German government defends plan to ease citizenship rules

2022/11/30 Leave a comment

Watching with interest on how the debate and discussion proceeds given significance of shift (disclosure our son in Germany would benefit from these changes):

Germany’s government on Monday defended a plan to make it easier for people to apply for citizenship, countering complaints from within the ruling coalition and the opposition that it might encourage illegal immigration.

The government has said it wants to boost immigration and training to tackle a skills shortage weighing on Europe’s largest economy at a time of weakening growth, and when an aging population is piling pressure on the public pension system.

A position paper obtained by Reuters – and earlier reported on by the German news site t-online – shows the government wants to do that in part by sigificantly reducing the income threshhold for migration and introducing a points system.

“Anyone who lives and works here on a permanent basis should also be able to vote and be elected, they should be part of our country with all the rights and duties that go with it,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said at a televised immigration forum.

“And this should be completely independent of origin, skin colour or religious affiliation,” he added.

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, from Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), has outlined plans to cut the maximum number of years a person must wait before becoming a citizen from eight to five, and lift restrictions on dual nationality.

German language requirements for citizenship would also be eased for members of the so-called “Gastarbeiter” generation, many of them Turkish, who came to Germany in the 1950s and 1960s as migrant workers.

Scholz further said that Germany, echoing a policy in other countries, would introduce a “transparent, unbureaucratic” immigration points system to allow foreigners who have the right qualifications to apply for work.

It would also be made easier to study or obtain qualifications in Germany, he said.

Scholz defended allowing immigrants to hold dual citizenship, arguing that “belonging and identity are not a zero-sum game.”

The draft legislation will be discussed by cabinet on Wednesday, Scholz said, after which it must be put to lawmakers in the Bundestag, the lower house of parliament.

The secretary-general of the FDP, the junior partner in coalition with the SPD and environmentalist Greens, has spoken out against the plan. In an interview with the Rheinische Post, Bijan Djir-Sarai questioned its timing while decrying a lack of progress on deportations and combating illegal migration.

Faeser played down differences in the coalition and said that all parties had signed up to the plan in their coalition agreement. The legal changes could take effect in the summer of 2023, she added.

Source: German government defends plan to ease citizenship rules

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with

Coates: Immigration is changing Canada for the better. But the conversation can’t end there

2022/11/29 Leave a comment

More generalities, with little awareness of existing integration programming, or efforts to increase knowledge of Indigenous peoples by newcomers. While I agree on the need for an “open, frank and supportive conversation,” it needs to focus on fundamentals, not generalities, and the externalities of immigration – housing, healthcare, intrastruture, environmental and climate change impact:

Canada, without a doubt, has been deeply enriched by immigration. Waves of newcomers, starting with French and British explorers all the way to the planned broadening of the immigration pool to include 500,000 new arrivals from around the world a year, by 2025, have brought with them their talents, cultures and enthusiasm for a chance at a new life.

Much like new Canadians themselves, Canada has adapted, creating a stronger but different country as immigration trends evolved. Canada’s already impressive cultural diversity continues to grow and flourish. There appears to be an informal agreement between Canada’s major political parties, and most provinces other than perhaps Quebec, that newcomers can solve critical labour shortages.

Despite all the exciting change that migrants bring, however, Canadians too often take an almost casual approach to immigration policy itself – and its corollary, which is how we ensure immigrants integrate comfortably into our country. With the government promising to continue to increase Canada’s immigration volumes, it’s worth considering how the country is changing and how policy makers might manage that change deliberately and thoughtfully.

The scale of the migration is stunning. Each year, Canada will admit a group of newcomers that is 10 times greater than the population of the Yukon or an influx roughly equal to the population of Newfoundland. Every two years of immigration brings enough newcomers to nearly match the population of Nova Scotia or Saskatchewan.

Yet as our population grows, the demographic and political importance of the country’s smaller jurisdictions fade considerably. Canada has become a nation of city-states, dominated economically and politically by a handful of major metropolitan areas, where most immigrants move. According to 2021 census data compiled by Environics chief demographer Doug Norris, 79.6 per cent of the Greater Toronto Area’s population are first- and second-generation newcomers; in Vancouver, the number is 72.5 per cent. Major cities such as these sustain the current Liberal government, and will almost certainly determine the outcome of future national elections.

Indeed, the benefits of immigration are distributed unequally across Canada’s vast geography. Smaller communities, including resource towns under threat from federal antidevelopment strategies and rapid technological change, are attracting few immigrants, and the influx is nowhere near enough to staunch the steady decline of rural and small town Canada.

To address this, the federal government has suggested that it is prioritizing immigration to rural areas and small towns. Yet only a small number of newcomers will end up there. Many of those who do are likely to migrate to the larger cities later, chasing perceived job and life opportunities, as well as the larger cultural and language communities that exist there. A focus on attracting and retaining immigrants in those places is needed.

Canada is blessed to be known as one of the most attractive destinations for international migrants and our immigration procedures are globally recognized for prioritizing the admission of individuals and families who can best contribute directly to the Canadian economy. Yet, we do little to aid the transition of migrants into our society.

Arriving migrants need support with job searches, recognition of credentials, language training, cultural and political awareness, housing, and more. Their children will require considerable resources as they enter Canada’s public-school systems. Though NGOs and intergovernmental co-operation play a major role in facilitating these key components of immigration, policy makers too often relegate these considerations to afterthoughts. This is a disservice to new Canadians most especially, but also to the communities that welcome them.

Mass migration presents considerable challenges for Indigenous peoples as well. There are, according to the 2021 Canadian census, some 1.8 million First Nations, Metis and Inuit in Canada. At current rates, four years’ worth of immigration is equal to that entire Indigenous population today, further diminishing the relative political power of Canada’s first peoples.

Most new Canadians also have little familiarity with the people, cultures, histories and rights of Indigenous communities, and understandably so. Without concerted effort to correct for this lack of knowledge, there is a real risk that Indigenous needs and interests will fall further down the priority list for the growing electorate and, therefore, for governments.

Canada can and should embrace change, and immigration has a positive role to play in this. But it needs to be thoughtfully done. Our current approach to immigration feeds our national strengths – a set of truly world-class, multicultural cities and a rapidly expanding service economy – but it also exacerbates existing weaknesses. It need not be this way. It is time for an open, frank and supportive conversation about how to better foster the success of newcomers, and of the future of Canada.

Ken Coates is a Distinguished Fellow and director of the Indigenous affairs program at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, and a Canada Research Chair at the University of Saskatchewan.

Source: Immigration is changing Canada for the better. But the conversation can’t end there

Filed under Immigration Tagged with

Racial discrimination in mortgage lending has declined sharply in America

2022/11/29 Leave a comment

Of note. For those worried about AI, an illustration of where it can reduce discrimination:

“Atlanta’s black neighbourhoods are under attack.” So wrote the editors of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in May of 1988 upon the release of “The Colour of Money”, a series of articles documenting racial disparities in mortgage lending in Georgia’s most populous city. The Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation, which analysed $6bn-worth of home loans made over six years, found that Atlanta banks made five times as many loans to white neighbourhoods as black ones, and rejected black applicants four times as often. The reaction was swift. Demonstrators marched through bank lobbies, the naacp urged black residents to withdraw their bank deposits and the Justice Department launched an investigation into discriminatory lending practices. Listen to this story.

Much has changed in the 35 years since “The Colour of Money”, and yet racial disparities in mortgage lending remain. Data reported under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (hmda) show that 15% of black applicants were denied conventional mortgage loans in 2021, compared with just 6% of white applicants, a ratio of more than two-to-one. Black homeowners seeking to refinance their existing loans were rejected 24% of the time, compared with 12% of the time for whites. Some lenders have been singled out. A recent analysis by Bloomberg News found that Wells Fargo, a bank, approved less than half of refinancing applications filed by black homeowners in 2020, compared with nearly three-quarters of those filed by white customers. 

To many Americans, such wide discrepancies in lending are proof of discrimination. A survey conducted in 2020 by the Pew Research Centre, a think-tank, found that 49% of American adults—and 86% of African-Americans—believe that black people are treated less fairly than white people when applying for a mortgage. But bankers have long argued that imbalances in mortgage approval rates reflect underlying differences in creditworthiness, not racial bias. Indeed African-Americans fare significantly worse than whites on several key lending criteria. Credit scores of black borrowers, for example, are about 8% lower than those of white borrowers. Their debt-to-income levels, meanwhile, are about 10% higher. Black borrowers have much higher loan delinquency rates, too. 

For decades the conventional wisdom was that both economic factors and discrimination played a role in lending patterns. A seminal study by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, published in the American Economic Review in 1996, analysed nearly 3,000 loan applications submitted to Boston-area lenders in 1990. The researchers found that credit histories, debt-to-income ratios, loan-to-value ratios, and other strictly economic factors explained more than half of the difference in denial rates between black and white applicants. But race mattered, too. Even after accounting for their creditworthiness, black mortgage applicants were rejected about 1.8 times as often as whites. 

But new research by economists at the Federal Reserve Board suggests that such discrimination is less widespread than it was 30 years ago.* Using a dataset of nearly 9m loan applications submitted in 2018 and 2019, the authors found that 17% of black applicants were turned down, compared with 8% of white applicants. But after controlling for the results of automated underwriting systems, which reflect the underwriting guidelines of government-sponsored entities like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and cannot take race into account, this gap was cut in half. After other relevant risk characteristics such as credit scores were controlled for, this figure fell to less than two points—a result that the authors describe as “significant progress”. 

What explains the improvement? Laurie Goodman of the Urban Institute, a think-tank, says that the decline of manual underwriting is one factor. “I’m sure automated underwriting, where very little is done manually, has made a difference because it leaves less discretion.” Stricter enforcement of the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which prohibit discrimination in lending on the basis of race, is another. Last year the Justice Department launched an effort to crack down on “redlining” by financial institutions—the practice of denying credit to particular neighbourhoods. Since then the department has reported four lawsuits and settlements worth a combined $38m. 

Experts point out that although mortgage underwriting systems are becoming less biased, the data fed into them may still reflect historical discrimination. These data can be improved, says Ms Goodman. “If the issue is credit scores, let’s figure out how to make credit scores better and more reflective of people’s true creditworthiness.” Overall, though, the picture is one of progress. “I think it’s fair to say that there’s still some discrimination, but it’s not very common,” says John Yinger, an economics professor at Syracuse University. ■

Source: Racial discrimination in mortgage lending has declined sharply in America

Filed under discrimination, Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , ,

Canada wants to welcome 500,000 more immigrants in 2025. Can our country keep up?

