Once-popular rural Quebec road for asylum seekers quiets down after U.S.-Canada deal

2023/04/07 Leave a comment

As expected:

About 12 hours after the closure of a rural southern Quebec road used by thousands of asylum seekers to enter Canada from the United States, Evelyne Bouchard witnessed RCMP agents escort a family of four people off her property.

Bouchard, whose farm is located about two kilometres from the forested pathway known as Roxham Road, says she is used to seeing police around her home; at times, she has found clothing and unknown footprints in the snow on her Hemmingford, Que., property.

In a recent interview, she said it was upsetting to see people being taken away so soon after the Canada-United States immigration deal closed Roxham Road to most would-be refugees.

“It’s that contrast,” she said. “This is like my happy place — my home. I love this place, and to think that someone in that same kind of physical space is feeling afraid and vulnerable and is possibly in danger is just completely heartbreaking.”

Officials say the massive wave of would-be refugees crossing into Canada has slowed significantly since the end of March, when the government negotiated a deal with the United States to turn away asylum seekers at unofficial border crossings like Roxham Road, closing a long-standing loophole in the Safe Third Country Agreement.

That agreement assumes that Canada and the U.S. are “safe” countries for would-be refugees. It also forces asylum seekers to apply for refugee status in the first country they enter — Canada or the U.S. — and prohibits them from crossing the border to file a claim.

Estelle Muzzi, mayor of border community St-Bernard-de-Lacolle, said residents who live near Roxham Road have reported a decrease in foot traffic in the area since the treaty was expanded.

“The message is getting through because I’m told that it’s gone down dramatically — there’s a big drop in traffic,” Muzzi said in a recent interview.

“I think that for the citizens of St-Bernard-de-Lacolle who were very affected by the situation, those who live right next to the border, for them, the most important thing was to find some peace and quiet,” Muzzi said.

Frances Ravensbergen, an activist with Bridges Not Borders, a refugee advocacy group in Hemmingford, said local volunteers have also reported a decline in the number of people arriving to cross through Roxham Road.

“The few people that we have seen crossing either don’t seem to be completely aware of the new regulations … and not realizing that if you’re handed back to the Americans, you may never apply for asylum again in Canada,” Ravensbergen said in an interview.

But despite the drop in people arriving at Roxham Road, Ravensbergen said she thinks scenes like the RCMP arrest on Bouchard’s property will be replicated across the country. Now that asylum seekers are blocked from using that road, they will likely try to enter Canada through other spots along the 9,000-kilometre border that separates the two countries, she said.

Border officials are also reporting a drop in the number of migrants trying to cross the border between official ports of entry. The Canada Border Services Agency said that from March 25 to April 2, it recorded 191 cases of people crossing irregularly. Out of that total, 144 claimants were returned to the U.S. in accordance with the expanded agreement; 54 were deemed eligible to make an asylum claim in Canada.

Before the new treaty went into effect, the government reported that since December of 2022, about 4,500 people were crossing through Roxham Road every month.

Now, the CBSA said that when RCMP agents or local police intercept would-be refugees trying to cross at irregular checkpoints, they take them to a designated — and official — port of entry. There, border officials determine whether or not their claim is eligible.

An asylum seeker is permitted to cross an irregular checkpoint under four circumstances: they have family members living legally in Canada; they are an accompanied minor; they have legal documents such as a Canadian visa or valid work permit; or their application for refugee status is considered in the “public interest.”

“If an individual does not meet an (agreement) exception or is otherwise determined inadmissible, they will be removed to the U.S. If the refugee claim is eligible, the person’s file will be referred to the Immigration and Refugee Board for consideration, and the person will be authorized to enter Canada to pursue their claim for protection,” Maria Ladouceur, a spokesperson for the agency, said by email.

Viviane Albuquerque, a Canadian and U.S. immigration lawyer based in Montreal, explained that once an asylum seeker has crossed Roxham Road to Canada and is deemed ineligible to claim asylum, it becomes almost impossible for the individual to seek asylum in Canada ever again.

“Once there is a determination based on your status — a refused refugee claim — it is very difficult to apply for refugee status again unless (the asylum seeker) tries to appeal the decision in court,” Albuquerque said in an interview.

Bouchard said she was hoping for a long time that Canada and the U.S. would renegotiate the Safe Third Country Agreement — to make it easier for migrants to file asylum claims in either country.

“It was just such a gut punch that it went in exactly the opposite direction to what we’d hoped, making it more dangerous and more difficult and driving people into the woods, where they’re more likely to be in danger.”

Source: Once-popular rural Quebec road for asylum seekers quiets down after U.S.-Canada deal

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The Kuwaiti Bidoon: neither nationals nor foreigners

2023/04/07 Leave a comment

Of interest:

At the wheel of his car, Hakim, wearing a blue djellaba, drives through the town of al-Ahmadi, built by and for the workers of the Kuwait National Petroleum Company. “There are two types of Bidoon in Kuwait,” he explains. “Those who worked in the oil industry and those who were in the army or the police.” This leading activist of the Bidoon cause in Kuwait adds: “Until 1990, the Bidoon enjoyed the same rights as all Kuwaiti citizens and took part in this country’s construction. In the 1960s and 1970s, over 80 per cent of the armed forces were Bidoon.”

The Bidoon – Arabic for ‘without’, implying ‘without nationality’ – are a stateless Arab minority in Kuwait. They should not be confused with the Bedouin, who are nomads living in the desert, although many Bidoon are descendants of nomadic tribes from the Arabian Peninsula. Most Bidoon are now categorised by the Kuwaiti authorities as ‘illegal residents’, despite having no links to other countries.

The Bidoon Committee, the central authority for dealing with the status of illegal residents, established in 2010, is a public institution intended to resolve nationality issues by granting citizenship to those entitled to it. Very few Bidoon have, however, been able to benefit from this process, as the committee regularly claims, without foundation, that they belong to another nationality. The authorities’ approach to them became harsher after the Iraqi occupation, from 1990 to 1991, suspecting them of having “collaborated with the enemy”.

Nawaf, aged 37, works as a taxi driver. He shows the documents of his uncle who obtained Kuwaiti citizenship in 1973, but since his father did not have citizenship, he cannot have it.

They are faced with a range of pressures to reveal their supposed ‘real nationality’. They are attributed nationalities based on their physical traits: “You look like an Iraqi,” they have been told, for example. Although some of them have been able to obtain identity documents, with the reference “non-Kuwaiti”, since 2011, and the first demonstrations to defend their rights, it has become almost impossible for them to renew them.

Hussain works in an automobile garage. In 2009, corrupt officials suggested he should buy a fake EU passport, which he went to collect from the public authorities.

According to some Bidoon, they are offered fake passports to push them into exile. In 2009, after being arrested during a traffic inspection, Hussain found himself in front of an Egyptian* official, in a Bidoon Committee office. The official presented him with a card with the contact details of a person from whom he could buy a fake passport. After meeting this person, Hussain decided to buy a fake Danish passport, “because it was the cheapest”, he says. As agreed with the Egyptian agent, he went to his office to hand in his new fake passport. A few days later, he went to pick up his fake passport from the public authorities.

Abdul Razaq, aged 73, shares memories of his time in the Kuwaiti police force, where he worked for over 10 years until the Iraqi invasion in 1990. Now, the authorities are refusing to give him nationality and a retirement pension.

They are also now excluded from the army, the public administration and the civil service. When they are not directly harassed by the authorities, who tell them to close their businesses or have their goods confiscated, the Bidoon are discriminated against in the labour market.

“I have been working for 12 years in the mail service of a public body, I am not entitled to paid holidays and I used to be paid €750. Last year, they decided to reduce my salary to €600,” says Bender, another Bidoon. He adds, by way of example, that the basic salary “of a teacher, even a foreigner, is €3900, whereas for a Bidoon it is €1350”.

A view of the Mutla desert in the Jahra region, where the Bidoon lived before the country’s independence. Today, the majority of them live in the surrounding towns, but continue to come here to relax with friends.

Their number is a sensitive issue. For many years, the authorities have been claiming that there are about 100,000 of them in Kuwait, which is clearly a huge underestimate. Hakim explains that confidential documents leaked on social media in 2016, on the government’s public policies for the Bidoon, refer to a figure of around 400,000 out of a national population of just under three million.

In the town of Taima, some 20 kilometres from the capital, Kuwait City, a road separates two worlds: on the left, comfortable housing reserved for Kuwaiti families, often granted by the government, while on the right, low breeze block houses, corrugated iron extensions and poor roads is the lot of the Bidoon.

The town of Taima is divided into several blocks, where the Bidoon came to settle in the 1970s, at the request of the state. They were built to bring an end to the traditional settlements, the ashish , where the Bidoon used to live. They were supposed to be temporary and the families were to be rehoused. But, 50 years on, they have never been given the opportunity to move elsewhere.

From Block 2 in Taima, residents have a direct view of one of the largest hospitals in the Persian Gulf, but the Bidoon, for lack of identity documents, only have access to basic treatment.

A few metres from these houses is a public school, in which stateless children cannot enrol. The majority of the Bidoon population is deprived of access to free education and health care. Those who can afford it pay for their children to go to private schools. They are also often denied marriage and birth certificates.

Quelques avancées ont eu lieu, ces dernières années, grâce à l’engagement de plusieurs associations bidounes. Depuis 2014, une centaine de Bidoun ont eu la possibilité de rentrer à l’université publique chaque année, sous réserve de bons résultats scolaires, même si certains secteurs comme la médecine leur restent interdits. « Je veux juste ma liberté de mouvement », explique le jeune Hassan, assis dans sa tente où il loue des chevaux. Du haut de ses 20 ans, il est malfré tout fier de son pays et de toutes ses infrastructures, « je veux juste pouvoir voyager avec mes amis ». Some progress has been made in recent years, thanks to the work of several Bidoon associations. Since 2014, around 100 Bidoon have been given the opportunity to enter public universities each year, subject to good school grades, although some areas of study such as medicine remain off-limits to them. “I just want freedom of movement,” says young Hassan, sitting in his tent from where he rents out horses. The 20-year-old is proud of his country and all its infrastructure, and says, “I just want to be able to travel with my friends.”

Source: The Kuwaiti Bidoon: neither nationals nor foreigners

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Worker shortage? Canada’s supply of labour is actually robust

2023/04/06 Leave a comment

Undercuts the case made by business organizations, governments and advocates for current immigration increases and greater flexibility for temporary workers and students:

For many years, the corporate sector in Canada has pointed to labour shortages as a persistent challenge – one that’s getting worse as the country ages and baby boomers head into retirement.

In the Bank of Canada’s latest Business Outlook Survey, published Monday, companies indicated that labour shortages were their second-most pressing concern, behind cost pressures. Small-business owners consistently say that a lack of skilled and unskilled workers is the biggest impediment to increasing sales, according to surveys from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.

But these responses can obscure a simple fact: The supply of workers in Canada is growing quickly, and among some groups, participation in the labour market has never been higher.

As of February, that participation rate – the proportion of the population 15 or older that is working or looking for a job – was 65.7 per cent. That’s the same as in April, 2018.

To be sure, it has drifted lower from its peak levels of almost 68 per cent in the 2000s as Canada has aged.

Still, that clouds some milestones. The participation rate for Canadians 15 to 64 – what is often called the working-age population – has jumped to record levels, above 80 per cent, in recent months. In raw terms, the sum of labour market participants has surpassed 21 million, a first for the economy.

