Will Canada apply its immigration policy fairly in the face of the Gaza conflict?

2024/08/07 Leave a comment

I find these arguments somewhat tiresome, not because they are not valid but rather because they need to also acknowledge the war crimes, genocidal aims, etc by Hamas. Equally tiresome are arguments by hardline supporters of the Israeli government not acknowledging their war crimes and tolerance of extremist settler groups:

One of the most sacrosanct foundations of democracies is that they are based on the rule of law, which mandates one set of laws enforceable on all individuals—including the government itself. The notion that the law simply does not apply to an individual, or groups of individuals, is more commonly associated with corrupt dictatorships than democracies. 

Yet, in 2024 in Canada, whether the rule of law is supreme is an open question. Canada has specific laws governing who is considered admissible to the country, proscribing Canadians from joining foreign militaries, and preventing illegal support for armed forces of another country by Canadian charities. Each one of those laws has been applied in regard to some groups, and consistently violated and disregarded with others. 

The American State Department recently issued an unexpected decision regarding Elor Azaria, a former sergeant in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) convicted of extrajudicially killing a Palestinian in the West Bank. The decision bars Azaria, as well as his immediate family members, from entering the United States. The statement declared, “We are designating Elor Azaria … pursuant to Section 7031(c) for his involvement in a gross violation of human rights … .” 

This decision marks a significant turning point for those implicated in war crimes in Gaza under U.S. jurisdiction, and it also raises a crucial question about the repercussions of the Gaza conflict on the enforcement of Canada’s laws. 

How will the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) handle the Income Tax Act implications for charities that fund the IDF? The CRA recently revoked the Jewish National Fund’s charitable status for directing donations towards IDF infrastructure. This raises questions about other charities that have publicly raised funds for the IDF and illegal settlements. Similarly, how will the Royal Canadian Mounted Police address provisions of the Criminal Code and Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act regarding Canadians who have joined the IDF?

Additionally, Section 34(1) of Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) bars entry to individuals involved in violence, terrorism, or membership in related organizations. Sections 35(1) and 35.1(1) further prohibit entry to anyone implicated in human or international rights violations, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, senior officials in governments guilty of gross human rights violations, and those under international sanctions. These provisions—mirroring the American laws that barred Azaria—were broadly designed by Parliament to safeguard national security. They granted discretionary power to Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) officers and immigration officials, but also acknowledged the potential to inadvertently affect innocent and non-threatening individuals who are meant to be treated as exceptions. 

If applied universally, these principles could restrict figures in the vein of Nelson Mandela, or even historical members of the U.S. Democratic Party due to their support of slavery. However, in practice, the CBSA has often used these provisions selectively, particularly to unjustly target and deport refugees from Muslim countries, with decisions frequently influenced by the personal biases of individual officers. This same bias has also led to the oversight of individuals who should rightfully be captured by the law.

Despite well-documented instances of systemic violence against Muslims and other minorities by members of India’s Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Canada has not taken a similar stance against them. The RSS, a right-wing Hindu nationalist group, and the BJP, India’s ruling party, have been linked to numerous violent acts, including riots and targeted attacks on religious minorities. From 2013 to 2023, Indian immigration to Canada increased by 326 per cent, with 18.6 per cent of recent immigrants coming from India. Yet, Canada has not pursued cases of inadmissibility against individuals from these groups, raising questions about the consistency and fairness of its immigration policies.

The ongoing Gaza conflict has led to investigations by the International Criminal Court into alleged war crimes by Israel, including the targeted killing of civilians, willful suffering, and the use of starvation as a warfare tactic—all human rights violations. Additionally, the International Court of Justice has declared that Israel’s occupation and settlement expansions in the Occupied Palestinian Territory are illegal, and that there is an imminent risk of genocide. Under Canada’s Immigration Act, involvement with groups linked to these illegal settlements or with the IDF, amidst allegations of war crimes or possible genocide, could make individuals inadmissible to Canada—a measure affecting a significant portion of Israel’s population.

Our laws must be consistently applied, holding individuals accountable for human rights violations, war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity, irrespective of their nationality, the geopolitical context of their actions, or the political stance of the government of the day. To ensure the proper application of the law and to enable the CBSA to effectively perform its duties, a suspension of visa exemptions for travellers from Israel is necessary.

