U.S. Population Growth Has Nearly Flatlined. Is That So Bad?

2022/09/16 Leave a comment

Well worth reading, a useful and needed counterpoint to all the fretting about demographic decline and an aging population. Canadian policy makers and others need to think more about how to manage an aging population that mainly advocating for increased immigration to slow the trend:

“A Demographic Crisis.” “A Blinking Light Ahead.” “The Death of Hope.” Those are some of the dire headlines that have been written in recent years about the sluggish pace of U.S. population growth, which in 2021 fell to its lowest rate ever — just 0.1 percent.

While the pandemic played a major role in driving last year’s decline, the country’s population growth has been slowing for much of the last decade, depressed by declining fertility rates, a surge in “deaths of despair” and lower levels of legal immigration.

But is a population slowdown as much of a crisis as some have made it out to be, or could it actually bring welcome changes? Here’s a look at a longstanding demographic debate.

For a population to replenish itself in the absence of immigration, demographers estimate that there must be, on average, about 2.1 births per woman. In the United States, the fertility rate has been consistently below that level since 2007. And it’s not alone: While some countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, are still growing rapidly, the global average fertility rate has been falling for decades, and even China’s population, the world’s largest, may very soon reach its peak.

As a result, the United Nations now predicts that the human population will start declining by the end of the century. (Other demographers have projected an even earlier peak.) Some countries — notably Japan and South Korea, whose fertility rates are among the lowest in the world — are already shrinking.

Why are fertility rates falling? The trend is typically attributed to a combination of economic prosperity, which leads to lower infant mortality, and greater gender equality. “As women have gained more access to education and contraception, and as the anxieties associated with having children continue to intensify, more parents are delaying pregnancy and fewer babies are being born,” Damien Cave, Emma Bubola and Choe Sang-Hun reported for The Times last year. Because many of those babies then go on to have smaller families than their parents did, they added, “the drop starts to look like a rock thrown off a cliff.”

It’s a stark reversal of the demographic trends of the 1900s, during which the coincidence of high fertility rates and lengthening life spans caused the global population to nearly quadruple in size, from 1.6 billion to six billion. And for much of the 20th century, it was the specter of overpopulation, not stagnation or decline, that animated dystopian visions of the future.

Which raises a question: How much stock should we really be placing in population forecasts? As David Adam explained in Nature last year, medium-term projections are usually quite accurate, as most people who will be alive in 20 to 30 years have already been born.

But over the longer term, projections diverge and become less reliable, in part because technological and environmental shocks that could cause demographic swings are impossible to predict, as Vox’s Kelsey Piper has written: “If, for example, climate change drives currently developed countries back into poverty and drives their birthrates back up, the estimates are poorly equipped to account for that. On the other hand, if more reliable contraceptives are developed and virtually end unintended pregnancies the world over, birthrates could fall much faster than predicted.”

For many futurists, the primary challenge posed by declining population growth is economic: When people live longer and have fewer babies, the population ages, leaving fewer working-age adults to support a country’s swelling number of retirees.

“Older people are more prone to illness, and many rely on publicly funded pensions and eventually require caregiving,” Stephanie H. Murray wrote in The Atlantic in February. “Many countries, including the U.S., are already struggling to meet the needs of the rapidly growing elderly population.”

This can create a kind of national languishing, as the Times columnist Ross Douthat argued last year: “If you assume that dynamism and growth are desirable things (not everyone does, but that’s a separate debate), then for the developed world to be something more than just a rich museum, at some point it needs to stop growing ever-older, with a dwindling younger generation struggling in the shadow of societal old age.”

Aging may take a particularly heavy toll on middle-income countries. Historically, as industrialized countries have become richer, their labor force grew more rapidly than their nonworking population, providing a “demographic dividend.” But in some developing countries, including Brazil and China, fertility rates have fallen to around or below replacement level much more quickly than they did for their higher-income counterparts, and their populations now face the risk of getting old before getting rich.

A population slowdown can be a symptom of other national problems. For example, as Derek Thompson has noted in The Atlantic, while declining fertility is often a sign of female empowerment, it can also be a sign of its opposite, as suggested by the growing gap between how many children Americans say they want and how many they have. “There are many potential explanations for this gap,” Thompson wrote, “but one is that the U.S. has made caring for multiple children too expensive and cumbersome for even wealthy parents, due to a shortage of housing, the rising cost of child care, and the paucity of long-term federal support for children.”

To see how population stagnation or even decline need not spell disaster, you can look at countries where it’s already occurring, as Daniel Moss, a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asian economies, did last year. Take Japan: “Despite the caricature of the country as an economic failure in the grip of terminal decline, life goes on,” he wrote. “True, growth in overall G.D.P. has been fairly anemic in past few decades, but G.D.P. per capita has held up well.” What’s more, he added, Japan’s unemployment rate is very low and has remained so throughout the pandemic (it was 2.6 percent in July).

Japan’s example lends some credence to the view of Kim Stanley Robinson, a widely acclaimed science-fiction writer, who believes that an aging population with a smaller work force could actually lead to economic prosperity. “It sounds like full employment to me,” he argued in The Washington Post last year. “The precarity and immiseration of the unemployed would disappear as everyone had access to work that gave them an income and dignity and meaning.”

The challenges of an aging population could push countries to pursue policies that improve quality of life:

  • One 2019 analysis estimated that if the European Union eliminated inequities in educational attainment and in women’s and immigrants’ labor force participation, it could cancel out more than half of the labor force decline it might otherwise experience by 2060.
  • Another way governments have responded to labor shortages caused by population aging is by investing more in the automation of work, an M.I.T. study found last year. As The Times’s John Yoon reported last month, “The prospect of a shrinking work force has put South Korea at the forefront of developing robots and artificial intelligence for the workplace.”
  • In the view of the Times columnist Paul Krugman, the biggest economic problem of an aging population isn’t increased strain on the social safety net, but rather weak investment from businesses anticipating reduced consumer demand. If that scenario comes to pass, though, “why not put the money to work for the public good?” he wrote last year. “Why not borrow cheaply and use the funds to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, invest in the health and education of our children, and more? This would be good for our society, good for the future, and would also provide a cushion against future recessions.”

Fertility rate declines may also be making climate change easier to combat, albeit not in the way many think: As Sarah Kaplan of The Washington Post has explained, fossil fuel consumption is driven primarily by increases in affluence, not the number of people on the planet per se. So while population growth in poor countries hasn’t led to large increases in planet-warming emissions, a sudden baby boom in high-income countries like the United States almost certainly would.

For some demographers, the prospect of population stagnation or decline isn’t any more a cause for alarm than population growth was; it’s simply a change that governments will need to manage. “Rather than panicking or trying to forestall this for ourselves,” Leslie Root, a demographer and a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Colorado, Boulder, wrote in The Washington Post last year, “we should be thinking about what that transition will mean globally — both for rich countries and for poor ones that will be far more burdened by aging populations than we will.”

Source: U.S. Population Growth Has Nearly Flatlined. Is That So Bad?

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,

Activists push Trudeau to broaden permanent-residency plan for undocumented migrants

2022/09/16 Leave a comment

As activists do:

As MPs return to business after the summer break, advocates are calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to offer a pathway to permanent residence for the estimated 500,000 undocumented migrants in the country.

“The next Parliament must not wait. It cannot wait. The time for comprehensive, immediate and inclusive regularization is right now,” Syed Hussan of the Migrant Rights Network told a news conference on Wednesday to launch the call for actions from Ottawa.

“Half a million people in this country are undocumented because of failures of immigration policy. Finally, Mr. Trudeau now has the historic opportunity to begin to correct these wrongs and be remembered for ensuring equal rights for these members of our society. There is cross-country support for such a move.”

Since the spring, the minority Liberal government, backed by the New Democrats, has been quietly working on a so-called regularization plan for non-status migrants, many of them precariously employed with often-exploitative jobs in construction, cleaning, caregiving, food processing and agriculture.

They face a range of vulnerabilities, including poor mental and physical health caused by social isolation and abusive working conditions.

The Star has learned that the new program builds on a previous smaller-scale initiative that helped undocumented construction workers obtain permanent status in Canada, and would likely focus on workers in particular sectors.

However, advocates are urging the government to take a broader-based approach.

“We are all here to insist that absolutely each and every undocumented person should be included. No one should be left behind. Equality is equality. And there can be no exceptions. All exceptions are discrimination,” said Hussan.

The Migrant Rights Network’s campaign is endorsed by 480 civil society organizations, including Canada’s largest human rights, climate, health, legal and labour groups.

Caroline Brouillette of the Climate Action Network Canada, a coalition of 140 groups, said the climate crisis forces more and more people from their homes, and ensuring equal rights for migrants is fundamental to climate justice.

“Transforming our unequal, exploitative system into one that ensures dignity and safety for all is a key step toward addressing Canada’s climate debt,” she said. “We urge the federal government to seize this opportunity.”

Like the majority of undocumented residents who came to Canada legally, Danilo De Leon arrived in Edmonton in 2009 from the Philippines under the Temporary Foreign Worker program as a cleaner.

In 2018, he was issued an exclusion order by border enforcement agents after his work permit and temporary resident permit expired.

“We came here to work because you need workers. We are more than just workers that feed your economy. We are human beings who have the rights to live in Canada with dignity,” said the father of two, whose deportation was only recently stayed by the court. “We need a regularization program that does not discriminate.”

Advocates say more and more migrants are arriving in Canada as temporary residents, but many struggle to extend their stay to gain permanent residence.

“Most temporary permits, whether a work permit, study permits or refugee-claimant permits, are the only gateways to Canada for low-waged and racialized people. But these pathways are actually a path off a cliff,” said Hussan.

“At one point or the other, these permits expire and cannot be replaced. The only choice, which is no choice at all, is living in Canada without any status or returning to a country that you may not be able to live in, whether it’s to escape war or poverty, climate catastrophe or discrimination.”

The Migrant Rights Network recommends a moratorium on deportations and detentions, and a free and simple application process that can be easily completed without immigration advisers.

Rallies will be held this Sunday in 12 Canadian cities, including Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver to support the call for immigration justice.

Source: Activists push Trudeau to broaden permanent-residency plan for undocumented migrants

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Paradkar: No, I do not mourn the Queen

2022/09/16 Leave a comment

Wonder how common this sentiment is among immigrants and their descendants from former colonies or other countries that suffered under British rule or influence. The November 2021 Angus-Reid survey showed relatively minor differences between visible and not visible minorities, but there is likely considerable variation among groups:

No, I don’t mourn the Queen. Like hundreds of millions of people around the world, I see no reason to.

But you’d hardly know from the hagiographical public discourse in Canada that the world is far from unified in grief over the death of a person under whose title a nation unleashed unspeakable violence, the wounds of which remain fresh. There is little room for the views of millions who vociferously reject Britain’s self-proclaimed greatness, and its royal family.

Condolences to those personally near and dear to Elizabeth. Sorry for their loss, human to human. By all accounts, she sounds like a person of dignity who took her duties seriously and untiringly.

The British monarch’s duties have been referred to as a service to the nation. But what were these duties? Were they merely innocuous ribbon-cutting ceremonies and charming royal walkabouts? Were those weekly meetings with the prime minister idle chit chats? What were these formalities servicing? A symbol, perhaps, but of what?

To many, the Crown is a symbol of economic and racial power and its consolidation in one family, in one institution, in one nation — and its offshoots. It’s the power to assent to laws, whatever their intent or consequence. The power to reside above the most powerful. The power to be unaccountable.

You won’t see a British ruler or a parliamentary leader hauled up before the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity — neither in Kenya, nor in the Middle East neither India nor Argentina neither Ireland nor in the Caribbean or, heaven forbid, Canada. 

Through all this pillaging and bloodshed, leaders marauded under the royal banner while the monarch was positioned as an apolitical figurehead, made mystical by remoteness. It’s an ingenious sleight of hand. 

Still, if one accepts that the queen was merely a figurehead, free from any responsibility for what she symbolized, then exactly what are we mourning? That this figureheaded-ness was handled with grace? 

A range of justifications for the monarchy — divine ordination, tradition, continuity — have been used to keep the plebs from questioning the grandiosity of royalty too closely, with royals entitled to the thousands of gaudy, glittering baubles. Perhaps it still serves to keep us from questioning why Charles, the new King, can legally avoid paying estate tax, something even other obscenely rich people cannot, on inheriting parts of estate estimated at $500 million US from his mother.

The position of Queen afforded Elizabeth significant immunity from criticism. But when the title was criticized, the person was protected. 

She is eulogized as a paragon of progressive ideals. She was anti-apartheid! Nelson Mandela was her buddy! This, even though hundreds of thousands of Kenyans, Iraqis, Yemenis, Koreans, Malayans were displaced and massacred during her reign.

It appears we must endlessly laud royals of great power and wealth, particularly this family, who took and took but contributed nothing to humanity. At least celebrities — actors, musicians, singers, artists, athletes, heck, even TikTok and Insta influencers — possess skills that entertain us, move us and enrich our understanding of the mysteries of life.

But hush. This is not the right time to criticize the Queen, we’re told. It’s insensitive. It’s impolite.

Polite, is it, to ask those who lost life and limb, land and wealth, ancestors and children, and even their own histories to mourn the very symbol of their suffering?

Sensitive, is it, to live in Canada and suggest the tyranny of British colonialism is a thing of the past, even while the Indian Act of 1876 in its various iterations and colonial philosophies continues to tragically upend Indigenous lives, an example of which played out as the James Smith Cree Nation torn apart just this month? I wonder how many of these mourners will show up as “allies” in orange shirts on National Truth and Reconciliation Day without recognizing their inconsistency.

How can British colonialism be a thing of the past when there never has been reconciliation with it? When the paternalistic attitudes (quite apart from greed and extraction in the name of exploration) that drove it still thrive? When, as the author John Newsinger wrote, the blood never dried?

If Tucker Carlson, that depthless denialist with a megaphone on Fox TV, is to be believed, we — the people of colonized lands — ought to be grateful to the colonizers.

“When the British pulled out of India they left behind an entire civilization, a language, a legal system, schools, churches and public buildings, all of which are still in use today,” he said this week, extolling British benignity. As if all of those things did not exist before the British set foot on the land. Yes, churches, too. Christianity has existed in India since 52 AD, as a one-second Google search shows. 

Carlson’s disinformation is low-hanging fruit for the bashing, but it is worth noting because many so-called centrists, the supposed not-crazies, believe colonialism at least modernized, if not civilized already ancient and sophisticated civilizations. Indeed, many among the colonized themselves affect a fondness for what was essentially an era of looting. After all, colonization could not have been carried out without the help of insiders. The colonizer-colonized relationship is neither linear nor a love/hate binary.

But there seems little space for nuance or critique around the death of this symbol of coloniality. Not only is it impolite to criticize the revisionist propaganda around the Queen, it’s now apparently dangerous to question the automatic ascension of Charles as king.

In recent days, U.K. police arrested at least four people for protesting the monarchy. One woman was charged for “breach of the peace” because she held a sign saying: “Abolish monarchy.” One was led away by police for holding a sign saying, “Not My King.”

Meanwhile, Charles himself appears set on defying the blatant efforts to rehabilitate his terrible image. Deliciously insightful videos of him with distinct “let them eat cake” vibes are circulating online. In one, he’s displaying his foul temper with an outburst at a leaky ink pen. In another, he appears to peremptorily and dismissively wave at stationary to be taken off his desk, rather than, you know, moving it himself. 

Here’s to Charles then, the crusty king of England, who might yet be our best bet for stirring revolt and revolution.

Source: No, I do not mourn the Queen

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Florida flies dozens of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard

2022/09/16 Leave a comment

Deplorable weaponization of asylum seekers, following the lead of Texas (where the migrants originated from), not to mention the way they were reportedly lured to get on the plane:

About 50 migrants arrived by plane in Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., Wednesday on a flight paid for by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and that originated in San Antonio, Texas.

The migrants touched down at about 3:15 p.m. local time. Later Wednesday, a spokesperson for DeSantis sent a statement to NPR and other news outlets confirming that the migrants were transported by Florida under a state program that was funded by the legislature earlier this year. The statement reads in part: “States like Massachusetts, New York and California will better facilitate the care of these individuals who they have invited into our country by incentivizing illegal immigration.”

The Florida statement refers to two planes, but local officials at Martha’s Vineyard say there was only one.

However, a number of migrants told NPR their flight originated in San Antonio, and that they were being transported to Boston.

NPR confirmed that a plane originated in San Antonio, made a stop in Florida and then another stop in South Carolina before flying on to Martha’s Vineyard. But apart from that layover, the migrants NPR interviewed had not spent time in Florida.

The unannounced flight drew anger from Massachusetts officials.

“We have the governor of Florida … hatching a secret plot to send immigrant families like cattle on an airplane,” said state Sen. Dylan Fernandes, who represents Martha’s Vineyard. “Ship them women and children to a place they weren’t told where they were going and never alerted local officials and people on the ground here that they were coming. It is an incredibly inhumane and depraved thing to do.”

NPR was able to interview three of the migrants late Wednesday. “They (the migrants) told us they had recently crossed the border in Texas and were staying at a shelter in San Antonio,” NPR’s Joel Rose said on today’s Morning Edition.

The migrants said a woman they identified as “Perla” approached them outside the shelter and lured them into boarding the plane, saying they would be flown to Boston where they could get expedited work papers. She provided them with food. The migrants said Perla was still trying to recruit more passengers just hours before their flight.

Andres Duarte, a 30-year-old Venezuelan, said he had recently crossed the border into Texas and eventually went to a shelter in San Antonio.

“She (Perla) offered us help. Help that never arrived,” Andres said. “Now we are here. We got on the plane with a vision of the future, of making it.” He went on to explain why he boarded the plane with so little information in hand. “Look, when you have no money and someone offers help, well, it means a lot.”

In Martha’s Vineyard, the migrants are staying at a church shelter while local authorities and nonprofit organizations figure out what’s going to happen next. Lisa Del Castro, who runs a homeless shelter on the island, said resources were initially scarce.

“Everything from beds to food to clothing to toothbrushes, toothpaste, blankets, sheets. I mean, we had some of it … but we did not have the numbers that we needed.”

Most of the arrivals spoke little or no English, and Spanish-speaking high school students were pressed into service as interpreters.

Edgartown Police Chief Bruce McNamee said many of the migrants were confused.

“We have talked to a number of people who’ve asked, ‘Where am I?’ And then I was trying to explain where Martha’s Vineyard is.”

The Wednesday flight extends a tactic by Republican politicians in primarily southern states have used to send migrants to Democrat-controlled cities in the north. Republican leaders have used this step to protest the rise in illegal immigration during President Biden’s time in office, and the issue figures to be prominent in November’s midterm elections.

Martha’s Vineyard has a reputation as a destination for the progressive elite, and DeSantis has been regularly bringing up the island enclave at his press conferences. Republican governors in Texas and Arizona have also been transporting migrants from the border to northern cities at taxpayer expense.

Democrats and immigrant advocates say those governors are essentially using migrants as political pawns. But the governors say are simply calling attention to a very real problem.

The U.S. Border Patrol is on pace to record 2 million apprehensions in a fiscal year for the first time ever.

Del Castro, who runs the Martha’s Vineyard shelter where the migrants spent the night, said the group is resilient.

“There’s some really sad stories. And then some people, the only thing they were expressing is how grateful they are to be here, and to be safe, and cared for, right? And, you know, their needs are immense right now.”

NPR spoke with Yesica, a migrant who gave only her first name because of her undocumented immigration status. She said she was uncertain about her future.

“Oh, goodness. I don’t know what is going to happen to us,” Yesica said, speaking in Spanish. “The truth is I am worried. It will be whatever God wishes, no? We’re here now and there’s nothing we can do.”

“Not even,” she added, “to take a step back.”

Source: Florida flies dozens of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard

Filed under Immigration Tagged with

Vancouver election chief challenges use of Chinese and Persian names on ballots

2022/09/16 Leave a comment

Of note. Tend to think better to only have Latin characters only for consistency and level playing field. Names in any case largely indicate ethnic ancestry:

Vancouver’s chief election officer has filed a court application seeking to declare that 15 candidates in upcoming municipal votes are not entitled to have their names on the ballot papers using Chinese, Persian or other non-Latin characters.

Rosemary Hagiwara filed the application to provincial court on Tuesday, naming respondents who include the Non-Partisan Association’s mayoral candidate Fred Harding, incumbent NPA councillor Melissa De Genova, and veteran Vision Vancouver school board trustee Allan Wong.

The application said all of the respondents submitted their “usual name” to be used on the Oct. 15 ballot papers in both Latin characters and either Chinese or Persian.

Ten are from the NPA, two from Vision Vancouver, and one each from Forward Together and COPE.

Hagiwara argued that none of the respondents who have previously stood for municipal elections used non-Latin versions of their names in the earlier nomination papers.

The matter is set to be heard by the provincial court in Robson Square on Thursday morning.

Harding said in an interview his Chinese name wasn’t something “plucked out of a hat.”

He said he has had a Chinese name for many years because half of his family on his wife’s side are Chinese.

“So telling me that this is not my usual name, you can understand this is like, ‘You really don’t know me,'” said Harding.

Hagiwara’s affidavit said that when Harding initially submitted his nomination on Sept. 6, he did not include Chinese characters in his usual name, but three days later he revised his nomination to add them.

She also said Harding did not include Chinese characters when he ran for mayor in 2018.

Harding said that although the NPA had access to lawyers, none could respond to the matter by Thursday morning.

Vision Vancouver said in a statement that Wong and council candidate Honieh Barzegar were dismayed by the possibility that their “unique and usual names” printed in non-Latin characters would be removed from ballot papers.

But the party also accused other candidates of using “cultural appropriation” by adopting Chinese names by which they are not commonly known, to seek an unfair advantage at the polls.

COPE school board candidate Suzie Mah said in a statement she felt “shock and disbelief” at being included among the respondents because her Chinese name was chosen by her parents and is part of her identity.

“The reason for using my Chinese name as well as my English name on the ballot is important to me. This is not about gaining extra votes with the Chinese community,” said Mah, adding she was not someone who sought to “make up a Chinese name” to use in the election.

Mah said in an interview her Chinese name was well-known among the Chinese-speaking community.

“I think that in the future if we want people to run for office and we want people to be part of democracy, voting has to be accessible. When you put in another barrier for people to take to run for office, it is very disturbing,” said Mah.

She said time was too short for her to seek legal advice before the hearing.

Hagiwara said in her affidavit that she is not aware of any candidate seeking to use non-Latin characters on ballot papers before 2014.

Only one candidate in each of the 2014 and 2018 polls had used non-Latin characters on the ballot, she said.

Source: Vancouver election chief challenges use of Chinese and Persian names on ballots

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

ICYMI – Denley: Shifting gender pronouns, racial terminology aren’t doing much to unite Canadians

2022/09/15 Leave a comment

Interesting results from the ACS poll, suggesting that academic and bureaucratic terminology may not be resonating with people (not a surprise).
Personally, find terminology debates and discussions far less interesting than looking at what disaggregated data (categories) can tell us regarding socioeconomic outcomes of particular groups, recognizing variation within groups as well as between them.
The particular not necessity be at the expense of the commonality, but it is important to have both. Not for “defining” people but understanding them: 
Anyone who follows traditional or social media can be forgiven for thinking that Canadians are divided as never before. Perhaps the better term is “categorized.” There is enormous enthusiasm in government and academe to define people by race, gender and sexual preference.
It has become the norm in the media to refer to people as “racialized” and bend over backwards to make sure that everyone’s personal pronouns are respected. The latter leads to the grammatically puzzling situation where an individual whose name we know is referred to as “them.”

Source: Denley: Shifting gender pronouns, racial terminology aren’t doing much to unite Canadians

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

ICYMI: Australia lifts permanent immigration by 35,000 to 195,000

2022/09/15 Leave a comment

Of note:

The Australian government announced on Friday it will increase its permanent immigration intake by 35,000 to 195,000 in the current fiscal year as the nation grapples with skills and labor shortages.

Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil announced the increase for the year ending June 30, 2023, during a two-day summit of 140 representatives of governments, trade unions, businesses and industry to address skills shortages exacerbated by the pandemic.

O’Neill said Australian nurses have been working double and triple shifts for the past two years, flights were being canceled because of a lack of ground staff and fruit was being left to rot on trees because there was no one to pick it.

“Our focus is always Australian jobs first, and that’s why so much of the summit has focused on training and on the participation of women and other marginalized groups,” O’Neil said.

“But the impact of COVID has been so severe that even if we exhaust every other possibility, we will still be many thousands of workers short, at least in the short term,” she added.

O’Neil said many of the “best and brightest minds” were choosing to migrate to Canada, Germany and Britain instead of Australia.

She described Australia’s immigration program as “fiendishly complex” with more than 70 unique visa programs.

Australia would establish a panel to rebuild its immigration program in the national interest, she said.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced on Thursday, the first day of the Jobs and Skills Summit, that 180,000 free places would be offed in vocational education schools next year at a cost of 1.1 billion Australian dollars ($748,000) to reduce the nation’s skills shortage.

Australia imposed some of the strictest international travel restrictions of an democratic country for 20 months early in the pandemic and gradually reopened to skilled workers from December last year.

Source: Australia lifts permanent immigration by 35,000 to 195,000

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

Lalande: Is #immigration at risk? Canadian attitudes could shift without proper planning

2022/09/15 Leave a comment

Broadening of the Century Initiative messaging to more explicitly address and mitigate externalities (as described in their scorecard), and a focus on “growing well” rather than just on demography and growth:

Welcoming and accepting successive waves of immigration has been one of Canada’s global advantages. Historically Canadians have recognized that immigration helps us innovate, grows our economy, keeps our public services solvent, develops cultural connections and business relationships with communities all over the world, and contributes to meeting our labour and skills needs – something that requires urgent attention right now.

Whatever their other points of disagreement, Canadians have welcomed immigrants and acknowledged the contributions they make to our economy and our social fabric.

While not yet at the stage it may be at in some other countries, that consensus may fraying and at risk of coming apart.   When Canadians are facing real day-to-day challenges in the forms of rising inflation and interest rates, housing unaffordability, labour shortages in healthcare and crumbling physical infrastructure, it can be difficult to see how welcoming more people in the country could help.

That unraveling is ever faster as divisive political discourse spreads and grows louder. There is deep anger we see reflected online in a rapid increase of hateful, racist and nationalistic comments.  Through my work at Century Initiative, I have experienced this vitriol directly, and I know many of you have too.

In the interest of our economic future we need to act now. Immigration is crucial to our development as a society, an economy and a nation.  We need more immigration and more supports for immigrants. We must continue to be the best country in the world in welcoming immigrants.

At the same time, we need to have an honest conversation about ensuring the benefits of immigration cascade to Canadians already living here – and mitigating any possible negative impacts of a growing population. Those discussions must be civil and focused on finding solutions.

At Century Initiative, we speak a lot about ‘growing well’. This means that not only do we need a growing population, but we need the policies, the public institutions and the physical infrastructure that will allow us to achieve sustainable population growth AND a prosperous country for all of us – old and new.

We need to make sure immigrants can contribute economically to their highest potential – by recognizing their credentials and by ensuring immigrant settlement agencies can support entrepreneurs and small businesspeople.

It also means recognizing the link between population growth and our ability to meet our health care, infrastructure and other needs. For example, with relatively low unemployment, population growth at its lowest in more than 100 years and growing demand for labour, we simply do not have the skilled workforce we need to build houses, highways and other infrastructure or staff our hospitals and other high demand jobs.

Take, for instance, our housing needs. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation recently estimated restoring housing affordability, will mean building nearly six million new housing units between now and 2030. At present, we are nowhere near being able to meet that target, for a variety of reasons, including the fact that we do not have the labour required to build what needs building.

Similarly, our shortage of healthcare professionals is leading to a crisis in a pandemic-battered public healthcare system. Our strained public services – even with respect to things as simple as passports – are creaking under soaring demand.

These are grave structural problems. Immigration can help address them.  Thankfully, no prominent politician has suggested limiting or eliminating immigration.  Let’s make sure it never happens.

The Canadian immigration model is a light unto the world. It’s our secret weapon – allowing our trading and innovating nation to become home to the world’s best, brightest and most ambitious.

But it is also fragile.

If we are going to grow, we need to grow well. And growing well means fixing the structural problems which make growth painful for ordinary Canadians – so that immigration can be part of a long-term solution for sustainable public services, a growing economy, and a prosperous country.

Source: Is immigration at risk? Canadian attitudes could shift without proper planning

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

Non-Francophone immigration a threat to ‘tightly woven’ Quebec cohesion: Legault

2022/09/14 Leave a comment

Not a dog-whistle, a megaphone, but unlikely to change the results:

Non-Francophone immigration is a threat to cohesion in Quebec, incumbent premier François Legault said Sunday.

The leader of the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) party had just delivered a speech to a few hundred supporters at the Le Dauphin hotel in Drummondville.

He addressed the importance of protecting the cohesion of the “tightly woven” Quebec nation, at the heart of which “there is our language, French.”

“Sometimes, this cohesion is shaken,” he said.

“The premier of Quebec, the only head of state in North America who represents a majority of Francophones, has a duty to stop the decline of French in Quebec,” he continued.

Asked in a press scrum who represented a threat to national cohesion, Legault pointed to the parties “who want to welcome 70,000, 80,000 newcomers a year.”

“It’s like math. If we want to stop the decline, for a certain period of time, we have to better integrate newcomers into French.”

François Legault’s CAQ has a goal of welcoming 50,000 immigrants annually, 80 per cent of whom would speak French upon arrival.

The Parti Québécois (PQ) would lower those thresholds to 35,000, while the Quebec Liberal Party would keep them at 70,000 and Quebec solidaire (QS) would raise them to 80,000.

Last Wednesday, Legault created a controversy when he spoke of Quebec values such as pacifism and respect, and equated immigration with violence and extremism.

He later said he was sorry if his remarks were confusing.

‘CLUMSY AND HURTFUL’

Quebec solidaire spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois called Legault’s words on immigration “clumsy” and “hurtful” on Sunday.

“I’m tired of François Legault always talking about immigration as a problem, as a threat, as something that weakens us as a nation,” he said.

His remarks were also criticized by Liberal leader Dominique Anglade.

“The Ukrainians who flee the bombs, the Italians, the Greeks, the Mexicans, the Portuguese, the Vietnamese, (…) is it a threat to our nation?” she questioned.

“It is your speech François Legault that threatens social cohesion,” she said.

PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon also criticized Legault for making “divisive statements” that were “not very responsible.”

“When we talk about threats, fear, we will play in an emotional register to try to make people forget that the CAQ is complicit and largely responsible for the decline of French,” he accused.

“The record of François Legault is that he will have welcomed 120,000 immigrants who do not speak French in his mandate,” St-Pierre Plamondon added.

RELIGIOUS SYMBOLS

On Sunday, Legault disagreed with the incumbent MNA for Sherbrooke, Christine Labrie, who said that banning the veil was a form of oppression.

QS promises to end the ban on religious symbols for government employees in positions of authority, such as teachers.

“We should, if we talk about teachers, think about children,” replied François Legault. “I think that a six-year-old girl who has a teacher with a religious sign has the right to a certain neutrality.”

“If you look at it from the point of view of the person who gives the service, well, it is a constraint, but if you look at it from the point of view of the person who receives the service, I think that in Quebec, we are a secular society,” he continued.

“I find it unfortunate that QS wants to question this, like the Liberal party.”

Source: Non-Francophone immigration a threat to ‘tightly woven’ Quebec cohesion: Legault

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

‘People look at you and they feel hope’: New CEO to lead Calgary Catholic Immigration Society

2022/09/14 Leave a comment

Passing of the torch. Always enjoyed my (limited) encounters with Fariborz:
After leading one of the country’s largest immigration organizations for 28 years, Fariborz Birjandian is stepping into an advisory role to welcome the next CEO of the Calgary Catholic Immigration Society.
Like Birjandian, the incoming CEO, Gordana Radan, was a refugee to Canada who started working with CCIS shortly after arriving in Calgary and experiencing the organization’s services firsthand. Radan came to Canada as a refugee from the former Yugoslavia in 1995. Her first home in Calgary was at CCIS’ Margaret Chisholm Resettlement Centre.

Source: ‘People look at you and they feel hope’: New CEO to lead Calgary Catholic Immigration Society

Filed under Integration Tagged with ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →