Here’s why the U.S. is pushing Ottawa to require visas from Mexicans

2023/05/08 Leave a comment

Good explainer:

When Canada lifted the visa requirements on Mexicans in late 2016, one of the first things Selene Mateos did was book a vacation to visit Vancouver with her girlfriend.

Drawn by Canada’s reputation as an “open and friendly” country, the couple jumped on the travel opportunity without the hassles of having to put together an application package and line up in queues —and without the prospect of cancelling their trip if a visa didn’t come through.

“If I’d needed a visa, I would’ve had to think about it three or four times more, even though I had all the proofs, of a job, income and ties to Mexico,” says the 35-year-old environmental engineer. “This makes travel easier and faster.”

Mateos was surprised when she learned from media reports this week that Washington has requested that Ottawa reimpose visas on Mexico after a surge of Mexican irregular migrants trying to cross into the U.S. through the northern border via Canada.

“I don’t think that’s fair, to be honest,” said Mateos, who now works in hospitality in Toronto on a work permit. “Even the U.S., Canada and Mexico are trade partners, we are the poor partner. We are not equal.”

That inequality is at the centre of concerns some have over the potential move — one critics say would severely restrict asylum seekers and punish residents of Mexico, a country that is a significant trading partner, but lacks the clout to resist whenever the U.S. wants to change the rules of the relationship.

The situation at the border

Mexicans are increasingly crossing the land border into the U.S. from Canada. The number caught crossing illegally has risen from a total of 1,169 in 2016 to some 300 a month since October, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.

Mexican refugees made up 7,483 of Canada’s 60,158 asylum claimants in 2022. During that year, more than 400,000 Mexicans came to visit. (That number of claims was up significantly from 250 in 2016, which was before Ottawa lifted its visa requirements on Mexico.)

In March, in response to the irregular migration at the northern border, Washington and Ottawa expanded the Safe Third Country Agreement across the entire land border, not just at official ports of entry, so asylum seekers crossing anywhere are turned back.

Still, compared to the U.S. southern border, where more than 2.5 million irregular migrants were stopped last year, the U.S.-Canada frontier is peanuts, says Laura Macdonald, a political science professor at Carleton University.

So why the increased amount of attention?

“There is some pressure being exerted by Republicans in Congress, Republicans from the northern states. Some of the northern states who want to make an issue out of this partly because they’re trying to convey the message that the Biden administration is weak on border control policies and weak on migration control,” said Macdonald, who studies North American relations and Latin American politics.

“I don’t think it’s a huge issue for the Biden administration. They have many other issues to deal with. But you could see how politicians in the border states could get caught up in that kind of dynamic. So he’s telling Canada they have to fall into line about policies that the U.S. government wants to enact.”

An unequal relationship

The U.S. has always required visas from Mexicans in order to screen out those who come to seek asylum or likely overstay their visits, while Canada has changed its policy back and forth under different governments.

In 2009, Stephen Harper’s Conservative government slapped Mexico with a visa rule in response to an influx of Mexican refugees who fled gang violence and drug cartels. The requirement was lifted in 2016, after Justin Trudeau’s Liberals came to power.

For Washington and Ottawa, visa decisions are tied to border control and economic interests, said Macdonald, but Mexico can never afford to put up travel barriers against its northern neighbours.

“Tourism is such a huge interest. So that goes back to the power asymmetries in the region. The U.S. and Canada could contemplate having such a visa and Mexico will never, ever retaliate in that form,” she said.

The reasons for crossing from Canada into the U.S.

Ramiro Arteaga, founder of a Mexican Canadian Facebook group, says there’s been a lot of discussions within the diaspora about the Biden administration’s visa proposition to Ottawa, with many worrying about further stigmatization of the community.

Arteaga says he’s against visa requirements which would restrict Mexicans’ families and friends from visiting them in Canada, and he doesn’t believe such measures would stop irregular migrants determined to cross into the U.S. at all costs.

He said it has always been easier for Mexicans to get to Canada than to the U.S., even when both countries required visas. And some of his compatriots have always had their eyes set on the U.S., for a variety of reasons.

“The language is not a barrier down there. You can go to Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, anywhere you go, you can find someone who speaks Spanish. You can find your own church, your own community, your own places to gather,” said Arteaga, 48, whose Facebook group has 250,000 members, mostly in Canada.

“It’s more likely to have a family member or someone from the same town back home living in the U.S. You can get jobs easily there. It’s more difficult if you are coming here and you don’t know the language and you don’t know anyone.”

The fallout of imposing visas

Efrat Arbel, an immigration law professor at University of British Columbia, said a visa requirement is a blunt instrument imposed by western countries to stem asylum flow from so-called refugee-producing countries.

“ If an asylum seeker is fleeing for their lives, then they don’t have the time, the ability or the capacity in most situations to apply for a visa in order to set foot on Canadian soil,” she said.

“The effect is that those individuals are prohibited from travel, are prohibited from making access of lawful routes of entry in order to seek refuge from persecution. It works contrary to the basic commitments of refugee protection that underpin our asylum regime.”

The visa requirement is among many tools Canada has implemented over the years to restrict people from certain regions and countries from coming, she said.

Even valid visa holders can be kept off a Canada-bound flight by air carriers that fear sanctions for bringing in “improperly documented persons,” or by border liaison officers stationed abroad, who flag travellers at their discretion.

“All of these mechanisms operate in tandem and Canada is systematically closing its borders to refugees,” said Arbel.

How will a decision be made?

In assessing whether to impose or abolish visa requirements, Canada’s immigration department said officials look at the socio-economic profile of the country, immigration issues, travel documents, security concerns, border management, human rights and bilateral relations.

“Canada values its strong ties with Mexico. The visa lift (ending the requirement in 2016) underscores the commitment Canada made to further enhance and expand its relationship with Mexico,” said department spokesperson Stuart Isherwood.

“The visa lift has generated positive results for Canadians and Canadian business. It has deepened our bilateral relations and expanded trade, investment, and tourism between both countries.”

Since the visa requirement was removed against Mexico, Isherwood said, Canada has welcomed more than two million Mexican visitors and they’ve spent more than $2.4 billion in Canadian hotels, restaurants and other businesses.

Mexican officials said leaders of the three countries met in a summit in Mexico City in January where they reaffirmed their commitment to collaborate on regional migration issues.

“Mexico is working closely with the United States and Canada to achieve safe, orderly and humane migration in the region through a holistic approach that includes addressing its root causes,” the Mexican Embassy in Ottawa said in a statement. 

Mateos is well aware that the political wind can shift at any moment. She just hopes any visa change won’t come before her wedding this August; 20 guests, including her family, are expected from Mexico.

“It’s going to be devastating for me not having my family and friends on my side on this very important day of my life,” she said.

Source: Here’s why the U.S. is pushing Ottawa to require visas from Mexicans

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Schools survey: Non-German students more likely to ‘sit next to a …

2023/05/08 Leave a comment

Interesting study:

A study on children’s attitudes toward their classmates resulted in some surprising, and other not so surprising, findings.

Based on surveys of ninth-grade children (aged 14 to 15) in Germany, research led by Zsófia Boda at the University of Essex and Georg Lorenz from Leipzig University has found that classes that are ethnically diverse are more welcoming of refugee students.

That’s the unsurprising part.

What it also revealed, however, was that students who were born in Germany to German-born parents were the most likely to reject their refugee classmates, and the least likely to refer to them as friends.

Would you sit next to a refugee?

The study is based on the results of a national survey of 6,390 children in Germany in 2018, which asked the students who their friends were and who they would not want to sit next to in class. Most of the refugee students involved in the survey came from Syria and Afghanistan — the two main countries of origin of people seeking protection in Germany.

The results, published this week in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, showed that the refugee children had fewer friends and experienced more rejection than their non-refugee peers.

But in a more mixed or ‘high-diversity’ classroom, it was much less likely for a child to say they would not want to share a desk with a refugee or asylum seeker, and more likely that they would name a refugee student as a friend.

The research found that there are two processes at work here: In a classroom with a high proportion of ‘non-German’ children, you are more likely to get people who are accepting of other non-Germans, the researchers explained. But also, ethnic majority (i.e. second-generation German) students are less inclined to reject refugee peers if they are surrounded by diversity.

The study suggests that this finding – that more diversity does not lead to greater rejection by the ethnic majority group – is an important one, because it challenges critical views of multiculturalism.

A large proportion – about half – of refugees and migrants in Germany are under the age of 18.

These young people need more than just access to education. Having positive and supportive relationships with others their own age in turn leads to them achieving better grades at school and results in overall better health and wellbeing for minority students.

The study suggests that if you take these away, the educational success and psychological adjustment of refugee adolescents will likely be put at risk.

Barriers to acceptance

So what is it that is stopping students from accepting their refugee peers?

There are several possible reasons, the researchers behind the study say. One is language, which is often said to be a major barrier to integration. Traumatic experiences can also make it hard for young refugees to adjust.

Other explanations for refugees having lower levels of social integration or acceptance in the classroom include the fact that they are likely to have joined the class later when friendships between other students have already formed. There is also the dynamics of friendship groups, which often grow and develop between people of the same ethnic group.

Moreover, the study also points out that social integration is not a one-sided process: “[T]he attitudes and behaviors of peers [is] crucial,” it notes.

What should policy makers do with these findings which, taken at face value, seem to suggest that refugee students should attend schools that are already ethnically diverse?

If they were to take this approach, it might jeopardize refugee students’ language development, which usually benefits from having a high proportion of majority-ethnic children in the classroom.

Steering refugee children into diverse schools could also lead to segregation instead of integration, and that would not help in promoting positive attitudes between German and non-German students, the study suggests.

There are some concrete steps that could “mitigate the negative consequences of prejudice,” according to the researchers. They recommend that teachers and principals are made aware of the challenges and that they support integration by, among other things, encouraging cooperation and showing support for mixing ethnic groups.

With global forced migration having become a ‘megatrend,’ Boda and Lorenz argue promoting the social integration of refugees, including adolescents, will remain crucially important for the refugees themselves. According to them, it will also reduce negative attitudes and prejudice towards immigrants — a problem which is widespread in Western societies.

Source: Schools survey: Non-German students more likely to ‘sit next to a …

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More Islamic lessons in Swiss schools? – SWI swissinfo.ch

2023/05/08 Leave a comment

Of note:

With a “Salam aleikum”, teacher Nimetullah Veseli greets the pupils of year four in the Kirchacker school building. Veseli stands in front of the six boys and six girls in the classroom in Neuhausen, Schaffhausen. Wearing jeans and a white shirt, he explains the Islamic religious teachings.

Imam Nimetullah Veseli gives confession-oriented Islamic lessons at the public school. Confession-oriented means that the children learn about their own religion, in contrast to the inter-faith lessons in most primary school.

Normally, these confession-oriented Islamic lessons take place in mosques. It is an exception that it is offered in a public school. Only ten Swiss schools offer such lessons.

Religious education with quality control

A recent study by the universities of Lucerne and Fribourg corroborates the advantages of this type of teaching: “The school is a neutral place,” says study director Hansjörg Schmid. This also means that children from different Muslim backgrounds receive lessons together.

In addition, more emphasis is placed on instructive elements of its study at the school. “The Islamic teachers are obliged to present their concepts to the school,” says Schmid. “This makes quality control possible.”

The director of the Swiss Centre for Islam and Society at the University of Fribourg, together with three other researchers, has examined all the Islamic instructions offered at schools. The study shows that once the lessons are up and running, the feedback is very positive. Generally the criticism and resistance comes beforehand.

Expand the programme – but how?

The study also shows that the lessons availability are strongly dependent on individuals. Most of the proposals came about as a result of initiatives by imams or Muslim religious teachers. “More stability would be important,” says study director Hansjörg Schmid.

The classes in Kreuzlingen could be a model for future programmes. There, various mosque associations, an interreligious working group and the local parishes have jointly set up Islamic instruction, and an association has taken over the sponsorship.

The study recommends expanding confession-oriented Islamic instruction in public schools. But who will pay for it? At present, the programme is supported by voluntary work as well as parental contributions or subsidies from mosque associations.

Broad-based teachings with trained teachers are lacking. In addition, there is another hurdle as in most cantons, teaching requires recognition under public law.

“Salam aleikum” in chorus

If a comparable religious education as that of the Christian national churches is to be developed, the Muslim communities would first have to be recognised. This is a lengthy process.

But Hansjörg Schmid says, “A lot is possible at the level of pilot trials.” He therefore advises trying out as much as possible at a low-threshold level – as in Neuhausen. There, Imam Nimetullah Veseli ends the lesson with “Salam aleikum”: “What does that mean?” he wants to know from the fourth graders. “Peace be with you and with you,” they answer in chorus.

Source: More Islamic lessons in Swiss schools? – SWI swissinfo.ch

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Bahamas: How to prove paternity is next as govt to grapple with citizenship questions

2023/05/08 Leave a comment

CHILDREN born out of wedlock to Bahamian men and foreign women won’t be recognised as citizens of The Bahamas until they prove that their biological father is a Bahamian through a process mandated by the government or determined by the courts.

How to prove paternity is a question the Davis administration will grapple with as it seeks to satisfy the expectation of people who now see themselves as Bahamian citizens following the Privy Council’s landmark ruling. The administration can address the matter through legislation.

Attorney General Ryan Pinder told The Tribune: “Needless to say, you have to prove that your biological father is Bahamian, which means you have to prove paternity. A framework needs to be put in place for that.”

When Chief Justice Ian Winder ruled in favour of Shannon Rolle in 2020, he deliberately left the question of how to establish paternity unanswered.

Former Attorney General Sean McSweeney, the co-chair of the 2016 Constitutional Commission, said yesterday that requiring scientific tests is the ideal approach to establishing paternity.

“You always have to prove that the man is the father if it doesn’t happen in the context of marriage,” he said. “There are some who are saying they should just use an affidavit, but given the historical laxity with which Bahamians used affidavits, I think it would be dangerous to rely on that. There really should be scientific proof of paternity; at the moment DNA testing.”

“There will have to be steps taken to guard against abuse of the system. You certainly don’t want an industry being created out of this where people feel they could just get an affidavit of paternity and just get citizenship on that basis.”

Mr McWenney said in cases where a person’s father is dead, DNA tests could be performed “on anything the deceased person may have used”.

“You have to ask a scientist about that: how do you go about extracting the materials used for DNA testing?” he said.

National Security Minister Wayne Munroe, who tried the landmark case before Chief Justice Ian Winder and the Court of Appeal, said people who will benefit from the Privy Council’s ruling must now be patient so the government can address the paternity issue.

“The matter isn’t fully resolved as far as this is concerned,” he said. “There were two issues. The first issue was a matter of principle, the construction of Article 6, and that’s what’s been settled, that Article 6 means that a child of an unwed Bahamian father born in The Bahamas is a citizen.

“The part that isn’t resolved that the Chief Justice has to determine because it was referred back to him by the Privy Council, is how do you prove that your father is a Bahamian? Is it enough for your father to come up and say it? Does he have to do an affidavit? Does he have to sign your birth certificate or do you have to have DNA evidence? That hasn’t been decided. In the Supreme Court case that I did, it expressly said that issue is not being decided and it will await this outcome.

“If you go and dash to the Passport Office, they’re gonna consult the OAG and OAG will no doubt take a position. It would be irresponsible not to take a policy position which can apply to everyone, and so as the lawyer who did the initial case and the initial appeal, now as a member of the government, I would advise caution and a degree of patience while the government puts in place the policy to address that issue of paternity, because in reality, there’s no value in saying you’re going to rush and pressure the government because if you don’t get a passport, what can you do? Bring an action. Then you have to wait for a court date and the rest of that. It’s just as easy for you to wait and see how the government will bring about the matter.”

It is unclear what the DNA testing capacity is in The Bahamas.

“I think the Immigration Department and the Office of the Attorney General is going to have to treat with that to bring forward a solution,” Mr Munroe said. “There are a number of things that no doubt the government of which I am a member will be considering going forward and once it’s considered, then, of course, if it’s by virtue of legislation, we’d have to table a bill and the public would be able to see it and give their views.”

Source: How to prove paternity is next as govt to grapple with citizenship …

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Qadeer: Canada needs new immigrants, but must plan for the consequences

2023/05/06 1 Comment

Another good commentary regarding the failures of governments and stakeholders to acknowledge and address the externalities of immigration:

Despite their success, Canadian immigration and settlement policies are producing some unintended negative effects on post-secondary education, housing, the labour market, and visa and immigration processes. Because these areas are interrelated, when one becomes compromised, others are also affected.

