Fake letter leaves Nigerian international student without status, asked to leave Canada

2024/08/02 Leave a comment

Yet another example of unscrupulous consultants and lack of real time due diligence. Appears that about 2.4 percent of all applications include fraudulent letters:

…The new letter of acceptance verification process began on Dec. 1, 2023. Before it began, the department acknowledged many students “sincerely” came to Canada to study, but some who knew about the fake letters had “no intent” of studying.

Between that day and July 1, IRCC said it has caught 9,175 letters that were never issued by a Canadian school.

Those 9,175 letters were out of a total of 361,718 letters checked by IRCC and the schools.

These letters “may be an indicator of fraud,” IRCC wrote in a statement, but each one will need to be checked by an officer.

The department declined to make anyone available for an interview, and agreed to answer questions only by email.

It said it is “focused on identifying culprits, not penalizing victims” of fraud.

In response to questions about Akinlade’s case and why IRCC believes she knew about the fake letter, IRCC pointed back to its officer’s decision based on the “balance of probabilities.”

“Applicants are responsible for all the information on their application,” IRCC wrote, noting that Akinlade had an opportunity to address the officer’s concerns.

Onus on the applicant

Sandhu said it’s not clear to her exactly why IRCC believes Akinlade knew the letter was fake.

“If we’re going off of hunches, I feel that most officers can be very skeptical when it comes to applicants that claim they were victims of a rogue agent.”

Sandhu acknowledged that Canadian immigration rules put the onus for everything in the application on the applicant.

“Even though you may have used an agent, you are still supposed to be aware of everything,” she said.

Akinlade said she has learned a “lesson” about finding a reliable agent to help her, but she believes if IRCC looks again at her case it will find she was not complicit in the fake letter.

Her lawyer is submitting her humanitarian application to IRCC in the coming weeks but the application does not give her any right to stay in the country, and it is not clear how many months it could take to process.

“I really want to be investigated,” she said, adding that the whole experience has been “traumatic” for her family.

“This is not something I pray for my enemy to experience.”

Source: Fake letter leaves Nigerian international student without status, asked to leave Canada

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Nicolas: Décivilisation

2024/08/02 Leave a comment


Good piece:


« Il faudrait d’abord étudier comment la colonisation travaille à déciviliser le colonisateur, à l’abrutir au sens propre du mot, à le dégrader, à le réveiller aux instincts enfouis, à la convoitise, à la violence, à la haine raciale, au relativisme moral, et montrer que, chaque fois qu’il y a au Vietnam une tête coupée et un oeil crevé et qu’en France on accepte, une fillette violée et qu’en France on accepte, un Malgache supplicié et qu’en France on accepte, il y a un acquis de la civilisation qui pèse de son poids mort, une régression universelle qui s’opère, une gangrène qui s’installe, un foyer d’infection qui s’étend et qu’au bout de tous ces traités violés, de tous ces mensonges propagés, de toutes ces expéditions punitives tolérées, de tous ces prisonniers ficelés et interrogés, de tous ces patriotes torturés, au bout de cet orgueil racial encouragé, de cette jactance étalée, il y a le poison instillé dans les veines de l’Europe, et le progrès lent, mais sûr, de l’ensauvagement du continent. »

Vous m’excuserez la longueur de la citation. C’est que cette phrase-monument contient en elle seule une thèse entière, un coup de poing à la face du monde qui a toujours le pouvoir de nous couper le souffle aujourd’hui. Aimé Césaire l’a publiée en 1955 en guise d’ouverture de son Discours sur le colonialisme.

1955, c’est cette année charnière qui marque la fin de la guerre d’Indochine et les débuts de la guerre d’Algérie, alors qu’une grande partie du monde se trouve toujours sous contrôle européen. On comprend le contexte, le temps d’où les mots de Césaire nous parviennent. On aurait souhaité qu’avec le passage des années, la thèse de l’écrivain s’empoussière, que le « progrès » en étouffe la flamme. Mais non.

En début de semaine, une foule a fait irruption au tribunal militaire de Beit Lid, en Israël, pour dénoncer l’arrestation de neuf soldats qui auraient torturé et violé un prisonnier palestinien. Plus précisément, les réservistes de l’armée font face à des accusations de sodomie aggravée, d’avoir causé des lésions corporelles dans des circonstances aggravées, d’avoir infligé des sévices dans des circonstances aggravées et d’avoir eu un comportement indigne d’un soldat.

À la suite de cette arrestation, des centaines de manifestants de l’extrême droite israélienne ont donc pris d’assaut la base militaire de Beit Lid, forçant des confrontations avec des soldats. La scène n’est pas sans rappeler l’attaque sur le Capitole du 6 janvier 2021, à Washington. La ressemblance avec la déchéance politique américaine s’amplifie encore lorsqu’on comprend que des élus, et même des ministres israéliens, ont participé à la mobilisation et encouragé les manifestants. Tant dans la foule que chez les politiciens les plus radicaux, on s’est insurgé de « l’ingratitude » envers les soldats ainsi accusés. D’autres, dont le premier ministre Benjamin Nétanyahou ainsi que des élus plus progressistes, ont vivement condamné le mouvement de foule.

Les questions sous-jacentes à cette suite d’événements extraordinaire sont lourdes. Pourquoi un « terroriste » aurait-il des droits ? Quels sont les motifs suffisants pour enquiquiner des hommes qui servent avec bravoure la Nation, affrontent son Ennemi ? La torture, la sodomie sont-elles des chefs d’accusation adéquats pour embêter des Héros ? Pourquoi s’empêtrer dans la moralité alors que nous sommes en guerre ? Serait-ce là, implicitement bien sûr, les questions qui divisent profondément les membres de la Knesset cette semaine, au point de devenir un véritable point de clivage politique ?

