Anti-immigrant politicos in U.S. and Europe begin exploiting Brussels attacks

2016/03/25 Leave a comment

Predictable:

The terrorist attacks perpetrated by the Islamic State (ISIS) in Brussels that left 34 people dead are being exploited for political gain by many European politicians and parties, but especially so by right-wing, anti-immigration populists.

Belgium’s own right-wing party from Flanders, Vlaams Belang, has seen its popularity on social media soar since the attacks after its leader called for a “waterproof border policy,” according to Vocativ.

Marine Le Pen, leader of the France’s National Front, called on French authorities to carry out sweeping raids on minority neighborhoods and “empty the basements [of terrorists], the laxness has gone on for too long.”

Poland’s Prime Minister Beata Szydlo from the Law and Justice party said her country could no longer take the 7,000 refugees it agreed to accept in negotiations with the European Union because of the deadly attacks, Reutersreported.

In the United Kingdom, the Independence Party, which is backing the British exit from the European Union known as Brexit, used the attacks to push their agenda.

SEE ALSO: Germany’s far-right is rising up against Merkel and immigration

American right-wingers chimed in, too.

Republican frontrunner Donald Trump used the attacks to reiterate his stance on torture as an appropriate response as well as his plan to close U.S. borders while labeling Brussels “disaster city.”

Source: Anti-immigrant politicos in U.S. and Europe begin exploiting Brussels attacks

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Trudeau picked some smart people for the Senate. That could be a problem. – Christopher Waddell

2016/03/25 Leave a comment

Valid questions regarding the impact of the new Senate appointees (I believe, however, better to have accomplished and capable individuals than not):

It would be foolish to question the calibre of the people Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has appointed to the Senate. They’re all highly accomplished in their fields.

But their backgrounds and accomplishments shouldn’t obscure two fundamental questions:

Now that they’re there, what are they supposed to do? And who do they represent in doing that?

There is, of course, the old chestnut about the Senate being the chamber of “sober second thought”, reviewing legislation that comes from the elected members of Parliament. Is that the sort of work these new senators — and the others who have recently declared themselves to be ‘independent’ — will content themselves with for the rest of their days in the upper house?

Sober second thought has its value — but this is a particularly accomplished group. No washed-up politicians or party bagmen getting a taskless thanks here; Trudeau’s appointments include a prominent judge, a champion paralympian, a former university president and the former editor-in-chief of La Presse. How long will they be satisfied with a job that requires them to think without acting? Is the Senate to become a glorified think tank?

The logical outcome of sober second thought is action — amending or rejecting legislation. Is that what Trudeau wants these senators to do? And who does the government believe the senators should represent in the event they do decide to overrule the elected members of Parliament?

Do Canadians want a more activist Senate composed of people who, while accomplished, have no democratic mandate to act? Do we want to see anyone who was not elected to office regularly rejecting or amending legislation passed by elected representatives? If so, on what basis should they do that? Their personal opinions? The views of others? If so, whose views?

Source: Trudeau picked some smart people for the Senate. That could be a problem. – iPolitics

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Study likely to fuel debate on foreign home buyers

2016/03/25 Leave a comment

One of the small, low-cost, but important initiatives in the budget, along with some estimates from economists regarding the extent of the issue. Better data means better decisions:

New funding from Ottawa to help remedy what economists call an “astonishing lack of data” about international investment in Canadian real estate amounts to less than the down payment on an average detached house in Vancouver, despite signs the country’s most expensive housing markets are witnessing a significant influx of foreign buyers.

Responding to Tuesday’s federal budget, National Bank of Canada economists Peter Routledge, Parham Fini and Paul Poon estimate that the Liberal government’s promise of $500,000 for Statistics Canada to study the issue of foreign investment in the housing market amounts to just 27.5 per cent of the average $1.8-million price of a detached home in the Greater Vancouver Area. (It equates to just 18 per cent of the $2.87-million average price of a detached house in the City of Vancouver, or less than the required minimum 20-per-cent down payment.)

Still, they say the funding, enough for Statscan to spend one year examining ways to collect data on international buyers, is a welcome change to help address what has become a “politically delicate” issue in a country that prides itself on having an open economy and immigration system.

In an analysis that is likely to add fuel to that political debate, the economists conducted their own research showing that as many as one-third of all home purchases in the Vancouver region last year and 14 per cent in Toronto came from buyers in China.

Without any Canadian-specific data on foreign investors to go on, the economists came up with their estimates by extrapolating from two international surveys of realtors and buyers.

One is an annual report on the level of foreign home-buyer investment by the National Association of Realtors, based on surveys of real estate agents in the United States. It estimates that Chinese investors bought $28.6-billion (U.S.) of real estate in the U.S. housing market between March, 2014, and March, 2015, a seven-fold increase from the $4.1-billion they spent in 2009.

The second is a multiple-choice survey by the Financial Times of 77 wealthy Chinese investors who had bought real estate outside of China. Of those, 33.5 per cent said they bought homes in United States, while 11.7 per cent invested in Vancouver and 8.3 per cent in Toronto.

Combining the two surveys, the economists estimate that Chinese investors spent roughly $9-billion (Canadian) on home sales in the Greater Toronto Area last year, or 14 per cent of all total sales volume in the region.

In the Greater Vancouver Area, they estimate Chinese investors spent $12.7-billion – or 33 per cent of total sales. That figure, they say, lines up with research from B.C. urban planner Andy Yan, who found that 66 per cent of all sales of 172 detached homes in three west-side Vancouver neighbourhoods within a six-month period were to buyers with non-Anglicized Chinese names.

The economists admit their survey is somewhat unscientific, but say such attempts highlight the importance of collecting better data on the influence of foreign investment, and even immigration, on housing market affordability.

Source: Study likely to fuel debate on foreign home buyers – The Globe and Mail

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Study reveals awfulness of Canadian investor immigration; income tax averages C$1,400 per millionaire | South China Morning Post

2016/03/25 Leave a comment

More on Vancouver real estate and investor immigration:

Yet other resultant economic activity is scant – in fact, investor migrants’ favourite “business” is real estate ownership.

Average annual income tax paid by millionaire migrants was C$1,400. No, that isn’t missing a zero

That’s just one finding of a Federal government evaluation of the Chinese-dominated investor schemes, quietly published in October 2014. I can find no reference to the 103-page report in any media; two leading academics who have studied the schemes for years were unaware of it before I forwarded it to them this week.

A skinny internal report on immigrant employment earnings, dating from 2012, gave a hint of what many suspected about the investor schemes, whose only real requirement of applicants was a willingness to hand over a pile of cash (latterly, C$800,000) as a five-year loan to Canada. But the latest data is depressingly comprehensive.

Canada’s millionaire migrants earn less than refugees

Among other things it reveals that 10 years after admission, the average annual income tax paid by millionaire migrants’ primary breadwinners was C$1,400. No, that isn’t missing a zero. The true average is even lower – since one-third did not file tax returns.

Compare that to the C$10,900 paid by skilled worker immigrants, or the C$7,500 paid by Canadians on average.

 Millionaire migrants’ average taxable income from all sources peaks at C$19,500 three years after arrival, but then defies the trend of other immigrant classes by falling sharply, to C$15,800 after 10 years. The report notes “increasing rates of out-migration after five years (especially among investors) may indicate a relationship with obtaining citizenship … a share of these immigrants wait to obtain Canadian citizenship to move out of the country.”

The Quebec backdoor: still open, still ripping off BC

Why does this matter? Wasn’t the federal IIP shut down? Yes, but the QIIP continues to operate and has always been the biggest component of investor migration to Canada. In fact, with 1,750 applications accepted annually, and a hefty backlog, Quebec’s immigration department is on track to funnel about 1,400 new millionaire households to Vancouver per year; that’s down from the 2011 peak, but is about the same average level the city received under both the federal and Quebec schemes in the past decade.

Source: Study reveals awfulness of Canadian investor immigration; income tax averages C$1,400 per millionaire | South China Morning Post

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Kelly McParland: Trudeau’s first senate appointees are exactly the sort of people you’d expect Liberals to appoint

2016/03/24 Leave a comment

Valid points by McParland but one can have general values and experience ‘alignment’ while also having a measure of independence. And notably, he criticizes the general orientation of the appointees rather than taking issue with their individual qualifications.

But the degree with which they may or may not exercise their independence may be seen not just in their review of Government legislation but on the nature and tone of debates in the Senate and its committees:

Still, you’d think there would be at least a smidgen of curiosity about the latest appointees. They’re the first by the new prime minister, the first in three years (since former prime minister Harper gave up in disgust and quit appointing anyone at all), the first under the Liberals’ heralded new arm’s-length advisory council, the first to be appointed entirely as independents, and the opening wave in the Liberals’ proclaimed plan to de-partisan the benighted second chamber.

Surveying the names on the Liberal list of appointees, two thoughts spring to mind. 1. The Liberals appear to have concluded that the best way to escape the sort of Senate controversy that engulfed the Tories is to make the process as boring as humanly possible. 2. Having achieved that, they’ve used public ennui to appoint exactly the sort of people you’d expect Liberals to appoint.

To get the apathy ball rolling, Trudeau’s government announced in January it had appointed a three-member committee to advise it on potential appointees. It had three permanent members: a federal bureaucrat and two academics, plus “ad hoc” members from provinces with vacancies. The first ad hoc advisers included another bureaucrat, the head of a native women’s group, the head of a Quebec doctor’s organization, an athlete, a singer and the head of a charity.

It duly sent some names to Ottawa, from which Trudeau picked his chosen seven: the head of his transition team, a former Ontario NDP cabinet minister, an academic, an “expert on migration and diversity”, a Paralympic athlete, a federalist journalist from Quebec and the head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission into residential schools.

Since the Liberals claim all new senators have to be non-partisan, we’ll have to assume all these people assured the prime minister of their independence, though, looking at the list, it’s not hard to guess they skew pretty much to the left. Not a lot of closet Tories in that group. As my colleague John Robson put it, the list is so predictable of a Liberal government it might have been selected by an affirmative action random-elite-candidate-generator.

And what else would you expect? Examine the membership of the advisory committee and you notice it’s heavy with people paid from the public purse, or dependent on government for grace and favour. Who else would they put forward but Canadians who reflect their own background: public servants, academics, friendly faces, administrators, reliable interest groups and members of other Liberal-friendly operations. They don’t reflect Canada so much as they reflect the Liberals’ view of Canada: people like them; people you see in the salons of Ottawa, people who will be sympathetic to Liberal aspirations and the Liberal way of doing things. Even if, under Trudeau’s directive, they have to promise not to call themselves Liberals.

Source: Kelly McParland: Trudeau’s first senate appointees are exactly the sort of people you’d expect Liberals to appoint

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Learning — And Unlearning — To Be An ‘Ambassador’ For Islam : NPR

2016/03/24 Leave a comment

Beenish Ahmed on the challenges of being Muslim in America:

After years of these kinds of interactions, I no longer have illusions about combatting anti-Muslim sentiments, not least because I’ve come to understand that the flames of Islamophobia are systematically fanned. Since 9/11, reports a study from the Center for American Progress (the parent organization of ThinkProgress, a news site where I work), a number of well-endowed organizations have spent over $40 million spreading fear against a “manufactured threat” — the notion that Islamist groups are working to make sharia the law of the land in America and turn the country into an Islamic state.

Thanks in part to such campaigns, even if someone like me can hardly recognize their faith in the hate espoused by terrorist organizations like ISIS or Al-Qaida, we are seen to belong more to those groups than to our own communities. That’s why hardly anyone is ever satisfied when I say that I’m from the Midwest. In their minds, I’ll always be all tied up with the Middle East and their perceptions of its mayhem.

