Sun Editorial: ‘Jihadi Jack’ is not Canada’s problem

2023/09/12 Leave a comment

Agree. UK “offloaded” him to Canada despite him having born and raised in the UK and never having spent any time, or significant time, in Canada. Feel for the parents but not a reason to provide consular and other support:

Once again, pressure is being brought on the federal government to provide consular assistance to Canadians in Syrian prison camps.

Canadians are being held in camps run by Kurdish forces that reclaimed the area from the terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) — a military organization that seeks to establish an Islamic caliphate in Iraq and Syria.
A recent Canadian Press story recounted the visit of a four-person “civil society” delegation, including a senator, to the camp to discuss the repatriation to Canada of some of those held there. The report omitted vital details about one of the men mentioned, Jack Letts.At 18, Letts left his home in the U.K. to join the terror group ISIS. Dubbed “Jihadi Jack” by the British media, Letts gets his Canadian citizenship through his father, John Letts. It’s unclear how much time — if any — his son has actually spent in this country. Jack was born and educated in the U.K. and that country has revoked his citizenship. As a signatory to the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, Canada can’t deprive a person of citizenship if it renders them stateless. So the U.K.’s pre-emptive action in revoking Letts’ citizenship has dumped the whole mess into our laps.

In 2019, then Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said, “Canada is disappointed that the United Kingdom has taken this unilateral action to off-load their responsibilities.” He told the CBC, “We have no obligation to facilitate his travel from his present circumstances, and we have no intention of facilitating that travel.”

This country should hold fast to that sentiment. It’s true Letts was young when he made the bad decision to join ISIS. His parents are exhausting every avenue in an attempt to return their son to them, as most parents would. Nevertheless, his presence in this country would be an insult to all those who honour the principles of freedom and democracy and those who have come here to escape terror.

Canadian citizenship is not a flag of convenience. It’s a badge of honour, hard won by those who fought and died for our rights and freedoms. Jack Letts does not in any way embody those values.

Source: EDITORIAL: ‘Jihadi Jack’ is not Canada’s problem

Filed under Multiculturalism, Radicalization Tagged with ,

Minister, advocates say they fear international students will be blamed for housing crisis

2023/09/11 Leave a comment

None of the commentary I have seen blames international students for the housing crisis but rather correctly notes that they, along with high levels of permanent and temporary residents, are significant contributors. After all, over 90 percent of Canada’s population increase is immigrant-driven.

The advocates/activists claims are self-serving, as is often the case. Equally, they fail to acknowledge time lags in increasing housing.

The only encouraging note is Minister Miller’s recognition of the “perverse incentives” by provincial governments and education institutions that have let us to this situation. But his interest in having discussions “with provinces about the systemic underfunding of higher education” is unlikely to deliver any meaningful results in the short-term:

Immigration Minister Marc Miller and student advocates across the country say they worry about immigrants and international students being singled out for blame because of the housing crisis.

“It’s one of my fears,” Miller said in a recent interview with CBC News. “I do worry about the stigmatization of particularly people of diversity that come to this country to make it better, and that includes international students.”

Miller told CBC Radio’s The House last week that Canada is on track to host around 900,000 international students this year. In 2011, that figure was just shy of 240,000.

Source: Minister, advocates say they fear international students will be blamed for housing crisis

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Blaney: Education export: an industry in dire need of a babysitter

2023/09/11 Leave a comment

Good commentary, highlighting the issues and failures. Understates the role of provincial governments in creating the problem by underfunding institutions and thus incentivizing recruitment of international students and the resulting diminishing of education objectives in favour of meeting lower-skilled service and related employment.

So while the federal government needs to take the issue seriously by considering caps and reimposing work time requirements, the provinces have a more important role in shutting down the various private colleges, sometimes under sub-contract to public institutions, that are more employment visa mills than education institutions:

Canada’s export education sector has experienced significant growth in recent years. The federal government has recently completed consultations towards the development of Canada’s third International Education Strategy, coinciding with broader consultations about the future of Canada’s immigration system. Significant changes to Canada’s International Student Program (ISP) are expected in the coming year.

Canada’s education export growth has been unmatched in recent years, but these accomplishments may also be its Achilles’ heel.

Some of its competitor countries have proceeded with more modest growth, while developing and enhancing their policy and regulatory frameworks to ensure sustainability. Canada’s current approach is highly susceptible to unwanted behaviours and future deflation if student expectations don’t match student experiences.

For a number of years, the international education sector has contributed more than CA$20 billion (US$14.6 billion) to the Canadian economy, supporting approximately 170,000 jobs. This roughly equates to the size and value of Canada’s aerospace industry.

However, while there are a plethora of federal regulations impacting the aerospace sector, only a handful impact an international student’s immigration process, and zero federal regulations govern international student recruitment.

Canada now appears ready to reconsider some of the sector-wide issues and its current highly unregulated approach. Whether the new policy initiatives will lead to a sustainable path forward, or allow the status quo to flourish, remains to be seen. However, this may be the federal government’s last chance to act before irreparable harm is perpetuated on Brand Canada.

Brand Canada: Advantages and challenges

Brand Canada has been recognised as the main value proposition by which to lay the foundation for Canada’s education export. Selling international education abroad has come with automatic advantage, based on positive perceptions of Canada, including the standards and values Canada represents.

This country brand advantage should not be considered unique to educational exports, but rather it is an advantage to many areas of Canada’s trade and investment. Mechanisms ensuring the quality of products and services are important.

In recent years, a number of occasions have been reported where Canada’s ISP has not been measuring up to the standards international students have been led to expect.

A lack of housing means that some international students haven’t been able to secure safe accommodation.

Other areas of concern include issues such as international student dependency on food banks and even much darker concerns about illicit drug use, prostitution and even suicide.

Furthermore, some education providers seem to have been poorly prepared to accommodate the sharp growth in student numbers. Provincial government authorities have not taken sufficient action despite concerns on record that some offerings are likely to be deficient in terms of facilities, academic delivery or student support.

The quality of education received has been called into question by recent government oversight audits. For instance, in 2021 in Ontario the auditor general expressed concerns about the processes used to validate whether private colleges are providing quality education. In this context, concerns related to Brand Canada deflation can no longer be considered blown out of proportion.

Band aid solution or brand reboot?

Amidst growing media reports highlighting foul play in Ontario’s international education sector, a registered lobby group, Colleges Ontario, assembled college presidents province-wide to lay out a ‘Standards of Practice’.

However, it is unclear to what extent this type of self-regulatory approach will lead to any significant improvements. For instance, the institution with the largest international student body refused to sign the statement of principles.

Some stakeholders who find the current status quo acceptable or want to see a relaxation of the rules that exist are those who are most likely to be exploiting the gaps in policy and oversight.

For instance, some overseas recruiters are purchasing institutions in Canada and consequently control the full cycle of recruitment, admissions and administration. This may enable alarming business practices, such as producing fake tuition receipts or transcripts for students who have never attended classes.