And with the unemployment rate just shy of an all-time low, it’s generally been a fruitful period for job seekers.

“Across the board – across basically all demographic groups – participation is at record highs or near record highs,” said Andrew Fields, a senior analyst at Statistics Canada.

The macroeconomic environment is certainly a draw for potential workers. Over the past three months, Canada has enjoyed a net gain of 241,000 jobs, despite higher interest rates meant to slow the economy. The Bank of Canada’s survey of consumers, also published Monday, showed that households think a recession is the most likely scenario over the next year. Even so, people are feeling upbeat about the labour market“Despite uncertainty about the economy, workers view the job market as strong. Respondents, particularly those not satisfied with their current job, are confident they can find new work,” the central bank’s report said.

Over the long term, immigration has been the main driver of population growth and, in turn, new workers. In a 2022 report, Statscan said immigrants accounted for 84 per cent of labour force growth in the 2010s.

The demographic profile of those newcomers is also helpful. According to the 2021 census, about three-quarters of immigrants who have been in Canada for 10 or fewer years were between the ages of 25 and 54 – prime years for working. Among people born in Canada, the proportion in that age bracket was 46 per cent.

This wave of newcomers is part of a deliberate plan to increase the supply of workers. The federal government is ramping up its intake of permanent residents to 500,000 annually by 2025, more than 60 per cent of whom will migrate through economic programs.

Lately, however, it’s not been solely a story of immigration. The employment rate of mothers (aged 25 to 54) with a youngest child under 6 was 76.6 per cent in January – a jump of almost four percentage points in a year.

Statscan said women with young children “are typically less likely to be employed, and these increases can reflect a tight labour market as well as a range of factors, such as the need to meet household financial requirements or changing access to childcare.”

The national child-care plan, which the federal government announced in 2021, is already delivering cost savings to parents with children in regulated daycare. Ottawa is betting that more access to affordable child care will boost female labour participation, much as it has in Quebec, which started a low-fee program in 1997.

Martha Friendly, the executive director of the Childcare Resource and Research Unit, said staff retention will be critical to creating more child-care spaces, given that industry wages can be meagre.

“It is absolutely clear that you can’t expand the supply of child care unless you actually address the work force issues. Because the people are the program,” she said.

Another theory to explain rising labour participation is that cost-of-living concerns are pushing more people to look for jobs. “If you have rising prices, some people are more likely to work,” Mr. Fields said.

Brendon Bernard, senior economist at hiring site Indeed Canada, stressed that while workers are broadly available, hiring could still be a challenge for some firms.

The situation is also a matter of perspective: Companies say there aren’t enough workers – but they’re also recruiting far more people than usual. At times last year, there were more than one million job vacancies, roughly double the number before the pandemic.

There are recent signs that the labour market is slackening. Job vacancies have tumbled about 24 per cent since last spring, although they are still elevated by historical standards. And in the Bank of Canada’s business survey, respondents said labour shortages were less intense than a year ago and it was easier to hire the workers they needed.

Despite the threat of a recession, companies have yet to implement widespread layoffs that would push up the unemployment rate, as many economists have predicted.

“Businesses are potentially waiting till the last minute, or waiting until they’re fully certain that the situation is going south, to actually start laying off workers in large numbers,” Mr. Bernard said.

“We haven’t hit that turning point.”

Source: Worker shortage? Canada’s supply of labour is actually robust

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Ontario regulator eases restrictions for some foreign-trained doctors to work in Canada 

2023/04/06 Leave a comment

Progress:

Ontario’s physician regulator is making it easier for doctors who were trained in the U.S., Ireland, Australia and Britain to practise medicine in the province, as jurisdictions around the country compete to remove licensing barriers in an effort to address chronic shortages in health care.

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO), which licenses and oversees more than 35,000 practising physicians, says it will allow doctors trained and certified in the U.S. to skip exams and begin working immediately. It’s also removing supervision and assessment requirements for family doctors from the U.S., Ireland, Australia and Britain if they have already been approved by the College of Family Physicians of Canada, the national certification body, allowing them to practice independently more quickly.

Alberta recently made a similar move, with the announcement of a pilot project targeting physicians from those four countries, offering them a simpler path to licensing. Last month, Nova Scotia became the first province in Canada to allow physicians who were trained in the U.S. to skip certification exams and begin working immediately.

A recent Globe and Mail investigation found Canada is increasingly losing foreign-trained physicians to other countries, as other developed nations lower barriers to licensing and step up recruitment. And fewer international medical graduates are choosing to start careers in Canada: the number of international applicants to entry-level residency positions has fallen 40 per cent between 2013 and 2022.

Groups that represent foreign-trained doctors say they’re happy Canada’s regulatory colleges are beginning to remove barriers for some physicians. But they note that there are still thousands of physicians who were trained outside the country and are unable to find paths to licensing.

They argue more must be done to remove obstacles that prevent internationally trained doctors from working, at a time when staffing shortages are causing significant problems for Canadian patients, clinics and hospitals.

“We’re glad there’s going to be some fast-tracking. But there’s a very serious concern it’s excluding the vast majority of people who come from other countries,” said Rosemary Pawliuk, a lawyer and spokesperson for the Society of Canadians Studying Medicine Abroad, an advocacy group for foreign-trained physicians.

“It’s still very much a system that rewards white, Commonwealth countries. And if you don’t come from one of those, the barriers are still very much up for you.”

Of the 5,948 new physicians who were registered in Ontario in 2021, 296 came from Saudi Arabia, making it the province’s top origin country for foreign-trained doctors. Ireland produced the second highest number, at 284. It was followed by Britain (133), India (129), Egypt (88), the U.S. (82) and Australia (62).

The college was unable to estimate how many more physicians may be able to begin working in Ontario under the new measures announced Tuesday.

