Ahmad: Zohran Mamdani and How to Be a ‘Good’ Muslim in America

2025/10/14 2 Comments

Good long read on Mamdani and being Muslim in America:

…But Muslims have been made to grin and bear it in America for more than two decades. Watching Mr. Mamdani stand unwaveringly in the face of a stream of anti-Muslim abuse is to witness the distillation of that dynamic in a single person. I’d be lying if I said I think his fate in this particular matter will improve over time. It is a certainty that Mr. Mamdani, if he wins the mayoralty, will have to contend with even more Islamophobic slurs, on a national scale.

In the face of this, it’s easy to become cynical, even as his popularity marks a moment of triumph for Muslims. Mr. Mamdani sees it differently.

“I used to be quite consumed by forever being a minority — of being an Indian in Uganda, Muslim in India, all of these things in New York City,” he said to me. It’s a sentiment he’s had to express often over the course of his campaign. It’s at once well rehearsed and heartfelt. “I remember my father telling me that to be a minority is also to see the truth of the place, to see promise and to see the contradictions of it.”

Mr. Mamdani finds hope in that tension.

“I was always left with a cleareyed sense of the world that I was in,” he said, “and how to ensure that the contradiction of that world didn’t leave you with a sense of bitterness.”

Meher Ahmad is an editor in the Opinion section.

Source: Zohran Mamdani and How to Be a ‘Good’ Muslim in America

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Chapman: Bill C-3 corrects inequalities, brings Citizenship Act into compliance with the Charter

2025/10/14 Leave a comment

Written before the amendments made by the House immigration committee although I expect Chapman likely opposes all of the amendments based upon his previous writings and testimonies.

And in his criticism of the CPC and their procedural maneuverings, he neglects to acknowledge that the Liberal government and the NDP in previous parliaments poisoned the chalice by expanding the scope of the narrow S-245 to include removal of the first-generation cut-off, hardly an example of being “respectful of democratic institutions:”

…Last week, I watched the committee discussion with concern as the Conservative Party under Pierre Poilievre returned to a familiar, dogmatic and troubling playbook—one that elevates fear over fact, and partisan rhetoric over responsible governance. Dismissing expert analysis, disregarding a clear judicial ruling, and inflaming public sentiment may deliver short-term political gain.

However, the long-term cost is steep: the steady erosion of the institutions that underpin our prosperity, our unity, and the rule of law itself.

Democracy depends not only on laws and courts, but on a shared commitment to uphold them. When a political party becomes comfortable with unequal treatment under the law, distorts public discourse, or refuses to acknowledge and correct its own mistakes—these are not isolated errors. They are signs of weakened accountability and declining leadership.

The moral and legal imperative to enshrine equal rights in the Citizenship Act is clear. Equality rights cannot be optional. Canadians must be cautious not to follow the troubling path of democratic backsliding visible else where. A decade ago, few would have predicted how quickly democratic norms in the United States would come under pressure. Institutional decline begins quietly—then accelerates. As with financial markets, trust builds slowly but can disappear overnight. 

And in politics, fear remains an expedient and dangerous currency—too often spent more readily than truth. Leadership of any party—indeed of any party—must be about more than electoral calculus. It must be rooted in principle—be respectful of democratic institutions, guided by evidence, and committed to the rights, dignity, and equality of all citizens.

Bill C-3 is a necessary step in that direction.

Source: Chapman: Bill C-3 corrects inequalities, brings Citizenship Act into compliance with the Charter

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Yin: Canada doesn’t like immigration anymore. This is a problem

2025/10/14 Leave a comment

Even the Century Initiative has moved past this simplistic thinking:

…In a world where Canada can no longer rely on others for its security, population size is also key for geopolitical power. Trade agreements are negotiated to gain access to large markets – which is partly why China and India wield so much influence, and why countries have rushed to accommodate Donald Trump’s tariffs, a country that is nearly ten times larger than us. Military strength, too, depends on demographic depth: Active forces can only ever be a small share of the population, and Canada’s military currently faces a shortfall of nearly 14,000 personnel. If we want Canada to carry more weight in the world, Canada must be bigger.

…The purpose here is not to fearmonger, or to dismiss the genuine concerns surrounding immigration. But it is important to keep our eye on long run objectives and to frame the current debate correctly. We should prioritize addressing housing for now, but large scale immigration will always be essential in growing Canada’s potential.

Kevin Yin is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail and an economics doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley.

Source: Canada doesn’t like immigration anymore. This is a problem

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Jamie Sarkonak: Canada doesn’t owe the world’s children a passport

2025/10/14 Leave a comment

More support for curbing birthright citizenship:

Anyone in the world can come to Canada, have a baby, and secure that child a lifetime of Canadian benefits along with a family link to this country for later chain migration. They don’t have to speak English or French; they don’t have to share our taboos against incest and rape; they don’t need to contribute anything to Canadian society. There are no guardrails.

