can’t support that growth without building way more homes

2024/08/08 Leave a comment

More on housing pressures and noting the importance of curbing demand in terms of numbers of immigrants, permanent and temporary and current government changes (further reductions needed IMO):

…On the population growth side, the federal government has committed to lowering the number of non-permanent residents (NPRs), including international students and temporary foreign workers, living in Canada. They have committed to reducing the proportion of non-permanent residents to under 5 per cent of Canada’s population over the next three years, a reduction of nearly one million people. If achieved, it would ease pressure on rents and ensure that the students we are inviting to the country have the best possible experience while here. However, the Bank of Canada recently called into question the federal government’s commitment to their non-permanent resident growth targets, stating  “it will take longer for planned policies to reduce NPR inflows to achieve the 5% target”. The federal government must release a credible plan, or risk having Ontario’s population grow faster than the housing supply.

Ontario’s housing crisis can be fixed. We have the solutions on both the supply and demand sides, many of which governments have already committed to implementing. They simply need to do so.

Source: Ontario experienced a decade’s worth of population growth in just three years. We can’t support that growth without building way more homes

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Will Canada apply its immigration policy fairly in the face of the Gaza conflict?

2024/08/07 Leave a comment

I find these arguments somewhat tiresome, not because they are not valid but rather because they need to also acknowledge the war crimes, genocidal aims, etc by Hamas. Equally tiresome are arguments by hardline supporters of the Israeli government not acknowledging their war crimes and tolerance of extremist settler groups:

One of the most sacrosanct foundations of democracies is that they are based on the rule of law, which mandates one set of laws enforceable on all individuals—including the government itself. The notion that the law simply does not apply to an individual, or groups of individuals, is more commonly associated with corrupt dictatorships than democracies. 

Yet, in 2024 in Canada, whether the rule of law is supreme is an open question. Canada has specific laws governing who is considered admissible to the country, proscribing Canadians from joining foreign militaries, and preventing illegal support for armed forces of another country by Canadian charities. Each one of those laws has been applied in regard to some groups, and consistently violated and disregarded with others. 

The American State Department recently issued an unexpected decision regarding Elor Azaria, a former sergeant in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) convicted of extrajudicially killing a Palestinian in the West Bank. The decision bars Azaria, as well as his immediate family members, from entering the United States. The statement declared, “We are designating Elor Azaria … pursuant to Section 7031(c) for his involvement in a gross violation of human rights … .” 

This decision marks a significant turning point for those implicated in war crimes in Gaza under U.S. jurisdiction, and it also raises a crucial question about the repercussions of the Gaza conflict on the enforcement of Canada’s laws. 

How will the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) handle the Income Tax Act implications for charities that fund the IDF? The CRA recently revoked the Jewish National Fund’s charitable status for directing donations towards IDF infrastructure. This raises questions about other charities that have publicly raised funds for the IDF and illegal settlements. Similarly, how will the Royal Canadian Mounted Police address provisions of the Criminal Code and Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act regarding Canadians who have joined the IDF?

Additionally, Section 34(1) of Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) bars entry to individuals involved in violence, terrorism, or membership in related organizations. Sections 35(1) and 35.1(1) further prohibit entry to anyone implicated in human or international rights violations, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, senior officials in governments guilty of gross human rights violations, and those under international sanctions. These provisions—mirroring the American laws that barred Azaria—were broadly designed by Parliament to safeguard national security. They granted discretionary power to Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) officers and immigration officials, but also acknowledged the potential to inadvertently affect innocent and non-threatening individuals who are meant to be treated as exceptions. 

If applied universally, these principles could restrict figures in the vein of Nelson Mandela, or even historical members of the U.S. Democratic Party due to their support of slavery. However, in practice, the CBSA has often used these provisions selectively, particularly to unjustly target and deport refugees from Muslim countries, with decisions frequently influenced by the personal biases of individual officers. This same bias has also led to the oversight of individuals who should rightfully be captured by the law.

Despite well-documented instances of systemic violence against Muslims and other minorities by members of India’s Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Canada has not taken a similar stance against them. The RSS, a right-wing Hindu nationalist group, and the BJP, India’s ruling party, have been linked to numerous violent acts, including riots and targeted attacks on religious minorities. From 2013 to 2023, Indian immigration to Canada increased by 326 per cent, with 18.6 per cent of recent immigrants coming from India. Yet, Canada has not pursued cases of inadmissibility against individuals from these groups, raising questions about the consistency and fairness of its immigration policies.

The ongoing Gaza conflict has led to investigations by the International Criminal Court into alleged war crimes by Israel, including the targeted killing of civilians, willful suffering, and the use of starvation as a warfare tactic—all human rights violations. Additionally, the International Court of Justice has declared that Israel’s occupation and settlement expansions in the Occupied Palestinian Territory are illegal, and that there is an imminent risk of genocide. Under Canada’s Immigration Act, involvement with groups linked to these illegal settlements or with the IDF, amidst allegations of war crimes or possible genocide, could make individuals inadmissible to Canada—a measure affecting a significant portion of Israel’s population.

Our laws must be consistently applied, holding individuals accountable for human rights violations, war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity, irrespective of their nationality, the geopolitical context of their actions, or the political stance of the government of the day. To ensure the proper application of the law and to enable the CBSA to effectively perform its duties, a suspension of visa exemptions for travellers from Israel is necessary.

As the U.S. has taken a step towards a consistent application of its immigration laws concerning human rights violations against Palestinians, it is crucial for Canada to critically examine its own legal enforcement, and ensure that it upholds fairness and impartiality in every instance. Our nation faces a difficult test with the Gaza crisis, challenging us to confront the systemic biases embedded within our governmental institutions. Our standing as a democratic nation founded on the rule of law demands nothing less.

Washim Ahmed is a refugee and human rights lawyer, and a co-founder of OWS Law. Taha Ghayyur is the executive director of Justice for All Canada, a non-profit human rights and advocacy organization dedicated to preventing genocide.

Source: Will Canada apply its immigration policy fairly in the face of the Gaza conflict?

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Clark: Kill a fallacy to save immigration

2024/08/06 Leave a comment

Good critique but like so many, takes an all good or all bad approach, without acknowledging that a mix of approaches is needed. But all to true on “articles of faith”:

…There is also the notion that the goal of Canada’s immigration should be expanding the labour force to pay for all the costs of an ageing population. This has become such an article of faith that Ottawa has lost a sense of balance.

As Mr. Fortin notes, the overall impact of immigration on ageing will always be minimal unless the number of newcomers is drastically increased to millions every year. There are only so many 25-year-olds coming each year into a population of 41.5 million, and once they arrive, they get older every day.

So, as the Liberal government works to repair its way out of its immigration mistakes, it’s time to question the assumptions. Already, Canada’s immigration system is in trouble. Polls show Canadians are starting to sour on it.

To save the immigration system, it’s time to discard the fallacies that have caused such damage.

Source: Kill a fallacy to save immigration

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Exodus of high net worth Indians economic travesty: Congress on citizenship renunciation data

2024/08/06 Leave a comment

Indian brain drain political debate:

Citing government data of 2.16 lakh Indians renouncing their citizenship in 2023, the Congress on Saturday said the exodus of high-skilled and high net worth Indians is an “economic travesty” that will shrink the country’s tax revenue base over the next few years. Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said business personalities are increasingly relocating to places such as Singapore, UAE, the UK and other places renouncing their Indian citizenship. 

In a written response to queries on Indian citizens who have renounced their citizenship, Minister of State for External Affairs Kirti Vardhan Singh recently told the Rajya Sabha that more than 2.16 lakh Indians renounced their citizenship in 2023. 

Ramesh, the Congress general secretary in-charge communications, said the number was almost double than what it was in 2011, at 123,000.

Many of these Indians who renounced their citizenship are highly skilled and educated, and their leaving the country at a time of a domestic skilled labour supply shortage will “extract a serious toll on our economy,” he said. 

“Many are also financially well-off – earlier this year, a leading global investment migration advisory firm had revealed that over 17,000 millionaires (individuals with total assets greater than $1 million) had left India in the last three years,” Ramesh said. 

This exodus of high-skilled and high net worth Indians could very well have been the result of opaque tax policies and an arbitrary tax administration, quite apart from the overall climate of fear and intimidation surrounding corporate India in the past decade, the Congress leader said. …

Source: Exodus of high net worth Indians economic travesty: Congress on citizenship renunciation data

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Column: The California roots of Trump’s anti-immigrant pitch to Black voters

2024/08/05 Leave a comment

Of note, 1994 Proposition 187:

Donald Trump is nothing if not consistent, and his Dumpster fire of an interview with reporters at the National Assn. of Black Journalists convention in Chicago this week showed the Republican presidential nominee in full, foul mode.

He lied. He insulted. He whined. He was racist and misogynistic. He evaded questions and elided answers, and showed all the grace and gratitude of a kindergartner who pees in a sandbox and expects others to clean up the mess.

Above all, the Republican presidential candidate kept stabbing at the same illegal immigration scapegoat that’s the centerpiece of his 2024 presidential campaign. This time, though, he tried to further his contention that Donald J. Trump is the greatest president for Black people since Abraham Lincoln.

He unveiled the strategy during his June 28 debate with President Biden, when Trump stated that immigrants were a “big kill on the Black people” and were “taking Black jobs.” In Georgia, which he narrowly lost in 2020, his campaign has aired radio and television commercials insisting Biden cares more about illegal immigrants than the Black community.

At the NABJ convention, Trump blamed open borders for endangering the job security of Black workers — never mind that unemployment rates for them have reached historic lows under both the Trump and Biden administrations, a time when illegal immigration has grown to numbers not seen in a generation. When a moderator asked what was his message to all the Black reporters gathered before him and people watching online, Trump responded it was “to stop people from invading our country … who happen to be taking Black jobs.” When asked what he would do on Day 1 of a new term, he blurted out, “Close the border.”

Trump’s gambit is yet another legacy of Proposition 187, the 1994 California ballot initiative that sought to make life miserable for undocumented immigrants. Then and now, GOP politicians figure that the best way to court Black voters — a longtime bedrock of the Democratic Party — is to argue that immigrants in the country illegally are a burden that hits their community harder than others by taking away social services and bleeding jobs away.

Here’s the thing: There is a historical basis for these concerns, even if Trump has pushed the Illegal Immigrant Bogeyman dial to 11.

When South L.A. began to turn from the heart of the city’s Black community to a Latino-majority enclave during the 1980s and 1990s, the subsequent tensions were real. In the wake of the L.A. riots, groups protested outside work sites and blasted contractors for giving jobs to Latinos instead of Black workers because the former group would work for cheaper than the latter. The assumption by Latino political leaders during the fight against Prop. 187 that Black people would join them without question offended leaders and community activists.

Incidents like that led to 47% of Black voters favoring Prop. 187, a margin that helped the resolution pass comfortably.

Some of the most prominent Black voices in the anti-immigrant movement over the past 25 years — homeless activist Ted Hayes, the late radio show host Terry Anderson, the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, former gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder — came from that era. One of the loudest anti-immigrant voices in Southern California today is Fontana Mayor Acquanetta Warren, a Compton native who has scolded immigrants from the dais for not speaking English and has waged an aggressive campaign against street vendors. Throw in deep-rooted anti-Black sentiments among Latinos that got a prominent showcase during the 2022 L.A. City Hall racist tape leak scandal, and no wonder Trump thinks banking on getting Black voters angry enough against a supposed south-of-the-border invasion is a winner.

The reality is that Black people aren’t as receptive to an anti-immigrant message as Trump and the GOP would like to think.

A 2006 Pew Research Center study showed that 47% of Black people thought immigrants in the U.S. without legal documents should be allowed to stay, compared with 33% of whites. But by 2013, a similar Pew report showed 82% of Black peoplefelt there should be a path toward legalization for those immigrants, compared with 67% of whites. The figure dropped in a Pew survey released this year to 73%, but it’s still far higher than the 53% of whites who feel the same, and just two percentage points behind Latinos, who have increasingly turned to the right against illegal immigration since the Prop. 187 days.

This general acceptance doesn’t surprise L.A. Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson. He campaigned against Prop. 187 in 1994, going door-to-door in his native South L.A. to argue that the initiative was a wedge issue being used by Republicans to divide Black and Latino neighbors against each other and make them forget their shared working-class status.

“One line I would tell people is, ‘Do you hear them [Prop. 187 supporters] talk about people from Canada? From Germany?” Harris-Dawson said. “Black and Latino people I talked to understood it clearly.”

Harris-Dawson didn’t have to make the same argument recently in Atlanta, where the subject of illegal immigration came up in conversation.

“They said, ‘We support immigration reform, because we don’t want working-class people who can’t play defense,’” he said. In other words, it was better for the Black community for immigrants to have full rights instead of keeping them without papers and thus easier to use to undercut Black workers. “The sophistication of that! They get that workers don’t take jobs; employers give jobs.”

He can see Trump peeling off Black voters from the Democrats by continuing to hammer on the illegal immigration issue — but “he’ll also lose them” because of Trump’s long history of racist dog whistles. Besides, the councilmember argued, “people have seen it play out. … You see new neighbors come in and think, ‘Oh, there’s a good family.’ And they are. And then 10 years later, the parents still don’t have papers and the kids can’t go to college.

