Tories worried about base finding out how much they spend helping immigrants – The Globe and Mail

2015/03/11 Leave a comment

Interesting but not surprising, suggesting that some of the Conservative embrace of immigration and new Canadians may not be fully shared within the party.

But settlement funding, after an initial increase by the Government, has been trimmed and reallocated to reflect more recent immigration trends (i.e., more to the West, less to Ontario), along with efforts to improve the effectiveness of language training (still the bulk of settlement services I think).

Moreover, there have always been questions regarding the proportion of funding given to Quebec in relation to the number of immigrants choosing Quebec:

A briefing note for a Conservative MP suggests the government is worried about how spending on immigration programs is going over with its base.

The House of Commons immigration committee is currently studying how government-funded settlement services can better help the economic integration of immigrants.

A note which appears to have been prepared for Costas Menegakis, the parliamentary secretary for immigration, says the party’s base will learn as a result that the government spends close to $1-billion a year on those efforts.

The note says the other risk of undertaking such a study is that the government’s relationship with Quebec may surface as an issue.

And while the study only began last month and the committee has only just started hearing from witnesses, the briefing note also lays out five recommendations for its the eventual report.

A copy of the note was obtained by The Canadian Press.

Menegakis’ office declined to comment specifically on the note’s contents.

“Committee members are masters of their own proceedings,” said an emailed statement. “As always, we look forward to hearing testimony from all witnesses.”

Liberal MP John McCallum, who sits on the committee, called it “chilling” to see the reference to the party’s base in the document.

“It’s as if they are concerned their own supporters would be aghast at the idea of spending money to help settle immigrants,” McCallum said in an interview.

“It’s good not only for the immigrants, it’s good for the country if the newcomers settle quickly and work and not be receiving welfare and become productive Canadians.”

The Conservatives credit much of their electoral success in recent years to the inroads the party has made among new Canadians. They’ve also massively overhauled the immigration system which they’ve said is partially motivated by concerns raised from within the newcomer community.

Tories worried about base finding out how much they spend helping immigrants – The Globe and Mail.

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Afghan immigrant studying in Vancouver wins Loran scholarship

2015/02/26 Leave a comment

The feel-good story of the week on how Canada provided Somaya Amiri opportunities, and how her determination enabled her seizing them:

When Somaya Amiri was a little girl, she’d watch each morning as her big brother hoisted a backpack over his shoulders and walked to school in Afghanistan’s Behsood District. She remembers desperately wanting to go too.

The day she decided to follow him, her father noticed she was missing from the house and caught up with her at the school. He was furious.

“When I got home my mom and grandmother were crying,” Ms. Amiri said in an interview. “They told me that when you are a girl, you don’t go to school.”

Ms. Amiri now finds herself pondering which of Canada’s top universities she will attend.

This month, the 17-year-old was among 30 Canadian high school students named Loran scholars. Under the program, she will receive up to $100,000 to fund four years of tuition. The scholarship also includes a mentorship program and money for summer internships.

Afghan immigrant studying in Vancouver wins Loran scholarship – The Globe and Mail.

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Apprenticeships in Germany: No guest workers please | The Economist

2015/02/23 Leave a comment

Explains, at least partly, some of the integration problems in Germany:

Yet one part of the population is barely benefiting from the system. A quarter of young Germans have foreign roots, but just 15% of the companies currently running apprenticeship schemes have at least one apprentice with what German bureaucrats call a “migration background”. The biggest such group is ethnically Turkish, but the numbers also include ethnic Germans from formerly communist Europe. Over 60% of apprenticeship-hosting companies have never had an apprentice like that, according to a survey by the Bertelsmann Foundation, a think-tank.

The reasons make depressing reading. Almost 75% claimed they had received no such applications, though the study notes minorities are more likely to apply than the average population. The next factor cited is language deficiencies. This may be an excuse: children of foreign parents raised in Germany usually speak German better than the ancestral language (though language may be a proxy for better-founded worries about generally poor schooling). The real fear may be a vague nervousness about foreigners, given that about 15% of companies cited unspecified cultural barriers.

Yet applicants are in short supply: nearly half of the companies that could take apprentices but don’t blame a lack of qualified candidates. Casting the net more widely would help. Siemens reserves about 10% of its apprenticeships for those who would not pass the first hurdle on their marks in school, on the logic that grades are hardly the best test for a skilled manual worker. This also has the result of bringing in more ethnic minorities. And given Germany’s export dependence, diversity—bringing knowledge of funny-sounding languages and different cultural backgrounds—should be a plus. The companies with the longest records in training apprentices are the most likely to hire those with foreign roots. Some say they do so to help the disadvantaged, but even more cite simply having had good experiences doing so in the past.

If Germany’s labour market continues tightening and the skill-labour shortage continues, perhaps word will also filter out to Germany’s fabled medium-sized Mittelstand companies. Such firms hold tradition as a virtue, and even boast of hiring the children of former apprentices, citing the resulting loyalty as an advantage.

But when 70% of Mittelstand companies complain of a lack of skilled labour, there is all the more reason to cast a wide net. Not hiring people because of fears about their lack of integration into German society is likely to prove self-fulfilling. In a country where career-switching and later retraining are rare, missing the early rungs on the economic ladder can be life-blighting.

Apprenticeships in Germany: No guest workers please | The Economist.

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Millions for immigrant services in B.C. went unspent

2015/02/10 Leave a comment

This has been a long-standing issue:

The draft report, called Lessons Learned Study: British Columbia’s Contribution to Settlement and Immigration 1998-2013, appears to explain why the federal government stripped authority to run the program from the province effective April 1, 2014, said Vancouver-based immigration lawyer Richard Kurland.

“It certainly justifies it,” said Kurland, who obtained the document through the Access to Information Act.

The report noted that B.C. officials were “less than effective” in presenting financial information, and “significant amounts were not accounted for.” It also noted that the federal government did not do an adequate job of ensuring B.C. gave a full account of how the funds were spent.

“(Citizenship and Immigration Canada) officials had ongoing concerns regarding consistent lapsed funds, accountability and access to (program) evaluation findings. C.I.C. also had questions related to B.C. serving non-eligible clients such as Canadian citizens and temporary foreign workers.”

The report said B.C. officials had indicated that the funding for non-immigrants and non-refugees came from B.C.’s contribution to immigrant settlement coffers, which generally totalled eight to 10 per cent of the entire federal-provincial settlement budget.

“While B.C. noted that ineligible clients were served with provincial funds, it was not always clear for C.I.C. officials if this was in fact the case,” the report said.

…The transfer back to federal government control has been a “huge transition” for the sector, Friesen said.

“Under the provincial government … the focus of the relationship was on the services to clients, the output. We had greater flexibility … to be able to move funds around to address gaps in services,” Friesen said.

“The funding regime is very, very different under the federal government with far more focus on the financial management than necessarily on the service side. … You could say it was the opposite under the provincial government.”

Millions for immigrant services in B.C. went unspent.

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Québec devrait inciter les immigrants à s’installer en région, croit Charles Taylor

2015/02/03 Leave a comment

Immigrants tend to go where they perceive the jobs are so not sure how realistic this proposal is.

But his reference to having more immigrants in the hinterland to reduce some of the fears among some “Québécois de souche” through more contact with newcomers has merit:

L’avantage de ce procédé serait double: disperser l’immigration et combler les emplois vacants en région.

«Ce sera une espèce de marché qu’on conclut avec une personne: il y a ce travail concret, on a beaucoup de mal à le remplir. Vous allez le remplir, alors là on est très d’accord pour vous faire passer rapidement à travers toutes les étapes» du processus de sélection, a-t-il illustré.

Entre 2009 et 2013, deux immigrants sur trois (70 %) ont choisi de prendre racine à Montréal. Si on inclut Laval et la Montérégie, on découvre que la très grande majorité (84 %) des nouveaux arrivants s’implantent dans la métropole ou autour, dans ce qu’il est convenu d’appeler le «450».

Leur présence en région paraît infinitésimale: 0,1 % ont choisi la Gaspésie, 0,2 % l’Abitibi et 0,3 % le Saguenay, durant la même période.

Avec son collègue Bouchard, M. Taylor proposera donc, notamment, un moyen d’inverser cette tendance, lors de leur témoignage jeudi devant la commission parlementaire qui se penche sur la future politique d’immigration québécoise.

C’est une approche gagnant-gagnant, fait-il valoir: «Il suffit qu’il y ait un contact humain entre les immigrants de toutes sources et les Québécois de souche, qu’ils se fréquentent un peu et les différentes craintes, les préjugés, les paniques, disparaissent.»

La sélection des candidats pourrait même être conditionnelle à leur acceptation de s’installer en région. Mais M. Taylor prône une approche plus incitative que coercitive. Il ne s’agit pas de leur «forcer la main», mais de créer des conditions favorables.

Québec devrait inciter les immigrants à s’installer en région, croit Charles Taylor | Jocelyne Richer | Politique québécoise.

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Multiculturalism Is Not Dead

2015/02/02 Leave a comment

Rumours of the death of multiculturalism and related policies are exaggerated according to this recent European study:

Countries will create formal policies for citizenship and declare the issue resolved, but that does not mean citizenship is really possible. The authors found that, even in countries such as Denmark and Germany where multiculturalism was never formally adopted, some public policies were being developed to recognize minority communities and facilitate their participation in the labor market, educational systems and other key social sectors at local and national levels.  Europeans love to insist that Americans should just give amnesty to people who got into the United States illegally but they won’t even give citizenship to their legal residents.

In countries where some multiculturalism has formally been adopted, such as the UK and the Netherlands, the picture was more mixed but showed that newer approaches, such as civic integration – including citizenship education, naturalization ceremonies and language classes – also built on and developed multiculturalism rather than erasing it. National identities have been remade in light of it – players of Indian descent can even get on the British cricket team now.

Dr. Nasar Meer, a Reader in Comparative Social Policy and Citizenship at the University of Strathclyde, lead author of the paper, said, “As European societies have become more diverse, the task of developing an inclusive citizenship has become increasingly important. In recent years, however, there has been a backlash against multiculturalism as path to achieving this.

“The reasons for this include the way that, in some countries, multiculturalism is seen to have facilitated social fragmentation and entrenched social divisions, while for others, it has distracted attention away from socio-economic disparities or encouraged a moral hesitancy amongst ‘native’ populations. Some have even blamed it for incidents of international terrorism.”

Dr. Daniel Faas, of Trinity College Dublin’s Department of Sociology, a co-author of the research, said, “Legislations have become more inclusive of diversity, and the large anti-far right demonstrations highlight the solidarity with migrants, but also show that multiculturalism is a fragile concept there.”

Meer added, “Our study clearly shows that, where there have been advances in policies of multiculturalism, these have not been repealed uniformly, or on occasion not at all, but may equally have been supplemented by being ‘balanced out’ in, or thickened by, civic integrationist approaches.”

Reinforces the Kymlicka analysis of the ongoing multicultural integration policies being implemented.

Multiculturalism Is Not Dead.

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France: «une politique du peuplement» contre les ghettos

2015/01/24 Leave a comment

Direct words by French PM Valls on the lack of integration (not no-go-zones, but nevertheless highly problematic no (or limited) public service zones):

Le premier ministre a également justifié sa dénonciation deux jours plus tôt d’un «apartheid territorial, social, ethnique» qui se serait «imposé» en France: «L’erreur, la faute, c’est de ne pas avoir le courage de désigner cette situation, peu importe les mots».

Dix ans après les émeutes urbaines de 2005, le soutien dans certaines banlieues aux trois jihadistes français auteurs des attentats qui ont fait 17 morts du 7 au 9 janvier à Paris, a rappelé à la France la désespérance de ses quartiers populaires paupérisés.

Mais le chef du gouvernement socialiste, ovationné debout pour sa fermeté face à la menace terroriste dans une scène historique d’unanimité à l’Assemblée nationale le 13 janvier, essuie désormais les foudres de l’opposition de droite.

«Comparer la République à l’apartheid est une faute», a accusé mercredi soir l’ancien président Nicolas Sarkozy, patron du parti conservateur UMP. D’autres élus de son camp ont dénoncé une «insulte» au pays.

«Il ne faut pas penser à je ne sais quelle échéance», a rétorqué jeudi Manuel Valls, dans une pique à l’ambition de l’ex-chef de l’État (2007-2012) de regagner l’Élysée à la prochaine présidentielle de 2017.

Le premier ministre a reproché à l’ex-chef d’État de vouloir «briser l’esprit du 11 janvier», date de la marche monstre à Paris contre le terrorisme. «Moi, j’ai utilisé toujours les mêmes mots depuis dix ans, parce qu’ils disent la réalité», a-t-il ajouté.

«Ne plus faire semblant»

Longtemps élu d’Evry, banlieue populaire au sud de Paris, Manuel Valls avait déclenché une vive polémique en 2009 lorsque, filmé dans une brocante de la ville, il avait demandé en souriant qu’on y ajoute «quelques blancs, quelques white, quelques blancos».

«Arrêtons la langue de bois, arrêtons le politiquement correct, assumons la réalité», s’était-il défendu à l’époque en revendiquant déjà vouloir «casser» les «ghettos», «émanciper ces quartiers qui méritent de représenter demain l’avenir de ce pays».

Classé à la droite du Parti socialiste au pouvoir, le premier ministre a reçu jeudi le soutien d’un élu de banlieue parisienne issu de la gauche du parti Razzy Hamadi, souvent critique à son égard. Selon lui, M. Valls a employé le «mot fort» d’apartheid «parce que la situation est forte».

