Disputed immigration provision requires link to national security, Supreme Court says

2023/09/29 Leave a comment

Of note:

A provision of federal immigration law can be used to bar people on security grounds for engaging in violence only when there is a clear connection to national security, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled.

The decision came Wednesday in a judgment on two cases that began with administrative rulings under a section of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

The section of the law says permanent residents or foreign nationals are inadmissible on security grounds for engaging in acts of violence that could endanger the lives or safety of people in Canada.

The first case involved Earl Mason, a citizen of Saint Lucia, who came to Canada in 2010 and later applied for permanent residence with his wife’s sponsorship. In May 2014, Mason was charged with two counts of attempted murder and two counts of discharging a firearm after an argument at a bar in Surrey, B.C. The charges were stayed due to delay.

In the second case, Libyan citizen Seifeslam Dleiow arrived in Canada in 2012 on a study permit and later unsuccessfully applied for refugee status. A Canada Border Services Agency report alleged he had engaged in acts of violence against intimate partners and others.

Some charges were stayed, and he received a conditional discharge after pleading guilty to being unlawfully in a dwelling house with intent to commit an indictable offence, mischief under $5,000 and uttering threats.

In Mason’s case, the Immigration Appeal Division agreed with the immigration minister that the section of the immigration law in question applies even when there is no nexus with national security. In Dleiow’s case, the Immigration Division followed the appeal division’s interpretation.

As a result of these administrative rulings, both men were deemed inadmissible to Canada.

The Federal Court quashed the rulings, but the Federal Court of Appeal concluded the administrative interpretation of the immigration provision was reasonable. The men then took their cases to the Supreme Court.

In its decision, the top court rejected the Immigration Appeal Division’s reading of the provision and overturned the administrative rulings.

In writing for the majority, Justice Mahmud Jamal said the relevant legal constraints “point overwhelmingly to a single reasonable interpretation” of the immigration provision — a person can be found inadmissible to Canada only if they engage in acts of violence with a nexus to national security.

Jamal said the Immigration Appeal Division failed to address critical points of statutory context that Mason had raised as well as “the potentially broad consequences of its interpretation,” namely deportation from Canada.

In addition, he wrote, the appeal division failed to apply the section in keeping with international human rights obligations concerning refugees to which Canada is a signatory.

Justice Suzanne Cote would have applied a different legal standard of review to the case, but agreed that there must be a link between the relevant act of violence and national security.

She found the Immigration Appeal Division’s interpretation would have significantly expanded the grounds for deportation of foreign nationals or permanent residents.

“It would allow foreign nationals to be returned to countries where they may face persecution, in a manner contrary to Canada’s obligations under the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.”

Source: Immigration law provision can bar people with link to national … – CTV News

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Nicolas: Faux dilemmes [intersectionality, LGBTQ+, visible and religious minorities]

2023/09/29 Leave a comment

Nuanced discussion of the issues:

Depuis les manifestations anti-LGBTQ+ de la semaine dernière, on entend à plusieurs micros et sous maintes plumes que « la gauche s’entre-déchire », que les « intersectionnelles » ne savent plus où donner de la tête, et autres clichés semblables.

Pourquoi ? Parce que le mouvement pancanadien qui s’est mobilisé contre l’inclusion des réalités — et donc des enfants — trans et non binaires dans les écoles au Canada s’est coalisé autour de complotistes auxquels la pandémie nous avait habitués, de militants d’extrême droite, de chrétiens fondamentalistes et d’ultraconservateurs musulmans. Les caméras, sans surprise, ont capté avec plus d’insistance les visages des manifestants musulmans. Depuis, on se dit en se frottant les mains : entre les personnes trans et les femmes voilées, la « gauche inclusive » fait enfin face à ses contradictions !

Sauf que non, désolée pour vous. Je ne peux que parler pour moi-même, qui suis engagée contre l’islamophobie comme contre la transphobie : je ne sens pas mon univers de sens s’écrouler.

Par contre, le commentaire me fait dire que bien des gens qui lancent des pointes aux mouvements sociaux peinent encore à comprendre leur logique la plus élémentaire.

On saisit d’abord encore mal ce que ça veut dire, défendre les droits de la personne. C’est là un engagement qui dépasse largement la logique de « ma gang contre ta gang ». Ça veut dire que je crois que toutes les femmes devraient être libres de porter ou de ne pas porter ce qu’elles veulent — même les femmes qui méprisent une partie de ce que je suis, moi.

Ça veut dire défendre le droit de toutes les personnes LGBTQ+ de vivre leur orientation sexuelle et leur identité de genre — y compris celles qui reproduisent le racisme dans la culture queer. Ça veut dire que même si un homme noir a déjà fait des commentaires ou posé des gestes profondément misogynes par le passé, je ne veux pas qu’il se fasse tabasser par la police. Ça veut dire que j’utilise ma visibilité sur la scène pancanadienne pour sensibiliser mon audience au bilinguisme et au droit de tous les francophones du pays de vivre leur vie pleinement dans leur langue maternelle — y compris ceux qui contribuent au racisme. Ça veut dire, en gros, que je souhaite que tout le monde, même les gens qui me manquent de respect, ait accès au respect et à la dignité.

En théorie, tout cela est bien noble. Dans la pratique, les choses peuvent rapidement devenir complexes. Le travail d’organisation dans les mouvements sociaux, c’est faire face au quotidien à cette complexité. Dans les relations interpersonnelles et la construction des liens de confiance, comme dans la négociation des messages clés qui permettent de faire coalition. Cette complexité ne surprend donc personne ayant quelque expérience de terrain en mobilisation.