As the U.S. has taken a step towards a consistent application of its immigration laws concerning human rights violations against Palestinians, it is crucial for Canada to critically examine its own legal enforcement, and ensure that it upholds fairness and impartiality in every instance. Our nation faces a difficult test with the Gaza crisis, challenging us to confront the systemic biases embedded within our governmental institutions. Our standing as a democratic nation founded on the rule of law demands nothing less.

Washim Ahmed is a refugee and human rights lawyer, and a co-founder of OWS Law. Taha Ghayyur is the executive director of Justice for All Canada, a non-profit human rights and advocacy organization dedicated to preventing genocide.

Source: Will Canada apply its immigration policy fairly in the face of the Gaza conflict?

Filed under Antisemitism, Immigration, Islamophobia, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Terry Glavin: B.C. doesn’t need to atone for its origins

2024/08/07 Leave a comment

Useful reminder that history and context have nuance:

…British Columbia’s origins owe little to even the most conventional narrative lines that have explained Canadian history.

While the HBC was a pivotal player in B.C.’s early years, it was never much about beaver pelts and furs. The HBC trade was concentrated in tierces and hogsheads of salted salmon. While the Métis were key players in the HBC brigade trails, a third of the HBC workforce west of the Rockies were Hawaiians.

The westward expansion of the Dominion of Canada involved the establishment of provinces by federal law, but that pattern stopped at the Rockies. B.C.’s story runs mostly north-south, and like Newfoundland, B.C. was a self-governing Crown colony that joined Confederation, for good or ill, on its own.

The story of B.C’s colonial survival against the backdrop of overwhelming American military and population pressure is a story written almost entirely by Douglas’s sheer will and force of personality. Douglas was himself a “coloured” person, the son of Martha Ann Ritchie, a free Creole from Barbados, and John Douglas, a Scottish merchant and planter from Glasgow. James’s wife, Lady Amelia Douglas, was the daughter of a Swampy Cree woman and an Irishman from Lachine, Que.

In 1858, when a war broke out between the Nlaka’pamux people and American miners in the Fraser Canyon, Douglas unilaterally annexed the mainland as a British colony in advance of London’s formal declaration. That’s one of history’s ironies. Far from being about stealing Indigenous land, B.C. was established in order to protect Indigenous people from heavily-armed American marauders and to secure to the Indigenous people of the Fraser River all the rights of British subjects.

In 1859, when an American military regiment occupied one of the Southern Gulf Islands in a clear violation of the boundary provisions in the Oregon Treaty, Douglas told the HBC’s Angus McDonald that if the Americans didn’t stay put, he would mobilize “fifty thousand Indian riflemen at Victoria.”

After the American Civil War broke out in April 1861, Douglas suggested to the colonial office in London that he would be glad to lead an expeditionary force to take back the Columbia territory that had fallen to the Americans 20 years earlier, and to keep on going, all the way to San Francisco Bay.

A great part of the success of British Columbia’s early settlement was owing to Douglas’s largely cordial relations with the Indigenous peoples within the colonial ambit. For one thing, Douglas and the Royal Navy were formidable allies to the Coast Salish people against the slave-raiding tribes from further up the coast. For another thing, the Indigenous leadership was fully aware of what had happened once the Americans moved into what would become Oregon, Washington and Idaho.

There was the Cayuse War, the Klamath War, the Salmon River War, the Yakima War, and the Nisqually War.

In Douglas’s vision of a successful colony, the tribes would be not be disturbed in their customary laws, their villages and enclosed fields would be protected along with their rights to hunt and fish “as formerly,” and there would be no removals to reservations. Indigenous people were to have the same rights as any settler and would be full participants in the emerging economy.

It was only because of the insistence of the Colonial Office in London that funds for treaty-making had to be raised locally that Douglas managed to secure only 14 treaties with First Nations on Southern Vancouver Island. It wasn’t until the 1990s that Victoria and Ottawa secured another treaty — with the Nisga’a people of the Nass Valley. Most of B.C. remains without benefit of treaty even now.

Despite the perilous challenges Douglas faced in his day, for the most part, peace prevailed.

In his articulation of how a proper colony should be managed, Douglas made clear that medical care would be denied no one on the basis of race or status, child labour would not be tolerated, common-law marriages should be recognized and public charity should be encouraged. Importantly, slavery, which was a commonplace Indigenous practice, would not be tolerated.

And so, for a time, a peaceable kingdom prevailed on what was to become Canada’s West Coast. Its multiculturalism emerged organically more than a century before it was conjured in the Canadian imagination as the invention of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, later mutating into the “diversity, equity and inclusion” regime strictly enforced by his son, Justin.

It’s why James and Amelia’s children were baptized in several Christian traditions — Catholic, Anglican and Methodist. It’s why the Congregation Emanu-El on Victoria’s Blanshard Street is the oldest continuously-occupied synagogue in Canada. Its cornerstone was laid in 1863. Many if not most of the synagogue’s original fundraising subscribers were gentiles.

When Lumley Franklin was elected mayor of Victoria in 1865, he became the first Jewish mayor in North America. In 1871, the year B.C. joined Confederation, Victoria voters sent Wharf Street merchant Henry Nathan to Ottawa. He was Canada’s first Jewish member of Parliament.

This is not a history that requires atonement, penitential reflection or some “long overdue reckoning.”

It’s certainly not entirely a happy story. But it’s nothing to be ashamed of, either.

Source: Terry Glavin: B.C. doesn’t need to atone for its origins

Filed under Aboriginal Tagged with , ,

Australia’s citizenship test should be provided in other languages, landmark review recommends

2024/08/07 Leave a comment

Government right not to accept this recommendation. Language central to integration and allowing immigrants to take the test in other languages weakens citizenship and integration:
The 200-page Multicultural Framework Review has been welcomed by advocates who are calling on all levels of government to update and improve what has been described as “fragmented” policy.
The review, which took more than a year to finalise, called on the federal government to action 29 recommendations, including 10 immediately.
They were made following consultation across Australia with more than 1,400 individuals and 750 organisations.
“Australia stands at a unique crossroads where we have a great opportunity to craft an inclusive future where not only do we celebrate our differences, but also our shared values to help form our national identity,” said Dr Bulent Hass Dellal, director of the Australian Multicultural Foundation and Chair of the review panel.
A key recommendation was a review of the citizenship test procedures, including incorporating languages other than English.
Managing Director of Migration Affairs Taraneh Arianfar said language requirements are an added burden on top of an already lengthy procedure.
“Apart from a very small category that are exempted from the exam, the test, the rest are required to do the test in English, which is very challenging for some groups, especially minority and refugees categories and some family visa-holders,” she said.
Another recommendation was the establishment of a Multicultural Affairs Commission and Commissioner, as well as a standalone Department of Multicultural Affairs, Immigration and Citizenship, with a dedicated minister.
A spokesperson from the Department of Home Affairs said the government “will draw from and embed the key features of the review … across all Commonwealth agencies and activities, now and into the future.”
The citizenship test plays an integral role in ensuring new citizens have “a basic knowledge of the English language and an understanding of Australia”, the spokesperson said, adding that a basic knowledge of English supports integration and participation in the community.
“The citizenship test will continue to be offered only in English as this reflects the role our national language plays in unifying the community and ensuring those who become citizens can fully participate in Australian society,” the spokesperson said.
“The department continuously monitors the operation of the test in order to consider any potential adjustments and support that may be needed.”

The ‘dangerous potential’ for one factor to create more unrest in Australian communities

The Refugee Council of Australia (RCOA) welcomed the recommendation to review the citizenship test.
“In too many cases, we see families divided between those who are able to pass the citizenship and those who cannot,” RCOA chief executive officer Paul Power said.
“Instead of penalising those with low English proficiency, we should strive to encourage all individuals to become citizens and contribute to Australian society. We urge the government to implement the Panel’s recommendation for a comprehensive review of the citizenship test.”
Despite committing $100 million to support multiculturalism, the government is yet to accept any specific recommendations, Professor of Sociology Andrew Jakubowicz pointed out.
“A lot of the recommendations of the review relate to parts of government doing new things, and there’s no framework until the multicultural commission is established, if it is established, of ensuring that those sorts of things happen.”
Among the further recommendations are to develop a national plan to celebrate Australia’s cultural diversity.
A full list of the recommendations can be seen HERE.

Source: Australia’s citizenship test should be provided in other languages, landmark review recommends

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with , ,

Clark: Kill a fallacy to save immigration

2024/08/06 Leave a comment

Good critique but like so many, takes an all good or all bad approach, without acknowledging that a mix of approaches is needed. But all to true on “articles of faith”:

…There is also the notion that the goal of Canada’s immigration should be expanding the labour force to pay for all the costs of an ageing population. This has become such an article of faith that Ottawa has lost a sense of balance.

