U.K.’s ‘Brightest and Best’ Visa Plan Faces Charges of Elitism

2022/06/04 Leave a comment

The English “public school” insularity! No surprise that Canada’s big three (UBC, McGill Toronto) are on the list:

When Britain started a program this week offering a two-year visa to graduates from some top global universities, Nikhil Mane, an Indian computer science student at New York University, welcomed the news.

“I was happy,” said Mr. Mane, 23, whose university was on the list. “It’s a good way to pursue our dreams.”

More than 5,000 miles away, Adeola Adepoju, 22, a biochemistry student at Olabisi Onabanjo University in Nigeria, also read the announcement with great interest. But he had the opposite reaction.

“I couldn’t believe my eyes,” Mr. Adepoju said. “No university from the third world is ranked.”

Britain’s “High Potential Individual” visa program allows graduates from 37 top-rated world universities in Australia, Canada, China, Europe, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and the United States to come to the country for two years even if they do not have a job offer.

A majority of universities on the list are in the United States, including Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California, San Diego.

The government said the plan would attract the world’s “brightest and best” and benefit the British economy. Critics, however, say the plan nurtures global inequalities and discriminates against most developing countries.

The purpose of the policy is to create “a highly desirable and able pool of mobile talent from which U.K. employers can recruit” and drive economic growth and technological advances, the government said in its announcement. It did not put a cap on the number of applicants who would be accepted, and said that graduates with Ph.D.s would be allowed to stay for three years.

“We want the businesses of tomorrow to be built here today,” Rishi Sunak, the British chancellor of the Exchequer, said in a statement. “Come and join in!”

The program is in line with Britain’s post-Brexit visa policy, which has made entry easier for high-skilled workers and harder for those considered low-skilled ones, as well as asylum seekers. Visa pathways include a skilled worker visa for people who have received a job offer in Britain, a visa for people considered a “leader or potential leader” in certain fields, and a program to allow international students who graduated from British universities to stay for at least two years.

Mr. Mane, the New York University student, said that after he graduates with a master’s degree, he will be allowed to stay in the United States for three years. After that, his prospects of getting another visa are uncertain.

The opportunity to go to Britain “opens more options,” he said.

The new British visa has been praised in some academic circles in the United States as one to emulate. But many academics, students and politicians in Britain, Africa and India have spoken out against it, saying that the universities that students attend are largely influenced by their social and geographical circumstances, and that the new scheme rewards those who are already more privileged.

“I would not be eligible,” said Deepti Gurdasani, a clinical epidemiologist and a senior lecturer in machine learning at Queen Mary University of London, who went to a university in India that is not on the list. “It is very hurtful to find that you’re devalued and that people within your community are devalued because of arbitrary thresholds.”

Dr. Gurdasani said that as a student, she got one of seven spots to study medicine at Christian Medical College in Vellore, India, for which thousands of students competed. There, she received what she said was rigorous training, seeing patients with very complex illnesses, including infectious diseases, and building expertise that she then brought to Britain.

“We’ve seen the lack of this in the U.K. during the Covid pandemic,” she said, “It’s very, very shocking to see that after that we are seeing the same sort of names, the same universities pop up, which will favor obviously a particular kind of privileged white person.”

Madeleine Sumption, the director of the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory, which tracks immigration patterns, said the new policy was an innovative idea, but with drawbacks.

“How do you decide who the highly skilled people are?” she asked, adding that the current policy would admit someone who just scraped through Harvard but not the highest achieving students at a top Indian university.

Introducing other criteria for assessing applicants, such as grades, would be fair, she said, but much harder to enforce. “It’s very convenient for the government to just have an institution be on the list or not.”

Britain’s Home Office said the list had been compiled from leading global university ranking lists, and that new international institutions could move up the ranks and later join the list.

However, university rankings are widely criticized in many quarters, with critics saying they often fail to grasp the quality of teaching and often overemphasize research over instruction.

Phil Baty, who is responsible for developing the methodology of the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, which is among those the British government used, said in a post on LinkedIn that “this isn’t what we had in mind when creating the rankings.”

Zubaida Haque, the executive director of Equality Trust, a British charity, said that in offering the new visa, the British government failed to grasp that race, class and financial barriers prevented many deserving students from reaching top universities.

A 2017 study of Ivy League colleges, as well as institutions like the University of Chicago, Stanford, MIT and Duke, most of which are on the British visa list, showed that more students came from families in the top 1 percent of income distribution in the United States than the bottom half.

“This scheme shows that the government does not understand the systemic racial and class inequality in this country and they clearly do not understand it anywhere else,” Ms. Haque said. “It’s an elitist visa scheme.”

She added that the program gave an unfair advantage to those who needed it the least. “There is likely to be a good pipeline for these graduates anyway,” she said.

Christopher Trisos, a senior researcher at the African Climate and Development Initiative at the University of Cape Town, said that the program was also detrimental to Britain itself.

“If U.K. businesses and governments want to play a role in addressing the biggest challenges of this century — energy access, fighting climate change and pandemics — they need to be including skills and knowledge from developing countries,” he said.

Mr. Adepoju, the student from Nigeria, said he hoped to become a researcher in molecular oncology.

“I might not get a degree in the 50 top universities but I have high potential and I want to achieve great things,” he said. But, he added, “It’s their loss, not mine.”

Source: U.K.’s ‘Brightest and Best’ Visa Plan Faces Charges of Elitism

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Milloy: Where is the progressive counter-narrative to Pierre Poilievre?

2022/06/04 Leave a comment

Important question:

As a member of the lefty chattering class, I am not sure what concerns me more — the rise of Pierre Poilievre or the inability of his progressive critics to develop a positive counter-narrative to his message.

The main criticism of Poilievre from those on the left seems to be that he is an angry “nut” with bad policies.  Although he may be popular in some circles, they would argue that it tends to be with the not-too-bright and ill-informed. Clever people from downtown Toronto, Ottawa or other urban centres have no time for him.

Labelling someone early in the game can work — just ask Michael Ignatieff — and maybe Poilievre is simply a crank who is just stirring up a small fringe minority.

Perhaps there is nothing to worry about.

I am not convinced.

From where I sit, it looks like Pierre Poilievre has touched a nerve. Canadians are angry, exhausted, divided, and looking for answers. Poilievre is providing them. He has developed a narrative about how he would address Canada’s problems that has caused many to sit up and take notice.

So, how is the other side responding?

Let’s start with one of Poilievre’s most high-profile promises. If he were prime minister, he would fire the governor of the Bank of Canada for his apparent role in fuelling inflation.

“Ridiculous,” say his critics. Not only does Poilievre not understand basic economics but look at what happened when John Diefenbaker tried to fire the governor of the Bank of Canada in 1961.

I have news for my progressive friends: When gas is two bucks a litre and grown children can’t afford to move out of their parents’ basement, ordinary Canadians aren’t interested in history lessons from the 1960s.

Then there is the issue of restoring freedom — the central theme of Poilievre’s campaign. Once again, the progressive crowd dismisses Poilievre as touting crazy conspiracy theories about big government.

But hold on a minute. I don’t care where you stand on vaccines, lockdowns, and masks. The last few years has seen an unprecedented intrusion in the lives of Canadians. Governments have regulated and curtailed our activities like never before, all in the name of public health.

Where are the limits? What is the progressive narrative about the need to balance personal freedom with the common good? Where is there even an acknowledgement from those on the left that the level of government control over our lives during the pandemic has been scary for some Canadians and they understand and respect that fact?

What about natural resource development and climate change?

Like all Conservative leadership candidates, Poilievre is anxious to cancel the carbon tax and dramatically increase oil and gas production in Canada.

What is the left’s counter-narrative?

Why has it been seemingly impossible for progressives to develop an easy-to-understand story that explains how we need to balance short-term support for oil and gas through actions like the purchase of the Trans Mountain Pipeline and approval of Bay du Nord offshore oil project with a long-term commitment to fighting climate change?

How about defunding the CBC — a proposal that always produces cheers at any Conservative gathering?

Sure, enjoying Canada’s national network over a latte or a glass of chardonnay is a favourite pastime for of every small “l” liberal.  But is it just me, or has the CBC increasingly turned into a northern version of MSNBC? Shouldn’t we be concerned that a big chunk of the population doesn’t see their views represented on our taxpayer-funded network?

Could progressives not even acknowledge the concern and outline a way forward to improve our national broadcaster?

And yes, Poilievre appears to have an unhealthy obsession with cryptocurrency and its growing presence in the global economy.

But how do progressives propose to deal with this emerging phenomenon?

What about the whole style of political discourse these days?

Poilievre claims that Canada is governed by “a small group of ruling elites who claim to possess moral superiority and the burden of instructing the rest of us how to live our lives.”

Ouch!

Be honest all you lefties. Can you see how some people (maybe many people) might view progressives that way? What are you going to do about presenting a style of leadership that is open, prepared to listen and willing to engage?

I end this column where I began. Maybe Pierre Poilievre will ultimately go nowhere.

But be careful. Although I am generally uncomfortable with comparisons between Canadian politicians and Donald Trump, there is one point worth making: Love him or hate him, Trump entered the 2016 election campaign with a whole range of easy-to-understand solutions to the apparent ills facing the United States. The counter-narrative from the other side left much to be desired.

Let’s not make the same mistake here in Canada.

Source: Where is the progressive counter-narrative to Pierre Poilievre?

Filed under Multiculturalism, Politics Tagged with ,

Feds announce one-time $3,000 payment for Ukrainians taking refuge in Canada

2022/06/04 Leave a comment

Yet another example of the preferential treatment for those fleeing the war in Ukraine:

Immigration Minister Sean Fraser said Thursday Ukrainians who have fled their war-torn country for Canada can now apply for a cash payment — money the government says will help these displaced people settle into their new home.

Ukrainians who are in Canada on valid work, study or temporary resident permits under the Canada-Ukraine authorization for emergency travel (CUAET) regime are eligible for a one-time payment — $3,000 for every adult and $1,500 for every child 17 years and under.

The government launched a new portal today to process applications for this transitional financial assistance.

Source: Feds announce one-time $3,000 payment for Ukrainians taking refuge in Canada

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Le malentendu sur l’impact économique de l’immigration

2022/06/04 Leave a comment

A relatively rare article on Quebec immigration that focuses more on the economics than the existential jurisdictional issues, and one that counters many of the false arguments in favour of ongoing increases in immigration levels:

Du point de vue économique, l’immigration n’est pas la catastrophe que certains prétendent ni la panacée que d’autres espèrent, préviennent des experts. En fait, disent-ils, elle aurait finalement assez peu d’impacts sur l’économie en général et sur la pénurie de main-d’œuvre en particulier.

François Legault a soulevé un tollé cette semaine en déclarant que si le Québec n’obtenait pas plus de pouvoirs d’Ottawa en immigration, il risquait le même sort que la Louisiane en matière de défense du français. Il a également fermé la porte à l’idée d’augmenter le seuil annuel d’immigration de 50 000 à 58 000. « On pense qu’on a atteint la capacité d’intégration », a déclaré le premier ministre.

En fait, le Québec accueille déjà bien plus d’immigrants que cela chaque année, a rappelé l’Institut du Québec dans une étude mercredi. Si on tient compte de l’immigration temporaire, on parlait même d’un gain record de presque 93 500 nouveaux arrivants en 2019. Or, les besoins de main-d’œuvre sont tellement grands au Québec que cela n’a pas empêché, au fil des ans, une amélioration spectaculaire de l’intégration économique des immigrants reçus. Elle se voit notamment par le recul marqué de leur retard en matière de taux d’emploi et de rémunération par rapport aux autres travailleurs.

Ces faits montrent bien l’ampleur des besoins de l’économie québécoise, qui est aux prises avec un vieillissement marqué de la population, avait fait valoir le mois dernier le Conseil du patronat dans un livre blanc sur l’immigration. « Nous faisons face à une pénurie de main-d’œuvre sans précédent, mais nous ne nous donnons pas toutes les chances de la surmonter », avait déclaré son président et chef de la direction, Karl Blackburn, avant d’en appeler notamment au rehaussement des seuils d’immigration permanente « à au moins 80 000 personnes par année pour les quatre prochaines années ».

Impact modeste

Tous ces débats tendent à exagérer l’impact de l’immigration sur l’économie en général et sur la pénurie de main-d’œuvre en particulier, observe l’économiste émérite de l’Université du Québec à Montréal Pierre Fortin dans un mémoire d’une quarantaine de pages réalisé à la demande du ministère de l’Immigration du Québec.

Se basant sur des synthèses de la recherche ainsi que sur de nouvelles analyses de son cru, il constate d’abord qu’il « n’existe aucune preuve scientifique que la croissance du niveau de vie des Canadiens réagirait positivement (ou négativement) à une expansion accélérée de l’immigration ». C’est que ce niveau de vie ne dépend pas seulement de l’augmentation du produit intérieur brut (PIB) que génère mécaniquement une hausse du nombre de travailleurs, mais aussi de l’augmentation du PIB par habitant. Or, la taille de la population et le poids qu’y occupe l’immigration ont, à terme, une influence nulle sur la croissance de cette richesse par habitant.

L’immigration n’a pas non plus la capacité d’altérer substantiellement l’actuel vieillissement de la population canadienne, dit Pierre Fortin, citant une étude de l’Institut C.D. Howe. D’abord parce que les immigrants finissent eux aussi par vieillir, comme tout le monde, et aussi parce qu’ils font souvent venir leurs parents auprès d’eux. En fait, pour stopper la hausse constante de la proportion des 65 ans et plus dans la population, avait estimé C.D. Howe, il faudrait tripler les cibles annuelles d’immigration au Canada pour 2024, en les faisant passer de 451 000 à 1,4 million de personnes.

Enfin, si l’accueil de travailleurs étrangers peut répondre aux besoins urgents et particuliers de certaines entreprises, l’immigration, en général, ne peut avoir qu’un effet globalement modeste sur le problème de pénurie de main-d’œuvre, ont constaté des experts. C’est que les immigrants qui viennent occuper des postes vacants deviennent aussi des consommateurs et finissent, « à l’autre bout du circuit économique », par stimuler la demande de travailleurs en retour.

Au-delà de l’économie

Et il n’y a pas que des considérations économiques, bien sûr, souligne Pierre Fortin. Il faut aussi tenir compte du poids démographique du Québec dans le Canada, de la défense du fait français et du risque de dérapage xénophobe.

« Cela dit, l’immigration doit progresser. Elle est une formidable source de renouvellement et de progrès culturel et humain. Elle rend possible une société plus diversifiée, dynamique et ouverte au monde. Elle est notre contribution au combat mondial contre les inégalités de revenu et de richesse », conclut néanmoins l’économiste dans son mémoire. « Mais il faut comprendre que l’immigration optimale n’est pas l’immigration maximale. »

Source: Le malentendu sur l’impact économique de l’immigration

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Barutciski: The Roxham Road legal confusion is back

2022/06/03 Leave a comment

A somewhat tortured series of arguments, coloured by a bit of Trudeau and Liberal derangement syndrome, that undermines the case to address Roxham Road irregular arrivals.

It also ignores that USA agreement would be required to amend the STCA and that unilateral actions would be subject to court challenges (as is the STCA itself).

However, fundamental he is right in that Roxham Road undermines Canadian confidence that immigration is being managed and reasonably controlled. Like other perceived “queue jumping” and loopholes such as birth tourism, the Roxham Road exemption from return to the USA raises questions about fairness between those who arrive at official border crossings and those who do not.

Roxham Road accounts for over 99 percent of all irregular arrivals (January-April 2022) given its ease and thus either making Roxham Road an official point of entry, pending fixing the SFCA loophole, would result is a large reduction in the number of irregular arrivals.

And of course, all political parties virtue signal to their supporters and potential supporters, as it is easier that addressing the substantive issues at stake (sigh…):

After a relatively quiet period, Roxham Road is back in the news. Refugee claimants have been entering Canada through this unofficial border crossing between rural Quebec and upstate New York at record rates since the Trudeau government lifted the pandemic-related entry ban. From his public statements, it appears Prime Minister Trudeau believes these migrants have rights in Canada if they try to enter irregularly at Roxham Road, but not if they follow the rules and present themselves at an official Port of Entry. He also has an imprecise understanding of the exact nature of Canada’s legal obligations.

It is no wonder part of the population is perplexed and losing confidence in the system. No protection principle could justify treating refugee claimants differently based on which part of the land border they use to enter. While it is unfortunate that an uncritical media and various attention-seeking politicians are unable to properly explain the Roxham problem, it is much more worrisome that the prime minister seemingly does not know the laws applicable in the country he governs.

Laws apply immediately at the border 

Given the apparent confusion, it is worth pointing out that a person who arrives at a land Port of Entry is already considered to be in Canada and the authorities are bound by both international and domestic legal obligations. The Canadian government does not apply a type of legal fiction that pretends there is a special “international zone” at the border in which people are not considered to be in Canada until they are officially authorized to enter.

As soon as migrants come into contact with the authorities, both the Geneva Refugee Convention and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms can protect them. If entry is not authorized, then they are returned to the US. As the Canadian system is based on the rule of law, refugee claimants can contest the decision to return. Indeed, several claimants have partnered with advocacy groups to argue that the US is unsafe for them. Their case will soon be heard by the Supreme Court of Canada.

The above legal situation is the same whether it occurs at an official Port of Entry or at an unofficial crossing staffed by the RCMP, such as the one at Roxham Road. The Canada-US Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA), which entered into force in 2004, simply declares both countries to be safe for refugee claimants and introduces formal cooperation on responsibility-sharing between them. It does not change the application of either the Refugee Convention or the Charter, although the substantive rights are affected by the designation of the US as a “safe third country.”

Likewise, the fact that the signatories decided the STCA would apply only at official Ports of Entry (i.e., not at Roxham Road) does not change the legal regime. It does, however, provide migrants with a huge incentive to enter irregularly through Roxham Road rather than the nearby Port of Entry at St-Bernard-de-Lacolle. Indeed, it indicates Canada and the US do not have formalized return arrangements for refugee claimants trying to cross the border in between Ports of Entry.

This loophole is what distinguishes the STCA from a similar agreement between European Union (EU) member states, known as the Dublin Regulation, which also tries to tackle the “asylum shopping” problem. The Dublin Regulation does not contain a loophole based on a migrant’s mode of entry, so EU members are supposed to send refugee claimants who entered their territory irregularly back to the first EU country that they entered. These so-called “Dublin transfers” can be complicated if someone enters irregularly via the Mediterranean only to be processed by the authorities in a northern European member state.

The above summary contextualizes the Roxham controversy. Given that the situation involves sensitive issues related to territorial sovereignty and border control, any serious leader should be able to explain this context to the public. The prime minister’s statements, unfortunately, suggest he has a superficial understanding of the situation. Speaking about Roxham Road to a group at the University of Manitoba, Prime Minister Trudeau said “Canada has obligations under international treaties to give asylum seekers a hearing.” Yet he somehow also believes these supposed obligations do not apply at the nearby Port of Entry.

The only rational explanation for this position could be that he is under the mistaken impression that a person arriving at the Port of Entry is not actually in Canada and therefore not covered by international and domestic legal obligations. From an analytical perspective, the striking aspect of the Roxham controversy is that the prime minister does not seem to grasp the legal dimensions but he insists they are guiding his government’s policy, as he recently explained to the House of Commons.

In other words, Prime Minister Trudeau does not seem to understand that while the Refugee Convention and the Charter apply to everyone who arrives at Canada’s border, the legal protection they provide depends on each person’s circumstances. He does not grasp the basic consequences of Canada having declared the US to be safe for refugee claimants and how this creates specific circumstances influencing the extent of the protection granted by international and domestic law. However, the prime minister does have a keen sense of political symbolism and a desire to project a humanitarian image.

Is there a right to a hearing? 

Does the Refugee Convention oblige Canada to provide a refugee hearing to anyone who arrives at Roxham Road, as claimed by the Trudeau government? Nowhere in this 1951 treaty is anything mentioned about refugee status procedures. The word “asylum” is not even mentioned in any of its 46 articles. The most relevant obligation is found in article 33, which stipulates that refugees cannot be returned to a country where their “life or freedom would be threatened.”

This basic guarantee is not the same as a right of asylum in that it allows some flexibility as long as refugee claimants’ lives are not endangered. Unless the Supreme Court of Canada determines the US is not safe, there is no violation if refugee claimants arriving at the Quebec border are returned to upstate New York.

The harsh reality is that the Refugee Convention’s limited protection does not oblige Canada to provide a hearing to every refugee claimant who shows up at the border. It also allows claimants to be returned to safe countries, which is why the adoption of the STCA was possible in the first place.

Does the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms oblige the government to provide a hearing to anyone who arrives at Roxham Road? The landmark 1985 Singh case established that the Charter applies to anyone on Canadian soil, but that does not mean its protection necessarily guarantees refugee claimants an automatic right to a hearing. Nowhere in the judgment is it mentioned that there is a general right to a hearing. Rather, the specific circumstances of the case are underlined in order to establish a potential Charter violation because the Sikh claimants risked being returned directly to India where they feared persecution. The Charter’s protection of “life, liberty and security” (section 7) was at stake, so the old refugee status determination procedure was considered insufficient and the Supreme Court ruled they were entitled to a hearing.

Refugee claimants at Roxham Road are arriving from the US. Stopping and returning them at the border will not result in a potential Charter violation because the US is deemed safe, so the reasoning behind Singh does not apply. Journalists who accept uncritically the prime minister’s position misunderstand why the Court in Singh granted a hearing. There cannot be a Charter violation if someone is sent to a safe place.

The federal Immigration and Refugee Protection Act also provides that, when a refugee claimant arrives at the land border, there is an initial determination to establish whether the person can make a claim (section 100). The various grounds for ineligibility are outlined in the following section 101 of the Act. Unsurprisingly, these include diverse security-related reasons. They also include a conspicuous clause rendering claimants ineligible when they come “directly or indirectly to Canada from a country designated by the regulations, other than a country of their nationality or their former habitual residence.” This is the legislative provision that allows return to the US and enables the adoption of a responsibility-sharing agreement with the US. As outlined above, laws apply immediately at the border given that there is no fictitious “international zone” or no-man’s-land where the authorities can act in a legal vacuum.

Even a quick reading of Canada’s main legislation dealing specifically with refugee claims makes clear that an automatic right to a refugee hearing was never intended or established by Parliament.

The predominance of image politics 

The inclusion of a major loophole in the STCA so that it does not apply at unofficial crossings such as Roxham Road is the result of an administrative choice that is not required by the legal regime. Rather than explain to Canadians the reasons why such a loophole incentivizing irregular entry was included in the treaty with the US, the Trudeau government has focused on signalling a supposedly virtuous policy and promoting a humanitarian brand. Observers who sympathize with this apparent openness at Roxham Road are missing the underlying political cynicism.

While its legal reasoning is neither rigorous nor nuanced, the Trudeau government seems careful in relation to public messaging and branding. The immigration minister’s mandate letter includes a commitment “to modernize” the STCA and the prime minister recently repeated this goal in the House of Commons, yet nobody has ever explained what this actually means.

The policy options are essentially limited to either one of two approaches: a stricter border control approach that involves tightening entry at Roxham Road, or a soft open borders approach allowing refugee claimants to enter openly through the front door at St-Bernard-de-Lacolle. The latter option does not involve any negotiations with the US because the STCA can be unilaterally suspended or terminated. Therefore, “modernizing” the STCA must logically mean removing the loophole and clarifying that all refugee claimants will be returned to the US regardless of which part of the land border they use to enter Canada. However, clearly saying so goes against the Trudeau brand because it can be interpreted as anti-refugee.

Similarly, despite the prime minister’s confusion about legal rules, a closer look reveals that government lawyers have always argued before the courts that migrants can be returned to the US because it is a “safe third country” where rights are respected (under both the Trump and Biden administrations). So far, the government has not said this too loudly outside the courtroom because it clashes with its branding efforts and preferred pro-refugee image.

The problem is that political marketing has contributed to the polarization of views regarding Roxham Road. Moreover, the resulting ideological battle is misleading. It has become a false symbol dividing Canadians into supposedly pro-refugee or anti-refugee camps. It obscures that Canadian policy regarding uninvited refugee claimants (to be distinguished from resettled refugees) has always been anchored to the basic concept of interdiction with strict visa issuance policies and airline sanctions for undocumented travellers. Despite the rhetoric, governments of all stripes have done everything possible to prevent potential refugee claimants from reaching Canadian shores. It is not by chance that many migrants from poor countries obtained US visas to fly to New York City before taking a bus/taxi to Roxham Road. They would never have received Canadian visas.

Academics and advocates have opposed any idea of responsibility-sharing with the US since the late 1980s because they do not believe US standards are good enough. Prime Minister Trudeau sees these influential groups as part of his political constituency and is trying to be sensitive to their particular concerns. This is apparent in the careful use of progressive language and terminology that reflects the latest trends in refugee studies. The risk is that superficial image-based approaches to refugee policy take precedence over substantive or nuanced hard discussions about the dilemmas inherent in managing borders while respecting human rights.

Conclusion 

To sum up, Prime Minister Trudeau’s explanation of his incoherent border policy concerning refugee claimants misunderstands how international and domestic law applies. It also promotes an unprincipled double standard that favours refugee claimants who enter irregularly over those who present themselves at a Port of Entry.

Prime Minister Trudeau also provides a practical argument to defend his incoherent border policy: he claims it is not actually possible to prevent entry in between land Ports of Entry. If Roxham Road is closed, the prime minister insists refugee claimants will simply enter elsewhere. This is the same disingenuous argument the prime minister used during the first three years of the Trump administration. If closing borders is ineffective, why did his government adopt in 2020 a special Order in Council that prevented entry at Roxham Road during the pandemic? Roxham is making headlines again because refugee claims immediately shot up as soon as the Order was lifted a few months ago.

This general futility-based argument on border control has widespread support in academia, even though it is based on an unproven hypothesis. It is presently being used by activists to denounce the British government’s new controversial approach to dissuade irregular migrants from crossing the English Channel, as well as to criticize the Biden administration’s intention of lifting its own pandemic-related entry ban at the Mexico border.

Just as no government claims that tax evasion can be completely stopped through tough law enforcement, no government is claiming that irregular migration will stop with the adoption of greater border control measures. The issue is rather about risk mitigation and not making illegal entry so easy that it becomes almost an invitation for potential migrants to travel to Canada’s borders in order to access the country’s lengthy and generous refugee status determination procedure.

However, an ideological dimension has dominated both sides of the debate. For the Trudeau government, it has become symbolically important to avoid the appearance of militarizing the border. The various US responses to the plight of desperate migrants on the Mexican border over recent years have understandably antagonized anyone with liberal views regarding migration. It is nevertheless dangerous to suggest to Canadians that their country’s land borders cannot be controlled: while the entry of desperate irregular migrants involves a morally complicated problem, public anxiety about gun and drug smuggling is clear.

Despite Prime Minister Trudeau’s unhelpful attempts at explaining government policy and available options at Roxham Road, Canadians have an interest in rejecting superficial image-based approaches to refugee policy in a post-pandemic context that will see increased international mobility. The government could improve public trust by eliminating the incoherence in the way refugee claims are handled at Roxham Road, while also being more precise and upfront about its actual position. It is time our leaders’ role in elevating the public discourse overrides the fondness for political marketing.

Source: The Roxham Road legal confusion is back

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Canada’s exploitation of Punjabi international students is history repeating itself

2022/06/03 Leave a comment

Governments should crack down on private college student international student recruitment given a number of articles and investigations highlighting the exploitation and abuse, and the minimum benefit to the economy and society:

Canada has a decades-old tradition of exploiting Punjab’s working class. The latest example of this comes by way of international students.

Canadian schools, partnering with a shady recruitment industry, allure youth from working-class farming families. Demand has been cultivated by urban centres and television littered with advertisements to go abroad via a study visa.

As a community volunteer, I have seen the result of such perverse marketing where many come to Canada with no understanding of what awaits and hope it will work out. Sadly, many face grave hardships and encounter shameless people aiming to exploit their vulnerability.

The problems include an unscrupulous and untrustworthy private college industry swindling foreign students across Canada. Rampant labour exploitation of international students. Sex traffickers preying on female international students aware they are financially vulnerable. A concerning number of international student suicides with deaths occurring monthly. Finally, a Statistics Canada studyfound international student graduates have relatively worse economic outcomes.

While volunteers try to help as much as possible, we cannot match the volume of students being churned through the system.

We receive messages from students stating they don’t want to live anymore, and while we feel compelled to take action, it is discouraging that politicians feel no such obligation.

In fact, politicians like MP Sukh Dhaliwal and minister Marco Mendicino do not seem to think anything is wrong with the international student program.

Politicians do not feel compelled to fix this mess because international education is very lucrative. International students are charged nearly five times higher tuition, bring in over $20 billion, and have allowed provincial governments to decreasetheir proportion of higher education funding.

In one honest conversation, an elected official acknowledged to me the unwillingness to fix this problem is because the economy and many jobs are dependent on the status quo.

What does this say about those in power? I interpret inaction to mean that in order to generate wealth for Canada, politicians tacitly accept migrant suicides and Punjabi migrant women being trafficked.

Adding to my frustration is this exploitation follows a similar pattern from over a century ago.

After British colonization of Punjab in 1858, Punjab’s fertile lands were used to produce cash crops for export. In the succeeding decades, British management of agriculture to increase production also led to land values, prices of basic goods, and taxes all increasing. It also resulted in repeated famines and many modest Punjabi farmers accumulating debt.

For many struggling farmers emigration was the best option to improve economic fortunes.

At the same time, newspapers were filled with job ads from Canadian companies and labour contractors who were recruiting in Punjab.

In the 1900s Punjabi migrant workers started arriving in Canada and would experience significant hardships. They were paid less for equal work and often victims of abuse and discrimination. This easy to exploit labour was lucrative for the lumber industry.

Fast forward to the 1960s green revolution, which was initiated to boost global agricultural production. Decades later, many found the green revolution benefitted multinational corporations pushing chemical pesticides more than farmers in places like Punjab.

In Punjab, long-term pesticide use has led to environmental degradation resulting in stagnating agricultural production. This disproportionately affects modest farmers who are accumulating debt to stay afloat. For these struggling families emigration is the best option to improve economic fortunes, and a student visa is the best path to emigrate.

Sadly, like their predecessors, this generation of Punjabi migrants also face serious hardships and exploitation in Canada.

Throughout the last century Punjabi Canadians have mobilized and began a tradition of activism. Prominent fights include advocating for equal pay in the 1940s and farm workers advocating for better work conditions in the 1980s. And today, community advocates and students are fighting against the economic exploitation of international students.

Ironically, Canadian politicians will celebrate Punjabi migrants who struggled for equality and dignity in the past, but neglect the indignity Punjabi migrants experience today.

Municipal, provincial, and federal politicians showed concern for farmers during India’s farmer protest, but they have no concern for the children of these farmers suffering in Canada.

It seems that in politics the profits made off the vulnerable count, while the pain experienced by them does not.

Balraj S. Kahlon is a member of One Voice Canada and the author of The Realities of International Students: Evidenced Challenges.

Source: Canada’s exploitation of Punjabi international students is history repeating itself

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , , ,

Newly released federal records reveal ‘darkest days’ of Chinese exclusion era

2022/06/03 Leave a comment

Part of our history:
Standing over a table at the Chinese Canadian Museum in Chinatown, Brandt Louie slowly and methodically sifts through the documents before him — occasionally bristling at what he sees.
The scanned, century-old documents were forms filled by bureaucrats as they interrogated and kept track of all existing Chinese in Canada after Ottawa imposed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1923, which banned immigration from China for almost a quarter of a century.
The nine documents Louie showed to a reporter Wednesday record the registration of Louie’s grandparents, his father and six uncles.

They are the first to be seen in a set that includes 56,000 similar documents for other Chinese in Canada at the time.

“We were quite excited because when we started to look through them, we realized that all the things we had heard about are now true,” said Louie, the 79-year-old B.C. businessman who is president and CEO of the H.Y. Louie Co. Ltd., which distributes to IGA stores, and the chairman of London Drugs.

Some of the records have small but important details such as the exact year his grandfather arrived, or that his grandmother was exempt from the head tax because she arrived in Canada as a “merchant’s wife.”

He said confirming oral history and buttressing stories didn’t carry much relevance for him before, but anti-Asian racism during the pandemic made him reconsider the value of doing this so they can be of value to the current and next generation.

He has been writing opinion pieces, promoting the Chinatown Storytelling Centre and a new exhibit, “Seeds to Success,” at the Chinese Canadian Museum in Chinatown that traces his family’s experience.

“When we heard these stories before, we used to merely assume they were stories of previous generations, that they didn’t apply to us,” said Louie.

For decades, the 56,000 forms have been stored at Library and Archives Canada, which was reluctant to make them accessible until Randall Wong, the first Chinese-Canadian lawyer to be appointed to a federal court, joined others in calling for them to be released.

Historian Catherine Clement is currently cataloguing the forms. She estimates the process will take a year and then they will be publicly available.

“What’s fascinating is that this is a snapshot of our community just before it enters its darkest days. And I always remind people, at the time this happened no one knew if this (Exclusion Act) law would come off the books, if things would change or get better. You couldn’t foresee it would last (until 1947).”

She notes that newspapers at the time give a sense of how the mass registration drive provoked fear and anxiety as much as the closing of immigration.

“There are headlines where we the community is afraid of the registration, afraid of how they’re going to be interrogated, of what’s going to happen to people if they don’t remember exactly what boat they came in,” said Clement.

Louie’s grandfather, Hok Yat Louie, who started the family’s legacy in Canada as a wholesale grocer, would have taken his family in for the process, submitting three photographs for each person. His form states he arrived in Victoria in 1898 while his grandmother, Young Shee, arrived in Vancouver in 1911. The forms for his father and six uncles list them as being born in Vancouver with two recorded as being 10- and 11-year-old schoolboys and the youngest a three-year-old child.

Each has “facial marks and physical peculiarities” listed, including the location and size of scars and moles, whether they are raised or small, by the left jaw or over the right eyebrow.

“It was really quite a classification,” said Louie, reading through the forms. “It’s almost as if (they) had to undergo a physical examination because how would you know where all these moles are?”

Louie remembers that even after the Exclusion Act was in place, his grandfather did go to China a few times as he was still in the business of importing sesame seeds, ginger and walnuts.

“If he wasn’t in the registry, he would have been denied entry. It was used to track people,” he said.

Clement, who is gathering the beige paper identity cards known as C.I. certificates issued by the government to people after they were registered in 1923, said that while families are finding and bringing some of these in, many have also been lost or damaged.

“Even though tens of thousands were issued, there are so few left. In some families, they didn’t recognize the value and so they threw them out. It was just grandma’s stuff. Or as soon as they got their citizenship (in later years), the first thing they did was to rip them up because of the symbolism.”

And Clement was able to manually go through and find the nine documents for the Louie family members because they had one beige paper card for Quan Louie, the uncle who was three-years-old when he was registered.

Source: Newly released federal records reveal ‘darkest days’ of Chinese exclusion era

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Why the Children of Immigrants Are the Ones Getting Ahead in America

2022/06/02 Leave a comment

Good read, similar pattern in Canada for some visible minority groups. Likely explains in part the rise of populism:

In April 2020, the New York Times ran a special feature called “I Am the Portrait of Downward Mobility.” “It used to be a given that each American generation would do better than the last,” the piece began, “but social mobility has been slowing over time.”

In paging through the profiles, we couldn’t help noticing one group of Americans who defies this trend: the children of immigrants. Sonya Poe was born in a suburb of Dallas, Texas to parents who immigrated from Mexico. “My dad worked for a hotel,” Sonya recalled. “Their goal for us was always: Go to school, go to college, so that you can get a job that doesn’t require you to work late at night, so that you can choose what you get to do and take care of your family. We’re fortunate to be able to do that.”
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The dream that propels many immigrants to America’s shores is the possibility of offering a better future for their children. Using millions of records of immigrant families from 1880 to 1940 and then again from 1980 to today, we find that the in past and still today children of immigrants surpass their parents and move up the economic ladder. If this is the American Dream, then immigrants achieve it—big time.

One pattern that is particularly striking in the data is that the children of immigrants raised in households earning below the median income make substantial progress by the time they reach adulthood, both for the Ellis Island generation a century ago and for immigrants today. The children of first-generation immigrants growing up close to the bottom of the income distribution (say, at the 25th percentile) are more likely to reach the middle of the income distribution than are children of similarly poor U.S.-born parents.

What’s more, no matter which country their parents came from, children of immigrants are more likely than the children of the U.S.-born to surpass their parents’ incomes when they are adults. This pattern holds both in the past and today, despite major changes in U.S. immigration policy over the past century, from a regime of nearly open borders for European immigrants in 1900 to one of substantial restrictions in recent decades. Children of immigrants from Mexico and the Dominican Republic today are just as likely to move up from their parents’ circumstances as were children of poor Swedes and Finns a hundred years ago.

Not only does upward mobility define the horizons of people’s lives, but it also has implications for the economy as a whole. Even immigrants who come to the U.S. with few resources or skills bring an asset that is hugely beneficial to the U.S. economy: their children. The rapid success of immigrants’ children more than pays for the debts of their parents.

To conduct our analysis, we needed data that links children to parents. For the historical data, we used historical census records to link sons living in their childhood homes to census data collected 30 years later when these young men had jobs of their own.

Think of us like curious grandchildren searching branches of their family tree online, but a million times over. We started by digging through websites like Ancestry.com that allow the public to search for their relatives. From here, we developed methods to automate these searches so we could follow millions of immigrants and their children in the records.

Our modern data is based on federal income tax records instead. The tax records allow researchers to link children to their parents as tax dependents, and then observe these children in the tax data as adults.

When we compiled this data, what do we see?

The first striking takeaway is that, as a group, children of immigrants achieve more upward mobility than the children of U.S.-born fathers. We focus on the children of white U.S.-born fathers because the children of Black fathers tend to have lower rates of upward mobility. So, the mobility advantage that we observe for the children of immigrants would be even larger if we compared this group to the full population.

The second notable takeaway is that even children of parents from very poor countries like Nigeria and Laos outperform the children of the U.S.-born raised in similar households. The children of immigrants from Central American countries—countries like Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua that are often demonized for contributing to the “crisis” at the southern border—move up faster than the children of the U.S.-born, landing in the middle of the pack (right next to children of immigrants from Canada).

Our third finding is that the mobility advantage of the children of immigrants is just as strong today as it was in the past. What’s more, some of the immigrant groups that politicians accused long ago of having little to contribute to the economy—the Irish, Italians, and Portuguese—actually achieved the highest rates of upward mobility. For the past, we are only able to study sons because we cannot link daughters who change their name at marriage. But in the modern data we can see that this pattern applies to daughters as well.

Today, we might not be that surprised to learn that the children of past European immigrants succeeded. We are used to seeing the descendants of poor European immigrants rise to become members of the business and cultural elite. Many prominent leaders, including politicians like President Biden, regularly emphasize pride in their Irish or Italian heritage. But, at the time, these groups were considered the poorest of the poor. In their flight from famine, Irish immigrants are not too dissimilar from immigrants who flee hurricanes, earthquakes, and violent uprisings today.

We often hear concerns about how poor immigrants will fare and whether their children will get trapped in low-paying jobs or dependent on government support. But our data sleuthing should lay these fears to rest. The children of immigrants do typically make it in America. And it most often takes them only one generation to rise up from poverty.

One question that arises with our work is: what about children who arrive without papers? Undocumented children face more barriers to mobility than other children of immigrants. Fortunately, this group is relatively small even in recent years: only 1.5 million (or five percent) of the 32 million children of immigrant parents are undocumented today. Indeed, this number is small because many children of undocumented immigrants are born in the U.S. and thus are granted citizenship at birth.

The children in our data from countries like Mexico and El Salvador are those whose parents benefited from an earlier legalization effort in the mid-1980s. They are doing remarkably well now, and we believe that their counterparts today have this potential, as well. Children who arrive in the U.S. without papers face barriers to mobility—and not because they put in any less effort, but because they encounter obstacles all along their path. With a stroke of a pen, politicians can make that happen but, so far, this legislation has remained out of reach.

What enables the children of immigrants to escape poor circumstances and move up the economic ladder? The answer we hear most often is that immigrants have a better work ethic than the US-born and that immigrant parents put more emphasis on education.

We agree that the special features of immigrant families could be part of the story (although it’s hard to tell in our data). Yet when we crunched the numbers we found something surprising: immigrants tend to move to those locations in the U.S. that offer the best opportunities for upward mobility for their kids, whereas the U.S.-born are more rooted in place.

Generations of social science research has confirmed that where children grow up influences their opportunities in life. We find that immigrant parents are more likely than U.S.-born parents to settle in these high-opportunity areas, which are flush with good jobs and offer better prospects for mobility in the next generation. As striking proof that geography matters, we see that children of immigrants out-earn other children in a broad national comparison, but they do not earn more than other children who grew up in the same area. In terms of economic fortunes, the grown children of immigrants look similar to the children of U.S.-born parents who were raised down the block, or in the same town. This pattern implies that the primary difference between immigrant families and the families of the U.S.-born is in where they choose to live.

One implication of our findings is that it is very likely that U.S.-born families would have achieved the same success had they moved to such high-opportunity places themselves. In fact, we find that the children of U.S.-born parents who moved from one state to another have higher upward mobility than those who stayed put: their level of upward mobility is closer to (but not quite as high as) that of the children of immigrants who moved from abroad. So, you might ask: why don’t US-born families move out of a region when job opportunities dwindle?

Ironically, J.D. Vance (who is now running for Senate in Ohio on an anti-immigration platform) poses this question in his bestseller Hillbilly Elegy,aboutgrowing up in Middletown, Ohio, only 45 minutes from the border with Kentucky, the state where his family had lived for generations. For Vance, moving up the ladder meant moving out of his childhood community, a step that many Americans are unwilling to take. He went on to enlist in the Marines, and then to Ohio State and Yale Law School—“Though we sing the praises of social mobility,” he writes, “it has its downsides. The term necessarily implies a sort of movement—to a theoretically better life, yes, but also away from something.”

Vance is hitting on the cost of attaining upward mobility for children of U.S.-born parents. Many of the children of U.S.-born parents grow up in areas where their families settled long before, so economic mobility for them is often coupled with the costs of leaving home. By contrast, immigrants already took the step of leaving home to move to America, so they may be more willing to go wherever it takes within the country to find opportunity. In other words, U.S.-born families are more rooted in place, while immigrant families are more footloose—and this willingness to move toward opportunity seems to make all the difference.

Adapted from Abramitzky and Boustan’s new book Streets of Gold: America’s Untold Story of Immigrant Success

Source: Why the Children of Immigrants Are the Ones Getting Ahead in America

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Prison service must do more to remove barriers for Indigenous, Black offenders: AG

2022/06/02 Leave a comment

Of note. Another ongoing issue, one not easy to resolve but one would hope to see some ongoing progress:

The federal auditor general says Canada’s prison service has not given offenders timely access to programs to help ease them back into society, including courses specific to women, Indigenous people and visible minorities.

Auditor general Karen Hogan found Black and Indigenous offenders experienced poorer outcomes than any other groups in the federal correctional system and faced greater barriers to a safe and gradual return to the outside world.

Hogan pointed out her office raised similar issues in audits in 2015, 2016 and 2017, yet the correctional service has done little to change the policies, practices, tools and approaches that produce these differing outcomes.

Hogan says disparities were present from the moment offenders entered federal institutions.

The process for selecting security classifications saw Indigenous and Black offenders assigned to maximum-security institutions at twice the rate of other groups of offenders.

They also remained in federal custody longer and at higher levels of security before their release.

The audit found that timely access to correctional programs continued to decline across all groups of offenders. Access to programming, which teaches crucial skills like problem solving and goal setting, worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Of men serving sentences of two to four years who were released from April to December 2021, 94 per cent had not completed the correctional programs they needed before they were first eligible to apply for day parole.

“This is a barrier to serving the remainder of their sentences under supervision in the community,” the report says.

The prison service needs to find a different way to organize programming, because “that timely access is so critical to an offender’s successful path forward,” Hogan said Tuesday at a news conference.

Correctional service efforts to support greater equity, diversity and inclusion in the workplace also fell short, leaving persistent barriers unresolved, the report says.

Close to one-quarter of management and staff had not completed mandatory diversity training a year after the deadline.

In addition, the prison service had not established a plan to build a workforce that reflects the diversity of its offender populations, which has particular relevance for institutions with high numbers of Indigenous and Black offenders, the report says.

Hogan noted the correctional service has acknowledged systemic racism in the system, initiating an anti-racism framework to identify and remove systemic barriers.

The service has agreed to act on the auditor general’s recommendations to remedy the various issues she identified.

Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino stressed efforts toward “rooting out racism in all of its forms” by diversifying the prison service’s workforce, improving our training and collecting data to inform policies. “And we know we’ve got a long way to go.”

Mendicino noted he recently directed the correctional service head to create a new position of deputy commissioner for Indigenous corrections, saying it will ensure the overrepresentation of Indigenous offenders in the system, especially women, is addressed.

Source: Prison service must do more to remove barriers for Indigenous, Black offenders: AG

Filed under Aboriginal, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Les immigrants au Québec sont plus nombreux et mieux intégrés qu’il n’y paraît

2022/06/02 Leave a comment

Most commentary in English media focuses on Quebec’s demand for full jurisdiction over immigration, which this report also advocates. <a href="http://<section class="article-content__content-group"> <p>Prime Minister Justin Trudeau repeated on Tuesday that he has no intention of transferring additional powers over immigration to Quebec, even as Premier François Legault has made it clear <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/caq-government-will-seek-more-power-over-immigration-legault-tells-convention&quot; target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">he will make the dispute an issue</a> in the provincial election campaign.</p> </section> <div class="ad__section-border article-content__ad-group"> <section class="article-content__content-group">“It’s clear that a country must have a say in its immigration,” Trudeau told reporters while on his way to a cabinet meeting.<p></p> <p>Responsibility for immigration is shared between the two governments “because the protection of French and francophone immigration are very important to us,” Trudeau said.</p> <p>Last weekend, Legault said Ottawa’s handing over responsibility for family reunification to the province was a question of survival for the Québécois nation. The premier went so far as to brandish the prospect of Quebec’s sharing the <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/new-political-parties-would-turn-quebec-into-a-new-louisiana-legault&quot; target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">fate of Louisiana</a> and the latter’s gradual disappearance of French if the status quo is maintained.</p> <p>With an election four months away, Legault said he intends to ask the population for a “strong mandate” to provide his government with a “position of strength” in relations with Ottawa.</p> </section> <div class="ad__section-border article-content__ad-group"> <p>Federal Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez, Trudeau’s Quebec lieutenant, noted Tuesday that the province “already has the tools to welcome the vast majority of immigrants.”</p> <p>The province takes in about <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/business/boosting-immigration-not-desirable-and-it-wont-happen-fitzgibbon&quot; target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">50,000 immigrants a year.</a></p> <p>About 10,000 immigrants come in as part of the family unification program, Rodrigues said, adding that nothing prevents Quebec from increasing the number <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/raise-immigration-levels-to-battle-labour-shortage-quebec-employers-group&quot; target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">economic immigrants</a> it accepts</p> <p>Federal Revenue Minister Diane Lebouthillier did not mince words, saying she “doesn’t believe” Legault’s claims. “It is important to respect jurisdictions and we can’t just do that only when it suits us.”</p> <p>Federal Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne said that “the powers when it comes to immigration are very clear.” Champagne said the No. 1 issue at the moment is the labour shortage and immigration is a key to solving it.</p> <section class="more-topic" aria-labelledby="moreTopicLabel2193823414915864500965387018879603"></section> </div> </div> <p>Source: <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/trudeau-pushes-back-on-legaults-immigration-demands">Trudeau pushes back on Legault's immigration demands</a>

Prime Minister Trudeau has pushed back on this demand.

But the real story and area of interest is just how much the economic outcomes of immigrants to Quebec have improved, both in absolute terms as well as relative to other provinces:

Le Québec accueille beaucoup plus de nouveaux arrivants qu’il n’y paraît et les intègre économiquement beaucoup mieux qu’auparavant, constate une étude. Aux prises avec une pénurie de main-d’œuvre, il devrait maintenant augmenter ses seuils officiels d’immigration, en ayant particulièrement en tête les régions.

À propos des immigrants, le gouvernement Legault a dit vouloir « en prendre moins, mais en prendre soin », rappelle l’Institut du Québec (IdQ) dans le communiqué de presse accompagnant le Portrait de l’immigration au Québec dévoilé mercredi. Or, même s’il a réduit de 51 000 à 40 000 le seuil de nouveaux immigrants permanents à sa première année au pouvoir, le nombre total de nouveaux résidents étrangers au Québec a augmenté pour une quatrième année consécutive, le solde migratoire externe global — le total des arrivées moins les départs au Québec — indiquant un gain record de presque 93 500 nouveaux arrivants en 2019.

Cette hausse vient de l’augmentation constante du nombre de travailleurs immigrants et d’étudiants étrangers admis en vertu de permis temporaires. Leur total est passé, en dix ans, de 79 000 en 2012 à 177 000 en 2021. La pandémie de COVID-19 et le resserrement des règles sanitaires aux frontières sont venus diminuer fortement le solde migratoire total à 14 000 en 2020 et à 44 000 en 2021. Passé d’un peu moins de 125 000 en 2019 à 97 000 en 2020, le nombre de permis de résidence temporaire délivrés par le gouvernement du Québec a toutefois rapidement rebondi l’année dernière, à presque 136 000.

Meilleure intégration économique

Il n’y a pas que le nombre d’immigrants temporaires qui a fortement changé depuis quelques années, poursuit l’IdQ dans son rapport de 69 pages. Le degré d’intégration économique des nouveaux arrivants s’est aussi nettement amélioré.

Le taux de chômage des immigrants reçus de 25 à 54 ans a, par exemple, fondu de plus de moitié en dix ans, passant de 12,7 % en 2012 (contre 6,5 % pour les populations nées au Canada) à 5,3 % en avril dernier (contre 2,9 %). Encore loin derrière celui de l’Ontario (75,1 %) ou bien celui de la Colombie-Britannique (76,7 %), le taux d’emploi de l’ensemble des immigrants reçus au Québec a, par ailleurs, bondi de 69,9 % à 81,9 % et rattrapé tout son retard sur les autres provinces.

Des progrès sont aussi observés du côté des revenus. Au Québec, la rémunération hebdomadaire moyenne de l’ensemble des immigrants reçus accusait en 2012 un retard de 8,5 % par rapport aux populations nées au Canada. Cet écart avait diminué à 2,8 % en 2020, avant que la pandémie ne frappe plus durement les travailleurs immigrants et ne recreuse l’écart à 6,4 % en 2021. Le rattrapage est encore plus spectaculaire lorsqu’on concentre son regard sur les seuls immigrants économiques, dont le retard salarial, un an après leur admission à la résidence permanente, s’élevait à 40 % par rapport à la médiane québécoise en 2010 et qui n’était plus que de 1,3 % en 2019.

Le recours grandissant à l’immigration temporaire n’est pas étranger à cette meilleure intégration économique des immigrants au Québec, ont indiqué en entrevue au Devoir deux des auteurs de l’étude. En effet, le fait d’avoir de l’expérience professionnelle au Canada aide grandement à cette intégration, observe l’économiste Daye Diallo. Et si la proportion des nouveaux immigrants reçus qui disposent d’une telle expérience est passée, en dix ans, de 37 % à 57 %, c’est que plusieurs d’entre eux travaillaient déjà au Québec à titre d’étudiants internationaux ou de travailleurs temporaires.

L’augmentation du nombre d’immigrants et leur meilleure intégration économique des dernières années découlent également du vieillissement de la population québécoise et des besoins de plus en plus pressants de main-d’œuvre des entreprises, poursuit la présidente-directrice générale de l’IdQ, Mia Homsy. « C’est clairement l’effet du resserrement du marché du travail, qui profite à tous les travailleurs, mais davantage aux immigrants. »

Pourrait faire mieux

Tout ne va cependant pas pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes, précise l’IdQ. Si l’augmentation du nombre de travailleurs temporaires aide les entreprises à faire face à la pénurie de main-d’œuvre, elle se fait souvent au prix d’une plus grande précarité pour ces travailleurs étrangers, parfois aux prises avec des permis de travail reliés à un employeur abusif ou inéquitable et avec des conditions de travail moins favorables, ne pouvant pas faire venir leurs familles ou montrant une méconnaissance de leurs droits. La situation n’est pas idéale non plus pour les employeurs, qui voudraient pouvoir compter sur une main-d’œuvre plus stable à long terme.

Pour compliquer les choses, les délais d’obtention de la résidence permanente pour ces travailleurs temporaires « sont, de loin, beaucoup plus longs au Québec qu’ailleurs au Canada ». Principalement attribuables au gouvernement fédéral, ces « délais administratifs démesurés » qui peuvent s’échelonner sur 37 mois en amènent certains, malheureusement, à se tourner vers d’autres provinces, comme l’Ontario.

L’IdQ constate également que, malgré les efforts, la régionalisation de l’immigration est « au point mort », la grande région de Montréal accueillant encore et toujours près de 85 % des immigrants au Québec. Or, les besoins de main-d’œuvre sont souvent bien plus grands ailleurs. De plus, l’intégration économique, sociale et linguistique des immigrants à la majorité francophone se ferait probablement encore mieux à l’extérieur de la métropole.

L’IdQ recommande notamment de rehausser les seuils annuels d’immigration en priorisant les régions. Aux 50 000 nouveaux immigrants reçus prévus, Québec pourrait ainsi accepter un maximum de 10 000 demandes supplémentaires qui seraient soumises par des immigrants temporaires déjà installés en dehors des grands centres.

À défaut de grands ambassadeurs comme Montréal international et Québec international, les régions devraient pouvoir compter davantage sur Investissement Québec international ainsi que sur leurs cégeps et universités pour attirer plus d’étudiants internationaux et de travailleurs temporaires qualifiés.

Comme les délais de traitement des demandes sont très longs et qu’ils sont généralement imposés à des immigrants temporaires qui travaillent déjà au Québec, l’IdQ estime qu’on pourrait aussi abolir l’obligation d’expérience professionnelle avant le dépôt d’une demande de résidence permanente. Pour réduire les délais, Ottawa devrait aussi céder plus de pouvoirs à Québec dans le traitement des demandes des immigrants économiques.

Source: Les immigrants au Québec sont plus nombreux et mieux intégrés qu’il n’y paraît

English version:

Quebec should boost immigration thresholds while demanding more powers from the federal government in a bid to cut “unacceptable” delays and start easing the province’s long-standing labour shortage, a new study suggests.

Economic immigrants who apply for permanent residence in Quebec face the longest wait times in Canada, according to a report released Wednesday by the Montreal-based Institut du Québec think tank. Candidates looking to settle in Quebec can face administrative delays of as many as 37 months, compared with waits of six to 28 months in the rest of Canada, the study says. Health, security and standards checks by the federal government are the main reason for the delays, it says.

Although Quebec has the right to select its economic immigrants, Canada remains responsible for setting national immigration standards and objectives. Allowing Quebec to verify by itself the health, security and criminal records of economic immigrants would considerably speed up the bureaucratic process and improve Quebec’s attractiveness in an increasingly competitive labour market, according to Institut du Québec chief executive Mia Homsy.

“The big issue is the length of time it takes to process immigration requests for economic immigrants,” Homsy, who co-authored the study, said in an interview. “There’s a huge attractiveness issue for Quebec when the gap with the rest of Canada gets too big. If things take too long, immigrants are just going to cross the border and settle in Ontario.”

Quebec’s programs should also be reviewed. To speed things up, Homsy and her colleagues say the province would benefit from allowing temporary workers admitted under the so-called “Quebec Experience Program” to apply for permanent residence before having accumulated up to 24 months of work experience.

As Quebec’s population ages and employers struggle to fill vacant positions, the province has been relying more and more on temporary immigration to keep businesses humming. Non-permanent residents represented 64 per cent of the net number of international immigrants in 2019 — a huge jump from the 9 per cent average recorded between 2012 and 2016.

Long considered a weak point for Quebec, the economic integration of immigrants has made remarkable strides in recent years. Employment among Quebec immigrants aged 25 to 54 has increased by 224,000 since 2012, the study shows — a 61-per-cent surge.

Immigrants now make up 19.2 per cent of Quebec’s working population. Ten years ago, the proportion was only 12.6 per cent.

As a result, the unemployment rate for immigrants aged 25 to 54 fell to 5.3 per cent in April. A decade ago, joblessness was 12.7 per cent.

Entry wages for economic immigrants have also improved. As of 2019, they represented 98.7 per cent of the Quebec median wage, up from about 60 per cent in 2010, the study says.

Quebec’s labour market is growing increasingly tight — and many economists expect the trend to persist this decade as baby boomers retire en masse. The province’s unemployment rate, long among the highest in Canada, is now the lowest in the country. It hit a historic low of 3.9 per cent in April, 1.3 percentage points below the national average.

At the end of 2021, there was less than one unemployed person in Quebec for each job vacancy. That compares with a ratio of five to one in 2015.

“It’s a spectacular turnaround,” Homsy said. “Economic growth has accelerated just as the population of Quebec was aging. There is huge demand for workers at the same time that more people are retiring. Employers haven’t had time to adjust.”

Despite a crying need for workers, Quebec’s regions have been unable to attract enough immigrants. Nearly 85 per cent of the immigrants who arrive each year in Quebec settle in the Greater Montreal area, the study shows. Montreal — home to about half of Quebec’s population — took in an average of 37,000 permanent immigrants annually between 2015 and 2019, while 11 of the province’s 17 administrative regions received less than 1,000.

“In fairness, this is a phenomenon that we see everywhere,” Homsy said. “Immigrants gravitate toward big cities because these tend to offer more career opportunities. Quite often, they already have friends in big cities. All of this is difficult to replicate in the regions.”

To help solve acute labour shortages in the outlying regions, Quebec should set up a new “fast-track” program that could lead to as many as 10,000 additional temporary immigrants settling here every year, the IDQ study says. Immigrants targeted by the new program would be added to the 50,000 already admitted for permanent residence under existing programs.

Among other measures suggested by the authors, Quebec should increase the scope of international recruitment campaigns to attract more foreign students and qualified temporary workers. Another recommendation calls for the province to boost tax credits for international students who decide to settle permanently in Quebec’s regions after their studies.

Source: Quebec must boost immigration levels to solve labour woes: think tank

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