Artificial Intelligence and Immigration Implications

2024/07/08 Leave a comment

More directed at legal and immigration firms than governments but nevertheless interesting. Predictive technology, if fed with the right assumptions and data, could be a very useful tool for governments as they often appear flat-footed and late with respect to impacts and change:

According to the International Monetary Fund, almost 40% of global employment will be impacted by artificial intelligence.

The field of immigration is no exception, and several countries are already implementing or planning to implement artificial intelligence (AI) into their immigration systems to obtain benefits such as increased productivity by their staff members, enhanced security measures and streamlined recruitment of foreign nationals.

This blog discusses recent and forthcoming examples of AI in immigration systems; ways for companies and governments to prepare for the AI revolution and adapt it for their uses; and addresses some of the challenges and concerns surrounding the use of AI in immigration.

Some recent examples of AI being utilized in immigration systems include:

  • In the United Arab Emirates, the Dubai airport launched an iris scanner to confirm identity, allowing travelers entering the country to move rapidly through passport control while still maintaining security precautions.
  • Portugal uses AI tools to validate the authenticity of documents submitted with an online citizenship application.
  • The government of Brazil is planning to utilize AI to analyze residence permit applications for employment, to reduce bureaucracy and speed up processing times.
  • France is expected to begin using AI to uncover and trace document fraud on the ANEF (Digital Administration for Foreigners in France) portal.

How can companies and governments prepare for AI and adapt it for their purposes?

  • Ensure compliance with standards in the region they are operating. Across the world, countries and regions are taking different approaches towards regulating AI and affected employers should be aware and revise their business practices if they are subject to these new rules. For example, the European Union is set to become the world’s leading tech regulator when the Artificial Intelligence Act goes into effect; the law will implement regulations on AI in phases, with the first phase banning prohibited AI systems that pose “unacceptable risks”.
  • Adopt specific AI visas to attract talent. Many governments recognize the transformative nature of AI and the critical need to attract individuals specialized in AI practices to transform industries and boost productivity.
    • The United States is considering changes to the J-1 exchange visitor program that could enhance opportunities for AI talent. The U.S. government is also reviewing existing immigration pathways, including the EB-1, EB-2, O-1 and International Entrepreneur Parole Program, to clarify and modernize these pathways for experts in AI.
    • Australia launched a Mobility Arrangement for Talented Early-Professionals Scheme, which provides 3,000 places for Indian national early professionals in several fields, including AI.
  • Utilize predictive technology to understand how migration management affects their companies. AI is being used for migration management, allowing the public and private sectors to pool information that can be used to predict migration flows, leading to more informed decisions and policy-making.
  • Implement upskilling and reskilling initiatives. The private sector should include AI upskilling initiatives as part of their workers’ regular assignments. This is particularly important as, according to the Harvard Business Review, “the half-life of [tech] skills is now less than five years, and in some tech fields it’s as low as two and a half years.” Constantly hiring new talent for emerging AI technology would result in a revolving door at a company, creating a loss of institutional knowledge, productivity, and revenue. By adopting upskilling and reskilling initiatives to keep up with the latest AI technology, employers build employee loyalty.

What challenges and concerns should companies and governments be aware of when utilizing AI or immigration systems built with AI?

  • Confidentiality of information. Governments and the private sector alike collect highly sensitive data essential to immigration procedures, such as biometrics and passports. With the AI transfer of information into systems, employers and government officials must ensure that these systems comply with data privacy laws, contain adequate cyber security precautions, and will not be used to harm the individual.
  • National security issues. Governments want to ensure that information they store on private sector AI platforms is only shared with select partners and does not end up with adversaries that could potentially use this information for nefarious reasons.
  • Translation issues. AI has already proven to be somewhat unreliable when used for translation purposes, due to the nuances of written and spoken languages. Although it may be cheaper and faster to utilize AI for this purpose, translation errors may lead to undesirable outcomes, such as denied visa applications. Employers and government individuals should be extremely circumspect in determining when and what type of AI translation technology they employ.
  • Divide in uptake of AI by countries. To effectively utilize AI, companies and governments must operate in countries with a suitable information and communication technology infrastructure. Developing countries, which may not have this infrastructure or individuals with the skill set to operate such infrastructure, may be slower adopters of AI technology. As a result, if AI is needed for productivity, companies may end up reshoring jobs originally outsourced to these developing countries, causing greater disparities among countries.

Due to the ever-changing nature of AI technology, companies should reach out to their immigration professionals for guidance in navigating the complex landscape at the intersection of these two fields.

Source: Artificial Intelligence and Immigration Implications

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How our immigration policies failed Black Americans

2024/07/06 Leave a comment

Every now and then, similar articles appear on Black Americans and immigration:

This year marks a milestone in Black American history. It’s the 50th anniversary of Congresswoman Barbara Jordan’s televised speech to the nation regarding the impeachment of President Richard Nixon.

Widely considered one of the best American political speeches of the 20th century, it catapulted Jordan – the first Southern Black woman elected to Congress – to national prominence.

But there’s another element of Jordan’s story that’s notoriously undercovered: her opposition to immigration policies that have failed Black Americans for centuries – and continue to hinder their ability to build wealth today.

With slavery abolished after the Civil War, Black Americans began accruing real wealth. After emancipation, the white-black wealth gap narrowed from 23-to-1 in 1870 to 11-to-1 in 1900. While still suffering from discrimination, Black Americans took on paying jobs, became business owners, and even purchased land.

Then the Progressive Era’s immigration boom began in earnest. Between 1900 and 1915, more than 15 million immigrants arrived at U.S. shores – destabilizing labor markets and particularly hurting Black workers.

Numerous Black civil rights and labor leaders, including A. Philip Randolph, endorsed efforts to slash immigration rates. Randolph correctly pointed out that excessive immigration “over-floods the labor market, resulting in lowering the standard of living.”

Congress ultimately listened and passed the Immigration Act of 1924 – which curtailed foreign migration. By dramatically tightening the labor market, the law helped shrink the earnings gap between Black men and white men by nearly 60% between 1940 and 1980.

It’s simple supply and demand. When there are fewer workers available, employers have to raise wages and provide better benefits to attract them.

The 1924 law certainly had flaws. It gave preference to prospective immigrants based on their country of origin, and strongly favored northern Europeans. Ultimately, the law’s discriminatory nature led Congress to repeal it in 1965.

But lawmakers threw the baby out with the bathwater. Instead of creating a nondiscriminatory immigration system that protected American workers from cheap foreign labor, the reforms of the 1960s re-started mass migration. Black Americans have been paying a steep price ever since.

As Harvard economist George Borjas has shown, Black Americans are particularly disadvantaged by lax immigration policies because immigrants compete directly with Black workers for blue-collar jobs. Each “10-percent immigrant-induced increase in the supply of a particular skill group reduced the Black wage by 4.0 percent, lowered the employment rate of Black men by 3.5 percentage points, and increased the incarceration rate of Blacks by almost a full percentage point,” he and his colleagues concluded.

Of course, Black Americans aren’t the only ones harmed. Journalist David Leonhardt recently chronicled how American workers of all races have seen their wages decline thanks to the renewed tide of immigration that began in the 1960s.

He also elevates the forgotten perspective of Barbara Jordan.

Jordan chaired the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, a bipartisan panel of experts tasked by President Clinton with offering immigration reform recommendations. The commission recommended that the United States pare down immigration to 550,000 people per year and eliminate low-skilled immigration altogether. Clinton initially endorsed the commission’s recommendations, but business lobbyists ultimately convinced Congress to not move forward with the reforms.

Since the Jordan Commission, too many policymakers have defended a system that imports millions of predominantly low-skilled immigrants, both legal and illegal, who depress wages for Black Americans.

Reducing immigration, just as Congress did a century ago, would give Black families a fair shot at the American dream.

Andre Barnes is HBCU Engagement Director for NumbersUSA. This piece originally appeared in the Houston Chronicle.

Source: How our immigration policies failed Black Americans

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Immigrants back regularization for undocumented people

2024/07/05 Leave a comment

More accurate header would be “immigrant organizations” as unclear, absent good polling, the degree to which immigrants themselves, who have gone through the hoops, would support. And the usual arguments in favour of impact on overall GDP, not the more important GDP per capita.

Sense of impending panic over a likely conservative government with their “the time is now” reference:

As leaders of immigrant and diaspora organizations across Canada, we want to address recent statements from Immigration Minister Marc Miller about the supposed lack of consensus on the regularization of undocumented people. This hesitancy ignores the moral and economic imperatives at stake. Canada has a responsibility to offer protection and stability to those who have long contributed to our society from the shadows. Contrary to concerns expressed by some about “queue jumping,” many Canadians—especially within immigrant communities—support regularization. Here’s why.

A matter of justice and solidarity

Many immigrants—like other Canadian citizens—personally know non-status people. Undocumented people are our friends, partners, neighbours, family, and coworkers. They care for our children, build our homes, and deliver our food. Their lack of status makes them vulnerable to exploitation, from unfair wages to denial of health care.

Many have fled war, persecution, or severe economic hardship, only to face a precarious existence due to barriers to legal status. Immigrant communities overwhelmingly support regularization because we understand these hardships, and empathize with those trapped by the unforgiving web of the immigration system.

Understanding the path to becoming undocumented

It’s crucial to dispel the myth that undocumented immigrants are “queue jumpers.” Becoming undocumented is not a choice but often a consequence of an opaque and unfair immigration system. Many arrived legally as refugees or migrant workers, but faced insurmountable obstacles in renewing their status or obtaining permanent residency.

Immigrants know—through personal experience or those of our parents and grandparents—that access to permanent residency is fraught with high fees, long waits, and complex requirements that many cannot meet. Thousands fall through the cracks not because they are trying to subvert the system, but because the system fails to provide fair options. When immigrants see undocumented people, they know it could be them. Regularization is not about rewarding lawbreakers; it’s about rectifying systemic failings that leave many vulnerable and uncertain.

Regularization: a pathway, not a shortcut

The idea that regularizing undocumented people amounts to “jumping the queue” is a misconception. Regularization does not mean granting immediate permanent residency without scrutiny. It means allowing individuals to apply for permanent resident status, subject to the same assessments as any other applicant. This would place them in the queue where they belong, acknowledging their long-term contributions and connections to Canada.

Regularization programs can ensure fairness and integrity, offering a transparent process where individuals must meet specific criteria, such as proving residence in Canada. This is not about creating shortcuts but about integrating those already part of our communities into the legal framework, enabling them to contribute more fully to society.

Economic and social benefits

Regularizing undocumented immigrants is not just a humanitarian gesture; it’s an economic boon. These individuals are already contributing significantly to our economy, often in sectors facing severe shortages. By bringing them out of the shadows, we can enhance their wages, productivity, purchasing power, and tax contributions. According to research done on France applied to Canada, regularization would grow the economy by more than $28-billion, and as Miller said, that’s more than the economic growth from multiple oil and gas pipelines. This growth will fund public infrastructure and services, which will result in improving the working and living conditions of all Canadians including recent immigrants.

Regularization promotes social cohesion and stability, and reduces exploitative labour practices. When people live without fear of deportation, they are more likely to invest in their communities, seek education for their children, and pursue opportunities. This leads to stronger, more integrated communities where everyone has a stake in our collective success. Undocumented people already live here, regularization is about including them in the family of rights.

The time is now

Canada has welcomed diverse communities of newcomers over the years. This has strengthened us. We cannot let fears and misconceptions dictate policies that leave hundreds of thousands in a perpetual state of limbo and fear. The decision to regularize undocumented immigrants aligns with our values of fairness, compassion, and inclusivity. The time for change is now. Immigrants are ready to support this initiative.

Debbie Douglas is executive director of OCASI – Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants. Amy Go is president of Chinese Canadian National Council for Social Justice. Samina Sami is executive director of COSTI Immigrant Services. Samya Hasan is executive director of Council of Agencies Serving South Asians. This is the shared opinion of multiple immigrant groups we are in touch with in the country.

Source: Immigrants back regularization for undocumented people

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Canadian Dream? High housing costs has two-in-five recent immigrants saying they may leave their province (or Canada)

2024/07/04 Leave a comment

Another sign that the value proposition for immigrants to Canada is weakening. How many will act on this deception remains unclear:

Canada’s immigration levels have reached record highs in recent years, but as more immigrants seek the Canadian dream from abroad, many who have arrived in recent years have discovered less of a dream and more of a nightmare.

New data from the non-profit Angus Reid Institute finds recent trends that have seen Canadians concentrating in Alberta, moving south, or beyond Canada and the U.S., potentially increasing in coming years. Most likely among those to consider further relocation are recent arrivals. Consider that while three-in-10 Canadians (28%) say they’re giving serious consideration to leaving their province of residence due to housing affordability, this number rises to 39 per cent for those who have lived in the country for less than a decade.

Canada’s newcomers tend to be urbanites with skills to quickly engage in the economy, and housing affordability challenges in these urban spaces is perhaps compounding their uncertainty. In Toronto and Vancouver, the long-term risk would be one of losing the workforce required to keep the city cores humming. In Downtown Toronto, 44 per cent say they consider leaving, with 22 per cent saying this is a strong current consideration. Similar numbers also say this in the surrounding 905 area code. In Metro Vancouver, one-in-three (33%) aren’t sure if that region is a long-term home.  

More Key Findings:

  • Two-in-five renters (38%) are considering moving away from their province, compared to 28 per cent of homeowners with a mortgage and 16 per cent of homeowners without one.
  • The most common destination for those who consider relocating is another province in Canada. Nearly half say this (45%) with Alberta the top choice (18%). That said, one-quarter say they would leave for another country beyond the U.S. (27%) and 15 per cent would head south to that latter nation.
  • Alberta is the primary potential beneficiary of emigrants from B.C., with 35 per cent saying they would travel one province east if they were to leave. In Ontario, the largest group say they would move abroad beyond the U.S. (26%), while Alberta ties for second (17%) with Canada’s southern neighbor (17%).

Source: Canadian Dream? High housing costs has two-in-five recent immigrants saying they may leave their province (or Canada)

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Ottawa considering buying hotels to house growing number of asylum seekers

2024/07/04 Leave a comment

Sigh. Recognition of reality or abandoning efforts to reduce the numbers or speed up the claim processes:

Ottawa is considering buying hotels to house the growing number of asylum seekers and to cut the cost of block-booking hotel rooms to accommodate them, Immigration Minister Marc Miller says.

The federal government has in the last few years taken out long leases on hotels to help provinces house thousands of refugee claimants. This year, Ottawa has been footing the bill for approximately 4,000 hotel rooms for 7,300 asylum seekers, many of whom have transferred from provincial shelters and churches, according to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.

In a recent interview, Mr. Miller said the government is looking at a more sustainable and affordable way to house people claiming refugee status, including buying hotels and converting them.

One model being considered could involve installing federal and provincial officials in the converted hotels to provide front-line services to asylum seekers waiting for their cases to be heard, he added.

Despite efforts to “stabilize” the number of asylum claimants, “these numbers aren’t going down drastically anytime soon,” Mr. Miller said….

Source: Ottawa considering buying hotels to house growing number of asylum seekers

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FINLAYSON: Trudeau’s immigration policy supercharging housing demand

2024/07/04 Leave a comment

Yet more commentary on the link between immigration and housing, and the time lags involved in expanding the latter:

According to a recent Statistics Canada report, Canada’s population has just hit the level it was previously expected to reach in 2028. That startling finding underscores the extraordinary growth of the country’s population since the pandemic, driven by record inflows of permanent and “temporary” immigrants.

A rapidly expanding population can bring benefits, notably by stimulating overall economic activity and providing additional workers. But it’s not an alloyed good. The number of Canadian residents is increasing faster than economic output (gross domestic product), which has translated into an unprecedented series of per-person Gross Domestic Product declines over the last several quarters. Productivity is stagnant as newcomers struggle to find their way in the economy and job market. In addition, a significant share of new immigrants don’t seek or obtain employment, dampening immigration’s contribution to the growth of economic output.

Meanwhile, unusually brisk population growth is putting considerable strain on public services and infrastructure, in part because the federal government did essentially nothing to plan or prepare for the dramatic surge in immigration that its own policies sanctioned. The “downstream” challenge of managing the pressures flowing from turbo-charged immigration falls mainly to provinces and municipalities, not far away Ottawa.

All of this has implications for the hottest issue in Canadian politics today — housing affordability and supply. Like the rest of us, newcomers need a place to live. Immigration is the predominant source of incremental housing demand in much of the country, particularly big cities. Demand for housing also comes from the existing Canadian population, as young adults establish separate households, marriages dissolve, and people move to other communities or neighbourhoods for work, education or retirement.

Unfortunately, homebuilding has been running far behind what’s necessary to accommodate immigration, let alone meet the demand from household formation among current residents. In 1972, when the population stood at 22 million, roughly 220,000 new homes were added to the Canadian housing stock. In 2023, with a population of 40 million, housing starts were only a little higher than half a century ago.

This brings us to the Trudeau government’s multi-faceted housing plan, rolled out over the past year and finalized with great fanfare in the 2024 federal budget. The government has pledged to somehow build 3.9 million new homes by 2031 — just seven years from now. This is equivalent to 550,000 housing starts per year. It’s an aspirational target, but also a patently unrealistic one.

The federal government has little control over what happens in the towns, cities and provinces where most of the policy and regulatory decisions affecting homebuilding and community development are made. Moreover, the Canadian construction sector doesn’t have the spare human resources or organizational capacity to quickly double housing starts.

Even today, the construction sector’s “job vacancy rate” is higher than the all-industry average.

The year 2021 marked a record for Canadian housing starts at 270,000. Starts fell over 2022-23, amid higher interest rates.

This year, RBC Economics projects housing starts of 251,000, rising to 273,000 in 2025. To put it mildly, these figures are inconsistent with Ottawa’s ambitious plan to deliver 550,000 new homes per year.

We’ll likely see more and faster homebuilding over the next few years, as governments at all levels direct more money and

political attention to housing. But a doubling of housing starts simply won’t occur within the Trudeau government’s politically manufactured timeline. One thing seems certain — Canada’s housing “crisis” will continue to fester.

Jock Finlayson is a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute

Source: FINLAYSON: Trudeau’s immigration policy supercharging housing demand

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Lederman: How attitudes to immigration have evolved in The Globe through the generations

2024/07/03 Leave a comment

Good historical overview, highlighting how the Globe overall reflected public attitudes of the time:

….As The Globe marks its 180th anniversary, questions around immigration continue to populate its pages. Who gets in, who doesn’t. On what criteria. Deafening in its absence for many years: discussion of who was displaced by settlers as Canada formed and evolved. From the Chinese head tax to Roxham Road, a trip through the pages of The Globe offers the real story in black and white. Canada – if it opened its gates at all – has often been inhospitable, even hostile, to newcomers….

Source: How attitudes to immigration have evolved in The Globe through the generations

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Coyne: In a country where immigrants are the majority, anti-immigration politics are obsolete

2024/07/02 Leave a comment

Or counter productive. But still room for lots of debates and discussions over numbers of both permanent and temporary, priorities and programs and the like:

….Indeed, we are about to cross a significant threshold. As of the 2021 census, 23 per cent of Canadians were immigrants – a record. Add to that the 17.6 per cent of the population with at least one foreign-born parent, and more than 40 per cent of the population were either first- or second-generation immigrants.

That was three years ago – before the current great wave of immigration. By now that number must be at least 42 or 43 per cent. Add to that the 6.8 per cent of the population, as of April 1 of this year, made up of non-permanent residents, and we are very nearly at 50 per cent.

That proportion is only likely to grow. Two years ago – again, before the great wave – Statistics Canada projected first- and second-generation immigrants would make up 52.4 per cent of the population by 2041. But that was on the basis of a projected total population of 48 million. It is already at 41.4 million.

There is no going back from this. We have crossed the immigration Rubicon. It’s easier to campaign against immigration in a country with little experience of it. But in a country where immigrants, and their children, make up the majority? It is not going to happen.

Source: Opinion: In a country where immigrants are the majority, anti-immigration politics are obsolete

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McGugan: Canada is a great place, with politicians who have a knack for bad decisions

2024/07/02 Leave a comment

More critical commentary, but leaves out the complicity of business associations, education institutions, provincial governments and others:

….The government’s incoherence on housing reflects its commitment to a similarly befuddled immigration agenda.

Mr. Trudeau supersized immigration after he became Prime Minister in 2015. Exactly why was never clear: Canada’s existing system admitted generous numbers of people, primarily on economic grounds, and was considered a model internationally.

Yet Mr. Trudeau ramped up the annual immigrant intake from a net total of roughly 200,000 people in 2015 to 300,000 by 2019 and more than 400,000 currently. Even more important, he allowed a vast expansion in the scale of programs that admit non-permanent residents – primarily international students and temporary workers – taking that category to more than 800,000 people this year.

The entirely predictable result of this population surge has been housing shortages and soaring rents. Ottawa is now moving to slash the number of non-permanent residents, but that will take time.

Perhaps the key question to ask is why nobody in Ottawa saw problems coming. It doesn’t take advanced economic modelling to suspect that the collision between a drum-tight housing market and an unprecedented surge of new residents would not turn out well.

On this Canada Day, we should ponder why our political class – federally and provincially, left and right – has developed such a knack for making unforced errors. Canada remains great. Sadly, its politicians aren’t.

Source: Canada is a great place, with politicians who have a knack for bad decisions

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Current immigration levels could lead to ‘overreaction,’ Quebec premier says

2024/07/02 Leave a comment

Of note and legitimate concern even if coming from Premier Legault and his series of missteps:
Quebec Premier François Legault warned Friday there’s a risk of “overreaction” against newcomers if the province maintains its current immigration levels.Legault told reporters on the Gaspé Peninsula he doesn’t want to see Quebec end up like the United States or France, where the debate on immigration has fuelled extremist views. Recent statistics show there has been an increase of more than 300,000 non-permanent residents in Quebec in the last two years, a number Legault said is more than the province can accommodate.

“There’s a risk of reaction or overreaction in the face of impacts on services, on the French language, on housing,” he said. “We have to be balanced in how many immigrants we take in every year.”

Legault’s comments came in response to a question about whether he fears a “rise of the right” in Quebec and Canada. Concerns about immigration have fuelled the popularity of far-right parties in several European countries, including France, where the anti-immigration Rassemblement National is leading in polls heading into the first voting round in parliamentary elections this weekend.

In the United States, President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump clashed on immigration during a televised debate Thursday night, and the issue will probably be a flashpoint in the 2024 presidential election.

“What I hope is that we don’t end up in the same situation as the United States or France,” Legault said. “I think Quebecers have always been welcoming. But we can’t welcome 300,000 new people in two years. That’s too many.”…

Source: Current immigration levels could lead to ‘overreaction,’ Quebec premier says

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