As Mr. Fortin notes, the overall impact of immigration on ageing will always be minimal unless the number of newcomers is drastically increased to millions every year. There are only so many 25-year-olds coming each year into a population of 41.5 million, and once they arrive, they get older every day.

So, as the Liberal government works to repair its way out of its immigration mistakes, it’s time to question the assumptions. Already, Canada’s immigration system is in trouble. Polls show Canadians are starting to sour on it.

To save the immigration system, it’s time to discard the fallacies that have caused such damage.

Source: Kill a fallacy to save immigration

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Brooks: Many People Fear A.I. They Shouldn’t

2024/08/06 Leave a comment

Perhaps overly optimistic view but useful counterpart to some of the doom predictions:

…Like everybody else, I don’t know where this is heading. When air-conditioning was invented, I would not have predicted: “Oh wow. This is going to create modern Phoenix.” But I do believe lots of people are getting overly sloppy in attributing all sorts of human characteristics to the bots. And I do agree with the view that A.I. is an ally and not a rival — a different kind of intelligence, more powerful than us in some ways, but narrower.

It’s already helping people handle odious tasks, like writing bureaucratic fund-raising requests and marketing pamphlets or utilitarian emails to people they don’t really care about. It’s probably going to be a fantastic tutor, that will transform education and help humans all around the world learn more. It might make expertise nearly free, so people in underserved communities will have access to medical, legal and other sorts of advice. It will help us all make more informed decisions.

It may be good for us liberal arts grads. Peter Thiel recently told the podcast host Tyler Cowen that he believed A.I. would be worse for math people than it would be for word people, because the technology was getting a lot better at solving math problems than verbal exercises.

It may also make the world more equal. In coding and other realms, studies so far show that A.I. improves the performance of less accomplished people more than it does the more accomplished people. If you are an immigrant trying to write in a new language, A.I. takes your abilities up to average. It will probably make us vastly more productive and wealthier. A 2023 study led by Harvard Business School professors, in coordination with the Boston Consulting Group, found that consultants who worked with A.I. produced 40 percent higher quality results on 18 different work tasks.

Of course, bad people will use A.I. to do harm, but most people are pretty decent and will use A.I. to learn more, innovate faster and produce advances like medical breakthroughs. But A.I.’s ultimate accomplishment will be to remind us who we are by revealing what it can’t do. It will compel us to double down on all the activities that make us distinctly human: taking care of each other, being a good teammate, reading deeply, exploring daringly, growing spiritually, finding kindred spirits and having a good time.

“I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart’s affections and the truth of Imagination,” Keats observed. Amid the flux of A.I., we can still be certain of that.

Source: Brooks: Many People Fear A.I. They Shouldn’t

Filed under Other Tagged with ,

Court grants Ottawa four more months to fix unconstitutional ‘lost Canadians’ law

2024/08/06 Leave a comment

Expected. Original deadline totally unreasonable given legislative processes:

A court has granted the federal government more time to amend unconstitutional legislation concerning so-called “lost Canadians.”

The deadline extension — to Dec. 19 — is the second the courts have given Ottawa to amend the law, which prevents some Canadians born abroad from passing on their citizenship to children also born abroad.

Bill C-71, which introduces sweeping changes to Canada’s citizenship laws, is set to become law by Dec. 19. The federal government says the legislation addresses the court’s concerns about constitutionality.

In her decision to grant the extension, Ontario Superior Court Justice Jasmine Akbarali said the government was able to address concerns about the hardship Canadians could face if the amended legislation is delayed again.

“The mechanism in place to address urgent cases of hardship is sufficient to ensure that an extension of the declaration of invalidity will not undermine confidence in the administration of justice,” the judge said in the decision.

Justice Akbarali initially gave Ottawa until June 20 to amend the current Citizenship Act after the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled in late 2023 that it violated the constitutional rights of some Canadians born abroad.

The Liberal government did not get the bill passed through the House of Commons before it rose for the summer a few days before the deadline.

The government appealed for a six-month extension. Justice Akbarali handed down a seven-week extension, to Aug. 9.

In granting the original extension, the judge said the government would only have until Aug. 1 to present arguments on why she should consider another extension until Dec. 19.