Cette même complexité donne aussi parfois du fil à retordre aux juristes qui doivent tracer la ligne lorsque les libertés des uns entrent en conflit avec les droits des autres. Quand la liberté d’expression ou d’association d’un groupe menace la sécurité — ou simplement la dignité — d’un autre, il faut qu’une ligne soit tracée. On ne s’entend pas toujours sur l’endroit où elle devrait l’être, mais la ligne témoigne au moins toujours d’une recherche plus ou moins adroite d’équilibre.

Plus on a l’habitude sociale et politique de la complexité, plus on se sentira outillés pour agir justement dans ce type de situation. On comprend que, souvent, on est face à de faux dilemmes. Plutôt qu’hésiter entre deux options qui ne conviennent pas à tous, on est tout à fait capables, avec un peu de volonté, d’en imaginer une troisième.

Il y a des personnes queers, traumatisées par la violence qu’elles ont subie au sein de leur propre communauté religieuse, qui se mettent à mépriser toutes les formes de foi et à étaler leurs préjugés contre tous les croyants du monde. Il y en a d’autres qui ont trouvé dans la spiritualité un vocabulaire pour nommer leur identité et leur rapport au monde, et une communauté pour les épauler dans leur recherche de sens. Il y a aussi des personnes très croyantes qui justifient par la foi des valeurs patriarcales, sexistes, homophobes et transphobes, qu’on peut tout aussi bien entretenir en étant athée. Il y en a d’autres qui puisent dans leur foi une compassion, une recherche de justice et un souci des plus vulnérables qui les mèneront vers une tout autre vision du monde.

C’est pourquoi ni la chrétienté, ni l’islam, ni aucune communauté de croyants ne sont des monolithes que l’on peut caricaturer aisément.

Si l’on veut bien comprendre les liens entre religion et diversité sexuelle, on a tout avantage à écouter les personnes queers qui sont elles-mêmes croyantes. Pour ce faire, il faudrait au moins arrêter de prétendre qu’elles n’existent pas. On ne peut les honorer dans tout ce qu’elles sont à moins d’imaginer une société où la liberté de conscience, l’orientation sexuelle et l’identité de genre sont toutes également respectées. Du moment qu’on est à l’aise avec la complexité, les conversations difficiles mais nécessaires, la recherche de solutions et l’écoute aussi, surtout, je ne vois pas pourquoi ce serait impossible.

Si cet optimisme me vient aussi aisément, c’est grâce aux années que j’ai passées dans les mouvements sociaux. On peut y voir comment des alliés de circonstance, à force de vivre des moments forts ensemble, finissent par bâtir des liens de confiance nécessaires aux discussions qui permettent de faire reculer les angles morts qu’on a tous — mais absolument tous — lorsqu’on décide de s’engager socialement. À force de défendre les droits des uns et des autres sans attente de réciprocité, les militants finissent par voir une compréhension mutuelle s’installer, doucement.

Si on ne reprend pas le rythme des mobilisations progressistes bientôt, d’ailleurs, c’est à la droite de la droite que cette magie des liens de solidarité et de confiance construits dans l’action politique s’opérera.

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

Source: Faux dilemmes

Filed under LGBTQ, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Rota debacle renews calls to examine history, including war crime records

2023/09/29 Leave a comment

Needed:

Canada could revisit calls to declassify documents about the presence of Nazi war criminals in the country, Immigration Minister Marc Miller said Wednesday, as the fallout continued over Parliament’s recognition last week of a man who fought for the Nazis.

“Canada has a really dark history with Nazis in Canada,” Miller said, heading into the weekly Liberal caucus meeting.

“There was a point in our history where it was easier to get (into Canada) as a Nazi than it was as a Jewish person. I think that’s a history we have to reconcile.”

Many Jewish organizations in Canada say doing that requires a public airing of information, and that means all the records Canada has about the presence of war criminals must be opened up.

“I think part of the problem here is that the records are closed,” said B’nai Brith senior lawyer David Matas in an interview.

“You can’t remember the past unless you know the past, and you can’t know the past unless you get the records.”

B’nai Brith Canada and the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center both reiterated their long-standing calls this week for the government to make public all records about the admittance of former Nazi soldiers.

That includes the entirety of a 1986 report from a public commission on war criminals, which is often referred to as the Deschênes Commission for the judge who led it.

The report has never been fully released, including an appendix with the names of 240 alleged Nazi war criminals who might be living in Canada that the report recommended Canada investigate.

“It’s now time for Ottawa to not only release the unredacted files related to the Deschênes Commission, but to also address the stark reality that there are still former Nazis with blood on their hands living in Canada,” said Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center President Michael Levitt.

Matas noted that in June, a House of Commons committee studying Canada’s access-to-information system recommended all historical documents be released in full after 25 years.

He said implementing that recommendation would fulfil the desire to see Canada’s war criminal records.

Currently, records can be released 20 years after someone’s death. But Matas said that rule doesn’t apply in this case, because information about people who died can’t be accessed unless their names are available.

He said it’s not that every person named in the records is guilty, but that a justice system relies on openness, and you can’t have justice without transparency, whether you’re guilty or innocent.

There is also little to no information publicly available about what follow-up was done to investigate alleged war criminals named in the Deschênes report, or bring any of them to justice.

All of this comes after what some have called the most embarrassing international debacle in Canadian history.

On Friday, during an official visit by Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the House of Commons Speaker pointed to a guest in the gallery he identified as a war hero.

Parliamentarians and dignitaries who were present gave two standing ovations to a 98-year-old Ukrainian Canadian war veteran without knowing or understanding that the unit he fought with was formed by Nazi Germany to fight against the Soviet Union.

Speaker Anthony Rota, who said he did not know about Yaroslav Hunka’s background, apologized for making an egregious mistake inviting him to Parliament. He announced Tuesday that he would resign from the role.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau issued an apology on behalf of Canada and all parliamentarians for the debacle.

University of Alberta professor John-Paul Himka pointed out that nobody seemed to immediately understand how Hunka’s military history implied he would have fought with the Germans.

That’s because of a great lack of understanding of history, even among elected MPs, he said.

“I mean, this man was introduced as somebody who fought the Russians during World War II. Who was fighting the Russians during World War II? It was the Germans,” he said.

Matas concurred.

“I mean if Rota didn’t know about this whole issue and he was the Speaker of the House of Commons, you can imagine how widespread the ignorance is,” he said.

Still, said Matas, the uproar has rejuvenated the discussion about exposing that history, including all the records.

“This is on the radar, now, I think,” he said. “They’re paying attention to it.”

Miller said he has read the Deschênes report twice since this all happened, and encouraged all Canadians to do so.

He also said he knows there are many people demanding the release of the records, and it is something the government “could possibly examine again.”

But he said because he doesn’t know exactly what is contained in the documents, he doesn’t yet want to say if he backs their full release.

“But again, in a country like Canada that has not only a difficult history with Nazis in Canada, but also one of the most important diaspora of Jewish people, including some of the largest proportions of Holocaust survivors, impunity is absolutely not an option,” he said.

Mental Health Minister Ya’ara Saks, whose York Centre riding in Toronto has about one-fifth of its population identifying as Jewish, said Canada should look at what it can do to help provide answers and closure to Jewish Canadians.

She said opening the records is something to be looked at.

Source: Rota debacle renews calls to examine history, including war crime records

Filed under Antisemitism, Holocaust Tagged with

Canada’s population sees biggest one-year increase on record, StatCan reports

2023/09/29 Leave a comment

Quoted on need for annual levels plan to include temporary residents and political will to curb growth:

Canada’s population is growing at its fastest pace since the distant days of the baby boom.

According to the latest Statistics Canada report, the population last year grew by more than a million — a 2.9 per cent rate, the highest since the late 1950s and one that outstrips, by a wide margin, every other G7 country.

At that rate, observed StatCan’s Patrick Charbonneau, the population, now at slightly over 40 million, would double in just 25 years.

The question those figures and that projection raise is this: Is Canada — famously in the midst of both a housing crisis and a health-care crisis — ready to deal with that many more people?

The growth — 98 per cent of it — has been driven by immigration, both permanent and temporary, and particularly by the numbers of non-permanent residents coming to Canada. Those include refugees, temporary foreign workers and international students.

In 2022-23, Canada took in some 1.13 million immigrants, the highest such figure on record, and almost half a million more than the previous year. Over the same period, the number of non-permanent residents increased by 697,701.

As of June 2023, the number of non-permanent residents stood at nearly 2.2 million, about 5.5 per cent of Canada’s population.

“Temporary immigration has surpassed permanent immigration for the first time last year in a context where permanent immigration was already close to a record high,” said Charbonneau.

Andrew Griffith, a former director general at the federal Immigration Department, said Ottawa has a well-managed immigration system of permanent residents, but the exponential growth of the temporary resident admission has made the population growth unsustainable.

Ottawa has an annual plan that sets admission targets for different classes of permanent resident, but the entry of temporary residents is uncapped.

“We have to have an integrated immigration plan that actually looks at both the permanent residents and the temporary residents, given that the temporary residence is largely uncontrolled and has been increasing at a very high rate,” Griffith said.

“If you look at its explosive growth over the past few years, the past 20 years, that obviously contributes to all the pressures on housing, health care, infrastructure and the like.”

He said the government’s immigration plan is developed in silos and doesn’t address infrastructure capacity issues when it comes to health care, housing, education and transportation.

Although public sentiment still largely favours the continued immigration boost and its economic and workforce benefits, many regions are already struggling to manage housing and health-care shortages.

Across Canada, rising prices and limited supply create difficulties for those seeking home rental and ownership. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. said in a Sept. 13 report that Canada needs 3.5 million more units, on top of those already being built, to restore affordability. Sixty per cent of the demand for housing is in Ontario and B.C., largely due to supply lagging behind demand for 20 years.

On the health side, about six million people across Canada lack access to a family doctor, according to Canadian Medical Association data. Of those who have a family doctor, about a third experience overly long wait times to access them.

It’s a system already under strain, with doctors and nurses increasingly reporting stress and burnout, and some quitting.

An increasing population doesn’t necessarily dictate a health-care calamity, said Ruth Lavergne, a Canada Research Chair in Primary Care at Dalhousie University.

But she said the segment of the population supporting and working in health care needs to grow proportionately to the population. And we need to “rethink the organization of health care, to make it more efficient and better use the capacity that we have.”

Some of that capacity exists within the ranks of the newcomers, in the guise of foreign-trained health professionals. The problem is Canada doesn’t have a great record in helping them work here.

But streamlining the credentialing process can’t be the only fix, said Canadian Medical Association president Kathleen Ross.

She said the country will have to reconsider health-care delivery.

And that, to her mind, means reconsidering who’s doing what, where and when in the health system, and how to plug gaps without opening up new ones.

It also means changing how primary care works, reducing the administrative burdens on health professionals and better retaining them.

“We’re in a really unique time. Our emergency rooms, which are sort of the backstop, if you will, for a primary care system that’s not functioning well, are already over capacity and struggling with closures relating to our human health resource challenges.”

“These are all things we need to take into consideration, whether or not our population increases by a half a million or one-and-a-half million this year. It still behooves us to get back to the big discussion about how we are going to deliver access to care for all residents in Canada, whether they’re temporary or permanent.”

On the housing shortage side, the responsibility falls on provincial and federal governments to ensure Canada can withstand rising demand, said John Pasalis, president of Toronto brokerage Realosophy Realty. Over the past decade, he feels that has broken down as governments failed to scale investments in vital services in line with population growth.

Although immigrants often feel the brunt of the blame for these pressures, Pasalis said culpability lies with leaders who set ambitious immigration targets and allow universities to accept significant numbers of international students without investing in upgrading capacity.

“The people who are moving here are the ones that are kind of paying the biggest price in many, many cases.”

If governments don’t step up, all Canadians will eventually feel the squeeze, said Mike Moffatt, assistant professor in business and economics at Western University.

“We certainly either need to increase the amount of infrastructure built and housing built or slow down population growth,” Moffatt said. “If we continue to have this disconnect, we’re just going to have more housing shortages, less affordability and more homelessness.”

Instead of looking at newcomers as the source of housing strain, Moffatt says leaders should impose stronger restrictions on investors taking advantage of scarcity to drive up prices.

But it’s not just the supply of houses; it’s the type of supply. Those stronger regulations will need to be aimed at developers, too, said Marc Lee, a senior economist for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. The housing in highest demand — for low- and middle-income families — is not as profitable to build.

David Hulchanski, a University of Toronto professor of housing and community development, noted that Airbnb has also taken up available housing across the country, something he said could be curbed through stronger regulation.

“There’s this effort to blame our housing problem on an increase in population,” said Hulchanski. “It isn’t just supply, it’s the type of supply.”

Against this backdrop, Immigration Minister Marc Miller has talked about the need to rein in admissions of international students — around 900,000 this year — by developing a “trusted system” to enhance the integrity of the international student program.

Griffith said that’s not enough — Canada needs to impose a hard cap, though that will take a strong political nerve.

“The business sector will squawk about the fewer temporary workers. Education institutions will go bankrupt if they don’t have their international students. The provincial governments will get in the way because they have to actually pay for university (education) rather than allowing the universities to be subsidized by foreign students.”

Shutting down the international student program and the temporary foreign worker program, or making major reductions to those programs, seems unlikely, he said, but freezing at current levels and gradually reducing those numbers might be viable.

“It would be very contentious,” he said. “It boils down to a lot of political will.”

Source: Canada’s population sees biggest one-year increase on record, StatCan reports

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Ravi Jain: Fix immigration system to unleash full potential of newcomers

2023/09/28 Leave a comment

Good sensible and practical recommendations, particularly with respect to international students and the need to refuse study permits for colleges where students are “not even eligible to apply for coveted work permits upon graduation”

Screenshot below showing steep increase of Indian students at colleges from HESA:

Tensions are high between Canada and India after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced last Monday that he had evidence linking the Indian government to the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar. India, which had previously accused Nijjar of committing terrorist activity in the state of Punjab, denied the allegation. The rift between Canada and India now threatens to impact our immigration sector, which is why the conflict must be resolved as quickly as possible.

In retaliation for the accusation last week, India paused visa services for Canadians wishing to visit and issued a travel advisory discouraging travel to Canada. This could impact the number of Indian students coming to Canada. We cannot afford to lose our leading source country for immigration.

Last year, 118,095 Indians became permanent residents. This does not include the hundreds of thousands of Indians entering as temporary residents (workers, students and visitors). For context, the next largest source country was China, at 31,815.

These newcomers are needed because Canada’s population isn’t just aging — it’s already aged. Our birth rate is too low. To maintain our standard of living, we need immigrants. Unlike the United States, where the majority of immigration is family-based, Canada relies mostly on economic immigration. We rely on India to fill our more ambitious immigration targets.

Proponents for more immigration talk of better employment opportunities down the road for Canadians, because greater diversity fosters innovation and trade. Critics argue that GDP per capita is the priority metric, and that it’s being depressed by large numbers of new entrants. In particular, they point to the 900,000 international students that Canada is on track to admitting this year (roughly triple from a decade ago) who can be used to provide cheap labour and relieve employers of the need to innovate.

Neither the proponents nor the critics are wrong. To reap the benefits of immigration, we need to tweak a few things.

First, governments need to focus on productivity. We shouldn’t be only 70 per cent as productive as Americans and less productive than Europeans. Many owners of small- and medium-sized businesses (which are responsible for more than $2 trillion in assets) will retire soon, their kids not interested in taking the reins. Canada must bring in entrepreneurs to boost our faltering productivity.

We also need to stop blaming international students for the country’s ills, including our lack of housing. Canada’s housing shortage has existed for decades, so it’s unfair to blame students now. Governments at all levels need to solve the housing crisis urgently.

Provincial governments should not rely on international students to make up for shortfalls in funding to our universities and community colleges. The number of applicants, however, are rising every year, with government forecasts estimating that Canada will receive 1.4 million applicants in 2027. International students contribute around $22 billion in tuition to our economy.

But this system has been exploited. There have been reports of poor educational quality with some colleges overenrolling and others holding classes in strip malls or movie theatres. This often happens when students enroll at a private collage partnering with a public college, with the latter issuing the diploma.

These colleges are on the federal government’s approved list for student visa issuance, but some graduates are not even eligible to apply for coveted work permits upon graduation, unlike those who attend public institutions. The federal government should therefore prevent student visa issuance in these scenarios.

We should also monitor immigration consultants more closely. Their numbers have risen rapidly, to more than 11,000. Some consultants make false promises, guaranteeing pathways to permanent residency even though only 30 per cent of temporary residents obtain it within 10 years of arriving.

Fraud and negligence are rampant among some registered consultants in Canada, as well as their non-registered counterparts in India. For instance, it was reported this summer that 700 students from India faced deportation after it was found that they were accepted to come to Canada on fake admission letters. The problem needs to be solved.

It is high time we required all consultants to work under the supervision of lawyers, who are professionally regulated and stand to lose their investment in law school if they face severe discipline.

I have practiced in this area for more than 20 years, and while a small number of immigration lawyers have been disciplined professionally, I regularly see victims of immigration consultants who enroll students at private college programs that don’t lead to work permits. These consultants will even arrange fake jobs and suggest making refugee claims simply as a way of staying in Canada.

While these changes could reduce immigration from India, this would ease Canada’s dependence on one country for international students. India would remain a main source country, but the numbers would come down to a more reasonable level.

The fraying relationship between Canada and India is incredibly unfortunate. Let’s at least use this opportunity to examine the benefits brought by Indian immigrants and temporary residents and improve the faults in our system that allow for exploitation.

National Post

Ravi Jain is an Ontario-based immigration lawyer at Jain Immigration Law. He serves as co-president of the Canadian Immigration Lawyers Association.

Source: Ravi Jain: Fix immigration system to unleash full potential of newcomers

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

Revealed: US immigration agency collects more data on migrants than previously known – The Guardian US

2023/09/28 Leave a comment

Of interest and apparent over reach:

A US immigration enforcement program that tracks nearly 200,000 migrants is collecting far more data on the people it surveils than officials previously shared, and storing that data for far longer than was previously known, the Guardian can reveal.

Newly released documents show that the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (Ice) stores some personal information the program collects on migrants through smartphone apps, ankle monitors and smartwatches for up to 75 years.

A facial recognition app that’s part of the program collects location information whenever someone logs into the app or makes a video call, the documents show, contrary to Ice statements that the app only logs location data when a migrant completes a mandated check-in through the app.

The documents were obtained by immigrants rights groups Just Futures Law, Mijente Support Committee, and Community Justice Exchange through a freedom of information request and a lawsuit.

They reveal that data collection by Ice is more extensive than was previously known to the public and even lawmakers, and raise fresh questions over the lack of transparency from the immigration agency and the company that runs the program, BI Inc.

“We learned there’s really no such thing as data privacy in the context of government mass surveillance,” said Hannah Lucal, a data and tech fellow at Just Futures Law. “The documents convey the alarming scope and scale of Ice’s growing system of data extraction and electronic surveillance monitoring.”

Ice and BI Inc did not respond to a request for comment before publication.

Ice’s ‘unlimited rights to use’ the data

The program in question, the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (Isap), is run on behalf of Ice by BI, which is a subsidiary of the large private prison corporation the Geo Group.

Billed as a humane alternative to keeping people in detention while their case moves through the immigration system, the program keeps track of migrants through ankle monitors, smartwatch trackers, phone check-ins or in-person visits.

But lawmakers and advocates have long demanded more transparency around how BI and Ice run the program, what data they collect through that surveillance system, how long they store that information and how they use it.

The documents show that Ice hasn’t been fully forthcoming in earlier questions about the information it tracks. In 2018, Ice told the Congressional Research Service that it monitored the location of program participants wearing an ankle monitor, but that it did not “actively monitor” the location of those being tracked through the program’s facial-recognition app, SmartLink. The agency said it only collected GPS data on those people during check-ins, when they are required to submit pictures of themselves from several angles to verify their identity and location.

However, an agreement migrants are required to sign when they are assigned SmartLink surveillance, made public as part of the document release, shows that location information is tracked much more frequently, including when users log into the app, start a video call through the app and enroll in it. Ice requires migrants to use the app far more frequently than for weekly check-ins. Olivia Scott, a former BI caseworker, said caseworkers were often asked by Ice to nudge migrants to log into the app, track the location and share that information with an Ice agent.

“They didn’t care what we said to the people [to get them to open the app],” Scott said. “They just needed a location.”

The documents also confirm that Ice ultimately owns the information BI collects on migrants through the program – information that, taken together, can paint a very detailed picture of someone’s life. The data collected through both the app and devices like ankle monitors include real time location history including common routes a person took, personal information such as addresses and employers, education information, financial information, religious affiliation, race and gender. The company also collects and stores a wide swath of biometric information, including images of people’s faces; voice recordings; weight and height; scars and tattoos; and medical information such as disabilities or pregnancies.

Ice is given “unlimited rights to use, dispose of, or disclose” the data that BI shares with it, the documents show – language that, according to privacy advocates, indicates that the agency can share this information with other agencies, including local law enforcement.

The management of that data is also regulated by Ice policies. According to a privacy assessment by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which encompasses Ice, all data collected through the program is stored in a DHS database that requires records be destroyed 75 years after they are first entered. BI keeps the data for seven years after a person is released from the program.

The information BI and Ice collect and store and what the two entities do with it can have far-reaching consequences for migrants, according to the records. For example, the documents show the data BI collects has helped Ice in arresting and detaining migrants. In one of the documents, BI says it “relayed participant GPS points” to Ice’s enforcement arm, which resulted in the “swift and discrete” arrest of more than 40 migrants.

The documents also show Ice’s enforcement arm (ERO) uses an opaque algorithmic scoring system to determine how much of a flight risk a person in the program is. The documents reveal the score – dubbed a “hurricane score” – is based on “risks factors”, though it doesn’t explain what those risk factors are, and BI employees’ weekly assessment of participants’ compliance with the program. If a person is determined by the algorithm to be more likely to abscond, it could lead Ice and BI to impose stricter levels of surveillance.

Maru Mora-Villalpando, a community organizer at immigrant advocacy group La Resistencia, who has worked directly with people in the program, said the revelations about the “amount of access” BI has to people’s personal information “and the unlimited control [BI and Ice] have over all the data” is “appalling”.

“We are a business to them,” she said.

“[The revelations] only make our case stronger for the end to the false idea that digital detention and monitoring of immigrants is an alternative to detention”, Mora-Villalpando said.

Source: Revealed: US immigration agency collects more data on migrants than previously known – The Guardian US

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Amid record immigration, some experts fear newcomers are ‘falling out of love with Canada’

2023/09/28 Leave a comment

Bit rambling and largely ignores the impact of the larger number of temporary residents coming to Canada as today’s StatsCan report shows over 2 million non-permanent residents.

Some interesting insights by the Institute for Canadian Citizenship, Business Council of Canada, Anil Verma, Richard Kurland, and the Ontario Chamber of Commerce:

A historic 431,645 new permanent residents were added to Canada’s population in 2022, but decreasing affordability and a sluggish economy have many immigrants reconsidering a future in Canada.

Immigration advocates and business leaders say it will have troubling consequences for the country. 

Just over a year ago, a survey conducted by Leger on behalf of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship suggested that three out of 10immigrants in Canada aged 35 and under are considering leaving the country within the next two years. The reasons cited were the astronomical cost of living and unrecognized credentials. 

“We think that because we’re not an officially xenophobic country, and because we are more open to newcomers than most other developed countries in the world, that this is therefore just paradise and everyone will come and stay,” says ICC CEO Daniel Bernhard. 

The ICC is a national charity that assists newcomers with the immigration process and integrating into Canadian society. Bernhard says the ICC’s research team could find no official studies about Canada’s immigrant retention rate and are now in the process of conducting one themselves. 

“We do know…that the number of permanent residents who are becoming citizens has nosedived, so these are indications that newcomers are falling out of love with Canada,” says Bernhard. 

In February, the ICC reported that the 2021 census found just 45.7 percent of permanent residents had gone on to become citizens in that previous 10-year period, a sharp decline from 75 percent in 2001.

Canada fell from 9th place in 2016 to 15th in the Global Talent Competitiveness Index and scored poorly on immigration retention. 

“Two-thirds of our members directly recruit newcomers through the immigration system and then the rest of them hire newcomers once they’re already relocated in Canada,” says Trevor Neiman, the director of policy and legal counsel at the Business Council of Canada. 

Neiman, and others in the business community, say this poses a major problem for the country’s economy. 

“Having a sufficient supply of labour underpins our entire economic model,” says Daniel Safayeni, the vice president of policy at the Ontario Chamber of Commerce. “So for businesses, to be able to find and retain the talent that they need is critical, and immigration is part of that equation.”

However, others are skeptical of the alarm bells being rung over these potential departures. 

“We have processed more cases than ever, at a fraction of the cost,” says Richard Kurland, a lawyer and policy analyst at Kurland-Tobe, a law firm specializing in immigration. “We have undergone an upgrade. It is a work in process, not perfect by any means, but what can you say when you get more people we need in huge numbers at the lowest per case cost ever?” 

Canada’s brand is threatened

While noting Canada has a very strong immigration brand that has helped it retain the best and brightest over the years, Neiman says that brand is under threat due to Canada falling behind on immigration backlogs, affordable housing, and credentialing. 

Neiman points out that in the Global Talent Competitiveness Index, Canada fell from 9th place in 2016 to 15th, and scored poorly on immigration retention. 

Bernhard says Canada needs a sufficient working-age population to support the social services promised by the government but that many of the countries that Canada traditionally relies upon for a supply of immigrants are outperforming it in key areas. 

“We do need a fresh infusion of working-age people…there are a lot of other countries that have figured out how to deliver health care at a high quality for less money, they figured out how to build transit at a decent quality for less money, they figured out how to build housing at a decent quality for less money,” says Bernhard. 

Neiman says countries like India and China have worked to curb skilled emigration, resulting in many of their citizens choosing to return home after a period of working or being educated in Canada. 

In 2022, the Times of India reported that many Indian nationals working abroad were returning home due to pandemic-born uncertainties and competitive job offers. Furthermore, Neiman says countries like Australia, who have historically been less open to immigration, have changed their policies to make them more attractive. 

Last August, the Australian government raised its permanent annual immigration quota to 195,000, up from 160,000 in the previous year. Worth noting is that the GCTI ranked Australia in 9th place in 2022, Canada’s former position. 

“Businesses and governments need to be laser-focused on ensuring that Canada is the top choice for newcomers who have so many options, and who are so sophisticated, and can choose wherever in the world they want to be,” says Neiman.

Credentials aren’t recognized 

Bernhard notes that highly regulated professions such as engineering, nursing, law, and medicine have strong entry barriers in Canada. 

“Immigrants to Canada in the economic class tend to be about twice as likely as the average Canadian to hold a university degree,” says Bernhard. “They’re far better educated and tend to actually be considerably younger, so they have more working years ahead of them.” 

Credentials in fields like dentistry and medicine from countries like India and Iran, both sources of large numbers of immigrants, are often not recognized by those industries’ professional colleges in Canada. 

“A lot of people don’t find appropriate employment right away,” says Bernhard. “And eventually that gap shrinks, but the impact on earnings and things like that lasts forever.” 

In the past, these barriers have resulted in legal battles to ensure foreign accreditation is properly recognized, such as in B.C. to ensure that Indian-trained veterinarians could be allowed to practice without undue scrutiny. 

Calls to soften the barriers for people trained abroad in the medical profession have grown in recent years as Canada’s health-care system is increasingly strained by a lack of new doctors and nurses. Bernhard says other barriers exist for other professions as well. 

“What a lot of people do not realize is that there are other softer barriers for people like marketing professionals, HR people, all these non-regulated jobs, where peoples’ experiences are also not being fairly recognized in the workplace,” says Bernhard. “It’s a big problem for Canada, which reports shortages in these areas despite the presence of many people who are qualified and working below their capability.”

Not a new issue

Anil Verma, the professor emeritus of industrial relations and HR management at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, does not believe the trend of immigrants cooling to Canada is new at all. 

“Just to give you my personal perspective on this, I emigrated to Canada in 1974, and so now over the last 50 years, I’ve seen the ebb and flow of immigrants coming and going,” says Verma. “It accelerates in the years that the Canadian economy is not doing well. It is much less of a problem during growth years, so there is an economic cycle to this.” 

Safayeni says Ontario’s economy is expected to slow down eventually as a result of higher interest rates, so it’s understandable that businesses are feeling more pessimistic.

“But when you look at the top two concerns underpinning that concern, it’s labour shortages and inflation,” says Safayeni.

Verma believes modern immigration to Canada must be addressed as a long-term issue, and that the country is being affected by a globalizing economy. 

“I think that what has happened, and that is relatively newer, is that there is a global market now in high-tech talent,” says Verma. “If you are a cutting-edge medical researcher, or similarly positioned in your profession or occupation, there are people all over the world hunting for you, or enticing you to move.” 

“Our members are disproportionately using immigration programs to attract highly skilled and highly specialized talent,” says Neiman. “So things like cyber security professionals, engineers, mathematicians.” 

Neiman says the labour shortage situation has changed drastically in the past few years regarding the need to fill gaps in the labour market. 

Record numbers of Canadian workers retired during the pandemic, and from August 2021 to August 2022, yearly retirements rose by over 30 percent. 

Neiman says that while they use the immigration system to address labour shortages, there is a wider interest in highly skilled immigrants with specialized areas of expertise.

“The particular skill set that’s in demand, that kind of a higher skill type of more specialized talent, has also grown as well,” says Neiman. “So I think there’s big structural forces here that are at play.”

Affordability matters

Internal migration may provide an example of how an issue like unaffordability is driving young, educated workers out of Toronto, Canada’s economic centre for the last 50 years, to more affordable cities like Calgary. One of the main reasons cited for Toronto’s unaffordability is the lack of housing supply in the Greater Toronto Area. 

Affordability has traditionally not been an area covered by the Chamber, but Safayeni says it has struck a task force to study the issue. In April, Alberta residents paid $873 less in monthly rent for an apartment, and $387,780 less when buying a house in March. 

Verma says affordability remains a huge problem, and that young people are drawn to urban centres like Vancouver and Toronto, but it becomes a problem when their salaries cannot cover the costs of living. 

Bernhard says the affordability crisis affects everybody, immigrant or non-immigrant. 

“Immigrants are a special class of people, but they also live in society with everybody else, and they’re subjected to the same pressures as everybody else,” says Bernhard. 

Verma, however, says people whose families have settled in Canada would be reluctant to uproot themselves and move away. He says the survey showing three out of 10 permanent residents are considering leaving Canada displays only their opinion, not what will actually happen. 

“I don’t see that this is a big problem. The main reason why people come to Canada is because of better economic opportunities,” says Verma. “Canada is a great place to live…wages are relatively high as compared to the world. They are not as high as in the U.S. but that has been true for the last 50 years.” 

Richard Kurland, the lawyer at Kurland-Tobe, however, says anybody who leaves Canada will be replaced by others.

“You have a bus where 25 percent of the passengers want out, and four times that number of people who want in,” says Kurland. “Anyone who wants to leave, God bless. There are a ton of replacements, with higher human capital scores, due to the nature of Canada’s new selection system.” 

Bernhard says Canada can learn from new immigrants to its benefit. 

“It isn’t just about standing still and replacing old people and hoping for the best. It’s about an optimistic vision for the future,” he said.

“Canada has always been built on that vision for hundreds of years, this is how we succeeded and I think that we need to keep that tradition alive.” 

Geoff Russ is a full-time writer for The Hub. He is based in British Columbia. @GeoffRuss3

Source: Amid record immigration, some experts fear newcomers are ‘falling out of love with Canada’

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Braverman: Multiculturalism has ‘failed’ and threatens security – The Independent

2023/09/28 Leave a comment

Seems like a rinse and repeat from former PM Cameron comments in 2011 along with leaders of France and Germany. The Canadian variant has always stressed integration and participation as objectives, along with removing barriers:

Caricature of multiculturalism as properly understood is a variant of civic integration that balances identities and accommodation within a national context.

Suella Braverman has declared that multiculturalism has “failed” in Europeand threatens social cohesion in the nation state.

The Home Secretary, giving a speech on migration in the United States, said a “misguided dogma of multiculturalism” has allowed people to come to the UK with the aim of “undermining the stability and threatening the security of society”.

Setting out the “civic argument” against illegal migration, Ms Braverman said: “Uncontrolled immigration, inadequate integration and a misguided dogma of multiculturalism have proven a toxic combination for Europe over the last few decades.

“Multiculturalism makes no demands of the incomer to integrate. It has failed because it allowed people to come to our society and live parallel lives in it. They could be in the society but not of the society.

“And, in extreme cases, they could pursue lives aimed at undermining the stability and threatening the security of society.”

She said “the consequence of that failure” are evident “on the streets of cities all over Europe,” pointing to clashes in Leicester as an example.

Migration to the UK and Europe in the last 25 years “has been too much, too quick, with too little thought given to integration and the impact on social cohesion”, she said.

“If cultural change is too rapid and too big, then what was already there is diluted. Eventually it will disappear.”

It “does not make one anti-immigrant” to say that the nation state must be protected, Ms Braverman added.

The senior Cabinet minister, a child of migrants from Mauritius and Kenya working under a Hindu Prime Minister, said: “It is no betrayal of my parents’ story to say that immigration must be controlled.”

She contrasted her parents migrating to the UK “lawfully” with those who “are coming here gaming the system”.

“They both signed up to British values wholeheartedly,” she said.

“What, I think, angers many people in Britain, whether they are from the migrant background or not, it’s the sense of unfairness that people are jumping the queue, that they are breaking our rules,” the Conservative MP for Fareham said.

Source: Braverman: Multiculturalism has ‘failed’ and threatens security – The Independent

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Petition e-4511 – Opposing self-affirmation of the #citizenship oath “citizenship on a click” – Signatures to September 26

2023/09/28 Leave a comment

The chart below breaks down the 1,512 signatures as of 26 September by province. No significant change.

ICYMI: Minister Miller’s recent comments: New immigration minister says one-click citizenship oath still worth considering

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

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Foreign students being tricked into thinking they can get permanent residency by studying in Canada, experts warn

2023/09/27 Leave a comment

More on the report by Senators Omidvar, Youssugg and Woo:

Foreign students, some of them confused by false promises from immigration consultants, are being misled into thinking that studying at Canadian postsecondary schools is a guaranteed route to remaining permanently in the country, senators and immigration experts are warning.

A report by Senators Ratna Omidvar, Hassan Yussuff and Yuen Pau Woo about the federal international student program warns that there are not enough permanent residence spots to cater to the rising number of these students coming to Canada, and calls on Ottawa to make clear that the process of staying permanently is highly competitive.

Although attending a Canadian college or university can help a foreign student gain permanent residence here, success is not assured. Under a program known as Express Entry, Canada’s immigration system assigns scores to would-be permanent residents based on their work experience and other factors, and only the highest ranked are invited to apply.

The senators’ report also calls for federal action to stop education consultants – who are paid by Canadian colleges to recruit students abroad – from overselling the ease of getting Canadian work permits after graduation. In some cases, international students are denied these permits because their colleges are not “designated learning institutions,” meaning the schools aren’t on a government list of approved institutions.

In comments to the House of Commons last week, Immigration Minister Marc Miller said international students are an asset to Canada and its future. But he said there needs to be a crackdown on consultants giving them “false hope.”

The senators’ report says it is often argued that the federal government itself is also “perpetuating an inflated sense of hope” among people who come to study in Canada.

“While the Canadian government is being honest in highlighting the immigration advantages of studying in Canada, it can perhaps do more to be forthright about the highly competitive nature of the permanent residence application process,” the report says.

The federal Immigration Department forecasts that the number of foreign students applying to come to Canada each year will rise to 1.4 million by 2027, according to an internal policy document. This year, around 900,000 are expected to study in Canada.

While Ottawa is increasing its immigration targets in the coming years, with a goal of admitting 500,000 permanent residents a year by 2025, the senators’ report says there will still not be enough spots to cater to the number of international students who wish to stay after graduation. It notes that while the number of permanent residents admitted each year is capped, there is no such cap on the number of temporary residents, including students.

Most international students want to gain permanent residence after they finish their studies, a 2021 survey of students for the Canadian Bureau for International Education found.

The survey found that 73 per cent of respondents planned to apply for postgraduation work permits, which allow former international students to work in Canada temporarily. The survey also found that 59 per cent said they intended to apply for permanent residence.

But not all postsecondary programs make students eligible for postgraduation work permits. The senators’ report says international students need to be made aware of this.

Ms. Omidvar, one of the report’s authors, said in an interview that the federal government should directly communicate with foreign students about the conditions for working and staying in Canada, to counter what she called “misinformation” from education consultants.

“It is the federal government’s responsibility to communicate with the students. When the visa is issued it should be accompanied by a letter,” she said.

Toronto immigration lawyer Michael Battista said many people discover after finishing their studies that they have been rejected for postgraduation work permits because the schools they attended, often private colleges, were not designated learning institutions.

Some return to their home countries, while others have to start their studies again at designated colleges, he said.

Mr. Battista, who is also an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto’s law faculty, said applications for permanent residence are becoming far more competitive. Qualifications that a few years ago would have allowed students to obtain permanent residence now aren’t enough, he said.

“International students are really being sold a false story,” he said, adding that many skilled graduates have waited so long for permanent residence that they have given up.

Ms. Omidvar said in some cases entire families have saved up to send one person to study in Canada. Some families in India have sold their land to pay student fees, she added.

The senators’ report says research by Statistics Canada found that 30 per cent of international students who came to Canada in the 2000s became permanent residents within 10 years of arriving.

Source: Foreign students being tricked into thinking they can get permanent residency by studying in Canada, experts warn

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