NDP leader Jagmeet Singh wants to tie federal funding to immigration levels

2023/04/25 Leave a comment

As the British Columbia government has also argued. Legitimate demand as federal government generally does not address or adequately fund the various impacts and costs of increased immigration in housing, healthcare and infrastructure:
Federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh wants to use the agreement his party has with the federal Liberals to push for tying funding for housing to immigration levels.
“We, of course, need immigration. Any chamber of commerce that I’ve gone to and in any kind of industry, folks have mentioned the need for additional workforce and this requires additional immigration,” said Singh.But he added that “where there is higher immigration or there are more folks coming in, we also (need to) make sure there are more dollars being spent so there are places for people to live and we don’t just see an exacerbation of an already difficult housing market crisis.”

Source: NDP leader Jagmeet Singh wants to tie federal funding to immigration levels

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Islamophobia widespread in Canada, early findings of Senate committee study indicate

2023/04/25 Leave a comment

Of note:

Islamophobia and violence against Muslims is widespread and deeply entrenched in Canadian society, early findings from a Senate committee studying the issue indicate.

Muslim women who wear hijabs – Black Muslim women in particular – are the most vulnerable, and confronting Islamophobia in a variety of public spheres is difficult, the committee on human rights has found.

“Canada has a problem,” committee chair Sen. Salma Ataullahjan said in a phone interview with The Canadian Press.

“We are hearing of intergenerational trauma because young kids are witnessing this. Muslims are speaking out because there’s so many attacks happening and they’re so violent.”

The problem is worse than current statistics suggest, Ataullahjan said.

Many Muslims across Canada live with constant fear of being targeted, especially if they have experienced an Islamophobic attack, witnessed one or lost a loved one to violence, the committee found.

“Some of these women were afraid to leave their homes and it became difficult for them to take their children to school. Many were spat on,” Ataullahjan said. ” Muslims have to look over their shoulder constantly.”

Last month, figures released by Statistics Canada indicated police-reported hate crimes targeting Muslims increased by 71 per cent from 2020 to 2021. The rate of the crimes was eight incidents per 100,000 members of the Muslim population, based on census figures.

The Senate committee’s work began in June 2021, not long after four members of a Muslim family died after being run over by a pickup truck while out for an evening walk in London, Ont. A man is facing terror-related murder charges in their deaths.

The committee’s senators, analysts, translators and other staff travelled to Vancouver, Edmonton, Quebec, and across the Greater Toronto Area to speak with Canadians who attend mosques, Muslims who were victims of attacks, teachers, doctors and security officials, among others.

The findings from those conversations are now being put together in a report, which the committee began drafting this week, Ataullahjan said.

The final version of the report – set to be published in July – is expected to include recommendations on what can be done to combat Islamophobia and how government can better support victims of attacks, she said.

Among the committee’s findings is an observation that attacks against Muslims often appear to happen out on the streets and appear to be more violent than those targeting other religious groups, Ataullahjan said.

Analysts and experts interviewed by the Senate committee said the rise of far-right hate groups and anti-Muslim groups are among the factors driving attacks against Muslims, Ataullahjan said.

The committee looked at the cases of Black Muslim women in Edmonton who were violently assaulted in recent years.

“Some of them sat in front of us and everyone was getting teary-eyed because it’s not easy to tell your story especially where you’ve been hurt,” she said.

The 2017 shooting at a Quebec mosque when a gunman opened fire, killing six worshippers and injuring several others, is another example of violent Islamophobia, she said.

The Senate committee’s report will also address recent violence against Muslims, including an alleged assault outside a Markham, Ont., mosque where witnesses told police a man tore up a Qur’an, yelled racial slurs, and tried to ram a car into congregants.

The committee will also detail day-to-day aggression against Muslim Canadians, including accounts from hijab-wearing girls in schools who don’t feel comfortable reporting instances of Islamophobia to police, Ataullahjan said.

The National Council of Canadian Muslims said the initial findings align with what it has been observing and trying to inform government leaders about for years.

“We’re happy that this is being done,” said spokesman Steven Zhou. “It’s something that everyone everywhere needs to study up on. It’s a worsening problem.”

The council gets calls every day from Muslims across Canada detailing instances of Islamophobia, Zhou said, underscoring the need for action.

“People don’t like to report these things,” he said. “It takes a lot out of them to actually go to courts or talk to the police who might not understand exactly what they’ve gone through.”

Zhou said he expects the committee will make recommendations similar to suggestions the council has already put forward, including changes to hate crime legislation, creating policies that would prevent hate groups from gathering near places of worship, and legislation to deal with online hate.

The National Council of Muslim Canadians also hopes the report will help Canadians familiarize themselves with the Muslim community.

“We want to address hate,” he said. “But also it’s about building bridges. For people to learn about Islam, for people to learn about what this religion is actually about, how the community works.”

Source: Islamophobia widespread in Canada, early findings of Senate committee study indicate

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Biden Opens a New Back Door on Immigration

2023/04/25 Leave a comment

Of note, one of the few areas of movement but only through executive action and the humanitarian parole program and TPS:

Amid a protracted stalemate in Congress over immigration, President Biden has opened a back door to allow hundreds of thousands of new immigrants into the country, significantly expanding the use of humanitarian parole programs for people escaping war and political turmoil around the world.