Justice Akbarali ordered the government to file a plan to address the hardship experienced by parents under the existing law during the extended period and to “ideally” file a report on the steps required to get the bill passed before mid-December.

Sujit Choudhry, the lawyer who represented the families challenging the law, estimates that the current law violates the rights of at least 1.48 million Canadians here and abroad.

An estimated 170,000 women born abroad who are in the age range when people often start families are still being affected by the current law, the judge said in her June decision.

Justice Akbarali added these are not “theoretical or minor constitutional violations” but ones that could lead to “children being stateless.”

“They can lead to women having to make choices between their financial health and independence on one hand, and their physical health on the other. They can separate families,” Akbarali said in the decision.

“They can force children to stay in places that are unsafe for them. They can interfere with some of the deepest and most profound connections that human beings both enjoy and need.”

Until Bill C-71 is passed, the government can grant citizenship to lost Canadians at Immigration Minister Marc Miller’s discretion.

Source: Court grants Ottawa four more months to fix unconstitutional ‘lost Canadians’ law

Filed under C-71, Citizenship Tagged with ,

In South Korea, Schools Grapple with Surge in Multicultural Student Population

2024/08/06 Leave a comment

Of note:

In a striking demographic shift, 350 schools across South Korea now report that students from multicultural backgrounds comprise over 30% of their total enrollment, according to a recent study.

This figure represents a 40% increase from just five years ago, highlighting the rapid changes in the country’s educational landscape.

The report, titled “Innovation Strategies for Schools in Immigrant-Dense Areas,” was released on August 2 by researchers at the Korean Educational Development Institute. It reveals that these schools with high multicultural student populations now account for 2.96% of the nation’s 11,819 primary and secondary schools, up from 2.15% in 2018.

The Ministry of Education defines “multicultural-dense schools” as those with over 100 students, where at least 30% come from multicultural backgrounds.

By this definition, 87 schools across 12 regions fall into this category, marking a staggering 278.26% increase from 23 such schools in 2018.

The concentration of multicultural students is particularly pronounced in certain areas. In Ansan, Gyeonggi Province, one elementary school reports that 97.4% of its student body comes from multicultural backgrounds.

Three other schools in Ansan and Anseong have multicultural student populations exceeding 80%.

This rapid demographic change poses unique challenges for the education system. Researchers warn that excessively high concentrations of multicultural students could negatively impact all students.

There are concerns about potential stigmatization of multicultural students and the risk of reverse discrimination against non-multicultural students if educational support becomes too focused on one group.

The study’s authors emphasize the need for comprehensive strategies to ensure quality education for all students in these diverse environments.

They recommend developing school visions and educational plans based on multicultural education policies, enhancing teachers’ expertise in multicultural education, and improving personnel policies for schools in immigrant-dense areas.

Source: In South Korea, Schools Grapple with Surge in Multicultural Student Population

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Exodus of high net worth Indians economic travesty: Congress on citizenship renunciation data

2024/08/06 Leave a comment

Indian brain drain political debate:

Citing government data of 2.16 lakh Indians renouncing their citizenship in 2023, the Congress on Saturday said the exodus of high-skilled and high net worth Indians is an “economic travesty” that will shrink the country’s tax revenue base over the next few years. Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said business personalities are increasingly relocating to places such as Singapore, UAE, the UK and other places renouncing their Indian citizenship. 

In a written response to queries on Indian citizens who have renounced their citizenship, Minister of State for External Affairs Kirti Vardhan Singh recently told the Rajya Sabha that more than 2.16 lakh Indians renounced their citizenship in 2023. 

Ramesh, the Congress general secretary in-charge communications, said the number was almost double than what it was in 2011, at 123,000.

Many of these Indians who renounced their citizenship are highly skilled and educated, and their leaving the country at a time of a domestic skilled labour supply shortage will “extract a serious toll on our economy,” he said. 

“Many are also financially well-off – earlier this year, a leading global investment migration advisory firm had revealed that over 17,000 millionaires (individuals with total assets greater than $1 million) had left India in the last three years,” Ramesh said. 

This exodus of high-skilled and high net worth Indians could very well have been the result of opaque tax policies and an arbitrary tax administration, quite apart from the overall climate of fear and intimidation surrounding corporate India in the past decade, the Congress leader said. …

Source: Exodus of high net worth Indians economic travesty: Congress on citizenship renunciation data

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Will A.I. Kill Meaningless Jobs?

