Report: Disparate swings in asylum outcomes by US immigration judges

2024/12/09 Leave a comment

Sean Rehaag has been showing similar discrepancies in Canada. Kahneman argues persuasively that automated systems are the preferred approach to deliver consistent rulings, albeit great care is needed to ensure that no unfortunate biases get coded into the system.

Wide swings in judicial outcomes for immigration asylum cases nationwide since 2019 are noted in a recent report.

Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse reports individual asylum decisions for over 800 immigration judges that finds some have denied asylum in 100% of their cases, while another judge has denied just 1% of cases.

But, on average, more than half of all asylum cases in the United States over the past five years have been denied, a sentiment that has repeatedly been said by at least one South Texas congressman.

The nationwide asylum denial rate from 2019 through 2024 was 57.7%, according to the TRAC report released in November.

“To grant or deny an asylum application is among the most consequential decisions an immigration judge makes. For this reason, understanding how asylum decisions vary across time, across courts, and across judges warrants more attention — particularly in current public policy debates on immigration enforcement policies to reduce the court’s backlog of cases. The lessons that are evident from past decades should not be ignored. For many asylum seekers our current system has not delivered a fast and fair resolution of their cases. Often it has delivered neither,” the TRAC report found.
(TRAC Graphic)
Some of the reasons for wide variations in outcome of asylum cases could be that fewer valid claims came before certain courts. Asylum applicants typically submit their claims to the court nearest their residency. Immigrants from the same country also tend to live in the same communities and their claims and outcomes can be correlated, the report found.

Other significant factors that can influence asylum outcomes includes the availability of skilled immigration attorneys in various communities, as well as court and docket size for number of immigration cases assigned to each judge, according to TRAC.

Two immigration judges in Houston — Monique Harris and Bruce Imbacuan, were cited in the report as having denied 100% of asylum cases in their courts. Harris has adjudicated 108 cases, Imbacuan has heard 105 cases with no cases granted asylum and no cases granted some type of relief, according to TRAC.

Bios on these judges show Harris previously worked as legal counsel for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Her case denials all fell within 2019, according to TRAC. Imbacuan was appointed in 2020 and all of his denial cases occurred in 2020. He previously worked for ICE in Cleveland, Ohio, TRAC reports.

That’s contrary to other judges within the very same court who have denial rates of 70% and 79% but who also have heard many ore cases, 430 and 235, respectively.

In South Texas, the nine immigration judges deciding cases in Harlingen, vary in denial rates from 57.8% to 84.3%. The 11 judges in the Laredo immigration courts vary with denial rates from 24.5% to 90.2%. And the five judges in Los Fresnos, Texas, have had denial rates from 77.5% to 90.6%, the report finds.
In West Texas, the El Paso immigration court judges have issued denial rates ranging from 14.7% to 85.5%.

Judge Lorely Ramirez Fernandez, in El Paso, heard 129 cases since 2019 and has granted asylum to 70.5% of cases and some type of relief to 14.7% of other asylum cases, TRAC says. Her bio lists her as having served as a staff attorney with Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center in El Paso in 2007.
San Francisco immigration Judge Elisa Brasil has denied just 1.3% of cases since 2023, since she has been on the bench, according to TRAC. She previously represented clients before the Executive Office of Immigration Review, which are immigration courts, TRAC found.

“Although denial rates are shaped by each judge’s judicial philosophy, denial rates are also shaped by other factors, such as the types of cases on the judge’s docket, the detained status of immigrant respondents, current immigration policies, and other factors beyond an individual judge’s control,” the report found.

TRAC reports that, to date, there are over 3.7 million immigration cases pending.

Source: Report: Disparate swings in asylum outcomes by US immigration judges



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Immigration department received intelligence about huge rise in clandestine U.S.-Canada border crossings last year

2024/12/07 Leave a comment

Good questions regarding senior official and minister awareness:

Intelligence experts within Canada’s border agency informed the federal immigration department last December about a big rise in illegal crossings of the Canada-U.S. border, including into the States, which raises questions about why action to curb it was not taken earlier.

An intelligence document sent to senior Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada officials, says smugglers were moving people across the border in both directions, with some foreign nationals flying into Canada at major airports and swiftly slipping across the border into the United States.

The Canada Border Services Agency’s intelligence analysis says clandestine entries have led to thousands of refugee claims, mostly in the Greater Toronto Area.