The number of scams, false claims and fake documents in the immigration and temporary workers’ permits process points to this issue. While there appear to be no hard statistics, media accounts and government warnings indicate they are an issue.

Canada is a world leader in accepting immigration. In the past few years, it has been adding about one per cent of its population yearly by immigration. In 2022, apart from permanent immigrants (437,000), the number of non-permanent residents increased by a net of more than 607,000, some of whom were admitted as temporary workers and/or international students. Canada’s population increased by more than a million people, largely as a result of a surge in immigration and temporary residents. The federal government is aiming to add 1.5 million more immigrants by 2025.

So far, these policies seem to have worked out. There is strong support for increased immigration among Canadians. Environics Institute’s recent survey shows that seven in 10 support the present level of immigration, though there is some recognition of the challenges arising from it.

One of these challenges is false documents, which tend to follow the priorities of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). For example, if the protection of people persecuted because of sexual orientation in a country is the priority, suddenly claims in that area increase. Some immigrant consultants, as well as human smugglers, tutor and manufacture documents to support such claims.

A recent story in the Toronto Star found that as many as 700 Indian students were admitted to study in Canada on fake admission letters. They lived and found places in different colleges for years before it became known that the letters were bogus. A regulatory body for immigration consultants, the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants, has had limited success in supressing such practices.

The post-secondary education sector’s structure and purposes have been widely compromised by the drive to recruit international students. Universities, and especially colleges, including private colleges, have come to depend on the international student enrolment fees. Access to higher learning may only be partially the motivating factor behind the scramble for foreigners trying to access Canadian post-secondary education.

Being an international student also opens the door to permanent residency in Canada. This is a big draw for students from abroad. It has been turned into a business by some post-secondary institutions. Even Ontario’s auditor general has identified the dependence on these fees as a vulnerable point in post-secondary educational finances.

About 500,000 international students contributed  $16.2 billion in 2017 and $19.7 billion in 2018 to this country’s GDP and supported more than 218,000 jobs in 2018. These international students are also being used as a cheap way to combat labour shortages. Recent rule changes allow some international students to work up to 40 hours a week while attending classes. This is to serve the need of the labour market, rather than advance international students’ education. To accommodate their schedule, institutions are arranging classes in the evenings and on weekends. In Toronto, for example, young South Asians dominate the landscape working as delivery workers and van drivers. If they are students, one wonders how much time they can spend on their studies after working a full-time job.

The enrolment of large numbers of international students affects the quality of educational programs in post-secondary institutions. International students generally add to the quality of learning experiences. Many international students are among the brightest. But the aggressive recruitment — combined with studies becoming a path to permanent residence and employment — have affected the classroom. Classes dominated by students from abroad with wide variations of language skills and motivation inhibit discussion and compromise learning. This is hardly the Canadian education for which they paid.

Immigration is a positive force for the Canadian economy, making up for labour shortages and a potentially decreasing population. Yet it has been used for many unethical ends. The downdraft of capabilities and status that immigrants experience on arrival is well-known. The infusion of hundreds of thousands of new job-seekers a year prompts abuses in the labour market.

Gig jobs rather than careers have become the norm. Foreign workers are hired to replace Canadians whose seniority has raised their salaries. Many economists argue that immigration at least initially affects wages of Canadian workers in the fields where immigrant labour supply increases.

In many professions, anecdotal evidence suggests that Canadians and long-standing immigrants are displaced after they have worked out new initiatives and routinized procedures. Foreign workers and new immigrants are then brought in at lower rates to run the programs. This means new immigrants and temporary workers often compete with second-generation Canadians in the labour market.

This affects the mainstream economy. International students and undocumented workers may be paid below minimum wage and off-the-books. A continual supply of young workers at lower salaries pushes older, more expensive and more experienced Canadians off the job market. It is not a surprise that businesses lobby for more workers from abroad.

The ethical responsibilities of attracting professionals in the fields of health and other critical areas from poor countries does not appear to register in discussions of Canadian immigration policies. The Global South needs professionals for development, yet rich countries such as Canada are attracting them to leave their homes with incentives for immigration.

This brain drain has long been an issue for the poor countries. It is particularly damaging in the case of medical professionals, who are direly needed in those places. The World Health Organization has taken note of the dilemma of health professionals emigrating from the Global South. It has established a global code for their recruitment, balancing individuals’ rights of movement and the social costs borne by poor countries.

Problems of housing adequacy, affordability and availability have buffeted Canada in one way or another for a long time. The demand-and-supply laws tell us that accommodating a million persons a year should exacerbate the housing shortages, particularly in major cities. This strain is expected, but what is of equal public concern are the abuses and illegal practices that the excessive demand is fostering.

Immigration funnels “black” money from abroad into real estate, leaving many housing units vacant for speculative gains. Toronto and Vancouver have lately recognized this problem and are restricting foreign buyers and taxing housing units kept vacant for six or more months.

More egregious is the practice of international students and other immigrants crowding in illegal housing, sharing rooms among many other, with their possessions spilling into the driveways. Neighbourhoods become noisy, choked with garbage and traffic. Brampton and Mississauga have been in news for the illegal basement rentals targeted at international students recruited from India.

Of course, a house is more than just a building. It requires infrastructure, schools, parks, sidewalks and roads. Housing requires major public investments and can result in higher taxes at local and provincial levels. Canadian cities are in a frenzy of increasing densities. Regardless of their success, these measures will change the quality of urban life for everybody. Immigration policies will change the form of our cities, potentially creating even more urban sprawl if there’s no careful planning.

Canada undoubtedly needs immigration, but post-secondary education and labour market policies are so interconnected that attention must be paid to the effect of an increase of a million new permanent residents. More enforcement against immigration scams, particularly aimed at post-secondary students, and the over-reliance of those institutions on foreign students should be deterred. The implications of more migrants on a housing market, particularly in specific cities, means a need for more careful planning. All of this suggests that these new immigration targets cannot be viewed as merely an issue of welcoming more faces. It requires careful planning, which to date does not appear to be happening.

Source: Canada needs new immigrants, but must plan for the consequences

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China needs foreign workers. So why won’t it embrace immigration?

2023/05/06 Leave a comment

Of interest:

For hundreds of years China could boast of having more people than any other country. The title became official in the 1950s, when the un began compiling such data. Such a large population conferred on China certain bragging rights. A huge labour supply also helped to boost its annual gdp growth, which has averaged close to 9% over the past three decades.

Last month China’s reign came to an end. India has overtaken it as the world’s most populous country. The demographic trends behind the shift have troubling implications for the new number two. China’s working-age population has been shrinking for a decade (see chart). Its population as a whole declined last year—and it is ageing rapidly. This is likely to hinder economic growth and create an enormous burden of care.

Yet when officials in Beijing mull solutions, one seems largely absent from the discussion: immigration. China has astonishingly few foreign-born residents. Of its 1.4bn people, around 1m, or just 0.1%, are immigrants. That compares with shares of 15% in America, 19% in Germany and 30% in Australia. Place it next to that of other Asian countries which also shun immigration and China’s total still looks measly. Foreigners constitute 2% of Japan’s population and 3% of South Korea’s. Even North Korea has a higher proportion of immigrants than China, according to the un.

China’s future economic and social needs resemble those that have made other societies recruit guest workers. In January the government released a list of 100 occupations, such as salesperson and cleaner, where there is a lack of staff. Over 80% of manufacturers faced labour shortages in 2022, according to one survey. Nearly half of China’s 400m blue-collar workers are aged over 40, reported a study in December. That is in line with an official estimate that China will have trouble filling nearly 30m manufacturing jobs by 2025.

An abundance of young and cheap workers once filled these openings. But as China ages and shrinks that supply of willing labour is drying up. Firms complain of a mismatch between the jobs sought by young people, an increasing number of whom have university degrees, and those available. Many young Chinese do not want to work in factories, laments China Daily, a party mouthpiece. That helps explain why nearly 20% of 16- to 24-year-olds in cities are unemployed.

Source: China needs foreign workers. So why won’t it embrace immigration?

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Russia forces occupied Ukrainians to change citizenship

2023/05/06 Leave a comment

Citizenship warfare and erasing identity:

A convoy of empty buses sweeps into a town, alongside members of Russia’s domestic intelligence agency FSB. They cite a decree issued by the Russian president regarding the deportation of anyone without Russian citizenship from the occupied territories. “They radically demand that people either give up their Ukrainian passport in favor of a Russian one, or their property will be confiscated immediately and they will be resettled,” according to the Ukrainian military.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree according to which citizens of Ukraine living in the Russian-occupied parts of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk and Donetsk who wish to keep their Ukrainian citizenship can only stay there until July 1, 2024. After that, they can be deported from those occupied regions.

“Constant threats”

DW spoke to people from the occupied parts of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions who confirmed that Ukrainians are being forced to take Russian passports. For security reasons, none of the people want to be named.

“Russian soldiers searched everything in our house. When I showed my Ukrainian passport, they shouted that I should change it for a Russian one, and that otherwise my car would be taken away, and I would be deported,” an elderly man from near Kherson said.

A woman from the Zaporizhzhia region was in tears as she recounted how Russian occupiers threatened to deport her young children to Russia if she didn’t immediately apply for a Russian passport.

Another woman was threatened by Russian soldiers who “put a bag over her head” because she refused to change citizenship. “We held out until the end, we didn’t want to accept a Russian passport. But it’s just unbearable and scary,” the woman from near the Azov Sea told DW.

Why the rush?

The first deputy chairman of the Kherson regional council, Yuriy Sobolevsky, said the pressure on the people living in the occupied territories has recently increased significantly. “Access to medical care and freedom of movement between cities will be restricted for those who refuse to accept Russian passports,” he said. He thinks the Russians are now resorting to terror because not as many people in those territories want to become Russian citizens as Moscow had hoped.

According to the British Ministry of Defense, Moscow apparently wants to speed up the integration of the occupied territories into Russia to sell the invasion of Ukraine as a success to its own people, particularly in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election.

But people are afraid of ending up in Russian databases, a young man from Khrustalnyi in the Luhansk region told DW. He’s from an area which has been occupied since as early as 2014. Many don’t know what to do. “More and more employers are demanding a Russian passport,” the young man explained. But anyone who applies for a Russian “residence permit” is handing themselves over to the occupying forces. Then there is also the risk of being drafted into the war.

Conflicting signals from Kyiv

Should people have a Russian passport forced on them or not? There are conflicting takes on this among Ukrainian politicians. Dmytro Lubinets, human rights commissioner in the Ukrainian parliament, said on TV that Ukrainians in the occupied territories should accept Russian passports if they fear for their lives. He stressed that Ukraine does not recognize such forced passports and that it would not mean that they lose their Ukrainian citizenship.

However, the Minister for Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories, Mychajlo Podoljak, said Ukrainians should not accept Russian passports. “Do not cooperate with the occupiers, do not accept Russian passports, flee if possible or wait for our army,” she said on TV.