2024/08/05 Leave a comment

Hard not to think of government having a preponderance of “meaningless jobs,” such as drafting talking points, Q&As, along with basic application processing, call centre and chat routine enquiries etc:

…Kevin Kelly, a Wired co-founder who has written many books on technology, said he was somewhat optimistic about the effect A.I. would have on meaningless work. He said he believed that partly because workers might begin probing deeper questions about what made a good job.

Mr. Kelly has laid out a cycle of the psychology of job automation. Stage 1: “A robot/computer cannot possibly do what I do.” Stage 3: “OK, it can do everything I do, except it needs me when it breaks down, which is often.” Skip ahead to Stage 5: “Whew, that was a job that no human was meant to do, but what about me?” The worker finds a new and more invigorating pursuit, leading full circle to Stage 7: “I am so glad a robot cannot possibly do what I do.”

It’s demoralizing to realize that your job can be replaced by technology. It can bring the pointlessness into sharp relief. And it can also nudge people to ask what they want out of work and seek out new, more exhilarating pursuits.

“It might make certain things seem more meaningless than they were before,” Mr. Kelly said. “What that drives people to do is keep questioning: ‘Why am I here? What am I doing? What am I all about?’”

“Those are really difficult questions to answer, but also really important questions to ask,” he added. “The species-level identity crisis that A.I. is promoting is a good thing.”

Some scholars suggest that the crises prompted by automation could steer people toward more socially valuable work. The Dutch historian Rutger Bregman started a movement for “moral ambition” centered in the Netherlands. Groups of white-collar workers who feel that they are in meaningless jobs meet regularly to encourage one another to do something more worthwhile. (These are modeled on Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In” circles.) There’s also a fellowship for 24 morally ambitious people, paying them to switch into jobs specifically focused on fighting the tobacco industry or promoting sustainable meats.

“We don’t start with the question of ‘What is your passion?’” Mr. Bregman said of his moral ambition movement. “Gandalf didn’t ask Frodo ‘What’s your passion?’ He said, ‘This is what needs to get done.”

What will need to get done in the A.I era is likely to veer less toward sustainable meat and more toward oversight, at least in the immediate term. Automated jobs are especially likely to require “A.I. babysitters,” according to David Autor, an M.I.T. labor economist focused on technology and jobs. Companies will hire humans to edit the work that A.I. makes, whether legal reviews or marketing copy, and to police A.I.’s propensity to “hallucinate.” Some people will benefit, especially in jobs where there’s a tidy division of labor — A.I. handles projects that are easy and repetitive, while humans take on ones that are more complicated and variable. (Think radiology, where A.I. can interpret scans that fit into preset patterns, while humans need to tackle scans that don’t resemble dozens that the machine has seen before.)

But in many other cases, humans will end up mindlessly skimming for errors in a mountain of content made by A.I. Would that help relieve a sense of pointlessness? Overseeing drudge work doesn’t promise to be any better than doing it, or as Mr. Autor put it: “If A.I. does the work, and people babysit A.I., they’ll be bored silly.”

Some of the jobs most immediately at risk of being swallowed up by A.I. are those anchored in human empathy and connection, Mr. Autor said. That’s because machines don’t get worn out from feigning empathy. They can absorb endless customer abuse.

The new roles created for humans would be drained of that emotional difficulty — but also drained of the attendant joy. The sociologist Allison Pugh studied the effects of technology on empathic professions like therapy or chaplaincy, and concluded that “connective labor” has been degraded by the slow rollout of technology. Grocery clerks, for example, find that as automated checkout systems come to their stores, they’ve lost out on meaningful conversations with customers — which they understand managers don’t prioritize — and now are left mostly with customers exasperated about self checkout. That’s partially why Ms. Pugh fears that new jobs created by A.I. will be even more meaningless than any we have today.

Even the techno-optimists like Mr. Kelly, though, argue that there’s a certain inevitability to meaningless jobs. After all, meaninglessness, per Mr. Graeber’s definition, is in the eye of the worker.

And even beyond the realm of Mr. Graeber’s categories of pointless work, plenty of people have ambivalent relationships with their jobs. Give them enough hours and then years clocking in to do the same things, and they might start to feel frustrated: about being tiny cogs in big systems, about answering to orders that don’t make sense, about monotony. Those aggrieved feelings could crop up even as they jump into new roles, while the robot cycles spin forward, taking over some human responsibilities while creating new tasks for those who babysit the robots.

Some people will look for new roles; others might organize their workplaces, trying to remake the parts of their jobs they find most aggravating, and finding meaning in lifting up their colleagues. Some will search for broader economic solutions to the problems with work. Mr. Graeber, for example, saw universal basic income as an answer; OpenAI’s Sam Altman has also been a proponent of experiments with guaranteed income.

In other words, A.I. magnifies and complicates the social issues entwined with labor but isn’t a reset or cure-all — and while technology will transform work, it can’t displace people’s complicated feelings toward it.

Mr. Wang says he certainly believes that will hold true in Silicon Valley. He predicts that automating pointless work will mean engineers get even more creative about seeking out their promotions. “These jobs exist on selling a vision,” he said. “I fear this is one problem you can’t automate.”

Source: Will A.I. Kill Meaningless Jobs?

Filed under Government Tagged with , , ,

Court grants Ottawa extension to fix ‘lost Canadians’ citizenship rules

2024/08/05 Leave a comment

Original deadline was completely unrealistic given legislative process and flawed draft legislation having no time limit to meet residency requirements, unlike for Permanent Residents (1,095 days within 5 years):

Immigration officials will have until Dec. 19 to enact Bill C-71, which would automatically confer Canadian citizenship on people born abroad to a Canadian parent who is also born abroad before the changes take effect. Until then, lost Canadians can only try to reclaim their citizenship on an emergency basis.

At the same time, officials must also roll out a system for anyone born outside Canada subsequently to prove their foreign-born Canadian parent had a “substantial connection” with the country by meeting a residency requirement, which is 1,095 cumulative days of physical presence in Canada before the birth or adoption of their foreign-born child.

Friday’s decision by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice is likely going to end a three-year legal saga that started in 2021 by a group of 23 people from seven families who have been harmed by the loss of citizenship as a result of the so-called second generation cut-off rule introduced by Stephen Harper’s Conservative government in 2009.

They claimed the second generation cut-off rule — denying the first generation born abroad the right to pass on citizenship by descent outside Canada to the second generation born abroad — violated their Charter rights based on country of origin and sex.

In December, Judge Jasmine Akbarali ruled the second-generation citizenship cut-off rule was unconstitutional and ordered the federal government to repeal it and amend the Citizenship Act in six months.

In June, officials asked the court for a six-month extension of the deadline, saying they needed more time to pass a new bill to fix the problems. However, the court was not satisfied that the government recognized the urgency of a new law and asked officials to return Aug. 1 with an effective plan to address the hardship that any further delay might “cause people whose constitutional rights are being violated day after day.”

The court held a hearing this week and was presented submissions by the government of the updated procedure and communications to address “special cases of hardship,” as well as the new instructions created for affected citizenship applicants who have an urgent need for family reunification in Canada.

While the revised website and communication may not be perfect, the judge said they “adequately” allow potential applicants to navigate how they can seek a grant of citizenship in urgent cases that may involve a child’s statelessness or hardship in family reunification during the delay.

“The question for me is not whether the respondent could have designed a better process, or whether it is executing the process it has designed in a way that I would, in my discretion,” Akbarali wrote in a decision released Friday.

“The question is whether the process it has designed is good enough to sufficiently address the concerns about the hardship caused by the ongoing rights violations.”

The court heard that the government has made every effort to ensure the passage of Bill C-71 to amend the Citizenship Act, including technical briefings to MPs and to opposition immigration critics about the proposed changes. Immigration officials are also undertaking work to support the implementation of the new law as soon as it is passed.

But at the hearing, Sujit Choudhry, lawyer for the affected families, raised doubts over the government’s commitment to push through the legislative changes, arguing that Ottawa could have prioritized the passage of the bill, first introduced on May 23, before Parliament recessed for the summer on June 20.

Akbarali said she was satisfied with the plan outlined by the government and trusted that it will continue to take steps to advance the legislation.

“It has a tool box at its disposal that it can use to accelerate the passage of Bill C-71,” she wrote. “There is reason to conclude that the Bill will likely be adopted before Dec. 19, 2024.”

Akbarali also awarded $15,000 in indemnity costs to the litigants and credited them for holding the government to account.

Source: Court grants Ottawa extension to fix ‘lost Canadians’ citizenship rules

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →