Japan’s Incremental Immigration Reform: A Recipe for Failure

2023/08/26 Leave a comment

Of interest:

Japan’s immigration policy underwent a fundamental shift in 2019 with the establishment of the “specified skilled worker” program, says sociologist and migration expert Higuchi Naoto. By allowing non-Japanese with limited skills to secure work visas and creating a pathway to permanent residence, the Japanese government had officially opened the door to immigration on a broader scale. Yet it has steadfastly denied doing so. “The reason,” says Higuchi, “is fear of a backlash from the right wing of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.”

The Forces Behind “Creeping” Liberalization

The Specified Skilled Worker No. 1 (SSW1) status of residence permits qualified foreign nationals (see table) to stay in Japan for a maximum of five years to work in any of 12 designated occupational fields, including construction, shipbuilding, and nursing care. Migrants classified as SSW1 are not allowed to bring their families to Japan. The SSW2 status of residence—reserved for SSW1 “graduates” with more advanced skills—can be renewed any number of times, and its holders may bring their families to Japan to live. SSW2 has been limited to workers in the construction and shipbuilding (including ship machinery) sectors, and only 11 workers had made the transition, according to the latest government figures. But on June 9 this year, the cabinet agreed to extend the scope of SSW2 to nine other occupational fields, including agriculture, hospitality, and manufacturing. (Excluded is nursing care, since carers can apply for long-term stays under a separate status of residence).

What precipitated the policy change?

Higuchi puts it simply. “The government was under pressure from business because the five-year permits of the [first wave of] SSW1 workers will expire next spring,” he explains.

Employers facing labor shortages are doubtless hopeful that some of their foreign employees will be able to stay on by upgrading from SSW1 to SSW2 status. To qualify, however, the workers will have to pass skills exams, currently under preparation by the relevant industry groups and government agencies.

“This is typical of the government’s incrementalist approach to immigration policy,” says Higuchi. “After putting an adjustable framework in place, it gradually expands the scope to create a fait accompli by stealth. Under pressure from various industries, it will doubtless continue to loosen restrictions bit by bit, by expanding the number of eligible occupations and reducing the difficulty of the exams, for example.”

A System of Loopholes

Before 2019, Japan maintained a basic policy of granting work visas only to highly skilled foreign nationals. However, from 1990 on, the government established a number of exceptions and loopholes to facilitate the use of foreign labor in low-skilled jobs that were becoming difficult to fill. For example, after the revised Immigration Control Act came into force in 1990, third-generation descendants of Japanese émigrés (primarily from Brazil and other parts of Latin America) were able to settle in Japan as “long-term residents,” with no restrictions on employment.

Around the same time, Japan began accepting unskilled foreign “trainees” on a short-term basis. In 1993 this practice was systematized and expanded through the creation of the Technical Intern Training Program (TITP). Although the program’s ostensible purpose was to support international cooperation by transferring skills to workers from developing countries, it soon came under criticism as a government-sanctioned side door for foreign labor and a recipe for exploitation.

By the first decade of this century, Japan’s worsening demographic outlook bolstered the acceptance of lower-skilled foreign workers as full-scale employees, rather than so-called trainees. “The ruling party and the business lobby floated a number of reform proposals. One called for admission of 10 million foreign workers, another for the adoption of a three-year ‘temporary worker’ visa,” says Higuchi. “But none of them was adopted.”

Instead, the government gradually expanded the TITP, extending the period of stay from three to five years and including more and more industries and occupations in the program’s scope. The number of foreign “trainees” soared. (At last count, there were more than 320,000 foreign workers registered as technical interns, down slightly from the pre-pandemic level.) In anticipation of surging demand connected with preparations for the Tokyo Olympics, the government took action to increase the supply of construction workers by instituting a program under which foreign “interns” in that field could continue working in Japan for a few years after their internships ended. It also gave the green light for employment of non-Japanese agricultural workers in national strategic economic zones.

Through these incremental changes, says Higuchi, “the government laid the groundwork for adoption of the Specified Skilled Worker program, promoting [the acceptance of lower-skilled foreign workers] in practice even while publicly opposing it in principle.”

The TITP as Nursery

From the government’s viewpoint, says Higuchi, the much-vilified TITP probably qualifies as a policy success. “It’s provided labor for industries suffering from shortages without allowing the workers to settle in Japan. Sure, some trainees go missing each year, but only about three percent on average. From the government’s perspective, this means the program is being adequately managed.”

Critics inside and outside Japan, meanwhile, continue to slam the TITP, citing labor and human-rights abuses. In response, the government has begun talking about “progressively dissolving” the system as the SSW program gears up.

Higuchi doubts that the TITP will be dismantled anytime soon. “Foreign nationals who have worked as a technical intern for three years can transition to SSW1 without taking an exam. Otherwise, they need to [pass a test to] show Japanese competence at the N4 level [‘ability to understand basic Japanese’]. To secure workers with SSW1 status without relying on the TITP would involve a major expansion of Japanese-language instruction and testing programs in migrant-sending countries like Vietnam. A year of study is needed to reach N4, and prospective applicants would also need to prepare for the technical skills exam in their field of employment. Realistically speaking, the TITP mechanism for importing unskilled labor will be needed to secure an adequate number of legally employed workers [under the new program].”

Restricting Free Choice of Employment

The government has also said that it is considering loosening the TITP’s rule against changing jobs. But Higuchi is skeptical about the prospects for substantive reform. “Even if technical interns upgrade to SSW status, they’ll be required to find employment in the same industry,” says Higuchi.

The main concern among policy makers is that if foreign workers are free to choose their place of employment, they will gravitate to urban centers and industries offering relatively favorable working conditions. That would leave the employers and occupations most in need of foreign labor short-handed.

“Émigrés are by nature independent-minded people, and giving full play to that trait would ultimately benefit the economy as a whole,” says Higuchi. “But the current system is all about confining people to the categories they’ve been assigned. For example, it makes no provision for foreign nationals to operate their own businesses or work as independent contractors, even though a relatively high percentage of people in the construction industry are self-employed. The SSW program was adopted as part of a larger economic growth strategy, but as strategies go, it doesn’t make much sense.”

Lessons Not Learned

While Japanese bureaucrats may regard the TITP as a success, few would give high marks to the policy of granting long-term residence to foreigners of Japanese descent (Nikkeijin), says Higuchi. For one thing, a large number of the migrants returned home after losing their jobs during the Great Recession.

But the biggest problem, Higuchi says, is that the policy was not accompanied by adequate support and integration measures. “The majority [of South American Nikkeijin] remain stuck in temporary positions, even after thirty years working in Japan,” he notes. “Many of their children were never enrolled in school, and others stopped attending. It’s clear that the failure to actively integrate the [third-generation] Nikkeijin badly hobbled the fourth generation.”

“In the end, the policy can be viewed as a kind of experiment, testing what happens if the government allows immigration without doing anything for the immigrants. I’m sure the Nikkeijin would have achieved a lot more if they’d been provided with rigorous Japanese-language training when they first arrived in 1990. Yet I’ve seen no indication that policy makers have learned the lessons of that ‘experiment.’”

Or perhaps they have learned the wrong lessons. In 2018, the government established a new category of work visa for fourth-generation Nikkeijin, who were previously permitted to reside in Japan only as dependent family members. But the new work visas are much more restrictive than those granted the previous generation. Applicants must be able to demonstrate Japanese-language competence at the N5 level (“ability to understand some basic Japanese”), and they must secure sponsors in advance. Moreover, they are not allowed to bring family members, and their stay is limited to five years. Thanks to these restrictions, Higuchi says, “Practically no one has applied.” There are reports that the Ministry of Justice intends to grant long-term residence to such migrants after five years if they demonstrate N2 competence in Japanese (“ability to understand Japanese used in everyday situations, and in a variety of circumstances to a certain degree”), but there are no plans to loosen the initial visa and status-of-residence requirements.

A Patchwork of Policies

The creation of the SSW status of residence was a policy change spearheaded by the prime minister’s office, known as the Kantei. But the Kantei does not oversee or coordinate immigration control on an ongoing basis. “Big business is forever lobbying the Kantei on economic and labor policy, and in this case the Kantei yielded to industry’s call for deregulation,” says Higuchi.

In fact, there is no single “control tower” coordinating Japan’s immigration policy, which helps explain its lack of consistency and rationality.

“The Ministry of Justice, which has jurisdiction over immigration control [via the Immigration Services Agency], has considerable authority over the admission of foreign workers,” says Higuchi. “But it has no idea how those human resources should be allocated. The Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare has a Foreign Workers’ Affairs Division, but it only has jurisdiction over building cleaning and nursing care. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries each propose separate quotas [for construction workers and agricultural/fisheries workers, respectively] on the basis of their own sectors’ needs. The reason the number of foreign construction workers has grown so rapidly is that the construction industry has very cozy ties with MLIT.”

What about the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry, which oversees economic and industrial policy from a more sweeping perspective?

“It would certainly make sense for METI to take some initiative in the context of an overall economic growth strategy, but in fact it’s only shown itself interested in securing highly skilled personnel in the information and telecommunications fields.”

Another obstacle to a more comprehensive, rational reform of Japanese immigration policy is the fact that the Liberal Democratic Party has controlled the government for so long. Many countries have managed to develop a balanced policy as a result of the alternation of power between parties with different perspectives on immigration. But in Japan, regime change is rare.

“For the LDP government, at least, there’s nothing to be gained by abandoning the current incrementalist, patchwork approach. What it really wants to do is secure as much labor as possible without any abrupt increase, which would trigger a backlash from the party’s right wing. Imperceptible increases aren’t what Japan needs to avert serious labor shortages, but the government doesn’t seem overly alarmed.”

Can Japan Have Its Cake and Eat It, Too?

In Higuchi’s view, the Japanese government will have trouble meeting even its modest goals for expanding the labor force if it continues to cling to the principle that foreigners entering Japan for purposes of employment must come equipped with specific occupational skills. “From the standpoint of policy goals, it would make more sense to admit untrained workers and nurture their skills here than to use exams to screen out unskilled applicants,” Higuchi says.

At the same time, Higuchi stresses the need to lay a solid foundation for success by providing formal Japanese-language training and other systematic instruction to new arrivals.

“It’s not enough for local governments to offer Japanese classes once or twice a week. Newcomers need formal, intensive training at the outset to ensure that they can communicate in the workplace. And the Japanese government should guarantee their educational and living expenses during that period. Municipal governments can’t be expected to shoulder that burden. Yet the central government has done everything it can to sidestep investment in human resources and minimize its own expenses.

“In Europe over the past couple of decades, it’s become the norm to provide language instruction in conjunction with vocational training. For example, Germany provides expats with about 600 hours of language training [as part of its required integration course] and a monthly allowance of about 1,000 euros during the training period. The US government doesn’t make that sort of human investment—but then, neither does it require migrants to pass a skills test after a certain number of years.

“Japan, on the other hand, demands skills from its foreign workers yet refuses to invest in them. And this would be a smart investment, since it would help address our labor shortages and eventually yield returns in the form of tax revenues. The government really doesn’t get it. It wants to have its cake and eat it, too.”

Helping Migrants Realize Their Potential

Higuchi’s research on Nikkei immigrants in Japan has shown a strong correlation between Japanese-language proficiency and employment options.

“To move up to regular employment or start their own business, they need business-level Japanese. Also, they’re more likely to find good work with a recommendation from a Japanese acquaintance. Relying on networks of other immigrants mostly leads to low-paying temporary and contract work. Strengthening ties between migrants and the Japanese community fosters social integration and multicultural coexistence and delivers a whole range of economic benefits.”

Migrants tend to be resourceful entrepreneurs if given the opportunity. Even in Japan, South Asian expats managed to carve out a niche selling used cars and now do a booming business exporting used Japanese automobiles around the world. The most successful at this ethnic enterprise, says Higuchi, is a group of Pakistani expats who obtained legal residence status by marrying Japanese women.

“The OECD [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] has made the case that migrants contribute substantially to the local economy through their entrepreneurship and ethnic businesses,” says Higuchi. “But the Japanese government makes no provision for ethnic enterprise; in fact, it won’t even let foreign workers move into more promising occupations. That stifles economic dynamism and drastically limits migrants’ potential to contribute to growth. It’s time for a fundamental shift in thinking.”

(Originally written in Japanese by Kimie Itakura of Nippon.com.

Source: Japan’s Incremental Immigration Reform: A Recipe for Failure

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Globe editorial: How the Liberals can roll back the surge in student visas (and blame Stephen Harper)

2023/08/25 Leave a comment

Likely one of the simpler solutions but will provoke considerable opposition given the number of education institutions that have largely become “visa mills.”

Another lesson from the Harper years is with respect to Temporary Foreign Workers; when abuse and displacement of Canadian workers became apparent, the government reversed course and largely reimposed the restrictions it had imposed.

One bit of political folk wisdom of Chretien (forget the context and the exact wording) was “when you paint yourself into a corner, you need to step on the paint.” Time for the government to do so with credible changes:

Timid as it is, the federal Liberals’ mulling of a cap on the (already astronomical) number of international student visas met with instant opposition from Quebec and postsecondary institutions.

Source: How the Liberals can roll back the surge in student visas (and blame Stephen Harper)

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Yakabuski: Capping foreign student visas isn’t as simple as it sounds

2023/08/25 Leave a comment

Good reminder that making choices harder that talking about “considering” limits. And, as always, interest groups, whether provincial governments, education institutions and associations, have louder voices that people affected by housing availability:

Housing Minister Sean Fraser’s suggestion that Ottawa may consider limitingthe “explosive growth” in foreign student visas, which many experts say has contributed to Canada’s housing affordability crisis, is giving indigestion to college and university administrators.

…

Source: Capping foreign student visas isn’t as simple as it sounds

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In Reversal Because of A.I., Office Jobs Are Now More at Risk

2023/08/25 Leave a comment

Implications for governments are immense, given the large number of clerical and administrative jobs. However, given government inertia, bureaucracy, unions and other interests, will likely lag private sector significantly, to the likely detriment of citizen service:

The American workers who have had their careers upended by automation in recent decades have largely been less educated, especially men working in manufacturing.

But the new kind of automation — artificial intelligence systems called large language models, like ChatGPT and Google’s Bard — is changing that. These tools can rapidly process and synthesize information and generate new content. The jobs most exposed to automation now are office jobs, those that require more cognitive skills, creativity and high levels of education. The workers affected are likelier to be highly paid, and slightly likelier to be women, a variety of research has found.

“It’s surprised most people, including me,” said Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered A.I., who had predicted that creativity and tech skills would insulate people from the effects of automation. “To be brutally honest, we had a hierarchy of things that technology could do, and we felt comfortable saying things like creative work, professional work, emotional intelligence would be hard for machines to ever do. Now that’s all been upended.”

A range of new research has analyzed the tasks of American workers, using the Labor Department’s O*Net database, and hypothesized which of them large language models could do. It has found these models could significantly help with tasks in one-fifth to one-quarter of occupations. In a majority of jobs, the models could do some of the tasks, found the analyses, including from Pew Research Center and Goldman Sachs.

For now, the models still sometimes produce incorrect information, and are more likely to assist workers than replace them, said Pamela Mishkin and Tyna Eloundou, researchers at OpenAI, the company and research lab behind ChatGPT. They did a similar study, analyzing the 19,265 tasks done in 923 occupations, and found that large language models could do some of the tasks that 80 percent of American workers do.

Yet they also found reason for some workers to fear that large language models could displace them, in line with what Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, told The Atlantic last month: “Jobs are definitely going to go away, full stop.”

The researchers asked an advanced model of ChatGPT to analyze the O*Net data and determine which tasks large language models could do. It found that 86 jobs were entirely exposed (meaning every task could be assisted by the tool). The human researchers said 15 jobs were. The job that both the humans and the A.I. agreed was most exposed was mathematician.

Just 4 percent of jobs had zero tasks that could be assisted by the technology, the analysis found. They included athletes, dishwashers and those assisting carpenters, roofers or painters. Yet even tradespeople could use A.I. for parts of their jobs like scheduling, customer service and route optimization, said Mike Bidwell, chief executive of Neighborly, a home services company.

While OpenAI has a business interest in promoting its technology as a boon to workers, other researchers said there were still uniquely human capabilities that were not (yet) able to be automated — like social skills, teamwork, care work and the skills of tradespeople. “We’re not going to run out of things for humans to do anytime soon,” Mr. Brynjolfsson said. “But the things are different: learning how to ask the right questions, really interacting with people, physical work requiring dexterity.”

For now, large language models will probably help many workers be more productive in their existing jobs, researchers say, akin to giving office workers, even entry-level ones, a chief of staff or a research assistant (though that could signal trouble for human assistants).

Take writing code: A study of Github’s Copilot, an A.I. program that helps programmers by suggesting code and functions, found that those using it were 56 percent faster than those doing the same task without it.

“There’s a misconception that exposure is necessarily a bad thing,” Ms. Mishkin said. After reading descriptions of every occupation for the study, she and her colleagues learned “an important lesson,” she said: “There’s no way a model is ever going to do all of this.”

Large language models could help write legislation, for instance, but could not pass laws. They could act as therapists — people could share their thoughts, and the models could respond with ideas based on proven regimens — but they do not have human empathy or the ability to read nuanced situations.

The version of ChatGPT open to the public has risks for workers — it often gets things wrong, can reflect human biases, and is not secure enough for businesses to trust with confidential information. Companies that use it get around these obstacles with tools that tap its technology in a so-called closed domain — meaning they train the model only on certain content and keep any inputs private.

Morgan Stanley uses a version of OpenAI’s model made for its business that was fed about 100,000 internal documents, more than a million pages. Financial advisers use it to help them find information to answer client questions quickly, like whether to invest in a certain company. (Previously, this required finding and reading multiple reports.)

It leaves advisers more time to talk with clients, said Jeff McMillan, who leads data analytics and wealth management at the firm. The tool does not know about individual clients and any human touch that might be needed, like if they are going through a divorce or illness.

Aquent Talent, a staffing firm, is using a business version of Bard. Usually, humans read through workers’ résumés and portfolios to find a match for a job opening; the tool can do it much more efficiently. Its work still requires a human audit, though, especially in hiring, because human biases are built in, said Rohshann Pilla, president of Aquent Talent.

Harvey, which is funded by OpenAI, is a start-up selling a tool like this to law firms. Senior partners use it for strategy, like coming up with 10 questions to ask in a deposition or summarizing how the firm has negotiated similar agreements.

“It’s not, ‘Here’s the advice I’d give a client,’” said Winston Weinberg, a co-founder of Harvey. “It’s, ‘How can I filter this information quickly so I can reach the advice level?’ You still need the decision maker.”

He says it’s especially helpful for paralegals or associates. They use it to learn — asking questions like: What is this type of contract for, and why was it written like this? — or to write first drafts, like summarizing a financial statement.

“Now all of a sudden they have an assistant,” he said. “People will be able to do work that’s at a higher level faster in their career.”

Other people studying how workplaces use large language models have found a similar pattern: They help junior employees most. A study of customer support agents by Professor Brynjolfsson and colleagues found that using A.I. increased productivity 14 percent overall, and 35 percent for the lowest-skilled workers, who moved up the learning curve faster with its assistance.

“It closes gaps between entry-level workers and superstars,” said Robert Seamans of N.Y.U.’s Stern School of Business, who co-wrote a paper finding that the occupations most exposed to large language models were telemarketers and certain teachers.

The last round of automation, affecting manufacturing jobs, increased income inequality by depriving workers without college educations of high-paying jobs, research has shown.

Some scholars say large language models could do the opposite — decreasing inequality between the highest-paid workers and everyone else.

“My hope is it will actually allow people with less formal education to do more things,” said David Autor, a labor economist at M.I.T., “by lowering barriers to entry for more elite jobs that are well paid.”

Source: In Reversal Because of A.I., Office Jobs Are Now More at Risk

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Canada is Recruiting H-1Bs. DACA Recipients Could Be Next.  

2023/08/25 Leave a comment

Of note:

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, is a program that provides legal protections and work authorization to immigrants who otherwise lack legal status but were brought to the U.S. as children through no fault of their own. In place since 2012, DACA currently protects over 570,000 Dreamers, the majority of whom have been productive members of the American economy for years.

Despite the well-documented contributions of DACA recipients, the program continues to hang in legal limbo. For two decades, Congress has failed to authorize permanent protection, and now, some Republican states are suing to terminate the program. While activists scramble for solutions ahead of an inauspicious Supreme Court decision, the door is open for Canada to poach yet another crucial group of U.S. residents.

In recent months, Canada has escalated its efforts to actively recruit immigrants with work experience in the U.S. or an American education. From creating a new visa for specialized foreign workers in the U.S. to running targeted ads for individuals frustrated with the American immigration system, Canada and its businesses have long since benefited from the dysfunction of our immigration laws. 

While Canada has not yet publicly attempted to entice DACA recipients to consider northern migration, it may be a matter of time before it does. DACA recipients would be competitive applicants for Canadian visa pathways like the points-based Express Entry program designed to attract the world’s best and brightest. 

Express Entry does not require employer sponsorship and instead awards points for qualifying factors like work experience, English language proficiency, and education. Points are also assigned according to age, with applicants between 18 and 35 receiving the highest possible age points. 

The average DACA recipient is 29 years old, and nearly half have college degrees. More than 80 percent of DACA recipients are working, and most have lived in the U.S. for over 20 years, receiving the majority, if not all, of their formal education here. Although many DACA recipients are bilingual, surveys indicate that “over 90 percent speak English well, or better.” By these standards, most DACA recipients would likely receive high scores that could result in invitations to migrate. 

Given the number of American corporations that have previously voiced supportfor their Dreamer employees, it is easy to imagine employers willing to sponsor employees who transfer to their Canadian offices through other visa pathwaysshould they lose work authorization here. 

If Canada poached these Dreamers, the United States would face significant economic losses as Canada reaps the benefits of highly productive U.S.-trained immigrants. 

For instance, Dreamers would pay their rent or mortgage in Canada, which, in the U.S., currently generates $272 billion in economic activity every month. They would spend money on groceries, clothes, transportation, and services in Canada. 

The U.S. would also lose teachers and essential workers while Canada filled its labor market gaps with our American-educated talent. The nearly $40 billion that Dreamers would contribute to Social Security and Medicare over the next ten years would instead bolster the Canadian social security system. 

Even after taxes, DACA-recipient households still hold over $25 billion in spending power, but if they go to Canada, their money will likely go with them. Under the Express Entry program, selected candidates receive permanent residence for themselves, their spouses or common-law partners, and their dependent children. Even temporary foreign worker programs in Canada permit immediate family members to accompany the beneficiary and work. 

With over 300,000 U.S. citizen children, the impacts of their departure would represent a significant loss for the U.S. economy and labor market when we are already struggling to fill the jobs we need. DACA recipients are, on average, more educated than the native-born U.S. population and have higher workforce participation rates. Yet, without action, we risk losing these productive individuals raised with American values, educated in the American school system, and trained in the American labor market. 

We have already witnessed Canada siphoning thousands of our valuable immigrant workers and taking advantage of our inability to create policies that retain the talent we attract and cultivate. If we do not act on DACA, Canada will also take advantage of this opportunity by becoming the haven that DACA recipients have been seeking in the U.S. for over a decade. Bipartisan solutions can protect Dreamers and allow them to stay and contribute to the only home they’ve ever truly known. Timely action is imperative. 

Source: Canada is Recruiting H-1Bs. DACA Recipients Could Be Next.

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I’m a Black Professor. You Don’t Need to Bring That Up.

2023/08/25 Leave a comment

Interesting read:

The hotel was soulless, like all conference hotels. I had arrived a few hours before check-in, hoping to drop off my bags before I met a friend for lunch. The employees were clearly frazzled, overwhelmed by the sudden influx of several hundred impatient academics. When I asked where I could put my luggage, the guy at the front desk simply pointed to a nearby hallway. “Wait over there with her; he’s coming back.” 

The conversation was wide-ranging: the papers we were presenting, the bad A/V at the hotel, our favorite things to do in the city. At some point, we began talking about our jobs. She told me that—like so many academics—she was juggling a temporary teaching gig while also looking for a tenure-track position. 

“It’s hard,” she said, “too many classes, too many students, too many papers to grade. No time for your own work. Barely any time to apply to real jobs.” 

When I nodded sympathetically, she asked about my job and whether it was tenure-track. I admitted, a little sheepishly, that it was. 

“I’d love to teach at a small college like that,” she said. “I feel like none of my students wants to learn. It’s exhausting.” 

Then, out of nowhere, she said something that caught me completely off guard: “But I shouldn’t be complaining to you about this. I know how hard BIPOC faculty have it. You’re the last person I should be whining to.” 

I was taken aback, but I shouldn’t have been. It was the kind of awkward comment I’ve grown used to over the past few years, as “anti-racism” has become the reigning ideology of progressive political culture. Until recently, calling attention to a stranger’s race in such a way would have been considered a social faux pas. That she made the remark without thinking twice—a remark, it should be noted, that assumes being a Black tenure-track professor is worse than being a marginally employed white one—shows how profoundly interracial social etiquette has changed since 2020’s “summer of racial reckoning.” That’s when anti-racism—focused on combatting “color- blindness” in both policy and personal conduct—grabbed ahold of the liberal mainstream. 

Though this “reckoning” brought increased public attention to the deep embeddedness of racism in
supposedly color-blind American institutions, it also made instant celebrities of a number of race experts and “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) consultants who believe that being anti-racist means undergoing a “journey” of radical personal transformation. In their righteous crusade against the bad color-blindness ofpolicies such as race-neutral college admissions, these contemporary anti-racists have also jettisoned the kind of good color-blindness that holds that we are more than our race, and that we should conduct our social life according to that idealized principle. Rather than
balance a critique of color-blind law and policy with a continuing embrace of interpersonal color-blindness as a social etiquette, contemporary anti-racists throw the baby out with the bathwater. In place of the old color-blind ideal, they have foisted upon well-meaning white liberals a successor social etiquette predicated on the necessity of foregrounding racial difference rather than minimizing it. 

As a Black guy who grew up in a politically purple area—where being a good person meant adhering to the kind of civil-rights-era color- blindness that is now passé—I find this emergent anti-racist culture jarring. Many of my liberal friends and acquaintances now seem to believe that being a good person means constantly reminding Black people that you are aware of their Blackness. Difference, no longer to be politely ignored, is insisted upon at all times under the guise of acknowledging “positionality.” ough I am rarely made to feel excessively aware of my race when hanging out with more conservative friends or visiting my hometown, in the more liberal social circles in which I typically travel, my race is constantly invoked —“acknowledged” and “centered”—by well-intentioned anti-racist “allies.” 

This “acknowledgment” tends to take one of two forms. The first is the song and dance in which white people not-so-subtly let you know that they know that race and racism exist. This includes finding ways to interject discussion of some (bad) news item about race or racism into casual conversation, apologizing for having problems while white (“You’re the last person I should be whining to”), or inversely, offering “support” by attributing any normal human problem you have to racism. 

The second way good white liberals often “center” racial difference in everyday interactions with minorities is by trying, always clumsily, to ensure that their “marginalized” friends and familiars are “culturally” comfortable. My favorite personal experiences of this include an acquaintance who invariably steers dinner or lunch meetups to Black-owned restaurants, and the time that a friend of a friend invited me over to go swimming in their pool before apologizing for assuming that I know how to swim (“I know that’s a culturally specific thing”). It is a peculiar quirk of the 2020s’ racial discourse that this kind of “acknowledgment” and “centering” is viewed as progress. 

My point is not that conservatives have better racial politics—they do not— but rather that something about current progressive racial discourse has become warped and distorted. e anti-racist culture that is ascendant seems to me to have little to do with combatting structural racism or cultivating better relationships between white and Black Americans. And its rejection of color-blindness as a social ethos is not a new frontier of radical political action. 

No, at the core of today’s anti-racism is little more than a vibe shift—a soft matrix of conciliatory gestures and hip phraseology that give adherents the feeling that there has been a cultural change, when in fact we have merely put carpet over the rotting floorboards. Although this push to center rather than sidestep racial difference in our interpersonal relationships comes from a good place, it tends to rest on a troubling, even racist subtext: that white and Black Americans are so radically different that interracial relationships require careful management, constant eggshell-walking, and even expert guidance from professional anti-racists. Rather than producing racial harmony, this new ethos frequently has the opposite effect, making white-Black interactions stressful, unpleasant, or, perhaps most often, simply weird. 

Since the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, progressive anti-racism has centered on two concepts that helped Americans make sense of his senseless death: “structural racism” and “implicit bias.” e first of these is a sociopolitical concept that highlights how certain institutions—maternity wards, police barracks, lending companies, housing authorities, etc.—produce and replicate racial inequalities, such as the disproportionate killing of Black men by the cops. e second is a psychological concept that describes the way that all individuals—from bleeding-heart liberals to murderers such as Derek Chauvin—harbor varying degrees of subconscious racial prejudice. 

Though “structural racism” and “implicit bias” target different scales of the social order—institutions on the one hand, individuals on the other— underlying both of these ideas is a critique of so-called color-blind ideology, or what the sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva calls “color-blind racism”: the idea that policies, interactions, and rhetoric can be explicitly race-neutral but implicitly racist. As concepts, both “structural racism” and “implicit bias” rest on the presupposition that racism is an enduring feature of institutional and social life, and that so-called race neutrality is a covertly racist myth that perpetuates inequality. Some anti-racist scholars such as Uma Mazyck Jayakumar and Ibram X. Kendi have put this even more bluntly: “‘Race neutral’ is the new “separate but equal.’” Yet, although anti-racist academics and activists are right to argue that race-neutral policies can’t solve racial inequities—that supposedly color-blind laws and policies are often anything but—over the past few years, this line of criticism has also been bizarrely extended to color-blindness as a personal ethos governing behavior at the individual level. 

The most famous proponent of dismantling color-blindness in everyday interactions is Robin DiAngelo, who has made an entire (very condescending) career out of asserting that if white people are not uncomfortable, anti-racism is not happening. “White comfort maintains the racial status quo, so discomfort is necessary and important,” the corporate anti-racist guru advises. Over the past three years, this kind of anti-color-blind, pro-discomfort rhetoric has become the norm in anti-racist discourse. On the final day of the 28-day challenge in Layla Saad’s viral Me and White Supremacy, budding anti- racists are tasked with taking “out-of-your-comfort-zone actions,” such as apologizing to people of color in their life and having “uncomfortable conversations.” Frederick Joseph’s best-selling book e Black Friend takes a similar tack. e problem with color-blindness, Joseph counsels, is it allows “white people to continue to be comfortable.” e NFL analyst Emmanuel Acho wrote an entire book, simply called Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man, that admonishes readers to “stop celebrating color-blindness.” And, of course, there are endless how-to guides for having these “uncomfortable conversations” with your Black friends. 

Once the dominant progressive ideology, professing “I don’t see color” is now viewed as a kind of dog whistle that papers over implicit bias. Instead, current anti-racist wisdom holds that we must acknowledge racial difference in our interactions with others, rather than assume that race needn’t be at the center of every interracial conversation or encounter. Coming to grips with the transition we have undergone over the past decade—color-blind etiquette’s swing from de rigueur to racist—requires a longer view of an American cultural transition. Civil-rights-era color-blindness was replaced with an individualistic, corporatized anti-racism, one focused on the purification of white psyches through racial discomfort, guilt, and “doing the work” as a road to self-improvement. 

Writing in 1959, the social critic Philip Rieff argued that postwar America was transforming from a religious and economic culture—one oriented around common institutions such as the church and the market—to a psychological culture, one oriented around the self and its emotional fulfillment. By the 1960s, Rieff had given this shift a name: “the triumph of the therapeutic,” which he defined as an emergent worldview according to which the “self, improved, is the ultimate concern of modern culture.” Yet, even as he diagnosed our culture with self-obsession, Rieff also noticed something peculiar and even paradoxical. erapeutic culture demanded that we reflect our self-actualization outward. Sharing our innermost selves with the world—good, bad, and ugly—became a new social mandate under the guise that authenticity and open self-expression are necessary for social cohesion. 

Recent anti-racist mantras like “White silence is violence” reflect this same sentiment: exhibitionist displays of “racist” guilt are viewed as a necessary precursor to racial healing and community building. In this way, today’s attacks on interpersonal color-blindness—and progressives’ growing fixation on implicit bias, public confession, and race-conscious social etiquette—are only the most recent manifestations of the cultural shift Rieff described. Indeed, the seeds of the current backlash against color-blindness began decades ago, with the application of a New Age, therapeutic outlook to race relations: so-called racial-sensitivity training, the forefather of today’s equally spurious DEI programming. 

In her 2001 book, Race Experts, the historian Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn painstakingly details how racial-sensitivity training emerged from the 1960s’ human-potential movement and its infamous “encounter groups.” As she explains, what began as a more or less countercultural phenomenon was later corporatized in the form of the anemic, pointless workshops controversially lampooned on e Office. Not surprisingly, this shift reflected the ebb and flow of corporate interests: Whereas early workplace training emphasized compliance with the newly minted Civil Rights Act of 1964, later incarnations would focus on improving employee relations and, later still, leveraging diversity to secure better business outcomes. 

If there is something distinctive about the anti-color-blind racial etiquette that has emerged since George Floyd’s death, it is that these sites of encounter have shifted from official institutional spaces to more intimate ones where white people and minorities interact as friends, neighbors, colleagues, and acquaintances. Racial-awareness raising is a dynamic no longer quarantined to formalized, compulsory settings like the boardroom or freshman orientation. Instead, every interracial interaction is a potential scene of (one-way) racial edification and supplication, encounters in which good white liberals are expected to be transparent about their “positionality,” confront their “whiteness,” and—if the situation calls for it—confess their “implicit bias.” 

In a vacuum, many of the prescriptions advocated by the anti-color-blind crowd are reasonable: We should all think more about our privileges and our place in the world. An uncomfortable conversation or an honest 

A look in the mirror can be precursors to personal growth. We all carry around harmful, implicit biases and we do need to examine the subconscious assumptions and prejudices that underlie the actions we take and the things we say. My objection is not to these ideas themselves, which are sensible enough. No, my objection is that anti-racism offers little more than a Marie Kondo–ism for the white soul, promising to declutter racial baggage and clear a way to white fulfillment without doing anything meaningful to combat structural racism. As Lasch-Quinn correctly foresaw, “Casting interracial problems as issues of etiquette [puts] a premium on superficial symbols of good intentions and good motivations as well as on style and appearance rather than on the substance of change.” 

Yet the problem with the therapeutics of contemporary anti-racism is not just that they are politically sterile. When anti-color-blindness and its ideology of insistent “race consciousness” are translated into the sphere of private life—to the domain of friendships, block parties, and backyard barbecues—they assault the very idea of a multiracial society, producing new forms of racism in the process. e fact that our media environment is inundated with an endless stream of books, articles, and social-media tutorials that promise to teach white people how to simply interact with the Black people in their life is not a sign of anti-racist progress, but of profound regression. 

The subtext that undergirds this new anti-racist discourse—that Black-white relationships are inherently fraught and must be navigated with the help of professionals and technical experts—testifies to the impoverishment of our interracial imagination, not to its enrichment. More gravely, anti-color-blind etiquette treats Black Americans as exotic others, permanent strangers whose racial difference is so chasmic that it must be continually managed, whose mode of humanness is so foreign that it requires white people to adopt a special set of manners and “race conscious” ritualistic practices to even have a simple conversation. 

If we are going to find a way out of the racial discord that has defined American life post-Trump and post-Charlottesville and post-Floyd, we have to begin with a more sophisticated understanding of color-blindness, one that rejects the bad color-blindness on offer from the Republican Party and its partisans, as well as the anti-color-blindness of the anti-racist consultants. Instead, we should embrace the good color-blindness of not too long ago. At the heart of that color-blindness was a radical claim, one imperfectly realized but perfect as an ideal: that despite the weight of a racist past that isn’t even past, we can imagine a world, or at least an interaction between two people, where racial difference doesn’t make a difference. 

Tyler Austin Harper is an assistant professor of environmental studies at Bates College. 

Source: I’m a Black Professor. You Don’t Need to Bring That Up.

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , ,

Will reining in the number of international students in Canada help the housing crisis — or bring more harm?

2023/08/24 Leave a comment

Some good comments by immigration lawyer Raj Sharma and if I do say myself, me:

Canada’s post-secondary education sector is pushing back on a proposed cap on international student admission, arguing it won’t help address the country’s current housing crisis but threatens the economy.

“Although implementing a cap on international students may seem to provide temporary relief, it could have lasting adverse effects on our communities, including exacerbating current labour shortages,” said Colleges and Institutes Canada, the largest national post-secondary advocacy group.

“We want to emphasize that students are not to blame for Canada’s housing crisis; they are among those most impacted.”

The group, which represents 141 schools across Canada, was responding to a suggestion by Housing Minister Sean Fraser at the federal cabinet retreat in Charlottetown to restrict the number of international students to help ease the housing crunch.

“That’s one of the options that we ought to consider,” the former immigration minister told reporters on Monday.

On Tuesday, Marc Miller, his successor, echoed the need to rein in the growth of international enrolment.

“Abuses in the system exist and must be tackled in smart and logical ways,” Bahoz Dara Aziz, Miller’s press secretary, told the Star. “This potentially includes implementing a cap.

“But that can’t be the only measure, as it doesn’t address the entire problem. We’re currently looking at a number of options in order to take a multi-faceted approach to this.”

The post-secondary educational sector has increasingly relied on revenue from international students to subsidize the Canadian tertiary education system after years of government cuts.

According to the Canadian Bureau for International Education, there were 807,750 international students in Canada at all levels of study last year, up 43 per cent from five years ago.

So much is at stake with international students, who pay significantly higher tuition rates than Canadians, contributing more than $21 billion to colleges and universities, local communities and the economy nationwide, creating 180,000 jobs.

Fraser’s remarks also marked a change from when he was overseeing Immigration and staunchly defended the Liberals’ record immigration levels and strategy to stimulate economic recovery through immigration.

“I find this a little bit disingenuous,” said Calgary immigration lawyer Raj Sharma. “The minister who’s talking about capping international students is the same minister that eliminated the 20-hour limit of working in a week for the international students.”

“It’s very odd for Mr. Fraser to be speaking out of both sides of his mouth.”

While concentration of international students in particular urban hot spots has contributed to the rising rental costs and strained housing supplies in the GTA, the Lower Mainland in B.C. and parts of Alberta and the Maritimes, Sharma said the housing challenges predated the influx.

International students have become such an integral part of the immigration system and the Canadian economy that it’s hard to just turn the tap on and off, he said.

Canada has made it a policy a decade ago to attract more international students and eased the rules by offering postgraduate work permits and a pathway for permanent residence.

International students have been touted as ideal immigrants because of their Canadian education and employment credentials. However, critics have warned that international education has been misused as a shortcut for those only here for a shot at permanent residence.

“There’s a lot of stakeholders, a lot of vested interest in keeping international student intake high. These students are exploited from basically before they come to Canada and then after they come to Canada up until they become permanent residents,” said Sharma.

“So there’s employers that are using them as cheap labour. These international students are causing even concern among various diasporic communities that they’re driving down wages.”

The immigration minister’s office said it recognizes the important role international students play in local communities and to Canada’s economy, but something has to be done.

“To tackle these challenges around fraud and bad actors, we also have to have some difficult conversations with the provinces around the threats to the integrity of the system, and outline the perverse incentives that it’s created for institutions,” Aziz said.

“We must also reward the good actors because there is so much real value in the international students program, and those who do it well are essentially mentoring the future of this country.”

The surge of international students is only part of the problem as the number of temporary foreign workers and work permit holders are also going through the roof in recent years, said Andrew Griffith, a retired director general at the federal immigration department.

The number of temporary foreign worker positions approved through a Labour Market Impact Assessment annually have skyrocketed from 89,416 in 2015 to 221,933 last year, according to federal data.

The numbers don’t include the hundreds of thousands of international graduates who have open work permits, refugee claimants pending asylum and those who arrive from more than two dozen countries that have shared mobility agreements with Canada.

“They picked international students because they probably calculated it’s the easiest group to go after. There are enough stories about abuse that it’s a way to get into Canada,” said Griffith.

“It’s by no means a slam dunk, but it does signal that the government is starting to realize that there are some impacts of large immigration. You can’t just expand immigration and expect that society will automatically adapt.”

Griffith said any immediate relief to the housing market won’t be felt in at least a year until the next round of intake because it’s already September and incoming students have been issued student visas or are in Canada.

In Ontario, international students accounted for 30 per cent of the public post-secondary student population and represented 68 per cent of total tuition revenue in the 2020-21 school year, said Jonathan Singer, chair of the College Faculty Division of OPSEU, which represents 16,000 college professors, instructors, counsellors and librarians.

Singer said any cap on international students would need to be accompanied by a model of stable and predictable post-secondary provincial funding. When such a funding model was last in place in Ontario, he added, the schools had no need to seek out a number of international students that they or the province couldn’t manage.

“One role they shouldn’t have to play is filling in the fiscal gaps left by an erosion in public funding,” Singer explained. “Our colleges and universities need to ask how many international students they have the resources to accommodate — including supports related to housing, academics and health care, including mental health.”

Although education is a provincial jurisdiction and admissions are the responsibility of the schools, both Sharma and Griffith said the federal government does have the leverage to raise the bar for language proficiency and financial assets in granting visas to students as a control mechanism.

“If you increase the quality of the intake and necessarily that may result in a decrease in the hard numbers,” said Sharma. “But instead of capping it, I think it’s time for us to optimize it and ensure that we’re getting the best bang for our buck.”

Colleges and Institutes Canada said its members have long recognized housing shortage challenges and have fast-tracked the development of new residences and approvals for building accommodations. It has also asked Ottawa to invest $2.6 billion in a new Student Housing Loan and Grant Program.

Source: Will reining in the number of international students in Canada help the housing crisis — or bring more harm?

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , , , , ,

Quebec rejects cap on student visas floated by Ottawa to address housing crisis 

2023/08/24 Leave a comment

Expect other provinces will join the chorus given all rely on international students to fund post-secondary education. Education organizations already also chiming in:

The Quebec government says it won’t accept a cap on the number of international students it can admit, rejecting one of the options the federal government is considering as part of a plan to tackle a national housing crisis.

Universities and colleges, meanwhile, said they were surprised and troubled, respectively, by the suggestion, which was first raised by Housing and Infrastructure Minister Sean Fraser at a Liberal cabinet retreat in Charlottetown on Monday.

Quebec’s reaction indicates that attempts to limit international student admissions could create conflict with the provinces. They have jurisdiction in areas of education and their postsecondary institutions have come to rely on lucrative international tuition fees.

“Quebec does not intend to impose a cap on the number of foreign students in its jurisdiction. Although issuing study permits is the responsibility of the federal government, education is the exclusive power of Quebec. It’s up to Quebec and its educational institutions to determine the number of people they can accommodate,” said Alexandre Lahaie, a spokesperson for Quebec Immigration Minister Christine Fréchette.

Federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller confirmed his government is strongly considering a cap on the number of international students Canada accepts. But Mr. Miller stressed that such a measure alone won’t fix the housing crunch.

“This will be a multipronged approach. A cap is something we’ll definitely entertain,” Mr. Miller said on Tuesday.

The number of international students in Canada soared past 800,000 in 2022, more than twice as many as when Justin Trudeau’s government took office in 2015. Some experts have said the influx of students in need of lower-cost rental accommodation has contributed to rising rents in some cities, at a time when construction of new housing has been inadequate.

More than half of all international study permits issued in 2022 went to students at Canadian colleges, a sector that has surpassed universities as the top destination for international students.

In a statement, Colleges and Institutes Canada, which represents publicly funded colleges, said it is “troubled” by the suggestion of a cap on international enrolment.

“Although implementing a cap on international students may seem to provide temporary relief, it could have lasting adverse effects on our communities, including exacerbating current labour shortages. Furthermore, we want to emphasize that students are not to blame for Canada’s housing crisis; they are among those most impacted,” Colleges and Institutes Canada said in a statement.

Michael Sangster, president of the National Association of Career Colleges, which represents private colleges, said his members are willing to work with a cap, if that’s what the federal government decides, or with a trusted institution model, another proposal the federal government has floated that could see institutions with a good track record receive preference in permit processing.

“The students that are coming to our institutions, many of them are training to become tradespeople to build the homes we need. So we’re in a bit of a catch-22 right now, but we want to be part of the solution,” Mr. Sangster said.

Philip Landon, interim president of Universities Canada, an umbrella group representing nearly 100 institutions, said the idea of a cap on international university students is concerning and something universities don’t believe is necessary.

“Universities seek to attract talented students to Canada and have been doing so in a responsible way with responsible growth rates,” he said.

Mr. Landon called on the federal government to make low-cost financing available to universities to allow them to build more residence spaces.

Mr. Miller said the government is already in talks with postsecondary schools about what they can do to guarantee more housing availability. He said provinces also need to be at the table, as they’ve benefited greatly from the international student program.

He said it has become “very lucrative” for some schools, adding that the economic impact of international students in Canada is more than $20-billion a year. While he said much of that is good, there is also “some abuse in the system.”

The international student program is a temporary resident immigration stream that isn’t subject to the yearly caps or targets that Ottawa sets for permanent resident immigration streams.

Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc said Tuesday that the premiers have not raised the need for a cap on foreign students with him. He added that while they talk often about the need for more housing, the premiers have also made clear they need more immigrants to fill labour shortages, including in the construction industry.

Mike Moffatt, the founding director of the PLACE Centre at the Smart Prosperity Institute and one of the authors of a new report on housing supply, spoke to the federal cabinet behind closed doors on Tuesday.

He said the increase in foreign students has had knock-on effects in the housing market that have helped turn a rental crisis into a home-ownership crisis.

In the area around Fanshawe College in London, Ont., for example, neighbourhoods once occupied by young families have “turned into a sea of student rentals” bought up by investors, he said.

“Domestic and international students are the biggest victims of this, not the cause of it,” he said.

“This is a systemic failure, I would say of both the federal and provincial governments and as well the higher education sector.”

Source: Quebec rejects cap on student visas floated by Ottawa to address housing crisis

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , , , , ,

Clark: The Liberal housing plan is overdue

2023/08/24 Leave a comment

Indeed. As it is for an annual immigration plan that includes temporary workers and international students:

You have to agree with Housing Minister Sean Fraser’s assertion that the answer to Canada’s housing crisis isn’t new political branding. Still, it would be nice if the federal government had a plan.

The good news is there are signs that the Liberal government is putting together what could be the rudiments of a plan. But it needs an actual plan. And it needs to come to grips with the screaming urgency.

So perhaps the best exercise for the Liberal cabinet retreat taking place in Charlottetown this week would be having all ministers dip their heads in vats of ice water before and after their briefings about the housing crisis. You know, so everyone there feels the kind of shocking wake-up call that should be motivating them now.

It sounded promising when Mr. Fraser, freshly appointed as Housing Minister on July 26, outlined some of the government’s thinking about increasing the housing supply – and even said he thinks the government is thinking of capping the rapidly increasing number of international students coming to Canada. But then he said a decision on that is “premature” right now.

The problem is that Mr. Fraser is mixing up the concepts of “premature” and “overdue.”

The feds have missed a window to cap – and reduce – those numbers for this school year.

Let’s note here that Mr. Fraser is quite right when he says that we should be careful not to “somehow blame immigrants for the housing challenges that have been several decades in the works in Canada.”

That’s absolutely true. We should blame governments. They failed to plan.

Immigration itself isn’t the cause of the problem: It is good for Canada, and international students can be an especially good thing. But successive governments, federal and provincial, encouraged a boom in numbers, especially international student numbers, without planning policies to encourage housing for them.

One of the people briefing the Liberal cabinet Tuesday was economist Mike Moffatt, who has been doing the academic equivalent of waving his arms trying to get governments to pay attention to the problem. “We are in a crisis and a war-time-like effort is needed. The federal government must prioritize speed and act now,” he wrote in The Hub this week.

Mr. Moffatt’s diagnosis boils down to the fact that the population grew quickly in recent years, especially in Ontario, but the pace of home-building was a lot slower. Few places for a lot more people means house prices and now apartment rents skyrocketed.

The rapid population growth went a little under the radar because it was not just an increase in permanent immigrants. The number of temporary residents has ballooned. In 2015, there were 352,325 international students. In 2021, the number was 617,250. The following year, 2022, it was 807,260. But there weren’t a lot more student residences and apartments for rent.

Now the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation estimates Canada needs to build 5.8 million homes by 2030 to make housing affordable again. So it’s good the Liberals are talking about policies to encourage more home-building. Mr. Fraser unironically noted that the Liberals campaigned on some of them in the past two elections. In fact, they promised to remove the GST on purpose-built rental housing back in 2015. It’s time to step it up.

It’s true successive federal governments are to blame. Municipal administrations and provincial governments are to blame for a lot of it, too. All for a lack of planning.

Now the plan is urgent, and it will have to include short-term measures like cutting back the number of international students. A government that doesn’t craft such a plan will create more poverty and damage many Canadians’ standard of living. And despite Mr. Fraser’s words, it is not at all clear Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet is shaking off the complacency.

Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc said he hadn’t heard talk of the idea of capping the number of international students and hasn’t spoken to premiers about it.

Mr. Trudeau, who was criticized three weeks ago for saying housing is not a primary federal responsibility, provided a nonsensical explanation for that on Monday when he said his point was that his Conservative predecessor, Stephen Harper, had “completely walked away from housing.”

And sure, we have to expect politicians will make points about politics. But this is a bigger issue now, and it’s time to pull together a plan.

Source: The Liberal housing plan is overdue

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , , , ,

Petition e-4511 – Opposing self-affirmation of the #citizenship oath “citizenship on a click” – Signatures to August 22

2023/08/24 Leave a comment

The chart below breaks down the 1,471 signatures as of 22 August by province. No major changes by province as numbers plateau.

And if you haven’t yet considered signing the petition, the link is here: https://petitions.ourcommons.ca/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-4511

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with , ,

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