Australia: Federal multicultural review to examine diversity in the public service

2023/06/05 Leave a comment

Header focus more narrow than actual review:

The federal government will examine the effectiveness of federal diversity, equity and inclusion strategies in the public service, as part of a multicultural framework review announced on Friday night.

The review will, more broadly, look at whether existing Commonwealth institutional arrangements and policy settings support an inclusive multicultural society, and make recommendations.

Australian Multicultural Foundation executive director and company secretary Dr Bulent Hass Dellal AO will serve as chair.

Speaking at the launch event in Sydney, Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs Andrew Giles said the review was about “enhancing the capacity of government agencies and service providers to respond to the needs of our multicultural communities”.

Mr Giles said that work had already begun in the Department of Home Affairs to better respond to the needs of multicultural communities, noting that the Multicultural Affairs team had moved from the Countering Foreign Interference division and into the Immigration section.

“The change, though it may seem bureaucratic to some, is symbolic of the role of Multicultural Affairs under an Albanese Labor Government,” he said.

“A portfolio that, at its core, should be about embracing those who have settled in Australia, rather than focusing on who we want to keep out.”

Human rights advocate and former refugee Nyadol Nyuon OAM and Multicultural Australia chief executive officer Christine Castley will also co-author the review.

Panellist Ms Castley said she looked forward to taking part in the review, which falls 50 years after the first multiculturalism policy paper was published under the Whitlam government.

“I am genuinely excited to be a part in this once-in-a-generation opportunity to take an open and honest look at how we ensure genuine inclusion, tackle systemic barriers and engage in the robust conversations we need to have if we are to move forward as a stronger, better, fairer and more inclusive nation,” Ms Castley said.

The panel will be supported by a reference group, which includes former Australian rules footballer Bachar Houli, Multicultural Youth Advocacy national manager Rana Ebrahimi, and Tasmania Australian of the Year John Kamara.

Mr Giles accused the former Coalition government of promoting “fearmongering and division surrounding multicultural Australians”, and said the review was a “concrete step towards an inclusive country”.

“Under their watch, a fragmented and inconsistent approach to engaging with CALD communities saw failures to translate vital health information during the pandemic, and government support and grant programs inaccessible to emerging migrant groups,” he said, in a statement leading up to the review’s launch.

The review is due to deliver its final report with recommendations to the minister by March 2024.

Source: Federal multicultural review to examine diversity in the public service

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The Economist: A new wave of mass migration has begun

2023/06/05 Leave a comment

In contrast to their earlier long-term prognosis (with a shout-out to Newfoundland and Labrador):

Last year 1.2m people moved to Britain—almost certainly the most ever. Net migration (ie, immigrants minus emigrants) to Australia is twice the rate before covid-19. Spain’s equivalent figure recently hit an all-time high. Nearly 1.4m people on net are expected to move to America this year, one-third more than before the pandemic. In 2022 net migration to Canada was more than double the previous record and in Germany it was even higher than during the “migration crisis” of 2015. Listen to this story.

The rich world is in the middle of an immigration boom, with its foreign-born population rising faster than at any point in history (see chart 1). What does this mean for the global economy? 

Not long ago it seemed as if many wealthy countries had turned decisively against mass migration. In 2016 Britons voted for Brexit and then Americans for Donald Trump, political projects with strong anti-migrant streaks. In the global wave of populism that followed, politicians from Australia to Hungary promised to crack down on migration. Then covid closed borders. Migration came to a standstill, or even went into reverse, as people decided to return home. Between 2019 and 2021 the populations of Kuwait and Singapore, countries that typically receive lots of migrants, fell by 4%. In 2021 the number of emigrants from Australia exceeded the number of immigrants to the country for the first time since the 1940s.

The surge in migration has brought back a sense of normality to some places. Singapore’s foreign workforce recently returned to its pre-pandemic level. In other places it feels like a drastic change. Consider Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada’s second-smallest province by population. Long home to people of Irish-Catholic descent—with accents to match—net migration to the province is running at more than 20 times the pre-pandemic norm. St John’s, the capital, feels more like Toronto every time you visit. Heart’s Delight, a small rural settlement, now has a Ukrainian bakery, Borsch. The provincial government is setting up an office in Bangalore to help recruit nurses. 

The new arrivals in Newfoundland are a microcosm of those elsewhere in the rich world. Many hundreds of Ukrainians have arrived on the island—a tiny share of the millions who have left the country since Russia invaded. Indians and Nigerians also appear to be on the move in large numbers. Many speak English. And many already have family connections in richer countries, in particular Britain and Canada. 

Some of the surge in migration is because people are making up for lost time. Many migrants acquired visas in 2020 or 2021, but only made the trip once covid restrictions loosened. Yet the rich world’s foreign-born population—at well over 100m—is now above its pre-crisis trend, suggesting something else is going on. 

The nature of the post-pandemic economy is a big part of the explanation. Unemployment in the rich world, at 4.8%, has not been so low in decades. Bosses are desperate for staff, with vacancies near an all-time high. People from abroad thus have good reason to travel. Currency movements may be another factor. A British pound buys more than 100 Indian rupees, compared with 90 in 2019. Since the beginning of 2021 the average emerging-market currency has depreciated by about 4% against the dollar. This enables migrants to send more money home than before. 

Many governments are also trying to attract more people. Canada has a target to welcome 1.5m new residents in 2023-25. Germany and India recently signed an agreement to allow more Indians to work and study in Germany. Australia is increasing the time period some students can work for after graduating from two to four years. Britain has welcomed Hong Kongers fleeing Chinese oppression—well over 100,000 have arrived. Many countries have made it easy for Ukrainians to enter. Even those countries hitherto hostile to migration, including Japan and South Korea, are now looking more favourably on outsiders as they seek to counteract the impact of ageing populations.

Economies that welcome lots of migrants tend to benefit in the long run. Just look at America. Foreign folk bring new ideas with them. In America immigrants are about 80% likelier than native-born folk to found a firm, according to a recent paper by Pierre Azoulay of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and colleagues. Research suggests that migrants help to build trading and investment links between their home country and the receiving one. A slug of young workers also helps generate more tax revenue. 

Some economists hope that the wave of migration will have more immediate benefits. “High immigration is helpful for the Fed as it tries to cool down the labour market and slow down inflation,” says Torsten Slok of Apollo Global Management, an asset manager, expressing a common view. Such arguments may be a little too optimistic. Having more people does increase the supply of labour, which, all else being equal, reduces wage growth. But the effect is pretty small. There is little sign that the countries receiving the most migrants have the loosest labour markets. In Canada, for instance, pay is still rising by about 5% year on year (see chart 2). 

Your people shall be my people

Migrants also lift demand for goods and services, which can raise inflation. In Britain new arrivals appear to be pushing up rents in London, which already had a constrained supply of housing. A similar effect is apparent in Australia. Estimates by Goldman Sachs, a bank, imply that Australia’s current annualised net migration rate of 500,000 people is raising rents by around 5%. Higher rents feed into a higher overall consumer-price index. Demand from migrants may also explain why, despite higher mortgage rates, house prices in many rich countries have not fallen by much. 

Over the next year or so migration may come down a bit. The post-pandemic “catch-up” will end; rich-world labour markets are slowly loosening. In the very long term, a global slump in fertility rates means there may be a shortage of migrants. Yet there is reason to believe that high levels of new arrivals will remain raised for some time. More welcoming government policy is one factor. And migration today begets migration tomorrow, as new arrivals bring over children and partners. Before long the rich world’s anti-immigrant turn of the late 2010s will seem like an aberration. 

Source: A new wave of mass migration has begun

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Globe editorial: Canada’s much-touted labour shortage is mostly a mirage

2023/06/03 Leave a comment

Good to see some serious (and belated) questioning by the Globe. Unlikely that the government will change its approach of appeasing business and other interests rather than focussing on medium- and longer-term impacts on productivity:

No one takes orders at the Burger King in the rest stop off of Ontario’s Highway 401 near Port Hope. Instead, there’s a large touch screen that customers use to select and pay for their Whoppers and fries.

…

Source: Canada’s much-touted labour shortage is mostly a mirage

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FIRST READING: Canada’s massive (and easily fixed) birth tourism problem

2023/06/03 Leave a comment

Second article in the National Post in a week. Hopper forgot to mention that the Conservative government did make a push to end birth tourism in 2012 (see my What the previous government learned about birth tourism):

Last week, Macleans’ published an interview with Simrit Brar, a Calgary OB-GYN who is one of Canada’s few medical researchers to actually look into the issue of birth tourism.

It’s something that’s long been an accepted fact within Canadian birthing hospitals: Hundreds of non-resident women each year are coming to Canada in the final weeks of pregnancy, having their baby in a Canadian hospital and then immediately returning home. The purpose of the excursion being to ensure that the child has Canadian citizenship by virtue of the country’s jus soli laws.

There are companies openly advertising their services as “birth hotels.” Online forums include questions as to the “cheapest” Canadian hospital for a non-resident to give birth. In the last full year before the COVID-19 pandemic, a single hospital in Richmond, B.C. had 502 non-resident births — nearly one quarter of total babies born.

Figures from the Canadian Institute for Health Information show that Canada hosted a record 4,400 foreign births in 2019 — up from 1,354 just nine years prior.

Vancouver’s first baby of 2023, in fact, was born to a birth tourist: Mother Salma Gasser had only recently arrived from Cairo, Egypt, on her first-ever trip to Canada, and told local reporters she did it to secure a Canadian passport for her baby girl.