The measures, introduced over the past year to offer refuge to people fleeing Ukraine, Haiti and Latin America, offer immigrants the opportunity to fly to the United States and quickly secure work authorization, provided they have a private sponsor to take responsibility for them.

As of mid-April, some 300,000 Ukrainians had arrived in the United States under various programs — a number greater than all the people from around the world admitted through the official U.S. refugee program in the last five years.

By the end of 2023, about 360,000 Venezuelans, Cubans, Nicaraguans and Haitians are expected to gain admission through a similar private sponsorship initiative introduced in January to stem unauthorized crossings at the southern border — more people than were issued immigrant visas from these countries in the last 15 years combined.

The Biden administration has also greatly expanded the number of people who are in the United States with what is known as temporary protected status, a program former President Donald J. Trump had sought to terminate. About 670,000 people from 16 countries have had their protections extended or become newly eligible since Mr. Biden took office, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center.

All told, these temporary humanitarian programs could become the largest expansion of legal immigration in decades.

“The longer Congress goes without legislating anything on immigration, the more the executive branch will do what it can within its own power based on the president’s principles,” said Theresa Cardinal Brown, senior adviser at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington.

The main challenge, she noted, is that “the courts can come in and say it’s outside the president’s authority, or an abuse of discretion, and take it all away.”

Already, critics have complained that the administration is using unfettered discretionary power that runs afoul of the laws Congress passed to regulate legal immigration, a system based primarily on family ties and, to a lesser extent, employment.

With Mr. Biden expected to kick off his re-election campaign this week, Republicans are likely to focus on what they call his overly permissive immigration policies.

Twenty Republican-led states, including Texas, Florida, Tennessee and Arkansas, have sued in federal court to suspend the parole program for residents of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, arguing that it will admit 360,000 new immigrants a year from those countries and burden states with additional costs for health care, education and law enforcement.

Alabama, one of the plaintiffs, cited estimates that even before these programs, up to 73,000 undocumented immigrants were already living in that state, about 68 percent of them with no medical insurance and 34 percent with incomes below the poverty line, an influx the state said was costing taxpayers about $324.9 million a year.

“This constitutes yet another episode in which the administration has abused its executive authority in furtherance of its apparent objective for immigration policy: open borders and amnesty for all,” Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general who is leading the states’ lawsuit, said when it was filed.

In adopting the programs for Latin Americans, the Biden administration was responding to widespread criticism over the chaotic situation on the southern border, which last year saw 1.5 million unauthorized crossings. It bypassed years of failed attempts in Congress to legalize undocumented workers already in the country or to make more visas available to employers who wish to bring in temporary workers.

The new parole programs are temporary — most expire after two years, unless they are renewed — but they already are changing the nature of immigrant arrivals. The migrants who were admitted to the country after flooding the border from many of the same conflict-ridden countries last year have not been allowed to work for at least six months, after opening an asylum case.

As a result, many have wound up in shelters in cities like New York, which has struggled to accommodate them.

The humanitarian parole program, in contrast, requires immigrants to first have a sponsor in the United States who will take financial responsibility for settling them in, and expeditiously offers a work permit for those approved. Employers with worker shortages are welcoming the arrivals as an important new labor pool.

The administration’s goal was to discourage the hundreds of thousands of migrants who were arriving at the border by allowing people to apply in a more orderly fashion from their home countries. After the programs began, overall Border Patrol apprehensions at the border reached their lowest levels in two years, led by a precipitous decline in Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans. Average weekly apprehensions declined to 46 in late February from 1,231 in early January, when some of the parole measures were announced.

“The successful use of these parole processes and the significant decrease in illegal crossing attempts demonstrate clearly that noncitizens prefer to utilize a safe, lawful and orderly pathway to the United States if one is available, rather than putting their lives and livelihoods in the hands of ruthless smugglers,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.

Overall border crossings from all nationalities, however, remain near historic highs, even with the new programs.

The programs have divided leaders of Republican states. Some, including those suing, contend that with the new programs, Mr. Biden has effectively kept the country’s doors wide open, although instead of masses of people crossing without authorization, he has invited them in legally.

But the programs have attracted broad support in the business community in some conservative states, like North Dakota, where there is deep concern over worker shortages.

A report last week from FWD.us, a bipartisan pro-immigration group, estimated that about 450,000 immigrants who entered the United States on parole programs from Afghanistan, Ukraine and Latin American countries were filling jobs in industries facing critical labor shortages, including construction, food services, health care and manufacturing.

In North Dakota, where the oil industry has been struggling to hire roustabouts to operate rigs in the region’s notoriously punishing weather, the state Petroleum Council is recruiting people across the western prairie to act as sponsors for new Ukrainian immigrants who can be put to work.

The first 25 Ukrainian families are expected to arrive by July, with hopes that hundreds more will follow soon after.

“The Ukrainians need us, and we need them,” said Ron Ness, president of the council. “We have been working seriously to develop a very big project on a very large scale to attract them.”