Les horreurs ont continué à se succéder à Gaza dans les dernières semaines, ou plutôt les derniers mois. Comme si ce n’était pas assez, la catastrophe humanitaire de Gaza vient elle-même faire ombrage aux assassinats, arrestations arbitraires et colonisations accélérées en Cisjordanie, et à la maltraitance de nombreux prisonniers palestiniens en Israël même. Et puis, il y a le conflit avec le Hezbollah qui a repris de plus belle à la frontière sud du Liban. La dernière attaque israélienne sur Beyrouth fait craindre une accélération du conflit et une implication directe de l’Iran, voire des États-Unis.

Ça faisait déjà un moment que je n’avais plus écrit sur Gaza et Israël. Non pas parce que les horreurs ont cessé, mais parce qu’à force, on est à bout de souffle. On ne sait plus quoi dire de plus. Je sais que je ne suis pas seule, ici.

Sauf que l’émeute de Beit Lid vient cristalliser, symboliser quelque chose de particulièrement important, qu’il faut nommer. Et ce, même si les questions de maltraitance des prisonniers palestiniens sont loin d’être nouvelles, et qu’elles ont été largement documentées par plusieurs organisations de défense des droits de la personne, étrangères comme israéliennes. Que des accusations de violence sexuelle puissent susciter un débat — oui, vraiment, un débat — entre représentants politiques dit beaucoup de choses sur l’état actuel du droit, des institutions et peut-être surtout de la morale dans cette fameuse « seule démocratie du Moyen-Orient ». Après près de dix mois de guerre, certes, mais aussi après des décennies de colonisation illégale de terres palestiniennes.

J’en reviens donc à l’ouverture du Discours sur le colonialisme d’Aimé Césaire, qui me travaille au corps pendant que j’absorbe les dernières nouvelles sur l’état du monde. Césaire parlait de « décivilisation ». C’est là un mot qui resurgit dans toute son actualité pour parler du débat public à l’ère des guerres de Benjamin Nétanyahou et des frasques de Donald Trump, dont le dossier criminel vient aussi banaliser la question de la violence sexuelle dans l’espace politique ; à l’ère de trop d’émules encore. Une ère où on doit poser avec le plus grand sérieux du monde des questions qui relèvent de l’absurde.

Le viol, est-ce si grave ? Vraiment, oui, on est dans l’absurde. Le théâtre de l’absurde, par ailleurs, est aussi un mouvement artistique qui a pris son envol à la même époque où Césaire écrivait son Discours — une manière de garder son humour, et donc son humanité, dans un monde qui avait perdu la tête. Décidément, pour faire sens de la dégradation politique qui nous entoure, il nous faudra renouer avec plusieurs classiques.

Source: Décivilisation

“We should first study how colonization works to decivilize the colonizer, to dumb him in the true sense of the word, to degrade him, to wake him up to buried instincts, to lust, to violence, racial hatred, to moral relativism, and show that, every time in Vietnam there is a cut head cut and a flat eye and that in France we accept, a girl raped and that in France we accept, a Malagasy tortured and that in France we accept, there is an achievement of civilization that weighs on its dead weight, a universal regression that takes place, a gangrene That is settling in, a focus of infection that is spreading and that at the end of all these violated treaties, all these lies spread, all these tolerated punitive expeditions, all these prisoners tied up and interrogated, all these tortured patriots, at the end of this encouraged racial pride, this spread jactance, there is the poison instilled in the veins of Europe, and the slow but sure progress of the enrage of the continent. ”

You will excuse me for the length of the quote. It is because this monument-sentence alone contains an entire thesis, a punch in the face of the world that still has the power to take our breath away today. Aimé Césaire published it in 1955 as the opening of his Discourse on Colonialism.

1955, it is this pivotal year that marks the end of the Indochina War and the beginning of the Algerian War, while a large part of the world is still under European control. We understand the context, the time from which Césaire’s words reach us. We would have liked that with the passing of the years, the writer’s thesis would get dusty, that “progress” would stifle its flame. But no.

Earlier this week, a crowd broke into the military court in Beit Lid, Israel, to denounce the arrest of nine soldiers who allegedly tortured and raped a Palestinian prisoner. More specifically, army reservists face charges of aggravated sodomy, causing bodily injury in aggravated circumstances, inflicting abuse in aggravated circumstances and having behaved unworthy of a soldier.

Following this arrest, hundreds of Israeli far-right demonstrators stormed the Beit Lid military base, forcing confrontations with soldiers. The scene is reminiscent of the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, in Washington. The resemblance to the American political decline is further increased when we understand that elected officials, and even Israeli ministers, participated in the mobilization and encouraged the demonstrators. Both in the crowd and among the most radical politicians, there was “ingratitude” towards the soldiers thus accused. Others, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and more progressive elected officials, strongly condemned the crowd movement.

The questions underlying this extraordinary sequence of events are heavy. Why would a “terrorist” have rights? What are the sufficient reasons to worry men who bravely serve the Nation, confront its Enemy? Are torture and sodomy adequate charges to annoy Heroes? Why get entangled in morality when we are at war? Could this be, implicitly of course, the issues that deeply divide the members of the Knesset this week, to the point of becoming a real point of political cleavage?

Horrors have continued to follow one another in Gaza in recent weeks, or rather the last few months. As if that were not enough, the humanitarian disaster in Gaza itself overshadows the assassinations, arbitrary arrests and accelerated colonizations in the West Bank, and the mistreatment of many Palestinian prisoners in Israel itself. And then there is the conflict with Hezbollah, which has resumed at the southern border of Lebanon. The latest Israeli attack on Beirut raises fears of an acceleration of the conflict and direct involvement of Iran, or even the United States.

It had already been a while since I had written about Gaza and Israel. Not because the horrors have stopped, but because by force, we are out of breath. We don’t know what more to say. I know I’m not alone here.

Except that the Beit Lid riot crystallizes, symbolizing something particularly important, which must be named. And this, even if the issues of abuse of Palestinian prisoners are far from new, and they have been widely documented by several human rights organizations, both foreign and Israeli. That accusations of sexual violence can provoke a debate – yes, really, a debate – between political representatives says a lot about the current state of law, institutions and perhaps especially morality in this famous “only democracy in the Middle East”. After nearly ten months of war, of course, but also after decades of illegal colonization of Palestinian lands.

So I come back to the opening of Aimé Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism, which works on my body while I absorb the latest news on the state of the world. Césaire spoke of “decivilization”. This is a word that resurfaces in all its current events to talk about the public debate in the era of Benjamin Netanyahu’s wars and Donald Trump’s escapades, whose criminal file also trivializes the issue of sexual violence in the political space; in the era of too many emulators yet. An era where we must ask with the greatest seriousness in the world questions that are absurd.

Is rape so serious? Really, yes, we are in the absurd. The theater of the absurd, on the other hand, is also an artistic movement that took off at the same time when Césaire wrote his Speech – a way of keeping his humor, and therefore his humanity, in a world that had lost its head. Decidedly, to make sense of the political degradation that surrounds us, we will have to reconnect with several classics.

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Polgren: We’re Taught to Hate Hypocrisy. We Shouldn’t

2024/08/01 Leave a comment

Thoughtful and nuanced:

…I have never been especially impressed by the accusation of hypocrisy, in no small part because this is the human condition: We are a collection of aspirations and failings, from which we try to be who we think we should be but constantly fall short. But I understand the appeal of calling out what looks like hypocrisy when we see it, especially now. We live under a penumbra of impotence, even as we face wall-to-wall crises: the heating planet; wars in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan; the migrant crisis. In place of action and solutions, which seem totally out of reach, we substitute judgment. And what is more satisfying to adjudicate than the charge of hypocrisy?

There is a temptation to police small hypocrisies to buttress our principles — lecture an environmentalist who uses plastic straws, for example. To give hypocrisy a pass, one might argue, is to slide down a slope toward having no principles at all. A better question is: How do you decide which principles you should hold with an iron grip and which you can grasp more loosely, or even ignore, when good might come of doing so? One does not need to sign up for a conspiracy of meaninglessness or embrace a binary choice between principle and expediency.

A manichean devotion to principle brings its own peril. As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his best-known essay, “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” But it is a less famous line from that essay, “Self-Reliance,” that has always stuck with me. It suggests that finding yourself abandoning a principle may well be a necessary precursor to changing your mind based on something new. It is, Emerson wrote, “a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present.”

We do ourselves no favors when we use the same language to describe our human foibles and genuine moral conflictedness to true amorality, the kind of actions that clearly illustrate that one has no principles beyond naked gain. Sure, Mitch McConnell is a hypocrite. But calling him a hypocrite is a bit like calling Al Capone a tax cheat. It is technically correct, but hardly captures the moral atrocity of his actions. In these merciless political times we should focus our minds on the true betrayals that really matter. Perhaps if we embrace our inevitable inconsistencies, we can have a more generous, less purity-focused politics of practical good aimed at actual persuasion and real change.

Source: Polgren: We’re Taught to Hate Hypocrisy. We Shouldn’t

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Feds headed in ‘wrong direction’ on immigration: Privy Council survey

2024/08/01 Leave a comment

Just another confirmation of the trend:

It doesn’t get any clearer.

Of the people surveyed by the Privy Council Office, 100% said the federal cabinet is “headed in the wrong direction” when it comes to immigration, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.

“Asked whether they felt the government of Canada was on the right or wrong track when it came to managing the immigration system, all believed it was headed in the wrong direction,” said a Privy Council report.

“It was strongly believed the rate of immigration needed to be temporarily stabilized.”

The federal government’s immigration levels plan has quotas of 485,000 people in 2024, another 500,000 in 2025 and 500,000 more in 2026.

These figures don’t include 1,040,985 foreign students and 766,250 migrant workers let into Canada in 2023.

“Several expressed the view that the rate of immigration had been too high in recent years and that action needed to be taken to temporarily reduce the number of people coming to Canada, including refugees and those seeking asylum,” said the report Continuous Qualitative Data Collection of Canadians’ Views.

“It was felt that the current capacity of infrastructure and vital services could not accommodate further increases to the population and that a priority needed to be placed on supporting those already living in Canada.”

The research was based on focus groups across Canada done under an $814,714 contract with Toronto-based pollster The Strategic Counsel.

The other big observation in the report was that immigration should be restricted to foreigners who fill labour shortages.

“It was felt a priority should be placed on more targeted immigration going forward with a primary focus on bringing in skilled workers in areas such as health care and education, which were believed to be facing widespread labour shortages at present,” said researchers.

Respondents felt current immigration policy merely added costs.

“A number identified what they viewed as a higher rate of immigration in recent years as a contributing factor to rising housing costs,” wrote researchers.

“It was believed that as more people entered the country, the increasing demand for housing had driven up housing prices even further.”