2022/11/28 Leave a comment

The Globe’s Matt Lundy is doing some of the best reporting and analysis of immigration these days, with this article raising one of the elephants in the room, housing availability and affordabilty, healthcare, infrastructure:

Every year, Canada adds a big city – in a sense. The mass of individuals are spread around, mostly to urban centres, but increasingly to suburbs and far-flung communities. They are here to work, to study, to build a better life.

The expansion is historic. From July to September, Canada’s population grew by around 285,000, a 0.7-per-cent gain that was the largest since Newfoundland joined Confederation in 1949. More than 700,000 people have been added over the past year, roughly the same as the population of Mississauga, the seventh-largest municipality in the country.

The trend picked up when the federal Liberal Party came to power. Since 2016, the country has grown at nearly double the rate of its Group of Seven peers. For the most part, that growth is driven by immigration.

The push is deliberate. Policy makers say higher immigration is necessary to fuel Canada’s economic growth, and in particular, to ease labour shortages that have frustrated the corporate sector.

It is, however, a population boom with its share of growing pains

Consider that over the past year, fewer than 200,000 housing units were completed. There were 3.6 new residents for every home added, the highest ratio since at least 1991. Affordability is deteriorating in most places. There is a fundamental mismatch between home supply and demand – and the population boom is contributing to the divide.

At the same time, Canadian governments are struggling to deliver basic services. Surgeries are getting cancelled in crammed hospitals. Canadians can’t find family doctors, let alone newcomers trying to navigate an ailing health care system. Cash-strapped cities can’t refurbish their infrastructure as fast as it’s falling into disrepair.

To cope with the affordability crisis, a growing number of people are fleeing our cities. They include teachers, nurses and construction workers – the very people who keep those cities running.

In this fraught environment, Ottawa has its foot on the accelerator. After admitting about 405,000 permanent residents last year, the federal government is aiming for 500,000 in 2025. And that’s just a portion of the migration wave: At last count, there were 1.4 million residents with temporary work or study permits.

Canada is facing a complicated adjustment. Notably, developers are scrapping or delaying housing projects, owing to rising interest rates and waning profitability. Just when more homes are needed, fewer are being built.

Several economists question why the federal government would create more demand for services, when so many pillars of social infrastructure are in distress. They wonder if Ottawa is singularly focused on hitting its immigration targets, with insufficient planning for how to successfully absorb those newcomers.

For its part, the federal government says the solution to so many of these problems is simple: more immigration. They’re planning to bring in more doctors and nurses from abroad, along with people to build homes.

Many recent immigrants have waited years for admission. Now they’re arriving at a time of decades-high inflation and slowing economic growth. Highly-skilled newcomers will likely manage the transition just fine. But others are discovering the Canadian dream is a pricey proposition – and perhaps not what they bargained for.

Ash Gopalani knew Toronto would be expensive. Just not this expensive.

He and his wife, Sneha, arrived in September, after a stressful three-year process to get their permanent resident cards. Finding an apartment was the next hurdle. Too often, the listings were in cramped basements, with little natural light, or far removed from the city’s core or public transit.

Mr. Gopalani eventually signed a lease for a one-bedroom unit in the city’s west end for $1,800 a month, the top end of his expected range. What he didn’t anticipate was paying six months of rent – $10,800 – up front, because the couple from Mumbai has no credit history here. Now, they have less of a financial buffer as they search for jobs.

Mr. Gopalani was hoping to follow a familiar playbook for newcomers. Establish a career. Save up money. Then buy a house – preferably big enough that their family from India could stay a while.

But the experience of moving here has been a reality check.

“We don’t know if we can afford building a life in Canada,” he said.

The rental market is ground zero for where immigrants get a taste of the cost-of-living crisis, in which fierce competition and bidding wars for relatively few units have led to jacked-up prices.

For Alexiane Sauvaire, it was a rude awakening. She thought finding an apartment in Toronto would be easier than in her native Paris. After eight frustrating days of looking, following her arrival, she moved to Montreal.

“Maybe for rich people, it’s easy. But when you’re not rich, it’s impossible to live right now in Toronto,” she said.

Increasingly, recent immigrants are bypassing the largest metro areas – Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal – to settle elsewhere, although a slim majority still favour those regions, according to the latest census results. However, costs are rising quickly in other cities, too, as they experience fervent demand from migrating people.

Over the past year, the average rent in Calgary has jumped 18 per cent to around $1,720 a month, according to data for new listings on Rentals.ca. London, Ont., is up 26 per cent. Halifax: 21 per cent.

From a labour standpoint, the affordability crisis is making it difficult to recruit – and retain – important workers.

“There are very significant economic risks to large cities if they do not get housing costs under control,” Aled ab Iorwerth, deputy chief economist at the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., said on a conference call this summer. “It’s getting increasingly difficult to attract skilled workers and even highly-skilled workers to these cities because they’re just becoming simply unaffordable.”

The task ahead is nothing short of gargantuan. CMHC says that, in order to restore affordability back to levels in 2003 and 2004, Canada would need to build 3.5 million morehomes than projected by 2030.

Earlier this year, the federal government unveiled billions in new spending for housing, with a goal of doubling construction over the next decade. That plan looks dead on arrival amid higher borrowing rates.

There is, of course, another problem: labour. In a recent report, CMHC said there were not enough skilled workers to build the homes so desperately needed.

“Even under more ideal conditions, I don’t think we have the capacity to build at a pace that matches the demand through population growth that we’re seeing,” said Shaun Hildebrand, president at real estate firm Urbanation.

Immigration lawyers have a blunt message: The application system is a mess.