And so, I will always say please and thank you when I order my coffee. I will smile at you on the bus if you happen to make eye contact with me. I’ll do so despite myself. And even if these habits result from my Ohioan upbringing as much as the traits imparted by my anxious, insecure, and yet incessantly good-willed immigrant parents, I know that I do these things because a part of me still can’t believe that I actually belong here. Still, I refuse to be an ambassador in the country of my birth.

Source: Learning — And Unlearning — To Be An ‘Ambassador’ For Islam : Code Switch : NPR

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Belgium’s big problem with radical Islam – The Washington Post

2016/03/24 Leave a comment

One of the better pieces I have seen, although over-mechanically emphasizes some of the causes of radicalization:

Of all the countries in the West, Belgium has produced the greatest number of foreign jihadists per capita who are fighting in Syria. The actual figure, according to researchers, is variously estimated at 470 to 553. Roughly a third of those who left to fight in Iraq and Syria have returned; many have not faced prosecution, with authorities struggling to prove that the fighters joined violent organizations such as the Islamic State, which is also known as ISIS and ISIL.

According to an analysis by the Royal Institute for International Relations, or Egmont, a Brussels-based think tank, the majority of Belgian jihadists are young (ages 20 to 24), have lower-than-average education levels and are mostly of Moroccan heritage.

The prevalence of Islamist extremism in Belgium predates the incidents of the past year, as well as the advent of the Islamic State. And this is not the first time an Islamic State proxy has struck on Belgian soil: In May 2014, a gun-wielding French national who had spent time in Syria killed four people in the Jewish Museum of Brussels.

The root causes of radicalization are largely familiar: high unemployment, marginalization, discrimination and a sense of alienation from the wider society.

BuzzFeed’s Joshua Hersh spent time in Molenbeek and came away with this picture of a downtrodden, disgruntled community:

“Unlike the infamous banlieues of Paris — the rundown high-rise suburbs that symbolize France’s failure to integrate its own Muslim immigrant residents — Molenbeek is practically in the middle of Brussels; it’s just two metro stops west of the central train station. Still, Molenbeek can feel deeply isolated. The immigrants of Brussels, most of them Muslim and of North African descent, are highly concentrated there — the schools they attend, shunned by white Belgian families, are disparagingly referred to as “concentration schools,” after the high percentage of immigrants enrolled, and the poor conditions. “I didn’t believe it was this bad when I first started,” said a teacher who works at a mostly immigrant school near Molenbeek. “The schools, all they do is accentuate the problems the students face in their daily lives.””

Moreover, as my colleague Michael Birnbaum reported, Belgium’s pronounced linguistic divisions between Dutch-speaking Flanders, the largely French-speaking city of Brussels and the region of Wallonia to the south have made it difficult for some immigrant groups to assimilate. This is particularly true of those living in Flanders, where far-right Flemish nationalist parties hold real sway and inveigh against the dangers of Islam.

“The Islamic State is giving them what the Belgian government can’t give them — identity, structure,” Montasser AlDe’emeh of the University of Antwerp told Birnbaum. “They don’t feel Moroccan or Belgian. They don’t feel part of either society.”

According to the Egmont report, the current crop of Belgian extremists are significantly younger than earlier generations, which went off to join the ranks of al-Qaeda and other fundamentalist groups. That radicalization is driven less by religious fervor than by more local factors, and it is shaped also by ties to gangs and other criminal activity:

“Their acquaintance with religious thought is undoubtedly more shallow and superficial than their predecessors’, as is their acquaintance with international politics. Geopolitics is less important to them than it once was to their predecessors, who felt motivated by the struggle against the superpowers. Injustice was often a starting point with their predecessors’ journey towards extremism and terrorism. This has now largely been overshadowed by personal estrangement and motives as the primary engines of their journey.”

Source: Belgium’s big problem with radical Islam – The Washington Post

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ICYMI: Liberals cheapen citizenship | Chong

2016/03/24 1 Comment

Gordon Chong, former Toronto municipal councillor, criticizes most aspects of the changes to the Citizenship Act announced by Minister McCallum (like all such critiques, ignores that McCallum maintained and added to integrity measures introduced by the Conservatives):

But this new soft-headed federal government wants to demonstrate its soft-heartedness by easing the rules to obtain our most treasured commodity, citizenship.

But should newcomers self-segregate and be functionally illiterate in English and French?

Should we establish a multitude of solitudes in addition to our “two solitudes”?

Should we discourage newcomers from “throwing their lot in with us”, as former federal court judge Francis Muldoon described unconditional commitment to Canada?

We need Canadians of conviction, not Canadians of convenience!

If citizenship is to be made irrevocable, a true “until death do us part” contract — unlike the Order of Canada, or an Olympic medal — then we should make the requirements reflect the unalterable nature of that contract.

Serious standards should be de rigueur.

When Paul Martin Sr. brought in Canada’s first Citizenship Act in 1947, he did not do so lightly.

He had visited the battlefields of Europe and solemnly recognized the contributions of French Canadians and others, including Japanese Canadians, Chinese Canadians, Italian Canadians and German Canadians, even though some were not recognized as “Canadians” in the same way as those of British descent.

Martin Sr. corrected that glaring oversight because so many had volunteered to fight for Canada — some on the battlefields, others in intelligence gathering — in World War II.

By 1947, Chinese inhabitants of Canada could finally vote.

In my family, there had been a dichotomy before that.

My British mother could vote, but my Chinese father could not!

The then Liberal government thought Canadian citizenship sufficiently precious that five years of residency was required prior to applying — with no flexible interpretations of “residency”.

In the 1960s, the residency requirements were shortened to three years with a looser interpretation of “residency”, to accommodate the business interests of those with international ties.

As their families were settling in, the business class immigrant (usually the husband] could leave the country and still be considered a “resident” because he had established a residence in Canada.

Our new-age Liberals are now proposing a change in the requirements for someone to be physically present in Canada from four out of six years to three out of five.

Why? The present rules are hardly onerous when granting something so valuable.

How much is Canadian citizenship worth? How much are we willing to devalue it? How soft-headed are we going to be?

Admittedly, revoking citizenship is challenging.

However, if the federal government is determined to keep dual citizenship, then those convicted of terrorism or other treasonous crimes against Canada should face the death penalty.

One way of extracting a seed of good from the psychotic nihilism that permeates terrorism would be to harvest the organs of convicted terrorists sentenced to death for transplantation and medical research.

Some faint-hearted souls may think this extreme. Many Canadians will not.

Serious, hard-headed, utilitarian leadership is the sine qua non for this debate. Who will lead it?

If patriotic Canadians willingly sacrifice their lives fighting terrorism, should traitorous Canadians not have to sacrifice theirs?

Then our policy will truly be once a Canadian, always a Canadian, irrevocably, right up to, “until death do us part!”

Source: Liberals cheapen citizenship | Chong | Columnists | Opinion | Toronto Sun

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The Daily — Study: Immigration, business ownership and employment in Canada, 2001 to 2010

2016/03/23 Leave a comment

Another interesting and useful study (see the earlier Immigrants took the brunt of recession-year turn toward self-employment):

Immigrants who have been in Canada for more than 10 years have higher rates of private incorporated business ownership than individuals born in Canada. However, the types of businesses owned by immigrants tend to employ fewer paid workers than those owned by individuals born in Canada, according to a new study.

Rates of business ownership are relatively low among immigrants during their initial years in Canada, but, over time, these rates surpass those for individuals born in Canada.

Among immigrant taxfilers who had been in Canada for 10 to 30 years in 2010, about 6% were owners of private incorporated businesses that employed paid workers. This compares with about 5% of Canadian-born taxfilers. But, while immigrant-owned private incorporated businesses employed, on average, about four paid workers, those owned by Canadian-born individuals had about seven paid workers.

Of all immigrant-owned private incorporated businesses, 45% were located in four industries: professional, scientific and technical services; retail trade; accommodation and food services; and transportation and warehousing. One-third of private incorporated businesses owned by Canadian-born individuals were in these four industries.

The rate of unincorporated self-employment was also higher among longer-term immigrants (22%) than among individuals born in Canada (16%). When restricted to individuals who received at least one-half of their total earnings from unincorporated self-employment—defined as primary unincorporated self-employment—these rates were 12% for the longer-term immigrants and 8% for individuals born in Canada.

Immigrants who were principal applicants in the business class had the highest incidence of incorporated business ownership or primary unincorporated self-employment, with a combined rate of 40%. Among principal applicants in the economic class, the combined rate was 17%, while among both family-class immigrants and refugees, it was 15%.

Source: The Daily — Study: Immigration, business ownership and employment in Canada, 2001 to 2010

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Grassroots coding, gaming groups tackle tech’s diversity crisis

2016/03/23 Leave a comment

Striking – but not surprising given Toronto’s (and Canada’s) diversity – the confluence between minority and women diversity:

Hina Mir sees a future for herself in technology. She’s only 16, so it’s not entirely clear what that future will look like. But one thing is almost certain: she’ll be coding.

The Toronto high school student already knows elements of multiple programming languages and has studied with experts working for some of the biggest names in the tech sector.

“With all the things I’ve learned with coding, as well as on the engineering and business sides of technology, there’s so much that I think I could do,” Hina said.

She’s part of an up-and-coming generation of potential programmers, software engineers, developers, designers and entrepreneurs who could help the tech world face down an uncomfortable reality: it is very white and very male.

Companies from across the industry have acknowledged the problems: specifically, that there is both a considerable disparity between the sexes and a troubling lack of diversity in the workforce.

The response from Silicon Valley has been to raise a small army of “diversity consultants” and use more inclusive recruiting and hiring strategies.

Iqra Alam, Tajmim Ahmed, Mariam Sayed Girls Crack the Code diversity

The group has members as young as six and as old as 16. International studies have found that starting to teach coding as early as kindergarten is the most effective way to ensure young people stick with it. (Lucas Powers/CBC)

“But it’s not enough to rely only on what big companies are doing if we’re going to create a tech world that reflects the society we live in,” said Ashley Jane Lewis.

A tech workforce that reflects society

The 26-year-old is a mentor with Girls Crack the Code, the community organization where Mir got her start in coding.

The Toronto-based group, which is funded by its organizers and the local school board, helps girls and young women of colour get a head start in tech, and not just with coding classes. In the four years it has existed, Girls Crack the Code has grown into an advocacy network that connects members with all kinds of tech-related opportunities, such as scholarships and workshops.

Ashley Jane Lewis, right, is a mentor with Girls Crack the Code. ‘I think in 10 years, when a younger generation looks to the tech world and sees women of colour who learned in communities like this, working in the field, they’ll see a trail that has been blazed for them,’ she said. (Lucas Powers/CBC)

“I’ve already been to Google, Twitter, Salesforce and coding camp, and I’m in a technology program at school,” Hina said.

Critically, Girls Crack the Code works out of Nelson Mandela Park Public School in Regent Park, one of the most diverse neighbourhoods in the city and home to Canada’s largest social housing development. Bengali, Mandarin, Urdu, Somali and Swahili are just some of the languages spoken there.

The neighbourhood is undergoing a billion-dollar “revitalization” ultimately aimed at creating a community with housing for families of different socioeconomic levels.

Khadija was one of about 30 girls who visited Twitter Canada’s headquarters earlier this month. (Lucas Powers/CBC)

In many ways, Girls Crack the Code is trying to build a tech industry informed by all of the voices, perspectives and experiences found in a place like Regent Park.

It’s part of a growing grassroots movement to cultivate talent in places where diversity is woven into the fabric of everyday life.

A ‘powerful’ message

Earlier this month, 30 girls from the group visited Twitter Canada’s trendy downtown office to listen to a talk by Helen Zeng, a 25-year-old software engineer who grew up in Windsor, Ont., and now codes for the tech giant in San Francisco.

Zeng says that while many companies are trying to hire more women and people of colour into tech jobs, there is a “very loud” effort to push back against built-in biases and attitudes that can’t be undone with corporate policy alone.

Source: Grassroots coding, gaming groups tackle tech’s diversity crisis – Technology & Science – CBC News

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