The document says “the Southbound movement into the United States (US) has grown significantly since 2022″ adding that “the majority of individuals who attempt to cross southbound illegally arrive by air, mainly at Montreal Trudeau International Airport and Toronto Pearson International Airport and move quickly.”

It found that “the vast majority were very likely in Canada for less than 6 months of which a large portion were in Canada for less than 3 weeks.”

Ministers have insisted in recent weeks, amid heightened tensions between U.S. president-elect Donald Trump and Ottawa over illegal immigration into the U.S., that Canada’s borders are secure.

But the emergence of the detailed analysis by the CBSA’s Intelligence and Investigations Directorate raises questions about whether ministers were ignorant of the extent of people smuggling into the U.S. from Canada, and in the other direction….

Source: Immigration department received intelligence about huge rise in clandestine U.S.-Canada border crossings last year

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Salutin | Can Shylock help sort out the conceptual muddle around antisemitism? Yes

2024/12/07 Leave a comment

Of interest:

In “Playing Shylock,” which is about to end its Toronto run, Saul Rubinek (actor, writer, filmmaker) manages to reproblematize antisemitism and save it from the dumbing down and weaponization it has been subject to in relation to Gaza. He does a lot else in this solo drama by Mark Leiren-Young, but I’ll stick to that.

Antisemitism has a lengthy history during which it has been many different things. True, all involved enmity toward Jews, but Jews didn’t even have to be there, as they hadn’t been legally in England for 300 years before Shakespeare created the antisemitic stereotype of Shylock, in “Merchant of Venice.”

The classic version was Christ-killers, which basically excluded non-Christian places, like the Muslim world. There were Jews as global conspirators, sometimes filthy rich — or commie revolutionaries. Also, in the sudden mass rootlessness of the industrial era, as a mysteriously cohesive alien body. There was the pseudo-scientific racist version of the late 1800s, adopted by Hitler. Recently there’s the incorrect conflation of Israelis with Jews everywhere as “Zionists.” There’s even a recent attempt to impose a “working definition” over all others.

There’s also a widespread sense of antisemitism as a unique metaphysical entity that’s always existed and always will, in varied forms, hovering somehow above history but infecting it, making it uniquely malignant and incomparable.

There’s been vigorous debate on the topic, which is healthy. Definitions are always abstractions that come after actual realities and are devices meant to clarify them. But the monstrosity of the Holocaust tended to sweep aside any disputes. Zionism, the movement for a Jewish state, was one of many currents responding to antisemitism, but rather swiftly supplanted other interpretations.

In the play, Saul Rubinek plays an actor named Saul Rubinek, who plays Shylock and whose show gets shut down during an intermission because “Jewish community” leaders say it will incite antisemitism. He’s been aching to play this part, not because it’s antisemitic — which it is — but because despite that and because Shakespeare is Shakespeare, it is the first portrayal of Jews as three-dimensional (“If you prick us, do we not bleed?”) in the history of literature.

Rubinek rails at leaders who think they can legislate ideas through definitions and shut down millennia of vigorous debate among Jews: kings versus prophets, priests versus rabbis, antinomian messianists versus legalists, hassidim versus mitnagdim, secularists versus religionists, Zionists versus anti-Zionists and other Zionists! Plus, he yearns to play this energetic, contradictory figure onstage.

He even drags in whether non-Jews can play Jews (like Mrs. Maisel) or the abled play the disabled etc., along with: Isn’t all art appropriation? This is what I mean by reproblematizing, or revitalizing, the issue of antisemitism.

Let it breathe. Don’t try to suppress, for instance, almost any criticism of specific Israeli policies, including clear atrocities, as antisemitic. Rubinek’s role scarcely alludes to Gaza yet his performance encompasses it.

The Israeli novelist Aron Apelfeld, who was steeped in the Yiddish-speaking communities snuffed out by Hitler, once said, “In the modern world, every choice to be Jewish is a paradoxical choice.” Rubinek embodies this by asserting his right to go back onstage after intermission to play Shylock.

The most breathtaking moment comes near the end when Rubinek shows how his father, an actor in Poland’s Yiddish theatre before the war, would’ve played Shylock in the prick-us speech. It is a fierce proof of how unshakable a grip the past has on us. Few audience members, Jewish or not, could’ve missed each nuance — in Yiddish! Earlier he did it in the original, with a lot of Othello (warrior and general) in it. What a multifarious performance.

You may’ve seen Rubinek in Clint Eastwood’s “Unforgiven,” “Frasier,” or “Star Trek.” Yet, he’s always, as he says, quoting his director and lifelong friend, Martin Kinch, Jewish. Here, by being so relentlessly, specifically Jewish and simultaneously so riven, he’s produced something truly universal. It may be the only, or at least the most effective, way to achieve that elusive goal.

Source: Opinion | Can Shylock help sort out the conceptual muddle around antisemitism? Yes

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Ottawa faces calls to scrap rule allowing migrants crossing border covertly to claim asylum after two weeks

2024/12/07 Leave a comment

Will see what government does but my guess is that the pressures to do so will be hard to resist:

…Opposition politicians and provincial premiers have raised fears about an influx of migrants to Canada from the U.S. after president-elect Donald Trump threatened to deport about 11 million people living there illegally.

“At a minimum, the 14-day rule should be suspended temporarily until we know what we are dealing with,” said immigration lawyer Richard Kurland, who obtained the border agency’s intelligence document through an access to information request.

Under the Safe Third Country Agreement between Canada and the U.S., asylum-seekers must make their claim in the first country in which they arrive. In March last year, the two countries restricted the agreement, ending the ability to claim asylum after crossing at Roxham Road.

Both Canada and the U.S. can terminate the agreement with six months’ notice, and they can also negotiate changes. Immigration lawyer David Matas said “the agreement could be extended by removing the possibility of staying in Canada if one enters Canada illegally and remains hidden for 14 days or more.

“That would be even more effective in discouraging traversal of the U.S. than the present form of the agreement.”

Canada does not return people to the United States if they have been charged with an offence that could subject them to the death penalty.

Warda Shazadi Meighen, a lawyer at Landings LLP, said Canada would have the power to enact additional public-interest exemptions to help people facing persecution if they were returned to the United States.

“One can imagine a scenario where women fleeing gender-based violence, and individuals facing LGBTQ+ persecution, for example, would not get adequate protection under certain administrations in the United States,” she said.

Source: Ottawa faces calls to scrap rule allowing migrants crossing border covertly to claim asylum after two weeks

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Legault se présente comme un rempart devant la menace Trump et la menace «islamiste»

2024/12/07 Leave a comment

Suspect there is support beyond Quebec given some of the disruptions of Gaza demonstrations that involve prayer:

Au terme d’une saison politique marquée par des entorses à la laïcité dans les écoles québécoises, il a dit songer à légiférer pour interdire la prière dans l’espace public. « Moi, de voir du monde à genoux dans la rue faire des prières, je pense qu’il faut se poser la question. Je ne pense pas que c’est quelque chose qu’on devrait voir », a-t-il déclaré au moment de clore les travaux parlementaires pour la pause des Fêtes.

« On regarde toutes les possibilités, incluant l’utilisation de la clause dérogatoire. On ne souhaite pas voir des prières dans les rues », a-t-il ajouté. À son avis, la prière doit se faire « dans une église, dans une mosquée, mais pas dans les lieux publics ». « De voir des gens qui prient dans les rues, dans des parcs publics, ce n’est pas quelque chose qu’on souhaite au Québec », a-t-il soutenu.

….« Les exemples qu’on a vus, c’était de l’islamisme, ce n’était pas d’autres religions », a-t-il dit à propos des cas médiatisés d’écoles publiques dans lesquelles des enseignants ont transgressé les principes de la Loi sur la laïcité de l’État.

À un journaliste qui lui demandait de faire la nuance entre l’islam (une religion) et l’islamisme (un mouvement politique et religieux), M. Legault a offert une réponse au sujet des valeurs québécoises. « Écoutez, je ne suis pas dans la tête de ces gens-là pour voir c’est quoi, leur volonté, mais ce que je sais, c’est que quand on empêche à une petite fille de faire du sport, ça ne respecte pas les valeurs du Québec. »…

Source: Legault se présente comme un rempart devant la menace Trump et la menace «islamiste»

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Hill: About that word, and about those books

2024/12/07 Leave a comment

Sensible commentary. Hill’s Book of Negroes had to be retitled for the US market however to Someone Knows My Name:

…When I reached out to the London District Catholic School board for comment, Susan Nickle, the board’s Executive Officer (Superintendent) People and Culture and General Counsel, wrote back to me to say that the board “does not, and will not, censor or ban your book” and that my work “will continue to be available as options for student engagement and learning within our libraries and classrooms across our district.

“However, we must also be mindful of the diverse sensitivities and experiences of our students,” she continued. “Due to the triggering language and content present in The Book of Negroes, and several students who have expressed concerns, we are not able to make it required/mandatory reading for formal assessment. That being said, your book remains an important resource that students can continue to voluntarily select for classroom novel study. Our objective is to create an inclusive and supportive educational environment for all students.”

I followed up to ask about the board’s policy with regard to the use of any books containing the word, but Ms. Nickle did not reply. I reached out again to Ms. Hamilton, who said she had taught the novel to 900 students over the years without receiving any objections. She said that every student is allowed to opt out of reading an assigned text and that Ms. Nickle’s reply skirted the key issue – that Ms. Hamilton said she was told “that under no circumstances am I to teach a novel using the n-word.”…

If we truly worry about protecting students from “harm” caused by the word “nigger,” then we have that much more need to discuss it in class. And if teachers cannot provide a safe and civilized space for students to learn about the hateful history of the word, if they must ignore the fact that many Black people have re-appropriated it, and if they cannot teach about the history and present lives of Black people in Canada, then how exactly are our students to be challenged?

Students need books by Black authors. Unflinching books that employ authentic language. Educators need to offer those books, and to lean on their research and their training to do so. Banning books with the word “nigger” does not protect students. It only protects educators from doing one of their most difficult but important jobs.

Source: About that word, and about those books

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Su | Trudeau’s government just sent the clearest signal yet that Canada’s doors are closing

2024/12/06 1 Comment

Well, the message needed to be sent given the rapid growth of asylum seekers (encouraged by the Liberal government’s previous policies), the concerns of most Canadians and the reality of the Trump administration.

My general take, rather than just raising their legitimate concerns, academics and settlement organizations have to think what kind of advice and advocacy will be most effective in the current environment. I do think that Su’s example of privately sponsored refugees as a cornerstone is appropriate but perhaps a second step would be to suggest a respective cut in the government assisted refugees. Recognizing trade-offs in a context of zero-sums:

The Canadian government’s recent announcement of a $250,000 global ad campaign warning migrants that seeking asylum here is “not easy,” coupled with the suspension of private refugee sponsorships, is sending a chilling message: Canada’s doors are closing and so too are our commitments to humanitarian principles, multiculturalism and our international obligations to uphold the rights of refugees.

But as the federal Liberal government continues its campaign to look tough on immigration in response to internal as well as external pressures from our neighbours to the south, it is prioritizing optics over meaningful, humane solutions. The government has said immigration restrictions are necessary to reduce pressure on housing, infrastructure and social services.  

The ad campaign is part of troubling shift in our immigration policies that isn’t just short-sighted but a betrayal of our values. It underlines our long-standing identity as a welcome place of refuge and opportunity, risking Canada’s transformation into yet another country using human lives as political pawns.

We are borrowing from the failed playbooks of Australia’s Operation Sovereign Borders and U.K.’s “Stop the Boats” campaign. Campaigns widely associated with cruelty, exclusion and human rights abuse. While these programs may have reduced irregular arrivals on paper, they came at enormous human and ethical costs. Canada, once the antithesis of such approaches, risks following a similar path.

Equally concerning is the suspension of new private sponsorship applications for refugees from groups of five and community organizations citing an “oversupply” of applications and a desire not to give people fleeing war zones false hope.

Private refugee sponsorship has been a cornerstone of Canada’s refugee program and our model has been praised globally for its success. In 2015, the Canadian government proudly said, “Canada can and will do more to help Syrian refugees who are desperately seeking safety, by offering them a new home.”

By 2018, Canada accepted close to 52,000 Syrian refugees, about half of whom were privately sponsored. Since 2013, more refugees have arrived in Canada through private sponsorship than through government support and in 2019, two-thirds of refugees entered through private or community sponsorship.

Not only is the program successful and low-cost for the government, it also enables communities to welcome and integrate newcomers, embodying the very values of generosity and solidarity that underpin Canada’s self-image. Limiting this program feels like a betrayal of our history, one that risks leaving countless vulnerable individuals in limbo.

These policies reflect a dangerous pivot in Canada’s immigration philosophy — from one of proactive humanitarianism to reactive gatekeeping. While the government claims these measures address systemic challenges, they risk conflating the inefficiencies of bureaucracy with the actions of migrants themselves.

These policies are also sowing division among immigrant communities. A recent poll found 65 per cent of Canadians surveys believe the Canada government’s current plans will admit too many people. And most immigrants(67 per cent) support stricter international student policies.

However, the flip side of the growing anti-immigrant and anti-refugee sentiments that is not getting as much attention is that this rhetoric increases racism and discrimination for the whole immigrant population, not just newcomers or international students. The same poll found that over a third of immigrants have faced discrimination at work, especially younger BIPOC immigrants.

Hate crimes reported by the police have also doubled from 2019 to 2023, with 44.5 per cent of incidents in 2023 motivated by ethnicity or race. One will never be able to calculate the social costs of a Canada where the fabric of multiculturalism is being picked apart one policy change at a time, but we will be able to feel it.

Rupinder Singh, a Sikh man living in Scarborough, felt it when he had his turban snatched off his head by someone who jumped into a car and sped off. Singh says he is planning to go back home because of this incident because he no longer feels safe in Canada. Singh is part of a growing trend of newcomers leaving Canada.

Statistics Canada data shows that more than 15 per cent of immigrants left Canada within 20 years of landing and advocates are asking for policies on immigrant retention.

So, a $250,000 global ad campaign might not be necessary to keep people away from Canada when word-of-mouth and the high cost of living is already doing the advertising for us. That money could be better spent on developing immigration policies that prioritize dignity over deterrence. If Canada continues down this path, we risk undermining the Canadian values of generosity, multiculturalism and inclusion that has been our foundation for so long.

Source: Opinion | Trudeau’s government just sent the clearest signal yet that Canada’s doors are closing

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with

Robillard | Gare au militantisme qui verse dans le dogmatisme, l’intimidation et la violence

2024/12/06 Leave a comment

Absolument. I attended UQAM during the 1980 referendum and it was very activist and left-wing then:

J’ai été membre de l’Association facultaire étudiante des sciences humaines (AFESH) de l’Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) de 2008 à 2011. Durant ce temps, j’ai participé activement à ses instances, respecté ses mandats de grève, fait du piquetage, cuisiné des repas populaires et milité pour un monde plus égalitaire et plus juste. J’en gardais jusqu’à maintenant, avec cette nostalgie bien spéciale que l’on peut avoir envers ses années universitaires, d’excellents souvenirs de camaraderie, de débats et de solidarité.

La récente sortie de l’exécutif de mon ancienne association étudiante a fait remonter dans ma mémoire certains aspects peu glorieux du militantisme : le dogmatisme, l’intimidation et la violence.

Des exemples de dogmatisme : vouloir expulser de l’université un député bloquiste venu donner une conférence sur sa tournée en Palestine sous prétexte que son appui à la cause palestinienne n’incluait pas un appui au Hamas. S’opposer aux plans de cours de professeurs dont les positions ne correspondaient pas à une certaine vision militante de l’université.

Des exemples d’intimidation : avoir connaissance de manoeuvres pour empêcher des étudiants opposés aux éternels mouvements de grève de s’exprimer. Appel à d’obscurs règlements adoptés en catimini pour appuyer des groupuscules supposément révolutionnaires, mais qui veulent surtout faire taire ceux qui ne sont pas d’accord avec eux, tel que l’heureusement défunt Hors d’oeuvre, ce collectif anarchiste financé par des associations étudiantes et mettant en avant des méthodes militantes violentes.

Des exemples de violence : participante à la baston annuelle censée s’opposer à la brutalité policière, l’AFESH vivait très bien avec la présence de Black Blocs dans ses activités. L’auteur de ces lignes se souvient avec clarté d’avoir été agressé par un militant alors qu’il exprimait son désaccord avec une journée de grève en soutien au régime failli de Hugo Chávez, au Venezuela, dont les crimes contre les droits de la personne sont largement connus. Il se souvient également d’avoir dû quitter la veillée funéraire d’un ami, car les menaces de certains militants devenaient trop pressantes envers les modérés dans la salle.

Ma formation en histoire à l’UQAM a été exemplaire et la variété des orientations de mes camarades de classe et professeurs a été un enrichissement précieux.

Je refuse de laisser ces gens qui se disaient anarcho-gangsters nuire encore plus à mon alma mater. De l’anarchie, ces gens ne retiennent que la violence et jamais ils n’oseraient tenir tête à de vrais gangsters.

Je tiens à remercier publiquement Pauline Marois pour son engagement envers l’éducation du Québec réel. Celui-ci est à mille lieues de l’enfer colonialiste, patriarcal et illégitime du « soi-disant Québec » dont l’AFESH parle dans sa lettre réclamant la « destitution immédiate » de l’ancienne première ministre de son nouveau poste de chancelière de l’université.

Aux étudiants de l’UQAM, ne laissez pas votre nécessaire association étudiante et vos fonds être détournés par ceux qui rêvent en rouge et noir.

Tenez bon, Madame Marois, l’UQAM a besoin de vous.

Source: Libre opinion | Gare au militantisme qui verse dans le dogmatisme, l’intimidation et la violence

I was a member of the Association facultaire étudiante des sciences humaines (AFESH) of the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) from 2008 to 2011. During this time, I actively participated in his instances, respected his strike mandates, made pickets, cooked popular meals and campaigned for a more egalitarian and just world. I kept until now, with this very special nostalgia that one can have for one’s university years, excellent memories of camaraderie, debates and solidarity.

The recent exit of the executive of my former student association brought back to my memory some inglorious aspects of activism: dogmatism, intimidation and violence.

Examples of dogmatism: wanting to expel from the university a Bloc deputy who came to give a conference on his tour of Palestine on the pretext that his support for the Palestinian cause did not include support for Hamas. Oppose the lesson plans of professors whose positions did not correspond to a certain militant vision of the university.

Examples of intimidation: having knowledge of maneuvers to prevent students opposed to the eternal strike movements from expressing themselves. Call for obscure regulations adopted in secret to support supposedly revolutionary groups, but who above all want to silence those who do not agree with them, such as the unfortunately deceased Hors d’oeuvre, this anarchist collective financed by student associations and highlighting violent militant methods.

Examples of violence: participating in the annual baton supposed to oppose police brutality, AFESH lived very well with the presence of Black Blocs in its activities. The author of these lines clearly remembers being assaulted by an activist while expressing his disagreement with a day of strike in support of the failed regime of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, whose crimes against human rights are widely known. He also remembers having to leave a friend’s funeral vigil, because the threats of some activists became too urgent towards the moderates in the room.

My history training at UQAM was exemplary and the variety of orientations of my classmates and teachers was a precious enrichment.

I refuse to let these people who called themselves anarcho-gangsters harm my alma mater even more. From anarchy, these people only retain violence and they would never dare to stand up to real gangsters.

I would like to publicly thank Pauline Marois for her commitment to the education of real Quebec. He is a thousand leagues away from the colonialist, patriarchal and illegitimate hell of the “so-called Quebec” of which the AFESH speaks in its letter calling for the “immediate dismissal” of the former prime minister from her new position as chancellor of the university.

To UQAM students, do not let your necessary student association and your funds be diverted by those who dream in red and black.

Hold on, Mrs. Marois, UQAM needs you.

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Jewish doctors consider fleeing Canada amid rising rates of antisemitism in their profession

2024/12/06 Leave a comment

Worrisome, even if consideration does not necessarily mean leaving. Likely similar worries in other professions:

Nearly one third of Jewish medical practitioners in Ontario are considering leaving the country in response to rising antisemitism, according to a new survey that found that doctors across Canada are worried about what’s happening to their profession.

The data released by the Jewish Medical Association of Ontario (JMAO) on Wednesday reveal widespread concerns of antisemitism among health-care practitioners across  Canada.

The survey of over 1,000 Jewish medical professionals across Canada found that while just one per cent of Canadian Jewish doctors experienced severe antisemitism in a community, hospital or academic setting prior to the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel, now 29 per cent, 39 per cent and 43 per cent say they have experienced some antisemitism in each of those settings, respectively.

Over 400 Jewish physicians commented on the most difficult aspect of rising levels of antisemitism. “I feel I no longer belong in Canada and may need to flee,” one said.

Another said they no longer feel comfortable around their patients and colleagues: “I fear their reaction to my name and identity. Being uncomfortable with colleagues as I am aware many are unsupportive. Feeling that I cannot share, express or even admit my identity.”

The survey included 500 Jewish health-care professionals in Ontario and “more than 80 per cent of respondents in Ontario said they’ve faced antisemitism at work,” says a news release published on Wednesday ahead of a press conference at the provincial legislature at Queen’s Park.

Source: Jewish doctors consider fleeing Canada amid rising rates of antisemitism in their profession

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Globe editorial: A Trudeau government trademark: Act now, mop up later

2024/12/06 Leave a comment

Cutting and accurate for the most part:

…This is what happens when politicians devote themselves to generating talking points and social-media content instead of making sound policy. Good governance requires serious planning and execution, something obviously lacking in this late-stage Liberal government.

Source: A Trudeau government trademark: Act now, mop up later

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