Some colleges continue to be listed by the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) despite the suspicions that many of their enrolled international students are not actively pursuing their studies. The data received under the Access to Information Act show potential non-compliance rates that are extremely high (89%-100 %).

Practices at public institutions also have concerning aspects if international students’ best interests are considered, such as brazen tuition fee increases, with the cost of tuition sometimes doubling from one intake to the next.

Some institutions also issue up to multiple times the volume of letters of acceptance than they have enrolment capacity for, then rescind them at the last minute or force large volumes of deferrals to intake periods up to two years later.

It is unclear whether, and to what extent, admission standards have been compromised, but the data received under the Freedom of Information Act demonstrate that some institutions issue letters of acceptance to 99% of all international applicants.

The promise of permanence

The draw of skilled, high-paying post-graduation employment opportunities is another example of a Brand Canada promise that has now worn thin.

Offshore-based education agencies run campaigns linking the prospects of international education in Canada to the realisation of wealth and success at a young age, justifying the cost of international tuition fees to new cohorts.

However, there is limited evidence to support these claims, and research points to issues where international graduates often have to accept precarious or low-skilled employment and-or poorer economic outcomes.

Of most grave concern is also Canada’s biggest draw: the prospects of students transitioning to permanent residency. This education-immigration pathway is often marketed openly and routinely abroad, with the standard marketing spiel holding that upon completion of an academic programme and a post-graduation work phase, students will have the opportunity to stay in Canada permanently – as if it was that simple.

For instance, 2022 data obtained under the Access to information Act from IRCC suggests that only about 10% of people transition annually to permanent residency through Canada’s post-graduation work permit programme. While other options exist, these are limited in volume and-or rife with the potential for exploitation.

Is the gig up?

There are some signs that the IRCC is set to take some meaningful action. There can be no doubt that one of the greatest irritants to the federal government, caused by lack of oversight and control, has been the strained resources and resulting immigration processing backlogs caused by a dramatic increase of non-bona fide study permit volumes.

The federal government is the party that has the most to lose. Once Brand Canada is damaged, the value proposition used for education exports becomes untenable. The way the advantages of a positive Brand Canada have filled up classrooms is the same way negative impressions can sink future investment, contracts and collaboration – for generations.

The damage to Brand Canada comes with a real long-term cost that reaches well beyond the international education sector. That is exactly what should be motivating significant federal action now, if protecting the interests of international students is not seen as an equally worthy cause to do so. In the education-export industry, Brand Canada has been without a babysitter for too long.

Earl Blaney is a regulated Canadian immigration consultant who has been an outspoken critic of Canada’s international study policy. Most of his research focuses on exposing concerns associated with inadequate consumer protection standards in Canada’s edu-export industry. Dr Pii-Tuulia Nikula is a principal academic at the Eastern Institute of Technology (Te Pukenga) in New Zealand. Most of Pii-Tuulia’s research focuses on international student recruitment and sustainability questions within the international education sector.

Source: Education export: an industry in dire need of a babysitter

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LILLEY: As StatsCan shows immigration soaring, is it time for pause?

2023/09/11 Leave a comment

Will be interesting to see whether the increased discussion of the linkages between immigration and housing pressures (not just in right wing media) will have an impact on the Conservatives being public about any reservations they have regarding current levels of permanent and temporary migrants:

Have we reached an immigration tipping point in Canada? Figures released by Statistics Canada on Friday definitely point in that direction.

In releasing the latest employment figures, StatsCan said we are bringing in people faster than we are creating jobs.

“Employment rose by 40,000 (+0.2%) in August. This increase in employment was outpaced by population growth (+103,000; +0.3%) and the employment rate — the proportion of the population aged 15 and older who are employed—fell 0.1 percentage points to 61.9%,” the report said.

That figure of 103,000 in a month is only the working age population of people 15 and older. It doesn’t include young children. Still, bringing in 103,000 in a month is the equivalent of adding Pickering in Ontario, Lethbridge in Alberta or Kamloops in British Columbia.

Since the beginning of the year, StatsCan says we have averaged 81,000 newcomers aged 15 and older per month. That will equate to just over one million new people this year if the trend continues.

“Given this pace of population growth, employment growth of approximately 50,000 per month is required for the employment rate to remain constant,” the report said.

This level of growth is double what Canada was experiencing between 2017-2019 and before the pandemic effectively closed borders.

So, can we create 50,000 jobs per month so that employment keeps pace with immigration?

In the last 12 months we’ve been over the 50,000 jobs mark four times, lost jobs in two of those months and for the other six, didn’t hit the mark. If we continue to bringin in an average of 81,000 working aged people per month but don’t create at least 50,000 new jobs, then the unemployment rate will go up.

A report from StatsCan issued on August 1 looked at this issue of immigration and employment and found that for the most part, employment has kept up with immigration. That was before this latest increase though and with each increase it becomes more difficult to manage.

Over the last several years we have gone from bringing in between 250,000 to 300,000 new permanent residents each year — people who are immigrating to settle here — to more than 430,000 permanent residents in 2022. The government’s goal is to lift that to 500,000 new permanent residents a year by 2025, a mark they will easily hit.

We have gone from a few hundred thousand international students studying in Canada each year to more than 800,000 last year and estimates of more than 900,000 this year. None of this takes into account the thousands of people claiming asylum in Canada each month or the hundreds of thousands of temporary foreign workers.

A recent CIBC report suggested that Canada’s population count could be off by one million thanks to an undercounting of non-permanent residents, mostly temporary foreign workers.

We have a housing crisis driven by more demand than supply and the ever-increasing population, especially among foreign students, is adding to that. This week we saw a story of international students in North Bay living in tents because of the lack of housing options available.

For the most part, Canadians have been supportive of high levels of immigration. All the major political parties have supported policies of increased immigration.

The current levels, though, unprecedented in our lifetime, could change all of that and result in calls to slow things down.

We don’t have enough housing for the people already in the country, never mind adding a new city per month, but we are also told we need the new arrivals to fill the jobs to build the houses. Our health care system is regularly at a tipping point without enough doctors and nurses to deal with the population already here, but we are also told that we need newcomers to fill the jobs in health care.

Yet, when they get here, we won’t have proper housing, health care, education for their children or infrastructure for the communities they settle in.

It is quite a conundrum.

Is any of this good for the country, or good for the people who are coming here, quite possibly on the false notion that Canada is a country that still functions properly?

Perhaps now is a time to hit pause, perhaps slow the intake until we have a handle on the situation and are sure we can absorb this many people so quickly.

Source: LILLEY: As StatsCan shows immigration soaring, is it time for pause?

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

John Ivison: Who really killed Canadian moderation?

2023/09/11 Leave a comment

Thoughtful analysis:

I’ve been immersed in Winston Churchill’s My Early Years, a ripping yarn that sees the future wartime leader take part in a cavalry charge at the battle of Omdurman in Sudan and escape captivity during the Boer War in the late 1890s.

As gripping as the incredible Boy’s Own adventures are his accounts of the fin-de-siecle British Empire — which, when he is writing in 1928, he described as a “vanished age.”

Ages always vanish, of course, usually because of traumatic cataclysms like wars or pandemics.

In our own time, COVID seems to have been the catalyst for a new age of discontent, accelerating anxieties that were already percolating, and taking with it the classical liberal consensus that dominated the postwar world.

It is paradoxical that a prime minister who ventured the thought that Canada is stronger because of its differences, rather than in spite of them, is now presiding over a political landscape dominated as never before by ill-will and alienation.

Politics in this country may never have been exactly civil — it’s been said the best explanation for the good old days is a bad memory. But the respect and a broad policy consensus that undeniably existed has been replaced by loathing and partisan hostility. Illiberalism is the dominant strain on both the left and the right.

There is empirical evidence that Canada is a meaner country than it was a few short years ago.

Police-reported hate crimes have soared 72 per cent from 2019 to 2021. The homicide rate has risen steadily to its highest level in 30 years. Meanwhile, social trust has plummeted. Only a third of adults now agree that most people can be trusted.

The political system is a direct casualty of that disillusionment. A recent study by the Public Policy Forum into the rise of polarization, appropriately called Far and Widening, said only 50 per cent of the respondents it polled believe voting is the best way to enact change. One person in six said that only taking power from “global elites” would effect real change.

It used to be the case that most people could agree on what many consider to be “Canada’s advantage” — an immigration policy that has attracted the best and brightest from around the world.

Yet that too is breaking down, in large part because of careless, incoherent federal government policy.

Last week, a video on social media featured a long lineup of what appeared to be Southeast Asian students queuing to apply for jobs at a Food Basics supermarket in Hamilton, Ont. The comments in response to the video suggested that a nativist backlash to Liberal immigration policy is in full swing.

The government has overseen an explosion in international students coming to Canada — 900,000 this year alone — many of whom are using education as a back door to citizenship.

By paying tuition fees of around $25,000, students can come to Canada, study part-time at a private college, work legally in low-wage jobs and stay in the country for years after graduating. Coupled with a Liberal plan to boost the number of permanent residents to 500,000 by 2025 — double the number from a decade earlier — it is clear that there has been a massive increase in low-skilled immigration that threatens to put pressure on wages at the bottom end of the labour market.

The lobby group Colleges and Institutes Canada, whose members are the main beneficiaries of the huge influx in tuition fees, acknowledged as much when it said in a statement that the cap on international students being contemplated by Ottawa could “exacerbate current labour shortages.” A reminder: this is a program for international students, not temporary foreign workers.

As many economists have noted, such high numbers of newcomers have the happy corollary for the government of boosting GDP — immigration is likely to account for the total output increases of 1.5 per cent in 2023 and 2024.

But those gains will mask a cumulative decrease in output per person and add to the housing crisis. In short, Canadians will be worse off under this policy and resistance to similar levels of immigration will surely follow.

The Liberals have to accept a disproportionate share of the blame for the state we’re in because they have been in government for nearly eight years.

But the conditions for a more bitter politics were already ripe in 2015. After the Second World War, average real wages doubled in roughly 30 years. In the subsequent half-century they have been relatively stagnant. Poll after poll has shown the majority of Canadians think the next generation will have a lower standard of living than their parents did — an economic backdrop against which it is hard to generate optimism.

The advent of social media that prioritizes provocative content has helped erode the common ground most Canadians shared in the postwar world.

Politicians have found that what former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole called “performance politics” works for them: ramping up the rhetoric and demonizing their opponents in order to get noticed. MPs not viewed as being sufficiently combative are considered suspect by their colleagues and partisan constituents.

O’Toole’s successor, Pierre Poilievre, has fine-tuned the cartoonish manipulation of the outrage machine that is X (formerly Twitter), combining bombastic rhetoric and an indifference to truth. Impressively, in one recent tweet, he managed to malign the trifecta of Conservative scourges — the prime minister, the CBC and the World Economic Forum — in under 140 characters.

As Justin Ling, author of the PPF report on polarization, noted, political parties used to be big tents, a microcosm of the country at large, but they now more closely resemble special interest groups.

The pandemic only accelerated that division of Canadians into two tribes, when a material minority emerged who were vocal in their belief that governing elites had lost their connection to the people they are meant to serve. That gave birth to the truckers’ convoy protest that blockaded downtown Ottawa last year. It is a significant indication of widespread disillusionment that one poll suggested a majority of 18- to 34-year-olds sympathized with the protest against vaccine mandates, even if they didn’t agree with the blockade.

Justin Trudeau did little to reconcile alienated voters by calling a snap election and using vaccine status as a wedge issue. He even referred to his opponents as “often anti-science, often misogynistic, often racist” and wondered if they should be tolerated.

For a leader who is quick to blame those who disagree with him of engaging in “the politics of fear and division,” it revealed his own tendency toward intolerance.

His critics contend that Trudeau has been on a quest to transform Canada into something more closely resembling his own progressive leanings — and of portraying those who oppose him as uninformed, irresponsible or motivated by unworthy goals.

Moderation and the modest compromises that characterized much of Canadian political history have been jettisoned in favour of lofty goals that often come with unintended consequences, such as the immigration targets. It is telling that the debate around the cabinet table apparently was not whether 500,000 newcomers was too many, but rather whether that number was ambitious enough.

In the current fervid political environment, it is unrealistic to expect a politician to emerge who will appeal for calmer heads to prevail, like the medieval knight in the middle of melee in the Far Side cartoon: “Hey, c’mon. Hold it! Hold it! Or someone’s gonna get hurt.”

Voters are in a vitriolic mood. Appealing to their better angels is likely to leave any politician feeling like Winston Churchill after his first abortive venture into politics, “deflated as a bottle of champagne when it has been half-emptied and left uncorked for a night.”

Source: John Ivison: Who really killed Canadian moderation?

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Whitzman: Stopping immigration won’t fix Canada’s housing crisis, Triandafyllidou: As mortgage costs rise, it is international students’ rent keeping households afloat:

2023/09/11 Leave a comment

A number of weak commentaries trying to change the narrative on immigration and pressures on housing (along with healthcare and infrastructure). None of these address the time lags in approving new housing.

Starting with the more intelligent analysis by Carolyn Whitzman, who notes the policy failures in housing policies (but fails to recognize the failure of immigration policies) and the need for better data:

As the country’s housing crisis intensifies, there’s been a lot of finger-pointing: at foreign investors snapping up residential real estate, at municipal governments and prohibitive zoning by-laws, and now, at immigrants and international students, the latest group thrust into the spotlight for exacerbating the crunch.

Canada is, by far, the fastest-growing country in the G7. We passed the 40 million mark in June, after the population surged by over a million in 2022. Nearly all of those new Canadians were temporary and permanent immigrants. The international student population has also skyrocketed—we’re on track to welcome 900,000 international students this year, three times as many as in 2013.

Although Canada’s major political parties have been careful not to blame newcomers for housing challenges, Immigration Minister Marc Miller said that “volume is volume, and it does have an impact,” in reference to the influx of immigrants. The federal government, which is not backing down from its recently increased annual target of 500,000 new permanent residents by 2025, is also considering a cap on international students as a way to ease the pressure.

But limiting immigration isn’t the solution, says Carolyn Whitzman, housing policy researcher at the University of Ottawa and expert adviser to the University of British Columbia’s Housing Assessment Resource Tools project. In fact, since current estimates of housing need don’t take into account millions of Canadian residents, as well as projected newcomers, we have a woefully uninformed picture of the situation. “Immigrants are an easy target,” says Whitzman. We spoke to her about why we’re so eager to shift the focus to immigration, the dearth of data on who actually requires housing, and the urgent need for a national social housing program.

A growing chorus of people are openly blaming immigration for the housing crunch. What’s your take?
Even if Canada stopped immigration tomorrow, we still couldn’t serve the population who live here. Nearly 1.5 million Canadian households are in what’s called “core housing need,” which refers to households that are living in unaffordable, overcrowded or otherwise uninhabitable homes, where an affordable and adequate home is not available in their area. Millions of other Canadians—homeless people, students, people in congregate housing like long-term care and group homes—aren’t even factored into core housing need. How will their need for low-cost homes be helped by restricting immigration or foreign students? Where’s the evidence? Immigrants and international students are an easy target.

An easy target, sure, but won’t ever-increasing numbers of permanent residents and international students put additional strain on the housing market?
Yes. So will the formation of new households, including young adults moving away from home or couples divorcing.

Why has the focus of the housing crisis conversation shifted so abruptly to immigration?
It appears to me to be a sign of desperation. Immigrants have always been blamed for the housing crisis. Look back 100 years and people were against building boarding houses because they were scared of foreigners moving in and endangering their families. Nowadays, politicians are blaming foreign investors for housing shortages, too. I’m very impatient about people pointing fingers at immigrants for the housing crisis, because it has very little to do with immigration and a lot to do with government policy.

Which government policy?
That’s the problem—there hasn’t been a national housing policy since the early 1990s. That’s when the federal government decided it was a provincial or territorial responsibility, and in the case of Ontario, the province punted it to municipalities. There are more and more international students each year who need places to live, but colleges and universities are provincially regulated. Immigration, on the other hand, is a federal responsibility. There needs to be coordination between federal, provincial and municipal governments. And that needs to start with an accurate sense of who needs housing, where, and at what price.

Do we have that information?
Partially. We know that new migrants are among the groups most likely to be in core housing need. Our data from UBC’s Housing Assessment Resource Tools project shows that in 2021, 16 per cent of new migrant households—those who moved to Canada since the last census in 2016—were in core housing need. That’s higher than the Canadian average of 10 per cent. Refugee claimants were the most likely households to be in core housing need, almost one in five. But the census only tracks housing need in private, non-farm and non-student households.

So we don’t have data on students?
No. The federal government has zero information on student housing needs, international or otherwise. In 1991, when the measure for core housing need was created by the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) and Statistics Canada, the decision was made to leave out students because it was considered a “temporary situation of voluntary poverty.” As a result, we don’t have any information on what students can afford to pay, whether they’re overcrowded or living in mouldy basement apartments. That’s unusual for a developed economy like Canada. France, Finland, the Netherlands, Germany—every country I know of with strong non-market housing programs builds student housing into it.

Why the lack of data?
I think it goes back to the ’90s, again, when the federal government backed out of housing policy. It’s been three decades of people passing the buck.

A classic tale of Canadian federalism.
I won’t disagree with you there.

And yet the federal government is looking into a possible cap on the number of permits issued to international students.
I believe we need evidence-driven policy instead. A good example is the Rapid Housing Initiation, which was first proposed as a COVID-19 relief measure in 2020. The initial target was 3,000 very affordable, rapidly constructed (or renovated) homes for the homeless. About 4,700 homes were constructed or under construction within 18 months. It was renewed in 2021 and 2022—the total number of units created is expected to be over 15,500 units. It needs to be an ongoing program.

The Liberals did introduce a national housing strategy in 2017, which promised to restore Ottawa’s involvement in building social housing. And legislation was passed in 2019 designating housing a human right.
Sure, but look at the national housing strategy. It literally has nothing to say about students. Do they not exist? Are they not part of the housing market?

You mentioned the fact that new migrants are more likely to be in core housing need. How else are they impacted by the housing crisis?
Asylum-seeking families, for instance, tend to be larger households, and there’s a critical shortage of rental housing that has three bedrooms or more. Also, new migrants traditionally moved to the inner city, where there are social services and other resources. But there’s no affordable housing there anymore, so migrants are moving to areas that aren’t near services or jobs or public transit, and most don’t have Canadian driver’s licences on arrival. All that exacerbates settlement issues, like isolation and unemployment. The federal government needs to think about an integrated policy between immigration and housing.

It sounds like you’re on the same page as Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc, who said that the government should “tailor its policies on immigration and housing to acknowledge the link between the two.” What would that look like?
For one thing, we’d be able to project population increases over the next 10 years. Remarkably, the 2017 national housing strategy we’ve referred to has targets that don’t include the impact of population growth through immigration.

The CMHC projected that we’ll need 5.8 million homes by 2030 to reach affordability. Do figures like that take immigration into account?
They don’t, though I do know that the author of that report is planning to publish a follow-up to revise that figure in light of current immigration projections. We can’t plan for housing if we don’t know how many people are coming in. Canada is a rich country and a smart country—we have the highest rate of individuals with higher education in the world. So if we’re a rich, smart country, and we can’t solve the housing crisis, what are we even doing?

Speaking of solving it, you’ve got a new book coming out next year, How to Home: Fixing Canada’s Housing Crisis. Spoiler alert, but how do we fix it?
We need a calculation of supply shortage that doesn’t just tell us we need X million units, but actually gets into what kind of housing and where. We have one of the lowest rates of social housing in the world. And we’re going to have to scale up purpose-built rentals, rather than condos, again. That kind of fell off the cliff in the ’70s. Back then, during another period of high immigration, we were literally building more housing than we are today because we had a national housing social housing program and purpose-built rentals.

What is one pragmatic step the government could take?
Enable purpose-built rentals again, with some conditionality. In other words, you can’t have a 30-storey building in the middle of the Greenbelt, for instance. There needs to be some conditions around location, price point and environmental sustainability. There were measures in place in the ’60s and ’70s that led to the construction of most of our current purpose-built rental stock—meaning most apartment buildings are 40 to 60 years old, which is a whole other problem. But we need a social housing program. We haven’t had one for three decades, and we’re seeing the impact of that.

Is a federal social housing program in our future, realistically?
Absolutely. The federal government promised a new co-op housing strategy in the 2022 budget. Sources tell me it’s ready to roll. I’m not sure why it hasn’t yet, but every single major federal evaluation of the national housing strategy has asked why a non-market, social housing program isn’t part of the plan. Everyone from Scotiabank on down is saying you need to start by doubling social housing. It’s the most direct way to start building the housing that people need most.

How do we quickly build a lot of homes?
In the post-war period in Canada, housing patterns were used—the CMHC literally had Type A, Type B, Type C stamped on the front of their “victory houses.” That happened in Sweden, too, with the Million Homes Program in the 1960s and ’70s. Kitchens and bathrooms of a predetermined size were built off-site. That helped streamline construction—and led to the pre-eminence of Ikea, by the way. There are currently a whole bunch of modular housing providers who have expanded with the new rapid housing initiative, and that’s a positive thing Canada could export. There’s a big advantage to going modular and building off-site, particularly in northern climates where the construction season is shorter. It’s really problematic if construction workers can’t afford to live in the cities they’re building.

Last year, Canada’s purpose-built rental apartment vacancy rate hit 1.9 per cent, its lowest level since 2001.
The best metaphor I can think of is the credits from The Simpsons, where everyone’s running for a seat on the same sofa. We have students running toward the sofa, seniors looking to downsize running toward the sofa. People who would have been able to buy homes in a previous generation are also in the race. So if we want everybody to have a seat, we need to build more sofas and make sure that they’re the right kind.

Source: Stopping immigration won’t fix Canada’s housing crisis

Anna Triandafyllidou argues that the housing needs can be accommodated by basement apartments and rooms but without any supporting data on their availability or the degree to which it helps homeowners pay their mortgages.

In recent months there has been a heated debate about Canada’s housing affordability crisis and the role of international students in the mess.

Some argue that, particularly in Canada’s big three (Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver), international students drive up rents because they are prepared to rent rooms in larger apartments or houses, and even share rooms with flatmates, bringing the overall possible rent of a unit to levels that are totally unaffordable for a local family.

In many smaller cities and towns, the sheer numbers of international students are also said to put pressure on housing, as there are simply not enough units for rent, regardless of the cost.

The question thus arises whether the average Canadian family is worse off because international students are creating an impossible rental market.

It is my contention that this is not the case, and I would actually argue the opposite: International students are saving both the average Canadian homeowner (and mortgage holder) and the Canadian banking system. How is that?

International students are high-paying and often exploited tenants in basement apartments and spare bedrooms across Canada’s large and smaller cities. Some are indeed contributing to competition in the market. But the housing crisis began long before the current surge in international students, and many of them, rather than competing with domestic renters, are living in arrangements that Canadians would not be seeking anyway.

Moreover, the rents that international students pay are allowing Canadian families to survive the Bank of Canada’s string of interest-rate hikes and their galloping mortgage payments. This, in turn, helps the banking system, as it grapples with the rising risk of defaults.

Recent reports show that, as the central bank tries to tame inflationwith higher borrowing costs, several Canadian banks have allowed borrowers to extend their mortgage amortizations to more than 55 years in an effort to keep the loans afloat and allow households to keep up their payments.

Anecdotal evidence suggests many families are renting not only their basements but their bedrooms to international students. In many cases, parents and children have squeezed into one or two rooms to leave the spare rooms for renters. Networking often works through friends and extended family, as many homeowners prefer to have a student from their own ethnic and/or linguistic background, to make sharing the home easier for everyone.

These rentals play a crucial and still unaccounted role in keeping households afloat now that their mortgage payments have grown sharply in less than a year.

While this is not a long-term solution for the housing affordability crisis, nor a strategy for international student migration, these insights point to a few ideas that could help in the short and medium terms.

Colleges and universities should be asked to arrange affordable accommodations for their incoming international students as part of the study permit application process. Such accommodation arrangements can include tailored schemes where, for instance, seniors are paired with students, offering full board for a reasonable price while the student helps by doing chores and grocery shopping or befriending the older person.

Young families could also be paired with international students and receive tax breaks on the rental income they make.

Provincial governments should provide strong incentives for colleges and universities to build more student residences.

International student migration needs to be reconsidered in Canada in some ways. We need to identify both bad practices (such as overexploiting international student streams as a revenue and sustainability strategy with little educational value) and bad actors (brokers and postsecondary institutions that prey on international students and their families, selling false promises for a path to migration). We also need to offer adequate services and protections to international students, including access to health care and clear pathways to job prospects.

But we must remember that international students are not the cause of Canada’s housing crisis – and that many households would be a lot worse off without them.

Anna Triandafyllidou is the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration at Toronto Metropolitan University.

Source: As mortgage costs rise, it is international students’ rent keeping households afloat

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,

Australia’s multicultural framework can no longer be separate from … – Pearls and Irritations

2023/09/09 Leave a comment

While errs on the side of discounting the risks of foreign influence and interference, fundamental point that foreign and multiculturalism policies should be more coherent, to which I would add a caution of not being overly influenced by diaspora politics and issues (all too often the case):

A new multicultural framework needs to recognise that the well-being of Australia’s multicultural communities is closely related to, and inevitably affected by, geopolitics, and by Australia’s foreign policy towards migrants’ countries of origin. It is no longer viable to conceptualise foreign policy and multicultural affairs as two separate entities.

The Australian government is currently conducting a Multicultural Framework Review, and I have made a submission.

My submission is focused on the need for Australia’s multiculturalism to be reconceptualised and redesigned by taking into account the opportunities and challenges posed by current geopolitics, and by the growing complexity of the myriad Chinese-Australian communities.

This focus on the Australian-Chinese communities is in response to a number of unique factors: (a) a higher percentage of arrivals from the PRC than in previous periods; (b) a fast-changing geopolitical dynamics featuring growing tension and hostility between the US and China; and (c) Australia’s foreign-policy positioning vis-à-vis the US and China, and the Australian government’s national security and defence strategy, which increasingly imagines China as the nation’s greatest military threat.

In my submission, I have made a few recommendations

  • At the conceptual level, a new multicultural framework needs to recognise that the well-being of Australia’s multicultural communities is closely related to, and inevitably affected by, geopolitics, and by Australia’s foreign policy towards migrants’ countries of origin. It is no longer viable to conceptualise foreign policy and multicultural affairs as two separate entities. This new reality may have serious implications for the current bureaucratic structure of various departments in the federal government, and the relationships between them.
  • In terms of the well-being of various Chinese-Australian communities, the government should recognise that the ‘China threat’ discourse has caused serious concern among the Chinese-Australian communities, many of whom feel that, caught in the hostility between their motherland and their new country of residence, they have been subject to undue suspicion and distrust. My recent research shows a worryingly low level of acceptance of the Chinese-Australian communities by the Australian public, and a low level of trust between English-language media and Chinese-Australian communities, especially Mandarin-speaking first-generation Australians and permanent residents. These tendencies alert us to serious problems in the nation’s bid for multicultural harmony and social inclusiveness.
  • Future multicultural policy needs to put the principle of human rights back into its framework, especially in the context of countering foreign interference. The Chinese-Australian communities are complex and diverse in terms of political views, social values, and cultural practices. In light of this diversity or sometimes even conflict, the overall principle of respecting individuals’ right to freedom of expression is paramount. For this reason, just as individuals speaking out against the Chinese government should be safe from harassment and abuse, those who wish to speak in support of the Chinese government should not automatically be seen as brainwashed by China’s propaganda, or – even worse – suspected or accused of operating as agents and spies of the Chinese state.
  • Similarly, free access to all social media platforms including WeChat needs to be respected. Naturally, WeChat should comply with all relevant Australian regulations. However, because WeChat is by far the most useful platform for PRC migrants, it is important that the government respect this community’s right to stay connected with their families, friends and networks in China. It is crucial that the issue of WeChat should not be weaponised by politicians who single-mindedly push for a ban or partial ban in the name of security interests.
  • In line with the goal of developing adequate communication platforms to reach out to non-English speaking populations, the government should continue to use Chinese social media such as WeChat and Xiaohongshu to facilitate political engagement, better delivery of social services in aged care, health care and disability care, as well as to promote social inclusion and belonging.
  • More than ever before, there is a serious need to support ongoing research in order to identify feasible strategies, methods and pathways of ensuring inclusion and acceptance of Chinese-Australians, especially first-generation PRC migrants. The government should actively harness the hitherto largely untapped resource of the Chinese-Australian communities as assets in defending Australia’s national security and national interest, rather than regarding them as primarily a liability. Identifying effective strategies to promote their social, cultural and political integration should be considered as an urgent matter of national interest and national security.

Chinese-Australians, social inclusion and the national interest

In recent years, and especially since COVID-19 and during the last period of government by the Coalition, we have witnessed growing anti-Chinese racism, the demonisation of Chinese-Australians, suspicion of Chinese-Australians’ political loyalties, and a lack of civic and citizenship education for new migrants.

Social cohesiveness has been identified as a key element of Australia’s national interest, underpinning Australia’s prosperity and security. Indeed, security commentators make the case that ‘building trusted and apolitical engagement with all parts of the community, and notably Australians of Chinese origin’ is an important component of formulating an overarching national interest strategy. Facilitating the integration of minority groups, particularly those as sizeable as the Chinese-Australian communities, is not only consistent with a liberal perspective of justice and equality, but it is also a matter of pragmatic importance, especially if Australia is intent on growing its own political influence and increasing its national power in strategic competition with foreign coercive influence.

For the same reason, Osmond Chiu cautions that pursuing our foreign policy through a defence and security lens needs to stop fuelling ‘the perception that Chinese-Australians would be acceptable collateral damage in a conflict’.

This view – that Chinese-Australians would be acceptable collateral damage in a conflict – seems to have been implicitly adopted by many commentators in our media, as well as by some think-tanks and politicians. This has been extremely damaging to the legitimacy and validity of the ethos and philosophy of multiculturalism.

A new multicultural framework needs to reflect the fact that the well-being of Chinese-Australians is closely related to, and inevitably affected by, current geopolitics, by Australia’s foreign policy towards China, and by Australia’s national security policy favouring a close alliance with the US. It is increasingly difficult to conceptualise the two as separate entities.

Given this, the challenge to facilitate the social integration of this particular cohort is enormous. Recently, Andrew Jakubowicz commented on what he has called ‘Sinophobia in times of COVID-19’. He writes:

Identity within and attachment to Australia for ethnic immigrants depend on how well the system they enter protects their human rights from the omnipresent threats from racists and xenophobes. They will not release their grip on the old if the new emerges as threatening and potentially dangerous.

Lack of Information and Communication Platforms for Practical Needs
While many people in these communities feel marginalised and excluded in political and social terms, in practical terms there is also a gap in the government’s efforts to deliver a wide range of services, including aged care, health care, legal aid, and myriad other social initiatives, such as GambleAware and information about domestic violence.

Academics who conduct research on various aspects of the Chinese-Australian communities have demonstrated the importance of Chinese social media platforms in the everyday lives of people in these communities. For instance, Bingqin Li (UNSW) has been studying how community organisations such as the Chinese Australian Services Society (CASS) use WeChat to recruit volunteers in aged care and self-help groups. WeChat is particularly useful for community-based service providers to contact hard-to-reach older people. Li reports that some of these older people have been quietly contributing to the shortage of aged care labour in Australia for many years. But now, with the help of WeChat, CASS has recruited many more volunteers, including many new migrants from mainland China.

For older Chinese Australians, WeChat is essentially a lifeline for overcoming social isolation and learning about Australian culture, regulations, social services, events and networks. If it were banned or its use restricted, many of these elders would return to a state of effectively being ‘blind, deaf and mute’.

Similarly, Tina Du, (currently at University of South Australia) has studied the information behaviour of Chinese migrants over the age of 67, and found that WeChat plays a significant and essential role in enabling these senior citizens to live in Australia and remain connected with China. This is especially relevant, given the challenges identified in the Australian Government’s recent 2023 Intergenerational Report.

Some researchers are also urging health professionals to use WeChat to assist their patients. Dr Ling Zhang (Sydney University) is a nurse practitioner and research fellow specialising in the care of patients with cardiovascular disease. Based on her finding of low levels of eHealth literacy among migrant communities, Zhang argues that WeChat should be used as a platform for GPs and cardiologists to disseminate health information by health care providers, given its wide reach.

This growing body of evidence-based research is pointing to the crucial role that WeChat is playing in the lives of many Chinese-Australian migrants, and so far, no concrete evidence has been identified that shows that WeChat is a threat of any kind to Australia’s national security.

Senator James Paterson, who chaired the Senate Select Committee on Foreign Interference through Social Media, believes that ‘We must also harden the resilience of our diaspora communities targeted by transnational repression to protect their right to free speech’.

To echo Senator Paterson’s call to protect our diaspora communities’ right to free speech, it is important to point out that the right to freedom of expression and free access to all social media platforms, including WeChat, indeed needs to be respected. While WeChat should be expected to comply with all relevant Australian regulations, it is also important that the government recognise and accept that WeChat is the most widely used social media platform for PRC migrants, and has become essential for them in staying connected with their families, friends and networks in China. Whatever policies emerge in this space must respect this community’s right to use the platform for such purposes. Moreover, these policies must encourage the government to harness the platform as a way of improving PRC migrants’ capacity to access information about social services and other vital government functions. It is crucial that the issue of WeChat should not be weaponised by politicians who single-mindedly push for a ban or a partial ban in the name of security interests.

The government should not only continue its nascent use of WeChat to facilitate political engagement, to deliver social services in aged care, health care, disability care, and to encourage and promote inclusion and belonging; it should also fund further research to identify ways of doing more with the platform in these spheres, and to do it better.

