Elghawaby: Racial diversity is good for business but CTV, Bell Media got it horribly wrong

2022/08/25 Leave a comment

Of note. One of the good aspects of the CAJ surveys is that we will start being able to track trends, just as government has been able to do with respect to the public service and the federally-regulated sectors.

Haven’t looked at j-school diversity trends but hopefully will be able to do so in the 2021 census:

Angry reactions to the sudden ousting of decorated broadcaster Lisa LaFlamme from her job as CTV’s chief news anchor and senior editor haven’t abated. 

In fact, a new Dove Canada campaign encouraging people to turn social filters grey in solidarity with women “being edged out of the workplace” has added renewed energy to online chatter. That’s due to speculation that LaFlamme’s decision to keep her silver locks was among the possible reasons for her sudden dismissal.

Whether it was her hair, her strength, or her salary, what most people agree is that LaFlamme’s firing reeks of discrimination rooted in sexism and ageism.

What has been largely lost amidst the justified uproar is a full embrace of the channel’s first-ever racialized male national news anchor. 

As Global News reporter Ahmar Khan tweeted: “Omar Sachedina is very much deserving of the role and is well-respected amongst journalists, but Bell Media’s treatment of Lisa LaFlamme overshadows it all. A Muslim man helming the biggest National news program — history. But, diversity doesn’t cover the gaps of mistreatment.”

Khan was reacting to the instant blowback Sachedina received to his poorly timed tweet announcing his new role. 

For racialized communities, who are too often missing from Canada’s newsrooms, particularly in leadership positions, it feels impossible to celebrate this historic moment. 

Yet, it’s critical to remember how far behind the nation’s newsrooms are when it comes to representation and inclusion. A lack of diversity hurts both their bottom lines and our democracy.

A 2021 paper from the World Economic Forum titled,“Tackling Diversity and Inclusion in the Newsroom,” explored how racial diversity is crucial to the success of the media industry.

“The Poynter Institute, a non-profit journalism education and research organization, reports that trust in the media is particularly low in communities that have long felt ignored or misrepresented by mainstream news outlets. News outlets cannot expect to hold or grow the attention of a diverse group of readers without accounting for their diversity in the newsgathering and news reporting process,” reads the paper. 

It goes on to point to a 2018 study from the global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company, which shows how diverse companies outperform those that aren’t as diverse, leading to a 36 per cent increase of profitability. This is often attributed to healthier work environments, which foster growth and innovation.

In Canada, we’re barely even catching up to the racial realities of our newsrooms, as the Canadian Association of Journalists pointed out last year in one of the most comprehensive analyses of newsroom diversity ever published (in which Bell Media’s CTV refused to participate).

That survey collected race-based data on 3,783 journalists in 209 newsrooms and the results were disheartening. It found that almost half of all Canadian newsrooms exclusively employed white journalists, and that about nine in 10 newsrooms have no Latin, Middle Eastern or mixed race journalists on staff. 

About eight in 10 newsrooms have no Black or Indigenous journalists; two-thirds have no Asian people on staff. Eighty per cent of newsrooms have no visible minority journalists in any of the top-three editorial positions: editor-in-chief, executive producer, or deputy editor.

This impacts the quality of political news we receive, with racialized candidates viewed as “outsiders.” This biased lens means they receive more negative coverage than white candidates, according to Erin Tolley, assistant professor of political science at the University of Toronto, and author of the 2016 book, “Framed: Media and the Coverage of Race in Canadian Politics.”

So, for communities sometimes underserved or stereotyped by mainstream media, it’s a good day when a racialized journalist steps into a leadership role.

Except when it happens under circumstances like the one both Sachedina and LaFlamme found themselves in. That’s on Bell Media.

Source: Racial diversity is good for business but CTV, Bell Media got it horribly wrong

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Internal Audit of Immigration Pilot Programs: Lack of guiding principles

2022/08/25 Leave a comment

Always worth reading IRCC audit and evaluation reports. This audit covered three pilots, Start-Up Visa Program (2013-2018), Atlantic Immigration Pilot (2017-2021) and Caregivers Pilots (the Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker pilots) (2019-2024).

Since then, a number of other pilots have been added: Rural and Northern Immigration, Agri-Food, Home Care Provider, and arguably, Municipal Nominee Program.

Most striking observation: “there was no clearly defined guiding principles for pilot programs to better guide development, oversight, management, evaluation and transition of pilot programs.”

Conclusion:

Overall, the audit found that there was no clearly defined guiding principles for pilot programs to better guide development, oversight, management, evaluation and transition of pilot programs.

Due to the uniqueness of the objectives of each pilot program, pilots were managed independently, and existing departmental structures and processes were leveraged to support their development, implementation, and transition or termination. Although there were adequate fraud and program integrity risk management processes in place, there was no overarching guidance to create a formal risk management framework for pilot programs. The Department heavily relied upon the evaluation function to assess and report on the early performance results of pilot programs to support early decision-making regarding changes to a pilot program or the transition to a permanent program. However, there were limitations in assessing economic establishment and retention as the respective data is not available until years after the pilots have ended. Monitoring and reporting did not include Benefits Realization to inform further investment decisions.

As demands on IRCC continue to grow, and there is more potential to use pilot programs, clearly defined guiding principles for the management and evaluation of the pilot programs will support the holistic management and oversight of the Department’s pilot program portfolio and the broader achievement of departmental objectives. This will also provide direction and guidance for the development, implementation of individual pilot programs with consideration of leading practices and lessons learned. 

Management has accepted the audit findings and developed an action plan to address the recommendations.

Source: Internal Audit of Immigration Pilot Programs

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Liberal government cuts funding, suspends anti-racism group’s project after tweets

2022/08/24 Leave a comment

Should never have happened.

Officials need to do a better job in G&C applications vetting, including social media of the organization and key staff to reduce future risks:

The Liberal government has cut funding for an anti-racism group and suspended work on a project it was running after a member of the group made antisemitic remarks in a social media post.

“Antisemitism has no place in this country. The antisemitic comments made by Laith Marouf are reprehensible and vile,” Housing, Diversity and Inclusion Minister Ahmed Hussen said in a statement posted on Twitter Monday.

“We have provided notice to the Community Media Advocacy Centre (CMAC) that their funding has been cut and their project has been suspended.”

Marouf, a senior consultant on an anti-racism project that received $133,000 from the federal government, posted the controversial remarks on his Twitter account. The account is private but a screenshot of the post showed a number of tweets with his photo and name.

One tweet said: “You know all those loud mouthed bags of human feces, aka the Jewish White Supremacists; when we liberate Palestine and they have to go back to where they come from, they will return to being low voiced bitches of [their] Christian/Secular White Supremacist Masters.”

Last year, the Community Media Advocacy Centre (CMAC) received a $133,800 Department of Canadian Heritage grant to build an anti-racism strategy for Canadian broadcasting.

The Liberal government has cut funding to an outside group it hired to deliver anti-racism training after it was discovered that one of the group’s leaders made antisemitic remarks in social media posts.

Marouf is listed as a senior consultant on CMAC’s website and is quoted saying that CMAC is “excited to launch” the “Building an Anti-Racism Strategy for Canadian Broadcasting: Conversation & Convergence Initiative” with funding support from Heritage’s anti-racism action program.

He expressed gratitude to “Canadian Heritage for their partnership and trust imposed on us,” saying that CMAC commits to “ensuring the successful and responsible execution of the project.”

Marouf is not antisemitic, says lawyer

In Hussen’s statement, he called on CMAC to explain how it came to hire Marouf and how it plans to rectify the damage caused by his “antisemitic and xenophobic statements.”

“We look forward to a proper response on their next steps and clear accountability regarding this matter,” he said.

The Canadian Press reported last week that a lawyer acting for Marouf asked for his client’s tweets to be quoted “verbatim” and distinguished between Marouf’s “clear reference to ‘Jewish white supremacists”‘ and Jews or Jewish people in general.

Marouf does not harbour “any animus toward the Jewish faith as a collective group,” lawyer Stephen Ellis said in an email.

Source: Liberal government cuts funding, suspends anti-racism group’s project after tweets

Lilley of the Toronto Sun:

At noon Monday, Diversity Minister Ahmed Hussen tweeted out that he was cutting the funding from the Community Media Advocacy Centre.

The Montreal based group received a $133,822 grant last September for a program called Building an Anti-Racism Strategy for Canadian Broadcasting. It had already held workshops in Vancouver, Montreal and Halifax with events still scheduled for Calgary, Winnipeg and Ottawa.

A major problem, though, were the comments from the man leading these sessions, Laith Marouf. He has called “Jewish White Supremacists” “bags of human feces,” said that French is an ugly language, and that “Frogs have much less IQ.” He once called Colin Powell the “Jamaican house slave of the Empire.”

Marouf’s lawyer said that Marouf does not have “any animus toward the Jewish faith as a collective group” and said his tweets made a clear distinction between “Jewish White Supremacists” and Jews in general.  But that explanation is difficult to accept.

That’s not the kind of person who should be lecturing another human being on racism.

“The anti-Semitic comments made by Laith Marouf are reprehensible and vile,” Hussen said in a statement.

“We have provided notice to the Community Media Advocacy Centre (CMAC) that their funding has been cut and their project has been suspended.”

Hussen called on CMAC to explain how they came to hire Marouf, given that the group is supposed to be about fighting racism and hate while Marouf’s comments were “anti-Semitic and xenophobic.” The minister should be pushing CMAC to answer those questions, but he has to answer many himself.

How did this group and Marouf get funding in the first place?

How could Hussen end up being quoted in an April press release with Marouf when a simple search would have turned up many of his vile comments?

Will anyone be held accountable for this?

We used to have ministerial accountability in our government; ministers would resign when their departments messed up. There’s no doubt that the government did mess up, not just Hussen’s department, but also Canadian Heritage which approved the grant.

Speaking to government insiders to get a sense of how this came to be shows a series of missteps across four different ministers, two departments and many months. The grant was approved last September as Canada was in the middle of a federal election.

The grant had been making its way through the system at Heritage Canada which was then overseen by then-minister Steven Guilbeault. While the grant was funded by Heritage, it was handed out by the Minister of Diversity, Inclusion and Youth which at that time was Bardish Chagger.

By the time the government got around to actually handing out the money and making and making an announcement, Pablo Rodriguez was the minister at Heritage and Hussen had taken over the diversity file. It appears that the vetting process wasn’t fully followed because the people in charge assumed others had or would do the vetting required.

On the one hand, I am tempted to cut the government some slack because their contract was with CMAC, not Larouf, but he’s been with them for years. This was not a new hire; he’s featured on their website and was likely central to their application.

According to government sources, had the contract been directly with Marouf, he could have been fired immediately. Since the contract was with CMAC, the government had legal advice they had to follow before the contract could be terminated.

There is now an internal review to see how this happened, and the government is looking at their options, including whether any funding can be recovered from the group.

They should be reviewing the entire anti-racism training industry they are supporting. As I’ve written previously, it appears to a sham.

It took the Trudeau government longer than it should have to fix their mistake, but at least they are fixing it.

Source: LILLEY: Firing anti-racism group took too long given trainer’s racist comments

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , , ,

USA: What Happened To The Bills On Employment-Based Immigration?

2022/08/24 Leave a comment

Good but disconcerting recap:

The new Congress began with hope for a lasting solution to the employment-based green card backlog problem but may soon end with no solution at all. What happened?

Economists have found foreign-born scientists and engineers are vital to the competitiveness of companies in the United States and the American economy. “The ability to recruit global talent is a key factor that has contributed to U.S. leadership in science and research,” according to the MIT Science and Policy Review. “This talent has been vital for the development of U.S. science and responsible for numerous discoveries and innovations that have improved quality of life.” At U.S. universities, international students account for 74% of the full-time graduate students in electrical engineering and 72% in computer and information sciences as well as 50% to 70% in fields that include mathematics and materials sciences. https://embedly.forbes.com/widgets/media.html?src=https%3A%2F%2Fdatawrapper.dwcdn.net%2FZbTwf%2F1%2F&display_name=Datawrapper&url=https%3A%2F%2Fdatawrapper.dwcdn.net%2FZbTwf%2F1%2F&image=https%3A%2F%2Fdatawrapper.dwcdn.net%2FZbTwf%2Fplain-s.png%3Fv%3D1&key=3ce26dc7e3454db5820ba084d28b4935&type=text%2Fhtml&schema=dwcdn

Due to a low annual limit on employment-based green cards and a per-country limit of 7% from a single country, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) estimates that more than 2 million peoplefrom India will be waiting in the U.S. employment-based immigrant backlog by 2030. Many foreign-born scientists and engineers will potentially wait decades before gaining permanent residence and a chance to become U.S. citizens. 

The impact on competitiveness is significant. At U.S. universities, Indian graduate students in science and engineering declined by nearly 40%, between 2016 and 2019, according to a National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) analysis. “During the same period (2016 to 2019), Indian students attending Canadian colleges and universities increased 182%. The difference in enrollment trends is largely a result of it being much easier for Indian students to work after graduation and become permanent residents in Canada compared to the United States.” Chinese student interest in attending U.S. universities has also declined.

In February 2021, the U.S. Citizenship Act (H.R. 1177), developed by the Biden administration, was introduced in Congress. The bill contained many immigration provisions and would have put an end to the employment-based immigrant backlog within 10 years. It included a higher annual green card limit, eliminated the per-country limit, provided permanent residence for those waiting with an approved immigrant petition for 10 years and excluded dependents from being counted against the annual limit. (See here.) It also would have exempted individuals with Ph.D.s in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields from numerical limits. 

Due to GOP opposition and the 60-vote filibuster threshold in the Senate, the U.S. Citizenship Act turned out to be a messaging or placeholder bill that did not move in Congress. To obtain green card relief, a different measure would need to become law.

The America COMPETES (CHIPS) Act

The best opportunity for employment-based immigration looked like legislation aimed at enhancing U.S. competitiveness in semiconductors. On February 4, 2022, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the America COMPETES Act 222 to 210. The bill contained several immigration provisions but garnered only one Republican vote. In June 2021, the Senate passed a similar billwithout any immigration measures.

The House bill created an exemption from annual green card limits and backlogs for foreign nationals with a Ph.D. in STEM fields and those with a master’s degree “in a critical industry,” such as semiconductors. The bill also included Rep. Zoe Lofgren’s (D-CA) LIKE Act to give foreign-born entrepreneurs an opportunity to earn lawful permanent residence. A recent NFAP report on immigrant founders of billion-dollar companies concluded many innovations only become useful through entrepreneurship.

During a House-Senate conference committee, Rep. Lofgren urged the Senate to accept the House’s immigrant measures. The Biden administration, businesses and universities wanted to see, at minimum, the exemption for individuals with Ph.D.s in STEM fields become law.

The exemption for STEM Ph.D.s was likely doomed the moment Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) appointed Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) to the bill’s conference committee. McConnell gave Grassley, the ranking Republican member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, a veto, in effect, over any immigration provision. Over several months, he exercised that veto and no group of Senate Republicans stepped forward to prevent it.

In June 2022, Grassley asserted he was against including immigration measures in a non-immigration bill. Critics pointed out Grassley had no problem, indeed lauded, including a restrictive measure on EB-5 immigrant investor visas in a non-immigration bill only a few months earlier (March 2022). It appeared evident that Grassley opposed any liberalization of U.S. immigration laws, no matter how beneficial economists and others believed a specific provision would be for the country and claimed a procedural reason.

Senate Democrats approached Grassley with iterations of the Ph.D. STEM provision, but he refused to budge, according to sources. He did not vote for final passage or the motion to proceed to the bill on the Senate floor (a 64 to 34 vote) but got his way on the legislation. The final bill included no measures to exempt Ph.D.s in STEM fields from green card limits or any other significant positive immigration provision. (The legislation was H.R. 4346, renamed the CHIPS Act of 2022.) 

A letter (July 27, 2022) to House and Senate leaders from the chief human resource officers of leading semiconductor companies called on Congress to admit more high-tech talent: “We are writing to you about an underappreciated but vital issue for both our economy and national security interest: the need for more talented and highly skilled individuals to fill the immediate labor demand of the technology industry. Workers with advanced education and knowledge in cutting-edge technical areas, specifically in science, technology and engineering (STEM) fields, are the fuel that will propel our economy and country into the next industrial and technological era.”

Budget Reconciliation

Another legislative vehicle, a budget reconciliation bill, became law without any measures to relieve the green card backlog or make other positive immigration changes. For months, Democrats in Congress talked about using budget reconciliation to enact immigration reforms. The reconciliation process overcomes Senate filibuster rules by allowing passage with a simple majority. However, under Congressional rules, reconciliation can only include certain measures.

The Senate parliamentarian advised in late 2021 that including provisions to legalize undocumented immigrants in a budget reconciliation bill would violate Senate rules. Senate Democrats also gave green card backlog reduction language informally to the Senate parliamentarian, but she did not provide a ruling on it, according to a Congressional source.

Immigration reform supporters pointed to language recapturing unused employment-based green cards that became law in budget reconciliation in 2005. However, the Senate parliamentarian said, according to the Congressional source, that the earlier parliamentarian never approved that language and it was allowed because nobody at the time raised a budget point of order since the provision was supported on a bipartisan basis.

In that context, it becomes clearer why, at different times, Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) threw cold water on the idea of including green card provisions in reconciliation. A Senate parliamentarian’s advice can be overcome by a vote but Sen. Durbin indicated getting all Senate Democrats to vote against a parliamentarian’s ruling on immigration was not “realistic.”

The issue appeared to be moot until Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) reached a deal with other Democrats and the reconciliation bill became the Inflation Reduction Act. The bill passed Congress without any green card measures. Senate Democrats voted against all amendments to the legislation, including those that would have restricted access to asylum via the public health measure Title 42. 

Based on Sen. Durbin’s earlier statement, it seems unlikely Sen. Manchin or Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) would have supported including green card recapture in the bill if, as appears probable, the current Senate parliamentarian advised the measure would violate budget reconciliation rules. Note also Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) adopted a strategy of zeroing out spending within the Judiciary Committee’s jurisdiction to force Republican amendments on immigration to meet a 60-vote margin for germaneness. (Title 42 did not fall within the Judiciary Committee’s jurisdiction.)

Other Legislation

Another legislative vehicle emerged due to international events. After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, a weak point for the Putin regime was its ability (or inability) to keep high-skilled technical talent living and working inside Russia. Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell recommended using legislation to “Drain Putin’s Brains.” 

In a letter to the House on April 28, 2022, the Biden administration provided legislative language on Russian scientists and engineers as part of the FY 2022 emergency supplemental funding for Ukraine. The language would have allowed Russians with a master’s or doctoral degree in a STEM field to obtain permanent residence (a green card) without a backlog or employer sponsorship. 

The emergency supplemental for Ukraine passed Congress without any non-spending measures, including the provision for Russian scientists and engineers.

In July 2022, hopes were high the FY 2023 defense authorization bill would include an amendment on green cards for individuals with Ph.D.s in science and engineering. In what has become a familiar story, it was not to be. 

“According to a Congressional source, the House Rules Committeedid not rule the amendment in order because the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said the provision would cost $1 billion over 10 years,” as reported in July. “To address the issue and offset the cost, a $7,500 fee was added for the individuals who received permanent residence under the provision. However, the House Ways and Means Committee said the fee could not be included because it amounted to a tax and, therefore, violated Clause 5(a) of Rule 21 of the rules of the House of Representatives.” 

It is unclear how CBO determined the $1 billion cost and how advocates can address the issues raised by the CBO score in the future. There is no word about adding the provision to the Senate’s defense bill.

A few bills related to employment-based immigration remain in play in Congress. On June 7, 2022, H.R. 3648, the Eagle Act of 2022, was reported out of the House Judiciary Committee on a 22-14 vote. The bill would eliminate the per-country limit for employment-based immigrants, with a phase-in period. It also would add new restrictions and requirements on H-1B visas, raise the per-country limit on family applicants from 7% to 15%, provide protection to children from aging out on a parent’s application and allow for adjustment of status within two years of an approved employment petition. Individuals would receive work authorization and advance parole for travel purposes.

In the House defense authorization bill, an amendment was included by Rep. Deborah K. Ross (D-NC) and Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-IA) to “protect dependent children of green card applicants and employment-based nonimmigrants who face deportation when they age out of dependent status,” reported Roll Call. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced the America’s Children Act, the Senate companion. The measure in the defense authorization bill would need to pass in the Senate to become law. (See here for more on this issue.) Sen. Grassley said in an August 2022 town hall meeting the measure could be included in an omnibus or the defense bill “if we can get bipartisan agreement,” which is positive but short of a personal commitment to support the legislation.

In June 2022, in the House Appropriations Committee, an amendment was added to the House Homeland Security spending bill to provide relief for individuals waiting for green cards in the family and employment-based backlog. The amendment authorizes using unused green cards going back to 1992, per Bloomberg Government. “The language of the amendment (see here) . . . means tens of thousands of individuals waiting in the employment-based immigrant backlog would benefit, as well as individuals waiting in family backlogs,” as reported in this Forbes article in June.

The Senate Appropriations bill for FY 2023 for Homeland Security also contains green card measures for those waiting in family and employment backlogs. The House and Senate green card measures face significant obstacles since non-spending provisions face a high hurdle to remain in a spending bill.

Blocking High-Skilled Immigrants

House and Senate Democrats and the Biden administration have supported or proposed several bills and measures to reduce the employment-based green card backlogs and exempt highly skilled foreign nationals from immigration quotas. Senate Democrats did not sacrifice a chance to pass the CHIPS Act after Sen. Grassley opposed including a STEM Ph.D. exemption. 

Republicans in Congress in a position to influence legislative outcomes are now opposing any positive measures on legal immigration. As one executive of a leading technology company told me, “If there are people in Congress who aren’t going to support more green cards for Ph.D.s in STEM fields, what will they support?”

Source: What Happened To The Bills On Employment-Based Immigration?

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , , ,

OECD: What are the risks and rewards of start-up visas? | Quels sont les risques et les avantages des visas pour start-up?

2022/08/23 Leave a comment

Useful international comparisons and caution regarding the benefits:

“Investor and entrepreneur visas in most OECD countries focus on owners with capital, experience and a business that is already operating, often with high turnover. Founders with potentially high impact and transformational ideas for new businesses, but without their own capital or income, are generally not eligible for existing visa programs. They may also fall short of the requirements for formal education in those countries offering skilled migration programs in some countries.

·         To be able to attract, admit and retain high potential entrepreneurs, many countries have introduced visa programmes specifically designed for founders and employees of start-up firms. All such programs focus on people with scalable, transformative and innovative business ideas at the early stage of development. 

·         Some countries assess applicants through the immigration service, but most rely on expert panels or government bodies and agencies with a focus on SMEs, business creation and innovation.

·         Determining which start-ups have high potential is not easy to scale up to a mass decision making process.

·         A start-up is, by nature, a high-risk venture and many fail. Managing this risk is a key concern of visa programs.

·         The benefits of the visa programme for the founder and the business community are evident. There is the potential for personal enrichment for the founder and opportunities for the business community to learn from both success and failure. However, these programs must also demonstrate there are benefits to the public – including that founders are contributing to the community that made their success possible.

·         Migrant founders are offered a range of generous conditions, including permanent residence, state funding, grants, professional contacts, mentoring, access to incubators, support for family reunification, simplified application procedures and expedited processing. 

·         There are real economic benefits from hosting successful start-ups, in terms of job creation, new services and supporting a sustained culture of innovation and forward thinking. An SUV programme can make the country more visible for investors, firms and individuals looking for a destination associated with innovation.

·         However, there is currently little quantitative evidence of the benefits that migrant founders bring to the host country. More needs to be done to build evaluation frameworks so that the policy settings can be refined and the generous support provided to start up founders can be justified to the public. 

·         There are also important issues to resolve in protecting the integrity of the programs – ensuring that programs are not deliberately misused to circumvent the controls in other programs (skilled migration and business visas) and that the programme delivers on its policy aims.”

View or download the full report | Consultez ou téléchargez le rapport complet (en anglais) :

·         https://www.oecd.org/migration/mig/MPD-28-What-are-the-risks-and-rewards-of-start-up-visas.pdf

From the conclusion:

However, countries that already have SUV programs should establish more robust processes to evaluate the outcomes of participants and adjust policy settings.

Countries that have established start-up visas have yet to develop metrics by which to judge the success of their start up programs. The SUVs presented in this brief often require more administrative resources for adjudication than other visas.

Evaluations are needed to refine policy settings and assess the benefit to the public, which funds the administration of the programs and bears the cost of any failures. Start-up visa programs are relatively recent and their value is yet to be demonstrated quantitatively, although they have not been subject to particular scrutiny so far.

Migration, or even the private sector, alone does not drive fundamental technological change.

Studies suggest that it is a broad co-operation between government, the private sector and tertiary institutions that provide fundamental advancements in science and technology – with sometimes no immediate commercial applicability. These advancements provide base level tools for the private sector to develop into products that have a real impact on the economy and people’s lives. While it is important to have visa options for the highly talented with unconventional backgrounds, migration is only one part of a larger project to foster innovation.

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

Lord: We should use Canada’s fallen statues to start a public conversation about our history

2022/08/22 Leave a comment

Agree. We need to understand history and context, rather than simply ignoring history and the forces behind previous values and those behind change. Always have preferred updating or new historical plaques to that end, rather than simply ignoring the complexities of the day:

At the University of Ghana, the administration in 2018 removed the statue of famed Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi in response to a petition that claimed he was racist.

In 2020, during anti-racism protests in Bristol, a slave trader’s statue was torn down and thrown into the harbour.

Mexico City confirmed last fall that a figure of an Indigenous woman will replace the capital’s Christopher Columbus monument.

Ideas about history are constantly in flux. In recent years, people everywhere have been critically rethinking representations of the past from a perspective of social justice and anti-colonialism. And as part of this collective reflection, communities, cities and countries are reassessing what, how and who they publicly honour and celebrate with the statues featured in their public spaces.

Canada is no exception: Last year, anger at the deaths of Indigenous children at residential schools led crowds in Winnipeg to topple a Queen Victoria statue and another of Queen Elizabeth II.

Earlier this year, Ryerson University was renamed Toronto Metropolitan University after years of advocacy, consultation and committee work, as well as protests that defaced and toppled his statue, ultimately throwing it into Toronto Harbour. (Ryerson, a supporter of public education, was a high-profile advocate of the residential-school policy, which separated more than 150,000 Indigenous children from their families – producing suffering for generations.)

But what happens next to these statues of fallen historical figures is a logistical, financial and educational question that cities and communities are struggling with. In New Orleans, four Confederate monuments have now been in storage for more than a year after they were taken down. Similarly, Baltimore keeps four monuments in a secret location while a city task force decides what to do with them.

But for Canada, this question of what cities should do with statues they no longer want represents a unique opportunity to lead in the creation of a new type of public institution – one that offers both a practical solution and addresses the complexity of our changing understanding of the past and its impact on the present.

This describes neither a museum nor a warehouse, but a proposal that I call an “aware-house.” Such a space would display fallen statues to build understanding about historical processes, including how and why they were first erected and how they came to be removed. Appreciating its potential positive impact as both a learning and healing experience requires looking at the current discourse on this issue.

Once a statue is taken down, whether by crowds or by design, what happens next isn’t clear. Storage is expensive, and once a figure ends up there, it’s unlikely to be brought back up again – removing the opportunity to have that educational conversation or use the moment to foster public engagement.

“Just send them to a museum” is a common misconception in this discussion. The mission of museums is not to be the attic for the nation’s unwanted items. Other alternatives, such as the case made by sociology professor Gary Younge to stop creating any monuments featuring historical figures, could be a go-forward option, but it doesn’t address what to physically do with those that are removed.

Countries such as Russia and the former Yugoslavia created “gardens of fallen statues,” but these are limited in their scope serving primarily as places of nostalgia rather than education or community healing.

The aware-house, meanwhile, would create a public place that starts with the recognition that history is a living discipline. Imagine a towering space, such as an aircraft hangar, filled with monuments and statues from our past. The foundation of the conversation they are driving starts with the framework that history and norms are ever changing, and then looks to explore what it means with perspectives from across sectors, backgrounds and life experiences. A swipe of a QR code empowers users to engage in a multimedia and immersive metaverse experience.

Equally important, the process of designing the aware-house is part of the healing journey of wronged communities and involves engaging new and diverse stakeholders in discussions, not only with historians of different viewpoints, but sociologists, poets, artists, psychologists and policy makers. Exhibitions on different themes could be shared around the country and adapted to local stories as needed to continue dialogue around the issues that these statues surface – including their long-term impact on public and social problems today.

Just as Canada in 2014 established the CMHR, the world’s first national museum dedicated to human rights, we could now lead the way on a new global chapter: pro-actively addressing the interplay between legacy racism, sexism, colonial exploitation and contemporary institutional and systemic challenges.

And as the country reflects on Pope Francis’s recent apology tour, it’s the perfect time to launch an aware-house – which, by curating and contextualizing removed relics to create genuine awareness and understanding for the future, could become an anchor component of our national reconciliation efforts.

Gail Lord is a museum planner and the president and co-founder of Lord Cultural Resources. She was the consultant for the establishment of both the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) and the National (Smithsonian) African American Museum of History and Culture.

Source: We should use Canada’s fallen statues to start a public conversation about our history

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McWhorter: The Herd Mentality Is All Around Us. I Still See Hope for Diversity of Thought.

2022/08/22 Leave a comment

Money quote:

The collegiality of groups united around manufactured certainties and Manichaean worldviews is tempting, but also a kind of cop-out — and quite unmodern. Courage is allowing that your own view may be but one legitimate one among many, that there are no easy answers, and that being your own self is a more gracious existence than joining a herd.

Commentary:

There are times when things really throw you a curve as to what you thought human nature was. For me, one of them was when carrying mobile phones became the default. It would never have occurred to me before then that so many people would want to talk and text in their spare moments as much as they do.

It should have. We are fundamentally social creatures who for centuries existed within smallish bands of people well known to one another. “Personal space” and the idea of being left alone with one’s thoughts can almost be seen as modern add-ons to what humanity is like, and perhaps more typical of WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic) societies than others — WEIRD-ness being the coinage of Joseph Henrich, an anthropologist at Harvard and the author of “The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous.” Reviewing the book for The Times, the Tufts University philosophy professor Daniel Dennett described Henrich’s concept thusly:

“The world today has billions of inhabitants who have minds strikingly different from ours. Roughly, we weirdos are individualistic, think analytically, believe in free will, take personal responsibility, feel guilt when we misbehave and think nepotism is to be vigorously discouraged, if not outlawed. Right? They (the non-WEIRD majority) identify more strongly with family, tribe, clan and ethnic group, think more “holistically,” take responsibility for what their group does (and publicly punish those who besmirch the group’s honor), feel shame — not guilt — when they misbehave and think nepotism is a natural duty.”

That realization makes less shocking to me, albeit utterly dismaying, the many dogmatic behaviors exhibited today that seem outwardly irrational or close to it. The kinds of things that make it seem as if so many of us are, so to speak, losing it are actually signs of how difficult it can be to get past what we seem to be hard-wired for. Fanatic beliefs, furious ideologies and even, potentially, a sense of duty to harm people in the name of certain beliefs reflect the eternal temptation of a sense of belonging to a group, of being part of a larger story, of having a guiding sense of purpose. To us WEIRD-os, by contrast, the ever-stronger purchase of individualism in our intellectual, moral and civic development seems natural. But it’s challenging, perhaps unnatural, to be an individual.

There will always be those who prefer the warm embrace of feeling as if they are part of a heroic mass movement, united in a communal grievance and spared the challenge of individuality, which entails facing the possibility of being wrong, of grappling with nuance, of living one’s own story without certainty as to how it will end.

Among those shirking that challenge are the people who cannot be budged from the fantasy that the former president Donald Trump won the 2020 election, the people fashioning themselves as eternal victims of undifferentiated masses of white people ever badgering Black people with microaggressions and the people who appear motivated to attempt to kill someone in the name of a religious leader’s declaration. The results of these impulses vary greatly in impact and import, but to differing degrees they’re all symptoms of the same preference of being part of a herd even at the expense of coherence.

But our times are bifurcated. There are signs that at the same time, so many other people are seeking to countenance diversity of thought, disavowing the comforts of the idea that their view is the only legitimate one and fostering an ideal under which our society frames difference of opinion as a norm rather than a threat. We can see it in aspects of linguistic behavior as well as in broader cultural matters.

Casual American English, in ways we’re not always conscious of, is more overt in allowing room for disagreement than it used to be. For example, the use of “like” that so bothers purists is in reality a useful discursive hedge, along with phrases such as “sort of,” “kind of” and “you know.” In conversation, these expressions can be read as subtle indications that someone knows that there are other ways to view things, and to be too categorical is to imply a certainty that all may not share.

I’ve mentioned this before in this newsletter, but I’d like to illustrate how ingrained this has become with a recent NPR interview, wherein the journalist Michael Grunwald expresses himself in what is now an ordinary fashion on all levels of media, with hedges discreetly tucked in. Talking at first about the American Rescue Plan, he places these rhetorical hedges alongside potentially disputable or controversial points as a way of being not inarticulate or hesitant but considerate (emphasis added):

“So that really worked. And, you know, some people would argue it worked too well, and it helped create some of the inflation sort of overheating the economy.

The infrastructure bill and the Inflation Reduction Act — I think, you know, the jury’s still out. Those are 10-year bills. You know, we’ll see how the implementation goes.”

And a bit later, of President Biden:

“In the Obama administration, he was kind of the go-to negotiator. … And I think you’d have to say that at some level, he’s been able to do business, even if largely on the Inflation Reduction Act, certainly, he kind of left it to the Senate to iron out the details.”

It’s true that public speech is simply less formal than it once was, but it’s also the case that informal speech in the past involved less of this kind of polite hedge. If I pick up a nearly half-century-old source such as “Informal Speech: Alphabetic and Phonemic Text With Statistical Analyses and Tables,” a book full of examples of people, including young people, just talking, I’m likely to find few, if any, examples of the informal, hedging “like.” Indeed, there was a time in our lifetimes (or at least in mine) when “like” was, like, not a thing. It’s often thought of as a feature of ditzy “Valley”-speak. (Listen here to the British actress Emilia Clarke, of “Game of Thrones” fame, doing a delightful, if just a bit stereotypical, Valley accent for the late night host Jimmy Kimmel.) But “like” deserves recognition as a nuanced conversational device that enables something we find in short supply today: consideration for the listener.

Grunwald is a respected writer and analyst. If you listen to his interview, you’ll hear someone speaking confidently and intelligently. And with his informality, peppering in the occasional hedge, he skillfully moves an informative conversation along by gently signaling to the listener that he is unpacking (sorry, Frank Bruni) what he knows about Biden’s record while leaving room for alternative points of view. He’s offering discussion, not dictating his perspective.

I’m also heartened by increasingly widespread interest in how we can have productive conversations despite differing beliefs. It has become, especially since 2020, one of the things people like me are most often asked to speak about, and I can personally attest that it has become a hot topic even in informal settings, like chatting with other parents at kids’ birthday parties and such.

For example, diversity, equity and inclusion programs often seem to be devoted to ridding workers of bias against, shall we say, diverse people. But there are scholars who’ve found that these programs “backfire.” A more constructive goal, in any case, would be to broaden the project beyond confronting bias and, rather, to help people deal with the challenge of differences among people and groups in this highly multiethnic society.

I think this week about Moral Courage College, an alternative to the D.E.I. ritual, a program offering training in how to productively grapple with the wide range of views and experiences found in most workplaces, as well as colleges, universities and even K-12 schools. Its founder, Irshad Manji, whom I know and admire, has created a method called Diversity Without Division. “This program doesn’t tell anybody what to think or believe,” she has said, “it teaches everybody to lower their emotional defenses so that contentious issues can be turned into constructive conversations and healthy teamwork.”

I’m also learning more about the Theory of Enchantment program created by Chloé Valdary (who, like me, is sometimes labeled a “heterodox” or “contrarian” Black voice). Among other things, she stresses how important it is in our conversations to “treat people like human beings, not political abstractions.”

The “courage” part of the name Moral Courage College is vital. The collegiality of groups united around manufactured certainties and Manichaean worldviews is tempting, but also a kind of cop-out — and quite unmodern. Courage is allowing that your own view may be but one legitimate one among many, that there are no easy answers, and that being your own self is a more gracious existence than joining a herd.

Source: The Herd Mentality Is All Around Us. I Still See Hope for Diversity of Thought.

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Ipsos: Where is the US public on immigration?

2022/08/22 Leave a comment

Interesting overdue with historic data:

Immigration is a perennial and divisive issue in American politics. Our latest polling with NPR demonstrates just how true that is.

As the midterms approach, the misinformation and the heated political rhetoric surrounding immigration seem to be resonating with the public.

But why is that? How did we get here? In short, populism and the persistent feeling many Americans have that the system is broken are creating the political ingredients that drive some of this sentiment. This is our context.

That and more below in five charts, looking at immigration, nativism, and the politics of it all in the U.S.

  1. Immigration then and now. In the first part of the 21st century, immigrants are increasingly making up a larger portion of the total U.S. population. The late 19th century and early 20th century were the last time immigrants made up a similar share of the U.S. population. Nativism grew in prominence then, just as it does now.immigration over time
  2. Who is America? Even as immigrants are making up a larger portion of Americans, fewer Americans feel immigrants are an important part of American identity. This is true regardless of party. Independents and Republicans saw the most notable drop over the past four years, though the dip among Democrats is also significant.Who is America
  3. System remains broken. Despite a new presidential administration, a pandemic, a recession, and inflation, all these things haven’t swayed the fundamental context Americans feel the country exists within–the system is broken. Populism underpins this moment.System is broken
  4. Invasion? The populist currents running through the public frame how people feel about borders and their security. Right now, many Americans feel that the U.S. is experiencing an invasion at the southern border. Half of Hispanics and a majority of white respondents feel this way. Though, this opinion is most pronounced among Republicans.Populism
  5. Not a monolith. Hispanic Americans, many of whom report experiencing xenophobic comments, are split on whether it is more important to help immigrants escape poverty and violence and find success in the U.S. or secure America’s borders. Partisanship drives opinion here as it does for the general public. A tale of two Americas—one Red, the other one Blue.Not a monolith

Immigration is a culture war topic that brings out some of our most divisive rhetoric and tendencies. Populism and nativism are the cultural currents framing this topic and this moment. This is not new in American politics.

Immigration is an issue that is unlikely to fade away anytime soon.

Source: Where is the public on immigration?

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New Zealand temporarily changes immigration rules to hire extra workers

2022/08/22 Leave a comment

Of note, the geographic distinctions:

New Zealand will make temporary changes to its immigration rules seeking to hire thousands of extra workers to plug a labor shortage, Immigration Minister Michael Wood said on Sunday.

Wood said the government was aiming at temporarily doubling numbers under the working holiday visa scheme.

The visa scheme allows people to enter and work from New Zealand for a period of up to 12 months, or sometimes even more, if they’re from select countries like the UK or Canada.

By throwing open more working holiday visa slots, New Zealand is hoping for 12,000 extra workers over the year.

“These measures are about providing immediate relief to those businesses hardest hit by the global worker shortage,” Wood said in a statement.

New Zealand announces measures to plug labor shortage

Michael Wood said there would be relaxation of wage rules for skilled migrants in key sectors like aged care, construction, infrastructure, meat processing, seafood and adventure tourism so  these businesses are slowly able to build necessary skills in the country.

Wood announced a temporary extension of working holiday visas by six months and an opportunity for those who previously held the visa but didn’t travel to New Zealand because of COVID.

“COVID brought the world to a standstill,” Wood said, adding that a workers’ crunch was being felt most by New Zealand’s hospitality and tourism sectors that traditionally rely on international workers.

While COVID had a major impact on international travel around the world, New Zealand’s response was unusually draconian by global standards. The isolated and remote islands closed their borders almost entirely during the pandemic, hoping to keep the virus out altogether, but ultimately failed in this goal. It finally reopened on July 31 this year.

Unemployment rate at record low, wages high

New Zealand’s unemployment rate remains at record lows, at around 3.3% in the second quarter which runs from April until June, according to Statistics New Zealand.

Annual growth in private-sector wages increased at the same time to 3.4% in the second quarter, their most rapid increase in 14 years.

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand last week lifted the official cash rate by 50 basis points to 3.0% in a seventh straight hike to rein in inflation.

Source: New Zealand temporarily changes immigration rules to hire extra workers

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Sarkonak: Why Canadian universities are blocking able-bodied white men from some positions

2022/08/22 Leave a comment

Affirmative action debates, Canadian version. From softer preference to hard requirement. Not a fan of hard quotas as softer approaches can be effective without raising concerns, valid or not, about qualifications and merit.

And will the government move to hard quotas in public service hiring and the employment equity act?

People should not be barred from jobs because of their skin colour, or their gender. We call that “discrimination” — and it’s generally considered a bad thing. It’s also bad that universities across Canada are refusing to hire white men for various research positions, simply because they’re white, male and don’t claim to have any disabilities.

That’s right: the federally funded Canada Research Chair program, which doles out roughly $300 million every year to 2,000 academics, adheres to an identity quota system. Universities risk losing funding for positions if they haven’t hired the designated number of research chairs by 2029 in each “identity category” (women, visible minorities, Indigenous people and people with disabilities). As a result, some resumes are going straight into the trash.

I wish I was exaggerating. Being not white, male or able-bodied was a requirement for the University of British Columbia’s 2022 research chair job postings in food science and quantum computing. A mathematics department job posting for a research chair in computational cell biology specifically says that the “selection will be restricted to members of the following designated groups: women, visible minorities (members of groups that are racially categorized), persons with disabilities and Indigenous peoples.” 

Similar requirements were listed for the University of Toronto’s positions in management, education, dentistry, engineering and medicine. Queen’s University only wants women for geotechnical engineering, nuclear waste storage and applied artificial intelligence. Western University doesn’t care about the researcher’s area of study in one opening, but requires that the candidate have a disability. A McGill posting prefers those who say they have a disability or are Indigenous. 

There are 78 schools in the Canada Research Chair program. Just Google “CRC” and any university’s name to look for more.

The Canada Research Chair program is doing this because of a Federal Court order that requires research appointments to reflect the Canadian population by 2029. It’s just following the law. Personally, I don’t think equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) should require exclusion, but alas. 

There’s a bigger picture to all this. The Canada Research Chair program is one of many under the nation’s three federal research funding agencies, which spend a combined $3 billion every year to advance our knowledge in health, science and the humanities.

They support numerous research positions, student jobs, academic awards and grants. Per their “Tri-Agency EDI Action Plan,” they’ve been tasked since 2018 with making students and researchers “representative of the Canadian population.” Universities, in their agreements to receive federal funding, must agree to promote “equitable practices.” 

At a glance, you’d think this means simply making sure that procedures are fair to everyone, regardless of background. But the Canada Research Chair program shows this can mean dismissing applicants outright if the quotas (or “equity targets”) haven’t been met. Good intentions appear to have paved the way to mandated discrimination.

Values attestations are making their way into job applications as well. A University of Ottawa job posting for a research chair in green chemistry — that is, the study of chemical reactions — requires a demonstrated history of incorporating EDI and a statement about doing so. Researchers should be free to talk about their values, including those who don’t agree with EDI. Academic freedom is supposed to allow for diverse ideas. Yet in this case, only one way of thinking is eligible. 

You might wonder if any professors oppose this kind of thing. Perhaps, but if promotions, funding and teaching positions are increasingly tied to their embrace of EDI, there’s a pretty big incentive to say nothing. Professors have families to feed, after all.

Those who have publicly dared to question these openly discriminatory practices haven’t been answered. During question period in the House of Commons on March 29, Bloc Québécois MP Martin Champoux raised concernsover the Canada Research Chair hiring exclusions at Laval University, and asked if the government agreed that exclusion is “not the way to go.” 

Reading from prepared notes, Andy Fillmore, the Liberal parliamentary secretary to the minister of democratic institutions, blamed former prime minister Stephen Harper’s government and assured the member that the current government is “committed to providing the resources and tools our scientists need to bring tangible benefits to Canadians’ health, environment, communities and economy,” which “will make Canada a leader in innovation.”

Although Fillmore refused to answer the question, it’s quite possible we’re headed for more mandatory diversity. The government used similar language in its bill to change the Broadcasting Act, Bill C-11, which would require media to “reflect” the viewpoints of the population. 

The problem isn’t that these ideas exist; the problem is that they’re being used to deny opportunities to people because of the body they were born in. When inclusion turns into active exclusion, it isn’t inclusion anymore.

Source: Sarkonak: Why Canadian universities are blocking able-bodied white men from some positions

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