«Ca veut dire qu’il y a une ségrégation, ça veut dire qu’il y a une séparation, ça veut dire qu’il y a des quartiers où il n’y a pas la culture, où il n’y a pas le service public, plus la police (…) On ne peut plus faire semblant de ne pas voir le problème», a-t-il résumé.

France: «une politique du peuplement» contre les ghettos | Bertrand PINON, Marianne BARRIAUX | Europe.

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Minister Alexander helped bureaucrats avoid giving full details on visa wait times | Toronto Star

2015/01/12 1 Comment

While there is some validity to the concerns regarding officials about the workload, one has to question whether or not CIC’s computer systems cannot generate these kinds of reports relatively easily (it’s not as if officers are looking at the 16 million records individually, they are using the CIC databases to extract the information):

The emails have officials describing the “enormity of the request,” estimating it would involve some 16 million records.

The emails also say the team tasked with crunching these numbers had to keep putting it aside to work on “high-priority requests to respond to public discussion and interdepartmental analysis around the (temporary foreign workers) file.”

Relief came when an official wrote on May 2: “You can hold this work — MINO (minister’s office) has come back to advise ADMO (office of the assistant deputy minister for operations) that we will use the same response we provided to Q-359.”

That was an order paper question about processing times submitted by Liberal immigration critic John McCallum, which was almost identical to the part of the question from Blanchette-Lamothe officials were scrambling to answer in time.

The response Alexander provided in the Commons last May 12 — there was no accompanying paperwork — is nearly verbatim to the response Blanchette-Lamothe received in writing two days later, although it also refers to “an excessive number of taxpayer-funded man-hours.”

A spokesman for Alexander said that was appropriate.

“It was at the advice of the department that we took the chosen approach. The questions posed by both Mr. McCallum and Ms. Blanchette-Lamothe were detailed, multi-part questions which could not be answered within the prescribed time frame. The answer to this (order paper question) reflects the advice of (Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s) professional, non-partisan public servants,” Kevin Menard wrote in an emailed statement Friday.

Chris Alexander helped bureaucrats avoid giving full details on visa wait times | Toronto Star.

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Did Sweden Opening Its Borders Backfire?

2014/12/10 Leave a comment

Interesting analysis by a number of commentators on Sweden’s integration and political challenges in accepting so many refugees:

For much of modern Scandinavian history, immigration was rare. Those who did move to Stockholm or Oslo came from neighboring or other European countries—places with relatively similar cultural habits and understandings. Prior to the 1980s, for instance, Swedes often viewed the word “immigrant” as meaning Finns who had left the Soviet Union. …

In recent decades, Sweden has seen a large influx of immigrants from Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and other non-Western countries. The Norface Research Programme on Migration finds that the children of uneducated, non-Western parents have considerably less success in school than their native counterparts in Sweden (and Denmark); once again, the gap is wider than that between native and non-Western immigrant students in the United States.

Worse, and unlike in the United States, things don’t improve over generations. Many immigrants have arrived too recently to trace their children’s trajectory, but the most recent poverty rates for children with a Turkish background born in Sweden are three times higher than they are for native children. Unemployment and poverty are much higher in the immigrant group.

“Poverty in Sweden has taken on an ethnic dimension,” Björn Halleröd, a sociology professor at the University of Gothenburg, told the Local, an English-language Swedish newspaper. Sweden remains egalitarian by international standards, but inequality grew by a third between 1985 and the late 2000s—faster than in any other OECD country.

Did Sweden Opening Its Borders Backfire? « The Dish.

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Reasons To Hope On Race – More residential mixing and marriage

2014/12/03 Leave a comment

PrintInteresting data and situating Ferguson in a broader context:

William H. Frey marks the slow, steady decline of segregation:

The average white resident, for example, lives in a far less diverse neighborhood—one that is more than three-quarters white—than residents of any other group. Nonetheless, the average white person today lives in a neighborhood that includes more minorities than was the case in 1980, when such neighborhoods were nearly 90 percent white. Moreover, the average member of each of the nation’s major minority groups lives in a neighborhood that is at least one-third white, and in the case of Asians, nearly one-half white.

He expects the continuation of these trends:

Population shifts that are bringing Hispanics and Asians to previously whiter New Sun Belt and Heartland regions will most certainly continue to alter the neighborhood experiences of these groups by bringing them into more contact with whites. The nation’s blacks are moving onto a path that more closely follows that of other racial minorities and immigrant groups as more blacks move to more suburban and integrated communities. The broader migration patterns are moving in the direction of greater neighborhood racial integration, even if segregation is far from being eliminated.

Reasons To Hope On Race « The Dish.

The following chart on mixed marriages (the equivalent Canadian figures include common law relationships, with the total being 4.6 percent):

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