Blogging break
2022/11/02 Leave a comment
Back on the 14th.
Hong Kongers returning to Vancouver after years of population decline, census shows
2022/11/01 Leave a comment
Not surprising given Chinese government takeover:
Ken Tung says he recently helped a new arrival from Hong Kong find a basement unit in Metro Vancouver for only $500 rent per month, thanks to a discount by a sympathetic landlord.
“It’s a good price,” said Tung, who said he has helped at least 100 young people from Hong Kong settle in Canada over the past three years.
But Tung said he’s playing a relatively limited role resettling Hong Kongers compared to Vancouver-based groups, including churches, that have helped thousands.
“I know many churches and their people are helping Hong Kong newcomers .… People are donating furniture and lowering the rent to help them out,” said Tung.
Tung and others like him are facilitating a shift that shows up in new Canadian census figures.
The data released this week shows the Hong Kong-born population of Canada is on the rise, with a large majority settling in the Vancouver region, reversing a return-migration trend that had previously seen thousands of Hong Kongers leaving Canada.
Experts say the shift is being propelled by a political crackdown in Hong Kong, which came under a sweeping national security law in 2020 after anti-government protests.
The 2021 census shows a 6.1 per cent increase of Hong Kong-born people in Vancouver’s census metropolitan area in the past five years, bringing the total population to more than 76,000. It had previously been falling for decades.
The increase of 4,395 accounts for 90 per cent of the Canada-wide increase of Hong Kongers since 2016, when the previous census was conducted.
Many more are on the way, using new migration pathways that Canada opened up to Hong Kongers last year.
Tung said he wasn’t surprised by the census numbers.
He said Hong Kongers arriving in Metro Vancouver recently mainly fell into four categories — returnees who already hold Canadian citizenship, people arriving on new work permits, students and some asylum seekers.
He said their motivations were largely the same. “The answer is simple — they can’t see a future in Hong Kong,” Tung said
The national security law has been used to target protesters and political opponents of the Hong Kong government and the Chinese Communist Party.
Tung said those leaving Hong Kong did so after watching Hong Kong go from being “open, modernized” to “hardcore communism.”
Hong Kong was Canada’s biggest source of immigrants in the lead-up to the 1997 handover to China, but Hong Kongers’ presence in Canada had been shrinking steadily for years as thousands moved back to the former British colony.
The crackdown in Hong Kong was followed by the establishment of new Canadian migration pathways in response.
But while the census shows 2,385 recent Hong Kong immigrants to the Vancouver census metropolitan area in the preceding five years, that number is outstripped by the actual increase in the Hong Kong-born population, suggesting more than 45 per cent of newcomers already held Canadian citizenship or some other status.
One such newcomer, a financial analyst who declined to be named for safety reasons, said he was born in Hong Kong but immigrated to Canada with his parents and finished his studies here.
His parents brought the family to Canada in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown in Beijing, which triggered an exodus from Hong Kong and Taiwan.
But in the mid-2000s, he went back to Hong Kong for work. It wasn’t until last year he decided to reverse direction again, returning to Vancouver with his wife and son.
“I used to have the freedom to speak my mind, have choices in reading different news media and discuss in public without any repercussion. This is really valuable to me .… And therefore when it’s gone, Hong Kong is no longer Hong Kong,” he said.
He said he was making a good living in Hong Kong and enjoying the low-tax environment there, but decided there is “something more important than the money.”
“I have a kid and it’s not only for myself but also for his future. I can’t stand living in that environment,” he said.
“It’s a very tough journey to go through. Seeing young people getting oppressed and intellectuals being jailed and detained. It’s definitely a saddening journey.”
Kennedy Chi-Pan Wong is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Southern California who has studied Hong Kong migration patterns.
Wong said his research showed many recent migrants were Hong Kong political prisoners’ relatives, friends or colleagues.
The U.S.-based Hong Kong Democracy Council says there are 1,163 political prisoners in Hong Kong as of September 2022.
“That actually creates a large pushing force, (as we call it) in migration studies, that really push people out of the country,” said Wong.
In addition to the political unrest, other factors have also come into play, such as Hong Kong and mainland China’s strict pandemic rules, said Wong.
He said the COVID rules that had inhibited mobility had created concern about doing business in Hong Kong, and the city’s future prosperity.
The influx looks set to accelerate, with more than 20,000 permits for study, permanent residency and work granted to Hong Kongers last year after Canada launched a new open work permit pathway last year for Hong Kong residents who are recent graduates of post-secondary institutions.
Some of those pathways only came into effect after the May 2021 census.
Wong agreed that the peak of newcomers from Hong Kong hasn’t arrived in Canada yet.
Meanwhile, the financial analyst who returned to Vancouver said he hoped the new arrivals would help capture some of Hong Kong’s previous spirit.
“(We) will connect with them and make sure the culture and values are preserved,” he said.
Source: Hong Kongers returning to Vancouver after years of population decline, census shows
Immigration Canada discrimine les étudiants d’Afrique francophone. Voici ce que Québec devrait faire pour y mettre fin
2022/11/01 Leave a comment
More concerns expressed, somewhat scattered rather than focussed:
La campagne électorale québécoise s’est terminée sur un verdict sans appel. La Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) a été reportée au pouvoir face à une opposition divisée et en retrait.
L’heure est au bilan et à l’élaboration des nouvelles orientations du gouvernement. Notamment en matière d’immigration.
Une campagne pénible sur le thème de l’immigration
Il a beaucoup été question d’immigration durant cette campagne. Rarement en des termes qui élevaient le débat, malheureusement. Le premier ministre François Legault a amalgamé l’immigration à des mœurs violentes pouvant heurter les « valeurs » des Québécois. L’ancien ministre de l’Immigration, Jean Boulet a démontré sa méconnaissance des chiffres de son propre ministère lors d’une sortie gênante. En voulant rectifier le tir, le premier ministre en a rajouté en qualifiant une hausse des seuils d’immigration au-delà de 50 000 immigrants par année de « suicidaire ».
Il est tout à fait légitime pour un État de mesurer les impacts de différents seuils d’immigration. Mais si le nouveau gouvernement veut se faire rassembleur, il devrait éviter d’avoir recours à des sifflets à chiens pour les amateurs de théories du déclin.
En tant que professeur dans le domaine de la sociologie politique, je m’intéresse aux dynamiques et transformations sociopolitiques au Québec et au Canada.
Discrimination systémique à Immigration Canada
Lors de son deuxième mandat, le gouvernement caquiste doit aborder les enjeux liés à l’immigration d’une façon moins frileuse et plus ambitieuse.
Paradoxalement, dans un contexte où plusieurs partis à l’Assemblée nationale adhèrent à une forme ou à une autre de nationalisme, aucune formation ne semble s’inquiéter de la diminution du poids démographique du Québec et de la francophonie au sein de la fédération canadienne, confirmée par les dernières données publiées par Statistique Canada.
Or, le développement de la francophonie canadienne et des institutions francophones au Québec devra passer, entre autres choses, par une immigration en provenance des pays d’Afrique francophone et par une plus grande ouverture à l’égard de celle-ci.
En lien avec ce premier enjeu, un deuxième doit être abordé et dénoncé de façon beaucoup plus frontale par l’Assemblée nationale à Québec, soit celui des obstacles posés par le gouvernement fédéral, par Immigration Canada pour être précis, aux étudiants·e·s de la francophonie noire africaine qui cherchent à étudier dans une institution francophone au Québec.
Ces étudiants·e·s subissent un taux de refus nettement supérieur aux étudiants·e·s appliquant dans les institutions anglophones : ce taux se situe autour de 60 % au Québec, 45 % en Ontario et 37 % en Colombie-Britannique. Les étudiants·e·s d’Afrique francophone sont surreprésentés parmi ces refus. En 2021, le gouvernement canadien a rejeté 72 % des candidatures provenant de pays africains ayant une forte population francophone, contre 35 % pour l’ensemble des autres régions du monde.
Cette situation est documentée et connue à Immigration Canada. Mais combattre cette forme de discrimination ne semble pas la priorité du ministère.
Ça ne semble pas être une priorité du Parti libéral du Canada non plus, en dépit de sa profession de foi antiraciste dans bien d’autres dossiers. Cette situation cause un préjudice d’abord aux étudiants·e·s en question, puis aux établissements d’enseignement supérieur au Québec. C’est pour cette raison que l’Assemblée nationale doit s’en saisir vigoureusement.
Racisme et francophobie
Durant les premiers mois où cette situation a été révélée, deux arguments ont été mis de l’avant par le fédéral pour la justifier : un problème algorithmique (ceux-ci ont le dos large) ; puis, la crainte que ces étudiants·e·s ne retournent pas dans leur pays.
Cette deuxième affirmation avait le mérite d’être claire. Pire, lorsqu’il s’agit de la francophonie noire africaine, le traitement discriminatoire des demandes va au-delà des seuls étudiants. C’est l’ensemble des dossiers qui semble faire l’objet de délais déraisonnables. De nombreux chercheurs africains devant participer à des congrès, comme celui sur sur le sida, qui se tenait cet été à Montréal, ont vu leur demande de visas refusée ou ne l’ont pas reçu à temps, une situation dénoncée par les organisateurs.
Encore là, le gouvernement libéral a l’indignation à géométrie variable.
Dernièrement, Immigration Canada a confessé du bout des lèvres qu’il y avait du racisme, jumelé à de la francophobie, à son ministère. Cela survient près d’un an après que ces pratiques aient été dénoncées par les institutions d’enseignement supérieur francophones.
L’Assemblée nationale du Québec doit dénoncer à l’unanimité cette discrimination.
Québec doit également rectifier le tir
Dans ce dossier, le gouvernement québécois doit lui aussi faire un examen de conscience.
Les signaux envoyés par Québec ces dernières années n’ont pas été attrayants pour les étudiants internationaux. Dans le cadre d’une mesure incompréhensible, le gouvernement a alourdi et allongé le temps de résidence nécessaire au Québec pour les étudiants internationaux souhaitant y demander la résidence permanente ou la citoyenneté.
Or, à la fin de leurs études ces étudiants·e·s bénéficient d’un réseau favorable à leur insertion professionnelle, sociale et culturelle. Pour reprendre une formule du premier ministre Legault, créer des embûches à ces étudiants·e·s est « suicidaire » pour l’attrait des universités québécoises face à leurs rivales des autres provinces.
Jouer les régions contre Montréal nuit aux institutions francophones à Montréal
Un troisième enjeu gagnerait à être réévalué par la nouvelle ministre de l’Éducation supérieure, Pascale Déry.
À la fin de son premier mandat, la CAQ a pris la décision de favoriser la régionalisation des étudiants internationaux dans certains domaines d’études au moyen d’incitatifs financiers s’ils étudient en région.
C’est, en soi, une excellente nouvelle. Les étudiants·e·s internationaux en région dynamisent le tissu social et culturel et ils revitalisent des institutions d’enseignement indispensables à la vitalité des régions. Cependant, on peut se demander s’il est pertinent de jouer les régions contre Montréal sur cet enjeu. Afin de freiner le déclin des institutions d’enseignement francophones à Montréal (toutes connaissent une baisse d’inscriptions cet automne), le gouvernement provincial peut aussi agir en les aidant à attirer des étudiants internationaux francophones à Montréal.
Jouer les régions contre Montréal est de bonne guerre en campagne électorale, mais si le gouvernement est sérieux à l’égard de la situation du français à Montréal, il doit se doter d’un plan pour contribuer au rayonnement de l’enseignement supérieur en français également dans la métropole.
Francophonie métropolitaine : le temps est à l’ambition
En 1967 et 1968, la création du réseau des Cégeps et de l’Université du Québec a favorisé la démocratisation de l’accès à l’éducation en français au Québec.
En 2022, l’objectif de la nouvelle ministre de l’Éducation supérieure pourrait être de faire de ce réseau d’éducation publique un pôle de référence pour la francophonie au Canada et dans le monde. Une première étape de ce programme devrait consister dans un appui systématique aux universités francophones dans leurs tentatives d’attirer des étudiants de la francophonie canadienne.
Dans un contexte où les campus francophones hors Québec subissent des compressions alarmantes et où règnent un climat de francophobie à l’Université d’Ottawa, qui a pourtant, sur papier, le mandat de célébrer la francophonie, le gouvernement québécois doit se montrer plus attrayant, plus agressif et plus ambitieux.
En somme, la CAQ doit se doter d’une stratégie cohérente, ambitieuse et moins frileuse en matière d’éducation publique supérieure et d’immigration durant ce deuxième mandat.
L’élaboration d’une telle stratégie pourrait faire l’objet d’une concertation impliquant la ministre Pascale Déry, la nouvelle ministre de l’Immigration, Christine Fréchette, ainsi que Pierre Fitzgibbon, ministre de l’Économie ainsi que de l’Innovation et du Développement économique de la région de Montréal. Il faut leur souhaiter de l’ambition dans l’appui au rayonnement des institutions d’éducation publique supérieures, que ce soit à Montréal ou en région.
Ces institutions devront être reconnues et appuyées comme des vecteurs au cœur de l’intégration sociale et culturelle au Québec. Cette stratégie devrait se montrer ambitieuse également en ce qui a trait au développement de collaborations avec les universités de la francophonie africaine, et elle devra envoyer un signal clair en condamnant de façon unanime les pratiques discriminatoires à Immigration Canada.
Rubin: Exposing Library and Archives Canada’s dismal transparency record
2022/11/01 Leave a comment
Another illustration of how broken ATIP is:
When I first came to Ottawa in the mid-1960s, I started going to the National Archives to access government records. I met Archives personnel who were trying to get the federal government to adopt better electronic record management to meet the growing demands for information.
But their efforts were largely ignored as more and more government record management came under the Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS) authority. There, record retrievals became more difficult and descended into a confusing and conflicted state of instability.
This was at a time when government department libraries were disappearing. My ability to freely wander the shelves and stacks and to get reference help ended when the access-to-information regime took over in the mid-1980s. Agency record collections became secret and inaccessible to the public.
By then, the Treasury Board Secretariat had firmly taken control of overall information management policy, with National Archives playing second fiddle. TBS sought to “standardize” and sanitize federal information holdings at a cost of many millions of dollars.
With the 2004 merger of the National Archives and the National Library, the new Library and Archives Canada (LAC) took on the attributes of a regular government agency under the Treasury Board’s tight control, driven by the latest software and ever-increasing secrecy practices.
Just another obedient agency
When Daniel Caron—neither a professional librarian, nor archivist—was put in charge at the LAC in 2009, he accelerated this deference to government powers, acting more like a TBS lieutenant.
He pressed for greater “modernization,” clumsily and at great expense transmitting LAC holdings into electronic file holdings. Caron didn’t fight the cuts imposed on LAC’s professional archivists and librarians, and seemed to relish reining in any staff’s independent actions to help the public. Nor did he fight the Public Works demand that LAC’s auditorium and meeting facilities be reserved only for federally sanctioned events and not for public use (Justice Paul Rouleau’s inquiry on the use of the Emergencies Act is currently taking place in the Library and Archives Canada building on Wellington Street).
Caron’s end came in 2013 after I obtained access to records that showed he was, at taxpayer expense, taking Spanish lessons. When he refused to end the language training, the heritage minister at the time fired him.
Eventually, LAC got a professional head and some of their former information reference service capacities were restored. But it was much too late for LAC to gain an influential central role under the Access to Information Act.
One example of how LAC had become just another obedient agency is how it took little interest in even housing or publicly listing and preserving past completed access-to-information requests.
That task, ignored for 20 years, was eventually done though the so-called open government portal, though the actual records received under access requests were never posted, just the titles of thousands of requests. The result is that much of the unofficial—at times very valuable and of historic record—of what the government did was destroyed without Canada’s retainer agency or historic records, LAC, giving one iota.
Not so well known was that for many years archive authorities had secret deals. One such arrangement that I have written about previously was that ministers’ “personal” and “political” past records deposited at LAC were allowed to remain secret for multiple years—even permanently—as demanded by ex-ministers and prime ministers.
LAC continues to make available public funds, office space, and staff to past prime ministers who assemble their so-called “personal” and “political” records. Such “private donations” get charitable income tax receipts. It’s not clear whether LAC has ever pushed back on prime ministers on ministerial claims made, Trump-style, about those records really being their personal property, a highly questionable practice in the first place.
Another long-standing deal is with the House Speaker, allowing in-camera parliamentary committee records to be hidden and housed at LAC for long periods of time.
A more recent 2018 secrecy arrangement with the Supreme Court of Canada favours many of the judges’ deliberation records remaining secret for a minimum of 50 years or more.
If that were not contentious enough, LAC has also turned its back on acquiring and preserving residential school records. Instead—and likely a better arrangement—many of those government records were sent to the University of Manitoba’s National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation in 2015. LAC, however, still has many residential school records in its possession and has been slow to get those and other federal records processed and out, especially those records held tightly by the federal Indigenous departments.
Which brings us to the 2018 Dagg case where LAC issued consultant Michael Dagg an 80-year wait-time, given the estimated 780,000 records dealing with the RCMP’s Project Anecdote, a 10-year investigation on secret commissions, money laundering and corruption, including in real estate, an investigation which ran out of steam and from which no charges were ever laid.
Dagg complained about the excessive delay to Information Commissioner Caroline Maynard, who then requested LAC take a mere 65 years to respond. The delay issue went to the Federal Court for appeal. Sadly, it was discontinued upon Dagg’s death this past September.
Faster info declassification a good first step to change
LAC, as Dagg, I, and others well-discovered, has become a typical unresponsive and obstinate bureaucratic agency quite willing to severely censor our tax-paid records under legislated secrecy claims.
Maynard’s scathing investigation report on LAC, released on April 26, 2022, readily confirms LAC’s unacceptable long wait-times to access requests, amounting to LAC regularly not meeting its legal obligation under access legislation.
The minister responsible for reporting on LAC activities, Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez, responded to Maynard’s report recommendations by refusing to take responsibility to correct LAC’s poor access-to-information services. He declined to put forward a strategic plan to quickly correct LAC’s laggard and disgraceful access-to-information record.
Maynard’s report scolded LAC and the Government of Canada (read the Treasury Board Secretariat, the Privy Council Office, and the Prime Minister’s Office) for not taking the lead to quickly declassify records it holds and receives from government agencies. Maynard recommended that the federal government establish a strong declassification directive as a crucial element to the functioning of access legislation.
However, LAC no longer seems up to the task of promptly declassifying those records it has in its possession. That’s even if agencies send any those records at all.
It would be helpful if the information commissioner could get tough on LAC for failing to declassify their records for public use on a timely basis, and if she, along with a rejuvenated LAC’s help, could penalize those government agencies that don’t bother to keep written records, that alter them, or that refuse to hand over records to LAC.
Another serious problem is that LAC quietly follows TBS’s 40-year practice of massive record destruction. Hundreds of thousands of draft records annually don’t make it at all to LAC as TBS orders agencies to regularly destroy draft transitory operational records.
One thing that LAC still does a relatively good job doing is collecting outside legally required deposited information from those publishing and that includes letting the public know about those published records.
Once seen as an arm’s-length agency keeping check on the PMO and the Treasury Board Secretariat’s all-powerful grip on federal records has simply wilted and been cast aside by the same cabal.
LAC has fallen in line with the centralized secrecy commands that rule Ottawa, and has even outdone many other government agencies in their dislike to giving Canadians access to their records on a timely and fuller basis.
Can LAC become more than a secrecy shill for the government? At the very least it would help if LAC, who holds the vast majority of government historical records, gets going in declassifying more records for release. That would be a start.
LAC badly needs to change course and become an independent record manager force with integrity, a pro-disclosure champion for the fulsome and quick release of federal information.
Respect and trust would follow.
Ken Rubin is a long-time observer of transparency and secrecy trends in Ottawa. He is reachable via kenrubin.ca
Source: Exposing Library and Archives Canada’s dismal transparency record
Iran’s protesters find inspiration in a Kurdish revolutionary slogan
2022/11/01 Leave a comment
Interesting background to the slogan used by Iranian and other protesters:
For 41 days, thousands of Iranians have taken to the streets in anger over the death of a young Kurdish woman in police custody, even as authorities continue their violent crackdown against them. The demonstrations — honoring the memory of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, whose Kurdish first name was Jina — have become the largest women’s rights movement in Iran’s recent history.
One resounding slogan has become the movement’s rallying cry: “Jin, jiyan, azadi!” — or “Woman, life, freedom!”
First chanted by mourners at Amini’s burial in her hometown of Saqez, the slogan quickly spread from the country’s Kurdish cities to the capital, Tehran. It took on new life in its Farsi translation — “Zan, zendegi, azadi” — and the message continues to reverberate across solidarity protests from Berlin to New York. Even fashion brands like Balenciaga and Gucci have posted the slogan to their Instagram feeds.
The words “jin, jiyan, azadi” and their various translations have unified Iranians across ethnic and social lines. They have come to signify the demand for women’s bodily autonomy and a collective resistance against 43 years of repression by the Iranian regime.
But Kurdish activists say that some Iranians and the media are overlooking key elements of the Kurdish background of both Amini herself and the slogan pulsing through the mass protests sparked by her death.
“It’s meant to be a universal slogan for a universal women’s struggle. That was what was always intended with it,” says Elif Sarican, a London-based anthropologist and activist in the Kurdish women’s movement. “But the root needs to be understood, at the very least in respect towards the people who have sacrificed their lives for it, but also to understand what this is saying. … These aren’t just words.”
The slogan was popularized during women’s marches in Turkey in 2006
The slogan originated with the Kurdish Freedom Movement, led by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an armed group carrying out an insurgency against Turkish authorities since the 1980s. The State Department has long designated the PKK as a terrorist organization.
The slogan was inspired by the writings of Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK’s cofounder, who said that “a country can’t be free unless the women are free.”
Ocalan advocated for what he called “jineoloji,” a Kurdish feminist school of thought. That ultimately led to the development of an autonomous women’s struggle — the Kurdish women’s movement — within the broader Kurdish Freedom Movement, Sarican explains.
She says the slogan was first popularized during International Women’s Day marches across Turkey on March 8, 2006. Turkey, with about 15 million Kurds, is home to the largest population of Kurds in the Middle East. Although they make up an estimated 18% to 20% of the nation’s population, they face discrimination and persecution.
Since 2006, Sarican says, “Every year, based on ‘jin, jiyan, azadi’ as the philosophy of freedom, there’s been various different campaigns that have been announced and declared to the world by the Kurdish women’s movement on each 8th of March — to say that this is our contribution, this is our call and this is our encouragement for a common struggle of women against colonialism and patriarchal capitalism.”
Five years ago, Kurdish female guerrilla fighters with the YPJ militia chanted the slogan during the Kurdish-led Rojava revolution in northern Syria that began in 2012.
Kurds in Iran face discrimination and many live in poverty
Ignoring the slogan’s political history contributes to the long-standing erasure of Kurdish people’s identity and struggle, activists say.
That’s also been the case in international coverage of Amini’s death, they contend, in which Mahsa — Amini’s Iranian state-sanctioned first name — is used. In interviews, Amini’s parents have used both her Iranian and Kurdish names.
Like many Kurds in Iran, Amini was not allowed to legally register her Kurdish name, which means “life.”
“I felt like she died twice because no one really was mentioning her Kurdish name or her Kurdish background, which is so relevant,” says Beri Shalmashi, an Amsterdam-based Iranian Kurdish writer and filmmaker.
Besides facing ethnic discrimination, Kurds, who make up an estimated 15% of Iran’s population, are marginalized as Sunni Muslims in a Shia-majority country. Their language is restricted and they account for nearly half of political prisoners in Iran. The country’s Kurdish regions are also among its most impoverished.
The Iranian government has blamed Kurds for the current unrest in Iran, according to news reports, and has attacked predominantly Kurdish cities, like Sanandaj and Oshnavieh. Some Persian nationalists, meanwhile, continue to ignore the lived experiences of Kurds in the country.
Shalmashi believes it’s vital to highlight Amini’s Kurdish identity, and the Kurdish roots of “jin, jiyan, azadi,” as a reminder of the need for greater rights for all people in today’s Iran — no matter their ethnicity or gender. Without inclusion and unity, she warns, the current protests risk becoming meaningless.
“Because if you don’t make room for people to be in this together,” she says, “then what are you going to do if you even succeed?”
Source: Iran’s protesters find inspiration in a Kurdish revolutionary slogan
Advocates urge Ottawa to remove quota on Afghan refugee sponsorship program
2022/10/31 Leave a comment
Of note – quoted:
A group of advocates is urging the federal government to remove the limit on applications to sponsor certain Afghan refugees in Canada – or at least stop counting rejected applications towards it.
The government introduced a new program last month to allow Canadian individuals and organizations to privately sponsor up to 3,000 Afghan refugees who don’t have refugee status from the United Nations refugee agency or a foreign state.
It said it will accept sponsorship applications under the new program until Oct. 17, 2023, or once it has received applications for 3,000 refugees – whichever comes first.
In a letter sent to Immigration Minister Sean Fraser last week, a volunteer with Northern Lights Canada, a non-profit that’s been helping Afghan refugees in Toronto, said the new program’s cap is “highly prejudicial,” compared to the accommodations made for Ukrainians who want to come to Canada.
“Minister Fraser, I urge you to reconsider the design of the Afghan special program,” Heather Finley wrote in her letter dated Oct. 22.
“By raising the applicant quota and removing rejected applications from it, you will allow a more fair and equitable opportunity for Afghans in Canada to sponsor their families to join them here.”
Stephen Watt, co-founder of Northern Lights Canada, said the new program doesn’t come close to meeting the needs of Afghan refugees and their families and friends in Canada.
“Just having 3,000 spots in a crisis where millions of people are very recently displaced. It is insulting,” he said in an interview.
Almost 109,000 Ukrainians arrived to Canada between Jan. 1 and Oct. 23 under special programs the government introduced to help unlimited numbers of Ukrainians and their family members flee the war in Ukraine to safety.
Meanwhile, Ottawa has committed to resettling a total of 40,000 Afghan refugees after the Taliban took over Afghanistan in August of last year, with fewer than 23,000 having arrived in Canada so far.
Immigration Department spokeswoman Isabelle Dubois said the program that has allowed Ukrainians to come to Canada is using the department’s existing temporary resident visa processes, networks and infrastructure to bring as many of them as quickly as possible.
“This is not a refugee program, as compared to our Afghanistan refugee resettlement program, since Ukrainians have indicated that they need temporary safe harbour,” she said.
“Many of them intend to return to their home country when it will be safe to do so.”
Dubois said the government provided 3,000 additional spaces for organizations wanting to sponsor Afghan refugees in addition to the 3,000 spaces under the new special program.
“We are also processing existing and new private sponsorship applications for up to 7,000 Afghan refugees,” she said.
Watt said the new program’s application system crashed shortly after the government opened it at midnight on Oct. 17 due to many people rushing to submit applications.
He said many will likely end up rejected on a technicality because the government said it will process only the first 3,000 applicants and thus sponsors had to raise funds and write their sponsorship applications quickly.
“It’s so disappointing,” he said.
“This announcement that whether (the applications) are good or bad, we’re still going to count them towards the total. So, what that did was create this condition where people were frantically rushing to put together applications.”
Dubois confirmed the government will count all completed applications towards the new program’s 3,000 limit and said the department is currently reviewing the received applications to determine whether it reached that cap.
“We understand some clients experienced issues when submitting an application. No applications were lost as files were automatically backed up,” Dubois said.
“Applications are reviewed on a first-in, first-out basis to determine their completeness. We will continue to send out acknowledgments of receipt for applications that are determined to be complete and accepted into processing.”
Watt said the government should remove the cap on how many Afghan refugees can be privately sponsored for one year to allow people to work on the sponsorship applications – which he said can take months to put together because the requirements are so stringent and excessive.
“If you had a family of seven that may be $70,000 you have to get together. You have to get all the sponsorship documents lined up. You have to write the application,” he said.
“Filling out PDFs perfectly in perfect English when you’reanew Canadian, and having to having to rise to the challenge of these applications which are very demanding even for people who are completely fluent in English and have great use of computer skills.”
Andrew Griffith, a former director at the federal Immigration Department, said he is not aware of any government immigration or refugee program that counted rejected application towards the target other than the new special program for Afghan refugees.
He said many have been criticizing the government for apparently prioritizing Ukrainian refugees over Afghan refugees.
“The situations for both sets of refugees are dire in many cases,” he said. “I’m not (trying to) apply any value statements on that, but it does highlight another discrepancy between the two groups of refugees in my view.”
Griffith said it’s true that the Ukrainians are formally coming to Canada on temporary visas, but many of them may end up staying here.
“Realistically, how many of the people accepted from Ukraine will go back?” he said. “I think most of them would probably like to go. I don’t deny that. But it depends on the situation.”
Source: Advocates urge Ottawa to remove quota on Afghan refugee sponsorship program
Once wary of immigrants, Canadian town sends out global labor SOS
2022/10/31 Leave a comment
After all the fuss over the code and the debates over reasonable accommodation, reality intrudes:
Herouxville, a small town in Canada’s Quebec, hit the headlines 15 years ago when it issued a code of conduct for would-be immigrants, warning them not to stone women or burn them alive, and to only cover their faces at Halloween.
Fast forward to 2022, and it’s actively courting new arrivals.
The town council’s once deep-seated fear over accommodating immigrants at the expense of its French-speaking identify has given way to a more pressing concern: a need for more families to help fill jobs, attend its schools and sustain its population.
Herouxville now wants to be known for its inclusion. It’s considering measures like subsidised housing to lure more immigrants.
“A new family, no matter where they are from, if we can welcome them here we are pleased to do it,” said Bernard Thompson, mayor of the town of 1,300 people in central Quebec. “The needs are huge in the rural areas.”
Herouxville’s outreach is a response to a wider quandary facing Quebec, Canada and many other countries, to varying degrees, as governments from London and Washington to Canberra and Tokyo balance public and political pressure to curb immigration against crippling labour shortages.
Ageing populations, a surge in workers retiring and Covid travel and business chaos are among factors contributing to the sta! crunch hitting both low-paid and skilled occupations, from hospitality and manufacturing to transport and agriculture.
Canada has the worst labour shortages in the Western world, according to the latest OECD data from late 2021. Its plight has been exacerbated by a record wave of retirements this year. The problem is particularly dire in rural Quebec, o”en overlooked by a limited pool of newcomers who prefer to stay in Montreal.
The latest Canadian census data puts new numbers to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s drive to ramp up immigration to plug the sta! and skills gaps, which economists say are pushing up wages and threaten to drag down productivity.
Immigrants now account for 23 per cent of Canada’s population, up from 21.9 per cent in 2016, with newcomers accounting for 80 per cent of the country’s labour force growth over the last five years, the census released by Statistics Canada on Wednesday showed.
The census also paints a portrait of urban landings, with more than 90 per cent of recent immigrants living in a city, leaving smaller towns and rural areas grappling to attract newcomers to replace aging factory workers, grocery clerks and doctors.
QUEBEC’S IMMIGRANT CAP
Quebec, a mostly French- speaking province with broad control over its own immigration policy, is resisting change more than elsewhere in Canada. Just 14.6 per cent of its 8.3 million people were born overseas, far below the national average, the new data showed.
The Coalition Avenir Quebec government was re-elected this month pledging to cap permanent arrivals at 50,000 a year to safeguard the region’s language and culture. Immigration has been kept flat at around that level for years, even as Canada’s has risen 49 per cent since Trudeau’s Liberals took o!ice in late 2015.
Reflecting torn local sentiment, Quebec Premier Francois Legault has described immigrants as a source of wealth, though has also said
that allowing more people in without ensuring they speak French would be “suicidal”.
But Legault extended an olive branch to immigrants last week, setting a cabinet that included a trilingual immigration minister and a Black anti-racism minister.
RED CARPET TO NEWCOMERS
Quebec had 246,300 job vacancies as of July 2022 and just 185,100 unemployed people. The labour gap is particularly dire in manufacturing, where the region’s industry association estimating sta! shortages had cost them C$18 billion ($13 billion) in two years.
“Our labour force participation is under more pressure than elsewhere, because we are just not seeing the foreign workers to replace those that are retiring,” said Jimmy Jean, chief economist at financial services firm Desjardins Group in Montreal.
Jean said he expected the Quebec government to come under pressure from businesses to raise the immigration cap, adding that the province risked being le” behind economically by neighbouring Ontario and other large provinces Alberta and British Columbia.
It’s Quebec’s rural towns that are feeling the most acute pain as they have far less migrant pulling power than diverse Montreal, the province’s biggest city, which itself faces deep labour shortages.
That’s why local authorities are taking it upon themselves to roll out the red carpet to newcomers in places like Herouxville, which has long abandoned its code of conduct for immigrants.
Mayor Thompson said the code – unanimously approved by the town council in 2007 – was consigned to the town archives in 2010 by the council that he has run since 2009.
“It was never a legal document … and it is now a historical document,” he added. “It’s been a long time since the citizens and my town put this episode aside.”
Source: Once wary of immigrants, Canadian town sends out global labor SOS
Yakabuski: Le Canada, champion mondial d’immigration
2022/10/31 Leave a comment
Good observations on the contrast between Quebec and the rest of Canada:
Le ministre fédéral de l’Immigration, des Réfugiés et de la Citoyenneté, Sean Fraser, s’apprête à dévoiler de nouvelles cibles en matière d’immigration pour 2023, 2024 et 2025. Et tout indique que l’annonce que M. Fraser fera mardi prochain prévoira une nouvelle hausse du nombre de résidents permanents par rapport aux dernières cibles, celles-là annoncées il y a un an à peine. Alors que le Québec promet de plafonner ses seuils d’immigration autour de 50 000 nouveaux résidents permanents par année, le reste du Canada, lui, s’apprêterait à bientôt accueillir plus de huit fois ce nombre. Nul besoin d’être économiste ou démographe pour anticiper les conséquences à court et à long termes de ces positions discordantes.
Déjà, le Québec voit sa part d’immigrants fondre comme peau de chagrin d’année en année. Destination de 19,2 % des immigrants arrivés au Canada entre 2006 et 2011, le Québec n’accueillait plus que 15,3 % des immigrants entrés au pays entre 2016 et 2021. Les données provenant du dernier recensement publiées cette semaine par Statistique Canada témoignent de l’énorme transformation démographique que connaît le Canada anglais, et ce, même en dehors de ses plus grandes métropoles.
À Hamilton et à Winnipeg, deux villes ayant une population semblable à celle de Québec, la proportion d’immigrants s’élève maintenant à plus de 25 % ; dans la Vieille Capitale, à peine 6,7 % des résidents sont nés en dehors du Canada. Dans la ville de Saguenay, une proportion famélique de la population est issue de l’immigration, soit 1,3 %, alors qu’à Red Deer et à Lethbridge, des villes albertaines de tailles semblables, les proportions sont de 16,9 % et de 14,4 %, respectivement.
Les chiffres frappent encore davantage l’imagination lorsque l’on tient compte des enfants des immigrants. Dans la grande région de Toronto, par exemple, presque 80 % des résidents sont immigrants de première ou de deuxième générations, selon une analyse des données du recensement effectuée par le démographe Doug Norris, de la firme torontoise Environics. À Montréal, environ 46 % des résidents sont immigrants ou enfants d’immigrants. Bien qu’il s’agisse d’une proportion passablement élevée, c’est moins qu’à Vancouver (73 %), qu’à Calgary (55 %) ou qu’à Edmonton (50 %).
Selon les résultats d’un sondage publié cette semaine par Environics, et effectué pour le compte de L’Initiative du siècle, les Canadiens sont plus favorables que jamais à l’immigration. Ceci n’est pas surprenant ; plus de 40 % des Canadiens sont immigrants ou enfants d’immigrants. On peut s’attendre à ce que ces gens aient un parti pris en faveur de l’immigration.
Mais le consensus canadien en matière d’immigration s’étend bien au-delà des communautés culturelles du pays. « Alors même que le pays accueille plus de 400 000 nouveaux arrivants par année, sept Canadiens sur dix soutiennent les seuils actuels d’immigration — la plus forte majorité en 45 ans de sondages Environics, a fait remarquer Lisa Lalande, présidente de L’Initiative du siècle, un organisme qui prône une politique d’immigration ayant pour but d’augmenter la population canadienne à 100 millions de personnes en l’an 2100. Malgré la rhétorique chargée sur l’immigration durant la campagne électorale provinciale, les Québécois appuient tout autant l’accueil des immigrants et des réfugiés que les Canadiens ailleurs au pays. »
Or, le sondage d’Environics fut mené en septembre, alors que la Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) promettait de maintenir les seuils d’immigration à 50 000 dans la province. Donc, l’expression « les seuils actuels d’immigration » n’a pas le même sens ici qu’ailleurs au Canada. Au Québec, ces seuils sont plutôt modestes ; dans le reste du Canada, ils sont très élevés.
Les 50 000 résidents permanents que le Québec s’engage à accueillir chaque année équivalent à environ 0,6 % de la population, et cette proportion est appelée à diminuer au fur et à mesure que la population augmentera. Les seuils d’immigration ailleurs au Canada s’élèvent à environ 1,2 % de la population par année, alors que cette population augmente à un rythme beaucoup plus rapide qu’au Québec. Au lieu de 400 000 nouveaux arrivants par an, c’est près de 500 000 immigrants que le reste du Canada pourrait bientôt en accueillir. Et des voix s’élèvent pour qu’Ottawa fasse preuve d’encore plus d’ambition en matière d’immigration.
« Bien que les chiffres absolus semblent élevés, ils doivent en fait être plus élevés encore en raison des défis démographiques du Canada, ont insisté pour dire l’ex-ministre libéral de l’Innovation, Navdeep Bains, et son ancien chef de cabinet, Elder Marques, dans un article publié la semaine dernière dans le National Post. Au début du XXe siècle, un Canada beaucoup plus petit accueillait autant d’immigrants que le Canada le fait aujourd’hui… Un Canada plus grand, plus riche et plus outillé nous attend si nous sommes prêts à faire le saut. »
Japan has taken in hundreds of Ukrainians. The welcome for others has been less warm
2022/10/31 Leave a comment
Of note:
A dozen Ukrainian students sit in a classroom, studying basic Japanese to help them navigate life in a new country. Among them is Sergei Litvinov, a 29-year-old trained chef, who arrived in June. He says he’s been listening to Japanese rock music since his teen years.
Coming to Japan is “a dream come true,” he says with a laugh. “But I’m not happy, because it’s a terrible story in Ukraine.”
Litvinov is one of nearly 2,000 Ukrainians admitted to Japan on a temporary basis since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, according to Japan’s justice ministry.
The Ukrainians have been met with an outpouring of sympathy and hospitality in the country. “It was the first time I’ve gotten so many phone calls and emails from society, wanting to assist the refugees from Ukraine,” says Kazuko Fushimi, who handles public relations at the Tokyo-based Japan Association for Refugees.
But the warm welcome Japan has given the Ukrainians contrasts with how it has treated other foreigners fleeing conflict and persecution over the years, say human rights groups. Of 169 Afghans who fled to Japan after the Taliban took over in August 2021, 58 went back to Afghanistan “due to what they say was pressure and a lack of support from the Japanese Foreign Ministry,” Japan’s Kyodo news service reported last month.
For now, the Japanese government has given the Ukrainians residency and work permits lasting up to a year. But for those from other countries, it’s often a years-long struggle to attain similar benefits and privileges.
The central government has provided visas and work permits. Local governments have provided food, housing and living allowances.
Litvinov is one of a group of 70 Ukrainians sent to the port city of Yokohama – 17 miles from the Japanese capital Tokyo — where local authorities are providing for temporary accommodation, food and living expenses.
Significantly, Japan is not calling the Ukrainians refugees, but “evacuees.” That is because Tokyo expects them all to go home eventually.
Historically, Japan accepts very few refugees. Last year, it granted just 74 applicants refugee status — the highest number ever, but less than 1% of the total who applied, according to the Japan Association for Refugees.
Some in Japan see their country as mono-ethnic — not a nation of immigrants. But the idea is a matter of debate.
Human rights groups and refugee advocates say the system is deliberately designed to set a high bar for successful refugee applications. Refugees applying for asylum in Japan must demonstrate they face life-threatening persecution at home.
Heydar Safari Diman has been trying to do just that for more than 30 years, since fleeing from Iran to Japan, which he became interested in through watching TV dramas and movies, including the films of director Akira Kurosawa. He does not want to say exactly what persecution he faced in Iran, because he fears it could jeopardize family members still in the country.
But authorities have repeatedly rejected his bids for refugee status. They detained him for a total of more than four years without any explanation, he says, in what he calls hellish conditions.
“I like Japan and Japanese people, but I hate the ones in the detention center,” he says, speaking fluent Japanese. “How could they bully us like that? What did we do? We are refugees. I have no criminal record.”
In 2019, Safari Diman was one of about 100 detainees who went on hunger strikes to protest their detention. Safari Diman says he sank into deep depression and thought about ending his own life.
“You need a lot of courage to commit suicide. It’s very difficult to kill yourself in there. And I did not have that courage,” he says.
Tokyo-based attorney Chie Komai, who represents Safari Diman and others seeking to stay in Japan, took his case to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in 2019. She argued that her client’s detention was arbitrary because Japanese immigration authorities can detain foreigners indefinitely, without any judicial review.
The U.N. working group agreed with her. “They made it clear that the Japanese immigration detention system is in violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”
The Japanese government objected to the U.N. working group’s findings, saying they were “based on factual errors” and disputing that its detentions were arbitrary. But it did not dispute the details of Safari Diman’s case. He is now out on what is called “provisional release,” and has not been detained since the ruling.
Safari Diman, who’s subsisted in Japan on donations from friends and supporters, says he does not expect the sort of benefits the Ukrainians are getting.
“I’m not asking for Japanese taxpayers to support me,” he says. “If authorities recognize me as a refugee, I will work and pay taxes.”
Other cases have also fueled debate over Japan’s treatment of refugees. They include the death in an immigration detention center last year of 33-year-old Sri Lankan Ratnayake Liyanage Wishma Sandamali, detained for overstaying her visa.
Prosecutors dropped charges against immigration officials accused of responsibility for her death.
In another case, last month a Japanese court ordered the government to compensate the family of a 43-year-old Cameroonian man who died in an immigration detention center in 2014.
The public outcry over deaths in immigration detention centers appears to have prompted the government to drop controversial amendments to immigration laws. The amendments would have made it easier for the government to deportforeigners whose bids for refugee status had failed.
Japan’s government says it will extend financial assistance to the Ukrainians for an additional six months. The double standard is not lost on officials like Kazuhiro Suzuki, a Yokohama city official who is involved in running the program for Ukrainians.
“We’ve only been supporting the Ukrainian evacuees,” he says, observing the students from a corner of the classroom. “While the situation of refugees from other countries hasn’t changed.”
He adds: “Every day we keep working, but this discrepancy bothers us.”
Source: Japan has taken in hundreds of Ukrainians. The welcome for others has been less warm
One in Five Canadians Is Now an Immigrant, and the Nation Approves
2022/10/31 Leave a comment
NYT on Canada being an exception:
Immigrants now make up a record portion of Canada’s population. It’s bigger than the one that resulted from the aggressive promotion of European settlement on Indigenous land on the prairies during the early 20th century and bigger than the one that took place after World War II when a wave of immigrants reshaped urban Canada. And according to polling data, most Canadians like it that way, though more tension over immigration could be on the horizon. At a time when immigration has become an increasingly divisive political issue in many Western countries, particularly the United States, indications are that most Canadians are welcoming newcomers even as their numbers rise. “There is growing recognition that immigration is important in terms of the economy and that immigrants, the country kind of needs them,” Keith Neuman, a senior associate at the Environics Institute for Survey Research, a nonprofit polling firm, told me. Census data released this week, revealed by Statistics Canada, said that immigrants made up 23 percent of Canada’s population this year, the highest proportion since Confederation in 1867. If current patterns in immigration remain and Canada’s birthrate continues to be lower than what is necessary to maintain current population, the census agency estimates that immigrants may form 29 to 34 percent of the population 19 years from now. To accompany the Statistics Canada announcement, the Environics Institute released a survey of Canadians’ attitude toward immigration. The survey, which dates back in various forms to the 1970s, found a record level of support: 69 percent of people it contacted disagreed when asked if Canada was taking in too many immigrants. Fifty-eight percent said they wanted more immigration to increase Canada’s population. That positive view of immigration, the survey found, even extended to Quebec despite its adoption of a law banning the wearing of religious symbols by public employees and officials at work, a move that many have seen as targeting Muslim immigrants. Mr. Neuman and Amyn B. Sajoo, a lecturer at Simon Fraser University School for International Studies who writes extensively about immigration and citizenship, shared some thoughts about the source of the country’s good will toward immigration. Perhaps at the top of their lists is that geographic isolation from places experiencing high levels of emigration means that the country can be selective about who comes here. There has never been a period when most refugee claimants walked into the country, despite all of the attention once paid to asylum seekers coming into Quebec from New York State. On the whole, Canada chooses who can come. Then 60 percent of the 431,645 immigrants who became permanent residents of Canada last year fell into the “economic” category. They qualify for that status by being either highly educated, willing and financially able to start a business, possessing a needed job skill or committing to make a substantial investment in an existing business in Canada. “We filter who can come in as refugees and immigrants,” Dr. Sajoo said. “Therefore, the public has more confidence in the system.” On top of that, Dr. Sajoo noted the strong approval for Canada’s official multiculturalism policy. In the Environics Institute survey, an overwhelming 90 percent of the respondents said that it was an important part of the Canadian identity. “More than ever, Canadians are accepting the idea that we’re better off in a pluralist, democratic space,” he said. “That we’re not just an Anglo-French demographic.” The growing awareness of Indigenous issues since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Dr. Sajoo added, has also increased this sentiment. While the Environics Institute survey found that Conservative voters make up the largest number of people who think there is too much immigration, Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the Conservative Party, has focused on wooing immigrants and regularly reminds voters that his wife, Anaida, emigrated to Canada from Venezuela with her family at the age of 8. But before Canadians become too self-satisfied about their openness to immigration, Dr. Sajoo said that one finding in the survey suggests the country is not fully immune to some of the political sentiment growing in other nations. Respondents were almost evenly divided when asked if there are too many immigrants “not adopting Canadian values.” Forty-nine percent rejected that statement, 46 percent agreed with it. “There is a flattering, fairy tale narrative that we’re wonderful and all is good,” Dr. Sajoo said. “But there is not at all enough attention to that 50/50 split on Canadian values,” he added, saying it “suggests that populism and populist rhetoric, supremacist rhetoric is coming across the border and also developing locally.” |
Source: One in Five Canadians Is Now an Immigrant, and the Nation Approves
Multiculturalism in Canada: Evidence and Anecdote
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Multicultural Meanderings 