Census records estimate that there are nearly 13,000 foreign-trained physicians living in Ontario but not working in their field because of licensing hurdles and other barriers. A report produced for the Ontario College of Family Physicians suggests nearly 15 per cent of the province’s population, or about 2.2 million people, is without regular access to a family doctor.

Shae Greenfield, a spokesperson for the CPSO, said physicians from the U.S., Ireland, Australia and Britain are being given preferential treatment because their medical training is considered the most similar to Canada’s. He said the idea that these people are particularly well suited to the Canadian system is supported by the experiences of senior Canadian physicians, who supervise foreign-trained doctors when they first enter the health care system here.

Yet there is significant disagreement within the Canadian medical community over rules that control who can and can’t be licensed, which some say discriminate against physicians who were trained elsewhere. Ms. Pawliuk argued regulators are restricting doctors from some countries as part of a policy to control health care spending by rationing the supply of physicians.

“It’s almost like you’ve got a bucket, and they’re pouring water into it, but they’ve ensured there’s a lot of holes in it so the bucket never fills,” she said.

Canadian and U.S.-trained medical graduates continue to get preference for residency positions, leaving vacancies that students from other countries could be filling, Ms. Pawliuk said. Across Canada this year, 268 family medicine residency positions went unfilled. That was the highest number ever, according to data from the Canadian Resident Matching Service.

Makini McGuire-Brown, a Jamaican-educated physician who chairs an advocacy group called Internationally Trained Physicians of Ontario, said foreign doctors remain an underutilized workforce in Canada. She said the announcement by the Ontario regulatory college follows a pattern of regulators favouring certain “approved jurisdictions” over others.

“The CPSO’s new policy is discriminatory and is the continuation of a pattern,” she said. “Instead of the CPSO improving upon age-old discrimination against less Eurocentric countries, they continue the trend.”

Source: Ontario regulator eases restrictions for some foreign-trained doctors to work in Canada 

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UK: Statistics watchdog rebukes Sunak over inaccurate asylum backlog figures

2023/04/06 Leave a comment

Always a risk with numbers:

Rishi Sunak and his immigration minister have been scolded by the UK statistics watchdog for using inaccurate figures to back up spurious claims about asylum seekers.

In a statement to the House of Commons in December, the prime minister claimed that the asylum backlog – 132,000 cases at the time – was half the size of the backlog left by the departing Labour government in 2010. This implied the backlog in 2010 would have been about 260,000.

In the same month, the immigration minister, Robert Jenrick, and the safeguarding minister, Sarah Dines, told MPs that 450,000 and 500,000 legacy cases had been left by the Labour government.

However, the UK Statistics Authority found the statements “do not reflect the position shown by the Home Office’s statistics”.

Source: Statistics watchdog rebukes Sunak over inaccurate asylum backlog figures

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Racism a major barrier for health care recruitment in Canada, report finds [Indigenous focus]

2023/04/06 Leave a comment

Of note:

More Indigenous practitioners are needed to address systemic racism, but that can’t happen without a supportive education system that also envisions them in leadership roles, says a report commissioned by Health Canada and touted as the first comprehensive review of the health-care workforce.

The report, released Tuesday by the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences (CAHS), includes an assessment of 5,000 studies done over the last decade on various issues, such as the retention of nurses and doctors and the impact of technology. Some of the research was from countries with similar care models, including Australia, the United Kingdom and Germany.

It outlines multiple hurdles in health care, including inadequate staffing, burnout, moral distress and dissatisfied patients. It also says the system should prioritize culturally safe workplaces, with a focus on team-based care and gender equity so women, who have been the main caregivers at home as well during the pandemic can stay in leadership roles.

The report, which includes surveys of 400 health leaders and professionals, also calls on governments and organizations to develop strategies to support Indigenous practitioners and trainees.

It says racism is a major barrier for many workers as recruitment and retention are among the biggest challenges to planning a health-care system for the future, including in rural and remote areas.

“There are substantial disparities between rates of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Peoples in every health profession, including nursing, medicine, midwifery, dentistry,” says the report, which calls for data collection on racialized trainees and workers.

Indigenous participants highlighted the legal and ethical need to advance the Indigenous health workforce, linking the labour gap to persistent social inequities among First Nations, Inuit and Metis Peoples.

“They also noted the legal obligations of our governments to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, along with the ethical responsibility to fully implement the calls to action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,” the report says.mom was admitted to a storage room

Dr. Marcia Anderson, an internist at Grace Hospital in Winnipeg, was among the 15 people who assessed the scientific literature. She said that as part of Canada’s systemically disadvantaged populations, Indigenous Peoples face “really high levels of racism in the workplace or in the learning environment.”

“In some reports that could be 80 or 90 per cent of people who report experiencing racism,” she said, adding one of the key “pathways” forward is through Indigenous-led development of policies, safe reporting and investigation processes, as well as mandatory education and training for all employees.

“Even within Indigenous populations there is significant diversity. As a First Nations person, I need to know more about cultural safety and cultural humility so I can provide culturally safe care to Inuit people, for example,” said Anderson, who is Cree and Anishinaabe.

Anderson said the gap also compromises care for Indigenous patients, who have endured racism in the health-care system.

She cited the case of 37-year-old Indigenous patient Joyce Echaquan, who died in a Quebec hospital of pulmonary edema in 2020, shortly after filming herself being insulted by hospital staff, as an example of the need for Indigenous Peoples to be part of the health-care workforce and provide leadership in ensuring culturally safe care.

However, Indigenous Peoples face the additional burden of driving change, often on their own and without compensation, Anderson said.

That may involve using connections to their community to help build relationships, sometimes referred to as “cultural load” or a “minority tax,” she said.

“That’s not something my non-Indigenous colleagues are getting asked to do,” said Anderson, also vice-dean of Indigenous health, social justice and anti-racism at the University of Manitoba.

“There can be significant expertise, community connections and relationships and experience and those are really valuable to institutions but institutions haven’t always valued them. So, when we’re asking Indigenous members of our teams to do this extra work, the point is, it should be fairly compensated because it’s part of the value-add to the institution.”

Indigenous Peoples in remote areas are more likely to be employed in community care settings and in jobs that don’t involve advanced education, compared to their counterparts in urban locations, Anderson said.

“I think that has to do with educational inequities that make it harder for Indigenous Peoples to enter programs like nursing or medicine or pharmacy and then be in those positions.”

Health Canada said health-care workers — from family doctors to personal support workers, massage therapists, dental hygienists and dietitians are — “the backbone of our health-care system and they are currently experiencing unprecedented challenges.”

“The government of Canada is committed to protecting and strengthening Canada’s publicly funded health-care system, including by addressing the health workforce crisis,” it said in an emailed response.

“This evidence-based assessment report will inform ongoing collaboration between the government of Canada, the provinces and territories and key stakeholders to identify both immediate and longer-term solutions to address significant health workforce challenges.”

Serge Buy, CEO of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, said many Canadians, including himself, are regularly affected by health-care issues, including the lack of a family doctor.

“I don’t have a doctor. My father, who’s 85, doesn’t have a doctor, for two years,” said Buy.

“My doctor quit in the middle of the pandemic. He sobbed on my shoulder saying, ‘I can’t do this.”’

Buy said that while much of the report highlights issues unveiled during the pandemic, they have not previously been backed up by scientific evidence now available to governments, non-government organizations and other stakeholders.

For example, during the pandemic, women health-care practitioners have found it difficult to remain involved in leadership, administration or research due to increased caregiving responsibilities, the report says.

“These factors are rarely considered in workforce planning,” it says regarding gender equity.

Source: Racism a major barrier for health care recruitment in Canada, report finds

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Middle East: Trend for ‘golden visa’ schemes accelerating

2023/04/06 Leave a comment

Of note, a broadening of the market from high net-worth individuals and regions:

After the extremist group known as the “Islamic State” took over parts of her own country in 2014, Iraqi journalist Hiba Ahmad started looking for an escape route.

“I just thought I needed a place outside Iraq, to be safe,” she told DW. “So if there is a difficult situation in Iraq, I can leave.”

After investigating online, the Baghdad native decided to buy a small apartment in Turkeyand found one she liked for around $40,000 (€36,840), near a small seaside resort about an hour from Istanbul. The “Islamic State” group was defeated in 2017, but she still comes here regularly.

“The reason I come now is because it’s very hot in summer in Baghdad,” Ahmad explained. “It’s calm and peaceful and I stay for two or three months.”

Although Turkey recently tightened residency rules, Ahmad is able to do this because she bought the Turkish apartment. This allows her to regularly renew a two-year visa. Without the real estate investment, she would only get a tourist visa for a month, she explained. Eventually, if she wanted to, Ahmad could even apply for Turkish citizenship.

Golden immigration opportunities

Ahmad’s Turkish visa is just one of the milder and more affordable examples of what are known as residency by investment (RBI) schemes, often colloquially known as “golden visa” programs. There are also citizenship by investment or “golden passport” schemes but these usually require a lot more money, paperwork and time.

In the Middle East, the motivations for both versions of these schemes are the same. Countries offering golden visas or golden passports want to encourage investment and top up foreign currency deposits. For the individuals who participate in them, these schemes can provide them with better lifestyle options, a second passport that offers more travel possibilities and the chance to escape political problems, economic turmoil or conflict back home.

Canada, the US, Ireland and other EU states have all had these schemes too. But it’s only been in the past five years or so that the idea has gained popularity in the Middle East.

Early in March, Egypt made it even easier for foreigners to become Egyptian via investment. The country has had a citizenship by investment, or CBI, plan in place since 2020 but, because of its economic struggles and the need for more international investment and foreign currency, the country relaxed the terms this year.

The United Arab Emirates has had a golden visa scheme since 2019 but overhauled it in 2022, making it cheaper and easier to access.

Since 2018, Jordan has had a CBI scheme and in 2020, Qatar began offering a longer, temporary residency in exchange for real estate ownership. Bahrain has had a “golden visa residency” program since 2022 and introduced a “golden license” for large-scale investments this month. And Saudi Arabia launched a “premium residency” scheme this year.

Europe phasing ‘golden visas’ out

“The trend in the Middle East is the reverse of what we are seeing in Europe,” said Jelena Dzankic, a professor at the European University Institute in Italy and co-director of the Global Citizenship Observatory. Dzankic is referring to the fact that in Europe, the golden passport and residency schemes offered by the likes of Portugal, Greece and Cyprus are now being phased out.

In Europe there’s been “progressive abolition of citizenship and residence by investment, due to scandals linked to the scheme and the risks associated with them,” Dzankic explained.

Critics often describe such schemes as nations selling citizenship to the highest bidder, arguing they open the country up to potential security issues, inflated real estate prices and the risk of corruption and money laundering. After the outbreak of war in Ukraine, the EU urged all member states to scrap such schemes for fear they would help sanctions dodgers.

“So I would assume that as one market — the European one — has become inaccessible, people have started to look into viable alternatives,” Dzankic said.

Fast track to citizenship

The modern idea of citizenship by investment dates back to the 1980s.

According to the Switzerland-based Investment Migration Council, or IMC, an umbrella organization for companies involved in the sector, the first CBI program was established in Tonga in 1982, the next by St. Kitts and Nevis in 1984. Small island states, struggling in the aftermath of colonialism, were able to raise funds by offering citizenship or residency in exchange for investment.

Today, most countries offer some sort of route for investors to eventually gain citizenship. But it’s important to differentiate between this and the frequently debated RBI or CBI schemes currently offered in one form or another by around 80 countries, according to the IMC.

In return for substantial investment, these offer either citizenship or residency almost immediately, or via a fast track. Required investments range from about $100,000 in the Caribbean to up to $3.25 million (€2.96 million) in Europe. Some of the schemes require investors to be in the country for a certain amount of days or to set up businesses, while others don’t even need them to visit.

As Dzankic, who has been studying this sector for over a decade, told DW, “a citizenship industry” has grown up around this and often companies involved will also lobby national authorities to introduce more benefits.

Sector observers have said it’s not just Middle Eastern governments that are paying more attention to RBI and CBI schemes. Locals in those countries, especially wealthier individuals in countries experiencing conflict or economic turmoil, such as Lebanon, Iraq, Libya and Syria, are also taking advantage of such schemes abroad.

Who applies for ‘golden visas’?

It is hard to find exact numbers on who is applying for golden passports or visas, or how many there are. State schemes tend to be opaque or slow to publish statistics.

“While there is no definitive data on the exact nationalities of Middle Eastern investors participating in these programs, there are a few patterns,” David Regueiro, a regional representative for the Investment Migration Council, told DW.

For one thing, Middle Eastern investors “are some of the most active consumers of these programs in the world,” he said, with some countries getting over three-quarters of all their applicants for CBI schemes from the region.

“In terms of specific nationalities, investors from countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Lebanon, Syria and Iran are among the most active,” Regueiro added.

Most of the immigrant investors are wealthy with a net worth of somewhere between $2 million to $10 million. But around a quarter of them have less than that, the immigration consultant noted. “So while it’s true that wealthy individuals have been among the most active investors, middle-income earners are also showing more interest,” said Regueiro.

It’s also possible that the less expensive and more accessible such schemes get — such as Egypt’s CBI program or Turkey’s real estate-for-residency plan — and the more difficult circumstances become at home because of things like an economic downturn or climate change, the more that non-millionaires will also consider this kind of move.

“You have a lot of people who can’t afford traditional CBI programs,” said Jeremy Savory, head of the Dubai-based immigration consultancy Savory & Partners. “Maybe there’s a gap in the market for some that start at $50,000, with relevant benefits,” he speculated.

Uncertain future

Whether the programs in the Middle East are more successful than those that came before them remains to be seen, the experts said.

Regueiro believes more new programs will continue to emerge in the Middle East. But, he suggested, “another trend we may see is an increase in the level of scrutiny applied to these programs.”

“The very simple answer is compliance and trust in the process,” Savory argued, arguing that some schemes, such as those in the Caribbean, had been running for decades because they were considered more trustworthy.

“The Middle East is still a young market in this context so what happens with these programs depends on a number of issues,” said Dzankic. That includes how demand develops and how what she calls the “citizenship industry” reacts. While EU countries have been regulated by member states, no such supervision exists in the Middle East.

“So pressures related to democracy and good governance might be less,” she said. “Over time, other concerns may arise out of these programs.”

For example, late last year the EU stopped allowing citizens of Vanuatu visa-free entry into Europe because of concerns about the Pacific country’s loosely regulated CBI scheme. “Then it depends on how states deal with them,” said Dzankic.

Source: Middle East: Trend for ‘golden visa’ schemes accelerating

Filed under Citizenship, citizenship-by-investment Tagged with , ,

‘A beautiful community:’ Universities open lounges for Black students

2023/04/05 Leave a comment

Of note. Not sure that this trend improves social cohesion, inclusion and integration but appears inevitable:

Spaces designated for students from marginalized backgrounds are spreading across Canadian universities, as officials say they are a necessary and overdue response to decades of racism on campus.

Toronto Metropolitan University officially opened a space late last month for students who self-identify as Black.

Cheryl Thompson, an associate professor at the university, said the need for such lounges became increasingly clear following the death of George Floyd, whose 2020 killing by a white Minneapolis Police Department officer sparked protests worldwide.

“Something did shift in 2020 institutionally … when the world witnessed the inhumanity in that George Floyd video,” Thompson said about the Black man who was seen in a video using his last few breaths telling the officer kneeling on his neck, “I can’t breathe.”

“The demands Black students have been making for decades have finally been heard.”

Eboni Morgan, a spokesperson for TMU’s lounge, said the decision to create the room stemmed from a recommendation in a 2020 Anti-Black Racism Campus Climate Review Report that surveyed Black members of the school community. It found they continue to face systemic racism by institutions and their peers.

The lounge — equipped with a kitchen, other facilities and a mural painted by a Black student artist — can fit up to 25 students at a time.

“It’s a beautiful community to watch unfold,” Morgan said. “It’s been loud, exciting and students are constantly in the space.”

Thompson said that in the lounge, “you can let your guard down and have conversations about things you’re going through … like support groups for people who have suffered trauma.”

“One of the reasons why young people struggle with their mental health is because they think they’re the only ones to go through what they’re going through,” she said. “Having these spaces makes you more confident and say, ‘oh, I’m not alone.”

Across the city, York University — Canada’s second-largest — launched a lounge for Black students in January. The University of Winnipeg’s BIPOC lounge for students who are Black, Indigenous and people of colour opened in 2018.

The University of British Columbia launched a space for Black male students last year, said Ainsley Carry, a university spokesperson.

Carry said UBC’s Black Male Initiative, is “believed to be the first-of-its-kind program at a Canadian university,” and was designed to provide “a confidential space on campus for members to connect to other Black male students where they can share their lived experiences.”

She said the pilot program has been well received.

“We recognize there is underrepresentation of the Black population at UBC, and that Black community members may feel isolated or face challenges not experienced by their non-Black peers,” Carry said.

“That is why UBC is taking steps … to help foster a sense of belonging … for Black community members.”

Thompson said TMU has received emails blasting its lounge as “segregationist.”

She dismissed that charge as “foolishness,” arguing such accusations were written by people who had no knowledge of what a system of segregation is.

Thompson said the type of racism Black people experience is different than other marginalized groups

“Anti-Black racism is not dependent on even being Canadian. It has nothing to do with your citizenship.”

Providing students with safe spaces is crucial to fostering their development, she said.

One critic of the lounges is Adaeze Mbalaja, the president of the York Federation of Students. She has accused school administrators of using the spaces to mend reputations tarred by years of underfunding Black student groups.

“This is a trend of performative justice, performative activism by institutions across Canada,” she said.

Mbalaja said that based on her discussions with other Black student associations in the Toronto area, she believed universities were creating spaces for Black students but leaving Black students groups underfunded “to fend for themselves.”

“If you’re going to support Black students, do that in a way that is genuine and in a way that desires to actually uplift and amplify the community.”

Thompson said such criticism was “healthy.”

“Universities, instead of dismissing that, need to really ask themselves, ‘Oh, where are they coming from?’ ‘Maybe we do need to have more open lines of communication.'”

Source: ‘A beautiful community:’ Universities open lounges for Black students

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

CBA: Restoring lost citizenship – S-245

2023/04/05 Leave a comment

Of note, like other witnesses, raising the first generation cut-off:

The CBA’s  Immigration Law Section supports retroactively restoring citizenship to individuals who lost theirs under s. 8 of the Citizenship Act. In a letter to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, the Section makes two recommendations to improve Bill S-245, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (granting citizenship to certain Canadians). The CBA Section appeared in front of the Committee to present its recommendations on March 27.

Clarify the date of citizenship

Until Parliament enacted Bill C-37 in 2009, individuals born outside Canada to Canadian citizen parents in the second or subsequent generations between February 15, 1977 and April 17, 2009 had until their 28th birthday to apply to retain their Canadian citizenship. After Bill C-37, the retention requirements were repealed but only for individuals who had not yet lost their citizenship.

“The CBA Section supports eliminating the requirement to meet the retention requirements by age 28 and retroactively restoring citizenship to their date of birth. However, it is unclear if Bill S-245 will restore citizenship as of the date the Actcomes into effect, or retroactively to the date citizenship was lost. We recommend that this be clarified.”

This is important, the letter adds, because it affects an individual’s ability to pass on citizenship to their children.

Pre-empting potential Charter challenges

S. 3(4) of the Citizenship Act inadvertently treats people differently based on their grandparent’s gender and marital status and Bill S-245 is liable to make that problem worse. The Section therefore recommends either amending S-245 or introducing a new bill to pre-empt a potential Charter challenge to s. 3(4) of the Citizenship Act.

The second potential Charter issue is that current legislation does not allow people who live abroad but have significant ties to Canada and who are born in the second or subsequent generations to become Canadian citizens. “Parliament may wish to consider changes to the Citizenship Act, to permit those born in second and subsequent generations to also become Canadian citizens,” the CBA letter reads.

Source: National – Restoring lost citizenship

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with , ,

The safe-third-country amendment paves a balanced road to refugee protection, The deaths in the St. Lawrence River show that border ‘control’ is a fallacy

2023/04/05 Leave a comment

Two contrasting perspectives, Michael Barutciski of York University, praising the agreement as being balanced, Christina arguing that it will result in significant hardship, human smuggling and deaths.

I find Barutciski more realistic and his arguments more convincing.

Starting with Barutciski:

After years of controversy, the Trudeau government is putting an end to the unofficial crossings at Roxham Road, which were undermining public confidence in border integrity. While all migrants must be treated with dignity, we should also recognize that effective protection is about balancing the rights of asylum seekers with legitimate state concerns. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appears aware, at last, that asylum is a two-way street and that the situation was leading to a backlash. He announced last week with U.S. President Joe Biden that the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) will extend across the entire Canada-U.S. border. This can lead to a balanced overall policy if there is a genuine commitment to a comprehensive regional approach.

Although commentators insisted the U.S. would never agree to remove the loophole in the STCA that allowed the Roxham Road situation, the timing was right for a renegotiation. The Biden administration is leading a collaborative strategy to establish orderly migration in the Americas, and the recent scandalous revelations that U.S. officials were encouraging irregular migrants to cross at Roxham Road provided Ottawa with the additional impetus to take a broader, hemispheric approach to migration.

Even before these revelations, the application of the STCA was undermining public trust. It left the impression that the government was unable to control the border; illegal entry at Roxham Road became so easy that it was almost an invitation for undocumented migrants to try their chances at obtaining asylum in Canada. It also gave the appearance of an incoherent system favouring irregular migrants over those who present themselves at official crossings. The latter were generally turned back to the U.S. in accordance with the STCA, which stipulates that they should seek protection in the first “safe” country they enter. No protection principle could justify such a double standard, one that treated asylum seekers differently based on which part of the land border they used to enter.

The additional protocol announced recently follows the most rational option: By extending the STCA to the entire border, it guarantees that collaboration between the U.S. and Canada is not limited to official crossings. Neither country is obliged to return migrants, although they now have the formal structures to proceed this way if they so choose. The dissuasion element will make irregular migration more complicated, so the logic is that fewer migrants will choose this path. Refugee advocates and their academic allies have countered by claiming that migrants will now start to cross at more remote places, implying border control is futile. This is essentially an argument for open borders.

By amending the STCA, Ottawa has backtracked from its previous position that the 1951 Refugee Convention automatically grants every asylum seeker at Roxham Road the right to a hearing. Indeed, the word “asylum” was deliberately omitted from the convention’s 46 articles, and following a failed endeavour to adopt an asylum treaty in 1977, no further attempts have been made to codify a legally binding right to seek asylum. Just as international treaty law does not stipulate such a right, the Supreme Court’s landmark Singhdecision never determined that every asylum seeker automatically has the right to a hearing once they set foot in Canada.

Yet the government’s previous position played well to activists and academics who continue to prefer the status quo, which has an understandable appeal if the issue is simply about handling irregular migration at the border in a somewhat predictable and semi-orderly manner. However, this view remains tone-deaf to the symbolic impact of the RCMP’s credibility-sapping participation in border theatre: Until recently, border agents tried to dissuade migrants from entering illegally by yelling out that they will be arrested, even though everyone knew they would be immediately released to pursue their asylum claims in Canada.

Last month’s diplomatic development should stop this situation from continuing. It appears to be a simple version of a quid pro quo arrangement previously suggested to advance negotiations: Washington has agreed to amend the STCA, while Ottawa has committed to resettling at least 15,000 asylum seekers from Latin America. But as migration flows stabilize, the Canadian contribution should expand well beyond 15,000 resettled refugees. By tending to humanitarian needs, Canada’s labour shortages could also be addressed by new legal pathways for migrants, who have much to contribute to the economy.

Instead of the current undignified status quo that forces migrants to enter illegally at Roxham Road, ambitious collaboration could bring us closer to a humane model for orderly migration not just between Canada and the U.S., but around the world. The crucial question is whether there will be a long-term commitment.

Michael Barutciski is co-ordinator of Canadian Studies at York University’s Glendon College. He was previously director of the diplomacy program at the University of Canterbury Law School and fellow in law at Oxford University’s Refugee Studies Centre.

Source: The safe-third-country amendment paves a balanced road to refugee protection

Following with Clark-Kazak:

The recent deaths of eight people at the Canada-U.S. border are the tragic but predictable consequences of policies that fail to account for the realities of global migration.

Last week, police reported that eight bodies – including an infant and two-year-old child – were found in the St. Lawrence River near the Kanien’kehá:ka community of Akwesasne. Six adults holding Indian and Romanian citizenship, along with two Canadian children of the Romanian couple, were reportedlytrying to cross irregularly into the United States. Casey Oakes, an Akwesasne resident, is still missing.

What may surprise Canadians is that the victims appeared to be heading from Canada into the United States. But the issue of irregular migration has long cut both ways – and recently changes by both parties only make matters worse.

This tragedy occurred less than a week after U.S. President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced changes to the Safe Third Country Agreement. While most of the media and political attention has focused primarily on the resulting closure of the irregular border crossing at Roxham Road in Quebec, the deal also requires, with limited exceptions, anyone claiming asylum after arriving by land to make their refugee claim in the first country they reach, either the U.S. or Canada.

The Canadian government’s primary objective appears to be to limit the overall number of refugee claims in Canada. The deal allows Canada to turn back refugee claimants at official land ports of entry, and to deport people who cross irregularly from the U.S. and subsequently make an asylum claim.

While they are small in number compared with the 2.4 million encounters by U.S. Customs and Border Protection on the country’s southern border with Mexico in 2022, Mr. Biden faced domestic political pressure to address the increasing numbers of people crossing irregularly into the U.S. from Canada. These irregular crossings, typically motivated by family and community networks and employment opportunities in the U.S., required the Americans and Canadians to publicly co-operate on the issue.

Many migrant fatalities over the past year have involved people crossing north to south. In January, 2022, the Patel family from India died while attempting to enter from Manitoba. Fritznel Richard, a Haitian man, died trying to reach his family in the U.S. from Quebec in December, 2022. In February, 2023, Jose Leos Cervantes, from Mexico, died shortly after crossing into New York State in sub-zero temperatures. These deaths occurred because there was no option like Roxham Road to allow for relatively safe, irregular passage from Canada to the U.S.

However, the resulting STCA amendment actually reduces overall immigrationpathways, thereby increasing the chances of irregular crossings and death.

Research shows that the securitization and militarization of borders has only driven up human smuggling and risky journeys on the land and sea borders of the European Union and at the U.S.-Mexico border, which the International Organization for Migration deemed “the deadliest land crossing in the world.”

While rich countries in Europe and North America benefit from globalization and the free movement of capital, many also attempt to close their borders – administratively and physically – to people seeking safety, security and a better life. These are not evidence-based policies. They are political measures to try to reassure domestic constituencies that they are “in control.”

But controlling borders – especially one as long and geographically complex as the Canada-U.S. border – is an impossible proposition. For as long as desperation remains the driver, irregular border crossings will continue, in both directions, no matter the risk.

Last month, in keeping with its decades-long patterns, Washington budgeted US$25-billion for border control, immigration detention and deportation. But despite such spending, the U.S. is estimated to have the largest undocumented population in the world, at more than 10 million. These people are often then driven into precarious employment that can lead to exploitation.

These resources would be better invested in clearing massive immigration backlogs – another problem Canada shares with the U.S. – and in creating more legal pathways to residency and citizenship. Funding could also be redirected to supporting communities along the border that are negatively affected by increased securitization and surveillance, but are otherwise neglected and marginalized. The Kanien’kehá:ka community of Akwesasne, for instance, has to contend with colonially imposed complications associated with its territory straddling Ontario, Quebec and New York State, which makes access to services (including health care) a challenge.

By following the U.S.’s lead on migration and border policies, Canada is making a costly mistake – in terms of how it is failing to invest in solutions that address the root causes of irregular migration, but also in terms of the impact their short-sighted policy making will have on human lives.

Christina Clark-Kazak is an associate professor at the University of Ottawa.

Source: The safe-third-country amendment paves a balanced road to refugee protection, The deaths in the St. Lawrence River show that border ‘control’ is a fallacy

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,

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