Did Canada use facial-recognition software to strip two refugees of their status? A court wants better answers

2022/09/21 Leave a comment

Judge Go’s activist background likely influenced this decision questioning the lack of due process and transparency over decision-making:

Canadian authorities can’t just brush off allegations that they are using facial-recognition software to discredit asylum-seekers, a court has ruled.

The decision by the Federal Court comes in a case that has cast a spotlight on the possible use of the technology by the Canada Border Services Agency — a practice the agency denies.

At the centre of the case are Asha Ali Barre and Alia Musa Hosh.

The pair claimed to be Sunni Sufi Muslims, who fled sectarian and gender-based violence from Al-Shabaab and other militant Islamist groups in Somalia.

They were accepted by Canada as refugees in May 2017 and July 2018, respectively.

In 2020, border officials moved to strip their refugee status before the Refugee Protection Division tribunal, alleging in part through photo comparisons that they were in fact Kenyans, a claim the women denied. Barre and Hosh lost their refugee status, and have appealed in court.

At issue was the alleged use of facial recognition technology, but also the privilege that authorities enjoy in withholding the source of their photo comparisons — and their investigative methods — under the Privacy Act.

“The RPD gave a cursory nod to the Respondent’s Privacy Act argument and failed to engage in the necessary consideration of balancing the alleged protection of privacy rights with the Applicant’s procedural fairness right to disclosure,” Judge Avvy Go wrote in a recent ruling in favour of the women’s joint appeal.

“The RPD’s swift acceptance of the Minister’s exemption request, in the absence of a cogent explanation for why the information is protected from disclosure, appears to be a departure from its general practice.”

Last year, Canadian Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien found that the RCMP committed a “serious violation” of Canadians’ privacy by conducting searches of Clearview AI’s facial recognition database, which contains billions of photos of people scraped from the internet, including from social media sites.

Facial recognition technology has been used in Canadian immigration settings to verify the identities of incoming travellers through automated kiosks at airports, but border officials have maintained they don’t use it in immigration enforcement.

Lawyer Quinn Campbell Keenan, who represented Barre and Hosh, was pleased with Go’s decision.

“It sent a clear message to the minister and the Canada Border Services Agency against the use of photo comparison or matching software to single out individuals for possible deportation on the basis of this very dubious photo matching technology,” she told the Star.

Other lawyers also hailed the decision after seeing a surge of former and current Somali refugees having their identities challenged by the border agency through photo matching with Kenyan travellers who had previously entered Canada legally. Many of those cases are now being contested in court.

“There has to be a balanced approach where, at the minimum, the RDP should at least review the possible disclosure that the border agency has,” said lawyer Tina Hlimi, who has seen more than a dozen cases in her practice since 2019 where Somali clients’ identities were challenged based on this investigative method.

“It’s refreshing to see a different perspective when we have been arguing in vain that border agents are perhaps using facial recognition technology.”

According to the court, in support of her asylum claim, Barre had “an identity witness,” a Canadian citizen from Somalia she had met in Somalia, and a letter from the Somali Multi Service Centre, which had conducted a verification assessment of her knowledge of and connection to Somalia.

Hosh’s refugee acceptance was based on a survey by the Loin Foundation that verified her identity, as well as her ability to speak about the Tunni clan and converse with the interpreter fluently in Somali, the court said.

In their attempts to revoke the women’s refugee status, Canadian officials submitted evidence based on photo comparisons between the women and two Kenyan citizens who arrived in Manitoba as international students, just before Barre’s and Hosh’s refugee claims were made.

Despite the refugees’ objection to the photo comparison and allegation about Clearview AI database being used in their cases, the refugee tribunal agreed with the government that the firm ceased providing services in Canada on July 6, 2020, and an “App that is banned to operate in Canada would certainly not be used by a law enforcement agency such as the CBSA.”

It also found “great similarities” between the photos in either case, even though lawyers for the women had argued that facial recognition software is unreliable and particularly flawed in identifying darker-skinned females in research studies.

The court was critical of the tribunal’s conclusion that Clearview AI was not involved when no inquiry was made as to when the photo comparisons were created in the two cases.

“While the RPD relied upon the fact that the RCMP was the last remaining customer of Clearview AI and stopped using it in 2020, this does not necessarily mean (Canada Border Services Agency) was not using the software when the photographs were collected in 2016 and 2017,” said Go.

“The RPD’s finding that the Minister did not use Clearview AI was not supported by evidence, and it failed to consider the Applicant’s submissions highlighting the danger of relying on facial recognition software.”

Government lawyers argued in court that Barre and Hosh were provided with the photos of the Kenyan women, were aware of the case they had to meet and had the opportunity to respond. The obtaining of the photographs and comparison, they said, was a matter of an investigation done by border officials, and thus subject to non-disclosure privilege.

“The RPD reached a conclusion about the reliability of the photo comparisons based on the Minister’s say-so with no further details about the ‘how.’ It then took the Minister’s word that they must protect the details of their investigation under the Privacy Act without having to demonstrate whether the requirements for non-disclosure, as set out in the Act, were met,” Go said.

“The RPD’s conclusion, which was void of transparency, intelligibility, and justification, must be set aside.”

Lawyer Paul Dineen, who represented Barre and Hosh before the RPD, said the women are not out of the woods as they wait for a new tribunal hearing to decide if they can keep their refugee status.

However, depending on where further arguments go, he said officials are left with two choices.

“They either have to reveal the methods of the investigation or they have to withdraw the photos,” said Dineen.

Both Barre and Hosh declined the Star’s interview requests.

Source: Did Canada use facial-recognition software to strip two refugees of their status? A court wants better answers

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How to Change Minds? A Study Makes the Case for Talking It Out.

2022/09/20 Leave a comment

Interesting study although hard to apply in practice (except ensure that no blowhards!):

Co-workers stuck on a Zoom call, deliberating a new strategy for a crucial project. Roommates at the kitchen table, arguing about how to split utility bills fairly. Neighbors at a city meeting, debating how to pay for street repairs.

We’ve all been there — in a group, trying our best to get everyone on the same page. It’s arguably one of the most important and common undertakings in human societies. But reaching agreement can be excruciating.

“Much of our lives seem to be in this sort of Rashomon situation — people see things in different ways and have different accounts of what’s happening,” Beau Sievers, a social neuroscientist at Dartmouth College, said.

A few years ago, Dr. Sievers devised a study to improve understanding of how exactly a group of people achieves a consensus and how their individual brains change after such discussions. The results, recently published online but not yet peer-reviewed, showed that a robust conversation that results in consensus synchronizes the talkers’ brains — not only when thinking about the topic that was explicitly discussed, but related situations that were not.

The study also revealed at least one factor that makes it harder to reach accord: a group member whose strident opinions drown out everyone else.

“Conversation is our greatest tool to align minds,” said Thalia Wheatley, a social neuroscientist at Dartmouth College who advises Dr. Sievers. “We don’t think in a vacuum, but with other people.”

Dr. Sievers designed the experiment around watching movies because he wanted to create a realistic situation in which participants could show fast and meaningful changes in their opinions. But he said it was surprisingly difficult to find films with scenes that could be viewed in different ways. “Directors of movies are very good at constraining the kinds of interpretations that you might have,” he said.

Reasoning that smash hits typically did not offer much ambiguity, Dr. Sievers focused on films that critics loved but did not bring blockbuster audiences, including “The Master,” “Sexy Beast” and “Birth,” a 2004 drama in which a mysterious young boy shows up at a woman’s engagement party.

None of the study’s volunteers had seen any of the films before. While lying in a brain scanner, they watched scenes from the various movies without sound, including one from “Birth” in which the boy collapses in a hallway after a tense conversation with the elegantly dressed woman and her fiancé.

After watching the clips, the volunteers answered survey questions about what they thought had happened in each scene. Then, in groups of three to six people, they sat around a table and discussed their interpretations, with the goal of reaching a consensus explanation.

All of the participants were students in the same master of business administration program, and many of them knew each other to varying degrees, which made for lively conversations reflecting real-world social dynamics, the researchers said.

After their chats, the students went back into the brain scanners and watched the clips again, as well as new scenes with some of the same characters. The additional “Birth” scene, for example, showed the woman tucking the little boy into bed and crying.

The study found that the group members’ brain activity — in regions related to vision, sound, attention, language and memory, among others — became more aligned after their conversation. Intriguingly, their brains were synchronized while they watched the scenes they had discussed, as well as the novel ones.

Groups of volunteers came up with different interpretations of the same movie clip. Some groups, for example, thought the woman was the boy’s mother and had abandoned him, whereas others thought they were unrelated. Despite having watched the same clips, the brain patterns from one group to another were meaningfully different, but within each group, the activity was far more synchronized.

The results have been submitted for publication in a scientific journal and are under review.

“This is a bold and innovative study,” said Yuan Chang Leong, a cognitive neuroscientist at University of Chicago who was not involved in the work.

The results jibe with previous research showing people who share beliefs tend to share brain responses. For example, a 2017 studypresented volunteers with one of two opposite interpretations of “Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes,” a short story by J.D. Salinger. The participants that had received the same interpretation had more aligned brain activity when listening to the story in the brain scanner.

And in 2020, Dr. Leong’s team reported that when watching news footage, brain activity in conservatives looked more like that in other conservatives than that in liberals, and vice versa.

The new study “suggests that the degree of similarity in brain responses depends not only on people’s inherent predispositions, but also the common ground created by having a conversation,” Dr. Leong said.

The experiment also underscored a dynamic familiar to anyone who has been steamrollered in a work meeting: An individual’s behavior can drastically influence a group decision. Some of the volunteers tried to persuade their groupmates of a cinematic interpretation with bluster, by barking orders and talking over their peers. But others — particularly those who were central players in the students’ real-life social networks — acted as mediators, reading the room and trying to find common ground.

The groups with blowhards were less neurally aligned than were those with mediators, the study found. Perhaps more surprising, the mediators drove consensus not by pushing their own interpretations, but by encouraging others to take the stage and then adjusting their own beliefs — and brain patterns — to match the group.

“Being willing to change your own mind, then, seems key to getting everyone on the same page,” Dr. Wheatley said.

Because the volunteers were eagerly trying to collaborate, the researchers said that the study’s results were most relevant to situations, like workplaces or jury rooms, in which people are working toward a common goal.

But what about more adversarial scenarios, in which people have a vested interest in a particular position? The study’s results might not hold for a person negotiating a raise or politicians arguing over the integrity of our elections. And for some situations, like creative brainstorming, groupthink may not be an ideal outcome.

“The topic of conversation in this study was probably pretty ‘safe,’ in that no personally or societally relevant beliefs were at stake,” said Suzanne Dikker, a cognitive neuroscientist and linguist at New York University, who was not involved in the study.

Future studies could zero in on brain activity during consensus-building conversations, she said. This would require a relatively new technique, known as hyperscanning, which can simultaneously measure multiple people’s brains. Dr. Dikker’s work in this arena has shown that personality traits and conversational dynamics like taking turns can affect brain-to-brain synchrony.

Dr. Wheatley agreed. The neuroscientist said she has long been frustrated with her field’s focus on the isolated brain.

“Our brains evolved to be social: We need frequent interaction and conversation to stay sane,” she said. “And yet, neuroscience still putters along mapping out the single brain as if that will achieve a deep understanding of the human mind. This has to, and will, change.”

Source: How to Change Minds? A Study Makes the Case for Talking It Out.

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McWhorter: Trying to Prove You’re Not a Racist

2022/09/20 Leave a comment

Useful overview by McWhorter of his sensible views. From a Canadian perspective, some of the issues that he flags also have relevance with respect to Indigenous peoples:

Since I started writing this newsletter, once about every couple of weeks I have received a missive from someone troubled by a controversy involving race, usually in the workplace.

These readers feel that their opponents in these fusses are unfairly tarring them as racist. Typical disputes they find themselves embroiled in include whether a school program should devote itself centrally to antiracism, whether it is fair to hire people ranking skin color over qualifications, whether reparations for slavery in a local context are appropriate and what they should consist of, and whether a piece of art should be deemed racist.

They seek my confirmation that they are in the right, that they are not racist, and presumably want to take that judgment back to the ring as proof that their position is not anti-Black. Sometimes they are under the impression that it would help if I addressed their colleagues over Zoom.

It has occurred to me that I should provide, in this space, an all-purpose response to this kind of letter I get. For starters, I’d like to offer a guide to my positions on the debates my correspondents seem to find themselves in.

To wit:

I do not support treating the word “Negro,” as opposed to the “N-word,” as a slur. “Negro” was not a slur when it was current, and the case for classifying it as one now because it is archaic is quite thin. Why look for something to be offended by?

I do not support calling something “racist” because outcomes for it differ for the (Black) race. For example, I take issue with the idea that there is something “racist” or “biased” about the questions on the SAT.

I do not condemn white authors writing Black fictional characters who speak Black English so long as it’s a respectful and realistic rendition.

I think the idea that it is cultural appropriation when whites take on Black cultural traits is ahistoric — human groups sharing space have always shared culture — and also pointless, given that Black American culture has always, and will continue to, infuse mainstream America. I also do not think arguments about power relations somehow invalidate my position. I think that it is in vain to decree that culture cannot be borrowed by people in power from those who are not.

I think the idea that only Black people should depict Black people in art and fiction is less antiracist than anti-human, in forbidding the empathy and even admiration that can motivate respectful attempts to create a literary character.

I revile any concept of equity that allows for appointing Black people to positions over more highly qualified non-Black ones.

I know that racism exists both on the personal and structural levels. But I also feel deep disappointment that the tenor of our times seems to encourage some Black people to exaggerate racism’s effects, to enshrine a kind of charismatic defeatism as a substitute for activism. And then there are those who outright fabricate having suffered racist mistreatment. I also worry that these kinds of things desensitize many observers from acknowledging the real racism that exists.

I think reparations are important — and happened already, decades ago with the Great Society, affirmative action, the expansion of welfare benefits in the late 1960s and the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, which encouraged banks to extend credit in low-income neighborhoods. I would not stand implacably opposed to new reparations today in the form of various kinds or even cash payments but am highly skeptical that a critical mass of Black commentators would accept them as true compensation. I can’t help thinking the race debate would stay where it is now.

I condemn notions that there are white ways of thinking (such as being precise and stressing individualism) and Black ones (such as being intuitive and stressing the communal), such that Black people resisting “assimilation” is taken as a kind of higher wisdom. That vision of Blackness would birth no useful inventions, yield only the occasional out-of-the-box insight and is alarmingly close to tacky, Dionysian depictions of Blackness, such as those in Norman Mailer’s “The White Negro.”

I consider it anti-intellectual performance art to retool educational institutions as antiracist academies that “center” the discussion of discrimination and other abuses of power in the instruction of all subjects.

Now that I’ve laid out a primer on my opinions, people who write me seeking support should keep in mind that quite a few Black people consider my stances on race to be a revolting kind of heresy.

Rather, as I have learned in my now lengthy experience with this kind of criticism, it’s that those who disagree with me feel — or perhaps have been taught to feel — that opinions like mine amount to giving white people a pass on racism, that they distract whites from engaging in the kind of thinking and activity that will help Black America. As such, they do not think of people like me as having opinions different from theirs but legitimate. They think opinions like mine are dangerous. I can imagine that to my critics, white people writing me for counsel is exactly what Black America doesn’t need. I am basing this on 25 years of receiving this kind of critique from various directions.

To witness a demonstration of the vigor and tone of this sentiment, please see the negative reactions that are sure to be part of the social media response to this newsletter — from people of all races. No Zoom talk could even begin to cut through such heated resistance.

Be under no illusion, then, that telling your colleagues my opinion about a race issue will be received by them as emanating from some kind of guru. You may suppose that it will be effective to say, “See? There are Black people who feel the way I do.” But to some of your opponents, those Black people may be seen as not just a different kind, but a wrong kind.

If people who don’t see race things my way continue to call you names and get in your way, you have my full sympathy. (And an overprivileged college professor like me isn’t the only one who would come to your defense. “Unwoke” views on race are quite common among Black people of all levels of education.)

But I consider myself engaged in a gradual process of — I hope — shaping our general consciousness on race via constant argument over decades of time. This is a long-game business. Views change slowly, incrementally, and writing is part of making it happen.

If you choose to present my take on race issues amid tense occasions anyway, you should understand that the issue is less my opinion than what you intend to do amid the response to it. My dear correspondents: Please know that it will require a degree of intestinal fortitude to withstand your opponents’ calling you a racist for agreeing with me. Know also, though, that if you’re up for that, you are joining me in that work I am committed to.

Source: Trying to Prove You’re Not a Racist

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Data sharing should not be an afterthought in digital health innovation

2022/09/20 Leave a comment

Agree that data sharing is intrinsic to healthcare innovation, not just digital.

In Ontario, Epic provides a measure of integration for providers and patients, which I have found useful for my personal health data (and I like the fact that I see my test results sometimes earlier than my doctors!).

But surprising no mention of CIHI and its current role in compiling healthcare data, which I have used to analyse trends in birth tourism:

Within Canada and abroad, many health-care organizations and health authorities struggle to share data effectively with biomedical researchers. The pandemic has accentuated and brought more attention to the need for a better data-sharing ecosystem in biomedical sciences to enable research and innovation.

The siloed and often entirely disconnected data systems suffer from a lack of an interoperable infrastructure and a common policy framework for big data-sharing. These are required not only for rapidly responding to emergency situations such as a global pandemic, but also for addressing inefficiencies in hospitals, clinics and public health organizations. Ultimately this may result in delays in providing critical care and formulating public health interventions. An integrated framework could improve collaboration among practitioners and researchers across disciplines and yield improvements and innovations.

Significant investments and efforts are currently underway in Canada by hospitals and health authorities to modernize health data management. This includes the adoption of electronic health record systems (EHRs) and cloud computing infrastructure. However, these large-scale investments do not consider data-sharing needs to maximize secondary use of health data by research communities.

For example, the adoption of Cerner, a health information technology provider, as an EHR system in British Columbia represents the single largest investment in the history of B.C. health care. It promises improved data-sharing, and yet the framework for data-sharing is non-existent.

Operationalization of a data-sharing system is complex and costly, and runs the risk of being both too little and too much of a regulatory burden. Much can be learned from both the SARS and COVID-19 pandemics in formulating the next steps. For example, a national committee was formed after SARS to propose the creation of a centralized database to share public health data (the National Advisory Committee on SARS). A more recent example is the Pan-Canadian Health Data Strategy, which aims to support the effective creation, exchange and use of critical health data for the benefit of Canadians.

New possibilities to help heath care providers and users safely share information are providing innovative solutions that deal with a growing body of data while protecting privacy. The decrease in storage costs, an increase of inexpensive processing power and the advance of platforms as a service (PaaS) via cloud computing democratize and commoditize analytics in health care. Privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs), backed by national statistical organizations, signal new possibilities to help providers and users safely share information.

Researchers as major data consumers recognize the importance of sound management practices. While these practices focus on the responsibilities of research institutions, they also promote sharing of biomedical data. Two examples are the National Institutes of Health’s data-sharing policy and Canada’s tri-agency research data management policy. These policies are based on an understanding of what’s needed in infrastructure modernization, in tandem with what’s needed for robust data-sharing and good management policies.

What about hospitals and health authorities as data producers? Who is forging a new structure and policy to direct them across Canada to increase data-sharing capacity?

Public health organizations operate with a heavy burden to comply with a multitude of regulations that affect data-sharing and management. This challenge is compounded by uncertainty surrounding risk quantification for open data-sharing and community-based computing. This uncertainty often translates into the perception of high risk where risk tolerance is low by necessity. As a result, there is a barrier to investing in new infrastructure and, just as importantly, investing in cultural change in management during decision-making processes related to budgeting.

Better understanding of the system is needed before taking the next steps, particularly when looking at outdated infrastructure governed by policies that never anticipated innovation and weren’t designed to accommodate rapid software deployment. Examining and assessing the current state of the Canadian health-care IT infrastructure should include an evaluation of the benefits of broad data-sharing to help foster momentum for biomedical advances. By looking at the IT infrastructure as it stands now, we can see how inaction costs society time, money and patient health.

One approach is to create a federated system. What this means is a common system capable of federated data-sharing and query processing. Federated data-sharing is defined as a series of decentralized, interconnected systems that allow data to be queried or analyzed by trusted participants. These systems require compliance with regulations, including legal compliance; system security and data protection by design; records of processing activities; encryption; managing data subject consent; managing personal data deletion; managing personal data portability; and security of personal data.

Because much of Canada’s IT infrastructure for health data management is obsolete, there needs to be significant investment. As well, the underlying infrastructure needs to be rebuilt to communicate externally with digital applications through a security framework for continuous authentication and authorization.

Whatever system is used must be capable of ensuring patient privacy. For example, individuals might be identified by reverse engineering data sets that are cross-referenced. The goal is to significantly minimize ambiguity in assessing the associated risk to allow compliance with privacy protections in law and practice. Widely used frameworks exist that address these issues.

The market is providing available technologies and cost-effective methods that can be used to enable large-scale data-sharing that meet privacy protection criteria. What is needed is the collective will to proceed, to upgrade obsolete data infrastructure and address policy barriers. Initiatives and applications in other jurisdictions or settings face similar challenges, but our research and development can be accelerated to help enhance data sharing and improve health outcomes.

Source: Data sharing should not be an afterthought in digital health innovation

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Quebec election: Immigration becomes political fodder as parties spar over ‘capacity’

2022/09/20 Leave a comment

More takes on the Quebec immigration election debates. Appears, however, that immigration has receded somewhat as a focus of the campaign. But the hope of the Conseil du patronat for discussions “in a calm, factual and rational way” is likely a stretch:

The head of a major employers’ group in Quebec says an election campaign is not the time to have a serious discussion about immigration.

Campaign slogans and political messages aren’t suited for rational conversations about how newcomers contribute positively to the economy, Karl Blackburn, president and CEO of the Conseil du patronat du Québec, said in a recent interview.

“And we are very much aware that these are sensitive issues, particularly around language,” Blackburn said.

But three weeks in, party leaders have not shied away from putting immigration front and centre in the Quebec campaign. The debate has so far been su

Blackburn, meanwhile, says Quebec has the capacity — and desperately needs — to accept up to 100,000 immigrants a year in order to address labour shortages that are negatively affecting the quality, price and availability of goods and services across Quebec. That number is a non-starter for Legault, whose party has a commanding lead in the polls and who wants to keep the level of immigrants at 50,000 per year — the maximum, he says, that Quebec can integrate properly and teach French.

Political scientists and economists, however, say there isn’t any research that offers definitive answers to the question of how many immigrants a society — including Quebec — can welcome.

For Pierre Fortin, professor emeritus of economics at Université du Québec à Montréal, Blackburn’s number is “wacky” and would bring “administrative chaos” to society. Increasing immigration levels to more than 80,000 a year, he said, risks creating “xenophobia and racism” toward immigrants and pushing voters into the arms of people who would drastically cut the number of newcomers to the province.

But Mireille Paquet, political science professor at Concordia University, strongly challenged that theory, adding that the research is inconclusive.

“What we know for sure,” she said, “is that what causes the backlash (against immigrants) is not, per se, the number of immigrants but feelings of insecurity in the non-immigrant population, and that feeling can be brought up by public policies, such as cutting social services … it’s something politicians can address,” she said in a recent interview.

Paquet said the idea that there is a limited “capacity to integrate” is often touted by restrictionists and people on the right as a reason to curtail immigration. The debate, she said, should not be around the rate of arrival or the number of annual immigrants, but on what the government is going to do to ease feelings of insecurity in the local population.

“It also depends on what is our expectation of integration,” she said. “What is good integration? That has changed over time, and that will continue to change.”

The debate over immigration during the election campaign has also focused on whether more newcomers would help solve the labour shortages plaguing the province. 

Parti Québécois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon says it won’t, and he is promising to cut immigration to 35,000 a year and only accept people who already speak French. The Liberals’ number is 70,000 newcomers a year, and Québec solidaire says it wants to accept up to 80,000 immigrants a year in order to have enough people to help build its ambitious climate change projects.

Fortin is adamant that immigrants do not address labour shortages but could even exacerbate them. Even if a company solves its labour problems by hiring foreigners, he said, those newcomers will be looking to spend money, consume services and products, seek health care, and enrol their children in school.

That extra spending creates demand and requires more production from Quebec companies, Fortin said. “You solve a shortage in one area and it reappears in another.”

His solution, however, is not politically palatable — especially during an election campaign. The only way to solve labour shortages, he said, is to increase unemployment.

Blackburn, for his part, is calling on whichever party wins on Oct. 3 to convene a forum with stakeholders to discuss — in a calm, factual and rational way — the best way to address the labour shortages that he says are causing billions in dollars of losses to companies across the province.

“We should not see immigrants as consumers of public services,” Blackburn said. “They are here to contribute to the economic vitality of Quebec.”

Source: Quebec election: Immigration becomes political fodder as parties spar over ‘capacity’

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Paul: When Diversity Isn’t the Right Kind of Diversity

2022/09/19 Leave a comment

Useful reminder that minorities are not monolithic in their political perspectives.

In many ways, it is a positive sign of civic integration when all groups participate in different political parties and formations, as is the case in Canada:

The death of Queen Elizabeth II has dominated headlines this month, homages to her reign and dissections of the Harry and Meghan situation unsurprisingly pushing other news aside, especially other stories from Britain.

But even amid all the pomp, one news item out of Britain has attracted curiously little attention. Liz Truss, the new Conservative prime minister, announced her cabinet, and for the first time ever, not a single member of the inner circle — what’s referred to as the Great Offices of State — is a white man.

The home secretary, Suella Braverman, is the daughter of Kenyan and Mauritian immigrants. The mother of the foreign minister, James Cleverly, emigrated from Sierra Leone. The new chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, was born to Ghanaian parents.

Did the left break into applause? Were there hosannas throughout progressive Twitter heralding this racial, ethnic and gender diversity as a step forward for society?

Not exactly.

Instead, the change was dutifully relayed, often with caveats. “Liz Truss’s cabinet: diverse but dogmatic,” noted The Guardian. The new team was criticized as elite, the product of schools like Eton, Cambridge and the Sorbonne. These people aren’t working class, others pointed out. They don’t sufficiently support the rights of those seeking asylum in Britain or policies that address climate change.

“It’s a meritocratic advance for people who have done well in education, law and business,” Sunder Katwala, the director of British Future, a think tank that focuses on issues of immigration, integration and national identity, told CNN. “It’s not an advance on social class terms.”

This is an interesting criticism. “Meritocratic,” used here in a pejorative sense, means based on ability and achievement, earned through a combination of talent and hard work. Traditionally, merit served as the primary consideration in hiring, but some people today see the very systems that confer merit as rigged, especially against minorities. In an effort to rectify that imbalance and to diversify the work force, particularly for leadership positions, it has become common practice in hiring — in the business and nonprofit worlds, as in government — to make racial or ethnic diversity a more significant factor.

The trouble is that for many of the same people, ethnic and racial diversity count only when combined with a particular point of view. Even before Truss’s cabinet was finalized, one member of the Labour opposition tweeted, “Her cabinet is expected to be diverse, but it will be the most right-wing in living memory, embracing a political agenda that will attack the rights of working people, especially minorities.”

Another Labour representative wrote: “It’s not enough to be a Black or ethnic minority politician in this country or a cabinet member. That’s not what representation is about. That’s actually tokenism.”

The implication is that there’s only one way to authentically represent one’s race, ethnicity or sex — otherwise you’re a phony or a pawn. Is that fair?

I’m not politically aligned with Truss on most issues. This is not the team I’d choose to lead a country reeling from Covid, an energy crisis and the twin disasters of Boris and Brexit. But it’s Truss’s prerogative to hire people with whom she is ideologically aligned and who support her policies.

And one has to assume those new hires joined her willingly and with conviction. Surely they, like all racial and ethnic minorities, are capable of the same independence of mind and diversity of thought as white people — some people Trumpy, other people Bernie.

Nor are they the first conservative minorities to hold top positions of power in Britain. It was the Conservative Party that, despite widespread antisemitism, first appointed a Jewish-born prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli, in 1868. The three women who have served as prime ministers — Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May and now Truss — have all been Conservatives. The former prime minister David Cameron was no lefty, yet he made a point of emphasizing ethnic and racial diversity among his leadership appointments.

Black and other ethnic minority voters in Britain aren’t uniformly lefty, either. They cast 20 percent of their votes for Conservatives in 2019.

A similar diversity of political opinion among minorities exists in the United States, and it bewilders the left. An increasing number of Latinos are running as and voting for Republican candidates. Donald Trump got more votes from ethnic minorities in 2020 than he did in 2016. Black men’s support for Trump increased by six percentage points the second time around. And that was after the murder of George Floyd, an event assumed to have galvanized many minority voters on the left.

In his prescient 1991 book, “Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby,” the law professor Stephen Carter decried many of the assumptions around diversity nascent at that time — including the notion that racial or ethnic minorities are expected to think as a group, not as individuals. He bemoaned “the idea that Black people who gain positions of authority or influence are vested with a special responsibility to articulate the presumed views of other people who are Black — in effect, to think and act and speak in a particular way, the Black way — and that there is something peculiar about Black people who insist on doing anything else.”

It’s been three decades since Carter’s book was published, and that lamentable assumption has only gained purchase. As he pointed out then: “In an earlier era, such sentiments might have been marked down as frankly racist. Now, however, they are almost a gospel for people who want to show their commitment to equality.”

It seems odd to have to point out in 2022 that “diverse” hires can be every bit as diverse on the inside as they are on the outside. For every Ketanji Brown Jackson, you’re liable to get a Clarence Thomas. Apparently, we need constant reminders that there’s more to people than meets the eye and that in multicultural societies, an acceptance of diversity must be more than skin deep.

Source: When Diversity Isn’t the Right Kind of Diversity

Filed under Multiculturalism, Politics Tagged with , ,

Rioux: Quel «dérapage»? [on Premier Legault’s comments on social cohesion]

2022/09/19 Leave a comment

Le Devoir’s European correspondent Christian Rioux comparing EU social cohesion concerns with those of Premier Legault.

While recognizing the differences between Canada’s (and Quebec’s) immigration selection systems and integration programs and those of EU countries, he nevertheless reverts to the same social cohesion concerns without examining the effects of Quebec political discourse and legislation that have contributed to social exclusion, not social cohesion:

« Couvrez ce sein que je ne saurais voir », disait le Tartuffe. Convenons que ses héritiers modernes ont des formules moins élégantes que celles de Molière. Ces temps-ci, ils préfèrent parler de « dérapage ». Mais l’effet est le même. Il consiste à écarter du débat tout propos un peu dérangeant dès lors qu’il aborde une question litigieuse. L’étiquette vaut à elle seule condamnation.

Ainsi en va-t-il des récents propos de François Legault sur l’immigration. Pourtant, qu’y a-t-il de plus banal que d’affirmer comme l’a fait le premier ministre la semaine dernière qu’une forte immigration peut nuire à la « cohésion nationale » ?

On comprend que dans un pays « post-national » comme le Canada, où l’immigration a été sacralisée, ces propos créent la polémique. Mais, vu d’Europe, où le débat est ancien et plus nourri, il est évident que l’immigration massive pose partout et toujours un défi à la cohésion nationale.

Cela se vérifie à des degrés divers dans la plupart des pays européens. En France, sous l’effet d’une immigration incontrôlée et très largement issue du monde arabo-musulman, on a assisté depuis de nombreuses années à un véritable morcellement du pays. Dans toutes les grandes villes sont apparues des banlieues islamisées autrement appelées ghettos. Pas besoin de s’appeler Marine Le Pen pour le constater. Interrogé par des collègues du Monde en 2014, le président François Hollande lui-même n’avait pas hésité à le reconnaître. « Je pense qu’il y a trop d’arrivées, d’immigration qui ne devrait pas être là », disait-il. Et celui-ci de conclure : « Comment peut-on éviter la partition ? Car c’est quand même ça qui est en train de se produire : la partition. » (Un président ne devrait pas dire ça…, Gérard Davet et Fabrice Lhomme, Stock).

Certains diront évidemment qu’en France, ce n’est pas pareil. Soit. Tournons donc nos yeux vers un pays plus à notre échelle.

Avec ses 10 millions d’habitants, son économie de pointe, son climat boréal, son amour du consensus et son parti pris en faveur de l’égalité hommes-femmes, la Suède partage plusieurs points communs avec le Québec.

Il n’y a pas longtemps, dans ce petit paradis nordique, celui qui s’inquiétait de l’immigration massive était accusé de « déraper », quand il n’était pas traité de raciste. Les Suédois regardaient de haut des pays comme la France et le Danemark, soupçonnés de xénophobie. Jusqu’à ce que la réalité les rattrape. La flambée des émeutes ethniques, comme en France, et l’irruption de la violence dans les banlieues ont vite fait de les ramener sur terre. Aujourd’hui, de la social-démocratie à la droite populiste, les trois grands partis estiment qu’il en va justement de la « cohésion nationale ». C’est pourquoi ce pays, qui a toujours été particulièrement généreux à l’égard des réfugiés, a radicalement resserré ses critères d’admission et a multiplié les mesures d’intégration. L’élection sur le fil d’une majorité de droite, finalement confirmée mercredi, ne fera que conforter cette orientation.

Les belles âmes ont beau détourner le regard, en Suède comme en France, il est devenu évident qu’un lien existe (même s’il n’explique pas tout) entre l’immigration incontrôlée et la croissance d’une certaine criminalité. Les événements récents du printemps au Stade de France, où des centaines de supporters britanniques se sont fait détrousser à la pointe du couteau par des dizaines de délinquants, ont forcé le ministre de l’Intérieur à reconnaître ce dont les habitants de la Seine-Saint-Denis se doutaient depuis belle lurette.

La Suède aussi a connu une explosion de la petite criminalité et des règlements de compte entre gangs. Elle a notamment enregistré une croissance des morts par balle parmi les plus fortes en Europe. Aujourd’hui, même la gauche sociale-démocrate l’admet. Et elle s’est résolue à augmenter les effectifs policiers. Contrairement à la France, cette prise de conscience fait aujourd’hui un certain consensus dans la classe politique.

Cela n’a rien à voir avec la peur de l’Autre. Comme nombre de Français, les Suédois ont dû se rendre à l’évidence et cesser d’envisager l’immigration comme une simple question morale. Les peuples ont le droit de réglementer l’immigration sans se faire traiter à chaque fois de raciste par une gauche morale et une droite libérale qui en ont fait leur Saint-Graal.

Bien sûr, l’immigration n’est pas la même en France, en Suède et au Québec. À cause de son histoire et de sa position en Europe, la France connaît une forte immigration illégale et de regroupement familial. Naïvement et par générosité, la Suède a ouvert toutes grandes ses portes aux réfugiés et elle n’a jamais contrôlé son immigration économique. Le Québec, où l’équilibre linguistique est plus que précaire, subit des quotas d’immigration parmi les plus élevés au monde et une immigration temporaire hors de contrôle.

Il n’empêche que, malgré ces différences réelles, les mêmes causes produisent partout les mêmes effets. Ce n’est souvent qu’une question de temps.

Lentement, depuis une décennie, tous les tabous de la mondialisation se sont effrités. Ceux qui ont vécu les années 1980 se souviennent de l’enthousiasme et de la naïveté qui accompagnaient cette nouvelle phase d’expansion du capital. Nous n’en sommes plus là. L’immigration de masse demeure le dernier mythe encore vivace de cette époque.

Source: Quel «dérapage»?

Filed under Integration, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

Tackling the health burden of anti-black racism and violence

2022/09/19 Leave a comment

As described, the new program seems more focussed on histories and ideologies than on practical measures to improve health outcomes for Blacks and other minorities, generally reflecting lower income levels, as the differential impact of COVID made clear:

As professors across Canada have been handing out syllabi and giving their first lectures of this school year, Professor Roberta Timothy has her eyes firmly set on next September, when the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto will welcome the first cohort into the two-year Master of Public Health in Black Health programme.

In addition to the regular public health curriculum, the 10 to 15 students will follow a programme that includes six courses devoted to black public health, including ones on the socio-historical context of black health, chronic diseases and reproductive health and decolonising theory and method.

“A masters in public health in the field of black health is needed,” says Timothy, who proposed the programme in 2021, “because of how the experience of anti-black racism impacts black health. There’s a correlation between what I call ‘anti-black violence’ and black health outcomes. 

“If we’re looking at factors such as higher diabetes rates, higher cancer rates, higher HIV rates and who has been impacted by COVID more, we see there’s a direct correlation with health outcomes and anti-black racism and violence.”

The fight for race-based data

In designing the programme, Timothy has, in large measure, drawn on her 30 years of being a public health practitioner because unlike, for example, the United States, Canada does not routinely collect race-based medical data.

“There are only two million of us, and most of us are located in Toronto, Montreal with smaller populations in Alberta. There’s this kind of notion that we don’t exist.

“We are a smaller population, we are absorbed,” Timothy told University World News, nodding to the fact that blacks account for only 3.5% of the Canadian population, while in the US blacks account for 13.4% and in states like Mississippi, Louisiana and Georgia blacks account for more than 30% of the population. “We’ve been fighting to get raced-based data,” Timothy says.

After we spoke, she e-mailed me an April 2020 letter sent to the Ontario government that called for the collection of socio-economic and race-based health data. 

A total of 192 community-based health and advocacy groups and 1,612 individuals signed the letter, which underscored that “Ontario, like other provinces and territories in Canada, continues to deal with the ongoing legacies of colonisation, structural inequality and systemic racism. Responding to COVID-19 with the expectation that all people will experience the pandemic in the same way hurts the already marginalised people and communities.”

When I asked how health outcomes for blacks, who, as in the US and the United Kingdom, are disproportionately poor, differ from poor whites, Timothy noted that there is evidence that shows that in terms of HIV the black community is more impacted.

Further, she pointed to a 2015 study and one she has been working on dealing with COVID rates for two years. The 2015 study showed that in Montreal the maternal morbidity of blacks was three to four times higher than it was for whites. (Because of Canada’s universal medical system, this difference cannot be attributed to lack of access to medical care.)

“I’ve been collecting data on COVID among blacks for two years. If you look at these COVID numbers from the UK, the United States and Canada, we see the similarities in terms of how COVID has disproportionately impacted folks of African ancestry,” says Timothy.

As the students will begin learning next year in the socio-historical course, Timothy told me, this fact, as well as the higher rates of diabetes, HIV and other diseases among blacks in the US, UK and Africa, must be handled extremely carefully. This is because of the long history, going back to the early 1800s, of racialist biological determinism.  

“The connection between African folks [ie, those in Africa or the diaspora] and these disorders is not biological, not as explained by the ‘biological determinist perspective’, but rather from the impact of racism and colonisation globally for black folks. 

“It’s not about being black. It’s about anti-black racism and experiencing anti-black violence. It’s about the implications of that extreme grief, trauma, violence that you experience as a black person anywhere you travel. It’s about a lifetime of being treated that way that impacts our mental and physical health no matter where you are, even if you come from the African continent.”

Critiquing Eurocentric methodologies

By training Timothy is a ‘methodologist’. Accordingly, I asked her how the methodology course she is presently designing differs from a traditional methodology course. The answer does not lie in ignoring traditional methodology. 

Quite the opposite, the course examines the Eurocentric history of research methodologies – in order to critique them. One notorious so-called methodology was that used by George Gliddon (b 1809) and Josiah C Nott (b 1804) in their Indigenous Races of the Earth (1857) in which, via measurements of skulls and other pseudo-scientific methods akin to phrenology, they adduced a hierarchy of brain development that placed blacks between Caucasians and chimpanzees in terms of intelligence.

As well, students will learn about the horrid Tuskegee experiment in the US. In 1932, 400 black men, impoverished sharecroppers in Macon County, Alabama, were infected with syphilis to “observe the natural history of untreated syphilis”. 

None was given penicillin after its invention in 1947. By 1972 when the study ended, 128 of the men had died either from syphilis or complications arising from it. Forty of the men’s wives had been infected and 19 children had been born with congenital syphilis. The violation of ethical norms and the human cost of the study is one of the reasons why many African Americans are vaccine hesitant.

The students in the programme will learn of the importance of looking at factors such as race, racism, class, gender, gender identity and sexual orientation when they collect data.

By way of example, Timothy turned our discussion to how she would approach a study of post-partum depression among black women. 

Noting the influence of Black Feminist Theory, she said, she would begin with such questions as, “How does the impact of anti-black racism impact the subject you want to inquire about? Does the question make sense to the population being studied?” An equally important question is, “How will the data from this study be used to advance the health care of black women?”

While white women also experience post-partum depression, Timothy notes, they are not burdened by the socio-historical narrative that burdens black women – a narrative that is informed by the experience of American slavery in which female slaves who had just given birth were expected to go back to the cotton fields, often within hours of giving birth. 

Further, because of the sundering of the black family during slavery and continued disruption of it because of the high incarceration levels of black males (which is part of the ongoing anti-black violence Timothy refers to), black women have historically been seen as the rock upon which the family relies.

“This false notion of the strong black woman is of one who is not human. We are not given human qualities. We are not allowed to be vulnerable or human.” 

The violence of the state

Yet, there is a second piece of the violence that is part of this stereotype. “It is the imagining of the violence of the state. It comes from the reality that you don’t have the right to be depressed or emotional because if you are a black person who is, there is a chance that your children will be taken away from you.”

(Timothy, who comes from a working-class background, holds a PhD and has worked in public health for decades and is now at the University of Toronto, exemplified this last point by telling me that when she has to bring her children to the doctor, they are dressed up. “You’d think we were going to church. But I do this because we are racially profiled on a daily basis, even in terms of our children.”)

Timothy’s students will also learn how the experience of being a black male in Canada contributes to diabetes and cardiovascular problems such as high blood pressure.

“The question students will have to ask is how criminalisation (or the threat of it) and anti-black violence by the state contribute to these diseases in black men. The inquiry will show that no matter what their socio-economic status is, where they work or live, black men know that they are profiled on a daily basis and this creates anxiety, higher blood sugar levels and high blood pressure.”

Public health practitioners who provide health care to black men must be aware not only of the effects of being hypervigilant but also of the depression these men carry, of the intergenerational transfer of post-traumatic stress disorder and how systems of enslavement and colonisation violated black men’s masculinity, says Timothy. The heightened tension of being black in Canada does not vanish even when home.

“Your home is never really safe because you are never sure when the police are going to come in the door,” she says, referring to, among others, D’Andre Campbell, a 26-year-old immigrant with mental health issues, who was shot in his home by a constable belonging to the Peel Regional Police (near Toronto) after he had been tasered and was already on the ground.

Professor Akwatu Khenti, who teaches courses on the public health implications of anti-black racism and the criminal justice system, told University Affairs in late August that there is “a lot of epistemic violence that takes place as a sort of intellectual microaggression [that] devalues or invalidates other ways of knowing. For me, it means building appreciation for the epistemic approaches of different groups and [giving] more space to traditional wisdom that worked for thousands of years.”

Inoculation for smallpox, for example, was practised in Ethiopia and West Africa a century or more before Edward Jenner noticed that milk maids with cow pox scars appeared to be immune to smallpox. The first inoculation in America was in 1721 by Puritan minister Cotton Mather, who learned of the practice from his slave Onesimus, who had been kidnapped from Africa and whose Latin name meant useful, helpful or, tellingly, profitable.

Dismantling a system

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic two-and-a-half years ago, doctors and public health practitioners have been uncharacteristically vocal for the most part, advocating for masking, the safety of vaccines and for improving ventilation in schools before they re-opened. Timothy views the role of graduates of the Master of Public Health in Black Health programme to be similarly engaged.

“I know that I’m teaching at the University of Toronto. I’m very aware that this education system has a history of colonial violence. Yet, we are going to train people in terms of how to resist anti-black racism and other forms of violence. We’re creating a place where we create practitioners who know how the system works and, therefore, understand how to begin dismantling it.

“Obviously, we are not going to do that tomorrow. But we can begin the conversation about how being a public health practitioner is to be part of a decolonising process. It’s part of a movement towards justice, to dismantle systems that create violence.”

Source: Tackling the health burden of anti-black racism and violence

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Regg Cohn: Is discussion of the Queen problematic? Let’s talk about it

2022/09/19 Leave a comment

Good commentary on excessive “trigger” warnings and the lack of meaningful civics knowledge:

Everyone has an opinion on the Queen, right or wrong.

But in some schools, not every student should have a right to mourn her passing in public — not if other students might be “triggered.”

That edict came from a GTA public school board that instructed teachers to avoid the topic of Queen Elizabeth’s death — and the legacy of her life. In the classrooms of York region, the late monarch was not so much dethroned as deplatformed.

How can the Crown be cancelled in the classrooms of Ontario? How do state schools disavow the head of state?

Good questions. According to a memo distributed to all teachers this month by the York Region District School Board, the answers were strictly black and white.

Diversity of identity trumps diversity of ideas, to wit:

“School staff please refrain from developing tributes or activities to memorialize the death of the Queen,” the note admonishes.

“For some, the death of the Queen is very triggering. We are committed to maintaining neutral learning environments in our schools.”

Neutral? Even going halfway, with half-mast, seemed a stretch to the school board:

“Some students and staff may require support as a result of seeing the flags lowered,” the memo continued.

To be sure, the monarchy affects different people differently, notably if they or their ancestors lived under British colonization. Many believe in abolition or refuse absolution for the Crown’s past sins.

As a foreign correspondent, I covered the referendum on abolition in Australia, which would have succeeded but for the failure of voters to agree on what to replace it with. As a columnist, I’ve written about the absurdity of a foreign-born monarch presiding over our homegrown Canadian democracy while simultaneously juggling more than a dozen other foreign realms — from Antigua to Tuvalu.

I’ve long argued that the Crown has a case of conflicted multiple personality that defies credulity. Be that as it may, it will remain that way for years to come, for Canadians have no appetite for the domestic constitutional combat required to reconfigure our democratic infrastructure.

Like it or not, the ineluctable consequence is that the British King is to be Canada’s King until further notice. That’s a complication that requires education and elucidation, not the silent treatment for fear of offending.

Trigger warnings are cited five times in the school board memo, including this alert about the perils of press coverage: “Media coverage will be frequent … Try to offer a neutral space in your classroom to have a break from this potentially triggering media exposure.”

Remember when students learned media literacy, not sanctuary? Are schools now “safe spaces” from overexposure to newspaper funeral coverage?

The “tip sheet” counsels teachers on how to respond to students who dare to say out loud, “I’d like to honour the Queen.”

Recommended staff response: “Thank you for your idea… While this might feel important and helpful for you, for others in our class/school it might not feel this way … We need to be respectful of everyone.”

In other words: Forget it, kid — no mourning this morning.

Predictably, the memo triggered Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government. Education Minister Stephen Lecce issued a statement reminding school boards of the province’s “expectation (to) honour the Queen on the date of her funeral, and enrich students with a strong understanding of the values and enduring legacy of Canada’s constitutional democracy.”

All schools are expected to observe a moment of “silent reflection” (students are free to opt out) on Monday — designated a day of mourning (or holiday) across Canada — according to a note sent out by the deputy minister of education, Nancy Naylor.

What is most instructive about the peculiar memo from York’s school board is what it says about the state of educational instruction today. Basic civics — teaching students about the complications and contradictions in our constitutional system — can’t be taught if educators are told to duck controversy because of potential sensitivity.

Never mind the endless debates about ending debates — so-called “cancel culture.” Quarreling over the Queen’s legacy should be part of our democratic discourse.

Indigenous leaders from Canada will be at the Queen’s funeral in London, as will our first Indigenous vice-regal representative, Gov.-Gen. Mary Simon. Perhaps they understand it is possible, in the spirit of truth and reconciliation, to also reconcile contradictions — to call out the Crown’s historical blunders and blind spots while still paying respect to she who wore the crown.

It’s called context and critical thinking, as opposed to trigger warnings that compel conformity and uniformity lest anyone feel uncomfortable. Whatever one thinks of the monarchy, the point is to make people think — not to warn teachers against letting students think out loud in classrooms. 

When the schools of state forbid talk about the head of state, it’s time for a refresher course on civics.

Source: Is discussion of the Queen problematic? Let’s talk about it

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Increase in Cuban Migration Has No Historical Precedent

2022/09/19 Leave a comment

Interesting and significant shift:

When it comes to immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border, media coverage tends to focus on the increasing numbers of migrants attempting to cross it. What’s missing from the conversation, however, is the changing demographics of these migrants.  

Historically, the majority of people who attempted to cross the southwestern border between border crossing stations — officially called ports of entry, or “POEs” — were Mexican nationals. This began to change in recent years, when U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) began encountering  large numbers of Central American migrants also attempting the crossing. Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala are known as the Northern Triangle, and many migrants from these countries frequently attempted the crossings in family units. 

Beginning in 2020, however, CBP began to encounter increasing numbers of immigrants from outside Mexico and the Northern Triangle. According to CBP data, the number of migrants from countries other than these four has increased 11,000% since 2007, with the sharpest increase occurring in the past two years. Border Patrol apprehensions involving migrants from countries beyond Mexico and Central America’s Northern Triangle were 9% in fiscal year 2019, but climbed to 22% in 2021 and 40% in 2022. In fact, encounters by CBP with migrants from these “other” countries are on track to outpace encounters with migrants from Mexico and the Northern Triangle. 

Migrants from these “other” countries come from a handful of nations, including Cuba, Colombia, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Each of these countries has seen dramatic increases in encounters at the southwest border over the past two years. The rapid increase in Cuban migrants is particularly notable. 

Cubans who remain on the island face widespread poverty, inflation, power blackouts, basic supply shortages, and intense government repression following massive anti-government protests in 2021. These conditions are driving a historic increase in Cuban migration, surpassing the 1980 Mariel boatlift. CBP has reported nearly 176,000 encounters with Cuban migrants at the southwest land border since October. 

Hundreds of unaccompanied Cuban children have arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border in the past year, as more parents appear to be sending their children to safety amid deteriorating conditions in Cuba.  

Since October 2021, CBP reported 662 encounters with unaccompanied Cuban children at the southern border, compared to 32 encounters in the FY 2021 and 57 encounters in 2020, marking an increase of 1,969%. 

In the midst of these increased numbers, USCIS has restarted the Cuban Family Reunification Parole program “to provide a safe, orderly pathway to the United States for certain Cuban beneficiaries of approved family-based immigrant petitions.” 

Source: https://www.boundless.com/blog/boundless-weekly-immigration-news/

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

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