And it’s a mess that was largely created in Ottawa.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (the federal immigration department) had around 2.2 million applications in its inventories as of Oct. 31. About 1.2 million of them were in backlog, meaning they’ve been in the system for longer than service standards for processing. That’s far higher than before the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The system is falling apart. I’ve never seen it like this, in the 20 years that I’ve been practising,” said Kerry Molitor, an immigration consultant in Toronto.

After failing to hit immigration targets in 2020, owing to pandemic challenges, the federal government wanted a rebound. Through various decisions, it invited thousands of people already in Canada to apply for permanent residency. The surge in applications overwhelmed a civil service that struggled to process files efficiently amid office closings and the shift to remote work.

In some cases, applicants are waiting years for a decision. Mr. Gopalani and his wife applied for permanent residency in the fall of 2019. They expected an approval within months, a typical outcome in their stream of immigration. They weren’t approved until July, 2022.

“The immigration system could have been more sensitive, empathetic, towards the kind of transition that people go through, which didn’t happen,” he said.

Because of the backlog, applicants such as Mr. Gopalani have put their lives on hold for years. Others are working in Canada, but their permits are nearing expiry, putting their future plans in doubt. These are individuals who, in Canada’s points-based system for economic immigrants, would often be shoo-ins for approval, but now are caught up in a bureaucratic nightmare.

There are “really good, quality people in the pool, and they’re not getting invitations,” said Mikal Skuterud, an economics professor at the University of Waterloo. “What happens now when these folks leave? They say, ‘The hell with this, I’m going back to my country or the U.S. or wherever.’ Now you’re losing all that talent. That’s completely not what this process is supposed to be.”

Despite the administrative headaches, Canada is on pace to welcome 431,000 permanent residents this year, right on target. The trouble is that talented people are slipping through the cracks – and the immigration system is taking a beating in public opinion.

“There’s this massive psychological toll that the backlogs, the delays and the lack of transparency have on people,” said Lev Abramovich, an immigration lawyer in Toronto. “I don’t think IRCC bureaucrats and politicians understand how much suffering this has caused.”

For all of Ottawa’s talk of targeting the best and brightest, the federal government is also allowing more cheap foreign labour into the country. Earlier this year, it overhauled the Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) program, largely so employers could access more low-wage labour.

Colleges and universities, meanwhile, are ramping up their intake of foreign students, who mostly don’t need work permits. Increasingly, those students are taking jobs to rack up points for their permanent residency applications.

Around 1.4 million people had temporary work or study permits at the end of 2021, an increase of 85 per cent since 2015. That’s 640,000 people – about equal to the city of Vancouver – who have been added in just six years. Their ranks are set to accelerate this year, after policy changes.

While Ottawa has targets for admissions of permanent residents, there are no such guidelines for other migrants. With students, the federal government has essentially ceded that responsibility to postsecondary institutions, which are inclined to boost their revenues through higher intake of foreign students, who pay lofty tuition fees.

“The number of foreign nationals who receive study permits in any given year is based on demand, not predetermined targets,” Rémi Larivière, a spokesperson for IRCC, said in a statement.

An extreme example: Cape Breton University. Nearly 4,000 of its full-time students this fall had study visas, up a whopping 68 per cent from last year, according to preliminary survey data from the Association of Atlantic Universities. About three-quarters of CBU’s full-time students are from abroad. That’s injecting a surge of new demand for services in sleepy Sydney, N.S. (population: 31,000).

Gurmeet Singh, a second-year student, is trying to help people with their transition. He’s part of a volunteer group that verifies rental listings for incoming students. On average, the group gets three requests daily to check out potential residences. Mr. Singh visits those listings to see if they’re suitable for living – and if they exist.

Fraudulent listings are fairly common, Mr. Singh said; the group finds a scam every couple of days. “We felt it was our moral duty to help our fellow international students,” he said.

That’s not the only source of frustration. In local media this week, CBU students complained that a majority of classes in the two-year postbaccalaureate business program – a popular choice among foreign students – were being held in an unexpected venue: a Cineplex Inc. movie theatre off campus

Higher immigration is a guiding principle for this iteration of the federal Liberal Party.

Time and again, the party frames immigration as the antidote to an aging population, helping to grow the pool of labour market participants – and thus, too, the economy.

“Immigration is not just good for our economy, it’s essential. We can’t get by without it,” Immigration Minister Sean Fraser told reporters at a recent news conference.

The truth is more complicated. A vast body of economic literature shows that immigration has little effect on gross domestic product per capita, a popular measure of living standards. Furthermore, while new immigrants are younger than existing residents, the intake is too meagre to offset a demographic wave of aging citizens.

This doesn’t mean immigration is bad for the economy. But it’s not an accelerant, either.

“Often, the argument is made as if it’s obvious that immigration generates economic growth,” said David Green, an economics professor at the University of British Columbia. “Not if you look at the numbers.”

Of late, Ottawa has said various policy changes – including the expansion of the TFW program and allowing foreign postsecondary students to work longer hours – are aimed at easing labour shortages. This has led several economists to accuse the federal government of kowtowing to corporate pressure, flooding the job market with low-wage foreign labour, rather than forcing companies to hike wages or make investments.

“There’s lots of evidence that holding employers’ feet to the fire in times of tight labour markets is the best way to spur innovation, automation and productivity. Those are the things you want in an economy,” said Jim Stanford, director of the Centre for Future Work, a think tank.

“And if you say to employers, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll let you bring in some low-priced temporary migrants to solve your problem,’ you’re just dissipating the pressure that’s required to achieve a more productive economy.”

Prof. Green questioned the need to admit half a million permanent residents in 2025, given the fragile state of Canada’s social infrastructure and the questionable economic rationale for that target.

“I don’t see the planning here,” he said. “Do you really want to ramp up to 500,000 a year, at a time when we seem to be heading into recession and our housing markets and our health care system are straining at the seams? That’s a discussion that should be had.”

By and large, surveys suggest Canadians welcome immigrants. A recent poll, conducted by the Environics Institute for Survey Research, found nearly seven in 10 respondents support current levels of immigration, about double the share in late 1970s. The vast majority of respondents – 85 per cent – agreed that immigration is positive for the economy, a view that has held strong for decades.

But Prof. Green suggests we shouldn’t take that for granted. If the country struggles to integrate newcomers, then perhaps Canadians will start to eye them suspiciously. “It’s politically dangerous, to my mind,” he said.

For now, that’s a worry. But it’s not the experience of Tanushree Holker and Nishant Kalia, who moved to Toronto from New Delhi in the summer of 2019. Their expectation of Canada as a welcoming country has checked out.

“That perception about Canada being a country which accepts immigrants with open arms, it is true when you come here,” Ms. Holker said.

The couple has shared their journey in Canada on YouTube; their channel, In The North, has nearly 100,000 subscribers, to whom they dispense their acquired wisdom on everything from buying a car to navigating a complex immigration system. Mr. Kalia started the channel after getting laid off early in the pandemic. He’s since built a career in human resources, while his wife works for a Big Six bank.

In recent videos, they’ve documented a major life change: They moved to Calgary. By doing so, they’re saving $350 a month on a similar-sized rental unit, and they expect to buy a home within six to nine months. Despite any number of financial complications, their version of the Canadian dream is going to plan.

“After we made our trip to Alberta, we realized that there is actually a life in Canada beyond Toronto and Vancouver,” Mr. Kalia said in a video. “To our surprise, [Calgary] was much better than we expected.”

Source: Canada wants to welcome 500,000 more immigrants in 2025. Can our country keep up?

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

Germany ‘needs better rules’ for citizenship: Scholz

2022/11/28 Leave a comment

Change is coming and we will see whether the changes prompt much debate:

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Saturday called for reforms to the country’s citizenship regulations, a day after the Interior Ministry said draft legislation on the citizenship process was “as good as ready.”

“Naturalization needs better rules,” Scholz said in a tweet Saturday. “It’s about respect and, of course, about our prosperity. Because all these women and men contribute to a strong economy. It is good if they also opt for German citizenship.”he said.

In his weekly video message, Scholz emphasized the integral role that immigrants have played in rebuilding and strengthening Germany, according to media reports. “Germany has become a country of hope for many,” the chancellor said. “The women and men and sometimes children who came to Germany have contributed greatly to making our economy as strong as it is today.”

Changing the citizenship rules is one of the reforms that the three-party coalition promised when it took office in December 2021.

German newspaper Bild on Friday reported that the Interior Ministry is preparing draft legislation that would enable foreigners residing in Germany to apply for naturalization after five years instead of eight. The ministry said proposals were still under discussion, according to the report.

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said on Friday that reducing the waiting time to be eligible for citizenship is “an incentive for integration,” the Associated Press reported. “We are a diverse, modern country of immigration, and I think legislation must reflect that,” she said.

The Interior Ministry said on Friday that draft legislation is “as good as ready,” the AP reported.

Source: Germany ‘needs better rules’ for citizenship: Scholz

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with ,

Ford: Britons have wised up to the benefits of immigration. It’s about time politicians did too

2022/11/28 Leave a comment

Will see how immigration continues to play out in UK political strategies:

For political veterans, the recent arguments over immigration have a very familiar feel: dire warnings of crisis as official statistics show record numbers of people coming to Britain to work, study and join their families, while a dysfunctional Home Office struggles to cope with a new wave of refugees; a beleaguered government pledging to clamp down, yet lacking the means or will to do so. All are familiar plot lines from past political dramas on immigration 10 or even 20 years ago. The political responses are predictable too – social conservatives thunder about the failure, yet again, to deliver the swingeing cuts they claim voters demand. Liberals prevaricate and change the subject, afraid their arguments are doomed to fail with a sceptical electorate. All the players are locked into the same old roles. None of them seems to realise the script has changed.

One of the most remarkable, yet least remarked upon, changes in politics over the past decade has been the dramatic liberal shift in public opinion on immigration. The decades-long tendency to see immigration as a problem to be controlled is now in rapid decline. The rising view is that immigration is a resource that can deliver gains for all. A majority now see immigration as economically and culturally beneficial, as a driver of economic recovery and a vital source of support for public services. The share of voters who say migration levels should stay the same or increase has never been higher, even as migration has hit record highs.

The public now favours increased recruitment of migrants across a wide range of economic sectors, from the NHS and social care to fruit pickers and pint pullers. Some of the largest positive shifts have come in low-paid sectors struggling with shortages, such as catering and construction. Voters see a case for more migration in practically every economic sector asked about. Only migrant bankers are unwanted.

Like all big changes, this liberal shift has many sources. Demographic change is moving Britain slowly in a liberal direction on many fronts – inherently more migration-sceptical groups are shrinking a little every year, while pro-migration groups grow. Yet the change of the past decade is too broad and fast for population shifts alone to explain. Brexit may be another part of the story – voters approve of the post-Brexit points-based system, which applies equally to all labour migrants, and post-Brexit labour shortages have underlined the economic importance of migrant labour. The Covid and post-Covid period may also have generated a wider direct experience of the vital and often high risk work migrants do, from the NHS and social care, to transport and home-delivery services.

The more moderate and pragmatic public mood is not evident in government rhetoric. The Conservatives are constrained by their heavy reliance on migration sceptics attracted to the party since Brexit by the promise to “take back control”. Fears of an anti-immigrant backlash lock the party into hardline language and proposals, yet fears of an anti-austerity backlash ensure these remain empty gestures. The government needs migrant workers yet cannot bring itself to say so. Likewise, the Rwanda plan for asylum seekers is obviously unworkable yet no one in government can admit it.

This approach is now failing on numerous fronts. Voters have noticed the yawning chasm between Conservative words and deeds. Eight out of 10 disapprove of the government’s record, an all-time low. Even those who approve of the Rwanda scheme see it as gesture politics, expensive and doomed to fail. Nigel Farage remains a more attractive option for migration hardliners, while years of draconian rhetoric have alienated swing voters who now favour a more moderate approach. The Conservatives’ reputation on immigration has been trashed across the board – for decades they led Labour by large margins as the best party to handle the issue. Now Labour is favoured in most polls, the only Tory consolation being that most voters distrust both the parties equally.

A floundering government and a warming public should present opportunities for progressive politicians to make the case for open migration. So far, Labour’s response has been circumspect – balancing recognition of migrants’ economic contributions with calls for business to do more to raise the skills, productivity and wages of British workers. Yet caution brings its own risks. Tough language and vague policy may be prudent on the campaign trail, but risk storing up problems once in government.

A Labour government, like the current Conservative one, will rely on migrant contributions to grow the economy and staff public services. The party needs to make the case in opposition for the reforms it will need in government. It has made a start, pledging to make the current points-based selection system more responsive to changing economic and social needs and to junk the expensive, performative cruelty of the Rwanda scheme. Labour could go further, for example, by promising root-and-branch reform of the toxic “hostile environment” and by offering a new deal to migrants who make their lives here with liberalised citizenship rules, implemented by a swifter, cheaper and more transparent migration bureaucracy.

Labour’s instinct to tread carefully is understandable – the party has been bruised by immigration before, the public is still wary and liberalism on migration remains more prevalent in the big city seats the opposition already holds than the rural or small town seats it needs to win. Yet such risks can be overstated – the Tory voters most open to Labour are pragmatic moderates who see immigration as beneficial. The Conservatives, distrusted by voters, and terrified of a Farageist revolt on their right, cannot contest the new centre ground. Labour has a once in a generation opportunity to change the conversation on immigration. It may be a risk worth taking.

Robert Ford is co-author with Marley Morris of a new report, A New Consensus? How Public Opinion has Changed on Immigration, published by the Institute for Public Policy Research

Source: Britons have wised up to the benefits of immigration. It’s about time politicians did too

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Immigration department finds no fault in Montreal AIDS summit visa debacle as another conference looms

2022/11/28 Leave a comment

Might help communications if IRCC would be more forthcoming with more data on the reasons for refusals, not stating the general reasons. Likely the systemic issue is concern that some attendees may file refugee claims or overstay, and the economic disparities between some of the countries or origin and Canada:

With Canada set to host a major international summit next month, advocates are warning about a possible repeat of issues that prevented some African delegates from attending a conference in Montreal over the summer, leading to allegations that the federal immigration department’s policies are racist.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said it found no fault in its handling of visa applications for the International AIDS Society conference last July. A number of delegates from Africa were either denied visas or were still waiting for a response by the time the conference got underway.

“The whole system is designed to exclude people,” said Madhukar Pai, the Canada Research Chair in translational epidemiology and global health at McGill University in Montreal.

Next month, Montreal is hosting a United Nations conference on biodiversity loss, stoking worries that delegates from the regions most impacted by declining species will be stuck at home.

“There is something about our governmental system that is, what I call anti-Africa or anti-Black, and that worries me a lot,” said Pai.

For years, Pai has attended conferences where his African colleagues have had more difficulty getting visas than his peers from Latin America and Asia.

It’s an issue he’s seen at events hosted in the U.S., Britain and Canada, and one he was particularly concerned about this spring as Ottawa struggled to process everything from refugee applications to passport renewals.

“I don’t know whether the government has genuinely learned much from the AIDS conference fiasco,” Pai said.

“The anger was so palpable, to have all those empty chairs of African delegates missing; it was egregious…I worry about any international conference that is being held in any part of Canada these days.”

The immigration department doesn’t share Pai’s concern.

“IRCC is using all the tools available at its disposal to facilitate the processing of thousands of visa applications in a short period of time,” spokesman Jeffrey MacDonald said in a written statement.

The department says it has a special events unit that works with conference hosts to try and ensure that visa offices abroad have a list of people who have registered for an event. People also use a special code when applying so that their applications are prioritized.

“IRCC works closely with the Canada Border Services Agency and event organizers to ensure the application process and immigration and entry requirements are understood, so that visa applications are processed in a timely manner and admission for participants can go smoothly,” MacDonald wrote.

The department suggested that people invited to this summer’s conference might have botched their applications.

“Waiting too long to apply, or omitting the special event code, may result in their application not being processed in time for the start of the event,” MacDonald wrote, adding that the department won’t get into specifics of the July event due to privacy legislation.

“There are always compelling reasons some individuals are not allowed to enter Canada.”

Issue is ‘systemic’, not technical, gender and health expert says

Lauren Dobson-Hughes, a consultant specializing in global health and gender, said Canada and other Western countries need to look beyond technical fixes and recognize “a much broader pattern” at these summits.

“It is a systemic issue across the world, where we tend to be divided into the Global North donors who host conferences, and the Global South who live these issues and should have ownership of them — and yet the conferences that are about them are not done with them.”

Dobson-Hughes recalled summits in 2016 and 2019 where African delegates had invitation letters on Government of Canada letterhead, but could not actually get a visa.

“I can’t imagine Global Affairs Canada is particularly delighted that they build respectful, meaningful relationships on a personal basis with colleagues in Africa, for example, only to have their own government turn around and deny them a visa,” she said.

“I have not seen anything that gives a sense that they [IRCC officials] have grappled with the sense of the problem as particularly African participants perceive it.”

Source: Immigration department finds no fault in Montreal AIDS summit visa debacle as another conference looms

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

New group with Beijing links to promote friendly candidates in Canadian elections

2022/11/28 Leave a comment

So it continues:

On the face of it, the fledgling organization’s goals seem innocuous enough — to encourage Chinese-Canadians to run for elected office and vote in elections. The Chinese Council for Western Ontario Elections says it wants to be an “incubator” for candidates who support the community’s interests and educate newcomers about Canadian democracy.

But the council’s links to groups that are closely aligned with the Chinese government — and possibly to a Chinese police station here — are raising concerns amid growing debate about Beijing’s alleged interference in Canadian politics.The council — launched at a formal event in Mississauga on Sunday — is headed by businessman Guo BaoZhang.

Guo is also executive president of the Canada Toronto Fuqing Business Association, named after a city in China’s Fujian province. Its own website says it was set up under the guidance of the United Front Work Department (UFWD) — a branch of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) whose mission is in part to extend Beijing’s influence worldwide.

The association is also named as the owner of units in a Markham, Ont., commercial building that media in China say is the site of one of three Fujian “police service stations” in the province. The same address is listed on the association website as its own location. The RCMP has said it’s investigating the stations, amid fears they could be used to intimidate Chinese expatriates here.

Two of the Fuqing group’s three honorary leaders are Weng Guoning and Wei Chengyi, the current president and honorary chair of the Confederation of Toronto Chinese Canadian Organizations (CTCCO), a group that has long worked with the city’s Chinese consulate to promote Beijing’s positions on contentious issues.

The CTCCO’s Weng is also featured in multiple photographs of the election council’s launch event on Sunday and gave a speech at the ceremony. Someone by his name is listed as a director of another, related elections group.

There’s no indication the council will break any law, but Chinese-Canadian critics of the CCP say the connections are clear, and worrying.

“They are by and large an extension of the apparatus of Beijing,” alleged Karen Woods, founder of the independent Canadian Chinese Political Affairs Committee. “I definitely think this is an area where our security agencies or the police should pay close attention.”

Woods once worked for a lobby firm that represented China’s Toronto consulate, before growing disenchanted with Beijing. Her association touts itself as being independent of China and opposed to foreign interference in elections.

“This really is like an ideological invasion,” said Jonathan Fon, a Toronto paralegal and outspoken critic of the Chinese government, about the new group. “I think that undermines our national security, our social security.”Guo could not be reached for comment by deadline Thursday.

But according to a Chinese-language news report on Sunday’s gathering, the council’s head said its goal was simply to “introduce Canadian democracy to the Chinese community, to help Chinese Canadians better understand Canadian elections, participate in the democratic process, and participate actively in elections.”

“We support candidates of any race, as long as they advocate democratic equality, oppose racial discrimination and support multiculturalism,” Guo is quoted as saying. “We are willing to share our network resources with them to help them gain recognition and support from Chinese voters.”The council was launched as China’s alleged interference in Canadian politics becomes a burning topic on Parliament Hill, with opposition MPs grilling the Liberals on the issue repeatedly recently.

Some of the attention was prompted by a Global News report that said the Canadian Security Intelligence Service had briefed the Prime Minister’s Office in January about a Chinese program that gave money to 11 sympathetic candidates in the 2019 election, using a member of the Ontario legislature and community groups as go-betweens.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has denied he received such a briefing and says outside experts have concluded the last two elections unfolded fairly, but accused Beijing of playing “aggressive games” with Canada and other democracies. And he reportedly raised interference in a brief meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Bali. China rejects suggestions it has intruded in any way.

The Western Ontario election council was registered as a federal non-profit corporation earlier this year. It appears to be an offshoot of the Chinese Council for Canadian Elections, which was registered in 2019. An individual with the same name as CTCCO president Weng is listed as one of that group’s three directors. Another of the three has the same family name and address.

A Chinese-language mission statement by the council obtained and translated by Fon says the group will abide by this country’s laws and constitution

The council will “support incubating Chinese ethnic candidates to participate in the election,” says the statement, adding that it would also back candidates of other ethnicities “who are friendly to the Chinese community” and promise “political views beneficial to the Chinese community after being elected.”

The United Front Work Department that provided “guidance” to Guo’s Fuqing business group was greatly expanded under Xi’s leadership. While it reportedly works closely with diaspora groups to promote China’s interests on issues like Tibet, the Muslim Uyghur minority and Taiwan, it also has an eye on politics in foreign countries.

A leaked handbook for United Front cadres even touted the fact that the number of politicians of Chinese descent elected in Toronto had almost doubled between 2003 and 2006, and urged officials to “work with” them.

The CTCCO, meanwhile, has been a reliable ally of the Chinese government. It ihas defended Beijing’s crackdown on democracy protesters in Hong Kong, while working with the local consulate to promote Beijing’s stance on Tibet, try to bring its Confucius Institute to Toronto schools and celebrate the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic. Beijing’s Overseas Chinese Affairs Office praised the group on its website.

Honorary chairman Wei himself shook hands with Xi at a 2019 event in Beijing. The CTCCO website includes a profile of president Weng by the “propaganda department and the United Front Work Department of the Fuqing Municipal Party Committee.”

With those sorts of connections, it’s hard not to be wary of the new election council, said Cheuk Kwan of the Toronto Association for Democracy in China.

“I’m highly suspicious,” he said. “I would not be surprised if the Chinese consulate or Chinese government is heavily involved.”

Source: New group with Beijing links to promote friendly candidates in Canadian elections

Filed under Multiculturalism, Politics Tagged with , , , , ,

Ivison: Quebec shows Scotland how to get everything you want without separating

2022/11/26 Leave a comment

Valid commentary:
Canada’s exports extend beyond hockey players and cold fronts, as Pierre Trudeau once said. It turns out we are also traders in world-class constitutional jurisprudence.
The U.K.’s Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that the Scottish government cannot hold a second independence referendum without the consent of the British Parliament and based its decision, in part, on Quebec’s past constitutional experiences.

Source: Quebec shows Scotland how to get everything you want without separating

Filed under Government Tagged with , , ,

N.L. immigration minister slams feds over lack of support

2022/11/26 Leave a comment

Of note:

Newfoundland and Labrador’s minister of immigration, population growth and skills is demanding more help — and more money — from his federal counterpart to support immigration and settlement in a province where deaths outstrip births two to one.

While speaking with reporters on Thursday, Gerry Byrne touted Newfoundland and Labrador’s population growth while slamming the federal government for a lack of support.

“There are many issues that need to be resolved with Ottawa,” he said. “Many.”

Byrne’s central frustration is the province’s federally granted immigration allocation, which he said was fulfilled as of Oct. 7.

Now that those spots have been filled, the provincial government won’t be able to nominate any more newcomers for permanent residency until Jan. 1. He said the province will continue to process applications and submit them to the federal government in the new year — but in the meantime, any newcomers who apply will have to wait.

“There is no room left this year,” Byrne said emphatically. “None.”

According to Byrne, the provincial government can nominate 1,140 people for permanent residency under the federal pathway, and 453 people under the Atlantic pathway.

“In previous years, we were lucky if we could fill a third of those spots,” he said.

Byrne said the provincial government is asking the federal government to expand Newfoundland and Labrador’s nomination capacity for the rest of 2022, and double capacity in 2023.

Byrne said he already asked federal Immigration Minister Sean Fraser for more capacity this year, but was turned down.

“Now we are seeing the results of this,” he said.

CBC News has asked the federal Department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship for comment.

Largest population growth in N.L.

According to Byrne, Newfoundland and Labrador’s population grew by 6,200 people in the past 18 months — the largest increase since 1971 — largely through migration from other provinces and countries. He said 5,600 people have immigrated to Newfoundland and Labrador, while 3,700 people have moved to the province from other parts of Canada.

He said the growth doesn’t include Ukrainians who have moved to the province since March.

Byrne also called for more funding for the Association for New Canadians, an agency that helps resettle immigrants and refugees in Newfoundland and Labrador.

According to the province, the federal government provides the association with less funding per refugee than agencies in the other nine provinces.

“The ANC is the lowest-funded support organization in the country,” he said. “That has to change.”

Byrne’s criticisms come during a rocky week for the relationship between the provincial and federal Liberals. On Tuesday, Environment and Climate Change Minister Bernard Davis panned the federal government’s decision to impose the carbon tax on Newfoundland and Labrador.

Just a few hours after the news conference, Premier Andrew Furey reposted a photo of himself with federal Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc.

‘The perfect timing’

Tony Fang, an economics professor at Memorial University, said he’s in “full agreement” with Byrne’s demand for a higher immigration allocation — though he thinks the province should ask for triple, rather than double, the current capacity.

“The federal government certainly should collaborate with the provincial government to take advantage of this large interest in immigration,” he said.

Fang, who leads a research team exploring immigration in Newfoundland and Labrador, said attitudes toward immigrants have improved.

“This is the perfect timing to increase immigration targets,” he said.

Jaclyn Sullivan, executive director of the Newfoundland and Labrador Employers’ Council, said immigration is essential for the province’s economic growth and prosperity, calling the current federal approach “not good enough.”

‘We would like to see much more effort on behalf of the federal government,” she said.

Sullivan said Newfoundland and Labrador doesn’t have enough people to fill jobs.

“We’re all seeing the impact of this,” she said.

NDP MHA Jordan Brown said he supports Byrne’s request for a higher nomination allocation and more funding for the Association for New Canadians, but he also wants to see more help from the provincial government — particularly regarding health care.

“We’re lacking in support both federally and provincially,” he said.

Source: N.L. immigration minister slams feds over lack of support

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →