Cornellier | Nos esclaves

2024/07/22 Leave a comment

Interesting history of slavery in Quebec:

Quand on parle de la présence de l’esclavage en Nouvelle-France, j’ai mal à mon identité. L’idée que mes ancêtres aient pu s’adonner à cette pratique inhumaine me blesse. Je sais bien, comme le montrent de récentes études, que l’esclavage traverse toute l’histoire du monde, et ce, presque partout sur la planète, mais j’aurais souhaité que mon peuple n’ait pas trempé dans cette calamité.

Les faits, malheureusement, me forcent à déchanter. Dès 1960, en effet, l’historien Marcel Trudel, après de rigoureuses recherches dans les registres de l’état civil (baptêmes, mariages et sépultures), établissait que la Nouvelle-France, elle aussi, avait bel et bien été, à sa mesure, esclavagiste, comme la mère patrie et comme la Grande-Bretagne.

Dans son Dictionnaires des esclaves et de leurs propriétaires au Canada français, publié en 1990, Trudel identifiait 4092 esclaves sur un siècle, dont 2692 Autochtones et 1400 Noirs. Les Autochtones asservis, précisait-il dans Mythes et réalités dans l’histoire du Québec (BQ, 2006), ne provenaient pas des peuples alliés aux Français. Il s’agissait plutôt de membres de la nation des Panis, dont le territoire se situait dans le bassin du Missouri.

En faisant la traite des fourrures, des commerçants français recevaient « en cadeau », de leurs alliés autochtones, des personnes, souvent très jeunes, et en faisaient leurs propriétés. Les esclaves noirs, quant à eux, sont souvent un « butin de guerre pris sur les Anglais à l’occasion d’incursions dans le New York ou dans le Massachusetts ou acquis par les marchands dans leurs courses aux Antilles », écrit Trudel.

Dans le numéro de printemps 2024 de l’excellente Revue d’histoire de la Nouvelle-France, une équipe de chercheuses, dirigée par l’historienne Dominique Deslandres, spécialiste du Québec ancien, revient sur le dossier en le poussant un cran plus loin.

Trudel, dit Deslandres, a réalisé un extraordinaire travail de pionnier, mais il a considéré l’esclavage ici « comme un phénomène mineur », comme l’affaire de quelques riches qui auraient souvent traité leurs esclaves avec une certaine bienveillance. Ce faisant, ajoute l’historienne, il a nourri le mythe d’un esclavage doux.

Trudel, pourtant, n’est pas si naïf. Dans Mythes et réalités dans l’histoire du Québec, il conteste le « tableau idyllique », tracé par « des historiens de grandes familles », qui montre des « esclaves noirs ou amérindiens parfaitement intégrés à leur milieu ». Dans l’ancienne bourgeoisie, précise-t-il, le domestique n’est jamais considéré comme membre de la famille et l’esclave, inférieur dans l’échelle sociale, encore moins.

Deslandres, pour illustrer la cruauté du phénomène, fait ressortir « l’extrême jeunesse d’une grande partie de la population autochtone asservie ». Entre 1632 et 1760, on recense 2199 esclaves. On connaît l’âge de 1574 d’entre eux et on constate que 734 de ces derniers ont moins de 12 ans. Selon la chercheuse Cathie-Anne Dupuis, jusqu’en 1759, « la moitié des esclaves masculins autochtones meurent avant 17 ans ». Après la Conquête et jusqu’à l’abolition de l’esclavage en 1834, c’est pire : l’âge médian au décès est de 11 ans. Pour les femmes esclaves autochtones, les chiffres équivalents sont de 21 ans et de 13 ans.

Selon Deslandres, la bizarre idée d’avoir un enfant esclave s’expliquerait par le désir de « s’assurer une retraite paisible à l’abri de l’avidité des héritiers ». Ces enfants, donnés « en cadeau » par des alliés autochtones déjà familiers de cette pratique avant l’arrivée des Européens, se sont fait voler leur destin.

Les historiennes engagées dans cette recherche s’intéressent notamment à l’agentivité des esclaves, c’est-à-dire à leur capacité d’agir par eux-mêmes. En fouillant les archives judiciaires et notariales, Catherine Lampron a découvert l’histoire de cinq esclaves, dont la fameuse Marie-Josèphe-Angélique, accusée d’avoir mis le feu à Montréal en 1734, qui se sont retrouvés devant les tribunaux après des gestes de révolte. La liberté empêchée est rarement source de bonheur tranquille.

Dans une émouvante contribution, la doctorante Astrid Girault, originaire de la Guadeloupe, se penche sur la pratique des danses africaines par les esclaves des Petites Antilles françaises au XVIIe siècle, afin d’illustrer la lutte de ces asservis pour leur survie culturelle.

Deux missionnaires français s’étonnent que les esclaves profitent de tout leur temps libre, incluant la nuit, pour danser, malgré leur fatigue. Ils ne comprennent pas, dit Girault, que ces danses ont une dimension spirituelle et culturelle pour les esclaves. Elles « sont donc essentielles à leur survie dans un environnement hostile qui vise à leur enlever tout ce qui fait leur essence ».

Le désir de liberté et l’expression de l’identité sont irrépressibles et magnifiques.

Source: Chronique | Nos esclaves

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Prousky: Canada’s housing crisis is fuelling a population crisis

2024/07/20 Leave a comment

Interesting turning around debates over immigration levels. But yes, levels have to come down given the time it takes to increase housing:

…The global pool from which to attract smart, employable immigrants is slowly shrinking. Africa is now the only region on Earth whose population is expected to grow by the end of the century. Meanwhile, the world’s population is expected to decrease in that time period. So in the coming century, rich nations – all of which have birth rates well below 2.1 – may be competing for the same small pool of working-age migrants.

Beyond immigration, there are a host of pro-natal policies that countries have devised to boost fertility. Governments in Asia have spent hundreds of billions of dollars to stave off looming population crises. Singapore, with one of the lowest fertility rates in the world at just 0.97, offers generous grants and tax rebates to parents with two or more children. But its fertility rate hasn’t budged.

It’s only a matter of time, it seems, before the Canadian government begins throwing big money at the country’s nascent fertility problem. The lesson from abroad is, don’t wait. Increasing the country’s housing supply today could be the best defence against a population crisis down the road.

Source: Canada’s housing crisis is fuelling a population crisis

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Jamie Sarkonak: Expect more injustice from the Liberals’ forthcoming Black Justice Strategy

2024/07/20 Leave a comment

Sarkonak continues her focus on the excesses of some advisory panels in recommendations that cross the line between recognizing different experiences and issues and developing separate bodies or processes to accommodate them:

…The report amounts to a socialist manifesto advancing cliché policy ideas that were all the rage during the Summer of George Floyd. Which is probably what the Liberals hoped to get out of the process: some kind of document that allows them to run the “experts said” defence when they ultimately propose to vandalize the Criminal Code.

Indeed, Canadians are overwhelmingly in favour of colourblind (rather than colour-conscious) policy at a rate of 70 to 30. When it comes to drugs and crime, a 2023 Leger survey found that nearly 80 per cent believe that too many violent offenders are being given bail, and about the same amount believe that the justice system is too lenient on criminals. About 70 per cent wanted more policing and tougher laws on drugs.

Beyond being plain offensive to the general public’s sense of justice, the ideas currently being weighed in Minister Arif Virani’s office likely miss some number of their target audience, too. One prominent voice, Conservative MP Jamil Jivani, is one example in the “no” camp.

“Black Canadians, like all Canadians, deserve a justice system focused on community safety,” he wrote last week on X.

“If the policies contained in the so-called ‘Black Justice Strategy’ report are adopted, there will surely be more crime, drugs and disorder in our communities. There will also be more victims of crime, and black Canadians will be affected along with the rest of the country.”

If the final Black Justice Strategy looks anything like what handpicked experts envision, it will be painfully out of touch. It will cost. It will reek of unfairness, diverting even more public resources to a fraction of Canadians to the detriment of everyone else. And it will be genuinely harmful by hamstringing the state’s ability to separate bad actors from the law-abiding public — by imprisonment or deportation.

Perhaps worst of all, it will promote the corrosive conception of Canada as a confederacy of racial groups rather than a unified state for Canadian citizens.

Source: Jamie Sarkonak: Expect more injustice from the Liberals’ forthcoming Black Justice Strategy

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Regan: The lazy and dangerous lie that’s taking hold

2024/07/20 Leave a comment

Good take from Malta that applies more broadly:

Multiculturalism has failed.

This is the constant and confident verdict of many commentators, academics, keyboard and ‘culture’ warriors and many a politician in recent years, in Malta and more broadly across Europe and beyond.

Allied to this is the assertion that very many of the problems and challenges we face from health and housing to identity and education to religion, infrastructure and immigration are the result of pursuing this ‘failed’ philosophy and strategy.

In short, ‘we’ are not responsible for society’s ills and failings, ‘they’ – most especially those who promote or pursue this multiculturalism- are. The ‘we’ and the ‘they’ are deliberately vague and are a movable feast depending on context, culture and, inevitably, politics and prejudice.

By contrast, we are rarely if ever enlightened (except by extreme far right groups) as to what the ‘alternative’ to multiculturalism is – mono-culturalism, uniculturalism, assimilation, exclusion? Instead, we get vague and unspecified assertions that ‘our culture’ and ‘way of life’ is being eroded by multiculturalism and that we need to somehow ‘return to’, ‘rediscover’ or redefine our ‘original’ or ‘untainted’ identity and culture.

And this it is assumed we can do without too much disagreement or dissent.

Routinely, the result is that we avoid dealing with the substantive issues before us, for example – overdevelopment and its associated ills, the absence of effective policies and governance, deeply embedded dishonesty and criminality and a toxic and self-defeating political culture.  ‘Multiculturalism’ has become our ‘get out of jail’ card.

Despite this supposed ‘failure’ of multiculturalism, we actually live in a Malta, a Europe and a world where every facet of life (even ethnicity, language, religion, identity, culture and more) is, by definition multicultural, embodying elements, facets and components of not just one but multiple cultures.

Malta and all things Maltese are by dint of history, geography and the experience of life over time (locally and internationally), suffused with multicultural DNA. In this sense, the story of Malta and the Maltese is a/the universal story. There is no ‘pure’, single-cultured Malta.

Inevitably (and for me, positively) the realities of a multicultured life does indeed pose challenges, some fundamental and many potentially transformative. The Maltese know this deeply as their internationalised history and culture attest.

I was born into and grew up in an Ireland that was, despite its history, prone to idealising a particular definition and interpretation of what it meant to be Irish. To be ‘really’ Irish, one was required to tick a number of selective ‘ethnic or cultural boxes’ – white, catholic, nationalist, an Irish speaker, ‘straight’, a follower of all things Gaelic, committed to a united Ireland etc.

Defining ‘Irishness’ in this manner was as much about excluding as it was about including. Needless to say we were (and are) not unique in this regard but nonetheless, this ‘Gaelic’ culture was literally beaten into us in school.

As a result, our constitution, our formal and informal institutions, laws and practices were crafted to protect and deliver this selective and rarified definition of ‘Irishness’.  Those who did not adequately tick the required boxes were forced to ‘navigate’ and ‘survive’ the dominant definition and culture often at huge personal and social cost. Our history is littered with the human and social consequences of attempting to promote one overarching and often supposed superior monoculture.

As a result, discrimination became widespread, even if routinely unspoken. It existed in employment, in religion, in gender, sex and marriage, in sport, in education and, most deplorably and cruelly, in healthcare and the institutional ‘care’ of children.

As I grew older, travelled in Europe, studied in Canada and Australia and eventually worked in various countries in Africa, I realised that having more than one established culture is vital for the well-being and the prospering of any society.

Slow learner that I am, I eventually came to realise that culture has no overarching or co-ordinating authority nor should it. Culture is never static or settled, it ebbs and flows in the superstructure and the substructure of any society. It displays and speaks with many voices and very rarely with just one. Culture is, by definition, complex and contradictory with multiple layers of ambiguity or ‘fuzziness’.

Ultimately, culture is a porous world of ideas and experiences, one that is constantly open and interactive with other worlds. As such, cultures benefit from external exposure and from ongoing engagement with different ways of living, thinking, defining value and satisfying individual and social needs.

Valuing and embracing multiculturalism need not imply or indicate a dismissal or diminution of one’s own culture, community, identity or heritage. Rather it signifies a deep appreciation of it including recognition of its limitations and failings.

At the core of multiculturalism lies a series of common values or aspirations based around the principles of human dignity and rights, for example, those of respect for self and for others, the mutual need for equality of opportunity, freedom of cultural expression and respect for conscience and for diversity.

Blaming Malta’s current ills (especially those associated with our chosen model of growth without development) on multiculturalism is lazy and mistaken. It is also dangerous as the history of so many other countries (my own included) attests. It is indeed time to address Malta’s existential problems but not by pointing the finger at multicultural others but pointedly at ourselves and our choices.

Source: The lazy and dangerous lie that’s taking hold

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Key Takeaways From the Republican Convention’s Message on Immigration

2024/07/20 Leave a comment

Useful summary:

Former President Donald J. Trump and Republicans are in lock step on the issue of immigration, further evidence that he has cemented his grip on the party during his third run for the White House.

At the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this week, the rhetoric and the party platform match his vision of isolationism and border security, and his suspicion of the people crossing the 2,000-mile line dividing Mexico and the United States, as they have since his first run for president in 2016. But the broadsides have become darker and the language more conspiratorial.

Here are four immigration takeaways from the convention.

In panels and speeches at the convention, falsehoods about noncitizens’ voting have become more pervasive and central to Mr. Trump’s lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.

Mark Morgan, a former top Trump immigration official, claimed without evidence that Democrats were encouraging illegal immigration for political reasons, in order to bring more people into their party. Kari Lake, a Trump acolyte and Republican nominee for Senate in Arizona, falsely accused her Democratic opponent of voting “to let the millions of people who poured into our country illegally cast a ballot in this upcoming election.”

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said Democrats “wanted votes from illegals more than they wanted to protect our children.” Senator Rick Scott of Florida recalled a nightmare, he said, in which “Biden and the Democrats flew so many illegals” into the United States that it “was easy for Democrats to rig the elections.”

Voter fraud is extraordinarily rare, and allegations that widespread numbers of undocumented immigrants are unlawfully voting have been consistently discredited. But Mr. Trump’s false claim, which is being used to disenfranchise Americans, has almost universally been adopted by his party.

Kate Steinle. Laken Riley. Rachel Morin. Republican political candidates and leaders are invoking the names of women, many of them young and white, who authorities have said were killed by undocumented immigrants. Their deaths have been used to amplify calls for mass deportations and other hard-line immigration restrictions.

On Tuesday, Mr. Cruz drew shudders from some audience members as he described sitting in homes with the grieving families of some the women. “Tonight, I speak for Kate and Laken and Rachel,” he said.

A day later, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas named 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray, who was killed in Houston. Two undocumented Venezuelan men have been charged in her strangling. “She’s one of thousands whose lives have been destroyed by Joe Biden’s open border policies,” he said.

There is little comprehensive data on the crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. But many studies show that crime has gone down while illegal immigration has increased, and that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than are people born in the United States. Republicans say that any crime committed by a person not lawfully in the country is one too many.

Source: Key Takeaways From the Republican Convention’s Message on Immigration

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Le bureau du ministre Marc Miller vandalisé, symptôme des problèmes de sécurité des élus

2024/07/20 Leave a comment

Hate crime:

Les gestes de vandalisme revendiqués par des militants pro-Palestine jeudi au bureau du ministre fédéral de l’Immigration témoignent de l’urgence de renforcer les mesures de sécurité autour des politiciens, selon un expert consulté par Le Devoir.

Le ministre Marc Miller a confié qu’il ne s’agissait pas d’un événement isolé. Son équipe et lui, ainsi que leur bureau montréalais, sont presque chaque jour la cible d’insultes ou de saccage. « Depuis des mois, mon bureau de comté est quotidiennement menacé. Nous avons fait de notre mieux pour prendre des mesures de précaution adéquates, afin de servir nos concitoyens qui ont besoin de nos services », a écrit M. Miller sur le réseau X. Il n’a pas voulu accorder d’entrevue jeudi.

Plusieurs graffitis propalestiniens ont été écrits sur le trottoir devant son bureau de la rue Saint-Jacques, face à la station de métro Lionel-Groulx. Les vitres ont été fracassées et de la peinture rose a été lancée sur l’immeuble. « Marc Miller child killer » (Marc Miller, tueur d’enfant), « No justice no peace » (Pas de paix sans justice), « Genocide is not ok » (Le génocide n’est pas acceptable), pouvait-on lire sur les trottoirs en face du bureau.

« Habituellement, [les activistes propalestiniens] viennent manifester en avant du bureau, sur le trottoir. Ils ont déjà mis des collants sur les vitrines. Mais des méfaits graves comme ça, c’est la première fois », a confirmé l’agent du Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) Nicolas Girard. Aucune arrestation n’avait encore été faite au moment où ces lignes étaient écrites.

Une vidéo montrant le saccage a rapidement fait le tour des réseaux sociaux. « Cette nuit, des militant.e.s sont venues rendre visite à cette institution coloniale qu’est le bureau de Marc Miller. Ceci est un rappel que les mobilisations ne finiront pas et que nous ne plierons pas face à l’État génocidaire », peut-on lire sur la page Instagram clash.mtl. La vidéo leur aurait été soumise anonymement.

« Le climat politique se dégrade »

Les gestes et comportements menaçants envers des élus sont préoccupants, selon Michel Juneau-Katsuya, expert en sécurité nationale. Pour lui, « le climat politique se dégrade au Québec. Il faut vraiment qu’il y ait une prise de conscience des risques, sinon plus personne ne voudra aller en politique ».

D’autres députés ont été la cible d’actes violents dans les derniers mois, rappelle l’ex-agent fédéral. Il donne l’exemple de la ministre des Affaires étrangères, Mélanie Joly, qui a été interpellée par un militant et s’est défendue elle-même. La multiplication de ces événements fait en sorte qu’une plus grande protection pour les élus est requise, estime-t-il. « Il n’y a pas au fédéral un équivalent à la loi 57 du Québec, mais il devrait y en avoir un », dit-il.

Au Québec, depuis le mois de juin, la loi protège les élus provinciaux contre les gens qui les intimident, les harcèlent ou entravent leurs travaux.

Marco Mendicino, ex-ministre canadien de la Sécurité publique, a réitéré jeudi la nécessité de renforcer aussi la protection des élus fédéraux. « La démocratie ne peut pas fonctionner tant que les parlementaires, leur famille et leur personnel ne sont pas en sécurité », a-t-il déclaré sur la plateforme X.

Urgence d’agir pour les visas temporaires

Les militants propalestiniens demandent depuis plusieurs mois au ministre Miller de « donner rapidement des visas pour les Palestiniens à Gaza » et « d’améliorer les politiques d’immigration pour les Palestiniens », selon le compte X OlinePalEng, qui documente les actions d’activisme pro-Palestine partout dans le monde. Ils lui reprochent aussi « de donner son support aux atrocités israéliennes à Gaza ».

Pour Thomas Woodley, président de Canadiens pour la justice et la paix au Moyen-Orient (CJPMO), le vandalisme commis montre « l’échec » du programme de visas temporaires pour les Palestiniens ayant des liens avec le Canada, lancé par Ottawa en janvier dernier. L’obtention de ce visa est « une question de vie ou de mort pour des milliers [de Palestiniens] » qui sont encore pris à Gaza.

Le ministre Miller a de son côté souligné qu’il ne tolérera pas de comportements violents. « Nous vivons dans un pays démocratique. Tout individu a pleinement le droit de manifester, d’exprimer ses opinions, et de faire entendre son mécontentement. Cependant, peu importe le point de vue, rien ne peut excuser le vandalisme et la mise en danger d’autrui », a déclaré le député sur X.

Même si le CJPMO n’est pas à l’origine du vandalisme, M. Woodley considère que « les Canadiens ont raison d’être frustrés au plus haut point », dit-il au Devoir. « Bien que certaines personnes puissent contester les méthodes utilisées par les manifestants, il ne fait aucun doute que le programme du ministre Miller visant à aider les Palestiniens de Gaza ayant des liens avec le Canada a été un échec lamentable. »

Source: Le bureau du ministre Marc Miller vandalisé, symptôme des problèmes de sécurité des élus

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‘Shocking and unjustifiable:’ Canada is deporting migrants at its highest rate in more than a decade [or is it?]

2024/07/19 Leave a comment

Cue the outrage. Cite statistics without context and you get a header like this.

Rather than absolute numbers, which indeed show the Liberal government having lower numbers that the previous Conservative government and a sharp spike in 2023/24, it is the percentage of removals compared to the number of temporary residents admitted that is relevant.

The last 9 years when numbers of temporary residents increased dramatically presents a different picture of removals compared to international students and asylum claimants:

Fiscal RemovalsStudentsAsylum ClaimantsTotal  %
201511,938219,03516,055235,0905.1%
20168,696264,28523,860288,1453.0%
20178,014314,98550,375365,3602.2%
20188,220354,27555,035409,3102.0%
20199,707400,58564,030464,6152.1%
202011,577255,57023,690279,2604.1%
202111,258443,61524,885468,5002.4%
20227,522548,43091,700640,1301.2%
202310,222682,430143,580826,0101.2%

So perhaps the header should have read: “‘Shocking and unjustifiable:’ Canada is deporting migrants at its lowest rate in more than a decade:”

Canada has spent more than $115 million deporting nearly 29,000 migrants since 2022, an unprecedented rate that flies in the face of the federal government’s promise to regularize the status of undocumented workers, advocates say.

In 2023, Ottawa spent more than $62 million on deportations, the highest amount spent in a year in over a decade, according to data from the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) dating back to 2011.

The deportation rate in 2023 was the highest since 2012, when more than 19,000 people were deported under Stephen Harper’s Conservative government. The deportations include “all removals enforced in each fiscal year,” the CBSA said, including refugee claimants, and migrants residing, working or studying in Canada who have overstayed their legal status.

When asked about the growth in deportations, the agency said “the number of removals enforced in any given year will fluctuate,” adding that the March 2023 expansion of the Safe Third Country Agreement, aimed at limiting asylum seekers entering Canada through unofficial entry points, has contributed to this year’s increase.

About 90 per cent of the total deportations since 2005 are due to “non-compliance,” the CBSA added, referring to migrants living in Canada without authorization. “Criminality,” the second most common reason for deportation, accounts for just over seven per cent of removals.

“The fact that $200 million has been spent to deport tens of thousands of people since 2020 — and after this promise has been made — is shocking and unjustifiable,” said Syed Hussan of the Migrant Rights Network, a national advocacy group for farmworkers, care workers, international students and undocumented people.

Advocates for migrant workers say the surge in deportations runs contrary to the government’s December 2021 commitment to a ‘regularization program’ for undocumented migrants. Such a program would allow migrants to stay in Canada as the government responds to historic labour shortages by ramping up immigration and issuing work permits to non-Canadians in record numbers.

Source: ‘Shocking and unjustifiable:’ Canada is deporting migrants at its highest rate in more than a decade

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What Would It Take to Deport Millions of Immigrants? The G.O.P. Plan, Explained

2024/07/19 Leave a comment

Good long read on the practicalities and virtual impossibilities of doing so. Any such efforts would of course be divisive, disruptive, costly and likely only partially successful (like the partially completed wall in his presidency):

When Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, he vowed to build a wall to seal the border and keep criminals from entering the country. This campaign season, his immigration agenda has a new focus: a mass deportation program unlike anything the country has seen.

His party’s platform, ratified at the Republican convention in Milwaukee, promises the “largest deportation effort in American history,” and immigration was the theme of Tuesday’s gathering.

What would it take to deport millions of people? Is it even possible?

There were 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States in 2022, according to the latest government estimates, and more than eight out of 10 have been in the country for more than a decade. Mr. Trump said during the debate last month that there were 18 million, which is unsubstantiated.

Fleeing political and economic turmoil, migrants from countries like Venezuela have crossed the border in record numbers during the Biden administration.

Mr. Trump and the Republican platform have made broad declarations but thus far offered scant details about their intended operation.

The former president has suggested that any undocumented immigrant is subject to removal.

The party platform states that “the most dangerous criminals” would be prioritized.

It also said: “The Republican Party is committed to sending illegal aliens back home and removing those who have violated our laws.”

The consensus among immigration experts and former homeland security officials is that logistical, legal, bureaucratic and cost barriers would make it virtually impossible to carry out the mass deportations Mr. Trump seeks in the span of a four-year presidential term.

“It’s enormously complicated and an expensive thing to decide to deport people who have been here years,” said Laura Collins, an immigration expert at the George W. Bush Institute in Dallas.

Currently, ICE agents focus on locating and deporting convicted criminals, such as child molesters and others suspected of being a threat to public or national security.

Some one million immigrants with final removal orders living in the country could be a targeted group.

“Let’s say you find these people. You then have to detain them,” said Mr. Neifach. “How are you going to expand detention in a way that won’t blow the bank?”

Every potential deportee is held in a detention facility, and in the current fiscal year, Congress funded the detention of 41,500 immigrants daily at a cost of $3.4 billion, which would need to increase exponentially.

And many immigrants hail from countries that do not have diplomatic ties with the United States or that refuse to take back their nationals. They cannot be immediately flown out of the country, and the Supreme Court has ruled that people cannot remain detained for limitless periods awaiting removal.

The ICE budget for transportation and deportation in fiscal 2023 was $420 million, and the agency deported 142,580 people that year.

Another Trump administration could speed up deportations by terminating programs that the Biden administration has introduced.

For example, since 2022, some 500,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela have been allowed to fly to the United States and live and work for two years, provided they have a financial sponsor. Mr. Biden has also allowed nearly 700,000 migrants who make an appointment on a mobile app to cross the border through an official port of entry and receive work permits.

“Trump could flick the switch and revoke it,” said Mr. Neifach. But, he added, many of the migrants could make asylum claims and become part of the clogged courts.

Expedited removal at the border enables the swift deportation of migrants without a hearing, unless they convince an agent that they would face the threat of violence back home, and Mr. Biden in June issued an executive order currently being challenged in court to amplify use of this tool.

Mr. Trump could try to extend it to the interior, though he would likely face court challenges.

Mr. Trump has not addressed whether he would exercise any discretion, or make any exceptions.

More than one million Americans are married to an undocumented person, and a large share of undocumented immigrants have children who are U.S. citizens.

“When you are talking those kinds of numbers and law enforcement presence, you have to think at the end — what does that do to the atmosphere in the country?” said Ms. Napolitano, the former Homeland Security secretary.

Source: What Would It Take to Deport Millions of Immigrants? The G.O.P. Plan, Explained

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Immigration Minister Miller admits gang members exploit vulnerabilities to gain entry

2024/07/19 Leave a comment

Not overly sugar coating:

Liberal Immigration Minister Marc Miller admitted that gang members were exploiting vulnerabilities in Canada’s immigration system and slipping into the country undetected.

In a press conference with ethnic media outlets on Monday, Miller was asked how criminals from India can slip through the vetting process and come to Canada.

Miller admitted that gang members are coming into the country, implying that it was inevitable when dealing with sophisticated criminal organizations.

“Well-determined actors regardless of the country, and particularly sophisticated gangs, are often able to get around even the most stringent immigration requirements,” said Miller.

“Canada has some of the most robust requirements in the world when we are checking people, but it’s not perfect.”

While Miller did not specifically name India, he said that the Canadian government often admits immigrants from countries whose governments are unreliable, allowing gang members to slip in with phoney police background checks.

“We all know how unreliable at times depending on the country that police certificates can be and if we were to rely on a country that is sometimes not the most – well I would say a reluctant partner, those certificates often become quite questionable as to their reliability.”

Miller touted the federal government’s immigration vetting process, however, admitted that criminals are coming into the country to commit crimes.

“Regrettably at times people do get in and they do commit crimes. Well-determined actors do have an ability despite best efforts to get in.”

Source: Immigration Minister Miller admits gang members exploit vulnerabilities to gain entry

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McLaughlin: There’s a troubling amount of churn at the top of Canada’s public service

2024/07/19 Leave a comment

Valid commentary.

Perhaps the recent example of Christiane Fox, who spent less than two years at IRCC, implemented a major reorganization at IRCC, and then left for PCO without having to live through the implementation nor see whether it was successful, provides an illustration:

…Fresh perspective on a task or mission is always useful, and promoting people into senior ranks is necessary for talent-building. But rampant shuffling has consequences. It commodifies deputy ministers. It devalues subject matter expertise and institutional wisdom in favour of management and system conformity. It weakens the crucial minister-deputy relationship that comes from longer periods of working together, and it does the same for the extensive stakeholder and delivery apparatus that surrounds modern government. It undermines the institutional memory and corporate knowledge that underpins the whole ethos of an independent, permanent public service.

Most importantly, it divorces senior officials from results. Individual responsibility for seeing things through is diminished when you know it will be your successor who will be carrying the can. This accountability serves as a form of collective protectionism – a kind of omerta – for the public service system as a whole.

Post-pandemic, Canadians are expecting that the institutions of government perform better. Right now, that is wanting. From procurement to service delivery to appointments, there are obvious institutional failures.

As voters increasingly clamour for change and accountability at the highest political levels, now is the time for the highest public service levels to adopt this same attitude as their own. Arresting the churn at the top should be at the top of that list.

Source: There’s a troubling amount of churn at the top of Canada’s public service

Filed under Government Tagged with , , ,

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