Experts pour cold water on Trump’s plan to end birthright citizenship — but issue a stark warning

2024/12/12 Leave a comment

Think this assessment largely correct. More performative but not without consequences and distracts from what the administration can and will do:

…”President-elect Trump is trying to send a message to people all over the world and also to unauthorized immigrants in the United States that he’s going to be tough on immigration,” argued Julia Gelatt, the associate director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), a nonpartisan think tank.

“He hopes that people will choose not to make the trip to the United States and not try to enter,” she told Salon in a phone interview. “I think he also hopes that people who are living in the United States without status might opt to leave the country on their own.”

Trump has signaled an interest in repealing birthright citizenship since his first run for president, including the change in his immigration policy proposal in 2015, according to CNN. Trump insisted to Axios in 2018 that it was possible to do so through an executive order and last May, Trump released a campaign video proclaiming he would sign an executive order to roll back the right on day one of his presidency, according to NBC News.

The impact of repealing the right would be immense. A 2020 MPI and Pennsylvania State University analysis found that ending birthright citizenship for U.S. babies with two undocumented immigrant parents would lead to a 4.7 million-person increase in the population of unauthorized people by 2050, including one million children born to two parents who had been born in the U.S. themselves.

That population would skyrocket to 24 million by 2050 from 11 million at the time of the analysis’ publishing if U.S. babies with only one undocumented parent were also denied citizenship, the researchers found.

Gelatt said that such an action from the Trump administration would create a “multigenerational class of people who are excluded from full rights” and citizenship, which would restrain their ability to achieve higher earnings, support their families and contribute to the country through taxes.

“Denying people that legal status, even if they’re born in the United States, would put people in a much more legally vulnerable, economically vulnerable position,” she said.

Depending on the exact language of Trump’s proposed executive order, ending birthright citizenship could also impact U.S.-born children’s parents, added Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor of immigration law practice at Cornell Law School. Such an order could potentially prevent officials from issuing passports, Social Security numbers or providing welfare benefits to family members of those children.

But Trump has no viable legal pathway to repealing birthright citizenship, Yale-Loehr told Salon in an email. An executive order can’t repeal an amendment, and any executive action Trump took attempting to do so would “trigger immediate litigation.”

Birthright citizenship was enshrined in the U.S. Constitution in 1868 with the ratification of the 14th Amendment, which was intended to grant citizenship and civil liberties to formerly enslaved African Americans. Contrary to what Trump told Welker, more than 30 nations, largely in the western hemisphere, provide birthright citizenship.

Amending the Constitution to upend the 14th Amendment would require a two-thirds vote in both the House and the Senate as well as ratification by three-fourths of the state legislatures. Even with slim Republican majorities in both chambers during Trump’s next term, such a proposal would be unlikely to get past either chamber.

His proposed executive order is also unlikely to withstand any legal challenges as the likelihood of the Supreme Court, despite its conservative majority, striking birthright citizenship from the Constitution is slim to none, added Hiroshi Motomura, a UCLA School of Law professor and faculty co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and policy.

“Even though people say that the court has become more conservative, this would be even further in the direction of trying to overturn the past than we’ve seen,” he told Salon in a phone interview.

Ending birthright citizenship would upend the foundation of how the nation has historically seen itself — as a country of immigrants — flying in the face of the purpose of the American Civil War and much of the United States immigration history since its founding, Motomura said. He pointed to the 1898 U.S. v. Wong Kim ArkSupreme Court decision that held that U.S.-born children of Chinese immigrants were U.S. citizens under the 14th Amendment even though their parents were, at the time, legally barred from obtaining citizenship under the Chinese Exclusion Acts.

“This is all part of the racial history of the United States. This is why this is so bedrock compared to other things that the Supreme Court is sometimes characterized for doing as being quite radical,” he explained. “This goes way beyond overruling Roe v. Wade. I think that was a radical move, but this is no comparison. This is quite a bit more of a rethinking of what the country is even about.”

Given how unlikely it is that Trump would succeed at repealing birthright citizenship, what purpose, then, could Trump’s focus on ending the right serve? Generating political value, Gelatt and Motomura argued, the former pointing to the importance of illegal immigration and the border to voters during the 2024 election.

Source: Experts pour cold water on Trump’s plan to end birthright citizenship — but issue a stark warning

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Tasha Kheiriddin: Marc Miller ignores potential threat from Syrian refugees

2024/12/12 Leave a comment

Does not appear that Kheiriddin has read the government evaluation (Syrian Outcomes Report) that shows, by and large, that Syrian refugees have integrated reasonably well. Certainly, seeing the happy Syrians celebrating the fall of the Assad regime reinforces that assessment.

However, she is right to worry about former supporters and officials from the Assad regime finding their way to Canada, as we have seen with some Iranian refugees who are former members of the Iranian regime:

..And then there’s Canada. On Tuesday, Immigration Minister Marc Miller said that Ottawa will continue to process Syrian refugee claims but will “monitor” the situation. “We don’t face that flow in Canada, I don’t know what rank they (Syrian refugees) occupy in terms of source countries for asylum seekers, but it’s pretty low,” Miller said. Canada has just shy of 1,600 pending refugee claims from Syria as of Sept. 30, while Germany has over 47,000.

The government’s response is predictable — and misguided. Canada took in 45,000 Syrian refugees between 2015 and 2020. The influx was highly politicized: in the 2015 election campaign, the image of Syrian refugee child Aylan Kurdi dead on a Turkish beach broke the internet and the hearts of Canadian voters. The Liberals accused Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper of dragging his feet on additional refugee admissions and promised to bring in 25,000. Following his election, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made a great show of greeting Syrian refugees at airports — and spending a lot of money to support them.

To date, Canada has spent $1 billion on humanitarian support for Syria, on top of the supports we provided government-sponsored refugees in Canada. Private Canadian sponsors also opened their hearts and homes to the newcomers, raising funds to give 18,000 a new life here, which wasn’t easy. Syrians had a tougher time than other communities: many spoke neither English or French and had difficulty finding housing for large families.

In short, we’ve done a lot. But Canada should now follow the lead of our European counterparts and end refugee applications from Syria. It’s not just about people who are already here, but there is concern that supporters of the Assad regime, including “terrorist fighters,” could now seek to escape. And while Syria’s transitional government, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, promises to treat minorities humanely, it could provoke another wave of refugees — at a time where Canada is already bracing for a tsunami of illegal migrants from the U.S., and our government is already preparing to spend a billion dollars to secure our borders.

Canada is a humanitarian country, but we must ask ourselves hard questions — and make some hard decisions — about our refugee policy. We must ensure that we act humanely, but also respect the interests of our own citizens, and our ability to provide social services for both newcomers and citizens alike. And we also need to avoid politicizing the issue, as this government has done in the past — and as Canada cannot afford to do in the future.

Source: Tasha Kheiriddin: Marc Miller ignores potential threat from Syrian refugees

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Globe editorial – On the Brink: Ottawa has to change its old thinking about a new border

2024/12/12 Leave a comment

More from the Globe:

…The Trudeau government lost control of Canada’s immigration system, and yet it appears to have never occurred to it that this would be an issue for the only country with which it shares a land border.

Fixing that begins with the federal government taking control of its refugee claims crisis (more on that in our next editorial in this series), restoring the primacy of points-based immigration, and working with the U.S. to ensure neither country is a backdoor into the other.

It also calls for Ottawa to streamline the way the RCMP and the CBSA patrol the border, and to provide the manpower, drones, helicopters, sensors and other equipment needed to defend 9,000 kilometres of boundary area against human traffickers, drug and gun smugglers, and other threats.

Ottawa should do this not to appease Mr. Trump, but in the interests of Canada. If our border with the U.S. is to be a symbol of anything, it should be that of a pragmatic country that welcomes immigration but is also unsentimental about its security and defence.

Source: On the Brink: Ottawa has to change its old thinking about a new border

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Bulgutch | Canada’s international student crisis was predicted — and ignored

2024/12/11 Leave a comment

Indeed:

…All of this is bad news. But what I find remarkable about the frenzy to deal with the apocalypse is that it was all foreseeable. In fact, it was foreseen. And no one did anything about it.

An advocacy group called One Voice used the Freedom of Information Act to unearth, “internal government documents,” warning that, “international student tuition has been increasingly supporting the financial sustainability of post-secondary education institutions.”

But who needed some internal secret document to figure that out? The 2022 report of Ontario’s auditor-general, which is freely available, was released with the usual fanfare, and was covered extensively in the media, said this: “Relying heavily on international student fees makes universities more susceptible to steep and sudden drops in revenue that could result when global circumstances and federal immigration policies change, and international student intake declines.”

It could not have been said more clearly.

In the movies, when some scientist discovers that an asteroid is going to collide with our planet and destroy us all, the powers-that-be spring into action, and figure out how to prevent disaster.

In real life, either no one read the auditor-general’s report, or everyone concluded it was best to keep taking in all that foreign money today and worry about tomorrow only after the asteroid hits.

We could blame the universities and colleges, but it’s hard to do that. They were hungry for foreign tuition money because the Ontario government doesn’t support them nearly enough.

Last year, a panel of experts appointed by the government itself noted that provinces outside Ontario provide universities an average of $20,772 per full-time student. Ontario coughs up $11,471. To catch up — that is to be just average — would require spending another $7 billion a year. Ontario has responded by promising $1.3 billion over three years. 

The Colleges and Universities minister called that an “historic investment.” She also told the schools they were stuck with a tuition freeze first imposed in 2019 for at least three more years.

Most people would be hard pressed to come up with the name of the auditor general of Ontario. People who dig into the government’s books are not superheroes. They’re just public servants in a relatively small department (total budget — $26,194,700) who report on whether taxpayers are getting value for their money.

That 2022 auditor general’s report by Bonnie Lysyk concluded that the government of Ontario had, “no clear strategy or long-term vision for the post-secondary sector.”

It appears the auditor general’s report was worthy of an A-plus.

Source: Opinion | Canada’s international student crisis was predicted — and ignored

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A wave of South Asian racism is sweeping Canada — and the Liberals’ missteps on immigration helped fuel the problem

2024/12/11 Leave a comment

Not convinced that much of the concerns about immigration levels are racist or xenophobic. After all, housing, healthcare, infrastructure etc affect immigrants and non-immigrants alike. Agree with Cochrane’s comment that governments, not immigrants, are responsible for the pressures:

…York University Prof. Tania Das Gupta has observed a shift in public discourse, especially after some politicians started making statements about how immigrants are contributing to the affordability crisis, framing migrants, especially international students, as interlopers.

“They are not Canadians. They are outsiders within. And they are using our services. They are using our housing. They’re using our food banks. They’re taking away jobs,” says Das Gupta, who researches on South Asian diaspora, migration and labour issues. “These are old racist tropes that have been surfacing again.

“In the popular psyche, migrants are being now visualized as being South Asians,” especially people from India, the largest source country of migrants in Canada, Das Gupta says.

She noticed a shift in the rhetoric in the wake of last year’s mass deportation of Indian students who claimed they were duped by an unscrupulous education recruiter and used fraudulent admission letters to apply for student permits to Canada, which she says feeds into the stereotypes that the group was taking advantage of Canada.

By association, an entire group is flagged and viewed through a different lens. And that kind of division and hate will spread if normalized, she warns. This can be felt not only by newcomers, but all Canadians of South Asian ancestry.

Reena Kukreja, an associate professor of global development studies at Queen’s University, is researching the linkage between hateful discourse, its normalization and how that manifests in abuse in people’s day-to-day interactions.

Her research is focused on South Asian men working in the gig economy, such as rideshare drivers and food delivery, or what she calls “hyper-visible” jobs. She says her findings show a “sharp rise in hate” — some report they’ve experienced a rise in overt racism, such as slurs, while others say they feel it in more passive-aggressive behaviours from customers.

“One of the guys told me it’s the way they look at you, and then slam the door shut … it’s a continual reinforcement of two things: One is that Canada is a white-dominant country. And you do not belong here.”

She says while such microaggressions can be hard to prove as outright discrimination, it creates a “continual trauma that accumulates over time, where you feel as less worthy.”

“The moment when hate becomes banal, it is highly dangerous,” she says. “It becomes everyday, which is what I’m seeing right now.”…

“There’s a considerable amount of research out there that shows that online hate doesn’t stay in the online space,” says Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, who edited the report.

She points to a study from the University of Warwick in England that showed tweets targeting Muslims and Latinos by then-U.S. President Donald Trump correlated with an increase in hate crimes against those same groups. 

In Canada, police-reported hate crimes against South Asians have increased every year since 2020, with 228 incidents in 2023, compared to 135 in 2020.

But these statistics likely only represent a fraction of what is really happening, as many people don’t report their experiences, and a comment like “Go back to your country” doesn’t typically meet the threshold of a hate crime, unless it precedes an act such as vandalism or assault, which could then be deemed hate-motivated. …

While it’s valid to criticize Canada’s immigration system, it becomes problematic when people start blaming the individuals who are coming here, rather than a deliberate government policy that welcomed them, and seems designed to keep wages low, says Christopher Cochrane, an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto, Scarborough.

“It’s governments that are responsible for this,” he says. “It’s not the fault of the students that are coming here and paying these massive tuitions that are subsidizing all of the students from Ontario who are going to university.”…

Source: A wave of South Asian racism is sweeping Canada — and the Liberals’ missteps on immigration helped fuel the problem

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Matthew Lau: Education, not racism, drives the difference in earnings between races

2024/12/11 Leave a comment

What Lau fails to consider are the barriers that affect education levels and enrolment in STEM disciplines. The numbers are correct but the analysis is overly simplistic:

Significant federal program spending is premised on the idea that visible minorities in Canada are systemically disadvantaged.

Take the latest: Earlier this fall, the federal government released a 45-page anti-racism strategy for 2024-2028, which “aims to tackle systemic racism and make our communities more inclusive and prosperous.” Such a strategy is necessary, according to the government, because systemic racism exists throughout our institutions and “[perpetuates] a position of relative disadvantage for racialized persons.”

But where is the evidence for this premise? Not in the income statistics.

Directly contradicting the idea that visible minorities are systemically oppressed, a new Statistics Canada study shows many Canadians from minority backgrounds thrive and even do better on average than their white counterparts.

The StatCan study started with 1996 and 2001 census data, used T1 and T4 tax files and other data to measure cumulative earnings over 20 years among Canadian-born men and women from four racial cohorts — white, South Asian, Chinese, and Black — and found minorities outperforming the majority population.

Specifically, among Canadian-born men, cumulative earnings over 20 years were highest on average among Chinese men ($1.58 million in 2019 dollars), followed by South Asian men ($1.51 million). Only Black men ($1.06 million) earned less than white men ($1.31 million).

Clearly, if Chinese and South Asian men have higher earnings power than white men, it is difficult to conclude Canada is systemically racist against minorities.

What about the inverse? Does the data suggest Canada is systemically racist against white men? No. “The fact that Chinese and South Asian men have higher education levels than white men and are more likely to be in STEM fields is the single most important factor explaining why these two groups have higher cumulative earnings than white men,” the StatCan report found.

In other words: education, not racism, drives the difference in earnings.

So what happens when we control for education and other factors like employer size, industry, and geography? The earnings gap between white and Black men remains. As well, while Chinese and South Asian men out-earned white men, after controlling for education and other factors, white men actually earned more.

Alas, have we found evidence of systemic racism? Is this evidence that the country is systemically racist because these employers paid minorities less than their white counterparts with similar educational backgrounds?

There’s no hard evidence of this. First, discrimination by employers against visible minorities has been illegal for decades. Second, as the study itself even suggests, many factors affect earnings besides the ones researchers can observe and control for, including differences in social networks, job search methods, and preferences for certain working conditions, so automatically blaming racism doesn’t make much sense. Third, if Canada is systemically racist against minorities, how did Chinese and South Asian men find themselves overrepresented in the higher-paying STEM fields to begin with?

And if racism against Black Canadians is to blame for the earnings gap among men, what explains the fact that Black women earned more than white women? Among Canadian-born women, before controlling for education and other factors, the cohort that earned the least over two decades was white women ($0.80 million). Chinese women had the highest cumulative earnings ($1.14 million), followed by South Asian women ($1.06 million), and then Black women ($0.82 million). Is Canada full of racists who only discriminate against Black men but not Black women?

Another outcome of the StatCan analysis is that after controlling for the same factors (e.g. education), Chinese women out-earned white women — by $38,000, on average. So, do racist employers systematically favour white men over Chinese men, while also disfavouring white women relative to Chinese women?

The narrative that Canadians from visible minority backgrounds are systemically disadvantaged just doesn’t hold up to the data.

Moreover, this latest StatCan study only considered four groups (Chinese, South Asian, white, and Black) of Canadian-born individuals, but other StatCan research provides similar evidence against systemic racism. Weekly earnings data from 2016 show that in addition to Chinese and South Asian men, Canadian-born Japanese and Korean men had higher earnings than their white counterparts. Among women, seven of ten minority groups (Korean, Chinese, South Asian, Japanese, Filipino, “other visible minorities,” and Arab or West Asian) had higher average weekly earnings than the white population.

Simply, the earnings data do not provide evidence that Canada is a society that systemically disadvantages minorities. Rather, the data show the exact opposite. Politicians and bureaucrats might want to consider these facts before wasting large sums of taxpayer dollars drawing up lengthy “anti-racism” plans.

Source: Matthew Lau: Education, not racism, drives the difference in earnings between races

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , , ,

Idées | Les leçons de l’expérience française sur la laïcité à l’école et la limite des lois

2024/12/11 Leave a comment

Thoughtful discussion and recognition that coercive measures are ineffective in improving the “vivre ensemble”

Maintenant que 17 établissements scolaires font déjà l’objet d’enquêtes pour de possibles manquements à la laïcité et que l’école Saint-Maxime de Laval fait les manchettes, les enjeux entourant la laïcité détonnent de plus belle. Un rapport détaillé sur ces cas est attendu en janvier.

Cette situation soulève des questions fondamentales sur l’application de la laïcité, une valeur profondément ancrée en France, mais aussi au Québec. Présentée comme garante de la neutralité de l’État face aux religions et protectrice des libertés individuelles, la laïcité, lorsqu’elle se traduit en législation scolaire restrictive, peut devenir une source de divisions plutôt qu’un facteur de cohésion. La France, pionnière dans la mise en œuvre de telles politiques depuis la fin des années 1980, offre un exemple clé pour l’analyse de leurs effets sur le climat scolaire et les relations interculturelles.

Des restrictions qui n’améliorent pas le respect de la laïcité

L’un des principaux arguments avancés pour ces lois est qu’elles renforceraient la laïcité en garantissant un espace neutre où toutes les croyances sont respectées. Cependant, en interdisant certaines pratiques religieuses, cette législation donne souvent l’impression de cibler des communautés spécifiques, ce qui crée un sentiment de stigmatisation et de discrimination.

En France, les lois sur la laïcité ont principalement affecté les jeunes filles musulmanes portant le hidjab. Ce ciblage a donné lieu à des accusations de traitement inégal et à des débats sur l’incompatibilité supposée entre l’islam et les valeurs dites « républicaines ». Or, la laïcité, idéalement, ne devrait ni exclure ni contraindre, mais offrir à chacun la liberté de croire ou de ne pas croire. Les restrictions imposées par les lois sur les signes religieux dans les écoles publiques compromettent cet équilibre en associant la laïcité à un outil coercitif plutôt qu’à un cadre émancipateur.

Un climat scolaire exacerbé par les tensions

Loin d’apaiser les tensions dans les établissements scolaires, les lois restrictives tendent à les exacerber. Dans l’affaire de Creil et dans les années qui ont suivi, de nombreux cas similaires ont mis en lumière l’instrumentalisation des écoles comme champ de bataille idéologique. Cela détourne les enseignants et les élèves de leur mission première : apprendre et grandir ensemble.

Des études menées en France montrent que l’application de la loi de 2004 a conduit à une augmentation des conflits dans les établissements touchés. Comme l’avait souligné la chercheuse Françoise Lorcerie en 2008, la législation prohibitive ne fait qu’accroître les tensions, souvent accompagnées d’une spirale médiatique et politique. Ce type d’escalade installe rarement le climat propice à la discussion de ce genre d’enjeu, comme la France a pu le voir lors de la commission Stasi, qui a mené aux lois prohibitives de 2004. La surreprésentation du camp prohibitionniste dans les médias fut soulevée dans la recherche (Thomas, 2008).

Ces lois ont également renforcé un climat de suspicion envers les élèves issus de minorités et fait en sorte que les professeurs se sentent parfois pris dans un rôle de police des comportements religieux. Ce type d’interventions n’encourage ni la compréhension mutuelle ni l’intégration, mais peut au contraire favoriser un repli identitaire chez les jeunes concernés.

Des relations interculturelles mises en péril

Une des promesses implicites de ces lois est qu’elles favoriseraient l’intégration des élèves dans la société laïque. Pourtant, l’effet inverse semble souvent se produire. Les interdictions rigides de pratiques religieuses, même dans un cadre scolaire, peuvent être perçues comme une négation de l’identité culturelle et spirituelle des élèves concernés.

En France, l’application de ces lois a parfois contribué à marginaliser des groupes minoritaires, alimentant un sentiment de rejet et une méfiance accrue envers les institutions publiques. Dans ce contexte, les établissements scolaires, qui devraient être des lieux de dialogue interculturel et de formation citoyenne, risquent de devenir des espaces de division.

Au-delà des murs de l’école, ces lois ont également un impact sur la perception des valeurs d’accueil dans la société. Plutôt que de renforcer une laïcité apaisée, elles alimentent le discours de l’exclusion et du « nous contre eux ». Les jeunes issus de ces minorités religieuses font ainsi face à un dilemme : renoncer à une partie de leur identité pour se conformer, ou résister, au risque de se voir rejetés davantage.

Pour une approche équilibrée de la laïcité

L’exemple français devrait servir de mise en garde pour le Québec envisageant de légiférer dans le même sens. Si l’objectif est de promouvoir la laïcité et le vivre-ensemble, des mesures coercitives ne sont pas la solution. La laïcité doit être perçue comme une valeur d’union et de respect mutuel, et non comme un instrument de contrôle ou d’assimilation forcée.

En fin de compte, les écoles devraient être des lieux où les enfants apprennent à vivre ensemble dans la diversité, et non des arènes de conflits idéologiques. Loin de résoudre les problèmes auxquels elles prétendent s’attaquer, les lois restrictives sur la laïcité risquent de creuser les fractures qu’elles cherchent à combler. L’expérience française, marquée par des décennies de controverses sur le sujet, montre qu’une approche plus nuancée et inclusive à la québécoise est non seulement souhaitable, mais aussi nécessaire pour bâtir une société véritablement respectueuse des différences.

Source: Idées | Les leçons de l’expérience française sur la laïcité à l’école et la limite des lois

Now that 17 schools are already being investigated for possible breaches of secularism and the Saint-Maxime de Laval school is making headlines, the issues surrounding secularism are more in tune. A detailed report on these cases is expected in January.

This situation raises fundamental questions about the application of secularism, a value deeply rooted in France, but also in Quebec. Presented as a guarantor of the neutrality of the State in the face of religions and a protector of individual freedoms, secularism, when it translates into restrictive school legislation, can become a source of division rather than a factor of cohesion. France, a pioneer in the implementation of such policies since the late 1980s, offers a key example for the analysis of their effects on the school climate and intercultural relations.

Restrictions that do not improve respect for secularism

One of the main arguments put forward for these laws is that they would strengthen secularism by guaranteeing a neutral space where all beliefs are respected. However, by prohibiting certain religious practices, this legislation often gives the impression of targeting specific communities, which creates a sense of stigmatization and discrimination.

In France, the laws on secularism have mainly affected young Muslim girls wearing the hijab. This targeting has given rise to accusations of unequal treatment and debates about the supposed incompatibility between Islam and so-called “republican” values. However, secularism, ideally, should neither exclude nor constrain, but offer everyone the freedom to believe or not to believe. The restrictions imposed by the laws on religious signs in public schools compromise this balance by associating secularism with a coercive tool rather than an emancipatory framework.

A school climate exacerbated by tensions

Far from easing tensions in schools, restrictive laws tend to exacerbate them. In the Creil case and in the years that followed, many similar cases highlighted the instrumentalization of schools as an ideological battlefield. This distracts teachers and students from their primary mission: to learn and grow together.

Studies conducted in France show that the application of the 2004 law has led to an increase in conflicts in affected institutions. As researcher Françoise Lorcerie pointed out in 2008, prohibitive legislation only increases tensions, often accompanied by a media and political spiral. This type of escalation rarely sets the climate conducive to the discussion of this kind of issue, as France was able to see during the Stasi commission, which led to the prohibitive laws of 2004. The overrepresentation of the prohibitionist camp in the media was raised in the research (Thomas, 2008).

These laws have also reinforced a climate of suspicion towards students from minorities and ensured that teachers sometimes feel caught in a role of police of religious behavior. This type of intervention does not encourage mutual understanding or integration, but can on the contrary promote an identity retreat among the young people concerned.

Intercultural relationships at risk

One of the implicit promises of these laws is that they would promote the integration of students into secular society. However, the opposite effect often seems to occur. Rigid prohibitions of religious practices, even in a school setting, can be perceived as a negation of the cultural and spiritual identity of the students concerned.

In France, the application of these laws has sometimes contributed to marginalizing minority groups, fueling a feeling of rejection and increased distrust of public institutions. In this context, schools, which should be places of intercultural dialogue and civic education, risk becoming spaces of division.

Beyond the walls of the school, these laws also have an impact on the perception of welcoming values in society. Rather than strengthening a peaceful secularism, they feed the discourse of exclusion and “we against them”. Young people from these religious minorities thus face a dilemma: giving up part of their identity to conform, or resist, at the risk of being further rejected.

For a balanced approach to secularism

The French example should serve as a warning for Quebec considering legislating in the same direction. If the objective is to promote secularism and living together, coercive measures are not the solution. Secularism should be perceived as a value of union and mutual respect, and not as an instrument of control or forced assimilation.

At the end of the day, schools should be places where children learn to live together in diversity, not arenas of ideological conflicts. Far from solving the problems they claim to tackle, restrictive laws on secularism risk deepening the fractures they seek to fill. The French experience, marked by decades of controversy on the subject, shows that a more nuanced and inclusive Quebec approach is not only desirable, but also necessary to build a society that truly respects differences.

Filed under Interculturalisme, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Globe editorial – On the Brink: Ottawa needs to restore the point of immigration – skilled workers

2024/12/11 Leave a comment

More editorials on immigration in the Globe:

…It’s time to take the hammer to both the new and old kinks in the system. Ottawa should scrap the special categories and restore the simplicity of the points-based ranking. And the federal government and the provinces together must streamline the inflow of newcomers – both new immigrants and those already here – into all regulated professions.

It’s the right thing to do for the Canadian economy, and for talented newcomers who want to make this country home.

Source: On the Brink: Ottawa needs to restore the point of immigration – skilled workers

And in a previous editorial:

…But there are problems of Ottawa’s own making that threaten to further undermine the immigration system. One is the Liberals’ continued insistence on using immigration to micromanage the labour market. That was the foundation of the government’s error on the immigration file in the postpandemic years: buying into the pitch from business lobbies that huge numbers of temporary migrants were needed to close a massive labour shortage.

That same interventionist mindset is still at work, corroding the points-based system for permanent residents. Rather than simply aim to bring in the highest-skilled migrants, the Liberals have whittled down the points system to instead grant permanent residency to less qualified candidates who can fill perceived skills gaps. And then there is the bigger threat to the points system of using it as a vehicle to allow large numbers of international students to remain in Canada, even though they would not have otherwise qualified.

The federal Liberals’ mistakes on immigration have pushed Canada’s once-enviable system to the brink. And their failure to learn from their mistakes threatens to push it even further.

Source: On the Brink: Canada’s pillars of immigration are crumbling


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Caroline Elliott: A Canadian values test sounds pretty good right about now  

2024/12/10 Leave a comment

Valid examples. But codifying would be difficult and enforcing largely impossible except in cases of criminal convictions for hate speech. And like all tests, those who we would worry about the most are unlikely to be caught up in such a test:

…In the face of blatant and repeated assaults on many of the Canadian values identified by Leitch, one has to wonder if the reception to her idea would be different today.

Recently, a proposed vigil in Mississauga sought to commemorate Hamas terrorist Yahya Sinwar’s “martyrdom” after he orchestrated the barbaric October 7 attacks on innocent Israeli citizens and was later killed. As if the veneration of a man responsible for the brutal, intentional deaths of civilians wasn’t bad enough, the flyer for the event included near-sacred symbolism normally reserved for honouring Canada’s fallen veterans—red poppies and the solemn words of remembrance: “Lest We Forget.” The phrase and imagery lie at the very core of Canadian values, used for nearly 100 years to honour our country’s soldiers who gave their lives for the freedoms we enjoy today.

On the anniversary of October 7, streets in many of Canada’s urban centres were taken over, not by those mourning the loss of the Israeli children, parents, and concert-goers who were the victims of the horrific pogrom, but by those celebrating the assault. In Vancouver, crowds vigorously cheered as a speaker crowed that, on October 7, “We celebrate the most brilliant and beautiful operation done by our resistance!” The throng eagerly applauded as another speaker expressed his desire to “Carry out October 7, 10 times more!”

While there was once a time when defenders of these gatherings pretended they were not rejoicing in acts of terror but merely drawing attention to the plight of Gaza, any remaining deniability has since been put to rest. Speakers in Vancouver have unabashedly declared “We ARE Hezbollah! We ARE Hamas!” The Canadian flag has been torn apart and burned, and large assemblies openly roar their approval to yells of “Death to Canada! Death to the United States! And death to Israel!” Similar mobs in Calgary chanted“Allahu Akbar,” as they barricaded a former Israeli government spokesperson, and last month there were reports of outright calls for jihad on the streets of Mississauga.

Wherever one stands on Leitch’s idea of a Canadian values test, there is no question that these demonstrators—newcomers and Canadian-born activists alike—represent the polar opposite of the values Leitch sought to defend.

The idea that Canadian values include tolerance for all religions and cultures has been enthusiastically trampled by the hordes of people repeatedly targeting Jewish people, businesses, community centres, and places of worship with their hateful rhetoric and actions.

The same is true of Leitch’s idea that Canadians reject violence as a way to solve problems, a sentiment now drastically at odds with the open calls of “Death to Canada,” the donning of military-style clothing and face coverings by demonstrators, and the urging of a repeat of the unrestrained violence, rape, murder, and hostage-taking of Israeli civilians that took place last year.

A recent Leger/National Post poll indicates that Canadians are perhaps becoming more protective of their values as they come under threat. It found that 70 percent of younger Canadians endorsed the idea of a values test for new arrivals. The same poll found that 72 percent of visible minorities endorsed a values test compared to 69 percent of white Canadians in the 18-39 age range.

It was just seven years ago that Canadian values were so taken for granted that the very idea of testing potential newcomers for alignment with them was deemed not only unnecessary but morally wrong. As Canada’s streets continue to be shut down by terror-celebrating, violence-inciting, flag-burning, hate-spewing mobs who threaten our citizens and co-opt our hallowed symbols for their murderous cause, we have to ask: was Leitch’s proposal really so far off the mark?

Source: Caroline Elliott: A Canadian values test sounds pretty good right about now

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Salgo: What if Canada’s public service is actually too accountable?

2024/12/10 Leave a comment

Has a point. Too much largely process accountability, too little substantive outcome accountability:

In the wake of this finding, it may sound foolhardy to ask whether there’s such a thing as too much accountability in the federal public service.

But yes, Virginia, such a thing exists, and it hurts the interests of Canadians.

To be clear, I’m not arguing with the AG. Accountability is a core tenet of good governance. Oversight and controls are essential, and when things go wrong, someone has to explain, take corrective action — and face the consequences.

What’s more, the public sector has a unique responsibility to be accountable. Citizens who feel ill-served can’t just take their business elsewhere, and last time I looked, paying for government services wasn’t voluntary. Still, when it comes to ensuring accountability, more is often less.

How so? First, more rules do not necessarily translate into better outcomes; the opposite is sometimes true. Many public sector controls are aimed at demonstrating good conduct rather than getting better results, as anyone who’s dealt with government procurement or staffing knows. Piling on rules doesn’t improve performance, and beyond a certain point it doesn’t improve public trust.

Second, rules are a lot more costly than people tend to realize – not just the cost of people who run accountability systems but the time of people who comply with them, who could be doing something more productive instead. Such costs are particularly onerous for small agencies. No one in the government of Canada knows the full measure of these costs and no one seems to want to.

Third, and perhaps most damaging, is the impact too much accountability can have on public service behaviour and culture. People who say there’s no accountability in government typically mean that heads don’t roll (or don’t seem to) when things go wrong. But when most of the rules are either proscriptions or exercises in box-ticking, and real-world outcomes aren’t your responsibility, avoiding blame gets easier, while innovation looks more risky and less urgent than it actually is. When your briefing note to a senior manager goes through 17 sign-offs (as I recently heard one deputy minister acknowledge) it’s a little hard to take full ownership of any slipups.

As Exhibit A, I offer the Federal Accountability Act, which I once described as “the definitive legislative monument to risk-averse, blame-avoiding institutional rigidity in the government of Canada.”

Enacted in the early days of the Harper government, the act did some good or semi-good things to hold public servants to account. Unfortunately, it also included a host of dubious measures such as redundant anti-fraud penalties, the judicialization of ethical regimes, and a series of increasingly detailed behavioral constraints.

But what was remarkable was how little connection the act had with the reality on the ground. We usually require any expenditure of public resources to address a demonstrated need. But in the case of the Accountability Act, there was often no evidence that the problems it was meant to address actually existed, or that the purported solutions would help.

The government talks a lot about risk but no risk assessment was conducted here.

This worst thing about the Accountability Act and its ilk is the missed opportunity to help modernize the public service: to streamline decision-making, encourage collaboration and innovation, and recast accountability in terms of achieving results for Canadians.

To-date, there has been no systematic assessment of the act, and the rules remain in place, as such rules usually do. Yet an underlying takeaway from COVID is actually that bureaucrats can be nimble when they are focused on outcomes and the political leadership seems to have their back. That may seem odd to say given the AG’s findings, but the scale of COVID payouts ($360 billion) was extraordinary and the government’s express goal was to get money out the door asap and ask questions later. The tolerance for error quickly snapped back, and rightly so, but the basic lesson holds.

So, yes, public servants are subject to too much of the wrong kind of accountability, and this isn’t likely to change through purely internal processes. We need an independent, public review of our accountability rules and of the opportunities to build a public service that will better serve a new and differently minded generation.

Source: Salgo: What if Canada’s public service is actually too accountable?

Filed under Government Tagged with ,

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