Life under occupation not a crime

“I’m ashamed and afraid to accept a Russian passport, but I’m also afraid of being deported,” said one desperate woman from the occupied part of the Kherson region. “We can’t leave, as the Ukrainian authorities advise us, because we have an old, sick mother.”

According to Alyona Lunyova from Ukraine’s ZMNINA Human Rights Center, the contradictory advice from Ukrainian officials is confusing people. She stressed that living under occupation is not a crime. “On the contrary, not everyone should leave the occupied territories, it shouldn’t become an empty country and we cannot take in four to five million people from there.” She added that it is not a crime to accept a Russian passport under duress.

Meanwhile, an adviser to Ukraine’s presidential office, Mykhailo Podolyak, said Lubinets’ and Vereshchuk’s advice was not contradictory. He tweeted this advice for Ukrainians in the occupied territories: “If it is possible not to take a Russian passport, then try not to take one. But if you have to take a Russian passport to avoid oppression and torture, then take one.”

Podolyak stressed that Ukraine would not persecute citizens who “passively obtained Russian citizenship.”

Source: Russia forces occupied Ukrainians to change citizenship

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Les immigrants temporaires ne feront pas partie des discussions de Québec

2023/05/06 Leave a comment

Seems similar blind spot to the federal government consultations on the annual plan that doesn’t include temporary residents even if the numbers and arguably impact greater than Permanent Residents:

Reconnaissant que près de 300 000 immigrants non permanents se trouvaient en sol québécois à la fin de 2022, la ministre de l’Immigration, Christine Fréchette, refuse toutefois d’inclure la question des immigrants temporaires dans sa consultation sur les cibles cet automne.

Talonnant Mme Fréchette sur le sujet lors de l’étude des crédits de son ministère, le député solidaire de Saint-Henri–Saint-Anne, Guillaume Cliche-Rivard, a sommé le gouvernement d’aborder le sujet lors de ses consultations sur les cibles d’immigration 2024-2027. « On a aucune consultation sur les temporaires, je vous demande un engagement pour qu’on puisse faire une planification ordonnée réglée ensemble et qu’on sache où on s’en va. De faire uniquement l’exercice sur les permanents, c’est de passer à côté du débat », a-t-il souligné.

Le député libéral de Nelligan, Monsef Derraji, a renchéri en faisant valoir que la majorité des travailleurs temporaires s’installaient dans la région de Montréal. « On ne peut pas dire qu’on peut juste tenir compte des permanents dans la planification pluriannuelle », a-t-il lancé.

Selon des documents rendus publics dans le cadre de l’étude des crédits, il y avait environ 290 000 immigrants temporaires en territoire québécois au 31 décembre 2022, surtout des étudiants étrangers et des travailleurs temporaires.

La ministre Fréchette a pour sa part rétorqué que ce type d’immigration reflète le besoin ponctuel des entreprises et estime important que ces dernières gardent cette « agilité » pour aller « chercher les talents dont elles ont besoin ». « L’immigration temporaire, c’est [aussi] l’effet du succès de nos établissements d’enseignement », a-t-elle ajouté. « Pour nous, d’office, ça fait partie des éléments, car on y fait référence, mais pour ce qui est des orientations comme telles, la planification pluriannuelle porte sur l’immigration permanente. »

Déplorant que des travailleurs étrangers temporaires soient pris en otage en raison de permis « fermés » qui les lient à un donneur d’emploi en particulier, le député Monsef Derraji a tenté d’obtenir de la ministre qu’elle s’engage à éliminer ces documents qui conduisent parfois à des abus de la part des employeurs. Christine Fréchette a répondu qu’il s’agissait d’une question dont elle discute déjà avec son homologue fédéral, Sean Fraser. Elle a par ailleurs rappelé que son gouvernement souhaite rapatrier les pouvoirs des programmes concernant les travailleurs temporaires gérés par Ottawa.

Davantage d’immigrants francisés

Malgré des taux de décrochage parfois élevés dans certaines régions, la ministre de l’Immigration s’est également félicitée du progrès de la persévérance des immigrants en francisation dans l’ensemble du Québec.

Préférant voir les choses du côté positif, Christine Fréchette dit observer des taux de persévérance de 78,8 % pour les étudiants à temps complet et 84,6 % pour les étudiants à temps partiel. « C’est franchement un beau succès. […] On a augmenté considérablement le nombre de personnes qui prennent des cours de francisation ».

Lors de l’étude des crédits, le député Derraji lui a fait valoir que près de la moitié des immigrants en francisation décrochent dans certaines régions administratives, notamment en Abitibi-Témiscamingue, où ce taux atteint 43 %. À Montréal, il est près de 25 %. « Ce n’est pas du tout un échec, on partait de zéro. On a tellement rebâti en 2018 », a répondu la ministre Fréchette. Selon les documents du ministère, le décrochage est moins élevé chez élèves à temps partiel, soit environ 15 % pour l’ensemble du Québec.

Pressée d’expliquer pourquoi certains immigrants décrochent de la francisation, elle a noté que, dans un contexte de plein-emploi, beaucoup peuvent être tentés par le marché du travail. « Quand on prend des cours de francisation, on peut être rapidement sollicité pour intégrer des entreprises ou travailler davantage d’heures si on a déjà un emploi », a-t-elle affirmé.

Quant aux immigrants temporaires, la ministre a précisé que la majorité d’entre eux (60 %) parle français et, qu’au cours de la dernière année, il y a eu une augmentation de plus de 30 % des travailleurs étrangers temporaires qui ont suivi des cours de français. « C’est colossal », a-t-elle déclaré.

Or, bien que les allocations s’étendent désormais aux milliers de travailleurs temporaires agricoles, à peine 431 d’entre eux se sont inscrits à la francisation. La ministre Fréchette a dit vouloir augmenter ce score. « La francisation est un travail constant, il y aura toujours des efforts à faire pour que l’apprentissage du français soit facilité et accessible. » Elle entend miser sur de nouveaux outils, dont Francisation Québec, un guichet unique qui sera lancé dès le 1er juin et qui regroupera toute l’offre de services en francisation.

Pas fermée à la régularisation

Par ailleurs, questionnée à savoir si son ministère allait emboîter le pas au fédéral, qui planche sur un programme de régularisation des personnes sans statut, Christine Fréchette a dit ne pas fermer pas la porte. « Mais il faut voir davantage les intentions pour décider si on s’y engage ou pas », a-t-elle souligné.

La ministre a d’ailleurs affirmé qu’il était « encore trop tôt pour se prononcer » sur cette question. « C’est important pour nous de connaître la nature des orientations [du fédéral]. On souhaite être consultés sur cette politique publique. »

Source: Les immigrants temporaires ne feront pas partie des discussions de Québec

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Rosenberg: Ottawa should consider a less ambitious immigration policy to help ease this epic housing affordability crisis

2023/05/05 Leave a comment

Asking the needed question:

The bizarre way the Trudeau government has dealt with an epic housing affordability crisis in Canada has been to exacerbate the demand-supply imbalance by pursuing the most aggressive pro-immigration policy on record. As a result, population growth keeps climbing, with Canada seeing its highest ever annual growth rate at 2.7 per cent – or more than a million people – last year .

This is truly insane.

The problem is that the country does not have the adequate supply, especially when it comes to residential real estate, to absorb this sort of immigration-led population growth without exerting further strains on the stretched housing market. The ratio of population to housing stock is 40 per cent above historical norms. And the same is true for the homeowner affordability ratio.

It would have been one thing if the Bank of Canada’s rate hikes of the past year had worked to bring real estate prices down to more reasonable levels, but the federal government didn’t let that happen with its aggressive immigration stance, which kept housing inflation intact. Canadian homeowner-wannabees have been crowded out by still-elevated prices and the central bank-induced rates shock.

The need to ramp up debt massively to afford a home has left Canadian household balance sheets extremely stretched, with a debt/income ratio at record levels of 180 per cent. And more than 14 per cent of incomes are now being drained by ever-higher debt-service costs. Even the tightest labour markets on record and expanding earnings growth have fallen short of mitigating the influence from higher rates and still-ridiculous home prices which, by the way, are back on an uptrend.

How much debt is each generation of Canadians carrying, and how do you compare?

The BoC seems unlikely to raise rates again, which means the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. has to start clamping down on lending guidelines.

Ottawa should seriously consider a less-ambitious immigration policy, which is doing more harm than good at this point. A country where folks in their 30s are crowded out of the housing market because of an elongated period of excessive home price inflation that is the result of government policy is not a very happy country. This will all come out in the wash in the next election, and if I were in opposition, this is the card I would be playing.

Prime Minster Justin Trudeau has aided and abetted the most onerous housing affordability conditions the country has ever faced and which are having ill effects on society at large.

To show just how egregious the situation is, for homeowner affordability to revert to its long-term average, home prices would need to fall by almost 30 per cent. But the government’s immigration policy won’t allow for this natural correction from crazy-stupid price levels. Interest rates would need to fall nearly two percentage points or we would need to see a 40-per-cent surge in incomes.

No matter, we have a very unstable situation on our hands. It seems highly unlikely that the affordability ratio can remain at such a massive deviation from its long-run average.

The question is: How will it revert to the mean? There is no way incomes will rise by 40 per cent. Maybe over the next decade, but certainly not quickly enough.

What is needed is for the BoC to allow for lower rates, and that in turn requires a fiscal and regulatory policy that will foster a return to more reasonable home prices (sorry, existing homeowners – your net worth needs to go down) and sustainably low inflation (which Ottawa’s spending and immigration policies are working against).

David Rosenberg is founder of Rosenberg Research, and author of the daily economic report, Breakfast with Dave.

Source: Ottawa should consider a less ambitious immigration policy to help ease this epic housing affordability crisis

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Paul: A Paper That Says Science Should Be Impartial Was Rejected From Major Journals. You Can’t Make This Up.

2023/05/05 Leave a comment

Agree with the concerns regarding the risks to scientific research:

Is a gay Republican Latino more capable of conducting a physics experiment than a white progressive heterosexual woman? Would they come to different conclusions based on the same data because of their different backgrounds?

For most people, the suggestion isn’t just ludicrous, it’s offensive.

Yet this belief — that science is somehow subjective and should be practiced and judged accordingly — has recently taken hold in academic, governmental and medical settings. A paper published last week, “In Defense of Merit in Science,” documents the disquieting ways in which research is increasingly informed by a politicized agenda, one that often characterizes science as fundamentally racist and in need of “decolonizing.” The authors argue that science should instead be independent, evidence-based and focused on advancing knowledge.

This sounds entirely reasonable.

Yet the paper was rejected by several prominent mainstream journals, including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Another publication that passed on the paper, the authors report, described some of its conclusions as “downright hurtful.” The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences took issuewith the word “merit” in the title, writing that “the problem is that this concept of merit, as the authors surely know, has been widely and legitimately attacked as hollow as currently implemented.”

Instead, the paper has been published in a new journal called — you can’t make this up — The Journal of Controversial Ideas. The journal, which welcomes papers that “discuss well-known controversial topics from diverse cultural, philosophical, moral, political and religious perspectives,” was co-founded in 2021 by the philosopher Peter Singer and is entirely serious. This particular paper was rewritten multiple times and peer-reviewed before publication. However controversial one judges the paper’s claims, they deserve consideration.

According to its 29 authors, who are primarily scientists (including two Nobel laureates) in fields as varied as theoretical physics, psychology and pharmacokinetics, ideological concerns are threatening independence and rigor in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine. Though the goal of expanding opportunity for more diverse researchers in the sciences is laudable, the authors write, it should not be pursued at the expense of foundational scientific concepts like objective truth, merit and evidence, which they claim are being jeopardized by efforts to account for differing perspectives.

Consider the increasingly widespread practice of appending a “positionality statement” to one’s research. This is an explicit acknowledgment by the author of an academic paper of his or her identity (e.g., “nondisabled,” “continuing generation”). Positionality statements were first popular in the social sciences and are now spreading to the hard sciences and medicine. The idea is that one’s race, sex, relative privilege and “experiences of oppression” inherently inform one’s research, especially in ways that perpetuate or alleviate bias.

But whatever validity “alternative ways of knowing,” “multiple narratives” and “lived experience” may have in the humanities, they are of questionable utility when it comes to the sciences. Some defenders of positionality statements maintain that these acknowledgments promote objectivity by drawing attention to a researcher’s potential blind spots, but in practice they can have the opposite effect, implying that scientific research isn’t universally valid or applicable — that there are different kinds of knowledge for different groups of people.

Another concern is the rise of “citation justice” — the attempt to achieve racial or gender balance in scholarly references. The purpose of a citation in an academic publication is to substantiate claims and offer the most relevant supporting research. Advocates of citation justice say these citations too often prioritize the work of white men. But in a field like chemistry, in which fewer than 30 percent of papers are written by women, according to data from the American Chemical Society, and where the foundational texts are almost entirely written by men, “justice” means disproportionately favoring studies by women, regardless of relevance. Many prominent science journals now recommend that before submission, authors run their papers through software programs that detect any citation bias.

A third worrisome development is the statements that researchers are often required to write in order to apply for faculty jobs (and to advance in those positions) describing their commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, something my colleague John McWhorter, one of the paper’s authors, has written about in The Times. These are noble goals that in practice, however, can amount to discrimination, and such statements strike many as a kind of political litmus test. At the University of California, Berkeley, for example, in the hiring cycle from 2018 to 2019, three-quarters of applicants for faculty positions in the life sciences were eliminated on the basis of these statements alone. (Grant programs also often require applications for funding in the sciences to include D.E.I. goals.)

Of course, nobody wants to hire a racist. But that’s not what we’re talking about. For a prospective faculty member to say he is determined to treat all students equally rather than to advance diversity initiatives can be enough to count someone out of a job.

Marisol Quintanilla, an assistant professor of nematology at Michigan State University, was required to take a multiple choice D.E.I. test for continued employment, along with all faculty members; she was also asked to write a D.E.I. statement as part of her annual performance evaluations, which weigh heavily in the tenure process. Several designated answers in the test didn’t align with her religious or scientific beliefs, she said. The statement requirement was abandoned in March, but not without a protracted battle. “I’ve heard colleagues of mine saying they need to get rid of white men in academia,” Quintanilla, a Chilean immigrant of mixed ethnicity, told me. “It amounted to clear discrimination. I feel very uncomfortable with this because I think hiring the best qualified candidates would be best for the advancement of science.”

Those are just three troubling practices detailed in the new paper. Sadly, they are part of a much larger set of developments.

“What’s being advocated are philosophies that are explicitly anti-scientific,” Anna Krylov, a chemistry professor at the University of Southern California and one of the paper’s authors, told me. “They deny that objective truth exists.” Having grown up in the Soviet Union, where science was infused with Marxist-Leninist ideology, Krylov is particularly attuned to such threats. And while she has advocated on behalf of equal treatment for women in science, she prefers to be judged on the basis of her achievements, not on her sex. “The merit of scientific theories and findings do not depend on the identity of the scientist,” she said in a phone interview.

It should go without saying — but in today’s polarized world, unfortunately, it doesn’t — that the authors of this paper do not deny the existence of historical racism or sexism or dispute that inequalities of opportunity persist. Nor do they deny that scientists have personal views, which are in turn informed by culture and society. They acknowledge biases and blind spots.

Where they depart from the prevailing ideological winds is in arguing that however imperfect, meritocracy is still the most effective way to ensure high quality science and greater equity. (A major study published last week shows that despite decades of sexism, claims of gender bias in academic science are now grossly overstated.) The focus, the authors write, should be on improving meritocratic systems rather than dismantling them.

At a time when faith in institutions is plummeting and scientific challenges such as climate change remain enduringly large, the last thing we want is to give the public reason to lose faith in science. A study published last month, “Even When Ideologies Align, People Distrust Politicized Institutions,” shows that what we need is more impartiality, not less.

If you believe bias is crucial to evaluating scientific work, you may object to the fact that several of the authors of the study are politically conservative, as are some of the researchers they cite. One author, Dorian Abbot, a geophysicist at the University of Chicago and a critic of some affirmative action and diversity programs, inspired outcry in 2021 when he was invited to speak at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But to deny the validity of this paper on that basis would mean succumbing to the very fallacies the authors so persuasively dismantle.

One needn’t agree with every aspect of the authors’ politics or with all of their solutions. But to ignore or dismiss their research rather than impartially weigh the evidence would be a mistake. We need, in other words, to judge the paper on the merits. That, after all, is how science works.

Source: A Paper That Says Science Should Be Impartial Was Rejected From Major Journals. You Can’t Make This Up.

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