Summary

The question of how to address the issue of Australian-Chinese communities is an integral component of the multicultural framework review. A number of factors – a large number of recent arrivals from the PRC, a fast-changing geopolitical dynamics featuring growing tension and hostility between the US and China, and Australia’s increasing tendency in its foreign policy to imagine China as our biggest military threat – come to bear on the current review of the multicultural framework. Much work – overall reconceptualisation, governing structure, a rethinking of policy, and the design of practical strategies – remains to be done. The government will benefit enormously by actively seeking the views of scholars, multicultural agencies and community stakeholders in updating its framework.

Wanning Sun is a professor of media and cultural studies at the University of Technology, Sydney. She also serves as the deputy director of the UTS Australia-China Relations Institute.

Source: Australia’s multicultural framework can no longer be separate from … – Pearls and Irritations

Filed under foreign policy, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Democrats press McCarthy, Jeffries to save key naturalization grant – Yahoo News

2023/09/09 Leave a comment

Meanwhile, in Canada, few if any settlement funding goes to citizenship preparation:

A group of Democrats is appealing to party leaders in the House to restore funding to a grant program that helps immigrants prepare for naturalization.

In a letter led by Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.), 26 members called on Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) to support funding for the Citizenship and Integration Grant Program (CIGP).

The program is a relatively tiny fraction of the Department of Homeland Security budget: It has awarded $132 million in grants since 2009.

But the lawmakers say its effects are substantial.

Through 579 competitive grants over that time, the program “has helped more than 300,000 lawful permanent residents prepare for U.S. citizenship,” they wrote.

Still, they noted, that number represents a fraction of a percent of the estimated 9 million permanent residents eligible to naturalize.

A key target population for grants under the program is immigrants who are poorer and who lack English skills; 32 percent of eligible immigrants targeted by the program have income below 150 percent of the poverty line and about 3 million “speak little to no English.”

“By providing increased assistance through the Grant Program, this eligible population could have greater access to naturalization and English-language classes,” wrote the lawmakers.

Yet all funding for the grant, originally proposed at $10 million for fiscal 2024, was scrapped entirely in the House Appropriations Committee in June.

On the Senate side, the Homeland Security Appropriations bill cleared the committee with $23.5 million for the CIGP.

Gomez, who has pushed to increase funding for the program, last month sent a dear colleague letter to Democrats and Republicans, asking them to join his appeal.

Though only Democrats answered, the co-signers include representatives from nearly every region of the country.

In their letter, the lawmakers made the case that more funding is required to support immigrants who wish to naturalize and who don’t live in cities with high immigrant concentrations.

“… [W]hile [United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)] reviewed and supported funding for only 66 organizations nationwide, recipient organizations served both traditional immigrant population centers and emerging immigrant population centers in only 35 states, out of 50 states and several territories,” they wrote.

“Increasing funding for the CIGP will both support immigrant-serving institutions, as well as increase the capacity for additional qualified legal service providers to assist with the naturalization application and process.”

That increased capacity, the lawmakers added, would ease pressure on the overburdened USCIS, “by reducing filing errors, likely contributing to the agency-wide effort towards reducing casework backlogs and improving processing times.”

Source: Democrats press McCarthy, Jeffries to save key naturalization grant – Yahoo News

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with , ,

John Ivison: Canada’s UN envoy warns of a North American migrant crisis unlike any other

2023/09/09 Leave a comment

Of note:

Bob Rae has seen more than his fair share of distressing scenes as Canada’s special envoy to Myanmar, advising the Trudeau government on the Rohingya crisis.

But he said his visit to Panama’s Darién Gap in late August, to bear witness to the irregular migration crisis unfolding in one of the world’s least accessible places, was particularly heartbreaking.

Darién has become a funnel point for a great migration that is turning into a humanitarian crisis, as hundreds of thousands of people brave raging rivers, robberies, sexual assaults and venomous snakes to try to make their way north toward the United States.

Rae said the increasing number of children and single mothers making the dangerous trek is especially concerning.

Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations was flown into the remote jungle area at the invitation of the Panamanian government to observe the torrent of distressed humanity crossing by foot and small boat from South America to Central America.

Rae said 4,000 people arrived in Panamanian reception areas last Monday. “The numbers have really skyrocketed,” the former Ontario premier said.

In 2019, just 24,000 people made the perilous 100-kilometre jungle crossing, which can take up to 10 days. The flow rose to 250,000 last year, according to UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency, and it expects that this year numbers will rise to 600,000.

To put that in context, just 180,686 irregular migrants arrived in the European Union last year from Africa and Asia.

There are no roads in the region, so irregular migrants either walk across the border from Colombia or hire Indigenous locals to take them in small boats.

Venezuelans and Ecuadorians make up the bulk of migrants, pushed by rising food insecurity, political instability and gang activity.

But Rae said he was shocked to find that there were also people from China, Afghanistan, Syria and Azerbaijan. “It’s become a global industry telling people how to get on El Camino (the northward route) and go all the way up to the U.S. and Canada,” he said. “(Traffickers) feed them misleading information. The countries in the region are only starting to co-operate to find out what is driving this. It’s quite extraordinary.”

He said he talked to a man from Fujian province on China’s southeastern coast who had flown with around 10 others to Quito in Ecuador. “I asked him what he was doing and, through the translator, he said he tried to get in through Mexico, that there is no work in China at the moment and that he wants a better future for his family in the U.S. or Canada,” Rae said.

Social media is full of accounts that suggest the Darién Gap can be crossed easily in a day. The reality is quite different. “It’s very dangerous, the rivers are very fast-flowing and people are dying on the route,” Rae said. The very remoteness of the crossing means there are no reliable records of how many have perished on the way.

A published interview by a worker from the UN’s International Organization for Migration with a recent arrival in Panama detailed a typical journey.

Gabriela left Ecuador with her 15-year-old son, hoping to get to the U.S., having watched a video that said Darién could be crossed in a day.

Ecuador has been plagued by chronic political instability and spiralling crime rates — homicides have quadrupled in two years.

Gabriela said she took the decision to leave to provide for a younger son who has special needs. But she said found herself lost in the mountainous jungle and swampland after losing contact with the group she was travelling with. She was rescued and said she would never do it again. But crossing the Darién Gap is just the beginning. Migrants are attempting to fulfill their American dream, despite being warned that travellers who arrive irregularly in the U.S. will be returned to their country of origin.

Rae said the Panamanians have been keen to move new arrivals to the Costa Rican border, providing buses that have carried over 200,000 people toward their northern neighbour.

Costa Rica has declared a state of emergency along its southern border, as its ability to cope with sanitation and health issues has been swamped.

In the town of Paso Canoas, which straddles the Costa Rican-Panamanian border, makeshift refugee camps have grown up, overwhelming the local community.

Those with US$30 for the bus fare can head north on the Inter-American Highway to Nicaragua.

The rest are stranded in a garbage-strewn camp with only half a dozen bathrooms. There is little in the way of food or shelter. Migrants endure 30-degree heat and daily downpours. The Red Cross is present, providing rudimentary first aid for people with stomach complaints from drinking untreated water on the journey, according to local media accounts.

In April, Colombia, Panama and the U.S. held a trilateral meeting to discuss joint efforts to meet the emerging crisis, including combatting human-smuggling networks and expanding lawful pathways for Colombians, such as temporary work visas.

The continuing flow of migrants, and Panama’s public comments, suggest those efforts have been in vain.

Panama is set to launch a publicity campaign: “Darién is a jungle, not a road” to discourage would-be travellers.

Panamanian officials complain that Colombia continues to “indiscriminately” send migrants their way. Rae said the crisis is increasing tensions in the region.

In August, Costa Rican president Rodrigo Chavez met his American counterpart, Joe Biden, in the White House to discuss legal pathways for some of the hundreds of thousands of refugees who have arrived in his country to move onward to the U.S.

Rae said one of the things Canada can do is to bring together countries in the region to deal with what is an increasingly serious humanitarian situation.

“It’s not about pointing fingers at each other. We have to work together,” he said.

“Obviously along the route, we donate to the Red Cross and others who are helping, but we have to encourage everyone to create a policy that will deal with this together. Each government on their own gets desperate — the Panamanians were talking last week about closing the border. Well, it’s not physically possible to close the border. But there’s a lot of agitation and people are getting angry.”

Source: John Ivison: Canada’s UN envoy warns of a North American migrant crisis unlike any other

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with , ,

Rioux: L’abaya, un vêtement comme les autres?

2023/09/09 Leave a comment

Le Devoir Paris correspondant on the French abaya ban (consistent in his support for dress restrictions):

Lundi, c’était jour de rentrée scolaire en France. Mais ce n’était pas une rentrée ordinaire. Dans une grande partie des collèges de France, on était littéralement sur les nerfs. Comment cela allait-il se passer ? Comment réagiraient les élèves ? Les parents viendraient-ils protester devant les grilles ? Bref, on craignait le pire.

C’est qu’une semaine plus tôt, le tout nouveau ministre de l’Éducation nationale, Gabriel Attal, avait décrété l’interdiction du port de l’abaya en classe. L’abaya est cette tunique traditionnelle musulmane que portent un nombre croissant de jeunes d’origine maghrébine afin de dissimuler leur corps. Tout juste nommé, à une semaine de la rentrée scolaire, le jeune ministre de 34 ans a décrété que ce vêtement distinctif identifié à la culture arabo-musulmane n’avait « pas sa place à l’école ». Le message était clair. On ne se présente pas devant un professeur en revendiquant sa religion.

Cela faisait des mois que, partout en France, enseignants et directeurs d’établissements réclamaient une intervention du ministre. Laissées à elles-mêmes, les directions étaient aux prises depuis plus d’un an avec des campagnes islamistes sur les réseaux sociaux incitant ouvertement les jeunes musulmanes à contourner la loi qui, depuis 2004, interdit aux élèves le port de tout signe religieux ostensible. Pas surprenant qu’en deux ans, le nombre d’incidents scolaires portant atteinte à la laïcité ait plus que doublé.

Or, quoi de plus ostensible que cet accoutrement patriarcal destiné à dissimuler tout le corps ? Dans sa déclaration, il aura suffi d’une seule phrase à Gabriel Attal pour clarifier le débat. « Lorsque vous entrez dans une classe, vous ne devez pas être capables d’identifier la religion des élèves », a-t-il tranché.

Les associations musulmanes eurent beau prétendre qu’il s’agissait d’une simple tenue traditionnelle sans la moindre connotation religieuse, il est clairement apparu dans le débat que l’abaya était aussi musulmane que la ceinture fléchée est québécoise. D’abord, rien de plus difficile dans la civilisation musulmane que de distinguer clairement ce qui relève de la culture de ce qui est proprement religieux. Comme l’a brillamment expliqué le philosophe Rémi Brague dans son essai magistral Sur l’islam (Gallimard) publié l’an dernier, contrairement à la chrétienté, l’islam est ce qu’il appelle « une religion intégrale » où « tout est culte » puisqu’il intègre un code juridique et définit les moeurs des bons musulmans.

Comme l’expliquait la spécialiste de l’islamisme Florence Bergeaud-Blackler, il n’existe pas de vêtements qui seraient par essence religieux, seulement « un habit qui permet de se conformer à une norme religieuse, celle qui d’après les rigoristes considère que la femme ne doit pas montrer les formes de son corps ». Comme le voile en 2004, ce rôle revient aujourd’hui à l’abaya. Il suffit de consulter les publicités sur Internet pour voir combien les marchands de guenilles le considèrent comme un prolongement du voile permettant de rompre avec la tradition laïque de l’école française.

Une tradition plus que centenaire que les Français ne semblent pas prêts à renier. Soutenue par 81 % des Français, l’interdiction de l’abaya fait l’objet d’un consensus encore plus fort que celui observé en 2004 sur la loi interdisant les signes religieux à l’école. Même les jeunes ayant entre 18 et 24 ans, que l’on dit pourtant multiculturalistes, se rangent à 63 % derrière la décision de Gabriel Attal. Ce consensus s’étend à toutes les familles politiques sans exception, mettant d’ailleurs en porte-à-faux la majorité de la gauche française avec ses électeurs. Ainsi, 58 % des partisans de La France insoumise (LFI) approuvent la décision du ministre alors même que son leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a fait un virage électoraliste à 180 degrés sur le sujet, dénonçant « une mesure dangereuse et cruelle ».

Certaines féministes ont aussi de graves questions à se poser. Alors que l’écologiste radicale Sandrine Rousseau dénonce une « machine de broyage » des adolescentes, le caractère religieux de l’abaya ne fait aucun doute pour 74 % des Françaises qui se disent féministes. Rarement un événement aura illustré de manière aussi évidente le cul-de-sac dans lequel s’est engagée depuis plusieurs années une grande partie de la gauche en se ralliant aux thèses du multiculturalisme et en ne craignant pas de s’allier aux musulmans les plus obscurantistes.

Lundi, comme en 2004, après moult explications de la part des proviseurs, à peine quelques dizaines de jeunes filles ont dû être renvoyées chez elles. Les autres se sont facilement conformées à la règle. Le cours normal de l’école a ainsi pu reprendre. Cela démontre que, pour peu que l’on fasse respecter les lois et la tradition laïque de l’école, l’immense majorité des élèves musulmans se conformeront aux traditions et règles de vie de leur pays d’accueil. Ils n’attendent qu’une chose, qu’on le leur dise !

Pour tous les Québécois que l’on stigmatise en permanence pour avoir simplement osé exiger des enseignants qu’ils se gardent d’exprimer par la parole ou le vêtement leurs convictions religieuses à l’école, le message est on ne peut plus clair : pour être respecté, encore faut-il se tenir debout.

Source: L’abaya, un vêtement comme les autres?

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

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