But on Tuesday, we got a glimpse of how good things could be when Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel Garner proposed a simple change to the law that would prevent citizenship from being granted to children born in Canada to non-citizens — unless at least one parent has permanent residency.

This would close Canada’s widest and most longstanding chain migration entry point without being too harsh on the foreign nationals who have established a connection to the country (though we do need higher standards for PR, too). It’s about as fair as you can get. Alas, Rempel Garner’s amendment was promptly shot down by the Bloc Québécois and the Liberals, who believe in the extreme approach of handing passports out like candy at a parade.

The rest of the world has noticed our complete lack of boundaries and is taking advantage of it. Non-resident births in 2021-22 doubled to 5,698 from the previous year’s 2,245. It’s a cottage industry in B.C., and in one study of 102 birth tourists at a Calgary hospital, the most popular source country was Nigeria, but parents also came from the Middle East, India and Mexico. Keep in mind that these are just the non-residents — there are plenty of other temporary residents giving birth here, but we don’t seem to be keeping track.

Even if these children grow up and never set foot in Canada again, they’ll be entitled to all the benefits of citizenship. They’ll be able to run for office, vote, and obtain consular services if unrest engulfs whatever country their family has chosen to raise them in. If they ever join a terror organization like ISIS, Canadian officials will be expected to retrieve them.

Not to mention the privilege of low domestic tuition, a right to public health care, the unfettered ability to re-enter the country, the ability to claim all kinds of social benefits, the absolute impossibility of deportation should they ever commit a heinous crime, and the guarantee that their children will be eligible for Canadian citizenship, too — and their children, if the Liberals pass Bill C-3, which has now cleared committee.

It’s not just the developing world’s rich who are using this loophole. It’s an avenue that’s open to any economic migrant: from “students” of strip-mall colleges, to temporary workers, to bogus asylum seekers. Having a child in Canada bolsters their applications to remain, particularly if they ever face deportation….

Source: Jamie Sarkonak: Canada doesn’t owe the world’s children a passport

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Yakabuski | Le droit du sol en danger/Birthright citizenship

2025/10/14 Leave a comment

More commentary on birthright cit and birth tourism and the need for more accurate data [I estimated that about 50 percent of non-resident self-pay births were likely due to birth tourism, so about half of what Yakabuski cites. And if anyone has about $60,000, Statistics Canada could do an analysis of non-resident self-pay births by immigration category which would separate out those on visitor visas (largely birth tourists) from international students, temporary workers and asylum seekers:

…Selon un article de l’ancien haut fonctionnaire Andrew Griffith publié en janvier dans Options politiques, il y aurait eu 5219 naissances attribuées au tourisme obstétrique au Canada en 2023-2024, soit environ 1,5 % de toutes les naissances au pays. Toutefois, le gouvernement fédéral ne recueille de statistiques officielles ni sur le tourisme obstétrique ni sur les naissances chez les résidents temporaires.

Avant de changer nos lois pour éliminer un principe aussi fondamental que le droit du sol, nos législateurs devraient avoir la certitude qu’un véritable problème existe et, surtout, qu’il n’existe aucune autre façon de le régler. Pour l’instant, les conservateurs ne se fient que sur des données anecdotiques pour s’enligner sur le chemin trumpiste.

… According to an article by former senior official Andrew Griffith published in January in Political Options, there were 5219 births attributed to obstetric tourism in Canada in 2023-2024, or about 1.5% of all births in the country. However, the federal government does not collect official statistics on obstetric tourism or on births among temporary residents.

Before changing our laws to eliminate a principle as fundamental as the law of the soil, our legislators should be sure that a real problem exists and, above all, that there is no other way to solve it. For the moment, the Conservatives rely only on anecdotal data to align themselves on the Trump path.

Source: Chronique | Le droit du sol en danger

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Keller: How Canada got immigration right for so long – and then got it very, very wrong

2025/10/11 1 Comment

Good long analysis that captures the dynamic and history well. Money quote:

It was a deliberate policy, but it was also an absence of mind. It was like one of those aviation disasters where the cabin depressurizes, and the pilots, unaware of their impairment via oxygen-deprivation, start making what post-crash investigators will identify as less-than-rational decisions.

Source: How Canada got immigration right for so long – and then got it very, very wrong

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Urback: The Conservatives are right: Canada should end birthright citizenship

2025/10/11 Leave a comment

Nice to see my work cited and discussion of current and potential numbers:

…It’s difficult to get a complete picture of how many parents who are not citizens or permanent residents are giving birth. Using figures about women who “self-pay” for births at hospitals, Andrew Griffith at Policy Options calculated that tourism births – by which women travel to Canada specifically to give birth – increased to 5,219 in 2024, which is nearly back up to Canada’s prepandemic high. There may be some overlap in that number with the number of births by non-residents, such as temporary foreign workers and international students, since some of them will not be covered by provincial plans or direct-bill insurance from their schools. 

Those who are covered, however, are outside of that calculation. An analysis of hospital deliveries from the early 2010s to 2017 found that approximately 6,000 births annually were by non-permanent residents; “more specifically, around 4,000 births were by temporary foreign workers, more than 1,000 by international students, and around 1,000 by refugee claimants and TR permit holders, annually.”

In the last quarter of 2017, there were nearly 972,000 non-permanent residents living in Canada. By the last quarter of 2024, that number had ballooned to more than 3.1 million. If a comparable proportion of those residents have babies while in Canada, it will mean thousands more children with citizenship whose parents may or may not be entitled to stay in the country, but whose citizenship will absolutely complicate immigration decisions. …

Source: The Conservatives are right: Canada should end birthright citizenship

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Chris Selley: ‘Birthright citizenship’ is an outdated concept

2025/10/11 Leave a comment

More commentary on birthright citizenship:

…The Liberals say they’re not interested in changing the law — though they didn’t freak out and call everyone racist for even raising the subject, as you might expect them to. (Is it possible they can … learn?) And it’s difficult to imagine this issue ever floating to the top of the pile, even with a Conservative government in power.

But in the absence of legislative action, as with so many files, we could commit to start collecting relevant data about the birth tourism and non-resident birth phenomenon.

Statistics Canada reports that in 2024, 1,610 people gave birth in Canada who did not reside here. That’s the number usually quoted in reference to “birth tourism” — but does it include people on temporary visas, like students and temporary foreign workers? Those aren’t necessarily abuses of any system; people do shag, regardless of their immigration status, and sometimes those people do get pregnant.

When I inquired of Statistics Canada about this, I got an intensely Canadian answer. “The mother’s residency status is typically determined based on the information she provides on the birth registration form. However, the specific requirements and procedures may vary by jurisdiction,” a spokesperson explained. “Since this is self-reported, we can’t tell from the data whether someone is a temporary resident or not.”

Could we at least do better than that? Is that too much to ask — to know the scope of the problem that we’re probably not going to solve?

Source: Chris Selley: ‘Birthright citizenship’ is an outdated concept

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Inspections of temporary foreign worker employers in Canada have plummeted — despite a surge of workers

2025/10/11 Leave a comment

Not a good take:

The number of inspections of employers hiring temporary foreign workers has plummeted over the past five years — with most conducted without inspectors ever setting foot on worksites — even as the number of migrant workers and reports of abuse have surged, according to government data obtained by the Star.

Annual inspections fell 57 per cent, from 3,365 in 2020 to 1,435 in 2024, according to Employment and Social Development Canada, the department that oversees the temporary foreign worker (TFW) program.

There are three triggers for an inspection listed by the Immigration Department: a history of non-compliance, random selection and a reason to suspect non-compliance including a received allegation or complaint.

From 2020 to the end of 2024, 77 per cent of more than 12,000 employer inspections have been “paper-based only,” meaning the vast majority of these inspections take place remotely without any on-site reviews of the workplaces where it’s suspected that violations occurred.

The declining number of inspections comes at a time when the TFW program has ballooned, undergoing a massive expansion in the last decade, amid rising allegations of abuse and penalties issued to employers violating the program. Labour experts and advocates say the combination of fewer on-site inspections and rapid growth of the program raises serious concerns about oversight, enforcement and the protection of vulnerable workers.

The number of TFW approvals has more than doubled in recent years, rising to nearly 51,000 approvals in the third quarter of 2024 alone, more than triple the 15,507 approvals from the third quarter of 2021.From 2020 to the end of 2024, 77 per cent of more than 12,000 employer inspections have been “paper-based only,” meaning the vast majority of these inspections take place remotely without any on-site reviews of the workplaces where it’s suspected that violations occurred.

The declining number of inspections comes at a time when the TFW program has ballooned, undergoing a massive expansion in the last decade, amid rising allegations of abuse and penalties issued to employers violating the program. Labour experts and advocates say the combination of fewer on-site inspections and rapid growth of the program raises serious concerns about oversight, enforcement and the protection of vulnerable workers.

The number of TFW approvals has more than doubled in recent years, rising to nearly 51,000 approvals in the third quarter of 2024 alone, more than triple the 15,507 approvals from the third quarter of 2021….

Source: Inspections of temporary foreign worker employers in Canada have plummeted — despite a surge of workers

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Bill C-3, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (2025): Interesting data requirement addition

2025/10/10 2 Comments

Complete text of revised bill. Only part that struck my interest that had not been reported previously was the data provision:

26.1 (1) Within three months after the end of each fiscal year, the Minister must prepare a report for the previous year that sets out the number of persons who become citizens as a result of the coming into force of An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (2025), their countries of citizenship other than Canada, if any, their most recent country of residence and the provisions of this Act under which they are citizens.

(2) The Minister must cause the report to be laid before each House of Parliament on any of the first 15 days on which that House is sitting after the report is completed.”

Source: Bill C-3, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (2025)

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