In Utah, already home to a thriving Venezuelan community but where unemployment is 2.4 percent, Gov. Spencer Cox has called for states to be allowed to sponsor immigrants to meet their work force needs. Derek Miller, president of the Salt Lake Chamber, said that Utah was “very supportive” of the parole program given the inability of Congress to open new pathways for legal immigration.

“We have 100,000 jobs going unfilled,” Mr. Miller said. “We embrace a process for those who want to contribute to be able to come.”

Employers in Illinois are also gearing up for new arrivals. “This is a breath of fresh air, when we are seeing such a labor shortage,” said Sam Toia, president of the Illinois Restaurant Association in Chicago, who said businesses there were attracting many Ukrainians on parole because of the state’s historical ties to Ukraine.

Many of the new immigrants already have found work. Anastasiia Derezenko of Ukraine crossed the southern border with her husband and two children last year, and the family received the temporary protected status Mr. Biden approved for Ukrainians. She found a job as a certified nurse assistant in Washington State.

“We have decided we don’t want to go back; we want to build our life here,” she said.

Humanitarian parole has been used in the past. The authority granted by Congress to the executive branch in 1952 in fact has evolved into a key tool for expeditiously admitting people who do not qualify under established immigration categories, though rarely to the degree seen lately under the Biden administration.

President Eisenhower used parole authority to allow 15,000 refugees to enter the United States after the Hungarian revolution in 1956. Before the enactment of the Refugee Act of 1980, parole was used to swiftly admit 690,000 Cubans and 360,000 refugees from Southeast Asia after the fall of Saigon.

Over the last several administrations, some of the most consequential immigration policies have resulted from presidents exercising discretion, including former President Barack Obama’s executive action to create the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, which gave young undocumented immigrants work permits and a reprieve from deportation. Mr. Trump used his authority to ban travel into the United States from a list of targeted countries.

But following the earlier moves to parole Cubans and Southeast Asians, Congress quickly granted the ability for them to obtain permanent U.S. residency.

The Biden administration paroled into the United States some 75,000 Afghans evacuees amid the hectic U.S. military withdrawal, but a divided Congress does not appear likely to pass the Afghan Adjustment Act, a bill that would put them on the path to green cards. If it fails to pass, the administration would have to extend their temporary status before it expires in August.

“The challenge today is, we are much less likely to get legislation from Congress that regularizes people who have come,” said Adam Cox, an expert on immigration and constitutional law at New York University.

Muzaffar Chishti, senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, cautioned that unless the parolees applied for asylum, or their parole was extended when it expires after two years, many recipients could join the mass of 10.6 million undocumented people already in the country

The United States historically has extended humanitarian exemptions repeatedly, enabling many participants to remain in the United States for decades. Nicaraguans, whose nation was battered by a hurricane, for example, have been allowed to stay since 1998.

The Ukrainian immigrants in western North Dakota are joining a community of Ukrainians that sprang up there in the late 1800s. State officials said that welcoming the newcomers would both achieve a humanitarian goal and help address a shortfall of about 10,000 workers in the oil industry.

Glenn Baranko, who owns a large company that builds pads for drilling rigs and is the great-grandson of Ukrainian settlers, said that his family and friends have already agreed to sponsor 10 people he plans to employ.

“I want them here, and I will help them get their first apartment and make sure their fridge is full until the paychecks start to come in,” he said.

Brent Sanford, a former lieutenant governor who is leading the state’s project to tap into the humanitarian parole program, said the state’s oil industry was keen to sponsor people from additional countries, such as Venezuela, which has a robust petroleum sector, and whose nationals are also eligible for humanitarian parole.

“We are hearing some who come might want to continue and stay in the United States, which is great,” he said.

Source: Biden Opens a New Back Door on Immigration

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New Zealand shouldn’t be afraid of ‘brain drain’ after Australian citizenship deal

2023/04/25 Leave a comment

Of interest, some similar but different dynamics between USA and Canada although restrictive immigration policies in USA are shifting somewhat the patterns in tech:

For a very long time, the concept of New Zealand and Australia as meaningfully different nations did not make much sense. The Tasman Sea was awash with two-way traffic in the 19th century, when we were outposts of the same empire, with ideas and people floating between the two countries freely. Australia’s 1900/01 constitution famously retains an option for New Zealand to join its federation of states. The two countries did not send proper diplomatic missions to each other’s capitals until 1943, and did not create separate “citizenships” until 1948.

In the decades since we have established ourselves as properly different countries, albeit ones that are extremely closely linked, with over half a million New Zealand citizens living in Australia. Over the weekend those links got even closer, as prime ministers Chris Hipkins and Anthony Albanese announced a huge change to the way New Zealanders can get citizenship, which has been far more difficult since 2001.

Kiwis living in Australia will soon be eligible to apply for citizenship after four years of living in the country, with all their children born since mid-2022 in the country automatically made citizens. This replaces a cumbersome and expensive system by which New Zealanders who had lived in Australia for years had to apply to become permanent residents of Australia first, despite already being de facto permanent residents anyway.

This is a major win for Hipkins and New Zealand. It brings Australia’s system into line with New Zealand’s and will make many New Zealanders lives measurably better, as they are able to access social services for themselves and their children in the country they have moved to. Even NZ First leader Winston Peters, who publicly decries the Labour government as “dishonest” separatists, acknowledged that the deal was a victory.

But before long an old obsession was trotted out to attack the deal: the “brain drain”. Australia is not just a richer country than New Zealand, it is one that distributes those riches differently, consistently paying workers a higher proportion of GDP. Would this not, asked several prominent economists, just send more Kiwis over the ditch for higher wages, contributing to existing skills shortages? One editor even suggested the government may have been “played” by those cunning Australians.

These arguments do New Zealand a disservice.

For one, there is scant evidence that this will meaningfully contribute to more people crossing the ditch. Between late-2003 and late-2022, 778,000 Kiwis migrated to Australia from New Zealand, suggesting that the tougher path to citizenship John Howard introduced in 2001 didn’t really stop many. If you’re the kind of young person who typically did make that move, the prospect of citizenship after four years is hard to see as much of a pull factor – over and above more immediate benefits like higher pay, better working conditions, and that half of your friends are doing the same. It could keep some Kiwis in Australia longer, sure, but anyone who is happy to become a citizen of Australia is likely a lost cause for us anyway.

Source: New Zealand shouldn’t be afraid of ‘brain drain’ after Australian citizenship deal

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Canadian military sees rise in applications from new immigrants

2023/04/25 Leave a comment

Long standing challenge among general recruitment challenge:

More than 6,000 new immigrants have applied to join Canada’s Armed Forces (CAF) over the past two months after the military dropped citizenship requirements to bolster its ranks, according to the latest data provided to New Canadian Media.

“We have seen a huge interest from new Canadians since we’ve opened the door to permanent residents,” Lieutenant-General Jennie Carignan, the military’s Chief of Professional Conduct and Culture told NCM in an interview during her recent visit to Vancouver.

“The number of folks from different backgrounds…new Canadians has increased from 23 per cent to over 30 per cent of applicants,” she said. “This is very, very good news.”

NCM reported on Nov 11 that Canada’s military would be opening its doors wider to attract new immigrants into its ranks after the CAF recruitment site was updated to reflect policy change. Before the change, only Canadian citizens were eligible to apply for employment within the country’s military. Permanent resident status — except in certain categories — did not qualify.

Permanent residents who join the military now will not be subject to the minimum residency requirements — to keep permanent resident status, a new immigrant must be living in Canada for at least 730 days in the last five years — and will be allowed to leave the country for overseas postings or personal reasons. 

The CAF is now recruiting for more than 100 positions, including radiologists and marine technicians.  As of July 2022, the regular force had approximately 63,500 members — about 8,000 short of its mandated strength. The CAF had a target to bring in at least 5,900 new members through its recruiting centres by March 2023. 

Top down, bottom up changes

LGen Carignan, who leads the command team for the military group tasked with leading the Canadian Armed Forces’ cultural transformation, said the recruitment uptick bodes well with her unit’s efforts to modernize the institution.

The mother of four and the first woman in the Canadian Armed Forces to lead a combat unit said her central mission now is to unify and consolidate culture change within the various departments in the CAF and the Department of National Defence (DND).

“This is a whole defence undertaking – bottom up, top down, and horizontally across the CAF,” she said. 

“We need to move towards a space where people can be themselves, be authentic and at the same time, contribute to the common mission.

Within LGen Carignan’s organization, there are these five advisory groups that represent visible minorities, Indigenous peoples, the LGBTQA+ community, people with disabilities, and women’s rights advocates.

“We gather their feedback every time we build a new policy… every time we go out and implement various initiatives,” LGen Carignan said. “And they do inform our strategies, our processes and our policies.”

“We are bringing our game up in terms of inclusive behavior,” she said.

The sweeping changes being imposed under LGen Carignan include everything from a new gender inclusive dress code to other aspects of appearance, including the length of one’s hair, and establishing a restorative engagement process, which she expects will guide culture change strategies and resolve personnel conflicts.

There will also be a restructuring of the defence department’s complaints management system and an overhaul to improve the training and promotion of managers.

“I expect a performance measurement framework that will provide quantitative and qualitative data on whether CAF is progressing in terms of creating a healthy culture, to be ready soon,” she said.

LGen Carignan said NATO members are also looking at what the CAF is doing in terms of enabling culture change within its leadership and ranks.

“Recently, I sat down with 25 of our allies within NATO who are very very interested in what we are doing,” she said.

Backlash

LGen Carignan said while most of the military family is very supportive of the required culture changes, she acknowledged that there are some within the military and media who feel otherwise.

Among the critics are Retired Lt.-Gen. Michel Maisonneuve who got a standing ovation from serving senior military officers after a dinner speech last November in Ottawa where he slammed the changes to military dress regulations, reported the Ottawa Citizen.

Thomas Juneau, a former National Defence analyst wrote on Twitter that Maisonneuve’s speech “was an embarrassment and a good illustration of the culture of entitlement that has led to the systematic abuses of power in the senior ranks of the military,” the paper said.

Others like National Post columnist Jamie Sarkonak have suggested that the military’s focus on diversity, equity and inclusion is getting in the way of training for war. 

“It’s hard to see why any of this would be relevant to the Armed Forces, which should be focused on defending all Canadians equally,” Sarkonak wrote.

LGen Carignan said building lasting, positive culture change in the military will ensure Canada’s effectiveness in responding to growing threats at home and around the world.

“This has never been a distraction… your teams are not conducive to be the best that they can be if its members do not feel protected and respected when they wear a uniform,” she said.

“What resulted in success in the past will not be what makes us successful in the future. We are at a time where a shift is required in how’ we conduct ourselves, how’ we exercise leadership, and how we understand power and authority,” LGen Carignan responded in an update about her unit.

“We at CPCC are inspired by the changes and evolution we have seen over the past months and are convinced of our capacity to continue to improve together.”

Source: Canadian military sees rise in applications from new immigrants

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Faine: I’m getting intolerant of tolerance

2023/04/24 Leave a comment

Good commentary from Australia’s Jon Faine:

It is time to retire the T word from the vocabulary of multiculturalism. I do not want anyone to say that they “tolerate” me. It is patronising and condescending.

Tolerance denotes a reluctant acceptance, a begrudging recognition of something unpleasant that will not go away. Why be so negative about one of the greatest assets we have – our diversity?

Smilingly encouraging “tolerance” for those who used to be described as “New Australians” is actually a backhander, a well-meaning but confused commentary on our almost universally shared commitment to social cohesion.

It is usually invoked by established figures comfortable about their place in our nation, but uttered rarely by anyone insecure or struggling.

I flinch when I hear it, whether from the lips of a government minister, a faith leader or various commentators who regularly pepper it through their offerings.

We live in one of the most socially cohesive, peaceful, multicultural societies on the globe. Although we can and must do better, let us be frank about our successes.

We speak nearly 300 different languages, according to Victorian Multicultural Commission data, and claim almost every known ancestry and every imaginable variation on the human race. More than 25 per cent of Australians are born overseas, and about 50 per cent of us have at least one of our parents born overseas.

Schools, workplaces, marriages, friendships and public and private enterprises are more diverse than ever before. Belatedly, we are beginning to validate and celebrate the unique culture of our First Nations communities and at last have adopted militancy in tackling the entrenched racism to which they have and continue to be exposed.

Australia without generations of migrants and their cultural contribution is unimaginable. But it is also a historical truth that many migrant communities, once established and settled, express reservations about the next wave.

Instead of feeling affinity or empathy, they question their legitimacy — dubbed the “drawbridge” phenomenon. Once a new arrival becomes established and secure, the “drawbridge” is lifted to prevent others from enjoying the same benefits.

It would be nonsense to try to argue that contemporary Australia is the mythical fairytale melting pot, that we all sit around together harmonising Kumbaya. It is equally wrong to portray Australia as a hotbed of racial or ethnic strife.

Last month, a handful of neo-Nazis performed on the steps of Victoria’s Parliament House, scoring the attention they craved along with their goal of saturation media coverage.

Reassuringly, their parade was swiftly condemned by almost all community leaders. Zero tolerance was confirmed at nearly every level. This is how standards are set.

Choosing to turn a blind eye or to stay silent about overt racism is in effect to support it. Saying nothing signifies everything. Not condemning is assisting – the nod, a sly wink, a slight hint of approval is oxygen to racists and assists their recruiting.

The annual monitor from the authoritative Scanlon Foundation, which researches social cohesion and helps migrants transition to Australia, notes a recent change in the value we place on migration. Since the foundation began more than 20 years ago, it has measured and tracked consistent support for immigration as a source of strength for our culture and economy.

That steady support over many years has stalled during the pandemic. Suddenly, our sense of national belonging has declined, according to the foundation, although local belonging has improved. Lockdown and isolation achieved something.

At the same time – and surely, related – fewer Australians think we are still a land of equal opportunity, both economic and social.

It ought not surprise that in times of financial stress, multiculturalism is vulnerable. Growing economic inequality exacerbates social inequality which puts stress on social cohesion.

Fear of “the other” is driving repression and racial tension all over the world, as it has throughout history. Although we have a continent to ourselves, with no land borders to spark friction, we are not immune.

For many years, I was honoured and humbled to be an Australia Day ambassador and to assist at citizenship ceremonies across the state. There are few more moving moments in public life than to witness first-hand the emotion, excitement and sincerity with which new citizens pledge allegiance to their adopted home. I recommend it as a tonic for even the most hardened of hearts and jaded of souls.

Many of us take for granted what for others is a profound privilege, the priceless reward for unimaginable hardship and struggle.

Immigration and diversity add strength to our society and counter the ossification and stagnation that impacts many countries that turn their back on the fresh ideas and energy that comes with welcoming new arrivals.

We must repel the efforts of those who try to exploit and inflame community tensions instead of resolving them, who see an opportunity for power or profit by poking a stick into an ants’ nest, and then wondering aloud why the ants have become so agitated.

Jon Faine is a regular columnist and former ABC Radio Melbourne broadcaster. He is a Vice Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Melbourne.

Source: I’m getting intolerant of tolerance

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Irwin Cotler: The lessons of the Holocaust remain sadly relevant today

2023/04/24 Leave a comment

Good piece, connecting the Holocaust to other genocides, war crimes and human rights violations, both historic and contemporary:

This year’s Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day was a particularly poignant historical moment of remembrance and reminder, of bearing witness, of learning and acting upon the universal lessons of history and the Holocaust.

I write in the aftermath of the 90th anniversary of the establishment in 1933 by Nazi Germany of the infamous Dachau concentration camp — where thousands were deported to during Kristallnacht — reminding us that antisemitism is toxic to democracy, an assault on our common humanity, and as we’ve learned only too painfully and too well, while it begins with Jews, it doesn’t end with Jews.

I write also in the aftermath of the 81st anniversary of the Wannsee Conference, convened by the Nazi leadership to address “The final solution to the Jewish question” — the blueprint for the annihilation of European Jewry — which was met with indifference and inaction by the international community.

I write also on the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the most heroic Jewish and civilian uprising during the Holocaust, which was preceded by the deportation of 300,000 Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka death camp. There is a straight line between Wannsee and Warsaw; between the indifference of one and the courage of the other.

I write also amidst the international drumbeat of evil, reflected and represented in the unprovoked and criminal Russian invasion of Ukraine, underpinned by war crimes, crimes against humanity and incitement to genocide; the increasing assaults by China on the rules-based international order, including mass atrocities targeting the Uyghurs; the Iranian regime’s brutal and massive repression of the “women, life, freedom” protests; the mass atrocities targeting the Rohingya, Afghans and Ethiopians; and the increasing imprisonment of human rights defenders like Russian patriot and human rights hero Vladimir Kara-Murza — the embodiment of the struggle for freedom and a critic of the invasion of Ukraine — sentenced this week to 25 years in prison for telling the truth, a re-enactment of the Stalinist dictum of “give us the person and we will find the crime.”

And I write amidst an unprecedented global resurgence of antisemitic acts, incitement, and terror — of antisemitism as the oldest, longest, most enduring, and most dangerous of hatreds, a virus that mutates and metastasizes over time, but which is grounded in one foundational, historical, generic, conspiratorial trope: namely, that Jews, the Jewish people, and Israel are the enemy of all that is good and the embodiment of all that is evil.

And so at this important historical juncture, we should ask ourselves what we have learned over the past 80 years and what lessons we must act on, including the following:

• The danger of forgetting the Holocaust and the imperative of remembrance — as Nobel laureate Prof. Elie Wiesel put it, “a war against the Jews in which not all victims were Jews, but all Jews were targeted victims” — of horrors too terrible to be believed but not too terrible to have happened.

• The demonization and dehumanization of the Jew as prologue and justification for their mass murder.

• The mass murder of six million Jews — 1.5 million of whom were children — and of millions of non-Jews, remembering them not as abstract statistics, but as individuals who each had a name.

• The danger of antisemitism — the oldest, longest, most enduring of hatreds — and most lethal. If the Holocaust is a paradigm for radical evil, antisemitism is a paradigm for radical hate that must be combatted.

• The dangers of Holocaust denial and distortion — of assaults on truth and memory, and the whitewashing of the worst crimes in history.

• The danger of state-sanctioned incitement to hate and genocide. The Holocaust, as the Supreme Court of Canada put it, “did not begin in the gas chambers, it began with words.”

• The danger of silence in the face of evil — where silence incentivizes the oppressor, never helping the victim — and our responsibility always to protest against injustice.

• The dangers of indifference and inaction in the face of mass atrocity and genocide. What makes the Holocaust and the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda so horrific are not only the horrors themselves. What makes them so horrific is that they were preventable. Nobody could say we did not know. Just as today, with regard to mass atrocities being perpetrated against the Uyghurs, the Rohingya, and the Ukrainians — nobody can say we do not know. We know and we must act.

• The Trahison des Clercs — the betrayal of the elites — doctors and scientists, judges and lawyers, religious leaders and educators, engineers and architects. Nuremberg crimes were the crimes of Nuremberg elites. Our responsibility, therefore, is always to speak truth to power.

• The danger of cultures of impunity, and the corresponding responsibility to bring war criminals to justice. There must be no sanctuary for hate, no refuge for bigotry, no immunity for these enemies of humankind.

• The danger of the vulnerability of the powerless and the powerlessness of the vulnerable. The responsibility to give voice to the voiceless and to empower the powerless. In a word, the test of a just society is how it treats its most vulnerable.

And so, the abiding and enduring lesson: We are each, wherever we are, the guarantors of each other’s destiny. May this day be not only an act of remembrance, which it is, but a remembrance to act, which it must be — on behalf of our common humanity.

National Post

Irwin Cotler is Emeritus Professor of Law at McGill University, International Chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights, and former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada. He is Canada’s first Special Envoy for Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism.

Source: Irwin Cotler: The lessons of the Holocaust remain sadly relevant today

Filed under Antisemitism, Holocaust, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Immigration Surges Past One Million — Canada Needs a Real Count and Real Plans

2023/04/24 Leave a comment

Annual levels plan needs to include temporary workers and international students rather than these being solely demand-driven. And better and more disaggregated data would be welcome although we have enough to understand the general trends:

Canada revved up its immigration machine last year to make up for the pandemic slowdown and recorded a new high of 437,500 new permanent resident arrivals. And the federal government plans to keep going, increasing permanent immigration targets to half a million by 2025 – 75 percent higher than the 2017 target level.

While public opinion remains broadly supportive of greater immigration, the impact on housing, health care, and broader community capacity has entered the debate. And to fully assess the effects, especially on housing, we need to look beyond headline immigration numbers. International arrivals for permanent and temporary visa holders not already in Canada need to be added to the equation. Precisely counting these groups is not an easy task due to data gaps and inconsistencies, but for 2022, we estimate the real total of arrivals last year was more than one million people.

The expansion of two-step immigration selection that prioritizes applicants with Canadian work experience and post-secondary education, allowed many applicants, such as temporary foreign workers and students, to receive approvals from within Canada. However, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) does not publish the data on their country of residence, making it difficult to understand the role of approvals for those already residing in Canada. According to IRCC data, this trend of applications from within Canada spiked during COVID. They made up fully 75 percent of 406,045 permanent residency approvals in 2021, but only 45 percent last year. This means the number of permanent residency approvals for people outside Canada – who create incremental housing demand – more than doubled between 2021 and 2022 to about 241,500.

Among those new arrivals are non-permanent residents. This category is growing rapidly, faster than new permanent residents, and is the most volatile element in population estimates. Non-permanent residents need to hold a valid permit to live in Canada and include temporary foreign workers, international students, refugee claimants and now a surging number of Ukrainians under a new authorization for emergency travel program.

In total, there were 1.3 million new temporary visas issued (excluding extensions and tourists) in 2022, a 45-percent increase from 2021. According to country of residence data, the number of new permit holders (e.g. temporary foreign workers and international students) whose place of residence was outside Canada grew by 83 percent from 2021 to more than 855,000 in 2022.

Combining permanent and temporary entry from outside Canada in 2022, the estimated total arrivals was more than one million (see Figure).

A new element of the temporary resident increase was the policy response to the invasion of Ukraine. Eligible Ukrainians can come to Canada for up to three years under the emergency authorization, and Ukrainians already in Canada can extend their visas. There is also a surge in Ukrainians arriving through other programs.  In 2022, only 29 percent (140,094 individuals) of the 478,357 approved applications arrived (another 66,000 have landed so far in 2023 through April 2). The continuing flow will substantially increase international arrival and non-permanent resident numbers in 2023 as Canada keeps receiving and processing applications.

Although some residents may leave Canada and some new arrivals are absorbed into existing extended family households, the available data points to an overall net increase in the number of arrivals as well as in demand for housing: the latest CMHC Rental Market Survey shows the national vacancy rate fell from 3.1 percent to 1.9 percent from October 2021 to October 2022.

Current trends indicate a larger influx of international arrivals (far outpacing temporary visa departures) in 2023 and further increases in housing demand. This would push the rental vacancy rate to near zero and worsen housing supply shortages.

Even if the Ukraine War ends swiftly and the labour market starts to cool down, requiring fewer temporary foreign workers, Canada still needs to address its housing crunch in both the short- and long-term.

In the short-term, prefabrication and modular construction, like those that non-profits have constructed for veterans may be needed.

Meanwhile, another concern is Canada’s data quality. Complex, confusing and even conflicting published data due to over- and under-estimates of temporary immigration figures hampers accurate and timely population and housing forecasts. First, one individual can have more than one visa in a calendar year, and leave prior to the visa expiry. As well, in another COVID response, the immigration department has allowed non-permanent residents with expired visas to remain in Canada while their application for visa renewal or permanent residency is under review. To obtain population estimates, however, Statistics Canada still assumes non-permanent resident visa holders left the country the month following visa expiry. Accurate data is needed for accurate analysis of resources and capacity planning to serve new arrivals. And evidence shows that there have been long term data gaps in tracking temporary residents.

COVID shutdowns and the Ukraine war illustrate how dramatic changes in the number of new arrivals can occur with lasting economic and demographic consequence. Using the correct metric in a timely manner is, therefore, critical. We need disaggregated data on permit issuances and arrivals by country of residence as well as data on the total unique count of temporary residents to make sure we know how many people are here.

Henry Lotin is an economist and principal of Integrative Trade and Economics and a retired Canadian diplomat, and Parisa Mahboubi is a Senior Policy Analyst at the C.D. Howe Institute.

Source: Immigration Surges Past One Million — Canada Needs a Real Count and Real Plans

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Proudfoot: The Trudeau government was supposed to be ‘open by default.’ Open at all, ever, would be a nice start

2023/04/24 Leave a comment

Hard not to agree:

In its youth, the Trudeau government was very good at branding and grand mission statements. It was a skill that was slightly hypnotizing for its novelty at the time. If the Harper government’s instinct was to turn the hose on any kids it found playing on its lawn, then the Trudeau government promised to fling open the front door and offer a rap session over a nice cool glass of lemonade.

In an open letter to Canadians on the day his first cabinet was sworn in, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pledged to “set a higher bar for openness and transparency” in Ottawa. “Government and its information must be open by default,” he wrote. “Simply put, it is time to shine more light on government to make sure it remains focused on the people it was created to serve – you.”

You could practically hear the “Open by default” banners fluttering nobly atop the Peace Tower.

The problem with having a flair for gleaming manifestoes is that they tend to stick in the mind. And then they follow you around like a hapless tuba soundtrack, reminding everyone of what you once proudly advertised, what you now are and the distance between the two.

At this point, the Liberals’ open-by-default declarations register as cruel farce. They didn’t start the practice of iron-fisted information control in government, but they sure haven’t ended it. And they’re the ones who made that a central feature of who they would be.

There are big-picture obfuscations that deserve correspondingly large derision, like refusing to say how much public money they spent wooing Volkswagen to make car batteries in Canada (a lot, as it turns out) or the government’s obstinance on Beijing poking its fingers into Canadian life.

But it’s the smaller, daily roadblocks that are perhaps more insulting and corrosive, because they seem so unnecessary and because they send the constant message that public information is meted out on a need-to-know basis, and the public needs to know a lot less than it thinks it does.

If journalists, being annoying and nosy on behalf of citizens, have a question for a federal government department, talking to a live human being who knows things about the thing you want to know is an adorable fantasy most of the time. This will usually be conveyed by the delicate euphemism that an interview request “cannot be accommodated.” This sounds like parenting books that advise you to tell a recalcitrant toddler “It’s time to get ready for bed now” because it’s harder to argue with something decreed by the universe than with a person who tells you they’ve made a decision.

Once the absurd idea of an interview is waved off, you are asked to submit questions for response by e-mail, and to state your deadline. This is where the whole thing devolves into play acting.

If you get responses by deadline, they will generally be “answers” to what you asked only in the geographical sense that they will be located below each of your questions. They will otherwise bear, at best, a one-night-stand relationship to the original queries or to anything resembling a clear thought or fact. They will be so obviously, transparently workshopped to death by an unseen army of staffers and bureaucrats that you will practically be able to see the sweaty, nervous fingerprints still steaming on them.

But sometimes – seemingly increasingly – you will not get even an overcooked pablum of words by the stated deadline. At least one federal department now responds to deadline requests by asserting that it has “a two-day service standard,” which is as good as refusing to answer. Others have taken to blowing through a deadline, then asking that a story that has already been published be “updated” or reprinted to include their day-late-and-a-dollar-short response. (No, but that is an impressive level of chutzpah you have there.)

It’s important to note that not every department or minister’s office does this. It’s also important to acknowledge that in terms of populations whining about their working conditions, journalists rank somewhere between scary birthday clowns and subway rats on most people’s scale of who’s worth tuning up the tiny violin for.

But the real problem that underlies all of this is the concept of who owns the information. It’s not the government’s to hoard, or for bureaucratic bouncers to jealously guard. It doesn’t even belong to the journalists asking a bunch of rude questions. The information is owned by the Canadian public, and owed to them as the ones who foot the bill and who will conduct the job interview next time there’s an election call.

That’s the principled argument, but if that’s too sanctimonious for you, there’s a much more mercenary one to be made for the government explaining itself on the regular: it’s self-defeatingly dumb not to.

The logic of withholding public information might be risk aversion or issues management or the peevish certainty that everything is torqued to death and no one gives a fair benefit of the doubt. None of those problems is improved by a refusal to explain yourself, and pretty much all of them are exacerbated by refusing to do so.

When you write an exam, sometimes you arrive at the wrong answer to the big question at the end of the paper. But everyone knows you only get partial credit for trying if you show your work.

Source: The Trudeau government was supposed to be ‘open by default.’ Open at all, ever, would be a nice start

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Australia unveils direct pathway to citizenship for New Zealanders

2023/04/24 Leave a comment

Of note (longstanding issue):

Australia announced on Saturday a direct pathway to citizenship for New Zealanders living in the country, reversing controversial visa rules a day before a visit by New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins.

Hipkins, set to visit Queensland state’s capital Brisbane on Sunday, hailed the move as “the biggest improvement in the rights of New Zealanders living in Australia in a generation”.

The changes, effective from July, meant New Zealand citizens living in Australia for four years or more could apply for citizenship without having to become permanent residents first, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a statement.

“We know that many New Zealanders are here on a Special Category Visa while raising families, working and building their lives in Australia. So I am proud to offer the benefits that citizenship provides,” Albanese added.

New Zealand has long campaigned for changes since visa rules were altered in 2001, making it tougher for Kiwis in Australia to get citizenship.

The reform would bring New Zealanders’ rights more into line with those of Australian expats living in New Zealand, Australia’s Labor government said.

“Kiwis taking up Australian citizenship will still retain their New Zealand citizenship. These dual citizens are not lost to New Zealand – but draw us closer together,” Hipkins said in a statement.

The changes also meant children born in Australia since July to an Australia-based New Zealand parent would be automatically entitled to Australian citizenship, he said.

“This will make critical services available to them,” he said, adding the changes delivered on an Albanese promise that no New Zealander be left “permanently temporary” in Australia.

Around 670,000 New Zealand citizens live in Australia, while there are around 70,000 Australians in New Zealand, according to Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Australia’s Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil ruled out the changes being extended to other migrant groups, saying it was a “special arrangement with New Zealand”.

The reform was about ensuring the “strong friendship we have is reflected properly in law”, she told ABC television.

Source: Australia unveils direct pathway to citizenship for New Zealanders

Filed under Citizenship, Dual Citizenship Tagged with ,

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