Source: Feds headed in ‘wrong direction’ on immigration: Privy Council survey

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Idées | Le profilage racial et l’éternel virage vers le statu quo

2024/08/01 Leave a comment

Pandemic issue for the SPVM, remember well from some of the files I dealt with more than 10 years ago:

La lutte pour mettre fin au racisme policier à Montréal se trouve dans une impasse. Nous n’avons jamais eu autant de preuves de l’existence de racisme au sein des forces policières à Montréal ni une meilleure compréhension des mesures à prendre pour le combattre. Pourtant, le Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) et l’administration de Projet Montréal s’entêtent à rejeter les recommandations formulées par des groupes communautaires et des chercheurs et ressuscitent plutôt des réformes éculées et inefficaces.

De nombreuses preuves empiriques sur le racisme policier ont été accumulées depuis les premières enquêtes gouvernementales, réalisées dans les années 1970. En 2019, par exemple, une équipe de chercheurs indépendants a publié une étude recensant les interpellations policières effectuées entre 2014 et 2017, qui montre que les personnes noires et autochtones sont interpellées par la police de Montréal quatre fois plus souvent que les personnes blanches.

L’an dernier, l’équipe de chercheurs a publié une étude de suivi portant sur la période de 2018 à 2022, et a constaté que les iniquités raciales, loin de s’atténuer, étaient en fait encore plus marquées.

En réaction à ces rapports, des groupes communautaires et des chercheurs ont exigé la mise en oeuvre de plusieurs solutions éclairées et efficaces. Une coalition de 80 groupes communautaires a demandé la réaffectation d’au moins 50 % du budget du SPVM à des programmes communautaires, et 85 groupes ont exprimé leur soutien à l’abolition des interpellations policières et des interceptions routières.

Le SPVM a écarté chacune de ces recommandations. Ainsi, lorsque les auteurs du rapport de 2023 ont demandé un moratoire sur les interpellations, le chef du SPVM, Fady Dagher, a rejeté cette demande, affirmant qu’un « virage culturel » au sein de l’institution suffirait à résoudre le problème. L’administration de Projet Montréal a donné son soutien au plan de Fady Dagher et n’a fait aucune autre déclaration sur le sujet.

Le 23 juillet dernier, une enquête du Journal de Montréal a révélé que le SPVM s’était ingéré dans une étude « indépendante » sur les interpellations afin d’en réduire la portée. Parmi les tactiques employées, le SPVM a tenté d’obtenir la transcription d’entrevues confidentielles de ses policiers qui dénonçaient les pratiques racistes du service et a fait pression sur les chercheurs afin qu’ils s’abstiennent de recommander un moratoire sur les interpellations.

Il est facile de comprendre pourquoi le chef Dagher et Projet Montréal balaient du revers de la main les demandes des groupes communautaires et des chercheurs et font plutôt la promotion d’un « virage culturel ». Le SPVM a déjà amorcé ce virage il y a des dizaines d’années, en adoptant une politique sur les relations communautaires en 1985 et en mettant en oeuvre un ensemble de politiques visant à mieux former les policiers pour éliminer les préjugés, à embaucher plus de policiers racisés et à établir des liens avec les communautés noires, autochtones et racisées.

Depuis les années 1980, ces mêmes politiques sont ressuscitées chaque fois qu’une crise survient — ce qui est stratégique. Présenter des politiques qui ont échoué comme de « nouvelles » solutions permet au SPVM et à l’administration municipale de donner l’impression qu’ils prennent le problème à bras-le-corps. Pendant ce temps, les disparités raciales dans le maintien de l’ordre demeurent aussi marquées, sinon plus, qu’en 1985.

De vraies solutions au racisme policier

Il existe de nombreux moyens efficaces d’éliminer le racisme policier, mais ils se fondent sur une conception très différente de la sécurité publique. Nous appuyons trois de ces mesures.

Premièrement, comme l’exigent depuis longtemps les groupes communautaires et les chercheurs, les interpellations et les interceptions routières doivent être abolies, et des excuses doivent être présentées aux communautés auxquelles cette pratique de longue date a porté préjudice.

Par nature, les interpellations et les interceptions n’exigent aucune preuve préalable que la personne visée a contrevenu à la loi — il suffit que la policière ou le policier « soupçonne » que ladite personne a commis une infraction ou est susceptible de le faire. Les interpellations arbitraires n’ont aucun fondement juridique, nuisent à la sécurité publique plutôt que de l’améliorer et laissent à la police un pouvoir discrétionnaire qui donne lieu à des comportements abusifs et à une discrimination raciale à grande échelle.

Deuxièmement, les règlements municipaux sur les « incivilités » doivent être abrogés. Ces règlements prévoient des pénalités en cas de comportements non menaçants comme s’allonger au sol, uriner sur la voie publique ou « flâner ».

Lorsque le SPVM a commencé à sévir contre ce qu’il appelle des « incivilités », en 2003, nous avons assisté à une augmentation considérable des cas de harcèlement envers les personnes marginalisées, notamment les personnes noires, autochtones et itinérantes de toutes origines, de même qu’à un accroissement du nombre de contraventions remises à ces populations. Projet Montréal a reconnu ce problème en 2018 et a mis sur pied un comité constitué de groupes communautaires chargé d’examiner et de supprimer les règlements les plus discriminatoires. Ces règlements abusifs sont toujours en vigueur six ans plus tard.

Troisièmement, les fonds publics investis dans les forces policières doivent être redirigés vers des programmes qui améliorent de façon tangible le bien-être et la sécurité des populations marginalisées et racisées. Depuis des décennies, la police est vue comme la solution à tous les problèmes sociaux qui retiennent l’attention du public, qu’il s’agisse de violence armée ou d’itinérance. Il en résulte un cercle vicieux où l’échec prévisible des forces policières à résoudre des problèmes systémiques se traduit par des appels renouvelés à une plus grande présence policière.

Ce sont ces mesures — et non un autre « virage culturel » vers le statu quo — que le SPVM et Projet Montréal doivent mettre en oeuvre s’ils veulent lutter contre le racisme et la violence des forces de l’ordre.

Source: Idées | Le profilage racial et l’éternel virage vers le statu quo

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Canadians increasingly divided on immigration, government research shows

2024/08/01 Leave a comment

Confirms other surveys. Karas is editorialized by adding DEI concerns to the mix as no such question was asked in the survey (https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2024/ircc/Ci4-183-1-2024-eng.pdf):

Canadians are becoming increasingly divided on the federal government’s current immigration targets, with over a third now saying we’re taking in “too many” people from other countries.

The Department of Immigration requested polling agency Ipsos conduct a national survey on its current immigration quotas. 

“Many participants felt that the targets set for the next three years, which were presented to them, were too high,” reads the survey. “They could not fathom how cities, that are already receiving high volumes of immigrants and where infrastructure is already under great strain, could accommodate the proposed targets.”

The survey cost $295,428 and included 3,000 people canvassed with two surveys and 14 focus groups.

When asked if they thought that immigration has a positive effect on their city or town, just over half, 55% agreed, while 22% said the effect has been negative. 

The results were similar when broken down provincially, with 58% saying that the immigration has had a positive effect on their province, compared to 24% who disagreed. 

Asked if immigration had a net “negative effect” on their province, 41% of Ontarians surveyed said yes, while a third of Prince Edward Islanders, 33%, and 27% of Albertans saw immigration as a net negative.

Only 48% of respondents felt that the current targets were “about the right number,” while a little over a third, 35%, said it was ‘too many.’ 

Another small cohort of 12% said that “too few” immigrants are coming to Canada. 

The “too many” sentiment was felt highest in Alberta at 52%, followed closely by Nova Scotia and Ontario at 51% and 49%, respectively.

On the national level, 63% said immigration has a positive effect and 23% said it’s negative. 

This shows the erosion of a long-held immigration consensus in Canada, one expert says.

“For the first time in recent history, support for immigration has eroded steadily amongst the public,” immigration lawyer Sergio Karas told True North.

“There are a multiplicity of reasons why this is happening. Still, the main issues are the cost of living, housing, competition for good jobs, and the general perception that the recent cohorts of immigrants do not contribute to the economy in the same way that previous generations have.”

The immigration department said the “broad sentiment” indicates support for immigration generally but with the caveat of “not right now” or “how are we going to make this work?”

Participants also expressed “strong appeals for reducing the barriers that prevent experienced newcomers from practicing in their fields of expertise,” citing nurses, teachers and skilled labourers as necessary examples. 

However, “reactions to prioritizing those with business skills were more mixed.” 

On the issue of family and immigration, respondents generally agreed on “setting a higher target for sponsoring spouses and partners, who are likely to be working-age, and a lower target for sponsoring parents and grandparents, who might put a strain on the healthcare system rather than contribute to the economy.”

Several participants suggested expediting immigration applications for healthier parents and grandparents over “frailer ones.”

“There is also resentment, especially from immigrants who have been in Canada for many years, that the current crop of newcomers is far more interested in receiving government benefits, and that their language and work skills are not up to par,” said Karas. “This seems to be especially acute about the large number of refugees that Canada has admitted.”

According to the department’s data, few participants believed that Canada was doing the “right thing” by providing asylum to large numbers of refugees. 

While some respondents recognized the “need to assist,” they were also concerned about Canada’s ability to “realistically support population growth given the current strains on public infrastructure.”

Karas said that a further reason for Canadians’ shifting opinion of immigration is the notion that the government is “admitting anyone” without properly vetting them for their skills, language ability and security. 

“While this is not always true, the public is sensitive to how immigrants from non-Western countries are changing the face of Canada,” said Karas. 

“The public concern is that the changes are too rapid and too deep and that immigrants should do more to adapt to existing customs, rather than the public being obligated to adapt to them. Current policies of  Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion have exacerbated that perception as organizations show a preference for EDI hires rather than using a merit system.”

Source: Canadians increasingly divided on immigration, government research shows

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Chris Selley: Can Quebec’s language vultures not leave hospitals alone, at least? ATIP translation

2024/08/01 Leave a comment

On ATIP, the government should just move to automated translation as it is getting good enough to be used for ATIP. From a client service perspective, would address timeliness, from a government perspective, would address costs:

…In other bilingualism news, journalist Dean Beeby reports that federal official languages commissioner Raymond Théberge has launched an investigation into the CBC proactively posting online its responses to journalists’ access-to-information requests.

That’s an undisputed best practice in the world of access-to-information, a field in which Canada (and the CBC in particular) ranks somewhere below South Sudan and Myanmar: If you’ve released information to one journalist, there’s no earthly reason to make other journalists request it again and go through the whole rigmarole. Just send them a link to the response, or they can find it themselves.

But federal government institutions are required to publish everything in French and English; the CBC’s responses are in English. So now we have a federal appointee considering whether this rare attempt at transparency must be published in both official languages.

That would amount to thousands upon thousands of pages of documents. They absolutely will not be translated. The only practical outcome is not to publish the documents at all. I’m quite sure CBC would be happy with that.

And without getting too melodramatic about it — official bilingualism is totally sustainable, in a rational form — I feel like we’re at a crossroads here. There was a time when Canada was fat and happy enough that doing arguably weird and excessive things in the name of official bilingualism didn’t seem like too much of a burden or a hassle. We had plenty of money, debt-to-GDP was fine, pretty much everyone with a decent job had a decent place to live.

That time is not now. This is a broke and broken country, requiring generations of punishingly expensive fixing — not least on the most basic issue of housing — that actually made a controversy out of children’s medicine delivered to Quebec, during a children’s medicine shortage, on grounds the labels weren’t bilingual.

It’s enough, already. Someone just has to say it: “enough.” But no one with the power to change anything ever, ever will.

Source: Chris Selley: Can Quebec’s language vultures not leave hospitals alone, at least?

Filed under Government Tagged with , ,

Immigrants frustrated at German citizenship bureaucracy

2024/08/01 Leave a comment

Join the club! Hopefully, a transition issue that will be addressed:

Maria Zadnepryanets loved Germany when she first arrived. The Russian software developer came to North Rhine-Westphalia a decade ago to study and was amazed by what she found — the freedoms, the public services, the educational opportunities. Now, after a four-year battle with Berlin bureaucracy, she feels like “a second-class citizen.”

“I came to Germany with a very naive idea of what it’s like to live here,” she told DW. “I thought that it’s a fair place. My expectation was that people are treated equally by the state, and this experience has given me a different message.”

In her first years in the country, she went out of her way to integrate: She learned German as quickly as she could, found a well-paying job in a modern sector where Germany needs workers and settled in the capital. In 2020, she submitted all her documents for naturalization in the Pankow district of Berlin — and then heard nothing, for months and then years.

After her emails were ignored, she consulted a lawyer, who suggested taking the Pankow office to court. But she decided against that, and in the fall of 2022 resorted to sending faxes to any official fax numbers she found — “to escalate my case,” as she put it. In response, the office asked for more documents, which she sent — again, there was no response.

“How I understood things with this whole citizenship story was: I do my part, I work, I contribute, I learn the language, I integrate, and then after a certain period of time I will be given citizenship,” she said. “It felt like I had done all these things, but that part of the deal was just not happening.”

‘German bureaucracy is not German at all’

Zadnepryanets isn’t the only one — many skilled workers in Germany have formed social media groups where they vent their anger about dealing with German bureaucracy. In late June, some mounted a protest outside the LEA office in Berlin calling for “a fair and transparent processing of citizenship applications.”

Many feel that only legal action will get them to the top of the pile — by filing a so-called “Untätigkeitsklage,” or “failure to act lawsuit,” against the immigration authorities. Such a complaint can be filed in Germany if an authority has not responded to an application for six months from the day on which the authority receives all the necessary documents.

One applicant who resorted to this was Imran Ahmed — he requested his name be changed for fear of prejudicing his case at the LEA, Berlin’s immigration and citizenship authority. “By this time I have lost trust in the fairness of the authorities, and am worried that I will be punished for sharing my story,” he told DW.

A Pakistani software engineer with a wife and young son, Ahmed submitted his application three years ago, when he had been in Germany for eight years, having earned a master’s degree in Darmstadt and found a good job. He heard nothing for 18 months, when he was asked to provide newer copies of the same documents. “Since then, blackout,” he said.

“I always wanted to come to Germany — the habits of German people were always something I could relate to: being on time, saying things in a straightforward way, being organized,” he said. “But German bureaucracy is not German at all. In my workplace and everywhere else I’ve been blessed with seeing German punctuality and organization, but whenever you deal with the bureaucracy, it feels like it comes from a Third World country.”

Frustrated and stressed by the long wait, which he said has led to health issues, Ahmed wrote to several members of the Berlin state parliament in January this year to ask how exactly the applications were being processed.

This year, the Berlin authorities switched systems in an effort to streamline naturalizations: By shifting the administration from the 12 municipal authorities to a centralized office for immigration and citizenship, the LEA. This authority replaced the previously required in-person interview with an online “quick check” to establish whether the applicant fulfilled the relevant conditions in terms of income, length of stay and language.

Laura Neugebauer of the Green Party was the only parliamentarian to reply to Ahmed’s questions. Her party, in opposition in Berlin, submitted an official information request, which revealed that it was “almost impossible” for the LEA to process the oldest applications first, as it was receiving the applications from the municipalities in batches in which the date of the application was not noted.

“This was mindboggling for me,” said Ahmed.

A mountain of old applications

A spokesperson for the LEA said he sympathized with people’s frustrations, but said “many customers do not understand” that the LEA had been left with a mountain of 40,000 old applications to deal with following the transition in January. The oldest of these, the spokesperson said, dated from 2005.

“They understandably only see their individual waiting time and their desire for naturalization and quite rightly put it in the foreground,” he said.

He also said it would actually be more inefficient to process the oldest applications first, since many of them may not be complete. “We are working through a mountain of work from several sides in order to naturalize as many people as possible as quickly as possible,” he said.

Adam (name changed), from Egypt, suspects those who applied for citizenship before the new digitized system was introduced this year are being disadvantaged. He, too, checked all the necessary boxes: A steady income (he works as an engineer for a major German telecom company), good German language skills, and long enough residency. After waiting over two years, he received his citizenship earlier this year only after filing an Untätigkeitsklage.

However, the citizenship applications for his wife and three children, two of whom were born in Germany, are now stuck somewhere in the LEA’s backlog. He has now filed more suits on their behalf, at a cost, he said, of over €3,000 ($3,600).

“There are people who applied online who are getting it in two or three months, and the people who applied offline, it’s ignored,” he said.

State aims to double naturalization rate

Berlin’s Interior Minister Iris Spranger said the state aims to double the number of naturalizations per year to 20,000. The LEA said it is on track to make that target for 2024, but it still had to work on those 40,000 old applications.

“This is a huge challenge, not least because the number of applications has increased significantly since the reform of the nationality law came into force,” the spokesperson told DW in an email.

Zadnepryanets is not impressed. “Those applications didn’t come from the air,” she said. “Why did these 40,000 applications happen? Who is responsible?”

And things are likely to slow down before they speed up, not least since naturalization laws were relaxed in June, which prompted a wave of new applications. According to the LEA, Berlin is currently receiving an average of 133 new citizenship applications every day and had already received over 25,000 this year. If that rate continues, the authorities can expect to receive over 48,000 new applications in 2024.

Despite this, local authority official Wiebke Gramm told the Berliner Morgenpost newspaper in January that the target for processing applications was now six months. That seems hopelessly ambitious to Zadnepryanets, who can’t understand why more people aren’t questioning the transparency and efficiency of the system.

“I’m just frightened of waiting another five years for anyone to touch my case,” she said. She too is looking to take legal action after all.

Source: Immigrants frustrated at German citizenship bureaucracy

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with ,

Privy Council Office workers face culture of ‘racial stereotyping’: internal report

2024/07/31 Leave a comment

Took a look at the Public Service Employee Survey results for PCO. In most cases, broadly comparable to the public service as a whole, with some exceptions. But interestingly, some slippage between the 2020 and 2022 surveys results in harassment and discrimination, perhaps reflecting a mix of greater awareness following the Clerk’s Call to Action and the broader social context.

19.2 percent of PCO are visible minorities, 3.0 percent Indigenous peoples, broadly comparable to other departments. Unfortunately, don’t have desegregated data by visible minority and indigenous group.

As to the Zellars report, based on interviews, we see a similar pattern in that the surveys indicate that there are issues, a consultant with experience in diversity issues is engaged, has discussions with a number of employees, many who feel aggrieved by remarks and/or treatment. But the nature of such consultants, given their career, is to have an implicit bias of highlighting discrimination and prejudice rather than a more neutral approach. Doesn’t mean of course findings are not valid but need to be assessed accordingly.

And of course the usual groups of organizations and activists use the survey to further their political aims:

Black, Indigenous and racialized employees in the Privy Council Office are regularly subjected to a culture of “racial stereotyping, microagressions and verbal violence,” according to the findings of an internal report.

The damning report — obtained by the Coalition Against Workplace Discrimination through the Access to Information Act and released by the coalition Monday — said the office does not have a grasp on the scope or impact of the discrimination that those employees face.

There are also “significant material barriers to meaningful representation and inclusion” in the workplace, it says.

The Privy Council Office’s 1,200 employees make up the lead branch of the civil service, providing support for the prime minister and cabinet in executing policy directives across the federal government.

According to the report, Black employees reported managers using the N-word “comfortably in their presence” and later expressing surprise at “not knowing” it was a pejorative term for Black people.

Report on discrimination at Privy Council Office ‘shocking’

The report also says managers made Islamophobic remarks and “feigned innocence when white employees have unfairly advanced at their expense.”

The report’s author, associate professor and researcher at St. Mary’s University Rachel Zellars, said one of her key findings was a culture that “discourages reporting,” with employees widely noting that “accountability mechanisms are currently non-existent.”

Zellars compiled her report after speaking with 58 employees in the office from November 2021 to May 2022.

“When we received this report, it was shocking,” said Nicholas Marcus Thompson, president and CEO of the Black Class Action Secretariat, at a Monday news conference after the report was released.

“This is the head of the public service. This is the Privy Council Office that directed the entire federal public service to address racism,” he said. “While it is shocking, it is what we’ve seen across the public service, across all departments and agencies.”

In January 2021, Ian Shugart, the former clerk of the Privy Council, secretary to the cabinet and head of the federal public service, called on leaders across the public service to take actions to advance anti-racism initiatives and foster systemic change.

The office commissioned the work that resulted in the internal report as part of this 2021 call to action. Thompson said Monday that Shugart’s call has been ignored.

“Despite a call to action from the clerk himself for the public service to take specific and meaningful actions to address racism, equity and inclusion, the report identified the PCO’s own corporate services as a key barrier to that call to action,” he said.

The coalition is calling for the resignation of two members of the office’s leadership for failures to address issues outlined in the report, including the deputy clerk in charge of the discrimination file.

Additionally, the coalition is calling for the government to settle the Black employees’ class action lawsuit.

‘Double standards’

Black employees interviewed by Zellars reported “double standards” in the career advancement opportunities afforded to them — like access to French-language training, something that’s been identified as a key factor for moving up at the Privy Council Office.

They also shared stories of being “discouraged” from taking part in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) work. Black employees said the messaging they got was that it would be a conflict with their non-partisan commitment as civil servants and could “detract from their real 9-5” work.

Non-black racialized employees reported seeing instances where career advancement for Black employees was hindered by managers and other employees.

Indigenous employees called on the office to define what reconciliation means for the department and for management to identify tangible initiatives they can achieve.

“White employees and executives detailed personal experiences and career-advancing opportunities that were in stark variance from Black, Indigenous and racialized employees,” the report said.

4 pages of recommendations

The report includes four pages of recommendations for how the office’s leadership can address some of the concerns.

The recommendations include modifications to hiring and promotion practices, including “name-blind screening” where applicable.

The report also emphasizes the importance of building trust in employees when it comes to DEI work. It calls on leadership to implement programs aimed at building a better understanding of the historical context around the Black Canadian experience.

In a July 26 letter to Thompson and shared Monday by the coalition, deputy clerk Christine Fox said leaders are committed to bringing change across the civil service and within the office.

Those measures include sharing quarterly “employment equity dashboards” aimed at identifying representation gaps and setting goals on recruitment and promotions, appointing a chief diversity officer that reports to the clerk of the Privy Council, and establishing new tools people can use to report issues without fear of reprisal.

“I would like to reassure you that the clerk and I, and the entire management team at PCO, are committed to action and results that remove barriers and ensure that Indigenous employees, Black and racialized employees fully benefit from the opportunities and experiences PCO offers,” Fox wrote.

In a separate statement to CBC News on Monday, Privy Council Clerk John Hannaford reiterated much of what Fox wrote in her letter.

“The entire management team and I are committed to taking continuous action to identify and address any barriers that may exist in the federal public service,” Hannaford said in his statement. “We can best serve the government and Canadians when employees feel heard, valued, respected, and included.”

Despite the assurance, Thompson said he doesn’t have confidence in the Privy Council Office’s ability to implement change by itself.

“We are witnessing a scenario where those who have been perpetrators of harm are now tasked with carrying out the solutions. We have seen time and again that this simply does not work,” Thompson said.

“The public service has historically proven to be incapable of policing itself on systemic discrimination.”

Source: Privy Council Office workers face culture of ‘racial stereotyping’: internal report

Filed under Multiculturalism

Abraham: J.D. Vance’s lessons on immigration for Canada

2024/07/31 Leave a comment

More immigration commentary, arguing for greater focus on economic immigrants with a more self-interested approach. Nails some of the current disfunctionalities, including the confusing plethora of pathways which, of course, large reflect responses to political pressures:

I’m not sure if many Canadians paid attention to U.S. Senator J. D. Vance’s speech to the Republican convention in Milwaukee recently. Even those who stayed up for the late-hour speech might dismiss it as another populist rant from a “hillbilly.” They’d be mistaken, because it carries big lessons for Canada.

I’m most interested in this section of his speech: “Now, it is part of that tradition, of course, that we welcome newcomers. But when we allow newcomers into our American family, we allow them on our terms. That’s the way we preserve the continuity of this project from 250 years past to hopefully 250 years in the future.”

In my 22 years of following the immigration debate in both Canada and the United States, I’ve not heard a clearer articulation of how immigration should work. It’s the exact opposite of what’s happening in Canada today: we have plunging support for immigration; a plethora of visa categories that would make even the immigration minister’s head spin; losing track of hundreds of thousands of temporary residents; and a record number of newcomers giving up on Canada, including moving to the U.S.

That is because we don’t know why we want to bring 500,000 or more immigrants into Canada every year. Every month brings a new number, as if we were talking about widgets in a giant wheel, rather than human beings whose lives depend on how we welcome them, how we treat them and how we make room for them. There is an almost limitless appetite for moving to Canada, and so, the question is: who do we take in … and why?

Instead, what we have is a mushy articulation of feel-good sentiments that mostly portray us as “better Americans.” We throw in words such as multiculturalism, welcoming, settlement, “all of us are immigrants,” etc., to establish our bona fides, but I’m not sure our national interest is served by sustaining very high levels of immigration — in fact, the highest per capita threshold in the world. All of us know at least one newcomer to Canada.

I recall moving to Ottawa in 2002 and disregarding doomsayers who told me that Toronto was the place to be. My kids were the first kids of colour in our local public school, but since then I have been delighted by the number of brown and Black folks moving into our neighbourhood. It was a simpler time and I knew the immigration department had three basic categories for newcomers: economic migrants like me who arrived based on a points system; a family class for close relatives; and humanitarian admissions for refugees and asylum seekers.

Today, I dare anybody to recite the various streams, sub-streams, super streams and slipstream visa categories that define Canadian immigration. No wonder immigration consultancy is a booming business.

Vance offered a more cogent — if narrow — policy prescription. He predicts that a Donald Trump administration will only admit those who serve the U.S.’s national interest, be it high tech, family unification, low-wage labour, entrepreneurs, international students, etc. Of course, his prescription is influenced by the immigration experience of his wife, Usha Vance. Her parents migrated from India, established successful careers in San Diego, and gave their daughter an Ivy League education. She may one day be the wife of a U.S. vice-president.

That is what immigration is supposed to do: grow citizens to become full participants in a nation’s life.

Instead, what we have here is falling rates of naturalization, diving political participation, and growing reverse migration, in addition to maladies such as foreign interference and communal tensions that are almost exclusively the fallout of immigration. Other than hearing or reading about Canada crossing the 40-million population mark — driven largely by immigration, not Canadian births — when is the last time you read something positive about the prowess of newcomers and the dynamism they bring?

I have three simple prescriptions to determine who gets in and how many. One, the quota of newcomers must be determined by economic conditions and must be re-calibrated the moment things begin to go south. Two, we must progressively increase the proportion of economic arrivals in line with labour market gaps. Lastly, we should recognize that there are 280 million people out there who want to move to a developed country because of the appalling conditions in their home nations. Our intake will always be less than a drop in the bucket.

At this moment of political inflection both in the U.S. and Canada, let’s have an honest conversation about immigration. At its root, our policy must be clear enough so a minister or any spokesperson for the government can clearly articulate the fundamentals of our policy. Let’s close back doors that dupe international students into believing their study visas will result in permanent residence.

In a nutshell, we should encourage those who come from other nations to become the next Usha Vance in Canada. That, to my mind, is an example worth emulating.

George Abraham is an Ottawa-based independent commentator on immigration.

Source: Abraham: J.D. Vance’s lessons on immigration for Canada

Filed under Immigration Tagged with

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