In Sweden, the Land of the Open Door, Anti-Muslim Sentiment Finds a Foothold – NYTimes.com

2015/01/07 Leave a comment

Good article on the politics of refugees and immigrants in Sweden:

Despite a lackluster economy, Sweden was third behind only Germany and France in the number of people registering for asylum in 2012, according to the Migration Policy Institute in Washington. Relative to its population, Sweden received the second-highest share of asylum applications in the European Union after Malta, the institute says.

The Syrian conflict has boosted the number of asylum seekers. Of 81,000 people seeking asylum in Sweden in 2014, roughly half were from Syria, the Swedish Migration Board said.

Opposition to the rising numbers is growing. The far-right, anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats had their best showing ever — nearly 13 percent of votes — in elections in September.

The entry of the Sweden Democrats to parliament in 2010 had already opened the door for a previously unthinkable discussion about turning back the country’s policy of taking in foreigners on humanitarian grounds and granting them access to the country’s generous welfare system.

Adrian Groglopo, a professor of social science at the University of Gothenburg, has studied discrimination in Sweden over the past decade. He said that Sweden has long been a racially segregated country where many immigrants live in ghettos and struggle to find jobs, but that the success of the Sweden Democrats has made racism more socially acceptable.

“It is a very difficult time in Sweden,” Dr. Groglopo said. “Now we can talk about things that we weren’t allowed to talk about before. It is a kind of coup d’état.”

In Sweden, the Land of the Open Door, Anti-Muslim Sentiment Finds a Foothold – NYTimes.com.

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UNHCR counting on Canada to increase commitment to Syrian refugees

2014/12/10 Leave a comment

Will Canada respond? Will Canada meet its existing commitment?:

“Canada is a very important country to the UNHCR not only for the support it gives to refugee programs but also for the leadership that it provides in terms of international standards of global protection,” De Angelis said.

“This is another occasion for countries who have a leading role in global refugee protection to really show their strength.

”The UNHCR is making a pitch at meetings in Geneva on Tuesday for countries to help resettle more than 100,000 refugees from the Syrian civil war over the next two years.

The plea follows formal requests that began in 2013 for direct help getting some of the most vulnerable people out of refugee camps in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt.

That year, Canada agreed to take in 1,300 refugees.

Private sponsorship groups were allotted 1,100 spots and the government agreed to directly resettle the rest.

While the government’s promise to settle 200 people has been met and exceeded, only 163 people being sponsored by private groups have made it to Canada as of the middle of November.

UNHCR counting on Canada to increase commitment to Syrian refugees – The Globe and Mail.

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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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457 Syrian refugees resettled in Canada, but pledge was for 1,300

2014/12/08 Leave a comment

Sharp contrast between the Minister’s statements and the reality. Other countries (e.g., Sweden, with over 30,000) have done much better.

Not exactly inspiring and in keeping with best of the Canadian tradition (e.g. the Vietnamese boat people):

The document says that as of Nov. 13, 457 Syrian refugees have landed in Canada. That number includes 163 refugees sponsored by private groups and 294 sponsored by the government.

Alexander has repeatedly said more than 1,150 Syrians “have received Canada’s protection” in response to questions both inside and outside the House of Commons.

Groups working with refugees in Canada have said that figure is misleading as it likely includes Syrians who have arrived in Canada on their own and claimed asylum.

They have urged Alexander to do more to increase the number of refugees being resettled in Canada. So far, the government has only committed to 1,300 by the end of 2014.

That promise was made in July 2013 by Jason Kenney, who was then the immigration minister. Refugee sponsorship groups have warned for months the promise would be difficult to keep, given delays that already existed in processing applications.

The newly released document says the first privately sponsored refugee to land in Canada under the government’s promise only arrived in March of this year.   Another figure though, suggests there is a large number of Syrians who want to come to Canada as refugees.  It states that the immigration department received 2,343 applications for privately sponsored refugees from October 2013 to September 2014.

“It is important to note that the scale and scope of the Syrian refugee crisis will not be solved by resettlement alone,” the document said, echoing statements made by Alexander.

457 Syrian refugees resettled in Canada, but pledge was for 1,300 – Politics – CBC News.

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Refugee Stories from Flight and Freedom – Sabreen

2014/12/04 Leave a comment

Another example of the impact of refugee reform from the book, Flight and Freedom:

Sabreen – Flight and Freedom.

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Refugee advocates battle federal government over welfare

2014/11/21 Leave a comment

More on the Government’s decision to allow provinces to restrict access to refugee claimants to social assistance.

As usual, appears limited or no consultations with provinces, no evidence-base provided as justification, and buried in the omnibus budget bill to avoid Parliamentary scrutiny and debate:

Ontario says it won’t go along with a proposed federal bill that refugee groups fear could severely restrict their clients’ access to welfare during their first months in Canada.

“We have no intention to change our policy as it relates to refugee claimants at all,” Community and Social Services Minister Helena Jaczek said in an interview Tuesday.

She was referring to the ongoing fight is over provisions in Bill C-43 an omnibus budgetary bill. Refugee groups say the proposals will allow provinces to restrict access to social assistance for refugee claimants and others who have not yet been granted permanent residence.

“We were not consulted. There was no communication from the federal government alerting us. We were very surprised,” Jaczek said of the omnibus bill.

“It’s sort of a downloading to the province to make a decision.”

On Tuesday the Canadian Council for Refugees joined 160 groups across Canada to release an open letter to federal Finance Minister Joe Oliver to withdraw the proposals, and a small group demonstrated in front of his constituency office in Toronto and delivered the letter through the mail slot.

“To receive social assistance in any province, one must already qualify through testing and demonstrate great need. To then deny social assistance based on immigration status is to cruelly deny the most vulnerable in our society the crucial lifeline that allows them to survive,’’ the groups say in the letter.

Refugee advocates battle federal government over welfare | Toronto Star.

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Refugee Reform Impact: Example from Flight and Freedom

2014/11/20 Leave a comment

One of the interesting stories and assessment of a Tamil refugee, analyzing the impact of the various changes of refugee policy.

Tarun – Flight and Freedom.

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Minister knew Canada wouldn’t meet Syrian refugee commitment

2014/11/17 Leave a comment

Caught out. At best, misleading the House and Canadians.

Four days later [March 25, 2014], C.I.C. officials told Alexander in a briefing note that the government “will not meet its Syrian private sponsorship commitment by the end of 2014” because “it takes time for private sponsors to organize and raise the funds to welcome a refugee to Canada.”

Highlighting the point, officials provided Alexander an update on June 10 that showed just 58 private sponsorship applications had been approved since January.

The update, which did not say how many, if any, had actually arrived in Canada, was provided the day before Alexander hung up on CBC’s As It Happens when he was being asked about the government’s response to the Syrian refugee crisis.

The minister later said he hung up because he was late getting to question period. But the incident prompted suspicions the government was lagging in its promise to resettle 1,300 Syrian refugees.

Alexander had repeatedly said more than 1,150 Syrians had received “Canada’s protection,” a figure he also cited in the House of Commons throughout the spring.

However, the documents show that number refers to all Syrian refugees accepted since 2011, including 942 who had travelled to Canada on their own before applying for asylum in the country.

Only 219 had actually been resettled from overseas, of which 93 had arrived in 2014 and would count toward the commitment to take in 1,300.

Liberal immigration critic John McCallum says the fact the Conservative government won’t meet its own “pathetically, ridiculously small” commitment demonstrates it has no real interest in accepting Syrians into Canada.

“They don’t care,” he said Friday. “It’s not a priority. If they cared, they could get the United Nations and people out in the field to give them huge numbers. There’s no shortage of needy people out there.”

NDP immigration critic Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe said the documents could explain why Alexander has been extremely evasive when asked to provide concrete numbers about how many Syrian refugees have arrived in Canada as part of its commitment to the UN.

“I would be very ashamed if I was the minister and I wasn’t able to fulfil such a small commitment in that massive crisis,” she said. “There’s nothing to be proud of in how the government has answered the international call.”

Always safer to stick to the truth, provide an explanation for some of the difficulties, rather than being ‘clever’ and  evasive. Eventually, the truth will come out.

Minister knew Canada wouldn’t meet Syrian refugee commitment | Ottawa Citizen.

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More refugee claimants get 2nd chance with new appeal process

2014/11/17 Leave a comment

Interesting:

Under the old system of judicial review, only about seven per cent of rejected claimants were granted leave to appeal their cases to the Federal Court. That means the number of people who are now getting a chance at an appeal has nearly tripled.

“They’re doing a better job, a much better job than the previous federal court process,” said Peter Showler, professor emeritus at the University of Ottawa and a former chair of the Immigration and Refugee Board. “[But] that’s because that process was so drastically limited.”

Under the old system, the standard for overturning a decision was too narrow, Showler argued. Federal Court judges could only consider whether the decision reached by the refugee board was “reasonable” in law. That filter, he said, prevented many legitimate claims from being reviewed.

“One way of seeing it is the Refugee Appeal Division is certainly doing a better job of identifying mistakes than the federal court,” he said.

“Another way of seeing this is we’ve had 10 years of lack of justice in this country where claimants were incorrectly refused and we did not catch those mistakes.”

CBC News asked officials in Immigration Minister Chris Alexanders office to comment on the new figures. His office did not immediately respond.

But other experts say that while the numbers are encouraging, there are still far too many restrictions on who gets to appeal their case.

Refugee lawyer Lorne Waldman noted that claimants from so-called safe countries like Hungary and Mexico are barred from appealing their cases, as are claimants who arrive and lodge a refugee claim at the U.S. border.

The Government could tout this as evidence that refugee reform both tightened the system and made it more fair than the previous Federal Court process.

But that might undermine their overall anti-fraud and misrepresentation messaging.

More refugee claimants get 2nd chance with new appeal process – Politics – CBC News.

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‘Not our idea,’ Ontario tells Ottawa over controversial refugee welfare restrictions | Toronto Star

2014/11/10 Leave a comment

Oops. Mistaking a general policy discussion on options for indicating support for a particular measure.

Given Ontario’s strong public opposition for the cuts to the IFHP for refugee claimants (partially rolled back following the successful court challenge), that Ontario had continued to fund health care for refugee claimants, hard to imagine that Ontario would support such a measure:

On Thursday, a senior federal immigration director told a Senate committee that the proposal to allow provinces to impose a minimum residency requirement for people seeking social assistance — currently embedded in the omnibus budgetary Bill C-43 — “came up” during conversations with provincial officials.

“We had a number of conversations with the Government of Ontario where we were looking at the very generous benefits Canada provided to asylum claimants in the past, when we’re trying to identify what adjustments we should be making in order to discourage inappropriate asylum claims,” said Mark Davidson, Immigration’s director general for international and intergovernmental relations.

“During that conversation, the Province of Ontario actually reminded us that there’s a provision in the federal law that limits the ability of provincial governments to make this policy choice in their own jurisdiction.”

When pushed by Toronto Senator Art Eggleton as to whether Ontario asked for the change, Davidson replied: “I wouldn’t say the Government of Ontario has specifically asked for this but certainly it’s come up in the conversation we had with them in the recent past.”

A spokesperson for Community and Social Services Minister Helena Jaczek immediately rebuffed that claim.

“The government of Ontario has not requested the ability to impose residency restrictions, and we were not consulted on this legislation,” said Amber Anderson.“

In fact, the Ministry of Community and Social Services has concerns about the potential human rights implications of imposing a waiting period for a specific group. We believe that a waiting period could impact people with legitimate refugee claims who are truly in need. We have communicated our concerns to the federal government.”

Critics and advocacy groups said the province’s response confirms that the proposed changes were undertaken by the Conservative government with little consultation.

Interesting how easily officials stray into Government political language, “very generous benefits” rather than more neutral language “benefits.” Stockholm syndrome in action.

Not our idea,’ Ontario tells Ottawa over controversial refugee welfare restrictions | Toronto Star.

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