Zelenskyy submits draft law on multiple citizenship to parliament

2024/08/08 Leave a comment

Of note:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has submitted a draft law on multiple citizenship to the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian parliament).

Details: The explanatory note states that the adoption of this law will help ensure conditions for the return of citizens who were forced to leave Ukraine due to the full-scale war and their retention of Ukrainian citizenship.

In addition, it will expand opportunities for certain categories of foreigners and stateless persons to acquire Ukrainian citizenship.

Zelenskyy proposes that multiple citizenship (nationality) should be allowed in the following cases:

  • simultaneous acquisition of Ukrainian citizenship and citizenship of another state by a child at birth;
  • acquisition by a child who is a Ukrainian citizen of the citizenship of their foreign adoptive parents;
  • automatic acquisition of another citizenship by a Ukrainian citizen as a result of marriage to a foreigner;
  • automatic acquisition by a Ukrainian citizen who has reached the age of 18 of another citizenship, as a result of the application of the legislation on citizenship of a foreign state, if such a Ukrainian citizen has not received a document confirming the citizenship of another state;
  • acquisition of Ukrainian citizenship under a simplified procedure by citizens of other states who are included in the list of those who can obtain Ukrainian citizenship under a simplified procedure;
  • acquisition by a Ukrainian citizen of citizenship of states from the list of states whose citizens acquire Ukrainian citizenship under a simplified procedure.

Moreover, multiple citizenship will not be allowed for people who have citizenship of Russia (i.e. a country recognised as an aggressor/occupying state by the Verkhovna Rada) or a state that does not recognise the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine. 

The draft law also aims to simplify the procedure for acquiring Ukrainian citizenship and improve the regulation of the legal status of foreigners and stateless persons who are or were on active military service under contract in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the State Special Transport Service, the National Guard of Ukraine, or are married to such persons, or are their children.

This document has several functions, here are the most important ones: 

  • it clarifies the conditions for acquiring Ukrainian citizenship by birth, by territorial origin, and the conditions for admission to citizenship;
  • it revises the grounds for the loss of Ukrainian citizenship;
  • it regulates the possibility of submitting an expired passport by foreigners and stateless persons who served in the military to obtain a temporary residence permit; and
  • it regulates the legal status of foreigners and stateless persons who, during martial law, provide or have provided fire support, tactical, medical, radio engineering, bomb disposal and other kinds of assistance to the army directly in the areas of combat actions.

Source: Zelenskyy submits draft law on multiple citizenship to parliament, record sheet for draft law no. 11469

Filed under Citizenship, Dual Citizenship Tagged with

Dave Snow: The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal will not be able to handle the deluge of cases from the Online Harms Act 

2024/08/07 Leave a comment

Interesting analysis of their workload and decisions:

…Exploring Human Rights Tribunal decisions

To determine how this new Bill could affect the federal human rights framework, I sought to understand how the existing framework works in practice. I conducted a content analysis of every Canadian Human Rights Tribunal decision over the last five-and-a-half years, from January 1, 2019, to June 30, 2024.

Surprisingly, I discovered that the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal issues very few decisions. Between 2019 and 2024, the tribunal only issued 63 actual decisions, along with 260 procedural “rulings” about ongoing hearings—typically involving brief motions to admit evidence, anonymize participants, or amend statements.

Moreover, nine of the 63 decisions were merely procedural in nature (mostly dismissing “abandoned” complainants) and one evaluated compliance with an ongoing settlement agreement between First Nations and the government of Canada.

This means that since 2019, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has only actually issued 53 decisions that involved an evaluation of a complaint alleging discrimination or harassment—fewer than 10 per year–from a low of six in 2022 to a high of 14 in 2019. By way of comparison, in 2023 alone, human rights tribunals in Alberta, B.C., and Ontario issued 126, 248, and 1,829 decisions respectively. The COVID-19 pandemic did not appear to have a serious impact on delaying tribunal decisions.

In human rights tribunals, complainants allege discrimination or harassment based on one or more “grounds.” They can claim to have faced discrimination on multiple grounds simultaneously. Across the 53 decisions, there were an average of 2.1 grounds claimed per decision.

The most frequently claimed ground was disability (in 58 percent of decisions), followed by national or ethnic origin (34 percent), race (32 percent), family status (21 percent), age (19 percent), and sex (19 percent). Interestingly, there were only two decisions where complainants alleged discrimination based on religion, only two on sexual orientation, and only one on gender identity.

For each decision, I examined whether the claimant was successful (a “win”) or unsuccessful (a “loss”). I characterized partially successful claimants as a win, as these decisions still involved a remedy that typically included some form of financial compensation.

Table 1 shows an overall success rate of 62 percent. It also shows the win rate for each type or “ground” of discrimination that appeared in at least ten decisions.

Graphic credit: Janice Nelson. 

I found that complaints alleging age-based discrimination—all but one of which were based on old age —were least likely to be successful (40 percent win rate). Complaints involving discrimination based on race (53 percent) and national or ethnic origin (50 percent) also had a lower-than-average success rate.

By contrast, complainants alleging sex-based discrimination or harassment were the most successful (90 percent). Nine of the 10 complainants alleging sex-based discrimination and or harassment were women. Eight of those nine were successful.

Table 2 organizes the 53 decisions according to the three types of “respondents,” or the organizations accused of harassment or discrimination: federal government entities (including federal departments, Crown corporations, the RCMP, and the City of Ottawa); private companies in federally-regulated industries (transportation, aviation, marine, rail, banking, and telecoms); and First Nations. There was minimal variation in success rates by the type of respondent, with complainants slightly less successful against First Nations (58 percent win rate) than against governments (64 percent) and private companies (63 percent).

Graphic credit: Janice Nelson. 

Given the controversy over the incoming chief of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, I also sought to explore decisions in which Jewish complainants alleged antisemitic discrimination, whether on the grounds of religion or national or ethnic origin.

What I found was that there were no such decisions. The words “Jew,” “Zion,” “Zionist,” and “antisemitic” do not appear in any of the tribunal’s 63 decisions from 2019-2024. The word “Jewish” only occurs in four procedural rulings. Three were from an identically-worded sentence in procedural rulings describing an ongoing case involving an inmate who “self-identifies as an Indigenous, Jewish, Two-Spirit transfeminine woman”. The fourth was found in an interim ruling for a Muslim inmate. He had complained that Correctional Service Canada “provided a religious diet for Jewish inmates, but not a diet for [him] that would accommodate his Muslim beliefs and his health issues.”

It is worth noting how infrequent claims of religious discrimination are. Only two of 53 decisions involved religious discrimination, and in both cases the complainants also alleged discrimination on other grounds. Both complainants were successful.

Conclusions

Federal human rights institutions are under the political microscope, and for good reason. The Canadian Human Rights Commission claims“We must all call out antisemitism” but its incoming leader (expected to take up his post this week) once posted that “Palestinians are Warsaw Ghetto Prisoners of today.” Its website proudly displays a section on “Anti-racism work” yet it has been publicly admonished for its own alleged anti-black racism.

Meanwhile, as I have demonstrated through my investigation, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal appears unprepared to deal with the influx of complaints about online hate speech for which it will be responsible if the Online Harms Act passes.

Based on my research, I draw three main conclusions. First, the tribunal simply does not issue many decisions. It only issued 63 decisions over the last five-and-a-half years, 10 of which did not involve a formal evaluation of discrimination or harassment. The fact that the tribunal also issued 260 procedural rulings during the same period further suggests its existing hearings are often slowed down by procedural issues.

Second, the few decisions the tribunal does render are fundamentally different than what it would decide under the Online Harms Act. More than one in five decisions (12 of 53) involved truck drivers or trucking companies. The same number(12 of 53) involved allegations of discriminatory conduct by First Nations, such as when a non-Indigenous woman alleged discrimination for being fired from a First Nation-owned bowling alley (she lost). Cases of discrimination involving religion, gender identity, and sexual orientation are virtually nonexistent. The term “hate speech” occurred precisely once in a single decision over the last five-plus years. Not a single decision involved a Jewish complainant and only one involved a Muslim. This is not an organization prepared to adjudicate hateful content over the entire internet.

Third, it appears the Online Harms Act is yet another example of the Trudeau government asserting federal authority where provinces are likely better suited to govern. Because they deal with most forms of employment discrimination, provincial human rights commissions and tribunals have a far wider scope of jurisdiction than the federal tribunal does. Provincial human rights codes already deal with discriminatory speech, and the B.C. Human Rights Commission has even recently argued that the B.C. tribunal has jurisdiction over online speech as well. There is no inherent reason that the responsibility for determining online hate should be done by an entirely new and costlylayer of federal bureaucracy, particularly given the existing institutional capacity at provincial commissions and tribunals.

To be clear, I am not suggesting that provincial human rights tribunals ought to be given the sweeping powers contemplated by the Online Harms Act. Others have convincingly shown that the bill likely violatesCharter rights, and will chill “legitimate expression by the mere spectre of a complaint.” I am simply arguing that there are additional procedural reasons to be concerned about the institutional venues through which that chilling will occur.

Adjudicating online hate speech under the Online Harms Act will require deft sensitivity to competing rights claims and societal interests, a tall order for any organization. Instead, the federal government is placing its hopes in the hands of institutions that lack both the moral authority and institutional capacity to do the job.

Source: Exploring Human Rights Tribunal decisions

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Trump’s Massive Deportation Plan Echoes Concentration Camp History

2024/08/07 Leave a comment

Good reminder:

The Republican National Convention hit rock bottom on its third day in Milwaukee, Wis., on July 17, with a sea of signs calling for “Mass Deportation Now.” If former president Donald Trump is elected for a second term, he and his advisers promise to remove from the U.S., via forced expulsions and deportation camps, as many as 20 million people—a number larger than the country’s current estimated population of undocumented residents. Put into effect, this scheme would devolve quickly into a vast 21st-century version of concentration camps, with predictably brutal results.

Concentration camps are built for the mass detention of civilians based on group identity, excluding protections normally afforded by a country’s legal system. I wrote a history of these camps that traced an arc from their 19th-century origins in Spanish-occupied Cuba through the development of death camps in Germany and their modern-day descendants around the world.

Trump’s plan to launch a massive deportation project nationwide—the first plank in the platform approved at his party’s convention—draws on the same flawed historical rationales and pseudoscience that built support for concentration camps worldwide in the 20th century. Early architects of these camps veiled their efforts in scientific terms while using terror and punishment to seize more power.

For example, Trump has claimed repeatedly that undocumented immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the U.S. “Blood poisoning” is a medical condition; saying that foreigners are poisoning a nation’s blood is simply a slur. But perverting scientific or medical language to violate human rights and permit atrocities comes from a familiar playbook.

Justifications for brutal immigration policies have often distorted scientific goals of public health programs. Trump and his advisers have long been prone to panic-mongering over the threat of disease from immigrants. They’ve likewise twisted sociology to stoke anxiety about assimilation to justify a Muslim ban or to try to make racist comments seem less objectionable. Even simple principles of statistics get skewered as Trump lies about crime committed by immigrants.

Trump’s incendiary language echoes dangerous historical precedents. He has called his political opponents “vermin,” referred to immigrants as depraved“animals” and “rapists,” and described the U.S.–Mexico border as an “open wound.” Examples abound of similar rhetoric in Nazi propaganda about Jews.

Less well known is the fact that before World War II, the Nazis framed German Jews as aliens who needed to be forced into emigration or expelled. This was the original logic for stripping Jews of citizenship: to officially render them foreigners. (It should be noted that Trump aims to end birthright citizenship in the U.S.)

Prejudice has always been a part of concentration camps. At the dawn of the 20th century, mortality surged in British camps in southern Africa during the South African War, with children’s deaths blamed on “uncivilized” Boer mothers. Embracing pseudoscientific biology, camp administrators spent about half the money per day for food for a Black African civilian as was spent on white detainees (who themselves received insufficient rations). Bureaucracy and unforeseen crises added immeasurably to the harm. In poorly sited and badly run camps, tens of thousands of noncombatants died.

Other early camp systems included massive networks established on an emergency basis to detain immigrants or expel targeted minority groups. During the Spanish Civil War, when 475,000 refugees poured across France’s southern border in less than three weeks, many were forced into unlivable conditions in remote areas to isolate them from French society. Illness and disease followed on a massive scale.

After the start of World War II, the French government used those same camps to intern foreign Jews who had escaped Hitler’s Germany, detaining them as enemy aliens. And after France fell to the Nazis, French policemen went door-to-door in Paris in May 1941 in the service of the Vichy government to round up foreign Jews who remained at liberty. Some deported Jews were sent to barracks still holding Spanish detainees and “enemy aliens.” Camps often begin as one thing and become something else.

The relocation and detention involved in the deportation project that Trump is proposing are at least an order of magnitude greater than these debacles. The argument that a second Trump administration wouldn’t be able to launch such an operation because of a lack of personnel or legal authority should be understood as largely irrelevant because it presupposes the intention of running a precise, legal project at all.

A professional effort on this scale would be impossible. The mass deportations planned to begin in January 2025 if Trump is reelected are meant to unleash deliberate and collateral mayhem. And if history is any guide, a system of camps built to punish millions represents a threat to every American.

As for what they say they intend, Trump and his allies openly admire the results of the Eisenhower-era “Operation Wetback,” whose very name offers a slur revealing the endemic prejudice that made it possible. This limited deportation blitz led to the deaths of 88 workers in 112-degree-Fahrenheit heat. A new Trump administration would be looking to replicate that operation on a scale heretofore untried, using the largest deportation force ever seen in the U.S., according to both Trump and former director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Tom Homan.

Trump adviser Stephen Miller has described a plan to create “vast holding facilities that would function as staging centers,” and Trump has promised to remove four percent of the current U.S. population in a deliberate plan to spur a massive disruption of the labor market. If Americans took notice of border policy during Trump’s first administration, said Homan earlier this month, “They ain’t seen shit yet.”

The “Mass Deportation Now” signs filling the audience at the Republican National Convention are a grim warning of how much worse the situation could get. Trump, his advisers, the Heritage Foundation (the extreme-right platform that has put forth Project 2025) and countless members of Congress are not only winking and nodding toward detention horrors of the past but also clearly willing to repeat history if it will let them consolidate power.

The U.S. has previously embraced concentration camps during the detention of Japanese Americans during World War II and under the family-separation policy imposed during Trump’s presidency. The broader legacy of camps on six continents offers a panoramic assortment of even more ways in which mass deportations and forced relocation can go wrong. Unleashed on anything close to the scale under discussion, the project Trump and his henchmen are proposing will be lethal to the targeted groups, catastrophic to the stability of the country and extremely difficult to undo. These camps are in no way scientific or even serious policy; they’re the equivalent of dropping a hydrogen bomb to put out a forest fire.

This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

ANDREA PITZER is author of the books One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps, The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov and, most recently, Icebound: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World. Follow her on X (formerly Twitter) @andreapitzer.

Source: Trump’s Massive Deportation Plan Echoes Concentration Camp History

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

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 ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →