El-Sharif: Why the Canadian Citizenship Test Offers a Troubling Road Map for Newcomers

2023/10/21 Leave a comment

While I doubt that any revision to the guide would satisfy El-Sharif, a revised guide that reflects considerable consultations with Indigenous peoples has been prepared and submitted for Ministerial approval (at least to two IRCC Ministers). So the blockage is at more at the political level.

While most of us dislike the reference to the King, particularly those who come from former British colonies, the reference to the Crown has particular significance to some Indigenous peoples given that the initial treaties were with the Crown.

I always find it interesting, and almost performative, when immigrant-origin academics use strong anti-colonialist language when they themselves are arguably complicit in settler colonialism by immigrating to Canada:

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada concluded its work in 2015 with its final report and 94 Calls to Action. Many of these calls focus on educating Canadians about the residential school system and its ongoing legacy.

Unfortunately, most remain unaddressed by Canada, including one rarely discussed in the public discourse meant to educate new Canadians: Call to Action 93.

“We call upon the federal government, in collaboration with the national Aboriginal organizations, to revise the information kit for newcomers to Canada and its citizenship test to reflect a more inclusive history of the diverse Aboriginal peoples of Canada, including information about the Treaties and the history of residential schools.”

The Canadian citizenship test and accompanying study guide, Discover Canada: The Rights and Responsibilities of Citizenship, remain violently obsolete.

Meanwhile, since the calls were made, 1.3 million people have become naturalized Canadian citizens based on an outdated education. Outdated is an understatement: the citizenship education program revolves around a racist history, archaic notions of Indigenous peoples, and descriptions of colonial relations that reproduce settler harm.

The ‘progress’ of Call to Action 94: the oath of citizenship

While Call to Action 93 is incomplete, 94 has seen some movement. To the casual observer, a new Indigenous supplement in the oath of citizenship — as the TRC called for — may seem an improvement. But context is required here: after pledging allegiance to the monarch, new Canadians now also commit to upholding Indigenous treaties by virtue of the fact that the Constitution recognizes and affirms Indigenous rights.

Notably, the bill that legislated this, Bill C-8, was only accelerated in 2021after the discovery of unmarked gravesites on the grounds of a Kamloops residential school, children killed by residential schools’ abuse and neglect. It was a discovery that demanded action.

This order of allegiance in the oath seems like a familiar pattern of Indigenous rights subsumed by colonial interests. It seems similar to the many school boards that now include a land acknowledgment, then move on to business as usual with “O Canada” — or in how Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tears up discussing Indigenous relations and then proceeds to ignore Indigenous rights and pushes for pipelines to be built without full Indigenous consent.

Similarly, the revised oath for new Canadians still rests on respecting the monarchy as the final arbiter of Canadian relations.

Call to Action 94 ensures that arriving immigrants are still part of a colonial project that continues to dispossess Indigenous Peoples from their land. The progress (or lack thereof) on the “newcomer” Calls to Action must be interpreted through this lens.

What are new Canadians really learning?

Returning to Call to Action 93 and the necessity of change here requires exploring what currently exists. What are new Canadians learning about Canada?

I’ve identified three key themes.

1. Newcomers are learning to erase genocide.

Canada emerged because early settlers encountered a world where land is described as a site for colonization, and battles for land sovereignty were between the British and the French. Together, these two warring factions spent the 18th century fighting over land, which was lost, won and consolidated. Throughout, there is a settler narrative of colonial “explorers” as modern, forward-thinking builders of nations and civilization, contrasted with Indigenous people who related naively to the land.

The guide asserts, “The native people lived off the land, some by hunting and gathering, others by raising crops… before the settlers arrived.”

There is nothing of pre-colonial Indigenous sovereignty followed by mass murder, ethnic cleansing and Indigenous resistance.

The pictures in the study guide tell a similar story. “Historical” panels show Indigenous people as decrepit and threadbare, in muted beiges and pale blues; by comparison, the panels showing the colonizers are large and gloriously resplendent in style, form and colour.

Even the grammar in the study guide does disturbing work. A pithy paragraph describes the genocide of Indigenous Peoples in the passive voice, thereby hiding responsibility: “Large numbers of Aboriginals died of European diseases to which they lacked immunity.” In one slick grammar move, carnage just happened, rather than being created by genocidal public policy involving actual perpetrators.

The enormity of treaty violations, deceptions, land theft and genocide — not to mention Indigenous resistance — is referenced in one terse sentence: Treaties “were not always fully respected.”

More, the story of residential schools is summarized with a tidy ending: “In 2008, Ottawa formally apologized to the former students.” These are the settler fantasies Canada’s newest citizens have to subscribe to in order to gain citizenship, the stories that settlers believe about themselves and those they colonized, and the stories that attempt to define colonial relations with Indigenous people.

2. Newcomers are learning to normalize colonial plunder.

Reversing the violence of the study guide is a matter not just of including Indigenous histories but also of thinking about the layers of settler colonialism.

Doing so is in the spirit of Call to Action 47:

“We call upon federal, provincial, territorial and municipal governments to repudiate concepts used to justify European sovereignty over Indigenous peoples and lands, such as the Doctrine of Discovery and terra nullius, and to reform those laws, government policies and litigation strategies that continue to rely on such concepts.

In other words, Call 47 is meant to repudiate the colonial concepts upon which the study guide heavily relies. Embedded in the settler histories are settler ideas that normalize and exalt colonial practices and symbols. Becoming Canadian citizens compels immigrants to subscribe to these stories, practices and symbols that are tightly interwoven and synergistically work to fortify business as usual for Canada.

Unsurprisingly, the study guide preaches an exploitative relationship to land that builds on both the Doctrine of Discovery (the right to “discover” and claim land) and terra nullius (the idea that land not colonized by Europeans is legally “empty”).

For example, Canada’s provinces are largely described as places of mining and extraction: “Thousands of miners came to the Yukon during the Gold Rush of the 1890s, as celebrated in the poetry of Robert W. Service.”

Describing Yukon to new Canadians in this way underlines the colonial notion that miners had a “right” to extract resources from the apparently empty land and that Canada glorifies mining. Consequently, the study guide encourages new Canadians to see mining as consequence-free, despite hundreds of years of settlers exploiting Indigenous lands without proper consent and fair compensation and degrading the land.

What the study guide does not say is that Indigenous people both in the past and to this day continue to experience disproportionate environmental consequences from colonial resource extraction: mining nickel has poisoned air and soil in Sudbury with sulphur dioxide, whereas paper mill processing has poisoned Grassy Narrows with mercury, to name two of countless examples.

The federal government has consistently violated treaties and discounted Indigenous lives. However, rather than acknowledge this in the study guide for new Canadians, immigrants are taught to repeat the same tired performance of reconciliation, where they may recite an oath to treaties but ignore the actions to uphold them and prioritize colonial interests instead.

Finally, describing land as primarily economically useful reinforces misinformation about Indigenous people and how they have related to the land. It also biases new Canadians’ interpretations of present-day legacies and conflicts related to extraction and development, such as Indigenous resistance and solidarity against the Wet’suwet’en pipeline construction or the land defenders at 1492 Land Back Lane.

3. Newcomers are learning to venerate exploration.

Consistent with the themes described above, the guide also uses colonized place names and upholds the heroes of colonization. On the former, it consistently describes landmarks only as named by the British or the French, such as “New Founded Land,” named by John Cabot in 1497, or the province of Alberta and Lake Louise, both named after Queen Victoria’s daughter, Louise Caroline Alberta.

The Yukon panel characterizes William Logan, a Scottish settler, as an “immigrant” and erases any mention of the Champagne and Aishihik, Kluane and White River First Nations on whose territories Mount Logan lies — a landmark, like so many other landmarks, named after a settler.

Nowhere in the guide are we informed of the Indigenous meanings behind any place names in Canada — save for the word “Canada” itself, described as a European rendering of the Iroquoian word for “village” learned from “two captured guides.” In other words, the only names worth mentioning are the places that settlers have co-opted.

In one particularly damning example, the study guide informs us about the naming of Iqaluit, not by telling us what Iqaluit means (“the place of many fish”), but by telling us its former name: Frobisher Bay. Frobisher was an English explorer who, according to the study guide, “penetrated the Arctic for Queen Elizabeth in 1576.” The sexual violence implicit here corresponds to Frobisher’s actions a year later, in 1577, when he kidnapped, assaulted and was ultimately responsible for the deaths of numerous Inuit, including Inuit women.

Even when the guide refers directly to Inuit — in an effort to seemingly praise Indigenous Peoples and their knowledge of the land — it does so by demonstrating how they gave their knowledge of the land in service of the settler state to assert its colonial sovereignty and security.

As the guide moves into the contemporary, it describes the Canadian military’s Arctic force: “Drawing on indigenous knowledge and experience, the Rangers travel by snowmobile in the winter and all-terrain vehicles in the summer from Resolute to the Magnetic North Pole, and keep the flag flying in Canada’s Arctic” (note the lowercase letter “i” in Indigenous).

In the same breath that it recognizes Inuit expertise, the study guide describes their knowledge as seamlessly fortifying the colonial nation. The photo even manages to symbolically bring in the monarchy with an Inuit boy who is hunting wearing a baseball cap emblazoned with the state crown.

Consistent with the citizenship oath, any shred of recognition towards Indigenous Peoples is in the service of upholding the colonial state.

For newcomers, a misleading map to Canada

All of the above speak to the high cost of the inexplicable delays in meeting the demands of Call 93. Canada has one of the highest immigration rates in the world, bringing in 500,000 immigrants annually.

There are currently eight million permanent residents in Canada, which is 20 per cent of the population. Some of them may go to college, university or trade school to upgrade their education. But all of them will go through the federal immigration system, making the government the biggest educator of immigrants in Canada.

To appreciate the significance of these narratives, consider how citizenship ceremony officials would walk around the test centres ensuring naturalizing citizens were actually mouthing the words of the oath before many citizenship ceremonies shifted to digital formats during the early pandemic years.

Some will remember this surveillance became a flashpoint between the Harper government and a Muslim woman, Zunera Ishaq, who insisted on wearing her face covering during her oath ceremony or taking the oath privately with a female official. Obviously, the Harper government’s obsession with visibly Muslim women was the main issue. But how could officials also be sure she was mimicking settler stories?

A central, unresolvable tension lies at the heart of the citizenship process: how to respect Indigenous rights, self-determination and treaties when they are subsumed under a required allegiance to a settler state.

Similar to how adults teach children to say the magic word “please” to access privileges, the need to take the oath and subscribe to the stories in the study guide sets up a political relationship for immigrants in their new home. It is the blueprint for how new Canadians are expected to relate to Canada and to Indigenous Peoples.

As a personal example, when talking to an immigrant friend in 2016, I suggested we do a land acknowledgment at her community festival, and my friend’s response was, “That thing Trudeau does? Yes, we can do that.”

The process of welcoming immigrants to Canada should reflect what it might be to be in something, but not of it.

Immigrants cannot be tools in the last, desperate breath of a settler state’s attempt to fortify colonial relations.

Source: Why the Canadian Citizenship Test Offers a Troubling Road Map for … – TheTyee.ca

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Jordan Michael Smith: Samuel Huntington’s Great Idea Was Totally Wrong

2023/10/21 Leave a comment

Good long read, concluding paras below. Like so many big ideas that grab popular or political imagination, the analysis over time demonstrates their shortcomings:

But even as research and events have discredited Huntington’s argument, it has found important adopters among the far right worldwide. Steve Bannon, the influential adviser to the Trump administration, has adopted variations of the ideas, saying, “If you look back at the long history of the Judeo-Christian West struggle against Islam, I believe that our forefathers … kept it out of the world, whether it was at Vienna, or Tours, or other places.” No wonder that Trump’s White House extensively limited immigration, singled out Muslim refugees as primed for violence, overstated the threat posed by jihadist terrorists, and made defending an apparently embattled American civilization fundamental to its worldview.

Beyond the United States, right-wing figures globally increasingly used the language of clashing civilizations. Pim Fortuyn, a pioneer in the far-right populist crusade against Islam, represented himself as “the Samuel Huntington of Dutch politics.” Russian leader Putin styles himself as the defender of Christendom, saying “Euro-Atlantic countries” were “rejecting their roots,” which included the “Christian values” that were the “basis of Western civilization.” Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister who has become the de facto leader of Christian conservatives, told an American conference of right-wingers that “Western civilization” was under attack by people who hated Christians and globalists who “want to give up on Western values and create a new world, a post-Western world.”

Huntington likely would have despised some of his new fans. He was a nationalist who was skeptical of immigration, but he was simultaneously a small-d democrat who devoted his life to defending America’s interests and its democratic system. Most importantly, he wanted to avoid the clash of civilizations he foresaw, not provoke one, as people like Bannon are eager to do. Praise for a violent, anti-Western dictator like Putin is unimaginable coming from him. But however inadvertently, Huntington furthered the cause of far-right populists everywhere by giving them a language and academic cover for their apocalyptic, xenophobic sentiments. These reactionaries have targeted Muslims and migrants with brutal rhetoric and actions, fueling the global, cultural, and religious tensions that Huntington wanted to reduce. But that is the thing about theories: Sometimes they clash with the real world, to disastrous effect.

Source: Samuel Huntington’s Greahttps://newrepublic.com/article/176019/samuel-huntington-clash-civilizations-wrongt Idea Was Totally Wrong – The New Republic

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Principal apologizes for asking student to remove Palestinian flag from online profile

2023/10/21 Leave a comment

Pity the officials that have to develop a consistent flag policy that applies equally to all countries given that flags have both an identity and political element. There would be similar outrage is a principal asked to a student to remove a Ukrainian flag, for example. The Israeli flag could be interpreted as a threat by Canadian Palestinian students just as the Palestinian flag could be interpreted as a threat by Jewish students.

But what would the response be to a student posting a Khalistan or ISIS flag on an identity basis?

The principal of an Ottawa public school has apologized for asking an elementary school student to remove the Palestinian flag as their profile picture.

The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB) confirmed the incident took place during an online class last week.

Video sent to CBC shows the principal of the school asking a student to remove the flag from their profile. CBC is not showing the video as it could identify the underage students.

In the video, the principal said “political statements are not for the classroom” and told the student they would be removed from class if they didn’t comply with the request.

“We will follow up with your family because we want to keep all students feeling safe, welcome and included in our classrooms,” said the principal.

“You’re not really welcoming me right now,” replied the student.

The principal then offered to have an immediate followup conversation with the child and their family, and concluded “we want all of our students to feel welcome, and having one side or the other doesn’t include all students.”

The video shows two other students then changing their profile pictures to the Palestinian flag before it ends.

CBC is not identifying the school to protect the privacy of everyone involved.

‘Unacceptable’ request by principal

The National Council of Canadian Muslims received dozens of complaints about the incident, including one from the family of the student involved, according to the council’s chief operating officer Aasiyah Khan.

“There’s a lot of confusion and there’s also a lot of anger and frustration,” said Khan, adding it has been an especially difficult time for the Jewish and Palestinian communities since the conflict between Israel and Hamas erupted nearly two weeks ago.

“Rather than creating a space to support students through this, I think surveilling or bullying them into muting who they are, or erasing part of their identity, is unacceptable,” she said.

The council arranged a meeting with the OCDSB following the incident. School board officials declined requests for an interview, instead sending CBC a statement already issued on its website addressing what happened.

“Upon reflection and thanks to the thoughtful feedback received from students and parents, the following day the principal acknowledged that for many students, a flag may be an important part of their identity,” the statement read.

The statement said the principal had apologized to the class and to families “for any harm that may have been caused.”

Flags allowed, says school board

The statement went on to read that symbols of hate, discrimination or violence would never be tolerated but students have the right to express their “identity, background or beliefs.”

“While this was regrettable, we would ask for understanding as school staff are working to navigate an extremely challenging international situation in a way that allows all students and staff to feel safe and supported,” it said.

However, Khan said this particular incident follows a trend in school boards across the country over the last two weeks, with the council’s caseload increasing fourfold.

What’s happening in the Middle East is “being weaponized and impacting students here,” she said, with the Palestinian flag being associated as “a threat.”

“It’s really hurtful because that is someone’s identity,” said Khan.

Source: Principal apologizes for asking student to remove Palestinian flag from online profile

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Canadians divided on whether impact of immigration is positive or negative: Canseco poll

2023/10/21 Leave a comment

Another poll indicating decreased support, likely reflecting concerns over housing, healthcare and infrastructure:

In September, only three per cent of Canadians selected immigration when asked to either choose between nine concerns or offer one of their own. Housing, homelessness and poverty (25 per cent), health care (24 per cent) and the economy and jobs (20 per cent) continue to dominate nationwide.

Canada is in a unique generational divide when it comes to what is keeping us awake at night. Young adults are struggling to become homeowners, their middle-aged counterparts worry about finances and Canada’s oldest residents are concerned about the viability of the health-care system. In the heat of a federal political campaign – even one that is technically two years away – immigration can be seen as a hindrance on each of these three pressing issues.

When Research Co. and Glacier Media asked Canadians earlier this month, 45 per cent told us that immigration is having a “mostly positive” effect in Canada, while 38 per cent believe it is having a “mostly negative” effect and 17 per cent are undecided. This year’s survey outlines a significant shift from the way Canadians felt in February 2022, when positive perceptions of immigration were nine points higher (54 per cent) and negative ones were 12 points lower (26 per cent).

In 2023, only in two provinces – Quebec and British Columbia – do we find majorities of residents looking at immigration in a positive light (54 per cent and 51 per cent, respectively). The proportions are lower in Saskatchewan and Manitoba (46 per cent), Ontario (41 per cent), Atlantic Canada (also 41 per cent) and Alberta (34 per cent).

The anti-immigrant sentiment that is sometimes present in parts of Europe is not appearing in Canada. We continue to see 75 per cent of Canadians who think the work and talent of immigrants makes Canada better, as well as 65 per cent who believe immigrants should only be allowed in Canada if they adopt Canadian values.

One issue where the numbers are moving is our vision of the country. There is a virtual tie when we ask Canadians if they would prefer the “mosaic” model, where cultural differences are preserved (45 per cent), or the “melting pot”, where immigrants assimilate and blend into society (42 per cent). In July 2021, the “mosaic” had a 12-point lead over the “melting pot” (47 per cent to 35 per cent).

On the vision question, the gender divide is fascinating. Practically half of Canadian men (47 per cent) choose the “melting pot,” while a similar proportion of Canadian women (48 per cent) prefer the “mosaic.”

The strident debate over illegal immigration that has played a role in American politics for the past four decades has never been present in Canada. Still, some perceptions are changing. In this month’s survey, practically two in five Canadians (39 per cent) think the number of legal immigrants who are allowed to relocate in Canada should decrease, up 14 points since February 2022. More thana third (37 per cent, down two points) would retain the same levels, while 17 per cent would increase immigration (down eight points).

In similar fashion to what is observed in the United States, ideology plays a role in the way we feel about immigration levels. More than two in five Canadians who voted for the Liberal Party (42 per cent) and the New Democratic Party (NDP) (46 per cent) in 2021 think the status quo is working. Only 29 per cent of Conservative Party voters concur.

While about a third of Liberals and New Democrats (32 per cent and 33 per cent, respectively) are ready to decrease the number of legal immigrants who enter Canada, the proportion jumps to 51 per cent among Conservatives.

While immigration is not rising as an issue of concern across Canada, it can become a key point of discussion for many reasons. We have seen politicians in the United States focus on immigrants – legal and illegal – to criticize the performance of governments on areas such as housing and finances. At this point, half of Conservative voters would welcome a reduction in the number of legal immigrants. The popularity of the party, and the way Canadians feel about their daily lives, will define if immigration becomes a campaign issue in 2025.

Mario Canseco is president of Research Co.

Source: Canadians divided on whether impact of immigration is positive or negative: poll – Business in Vancouver

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The Liberals win points on housing policy, but it might not change the politics

2023/10/20 Leave a comment

As I have also argued, “The new Liberal measures to increase building and alleviate the shortage, meanwhile, aren’t likely to have a palpable impact on the supply of housing for years – and not before the scheduled 2025 election.”

Paying a price for their fixation on higher levels of immigration while ignoring the impacts on housing, healthcare and infrastructure:

Don’t look now, but the Liberals are starting to win some policy debates on the housing crisis. It just might be too late for the politics.

Justin Trudeau’s Liberals spent much of 2023 getting hammered about the high price of houses, skyrocketing rents and mortgage spikes. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre was making hay, and gaining ground, lambasting Mr. Trudeau by channelling the resentment about 30-year-olds living in their parents’ homes and families struggling to afford one.

For most of the year, the Liberals hemmed and hawed and declared that all the things they had already done were the greatest ever – as if they couldn’t see the problem nearly everyone was feeling.

But if you tuned into Question Period on Monday, there was Housing Minister Sean Fraser knocking back Conservative attacks with shots of his own, claiming, albeit apocryphally, that the Tories plan to raise taxes on rental units.

Liberals could, and did, claim that private-sector actors have endorsed some of their new housing measures. Four major developers said they plan to build more than 10,000 rental units between them because of the federal government’s September move to remove the GST on purpose-built rental housing. Mortgage lenders have said the tripling of the Canada Mortgage Bond Program will make a significant difference for builders.

Where the Tories were landing blows at will a few months ago, now Mr. Fraser was jousting gamely, responding to a Peterborough Conservative MP’s arguments that Liberal “inflationary spending” forced interest rates higher by pointing to a multimillion-dollar housing announcement in her riding. Though the Tories kept picking the fight, the Liberals were starting to win some of the rounds.

But if the Liberals are starting to get a grip on the issue in Question Period, it comes at a time when no one is watching. Not many people watch Commons debates, and this week, the public attention paid to Parliament was devoted almost entirely to speeches about events in the Middle East.

It’s not clear, anyway, if the Liberals can still rebuild credibility after letting the housing debate get away from them.

Their late-summer epiphany came when the public outcry was rising high and Liberal poll numbers were falling low. Their biggest new measure – that GST break – was something the Liberals promised to do in 2015 but didn’t.

Even so, the Liberals suddenly boosted housing policy on a bigger scale, with real potential. The deals Mr. Fraser is signing with cities and towns for money from Ottawa’s Housing Accelerator Fund could move the dials, too, if municipalities make rule changes that, for example, allow more triplexes to be built.

Mr. Fraser now likes to point out that the Liberal bill provides more extensive housing tax breaks than a bill Mr. Poilievre tabled in September – hence the minister’s disingenuous claim that the Conservatives would raise taxes on housing.

The Liberals now have better policy that will make a difference. But it might not change the politics for Mr. Trudeau’s government.

For starters, Mr. Poilievre’s Conservatives have had some success in making people believe that government deficit spending – and big Liberal spending, during the pandemic’s peak and now – is the cause of inflation, and therefore the cause of high interest rates.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland can argue that inflation is global and declining, and Canada’s deficits and debt are lower than most industrialized countries. And while the Liberals have been profligate spenders who showed little regard for controlling costs, there’s no reason to believe a Conservative government would take office and bring in spending cuts that would make interest rates rapidly tumble.

But those are arguments. People feel inflation. And they keep feeling it even when the pace of price increases starts to slow. Many felt the struggle of paying a high cost of housing exacerbated by a shortage of supply, and now are feeling the pinch of higher interest rates through mortgage bills or higher rents. The Bank of Canada’s rate increases seemed to park declines in Liberal poll numbers.

The new Liberal measures to increase building and alleviate the shortage, meanwhile, aren’t likely to have a palpable impact on the supply of housing for years – and not before the scheduled 2025 election.

So now the Liberals have regained their footing in the fight over who can address the housing crisis but it is still a government eight years into power hoping to win a political argument over who has the best solutions for years in the future. Mr. Fraser is starting to win debates in the Commons on housing policy, but it might be too late to make Canadians feel things will change.

Source: The Liberals win points on housing policy, but it might not change the politics

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When Japan’s dual nationality ban meets a legal gray zone

2023/10/20 Leave a comment

Of interest:

Despite Japanese law prohibiting dual or multiple citizenship, it’s well known that citizens are often able to quietly retain these statuses due to a lack of official revocation procedure.

One of the thousands of people that could be in this citizenship gray zone is Yuri Kondo, a lawyer who is now pursuing a lawsuit to challenge the rule, its constitutionality and its ambiguity.

Born and raised in Japan, Kondo, now 76, spent four decades in the United States. She first pursued her education and then ultimately settled in the state of Arizona, where she worked as a lawyer and raised a family with her Bangladeshi American husband.

After decades in the U.S. as a permanent resident with a green card — which hampered her longer-term stays to see family in Japan — and after becoming a member of her local Democratic Party, she decided to become an American citizen. The move would allow her to both travel more freely and to vote.

“When I became politically active, and (considering) my parents’ health situation, I finally said I might as well become a U.S. citizen, because at the time I thought I would just stay on in Arizona,” she said. “I thought I’d live and die there and that would have probably been true until the coronavirus.”

But Article 11 Clause 1 of Japan’s nationality law states that a Japanese national who obtains another nationality by their own choice shall lose their Japanese citizenship. The law also requires those who have dual citizenship from childhood to choose one by the age of 20.

As of 2020, 76% of countries worldwide allow citizens to acquire multiple nationalities, according to data from the Maastricht Centre for Citizenship, Migration and Development in the Netherlands, compared to just 38% in 1960. Most are non-Asian countries, but some in Asia, like the Philippines and South Korea, allow it under certain conditions.

Germany made headlines this summer after its Cabinet approved a bill that would drop restrictions for holding dual citizenship.

Kondo became an American citizen in 2004, and, despite her naturalization, she kept her Japanese passport and traveled back and forth with it for years, just as she’d heard of many others doing.

It wasn’t until she traveled back to Japan in 2017 with a nearly-expired passport — to care for her late mother who was battling cancer at the time — that Kondo’s nationality status raised alarms.

According to Kondo, upon trying to get her Japanese passport renewed before expiration, she was flagged as potentially having dual citizenship at a passport center in Tokyo. Officials there withheld her passport and application, she said.

So, without her Japanese passport, when it came time for her to return to the United States, she attempted to leave Japan with only the American one.

Upon arriving at immigration, the official who looked through it seemed perplexed when they realized she had no entrance stamp in the American passport. They asked Kondo to explain.

She told them that her Japanese passport had been taken away and that using the U.S. passport was her only option.

The agent left for 10 minutes and returned to inform her that she could leave Japan as a Japanese citizen and then left a handwritten mark in her U.S. passport reading “dual citizen.”

Kondo’s now-expired Japanese passport has since been returned. However, she hasn’t reapplied for a new one on the assumption that she’d once again be denied and hasn’t received any follow-ups from the government requesting she pursue a formal withdrawal of nationality, as there is no rule requiring it.

Today, Kondo resides in Fukuoka. She returned to Japan in the first few weeks of 2020.

Initially, she and her husband returned for what she thought would be a short stay to be close to her daughter and grandchildren who were there for work at the time. However, with the onset of COVID-19 and associated border restrictions, she stayed out of fear that she might not be able to return, while her husband returned to America and has since gone back and forth.

Ultimately, Kondo realized that she was comfortable in Fukuoka, where her father was raised, and she plans to remain there for the foreseeable future. Having returned to Japan without a Japanese passport, though, Kondo is unsure about her current residency status in the Japanese government’s eyes.

She’s stayed beyond the time allowed for someone considered a “foreigner” without a visa, but her Japanese koseki, or family register, still exists, meaning that she is still a Japanese citizen on paper. At the moment, she refuses to submit the documents the government deems necessary to delete it.

“On the one hand, (the law) says that I lost my Japanese nationality, I’m a foreigner,” Kondo said. “But then inside Japan, the proof of citizenship or nationality normally is koseki, right? To get the passport you need the koseki, among other documentation, as residential registration proof.

“I have everything because my koseki has never been deleted and the government cannot do it (themselves).”

In order for someone’s koseki to be deleted, it’s the person’s responsibility to submit the necessary documents — like a formal nationality withdrawal application or proof of naturalization in another country, according to the Justice Ministry. There are currently no consequences for failing to submit such documents and, more generally, for not giving up Japanese nationality.

So, with guidance from her own legal team, Kondo remains in her country of origin, going public with her story and taking legal action in the meantime.

While the issue is not actively tracked, the Justice Ministry estimates in its most recent data from 2018 that around 925,000 people were potentially in a position to have dual nationality.

However, this figure could include people who could have already declared or forfeited their Japanese citizenship as well as those who could have multiple nationalities through descent, and even people who may have since died.

Among all of these people potentially living in this gray area are those who get caught in the law’s crosshairs and lose their Japanese citizenship, with some choosing to give it up out of fear of breaking the law and others who don’t know about the rule in the first place.

“The (government’s) argument is ‘This is the law so you have to abide by it,’ and then we say, ‘Well, this law doesn’t make any sense,’ and they say, ‘It doesn’t matter,” Kondo said.

After advising and hearing from many whom the law has touched over the years, including her own multiracial, international family, Kondo has grown frustrated. In her eyes, the Japanese government makes people with dual nationality feel as though having these connections to more than one nation is somehow a crime.

Kondo became determined to do what she could to challenge the nationality law in hopes of changing the status quo. She filed a lawsuit questioning the constitutionality of the law — Article 13 that says all people shall be respected as individuals, and Article 22 deals with the freedom to divest themselves of their nationality — with the Fukuoka District Court in 2022, becoming the third such case in Japan.

Kondo’s case has gained momentum. A crowdfunding campaign has already nearly raised ¥1 million.

On Oct. 2, the Supreme Court upheld a Tokyo High Court ruling in one of the cases — a case filed in Tokyo by eight individuals who acquired citizenship in Switzerland and Liechtenstein — that said the nationality law is constitutional.

In the ruling, the judge stated that the law can work to prevent “friction” that could arise from having dual nationality due to various rules established by certain countries, like those related to diplomatic protection, military service obligations and taxation. Plus, the judge said, Japan still allows the freedom to change nationality.

In Kondo’s statement to the court, she states that the nationality law lacks a concrete mechanism that will automatically delete a person’s Japanese nationality once it’s lost, adding that the law is outdated, that Japan should aim to diversify in today’s age, and that the law should be abolished or amended.

Also, the fear and concern that comes with the legal pressure to give up citizenship, which can be a large part of someone’s identity and livelihood, is “not justifiable,” Kondo said to The Japan Times. And she feels a special responsibility to do something about it.

“I think one point I want to emphasize is that this is personal, but also not personal, because I know that so many people who are in my situation don’t speak up because they are so afraid.”

Source: When Japan’s dual nationality ban meets a legal gray zone – The Japan Times

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Nicolas: Devant la catastrophe, les mièvreries

2023/10/20 Leave a comment

Historical parallels. And of course, decolonization language, like land acknowledgements and “land back”, while helpful for some, are easier than addressing many of the underlying intractable issues. Concrete measures and policies are much harder to seek agreement and implement. Particularly, of course, given fanatic, unrealistic and weak leadership from all sides:

Depuis la frappe meurtrière de l’hôpital Ahli Arab et devant l’horreur des corps qui jonchent le sol de la bande de Gaza, le monde entier est en état de choc. Devant la catastrophe, le Nouveau Parti démocratique continue d’être le seul parti de la Chambre des communes à réclamer un cessez-le-feu immédiat. Une poignée de députés libéraux demandent aussi un terme aux bombardements, tentant visiblement de faire pression sur leur propre gouvernement.

Justin Trudeau a certes appuyé l’ouverture d’un corridor humanitaire au poste frontalier de Rafah en début de semaine. Mais face à l’horreur de la guerre, ce sont plutôt les mots que le gouvernement canadien ne prononce pas qui résonnent le plus fort.

« Crimes de guerre » : un terme qu’on avait tout de suite employé lorsque l’armée de Poutine s’était mise à bombarder les civils ukrainiens.

« Sanction collective » : un crime de guerre, plus précisément, qui peut prendre notamment la forme d’une coupure d’eau, de vivres et d’électricité à une population de plus de deux millions de personnes, dont la moitié est des enfants.

« Déplacement forcé de population » : un autre potentiel crime de guerre à avoir en tête alors que l’armée israélienne oblige un million de personnes à quitter la partie nord de la bande de Gaza pour se réfugier (pour l’instant) au sud du territoire, déjà surpeuplé et sans ressources.

Ces mots et tant d’autres, pourtant partout dans l’espace public, ne trouvent pas leur place dans les débats de la classe politique canadienne. Devant l’ampleur du décalage, une question : comment expliquer la faiblesse de l’empathie et du soutien de notre gouvernement au peuple palestinien ? Ci-bas une piste de réponses trop peu nommées qui complète l’analyse de la relation du Canada avec le reste du monde en explorant le rapport de notre pays à lui-même.

Le gouvernement canadien a maté les dernières grandes résistances militaires autochtones à la dépossession de leurs terres à la fin du 19e siècle. À l’échelle des milliers d’années d’histoire autochtone en Amérique du Nord, c’est hier. La plupart d’entre nous n’avons jamais entendu parler du mouvement de Tecumseh lors de la guerre de 1812. Et si on nous a rebattu les oreilles avec la pendaison de Louis Riel, on ne s’est pas étendus sur ce qui a suivi le rachat des prairies canadiennes à la Compagnie de la Baie d’Hudson par le gouvernement fédéral.

Le peuple métis a été chassé de ses terres et condamné à plusieurs générations d’errance. Les Premières Nations ont été enfermées dans des réserves dont le gouvernement d’Ottawa contrôlait chaque aspect de la vie quotidienne : l’accès à la nourriture et aux médicaments, le droit d’aller et venir. Puis, on a pris les enfants pour « tuer l’Indien » en eux. On s’est assurés de briser les âmes pour que de résistance militaire à grande échelle il n’y ait jamais plus.

Quelques décennies après que le danger de révolte s’est bien passé, on s’est mis à relâcher les règles et à « moderniser » la Loi sur les Indiens peu à peu. Mais quand on voit, par exemple, quelles ont été les réactions populaires et politiques à la crise d’Oka, on se dit que nos fantômes collectifs ne sont pas encore bien loin. Depuis quelques années, du haut de la sécurité des vainqueurs, on nous parle de réconciliation — préférablement que symbolique, s’il vous plaît.

On pourrait faire une série de cartes du Canada et des États-Unis où l’on pourrait voir les territoires sur lesquels les Autochtones peuvent circuler et vivre librement, rapetisser, puis rapetisser encore. Bien que chaque contexte historique compte toujours son lot de réalités uniques, on ne peut pas s’empêcher de penser que ces cartes ressemblent, à bien des égards, à celles qu’on a l’habitude de nous montrer d’Israël et de la Palestine en 1948, en 1967 et aujourd’hui.

Déjà, depuis plusieurs années, il y a un écart important entre le territoire théorique de la Cisjordanie et la réalité sur le terrain. L’entreprise de colonisation et d’occupation des terres, accélérée par le gouvernement de Nétanyahou, ne laisse plus grand-chose aux Palestiniens.

Ce n’est pas un hasard que la grande puissance qui nous a donné l’âge d’or d’Hollywood et tous ses films de « cow-boy et d’Indiens », où l’on glorifie la dépossession violente, soit la plus incapable de sens critique aux décisions de Benjamin Nétanyahou. Il est tout à fait logique que le Canada et les États-Unis, où l’on refuse encore de réfléchir un peu sérieusement à l’origine de la souveraineté de l’État sur le territoire, adoptent des postures morales sur la scène internationale en cohérence avec leur propre histoire.

Une bonne partie des militants propalestiniens les plus fervents, d’ailleurs, peinent encore à saisir pleinement qu’en immigrant au Canada, on s’inscrit de facto dans un projet colonial qui n’est pas si dissemblable de celui qu’ils condamnent. Plusieurs sont issus de familles venues ici pour fuir la guerre (ou les conséquences structurelles du colonialisme, plus largement) dans leur coin du monde. Le mouvement sioniste, lui, a pris racine dans le trauma de siècles de pogroms, puis de l’Holocauste en Europe.

Partout, le rêve de sécurité des uns s’assied sur la dépossession des autres. S’attarder à cette question, c’est perdre quelque peu sa posture de supériorité morale, réfléchir de manière moins abstraite à la proximité humaine dans une « colonie de peuplement », envisager d’autres formes et possibilités de paix. C’est prendre acte qu’on est tous inéluctablement liés et pris dans le grand bourbier de l’Histoire humaine.

Il y a bien sûr plusieurs grandes différences entre la conquête du « Wild West » canadien et américain et la colonisation en Cisjordanie et l’occupation de Gaza, notamment. Aucune comparaison n’est parfaite. L’une de ces grandes différences, c’est qu’ici, on a plus d’un siècle de distance émotive depuis la fin des grandes résistances militaires autochtones.

À moins de renverser la vapeur — et peut-être sommes-nous à un moment décisif de l’histoire —, on peut imaginer un jour des événements officiels israéliens s’ouvrant avec de belles déclarations de reconnaissance des territoires traditionnels plus ou moins cédés. Ce sera probablement très émouvant.

Anthropologue, Emilie Nicolas est chroniqueuse au Devoir et à Libération. Elle anime le balado Détours pour Canadaland.

source: Devant la catastrophe, les mièvreries

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Immigrating to Canada? The system is backlogged and at times unfair, a new report confirms

2023/10/20 Leave a comment

Pretty condemning report, reflecting political and official level weaknesses. Money quotes:

Overall, the report concluded that the Immigration Department’s ability to reduce backlogs is hampered because officials are taking in more applications than what they can handle under the immigration targets the government has set.

Another contributing factor, it said, is the failure of the immigration minister to use his authority “to apply intake controls” during the pandemic.

One despairs at times…:

Immigration applicants have long complained that newer applications are being processed ahead of the older ones, while some visa posts finalize the same files much faster than others.

Those experiences have been validated by the Auditor General in a report released Thursday that found Canada’s immigration backlogs have persisted, with the length of time some permanent residence applications are in the system ballooning in some programs.

The audit focused on eight programs that receive applications in economic, family, and refugee and humanitarian classes, and found a substantial number of applications across all programs remained backlogged at the end of 2022.

The Immigration Department aims to process 80 per cent of applications within its service standards. However, the volume of applications that remained backlogged far exceeded 20 per cent in all programs, with refugees waiting the longest for a decision.

On average, privately sponsored refugees waited 30 months for a decision, while overseas spouses or common-law partners waited an average of 15 months to be reunited with their partners in Canada, compared to the set 12-month service standards. That means, only five per cent of these refugee sponsorship cases and 56 per cent of the spousal applications were processed promptly.

The federal skilled worker program fared worst, with only three per cent of the applications meeting the six-month timeline.

Canada not abiding by ‘first-in-first-out’

The report also found that the length of time backlogged applications spent in the queue increased across all programs — indicating that the department finalized many newer applications over older ones.

In the family class, more than 21,000 applications were finalized within six months of being received, ahead of at least 25,000 older applications that remained in the inventory at the end of the year.

In the provincial nominee program, the time applications remained in the backlog had increased from 12 to 20 months from January to December last year, while for in-Canada spousal sponsorships, the age of the applications rose from 27 to 47 months.

“Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada did not consistently process applications on a first-in-first-out basis contrary to its operating principle,” said the 40-page report.

That principle was not adhered to, it said, due to other priorities such as the special resettlement program for Afghan refugess, as well as the pressure to complete large volumes of applications to meet the annual immigration targets.

Backlogs vary by country

The report also found differences in the size and age of application backlogs by country of citizenship in seven of the eight audited permanent-residence programs, particularly for government-assisted refugees, federal skilled workers and sponsored spouses who applied from abroad.

For example, in the government-assisted refugees program, more than half of the applications submitted by citizens of Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo were backlogged. By comparison, only one third of Syrian applications were backlogged.

The three countries have the most applications for government-assisted refugee sponsorships, but the visa offices are also under-resourced.

“The department continued to assign application workloads to offices without assessing whether they had enough resources to process them,” the audit said.

The Dar es Salaam office in Tanzania, for instance, had an assigned workload that was five times greater than the Rome office in Italy, even though both offices had a comparable number of staff.

Immigration officials recognized that the visa posts in sub-Saharan Africa were chronically under-resourced but continued to assign files to these offices, which have some of the highest processing volumes for family and refugee programs.

Although the department, with digital applications, has the capacity to redistribute files to let other offices to share the workload, the audit found family-class and refugee-class applications were not transferred out of the Dar es Salaam or Nairobi offices — which both have high workload and application backlogs.

“Department officials told us that they had no plans to transfer backlogged applications to other offices with available capacity, leaving these applicants to wait even longer,” said the report.

“The department did not know whether these offices had the resources they needed to process the volumes of applications assigned to them.”

Canada taking in more applications than it can handle

Overall, the report concluded that the Immigration Department’s ability to reduce backlogs is hampered because officials are taking in more applications than what they can handle under the immigration targets the government has set. (Canada’s annual permanent resident intake grew from 341,000 in 2020 to 465,000 this year.)

Another contributing factor, it said, is the failure of the immigration minister to use his authority “to apply intake controls” during the pandemic.

“From March 2020 through 2021, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada continued to accept applications to its permanent resident programs,” said the report. “But with office closures and travel restrictions, the volume of applications in its inventory grew.”

Despite the launch of a new digital assessment tool and online application portals, the report said the department did not monitor the implementation of its new automated eligibility-assessment tool to determine whether the tool was reducing processing times or to identify and resolve unintended differential outcomes for applicants.

What does the AG recommend?

The Auditor General recommends the Immigration Deportment:

Take immediate steps to identify and address differential wait times to support timely processing for all applicants;

Examine backlogged applications to identify and act on processing delays within its control, and prioritize the older backlogged applications;

Provide applicants with clear expectations of the timelines for a decision; and

Improve consistency of application processing times across its offices by matching assigned workloads with available resources.

“People who apply to Canada’s permanent resident programs should benefit from the government’s efforts to improve processing speeds regardless of their country of citizenship or the office where their application is sent for processing,” the report said

Source: Immigrating to Canada? The system is backlogged and at times unfair, a new report confirms

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Online citizenship ceremonies undermine oath’s significance, critics say

2023/10/19 Leave a comment

CBC’s The National coverage of the citizenship oath petition:

http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2274832451616

And the reason that “over 90 percent” choose the virtual option is that they are not offered a choice: “We’ll invite most applicants to a video oath ceremony (virtual citizenship ceremony).”

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Paul: A Chill Has Been Cast Over the Book World

2023/10/19 Leave a comment

Agree, dangers of cancel culture with respect to literature and the arts in general:

Last week the literary association Litprom canceled a celebrationfor the Palestinian author Adania Shibli’s book “Minor Detail” at the Frankfurt Book Fair, one of the publishing world’s biggest international book fairs. The novel, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and was longlisted for the International Booker Prize, was to be honored for having won the 2023 LiBeraturpreis, a German literary prize awarded annually to a woman from the developing world. A panel that Shibli, who splits her time between Jerusalem and Berlin, was to be on with her German translator, Günther Orth, was likewise canceled.

In a statement defending the decision, Juergen Boos, the director of the book fair, distanced the organization from the award, saying the prize came from another group, which was now looking for “a suitable format and setting” to honor Shibli elsewhere. He also said that “we strongly condemn Hamas’s barbaric terror war against Israel” and that the fair “has always been about humanity; its focus has always been on peaceful and democratic discourse.” Furthermore, Boos said, the Frankfurt Book Fair “stands with complete solidarity on the side of Israel.”

Some readers, like the festival organizers, may also side entirely with Israel, which was brutally attacked by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7. Others may side with Hamas or with the Palestinian people, now under fire by Israeli forces. Still others may have more complicated positions, condemning the actions of Hamas while supporting the establishment of a democratic Palestinian state or supporting Israel while disapproving of the tactics of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government or its military.

But taking a side in a war does not require taking positions on a work of fiction — no matter the subject matter or the author’s nationality — and that is the effect of the fair organizers’ decision. Canceling a celebration of an author may not be the same thing as banning a book, but the organizers’ decision amounts to demonizing a fiction writer and stifling her viewpoint.

The move sends an unfortunate message to both authors and readers, advancing the false notion that there is a wrong time for certain authors or novels and that now is not the time for Palestinian literature. As if novelists were somehow responsible to or for global conflicts and must be judged in accordance with whatever political events take place at the time of publication.

Even if one chooses a side in this war, literature and the views of fiction writers shouldn’t become collateral damage. It is no more wrong to read the latest novel by the Palestinian writer Isabella Hammad at this moment than it is to read the comic short stories of the Israeli author Etgar Keret. Now may, indeed, be the very moment when it makes sense to consider a creative work that comes from the other side.

Shibli told me she doesn’t fear the effects of Litprom’s and the book fair’s actions so much as she fears what they reflect in terms of political shifts. “It’s alarming to witness this populism attempting to take its hold on literature,” she wrote me in an email. “But literature cannot be in the grip of one group, not when it forges an intimate link with every reader.”

Shibli has not been canceled. Her works are still available in translation from the Arabic. But a chill has been cast. The idea has been thrust out there by the organizers of one of the world’s most prominent annual literary events that her fiction and, by extension, the work of other Palestinian writers are somehow not OK for our moment. And that the work of literary institutions is to reinforce borders rather than enable literature to transcend them.

“Minor Detail” undoubtedly offers sympathies to the Palestinian cause — a perspective that surely won’t be embraced by all readers. It includes the story of a Bedouin girl who was gang raped and murdered by an Israeli Army unit in 1949, an atrocity that has been well documented. One German judge of the prize, Ulrich Noller, resigned from the jury that determined the award last summer, saying the novel serves “anti-Israel and antisemitic narratives” and claiming it not only allowed such readings but also opened up space for them.

This is 2023’s second controversy in which political passions over a war prevailed over the fate of an author’s work. A month after a dispute between Ukrainian and Russian writers over a panel at the PEN World Voices Festival this year, the novelist Elizabeth Gilbert delayed her historical novel set in Siberia in response to online outcry from readers she said were Ukrainian. Gilbert said she made this decision on her own — we don’t know for sure — but in the end, this is another example of a work of fiction’s subject matter being deemed inappropriate for political reasons.

“It is not the time for this book to be published,” Gilbert said in a video she posted online at the time. “And I do not want to add any harm to a group of people who have already experienced and who are continuing to experience grievous and extreme harm.”

Let’s be clear: Wars cause harm. Novels do not. Literature may raise uncomfortable questions or explore unpopular viewpoints or establish reasons to empathize with a character a reader might otherwise find repugnant. A novel’s story, characters, politics and theme may not appeal to a particular reader. That reader does not have to like those books or read them to begin with. One need not like or agree with the author, either, to appreciate the person’s work.

But novels need not appeal to or appease a political constituency. Those works of fiction written purely as political dogma in disguise tend to suffer the consequences with critics and readers. That said, even overtly political fiction and the novelists who write them should not subjected to the passions incited by global conflicts.

These are just two examples, but the effects ripple out, generating tension and fear in the wider literary world. Already, there is fallout from the decision in Frankfurt. The Indonesian Publishers Association, the Arab Publishers’ Association, the Emirates Publishers Association and the United Arab Emirates Sharjah Book Authority have pulled out of the festival, which opened on Wednesday.

As the Sharjah Book Authority put it, “We champion the role of culture and books to encourage dialogue and understanding between people. We believe that this role is more important now than ever.” In withdrawing on Tuesday, the Malaysian Education Ministry noted its decision is “in line with the government’s stand to be in solidarity and offer full support for Palestine.”

More than 600 publishers, editors, translators, writers and others in the industry, including Ian McEwan, Colm Toibin, Anne Enright and the Nobel Prize winner Abdulrazak Gurnah, have signed an open letter on the ArabLit website.

“The Frankfurt Book Fair has a responsibility,” the letter explains, “to be creating spaces for Palestinian writers to share their thoughts, feelings, reflections on literature through these terrible, cruel times, not shutting them down.”

In the statement Boos emphasized “peaceful and democratic discourse.” He and the fair’s organizers should then reflect on this: When you shut people out (be it through censorship, bans, social media campaigns, a canceled book celebration or the machinations of an autocratic regime), when people feel judged by or deprived of a voice that expresses their — and our common — humanity, we wall off our minds.

The moment people line up on opposing sides, when their eyes and hearts shut tight accordingly, is precisely when we need literature that challenges our presumed allegiances most.

“‘Adab’ in Arabic means ‘literature’ but also ‘ethics,’” Shibli told me. “Literature as ethics would perhaps open up more possibilities in our imagination on how we could live our lives together, in relation to each other.”

Source: A Chill Has Been Cast Over the Book World

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