There’s nothing illegal about birth tourism and birth tourists are all paying handsomely for the service (it costs between $6,000 and $10,000 for an uninsured non-resident to give birth at a Canadian hospital). But for a Canadian health-care system that is constantly on the verge of crisis, the phenomenon is having an impact.

In a two-tier system like Australia, the U.K. or the U.S., an influx of non-residents seeking health-care beds could safely exist on the sidelines without affecting overall health-care access: The system could simply grow organically to accommodate the increased demand.

But Canada rations its supply of doctors and health-care workers, meaning that any extra patient is going to be adding to wait times.

“So even if a birth tourist does pay their bill, if we allow people who have the opportunity to pay to preferentially access beds … that displaces people here,” Brar told Maclean’s.

She added that birth tourism is a “social structure issue.” Ultimately, wealthy people from abroad are able to supplant scarce Canadian health-care resources, with negative results for “disadvantaged” Canadians.

“The system is too strained for us to ignore these questions,” she said.

Brar’s research examined 102 cases of birth tourists who had their babies in Calgary between July 2019 and November 2020. A plurality (24.5 per cent) were Nigerian and all told, the 102 paid $694,000 to Alberta Health Services in hospital fees.

Notably, most of Canada’s birth tourists are coming from countries that do not offer birthright citizenship. Almost all of North and South America grants automatic citizenship based on birthplace — a principle known as “jus soli,” or “right of the soil.”

In most of the rest of the world, citizenship is determined based on the nationality of one’s parents — known as “jus sanguinis,” or “right of the blood.” If a visiting tourist gave birth in Nigeria, for instance, that child would not be considered Nigerian unless they had a Nigerian parent or grandparent.

It would be remarkably easy for Canada to ban birth tourism, or at least make it less easy.

Provincial health-care systems could dramatically raise fees on “other country” birth services in order to discourage patients not insured under the Canadian system.

Some minor tweaks to the Citizenship Act could nullify instant citizenship if a baby is born to a parent temporarily visiting Canada on a tourist visa.

Refugees, asylum-seekers and other newcomers would still have guaranteed full, automatic citizenship for their Canadian-born children.

Or, Canada could simply begin denying visas to foreign nationals booking short trips to Canada at the tail end of a pregnancy. This is what the United States did in order to curb its own rising rates of birth tourism.

In early 2020, the U.S. Department of State issued an order to deny certain classes of recreational visas to foreign nationals if a consular official believed they were doing it just to give birth.

“The Department does not believe that visiting the United States for the primary purpose of obtaining U.S. citizenship for a child, by giving birth in the United States — an activity commonly referred to as “birth tourism” — is a legitimate activity for pleasure or of a recreational nature,” reads a statement from the time.

U.S. officials have also prosecuted California-based “birthing houses” for counselling foreign nationals to misrepresent their intentions on visa forms in order to enter the U.S. for the purpose of giving birth. Similar charges are feasibly possible in Canada, given that it is illegal under Canadian law to misrepresent one’s intentions for visiting.

Although birth tourism is not addressed or even acknowledged at the federal level, it’s long been deeply controversial in the immigrant-heavy Vancouver communities where it’s most visible.

Jas Johal, MLA for Richmond, has repeatedly denounced birth tourism for turning local hospitals into “passport mills.” Longtime Richmond city councillor Chak Au has often gone on record saying that his constituency — the most Chinese-Canadian in Canada — supports a legislated end to birth tourism.

In 2018, Richmond’s Liberal MP Joe Peschisolido tabled a petition in the House of Commons calling birth tourism an “abuse of Canada’s immigration and citizenship system.”

“The government should say birth tourism is bad. Let’s quantify it and let’s fix it,” he said at the time.

As recently as 2016, Vancouver-area Conservative MPs Alice Wong and Kenny Chiu even led a drive to overturn Canada’s system of birthright citizenship altogether in order to combat birth tourism — although both had reversed course by 2019, when the Conservatives prepared for that year’s election with a platform that mostly side-stepped immigration policy.

Source: FIRST READING: Canada’s massive (and easily fixed) birth tourism problem

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Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences

2023/06/03 Leave a comment

Useful reminder that expanded immigration is unlikely to be a viable long-term strategy:

In the roughly 250 years since the Industrial Revolution the world’s population, like its wealth, has exploded. Before the end of this century, however, the number of people on the planet could shrink for the first time since the Black Death. The root cause is not a surge in deaths, but a slump in births. Across much of the world the fertility rate, the average number of births per woman, is collapsing. Although the trend may be familiar, its extent and its consequences are not. Even as artificial intelligence (ai) leads to surging optimism in some quarters, the baby bust hangs over the future of the world economy.Listen to this story.

In 2000 the world’s fertility rate was 2.7 births per woman, comfortably above the “replacement rate” of 2.1, at which a population is stable. Today it is 2.3 and falling. The largest 15 countries by gdp all have a fertility rate below the replacement rate. That includes America and much of the rich world, but also China and India, neither of which is rich but which together account for more than a third of the global population.

The result is that in much of the world the patter of tiny feet is being drowned out by the clatter of walking sticks. The prime examples of ageing countries are no longer just Japan and Italy but also include Brazil, Mexico and Thailand. By 2030 more than half the inhabitants of East and South-East Asia will be over 40. As the old die and are not fully replaced, populations are likely to shrink. Outside Africa, the world’s population is forecast to peak in the 2050s and end the century smaller than it is today. Even in Africa, the fertility rate is falling fast.

Whatever some environmentalists say, a shrinking population creates problems. The world is not close to full and the economic difficulties resulting from fewer young people are many. The obvious one is that it is getting harder to support the world’s pensioners. Retired folk draw on the output of the working-aged, either through the state, which levies taxes on workers to pay public pensions, or by cashing in savings to buy goods and services or because relatives provide care unpaid. But whereas the rich world currently has around three people between 20 and 64 years old for everyone over 65, by 2050 it will have less than two. The implications are higher taxes, later retirements, lower real returns for savers and, possibly, government budget crises. 

Low ratios of workers to pensioners are only one problem stemming from collapsing fertility. As we explain this week, younger people have more of what psychologists call “fluid intelligence”, the ability to think creatively so as to solve problems in entirely new ways . 

This youthful dynamism complements the accumulated knowledge of older workers. It also brings change. Patents filed by the youngest inventors are much more likely to cover breakthrough innovations. Older countries—and, it turns out, their young people—are less enterprising and less comfortable taking risks. Elderly electorates ossify politics, too. Because the old benefit less than the young when economies grow, they have proved less keen on pro-growth policies, especially housebuilding. Creative destruction is likely to be rarer in ageing societies, suppressing productivity growth in ways that compound into an enormous missed opportunity. 

All things considered, it is tempting to cast low fertility rates as a crisis to be solved. Many of its underlying causes, though, are in themselves welcome. As people have become richer they have tended to have fewer children. Today they face different trade-offs between work and family, and these are mostly better ones. The populist conservatives who claim low fertility is a sign of society’s failure and call for a return to traditional family values are wrong. More choice is a good thing, and no one owes it to others to bring up children. 

Liberals’ impulse to encourage more immigration is more noble. But it, too, is a misdiagnosis. Immigration in the rich world today is at a record high, helping individual countries tackle worker shortages. But the global nature of the fertility slump means that, by the middle of the century, the world is likely to face a dearth of young educated workers unless something changes.

What might that be? People often tell pollsters they want more children than they have. This gap between aspiration and reality could be in part because would-be parents—who, in effect, subsidise future childless pensioners—cannot afford to have more children, or because of other policy failures, such as housing shortages or inadequate fertility treatment. Yet even if these are fixed, economic development is still likely to lead to a fall in fertility below the replacement rate. Pro-family policies have a disappointing record. Singapore offers lavish grants, tax rebates and child-care subsidies—but has a fertility rate of 1.0. 

Unleashing the potential of the world’s poor would ease the shortage of educated young workers without more births. Two-thirds of Chinese children live in the countryside and attend mostly dreadful schools; the same fraction of 25- to 34-year-olds in India have not completed upper secondary education. Africa’s pool of young people will continue to grow for decades. Boosting their skills is desirable in itself, and might also cast more young migrants as innovators in otherwise-stagnant economies. Yet encouraging development is hard—and the sooner places get rich, the sooner they get old. 

Eventually, therefore, the world will have to make do with fewer youngsters—and perhaps with a shrinking population. With that in mind, recent advances in ai could not have come at a better time. An über-productive ai-infused economy might find it easy to support a greater number of retired people. Eventually ai may be able to generate ideas by itself, reducing the need for human intelligence. Combined with robotics, ai may also make caring for the elderly less labour-intensive. Such innovations will certainly be in high demand.

If technology does allow humanity to overcome the baby bust, it will fit the historical pattern. Unexpected productivity advances meant that demographic time-bombs, such as the mass starvation predicted by Thomas Malthus in the 18th century, failed to detonate. Fewer babies means less human genius. But that might be a problem human genius can fix. 

Source: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences

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Connelly: Even high-wage temporary foreign workers are at risk of exploitation

2023/06/03 Leave a comment

Haven’t seen much written one the higher-wage Temporary Foreign Workers or the kind of anecdotes and studies that we see on agricultural and other lower-wage workers.

So the extent to which this is more theoretical (same general points apply to all TFWs), or a real issue is unclear (and Connelly doesn’t indicate that any surveys or other assessment of on-the-ground reality was undertaken which may have been included in her book):

When we think of temporary foreign workers, we usually think of agricultural workers and nannies: vulnerable workers at risk of exploitation. But not every temporary foreign worker does this kind of work. What about software engineers, accountants, and technicians? Unfortunately, they are also at risk.

Many Canadians assume that high-wage temporary foreign workers are less vulnerable because they have more resources at their disposal. But their high incomes and education levels are not enough to protect them.

Temporary foreign workers in the high-wage stream are vulnerable to exploitation because they have closed work permits. With only a few exceptions, they are only allowed to work for the company that hired them. Even when they are aware of their employment rights, they are often reluctant to do anything that they believe could jeopardize their employment, such as complaining to their boss, their HR department, or the government. Most high-wage temporary foreign workers are hoping to apply for permanent residency through a provincial nominee program, and they are concerned that any complaints will be held against them. And even though many high-wage temporary foreign workers eventually become permanent residents, they still have closed work permits while they navigate this process. And in the meantime, they may endure a lot.

High-wage temporary foreign workers are lucrative targets. Because their wages are relatively high, unscrupulous companies have a financial incentive to pay them less than their contracted wage. For example, instead of paying them the agreed-upon $30 per hour, a company may decide to only pay them only $27 per hour: a 10 per cent discrepancy. This pay cut of course violates the temporary foreign worker guidelines, which stipulate that all temporary foreign workers must be paid the agreed-upon wage for the duration of their contracts. They also must be paid at least the local median wage for their occupation.

Three dollars in wage theft may not sound like much, but it adds up. If that employee works 40 hours per week, this represents a savings to the employer of about $6,240 per year, per employee.

Because high-wage workers are so qualified, they are frequently asked to perform extra tasks that are not in their contracts. For example, they may be asked to manage a team or take on more important or complicated responsibilities with less supervision. Many temporary foreign workers are overqualified for their positions, so some companies use this as an opportunity to require them to do extra work without compensation, even though this violates the rules of the temporary foreign worker program.

Companies that have difficulty retaining Canadians because of poor management skills may turn to temporary foreign workers specifically to lower rates of staff turnover. While Canadians and foreign workers recruited through the International Mobility Program (e.g., from a country that has a free trade agreement with Canada) can quit, high-wage temporary foreign workers, who might be doing the exact same job, do not have the same options. In addition to wage theft and unrealistic performance expectations, high-wage temporary foreign workers frequently have to deal with abusive supervisors. 

The solution is to harmonize the high-wage temporary foreign worker program with the International Mobility Program to ensure that these workers all have the same rights. That is, high-wage temporary foreign workers would receive open work permits that would enable them to change employers more easily. A further advantage of open permits is that companies could then promote high-wage temporary foreign workers, or move them to where they are needed.

One could argue that open permits would be inconvenient for employers, because mistreated high-wage temporary foreign workers may quit if their work permits do not force them to stay with their employer. However, employers could adopt the same management strategies that they use to prevent their Canadian or International Mobility Program employees from quitting: careful recruitment, fair treatment, and reasonable wages.

In discussions about temporary foreign workers, those in the high-wage stream are often overlooked. There are not so many of them: only 45,867 were approved to come to Canada in 2022. But as Canadian companies address ongoing labour market challenges, more are likely to be hired. High-wage temporary foreign workers are an important part of the Canadian workforce, and they need the same protections as Canadians.

Catherine Connelly is a Canada Research Chair in organizational behaviour at the DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University, and the author of Enduring Work: Experiences with Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program, published by McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Source: Even high-wage temporary foreign workers are at risk of exploitation

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Black men were likely underdiagnosed with lung problems because of bias in software, study suggests

2023/06/03 Leave a comment

Of note (I have done the pulmonary function test as part of my cancer treatments but was completely unaware of the algorithms involved but I could sense the difference between two tests about a year apart):

Racial bias built into a common medical test for lung function is likely leading to fewer Black patients getting care for breathing problems, a study published Thursday suggests. 

As many as 40% more Black male patients in the study might have been diagnosed with breathing problems if current diagnosis-assisting computer software was changed, the study said. 

Doctors have long discussed the potential problems caused by race-based assumptions that are built into diagnostic software. This study, published in JAMA Network Open, offers one of the first real-world examples of how the the issue may affect diagnosis and care for lung patients, said Dr. Darshali Vyas, a pulmonary care doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital.

The results are “exciting” to see published but it’s also “what we’d expect” from setting aside race-based calculations, said Vyas, who was an author of an influential 2020 New England Journal of Medicine article that catalogued examples of how race-based assumptions are used in making doctors’ decisions about patient care.

For centuries, some doctors and others have held beliefs that there are natural racial differences in health, including one that Black people’s lungs were innately worse than those of white people. That assumption ended up in modern guidelines and algorithms for assessing risk and deciding on further care. Test results were adjusted to account for — or “correct” for — a patient’s race or ethnicity. 

One example beyond lung function is a heart failure risk-scoring system that categorizes Black patients as being at lower risk and less likely to need referral for special cardiac care. Another is an equation used in determining kidney function that creates estimates of higher kidney function in Black patients.

The new study focused on a test to determine how much and how quickly a person can inhale and exhale. It’s often done using a spirometer — a device with a mouthpiece connected to a small machine. 

After the test, doctors get a report that has been run through computer software and scores the patient’s ability breathe. It helps indicate whether a patient has restrictions and needs further testing or care for things like asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder or lung scarring due to air pollutant exposure. 

Algorithms that adjust for race raise the threshold for diagnosing a problem in Black patients and may make them less likely to get started on certain medications or to be referred for medical procedures or even lung transplants, Vyas said.

While physicians also look at symptoms, lab work, X-rays and family histories of breathing problems, the pulmonary function testing can be an important part of diagnoses, “especially when patients are borderline,” said Dr. Albert Rizzo, the chief medical officer at the American Lung Association. 

The new study looked at more than 2,700 Black men and 5,700 white men tested by University of Pennsylvania Health System doctors between 2010 and 2020. The researchers looked at spirometry and lung volume measurements and assessed how many were deemed to have breathing impairments under the race-based algorithm as compared to under a new algorithm.

Researchers concluded there would be nearly 400 additional cases of lung obstruction or impairment in Black men with the new algorithm.

Earlier this year, the American Thoracic Society, which represents lung-care doctors, issued a statement recommending replacement of race-focused adjustments. But the organization also put a call out for more research, including into the best way to modify software and whether making a change might inadvertently lead to overdiagnosis of lung problems in some patients.

Vyas noted some other algorithms have already been changed to drop race-based assumptions, including one for pregnant women that predicts risks of vaginal delivery if the mom previously had a cesarean section.

Changing the lung-testing algorithm may take longer, Vyas said, especially if different hospitals use different versions of race-adjusting procedures and software. 

Source: Black men were likely underdiagnosed with lung problems because of bias in software, study suggests

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Meggs: Au-delà de l’Initiative du siècle

2023/06/02 Leave a comment

Good commentary on how the steep rise in temporary residents, particularly students, has effectively resulted in Canada and Quebec no longer managing levels and pace of immigration, with a sharper disconnect between Quebec, given relatively lower permanent residency levels, than in the rest of Canada:

On a tendance à interpréter la hausse comme étant une politique délibérée et idéologique, mais il y a aussi le concours de circonstances qui a fait en sorte que les propositions de l’Initiative du siècle, alignées certes avec le discours d’ouverture et de diversité du Parti libéral du Canada, sont tombées à un moment où Immigration, Réfugiés et Citoyenneté Canada (IRCC) commençait à perdre le contrôle sur l’immigration canadienne. 

C’était inévitable. Le Canada ne pouvait augmenter sans limites son immigration temporaire, invitant en particulier les étudiantes et étudiants étrangers à venir et à rester, sans augmenter ses seuils d’immigration permanente.

Politiquement, il ne peut renvoyer les personnes diplômées au pays et ayant contribué à l’économie canadienne pendant plusieurs années. D’où les programmes spéciaux récents et annoncés de régularisation des personnes à statut temporaire, ainsi que des personnes non documentées, un autre phénomène qui augmente avec l’immigration temporaire. 

Le gouvernement de la CAQ affectionne plutôt le Programme de travailleurs étrangers temporaires (PTET)⁠1. Au Canada, au 31 décembre 2022, les titulaires de permis de ce programme représentaient 7,5 % de l’ensemble des titulaires de permis des trois programmes d’immigration temporaire. Au Québec, ils en constituaient 17,5 %. Comme le Canada, le Québec augmente le nombre de travailleurs temporaires, mais, contrairement au Canada, le Québec refuse d’augmenter ses seuils d’immigration permanente. 

Des résultats chaotiques

Ultimement, les résultats sont chaotiques et marqués par l’improvisation : 

– les délais de traitement des demandes de certificat de sélection du Québec (CSQ) s’étirent pour l’ensemble des catégories permanentes – économique, familiale et humanitaire. Ce document est délivré par le ministère de l’Immigration, de la Francisation et de l’Intégration (MIFI) et est préalable à la résidence permanente au Québec ; 

– le Québec ralentit sa sélection pour ne pas dépasser les seuils permanents planifiés ; 

– IRCC ralentit aussi la délivrance des visas de résidence permanente pour les détenteurs du CSQ pour ne pas dépasser les seuils établis par le Québec ; 

– de plus en plus de personnes immigrantes francophones⁠2 – temporaires au Québec et permanentes de l’étranger – décident de faire leur demande de résidence permanente dans une autre province. (Un cadeau au fédéral qui veut augmenter l’immigration francophone hors Québec.)

Jetant la responsabilité des délais de traitement des demandes de résidence permanente sur IRCC et la pandémie, Jean Boulet, ancien ministre du MIFI, a négocié avec le fédéral un permis de travail temporaire ouvert dans le cadre du Programme de mobilité internationale. On l’appelle le PMI+. Ce permis, aussi délivré par le fédéral, est offert aux personnes avec un CSQ en attente de leur résidence permanente. Il permet à celles déjà au Québec de continuer à travailler ici et à celles à l’étranger de venir s’établir en sol québécois. 

Mais si le Québec refuse d’augmenter ses seuils d’immigration permanente, ses gens vont demeurer avec un statut temporaire très longtemps.

Le prochain phénomène qu’on risque de voir sera celui des personnes francophones sélectionnées par le Québec et travaillant au Québec avec un permis PMI+ qui décident de déménager et de faire une nouvelle demande de résidence permanente dans une autre province parce qu’elles se lassent de l’attente et qu’elles veulent pouvoir planifier leurs vies. 

Le gouvernement a beau promettre de sélectionner 100 % d’immigration francophone, les délais pour obtenir la résidence permanente font perdre au Québec des personnes immigrantes francophones au profit d’autres provinces ou territoires. Où est la logique ? Si ces personnes souhaitent s’établir au Québec, elles peuvent y venir à la suite de leur admission au Canada, car il n’y a pas d’obstacles à la mobilité des résidents permanents. Mais cela a pour effet de laisser au fédéral et aux autres provinces la sélection. 

Les consultations organisées par le MIFI qui auront lieu dans les prochains mois établiront les paramètres de l’immigration au Québec pour au moins trois ans sans pour autant fournir une vision d’avenir. Ce n’est pas de la planification, mais plutôt de la gestion réactive dont les résultats continueront d’être chaotiques. Il ne suffit pas de dire où l’on ne veut pas aller en dénonçant l’Initiative du siècle. Il s’agit de répondre à une autre question : où va-t-on, et surtout, où veut-on aller ? 

Il est crucial que le gouvernement soit entièrement transparent sur l’ensemble des enjeux, tant envers la population d’accueil sur la façon dont il propose de gérer le nombre et le rythme des arrivées qu’envers les personnes qui arrivent sur les dures réalités de leur statut. La question de l’immigration temporaire sans limites présente trop d’enjeux négatifs pour être exclue du débat. L’objectif est un retour à un système d’immigration permanent fonctionnel. 

Source: Au-delà de l’Initiative du siècle

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Appeal court overturns ruling directing Ottawa to repatriate 4 men detained in Syria

2023/06/02 Leave a comment

Of note and, IMO, correct decision:

The Federal Court of Appeal has overturned a high-profile ruling ordering Canada to bring home four Canadian men detained in northeastern Syrian prisons for suspected ISIS members.

In January, Federal Court Justice Henry Brown ruled the four men were entitled to have the federal government make a formal request for their release “as soon as reasonably possible.”

But three appeal court judges disagreed with Brown’s decision and overturned it on Wednesday.

In their ruling, the judges wrote that Brown’s decision interpreted the right to enter Canada too broadly.

“[The previous ruling] took the right of Canadian citizens ‘to enter … Canada’ and transformed it into a right of Canadian citizens, wherever they might be, regardless of their conduct abroad, to return to Canada or to have their government take steps to rescue them and return them to Canada,” Wednesday’s ruling says.

“The right to enter, remain in and leave Canada, is not a golden ticket for Canadian citizens abroad to force their government to take steps — even risky, dangerous steps — so they can escape the consequences of their actions,” the ruling says.

The men travelled to northeastern Syria against the travel advice of the Canadian government and have been held in prisons for those suspected of ISIS affiliations. The camps in northeastern Syria are run by the Kurdish forces that reclaimed the war-torn region from the extremist group.

Canada not responsible for men’s detention: judges

In his January decision, Brown cited the conditions of the prison and the fact that the men haven’t been charged and brought to trial.

“The conditions of the … men are even more dire than those of the women and children who Canada has just agreed to repatriate,” Brown’s decision reads.

“There is no evidence any of them have been tried or convicted, let alone tried in a manner recognized or sanctioned by international law.”

But Wednesday’s appeal court ruling said the Canadian government is not responsible for the men’s detention in Syria.

“Canadian state conduct did not lead to the respondents being in northeastern Syria, did not prevent them from entering Canada, and did not cause or continue their plight. The respondents’ own conduct and persons abroad who have control over them alone are responsible,” the ruling reads.

Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino said the government will take time to “absorb” the court’s ruling.

“Our priority first and foremost is that we safeguard the country and our borders from any potential terrorist activity,” he told reporters Wednesday.

Jack Letts, who has been imprisoned in Syria for more than four years after allegedly joining ISIS, is among the four men.

Sally Lane, Letts’ mother, said the appeal court decided to “to perpetuate the arbitrary detention and torture” of her son.

“The decision is nothing but victim-blaming and narrow legalese that stands in utter contempt of human rights law and fails to rise to the challenge of the moment,” Lane said in a statement provided by the family’s lawyer, Barbara Jackman.

Letts admitted in a 2019 interview to joining ISIS in Syria. His family says he made that admission under duress and there is no evidence that he ever fought for the group.

Jackman told CBC that they are considering taking the case to the Supreme Court, but a final decision hasn’t been made yet.

Lawrence Greenspon, a lawyer for the other applicants, also told CBC that his clients are considering an appeal.

In the past, Greenspon has argued that if there is any evidence the Canadians took part in terrorist activities, Canada should put them on trial here.

But former CSIS analyst Phil Gurski said he fears that any trial likely would end in an acquittal because the witnesses and evidence are located in Syria.

“I’m just not confident that the Canadian court system would have the resources to locate the witnesses … and the evidence to bring forward a successful trial,” he said.

Family members of Canadians detained in Syria — including the four men — have been asking the federal government to arrange for their return to Canada.

Prior to the January ruling, the government agreed to repatriate six women and 13 children from northeastern Syria.

At least three of those women have returned and were taken into police custody upon arrival. They have all been released pending terrorism peace bond applications.

A terrorism peace bond allows a judge to order a defendant to maintain good behaviour — sometimes with conditions such as a curfew — or face a prison sentence.

Source: Appeal court overturns ruling directing Ottawa to repatriate 4 men detained in Syria

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German citizenship: Record number of naturalizations

2023/06/02 Leave a comment

Of note, along with the planned policy changes:

A record 168,545 applicants with 171 different nationalities received German citizenship in 2022. That was 28% more than in the previous year, the Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden reported this week.

Twenty-nine percent of people who adopted German nationality in 2022 were from Syria, their average age was 24.8 years, and two-thirds of them are male. Many of them had fled their homeland when the civil war broke out in 2014 and have since found a new home in Germany. Before naturalization, they had been in Germany for an average of 6.4 years.

Syrians topped the list, followed by Ukrainian, Iraqi and Turkish nationals.

“Almost half of all Syrians who received their German passports did so after only six years. That’s because they were able to demonstrate exceptional integration achievements,” Jan Schneider, of the independent Expert Council on Integration and Migration, told DW.

“In fact, we can expect the number to rise further this year,” Schneider said, as the ruling center-left coalition of Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP) has comprehensive plans for changing and simplifying the citizenship law.

High hurdles so far

Currently, the requirements for naturalization include language skills (B1) and a secure income, and candidates must have lived in Germany for a minimum of eight years.

People who want to become German citizenship have not only had to pay the fee of €255 ($272) but also need to be able to document their identity and pass a written test in German, which consists of 33 questions on German customs and society and the law. Applicants must also declare their support for democracy and the German constitution, the Basic Law.

Anyone who has been convicted of a criminal offense does not stand a chance. Neither do applicants who have no income or savings and rely solely on state support.

But, now, Germany sees a labor shortage across its economy, ranging from IT specialists to medical staff to food servers. Labor market experts have estimated that Germany needs 400,000 immigrants per year to close the widening gap. Currently, only 60,000 are attracted each year by the government’s skilled immigration program.

A fundamental change in the citizenship law, the government argues, could be an incentive for people to come and for those already living here to integrate better.

Plans to simplify the citizenship law

Legislation proposed by Interior Minister Nancy Faeser will make dual citizenship easier, as well as naturalization for non-EU citizens. It boils down to three main changes.

Immigrants legally living in Germany will be allowed to apply for citizenship after five rather than eight years. This shall go down to only three years if the applicant can show special integration achievements.

Children born in Germany of at least one parent who has been living legally in the country for five or more years will automatically get German citizenship.

Multiple citizenships will be allowed.

So far, only EU and Swiss nationals, and those whose country of origin does not allow people to renounce citizenship such as Iran, Afghanistan and Morocco, for example; refugees who are threatened with persecution in their home countries; and Israelis are generally permitted to hold on to their original passports when they get a German one.

Schneider believes that, for some of the approximately 1.3 million Turks who are living in Germany, “the dual passport may well be an incentive for naturalization.”

Opposition to reform

The new record figures for naturalizations have triggered another storm of protest among critics, especially from the largest opposition group, the center-right Christian Democrat Union and the regional Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU). Their parliamentary group’s spokesman, Thorsten Frei, told the daily newspaper Die Welt: “The plans of Interior Minister Nancy Faeser increase the risk that more people will be naturalized who are not sufficiently integrated.” He said there were no convincing reasons to lower the requirements for a German passport.

Currently, about 6 million foreign citizens have been living in Germany for over eight years. If the minimum period of residence for naturalization is set at five years, migration expert Schneider pointed out, most of them will meet the criteria for naturalization.

Although it is not possible to predict today whether parliament will approve the government’s bill, “a massive increase in naturalization applications” is to be expected, Schneider said. “Applications for naturalization are already piling up in many Citizens’ Offices,” he added.

Source: German citizenship: Record number of naturalizations

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