Changing the temporary mindset of refugees: Saunders

2015/09/28 Leave a comment

A reminder that while much can be done to foster integration, this also depends on immigrant attitudes and mindset:

There is a scholarly concept known as “myth of return:” the belief widely held among many new immigrants, and most refugees, that they will just stay a while and then move back. I know immigrants who have held this myth for decades. But their success depends on seeing their new location as home, and that home seeing them as fellow citizens.

Ending that “temporary” mindset is the refugee’s job, but there are a number of things that host countries need to do to make it happen. In a research paper examining the obstacles to refugee integration, three Canadian scholars found a number of factors were key.

Employment, housing and schools make a big difference: The sooner they can get a job suited to their skills (and refugees tend to be middle-class), secure tenure in an affordable living space and a school for their children, the sooner they become “here.” Cultural integration tends to follow naturally from economic and educational integration.

Equally important is the ability to be around refugees and immigrants from the same place. “One of the few resources available to most refugees is social capital in the form of social support networks,” two Canadian scholars wrote in a paper on refugee integration. “These many formal and informal social networks are extremely valuable, providing much-needed support and assistance when refugees are faced with financial, employment, personal, or health problems.”

Which means refugees should be allowed to relocate to join clusters of other refugees. A study by Citizenship and Immigration Canada found that 80 per cent of refugees who settled in Ontario, Alberta or British Columbia ended up staying there, whereas half the refugees settled in the Atlantic provinces or Saskatchewan ended up moving, presumably to the big cities.

The success of earlier, larger waves of even more foreign refugees shows that their integration tends to succeed. We just need to help them change their minds.

Source: Changing the temporary mindset of refugees – The Globe and Mail

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Few ethnic minorities among Syrians sponsored by Canadian government

2015/09/23 Leave a comment

Contrast between Government messaging and rhetoric and action:

Syrian refugees who came to Canada through private sponsorship this year were far more likely to be from ethnic or religious minorities than the ones who were directly sponsored by the government, the Citizen has learned.

Since January, almost 90 per cent of those privately sponsored were ethnic or religious minorities, as compared to only about five per cent of those directly sponsored by the government.

The government said in January that ethnic and religious minorities would be a priority as it announced plans to resettle another 10,000 Syrian refugees, on top of 1,300 already promised. Largely overlooked was that an unspecified majority would be privately sponsored.

Conservative leader Stephen Harper reiterated the focus on minorities last month, explaining at a Coptic Orthodox church on Aug. 10 that “ISIS targets innocent men, women and children of the most vulnerable ethnic and religious minorities.”

The government has never revealed how many of the approximately 2,500 Syrians who have arrived in Canada since 2013 were ethnic or religious minorities. But the Citizen has learned that nearly half of the 1,000 admitted this year were categorized as belonging to a vulnerable ethnic or religious minority.

That, however, is only half the story. Only about five per cent of the nearly 400 Syrian refugees sponsored by the government since January were vulnerable ethnic or religious minorities. In contrast, almost 90 per cent of the approximately 600 Syrians who were privately sponsored fit into that category.

When the idea of prioritizing certain groups was first raised, the United Nations said its policy was to help the most vulnerable, no matter their religious background. The government’s policy also prompted allegations of an anti-Muslim bias, with suggestions it would cherry-pick which refugees it accepted.

The figures appear to refute suggestions the government would outright cherry-pick non-Muslims from lists of refugees needing resettlement provided by the UN High Commission for Refugees. But why are privately sponsored refugees overwhelmingly from ethnic and religious minorities, particularly Christians?

Refugee advocates say there are no signs Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) is discriminating against Sunni or Shiite Muslims when it comes to private sponsorship applications. Rather, they say the numbers reflect which organizations are better organized and more experienced with private sponsorships.

Source: Few ethnic minorities among Syrians sponsored by Canadian government | Ottawa Citizen

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As resources dwindle, churches worry refugee response will slow

2015/09/22 Leave a comment

Another aspect to the refugee crisis. Report might have benefited from looking at the activities of the younger churches (e.g., evangelicals), churches with specific-ethnic group clienteles, and of course other faith groups to provide a more complete picture:

Slightly more than a decade ago, Canada admitted about twice as many government-assisted refugees as privately sponsored, but the streams began to converge after the Conservative government took office in 2006. By 2013, the number of new permanent residents who came as privately sponsored refugees, whose expenses in their first year in Canada are borne by citizens or faith groups, surpassed the number being assisted exclusively by the government, according to Library of Parliament research.

“When you look at these churches that sponsor refugees you’re going to see mainly people in their 60s, 70s and 80s,” said David Seljak, professor of religious studies at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ont. He says church membership is in very rapid decline, more rapid than previously appreciated, and that also means a decline in financial and human resources.

“I think this may be the last refugee crisis in which the churches have the resources to respond on a large scale. They will respond in future, I hope they see it as part of their mission, but whether they’ll have the resources to do it is really an important question,” Prof. Seljak said.

Back in 1979, it seemed natural for the government to partner with religious institutions to help confront the Vietnamese refugee crisis. Religion played a much more important role in community life, and churches still had strong attendance and were seen as key stakeholders. The Presbyterian Church, for example, had 211,000 members in 1981. By 2011, that number had been cut roughly in half, in a country that had grown by 10 million people.

“When you look at what’s going on [with refugee resettlement], you see great faith. They’re involved, they’re committed, but they’re seniors. They won’t be there forever,” Mr. Shropshire said.

Many Christian groups, guided by the biblical principle of welcoming the stranger, have done refugee-settlement work year after year, even when refugee issues were not leading the news agenda.

Source: As resources dwindle, churches worry refugee response will slow – The Globe and Mail

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Flight and Freedom: Refugee Stories

2015/09/18 Leave a comment

Flight and Freedom, the book of refugee stories by Ratna Omidvar and Dana Wagner, is now out.

I read a proof copy and find their book to be a timely and well-needed counterpart to much of the rhetoric around refugees through its highlighting the remarkable personal stories of thirty refugees who have, and continue, to contribute to Canada. These stories make a compelling case for a more generous approach, reminding us of the potential cost of more restrictive approaches, particularly germane in the context of today’s Syrian refugee crisis:

What does escape look like up close? Why do people choose Canada? And once they land in a safe country, what happens next?

In Flight and Freedom, Ratna Omidvar and Dana Wagner draw on 30 astonishing interviews with refugees to Canada to document their extraordinary journeys of flight, and to transform a misunderstood group into familiar, human stories.

Each of the 30 stories documents an escape that is sometimes harrowing and always remarkable. The narrative then turns to contemporary lives and careers, and the impact of refugees-turned-Canadians in the communities they call home, from Halifax to Vancouver.

Stories focus on Canadians who arrived as refugees from notable conflicts around the world, from the War of 1812 to the ongoing War in Afghanistan. Beyond conflict zones, other stories profile people from persecuted groups like gay men and women. At the time of escape, some refugees were children, others were parents, and others got out alone. Notwithstanding the diverse events of a story, the single overriding imperative for all characters can be summed up in one sentence: “We have to run.”

Closing the book is a question: Would they get in to Canada today? Peter Showler, lawyer and former chairperson of the federal Immigration and Refugee Board, answers the hypothetical question by analyzing how the cases would be handled under Canada’s new refugee system.

Source: About the Book – Flight and Freedom

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Missing the Point of Charlie Hebdo. Again. – The Daily Beast on satire

2015/09/17 2 Comments

Charlie_Hebdo_RefugeesGreat point on once again how many critics of Charlie Hebdo don’t get satire (the offending cartoon above):

Satire is, by definition, offensive. It is meant to make us feel uncomfortable. It is meant to make us scratch or heads, think, do a double-take and then think again. It is supposed to take our prejudices, turn them upside down, reapply them, and make us think we’re seeing something we’re not, until we stop to question ourselves.

Yes taste is always in the eye of the beholder. But that’s the whole point of goodsatire. It is not meant to be to our tastes. It is meant to challenge our tastes. Having our fundamental assumptions about life challenged is never a comfortable thing. Bringing this back to the subject at hand, far from insulting him, these cartoons about Aylan are a damning indictment on the anti-refugee sentiment that has spread across Europe. The McDonald’s image is a searing critique of our heartless European consumerism, in the face of one of the worst human tragedies of our times. In particular, this image plays on the notion that while we moan there are not enough resources to cope with the influx of refugees, we simultaneously offer two for one McDonald’s Happy Meals to our own children. The image about Christians walking on water while Muslims drown is — so — critiquing what the magazine views as hypocritical European Christian “love” and truly bigoted claims, such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s, that Europe is a “Christian” civilization.

Hebdo is no more racist a magazine than that bastion of liberal media The New Yorker was when it depicted Obama dressed as a Muslim, fist-bumping his angry black-revolutionary wife Michelle.

Not to our taste? Okay. Make us cringe? Fair enough. Don’t like them? Fine. But whatever we do, let us not misrepresent these images. Juxtaposing images of a dead child next to offers of cheap food “meal deals” is not mocking little Aylan, it is mocking us. It is mocking us for what we miss every single day, hidden in plain sight, and we do not see it because this is how desensitized we have become to human suffering. No, those besieged, brave satirists at Hebdo are not mocking Aylan. They are mocking newspaper covers like this from the UK right-wing tabloid The Daily Mail in which an image of Aylan was — in a national newspaper —  placed below an actual food deal. And how many of us noticed that on the day this Daily Mail cover went to print?

Poe’s law refers to a standard by which satire can be judged to be too good, where parodies of extreme views are so well performed that they are indistinguishable from the real thing. Yes, if those courageous disturbers of our conscience at Charlie Hebdo — those who survived the massacre that is —- are guilty of anything, it is that they are too good at their job.

Source: Missing the Point of Charlie Hebdo. Again. – The Daily Beast

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Mr. Harper, think big on the refugee crisis: Former Ministers and Deputy Ministers

2015/09/17 Leave a comment

Reprinted in entirety (see article for impressive list of signatories):

Bravo that Conservative Leader Stephen Harper is now preparing a new plan for Canada’s response to what has emerged as the worst refugee crisis in Europe and the Middle East since the end of the Second World War. Perhaps he has heard the many voices across Canada – provincial premiers, mayors of municipalities, faith leaders, non-profit organizations and ordinary citizens – wanting to act but stymied by the reality that the key lever for further progress is within the hands of the federal government.

As former federal ministers and deputy ministers, appreciative of what it takes to translate political announcements into realities, we urge Mr. Harper to think big and not let the exigencies of the election campaign diminish the call to action. There is nothing in the caretaker convention, followed during election campaigns, to stop government from responding to a crisis – particularly when there is all-party support.

Mr. Harper can turn to his professional public servants with their past successful history of managing Bosnian, Ugandan, Kosovo, and Indochinese mass movement of refugees. He can ask them to determine Canada`s maximum capacity for absorption of individuals now streaming into Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and Europe. Under the Public Policy provisions of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the government can launch a significant new humanitarian Syrian refugee resettlement program. Its goal should be to increase the overall Canadian commitment to numbers of refugees and significantly simplify administrative burdens for both private sponsors and immigration officials.

Mr. Harper can ask officials in the Departments of Finance, Treasury Board, Citizenship and Immigration, Defence and Foreign Affairs to ascertain the financial and human resources required and set those aside. The public record of the contributions of the previous waves of past refugee settlement programs demonstrate the long-term returns to Canada from what may, in the short term, look like significant costs. The government can engage with provincial governments, who are also committing resources, to maximize the effectiveness of all efforts. It is short term investments which will be critical to the success of the program: there will be ample payback for an adequate number of visa and security officers in the field for refugee selection, for professionals to expedite medical clearances and security assessments, and for transportation costs and staging areas in Canada when the refugees arrive. Pending full program implementation, the government can ensure ”all hands on deck” in fast-tracking existing applications, particularly those with family connections in Canada.

We appreciate that the world has changed. We share concerns about the protection of the security of Canadians in the post-Sept. 11 world – but security cannot be an excuse for inertia. In addition to providing adequate screening personnel in the field, security risks can be mitigated by a focus on women at risk, families with children, and families with Canadian connections. Canada can also now benefit from positive changes since earlier humanitarian programs. Social media and other information technologies now exist that were not dreamt of 30 years ago to enable rapid information sharing and decision-making – whether in identifying security risks or refugee resettlement. In contrast to the 1970s, there is a substantially increased cross-Canada network of highly experienced and motivated municipal, provincial and non-profit newcomer settlement agencies ready to act and be proactive partners.

Nor should Canada’s commitment to continuing the fight against Islamic State stop humanitarian initiatives. Public policy often has multiple objectives and there is no reason the two cannot proceed on parallel tracks. We understand that the challenge seems daunting when one considers there are now more than four million refugees. Perhaps in this context, a quote from Mother Teresa is appropriate: “I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.” Will Mr. Harper lead Canada in throwing that stone?

Source: Mr. Harper, think big on the refugee crisis – The Globe and Mail

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Eight steps to get more Syrian refugees into Canada: Adelman, Alboim, Molloy and Cappe

2015/09/16 Leave a comment

Best and most comprehensive advice I have seen so far from Howard Adelman, Naomi Alboim, Mike Molloy and Mel Cappe:

1. The government should authorize the admission of Syrian refugees under a special program without the need for individual determination by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) or another state. This has been done for other major refugee movements in the past. This one step would expedite the selection of refugees and reduce the paperwork burden for sponsor groups.

2. The actual number and time frame will have to be negotiated or determined by the government when elected in October, but the method for speeding up the process must be introduced as soon as possible. We believe that it is not unrealistic to call for 25,000 government-assisted and 25,000 privately sponsored Syrian refugees to be admitted each year for the next two years.

3. The vast majority of Syrian refugees should be resettled to Canada from four target countries: Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt . This will relieve the pressure on these countries of first asylum and will reduce the desperation that is compelling people to risk their lives to get to Europe.

4. First priority should be given to displaced Syrian families with children in the four target countries. These would include families with significant Canadian connections, which would include relatives of Canadian citizens or of permanent residents. The fundamental rule (applied during the Indochinese movement) would be that extended family groups that have fled or taken refuge together would be processed and travel to Canada together. Families would not be broken up.

5. In addition to those with significant Canadian connections, the new program should target (but would not be restricted to) cases referred by the UNHCR.

6. Canadian visa offices in the field should be reinforced significantly and instructed to accelerate the selection rate for refugees referred by the UNHCR or with Canadian connections so that they can be referred to both the large umbrella sponsor groups (sponsorship-agreement holders) and local sponsor groups (groups of five) in large numbers expeditiously.

7. An increased number of government-assisted refugees should be selected from the pool of refugees referred by the UNHCR or other reputable agencies and should be destined to communities with reinforced agencies providing immigrant and refugee services. Humanitarian considerations should be paramount and provision should be made for hardship cases and those most in need.

8. Early outreach to employers will be essential; the temporary foreign worker program for low-skilled workers should be severely curtailed, freeing up jobs for incoming refugees.

Now is the time for all political parties to demonstrate to Canadians that they can work together to address a crisis of enormous proportions and to reclaim our leadership role on the world stage that reflects our values as a caring and compassionate society. We have the experience and expertise. We did it before and we can do it again. All we need now is the political will.

 Source: Eight steps to get more Syrian refugees into Canada – The Globe and Mail

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What do voters hear in Conservatives’ message on refugees?

2015/09/16 Leave a comment

Good piece on some of the implicit messaging behind reasons invoked:

The further subdividing of Syrian refugees to prioritize “persecuted ethnic and religious minorities” can only make an already slow and burdensome process all the more so.

“Our focus is on the most vulnerable refugees who are often in a more difficult spot and harder to reach,” Conservative Jason Kenney conceded this weekend on CBC Radio’s The House.

But those are just rational arguments.

“The key is to craft messages that trigger fears but are not themselves explicit about the sorts of fears they are trying to trigger,” is the way [Ian] Haney-Lopez explains this type of messaging.

[Lynton] Crosby phrases it slightly differently: “You can have a rational argument, you can have a rational position, but unless you make an emotional connection, you will rarely succeed,” he says in the 2013 video.

Last March, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau accused the Conservatives of “using dog-whistle politics,” to stir up anti-Muslim sentiments in the debate over anti-terrorism legislation.

However, when asked on Friday if Crosby’s arrival on the scene could mean an increased use of the technique, Trudeau side-stepped.

“I’m not going to comment on my opponent’s campaign and approach,” he told reporters.

Haney-Lopez suggests that’s the wrong answer.

“People don’t realize they are being manipulated, they don’t realize their basest instincts are being appealed to,” he says. “Staying silent and not addressing that is an absolute failure.”

Of course, calling out a dog whistle doesn’t necessarily negate its effect.

As Crosby himself teaches, in the battle of reason over emotion in voters’ minds, reason barely stands a fighting chance.

Source: What do voters hear in Conservatives’ message on refugees? – Politics – CBC News

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Some hard truths no one wants to hear on refugees: Cohn | Toronto Star

2015/09/15 Leave a comment

An appropriate note of caution in terms of long-term trends:

In the rush to sponsor Syrians to Canada, relatively little is said about supporting the infrastructure of refugee processing handled by the UNHCR in countries bordering Syria. While it may generate fewer headlines at home, not enough thought is being given to the more affordable, sustainable, realistic (if less idealistic) alternative of funding camps closer to war zones, so that refugees can be repatriated more rapidly if those conflicts subside.

We need to open our hearts to the latest wave of Syrian refugees, but we also need to open our minds to what lies ahead. The crisis is unlikely to be temporary. It cannot be resolved with a few thousand more sponsorships and a few million more dollars, as important as those contributions are.

The federal Tories have missed the boat on the latest wave of boat people, but many well-intentioned do-gooder’s have been selling us a bill of goods about the refugee crisis. We need to start thinking about what comes next.

It is good to be principled, but we must also be practical. Mass migrations are at the intersection of war, geopolitics, economics, logistics and human smuggling. They defy easy answers. The reality is that refugee fatigue will set in anew, because the flood never ends — it merely fades from the front pages. What then?

Source: Some hard truths no one wants to hear on refugees: Cohn | Toronto Star

Jon Kay makes similar points:

The morally complex task of determining how many Syrians should be allowed to come to Canada must not be performed through the Tories’ usual practice of reciting jingoistic talking points and slogans. But it also cannot become a no-limit humanitarian bidding war. If we want to preserve the open and generous quality of Canadian society, we must balance our open hearts with hard heads.

Jonathan Kay: Even in face of tragedy, there’s no substitute for a seriously considered immigration policy

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Q&A: Mike Molloy, the man who delivered the ‘boat people’

2015/09/14 Leave a comment

Well worth reading in its underlining the importance of political leadership:

Q: The overwhelming reaction of Canadians—and the Clark government of the day—is now a celebrated part of our country’s history: welcoming 60,000 refugees. How did you pull off such a bold promise?

A: It has everything to do with leadership and direction. There was real leadership at the top and a real recognition that this was a historic challenge and we’d better rise to it. As a mid-level civil servant brought into the middle of it, the thing we never doubted was where the leadership wanted us to go. The clarity of the direction from the top, and the commitment of the people at the top, was amazingly empowering. It allowed us to innovate. It allowed us to figure out new ways of doing things. It allowed us never to break the law, but to stretch it as far as it could be reasonably stretched to deal with what we actually saw as opposed to what the policy-makers might have imagined we’d see.

That is missing here. Over the last four or five days, we have the same profound concern bubbling up from our society—perhaps in an even bigger way than back then—but we’re like a ship without a rudder this time. The engines are ready to go full speed, but in what direction?

Q: It may seem like an obvious question, but what triggered such staunch political will? What was the turning point?

A: The case for intervention was clear. Vietnam was the first real TV war. This was the first real TV refugee crisis. In 1979, we saw so many times a boat absolutely packed with people—with kids—and we would watch it going down before our eyes. We would watch people coming out of the surf, dragging kids behind them, maybe alive, maybe dead. These were immediate images coming into the homes of Canadians that caused this enormous springing up of concern. At that stage, the refugee sponsorship program had never been tried; it had just been invented. And yet Canadians grabbed it and ran with it. We didn’t have to thump the drum at all. We didn’t have to promote it. Canadians just grabbed it and ran, and I think there is a similar spirit today.

Source: Q&A: Mike Molloy, the man who delivered the ‘boat people’ – Macleans.ca

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