“Black folks can sympathize,” Harris-Dawson concluded, with “people who deal with systems that are ostensibly there to help you, but in fact do the opposite.”

Source: Column: The California roots of Trump’s anti-immigrant pitch to Black voters

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GOLDSTEIN: High immigration policy undermining housing, healthcare and climate goals

2024/08/05 Leave a comment

Nothing new here but another Postmedia commentary:

It’s hard to know what the Trudeau government was thinking two years ago when it dramatically increased its immigration targets given the added pressure this has put on three issues it says are priorities — housing affordability, improving healthcare and reducing industrial greenhouse gas emissions.

When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau came to power in 2015, 271,845 immigrants became permanent residents of Canada.

In 2022, his government set a target of 465,000 for 2023, 485,000 this year and 500,000 in 2025, followed by another target of 500,000 in 2026, announced last year.

Simultaneously, there has been a huge increase in non-permanent residents during the Trudeau era (international students, temporary foreign workers and asylum seekers).

Trudeau himself said in April that in 2017, they constituted 2% of Canada’s population, while today it’s 7.5% or almost three million people, a number the PM described as “far beyond what Canada has been able to absorb” and “something that we need to get back under control.”

All of this has directly contributed to rapid population growth — Canada’s population hit 41 million people on April 1, an increase of one million people in less than a year, almost all of it due to increases in permanent and temporary immigration.

While the Trudeau government is sticking with its previously announced permanent immigration targets, it has now set a goal of reducing the number of temporary residents to 5% of Canada’s population by 2027.

Immigration Minister Marc Miller has announced plans to cap and reduce the number of international students and foreign workers, and in an interview with Reuters last week said more measures are coming to end “the era of uncapped programs.”

Asked if the government made a mistake by allowing rapid growth in temporary residents, Miller said, “Every government makes mistakes. I think we are all human.” But “coming out of COVID, in particular, we were facing massive labour shortages.”

Asked about a recent Leger poll that found 60% of Canadians surveyed believe too many immigrants are coming to Canada, Miller responded: “I’m not naive enough to think Canada is immune to the waves of anti-immigrant sentiment,” although he acknowledged Canadians want a system that is not out of control.

The Trudeau government often blames anti-immigration sentiment when questioned about its immigration policies, despite the fact years of polling have shown Canadians are generally supportive of immigration.

The reason there is concern now comes from statements by Trudeau that temporary immigration needs to be brought under control and by Miller that the skyrocketing number of international students was a source of concern about the integrity of the immigration system itself.

The federal government has long argued Canada needs high immigration because of its low domestic birth rate, which is not providing enough future workers to grow the economy.

But that policy has also undermined the goals of the Trudeau government on three major issues it says are priorities — housing affordability, healthcare and climate change.

Internal government documents obtained by The Canadian Press earlier this year revealed that in announcing its significant boost to immigration targets in 2022, the Trudeau government ignored warnings from its own public servants that doing so would increase the cost of housing and negatively impact Canada’s already beleaguered healthcare system.

“In Canada, population growth has exceeded the growth in available housing units,” the documents said.

“As the federal authority charged with managing immigration, IRCC (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada) policy-makers must understand the misalignment between population growth and housing supply, and how permanent and temporary immigration shapes population growth … Rapid increases put pressure on healthcare and affordable housing.”

Last month, a peer-reviewed study by Lauren Eastman, Sukhy K. Mahl and Shoo K. Lee published by the Canadian Health Policy Journal — A Growing Problem: Is Canada’s Health Care System Keeping Up With Newcomers — found that, “newcomer demand for health human resources including family physicians, specialists and registered nurses, far out-strips new supply in recent years, leading to a shortage of 1,122 family physicians, 690 specialists and 8,538 registered nurses in 2022. Immigration and healthcare resource policies should work in tandem to ensure the healthcare shortage facing Canadians is not exacerbated.”

Herbert Grubel, a former federal MP and emeritus professor of economics at Simon Fraser University, and Patrick Grady, a former senior official in the federal finance department, estimated in a 2021 article in the Financial Post that based on higher immigration levels, “greenhouse gas emissions will be 7.5% above what they would have been otherwise” in 2030, and “this gap will be much larger by 2050, the year the government has promised to reduce emissions to net-zero as required by the Paris accord.”

Source: GOLDSTEIN: High immigration policy undermining housing, healthcare and climate goals

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